Tattoo musing

My friends know by now that I am fascinated by the tattoo movement in the US. My interest has peaked with my new job in a younger, hipper, tattoo ridden environment. I strive to understand what motivates people to get tattoos and specifically what motivates them to choose the tattoo they choose.

In talking with my dear, younger friend Jenn (she is in the tattoo age bracket), we try to make sense of the craze.

We were discussing one of my recent tattoo sightings: I saw a girl with a tattoo of a bunny in a wagon being pulled by a bike. It was on her ankle! What does that mean???? On her other ankle was a skull!

Then she shares that her husband (a guy in her same tattoo age bracket - but obviously not as level headed) has a "warrior" tattoo. Her husband is from Guam, so I ask the logical question: "Is he some kind of Guamanian Warrior and is this a tribute to his culture?"

HA! At this point she busts a gut laughing and explains "He's no Guamanian Warrior, he got the tattoo when he was 18 and he thought it looked cool.....I just think it looks like the female reproductive system"!

That's when I busted a gut laughing!

Cheechoo Train....

Yesterday Jim met Jonathan Cheechoo, my favorite Sharks hockey player! He was having pizza with a friend of Cheechoo's and Cheechoo ran into the pizza place to drop off a fishing pole. So it was not a long meeting, just a shake hands type of thing. But that was enough time for our whole family to be fired up... I wanted to know if Jim invited him for dinner or told him I was going to name my french bulldog Cheechoo! Drew wanted to know if Cheechoo was going to go fishing with him and Jim! Gracie wanted to know if Jim told him she has a stuffed chicken named Cheechoo!

Jim could have met the President, a movie star or a rock star and we would not have been as impressed!

Play date

Daisy Mae had a play date tonite with Jeeter. His mom and dad are gone and he has been getting into trouble (eating stuffed animals) - so we decided he needed to get out and use up some energy. We are not telling Toby, her boyfriend, about the date!

Where are those kids?

Last weekend I was with my nephews (almost 5 and 7). We were looking at Sam's yearbook and both Gracie and I noticed that there was a boy wearing a camouflage shirt. Both of us made comments about camouflage is not allowed at our school. And Jack (almost 5), says "why, because the teachers won't be able to see the kids???"!

We all cracked up!

1st Day of School 2007

Here are pics of the first day of school. Drew is starting 6th grade and Gracie is starting 2nd grade.
The word on Gracie’s teacher is “it will feel like the train is going off the track at first, but by the end of school you will realize it did not go off the track!” Not a warm and fuzzy feeling! But I have to wait for data before making a stink about it! I was really hoping I wouldn’t need to do a lot of oversight of her learning this year.

Don’t know much about Drew’s teacher. I didn’t even get a peek at her because I was with Gracie.

we might as well live in the wilderness...

Last nite I had a BAD case of insomnia and I was up at 11:45 looking out the front window. Imagine my surprise when 2 raccoons walk from the side of the house out to the middle of our yard! Then they wander across the street and walk down the sidewalk like they are going for a nightly stroll!

Then this morning, Betty starts making weird noise in the back yard and Jim goes out to see that a hawk is stalking her! She was hiding under a hedge so she was ok - but it was totally going to try to get her!

Tuna Trip

Drew went tuna fishing for the first time this weekend. This is the haul. They went 55 miles offshore - they left the harbor at 3:30 am and got home at 4:30 pm. Drew had taken sea sickness medication so he felt pretty good all day. Besides catching the fish, the highlights of the day were when a shark at half a fish that was on their line and when there were 300 to 500 dolphins swimming around them. All in all a dream day for an 11 year old boy....and his Dad!

PS that is the hoochee that they use to attract the fish!

Mimi the crazy hat girl

My niece Amelia certainly has a zest for life! This is her a couple weeks ago at our house. She is wearing one of Gracie's old hats. She kept asking for someone to help her put it on.

Good Morning!

What a way to wake up.....

This morning at about 6 am, I was taking the dog our for a run. You know....same old routine. I am in the garage getting her collar and she starts hunting around like she smells a critter. She runs all around the garage sniffing and heads out the the side of the house. I am watching her and thinking that there must have been a cat in the garage and she smells it.

I am standing on the step going into the house and am still half asleep.....when all of a sudden, she uses her big lab nose to move a plastic bin that is located just outside of the garage. Out from behind the bin comes a HUGE rat....running straight towards me!!!!!!!! It literally jumps up on the step I am standing on and runs behind me and then jumps off the step! I screamed like I have never screamed before and went running inside and up the stairs. Jim came running like something terrible had happened to me or the dog. He said he had never heard a sceam like that and was not sure it was me or the dog!

The dog was right behind me and stood next to me on the stairs and wondering why we were not going on a run..... I was sweating, had tears in my eyes and was generally out of control! Not a good way to start the day. I have to admit, I have an un-natural fear of rats!

So when I finally calm down, I head out with the dog. While out, we go by an accident where a 16 year old girl failed to negotiate a turn and ended up crashing into someones side yard - taking out the fence, trees and bushes.

The scary thing is that where she crashed is where we run every morning.....so the moral to this story is.... that rat save my life! If I had not been delayed by the rat, it is likely that Daisy and I would have been right at the crash spot when the girl lost control! I always try to look at the positive of everything!

Now for the rest of the story... Jim and Drew went to check out the accident and got the skinny from a friend of ours. The driver was a 16 year old girl and was in her robe with negligee underneath! She said she was going to pick up a friend who was at a party (on Weds morning at 6 am!?!?!). Cops did a bunch of DUI tests and took her away.

Way too much drama for me....and all before 7 am!

Betty needs a new home

Now that Betty is an only chicken, she really needs a new home. Chickens like to be with other chickens and I have terrible guilt that she is lonely. I think I can find her a new home pretty easily - that is not the problem. The problem is with my husband and children who don't think she needs a new home because they can't stand to give her up. Everytime I bring it up they start protesting. They have every excuse in the book:

* She is not lonely, she has us and Daisy Mae
* She can't possible live with 20 other chickens, she won't get enough attention
* Nobody will take such good care of her

She has up to 7 or 8 more years left in her life span.....this may be a long discussion.

pot in the burbs....

So there I am on Saturday morning watering my flowers in my front yard in the suburbs! As I am watering, I get this whiff of marijuna smoke! I am sure that it must be some local brush fire and look around for smoke....but I don't see anything. This happens again and again. I finally put down my hose and look down the street to see two 40 something year old guys sitting on the curb on the side of our house smoking pot and drinking something out of a brown paper bag. WHAT THE?!?!?! This is Saturday morning at 11 am. People are pushing babies in strollers, kids are riding bikes, people are washing cars....and these two morons are smoking pot!

I call the police - non emergency number - and they send someone out. But, of course, the police do not get there before the moron's get up and walk away. But as they walked away they put on smocks. The type of smocks people wear when they are walking door to door to drop of advertising.

The guys later walked down our street and left an advertisement for a local real estate agent....who I promptly called and told about the pot smoking and drinking. And then asked that she send someone out to clean up the trash they left on the side of our house!

Total strange experience!

Hillbillies have quite a sense of humor!

This morning I was emailing back and forth with my handsome, charming, smart and hilarious hillbilly cousin Matt. I was playing the role of OLDER and WISER cousin and giving him career advice. I made the mistake of calling myself "OLDER and WISER". Here was his response:

"However don't ever put "older" in caps like that again. I don't care how many years old you are, old people do not: hike miles in mountains, take hillbillys on the best camping trips ever, rescue hillbillys from class 46 rapids and drive the most bad ass SUV on the market. You can call yourself old when you have to ask Jim to grab the walker out of the truck before a 12 mile hike."

This made me crack up and really put things into perspective.....

Thanks Mattt....now who is wiser?!?!

Yum - new discovery of an old stand by

I love grapenuts in my yogurt. It makes for a great breakfast. The crunchy of the grapenuts goes great with the sweet of yogurt - and it is a low calories, high fiber, healthy breakfast. I have been eating this mixture for years.

Today I did not have any yogurt (I am at work). But I did have grapenuts and a banana. So I got a cup of milk from the coffee bar downstairs and made a bowl of grapenuts with sliced bananas - YUM! The only problem is a 1/2 cup of grapenuts is 200 calories and I easily could scarf down 2 cups of grapenuts! But I used restraint and kept it at about 3/4 cups! I thought that was acceptable after doing 6 miles this morning!

So try it! And don't think I am some kind of health nut because I would still give my left arm for a bowl of Lucky Charms!

Movies

We saw a couple good movies this weekend.

The first one was "Breach" and was about the FBI agent Robert Hannsen who sold secrets to the Russians for 22 years. It was really good. Really engaging.

The other was "My Super Ex Girlfriend". It was goofy but entertaining. Worth a rental!

Betty - The Lone Ranger

Poor Betty is lonely without all her chicken friends. And lonely in the chicken world means a little neurotic! She spends most of her time hanging out at the back door waiting for someone to open it so she can make a mad dash inside. And when she is not at the back door she is waiting for someone to open the gate or the garage door so she can make a mad dash out front.

On Saturday at about 7 am, I was upstairs in my room and heard clucking in the front yard. I ran downstairs to find Betty strutting around the front yard. Someone had left the gate open and she wandered out.

She spent a good part of the weekend in the front yard hanging out with us. I was weeding and she would run over and inspect the weed I pulled out. Kids in the neighborhood would come by and pet her. She watched the dogs play and ended up in the middle of them a couple times and had to run so she was not smushed under a pile of labradors!

Last nite she was going crazy pecking the back door when it was just getting dark - she was telling us that her coop was closed up and she could not get in!

Tattoo watch

So I have shared with you that this new place of employment I have been hanging around is ripe with tattoos! I am committed to sharing with you the lunacy of tattoos in the workplace and will share all the odd places that I see tattoos!

This morning at the gym, which is a key place to view tattoos - due to the lack of clothing, I saw an abundance of tattoos. The most notable today was a woman who had a tattoo of a flower on her big toe! That must have hurt! I can buy into the whole meaningful aspect of a tattoo - ie a tribute to a lost family member, a memory of a hard time in your life and how you succeeded, etc. BUT - what could a flower on your toe mean? A memory of tip toeing thru the tulips?

Betty update

Just an update on Betty, my remaining chicken. I talked to the folks at the feed and supply store last nite and they agree that whatever killed Maverick and Rowdy could have been one of any billions of things! And what killed each of them could have been different things. They also agreed that I should treat Betty with antibiotics just in case. So this morning, I started her on a 7 day course of chicken antibiotics! I am watching her closely and don't see any signs of illness so far.

As for Betty, she seems lonely - she keeps breaking into the house when she gets a chance and if the big garage door is open, she makes a mad dash into the front yard. Yesterday she was in the front yard in the middle and Daisy Mae and Toby (2 BIG labs) playing. Pretty soon she is going to think she is a dog.

How I knew I made the right job decision...

I knew I came to the right company when I overheard this in the lobby of the building I work in....

"alright, everyone gather around the cow!"

I laughed out loud because where else would that happen? In our lobby there is a giant purple bull that has a computer built into the side of it and folks take their pictures with it all the time.

Bad Office Mojo

Next time you see me be sure to ask me about the bad office mojo my new office has.....it is a long story and too high visibility to post about but it is a great story I can share if we are not in a public place. It involves me doing a bad mojo/karma cleansing of my office....

Maverick's Demise

I am very sad to report that Maverick went to the great chicken coop in the sky. No doubt she is there bossing someone around and chasing Marty's Dad across his garden!

So far Betty looks fine but I am going to treat her with antibiotics just to be careful. I feel so bad for her that she is alone. I have looked at the humane society and some chicken websites to see if anyone is looking to get rid of an adult hen but have not found one yet.

Eraser Love....

This is what happens with 2 young, attractive erasers meet at the office.

Maverick

Just a quick note to ask for a little prayer for a sick chicken --- Maverick is really sick!

New Job

I started my new job this past monday and it has been a wild ride! I would describe it as drinking from a fire hose. Lots of info coming at me from all different sources. I am trying to understand the business, the culture and the politics as fast as I can so that I can do my job as efficienctly as possible. So far so good, although this company is a lot "younger" than other companies where I have worked. I am a bit alarmed to tell you I have seen more tatoos and thong underwear hanging out the top of pants than I see at the mall! I kid you not! So when I get a tatoo, don't be surprised!