Holy Crap, I’m A Mother…..AND A HOUSEWIFE!!!

As many of you know, The King came down to Florida last November and moved in with myself and The Offspring. There have been many adjustments, changes, and fine-tuning of our living arrangements since that time. One of the things I found myself daydreaming about on a regular basis was organization. I shared with you the “purging” of the bedroom, and now I bring you the “reorganization” of the kitchen cabinets.

I know, you guys think I’m crazy…and I probably am…but here’s the thing. I have been in my house between nineteen and twenty years give or take a nightmare or two and I think in all of those years I have cleaned out those cabinets once.

ONCE.

In twenty years.

I don’t know about you but can you imagine how much shit has accumulated and been piled, shoved, pushed, and stacked in the extremely few cabinets I have in my kitchen? You guys know I love football but did I have to bring an average of 2.67 plastics cups home from every – single – football game I attended? And did I have to have a coordinating koozie for every outfit that used to hang in my closet? Okay, maybe I did but I’m over that phase in my life. Did I have to save every single baby plate, spoon, and sippy cup from when my children were but babes? No really, my son drives a redneck four-wheel drive truck; do you think he’s going to go muddin’ drinking from a Playtex spill-proof juice cup? I don’t think so either, even if it DOES have cute widdle ducks all over it.

So for the past two weeks I have been a tad busy. Between getting over a sham of an illness, I have been attending three softball games a week, taking and picking up Spawnette from softball practices, getting two hundred people here at work ready for a two week COOP exercise in the middle of nowhere with nothing to eat but MRE’s thank goodness I’m not going and organizing kitchen cabinets in any spare time I can find. Here is just a sampling of some of the reorganization results.

An example of "before" that I haven't yet cleaned out:

An example of "after" that is one of the few completed:

Don’t roll your eyes and wonder why the hell I posted pictures of my kitchen cabinets, those there are pictures of my blood, sweat, and tears. That shit took HOURS and I’m still not done. Hell, I’m not even half way through and I truly don’t have that many cabinets in my kitchen!

I need a beer….anyone have a koozie to match my black and white Hawaiian sundress? If not, I’ll take one of these:

Sometimes It's Good To Be Queen

I know…..I’m a bad girl for being gone so long but it has been a crazy couple of weeks. As you all know, King Dork has finally and “officially” moved from Ohio down to the armpit of Florida. He’s not as close to his kids as he would like BUT there is year-round golf so he’s adjusting. Speaking of his kids, his youngest son leaves Saturday for a year-long tour in Iraq so keep him and all of the soldiers over there in your prayers.

So we brought The King’s stuff back to the homestead the weekend of Thanksgiving. As we didn’t get in until very late that night due to holiday traffic, we waited until Monday morning to unload the U-Haul trailer and the SUV. The two combined held a lot.

I’m talking so much that the garage is overflowing onto the back porch and there are additional boxes in the Florida room and dining room.

STILL.

packing it up to bring to Florida

stuff that didn't make it to Florida but instead got "stored" at the farm


I’m freaking out because I don’t know where to put all of this stuff, my Christmas decorations did not make it up, I have no tree, and this is my favorite season on the year as far a decorating. UGH!!! Big cry jig Sunday and onto the “fuck it” stage. This is the stage in the game where I pretty much don’t give one or two shits whether or not I put up a tree, hang a stocking or two, or string my flying light-up flamingos from the pines in the front yard.

yes this is really my house.....

This is a quiet stage, a stage of acceptance, a stage that reminds me there will be no week-long packing up of decorations after the holiday season is over. A stage of many a beer and contemplation of many more beers.

And now onto THIS weekend. As most of you know, my son plays high school football. He plays on a 1A team that has made it through the playoffs and is headed to the Citrus Bowl for the State Championship game tomorrow night. This is the teams’ third year in a row making it to State Champs; we’re hoping for a win this year. My son is a junior but has started in all three State Championship games and is finally hopeful they will go all the way.

This is MY “Z”

coming in for the kill

The fun part will be staying at my sister’s for the weekend. I see in my future quite a few toddies consumed as I sit on the floor admiring HER Christmas tree.

Admiring her tree…..sounds like I need a beer this evening to prepare for the beer tomorrow that I will be drinking as I sit under a tree that is shedding needles on someone else’s floor, that someone else is forgetting to water, and that someone else knows before this holiday is over the dog is going to run through the house and slam into the tree knocking it down and leaving shards of broken glass all over the floor that the kids will step right through or over because they don’t have it in them to grab the broom and sweep it up themselves.

Ya know.....sometimes it’s good to be Queen.

Holiday Traffic Is The BOMB!

Well we made the trip to and from Columbus; what should have been a thirteen hour drive (with potty breaks) turned into seventeen hours each way. SEVENTEEN HOURS!!! Why did it take so long? Well, because I love you guys and think of you often I took my camera along just so I could share with you a photo or two of holiday traffic.

In February of this year Atlanta was deemed having the worst traffic in the country; here is why:

This is our trip up to Columbus. Between Macon and Atlanta this is what the traffic looked like. This is a 95 mile distance that took between three and four hours. It usually only takes me just over an hour. Not this past weekend:

This is one of the reasons for the hold ups:

This is our trip back:

We finally got off just south of Atlanta (you can see the split highways here) and took the back roads home. It may have taken a bit longer but at least we were moving!

Any road trip horror stories you’d like to share?

UPDATE.....

This is what I am used to driving on:

Thanksgiving Day Cooking Tips While We're Away

My brother is always looking for new ways to cook a Thanksgiving Day turkey. Living in the south it is now “understood” that the holiday bird will be deep fried, not baked like woosie people do. Through trial and error he has discovered the need to fully thaw and remove any and all moisture from the turkey before submerging the carcass into a vat of hot, boiling oil.

He has also discovered that it’s best not to fry a turkey in the carport as the flames can flash in a nanosecond reaching heights of ten feet or more.

Lastly, it has been determined that when frying a turkey, proper footwear is a must.

Hiking Shoes = NO
Steel-toed boots = YES

This year I found a recipe for the Finster to tryout; jars of jalapeno peppers will fill the cavity of the bird instead of plain, old stuffing. Once stuffed the well-thawed and well-dried off turkey will be submerged into the hot vat of boiling oil and cooked to perfection. Unfortunately I will not be here to enjoy this tradition in the making as King and I will be enroute to Ohio to bring back his worldly possessions.

Happy Turkey Day To One And All!

We'll be back next week - stay safe and eat too much.....errr, don't, yea DON'T eat too much.

Does Anyone Have A Dance Hall Girl Outfit I Can Borrow?

The season of big meals and long naps are finally upon us. The King and I are leaving next week to travel north unto the snow and icy encrusted tundra for to bringeth his life’s possessions unto our kingdom. Yeah, we’re driving the gas-guzzling SUV to his former homestead and bringing the rest of his belongs down to Florida. Or should I have said “all” of his belongings considering he arrive with a suitcase, two small duffle bags, and his laptops. He has a house in Ohio out in the country…..no really, it’s in rural farm country…..but we both feel that any “big ticket” items should not be stored out there for numerous reasons. Therefore, we are renting a big trailer to hitch the behemoth “Gawain” (that’s what I named my Expedition) in order to fill it with The King’s bountiful property and transport it back home. Or what he is now calling home until he decides he can’t take the tedious life here in our small southern town and runs kicking and screaming back to Ohio.

So I bet you guys are asking what kind of “big ticket” items does The King have in Ohio that we don’t want to store in an empty house. Well, as almost all of his antique furnishings were lost in a flood, he is left with the following:

An extensive movie collection (to add to my extensive movie collection which I am very excited about)

An extensive music collection

The rest of his clothing

A desk

A chair

A pool table

Two video arcade games

Lots of Christmas decorations

Now I know this doesn’t sound like a lot but here we have The Queen’s dilemma. I have lived in the same house for roughly eighteen years. I have brought with me, added, taken in, adopted, whatever you want to call it……enough shit to fill two houses and a barn. We live in Florida where the houses do not have basements and rarely have an attic. I have neither. Here is my house:

I am not an architect, interior designer, or decorator so the picture above is the best I can do under those futile circumstances. What I wanted you to notice, however, is that I HAVE NO ROOM!!!!! I have no room for “big ticket” items. So here’s the problem: I need assistance in figuring out where the hell to put a game room. You guys have probably guessed that each room has more than enough furniture (ignore the picture it's not perfectly accurate; there’s plenty in each of the rooms.) If I turn the Florida room into a game room where in the house is it quiet enough for an office and a fold-out couch should we have over-night visitors? The back porch is not closed-in so I don’t want furniture or electrical items out in the humidity or I’ll get electrocuted as I drink my morning coffee and I really do like my straight hair. That weird rectangle to the left of what is suppose to be the bed in the master bedroom is actually a closet so that won’t work. UUGH!

I know we’ll figure it out and it’s important that The King have his own personal space so that he feels at home but…….do you understand where I’m coming from? He’s such a wonderful guy and I want him to feel at home but the only thing I can think of is turning the pool table into a dining room table when not in use and I’m just not really cool with that unless I were able to hang a flashing Budweiser sign from the dining room ceiling. DAMN, I should have bought that one I saw at a garage sale a couple of weeks ago.

Yea, the first thing you see when you walk into the house is the pool hall. Who needs a dining room – we eat in the kitchen! I already have a piano in there for musical entertainment and the party ball may be gone but I have a refillable keg in the garage. Whatcha think? Pool room in the middle of the house? Feel free to make a suggestion or two if you want; I will gladly take any and all under consideration at this point.

Mergers and Acquisitions

The merge is complete. Okay, the merge has begun but the move in is complete. The merge will be the easy part. This is what King Dork brought with him when he arrived in Tallahassee. Think I have room in my 1900+ square foot home?

I don’t know; it looks like the merging of our “stuff” may be a tough one. We’re heading to Ohio over the Thanksgiving holiday to bring back the rest of his stuff. He says it should all fit in my SUV. Sounds like we may have to add onto the house to accommodate everything.

And I spent TWO WEEKS CLEANING CRAP OUT OF MY HOUSE FOR THIS?!?!?!?

Looks like I may rake in at the yard sale next weekend!

Enough About The Purge....For Now

I know you guys are tired of hearing me complain about the purging of my household items so I thought I would share with you an e-mail response to King Dork's sister. I received a note from The Beanster this weekend wishing me luck and asking if I was truly ready to have her brother move in with me; this is what I told her:

After much consideration and a few moments of dread, my mind and heart have been set. Yes, I'm ready for this. At first a bit of trepidation arose as I have not lived with a man in fourteen years (I don't think my kids remember living with their dad.) But the fear and anxiety were easily nullified by the fact that my chosen path of study in college has prepared me for this better than life itself. Chapter 8, page 209, of the very first text book I purchased toward a "proper education" covers the removal of bloodstains so that they may not be traced. In addition, Chapter 7 covers all trace evidence and how it is collected and Chapter 16 discusses all aspects of a homicide investigation. I highly recommend Barry A. J. Fisher's Techniques of Crime Scene Investigation for any wife or girlfriend that foresees complications or disagreements in their romantic relationships. (You can find the book used on-line, if need be.) Mr. Fisher has kindly covered all areas of crime scenes and what a technician looks for in order to "catch the bad guy." What we can take from this is to learn what NOT to do when eliminating those things from our lives that trouble us.

That being said, the only thing I’m dealing with right now is panic. I’ve lived in the same house for almost nineteen years. Do you KNOW how much stuff a woman can collect in a nineteen year period? Where in heaven’s name am I going to put all that stuff? I asked Bill if he thought he would need more than a drawer for his clothes. He said if he did I could purchase him a cardboard dresser. What a guy, huh?

My sugar-plum, candy-coated, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate bar dreams were shattered long ago. I, too, have a brother. LOL Nah, just kidding, my brother is actually one of my favorite people. Speaking of family, the only thing I see changing in your future are more trips to Florida. Our home is your home; my family is your family……really, they’re yours, take ‘em. I look forward to you and your clan heading down south to thaw out once or twice this winter so we look forward to seeing you guys soon.

I promise to take care of King Dork so don’t worry……Chapter 16 covers a lot. As for the Luck O’ The Irish, let us bow our heads and pray I can hold my liquor.

Love you guys and hope to see ALL of you soon,
Marn

p.s. We’ll have to compare stories of our childhood one of these days and see which ones are worse.

Think she got the picture?