CAUTION: Woman In Progress

Libby's room is in a current state of extreme distress. Meaning, everything that needed to go play elsewhere while I painted, migrated to poor Libby's room. And while some of the stuff has managed to find its way "home" a ton more hasn't. A ton more has no home to go to anymore. So Libby's room is looking rather sad these days. Perhaps while I'm at home next week, I'll have one or two days to myself to get in there and dig it out. It's kinda driving me a little bit nuts. Not that I'm not already more than a little bit nuts already.

I love, love, LOVE that Emmy and Lyssa get along so well. With such a huge age difference between them, it could've gone either way. But even though one is nearly four and the other is nearly twelve, they get along like BFF's. It sort of reminds me of the relationship I had with my aunt, Mary, who is 8 years older than me. Emmy's so patient with her and they adore each other. I don't know that Aunt Mary adored me, but she was always patient with me and I followed her around like a puppy whenever she came to visit--much like Lyssa does with Emmy. And you know Emmy adores Lyssa because see that picture up there?? She's letting Lyssa play a game on her iPod touch--the iPod touch she saved her allowance, birthday money and did odd jobs for (for family friends) for MONTHS to buy herself. I think her parents only had to contribute like the last twenty dollars for it and they did so because she'd been so diligent in saving for it. That, and she's such a good ...

God knows I love them, but I have just about hit the wall on the amount of "family time" in my life lately. Four days of family last weekend. A whole day yesterday. The coming weekend and next week. The weekend after that. If I survive the summer it'll be a miracle. So I never recapped last weekend. I was still recuperating from it. It was not bad in any way but it was long. And crazy. And there is only so much chocolate I can eat to sooth my family weary soul. Because ya'll? I had Sis1 with me for four days and three nights. Eep! By the end of night two I was ready to ship her back to Bama. I love her to death and wouldn't trade her for anything (except for maybe a deserted island somewhere) but ya'll...I thought if I was asked "Do you have (insert item here)?" one more time I was going to bash somebody's head into the floor--mine or hers, I didn't care. "Do you have a paper towel?" After she'd already been using the roll ...

Is such a mess. Literally and figuratively. He's eyeing my plate and contemplating what he wants to steal next.  The stinker. He was pretty happy with his selections. And seriously, how could you be mad at such an adorable little thief? I mean, just look at that face...And that mess! And of course, he had to help Sister eat hers, as well. Such a gentleman. ;-)

There are only a handful of things that make the heat and misery of summer worth enduring. One of those things is the quiet of summer school on campus (I can cross a street and not get creamed AND don't have to wait in line for 30 minutes at Starbucks.) and another is garden fresh tomatoes. And really, there's only two things that make garden fresh tomatoes so special. One of them is called a BLT (I need to buy some bacon, dag-gummit!) and the other is biscuit and tomato for breakfast. Don't say yuck. It's like...I don't know how to even describe it. It's simply summer on a plate. Start by baking a perty biscuit.  I haven't yet mastered the art of making biscuits so I used the frozen and bagged kind from Wal-Mart. But fresh homemade is best.  Cut the biscuit in half. Slather both sides generously with mayonnaise. (It's not gross, I swear!) Slice a tomato and plop one of those slices on one half of the biscuit. Don't  be wimpy with the si...

So, as Heather  so cleverly guessed in yesterday's comments, I did get an entertainment center. One I had to build. One of these years, I'm gonna be rich enough to afford furniture that has no assembly required. One of these days. As it is, I had to build it. And I built it very badly. The last TV stand I built (the temporary roll cart as witnessed here ) took a while but was a cinch to build. It was the very first piece of furniture I've assembled without having to take apart some part of it and put it back together. Buoyed by that success, I looked over the instructions and thought, I can do this. No problem. The problem was, of course, that these are the instructions. As in, no written directions, no words of wisdom or advice. Just diagrams. I'm the kind of person who needs the words AND the pictures. I need step by step a to b instructions, ya know? So of course I messed it up on the first try. As in, the very first pieces I put together, I put together wr...

I had intended on revealing my little super secret project today. I did finish it this weekend amid all the chaos of out of town family and partying and all that.  However, we've had network issues all day and just got internet access back about an hour ago. Since I had a few things to catch up on I don't have time to post the reveal with all the details I want to share with it. I do, however, have time to share a teaser photo... Can you guess what I might have been doing? ;-)

I dozed off a few times on the way to work this morning. Unfortunately, I was driving. Eep! I went to bed at a decent hour last night. Well, not as decent as I'd have liked, but decent enough. 10:30ish. I was working on the super secret project (and making a mess!) and I still didn't finish. But I'm almost there. And since I was making a mess anyway and Libs was getting annoyed and pouty I just quit at around 9:30 and snuggled with her on the couch until 10:30. But then... I hate, loathe and despise when I wake up in the wee hours of the morning and can't go back to sleep. It royally sucks. Woke up at three something and my mind started racing with everything I still had to do before everyone descendes on my neck of the woods this weekend. Paw-Paw's party is tomorrow and we're giving it at our church in the fellowship hall. With everyone coming from everywhere (CO, GA, Natchez, etc) I half fear that they're going to want to take the opportunity to see ...

If a co-worker didn't follow me on Twitter (don't ask me how that happened since I pretty much like to keep my on-line life separate from the one I share air with.) this is what I'd tweet: @JanaHunter: Living dangerously: drinking mocha at my desk while tweeting. I'm such a rebel. Because, you know, we're not supposed to have food/drinks in our office nor are we supposed to be tweeting at work. I'm a rule breaker, what can I say? And I have positively fascinating tweets. :-D Anyway, now that THAT'S outta the way, can I just say... Woo hoo! I finished the scrapbook-ish project! *snoopy dance* The downside of that, of course, is that I was up till midnight working on it and had to get up at a little after 5 this morning. No snooze this am because it's garbage pick-up day (today IS Thursday, right??) and I had to give myself plenty of time to round up the trash and get it to the end of the driveway before schlepping to work. Oh the bliss of domesti...

Good news is: I finally finished scanning and printing all the photos for Paw-Paw's scrapbook-ish book. I was bound and determined to finish that part last night. It took me from six to nine to do it, but I did it! Now I've just got to put them on the pages and perty the pages up. Since I was given such a short time frame to do it, I'm not going all out. No stickers or stamps or anything like that. Just colored card stock for the page and some complimentary colored blocks of card stock for "framing." Hopefully I'll be able to knock this out tonight, before or after church. Prolly after. If I can stay awake long enough to do it. I'm so exhausted right now that I think I may actually be sleep-typing. Work has been just bonkers this week with projects and researchers and a certain PTB who made me cuss to myself yesterday over a lost book. I found it and she was glad but then she continued to bug me about how it had come to be lost. *sigh* Needless to say,...

Slammed at work this week, I am.  Actually, I'm slammed at work AND home. Been workin' my booty off on a scrapbook-ish project on my aunt's behalf for Paw-Paw H. It's due Saturday. I'm only four pages in a 20 page book. Wish me luck! In the meantime, ponder this. You know how sometimes you go into a room for a specific purpose only to forget what it was you went in there for? (If you're unfamiliar with this phenomenon, consider yourself lucky.) Well, that happened to me this morning before I left home for work. I JUST NOW remembered what it was I went in there for. *sigh* Oh well. Cio for now!

Ya'll, I shouldn't complain much about priming and painting. Truth is, I'm just a wimp at physical labor. Chubby, lazy and better suited for reading, I am. Especially, after having read through some of Jen's recent posts on the work she and her hottie  fireman hubby are doing on their roof. (And drooling over the fact that she's had a plethora of assorted hot firemen helping them out. I'm picturing them shirtless and tan, Jen. Please don't tell me they weren't.) Jen climbed up on the roof! And nailed stuff! In the rain! While it hailed! Eep! So Jen, hon, you are officially my DIY hero. But since she's probably about to kick me in the shin for continuing to stalk her about it, I'll move on to what I did last night. No hunky firemen involved, unfortunately. (I gotta get me one of those...) I done primed that last wall! *takes a bow* But not without injury. (Shock.) I didn't fall. No. I just dropped... the ottoman... ON MY TOE! It still...

I'm having an off week, ya'll. Just not feelin' it right now. Headachey and irritable. All around blah. Overwhelmed, maybe. You just really don't wanna be around me right now. But, because they're burning a hole in my camera, here's some house progress photos...which might explain some of the overwhelmed feeling.  Paint setup. I'm about 1/2  through at this point  and decided to document.  Being at the halfway point made me giddy.   Also, that's not my bra. That's a white tank top. And you can't see it, but there's now a nice little smudge of Almond Creme paint on my left boob. Cause you needed to know that, right? The dining room all done.  Sorta. Paint's done, anyhow. Prepping that last wall.  Notice anything wildly different in this shot? I'll give you a hint...I've still got the same pup I had last week. My entertainment "wall" in transition.  Goofus came over Monday afternoon and helped m...

Paw-Paw H and Maw-Maw. This was taken a couple of weeks ago. Glad to see them both smiling and almost looking like themselves. It's been a tough year or five for the both of them. Between Paw-Paw's health issues (heart attacks, bypass surgeries, strokes and muscular issues, among other things) and Maw-Maw's anxiety attacks, they've both been struggling back and forth with bouts of depression. On any given day when asked how they're doing you may get a halfway jolly "I'm moving, so I can't complain" to "I don't think I'm gonna be around much longer." In fact, Maw-Maw has been saying for MONTHS that Paw-Paw was either a) not going to make it to his 80th birthday or b) was waiting for his 80th birthday to die. Well, his 80th birthday was yesterday and while he's not fit as a fiddle, he ain't dead either! Praise God! A bunch of us met over at their house yesterday for lunch to celebrate. It isn't every day that y...

Paw-Paw H and Mama's biological mother, Pauline back in 1963. I never knew Mama's mother. She died when Mama was around 13 or so. I don't even know what to call her. Grandmother Pauline sounds too formal. Granny is reserved for Daddy's mother. Mama's step-mother is Maw-Maw. Daddy's step-mother is Gran-Daisy. So what to call this woman who gave birth to my mother and died so young? I like to think of her as simply Mama. Because that's what my Mama always calls her when reminiscing about her. And because she looks so much like Mama. She was the love of Paw-Paw H's life, or so Mama and Aunt L's stories would suggest. He loves Maw-Maw but Mama Pauline was his soul mate. She died giving birth to my Uncle T, her sixth baby. Because he was a poor minister barely making ends meet and had six children to care for, Paw-Paw H married Maw-Maw about six months after Mama Pauline died. Maw-Maw had known them both for a while and probably secretly had a cr...

If you've got nothing better to do, today's follow up from yesterday's Tuesday special edition is up over at Kessler County Chronicles . But if you're not following the cowboy/lawman/bartending drama over there then you can ignore this PSA. Or if you want a newsworthy PSA: Buckle up for safety. Just say no to drugs. The only safe sex is no sex. Use a condom. Stop smoking. Don't drink and drive. Don't drink and walk into traffic.  (Always walk into traffic when you're sober so it'll hurt more.) Guns don't kill, people do. Wait. Are those still PSA's or are they officially cliches? I suck. Never mind.

It's Petunia's Gone Wild over here in the hill country. That one little petunia plant that spontaneously rebirthed itself is just bloomin' its little heart out.  It still looks oddly lonesome all by itself. If I hadn't spent all my "disposable income" (all $10 of it) on lattes and frappacinos I'd go ahead and buy some more petunias to give him some company. However, I did borrow from savings and bought some azalea bushes. Four, to be exact. Then Mama gave me a fifth one. The co-op was running a special on azaleas last week--four for $7.50. We couldn't pass that up. Mama came over last night and helped me set them out. Once I get my act together and take some photos I'll post 'em. Because I know ya'll are just DYING to see where I planted those puppies. Edited to add: A special Tuesday edition of Kessler County Chronicles is up. Tune in tomorrow for another episode on it's regular day. :)

I had a hot date Friday night...with some blue painter's tape. Scandelous. (Apparently spell check's not working. So feel free to giggle if I misspell/typo words.) In order to "get it on" with my tape, I first had to move a butt load of furnature. Well, FIRST first, I had to empty out my glass doored cabinet. The one I keep all my stemwear, glass pitchers and other "pretty stuff" in. That took a gazillion hours. I'm thinking I may need to weed out some junk. I may also need to invest in a muscle-y man. All this furniture movin' business is a little unweldy for me. Thankfully I'm stubborn and managed to wrestle most of it on my own. And I don't even want to think about what all manner of dog hair and dead bugs I found beneath all that furniture. *shudders* I'd have taken pictures but I was concentrating too hard on not throwing up. (But wouldn't all this be more interesting WITH picutres? My bad.) Shackin' up with blue ...