some pictures for you...

I thought I'd post some pictures from a few weekends ago, even though a lot of similar looking pictures have already been blogged by those I am distantly related to. Oh well, I didn't think anyone would complain. We were going to rake leaves today, but you know what? It's just too crazy windy out there. So alas, sadly, no raking for today. I'm just torn up about it all.

composing an ode to the teady bear... I can still hear it ringing in my head.

Just because I'm mean! And becuase I needed some adult pictures - good thing he never reads my blog anyway...

charming little guy

getting a free ride

I single handedly helped both of these little guys and it was no small feat, lemme tell ya! We had fun though.

I think there's a bunch of these pictures out in cyberspace, but oh well, so much for being original....

Sadly, these are all turning out grainy...

playing hockey in the Canadian wilds... (or something like that)

Driving to the ends of the earth in a blizzard

Shell shocked?

in an attempt to be healthy

... I went to the store and bought (amongst other things) some sweet potato and beet chips. Why you ask? I ask that too! (now) I wanted to be a bit healthy in the process of recovering from this cold and all and thought I'd try it. Well, can I just say, they are some kinda NASTY! So if anyone wants to drop by, you can have them for free! Okay, that's all I guess. I'm so glad it's Friday I don't even know what to do with myself! (eat beet chips and watch movies all night?)

mindless babbling...

"Hello children, Today your social worker will be completely strung out on drugs, so please don't pay attention to a thing she says or does.... (and remember... stay sober!)"

So, I've had this wretched cough for over a week now that feels as though someone has their fingers wrapped around my throat and is squeezing. I get hacking and can't quit. It is so frustrating. And has been interfering with my sleep a lot lately, so I've been experiencing with different drugs to see if anything will work. What I have been discovering is that drugs take a LONG time to get out of the system! Whenever I take something at night, the next morning I'm just out of it, even if it's non-drowsy. Well, a couple nights ago I was up so much, that last night I didn't care, I was going to heavily sedate myself so that I could sleep. The thought was if I took something early enough in the evening, it would be gone by morning. My plan failed, and the powerful drugs did little to stop the coughing as well. So now I was near comatose, with scarcely the ability to move, yet compulsed to rid the chocking feeling, so I still had to cough. I think coughing drugged is actually worse than coughing undrugged because coughing takes a certain amount of energy which the drugs very effectively removes. By morning, the drugs were still very much a part of me and I wandered around work feeling like a was having an out of body experience. Also, due to having cough drops in my mouth nearly constantly for the last several days, the inside of my mouth feels like, oh I don't know, hamburger... sandpaper... something like that. I was wishing for some good old Canadian Buckley's. The only stuff I had expired in 04 and was solidifying so that scared me. Okay, that's about all that's new with me.

As for the state of my car, I get to drive it like this for a couple weeks and then I get it fixed and insurance pays for all of it but my modest deductible, so it's not too bad. Hope everyone is just peachy.

My poor baby

More good luck on the road....

I'm getting scared to leave my house. Last night I hit a deer. Could have been so much worse. The big huge thing appeared out of no where and I didn't see it till it was right in front of me. How much mental reasoning would it take to look before crossing the street? Seriously? These dumb animals run towards vehicles instead of away from them. Anyway, I slammed on the breaks and just got the tail end of him I think, but enough that I had to stop and tear off my front right panel which was barely hanging on. The car is drivable so that's nice. Hopefully I can get it fixed this week. So, that's my excitement for now, till next time I attempt to drive. My roommate had an interesting experience this morning. After listening to me rant and rave last night about no one stopping to help, this morning when she was driving to church, she saw a van that had hit a telephone pole. No one was stopping to help and she couldn't see any action around the vehicle, so she heard my words ringing in her head over and over (nobody stopped, nobody stopped, what if I had been unconscious in my car....) so she decided to stop, and sure enough. Here there was an unconscious woman in the van, and everyone just driving past. The lady was coming to when help got there. Okay, that's all from my neck of the woods for today.

I'm convinced that a group of males with outstanding navigational ability designed the interstate!

Well, I decided I should finally wander on here and say SOMETHING. I've thought about updating several times, but I've either been too busy, or have had only negative, bummer things to say. So today I just decided to say them. = P But now I have some happy things too - like I had a wonderful weekend with my family and wished it could have been longer. It's so much fun to all be together and listen to the dull roar of 3o some odd people (and I mean very odd.) Now can I gripe? It all started awhile back... one day the other week I ran out of gas. Oh wait, before that I blew a stoplight and so easily could have killed myself, but God was gracious and there was no one coming to hit me. So then I celebrated my new lease on life by running out of gas, holding up traffic both on the road and in the parking lot. My car can run so long with the gas light on that I must have not been watching close enough (ya think?), but some nice people stopped to help me and we were really close to a gas station that had a gas can I could borrow for free. How very generous of them. But still an embarrassing situation. Then I moseyed up to the north land. Nothing too tragic there, other than some mice that wouldn't let me sleep. = ) If I had the ability to fall asleep after being awakened in the middle of the night, this wouldn't have been so tragic. Oh yeah, another thing about the trip - I had bought some food down here to take on my trip because it's way cheaper here. So, half of it I forgot in my fridge. The rest that I remembered exploded in my luggage. A jar of salsa broke and got class and salsa all over. But again, could have been much worse - nothing stained. But somehow I feel as though there's this odd strain of bad luck following me around these days. Or maybe I should look at the opposite cause I haven't killed myself yet. Okay, so went home and had a lovely time and sadly, didn't spend time with anyone from Red Lake other than family because it was such a short trip. Like I said, it was great to see family. Maybe I'll post some pics of the trip soon. I'm trying to hurry and go do something useful with my life like laundry or something. But I just want to tell you about my wretched trip home yesterday. I'll try to spare all the details, but it was pretty much one thing gone wrong after another and I could have driven it in the same amount of time that I was flying! So when I got to Minneapolis, I discovered my flight to Detroit was canceled. Yes canceled. So this lady was helping me out and got me on the next flight, but it was going to be really tight making my next flight out of Detroit. She said I should try to make the flight, but if I couldn't, I could get one 2 hours later. So when I got to Detroit I practically ran to the gate and the flight hadn't left yet. It was about an hour delayed, so I thought everything was fine. When I was boarding, however, the lady told me that I was no longer booked for this flight. She let me on because it wasn't full, but said my luggage wouldn't make it until the next flight. Precious little good that does me! So I got to IN and waited for my luggage, and left about 2 hours after schedule. But I still could have made it home at a decent time. Oh my, do I ever hate driving, even more so in the dark, even more so when I'm not sure I'm going the right place, and the most more so when I KNOW I'm going precisely opposite of where I need to be, but can do nothing about it. As I was exiting on to the correct road, I actually backed up and took the South route instead of the North route which is what I wanted. After I had been driving south for awhile, I knew it was wrong - stopped and asked some guy at a rest stop how to get to where I wanted and he said I needed to get going north (much easier said than done!) and then gave me the exit I needed and everything. So I went back, going the opposite direction, but there's no where to turn around and I was going to just make an illegal U turn, but I kept flying past them all - sort of hard to see them in the dark until they're right there. So anyway, I drove and drove and drove and drove in the opposite direction, going nuttier and nuttier and wanting the whole bad dream to just stop! Finally I came to a town about 3 years out of my way and I knew it was pointless to backtrack, and I had NO desire to do that, so I made my way home from there after stopping at a gas station with my atlas and getting some help. Only had to turn around once after that. But it was really starting to feel like it would never never end. In the end it took me about 2 hours and 15 - 20 min. to get home and should have taken under an hour. It was very late when I got here and I felt was quite out of it when I got here. I was in a coma like state all night when I could finally go to bed and overslept by over an hour this morning (which was actually quite nice). There are more foolish things I did on the way home that I won't bore you with, but reiterated the fact that driving and nighttime and directions and interstates and me do NOT get along. Oh, and how cotton pickin hard would be it to have areas to turn around on the interstate? It's as though once you make one wrong turn, you're locked in for life, as though the people who designed the highways are trying to teach deep, philosophical truths about life instead of simply helping us get from point A to point B. Even now I see no humor in the situation, just bitterness and agony. Well, I trust this has been uplifing and I need to go now. Talk to you all later.

Canadian bananas last longer

Whenever I buy them here, I just can't eat them fast enough! I don't get it. And another thing in case you were wondering, if you leave 1 or 2 in your car, it doesn't take long before the whole thing smells like a banana on wheels. So, I really don't have much to say, as you will note from the extensive banana talk, but I wanted to say HI before all my fans started pestering me for an update. tee hee. Hey Robyn and Rhonda - can I see some pictures of the wedding? Well, life is okay here and I'm excited about coming home soon and all that good stuff. This past weekend I pretended to be all domesticated and cooked like a madwoman. Who wants to make supper when you get home at 7:00 half the time? So I wanted to put a bunch of stuff in the freezer. My roommate and I worked at it together and I was pleasantly surprised that it didn't take as long as I thought it would. And now we have a freezer full of food, and I don't want to eat it because it's so nice knowing that there's food in the freezer, and if we just eat it, well, then there won't be, will there!? I do think it's quite the handy little time saver because you get all your mess and work out of the way at once. handy. Okay, other than that tid bit, not too much is going on. So, I guess I'll sign off.