Woman in the Middle

We are getting a new mattress set delivered today. My lower back CAN NOT WAIT to give it a try tonight! Of course, one of the first thoughts we had was “Got to get those dust bunnies under the bed vacuumed up before the new mattress arrives!”

So, bright and early this morning, before Hubby went off to work, I stripped the bed and he and I moved the old mattress and foundation out of the way so I could vacuum before the new ones arrive. For those cat lovers out there,  it will be no surprise that Lumos and Nox had to be RIGHT THERE and involved in the whole process! The mattress was heavy enough, we didn’t need 10 pounds of cat riding it like a surf board, too!

This is what happened.  Nox jumped up on the mattress. Hubby and I picked it up and start to move it. Nox ran to the end of the mattress and jumped onto the trunk we have at the end of the bed. Hubby and I then continued to move the mattress, gently nudging Nox off the trunk with it until he finally jumped down and we could move the mattress where we wanted to. Repeat the same process with the foundation. Both were too heavy to lift over Nox and he ignored all entreaties to get out of the way!

Meanwhile, just as we wanted to pick the foundation (which is really just a heavy wood box) out of the bed frame, Lumos dove under the bed. Sigh. We really didn’t want him there in case the foundation accidentally slipped out of our hands. We didn’t want to squish him! Happily, nothing slipped and no cat got squished.

Finally, everything was moved, and now the boys are playing in our bedroom like it is Disneyland! Onto the trunk, off to sniff around what we store under the bed that is now exposed, over to check out the mattresses which are standing upright against the dresser. Oh what fun! Of course, we are so happy we could make their morning! Because, after all, it is all about the cats!

Last winter around this time I was in a chain drug store and saw a pair of slippers on sale for a good price. i needed a new pair and decided to buy them. Big mistake. While they were the right size size length wise, the part of the slipper you slip your foot into was just too big. They would be good for someone who had problems with severely swollen feet, but not for someone like me who just needed a pair of slippers to wear around the house. They also had hard plastic soles which were noisy on my wood floors. My noisy walking was made worse by that “too big” factor, which caused me to slap around the house.  This was getting on my nerves and so I asked for a new pair of slippers for my birthday or Christmas.

Somehow (and I don’t remember how) me and my cheap noisy slippers came up at Thanksgiving dinner. Youngest Daughter’s bedroom is at the entrance to the hall, and I found out that she thought I was either being passive aggressive and trying to disturb her with my loud walking, slapping back and forth in front of her bedroom door,  or that I was getting old and decrepit and was having issues walking in my slippers. I explained my cheap slipper issue and oh how we laughed about the misunderstandings that came from me buying cut-rate footwear!

I am happy to report that Hubby bought me some nice, warm, Dearfoam slippers and I no longer disturb the family with my shuffle/slap walk.  The cheap ones are going in the trash and I have learned my lesson concerning budget slippers!

My lovely, warm new slippers, thanks to Hubby.

Things I am grateful for at this very minute:

1. We were able to fit all the Thanksgiving leftovers in the fridge last night. Whew!

2. Six years after I convinced Hubby he could toss the ancient Kmart stereo speakers and buy himself a new pair, he finally found some he liked that fit into the space allotted, and he ordered them yesterday. What can I say, Hubby is an old school kind of guy when it comes to his music.

3. The girls braved the crowds at Target and bought some gifts last night and I didn’t have to. Yay!

4. We had a nice little group around the Thanksgiving table yesterday. It was us, cousin Michele, and our friend Chris. No awkward political talk, no drama, just eating and chatting.

5. Both of my girls are home with me today and are going to spend the day with me for my birthday, which falls awkwardly around Thanksgiving every year. I am much more excited about that than turning 55!

6. Home, family, friends, hope, furbabies….I am grateful for all of these things this day after Thanksgiving on the anniversary of when I made my entrance into the world.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

May your stuffing be tasty, may your turkey be plump

May your potatoes and gravy have nary a lump.

May your yams be delicious and your pies take the prize

And may your Thanksgiving dinner stay off of your thighs!

(courtesy of an unknown poet who had a sense of humor)

Wishing you and yours much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving!

(Courtesy halloween-art.com)

I consider Thanksgiving to be the Super Bowl of cooking. Face it, the holiday is all about the meal. So that meal better be decent. After trying to kill myself in years past, I have made shortcuts, but it is still a challenge to get turkey and sides cooked and on the table, hot and delicious, all at once.

I am happy to report, after the shock of last weekend when I found out that Thanksgiving is THIS WEEK, I have recovered and am moving forward. The only things I appear to be missing at this point are whipped cream and ice. I will be making a run for the border in a bit to pick up those two items before they disappear from the shelves, or ice cooler, depending on the item.

Meanwhile, I also realized I better get to picking out the Christmas cards. I just order the photos ones. My wrist gets sore if I have to sign all of those cards so, by ordering the photos cards, signing doesn’t have to happen. What can I say, I am all about taking short cuts where I can.  I would rather send a card without the personal signature, than send no card at all.

Of course, that means we have to have taken a decent photo of ourselves sometime in the past eleven months. Oh, ha ha! You would think a vacation in a tropical paradise would have yielded one decent photo of the family, Well, it didn’t. Between tropical breezes, tropical humidity, and sleeveless tops or dresses showing off my pale, flabby upper arms, that did not happen. However, a photo celebrating Eldest daughter’s graduation from college did pass muster and so cards can still be ordered.

A much more attractive photo from Hawaii then my upper arms could ever be!

Water fell from the sky the morning. Really, it did!  While there had been some prediction of rain, we know here in So Cal to take such crazy talk with a grain of salt. It didn’t rain for long, only about half an hour, but it rained pretty hard. We will take what we can get!

Youngest Daughter drove to Sacramento on Friday to see friends. She returned last night. (Ah, youth!) It rained on her pretty much the whole time she was here and then rained on her some more as she was driving home. She was terribly unimpressed when it started raining this morning, just at the right time for her to have to run to her car in it and then drive to work in it. I told her she brought us the rain. She gave me an annoyed look at that remark.

Over the weekend Hubby and I went on a little trip of our own, to Las Vegas (more on that another time). At some point on Saturday, one of our friends we were traveling with mentioned that Thanksgiving is this coming week. I denied that was the case. All three people in the car explained I was incorrect, that it is in fact in just a few days. Sigh. I was totally out of it when it comes to the calendar. I guess I better get my act together concerning the upcoming holiday!

I hope you have a wonderful Monday, wherever you are!

Our next door neighbors have decided to move and have put their house up for sale. That is always a scary prospect. They have been good neighbors. They are quiet, rarely if every have large numbers of people over (which can not be said for their neighbors, ahem) and we mutually ignore each other’s dog barking. They keep their home up in a lovely manner, having one of the nicest if not the nicest yard in the neighborhood. So we hate to see them go.

I also look ahead with a bit of anxiety as to who is going to move in there. A family of 12? A herd of small, yappy dogs? A herd of large barking dogs? People who like to party until the wee hours of the night? Hopefully none of those things occur. But I will still worry!

Then, I went out in the front yard this morning, only to see a U-Haul truck in front of the across the street neighbor’s house. This was the house that was a rental for the first 5 years we lived here, kept in terrible shape. The new people moved in and now the house and yard look fantastic. So, who is moving? No for sale sign is up, so hopefully it is a roommate or such. Hopefully it isn’t a foreclosure situation.

So change is int eh air in my small neck of the woods. Only time will tell if it is good change, neutral change or bad change. I will just have to keep my fingers crossed!

As I wandered around yesterday in my flip flops, I thought to myself, “What do you mean it is November 14th?” We just can’t let go of summer around here. My AC is even kicking on a couple of times in the afternoon, even though I have it set at 78 degrees. But, then, it was 90 here yesterday.

They have promised us a significant cool down starting tomorrow. I will believe it when it happens.

It is really hard to care about all the winter clothes in the stores with weather like this. I want to grab another tank top or two to freshen my tired summer wardrobe and another pair of comfy flipflops would be nice, too. I am sure somewhere in February I will think with fondness about warm weather. But not right now. I am pretty tired of it.

A while back, the citizens of California passed a law though the voting process to get rid of free plastic bags at stores. Stores that offered bags would have to charge 10 cents for them. The plastic bag manufacturers weren’t happy about this and managed to get the law placed on the back burner while they tried to figure out how to postpone it or make it go away. Then, last Tuesday, we once again had the plastic bag law before us. Once again the voters confirmed they wanted to do away with free and ubiquitous plastic bags. Because this vote was confirming a law that was already in existence, there was no period of a month of two before it went into affect. Literally, the very next day, all of those free plastic bags were gone and you had to pay 10 cents to get one. This caught a lot of people by surprise.

I have a love/hate relationship with plastic bags. They seem to breed in my cupboard and I have so many of them it is crazy. A couple of years ago I made ti my New Year’s resolution to use reusable bags more and I have. But, even with dong that, my household seemed to overflow with bags. However, that being said, those plastic bags were and are very important to me. With three cats and daily litter box cleaning, I reuse plastic bags every single day. What was once a nuisance is now a resource to be hoarding and coveted.   

Meanwhile, it is a whole new world at the grocery store. People are coping in different ways. Some, like me, are just trying to remember to bring our reusable bags with us. Others are keeping boxes in their trunk and they do not have any of their groceries bagged at the store. They just put it all back in the cart and then put the groceries in the boxes in their trunk. Others are buying the 10 cent bags and plan to reuse them multiple times.

Almost 20 years ago when we were visiting friends in England, they were already charging for bags, so California is behind the times in that sense. I am sure it will soon seem very normal to us all.  Meanwhile, I am throwing those reusable bags back into my car right away so I will have them the next time I go to the store. And the plastic bags I do have are being filled to the brim before they are thrown out.

After a short break of fall weather, summer has returned with a vengeance. We have been having temperatures well north of 90 degrees. Needless to say, I have not retired the shorts and sandals yet! Thank goodness I got that pedicure a couple of weeks ago, even though I thought no one was going to see my toes. LOL!

People I know are threatening to put up their Christmas decorations in the hopes of either feeling like fall is here or in the hopes that they will somehow conjure up cool weather.

I am currently sitting here with the window open. Someone is trimming something with a chain saw and I can hear it loud and clear. It is not a relaxing noise.  But when I turned around to close the window, there were two cats, the young ones, with their noses pressed up against the screen, looking intently at the world outside. I couldn’t bring myself to close the window with two such eager faces looking out. Me happy, or the cats happy? You know which one will win 99% of the time.

By the time I took the photo, Lumos had decided to take a break from looking out the window. But you can see Nox is still fascinated with the outside world. 

I am eagerly looking forward to this weekend. It will be the first one in six weeks that I don’t have to  walk and knock on the doors in the heat. I don’t enjoy the heat under any circumstances. Since it is still hot, I an doubly happy about that!