Sunday Scramble 3-28-10

Whew!  What a couple of weeks I've had.

Let's see what I can update you on.

Well, Mikayla got in more trouble last week than she's ever been in in her life.  Why?  Because she insisted on telling Madison that there is no Santa Claus.  Said she couldn't stand perpetuating the lie anymore.  She didn't actually say perpetuating, but that's what she meant.



I threatened her bodily harm if she went ahead with it.



She did it anyway.



WHOP upside the head.

I can't even tell you the trauma this caused all of us.  Madison crying hysterically, asking why we've lied to her all these years, Jimmy over the phone from Kansas City yelling at Mikayla, Mikayla in her room crying for hours... and punishment!  Ooh, for five days Jimmy let her think that her hip hop classes were a thing of the past.



Thank goodness I convinced him not to take that away.  It's the first thing she's ever done that she's truly passionate about.




I love my sister.  You all know that.


But sometimes she's stupid.


The night of my nephew, Jonny's, play, we all went out for dinner at a Chinese buffet.


Blech.  Ptooey.  Need I say more?



But as we were sitting there over dessert, all of a sudden Jill looks at me and says, "Man, this ice cream is cold!"



Now what would you do or say if your beloved sister said something so completely ridiculous?  I mean really, was the ice cream supposed to be tepid?  I wanted to smack her, but instead I just called down the table to my brother and loudly announced what she'd just said.  Ya know, to make her feel even more stupid.  Jeff, of course, was not surprised, but rolled his eyes anyway.





Then, days later Jill and I are on the phone.  She's telling me about seeing her friend's mother's house for the first time and how beautiful it is.

Jill:  You should see it.  It has a porch that goes all around and then those big, tall cylinders.  So pretty!

Me:  Excuse me?  Did you just say cylinders?

Jill:  Yeah, what was I supposed to say?  Oh duh!  I mean, colanders!

Me:  Really Jill?  They have giant colanders on their porch?  What?  They have massive amounts of pasta to drain?

Jill:  Oh.  Shit.  What's the word I'm looking for?

Me:  Columns, you asshole!


See?  Stupid!

Love you sis!


I'm excited and I'm nervous.  I've decided I'm going to take online courses and get a certificate in medical transcription!!!!  I have two different schools I'm looking at and am just waiting for Jimmy to look them over and see which one will work best for me.  I know which one I want to use, but dammit, it's $5,000 for the course, versus $800 at Penn Foster.

This could potentially open up a whole new world for me!





Remember the pictures of all those adorable armadillos I showed you weeks ago?  Seems the poor rototillers are dropping like flies around here.

Actually, it's more like they're dropping like animals being shot by pellet gun-totin' neighbors who are out for blood.

I shit you not.  They're working together, the neighbors.  They've formed a regiment of sorts.  One traps, one shoots, others look on, another disposes without Justine seeing.

Last week, I was sitting out here in the bitch cave, minding my own business as usual, when suddenly I see 3 or 4 people skulking around the side of my next door neighbors' house.  Yes, I said skulking, because that's exactly what they were doing.  Grown men and a woman actually tip-toeing as to not alert me to their presence.  But I saw the murderers.

I just didn't know they were murderers at the time.

I raised my hand to wave at my good friend and wouldn't you know she looked down, turned around and the whole gaggle of them skulked away in the other direction?  One of them holding a garbage can?  They actually turned in unison like synchronized swimmers (Buzby Berkeley comes to mind) and walked away guiltily in the direction they'd come from!

I grew suspicious (wouldn't you?), so emailed my good friend to ask what they had been doing.

She said, "Well, Tim had an armadillo trapped in his trash can and we didn't want you to see and make you sad.  So we turned around."

Hmmm... What else?

"Well, we kind of bought a pellet gun to get rid of these things.  They're digging under the foundation of our houses now!  They've gone rogue!  Four down at my last count."


Then, a few days later, while on the phone, she says, "Hey, did you see the picture on my Facebook page?  It was on my front porch so we killed it with a shovel.

Oh.My.Goodness.  It's a harmless garter snake for goodness sakes!  These beautiful animals eat the disgusting vermin.  Stop squishing them!  Squish the vermin!  Hell, you can even shoot them with the pellet gun if it'll make ya feel better.  Leave my critters alone!



Holy crap, am I still living in Saint Augustine, or have I been transported to Buttmunch, West VA?  We don't shoot things in these parts!  We trap them humanely and release them a few miles from our neighborhood.


At least that's the way it used to be done.


I'm thinking it's time to move.


Or get new friends.


Does it occur to anyone else that I'm really not fit to live in suburbia?  Me, the critter lover, is meant to be out in the wide open, with animals walking up to my porch to be hand fed, birds alighting upon my raised hand, pecking gently at the organic seeds I offer.




I truly feel that my destiny is to commune with cattle like Temple Grandin.

I would just look a wee bit better while doing so.








Pssst! If you love me, you might love my stupid sister more. Go visit her at Jill's Believe it or Not, and tell her I sent you!