I do't understand a word of German

But this video makes me giggle. I'm predicting there will be a pet-cam trend hitting the US sometime soon. You heard it first here. I would never put one on Peanut. His images would be too violent and disturbing, what with his lizard hunting skills and all.

Unsolicited advice

I made a decision last year not to give out advice or any of my um, informative comments anymore. Un-asked-for advice/comments that is. Well, it's hard. I mean, I don't have all the answers, I know this. But when I see ignorance, silliness and so forth, advice just itches my insides, dying to come out so bad. So to get it out of my system, I'll just say it in my mind. For example, and this is a perfect one, when I was getting my body scan a few weeks ago, there were two nuclear technicians in charge. One was a guy and the other was a girl, both about my age. I was told I could listen to my ipod but to keep it at a low enough volume so that I could answer questions if need be with out having to move because one has to keep as still as possible for the pictures. I was very thankful to have music because it took about 3 hours and made the time more enjoyable. Except for one thing. I could pretty much hear everything they were saying in between songs. The girl kept talking and talking and talking about her boyfriend and how he doesn't understand her/doesn't do anything/doesn't like anything/doesn't talk enough/doesn't breath right/ doesn't pee correctly/doesn't eat enough/eats too much cereal/is too moody/doesn't dress properly/hates his job/needs a new hobby/doesn't get along with her friends/doesn't take her anywhere/never talks about his feelings/sleeps too much/hangs with the wrong crowd/drinks too much/doesn't drink enough/spends too much time working/doesn't put things away/doesn't answer his cell phone/never comes over/won't give her a key to his place/acts crazy/ never gets jealous/hates her poetry/isn't social enough/refuses to buy her an engagement ring..... 3 hours non stop for 2 days I listened to this. My advice in my mind, "Sounds to me like you're so far up your boyfriend's ass that he probably can't even breathe. Maybe you should um, I don't know, shut up and let him get a word in edgewise....and furthermore you might want to give your coworker over here a little break from listening to this craziness because he's too damn polite and frankly busy since he has to do everything because you're so preoccupied with your boyfriend, who, I'm beginning feel sorry for, to tell you to shut up for 5 minutes so you guys can get some damn work done and your patients can get the hell out of here in a shorter time than 3 damn hours. Thanks."

It's mean, I know, but when you're laying there not allowed to move or twitch forced to listen to stupidness(my favorite made up word), you begin to feel a little mean. Feel free to leave me a little advice about how to not be mean in my mind, this time it's actually asked for. :O)


Thanks to Ms. Yvonne for giving me an award, I will pass it on when I don't feel so mentally lazy.

Awh! Twins!

I saw it once in Denver. I even remember Laurie posting about it(the same ones actually) a while back. But I never thought I'd see it here....

A new Starbucks:



Right across the street from....cue drum roll...Starbucks!!!

Granted the new one is a drive through only. But still. Thoughts? Complaints? Praises? What say you, peeps?


Ok on to another strange deja vu like encounter, apparently this bird forgot where he parked.



This one at the library remembered and was showing off his classy Cadillac. I think he may have been there for the Republican primary early voting. Do you think he's a Huckabee kind of bird or a die hard Giuliani guy? He's definitely not a snowbird so I can't tell.


I got asked if I wanted to make any donations on my way in to check out some books. Yeah, with all my medical bills and neither party jumping in line to REALLY get us some f-ing affordable health care instead of talking about it(unless it's an election year), I'm just so full of desire to give away free money I could be buying shoes with instead. That's about as political as I'll get today, I promise. For the record, I was polite.

Moving on, I heard someone at the library actually bragging about the fact the he has never read an entire book before and never watched the news. Um. OK. I won't go into the horror I felt about the fact that this person is there to vote for his party's nominee and perhaps our next president. Ooops, it came out. And there I promised I wouldn't get political again today. Damn.

I'm ok with the Random

*That new med made me nauseous last week. Everything was gross. Food was gross. Trees were gross. The sun was gross. Rain, also gross. Watching tv, gross. The vultures outside, gross. The car, gross. Even Peanut was gross. But this week is better. Peanut is off the gross list. Actually he has a doctor appointment today and I'll be feeling sorry for him because of the invasive things they'll be doing to his derrière. But he doesn't want me to talk about that.

*A lot of people made fun of me in high school for taking French not Spanish. "When the hell are you ever gonna need that? People here speak Spanish, dumbass!" They said. Well jackasses, if you read here, and I know a few of you are, I use it all the damn time and none of ya'll even remember one friggin Spanish word. So sit down!

*Sometimes my husband will do something and I'll think to myself, I have the best damn husband on Earth. Like lately he's been turning on the heating pad my Grandma bought me and putting it on my side of the bed under the blankets. He knows how sensitive I am to temperatures now. So when I go to bed, my side of the bed is warm. It's these little things that keep me from screaming at him when he splashes water all over the sink and 'forgets' to clean it up.

*Speaking of sinks, we have separate bathrooms. This is the key to a healthy marriage, I am convinced of this. I use the master bath because it has a bigger closet. We don't use the master bedroom connected to the master bath because I hated the tiny window in that room when we moved in. So we sleep in the smaller room with the big eastern window and I trod, or I should say stagger every morning across the living room to my bathroom and closet to wash up and get dressed. And since I'm on the topic of closets and healthy marriages, I have to say that separate closets are also essential. At least, in my marriage they are. He can splash to his heart's content all over his bathroom and I don't have to look at it. And I can fill my closet with all kinds of shoes and be as disorganized as I like and we don't have to argue over closet space. We're closing in on our 11th anniversary(in March)so I think I may be onto something....

*And since I'm also on the topic of my upcoming anniversary, a snowbird lady I talk to sometimes who didn't know I was married said to me when I told her about my anniversary ,"Damn girl, you musta' been born married! Girls in the south still get married too damn young? You southerners, I swear!" I was 20, not 12. 20 is a bit young but still though there's a difference. And anyway, I'm not from the south. I just grew up here so I'm a southerner by preference. He's not my cousin for crying out loud. So I don't know what all the shock was about.

See!See!

I'm not the only one.

Not horrible news, just not the news I wanted

My doctor(s) decided not to do a biopsy yesterday during my ultrasound because the tissues are too deep. She decided instead to have me do the whole radioactive iodine pill again. The real one this time. The 'stay in the hospital until you pee and shower the radiation out so you're not a danger to society pill' . Last year I only took 24 hours because I drink a lot of water anyway. I also took about 4 showers but that's because the food was so nasty and my view was a concrete wall so I was determined to get the hell out of there as soon as I could. Doc admitted that it was probably overkill at this point and the tissue is probably benign but, just to be safe, she wants to get rid of it. I'm pretty sure even if they had been able to do a biopsy and the results came back negative, she already had her mind made up that we would do the radiation anyway. She's like that. I tried not to cry when she told me I couldn't have a baby again this year. I have to admit, that hurt me some because I was hoping.... So that pretty much slammed the door on that idea, didn't it? I was upset about it yesterday but I'm ok today. I'm not a hag yet so I can wait. If it can't happen then I'll deal with that too. She already told me that this was a possibility last appointment when I told her about my plans so I knew. So here are the positive things: I don't have to go off my meds for 8 weeks and feel awful like I did last year. She gave me a new prescription to take for 2 weeks and then I don't take anything for another two weeks before I go in to the hospital for my scary pill and I can handle that. So that means I have a month to fool around, and trust me, I will dedicate this month to some serious fooling around. It's winter anyway so I won't be feeling sorry for myself wishing I was at the beach instead of at home or in the hospital feeling like a leper. Plus by the time it's all over and I'm fully recovered, Spring will be here. And I'll be ready to start doing all my Spring stuff that I love to do, which now that I think about it, is pretty much the same stuff I like to do in the winter, only I get wear cuter clothes and cuter shoes. So I'm happy about that part. And my in-laws are coming to visit us from Quebec in the Spring and I'm going home with them when they leave for a long visit.(Oh Canada!) And I'm reallllly happy about that. So that's that. Again I want to reiterate how thankful I am to have such a good doctor.

In the mean time, peeps, have some more Jelly why don't you?

Don't know what kind this is, it's not in my field guide since it lives in the sea and not the seashore, it looks like it could be a box jelly, but I'm not sure.

These two are cannonball or cabbage jellies. Obviously the tentacles on the bottom are half ripped off. (isn't my scientific jargon impressive? don't be intimidated by it) I've read that they are edible but I couldn't tell you what they taste like since I don't eat jellyfish. Anyone who does, please chime in for us cuz' we'd like to know and dammit don't say it tastes like chicken.



While I was taking these, the people on the beach looked at me like I was a complete idiot. Who the hell takes pictures of dead jellyfish? I do! I do!

Tomorow morning at the damn earliest hour they could force me to come in

I heard from my doctor's office this week about my scan results. She said there doesn't look like there's any cancer but there is a lot of thyroid activity and tissue in my neck, behind my collar bone and breast bone that she doesn't like. Isn't that nice? :O) I already knew about this last year after the body scan I had then. The radiation I had last fall was supposed to take care of it all but, and this is just my theory, I have super cells. So even though it doesn't look like cancer my doctor wants to do a biopsy anyway tomorrow morning. I didn't mention anything here because I hadn't even told my parents or anyone else. I wasn't planning to tell anyone because I didn't want anyone to start the freak out session that always ensues. People always start crying and then I have to be the one comforting them. Selfishly, I really am not in the mood to comfort anyone since I don't feel enough comfort to even give myself. Plus I wanted to have a beautiful week under the sun at the beach and not think about that kind of stuff. But I don't like/don't keep secrets so I just went ahead and told everyone. So here's how I feel about it really: I am so thankful I have such an aggressive doctor and that I listened to myself two years ago when I felt like my other doctor wasn't taking me seriously. I am so thankful that I have excellent health care, which was not always the case and there are a lot of people out there who get worse diseases and don't have health care at all, like the guy sitting next to me at the blood lab asking how much everything was going to cost because he didn't have insurance. I could hear the desperation in his voice. (I won't even start getting political right now about how furious this makes me given the great country we live in) I don't look forward to tomorrow but I'm just thankful I have the luxury of good health care and a good doctor.

And for just a second I have to jump on my soap box and urge everyone who reads here to always listen to yourself. If you know something is wrong with you listen to your body. You know your body better than anyone else, you live in it :) Don't let any one tell you,"oh you're fine," if you really don't feel fine. Because that's how I felt, and as a girl who was brought up to be nice and defer to authority I was made to feel like I was the crazy one, I was the vain and spoiled little housewife because I hated the ugly nobs growing out of my neck. So because of that I walked around with cancer in my neck for another year.(actually 2 years because of the pre-existing conditions clause in our former insurance policy....yeah) We have to be our own advocates as patients.

Ok that's all the 'serious' for you peeps. I'll be back with something better next post, cross your fingers for me tomorrow. It's not that invasive and Mr.Pea will be with me so I'm not scared.

Tag-tastic

My Seventh Sister tagged me(thanks!). I'm sort of sorry not to have any exciting answers....

1. What am I reading at the moment? Right now, my Peterson Seashores Field Guide. I've been taking advantage of the good weather so I've barely been home to read anything. Low tide has been in the afternoon all week and it's been sunny, so just guess what I've been doing.

2. What am I listening to at the moment? Oh everything. My ipod is set to shuffle. Elvis has been getting a lot of air time lately. Old Cure songs too. How random is that? French hip hop. I don't understand a word but I'm pretty sure it's the filthy kind. For some reason I feel like a badass when I listen but it might just be because I'm working out at the time.


3. What am I watching at the moment? Oooh! I just saw Sweeney Todd the other day. I liked it. There were some reviews that made fun of the way Johnny Depp sang but I thought he did fine. But Johnny can do no wrong in my eyes anyway so maybe my ears are broken. I really did like the whole movie though. A lot. And I'm waiting for Lost to come back on. And I have to say that I have been watching most of the Presidential Debates. I'm a concerned citizen like that you know. I care about stuff ok? Betcha' didn't know that didya?


I'm supposed to tag people but I'll just do as always and tag whoever wants to be.

Oh. Ok. It's a prank call.

Yesterday I got a message on my voice mail telling me my triple x-large, turquoise sequin thong that I special ordered is ready for me to pick up at the porno shop. I laughed so hard, I had to listen to it twice. If I had been home, I totally would have went along with it. I was 12 once too. My friends and I did stuff like that all the time. I thought prank calling died out when caller id came into power so I'm glad to know it's still going strong.....keep it alive! Keep it going! Call me again so I can ask about the 40 triple D cupcake sprinkle bra I've been waiting on and if I can put it on lay-away at 7 cents a month.

It's time to interrogate my peeps

Ok. This blog is about ME ME ME. That's what personal blogs are for, I know that. But I'm sort of sick of talking about myself right now, which I think is the reason for so little posts in the past couple months. In reading blogs I've learned a lot about the everyday lives of many interesting people. But since I have never met any of my readers or blog writers in person, these are questions I sometimes ask when I meet a person for the first time. Some of my questions are strange and maybe too personal, but I never said I was normal. Answer if you want, I'm just putting them out there. You can answer in the comments section or on your own blog, it's up to you....(I would be doing you a favor if you have blogger's block)


Cue blaring, intimidating light bulb shining right into your eyes and perhaps some intense sounding music


1. What is your middle name?

2. Speaking of names, are you named after anyone?

3. What do you think you may have been in a past life? Or do you even believe in all that stuff?

4. Best day of your life: (fill in) And do you remember what you were wearing?

5. Does your job make you happy?

6. Have you ever been to Machu Picchu? If the answer is yes, I'm begging for whoever has to post pictures of Machu Picchu immediately because I've never been and I've always wanted to see.

7. What did you dream last night? (and do you dream in color?)

8. Are you getting sick of my shark teeth posts?

9. Tell me about something that scares you. (Ok just to be fair, I'm scared of spiders, clowns, and evil ghosts I'm pretty sure I've posted about that before.)

10. Do you ever find yourself attracted to Dick Cheney? Ok I'm just kidding, I just wanted to see if anyone was still paying attention. Or answer if you want....

That's it. See that wasn't hard was it?

I'm not Martha dammit, but I did stuff

Been feeling pretty blah blah(blahg) lately, as I usually do when it's cold outside. But not in the bad way, I've just been hibernating by the fire place. I did get a little creative and finally did my shell frame that, in my mind, I finished a long time ago. Like? The coral and I think the sea glass I found in Hawaii(at a secret beach, yessss, we had a secret beach there too!). One of the snail shells I found 11 years ago in the Filipines. And the rest are from around here. Well except for the peach one, I think I found that in Tampa a long time ago. I don't remember....

I used regular school glue because I'm too lazy to go the craft store and get the proper glue, in case anyone wants to borrow this idea for a project. I would suggest using craft glue or hot glue, but since I had neither, I didn't. Hopefully I won't regret this. Another good idea would be to mix glue and clear glitter and brush it on the sides and in between the shells to make it look like sand but like I said, I'm too lazy to go to the store so it stays like this. I'm sure Martha would pee in her pants but less is more I think. Plus if I gave a crap what Martha would do, I would have just went to the store and bought a new damn frame.

Sweet Nothing

It's ass freezing cold out and the wind is making all those cool scary noises that I love so much. There's a fire in the fireplace, home-made soup heating on the oven, fresh coffee(pinch of sugar lots of cream!) and a sleeping dog warming my feet. I have so much leftover food from yesterday's feast, I don't have to do anything for dinner. In fact everything I wanted to do today is done, so I don't have to do anything at all. Life is goooood....According to the label on the candle, my home is supposed to smell like The Sea of Amalphi but I've never been there so how the hell would I know?

Remember this guy? He must have told all his friends about our hospitality because we had a Christmas visitor.


I haven't heard from my doctor about my scan results. I'll call around Friday if I haven't heard from her yet. But I imagine if there was something urgent to tell, they would have told me by now. Actually on my last day, the tech who was in charge of my scan was nice enough to show me my scans and(knocking on wood) it looked fine.

But I have to brag about my husband for just a second!! Oh gush! Oh swoon! On the first day of my scan I walked out of the hospital after lying still for three and half hours. I was feeling a little stiff from not being allowed to move, not even to itch my own damn nose- and boy was that mind over matter. Little did I know that someone went shopping for me. Look what my Mr.Pea had waiting for me. Joy! Joy!

My husband married a woman who is not impressed nor desires jewelry, perfume or flowers and prefers books as gifts instead. It must be confusing for him because it's taken almost 11 years to figure that out....better late than never. And what better way to spend a cold day inside relaxing by the fire than with some new books? I'm so loving that field guide...and I'm sure I've seen him taking a peek or two at some photos of beautiful Egyptian queen carvings. Should I be jealous?