A good kind of busy

Tomorrow I'm attempting to get the Christmas stuff down from the attic by myself, while making every effort not to hurt my back again right before another hash run. Since we're hosting this run, it'd probably be a good idea if I was fit enough to participate. I also have high hopes of getting the tree up, the house decorated, and food bought for the party. Tomorrow's the only day I have off, so it all really needs to get done in one day. Throw in a couple more errands I can think of, and I'm skeptical at best. Still, it'll all be fun in the end!

9 hours and we're back

I gotta say it's a little strange for the weather to get colder and more wintry the further south we traveled towards home. But aside from the brief period of snow and bad roads, we still made it back to Midland in good time.

Not sure I'm that glad to be back home though. We had a great time in Oklahoma with DeeBee and the kids, so now I'm missing their company! I'm also going to miss the portable electric blankets below, Mia and Brandy:



Some holidays are fun in that you get to see your family, but stressful in that you're spending your time running around from house to house trying to ensure everyone gets their fair allotted time with you. But this Thanksgiving was just plain relaxation, shopping, couch potatoing, eating, and of course a lot of video games:



The main reason I'm glad to be home, however, is because we felt bad leaving Junior alone for five days. Matt was nice enough to come by a couple times to check in on him, but he obviously had a negative reaction to our being gone. He tends to get mad when we leave town for a few days, so it's not unusual to come home and find a trail of destruction. This time it was magnets knocked off the fridge (the breakable ones), leather flip-flops chewed, papers and other junk knocked off the counter, but mostly....the freaky cat molted hair all over the place! I know he tends to shed hair when he gets upset or worked up, but good grief. There were tufts of hair everywhere, like you would expect had their been a major cat fight in the house. But Junior seems to have survived, and it didn't take long until he was attacking my jeans and holding on for dear life. Welcome home, dear humans!

Even the cat will get fatter

Tomorrow we leave for Oklahoma to spend Thanksgiving at DeeBee's. The past few years the girls have spent the bulk of their Thanksgiving holiday at their dad's, mostly because they enjoyed hanging out with certain family members on his side, i.e. YOUNG people. I understood why, but still it feels a little odd when your kids are not around on a major holiday. So it's kind of cool that we're spending Thanksgiving together this year. As the girls are getting older, I don't expect we'll have many more family trips.

That leaves Junior in charge of the house. And without Alan around to play chase with and me to stalk from dark corners and hallways, I suspect he'll be doing a lot of this:

More from Oklahoma in a couple days...

It's 3 a.m., I must be lonely

Not really, but that song is stuck in my head because it really is 3:00 a.m. The things your mind dwells on in the middle of the night when you can't sleep are just plain random.

My head hurts.

Maybe I should get bangs tomorrow.

Lots of laminated letters of the alphabet...cut out individually....yeah, with the vowels a different color...with magnets on the back!

I need running pants.

Maybe I'll run tomorrow.

I should have brushed my teeth.

I hate my hair.

Might do some Christmas shopping tomorrow.

I need aspirin.

It just goes on and on, and none of these things are important enough to lose sleep over. I should have taken Nyquil.

I'll just sit somewhere else. Thanks.

A token posting

I have nothing to post, so here's a photo of Junior proving he has a rarely-seen-by-the-public sweet side.

It was time

Last night I colored my hair, myself. I've never colored my hair or gotten highlights - whether at a salon or at home. I'm fine with the color, although the point was not to try out a new color but to cover the strands of gray that seem to be multiplying. I'm happy that it didn't turn out disastrous, but I'm sad that this is the beginning of the end. I have to do this forever now, don't I? I kinda liked my natural hair color, because it was....NATURAL! This color is a darker brown with hints of brownish/red. But as far as doing it myself, $9 at home beats $90 at a salon.

On On!

I'm going to keep this short since I smell like a BBQ pit and have dried beer in my hair. And that didn't happen because I got drunk - it was all part of the required festivities at the Hash House Harriers party this evening. I think this "drinking club with a running problem" is something Alan and I could stay involved with, particularly since we offered to have the next one at our house in less than a month. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and maybe next month I'll have pictures.

40 and Fabulous

This is me and Denise (my BFF!) at her surprise 40th b-day party Monday night. We are exactly a month apart in age, so no longer am I alone in the 40s. Yes!

Run, stink, eat

I'm not very good at this NaBloPoMo thing. Maybe I just don't have much to talk about, or much that I can talk about. Or maybe, had I not been a permanent fixture on the couch when I got home from subbing yesterday, I could have written something.

So I took a month off from running to get completely healed up and started back this past Sunday. It was ugly to say the least. Then I went on Tuesday after school when the weather was really chilly, which just happens to be my favorite weather to run in, and lo and behold those wonderful shin splints are back. Yes! But I'm going to try again this morning, because Alan and I are invited to a "hash and dash" (or something like that) on Saturday. Apparently the plan is a group gets together for an afternoon run and then finishes at someone's house for beer and BBQ. I just have to say - with temps expected in the upper 80s, I hope the party is spacious and OUTSIDE with lovely breezes to carry all the odor away. I know how Alan smells after an hour of running, so can you imagine trying to eat around a whole group of smelly, sweaty men? Gross.

Just doing what my body says

Happiness is arriving home after work on a cold day and smelling stew cooking in the crock pot. I had two bowls, followed by an hour of HGTV, followed by a nap on the couch. Now I'm going to take Nyquil for the sheer purpose of sleeping some more. I need sleep.

Whatever pops into my head

I just noticed on Melissa's blog that it's National Blogging Month or something like that. You're supposed to vow to post something every day in November. I missed the first three days, but I'll try to join the crowd for the rest of the month. We'll see. And this second posting of the evening is a good way to keep me from going to bed early. I've fallen asleep on the couch the last two nights before 8:30 p.m., so this is quite the accomplishment!

Cat fights

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=21280368

This video sorta reminds me of one of my daily fights with Junior. And yes, I have been known to both slap and bite him back. Good times.

Expect much whining

Less than a week ago I mentioned the days when Alan lived in Ft. Worth and we had to do that long distance relationship thing, and then he moved back to Midland for about 18 months before we had to that "thing" again. That second time though, it was only as far as Levelland, which was pretty doable. But we still didn't like it and were so thrilled when the position opened up back here in Midland, and we were once again able to live in the same house together. That was a little over two years ago....and here we go again. This time it's Houston, which is way the hell too far from Midland. We're not going to pack up and move somewhere we have no intention of staying, and we're certainly not going to make Bailey start all over right in the middle of high school. Not to mention the fact that Addison would still be here, too. So Alan's going, alone. And that sucks. And I need to not think about it too much.