Blog Feature Friday ~ "Here On The Prairies"

Over the last couple of weeks, I took some time to check out new blogs on Blotanical.

Most of the blogs I like have something in common with the way I write my own blog (duh, right?)

Be sure to follow Here On the Prairies by Prairie Chicken.

She's a hilarious and opinionated Canadian blogger, based out of Winnipeg. You've got to have a sense of humour to live in Winnpeg during the winter.

I've been there. In the winter. I got frostbite just thinking about it.



She has the ability to be funny with a single photo or single sentence. I'm convinced that Prairie Chicken is my sista from anotha mista.

This crafty lady's got balls. Figuratively and literally...she's had some crocheted! Check out her online embroidery shop on Etsy.

I totally want to order a "Make Me A Pie Bitch" tea towel.

She blogs about any subject. Gardening, her various projects, music, weird shit, life, etc. She peppers it with random photos and YouTube videos, which you know I enjoy. It's also peppered with Tales of rrrrrrrrrRibaldry!...



...so be warned if you're sensitive to profanity. But you're not sensitive, are you Dear Readers? Or you wouldn't be reading my blog. :)

If you have the time, it's worth it to skim through her past posts to get a picture of what I'm talking about. On my last day off, that's what I did. And I wasn't disappointed!

Speaking of great YouTube videos, I found a series of awesome ones yesterday that I'm sure lot of people have already seen. But I'm always late to the viral video party. So here's one of them (there are four). Almost spit some coffee out.



"No way!"

"Yaweh."

:D

Dear Mr. Fantasy, Play Us A Tune

The cotton in the field behind my backyard is flowering.






I've never seen cotton flowers before. I think they're very pretty. Wayne's World dream sequence style, my thoughts swirl into a whirlpool of pink...

Pink ladies. This one looks like she runs a cult O_O


And this one is me. Really. *cough*.


Pink Barbie Corvettes. I always wanted to grow up and drive a pink corvette.


Pink cotton candy clouds chasing a scared woman down a country (oops, just about left the 'o' out of country, good thing I looked) road.



Pink ballerinas. I also wanted to grow up and be one of these. That dream crashed and died when I turned 13. Most girls lose their baby fat when they turn 13. I reclaimed mine. Plus some huge knockers. Of which I got made fun of for every single day. Of which led to a sense of humour. Of which I am thankful. For both knockers and sense of humour.


Pink mohawks with leopard spots and braids. Wow. That actually looks really heavy. And super-awesome :D


Pretty in Pink. Oh Molly, it's weird to see you playing a grandmother on your new-ish TV show.


Pink martinis!! I was going to post a picture I have of myself with a pink martini. But I thought that would be crass. Pip pip.


Pink Drag Queens. I love you Pink Drag Queens! There aren't enough of you in Jacksonville to give this place some LIFE. :)


Pink cherry blossoms.


Cats in pink wigs. Um, pardon me for a minute. I have to go and make a quick phone call to the authorities...


Pink bra planters! I think this may be my favourite. I do have a bra exactly this colour, except it's a lot bigger. Well, not 'circus freak' big. More like...'interferes with my golf swing a little' big.

And it's getting kinda old, so I could totally plant petunias in it, hang it on my mailbox and shock my plethora of Republican neighbours. I have an idea now, thank you to whomever gave it to me!



I'm so happy that there are people out there on the internet who posted photographs of the EXACT things I was dreaming about. I would be lost without you.

Little Boxes, On The Hillside...

Weeds.



Remember a few posts back, I said that I had lost my garden Mojo?

The weeds were bad then, but they got even worse, as you can see from the photos.



I've discovered that my Mojo has been kidnapped.

Whoever's got my Mojo held hostage is one mean bastard. Do know what they did the other day?

Mailed me one of my Mojo's fingers!!



In the ransom note, they said that if I didn't weed my garden, they'd cut off the rest of my Mojo's fingers one by one.

And if I still didn't weed my garden?

You don't even want to know what they said they'd start cutting off my Mojo next!



So I got down down to business. It was super hot out, nasty humidity. When I came out the door, garden gloves in hand, it felt like I was stepping into someone's mouth.



That one behemoth of a weed you can see in the center of the above photos of my garden had literally become a TREE. When I pulled it out, it uprooted like 5 other plants next to it, including one of my oriental lilies.

My azalea had some sort of weird spiky tumour growing out of it. These kind of weeds gave it up more easily than the one above, though.


Hopefully I've done enough that my Mojo will be returned [mostly] intact.

I have a nasty feeling of who might have my garden Mojo...



And if she does, I'm screwed. She's one tough cookie. With a mean set of clippers. And she knows I'm anti-drug.

My Mojo is doomed. :(

Blog Feature Friday~ Hyperbole and a Half

I will never, ever in a million years be as funny as this person.

Allie @ Hyperbole and a Half




Because I base my whole existence on being funny, I would be very depressed at this prospect...

...if I only wasn't laughing so hard. It's impossible to be melancholic when there are tears streaming out of my eyes and I'm snorting because I can't breathe.

Examples of posts you should not miss:

Dog

This Is Why I'll Never Be An Adult

Sneaky Hate Spiral

And my personal favourite, the post which inspired me to share my love/envy of this blogger...

Things That Can Make You Feel Like An Idiot Almost Instantly


Currently the blog as 15,534 follwers, and counting. Allie obviously doesn't need anyone's help in promoting her blog. She has no idea who I am. Chances are that many of you are one of the 15,534.

And she's hot in real-life. DAMMIT!



If you aren't one of the 15,534 followers, RUN, do not walk to read her blog. Her animations are worth the trip alone.

If you need me, I'll be standing on the Emerald Isle bridge holding a big rock tied around my waist, struggling to think of reasons to live. And most likely I'll be struggling with the rock as well. Because I have the upper arm strength of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.



*sniff*

Whew!

Thank the little baby Jesus!


Turns out they didn't run out of BBQ pork before we got to B's after all!




Oh, and Chuck's CT scan was all clean. No cancer :D



What a long day we had. A long day of waiting in two different cities with nothing to do in between the couple of things we were waiting for.

The appointment for the CT scan was at 9:30, so we left here about 7. I expected a long wait at the hospital in Greenville, because the waiting room in Radiology was packed. Normally he gets his CT scan here in Jacksonville, and they send the results up there where Chuck gets checked out by the doctor at a later date.

This time we decided to do it all same day. Chuck was in for his test and out in record time. Those people really run a tight ship! Best hospital I've ever had to deal with. If you're going to get sick, go to Pitt Memorial in Greenville.

Chuck came out of the test kind of loopy though. Have any of you ever had a CT scan with contrast dye? You can taste a really strong metallic taste in your mouth and feel it in your nose, and your crotch gets really really really warm. Your balls feel like a hot teabag.



Since we got out of there in record time, we raced on over to B's BBQ. We had beat the rush! I felt triumphant.

Which wouldn't last long. Because although their pulled pork is delicious and succulent and I thoroughly enjoyed it, there is one problem with the place. No air conditioning. It looks like a hole-in-the wall dive from a movie about the South. There's a smoke shack out behind it. Which gives it a great ambience!

If only it wasn't 100F/37C outside. And even hotter inside, of course. Dear God, I felt like a roasted pig myself!

We actually killed most of the day by eating, which I hate to admit. The appointment to see the doctor was in the afternoon at 2:30. There's nothing to do in Greenville, so we stopped and got ice cream. Then we stopped and visited with my old boss who now manages the Barnes & Noble bookstore there. Then we got coffee. Lots of thumb-twiddling.

Boring enough for you yet? There's not even any way to turn this into something funny!



Finally the appointment came nigh. We did have to sit in the waiting room at the cancer center for quite awhile. That is one of the most depressing things you can ever do. People are there waiting for their chemo. Everyone looks so sad. A lot of people are bald and skinny. I applaud the people that work in that clinic, but man, I don't know how they do it without Prozac.

I remember the first time we came into that clinic, when Chuck started his chemo. I even remember where we sat while we were waiting. Chuck was very silent. That was....I think 'ominous' is the descriptive feeling I'm looking for. Chuck is never silent.

This the the Leo W. Jenkins Cancer Center from the outside. The Brody School of Medicine looms in the background.


We did see one of his chemo nurses this time, who totally remembered us. She even remembered the year we were there...she didn't know we got married, and was very happy to see us still together. Chuck is as big a ham as I am (and an even bigger charmer of the ladies), so he kept all the nurses laughing every time he went into the chemo bay. Tough to forget Chuckles. He copes with difficult things through making other people laugh, just like I do.

We weren't expecting the results from the morning CT scan to come back so quickly, but they did. The doctor told us Chuck's lung was clean as soon as he walked in the door. Dr. Walker is AWESOME. We were shuttled around to a couple of different oncologists over the last five years. Even though they were good at what they do, they weren't specialized in thoracic cancers (which lung cancer counts as). This guy is. And he CARES about his patients, I can tell. Sometimes doctors get a bit desensitized and mechanical, but this one isn't. You can't teach that in medical school.

Anyway, I mis-spoke last post. I meant to say we actually went back for bi-yearly check-ups, not yearly. They're every six months. Turns out, Chuck does have to come back one more time in 6 months. And we thought it would be done. Or at least Chuck would only have to come back to be checked out every couple of years.

The doctor got all Dennis Downer on us. Chuck still will have to come back every year. For like the next 20 years. After 5 years, it's unlikely the SAME cancer will return to Chuck's lung. But after 5 years, there's a 20-30% chance a different lung cancer will attack him.

That kind of depressed him. More correctly, that kind of depressed his wallet.



We were cheered up later on though, we did end up going to that baseball game in Kinston. Ate some bad-for-you-but-delicious stadium food (I stayed away from the hot dogs, IG....but I may have had a chip or twelve O_O). Drank a couple of beers. The game got cancelled near the end, on account of a nasty thunderstorm.

And it STAYED nasty. The hour drive home through the rural countryside was a white-knuckle affair. We could barely see out the windshield a couple of times. And a crack of lightning struck something quite near us and seared the image on our vision for about 10 minutes afterwards...scared the crap out of me.

But we finally made it home. 13 hours out on the road. Glad that's over for another six months :)

Thank you everyone for your well-wishes and good thoughts. Not to get all mushy, I truly believe that they help. :)

Four Years Gone

Chuck has a cancer check-up tomorrow. We're not sure if it's #4 or #5. He has to have a CT scan and a doctor's appointment every year for 5 years. But we don't know if that 5 years started in 2006 or what. I'm thinkin' we've got one more year left. After the 5 years are up? Then it looks real good for the cancer not reappearing.

If you're totally confused, and have no idea what I'm on about, please refer to this post.

We're going up to Greenville, and we're going to make a day of it. First the CT scan at 9:30. Then we'll be waiting around for a few hours, and hopefully getting some delicious BBQ pork at B's BBQ. You've got to get there early, or else they're out of BBQ and they close. THAT'S BAD. Then it's off to see Chuck's oncologist in the afternoon. He'll let us know if they saw anything funny (not funny ha-ha...funny-bad) on the scan.

And then off to Kinston to see an Indians' baseball game! Hotdogs and beer. Mmm.

I'm determined to turn a scary day into a date. Because then it doesn't feel so scary. My husband Chuckles is awesome, by the way. If you knew him, you'd love him too.

Peruvian Daffodil

The last of my bulbs to bloom for the summer.




I love the little feathered edges of the petals. Almost looks like a silk flower.


These things are very tough. I moved them after the second year of bloom, because I found out how massive they get. They were planted too close to the front of the bed, and overpowered everything.



Peruvian daffodils are not only massive above ground, but much like the iceberg that got the Titanic, most of the "business" is below the surface. Each bulb is the size of a large freakin' turnip after a couple of years. You should have seen me trying to dig these things out. I almost ended up on my back a couple of times.



But even after I moved them in the early spring, they still bloomed for me in the late summer of the same year. I couldn't believe they weren't shocked from the difficult move. I was shocked from the difficult move. They looked much better at the back of the bed.

I recommend these, because they're beautiful in both blooms and foliage. Give them a lot of sun, and a lot of room. They don't bloom the first year you plant them. But the next year? They put on a show! And they're very easy to split when you want more of them.

The flowers only last a couple of days, like irises. But they're worth it.

Which Came First? The Egg, or the...Egg?

I was totally going to make the title of this post into an egg pun.

Possibly including:

Eggstraordinary!

or

Eggcellent!

or

Eggciting!

But I thought that would be a cop out. Too easy.



Many of my garden blogging friends keep chickens. Curbstone Valley Farms springs foremost in my mind. If you want to talk chicken, this is the place to go. I hadn't realized just how many types of chickens there are in this world.

I saw this article in our local paper, the Jacksonville Daily News. A chicken at a local farm was laying multiple double-shelled eggs!

Craziness...

So this short post is for my Chicken-Hugging friends, and for the rest of you that just might find it cool like I did.

And make sure you leave me your best egg pun in your comment! I have high standards you know!

Ain't Too Proud To Beg

It's that time of the month again.

*sigh*


I hate that time of the month.

I'm crabby.




My back hurts.



I'm dog tired.


And not just any dog either, but one of those fugly Chinese Crested dogs.



What was that? I should keep my female problems to myself?


What are you talking...?


Oh. Where's your mind at?


I'm not talking about that!




I'm talking about Changeover Tuesday. The special level of hell reserved for Music Department Managers. Dante's editor made him cut that part out of his little poem...thought it wouldn't be exciting enough.

Let ME tell you about it.

On the first (and sometimes the second like yesterday's was) Tuesday of every month, I have to change out every promotion and display in my department. I don't mean to brag about the size of my department, but it's pretty damn skippy.




What does changeover day consist of? A lot of bending, squatting, scurrying, lifting, toting, and peeling. Like Zumba, but without the cute music and there's less ass shaking.

Picture someone untying a helium-filled balloon, and letting it go. The balloon fartily swirls around the room in an unpredictable frenzy, before coming to a sad, limp, wrinkly, deflated demise on the ground.



That's me on changeover (except I'm way less farty). For 10 hours straight. Half an inch of cheap rubber between my feet and the concrete floor. Needy customers. No coffee breaks.

What brought this on besides my penchant for complaining?

Tracy @ Gardening Obsession asked me if I was ever "not funny".

You guys know me by now, I have to crack a joke at everything. I leap at the chance to make a witty quip.

The Humour Hamster is constantly sprinting on his little wheel in my head.

On one Tuesday of every month he gets tired of my shit, quits running, packs up his little hamster-sized suitcase and tells me he's going to stay at his mother's.




For that entire day, I'm a black hole of humour. People orbit tentatively around me, for fear of being sucked into oblivion.

For example, I could totally make some immature joke about that last sentence, but it's just not in me on changeover day.

I don't like being like this. It just doesn't feel natural. What's a girl to do?

Beg. Lots of begging.

I went over to his mother's last night, and bribed Hammy with a present. He came back to me.




"I'm sorreh babeh, I'll never do it again! Come home to Mama!"


And I'm back! The sense of humour's BACK! If you listen very closely, you can hear the squeak of the wheel...



Till next month. *sigh*


I totally shouldn't be complaining. It's storming outside (finally!), and I have two days off. I'll be able to get into my garden to weed. Or nap if I want to, which is more likely.

And I have better luck than my new garden buddy Zoe @ Pearled Earth. Murphy's Law? Murph really got her good the other day. Go read that post, she's hilarious and is one of my new favourite blogs to follow.

Oh My God, Charlie Darwin

Amy @ Go Away, I'm Gardening inspired this post indirectly, through a question she asked me in a comment. My answer to her made me think of telling you a recent anecdote. Not really to do with gardening, although I'm sure I could spin it that way if I really wanted to.

As many of you know, I'm the manager of a music & DVD department.

A couple of nights ago, a older woman came in carrying a DVD. She saw me and marched (I got the feeling that 'marching' was always her mode of transport) up to me at the desk.

"I want to return this."

I looked at the bag, and said, 'Do you have the receipt?'

She handed me both items. The DVD appeared to be a documentary on pregnancy of some sort. I noticed the DVD was already opened. "Ma'am, I'm sorry, I can't return this for you. It's already been opened."

She looked at me like I had two heads. "Nowhere on the back of that DVD says it's about evolution!"

Ah. I started to get the picture. This was going to turn into one of those transactions.



So I told her I would take it back for her in this instance, in exchange for something else. Because she probably would have turned me to stone with her Medusa glare if I hadn't acquiesced.

When she marched away to look around, I decided to read the synopsis on the back of the DVD.

Yeah. She was right. The word 'evolution' didn't appear on the back. But the whole synopsis MEANT 'evolution', if you have any idea what the concept is. The DVD was all about comparing the similarities of human embryos to those of other mammals, especially chimps. I had to shake my head.

She came back a little while later, carrying a DVD about something completely different. While I wordlessly started the exchange, she looked me squarely in the face and stated, 'I don't BELIEVE in evolution.'

Was this a challenge? Was Ms. Scopes Monkey Trial trying to draw me into a rumble??



Ha! Like I was going to bite. I just smiled sweetly and said, 'Would you like your original receipt back?'

Then I danced around like an orangutan and threw my own feces at her, and she totally complained. Some people can't take a joke.





I don't generally have a problem with Creationists (There are many branches of Creationism, but the one I seem to hear the most about teaches that the Earth is only roughly 6,000-10,000 years old), except for the fact I don't agree with them ('cause they're wrong). Everyone's entitled to their own opinion as long as they're peaceful about it.

Except Kirk Cameron. He gives me Growing Pains. In my ass.



My point is, if you're going to be against something, at least be able to recognize the definition of it!



I personally do believe in evolution. I've taken too many biology, anatomy and physical anthropology classes to believe otherwise. I have absolutely no problem with the idea that I'm an evolving animal.

And in fact, I'm evolving as we speak!

I'm a Cougar-In-Training.



Rwoar.





(The post title is an album by The Low Anthem)