Category Archives: musing

Coyote pee and carrots

image

We have a, um,  situation with bunnies in our neck of the backwoods burbs.  
There are TONS of them, and they breed like, well, like bunnies.
They aren’t shy about coming into yards, and they love a good planter for snacking.
They also eat grass.  This made them the arch nemisis in the comic book-like tale of The Mr’s adventures in yard care.
It hasn’t been uncommon for him to drop off midsentance and go shooting out of whatever door is closest, waving his arms and shouting “GET OUT!! DAMN RABBITS!” when he spoted one of the furballs on the lawn.

His arsenal includes pepper spray (spray on plants, not at bun buns, we aren’t those people, ) and a vat of coyote pee the size of a pony keg, among other things.
He has been in the trenches against Bugs’ brethren like his life depended on defending every blade of grass.
Until last week. Then I got the picture above from him on my phone.
And another.
And another.

This is “Grayton” (according to The Mr,)
the little bunny who divides his time between our drain pipe and that infamous ugly bush in our front yard.
He is now my husband’s favorite topic.

First thing in the morning, The Mr goes to the front door an searches for the bunny.
Don’t know where my husband is? Try the front yard, he is probably watching Grayton snacking on the grass in the shade.
I caught him leaving a portion of carrot by the drain pipe.

😐

Stockholm syndrome much?

We are going to be running the G rated version of The Bunny Ranch by next year.
I need a lock for my produce drawer.

1 Comment

Filed under musing

My Daddy

image

So that’s me in the bed, snacking down on ice chips after Jr. was born. Jr is the burrito situation with the smooshie face and beanie.
The guy holding Jr the Burrito? That’s my daddy. “Pop” to his grandkiddos.

This has been a pretty big Father’s Day weekend for him. On Thursday – also known as his twin daughters’ 37th late 20ish birthday (oh gawd… old,) – he had a valve replaced in his heart that was even more in need of it than we realized before his docs got in there.
Here we are together again in that same hospital where Jr was born, but he’s the one who gets to lay down this time.

image

My parents are pretty much the cutest thing EVAH. Married at 18, together through an amazing amount of life’s challenges, lucky enough to have adopted twin girls at 6 weeks old (ok, it is my sister and I who were the lucky ones… we got the BEST parents.)

And my dad?  My daddy? There aren’t words… I saw him in that bed when they let my mom and me in to his ICU room before he was awake after surgery, and a lifetime of moments flashed through my mind: two blond-haired little girls each up on a knee at the breakfast table while he read the funnies to us; hilarious impromptu tripple jump competitions in the back yard where he let us win and treated us to a Snickers bar from the Circle K as a prize; hearing him chaining up his plumbing van to go fix someone’s heat in the wee hours of cold, snowy winter nights; the time he came banging on the window of my first serious boyfriend’s car in his bathrobe after we sat just a little too long; the road  trip we took with two of my friends to visit West Texas A&M my Jr year; countless rodeos and country concerts and farm team hockey games he and I went to; his trademark daddy spin as he walked me up the isle to marry The Mr; all the moments I have watched Jr filled with pure baby glee playing with Pop; and a billion other memories of him and our family.

This Father’s Day we are celebrating the new ticking portion of his heart, and everything it means for him and everything he means to all of us.

I am so glad we get to keep him…. this daddy’s girl knows how very lucky she is.

Happy Father’s Day to my Daddy, The Mr, and all the Daddys out there. Thanks for all the little and big things you do for your kids and grandkids every day!

1 Comment

Filed under musing

On swass and gas and 6.99 wine in a plastic glass.

Happily Urban Me didn’t travel for work.  She occasionally transported her VIP Boss to the airport while he took conference calls with the Sultan of Biggetty Bruhaha (or whatever, I MAY have that name wrong,) but other than that, hoofing it across campus to represent at the all staff council was my biggest work trip.

Reluctantly Suburban Me is also “Shockingly Corporate Me” who has to travel occasionally, and currently located 38000 ft in the air after 2 days at the main office (or Mothership as I like to call it – so I can say “They called me back to the Mothership for a few days,” because I am a super dork unique like that.)

It’s fine…  it makes my Foursquare and Untappd check-ins more exciting, and I get to send pictures of ivy-covered brick buildings back to my parents with captions like “Look Ma, now you can say your daughter went to Harvard!”   I can’t exactly say that sorting through email while lounging in a puffy hotel bed with a plate of room service fruit and cheese and a glass of wine super sucks or anything. That would be a pretty transparent lie.

 But there are a few things that are less-than-awesomesauce about it both this time and in general:

  1. The biggie.  Leaving my kid, standing there waiving with The Mr., wearing his tiny Dropkick Murphys T-shirt in honor of Mommy “Shipping Up To Boston,”, I had a feeling of certainty that he would be packing for college when I returned in a few days because YEAH, it really does  seem like it is all going by that fast. 
  2. Getting to DIA kind of always sucked. But from the north-west burbs it feels like you actually are driving to Kansas.  You should SEE the amount of bug carcass splattered on my windshield. Too. Far. Out.
  3. The GTL beefcakey situation spilling into my seat as I type this has been ripping toots every 7 to 10 minutes since we pushed back from the gate at Logan over 2 hours ago.  If I had to guess I would say he had burning tires for dinner.  I have been sniffing my own pit on a regular basis just to see if I can muffle the stank with what is left of my Secret powder fresh.
  4. Speaking of  Dee-ode, is there some ninja version that peeps in high humidity climates know about that us high and dry dwellers aren’t privy to?  Because the “Secret” I find is that I am a sticky, sweaty pile of less-than-fresh about an hour into my day during trips to Beantown.  (Holy swamp ass, yo?)
  5. Every cabbie I get for the ride between hotel and office seems to be on the “I will save money on car maintenance by only using two of my tires every time I take a turn,” plan.  Oh and also by rolling the windows down (A/C is for sissys,) so that my passenger’s humidity bombed hair can also be blown 80 different directions.  Hot stuff.
  6. I used to be a TERRIBLE flyer.  I say this knowing that the only reason I am no longer one is because I turned 21 and was able to toss a lot little booze on top of the Xanax/Ativan/Whatever that the doctor had given me that never QUITE worked completely.  However, faced with the knowledge that I have to drive myself back home from Kansas DIA when we land, I have to ratchet back on my usual shameless self medication – leaving me stone cold sober and sniffing up GTL’s gas as we hit the usual mountain wave turbulence in our descent back to the pleasantly thin-aired 5280+ ft that we like to call “on the ground” here in the great state of CO.
  7. The actual, legit (not doing an SNL skit,) use of the word “Wicked”.  It can be kind of cool, actually… but when the bar tender at the hotel has said it 9001 times in 15 minitues? Yeah, I’m wicked pissed.
  8. Andplusalso – my kid.  (did I say that already?  He counts twice.)       

(And The Mr…. and the world’s greatest puppy pants….  And my folks who tag team Jr. care with The Mr. while mommy “pahks the cah in Ha-vad yah-d” because it really DOES take a village to raise a Little Emperor Jr.  Miss them all like crazy-crazy-cray.)

 

Until next time, Boston – Home again home again, jiggetty jig.

1 Comment

Filed under musing

Long weekend in the burbs; a brief synopsis.

Day1: a neighbor cat murdering bunnies in the back garden ; fighting the crowds fun in the sun at Boulder Creek Festival; “energy gummies” that came with a crash like the hangover of a frat boy’s graduation night bender, (this was a rookie mistake on my part, I am rusty with my Boulder rules- NEVER take anything a crunchy girl on the Pearl Street Mall gives you, even if she’s a legit vendor;) exploding mason jars of beer in the back seat of The Mr’s Jeep and some very unfortunately-placed wettness on my pants from said jars; assembly of a patio storage box that made putting the Cozy Coupe together seem like stacking Jr’s “1,2,3” blocks; “all natural mosquito repellent” that does NOT repel; and a carpet of dead/dying insects on the floor of our garage that can only properly be described as “of Biblical Proportions.” Off to quite a start.

Day 2: a morning greeting that included a monster toddler poo blow-out before my first cup of coffee even got cold waiting for me to drink it; a short trail hike to a favorite pizza joint, during which I discovered everyone thinks that even a hike on a joke of a trail in the foothills is “outside my comfort zone,” :::cough cough::: Colorado Native here :::::throat clear cough::::: ; a lounge singer version of 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop”; finding that the uber-sucky-to-assemble patio storage box has a faulty lid that I will have to replace (sigh); getting scraped on one of my extra large bug bites by Jr’s shoe, causing an explosion of itchtastic-ness that resulted in actual tears; and the errecting (giggle giggle, tee hee,) of a bug zapper on our property. (If that isn’t suburban, I don’t know what is.)

Day 3 is just starting, but it is going to include The Mr. using an electric hedge trimmer that is probably too much tool for a trimming newb perhaps overkill for the job at hand, (pray for my shrubbery.) Maybe we will make it to the overcrowded concrete swimming hole pool, maybe we will just keep doing what we are right now: running as fast as we can in circles screaming “I’M A DINOSAUR!!!!” (ok, that’s not really what I’m doing… but we can revisit that statement after a few long-weekend-bonus Mimosas.)

Happy Memorial Day, Suburbia.

1 Comment

Filed under musing

What NOT to say…

image

I may hate this bush even more than I loathe Mega Coon. It was, like everything in our gardens, very neglected when we moved in. It was growing way out over the driveway, which meant there was a danger of it scratching The Mr’s Jeep that he thinks is a Bentley. So it, along with everything else on the property, go a pretty major pruning from the landacaper last year.
Only problem is that it was so unloved that pruning it made it look like ass. 

Also, it revealed tons of dead needles that had been concealed by the overgrown monstrosity.

It looks awful, and it is RIGHT IN FRONT of the house…. screaming ” HELLO, THE FAMILY INSIDE IS PROLY AS MESSED UP AS THEIR SHRUB!!!” (OK, maybe people don’t think that way, but I do, and I matter in this story.)

Removal is the ultimate plan.
But I uber-cringe every time I see it, so I decided to at least dig out the fire hazard from hell dead needles to see if it would improve the visual a bit.

2 big shopping bags crammed full of dead crap later, I was just finishing up when the year-out-of-high-school neighbor kid and his buddy returned from another Taco Bell run.
They waved, I pushed up my nerdy-as-hell super-awesome sunglasses that stack on top of my regular glasses and waved back.

“What are you doing?” inquired neighbor boy.

“Cleaning my bush!” I exclaimed.

And blushed burning red.

:::crickets chirping::::

Cue the Bevis and Butthead laughs.

That is way up there on the “what NOT to say to the teenager next door” list.  Anything having to do with bush, really. 

Gah. 
And I’m worried about what our SHRUBS say about me?

1 Comment

Filed under musing