A $2 Dress Beats a $5 Milkshake

Perhaps it is my freakishly long neck that makes my head appear so large but for some reason, these photos make me look like I should try out for the Alice In Wonderland movie coming up.

Hey, I wouldn't need any CGI alterations!

The sparkles don't show in the photo either but they exist. I promise.

NEVER DOUBT THE SPARKLE!

Now all I need is a good pair of dress shoes. Maybe I'll go hog wild and visit Goodwill!

I really do love this dress and for $2, I'd say it was a good deal. Now I just need a couple more places to wear it!

Perhaps shopping at Cub Foods? Or as my son assumed as I got this photo taken before we went to the movies last night, perhaps I should wear it to a screening of Zombieland?

Or maybe I can wear it while working out in the garden? I foresee a long pair of black gardening gloves, like Kim Woodburn only sexier?

Maybe I could wear it to the food shelf?

Nah, then they'd think I was a freelancer on First Street when actually I'm just a pharmaceutical rep.



I usually wear my $5 business suit for those transactions.

Please Sir, Can You Be A Little More Obnoxious?

Every now and then, a single individual comes along to put a shiny sharp point on the fact that there are a frightening amount of people in this world that need to be beaten with a sack of doorknobs.

As I stated earlier, having the criminal hearing and our garage sale back to back was a little bit overwhelming. After our morning in court on Friday, the rest of the day was spent prepping for the garage sale. I woke up at 3 am and went to bed at 11:30 pm. It was a long day.

I had put the ad in the paper for Friday and Saturday and as I was in the garage on Friday, some old guy pulls up in his truck. He has "dealer" written all over him but frankly, at that point, if someone had pulled up and asked to brew a batch of Meth in my bathtub, I probably would have just mumbled "bathroom's up the stairs and on the right."

"I know your sale is tomorrow but do you mind if I look right now? I just got paid and I have cash."

Keep in mind, less than two hours ago, I had listened to a painful description of exactly what my husband was pleading guilty to. I had a posse of people holding me up as I bawled my damn eyes out in the frickin' courthouse hallway. FYI: I don't cry in public (except for the grocery store. Organic produce makes me VERY EMOTIONAL).

So, the strange man who will now be called "God Damn Prick" (GDP for short, of course), starts rummaging around my sale after I looked up at him like a deer caught in the headlights. "I guess..." I faltered.

"So, you don't have this marked, what do you want for it?" He asked this at least three times.

"These sales really take a lot of work. You look really tired."

"Here, I owe you three dollars but I'm giving you five dollars, you look like you could use a good meal."

He needed to come back and pick up some lumber (from the dining room remodel) today. I told him to come back after 4 pm. He came at 1.

I went to open the garage door and he told me to stop because "that's not a woman's job"

"You look a lot different today. You're not wearing a sweater like you were last time." (I was wearing a tank top today.)

He then handed me two dollars for the glass blocks in my front yard. I was completely confused by this but I had some bricks for sale and thought that was what he was referring to.

Since I was making homemade pudding, I had to get back to the stove. I let him load up on the lumber.

Next thing I know, he was opening my garbage bags (which are the big contractor bags) and looking through my trash.

Then he wandered to the front yard and was walking through my flower garden which covers my front lawn. My daughter came and told me that there was a freak in the garden so I went outside.

"Where are your glass blocks? I came back for your glass blocks."

I told him I didn't have any glass blocks. I never had glass blocks. I thought he was talking about bricks.

Come to find out, there apparently was a house somewhere in my neighborhood with glass blocks in the garden. I gave him his two dollars back and said "Well, I guess you have what you need now."

He then proceeded to ask me what garden fixtures I wanted to sell.

"Yeah, you need to leave now." I waved him off to his truck and then stood there with my arms crossed.

I don't suppose it's a woman's job to rip off a strange man's scrotum and shove it down his throat either but I've always been a bit of a trailblazer.

Dark Night Of The Soul

It's 6:36 a.m and I'm so very tired.

I kept imagining what might be going on in STBX's mind. Today is his big day. His big coming out party at the courthouse.

I've gone through the options with my daughter. What will it mean if he pleads guilty. What will it mean if he pleads innocent. What would it be like to go to trial. What would happen to his life if he gets off with a slap on the wrist. How I have had to process my raw anger and hatred toward him and realize that I have no control in this matter.

I sincerely appreciate the county attorney in this case. He called me yesterday and talked me through some things. He then told us to meet him up in his office and we would all walk down to the courtroom together. It's really inexplicable but I almost started bawling when he said that. I've met with him a couple times and we've spoken on the phone a couple times and he let me know that he was our representative and all that jazz but to realize that we weren't going to have to walk into the courtroom alone was such a big deal. I'll have a couple friends with me and my daughter will have her PAVSA advocate, but we're just people with no voices right now. He is our voice.

We've also been moved to yet another judge. Third times the charm! There is nothing more helpless than looking up the case on the court calendar under the judge that you think you have and not finding it. As I've stated before, victims aren't given information. Cancel a court date? Sorry, can't be bothered to tell you. Change a judge not once, not twice, but three times? Yeah, hope you don't mind! And pushing your case back and delaying it by weeks because the judge is on personal leave? Sorry, justice is not only slow, but sometimes works in reverse.

I saw on the news last night that some guy threatened a judge at the courthouse yesterday as well as a few other people before he left to go home. Needless to say, the police brought him back rather quickly.

So, note to self...don't threaten anyone today.

No matter what happens, the rest of the day will be spent taking care of my daughter. We'll be going to the chiropractor after court and then I'm taking her to get a massage from one of my friends this evening. Aside from that, it will be prepping for our garage sale tomorrow.

And tomorrow after our sale? That's when I'm doing a little self care. That's when I'll be convincing my new guy friend that it is imperative that I see Star Trek again. And it is imperative that he comes with me. And then, perhaps, we will kill a few brain cells at a local drinking establishment with friends.

No matter what happens today, I want me some more Spock.

I Think I Will Name This Post Phillip

Today will be a better day. It will not involve profanity (unless someone REALLY deserves it), it will not involve parking illegally (since my kids don't have school today), and besides, today is Friday.

I haven't checked what the weather is going to be like this weekend but I'm planning on playing in the dirt with a friend of mine on Sunday. We're both too poor to buy into a CSA but we both want good food and if I really try to, I can squeeze a lot of food out of my home garden and hopefully, our community garden space. I've already plotted out what to can, what to freeze, and for what time of the summer on the family calendar on the fridge. I'm great at starting out with a bang but along comes August and I usually want to just sit in a heat induced stupor.

I'm thinking with two of us, we can motivate each other. Or at least, I won't be lonely when we're both sitting around in a heat induced stupor.

Plus she has a young daughter and hopefully her daughter will be able to assist in growing a few pumpkins. I used to grow pumpkins every year for my kids and I would baby them and nurture them and turn them so they would grow pretty. One year we had a pumpkin decorating party for my daughter's October birthday. Another year, we managed to grow a pumpkin that weighed 50 lbs. Yeah, not quite record breaking but when you're in Duluth, it's bigger than most.

Saturday will be putting my garage in order for a sale, hopefully next weekend. As I've been paring down my life, I've just been throwing things out in the garage in horrifying piles of awfulness. Currently, you can't get into our garage without a guide rope and a miner's lamp.

By the time Monday rolls around, I'll probably need a day off.

Sigh.

Immaculate Gutters

It started because I needed a ladder. We have lived in our house for twelve years or so now and we have never cleaned out the gutters on our garage. Not that this fact haunts me or anything, although it seemed to haunt our old neighbor as he pointed out to me a couple times "You have trees growing in your gutters!"

He was a bit of a dramatist. They were only seedlings.

The only reason I wanted to clean out the gutters as of late is that I would like to invest in a rain barrel next year and it is best placed below your gutter downspout. Well, in order for THAT little arrangement to work, you actually need to have water flowing through your downspout.

So I've been casing out ladders. I haven't really wanted to mortgage my soul for one since the job would only take five minutes and rarely do I wander around my house saying "If only I had a nine foot extension ladder, all my problems would be solved!"
Ladders can be expensive. Either that or I am really cheap.

Thus, last weekend when I went to the Superior Dragon Boat Races with the only member of my family that cared to attend (my dog), and I stopped at a garage sale on the way home only to find a nine foot extension ladder, I was giddy with excitement. I must admit, I do have the Midas touch when it comes to garage sales. If I ruminate on what I'm really looking for, I will find it at a garage sale within a week.

Now, this might seem like a fabulous skill. It is tempered, however, by my inability to look at a situation rationally and ask myself a key question: How in the hell am I going to fit a 9 foot extension ladder into a Geo Prizm and drive over the bridge with no one to help me but a Pembroke Welsh Corgi who really doesn't care one whit about my gutters?

Well, I rolled down the back window and put the ladder into the back seat with a fair amount of it hanging out of the passenger side. I then wrapped my right arm around the ladder to keep it from extending as the wind caught it and buffered it like a sail if I went so much as fifteen miles an hour. I was also concerned that I would take out a pedestrian as they waited to cross the street. I'm guessing that not too many people are expecting Geo Prizms to be sporting ladders hanging out the back window.

I did have enough sense to put on my emergency flashers and I kept up a mantra as I started over the bridge. It went something like "shit! Shit! SHIT!!!!". A quarter of the way across the bridge, my arm holding the ladder was numb, halfway across the bridge, my shoulder started screaming, and three quarters of the way across the bridge, a hornet appeared and proceeded to sting my dog on the ass.

Of course I didn't know there was a hornet in the car. All I knew was my dog suddenly started to yelp and spin in circles in the passenger seat, knocking his butt against the gear shifter and forcing the car into neutral.

Thankfully, a vast amount of society can recognize an idiot when they see them and cars steered well clear of me. I was able to whip my arm from the ladder, pop the car back into drive, and grab the ladder again before it blew out of the car, over the bridge, and undoubtedly onto a 1000 foot laker below, sinking it and killing all the sailors aboard before they ever left the harbor.

Shakily, I took the first exit once I got to the MN side of the bridge and composed myself in the parking lot of Goodwill. There is nothing like overweight people wearing white leggings three sizes too small with blue flowered underwear to calm the mind and bring one back to reality.

I found the offending hornet, disposed of it, kissed the dog, said a prayer for four different religions, and made my way home where I cleaned out my damn gutters.

If I had realized that this would have been such a simple operation, I would have done it years ago.