I've been ROBBED

damn it!

On Mother's Day, my DH and boys took me to our local home gardening center. Not the "big box boys" mind you, but a real local family owned nursery (yes they still DO exist) so that I could select and compose my "ideal" container gardens for our big deck out back.

I greedily stuffed three wagons full of flowers and herbs and varieties of squash and tomatoes. (Oh joy..oh glee...I imagined myself an Earth Mother to Be)

All the while dreaming of the bounty of color and fragrance and taste that would await me in the wretched heat of the summer to come.

The wretched heat?

It has yet to show it's glowering/shimmering/breath robbing face.

It has been so damn gloomy and rainy here for the past two months I feel like we went from spring directly to winter, although slightly warmer.

But still my plants survived and thrived.

And I rejoiced in every new bloom, every shiny plump new fruit that glimmered on the vine, every heady frond of earthy delight that managed to survive the deluge that would drown out its life.

Until today.

Today...there are NO MORE FREAKIN plump shiny unripe fruits on my tomato and squash plants.

They have been stolen away, in the dead of night, by some unknown scavenger. I have no DEFINITE ID's, but I suspect

a fox (nice threads girl) or maybe a raccoon (okay you have the mask) possibly a possum (sympathy for the ugly but persistent factor)

CRAP

One side of me is PISSED as hell that I won't be enjoying the fruits of my labor this summer

THEN the other altruistic side of me (and by the way I don't like "her" very much. The alruistic side? She is far too freakin sensible and rational and makes the pissy side of me want to kick her ass)

THAT side says "Poor animal, how hungry she must be. Pushed on all sides by this city's insatiable need to build and develop and destroy her habitat...how can I begrudge her a meal"

But striking a balance I have to ask....did the scavenger have to eat EVERY SINGLE LAST COTTON PICKIN ONE???"

I swear, it's enough to want me to toss all the plants to the compost heap and throw in the towel.

And just because I need to give my self-indulgent self a good swift kick, I think to myself

"At least you aren't trying to make a living doing this like your grandpa did"

I tell you truly, sometimes the war between my early childhood Catholic guilt self and my latter year Presbyterian pragmatist self make me want to howl at the moon.

Boys are funny

My youngest child will be turning NINE on Wednesday. Yes. I was a child bride. 15 years old. They let you do that here down South. HEH

They also let you marry your first cousin. Or did. But not anymore. That may be why our SAT scores are inching up ever so slightly in the course of 20 years.

But I digress

So Thumper is turning NINE and in honor of the occasion, Gigi & PopPop (my parental units) came swooping into a town for a whirlwind two days of shopping, eating and movie watching.

Because as we told Thumper..."It's all about you baby"

They started off the day with a Matinee showing of "Ratatouille"

Now here's the thing.

Thumper had seen the previews when we went to see "POC3" and thought it looked hysterical. "Almost 11 year old" BamBam merely rolled his eyes, pronounced it "lame looking" and lobbied hard for "Transformers"

Alas...this was the week-end of "Thumper" not "BamBam".
So Thumper trumped BamBam and Ratatouille trumped Transformers.

I know, I know...it's a crazy universe.

After the movie and $40 later...my folks asked the boys how they liked the movie.

BamBam and Thumper in unison: It was....okay.

Thumper: Not enough action

BamBam: Yeah it was kind of boring.

Dudes. Seriously. What were you expecting? A movie about a RAT who becomes a CELEBRATED CHEF is NOT going to be BIG on the action scenes. Know what I'm saying?

Oh well, at least dinner afterwards at "Happy Sumo" was a hit.

Cause nothing says FUN like a flaming table of meat and a guy in a 2 foot toque tossing bits of meat in the air for you to catch in your mouth.

HEH

Twenty

I just typed that word and it looks so WEIRD

And I want to spell check it....because it does NOT look right.

TWENTY

It looks like a typo doesn't it?

But it's not.

TWENTY

TWO times TEN

FIVE times FOUR

TWENTY

Twenty years ago I..............

patted my daddy on the arm and told him it would be okay as I walked down an aisle in yards of lace

pledged that his people would be my people

danced under the stars

TWENTY

Twenty years later I........

answer people who ask "how did you make it so long?" by saying

equal parts love, friendship, faith....AND

STUBBORNNESS

We were/are both too damn stubborn to throw in the towel and cry "uncle" when things got/get too hard.

Heads up to all you newlyweds......things ALWAYS get hard. Repeatedly. Buckle up.

"the HARD is what makes it GREAT"....hats off to Jimmy Duggan in a "League of their Own" for that last quote.

But if you can hold on through the hard....well

I'll leave it to you to pen you own happy "neverending"

Tagged

Yikes

DINA tagged me a WEEK ago and WHAT have I been doing?

WELL.....I've been off making googly eyes with my DH for the past week.

HEH

It is/was our 20th (more on that later...I PROMISE) and so I'm back and have to answer the diviine Ms. "D"

"If you had the opportunity to do a 1-year internship in a company or field completely unrelated to your current career or specialty, what would be your top 5 choices?"

travel writer, travel photographer, restaurant critic, marine biologist, or art museum curator.
Uhmmm

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

ALLLLLLLL of the above!!!!

WHAT???!!!

I have to pick one?

CRAP

Okay If I MUST pick one...I obviously would pick restaurant critic

Why?

Because you can learn more about a culture and a people in an hour of dining with them than you can in a week of seeing "the sights" with them.

Food is truly the universal language.

Can I have an Amen...and a pass the applesauce...and the charbroiled crickets!

And here are my FIVE posits for woulda/should/couldas (Cause Dina dinked me on the head and said "hey you silly girlie..wake up and read the rules)

Would you go on a FIVE year mission to Mars?
What FIVE things would you pack?
Name FIVE people you would you take if you could?
List FIVE things you would not miss AT ALL
What FIVE things would you bring back?

And I tag Patrice....because I am a total slacker in the blog challenges and she is so NOT a slacker inparticipating.

ladies and gentlemen...I give you

PATRICE