10 Things to Smile About September

Oh goodness, last night was a rough night. I’m pretty much dragging this morning. Baby girl went to sleep around 8:45pm last night, then woke up around 10, just as we were going to sleep and it was on. She has 3 new teeth that have sprung up over night and I don’t know if that played into it or not, but I passed out somewhere around 2am. I’m not sure if she was awake or asleep by that point or not.

I can tell you none of us wanted to get out of bed this morning, that’s for sure. Hubby gets up about 30-45 minutes before I do on Tuesday mornings, let’s just say my butt was dragging soooooo bad. My mom meets me to get squirrel girl on my way to class, I sent her a text at 8am saying we were on our way, don’t think we forgot, we were just dragging.

But let’s not focus on that… because even though I’m tired and last night sucked, I wouldn’t trade this life for the world. I love that little girl so much and I am blessed. So keeping on that blessed feeling, let’s go ahead and see what the 10 reasons were to smile about in September!

In no particular order…

5. Squirrely Girly got a month older… she’s now 15 months. Holy Cow!

7. Tbug and I went and participated in the Ride for Life. We had so much fun and she went on and on thanking anyone and everyone for letting her go.

(more…)

A Thank You, A Restaurant Review, & Auction Items… oh my!

If it weren’t for my family and friends I’d probably be bald by now. Yes, I just said that. Let me explain. Fall of 2013 I was presented with an opportunity that lead me to the road back to school to work on my Master’s. (I am forever grateful for this opportunity too!) My Bachelor’s Degree is in Agriculture, my Master’s will be in English. I sometimes get asked what I plan on doing with that…

Now first, before I give you my answer… when I was an Agriculture major I used to smart off that I could talk about Cows, Sows, and Plows. Sometimes I’d use it to the advantage of, Well at least I can talk about Cows, Sows, and Plows. Other times I’d smart off that I could talk about more than Cows, Sows, and Plows.

So now when people ask me, as long as they know my smart aleck side, I’ll smart off that I will now be able to eloquently write to Cows, Sows, and Plows. ha!

Some days I need to just learn to keep my mouth shut :). What am I going to do with this… well there are lots of plans in the making, hopefully one of them pans out!

But for now, I rely heavily on my family and friends to keep me sain, especially this fall as I prepare for Comps. I’m not going to lie, I’m scared of general comps.

Thankfully my mom is able to watch baby girl for hubby and me on Tuesday’s, Wednesday’s and Thursday’s. I’ve stated in the past that when I was growing up I got the opportunity to spend a lot of time with my grandparents and I wouldn’t have traded that for the world. Well, this is one of those opportunities that my baby girl is being blessed with also.

So last Wednesday I made plans with my mom to get her the squirrelly girly and she offered to meet hubby and me for lunch. We took her up on the opportunity. When the restaurant she suggested didn’t pan out, we opted to try another one. Joe’s Pizza, Pasta, Sub Italian Restaurant. Upon first impression of the name, we assumed it would be fast food Italian but it was in fact the opposite. It was a sit down meal.

(more…)

Horse Trivia: Witches Knots

Is anyone else as ready for this weekend as I am? This has been an extremely long week and I’m exhausted. You know though… I’m tired of complaining about being tired. ha! I’m not sure I’ll ever get fully rested so I might as well just take it like it is and be done with it.

Tomorrow hubby has to go with the Missouri Governor’s Mounted Guard to help park cars at a Bluegrass festival. I’ve been asked/invited to go but I may get stuck at home doing homework. Ugh, beautiful weather and I’m stuck inside doing homework… Well it could be worse I guess!  So really I don’t know what my plans consist of yet. We’ll take it as it comes. And who’s to say I can’t go park my butt in a lawn chair in the front yard to do homework.

But being as though they are the Missouri Governor’s MOUNTED Guard… mounted means they’re riding something and that something is their trusty stead. In case you don’t know what that is… that’s a horse.

So I only thought it fitting to give you a little information about horses today. That information is about “Witches Knots.”

They really are the biggest pain in the butt. As you can see, it almost looks like a human who has dreadlocks. Now I’m not sure how that person who has dreads gets them out… maybe they have to cut their hair? But I can tell you how to get a Witches Knot out without cutting it out… although sometimes you might get so frustrated you want to cut it out.

(more…)

Comedy: Masculine versus Feminine….

My Wednesday night class is called British Comic Novel. The first night of class we were asked “What makes you laugh.” Seems like a very straight forward question, but try to put it in words. Then we had to give examples of our words.

The second night of class the professor summed up what we said:

We laugh…….
At the Irregular                                                and at the unexpected
The erroneous (deviation from familiar             the Cathartic (psychological reaction)
patterns and norms)
Physical                                                              release of nervous tension
Verbal                                                                 expression of surprise
psychological                                                     exlamation
intellectual (logical)
moral/ethical

The Incongruous                                               The Coincident
(juxtaposition of unlike things)                          (sudden discovery/achievement of order)
tone                                                                     congruity
appearance (features)                                          connection
situation                                                              reconcilliation
action                                                                  resolution

Since that first and second night of class we’ve been discussing different books that we’ve been required to read. The first was Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding, the second was Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, and the third was The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse. (by the way we’re reading 10 books in 16 weeks… plus I have books I’m reading for comps, wish me luck!)

Last night we finished up The Code of the Woosters, being a seminar class, we’re all required to talk. That’s part of our class participation, we have to ask a question, state a comment, or feed off someone else’s comment twice.

But one of the guys offered up this… Is The Code of the Woosters masculine comedy. Whoa, that opened a whole discussion for like 20 minutes on what is masculine and what is feminine comedy. Did you know there was a difference? I didn’t. I mean once we sat and talked about it, maybe there is… but I’m not 100% sure I totally buy that either.

Some of the characteristics described for masculine comedy is slapstick/physical (think America’s Funniest Home Video’s and all the people who constantly get racked over and over) and rude/crude. And they described feminine comedy as more predicaments we could find ourselves in. It was more compared to romantic comedies.

(more…)

2015 Ride for Life Pineville, MO

I’m getting closer to not being able to say that I can’t count the times I’ve gone trail riding on one hand… the current count is 4. Now, this doesn’t include riding all over the place at my parents/grandparents house checking for cattle, this only includes going to a place specifically for trail riding. The 4 times include once while I was dating the hubs, Trails for Kids in April and now 2 Rides for Life (One in fall 2013 and this years).

For my husband’s job, he is committed to working 2 weekends a year. This year one of those weekends happened to fall during the Ride for Life over the weekend. Because of that, Tbug and I were on our own if we wanted to go ride. We invited my dad but he had hay to mow/bale.

Earlier Friday afternoon I was texting with Karen about this, that, and everything else when I decided to see what time the ride started on Saturday morning. Initial plans were to pick Tbug up on Friday evening, she and I would get up first thing Saturday morning, load horses up and head to Pineville. When Karen said she thought it started at 8 am though, plans quickly changed.

Hubby suggested I ask if Jared & Karen had room we could sleep in their camper. They did so we decided to load up Friday evening, go down and stay the night. And then Fit hit the Shan. haha…

I quickly started packing a suitcase with clothes we’d need. That seemed like it took forever. Oy! Then we headed to my parent’s house to hook up my dad’s truck to the trailer, load horses, and then go pick Tbug up on our way to Pineville. All went fairly smoothly until pulling out of my parent’s driveway we noticed dad’s truck didn’t have ANY power. Trucks are made for hauling things and it wouldn’t pull the trailer with our 2 horses and tack in it. Something was wrong.

Hubby called Grady and asked if they had an extra truck we could borrow. He said yes so we drove to their house to switch trucks around. Then I took my dad’s truck, which now drove perfectly (not pulling anything), to go pick Tbug up. From there we went back to my parent’s house to drop the truck back off and pick up my car. Then Abug, Tbug, and I headed to Pineville.

On our drive down I happened to look up and see a guy standing on the side of the road (about halfway between home and Pineville). The more I paid attention to the man and the vehicles, I realized it was Pokey and Earl. Tbug was yakking my ear off about Kansas history, so I told her to hold that thought and quickly called Earl to see if there was anything I could do to help them. She said that Pokey had a blow out on a trailer tire and they were waiting for their brother in law to come rescue them but thanks for calling. I was like, well I know my car can’t pull a trailer but I didn’t know what was wrong so I wanted to be sure they were all A-ok.

Hubby left Deb & Grady’s house with their truck, our trailer, and horses. Deb and Grady were leaving the house at the same time so I assume he followed them. They stopped at a burger place in Pineville called Burgertime. They grabbed Tbug and me a burger and fries. We both tried sharing with Abug but she wanted no part of any of it. He also got cheesecake for dessert. There were 2 boxes so I assume one for Tbug and one for me but we were told later that we weren’t to eat them without him. lol. The burger was good. I love a good cheeseburger.

(more…)

Thurday night Chiefs Game vs Denver Broncos

It’s Monday, already? Can I please have a weekend to recover from my weekend, or even just a day. I’m so worn out!

Before I write a post on my weekend though, let’s write up a post that started the tiredness… the CHIEFS 1st Home Game!

Not that I’m complaining, but I’m complaining a little bit, can we please just have games on Sunday’s at noon. That way no late nights. haha… let’s see if they listen to my plea (which I know the answer… I’m okay with them ignoring it).

Normally we wouldn’t attend a night game like this, but this was an exception… 1st Home game of the season + it was against the Denver Broncos. Do you blame us for going?

Normally we have a large tailgating spread, but this time, since it was a Thursday night and the first home game, which also makes the Red Coater’s help Paint the town red, it was a long night so Dan and Grady said they’d take care of it. Dan wanted me to point out that this is how he and Grady cook.

(more…)

5 Things

It’s Friday. Do you hear that? Friday! Woohooooo! And I have some awesomely fun plans this weekend that include studying. Oh wait… that’s not awesome. How about doing a photo shoot for a friend’s senior pictures and riding horses. Now that sounds more like it! Although there will be some studying in there too… I need to read The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse. Ever read it? I hear it’s a funny, quick read. That’s what I need!

So since it’s Friday, let’s do some just quick minute thoughts, k? I saw a friend post on facebook yesterday that K isn’t a word, so Potassium to you too. ha! Okay, moving on….

1. Wednesday evening while I was driving to school my luck with red lights struck again. So far I haven’t had a typical Wednesday, but if it were a typical Wednesday, I would go through 19 stoplights. I hit 9 of them on red. Now I guess that isn’t tooooo bad but still, it’s not great. Over the weekend they were teasing me that at some point I had flashed a red light (I haven’t) and it was one with cameras, they caught it and now they want to see if I’ll do it again. Again, let me state clearly, I HAVEN’T DONE THAT. Okay now that that is clear… Hubby told me last night I needed to either find a red light and sit through it twice or else I needed to go outside, spin in 3 circles, spit, and curse to make it right with the light God’s so I didn’t get stuck at so many of them. hahaha… I told him the second was probably more something I could do.

Moving on….

(more…)

One last Mermet Springs Post

Let’s get through Mermet Springs (Day 1, Day 2), what do you say? So what I’m telling you is… we’re going to have pictures GALORE! Just know, you’ve been warned!

Friday morning as we were headed out to Mermet Springs from Metropolis we passed by Hardee’s. Jared mentioned it so Saturday morning we decided to grab breakfast there before heading to dive. Have you had their Pork Chop Breakfast Sandwich? Oh goodness, you’re in for a treat with this one… no joke!

One thing I’ve learned about the group at Mermet Springs is they’re out to help make sure you have an enjoyable dive as well as an enjoyable trip. I even got an interview with the owner for the Scuba Blog I write. I got the back story on how they got the Boeing 727 from the movie bought as well as how they got it into the quarry for people to dive in. Pretty sweet story, really! Now the little ol’ man who has sat on the dock the last 3 years now is adorable.

(more…)

Food, Scuba Diving, Friends and Fun

Now the hotel has a continental breakfast but we decided not to eat there. Instead we decided to go back across the river to Paducah and eat at Cracker Barrel.

They gave Abug a kids menu. She ate the Crayons and Karen and I tried to color on it some. Do you see a theme here. ha!

After we ate we wandered through the store. I saw this sign and totally started laughing. This is definitely a sign for me. ha! I also found a Mr. & Mrs. Santa Clause Salt and Pepper shaker for $.99 a piece. I bought them. I’ll have to tell you that story some time.

(more…)