There’s no explaining some things….

So, as many of you know, silly things seem to happy to me. Well, my friends, this happened to me today:

Sorry it’s a little grainy, but I took the picture on my Crackberry. What happened here was this:

I leaned over to grab my umbrella out of the passenger floorboard and the thing sprung to LIFE!  It was ALIVE.

And the worst part was, it was caught just right that it took me a few minutes of cursing and muttering to get the thing to collapse again so I could get it out of my car.

I’m told this is the kind of thing that only happens to me.

It’s okay. I’m coping.

Happy Labor Day Y’all.

Well my friends, I hope you aren’t laboring this Labor Day. Me?  I didn’t have to work today officially, but I did spend a few hours trying to get ahead for the rest of the week. In fact, I sat cross-legged for so long that my right foot went numb and I had to drag it around the house to wake it up saying “Wake up foot, wake up!”  It’s a little stubborn. Not sure where it got that from. I am certainly NOT stubborn. Right?

During the time I didn’t labor this Labor Day, I considered going to one of my favorite places on the other side of our county, and I felt the need to tell you about it. Heck, I’m not sure it’s really even in this county – I think it’s actually about half-a-mile from the county line really, so we’re gonna call it “close enough in Jessica’s book” and let it go.

It’s a place called Ghingis Grill… although I frequently slip up and call it Ghengis Kahn or “that Mongolian place.”  It’s usually preceded with “let’s go to —”. Ha ha.

Have I blogged about it before?  I *love* it, and one of my bestest friends ever took me there the other day to feed my whiney side. You see, you go in and they give you a silver bowl. Not real silver, but you know… anyway, you go through the line and pick your meat. It’s raw, which freaks me out, but I usually get over it pretty quickly. You pick as much meat or any variety as you like and you throw it in your bowl. Then you pick whatever spices you want and how much of them. Then on to the veggies and sauce… finally, you pick noodles or rice and it’s all cooked on a giant grill. It’s then returned to you in a giant red bowl – all cooked and YUMMY.

Here’s mine:

Okay… so it looks questionnable in photograph form, but I promise you – it’s DELISH. Mine had turkey and steak,  brown rice, stir fry mix, bamboo shoots (yum) and the 3D vegetable mix. I have no idea what that means – the 3D mix – but it’s yum. YUM.

So anywho, I had to share with you my love of this newly-discovered restaurant. I also have a new favorite pizza place in Cibolo called Fox’s Pizza. It has AMAZING breadsticks, but if you’re in Seguin, you know I’m all about Rosie’s!  BUT if you’re in Cibolo, you should visit Fox’s. I have no clue how to tell you to get there. I got turned around as soon as we turned of FM 78.

GPS, my friends, was invented for me. My brother used to say I could get lost in a big bathroom. I’m starting to think he might have been on to something.  

So there. My Labor Day post is all about food that you’ve let other people cook for you. Enjoy! 

Hopefully as soon as the weather cools off, I can share some yummy recipes for you!  I just got a bottle of some very delicious balsamic vinegar and I’m hoping to have a recipe that I can post for you soon involving it!  Good balsamic = my new favorite ingredient.

I’m blue

Raise your hand if you remember the computer game Oregon Trail! I used to love that game when I was younger, and if you remember my previous post about the game, I was shocked last year to learn that the game I loved so much in school was actually educational. CRAZY. I totally thought we were getting away with not learning for those 30 minutes a day… joke’s on us!

Anyway…. I thought about it yesterday when I had to ford a river in the Schertz Wal-Mart parking lot….I posted to Facebook “I forded a river and my oxen died!”  Only a few people got it. I was proud of them. YAY you!

Anywho, to prove there WAS a river, I took this photo:

Okay, so this was the shallow end of the pool, but there really was an ankle-deep river (FLOWING river) in the parking lot right near our truck.  Me, I’m no pansy, so when we saw the rain and all the people huddled under the awning, I was like “Let’s make a run for it!”  After all, I wasn’t wearing flip flops!  This is something I learned while at TLU…. don’t run in flip flops in the rain. It’s VERY dangerous. Ah TLU, so many things I learned from you.

As a farmer’s daughter and granddaughter, I have to tell you, I’m stoked it’s raining. The fields have been looking a little questionable. As someone who hasn’t slept in a few days, I’m not so keen on this dreary weather. It’s making me grumpy, tired pants. THAT and I have this song stuck in my head (which I’m always okay with):

Oh and I’m literally blue:

I popped my pink acrylic tips off when I was sick and my natural nails were so damaged that I haven’t had them fixed again, so I’ve just been sporting my regular boy-short finger nails. One night I got bored and decided to paint them this color - For Audrey by China Glaze. It’s more of a Tiffany Blue really, which is my sister-in-law’s favorite color and was her color in her wedding. I love this shade too, but I’m more of a pink gal.

Anyway, one of my guy friends mentioned my toes were a fun shade of blue the other day (this color) and a woman with him was asking where I got it (Sally’s), so I thought I’d post why I’m so blue.

By the way, when I wear this nail polish, my grandmother likes to ask if I have poor circulation. Us Domels, we’re comedians.

Okay, that’s it. There’s a mud puddle in our parking lot with my name all over it. I’m going to don my rain boots and jump in it!    Maybe I should wait until after work to do that….. don’t wanna get my dress muddy.

I miss you already…

I love Q-Tips. There I said it. I feel better now. Don’t you?  In fact, I pretty much have an unhealthy love for Q-Tips. I mean, they keep our ears clean, they can help you clean in the little gaps between the buttons on the remote, they can help you fix makeup mistakes so you don’t look so goofy, and all kinds of things!  Imagine the possibilities!  Ohhh Q-Tips, I love you so.

In fact, I love you so much that I refuse to buy the cheap ones because the cotton doesn’t feel the same way in my ears… yeah, I’m a weirdo, and I’m perfectly okay with that.

But my doctor isn’t.

I’ve been banned from using my beloved Q-Tips!  I wanted to scream “Ohhh whyyy me?” But then I remembered that the last time I saw him I was forbidden and I didn’t listen… and this time when he banned me, he gave me the dad face. So now I’m really in patient time-out.

You see, apparently Q-Tips can push the wax further into your ear… making globs of icky pooo wax, which can damage your ear and effect your hearing.

The doc said the cotton ear cleaners are only for use on the external parts of the ear – and nothing bigger than your elbow can go inside the little hole.

….. ohhh what’s a girl to do?  Apparently we’re supposed to use water and bulb syringes – I call them “baby booger pickers.”  It is my uncle’s fault, blame him.  Oh and he gave me these drops to fix my broken ears… which apparently is also not good for someone who works in radio. Fine fine fine, ears = important. Q-Tips = bad. Got it.   Geez. It’s like my whole world’s upside down. Not really, but you know.

No Q-Tips.

It’s okay… I’ll still keep some around for , you know, multi-purpose non-ear-related things. And for nostalgia….for my un-educated ear-cleaning days.

Thought I’d share, in case you too are a compulsive Q-Tip ear cleaner too.

Um, no thank you.

For those of you who don’t know, I update our health section in the Seguin Daily News and on www.seguintoday.com every day, and this morning I stumbled across this story:

FDA Details Findings From Inspections Of Egg Recall Farms

(Undated)  –  The Food and Drug Administration has issued detailed reports on the possible causes of the recent egg recall involving Salmonella-tainted eggs from two producers.  FDA official Mike Taylor says the agency’s inspectors found instances of both rodents and flies inside some of the poultry houses at Wright County Egg.  The report on Hillandale Farms of Iowa shows that egg producer had unsealed rodent holes at some of its facilities.  Late last week, the FDA said one early finding of their testing at the two egg producers was that Salmonella-tainted feed may have contributed to the Salmonella outbreak that prompted the recall of 550-million eggs.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says nearly 15-hundred cases of Salmonella illness from the tainted eggs have been reported since May.  FDA official David Elder says neither Wright County Egg nor Hillandale Farms is allowed to ship shell eggs until the FDA is satisfied the Salmonella problem has been resolved.

Raise your hand if you just cringed!  Rodent holes?  No thank you.

Now keep in mind that we had chickens on the farm, and I’m pretty much used to chicken poo everywhere and bugs and killing snakes and all, but the phrase “rodent holes” creeps me out.

A friend of mine told me earlier he was considering raising chickens now. I LOVE (almost unhealthily so) baby chicks!  My grandpa used to let us play with them and take care of them in the house when we were younger. They’d hop up in his lap in the recliner and watch him eat ice cream. It was hilarious. I love baby chicks!  Now chickens…. they kinda creep me out sometimes, I’m not gonna lie. But BABY chicks!  Sign me up.

That is all.

Rodent holes.

::shivers::

He just wanted a heart…

I think my dad is obsessed with Tractor Supply and Home Depot. Every time he comes to visit, we end up in one or both at least twice. Twice. Maybe it’s because he’s my dad and it’s in his DNA to want to fix everything that’s broken or just not “as good as it can be” at my house. This weekend he came to check on his sickly daughter (I’m feeling better, by the way), and to get my car inspected for me. He’s pretty fabulous like that.

For the record, I would totally have taken my own car to get it inspected, but the stupid check engine light HATES me and only comes on when I’m in the car to piss me off. So he took it to my handy dandy friends over at Advanced Auto Parts (make that twice that they’ve saved me, for the record) and they cleared the light and it hasn’t come back on. There’s some silly sensor that gets dirty and flips on, and even if you clean it, you have to have someone restart the check engine light – therefore I needed my dad… okay so maybe I could have gone by myself, but like I said, the light hates me.

ANYWAY, while we were in Tractor Supply looking at grease guns (I don’t ask questions anymore), I saw this:

I squeeled. OKAY, I will admit that I’m a nerd, but hear me out. That little guy there in the front – to the right of the blue and yellow funnels, in front of the silver funnels, that’s the oil can from the Wizard of Oz. As I announced this to the store, my dad gave me the :-/ face and some other guy looked at me like I was looney tunes, but look:

 

Okay, maybe it’s not the exact same…. or anywhere near it, but I was excited…. until I saw this picture on Google images. Eh close enough!  Hey, it’s the little things… I learned at an early age that you might as well entertain yourself when you’re bored… that’s why I had a set of toy screwdrivers in my dad’s shop. Okay, they were real screwdrivers with colored handles, but there was a mommy and a daddy and a baby screwdriver… you get the idea.

So maybe I’m not the queen of Tractor Supply today, but some day…. some day I’ll get a random trivia point there.

The end.

Maybe I need more orange juice…

At least once a day, I try to make it a habit of saying “Are you freakin’ kidding me?” out loud. I find it very therapeutic. And I may have spelled that wrong. I’m sort-of okay with that.

Anywho, a few of you have noticed and sent me notes about seeming out of it or something after running into me in some sort of public space. Sorry about that. I still have mono, and as those of you who have it know, it drains the heck out of you. The problem is, I’m too old to have it apparently, which means it makes me even more drained. By the way, if the doctor tells me I’m too old one more time, I may scream. Just sayin’. In all honesty, I like my doctor. He’s been good to me, and heck, I think I’m even helping him buy a boat. All those lovely co-pays…

I have a high level of respect for those in the medical field. I really do!  My sister-in-law is an emergency room nurse, and I find all of her stories to be very interesting!  It’s like she sees the opposite side of what I do… I go to the accidents and she fixes the people up. That and she’s REALLY funny when she tells stories. Maybe that’s it….

Anywho, I also have a high level of respect for doctors because mine figured out why I’m nauseus and itchy all the time!  Me, I thought I had fleas. Seriously. Yankee convinced me I had fleas. Apparently I’m very gullible when I’m exhausted…. but Dr. Dan figured me out. I have labrynthitis as a side effect or whatever from the mono.

This is the point where I yelled “Are you freakin’ kidding me?”

So for those of you who didn’t go to medical school or Google what Labrynthitis is – here’s a picture:

Basically, there are these tubes in your ears that tell your brain when you move. It’s easier if I explain in person because I do these cool tricks where I show you with my hands, but I’m tired and this is a blog…. so anyway, my tubes are clogged or broken or whatever because the mono has them chock full of boogers. Okay, maybe not really, but I swear to you that’s how Dr. Dan explained it to me the first time!  I laughed. I hope he was kidding…. Anyway, my brain isn’t telling my body I’m moving, so Monday when I did the Trading Post and I moved my head from the touch-screen commercial system to where I type my ads at, I got dizzy and thought I was going to pass out or throw up.

So being the caring father he is, when I told my dad I didn’t feel good and what happened at work, my father made me go to the doctor… which I cursed him for as I waited for over an hour in the waiting room.

So the neato doctor gave me some crazy blue pills and then some other stuff for the mono and some other stuff for my itching. I itch a lot.. it’s called Mono rash… it’s what happens when you take antibiotics with mono…. it’s like having cooties. I have cooties.

I’m sure that was all very attractive.

Just be glad I didn’t post photos of the night I almost went to the ER. THAT’S flat-out frightening!

I’m sure that’s more than you kids wanted to know, but I felt the need to explain because I’ve gotten a few texts asking me why I was still sick.  By the way, if one more person says “You’ve been sick too long.” I’m going to scream. I’m a little tired of being tired. It’ s making me a little crotchety. I was feeling better for a few days when I was on the steroids, but apparently I have enough of those in my body to play Major League Baseball, so I’m not allowed to take those anymore. Go figure! 

Doesn’t it make you want to wash your hands?

J-E-L-L-O…. it’s alive!

You know what makes me feel better when my throat’s sore and I’m tired? Popcorn. Well… popcorn and Jello. I love me some Jello!  I’m pretty sure strawberry Jello has some sort of crack in it or something, by the way… that stuff is addicting!

Today I decided to take a walk on the wild side and re-visit lime Jello!  Okay, maybe that’s not walking on the wild side, but I thought it was funny….

So as I was poking the Jello and cursing at it and asking it to please set up faster, I remembered one thing: I don’t make Jello because I have the patience of a small child. Oh yeah….

That and lime jello looks like this:

Sure, I could have taken a more appetizing shot of the lime green Jello, but where’s the fun in that?  By the way, as a woman who grew up in a house full of boys (or at least it seemed that way), I took one look at that picture and said it looked like boogers. There, I said it. I’m already ashamed of it. Point and laugh if you will. I’m okay with it.

Maybe tomorrow we’ll revisit Strawberry Jello – an old favorite. Yum. Hey, it’s the little things in life… that and I like to watch it jiggle. Jiggle jiggle. Fun.

I’m a big kid look what I can do…

“Back to school, back to school, to prove to mom and dad that I am not a foollll”  Yep. I sure did wake up humming that this morning. It’s from some Adam Sandler movie I think. Either way, it’s what I thought of this morning as I cursed my alarm clock and the sunshine that was blinding me through two layers of curtains – I like it dark in there, what can I say?

Anywhoooo, it’s back to school time and you know, everyone’s been in the stores (it’s mayhem really) in search of school supplies for the upcoming year. I loved school supplies when I was little. It was my favorite thing about back to school. I *loved* new markers and crayons and pretty folders. Yeah, I was one of those kids.

I may be an adult, but some things never change. I still buy markers at least once a year – albeit not at back to school time. I’m not THAT crazy. In fact, I was cleaning out my filing cabinet drawer the other day and found three half-sets of markers!  You see, I use them to write notes on things at work so they stand out…. and I throw the colors I don’t like or can’t use – brown, yellow (it doesn’t show up!) – in the drawer. It’s a weird process, but I’m okay with that.

Seeing that I was finally out of pink markers (a sad day in Jessica Land), I had to go to the store, and guess what I found?

 

THEY’RE BLACK!  Technically they’re green though – in the environmental sense of the term. I read the back of the box once I realized they were black (the tubes are usually white), and I found out that Crayola is using recycled plastic to create its markers, so they tubes are black now. They’re also planting trees to supplements those that are cut down for colored pencils, but I never liked map pencils, so that wasn’t as intriguing for me.

So there you have it, an old favorite has gone and changed on me, but I think it’s pretty cool. Go Crayola!  Way to kick off the school year right. 

By the way, pink markers rock. That is all.

I *knew* it!

My friends and I have very interesting conversations. When I say that, I mean we have weird conversations. We’re weird kids. Let’s face it. It’s true.

BUT, the other day, one of my favorite people – the Yankee – told me my random comments made him laugh. I quickly gave the Yankee evil eye and asked him to explain himself. I wasn’t being random, I had finally figured out WHY frogs were so evil!  I was sooo proud!  And yet, I made him laugh. So he got the evil eye…. also known as the stank eye. It’s okay… he’s still alive and kickin’.

So for those of you who don’t know, I’ve known frogs were evil my entire life. At an early age, they made me cry and run away…. and NOW, I know why.

Exhibit A:

Sigh. I feel better. It’s like finding out why the sky is blue. Peace.

Now I can go on being scared of and disliking the little pods of evil…. because the TV show “Dead Like Me” said I could. Now, I understand that some of you may not find this a very good explanation for a phobia, but me, I’m okay with it.

Toodles.