havocandmayhem.com

We had a mouse problem recently. This meant putting sticky traps all over the cupboards & taking everything out of the cupboards, washing it or checking it for mouse contamination, washing the cupboards themselves & then putting everything back, but in better sealed containers. I should know by now that cleaning anything in my kitchen is bound to provide blog fodder & that I ought to go get my camera for ‘before’ photos before I start. I have no shame. I share my embarrassing bad housekeeping skills with the world willingly because even a bad example is still an example & someone may think to themselves “you know, it has been awhile since I cleaned out my fridge” & be inspired by me. That’s my story & I am sticking to it. My mom, right now, is cursing the day she joined Facebook and gained access to my blog feed. The snack cupboard held no surprises because everything in it is in heavy rotation. It gets emptied & filled regularly & at various

but I had hoped there would be more time. Granted I have been expecting this post for months, so there has been time. But not enough. There never is enough time. Especially when you have a 17 year old cat who has been slowly getting thinner & thinner. One who has a bloody abscess on her paw that never really heals. And who, despite being inside for 3 days eating & drinking, added nothing to her litterbox in all that time. I knew it was coming. It was inevitable really, but I had hoped there might be something we could do. That I could take her to the vet today & they would say ‘oh some antibiotics and this special diet & she’ll be fine’ Even though I knew in my heart they’d tell me it was time to let her go. I didn’t want to have to make that decision so I had been cowardly putting it off all last week. Thursday morning when I was getting ready to mop the floor Pandora was dithering about going outside & I nudged her out so I could clean. She spent mo

Some from my 365 project this week Union job, one guy working, two guys ‘supervising’ My contributions to a wine & cheese party I wish energy was this easy to find Well let me tell you about that Clone troopers go offroading. It can be dangerous, good thing they wear armor For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by

Deep thoughts I am sure… Yesterday’s photo was under captioned in my opinion, but I didn’t have time to write down everything that I was thinking about in relation to these two socks in the hallway, a mere 5 feet from a welcomingly empty washing machine, only 15 feet from the dirty hamster where they actually belong. Socks whose owners suddenly couldn’t bear to continue the journey carrying them any farther. It was all too much. Those 3 steps they had to climb were the limit of their endurance, if they even made it up them, since the socks are at the top of the steps and the boys are taller than the 3 steps are high. Perhaps their bare feet got stuck to the kitchen floor from the juice someone spilled & then wiped up in a half assed manner, keeping them from attempting the steps & all they could manage was to fling the socks in the direction of the laundry and hope for the best. Maybe the weight of dirty socks is to great for males to carry. It could be that only a

Socks – malicious creatures that will not stay in the dirty clothes hamper no matter how often you put them there. Also very prolific at reproducing on the floor but easily lost  in the wash

I’ve had 2.5 years nearly entirely free from pain caused by the endometriosis that has taken up residence in the left side of my pelvis around my ovary. But the good times seem to be at an end unfortunately. The pain has returned, in full, long lasting force. At least I assume it is long lasting because it started 5 days ago & is still here. Oh sure, I’ve had the occasional uncomfortable twinge, a brief bout of discomfort that rarely lasts an hour or so. You know, cramps, but not really. The ghosts of cramps past or the specter of cramps to come. You know what I am talking about ladies. But this is different. This is a continual discomfort, interrupted by moments of sharp pain whenever I do something silly, like stand up or sit down or….wear pants & underwear. The sort of pain that makes wearing anything the slightest bit constricting (like underwear) uncomfortable. The sort of pain that is accompanied by bloating & swelling guaranteeing that your loose pajama

It was back to school this week. A loving brotherly moment while waiting for the bus It never lasts and then escalates   and escalates but then the bus arrives Leaving me & these guys to make cookies naturally there was trouble For more weekly winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom Thanks for stopping by!

DH & his team did such an awesome job this summer down at Ft AP Hill that they have job prospects doing the same installation/moderation thing at the NY State Fair and somewhere in Connecticut later this year. Imagine the joy I feel at the prospect of DH spending days, nay weeks, at a time in upstate NY and in Connecticut. And I don’t even know where Connecticut is. Somewhere in the north eastern part of the country. Nowhere within daily driving distance. Yes I just admitted my geographical ignorance to the internet at large. Yes, Americans…bad at geography…stereotypes… etc. Look, once upon a time I knew where Connecticut was. I still can pick it out on the map if you give me a couple seconds. If you give me a full minute I probably can recall the name of the capitol city. OK, maybe two minutes and a lifeline. Sorry. The parts of my brain that used to hold that state info from 4th grade geography have been taken over by the names of every single Pokemon, where i

For the ill prepared. Chocolate crackers 1. Realize you have a lot of graham crackers left over from the cookout. 2. Remember there was a cookie recipe for them in one of those mysteries with the really annoying sleuth that you have been reading & you copied it. Find it. 3. Lay out graham crackers on foil lined pan 4. Start 2 sticks of butter melting 5. Get one cup brown sugar   a. Realize there is no brown sugar in the house because *someone* (I’m looking at you DH) made cookies last week and did not tell you they used all the brown sugar   b. Google ‘brown sugar substitutes’ and find many proportional variations of ‘add molasses to white sugar’. Debate between 2t to 1 cup and .25c to 1 cup   c. Realize you aren’t just making cookies, you are also making blog fodder. Get your camera & channel the Pioneer Woman. 6. Remove 1T butter from pan. Add 1 cup white sugar and 1T molasses. Stir until melted together, bring to a boil and stir constantly for

A dreary rainy morning Back to school

School starts tomorrow. The bus will be here some time between 7:13 and 7:25, which strikes me a very broad time range to cover half a mile and 4 houses but what do I know? We have a new bus driver, possibly she could get lost I suppose. We met the kids’ new teachers yesterday at the school open house. The school had two teachers retire & only one was replaced, so there was a shake up in the classrooms. Havoc’s teacher used to be a kindergarten teacher and Mayhem’s teacher was the 2nd grade teaching assistant & just got her teaching license in this state (apparently she has been teaching for a few years in NV but hadn’t had it updated when she moved here a few years ago) We gave them apples. Havoc is once again in the largest class. I assume that means he’s relatively well behaved. He’s in a class of 20. Judging from kiddie gossip it looks like the class of 15 is filled with troublemakers & there are a few in the classes of 17. It would be very easy to adjust the

We had some friends over Saturday night for a cookout. We had hotdogs & hamburgers & corn on the cob & frozen margaritas and the kids ran around the yard at dusk chasing fireflies & playing flashlight tag (and occasionally going inside & playing Wii, which the adults let happen because we were talking & drinking beer & a little bit of silence was nice). Then we assembled these things and (ignore that black & tan) and we did this and made these I haven’t had smores in ages. My dislike of camping means I miss out on campfires & toasting marshmallows & tequila shots around the fire after the kids go to sleep… Naturally there was one of these in yard or on the deck as the case may be. The kids were having a sleepover combined with backyard camping. We tried to do this a couple of weeks ago at our friends house but it was rained out & the kids slept in the basement. This time the boys & their friends were abl

Only a few this week. Legos, actually IN their storage bin Havoc with the Legos Playing on the whirly gig Fruit salad for lunch For more weekly winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by

I can’t think of anything that would fill a whole blog post so I am working with bullet points today Its freakin hot AGAIN! It had cooled down there for a week or so but it’s back to hovering around 100 I won a contest at Lizzie Made ! I won a spot in shimelle’s Love Your Pictures Love Your Pages class . It ran in July but shimelle keeps all the materials available online for you to work through at your own pace.This’ll by my 4th class with her. I’ve also taken Blogging for Scrapbookers, Learn Something New and of course Journal Your Christmas Note to self – if you think you smell green peppers when you pick up carryout pizza – CHECK THE PIZZA. Take 5 seconds, pull over, whatever, open the box & look because discovering that there are SURPRISE! GREEN PEPPERS! on your pizza at home, 20 minutes later is a real bummer. So’s the drive back into town to get the right pizza. Green peppers are a lingering scent in pizza stores, but not THAT lingering. Green peppers & pine

To you desperate people in the refi and home equity department: Please share notes about customers. Please read the customer history. It will save us both endless amounts of time, money and the lives of several trees in bulk mailings, if you would just do a little looking around before contacting me. I realize it drives you home equity people nuts when you see that, according to your records, I have over $80,000 in equity in my house. That's equity I could be paying you interest on! And I have the audacity not to have contacted you asking to have my debt load increased! You feel you are doing me a favor by contacting me and telling me all about how I could borrow against that equity and pay off high interest credit cards or remodel the house or pay for the kids college.  There are a couple of problems with this pitch. Please, make note of them in your customer database. First, those high interest credit cards of mine that you are so worried about? There is one, and it w