havocandmayhem.com

People went camping. People other than me. I stayed home, set up the swimming pool and indulged in some gastrointestinal distress. In fact, I got a jump on the holiday & started my gastrointestinal distress on Wednesday just to be proactive about it. So it’s now been a week since I slept more than an hour at a time. And the sleep had been going so well too… I’m more distressed about that than the gastrointestinal thing. After all, the gas shall pass.  (pun intended) Other distressing news? Well, Sunday evening I went to Wal Mart to buy some chemicals & filters for the pool & when I came out of the parking lot I discovered this in the back of mini van and not a note in sight. So this morning, me & my distress get to drive an hour to get an insurance estimate at an insurance approved body shop & leave the car to be fixed. My lovely insurance (and I mean that really, in spite of the hour drive. Everything just is an hour drive) will have a ren...

As always on Memorial day weekend I spend Saturday setting up the pool. While I was doing that, the dinos were checking in at their weekly Weight Watchers meeting the blue guy is angry he has put on a few pounds How many clone troopers does it take to sharpen a pencil? And earlier in the week we found this guy living in a safety cone, laying on it’s side For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom Thanks for stopping by!

Some new layouts from me for credits check out my gallery http://www.sweetshoppecommunity.com/gallery/showgallery.php?cat=500&ppuser=133

And my favorite swimsuit seems to have done a bunk over the winter. I cannot find it anywhere. It was last seen at my folks’ house in FL over Thanksgiving vacation & I am 100% sure that, had I left there when we departed, I would have gotten a phone call about it, followed by a UPS package containing it. This did not happen so I can only assume it is hiding out somewhere in my house unbeknownst to me. It was a 3 piece set from Lands End, probably in 2006. A tankini top, a regular bottom and a skirt bottom, back when skirt bottoms were a new thing.  I still have the skirt part but the other two parts are missing & it’s the tankini I miss the most. You see; it fit. It had the proper straps. And it contained the bewbs. The bewbs are my problem area with bathing suits. The tummy area is problem too but honestly I’m too busy dealing with the bewbs to give a rap about the tummy area. See, when I go shopping for bras I have to look for the fourth letter of the alph...

Towel Day is an annual celebration on the 25th of May, as a tribute to the late author Douglas Adams (1952-2001). On that day, fans around the universe proudly carry a towel in his honor. I have, all my adult life subscribed to the beliefs of the Holy Lunching Friars of Voodoon “lunch is at the center of man's temporal day & man's temporal day can be seen as an analogy of his spiritual life, so lunch should be a) seen as the center of man's spiritual life & b) held in jolly nice restaurants” So in honor of Towel Day, I am taking my towel to a jolly nice restaurant for lunch. Sadly there will be no Pan Galactic Gargleblasters consumed because I have to drive.

3 weeks ago I gave up caffeine entirely. It’s had it’s problems. Not the ones everyone was warning me about – headaches. Everyone said “Oh take a couple weeks to wean yourself, you drink a LOT of coffee” But that coffee was 2/3rds decaf already,sometimes 3/4 decaf, so just using straight decaf was a simple thing. No physical effects were felt at all. Until a couple weeks later when my brain started taking longer to boot up in the mornings. It’s a problem, but not a big one. There is a bigger problem. The problem  no one warned me about. The coffee maker itself. My coffee maker does not like straight decaf coffee grounds & throws up at least half time I make coffee. By throws up I mean the coffee grounds overflow the filter & sometimes the basket & drip into the pot, clogging its openings (it’s a thermal carafe, keeps my coffee hot for 4 hours) causing the liquid to slowly drain down the outside of the carafe. Makes a terrible mess. So I bought a...

I had some happy news last week. I got a spot on Penny Springman’s creative team!  She sells at Sweet Shoppe Designs & her own store My Digital Stash .  I’ll be doing tutorial posts for PSP & Lightroom on her blog starting in June. I also get to play with her stuff. I did this for an SSD challenge using Penny’s new kit Smile, Sunshine . I did a bunch of layouts this weekend as well, while waiting for the Rapture to come so I could go loot Target’s camera area. Looting & pillaging are on my Bucket List you see. But Jesus never showed up so I didn’t get a new Nikon. Guess I’ll continue saving my pennies.  It’ll give me more time to dither over which model I want, rather than just grabbing whatever was in stock. I was going to grab a bunch of books too because I have NOTHING to read.  Do you ever get like that? There is a stack of new books from the library on your nightstand & while they seemed interesting when you chose them, you now...

The Great Sleep Experiment continues apace. The lack of caffeine has finally caught up to me. Not in the form of headaches but… see, here’s the problem… I can’t sleep because my brain is too busy. So I cut out caffeine (among other things sorta, more on that shortly) and now my brain isn’t busy much at all. But you need your brain to be busy if you expect to function on a day to day basis. Right now, I’m not functioning, mentally, much before noon. Fortunately making the kids lunches & my pot of decaf coffee are so ingrained I don’t need to think about them. It takes about 5 hours of awake time for my brain to boot up without caffeine to give it a kick start & so I am more vague & rambling than usual. I know some of you are thinking “But how can you tell?” Trust me, it’s noticeable. Just ask SciFi Dad who was treated to my early morning mental gymnastics on his Thursday blog post. I’m starting to think I should stay off the internet before noon but what the...

My latest manicure. Inspired by Pinterest. I have a board of different manicure photos. You Tube has a bunch of videos on how to do water manicures or water swirled manicures. I’d explain but seeing it written down is a detriment. It sounds so much more complicated than it is. Basically polish colors are dropped in water, swirled around & then you dip a nail in them.  There is more to it that that but with a bit of practice it really is fairly easy. Remember, I am basically lazy. I’m not going to make too much of an effort for anything. So if I can do it, you can do it.

The chickens are still with us. Yep. A whole WEEK and they are still alive. The boys have gotten up every morning, let them out of the coop & fed them. Well, Havoc has. Mayhem sometimes helps, sometimes not. Havoc has become possessive of the chickens. DH mentioned, while they were loose in the larger fenced area, that they might be able to flap up on to the smaller area & then onto the coop and then get loose. Ever since then Havoc herds them back into the smaller area when DH isn’t around because he doesn’t want them to get loose where the dog could get them. Odds of those chickens reaching the top of the smaller run are very slim but there is no telling Havoc that. He was also “shush”ing his friends when they came over to see the chickens & warning them how to behave so they wouldn’t alarm the chickens any. In non chicken news I’ve decided the ‘workout at 10pm’ thing just isn’t…um…working out. First off I cannot be relied on to make myself all exhausted & s...

So another week on the sleep regimen has passed & really, nothing too exciting to report. Mostly I fall asleep around 1am & wake up around 6. So, it seems the ‘staying asleep’ issue is improving & the ‘falling asleep’ issue still needs work. And I have cheated on the no chocolate thing a few times to the tune of 1 Reese’s Cup and 2 dozen M&Ms with no real effect one way or the other. End of story. Now on to an even better story, which is the reason for the ‘mostly’ in the opening paragraph. I checked out two books from the library on Monday & spent Monday-Wed consumed with reading them, so much so I totally lost track of time & forgot to meet the boys’ bus Tuesday & found out just what happens when no parent is waiting… They call the house & inform you the bus is at the end of the driveway & would you please go get your kids. All that angst last year about CPS… The books I read were by Connie Willis – Blackout & All Clear . They ar...

Welcome to 1975! Christmas 1975 as evidenced by the nativity set on top of the tv. Note the dark wood paneling, the orange & brown carpet, the orange kiddie chairs, the brown curtains and of course the tv. We’d had this tv for about 4 years at this point. They would remodel this basement in 1988, just around the time 1970s décor was coming back into fashion. It like the rest of the house would end up all blue & white. You can, if you squint, see a mark in the middle of the tv screen. That is not dust on the negative. That mark is actually where the tv screen was cracked one Saturday morning when my brother took a swing at me with a glass soda bottle, missed, and hit the tv instead. We were regularly left alone in the basement family room for hours on Saturday mornings. My parents left out bowls and a box of cereal & put small Tupperware bottles of milk for us in the fridge so we could get our own breakfast & they could sleep in. I’m not sure what my brother ...

Well, a mere 14 years after moving to the country, where we are surrounded by farms on all sides, we have finally got some farm animals of our own. We now have 4 chickens and so far they have survived 48 hours in our care, which is just short of miraculous. (We’re lazy & somewhat incompetent & know only what we’ve read on the internet about chickens, well, that & some advice from some people we know who keep chickens but still…). This is Stewin’, Fried & Fricassee. Rotisserie walked out of the shot as I was taking it. WHAT did you say my name was????? The reason we are surprised they are still with us is her Our dog, Houndini. DH has been fairly certain we are not getting chickens so much as buying expensive & short lived dog treats. But after a couple hours Houndini lost interest in the walking snack bar & so far things are ok. It’s not so much a chicken coop as a chicken prison. Maximum security. It’s not the chickens breaking out we are ...

Back from 2 nights camping edition Meanwhile, while they were gone… the clones got their speeder stuck in the mud and had to call the Jedi Auto Service and I went grocery shopping For more weekly winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by!

I went shopping at TJ Maxx recently. I rarely go there because mostly I find clothes that are in my size but ugly or clothes that are cute & the wrong size. And this time was no different - I found THE CUTEST DRESS! They only had it in purple in a size 6, which I have not been in..oh…say a decade or so, probably more like two, possibly an entire quarter century, since I regularly forget just how old I actually am & don’t honestly recall ever being a size 6 though I must have been at some point- logically speaking. Common Sense shook it’s head at the size & wondered where exactly Vanity thought I’d be wearing it if there was a size 10 version .(Common Sense spends a lot of time asking “And where will you be wearing/using THAT?” when I go shopping. I think I have mentioned before that Common Sense sounds like my mom.) Vanity was drooling over this dress, so much so that I found myself in the dressing room in possession of a dress I suspected would not be able to p...

April 27, 2011 – My first visit to sleep specialist, who gave me a list of ‘clean living’ things to do over the next 8 weeks. I’ve done almost all of these things at various points over the past 9 years, but this time I will do them all AT THE SAME TIME! Give up alcohol Give up chocolate Give up caffeine Give up ALL screen time after 10pm Exercise vigorously for 20 minutes prior to sleep Get out of bed if can’t sleep after 20 minutes No going back to bed in the morning April 27 – I decided I need time (and a glass of wine) to take this lifestyle change on April 28 – I created a schedule to make this happen (the doc told me to take up to a week to give up the caffeine so I don’t feel bad dragging this out a few days) April 29 – I gave up caffeine (not too hard really, my coffee was 2/3 decaf already & Coke & Sprite are interchangeable to me, no headaches reported, despite much naysaying). I woke up at least 6 times, probably more, during...

May the Fourth be with you! Happy Star Wars Day!

At the end of April 2009 we acquired 48 months of car payments. We bought a 2006 Grand Caravan with 24,000 miles on it and I wrote this post about it. I thought I would update that post with my thoughts after 2 years of ownership We had looked at 2008 version in an electric blue first & I liked it more. But I didn’t like it $4000 more. It had the same mileage & I like the radio better. I mostly liked that it was electric blue. Because there are exactly zero electric blue mini vans in the Wal Mart parking lot at any given time. But silver? You can’t swing a cat without hitting a silver mini van in the Wal Mart parking lot. However it does have electric doors, so I can stand in the general vicinity of several silver mini vans, push the remote & then go to whichever one’s door opens. ***2010*** This losing-the-car-in-the-parking-lot thing is pretty much a monthly occurrence. I regularly find myself standing next to a silver minivan, pressing the remote unlock ...

I read 14 books in April. 4 on the Kindle and 10 dead tree books from the library. On the Kindle I read The Folklore of Discworld – which tries to be a comprehensive collection of folklore & myth on Discworld but mostly draws parallels between things on Earth and things on the Disc. Nothing wrong with that in general, but I was hoping for more Discworld myth & stories than Earth stuff. I could make nearly all those connections myself. I enjoyed it but felt it wasn’t living up to what it could have been. Anthem for Doomed Youth: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery (Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries) – I love this series but this book was a bit of a disappointment. It was well written, the familiar characters were there (thoug...

We went to the Natural History Museum at the Smithsonian this week. I took a ton of photos, these are a few of my favorites from the Hall of Gems. Mostly I thought they looked like food Chocolate chunk ice cream Hard toffee candy Snowcone Scrambled eggs (lower left) And some mushrooms For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by!