Her Tragedy

“I am a ghost,” she said,

“a shade that no-one sees,

I am a shimmer of the leaves

As the wind plys the trees.”

She wended ‘round the table,

And lighted on the chair,

And a ray of golden sunlight,

Caught a ringlet of her hair.

“Gazes pass right through me,

Never glimpsing who I am.

What they see is an empty soul,

Held upright by strings and hands.”

“And what do you see,” I asked,

“When in the mirror you do peer?”

Her hand reached to her ringlets,

Which she tucked behind her ear.

“I only see my outline,”

She hastily replied.

“I am a cutout made of cardboard.”

She closed her eyes and sighed.

But never did she ask

What I could really see;

Behind all her confusion,

And her missing sense of ‘me’.

She didn’t want to hear it,

From the ones who mattered most.

She would rather flit about,

Thinking that she was a ghost.

An indecent proposal, bad office special & happy Friday!

I am not quite a coherent speaker am I?  "I have it in my pocket so I might as well give it to you..." ::Facepalm::  He had my ENGAGEMENT ring in his pocket... Gawds.  I'm such a dork. He was going to propose at dinner. FAIL on the communication Steph. :)

Yes, it's terrible. I confess... But it was hurried. :)
Happy Friday all.

On the update side: I am looking into having some dassenplanks made of fine hardwoods to sell in my etsy shop. I will be offering three sizes, small (1 foot wide) for scarves and such, Medium (2 feet wide, like mine) and large (3 feet long).

Yay!

Doodles and gossip.

Man, it’s nice to feel what it’s like to have had enough sleep every once in a while. The chronic insomniac that I am, it’s a rare feeling to get up and not to feel exhausted. I’ve had insomnia issues since I was very little. I have distinct memories of sitting up all night gazing out the window, or climbing out on top of the garage roof and watching the stars until the sky turned sapphire to periwinkle and the turtle doves lulled me back inside to sleep.

Don't ask me what it's supposed to be.
A deer; a horse, a dorse.. Who knows? He
also appears to be floating. We may have
our answer. It's a reindeer.

My ideal hours of highest function are between eleven PM and four AM. It has always been that way. I have always thought myself to be nocturnal, being forced to function in a diurnal life. My brain gets really crazy when I go to bed. It just goes from one thing to another and I keep trying to quiet it, purposefully imagining things to distract it, but in the end, it wins, and my temper flares with every glance at the ever-advancing clock. I hardly ever arrive at work with more than five hours of sleep at best; sometimes much less.

Yesterday, I’d gotten to work with about two and a half hours of cumulative sleep. So by the time I got home, I was completely dead. I went to bed around nine at the hubbers’ heels. We chitty-chatted and joked for a while and then I read until about ten-thirty. That is unheard-of-early for me. I woke up this morning still dragging butt, but that’s just because as a chronic depressive (dysthymic), I like to sleep and if left without alarm clocks or dogs or spouses or a bladder, I’d sleep indefinitely. I like sleep. It’s quiet.

Today I woke up spry and well.. awake. It’s so rare. The blue sky and the blooming trees have added to my good mood. I know, what’s up with that, huh? Me in a good mood, LOL! But yep... here it is.

We are meeting with a member of the hubby’s family tonight that has been sort of estranged by a family squabble. It’s not really fair that everyone just cut her off like that, she’s the daughter of the person in question who’s started the problems, and even though they are no longer speaking to her, it seems ridiculous to me that they would ostracize her kid. She’s stuck in the middle, and their expectation is for her to take sides against her own mother. No matter how misguided and ridiculous her mother is, she is still her mother. I’d even defend Satan to some extent. She’s still my mom.

I kind of messed up the fox's head, and when I tried to fix it,
messed it up more.

The whole thing is really upsetting and makes my whole opinion on families even lower. She can’t help what her mother does, and she has struggled with her own problems all of her life because of her mother. They should be supportive of her, and inclusive and loving—but that’s not the case. The last time I saw her was when everyone was still on speaking terms. It was her birthday and the family invited us over to celebrate ‘her birthday’. Everyone was there, but as soon as the food was eaten, the cake sliced and the presents opened, they all migrated upstairs to watch wrestling (seriously) and just left her downstairs alone. I felt so awful for her. The party was more of a get-together for wrestling night than it was about this family member. She’s a nice, genuine kid. Sure she isn’t perfect, but who makes great decisions during their late teens and early twenties? Yeah... nobody. She made some horrific ones like marrying some older manipulative abusive freak at 19 for one, but she got away from him. She’s back in school, and building her own life. She’s doing well. She’s with a good guy who is in the Navy—responsible and who has adored her forever.

::shrug:: Meh. Dunno.

She struggled with identity and with a difficult family situation for her formative years—of course she’s imperfect, but hell, that’s no reason to write her off, nor is the fact that everyone’s pissed at her mom reason enough to pretend she doesn’t exist, or to call her a ‘piece of sh*t’ as one family member so aptly and coldly described her (and her mother as well).

Hubby and I have kept in touch with her through Facebook—defying this silly moratorium on dialogue with those people imposed by family. She’s in town this week and so we are grabbing an old Christmas present we keep forgetting to send her from the year before last (I honestly have no recollection what is inside the wrapped box anymore), and meeting her for dinner. I’m looking forward to seeing her. She’s a smart, nice kid. I’m sure there will be an awkwardness when the other family members find out we met with her, and I imagine they will be biting back a million questions; but it is what it is. Families can be infinitely stupid and ridiculous about relationships—I’m sorry but I don’t want to be stupid and ridiculous along with them. Especially towards someone who has always been sweet and welcoming to me. She’s young and needs as many supportive people around her as she can get. If some relatives are too proud to get over themselves it’s their loss. In my mind, she’s just a kid. Get over it.

Okay, these guys turned out HELLA cute.

Office Specials: These are my ‘phone doodles’. I spent a lot of time hunting people down and asking questions with the phone wedged on my shoulder yesterday; so these little things were all peppered over a piece of paper at the end of the day..

Options like adoption? Happy Friday!

Most of you who follow my blog regularly know the stuff I’ve gone through to achieve pregnancy. It’s been a lot. We haven't explored every single option available to us fertility-wise, but we are neither drippingly rich people (or even moderately moistly-rich at that--we're more like a dessicated-desert-lizard-corpse rich) with disposable income to hand over to fertility specialists for a shiny new baby. I’ve had to go the conventional road, go with the medical options that come along with remediating my horrific endometriosis and somehow trying to control my raging PCOS. I spend a good part of each month stalking around in a fugue of pain and discomfort and I probably look like this:

Get the !#%*&^ away from me.

The surgery has cleared the way in some cases... but my fallopian tubes have been open and clear all this time, which means something just isn’t working, and it’s suspected to be the endometriosis doing something chemically. My doctor now says I have only one last conventional method left to me. That is to take monthly Lupron injections for six months to ‘dry out’ the endometriosis, and then go back on Clomid to see if I can ovulate & finally acheive the pregnancy thing. At age 40, your chance of getting pregnant in any given month is just 5%. So I confess, I haven’t been feeling too hopeful about the whole thing, but I figured I’d give it a whirl. HOWEVER, Lupron is a drug that will put me into a false menopause. That means I will enjoy all the symptoms of the condition I get to look forward to in ten or fifteen more years; the mood-swings, the brain-short-circuits, the hot flashes... the full gamut for six solid months. Yay?

I WANT SOME GODDAMN CHOCOLATE!

THE PUPPEH COMMERCIAL SO SAD
AND KYUUTE BWWAHHHHH

Do we have to keep the thermostat set at
'Turkish Steambath' for &;^#$!*'s sake?
Owait, now I'm cold!

My poor, poor husband, that’s all I have to say. So, he endures these horrific mood-swings, and everything else with me, and there’s only a 5% chance of my getting pregnant each month that follows treatment that I’m on ovulation medication; chances are pretty slim. I’m not saying I’m giving up hope entirely, but I’m not going to start walking through the baby-clothes section at Old Navy, or make the full circuit of IKEA so I can look at baby furniture like I did when I was on Clomid from June until December. Every month I’d end up bawling on my husband’s shoulder while he lovingly smooched the top of my head and said it was okay. I won’t get myself all worked up only to be crushed with disappointment each month when the evidence arrives that the Clomid wasn’t working.

I’ve decided to focus in another direction. I know I have complained that adoption is too expensive, but there is a woman at my barn who has two adopted daughters, Amy & Jade. She adopted them from the state. She explained the program to me, and I was astonished. I’ve always steered away from fostering because I don’t want to get attached only to have the child ripped away from me so they can go back to meth-mouth mom who is only tenuously clean at the moment. I worked non-profit many years with at-risk kids, diversions kids, troubled kids, and god if it didn’t take everything out of me. It became increasingly difficult to take these kids home each night to abusive and neglectful households, to see them with bruising and old eyes, and to be powerless to do anything about it. I eventually had to quit that job because I would just go home crying every day. I also watched my aunt provide short-term fostering for troubled kids, and that was a whole other ball of wax. I certainly don’t want to deal with a hostile, violent teenager.

So as tempted as I was to set up my little spare bedroom into a kid’s room and to invite a foster child into our home; I couldn’t quite do it. But the state adoption program is completely different. You foster your prospective adoptee before the adoption is complete, and by the time they actually come to your home as a foster child, their parents have already given up parental rights—so chances are, if you fall in love with the kid and they settle in, you won’t lose them. So I’ve signed us up for the required seminars for people who want to foster and adopt from the state of Oregon. I’ve registered us, and we think it’s okay if the kid is a little older. I think 0-4 maybe. I’m not sure about older, honestly. I feel awful saying it, but as a guardian of a developmentally disabled adult, and the overseer for a completely crazy senior demon (aka Satan/Mother), I don’t know if I can handle a really angry, troubled kid on top of all that. I know, it’s selfish... but growing up with my brother taught me a great deal, and I’m not sure if I want to replicate that kind of stress and destruction in my household for the rest of my life. It was enough already taking care of him well into my twenties. And I saw what it did to my parent’s marriage (which already sucked to begin with).

It’s an option, I guess. I know me, I’m completely soft-hearted and I’m going to get all invested in it. I have been excited thinking about it, and there’s no guarantee we’ll even be granted adoption to anyone. But yes, I’m already looking at tiny patterns for pea-coats and dresses... adorable mary-janes and toys... books... I have to stop. But I can’t. I have this idea that I might finally have someone specific to paint all these office specials for. The thought of it makes my eyes burn with tears of anticipation, and we haven’t even gotten to the first step. I guess I selfishly just want to be a mom SO bad. To teach a child to ride on a pony, to sing them songs to sleep, to read them ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ and to finally have a someone to give all the Beatrix Potter collection, the miniature silverware set, the handmade wooden rattle to that I’ve collected over the years in anticipation of becoming a mom.

We shall see. I’m trying not to get excited about either option. I hear all these stories of women who go through all this, and then they get their adopted baby and find out they’re pregnant... that would be inconvenient, but it wouldn’t suck either, but there’s a possibility neither of those things could happen for us. No pregnancy, no adoption. So if you happen to see me swooning over huge stuffed bugs in the IKEA kids section, smack me upside the head and send me to the kitchen department.

Icky Monday Office Special.

It took me quite a while to get this one finished, I confess.  I was distracted by actual work. :)

We had a 14.5 hour power outage this Sunday into Monday.  It isn't a Tsunami, 8.9 earthquake or possible nuclear (pronounced New-Clee-Ar NOT Nuke-you-lar god damnit!) meltdown, but it was a little windstorm that shut down our "Walking Dead" series marathon and making of popcorn.  We holed up and read books by the light of candles and LED flashlights.  We slept a restless night in the pitch black, and I awoke after my husband left to discover the power still out.  Just as I was about to leave the house, it came back on, and THANK GOODNESS I was there because El Hubbington, in his bad-night-of-sleepiness, left the bathroom sink cold water full-on-open, and the sink immediately filled up within moments and threatened to overflow (it drains very slowly). If I hadn't been there when the power came on, we'd have come home to an indoor pool.  ::phew:: Now to go home and take that hot shower I wanted to take last night. 

This is usually a riding night for me, but Tag gets a reprieve! He was worked very hard Saturday and was sweaty and bratty both.  But he did well, and earned himself a little pile of carrots.

Anyway, this is the first colour-pencil office special I've done in FOREVER. I started it at lunch, and then finished it only a few moments ago, adding it up here before I leave for home.  I'm into the mouse thing.  A lot.  For now.

I am hoping for a non-stressful week--despite the theft of a good hour of sleep out of my mornings... :::curses and shakes fist at Daylight Savings:::  It's birthday season, so that meants our weekends won't be ours for a few weeks.  Lots of stress and pressure in regards to the ORS too--the Eugene faction is poised to take over the management of the behemoth of a group; I'm a little worn by the thanklessness and the politics for now; you can't avoid it with groups, but hell if I'm going to keep doing something that has become quite un-fun lately.  It's hard to let go of my kid though, I confess; I trust the Eugene ladies to do it justice, but I'm afraid the Portland group will be neglected and the focus will go on less populous areas. :(  But I can't control everything. The chips will fall as they may.  It's time to set the baby free and watch it either walk or stumble.  Maybe I'll start enjoying sewing and hobbies again without this albatross of a thing tied to me in addition to the other stressors that life seems to be heaping on me.  I just hope my Portland group leaders will be supportive of this transition for my sake, and not fight the Eugene leadership too much.  ::sighs::

Anyway, I want to go home now.  G'night. :)

The Guide to Hideous Eyebrows.

I have really bad eyebrows. If you’ve been following my blog, you know I suffer from the ‘Hungarican Curse’ as described in this special post. I consider my post on the Hungarican Curse a public service; sharing the dangers and pitfalls of Hungarian/Puerto-Rican interbreeding. Tragically hairy, dark, huge groucho eyebrows are one of the devastating genetic side-effects of this combination (among others).

I get them waxed fairly infrequently. I actually LIKE the feeling of having those babies waxed, but I am leery about who I allow to wax them. Depending on who it is, I can walk out of a salon looking any number of ways. I prefer a nice, natural arch, some thickness left behind, but just cleaned up around the edges (if allowed to grow freely, I would probably have curtains of eyebrows over my whole eye socket which would have to be parted so I could see through them). However, I’ve come out of an eyebrow waxing looking like a number of the below described eyebrow types and I have had to be very careful about who does them after that. I'd rather go shaggy than end up like something below.

I often just keep them pretty natural and I trim them. Yes, trim with scissors whenever they get shaggy. They can be out of control a lot, especially in the morning when I’ve slept on them and they are pointing upwards like Spock. I am however, committed to keeping them natural looking, and you know, if you follow this blog, how much I rail on bad eyebrows. They are a scourge.

So I’ve created this guide to help you identify the bad eyebrow, and to, one set of brows at a time, change the world for the better, and to eliminate the horror that is bad eyebrows.



Also sometimes known as the 'Spermatazoa'

 The Slim Quote is one of more popular of the bad-brows.  A thick, dense little patch hovers at the front of the brow, with a tiny little line trailing off over the eye. Sometimes these are arced very high. Sometimes they are waxed this way, sometimes, they are drawn on this way.  They are all-out hideous and must be stopped.

The Fat Quote, like the slim, has a thick part towards the center of the face, and then a sudden decrease in thickness at about the middle of the eye. This style is also known as The Machete'.

The Bozo speaks for itself. Lending the wearer with a permanent appearance of suprise and astonishment, the Bozo can come in a variety of thicknesses but is most frequently applied with a thin pencil line. This is the most offensive of all the bad-brows and should be slapped right off the faces of the people who apply them. These brows are usually drawn-on, because the apogee of the bozo arc almost always rises far above where natural eyebrows grow.




Sometimes known as 'The Spock' or the 'Live Long and Prosper'

 The Vulcan is usually worn by women with severe and humourless personalities.  The waxing process to create this look is fast and simple, often done with a straight-edge to acheive the maximum sharpness possible of the line. These are sometimes applied slightly crooked by bad waxes, lending the wearer a permanent look of puzzlement and bemusement or the air of being sardonic and smug.

Most commonly found on 20-something Wal-Mart staff with muffin-tops... this dash rarely meets the line of the corner of each eye.  Waxed into tiny rectangles the Dash eyebrow is usually accompanied by red, puffy eyebrow skin and acne.



Sometimes called the Shepherd's Hook.

 This crime against womanhood is most often sported by older women. They are usually all done in pencil, usually a medium to dark brown, sometimes a harsh black. A little hook is made in the inner brow, and then a quick swish of the eye pencil and voila, you have the ugliest eyebrows known to humankind.  Usually, the older the woman, the squigglier the line is.

The same as Little Bo-Peep, except for the angle of ascent, giving the older lady wearing it the appearance of severe irritation.

This eyebrow is a much-offended crime in the Hungarican circle.  Mostly because we are all born with thick brows, and somehow we are baffled as to what to do with them.  The solution for some is to hack off the tapered corner, and wax too far outwards from the center of the brow, and to end up looking like a moron.

The Ever-Astonished comes in many forms.  The trait of this bad-brow is that it is usually drawn on areas where no natural eyebrow could actually grow, mainly, the forehead.

Some Einstein out there came up with the idea that women could just colour on their eyebrows from a template just like Kindergarteners do with tracing templates and crayons.  This usually generates an eyebrow that is hugely thick, densely coloured and too heavy for a woman's face.  But hey... at least they're even, right?  Women who wear these type of eyebrows often inadvertently frighten small children and make them cry.




Also sometimes referred to as the 'Spider Face' brow.

 This eyebrow is often on the face of women who've also happened to have plastic surgery done.  The shape of the brow is mostly due ot the procedures, the skin of the forehead being yanked up at the temples to give the brows that super-arced, not-in-their-natural-place look.  This gives these women the appearance of a disney villainess like the witch from Snowwhite, and Cruella DeVille.

Casting off the Dassenplank

The Dassenplank has been freed from its knitted burden! How'd she do it?

I have graced the world with another of my wooooonderful videos (okay, slightly sarcastic here).  It only took me three months to knit together five small skeins of yarn into a rectangle.  The type of yarn I bought has apparently been discontinued, so going back to get more of the same type is no longer an option. But I decided to finish it anyway... it would have taken less than two or three hours of total knitting time if I didn't put the project down after two courses of knitting for weeks at a time.  But, finally, I knitted up the five yarn skeins and it's time to cast off.

I know, my voice is soft, but since the project is cast-off, I can't go back, undo it, put the loops back on the pegs and start again, so sorry. Just up your volume as best you can I guess.  It's probably for the best, because as usual, I just can't shut up.

The video shows the finishing course of the knitting, the casting off process and the final tying off of the yarn to finish.  As I said in the video, I have this rectangle of knitted stuff just sitting here... no idea what the heck I'm going to do with it, so if you have project suggestions, please feel free to comment.  I'm thinking an eclectic looking laptop case?  A tote? Pillows are overdone and with my dogs it will look like my knit blanket, with pulls scattered on it and dog-hair all over it.

I am also going to repost the dimensions and the yarn looping guide that I added to the last Dassenplank post just in case. :)

Giggle and an Office Special

The Saga Of Biorn from The Animation Workshop on Vimeo.

This is so adorable and hilarious, it bore posting.

I'm riding again. AT LAST!
I had a video of him, but it's on Facebook and the embed feature doesn't really work well with blogger (privacy issues & such). Next time I'll upload to youtube instead. Sorry! It was a dark and crappy video anyway.

Here's an inane, boring and odd video I took on Monday. Just stupid things we do at the barn with our big dog, I mean horse.

My language is less than ladylike, and I'm just a giggling moron, but hey....
That's how I roll.  Tag is pretty serious about carrots. It's like we're dealers
and he's a junkie.  Hubby indulges him... I laugh and let them get away with it.

Tag was totally fine both on Monday and yesterday. It's funny how much peace I derive from being around him and just riding for half an hour. I got him pretty sweated up yesterday, but that wasn't hard, he's like me... fat and out of shape. After 15 minutes on the longe, he was already tired and unwilling to do much. But either way, it's good to be riding again. I'm happier when I'm in the saddle.

Here's my newest office-special. I call it "The Pests". :)

Happy Birthday Papa. :)

Scary how much my brother looks like him.
He even has that crazy hair.

September of 2009; Lowell Massachusetts rehab.
He looked terrible. :(
Me on left, Helen on right.



We got him that shirt because we thought it was perfect for him.
My sisters; Anna on the left, Helen on the right. Same visit in '09.



Handsome.

2002 - Timberline Lodge. He was 72.



I post this one a lot. Papa in 1993 or 4... covered in dogs.

 

In Switzerland probably... Kinda hard to know which alp it was. :)
That's me clinging to his leg crying.
I'd say thi sis 1975ish.



Papa's in the back seat piloting. I'm with is friend in the front.
I have distinct memories of that flight. The sound of the tow-plane releasing us,
The sight of the earth beneath us, the sound of the wind holding us up.

And there he is now; in all three of us. 

Happy birthday daddy. You would be 81. We miss you so very much.

Sister's Hair Salon & Happy Friday. :)

Mother’s new sewing scissors caught the sisters’ eyes.

Instantly they thought of all the things that they could try.

An idea came about: “let’s play Sister’s Hair Salon!”

They both had lots of hair to experiment on!

Big sister took the shears and said “Okay, I’ll go first”

And into little sister’s curls, she was utterly immersed.

Snipping here and chopping there; locks fell to the floor.

She cut and trimmed and snipped and sheared until she could no more.

“All done!” big sister said with a great and happy smile.

“The cut looks good on you; it is totally your style!”

The mirror showed a hairstyle that wasn’t nice at all.

Her hair was shorn in choppy cuts and her bangs were really small.

Fighting back the tears, little sister turned around,

She reached for the scissors with a dark and threatening frown.

“Now it is my turn to cut,” she said with narrowed eyes.

“Well, I don’t want to play anymore,” big sister then replied.

“That’s not fair!” little sister cried, but big sister didn’t stay.

With flowing curls and perfect hair, big sister skipped away.

(This is a true story... we used to have hilarious photographic evidence... My eldest sister did this the middle sister).

Bitchin', Snowin', Jeepin' and Horsin' around.

Yep, I am at it again. It's not exactly an office special this time.

So the surgical-hot-glue they used to seal up my incisions has finally come off in its entirety. I’ve been pretty grumped out about having those little pointed shards annoying me all day... I pried out the one from my belly button this morning and it was heavenly to be rid of that little bugger—it was the worst one. It sort of cracks me up to think of them with a hot-glue gun in the surgery room, squeezing the trigger like a bunch of middle-aged crafters in mom-jeans and 'I-give-up' hair making wall and door wreaths.  I stated on Facebook this morning that I am surprised I didn't lift my shirt to find a bird's nest with a fake chickadee and some country-style silk sunflowers glued onto my incision too.

I had to get up at this ungodly hour so my husband could drive me in. The night before last, an unexpected snowfall up in the cascades made my drive home most unpleasant. By the time I got to my town, I could hear the snow scraping the bottom of my car. I had to take a run at my street to get through the thick, slushy berm of snow created by the ploughs and then drive at ridiculous speeds on our little gravel road to make it to the driveway without bogging out in the deep, wet cascade concrete. I was successful however, and the Prius passed a number of unfortunate vehicles nosed off the side of the road into ditches that night, so it got a loving pat on the hood before I went into the house. The snow was so deep I had a log-shaped snowball rolling in front of my bumper when I finally slid into the parking spot next to our house. That was a first for me. LOL.

I think the best benefit of four-wheel-drive vehicles is not so much the four wheel drive action, it’s the bloody height. We knew when we bought the Pri that this would be an issue... they are low-riders. I’m glad we kept the other Jeep—or I would not be at work today. Poor Prius, although very much laudable for getting me home safe the night before last, was pretty much inundated by the deep snow by the next morning—so I ended up taking a snow-day yesterday. Our street is still unploughed as of today, so our only alternative was to get up super early today so hubby could take me in to work in the reliable Jeep. The snow had melted some and compacted down, but it was still pretty deep around the Prius; and the snow on the road is still way to high for Pri to nose through. Hopefully it will melt out a bit today. The Jeep will have to be the stand-in for now.




Jeep-a-boo.


They truly are incredible little cars, those Jeeps. Sure they’re gas-hogs, but they trundle through pretty much anything, even with the disadvantage of not having a locking differential (they only have power on the one front tire and one back tire—diagonally when in 4WD mode as hubby explains it). That Jeep has given us 100,000 miles of reliability and trustworthiness for really what amounts to very little in cost. Sure, we dumped $1,800 into a new transmission, and it’s needed its heating system and radiator replaced... but that Jeep commuted with me 75 miles a day every weekday (and more long drives on weekends and trips) for five years, it has tromped through snow events like a trooper, it has hauled the trailer of trash to the dump, it has tugged other vehicles out of stuckness and blazed trails through dense snow so others with less capable vehicles could follow. I love that Jeep.

What’s even better about this car is that it has improved in looks these past years. When I first got it, it had a black soft-top made by some obscure company that was falling apart. We got it a soft-top, and then traded that for a hard-top, and then hubby managed to find full doors to replace the half-doors, and we fixed a rust-spot on the tub, replaced the leaking seal-thing on the top of the window and now it’s a better package than it was when I got it in ’04 (yeah, with a few more miles on it, granted)... Jeeps are like giant erector-set toys or something. You can just keep building and adding onto them and they just get better and better.  Lifts, tires, racks, lights, winches, hooks... Possibilities are endless.  I have a hard time thinking about losing that little green trooper. If are ever in a situation where Jeepy buys the farm, we will probably replace it with another used Wrangler. As crappy as the mileage is, they are completely indispensible for where we live and for what we do. We have our sedan commuters who pack on the miles now; the Prius and the gifted Dodge Intrepid my mother gave us. They save us gas-money and work fine on the most part in all weather; but when the deep stuff arrives and the low-riders are snowed in, we have our trundly little Jeep to get us through. :) Not that I wouldn’t have preferred to just stay in bed this morning... but I suppose we all have to be responsible. ::grumble::

I took some time with Hubby to go see horsikins for a change. I missed him!!! I haven't spent hardly any time with him lately, and I'm full of guilt.  I haven't ridden since November, and he's lost all his muscle mass and looks like a huge Shetland pony again. ::GAR!!:: I worked him a bit on the longe and he was exploding with unspent energy.  It'll be a while before he looks like this again:

Fine lookin' horse if I say so myself.

Anyway, I'm going to try to LITERALLY get back into the saddle this weekend... after running him prolifically on the longe first so he doesn't aggrivate my torn meniscus or recent surgery, etc., by throwing me.

Okay, I’m off.  Have to hit the road at this horrid early hour. The benefit, no traffic... Laters.