oh my gosh. seriously,

how long does a poison ivy rash last?  I'm starting to think it's forever.  I did get to the doctor yesterday for something a little more potent than calamine lotion and Benadryl.  So far I really dig the magic cream and itch-be-gone pills.  They're wonderful.

oops. i

haven't been posting.  I'll try harder this week.

Now I'm off to take some Benadryl.  I hate poison ivy, oak and sumac.  I've been wearing long sleeves to hide the rash on my arms.  Do you know how refreshing it is to wear long sleeves in SE Texas during the month of July?  I'll clue you in, not very.

beware the

three leaved beast.

Cosme and I have been miserable for the last few days.  We were all up in the bushes trying to trim them back and hauling it to the street.  I later went around pointing out the poison ivy in certain flower beds telling him that I was not going near any of that.  Yeah, if only I'd thought to look in the bushes...

We've been living on Benadryl and calamine lotion and it sucks.

a little random

something from Saturday.

No, I wasn't playing golf, I was waiting for Dodo to wake up.  The funny thing is I talked to Dad a few hours later and he was out playing golf.

breakfast is

served.

I started the dough last night and finished my cinnamon rolls this morning.

I drizzled this icing all over them. 

One goes a long way so I figure this will fill Eric and his friends up.  I hope they're hungry because four more pans are about to come out of the oven.

This whole post is making me need a glass of milk.

guess where we went

late yesterday evening.  Yeah, we left around 8:00 and went for a ride in the MG.  Yes, 8:00 in the evening is SO much better than 11:00 in the morning... if you're wanting a breeze and not so much a sunburn.

Here are a few images I have from our drive.  I know the first three are very similar but I'm posting them anyway.

 The Brazos River

and of course, the sky

we went to the beach

 yesterday and it made me think.  The media is all over the tar ball situation.  Yes, I understand that tar balls are not good and they're showing up at all the beaches now.  (Forget the fact that from my earliest beach memories, one of the most dreaded things about going was coming home with tar somewhere on me.  It wasn't occasionally either, it was EVERY FREAKING TIME.  There was tar.  It was what happened when there was a trip to the beach.)  Anyway, like I was saying... The trip to the beach yesterday made me think.  I saw a lot of things on the beach.

There was a bunch of garbage.  Oh, there was this jelly fish too but there was tons of garbage.

Guess what.  There were no tar balls.  Alert the media.  Who cares about the garbage?  As long as there weren't any tar balls, I guess it's all good.

the mg is

finished and street legal!

as soon as the rain lets up

I plan on doing a couple of things at Grandma and Papaw's house.  One of which is trimming back some of the brush growing in front of the shed.  Here are a couple of before pics.

After that I think I'll check on the fig tree and see if anything is ready to come off.  If so, I'll try my hand at fig preserves.

i'm just not feeling

this new design stuff Blogger has going on.  I'm trying to find something that's "me" and it just isn't happening.

i've received a few

texts from Lauren showing the weird things her cats are doing.  This has made me stop and think about my normal, lazy cats that don't like to sit on the refrigerator or watch the water in the toilet.  Today's spotlight is on Lucille.  She's predictable.  If you sit, she heads for your lap.  If she sees your hand, she rubs against it.  She is sweet.  Some days she likes to sit at the front door and just watch.  We joke that she's waiting for a package.

Other than that, she lounges

and takes breaks to rub against things to find that perfect scratch

and lounges

and rubs against things to get scratched

and lounges

That's Lucille for you.

now that was a rough

week.  Strep throat is one of the worst.  I hate it.  I've always been the type to catch a sore throat when at all possible and I've always dreaded it but topping it off with fever just plain sucks.  It's not so much the lying in bed with aches and chills, tylenol and a few blankets can put a temporary hold on that.  Now the throat pain is always severe and I do hate it.  One thing that doesn't make any of it better is knowing that as soon as I'm good enough to get around, I have to strip and wash all the bedding (as well as any other laundry I've missed the three days stuck in bed).  Oh, and the kitchen...  Even though I haven't been cooking, there's a guaranteed mess.  The morning I went to the doctor I came out of the bedroom to find take-out bags and cups littered across the island with dishes in the sink and 5-10 empty 2-liter Coke bottles.  ugh.  I turned around and ignored it all.

Later that day after I'd been diagnosed, medicated and sleeping off another round of fever, I heard Eric in the kitchen.  I heard a new garbage sack going into the can... and then filled.  I heard water running and dishes knocking around.  Eventually my door opened and Eric asked how to start the dishwasher!  This was a first.  I was as excited as one could be while lying in bed feeling miserable.  I explained to him the simple steps of putting the soap in the two compartments and then selecting the NORM WASH cycle.  Ahh, I went back to sleep.

As expected, the following day I was a little better.  I got up and made a few rounds through the house.  I walked into a now clean kitchen and smiled as I knew I had one less task to be done.  Saturday came around and I began to tackle everything I knew had to be done.  I started with the bedding and loaded it up on the sanitary cycle.  I made my way to the kitchen and decided I would unload the dishes Eric was so kind to wash the other day.  Once opening the dishwasher, I noticed a couple of the glasses had a film over them.  No big deal, I'd rinse them off and send them back through the washer.  I noticed some blue spots on some of the plates.  Fine, I just ran everything through again.  But why were there blue spots?  My Cascade is white.  This was clearly a blue gel on the dishes.  At that moment I realized I didn't clarify which soap is used in the dishwasher.

Oh well, there was no harm done and I cleared everything up with Eric on the difference in dish soaps but mainly I'm still just so happy he attempted to help without being asked.

day three

of lying in bed, day two of antibiotics, first day without fever.  I think I'm starting to see a light at the end of this tunnel.