Dear Dad, It's me again.  I've lost count of how many times I've written to you in the past few months, but if I had to guess I'd say it was over a hundred times.  I know in my heart that you don't NEED me to write, that you already know how I'm feeling and what I have to say to you...but it helps me to write it down anyway (and I know that you know that too). I miss you, Dad.  I miss you every fucking day, in one way or another.  Sorry for the profanity, btw.  I k...

I don't mind spiders when they're living outside.  I don't mind watching them spin their webs; I'll even go and watch them work and admire the finished results. But what is guaranteed to give me the willies and make me run away shrieking is a decent sized spider in the house.  When I was pregnant with our 12 year old, my husband and I found a hunter spider the size of a bread plate crawling down the side of our couch (we lived in the UK at the time and had the screenles windows open...

I have hair!  I know that we've all got hair, so you can quit saying "so do I!!!" now. What I mean is that I have enough hair to gather into two little ponytails.  It's long enough.  It hasn't been long enough for ponytails since I was in my early 20's. So, ponytails are a big deal for me, and I've been sporting them for a couple of days now.  I figure I'll eventually get tired of them, but right now I'm loving being able to tie my hair up so I don't have sweaty wet hai...

I attended a retirement ceremony this morning.  It's the first one I've actually WANTED to attend.  I've been to others out of a sense of duty, but this one I really wanted to go to. It was for Chief Master Sergeant E.  CMSgt is the highest enlisted rank you can attain, and only a few ever reach it.  You've got to be something really special to be a Chief. We've known Chief E since we were in England, 12 years ago.  He was a Staff Sgt and had made Tech Sgt whilst w...

Link I just left a response to Locamama's excellent article 'What's the most expensive thing you ever bought?' and it got me to thinking about the best bargains I ever got.  I'm a big bargain shopper and LOVE to get a great deal! I bargain shop mainly for clothes and shoes, but occasionally for the house and electronics too, so I'll list the best bargain I got in each of those categories. Clothes: A Calvin Klein jacket and pant set that was tagged with a retail price of $160. I ...

Ok, so I'm showing these a little early...I said tomorrow morning, but I have an appointment in St Louis then so I'm posting them now. This is my purple hair (hi, 'miah!!): And just for fun, this is me: Those are my bug-glasses. I love that big gradient tint sunglasses are back in style; I can go without makeup some days and still look groovy!  Yesterday I didn't have time to shower and style in the morning, so I tied my hair back in a black bandana and threw on those g...

This is what I started last night: I'm making it for my mom - I changed my mind about the last lacy scarf that I started and have decided to frog it (that's rip it out and use the yarn for something else in knit-speak) - and I'm using a pale lavender silky textured sport-weight yarn.  So far I'm very happy with it, and am pleased to report that it's not as hard as it looks. It's not the kind of thing that you can knit whith your eyes closed or whilst watching TV because i...

No, not 'tar-jay'.  TARGET.  As in bullseye.  Something to be aimed for and shot at. I don't usually make much metion of the various ans sundry rumors that I hear about my husband's career field and the way it's heading.  I figure that it's not of much interest to anyone, and that the rumors are usually just that - rumors.  However, this information I'm about to share is starting to look like it's going to become reality, and it scares me to death. There i...

My son will be 12 next Monday.  My mum sends him a birthday gift from the UK every year, and this year his gift arrived today.  She often puts some photos or a note for me in the box, so I always open it and then find somewhere to stash Davey's present. Today I opened the box, and, alongside my son's wrapped gifts, I found a package wrapped in tissue paper with a sticker attached that said 'some of your dad's things for you.  I hope you like them - Mum'.  I didn't expect i...

Uber-spoiled very upset teen girl with a tube of Revlon Mascara in her hand:  "I've come from MAC to THIS.  I don't know what I need here!  I don't know anything about THIS!  I usually just go to the MAC counter and tell the lady what I want and she gets it for me!" Uber-spolied girl's equally spolied friend who's wearing a skirt so short you can just about see her lady-parts: "Why is she making you do this?" Uber-spolied girl:  "Beacuse she's being a mean bee-atch...

You get excited about a new yarn you've seen and spend an entire day searching for projects to make using it. You wake up in the night smiling having just had an awesome dream about said yarn and the fingerless mittens and matching scarf you crafted out of it. You practice saying "oh yes, isn't the coloring and texture beautiful?  I made them myself you know!" in anticipation of people asking you about the fingerless mitts and scarf you made out of the yarn you had a happy dream about...

As I dragged my long-suffering husband into a local craft store today, I saw a sign on the door advertising daytime teaching positions, for, amongst other things, knitting classes.  "That'd be about perfect for me," I said.  "I could get paid to knit!!" I did as the sign instructed and found the manager.  He said that whilst they had one knitting teacher already, they were always looking out for people to teach during the day.  He asked what hours I could work, and whe...

I was wandering around the shoe department in the BX on Saturday, forcing my husband to look at cute shoes, when we heard this woman yelling at her kid 2 aisles over.  As we rounded the corner, we saw the kid in question - a little boy, maybe two or three, and we saw why she was yelling at him. He was giving her the finger.  Quite proficiently, too, wiggling his middle finger around as he flipped his mother the bird. It's my experience that little kids aren't the most ...

Publisher Penguin is celebrating it's 60th anniversary by compiling a list of what it considers to be 'must read' books: THE BEST CRAZIES One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Ken Kesey The Diary of a Madman Nikolai Gogol Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky Notes From Underground Fyodor Dostoyevsky THE BEST SEX Story of the Eye Georges Bataille A Spy in the House of Love Anaïs Nin Lady Chatterley...