Our House is Back to as "normal" as it gets...

These two are the last of our sneaky cat's second litter. As of Wed. they are all gone and we are back to only 4 "under 3's" in our house. phew.

In comparison, Tuesday night we had 10 "under 3's" in our house with a collective 36 legs. yeah, thirty-six.

Allow me to explain: I was the on-duty stray animal guy on Tuesday. I had just gone to bed at around 9, which is slightly on the late end considering the alarm was set for 4:50 (ugh). I had been in bed for about 10 minutes, just long enough to get really comfy and settled in, when the duty phone rang. Downstairs. I got up and ran down to answer it. My co-worker (who is conveniently not at work this week) decided to go to the gym. On the way home from the gym he happened upon a squeaking box. A squeaking box of five puppies, approximately 6 weeks old. Being the on duty guy and therefore "responsible," I tell him to bring the pups to the house and I will take them to the kennel in the morning. After bringing the outside dog crate in and getting the puppies settled, I again laid down and closed my eyes, hoping to get at least a few hours of sleep before the alarm went off at 4:50 a.m.

The boys are just getting over a tenacious cold, and were therefore up more often than usual, and the puppies were up several times, but I must have gotten some sleep because at 5:20 the following morning I bolted awake and realized that although I had set the alarm, I had neglected to activate it. Now I'm late and have to provide transportation for 5 pups and the last kitten who is being adopted out today. I should also tell you that our cat carrier is not that cool and the kitten figured out how to get out of it. I drove the whole way to work with one hand on the wheel and the other holding a 12 week old kitten, trying not to get clawed/bit by the attempts it was making to escape.

Fun week. I am looking forward to this 4 day weekend. So this Thanksgiving I am truly thankful for a "normal" house of 4 living things under three years old with a mere 12 legs. 2 of which are attached to knees that are dangerously close to crawling, but I'll take it.

Technology kicks my butt again....

So we made a really cool video today. The boys played with each other, Patrick said Hi to all his favorite relatives, and there was even a secret handshake. Sad to say the audio never made it off the camera and into the computer. Ugh. So I am trying to figure this out for a while, then I am going to dropkick my computer/camera into next week. If you and I are lucky we may get to see this on the internet. If I am not lucky and you are, maybe the missus will bring the video camera when she visits. Stupid technology.

*snort*

Within the past month or so I've had several women say variations of the same comment to me:

"wow, your kid is so independent/well-behaved/tough/precocious, and you are so laid back and still have time to DO things, I thought you'd have him attached to you 24/7 until he was 18 and I thought he'd be a whiny brat who got away with everything! I mean, you do all those crunchy and christian things, I wasn't sure we were even going to be able to be friends, but you're not half bad!"

Ok, so they weren't quite that blunt, but that's very definitely what they meant, and all I could do was snort (hopefully just in my head and not out loud) . I mean, what do you say to that? "yeah...I did what I thought was best for our family, and it's working out pretty well so far, thanks" hehe.

ps: not really a rant, but that was the closest label I could come up with.
pss: oh, you want a picture or else this post isn't even worth looking at? well, don't twist my arm, I've got them right here. Random, but that's what you get when I'm only on the computer about an hour a day.

1)apart from chasing flies/cat/dog with his very own fly swatter, this is one of the boy's favorite pastimes. He's actually doing this as we speak, except from inside the dog's crate. with the door shut. I maintain that HE is the one who did the shutting. "hah ya dooah? eh. ah?! mm-hmm. GOOOAA!"
2)hello pretty volunteer squash. mmmm...3)Unfortunately, as soon as I took this pic, he/she disappeared, and our yard is still covered in flies. Maybe I could buy a whole family of praying mantises?
one more ps: anyone want to bug me for a secondhand goodness post or a crafty post? I'm tired of all the hockey on this here blog ;-)

fly on the wall

me: "Honey, guess what?!"
mr. waaz: "what."
"if you go to sleep right now, you will get a whole 6 hours of sleep before you have to be awake again!"
"hooray. "

15 hour days are no good, I tell you. lb and j, I now understand your "like ships passing in the night" comment from awhile back. Add no sleep to starching and ironing uniforms and polishing boots every single day to STUPID people at work, and you get one drained husband, in every sense of the word.

ugh.

Day 1 of a 3 day set*.....

or, Two reasons why I think people are stupid.

Apparently it rained on base last night. I was not aware of this. Our base has a small problem with drainage of said rain water, so the other housing unit, Marinai, (as in the one I don't live in) had what amounted to a small lake in front of it. Since this road is the primary path to get onto base, many people traverse it. Not today. When I got to work at 5 a.m., I was informed that instead of sitting in a nice warm unit all day, I would be standing at one end of said road in a blaze orange vest with a flashlight (as it is still dark out when I start work) and inform commuters (some of which either did not see me or did not question why a police officer would be standing in the middle of the road wearing bright orange and waving at them and simply kept driving. Fine by me but I am sure not calling you a tow truck to pull your car out of the ditch that you can't see because it's covered with water!!!) that they should take the alternate route to work. Reason one that I think people are deficient in their mental capacities is the following conversations that I had with some particular people today:

Me: Good morning, SP-105 is closed due to flooding, you will need to take the alternate route to work today.
Them: Well, how bad is it?
Me: Bad enough for me to be standing out here telling you not to go that way. (duh)
...
Me: Good morning, this road is closed because of flooding in front of housing.
Them: I work in Marinai, can I get there?
Me: in front of housing

***
The second reason is more comical, to me anyway...

Part of my duties today, aside from telling people where not to go was to check on the progress of the lake drainage project. I.E. drive through it and see if it had gone down at all. I was on just such a mission in the late morning, right before we decided that the lake/puddle was now receded enough to allow a normal flow of traffic. In front of me was a small Opel Corsa, (read Ford Pinto only French) making its way through the water. In the opposite lane was, of all things, a guy on a Harley Sportster. (This is dumb, who drives a motorcycle through a lake?) Anyway the Opel is not going particularly fast but is still creating quite a wake, he is driving through at least three inches of standing water. The Harley guy sees this impending wave coming for him and makes rapid gestures toward the driver of the Opel to slow down. The Opel driver of course does not slow down and soaks the Harley guy. The Harley guy's gestures quickly take a more obscene turn as he is obviously quite upset. Harley guy then points at me in my police unit and then viciously at the Opel guy, as if I should give him a ticket for splashing people. Eh, that's what you get for driving a motorcycle through a lake.

*I hope I survive.