Friday, cry day

Hurray for Friday!

I'm exhausted and tired and sleepy and unrested and ready for a nap.

And I could use some sleep.

Fortunately, we don't have much going on this weekend. Me survivor buddy, Tracee-Trace, is having a Pampered Chef party. I'm gonna go buy some knives that I use to cut the cheese. (I'm punny.)

I've gotta come to work for a bit tomorrow but that's no big whoop. Then I'll be lying around in the filthy house trying not to club anyone with a baseball bat.

Good times.

In the meantime, you should click over here. They guy's flippin' hilarious. Click on his "How much is inside" link — they dude represents. He totally dedicates himself to the cause of finding out how much is inside. Brilliant! Go click over there, don't waste your time here.

Eatin' shit sandwiches

Yesterday I wrote this about my mom and I making quilts to post today my Haute Mamas blog. It's got nice pictures of the quilts that we've made. Doot, doot, doot. La, la, la.

Meanwhile, Bill and I had no clue that his son was the driver in this incident on Tuesday night. Sean almost killed his best friend due to his own stupid and careless actions. Sean's mom didn't call Bill until 3:30 yesterday afternoon.

Needless to say, it's all shit sandwiches for us today. Bill is devastated. I'm so angry I could ... well, let's just say that I should be kept away from baseball bats or other blunt instruments.

Oh, and what has happened to Sean so far? He's gotten a ticket for reckless driving. A ticket. He almost killed his friend and he gets a ticket.

What is wrong with this picture?

The happy hitcher

Last night on the way home from dinner my dad was telling us about a hitch-hiker that he gave a ride (Who picks up hitch-hikers anymore? Oh yeah, my dad):

My Dad: "The kid was dressed really nicely for a dishwasher. I think he was gay."

Margaret: "You mean he was happy?"

My Dad: *without skipping a beat* "Yep. Happy." And he continued on with his story.

If she knew that gay meant happy, why did she ask for clarification?

She's so like that.

Dude, where's my bench?

As I mentioned in my Haute Mamas post from yesterday, someone "borrowed" the bench from our front yard while Bill and I were in Austin.

Bill was lamenting the theft of the bench when I suggested that maybe someone actually did borrow it and just forgot to return it. He said I was being naive and that it was stolen. I'm having a hard time believing that.

I mean, how could someone or someones walk into our yard and carry the thing off? It's heavy and cumbersome and since I haven't sealed the wood in several years, it's all splintery, too.

Then the question arises of who would want it? It's all splintery and the black paint is chipping off the white paint which is covering the cast iron in so many layers that ... well, it's just not very attractive.

But we liked it.

We liked to sit on it. We liked to display our pumpkins on it:
Margaret and her little girl friends liked to play on it and lay on it and pretend to sleep on it, covering themselves with newspapers like tiny, Central-Park bums.

Our crumby bench got sat on a lot during the nice-weather months when we'd have people over for the expressed reason of sitting around in our front yard. Now all we have left is crusty, plastic lawn chairs.

Oh what a sad spring and summer it will be without our worn, but loved bench.

Good-bye, bench! We'll miss you! Oh and we hope that your crappy slats split and cause the person who stole you to smack their fat melon on a concrete curb ... or something.

Flowers and all the joys of spring

It's spring ... what? You knew that already? Allergy sufferers sure know. Bill's nose has been like a faucet, poor thing.

Anyway, I wrote about our early spring over here.

So it's not just my kid ...

I love how the mom tries not to laugh and every time she does, it makes the little girl smile bigger.

We learned that the hard way — if you laugh they say it over and over again.

Cut the power

I'm looking our the list of songs that my band covers right now. The list contains two columns: covers and originals.

The column of originals is now longer than the list of covers. Yep, we've got 19 covers and 21 originals. It's a good place to be.

I'm searching our list because of what I read in this column which appeared in The Daily Sentinel's entertainment magazine, Out & About today. For those who are click-o-phobes, the column says that my kick-ass rock 'n' roll band is doing an acoustic set for a fundraiser for the local community radio station, KAFM.

Yep, acoustic.

We've been talking about doing this fundraiser, but I didn't realize that it was acoustic until I read that.

At first, I was all — 'the hell? But now I'm really warming up to the idea. We could show the softer side of Riveter and feature Kelley's amazing pipes and be all sweet and cuddly and make more people love us.

It will be interesting, to say the least, to see how this turns out.

Going to the well

I started this blog over a year ago and in that time I've never had this happen: I've gone to the well of good blog ideas and have come up dry.

Sometimes I don't have time to write or don't have the energy or whatever. But today, I have the time — I'm all caught up on my work and am just waiting for the time to skedaddle. I have the energy — I want to write something interesting and/or witty and/or relevant.

But I got nothing.

I went to fark.com to see if I could find a crazy news story to comment on and ... nothing.

I'm trying to think of a funny or even stupid anecdote – nothing.

Gah! I hope this isn't the start of something bad.

Instead you should click here to read about how Richie is not like Ugly Betty or here to read about how Dooce's kid said, "Shit" at the dinner table.

An open letter to the Japanese guy

Dear Japanese guy with the spiky hair sitting a couple rows in front of us on the plane Friday,

You're welcome.

For what, you ask?

For saving you from probable neck injury and possible paralysis when I threw all concern for my own safety to the wind and caught that dangerous carry-on before is smacked you on top of the head. I torqued my upper body perfectly in order to grab that heavy piece of luggage just as it grazed your nicely coiffed hair, thereby, assuring you a good flight, instead of a trip to the emergency room.

Like, I said before, you're welcome. It's the least I could do considering it was my bag and I was the one who let it go before it was carefully stowed in the overhead compartment just above your delicate cranium.

Yes, I realize that you were just sitting there quietly, not encouraging anyone to bludgeon you with their luggage, but I could've saved my rock-starself and let it ker-plop your skull like a ripe melon. I didn't. So, you're welcome.

I know, I know, I'm so kind and considerate — it's just one of my many magnanimous character traits. So, I'll just sit here and suffer from the horrendous spasms in my own neck, happy to know that yours is OK.

I would suggest, however, that next time you wear a hardhat and duck when you see me coming with luggage.

Yours in neck pain,
rivetergirl

Half-cup Bill

In learning how to correctly feed ourselves since Bill's diagnosis, we discovered that often, one serving equals a half of a cup. Um, yeah, we've been serving up way more than that, so there's still a lot to learn.

Bill's doing well. Click over here to read more about his disease and how we're all coping.

Basking in the afterglow

First, Riveter owes a giant THANK YOU to Madalyn Sklar and GoGirlsmusic.com for including us in their Saturday night showcase.
Like I've been saying over and over again, we had a great time. The crowd was great to us. We were treated wonderfully by Madalyn and the other GoGirls folks. The sound guy did a great job with a limited amount of equipment. The other bands were fun and friendly (for the most part).

The fact that the venue was off the beaten track and down a ways from the main portion of SXSW was actually better for us than if we'd been downtown because the people who were there, stayed there — instead of being lured off to another venue.

During the day Saturday, we would walk from venue to venue watching a band for a song or two and then moving on — because you never knew who was going to be playing just around the corner. With our venue on Saturday night, we had more of a captive audience — and what a great audience it was.

While we were playing, I kept having to pinch myself. I couldn't believe that we were playing in Austin during SXSW. Whoda thunk a little, girl band from western Colorado would be playing in such a place?

We love you, SXSW

Trying to recap our whirlwind trip to SXSW would be like trying to describe the horrendous stench that sometimes escapes from my husband's nether regions — I could tell you about it, but unless you witness it in person, you can never really appreciate its awesome power to overwhelm.

Like this:

Friday we arrive in Austin, check into the hotel then drive downtown. We find a miraculous parking spot (thanks to my lucky coldsore — yeah, don't ask) near the fest and we just start walking randomly down the street.

We hear bands from every direction. Bill says, "Let's go over here, it sounds cooler."

Then we find ourselves standing outside Stubb's. Bill cocks his head like a Golden Retreiver listening for the sound of a pheasant hitting the dirt and says, "That sounds like Pete Shelley" and he marches over to the guys guarding the entrance Stubb's garden.

Guess what? It was Pete Shelley and the rest of the legendary Buzzcocks. They were playing just yards away from us.

Bill tells that guy at the gate that he's just got to let him in and the dude did ... and us, too. Just like that, we were standing there taking it all in. I thought Bill was going to bust at the seams.

As soon as they finished playing, Bill says, "OK, I don't need to see anything else and I can go home a happy man."

The whole trip was so much fabulous fun that I'm still trying to take it all in.

You can read more about our show Saturday night here.

Look out Austin

Here comes Riveter!

Bill, Mar and I are driving to Denver with my parents tomorrow, then Bill and I are flying to Austin Friday morning for our debut performance the the Invasion of GoGirls.

I don't think that I'll be updating much, so I'll leave you with this:

After dinner last night:

Margaret: "Gramma, open your mouth."

Gramma opens her mouth.

Mar: "No, like this." She bares her clenched teeth. "So I can see her teeth."

Gramma clenches her teeth so Margaret can see.

Mar looking intently: "Yeah, you got something stuck in your teeth that you can probably floss out."

Indeed.

Driving to the cars

Monday, we packed into our car and took the drive to Gateway to see the Discovery Channel's John Hendricks' car museum.

The weather was beautiful and the drive nice dispite some traffic. You can read about our trip to the museum and see a couple snapshots here.

(But I'll give you a hint, we all — my mom, dad, husband and kid — walked out of there knowing that we saw some really special stuff.)

Where did Monday go

Man, time flies when you're having fun.

First, a note on Bill. He's doing pretty well. We're making the necessary changes, but still have a lot to learn — like if you can't eat cereal or eggs, what do you have for breakfast? Fortunately, we've got an appointment with the diabetic counsellor today and we'll have some of our questions answered.

So that's going as well as we could expect.

Second, Saturday night my little band rocked the Quincy Bar. I was blown away by the many, many people who came out to send us off to Austin — and boy, were they generous. The money we made that night will make a huge difference for us. So a humungous thanks to all those that came and supported us.

We had a great time. Really.

Here's a short slideshow from that night:



Friday we fly to Austin for our big Invasion of the GoGirls gig and we couldn't be more excited. Here's an e-mail I got from Kelley this morning:

can't wait can't wait can't wait can't wait can't wait can't wait can't wait
can't wait can't wait can't wait can't wait can't wait CAN'T WAIT!!!
hope you're having a great week with yo family. see ya wednesday!
kel

So, yeah, excited says it pretty good.

And third, my parents are here visiting. It's been a year since they've been able to come visit and it's been great. I keep hoping that they are going to move here ... or just live in their RV in our driveway. Either way would be great.

I took the day off work yesterday, but I'll write about that tomorrow.

It is what it is

And it is diabetes.

I think we're all resolved to the fact that our lives are forever changed and we're OK with that.

I wrote more about it over here.

We still don't know if it's Type 1 or Type 2, but he's home and managing his sugar level with oral medications at this point.

We're hopeful and optimistic — like we always are.

Ups and downs

Yesterday I was squeaking over our guitar endorsement and our trip to Austin.

Today I'm dealing with a sick husband. Scary sick but manageable. He'll be home from the hospital in a day or two and we'll make the necessary lifestyles adjustments. Life will go on ... thank goodness.

We're official

It's an exciting time for my little band, Riveter.

Next week we're playing GoGirlsMusic.com's Invasion of the GoGirls SXSW in Austin.

GoGirlsMusic.com is proud to present the 7th annual Invasion of the GoGirls during Austin's annual "South by" weekend


March 15-18, 2007




And just today we learned that we have received an official endorsement from Daisy Rock Guitars.



If you click to Daisy Rock's site and then click on the "Artists" button at the top, you'll find us listed under Riveter.

Other than having our shows listed on their myspace and listed on their Web site, we have no idea what that means, but, honestly, we don't care.

We love Daisy Rock Guitars and being endorsed by them, whatever that means, is just a hugely awesome thing for us.

Huge.
Awesome.
Riveter.

Of mommies and daughters (who love their daddies)

As I stood over the bed and strongly encouraged Margaret to get up this morning, she squeezed her little-girl eyes shut and bleated, "I like the way daddy wakes me up better."

Certain that this conversation is going to end badly for me, but I ask anyway, "How does daddy wake you up?"

"With hugs and kisses," she cries.

"Oh," I mumble as the bright-red, "shitty mom" sign appears over my head.

And so it goes when Bill is out of town. Luckily he gets back tonight and all will be right with the world again.

In the meantime, click over here to read about Margaret's sonatina concert.

End of an era

All good things must come to an end ...

I took this picture at my desk this morning. Do you see it?

It's my neck ... out there in the open ... flappin' in the breeze.

Yep, today marks the end of my black, cotton, Old Navy, turtleneck sweater marathon. I lasted 47 consecutive work days of wearing one of my six turtlenecks.

Even though I was getting a bit bored of wearing those sweaters, I loved the fact that I never had to worry about that I was going to wear to work in the mornings.

But the weather is turning nice again and I hate being overheated, especially in a turtleneck. So today I'm all v-necked up.

Now, I'm looking for the next black, cotton, Old Navy turtleneck sweater. I hoping to find the perfect, light-weight, fine-guage, short-sleeved, black — of course, sweater that I can wear all spring. I'm going to to have try out a couple and see what works.

And the search is on ...

Incorrigible

At lunch today the gal behind the counter asked: "What name shall I call when it's ready?"

Bill: "Latchmi."

Gal: *crickets*

Me: "Bill. His name is Bill."

Gal: Sigh and nervous laughter, "Oh good, I didn't know how to spell that other one."

Bill: "But isn't Latchmi more interesting."

Gal: *crickets*

Me: "Yeah, in your own head."

If it's not me taking pictures and movies while we're eating, it's Bill making up stuff to entertain himself.

It's a wonder we haven't been banned from moving freely in public.

Effects of the evil orb

Some of you may remember this rant that I wrote last December about trying to see the dermatologist about what I thought was a return of my skin cancer.

What? You don't remember and you just aren't in the mood to click the link? Fine, here's the Reader's Digest version:

I had skin cancer surgery in May of 2005. Late in 2006 I noticed a growth that looked just like the original cancer on the same spot. I made an appointment with my not-any-longer-because-his-office-doesn't-believe-in-customer-service dermatologist, who then proceeded to essentially stand me up, so I refused to go back.

Not being one to just let potential skin cancer eat away my face, I made an appointment with Richie's plastic surgeon (he's been treating her for skin cancer), way back in December. His first available appointment was Feb. 26. Believe me, this annoyed me but I couldn't go back to the old dermatologist on account of the big fit I threw in their office (my blood starts to simmer just thinking about it).

So Monday, I ran off to see the plastic surgeon for what I assumed would be a consultation appointment. Dude, was I wrong.

The guy — who was very thorough and very odd ... he says, "uuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" a lot — checked me all over for other signs of skin cancer (none of the other two DERMATOLOGISTS looked anywhere but where I pointed) and spent a long time checking out the lumps and bumps on my face.

It was a good news/bad news situation:

The good news was that the cancer had not come back. The thing I thought was a cancerous mole was actually a milia (a little cyst thing) that formed along the scar — ick and whatever ... the doctor cut it open and cleaned it out and now it's all good.

The bad news is that he found yet another spot of skin cancer on my face. Nice. I'm all skin cancery. 'the hell?

Anyway, he froze that off with the liquid nitrogen.

Oh and he did all of that sans any type of anesthesia which is fine but still ... ouch.

So that's that. I have skin cancer. I have to keep going back and having him say, "Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhh" while looking all intensely at my face.

The sun is evil, mmmkay?