Wild Kingdom

As if Larry the Lizard wasn't enough, darling husband came home the other day and told me to have a look out the kitchen window. What I saw was a bird, a hawk, eating something. Turns out, he was dismantling another bird! There were feathers everywhere. That makes 2 days of animal behavior at my house. What in the world is happening here?

Jurassic Basement

We have company coming, so I decided to take my shower curtains down to the laundry for a washing. I use alot of bleach on the liners and am always afraid that it will get all over me while I try to get them out. When I heard the washing machine stop, I went down and started taking off my clothes. Nice visual, huh? Anyway, I was down to my bra and had the belt of my jeans unbuckled, when I saw something walk past the dryer. It was, are you ready for this, a LIZARD! WTH? It looked alot like this.

See how he is mocking me, daring me to come closer so he can eat me? Or, maybe he is saying, "Na, na, na, na na, I'm in your basement! You can't touch me!" Yeah, laugh it up big guy, laugh it up. So, my reaction to finding this little bit of the herpetarium in my basement is to scream like I am being cut with a samurai sword. The neighbor probably heard. All of them.

I call my husband to have him come home to remove the beast from the basement. He cannot understand me through all of the screaming. At the exact same time that I am screaming at him, a friend calls on my cellphone. She never calls, so while I was concerned, I was a bit more concerned for what was stalking me in the basement. I scream at her too, telling her their is a large reptile in my basement. She, not surprisingly, couldn't understand me and hangs up, texting me to find out what was them matter. I text her back and she just laughs, no offer to come over with a lizard trap. Hubby says he has to go to a meeting and I am left to fight off the beast in the basement. I call my parents. My mom puts my dad on the phone and I tell him to come over immediately to put this thing out of my misery. He says let it be, it eats the bugs. I scream that I don't care and get over here. He does.

We go into the basement. I point out the location of the offender and he grabs a flashlight and step stool. We have weapons but he chooses to go at it unarmed. He pokes and prods things, nothing happens. By now, the thing is probably wandering around the house. The useless cat doesn't even seem interested in what I am telling her. My dad reassures me that at least it isn't a snake. How freakin' reassuring is that? He then goes on to say, that it has probably been in the basement for quite some time, grown up there, so to speak. Freakin' great. I tell my dad to get out because I don't want anymore of his opinions.

I post on my mommy boards. I explain the entire story and my responses are interesting. Most say that I am lucky it isn't a huge spider. While this is true, I could kill a spider and that would be it. Now, I basically have a pet in my basement, and an unwanted one at that. Most laugh at my underwear clad self screaming at the top of my lungs about something I may never see again. Whatever, I am never going into the basement unarmed again.

Larry the Lizard, as I call him now, wasn't really that big. I am figuring about 9-10 inches. That is pretty long though, I think, especially for someone that doesn't like things living in her house that don't make any kind of contribution, other than scaring the crap out of me.

This is probably a more accurate representation of the visitor.


You know, the smiling, happy go lucky lizard that just wants to hang out and be friends. Larry was brown, but you get the idea.

I have yet to see Larry the Lizard again, and I am totally fine with that. I carry a broom and make alot of noise to scare him away. I am not feeding him or setting out water for him, I want him go away, far away. I am still faced with the fear of him crawling into my clean laundry and making his move upstairs. I may need therapy.

Hair Experiment

Done! No comment.

Today

Ivy woke up at about 430, so my day started early. It usually starts around then, and sometimes I go back to sleep, sometimes I don't. On Tuesday and Thursday, Mia has school, so I have to be dressed fashionably and well coiffed, in order to fit in with all of the other stuck up moms. See the next post regarding the well coiffed part, very sad. Anyway, Ivy went back to sleep so I showered, had coffee etc and decided at 530 that I should get dinner going. Not that we are going to eat prior to 6pm, but hey, why not get a jump on things? I am making chicken and that always takes awhile to bake. If I have a late nap, it could be 7pm before we eat and by then I will have eaten everything in the kitchen. So, I get the cookbook and start assembling the ingredients for this new recipe. The last one I made from this book, SUCKED, so am hoping for better results this time. I mix the Ranch dressing and flour together to dredge my breasts in, just a little early morning humor there. I get the chicken out of the fridge and see these aren't just chicken breasts, they are chicken BREASTS! Mammoth, gargantuan, Dolly Parton sized pieces. They aren't going to bake in 25 minutes, like the recipe says. I will be lucky to get them done in 25 days with my oven. The darn thing isn't even 3 years old yet. I have to bang them down to even fit in the pan, let alone cook. I grab the meat mallet and think about where I can beat them down. It is 530, no one wants to hear me beating the meat, so to speak. I decide the basement is the place. Lots of yucky things happen in basements, so why not a little breast beating? I whack them hard so they flatten enough to be manageable. I can't get them that thin, so guess I will add about an hour to the cooking time. I bring the bags of chicken upstairs to dredge. I HATE, HATE touching chicken! It has a cold, sticky/snotty feeling, and is just gross. I mix the flour and dressing together, by now I can tell this is going to be another sucky dinner, and prepare to plunge my chicken covered hands into cold, sticky Ranch/flour mixture. My teeth are starting to sweat now. You know, that sick feeling you get before you hurl. I have already turned on the faucet because I know the second I am done, I will have to sterilize my hands. I put the first piece in and smoosh it around to get it covered. I am literally, gagging. There is always that squeeby little piece of whatever that comes off the breast, sometimes it hangs on for dear life, but I always remove it because it is totally disgusting. I use a spatula to get better coverage of the dressing/gloppy mixture. You would think that using a spatula would cut some of the hand mess, wrong. There is way too much touching of gross stuff in this recipe, so I will not be making it again, no matter how good it tastes. I get all of the chicken into the pan and set the timer. I rinse all of the dishes/utensils involved and then go about sterilizing my hands. I use the hottest water that will come out and lots of dishsoap. My cuticles will look like hell but I don't want any remnants of the chicken goo I call our dinner to be on me. Then, there is the cleanup of the prep area. Oh, no, there are squeeby particles and the dressing mess on the table. I have no papertowels. I get a clean hand towel and proceed to spray the entire area, twice, for best results, with a mixture of chemicals that I'm sure could send me to the hospital. There is no trace of the yuck that I was cooking so I am happy. However, the sink has the yucky dredge bowl in it and the mixture isn't coming out. I kick up the hot water and try to rinse it out without touching it. Finally it comes clean, but the gack is now stuck in the sink. Nice. I run some more hot water and turn up the faucet to a more concentrated stream. It seems to do the trick. I have to wash my hands again, just in case something gross got on them. I don't even have an OCD but chicken is so gross that I must wash, must wash, must wash. By now, I am angry that I have made something that is probably going to suck, my family won't eat it and I have to be sterilized after making it. I get it into the oven, it actually smells pretty good. By 630, it is done. I have cut into it, just to make sure that we won't get some squeeby chicken disease if we eat it. All I can say, is that dinner is done and it will probably suck. So, I have been up since 430, my hair looks like crap, my cuticles look like crap and I have created and cooked some crap. Have a nice day!

No hair wash-Day 1

I got up at the crack of dawn with the baby and decided to just shower, not wash my hair. I did it yesterday and my hair still had that straw-like quality to it. I smelled it, felt it, ran the brush through it to see if it was an oilslick. Nothing led me to believe it would look like hell so stuck the shower cap on, and off I went. I look lovely in my poufy, pink showercap. Maybe I should have left it on. Once I started trying to style my hair, the reality set in. Not too greasy but very flyaway and still dry looking. I plugged in the curling iron, hoping for a miracle. Apparenly, today was not my lucky day. My hair is sticking out in a million different directions and is really creeping me out. The curling iron curled the ends under(a little maybe)but the rest is flipping out all over the place! My old straightening iron didn't work, so I threw it away. I can't see getting a second mortgage to buy a Chi either. So, today I am stuck. I hear it is going to rain, so may just wear the shower cap.

New Hair Experiment

Due to the fact that my hair is suffering more than usual, I abandoned my baking soda/vinegar idea. I have deep conditioned twice and today went back to my expensive(but very worth it)Redken shampoo. My hair is on the mend and looks alot better, no pictures because I hate them. Anyway, my new experiment is not to wash everyday, letting the natural grease, I mean, oils, take over and make my hair look great. I was talking to my wonderful stylist and she said that she only washes twice a week! Her hair always looks great, not sure mine will. Let me rephrase, it won't, but I will give it a whirl and see what happens. I have my showercap ready for tonight and we will see how long I can go without washing. I am scared. K's hair always looks great, I'm sure just not because she is a professional. Saturday, Mia and I are going to get our hair cut, so we will see what K's verdict is.