It seems like all I do is yell at the girls sometimes.  Especially when we’re trying to go somewhere.  They dawdle around, and I feel like I’m constantly shouting, “come on!  Let’s go! Move it, move it move it!”

So this morning I’m trying to take out the recycling before work and as I’m heading for the door I hear this parrot voice saying “Move it!” 

At least he hasn’t started swearing.

And the raccoon saga continues.  My brother moved the trap to the other side of the deck and chained it down, reset it and came in to eat dinner.  After he ate he made a phone call and went out to the deck.  All of the sudden I hear him exclaim “I don’t f*ing believe it!  That little a**hole got the food!”

Apparently while we were less than 10 feet away, with the door open, this raccoon came over and took all the food without making a sound or setting off the trap.  My brother comes in with this crazed look in his eyes and says, “You wait, I’m going to get him.  I don’t care if I have to sit out there with an air rifle!”

Caddyshack anyone?

Ok, if you are at all squeamish, do not read the rest of this paragraph.  Skip over it!!!!!!! It involves quite possibly the most disgusting thing I have ever seen.  So you have been warned.  You all know about the raccoon and trap.  Well, my brother went out of town for the week and left it all set up, hoping that I would be the one who would have to deal with it, I’m sure.  Didn’t catch the raccoon, but this was far worse.  Saturday I went out to check the trap, and the food was moving,  Really.  The inside of the container was completely covered with maggots.  I nearly threw up.  So what am I going to do now?  I can’t very well leave it there and there is NO WAY I’m touching it.  So I go back in the house, get a bottle of bleach and pour it into the container and run back into the house.  And I just leave it for awhile.  I eventually go back out with a pair of gloves, pick it up with a pair of tongs, carry it to the compost pile (which I know is a no-no, but ask me if I care), then go over and hose it out.  I then leave it in the sun to dry and go back into the house and take a shower because I feel like me skin is crawling. 

I decide not to reset the trap because I don’t want to deal with it.  But I do buy a can of cat food to go in it.  When my brother came home last night, he set it up (put the partially opened can of food into the container and then into the trap) and went to bed.  He was awakened by clattering in the middle of the night (his window overlooks the deck where the trap is, but he sleeps with earplugs in and NOTHING wakes him up.  He slept through a birthday party with ten screaming 8 year old girls). 

It turns out the raccoon found the cat food irresistible.  He somehow dragged the trap across the deck, flipped it over, got the can of cat food out of the container, ate most of it and then set off the trap when he WASN”T IN IT.

June 9^th is too far away…….

We’ve been speaking in rhyme today, all day.

And yes, we really are OK,

We don’t rhyme to customers, that would be rude,

We don’t want them to think we have a ‘tude.

And while our rhymes are not perfect, that is for sure.

Our intentions are good, perhaps even pure.

And tho it is taxing and causing a strain,

It really is fun and good for the brain.

I’m ready to stop,

My head just might pop!

I lasted past noon, much longer by far,

And now I just want to go to a bar.

At work yesterday, this woman, (we’ll call her L, I should also point out she’s 67 years old) looks at me and says, “Come help me.  How do I make this little thing bigger?”  To which I answered, “That’s a question men have been asking for years.”

Dead silence.

I realize what I said and clap my hands over my mouth just as she bursts out laughing.  The lone man in our department looks up, smiles, shakes his head and says, “I think I’m going home now” and leaves.

Whoops.

Still no sign of our furry friend.  However, my brother up and decided to take Bart and go out of town for a week, so you know it’s going to find its way into the trap while he’s gone.

We have now had a Have A Heart trap out for three days.

Day One:  Raccoon came by before trap was set up.  We put a chicken leg, some steak scraps and a pork chop bone inside and waited.  And waited.   Had conversation with neighbor in which I told her if she didn’t relocate him when he caught him, my brother was going to relocate him to the great raccoon sanctuary in the sky.  She looked horrified and said to bring it right over.   Gave up waiting at 10:30 and went to bed.

Day Two: Got up and trap had been moved but had not been triggered.  All scraps and pork chop bone gone.  Chicken leg still in trap, but pulled over to side.  Raccoon obviously reached through bars to get food.  Modified trap and blocked portion so raccoon had no choice but to enter trap to get food.

Day Three:  No sign of him, food untouched.

Hmmm.  Is it possible he’s smarter than us?

I have always been a big believer in signs.  However, I do tend to be a little dense, so I always say what I need is a big neon sign to pop up in front me. 

Lately there have been innumerable signs directing me.  Like yesterday.  I was all freaked out about money.  It was all I could think about.  And as I was driving to pick up the girls, worrying about how things will work out, a huge rainbow appeared right in front of me.  And at the very same time, this song came on the radio.  It’s about making the world the place you want it to be.  And it’s one of my favorites (well, actually I like all The Five for Fighting stuff, but you get my point).  And suddenly, I just knew it was all going to work out.  I was completely calm.  I went home and there was an ad for the same bed I had been looking at, for $100.00 cheaper than I had seen it anywhere else.  My truck rental is going to be about $50.00 cheaper than I planned.  And the couch?  If it’s supposed to be mine, it will happen.  If not, we can sit on the floor for awhile.  Up until now I’ve felt like all I’ve been doing is complaining about everything we need, everything we want, and I forgot that I already have everything that’s important.

So, thank you for the neon sign to remind me.

Ahhhh!  So much to do, so much to buy, so little time and even less money!  I need to get a new bed, a washer and dryer and a couch.  And of course, I don’t have any linens for the new bed, so tack that on.  I found a very reasonably priced couch that I LOVE and a mattress and box spring that are being discontinued, but even with the cheapest washer and dryer I can find, I’m still looking at close to $2000.00.  And I just can’t spend that.  I thought about buying a used washer and dryer, that would save me a lot of money, but how would I get it? 

It will all work out, I guess.  I’m trying to relax, but I excel at freaking out about the stupid stuff.  I know in the grand scheme of things, these are unimportant (although not fun to live without).

We had another visit from our masked bandit.  I was watching the final episode of The Gilmore Girls (Hey! I like it!) when all of the sudden I heard this crash on the deck right outside the screen door.  I jump up run over and flip on the floodlights in the backyard and there he is!  He just looks at me very sheepishly and starts to wander away.  Not even run, just wander.  Almost a meander if you will.  So I close the door, lock it and go to bed.

Mother's Day was wonderful, filled with lots of beautiful homemade gifts and cards, which were thrust upon me before I even woke up on Sunday.  Actually, that was the way they woke me.  By shoving presents in my face and screaming "Happy Mothers Day!"  There are worse ways to wake up!

And btw, Bart hates me.

Doing a happy dance (wiggle, wiggle, shimmey shimmey, Jazz Hands!)

I FOUND A TOWNHOUSE!!!!!!!!!

I close on May 31^st.  When you look out the front door, there is a playground about 20 feet away (yet oddly, you can’t hear the screaming kids when the door is closed).  When you look out of the deck door on the back, all you see if rolling landscaped field and bike paths (there are houses in distance, but nothing really close).  It two stories, three bedrooms and ALL OURS!!!!!!!!!  I am so excited I can hardly stand it!

 But on to other news…

We did have a break in yesterday.  Our neighborhood raccoon actually ripped a screen and wandered into the house (during the day).  He then proceeded to tip over the garbage and drag it through the house, steal the girls’ candy out of a drawer, sample all of it, and then steal poor Bart’s food.  Needless to say, Bart was utterly terrified.  The kicker is, my brother was home.  He was asleep, but he was home.  So he got up apparently right after it happened.  And while he’s walking around assessing the damage, the raccoon comes back in!  Now we are living in lock down until we can get a Have a Heart trap to relocate him.

Some things I won’t miss….

(drum roll please)

Yes, It’s Margherite at our reunion!  And in case you don’t know, the story is, she decided that if she had to go to the reunion with glasses and braces, she was going to wear the prettiest dress she owned.  And you do have to admit, she does look awesome!

This raccoon and mother goose got into a fight over her eggs at a park by my house.  I wish I could take credit for the picture, but someone I know snapped it.  Apparently the standoff lasted quite some time…..

OK, you’re not going to believe this!  I started crying last night, thinking about the move, and you know why?  Because I don’t want to leave Bart the Bird! Argh!  Seriously, of all the things… How did I ever get so attached to a bird?

And I don’t want to give the wrong impression.  I really don’t blame my brother for wanting us to leave.  It is time.  He deserves to have his life and his home back.  And I will forever be grateful to him.  I will never be able to repay him for all he has done for me and for the girls. 

In other news:

Emma must be feeling better.  Yesterday when I picked them up, Emma tried to go into the boy’s restroom.  Which of course resulted in me yelling at her in the middle of the school.  When asked why she would do such a thing, she replied, “I just wanted to see what it looked like.”

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Program for a Newsflash:

Margherite was accepted into a VERY prestigious show!  I’ll let her give you the details of her awesome day (after she’s done celebrating and getting drunk with one of her friends), but we should all do the happy dance for her! 

BTW, did I ever mention that she attended our reunion in her wedding dress?

And enough of Barely Man-enough, oh sorry, Barry Manilow.  Back to Liz cause I love this song!!

Because this song has been in my head for the past three days –(THANKS Emperor Criostoir the Defenestrated of Frogging over Womble) , I thought I would share it with everyone!

Poor Em, she’s having such a bad couple of weeks.  Monday when I picked her up from daycare, they said she had just started complaining that her throat hurt.  Then, just before we got home she said she felt like she was going to throw up.  When we got home she bolted from the car and ran into the house and by the time I got to her she had already been sick and was crying.  Took her temperature and yep, she was running a fever.  So I gave her some Tylenol, and she went and laid down and watched Dancing with the Stars.  By Tuesday morning she had thrown up 4 more times (which I find remarkable considering she only ate three crackers and drank ½ glass of water the whole evening), so needless to say, going to work was out of the question.  Instead, off to the doctor we went, where the doc says that she has Strep, but she’s very concerned about her lungs and wants to take a chest xray.  Now we all know how well I do with these things, but I stayed calm, cool and collected.  SHE’S NOT THAT SICK!!!!!!! So she listens some more and makes Emma cough and asks me if she’s been wheezing of had trouble breathing.  I tell her no, that we’ve all had slight (slight!) colds, but that’s all.  Turns out she has some sort of respiratory infection as well.  So they put her on some super antibiotic and we go home.  A few hours after the first dose we decide to go to the store to get more popscicles, and she chatters all the way through the store, non stop.  And I mean non-stop.  She obviously is feeling a little better.

Then this morning, she bounces out of bed and says, “Mom, I don’t feel sick anymore! I can go to school!”  Hmmm, Emma wanting to go to school?  She must be sicker than I thought……

My brother is dropping not so subtle hints about my moving.  He emailed (mind you, he was home with me ALL day yesterday) me and asked how the house/apartment hunting was going.  I wonder if he’s trying to tell me something……