gunderson bee’s Neighborhood

Snake Update

java janie
13 minutes ago
4 comments

We kept the snake locked up in an aquarium last night. I just wasn't comfortable with just letting him go. Just letting him go meant he was in my yard somewhere. I like snakes much better when I know exactly where they are, like the zoo. I was afraid if I let him go, he'd sneak up on me or eat one of my chipmunks.

This morning, Steve picked him up and put him in a smaller cage. He took him to work and released him by the water. Yes, he drove over an hour with only a thin sheet of plastic between him and the snake. What if it had gotten loose in the car? He's brave. That's why I love him. Now the snake is over an hour from my backyard. That makes me happy.

Caviar Tastes Like The Smell Of Dead Fish...

Jamie
1 hour ago
2 comments

We were supposed to go out of town this weekend but we decided to pay the mortgage instead. I like staying at hotels, it's like having your own Alice, you go out for the day and come back and your beds made and you've got fresh towels. As much as I like the idea of having an Alice, I like living in a whole house more.

DeWitte already took Friday off so we slept in, went out for breakfast and went off for some outdoor fun. Fishing and crabbing, that's as outdoorsie as we tend to get. It's the only sport (It is too a sport..I looked it up, it's even got it's own magazine) I'd actually watch in the Olympics but the Olympics is stuck up and only has sports, besides sumo wrestling, that skinny people seem to like to do. Too bad we didn't check the weather before we left.

The place we where fish is kind of funny. It's a 1/4 mile pier, which means blood, guts and the smell of caviar in places, because caviar tastes like the smell of dead fish, attached to a $$$ restaurant. That promotes signs like this....

Sign

Which means one side of the parking lot is full of valet parked Mercedes' and the other side is beat up pick-up trucks. DeWitte's truck feels at home there.

We set all of our stuff up and the fishing/crabbing commenced. That means people watching. The guys right behind us on the other side of the pier were obviously tourists. You could tell because they looked like someone gently picked them up by the back of their business casual striped Izod shirts and set them on the pier. You don't wear business casual when you're fishing. I had on DeWitte's 1983 Supertramp World Tour concert t-shirt (Which proves he robbed the cradle. In 1983 I was three years from graduating high school and he was off in college partying at concerts.), which I'm gonna wear a lot more often because, from his reaction, you'd think I was wearing lingerie.

One guy was in his 50's and the other guy was either his father or his father-in-law. The old guy seemed to have some disdain for the younger guy so I'm gonna guess father-in-law. The old guy didn't move from his chair most of the time we were there, he just sat there and grunted. The younger guy never stopped moving. He had two fishing poles that he checked on more than a nervous mother checks on her newborn baby. Only a mother would never snatch her new born up so fast that she'd break it in two. Every time that guy checked one of his lines, he pulled so hard his pole came apart, than he'd get mad and swear.

Down the pier a little bit was a family that I can only guess were from Brooklyn. It was the loudness and accent that gave them away.

Oh! My! Gawd! Louie, get the camewra! I cawt a cwrab! Get the camerwa, Louie, a cwrab!

Followed by Louie yelling that she should hwold yer howses, he's getting the camewra. Then..

Oh! My! Gawd! Louie, get the camewra, I got a fish! Hurry Louie, get the camewra!

I'm not sure why he had to hurry up, it's not like the fish wasn't going anywhere.

Next to us was a foreign family. They spoke really good English but I couldn't quite place the language they spoke when talking among themselves, I think maybe Canadian. They were fairly large people and the dad had on a pair of pink shorts that left him with a constant wedgie. Either he wasn't wearing underpants or he was wearing a thong, neither of which I like to give much thought to.

After a couple of hours, the sky started to turn black on the other side of the bay.

Storm

I thought maybe we should start packing up but DeWitte was determined to stay. He was really busy and didn't want to leave.

Busy

The people with common sense started leaving, one by one, until it was just us and the old guy and his son-in-law. All of the sudden, some woman that was so quaffed, she looked like she just came out of the fancy restaurant next door, came running down the pier, yelling to "daddy" that a big storm was on it's way. Hurry up and get their stuff. It was pretty obvious that a big storm was on it's way but it certainly wasn't the hurricane she seemed to think it was. They were probably from Florida..they take storms a lot more seriously than we do.

The old guy got up at a snails pace, as the younger guy continued to obsessive compulsively check his lines. The old guy pulled up his crab trap and seemed surprised to find an actual crab, while the woman tried to hurry them along. Grandpa finally seemed excited about something. Instead of just pushing the crab back into the water (what are you gonna do with only one crab?), he lunged for it. When he did, he tripped on one of the boards on the pier a fell flat on his face. It was like he didn't have the natural reaction to put his hands out in front of him, he fell like a freshly cut pine tree. Whoosh. The lady started screaming Daddy, while the SIL just kept checking his lines asking "What are you guys doing down there?", never once looking up. The old guy was OK and the lady finally got the son-in-law to stop touching his fishing poles while we were packing up our stuff.

We got off the pier just as the rain came down so hard it made you wish you had an ark. The only thing we caught all day was this...

DeWitte-caught-a-pigeon

2 comments

But I still had a really good time. Tourists make excellent entertainment.

Thought for the Day

tom
5 hours ago
3 comments

Formula for failure: trying to please everyone.
--Anonymous

I feel like I'm living in a zoo

java janie
14 hours ago
13 comments

Ashley and Mr. Jeremy Fisher

This is our resident frog, Mr. Jeremy Fisher. He loves to hang out in the pool. The chemicals appear to have no effect on him, unless you consider his rather large size. He's grown a lot since the Spring. We take him out of the pool all the time. He just gets back in when we aren't looking.

DSC_9272

Today, Victoria was outback sweeping the area around the pool. She picked up a towel and found this guy. We tried to catch him, but I soon realized anytime he attempted to come out of hiding, it resulted in me screaming like a little girl. Of course, that caused whatever child was nearest to scream. It was fun. I kept him at bay in his little hiding place in our stone wall til Steve got home.

Trying to sneak away

Steve gets just as excited about the wildlife around here as I do. He was determined to catch the snake. He barracaded the little guy with a bunch of junk from the garage.

Redneck Snake Trap

After 3 hours of watching and waiting, Steve flushed him out with some water*. He went right into the aquarium. Then I came inside to consult the internets and find out what kind of snake he is.

Simon the Slithering Snake

As far as I can tell, he's an eastern garter snake. Either way, I'm not sure what to do with him. I don't want a snake as a pet, and I'm not too keen on knowing he's just hanging out in my yard either. Despite spending most of the evening attempting to catch him, I'm still scared of him!

*We were very gentle with him and he wasn't hurt at all.

Things on Tuesday

Kzinti
16 hours ago
Post a comment

I do not like green eggs and spam, Sam I am... Oh, I love it. I'll have his spam.

Things I am Loathing today:

Utility Bills. $40.00 gas bill. No wait, that is the loving part. Loathing part is the $350 electric bill...
Any bit of drama that involves the oldest kids ExGF in any way, shape or form.
Spending my last hour at home before work talking about the ExGF instead of other things.
My job. Today, it just seems to suck and I don't really know why.
Wookie Girl, Trash. Yeah, I know. 18 years old and... Yeah. Yay Responsibility! </sarcasm>
New work schedule. Going in two and a half hours earlier just feels wrong.
Headaches. Maybe that is why work seems so sucky today...
Having three weeks vacation left for the year and no money to go use it anywhere nice.
That for once, the loathing list is longer than the loving list. Ugh.

Things I am Loving today:

Waking up and spending a half an hour lying in bed talking with my Sweetie before getting up.
Egg sandwiches with ham and cheese on toasted wheat and peach-cranberry juice for breakfast
Making homemade real chili (with habaneros) when I get home tonight
Eating light and healthy a majority of the time now and it's showing in a thinner me,
Going to Home Depot tonight after work to get a couple of 2x4x10's to finish the last bedroom wall.
Rosemary and olive oil triscuits with cottage cheese. Maybe I'll get a thing of ricotta cheese next time...
Those odd WTF? moments life throws at you. How else would you be able to gauge how bad things could be?
A Yurt in some remote village somewhere, far away from things for a while...

Gorilla grieves over death of her baby

Caprica
16 hours ago
6 comments

Gorilla grieves over death of her baby

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main...

A female gorilla has been photographed grieving over the loss of her baby, showing a strength of emotion rarely witnessed in the animal world. Gorilla Gana, 11, was left shattered in her compound at the zoo in Muenster in northern Germany at the weekend when her three-month-old baby Claudio suddenly died.Visitors wept as Gana held her lifeless child up in the air, vainly seeking to restore movement to his lolling head, his limp arms.She put the baby on her back and walked around, stopping to look at him after a few paces to see if he had recovered."Claudio died in his mother's arms, with think from some heart defect," said Joerg Adler, the zoo's director."On Wednesday he gave the impression to keepers that he wasn't feeling too well.advertisement"On Friday he wasn't eating or drinking properly and seemed to be growing weaker."We were keeping a close eye on him but suddenly, on Saturday morning, he died."The death of Claudio is a double tragedy for Gana; for reasons unknown to scientists, she rejected her six week old daughter Mary Zwo last year.She was moved to a zoo in Stuttgart where she is healthy and one of the star attractions.By Monday morning the zoo keepers were still unable to get to the body of Claudio, so fiercely is Gana guarding him."In the wild a gorilla mother can keep hold of a dead baby for weeks," added Herr Adler."We will carry out an autopsy on the body when we can."Gana doesn't know it, but the whole of Germany is mourning with her. She is so sad right now."

Product Cuteness

DKN
Yesterday
1 comment

Hey guys,

I know most of you will remember me talking about my girl Megan who I visit in RI and vice versa. She and her mother have teamed up to do some crafty craft work and they have really cute stuff such as craft and kitchen aprons, cosmetic bags, totes and pouches.

Check it out:

Etsy Site

Photos of their work

Check out these squeee-worthy place mats and pot holders!

Squee products

I <3 Google Reader

Yup, that's it. I just forgot to say that in my "Things on Tuesday". I've been wanting to say it for a long time. I think about how much I love it everytime I go to my "igoogle" home page. I really do.

Out Of The Loop...

Jamie
Yesterday
5 comments

On Monday afternoons, Nathan has his piano lesson. I usually just hang out in the parking lot and read. I thought about striking up a conversation with the other mom that sits in her car and reads but she reads things like jewelry, make-up and baby doll catalogs. I don't usually wear make-up and if I do it's just from the drug store. I don't wear jewelry, not even my wedding and engagement rings..they're about 15 sizes too big and I never had them resized and I wouldn't read a baby doll catalog if it was the last catalog on the planet..I don't think we'd have very much in common.

Well, my air conditioning is still broke, it has been all summer, because I'm lazy and haven't taken it into the shop yet. It's hot here..ninety to a hundred degrees, though we've had some relief lately and the people that designed the parking lot decided that silly things like shade might attract vagrants into the middle of their yuppie shopping center, or worse yet, block the view of all the Hummers and Jags. What good is driving a giant penis if nobody gets a chance to see it?

So, every once in a while, I'll walk over to Starbucks and order a large iced tea. Then the girl behind the counter yells out my order to some other girl in a foreign language they made up and that I don't understand. "Vente, black, classic, blah, blah blah"..I stop listening after the first 30 words, it's like listening to twin speak. That's all fine and well if I'm the only person in line and they can just push my cup over the counter but when they have to start yelling out individual orders, they always have to yell out mine more than once because in their foreign language, my large iced tea turns into a paragraph and I don't know that they're talking to me. I don't know why they have to make it so difficult unless they're just trying to make me feel old..then they're right on the mark.

Things on Tuesday (End of Summer Edition)

Things I loathe

When Josiah folds the laundry, he comes running to ask me who every single article of clothing belongs to (including underwear).
How expensive school supplies have become
Cleaning and reorganizing the garage
The girls' messy closet (no matter how much I give away/throw away, it seems to multiply in that stinkin' closet)
Summer reading projects for Victoria and Alex. Seriously, homework for summer break?!?! Not fair.

Things I love

Having five kids old enough to do chores. Sure he's bugging me, but he's actually folding and putting laundry away!
Seeing how excited the kids are about their new bookbags/shoes/binders etc.
Being able to walk through the garage. Heck, I could dance in their right now if I wanted too. We're pretty close to being able to park Steve's car in there.
Cleaning and reorganizing the garage with Steve. Hey, I'll take any time I can get with him!
The kids willingly doing their summer reading projects with little prodding
Coffee. I don't know who came up with this stuff, but I love it.

I can't think of anything good about the girls' closet. I'm going to have to go through it again and donate stuff to Salvation Army next week when they go back to school.