I’m In Your Garage Touching Your Stuff

It has begun. I have now been to the first garage sale of the season. I’ve practically held my breath all winter waiting for this moment and now I can breath again. Nah, I’ll breath again when I can get the whole family up in time to make it to the HUGE church rummage sale that starts in the morning.

Nothing makes me happier than walking away with your junk that you probably paid full price for in exchange for a quarter or two. I hear I lose respect for the elderly and may even shove one or two over in my excitement at a wonderful find that I just absolutely have to have. I’m not sure. It’s all blank to me till I’m home going through my loot.

Oh great, I’m a black-out garage sale-a-holic. Should people be warned about me?

Allow me to share my booty from the first sale of the season.

I bought a cardboard box that was all sealed up and didn’t open it just because it said canning jars. I was afraid if I opened it, the glint from the glass would be enough to attract the attention of somebody else that would fight me for these! We suffered a canning jar shortage last year and it got pretty nasty. I was VERY happy when I opened the box at home and discovered twenty-six canning jars PLUS an old jar funnel all for the price of two dollas!

Here is my husbands loot. A set of nut drivers (?), a hitch pin (??) and a manual, pocket nose hair trimmer (?pleasedon’task – that’swhatrubbingalcoholisfor?!). The lady running the sale said she had to NOT tell her nephews what the nose hair trimmer was when they asked or they would have been running around with them stuck up their nose or who knows what else a little boy would do with that.

I also got a splatter screen, a jar opener and the cutest flour sack cloth. No pictures. Boring. But I do have a couple more pictures.

That is a lady bug for my daughter, a lobster for my dog and the pig, well, she is for me. Look at her in her hat and heels! HOW FRIGGIN’ CUTE IS SHE? Besides, under that faux fur coat? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. A pig like that just had to come home with me. I think I collect pigs.

Here is a gratuitous picture of Tulip enjoying her lobster. Yeah, she is gonna eat it up. She LOVES beanies! Especially real ones, the ones we have to rip the TY tag off of. Yeah, she loves that.

Total spent for all this useful stuff?

$5.75

I am very pleased with my first score of the season. You couldn’t even purchase one box of canning jars for that much. I wish there was a yard sale club or something I could join where we do nothing but high-five each other for spectacular finds. Oh, and eat snacks.

They would have to have snacks.

To Tweet Or Not To Tweet

I have a confession to make here. Get out your smelling salts and pull up the fainting couches because this is a doozy and you may not believe it.

I don’t Twitter. OHMYGAWSH I know. Terrible, isn’t it? I think I may have an account from when it first came out and I was “curious” but the looks of it just didn’t entice me in any way.

I don’t think I would have the time for it. I barely have time for the stuff I want to do, where would I find the time to tell the world about it? Also, I am not sure anybody would be ready for the random goo that drips out of my head. I mean, I can entertain the heck out of myself and I think I’m rather funny, but I’m also easily amused.

Really, things that have me busting a gut leave blank stares and cricket chirps around others and I don’t think I could stand to disappoint on more than a once a day basis. Let’s have a sampling of some of things things I think would be tweet worthy, shall we?

Wow! I think Caprisun is TOTALLY meant to be drank (or is it drunk?) with a teeny straw. Really, try it. Cut one open and just drink it up. Not as good. Now suck it through that teeny straw and it becomes the awesome that is Caprisun once again.

I bought some Irish soda bread WITH nuts and raisins from the bakery. YUM, I know. Big plans of toasting it and enjoying all by myself TILL I CUT IT OPEN AND IT’S ALL DOUGHY ON THE INSIDE. *sigh*

I really wish I had taken a picture of that lonely cheeto on the ground the other day. I could just get another cheeto and try to recreate it but it will never look as good as the inspiration. I bet some bird was happy to find that!

I just did a search for lonely cheeto and it led me to the San Diego Spaniel Rescue where they had a poem that put me in tears. I’m balling like it’s a Hallmark commercial, is this PMS? Something else???

How many times can I watch Gay Shark before it becomes NOT funny? I’m peeing myself here!

I REALLY should start planning my menu for our WooHoo 1st Day of Spring BBQ.

Oh look! A penny.

I can’t even keep up with myself. What was I talking about?

The Bet…Now With Marshmallows

So I messed up. My daughter is a HUGE reader. She will read anything from biographies to dictionaries but she prefers fantasy. I had heard some hype about some book that was gonna be a movie and fell for it without doing my research like a good Mom should.

I bought her the first Twilight book.

It gets worse. I sat down and watched the movie with her. I was not really impressed. I mean really, glittery vampires? I dread this Halloween. Anyways, her aunt is a fan too and had the other books and just happened to be done with them and offered to ship them to her.

The girl now has Twilight on the brain and it’s driving me CRAZY! She can take anything that is said or done, relate it to Twilight and then share her entires thoughts on it. My research now being done, I hope I instilled enough into her about what in the world is wrong with those books so she isn’t just some mindless book groupie.

I didn’t know what else to do and I didn’t want to be rude to the kid. Didn’t want her thinking her thoughts and feelings were junk I didn’t have time to hear but I was REALLY SICK of Twilight. So I proposed a bet to her.

“Bet ya can’t go a whole week without mentioning Twilight or it’s subject matter, specifically vampires and werewolves.”

“Bet I can. I also think a werewolf would keep his promise better than a vampire.”

“Ugh. Okay! One week. You win, you can have a special company night where you have a friend over and we do something cool. I win, you have to do the dishes for a whole week.”

Three days into the bet I was standing there washing the dishes while thinking about how nice it would be to not have to do them for a week. Oh well, she was doing pretty darn good with her end of the bet. She might even make it and then I’ll have the sound of two tween girls squealing all around the house while I regale them with tales of Robert Pattinsons hygiene.

Later on, I found myself in the cereal aisle. Hubby was picking his cereal out and my baby girl hates shopping so I was looking for something for her. She has never really been big on sweet, kiddy cereals. She prefers granola and other good for ya stuff but there was a sale and I just couldn’t resist.

It's whole grain, fortified, wheat cereal.

I can’t wait to ask her what she wants for breakfast!

Quitting Smoking…Almost Killed Me?

Oh yeah. You’ve heard it before too, “My uncle’s baby’s daddy’s rabbit quit smoking with the patch. It was so eeeeasy!”. I think I might have even said it myself once, way back when I had tried to quit smoking the second time.

There I was, on day 9 without a cigarette. I was wanting to kill my husband doing great. I had thought about kicking the cat not lit up for nine days! My daughter was breathing just to annoy the hell out of me so proud of me.

I pulled off the old patch and looked around on my arms for a new spot to soak in the sweet, sweet nicotine. The pamphlet that came with them warned me not to use the same spot for a week. Well, there goes my upper arms as an option till at least tomorrow. No matter how big and jiggly they have gotten, those 21 mg patches are big and there wasn’t a place for it.

I reached back and stuck the patch on my shoulder blade. Perfect place for recreating one of those life-interupting, traveling itches because MAN those patches ITCH like the dickens for the first hour if not longer.

Once that settled down and I no longer looked like I was trying to escape from a straight-jacket Mel Gibson style, I got down to the serious business I had to attend. You know, surfing the web and looking up new recipes.

I have suffered headaches since I was 12 years old, so the pain in my head was nothing new to me and I tried to ignore it. Oh, now I was getting a little dizzy but it was okay with me because I was still able to read about Jennifer Anniston’s nose job deviated septum repair. When I lost the strength to scroll down and compare the before and after pics of the nose, that’s when I became alarmed.

I wondered if it was the patch? In my disorientated state, I dug out the little Nicoderm CQ pamphlet and searched for their phone number. Something I had read made me think I could and should call them to ask what I should do.

The lady that answered the phone was nice enough. I told her the problem and asked her if I should remove the patch, if it sounded like something that could be caused by it. She says she is sorry to hear that and would I give her the information from the box about the patch?

Well of course I will because I”m still thinking she can help me. I was drowning in my head and this lady is gonna pull me out if I can tell her about my patch. Information noted, I ask her again, should I take off the patch?

She can’t answer that for me but I should give her my name and address. I think I give her the info she wanted, at that point I am not sure at all. She then informs me about how unwell I sound and maybe we should get off the phone.

Alrighty! So I give my husband a call. At this point I’m laying on the bed with the phone next to my face because I totally lack the strength to pull it up to my ear. He says he’ll call and check on me in thirty minutes when he is finished with dinner break. He calls back when what I’ve told him sinks in enough to make sense and tells me to remove the patch and he is on his way home.

I finally understood him enough to remove the patch and he walks in the door and puts me together enough to get to the ER. I couldn’t think, could barely move, didn’t know which way to puke, I was sick! Nicotine poisoning!

I don’t remember much about my hospital stay because in order to get my blood pressure back to normal they pumped me up with enough morphine and relaxant drugs to put Courtney Love to shame. This all happened a week ago and today is the first day I have felt clear headed and not nauseous. Six days of walking around disorientated and unsteady.

Six days ago I overdosed myself on a Nicoderm CQ patch and almost died, I want people to know this. I want people to be very careful with nicotine replacements. Before attempting to quit with gum, patches, lozenges or whatever, make yourself familiar with the symptoms of nicotine poisoning so you recognize it as such BECAUSE IF YOU CALL THE NICODERM PEOPLE (or whatever) THEY AREN’T GONNA HELP YOU ONE BIT EVEN IF YOU’RE ON THE PHONE WITH THEM DYING.

Sorry about that, but really, they could at least send me a card.

By the way, I had to quit cold-turkey after all that. This post was written in between me running around the house trying to locate a cigarrette butt I just know was laying around here somewhere…