Category: Craziness

I was singing,

“Just hear those sleigh bells jinglin’, ring ting tinglin’ to
Come on it’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you
The snow is fallin’ and friends are callin’ “you-who”
Come on it’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with, you”

as I sat wrapping gifts. After a half an hour, I stopped and grabbed the phone.

“Hello? Do you have any classes for remedial package wrapping?”

They didn’t. So I sat there looking at packages I had wrapped and packages to be wrapped and I realized I was screwed! It is just not my strong suit. Oh, I try. I carefully cut the paper, I try hard to line everything up, and I desperately try not to tape myself to each item. In the end, I have tape stuck to my elbow and eye brow! Don’t even ask me how it gets there.

I looked at Fritz. “You want to try?”

He looked at me, with laughter in his eyes and got up and left the room. So it was me, and miles of Santa Claus wrapping paper and my tape.

I tried to calm down by reminding myself that it is, after all, the thought that counts, right? But then I looked at the square little packages with the ill fitting paper and I can feel the tears well up inside.

I had turned on Martha Stewart’s program and they were decorating packages with live holly and icicles that they made from paper mache! I wondered then, what was wrong with me, that I couldn’t even tape two pieces of paper together to form a straight line?

I am gift wrapping challenged.

I stopped and sat there once again looking at the wrapped and unwrapped packages. I simply refuse to use gift bags unless I am under the gun time wise. I love to see people ripping the paper I have so carefully tried to tape together.

So what’s a girl to do? I know I can never hope to be Martha Stewart, and there are still a few more days left until Christmas, so I’m not out of time, I’ll simply have to suck it up and hope that my family loves me enough to forgive the poorly wrapped presents.

Can someone pass the tape?

I am not what you would call a lucky person. I have always hoped I was, but well, things just seem to conspire to thwart me. Still when attending a charitable fund raiser, or going to a group conference, I always buy raffle tickets. Not because I expect to win, but because I always want to support the organization.

Recently, we went to the North American Teckel Club show so that Greta could be rated by the German judge. I bought some merchandise with the NATC logo on it, and I bought raffle tickets. I left the show after Greta’s papers were signed for the long drive back to New Hampshire, but before the raffle was held. And this time, I WON!

What did I win? A bright fluorescent orange hunting vest! Now I know that there are some of you who wouldn’t see the use for this, but for me, living in a heavily wooded area of New Hampshire, the vest is perfect during hunting season, so I am not mistaken for a Moose! I love it. I plan to take my old fluorescent vest and make smaller ones for Fritz and Greta.

I did believe that this was some sort of anomaly and that I would probably go for the rest of my life without winning another thing. This was okay with me, because I felt happy to have won, just once in my life.

Last Saturday was a Christmas Fair at the Greek Church that my next door neighbor attends. I went to support her church, and as always, bought raffle tickets. And again, I got a call. I WON! This time I won a cute Santa Elf decoration for the shelf. He’s really rather large, and adorable and I am pretty happy about this.

More than anything, I can’t believe I am winning anything at all! Hubby had me check the two lottery tickets he had purchased for the Saturday night drawings. Not one number. I told him that I think it must be that I need to be the one buying the ticket for the magic to work.

In the meantime, I’m looking for another church Christmas Fair to attend and a raffle to enter. I wonder if this is what it’s like when you win in Vegas?

Friday is the big day. Greta goes to the Vet and we will get the word on “if” she is pregnant. Oh how I wish I had experienced fingers! I could feel my girl up and just know if she had “biscuits in the oven”! Alas, my fingers are not so learned, and although I “think” I feel a hard little mound in her belly, there is part of me that worries that she is just getting fat!

I’m like that, you know. When presented with almost irrefutable evidence of a condition, I always come close to convincing myself that it’s nothing.

A few years ago when I lost the vision in my left eye as I was instant messaging with my friend Uschi, I immediately suspected something serious. I actually called the doctor and when told to come immediately to the hospital I got in my Jeep and headed to the hospital. Half way there, I had convinced myself that it was nothing and that the doctor would be angry that I had wasted his time.

I know, you are thinking I am a nut case. Blind in one eye and then convincing myself it was nothing. As you all know from this entry, I had a detached retina. So it wasn’t all in my mind. It was real.

Even with this history it doesn’t stop me from thinking that perhaps I am wrong about my Greta and that this

July ’06

Nov. 8

is just my imagination.

I take her in at 10:30 in the morning. I will post as soon as I get home and let you all know.

Last night I had written a post about my computer woes. Ah, the words flowed from my fingers onto the keyboard, as I composed sheer poetry! Never have I explained a situation with mere words in such an expressive manner.

I knew I would surely win the Pulitzer Prize for Blogging, so I asked my dear, sweet Hubby, who is an English Language/Grammer enthusiast , to go over this masterpiece and correct it for me, before I posted it, and likewise to send a copy to Columbia University for Pulitzer consideration.

I went into the kitchen to start dinner and he sat down with a glass of wine to begin the task at hand.

Then I heard it! Those fateful words. “The post has disappeared!” I ran to the computer, took it from his hands, and I looked. Gone! Gone! All my hopes of International fame and fortune! Gone!

Hubby apologized over and over, but I knew in my heart that life would never be the same.

When I die now, my obituary will read…”and she would have won a Pulitzer Prize for Blogging, but her husband accidentally deleted the post”.

I love you, Chip!

The saga of the router continued this morning after a difficult night’s sleep. I just knew there was something very wrong, but I wasn’t sure what it was. During the night when I woke, I thought that perhaps there was something wrong with the modem, but I am not enough of a computer Geek (just a Geek Wanna-be), to understand the intricate workings of my computer, modem and router.

When I got up this morning I decided to call my ISP. Certainly they would know if there was a possibility that the modem was failing after the thunder storm, causing my new router not to work correctly. I simply could not accept that two routers were defective.

I spoke to a nice technician, and I explained everything to her. We tossed a few theories back and forth, tried a few things and by the end of the 45 minute call, which left her totally perplexed, I was put on a list for an in house service call.

I left for my hair appointment with the question still ringing in my head. Was the modem defective or was I just the unluckiest computer user who ended up with two defective routers?

I sat in the hair dresser’s chair, while my hair processed, looking a bit like the old Phyllis Diller. I tossed the idea around in my mind some more, and the more I tossed it around, the more I was sure that the modem was the problem.

As I finished up at the salon, I decided to speak to someone I absolutely trust regarding computers. My computer guru, Chip. I called Hubby on my cell phone and told him I was going to swing by Chip’s to speak to him about the problem.

When I got to Chip’s I stood there explaining things as best as I could. I finished my explanation of events and then asked him, “Could this have anything to do with the modem?”

His answer was a quick and firm, YES! Apparently it has something to do with the fact that the older routers work on lower frequencies and if a modem is having a problem, then the older ones don’t need as much kick to work. The newer routers, work at a higher rate and throw a broader signal. They require a modem to be working efficiently. He had actually had this exact thing happen to his own system a year or so ago.

At that exact moment my cell phone rang. The ISP serviceman was at our home. I left Chip, raced home and told the serviceman what I had learned. He didn’t exactly believe me. He tried a few, slick tricks that all repairmen know, and nothing worked.

Finally the nice serviceman switched out the modem with a new one. Bingo! Problem solved. The nice serviceman had never heard of anything like this happening before. He wrote down the model number of my old router and then wrote down exactly what had occurred. I think he was truly in awe of the situation.

After he left I sat down and smiled. I KNEW there was something wrong, and I knew it had to be something with the modem. Maybe there is hope for my geekiness after all.

Thanks, and I love you, Chip!

I was looking forward to today. Hubby was going to get me a new router, I would install it and life would be good. However, when I was going through the set up process, the new router didn’t work! I tried everything, and nothing would get it to work.

I called their help line. I waited a short time, and got a gentleman on the phone. He was in India. And he spoke English with such a heavy accent that he had to repeat himself 3 or 4 times for me to understand anything that he was saying. Frustration built and I began to have a melt down.

Emily was here and she fed the dogs, and before I knew it, it was time for dinner. Not for me to start dinner, but to actually sit down to eat, but nothing had been started.

Hubby had wanted to bid on something on Ebay and since I was in the middle of a router change everything was down and not working.

Finally, I reached the point of no return and I hung up the darn phone and left the office in disgust. I made dinner, ate it, went back in to the office, unhooked the new router and hooked up the old router, and said the heck with it!

I have questions to ask my ISP, but I’ll do that tomorrow. For tonight I plan to get my pajamas on, and curl up and watch “How I Met Your Mother” and “Two And A Half Men”.

Sometimes a girl just has to chill.

They say that everyone is connected to Kevin Bacon by 6 degrees. Well today I found out that this was true. I was born in 1958 and so was Kevin. Why, we could almost be twins!

Seriously, have you ever had one of those weird encounters where you are talking to someone and they happen to know someone you know, or perhaps they know someone who is once or twice removed from the person you know?

It’s the old saying, “It’s a small world”.

Recently this actually happened to me. I was sitting in a surgical waiting room passing the time back when Hubby had his second knee operation. I was speaking to a stranger about operations and such and I mentioned that I was getting a second opinion on my eye. (This was back in May before my eye surgery.)

The woman asked me all sorts of questions, the kind you don’t mind answering because you are never going to see this person again, when a woman seated on the other side of me said, “You’re going to see Dr. W. in Boston, aren’t you?”

I just about fell out of my chair. How did she know? She then explained that her husband had some very serious eye problems and had gone to this woman and she had restored his vision!

Another time, I was in Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France. I was standing in a line on a very hot day, feeling tired and faint, when a woman came up to me and said, “You’ve been to Falmouth, Massachusetts, haven’t you?”.

Again, you could have knocked me over with a feather. “Yes,” I replied, “How did you know?”.
“Well,” she began with a big smile, “You have on this pin,” and she gently touched the seagull pin on my lapel, “and that was made by Mr. Pannis!”
She was right. Years ago there was a silversmith in the town I grew up in who made very distinctive jewelry. This man was a true artisan and his work was never duplicated by another.

So have you had this happen to you?

I’ve been watching TV today, one of those things that you do on a rainy Sunday in October…well that, and cook. So while cooking and watching TV, I found myself not really involved with the football games on the tube, but rather the commercials.

There are two ads that seem to be repeated over and over. The first is a Tiger Woods commercial. It shows Tiger on the golf course. At first he is hitting the ball brilliantly and then he is hitting the ball out of sand traps, water holes, and off of palm tree stumps. You’ve all seen the commercial, haven’t you? He does this with a smile on his face and with a great deal of self deprecating humor. Very cute.

The next one is Peyton Manning going around to local businesses, applauding the workers, cheering them on, asking the grocery store guy for his autograph. Peyton is so cute, just making fun of himself.

I mentioned this to Hubby, who remarked that each time those commercials are shown those two men just rake in the big bucks. Kaching, kaching! (Sound of a cash register ringing up the dollars!)

It was then that I had this idea.

Dear Mr. Ad Man,
I want you to know that I would not be averse to making a commercial for your company. I will allow you to film me while I golf (which is truly splendid because I have no talent at all and this would be quite humorous to your viewers). I would also allow you to come with me to the grocery store, McDonald’s, Wendy’s or Burger King, and film me asking for autographs and cheering the cooks as they make my burgers. I will even do a series of cheers in an outfit of your choice (which, if you could see my figure would be “fun” for sure).
For this privilege, I will charge you 1/10th of what Peyton Manning and Tiger Woods charge you for their services.
You see, instead of these superstars trying to look like an average person, you would actually have an average person, in “real life”! This could be a first!
Yours very truly,
The Dackel Princess

Well, do you think I have a chance?

Today I have spent a large portion of the day thinking about clothes. What clothes, you ask? The clothes I will wear on Saturday to show Greta at the Zuchtschau. Do I wear the ever slimming black pants that hug my derrière with a cream turtleneck and classic gray and cream Icelandic sweater, or do I wear some chocolate brown comfortable pants, with a wheaten turtleneck and classic light brown German edelweiss sweater with loden piping?

I asked Hubby. What did he like? What did he think looked good? He is the perfect husband. He liked them both and refused to commit.

So, I am packing both outfits and I will see how I feel on Saturday. If I am feeling young and wild and free, I will wear the brown. If I feel like hiding, I will wear the black.

I have gotten Greta’s crate ready and next I need to pack her food. I’d like to get everything but the toiletries packed in the car tonight. Then tomorrow I can relax and not stress. Well, not stress too much!

This morning I was sitting here reading mail when first Fritz jumped up in my lap, and then Greta. Hubby grabbed the camera and took this picture.

Have a great Friday everyone and I’ll write as soon as I can with Greta news.

Today was grape day here in New Hampshire. The Concord Grapes, so deep, dark and purple were harvested yesterday by Hubby. They grow wild on our property and all you need to harvest them is a good ladder and no fear of heights. Needless to say, that’s why Hubby did the climbing. I had to remove the grapes from the stems, clean them, crush them and cook them.
Once that was done I pressed them for their juice.

MB ala I Love Lucy

It is fairly labor intensive work, one I do with plastic gloves on because grapes stain skin unlike anything else. I could just see myself presenting Greta to the judge with purple fingers! Now that actually made me laugh while I worked.

Hubby picked more today, (giant frown) and I told him that he simply had to either sell them or give them away. I didn’t want to have to do more of this, as it is also apple season and in the next few weeks I’ll be making apple sauce to freeze.

It’s all been fun though, growing our own fruits and vegetables and then canning them to use over the course of the winter. Emily brought over a friend today and showed her all the things we have canned this year. The young girl’s eyes got very large in her head. I smiled and said that we’re getting ready for a big snow storm this winter 😉 .