I'll let you in on a little secret...

I should have been a gardener.

As much fun as I've made of horticulture majors over the years, I would love to be a gardener... well, except for pulling weeds, that is. PB and I took the Force to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond last Saturday. What a cool place! They had gorgeous flowers in bloom, a Japanese Tea House, and an awesome Children's Garden, complete with tree house. It was freakin' hot that day, but we had a very good time. Anyway, being there definitely got me in the mood for some spring planting, so on Sunday I got crack-a-lackin' and bought a bunch of stuff to pretty up my porch. I've long been a fan of window boxes, so I got two of those for my porch railing (as you can't get the screens off the windows to have them there). After some significant frustration over not being able to get them to stay stable (so as to not break the head of some innocent passer-by, or the pot-smoking frat boys downstairs) I remembered that zip-ties aren't just for stalkers anymore! A quick trip to evil WalMart and I was set! So I poured dirt, dug, planted, fertilized and watered... and voila! Beautiful boxes full of flowers.

Now, how exactly am I going to get the 2 giant hanging fuchsias to hang when I have a metal cover on the place I want to hang them? Oh, wait, that's easy... I have a drill! So drill I did, and now the fuchsias are hanging there pretty as a picture. I left the porch light on tonight just so I could look at them a little longer. The hummingbird feeder is up, too, and those little suckers are coming in droves! One was so impatient that it fed about 2 feet from my face while I planted the window boxes. I may or may not be afraid of birds, as we all know. Somehow I feel that the hummingbirds and I have an understanding. You know, they understand that if they peck my eyes out I won't feed them anymore. Anyway, I flinch a lot when they're around, but they don't seem to mind that too much.

Oh, and Skinny Marie is doing great, thank you for asking! She's gained almost 2 pounds in a week and has settled into life at Casa de Crazy Cat Lady without a bump in the road. Yesterday she was actually awake for a while (mostly she'd been eating and sleeping until that point) and today she started to play with some toys (which went largely ignored until now). I guess all signs point to go for her. She's completely comfortable around other cats, and thinks Pooh King is the best rubbing post a girl could have. He still follows her around, worrying that she'll get in trouble, but so far he's got nothing to report.

Okay, pictures of the pets, birds, and plants will be posted soon!

Looking for love...
Looking for food...

Skinny Marie is doing really well. She has gained a whole pound and is indeed looking more like a cat now than a skeleton. I brought her out to meet Otis, Oz and Pooh last night. She wasn't phased by any of it, even when Otis and Oz hissed and walked indignantly away. She headbutted Pooh like she's been here forever. I can say without question now that she will fit in to any home, and probably will LOVE a house with kids to pet her, another cat to snuggle with, or a dog to hang with. She's something, alright. I'll be calling the local places about posting a free/found ad, and hopefully she'll have a new home soon. While checking her out I found some scabbing around her neck that seems to suggest that she may have been picked up and carried off by a fox or coyote. Maybe she does have a family that's missing her. She's been on the road for a while, though, so it may be a little harder to find them.

She'll land on her feet. There's no question about that.

I know, I know. I said I needed a break. I said I wasn't going to do it again for a while.

But I'm back... and her name is Skinny Marie.

She was on the porch at a patient's house, and she was starving. And my patient wouldn't feed her because she thought she would go to another house. Except she couldn't. She was too tired, too hungry, and too thirsty to go anywhere else.

So she came with me. She was so ridiculously happy to be in the car she curled up on the passenger seat and made happy feet all the way home. Then she nearly choked herself trying to eat all the food in the little cup in one bite. And she purrs, and rubs, and rolls, and makes happy feet all the time.

She weighs all of 5 lbs today, which is probably more than she did yesterday. I know because today the vet gave her a clean bill of health, except for her earmites and "a desperate need for groceries".

Skinny Marie will find a new home, but for now she's safe, full, and very, very grateful.

The Barn Dance is over. Hooray! No, seriously, hoo-freakin'-ray! I am NEVER doing that again.

The Shifu clan arrived Thursday evening, and pizza was had by all. Whoo hoo!! Then, while PB went to school, and the Shifu's ran around FarmVegas having fun, I had to go to work. Boooooooo. Saturday morning finally came around and it was game on! PB and I took a load of silent auction stuff down to the barn, which was totally necessary since I had the brainiac idea to load it all before I had the brains to remember that the trailer hitch was in the trap door below the hatch space. Good thing the barn's only about 10 minutes away.

After a few trips we had moved all of the silent auction stuff, including a sailboat and 6 brown sugar pies, and it was go time. For the most part things ran quite smoothly during the event. Well, that's not entirely true. The Square Dancers showed up late, which caused the band to take an unscheduled 45 minute break. Thankfully the band members were totally cool about it and didn't pitch a fit. They even got up to give square dancing a try. Anyway, things got hairy at the end of the silent auction (which I was supposed to be in charge of) when the director took the bid sheets out of my hands and decided to do it her own way. Umm, not cool, and I told her as much.

Spellbound and Mr. Spellbound came down and hung out for a while, which was awesome. And Brook is one of the best bake sale saleswomen I've ever seen. That chick hawked brownies, cookies and pies like a pro. At the end the Spellbounds decided to head back to Richmond, I sent the Shifus back to the apartment to put the wee one to bed, and PB and I hauled a trailer full of tables back to the church they were borrowed from.

Today the Shifus and I went to brunch and ate waffles bigger than our heads. Then they hit the road for Ashville so as to have the kids in place for school tomorrow. PB and I went back to the barn, broke down the stage (with the help of only 1 person who showed up from my organization) and returned it to the bar it was borrowed from, hauled the event's trash to the dump, then delivered the bike and the sailboat to their new owners. We were done with the Barn Dance Extravaganza around 4:00 this afternoon. The committee chair (who was the only one to show to help with tear-down) thinks we need to meet this week to go over what was good and bad about the event, what we can work on to do it better, and to start planning the next event. I told her I needed a few weeks.

Like I said, I'm never doing that again. Seriously.

PB starts school tomorrow. New bookbag, pens, paper and notebooks... the whole works. I'm so excited for him.

Shifu, Brook and the kids will get here on Thursday. The Barn Dance festivities are on Saturday evening, so we'll all spend a good part of Saturday getting everything ready. I'm really getting excited about it now.

Speaking of the Barn Dance, I'm on the radio! The commercial is well written, but I was focusing on the enunciation so much (so as to make sure that everyone could understand me) that it came off a bit monotone. Yeah, monotone except for the "YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-HAW!!!" part. That part is very animated. No, I don't think they broadcast on the internet and no, I will not send you a copy.

My job continues to be faboo. Seriously. I even love the driving part.

Today a patient asked me how long before I grew up (in a good way). I thought about it all the way home... answer to come soon.

Happy Easter!

Bawk Bawk!!!

Last week a patient's wife taught me how to make "brown sugar pie". Not surprisingly, it has 2 cups of brown sugar in it. And it's delicious. Also not surprisingly, her husband just had a quintuple bypass. Maybe I'll pass on the second slice.

The silent auction is coming along really well. I now have a room FULL of stuff that I need to catalog and prepare bid slips for. Whoo hoo! In other Barn Dance related news, I'm going to have visitors during it! Brook and Shifu are coming!!!!! (Okay, confession time. Brook, we call Big Daddy D "Shifu" (like from Kung Fu Panda) because of his Kung Fu awesomeness.) That's right, I'm housing the bed breakers. Sweet! I haven't actually seen Shifu since college (where, as I recall, he tried to get me involved in a pyramid scheme) and I've never met Brook, but I can't wait to have the party begin. I hope they bring Minion #1 as I have lots of heavy lifting to do with getting things to and from the Barn Dance... and my car needs washed. Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!

I'm going to record my "radio spot" this morning.

That's right. I'm going to be on the radio. We've purchased some commercial time to advertise the fundraising barn dance for Heartland Horse Heroes. I don't know how I feel about hearing my voice on the radio. I have a voice made for silence.

Anyway, wish me luck.

So, I started taking the "African Dance Class" at the YMCA. It's offered Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I usually hit two classes a week. I figured that with a badonkadonk like this, African dance might be right up my alley.

I noticed right away that this was not really a dance class, but more a straight cardio, low impact aerobics-type class. But it's fun, so I don't mind. I wiggle, jiggle, and sweat through the hour, knowing that at the end I'll acknowledge that whether it's dancing or not, it's kicking my ass. The music has been, well, less than African as well. The first few weeks we listened to a mix of Caribbean/Jamaican style rhythms. Again, a good beat, so I didn't mind the decidedly "not African" vibe so much. Lately, though, the music has gotten downright weird.

Last week? The Macarena. I shit you not.

Last night? Brittany Spears.

The only thing mildly "African" about our class is the instructor... a black woman named "Yleshiba".

Yleshiba, that's African, right? I mean, she's from New York.