May. 27, 2007

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WOW [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:27 pm

last night, as part of the ongoing birthday celebration, kevin grilled me a perfect steak and we all ate outside at mom and dad’s house and it didn’t rain on us. and then we ate lots of cake and i got a ridiculously large amount of gifts. lots of cool things, including some extremely cute high heel wedges that randy got for me. i told him and kevin and that i wanted these shoes; i’d tried them on at the mall and looked them up online and printed out a photo and gave it to them. i assumed that one of them would get them for me.

but still, you never know. i want to take them to las vegas but i’m sure that would be a very bad idea because of all the walking and of the extreme height of the shoes. but boy, they’re great shoes. when will i have an opportunity to wear them? maybe i’ll take 'em.

after getting all these great gifts, i opened a kind of big box from kevin, but i had no idea what it could be because i thought he’d have been the one to get me the shoes.

no. he got me a NEW LAPTOP COMPUTER. i’m sitting here typing away on it RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE.

i still can’t believe he gave it to me.

i’m lounging on the couch as i type. this way, i really never have to go into our office again. last night i told kevin that maybe he got me the computer so i won’t have to go in there again, and i’ll never ask him to do something with the many many piles of paper that are everywhere.

that seems like a kind of expensive way to get me out of the office, though, doesn’t it?

I CAN’T BELIEVE I HAVE A NEW LAPTOP.

it’s a gateway. it has a 1.5 GHz Intel processor and 958 MB of Ram. i know these things because i looked them up just now. it has a wide screen, and it’s very very light. i think maybe it weighs five pounds. i’m sure the weight is listed somewhere, or i’m sure kevin knows what it is, but he’s taking a nap right now. i think that if i woke him up to ask how much the computer weighs, he wouldn’t be really happy to answer. but actually he would, and he’d probably tell me the right answer but he’d still be asleep.

I HAVE A NEW LAPTOP.

i got so many other great gifts, too, and i don’t really think i needed so many things. mom got me a purse made out of metal, that she got at the art fair. it’s very cool and i’m thinking of also taking it to las vegas. hmm, it’s a lot of metal, would there be an issue on the plane?

i’d take a photo of the shoes and the purse and the computer, but i don’t want to get off the couch. plus, i think i don’t have some necessary thing for getting the camera memory card into the computer. it comes with a slot for a memory card, but not my kind.

we have had no wild animal incidents today. i did let a moth into the house accidentally, but i’m sure some dog or cat will catch it soon.

here’s the funniest thing about my birthday celebration last night - i kept saying that all i wanted was a CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH CHOCOLATE ICING. over and over i said it, and yesterday i called amy and left her a message, asking her if she was busy making me my chocolate cake with chocolate icing. i knew she wasn’t really going to make it, because i was sure she’d buy one. i called randy, too, and asked hi if he was busy making my cake and he just kind of laughed. i’m pretty sure randy has never made a cake of any kind. ever.

but last night they carried out the cake and the icing was...white. but it was very very cute; they’d gotten a photo of me when i was a kid and had it magically put onto the top of the icing. and i guess you can’t do that with chocolate icing. (couldn’t they have frosted the rest of the top in chocolate, and left the photo white?) but it was fine.

and then i cut into the cake...and it was white. hmm, i thought. i wonder why they did that. IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE CHOCOLATE said amy. she’d ordered chocolate but they gave her white. and nobody knew till we cut into it.

i just think it’s funny that i kept saying over and over that i wanted a CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH CHOCOLATE ICING, and i got a white cake with white icing. it was quite delicious. but not chocolate. but very funny to me.

in our family we always get together for our birthdays as long as everybody is living here in town, and lots of times i make the cake because i like to do it, but sometimes people have specific requests, but sometimes it’s supposed to be a SURPRISE like maybe you won’t even get a cake even though of course you know you’re getting one. when i was a kid i’m pretty sure i wanted CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH CHOCOLATE ICING but i usually got an angel food cake, because for some reason mom really liked to make them. they must have been easy to make.

at least i didn’t get an angel food cake last night. instead of amused, i’d have been MAD. and then WATCH OUT.

i hope you have a good vacation day tomorrow. whatever you do, if you’re driving in the state of illinois, DON’T SPEED. because there are cops EVERY TEN MILES, trying to get the speeders.

ok then,

new computer grace.


May. 26, 2007

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TRAPPED IN A HORROR MOVIE [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:10 am

i realize now, by the light of day, that it wasn’t exactly like being inside a horror movie. i don’t even watch horror movies because they’re too scary.

but last night as i was lying in bed, i was sure this is what it feels like to those people in HMs who are waiting for something bad to happen and freaking out and the audience is yelling WATCH OUT!

like i said, though, it wasn’t really that bad.

we were in bed, kevin was already asleep, and i was tossing and turning. the door was shut to the music room, in order to trap the mouse inside. mollie was sleeping on the floor, but then all of a sudden she wasn’t sleeping anymore, she was snuffling all around the room. clearly, there was another mouse.

another mouse. soon will we be overrun? yes.

mollie wouldn’t quit. she kept snuffling and digging under the bed and tried to get into the closet and paced around and ran down the hall and whined and scratched and i started going a little crazy, deciding i’d never get to sleep at all.

then i thought, since there was a mouse, it would probably scamper right up ONTO THE BED.

so i was lying there, terrified at the thought of a mouse suddenly running right across my face.

no sleep. lots of anxiety. i kept thinking I’M IN A HORROR MOVIE. or at least having a real-life experience that could have been a bad dream.

after a while winnie jumped up on the bed, and he did walk right across me, a few times. but i realized that since winnie was there, he’d surely capture a mouse on the bed. but wouldn’t that make a huge commotion? yes.

eventually, even though mollie didn’t stop her foraging for mice, i finally fell asleep. this morning mollie was peacefully sleeping on the bed with us and kevin found a dead mouse in the hall, so clearly she had finally accomplished her mission and was able to rest after her active night.

me, i’m sluggish. surely a nap will be in order on this wet and dreary saturday. and tonight...

i can’t think about that right now. i’m looking forward to sleeping in las vegas, even though it’s not so easy to sleep someplace different. but there probably won’t be any mice, and there definitely won’t be any dog or cats in the room.

ok then, saturday awaits,

grace.


May. 25, 2007

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MOUSE HUNT! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 7:00 pm
isn’t there a game called mouse hunt? well, mollie is playing the real-life version, in our music room.

i’m sure honey brought the mouse into the house, but honey is now sleeping peacefully. she mostly enjoys carrying rodents and bunnies around. but now...

mollie is very determined to GET THAT MOUSE. hopefully she will, so it won’t be running rampant around the house.

is it only a matter of time before honey manages to drag a bunny into the house? now that will really be something.

i bought a pair of earth shoes today. remember earth shoes? i have a very vague memory of them, but i don’t believe i ever owned any. they slope downwards at the back, so that you don’t have back pain because you’re in better alignment. we shall see. maybe i’ll take them to VIVA LAS VEGAS with me and see if they withstand the huge amount of walking. i had no intention of buying any earth shoes; for some reason kevin has decided he wants a pair so we went to a shoe store but he couldn’t find any and i tried some on and i’m wearing them right now. they feel really good so far.

kevin was going to take me to bella milano last night for a b'day dinner, but we were too tired. instead we sat on the couch and ate (delicious) frozen pizza and watched a lot of episodes of “sex & the city.” it was a perfect birthday evening. everybody bought me the series for my birthday last year, and we now have five episodes to go. it’s hard to believe that it’s taken a full year to watch them.

and then we have to start watching “lost” in earnest, so amy doesn’t yell at us. not that she yells, but she’s very adamant about our deep need to watch it. mom is totally hooked and i think maybe she’s watched all of season one, but i think there are many many episodes, plus they’re all about 45 minutes long i think.

whew. tv-watching is kind of difficult when the weather is nice.

we went to bella milano for lunch today, instead, and had a glass of wine with our meals. very decadent.

the mouse hunt continues. i hear all kinds of thumping going on. there are a few bookcases in the music room, and i’m sure that mollie will start trying to dig right under them pretty soon if she doesn’t get the mouse. perhaps it can be the beginning of a basement? because we don’t have a basement, but why not just dig one?

ok then, i don’t know if friday night could get much more exciting than this,

grace.

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friday! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:21 am

and i hope yours is a good one. here, things are pretty good. goodness all around. no new mouse faces to report - well, there was one earlier in the week, as i recall - but kevin did find an unspecified mouse organ this morning. hopefully the face was disposed of properly. whatever “properly” might mean in the mind of the killer honey cat.

mom took me to lunch yesterday at the house of hunan, and their sushi is really darn good and if you live here and like sushi, you should definitely check it out. michael higgins, the chef at maldaner’s, got there right before us and he was eating sushi at the sushi bar. so there you have it, what more endorsement could you want?

of course, there’s dad’s opposing viewpoint: “it’s no good, i only like Taipan.” not that dad is set in his ways or anything. but he could be right about the chinese food, since all i’ve had at the new house of hunan is the sushi. oh, and also my rather intriguing fortune in my cookie. it read, “A blonde from afar has something interesting for you.” Hmm. i hope by “something interesting,” it meant heaps of winnings from our upcoming trip to las vegas. i feel it must be a blonde i don’t know, because i can’t think any faraway blondes, the only blonde i can think of right now is me, and i’m even more blonde thanks to amy’s hair magic.

well, jerri is a very faraway blonde at the moment because i believe she’s still in australia, but i’m sure she’s not the person who is going to provide me with the interesting thing.

so i’ll just wait and see.

the last time i was at house of hunan, i got another good fortune. it said that something great would happen to me in exactly three months.

i love fortunes where they actually tell you a fortune, instead of the too frequent and very lame ones that say something like “you are a fine person.” i want a PREDICTION OF THE FUTURE, please.

ok then,

friday grace.





May. 20, 2007

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up on the rooftop... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 2:25 pm

is my husband. after the tornado last year, many many people got new roofs because of all the tornado damage. some people had no roofs at all after the tornado.

we didn’t get a new roof when everybody else did, and now i believe ours is the seediest-looking roof in the neighborhood. a couple moved in across the street, but before they did we went over to look at their house when it was for sale. theirs is a two-story house and the view of our roof from their second story was pretty bad. not to mention all the boat parts in the driveway now. i should really bake some chocolate chip cookies and take them over there, to show the people that although it may appear that our house is closer to a trashy trailer park trailer than a house in a nice area, that...well, i make good cookies, anyway.

but right now as i type, kevin is changing all that. he’s starting, anyway. here he is just moments ago, hard at work.



i should be doing something too, instead of sitting in here typing. he said i can’t help him with the roof, because he feels that i’d fall off. and of course he’s right. at least my lack of grace comes in handy every now and again.

here’s the corner of the back yard that continues the trashy trailer park theme:



boat parts, plus there’s that unsightly thing hanging off the back fence. i think it’s part of the catamaran, which we haven’t used in two years. i should go out there right now and at least tidy it up a little.

here’s the part of the yard that i try to exclusively look at when outside.



it’s much more orderly, with no random pieces of plastic hanging anywhere. the kitties love that circle garden and can frequently be found creeping around in it or hiding deep in the recesses.

when i was weeding this morning i looked up and there was honey, carefully walking along the top of the fence, with an animal about half her size in her mouth. a big mouse? i hoped.

nope. she jumped down and set it down - a baby bunny. oh no. it wasn’t dead, but didn’t seem to be too happy. i talked soothingly at it and suddenly it was OFF, tearing across the yard. honey tore after it and i yelled at her and she cornered it under a piece of pipe. i took honey inside and finally kevin came out and so did mollie and then we had quite a bit of mayhem for a while. kevin got mollie inside, but meanwhile the bunny took off and we couldn’t find it and i finally said we should let mollie out to find it, then we could let it go.

mollie, meanwhile, was whining frantically and trying to smash her way out of the back door.

kevin let her out and she tore after the bunny and soon had it in her teeth. kevin chased her for a while but of course it did no good, and mollie had a lovely baby bunny morning snack.

while i weeded the garden mollie continued to patrol the yard, sure that there was a treasure trove of baby bunnies lurking somewhere.

whew.

here’s the vegetable garden, which is coming along pretty well. except we have four rows of onions and i’m not sure what we’re going to do with all those onions.



the garage sale went pretty well except that there were garage sales all over town, apparently, so people were much too picky. lots of people would cruise by in their cars but didn’t even stop to look. how on earth did they think they could see what we had from their cars?

we made enough money to take mom out to lunch, to a new place called buffalo wild wings which i thought would be bad because i don’t believe in wings, but they had lots of good stuff on the menu.

here’s the aftermath of the sale, plus all the junk in the garage from the boat plus the stuff that was already there. we need a much bigger garage, and also a basement.



the nice part about the garage sale was hanging out in the yard all morning on a beautiful day. honey was being very sociable and let all the little kids who stopped by pet her, and she kept rolling around the driveway in a very adorable way and you’d never know she was a murdering killer.

mollie was very excited by the sale and at first barked at everybody who came up so i put her inside, but then she calmed down and got to sit outside with us, like the very good dog that she really is.

i got an e-mail from baskin robbins today, and i’m getting a free birthday cone this week, so i’m very excited about that.

life is good on sunday.

ok then,

grace.


May. 17, 2007

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more about the bionic woman [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:23 pm

it’s going to star a woman named michelle ryan, who was on the tv show “eastenders,” which was a british soap opera, or at least that’s what it says on the internet movie database.

it sounds just like the original bionic woman, with michelle playing jamie somers, a tennis pro whose body was rebuilt after a car crash. isn’t that the premise of the first one? that was a might long time ago...

meanwhile, here we’re getting ready for our HUGE GARAGE SALE. if you know where we live, please come by, sometime this saturday morning. we have not one but TWO microwaves for sale, plus lots and lots of other things, including a guitar.

it feels good to get rid of things, but i wish we could get rid of more. maybe next year.

ok then,

thursday evening grace.

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all is lost... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:54 am

...the tv show, that is.

for quite a while now, amy and jim and randy have been obsessed with the show “lost,” and amy keeps saying YOU HAVE TO START WATCHING IT! i don’t want to be hooked into watching some show, especially one where you’re always left hanging. i’ve watched a few episodes with randy, and it’s always annoyingly confusing.

have i mentioned that my sister can be very very persistent? she brought the first dvd of the show to our house on mother’s day, and we capped the day’s festivities with not one, but the first THREE episodes of the show. and now i want to watch all the rest of them, right now, but at the same time i’m annoyed because i knew this would happen.

this is how ridiculous the show is - in one of the episodes, some of the people were being chased by something, and a guy shot it, and it was a polar bear. if you’ve been living under a rock and aren’t familiar with the premise, it’s about a bunch of people who have crashed on an island. an island with palm trees, so WHY WOULD THERE BE A POLAR BEAR?

at one point they were trying to figure out how to fix some receiver and i said THEY NEED TO FIND THE PROFESSOR. because, let’s face it, what could be a better shipwrecked tv show than “gilligan’s island?” hopefully they’ll find a magic box of seeds and they’ll all have superhuman strength at some point - that was my favorite gilligan’s island episode.

speaking of tv and superhuman strength, yesterday i heard the very end of an NPR report about new shows coming to tv, and one of them is “bionic woman.” how great is that? maybe they should just re-make all the good old tv shows, instead of trying to think up “new” ideas that aren’t so new and aren’t so good, either.

meanwhile, i’m going to be trapped watching “lost.”

ok then,

thursday grace.

p.s. we’re going to las vegas in a week and a half, and i have to prepare to win FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS A DAY. that’s the realistic goal that kevin has set for me. maybe he’ll need to help attain that.


May. 14, 2007

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boat photos [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 6:10 pm

this is how dazzling the pontoons looked after much cleaning and scrubbing and polishing.



and here’s david and kevin, hard at work.



kevin and david, plus mollie and honey, who wanted to be right there making sure nothing was done without them.



yesterday was very exciting for mollie because there was lots and lots of barking to be done as she sat there standing guard over everything. not to mention the people coming and going, plus of course the fire.

then there was last night, when we had people over for a mother’s day dinner, which meant there were people plus grilling which of course made her day. she worked herself up into a frenzy of snacking excitement. the last thing i gave her was a very small amount of leftover curried pasta salad, the remains of which were thrown up on the carpet this morning.

but like i said, no mouse parts.

kevin did take a couple of photos during dinner last night, but mom and amy will be thrilled that i’m not posting them. there’s one which features all three pairs of mom’s and amy’s and my legs, and in the photo it’s all too obvious that all six legs are identically tree-trunk in appearance. so we’ll spare everybody that vision.

ok already,

grace.

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two by two [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 5:54 pm
first - saturday morning, kevin awoke to a mouse face on the kitchen floor, with an accompanying pile of entrails. mouse face number one of the weekend.

then - after fencing, a few of us were sitting outside at el presidente downtown and eventually most of the people left, and it was just me and kevin and jonelle and her son freddie. a firetruck whizzed by and freddie ran up to look at it which i thought was odd, because freddie is 14, it’s not like he’s never seen one before.

but then we all got up, because across the street at maldaner’s restaurant, flames were shooting out of the building! the firetruck wasn’t whizzing by, it was stopping right there, and it was followed by a few more firetrucks and we watched as the flames continued to lick the really old building and the firemen went about trying to put it out.

i think the date on the top of the building says 1894. it’s OLD. was sat on a bench and watched the firemen work and it was quite fascinating. smoke kept pouring out from behind the copper decorative work around the windows, as jonelle said that she had seen it start - a guy was doing some work on the building with a blowtorch, and then she noticed the flames and wondered why they were coming out, and saw him stuff some material in the hole. and the of course the firetrucks came because no, it wasn’t supposed to be flaming.

they had to break off a lot of the copper, and some of the firemen were inside the building poking their heads out, and sometimes they wore their masks because there was quite a bit of smoke. we probably sat there for an hour, just watching, and when a tv reporter finally showed up we told freddie to go tell her that his mom has seen it start. he did, and the woman interviewed jonelle, but they only used one little snippet of the interview, the part where she said the fire department did a good job of putting out the fire.

quite an exciting saturday afternoon.

sunday morning, the second mouse face. except this time it was the whole head. plus more entrails.

and then, sunday afternoon, we did lots of work on the pontoon boat. lots of scrubbing and scraping and trying to get all the caked-on stuff off the pontoons. it was hard work, but at least the weather was perfect.

amy and i left for a while to go hear mom in a flute choir performance, and when we got back there was smoke coming out of the box in front of the boat, the box that david had neatly stacked the pieces of flooring and chairs that he’d chain-sawed into small pieces. “isn’t there a law against burning stuff in your front yard?” i asked amy.

it wasn’t supposed to be burning, you see. the neighbor girl jennifer was hanging out watching david and kevin work, and pretty soon she said, “is that box supposed to be on fire?”

NO. kevin was going to put it out with the hose, apparently, but the flames were too high, so he had to use the fire extinguisher.

amy and i missed it all, except for the lingering smouldering.

today, monday, things are more quiet. no mouse parts of any kind this morning, nothing on fire.

whew.

ok then,

monday grace.



May. 12, 2007

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even in china... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:02 am

they’re reporting that THIN PEOPLE CAN BE FAT ON THE INSIDE.

i think many thin people feel fat on the inside. i think many many people, no matter if they weigh 90 pounds or 300, feel fat.

mollie the dog, she doesn’t feel fat. not at all. we brought her some leftover pizza tonight and she scarfed it down in her usual three seconds. then i gave her a treat in her magical orange treat ball. kevin said “don’t give her too much, because she just had pizza.” but looking at mollie, you’d never ever know that she just had pizza.

have i described the magical orange treat ball? i’m going to take a picture of it. you fill it with dog treats, or just little pieces of dry dog food, and she scoots it around on the floor with her nose and the treats come out, but not all at once, and she scoots it all over the house and she loves it. sometimes she spins and flips it with her paws. because she’s smart, and because SHE NEEDS TREATS.

the other night we were watching a movie, “a knight’s tale,” which is a pretty darn horrible movie, in case you were wondering, and mollie was lying on the floor next to the couch and kind of digging around under it and whining and pretty soon i laid down on the floor next to her and reached under the couch...and there was some dry dog food. and then more pieces of dry dog food, and then more. when she pushes the orange ball around some of the pieces go under the couch but she doesn’t care at the time because she knows she can push the ball and get more. but she WANTED THOSE TREATS and i have to say i was slightly appalled by the amount of dry dog food we’ve collected under the couch. and then under the other couch.

mollie was delighted to eat them all up, despite the fact that they were who knows how old.

because she’s a dog. and doesn’t care if she’s fat, on the inside or the outside.

ok then,

grace.


May. 11, 2007

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PANDEMIC! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 2:19 pm

ok, maybe it’s not a pandemic. YET.

but when erica read about how sick kevin and i were, she called to say that she, too, had the exact same virus. she got it monday night and it sounded worse than kevin’s and she spent all of tuesday lying on her floor. i really feel for her.

i also feel bad because she lives alone, and who was taking care of her? she said her mom brought her some gatorade, which is what randy told me to get kevin, and i did, two bottles, but it’s still sitting in our fridge. erica’s mom also brought her a prime rib. this was extremely nice of her; obviously, she felt that erica would need some protein after throwing up all night. but i know that i didn’t even want to think about food of any kind for a few days, so i was glad nobody brought me a prime rib.

but it was a nice thought.

i guess we’re just at the very beginning of the pandemic here in spfld. i’ll keep you posted. unless i forget, which is entirely possible.

ok then,

friday afternoon grace.

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INNER FAT [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:16 am
in today’s paper, there’s an article about how even thin people can secretly be fat - if you don’t exercise, you can have lots of fat INSIDE YOUR BODY, pressing on your inner organs.

secret fat. is there no end to fat?

no.

it was more entertaining to read about this, though, than to hear about our governor. if you don’t live in illinois, you probably don’t know that our last governor, george ryan, was very very bad and did many illegal things and got indicted and i think he’s in jail now but maybe he’s actually appealing it and he’s at home, i’m not sure. most of his reign as governor happened when i was living in LA, so i didn’t follow his story very much. but i knew that he was VERY VERY BAD and everybody was delighted that he was gone.

then we got rod. blagovecich. and now, he seems to be maybe even worse than george. his latest ridiculousness is a huge gross receipts tax that he wants to impose on us. it’s the biggest tax in the HISTORY OF THE WORLD, and he claims it will just tax the GREEDY BASTARD BIG BUSINESSES, but most people think this isn’t true, that it will hurt everybody.

yesterday in the paper the governor said that if the legislature votes against his tax, that there are two other options - an income tax and other taxes, or no action at all. but he’d veto both of these things! so really there is NO ALTERNATIVE TO HIS GREAT BIG TAX.

yesterday the illinois house voted on his GRT. he did not get ONE SINGLE VOTE. everybody voted against his great big grt, because it’s a very bad idea.

now this is even more ridiculous - right before the vote (after there had been an eight-hour talk about the tax and it was apparent that everybody hated the idea), he declared that he thought everybody should vote “no” on the tax because this would mean that people were serious about the debate. but wait, the day before you said there WERE no alternates to your tax!

and then, lo and behold, EVERYBODY VOTED NO.

and now, apparently, he can say, “i told everybody to vote no.”

it’s like he’s a completely crazy person. COMPLETELY CRAZY.

could he actually believe that everybody voted no because they SUPPORT him and his retarded Grosss tax?

our governor is almost too annoying to even think about.

instead, let’s think about that inner fat, lurking in the dark recesses of our bodies. and you know, it won’t just lie there forever, at some point it’ll start poking out all over in great globby blobs.

ok, let’s not dwell on that, either.

i, personally, am just happy to not feel sick and lousy and rotten today.

all right then, friday it is.

grace.




May. 10, 2007

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we’ve been better... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:34 am

tuesday morning, kevin was sick. very sick. he said he hadn’t felt that bad since he had appendicitis in first grade.

bad.

he spent the day in bed, until i rolled him into the car and took him to the doctor who gave him a shot for the nausea, and then he went back to bed. then i went to bed tuesday night and started feeling sick. really sick.

i went to sleep at 10 and slept until yesterday afternoon at about four. 18 hours of sleep. i’ve never slept that much at one time. i got up and read an article in the paper and went back to sleep on the couch.

he’s sleeping on the couch right now.

how much can two people sleep?

a whole lot.

i’m lucky that i didn’t get it as bad as kevin - no throwing up or other unpleasant things in that neighborhood, like he had. but i’ve never hurt all over so much.

i think we’re recovering, though. which is good, because we have many, many things to do.

like, i really need to make a rhubarb pie. we have a rhubarb plant in the garden and it’s now enormous and needs to be picked and made into a pie. maybe a cobbler, which would be less work.

maybe i’ll wait a day or two, until we’re eating again. this morning i had cereal, my first food in a couple of days.

it’s a great weight-loss method, being sick and not eating anything at all. but there must be better ways to lose weight.

here are more photos of the boat.



this is me, unscrewing the many many many screws which attached the floor. it was very tedious.



this is me, pretending that it was a lot of fun.



here’s what it looked like at the end of the day.



and this is an idea of how our driveway looks like a little bit like a garbage dump.



this is after kevin tidied it all up and readied it for sitting in the driveway.



and here’s the boat, a week later (sunday may 6th). the flooring arrived, and kevin laid it on top of the beams to store it. we’ll have to take it all off to clean the pontoons and do a bunch of other stuff, and then we’ll have to screw in the screws but it’s more complicated than that because he says that will take four hours.



the screws and the pontoon cleaner have arrived, and the carpet is going to get here any minute.

like i said, we have LOTS to do. no time to be sick.

i may nap now.

ok then,

thursday morning grace.





May. 07, 2007

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drink up! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:33 am
every day, i read the paper, and it invariably makes me kind of depressed. rarely is there good news, something to smile about. always it’s the horrors of the war, plus additional gloomy stuff like today there was even a horrible thing in ann landers - a mother said her four year-old acted out sometimes and nothing she did could get the kid to behave, except when she’d smash one of the child’s toys WITH A HAMMER. and was this an OK thing to do?

i seriously think there should be a very elaborate and strict screening process before people get to be parents, because there are way way way too many of them out there who seem to have little or no basic common sense or intelligence about the whole thing.


however, luckily, i did find one bright article in the paper. this is NATIONAL DRINKING WATER WEEK! i assume everybody will get at least one day off, not to mention the parades and celebrations and speeches and other excitement to revel in our national drinking water. i, personally, have already drunk one whole glass of drinking water, in honor of the week. later mollie and i will go running and both of us will imbibe freely.

so, the weekend. i’m kind of exhausted by the amount of outside work done yesterday, but saturday, you may recall was the GARDEN TRACTOR PULL.

it was full of...garden tractors. kevin’s friend randy’s wife luanne explained that they find old rusted garden tractors and then they totally refurbish them, and then they go to these garden tractor pulls, which seem to be everywhere around the country. in case you live someplace else and are dying to go to one.

not that i’m actually recommending the sport. it’s a little, uh...dull...if you’re not actually competing.

dull for me, anyway. many people were there in their lawn chairs, and they seemed to enjoy it quite a bit.

here’s me and randy in front of the tractor he was going to pull. this isn’t randy’s actual tractor; his lost a bearing or threw an axle or something that morning.



here’s one of the participants competing. they don’t race, but each one pulls a weight down the track, and that big numbered sign you see in the back is actually a measure of the distance each tractor pulls the weight. the thing in back of it is some kind of thing which has a name although i don’t know what it might be, but it has a weight on it and is driven by the guy way in the back. each tractor is weighed before starting, and then an appropriate amount of weight is added to the sled. yes, maybe that’s what the thing is called, a sled. and i’m sure that more information you’ll ever want or need to know about garden tractor-pulling.



most of the pulls are just competitions, but this one was a charity event, for the make-a-wish foundation. they raised a nice amount of money for the cause, plus a little kid sponsored by make-a-wish got to ride one of the tractors. here he is.



the kid’s wish was to be in Nascar, so this seems to have come up a little short in the wish department. but on the other hand, it’s not like they’d have let him drive a car in Nascar, and he did get the thrill of driving a tractor.

plus they gave him a GIGANTIC trophy.



before the event started, kevin and i and some make-a-wish volunteers had to sign people up. it wasn’t cheap to sign up, but the guys were eager to do it. i thought they must be farmers; they looked like farmers, and a lot of them wore john deere t-shirts, but luanne said they weren’t farmers. i should have asked them what they did for a living as i signed them up.

after the signing-up was over, we just sat around and watched for a while, and that’s when i decided that this was probably my first and last garden tractor pull. in addition to not exactly scintillating, it was very very loud. kevin went away for a while and came back with a pair of headphones for blocking the noise.



he offered them to me, but i declined his generous offer. i did notice that there were a few little toddlers and some little babies there, and none of them wore headphones. and some of them were right there next to the track. a group of women right down in front had a couple of babies, and many of the women were chain-smoking and i watched as one of them kept giving their baby mountain dew. once again, my idea for a strict screening process seems obviously direly needed.

there’s going to be another pull next weekend, and one the weekend after that, and they are very very popular among the garden tractor-pulling crowd. people came from as far away as missouri and kentucky.

we won’t be there. we’ll be busy building our boat.

our pontoon boat, that is. mom and dad had a pontoon boat that was 18 years old, and kept getting more and more decrepit, and they finally decided to sell it this year.

and we decided to buy it.

and now it’s in our driveway, and we’re in the process of rehabbing it. it think it’ll look great when we’re through and will last another 18 years. we basically gutted it, keeping only the pontoons and the motor and the frame.

here’s what it looked like when we brought it home.



here’s kevin, as he begins the dismantling process.



as you can see, kevin is doing most of the work here. when i say “we” are fixing up the boat, i really mean kevin, as i do my best to be helpful without hurting myself.





i did use some tools although i usually didn’t know what they were called.



this is what the 18 year-old deck looked like. it’s a miracle nobody stepped through the floor on the boat, and it’s a miracle it didn’t sink. although i guess it wouldn’t sink because of the pontoons, which are fully functioning although very grimy (right now; kevin ordered cleaner that will make them sparkling clean).



kevin ordered marine plywood for the new floor. it had to be special ordered because it’s treated with arsenic and they just don’t sell the arsenic to anybody nowadays. not that somebody would eat the arsenic, but oddly enough, our cat honey was chewing on a piece of the old floorboards.

here’s honey and mollie, both fascinated with the boat-rehabbing process.



we did all this stuff last saturday, completely stripping the boat of the top, the sides, the seats, and the flooring. it was all very well-documented, and more photos are to come.

ok then,

monday morning grace.



May. 05, 2007

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entertaining AND gifts [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:06 am

i’ve never attended a performance where i got a gift. until last night. “mrs. Lincoln's” director, my friend phil (who is also KING OF THE ABE LINCOLN MUSEUM, by the way), hurried to give us our wedding gift after the play was over.

i mean, i guess he didn’t actually hurry per se, since we’ve been married over six months now. but it was fun to get an unexpected gift. a lovely one, at that.

the play - as i wrote, i was concerned that it would be terribly depressing. when it started it felt like it was headed for deep depression. my knowledge of mary todd lincoln’s life was kind of sketchy, and i assumed she died in an insane asylum, where she was put by her evil son robert.

not true at all. the play’s first act covered the first six years after lincoln’s death, and pam brown did an amazing job of conveying mary’s intelligent, independent, spikey personality. she was a wonderful mother, and the amount of tragedy heaped upon her was staggering. by the end of the act she was hearing and seeing things that weren’t there, but i think that if my husband had been shot in front of me, and all but one of my children had died early deaths, i’d be delusional, too.

robert was portrayed as a stiff but caring son who didn’t want his mother to cause herself any harm., not an evil bastard at all. the actor who portrayed him said robert got a bad rap.

but like i said, by the end of the first act, things seemed very bleak indeed. we worried that the second act would be even blacker, with lots of madness and insane asylums.

instead, the second act was kind of funny. nancy cole.a dim-witted neighbor, and patrick russell, mary’s nephew, provided some levity. nancy was simply a hoot, and it was funny to see patrick and pam’s relationship as so close and loving, especially because in the last play they were in together ("noises off"), patrick and pam were lovers. hmm, maybe they’re destined to be together. at least in plays. maybe next time they’ll get married.

the second act took place after mary was released from the insane asylum. it was sad, yes, and she was treated horribly by lawmakers (they refused to give her a pension for years)and the press, and she spent lots of time utterly alone in europe, but things weren’t all black all the time.

and her costumes were great.

and the lighting was striking, and the theater at the lincoln museum is, of course, a great space.

it was refreshing to see such an entertaining entertainment, a nice surprise that it wasn’t all despair and heartache.

not to mention the gift.

ok, but here’s my one big complaint. WHY ARE THEATER PATRONS SO RUDE?

kevin and i were among a very small handful of people under the age of 65. the place was chock full of white-haired people. who have been known to be very polite. not last night. an old couple and their friend sat in front of us, and they JUST KEPT TALKING. OUT LOUD. i don’t know why i didn’t lean over and say PLEASE STOP TALKING. i should have. also, the woman had a box of what sounded like tic tacs that she kept shaking, VIOLENTLY, like she was trying to accompany a salsa band.

these aren’t people who grew up watching movies on tv in their living rooms, the reason so many annoying children are loud in movies. at the end of the play, robert comes in to find mary sitting in her wheelchair, eyes closed. the man in front of us loudly proclaimed. IT’S TOO LATE.

his wife said I HOPE NOT.

in addition to the rudeness (and there were others around us talking, too, but not quite as loudly), it seemed that many were also very sick as well as rude. a man in back of us sounded like he was going to cough up a lung, and all around were the sounds of coughing. coughing and talking. PLEASE JUST LEAVE THE AUDITORIUM.

my friends kate and don were at the performance, and i said i missed seeing kate and she said “i follow everything going on in your life.” and yet you never write or call...

i have to go get ready for the lawn tractor pull now (what does one wear to a lawn tractor pull? i have no bib overalls).

ok then,

saturday morning grace.

p.s. “real time” was wonderful as usual, last night at the jazz bar the loft. there was a disappointingly small crowd there, though, which is too bad because it’s a cool space.

vroom vroom, here i go.




May. 04, 2007

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post-birthday friday [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 2:52 pm

mom made dad look at the photo of them on the website and dad said “i don’t think i’ve ever seen this before.” meaning the website. is it possible that he’s never actually looked at my website? perhaps.

of course i ate two cheesy biscuits at the red lobster. somebody remarked about the cheesy biscuits that i’d made one time, using a recipe from the paper and how good they were. i totally forgot about those biscuits, so now i can make them any time i want. until i forget all about them again.

perhaps i’ll even post the recipe here, and then sometimes this can be a recipe website.

but on the other hand that kind of seems like a lot of trouble.

tonight we’re going to go see the mrs. lincoln play. hopefully it’ll be good. i’d like to see something a little more lighthearted, but afterwards we’re going to go hear the jazz band “real time” at the loft, which should definitely be entertaining.

not that mrs. lincoln WON’T be entertaining. but i feel that it probably won’t be so upbeat.

but you never know.

but probably. i mean, not a lot of fun things happened to her after abe died. committed to an insane asylum by her son, stuff like that.

speaking of all things historical, yesterday we went on a downtown tour of buildings which included the rotunda at the old state capitol, said rotunda NEVER being open to the public. we had to wait in line about 45 minutes, but it wasn’t so bad. there was a group dressed in period costume singing, plus when we got farther along in the line they gave us wine and cheese.

the view from the top of the old state capitol was good. but we probably won’t be back, because they probably won’t open it up again.

tomorrow...the lawn tractor pull. have i mentioned the lawn tractor pull before? why are we going to a lawn tractor pull, you may be wondering. me too.

kevin’s friend randy (not my friend randy but yet another randy) is in charge of a lawn tractor pull. i think he actually does lawn tractor-pulling himself, as does his wife. kevin and i were going to be in charge of registering entrants a while ago, but it was much too cold, so they postponed it till tomorrow.

so there we’ll be. at the lawn tractor pull.

quite frankly, i don’t see how a saturday could be much more exciting.

i guess maybe if we were IN the lawn tractor pull.

but then again, there’s only so much excitement a person can stand.

ok ok ok,

friday grace.



May. 03, 2007

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 3:23 pm

I don’t think dad actually reads this website, but i’m sure mom will tell him that i wished him a very happy birthday right here.

before it fades too far into the distance, here are a couple of photos from the wine and wine and more wine and dinner the other night. here’s mom and dad, looking very snazzy.



as i wrote previously, kevin felt the need to take photos of most of the food, but i just looked at the pictures and they look a little too...vivid...to put up here. kind of gross and too big. especially the crab cake, which looked kind of disgusting (but was actually quite delicious), and the ceviche, which was ok.

but here’s one of the many MANY photos he took of the infamous pastel de choclo. i don’t think it looks very good, and it wasn’t so great, either.

note the many many many wine glasses surrounding the pastel. they were all filled, and then re-filled.



tonight for dad’s birthday celebration we’re NOT having a hundred glasses of wine. instead we’re going to the red lobster, where we’ll be forced to eat mass quantities of food including cheesy biscuits which i’m vowing NOT TO HAVE even though i know this vow is utterly meaningless because i don’t know a mortal soul who can possibly resist the delicious red lobster cheesy biscuits.

all right then.

grace on thursday.

p.s. i’m mad because last night we forgot to go to baskin robbins where they had 31-cent ice cream cones. but the place was probably packed anyway. plus it’s slightly too chilly for ice cream.

not really. the dead of winter isn’t really too chilly for ice cream.


May. 02, 2007

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may! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:58 pm
it happened so quickly, may.

briefly today i thought, it’s may already, that means the summer is going to whoosh by and suddenly it’s going to be cold again...

clearly, no way to live my life, worrying about NEXT WINTER.

i still haven’t looked at the pictures of the food that kevin took at that wine wine and more wine dinner the other night.

that seems like so long ago...

we’re about to have a STATEWIDE SMOKING BAN here in illinois, assuming the governor signs off on it. that would really be good. when i left LA, i wasn’t too thrilled to be returning to the land of smoke, but then we didn’t have smoking here in spfld, but we really still have, kind of, because of the various little municipalities that aren’t actually technically springfield and still allow smoking.

but soon, it’ll all be just a hazy, smoke-filled memory.

not to mention the fact that we have a great indian restaurant here.

plus, PLUS, the house of hunan, which used to be a really good chinese restaurant, many many years ago, and then got kind of seedy, was closed because of the tornado last year, and now they’ve re-opened and they serve sushi, and i’m going to try it very soon.

sushi, no smoking, indian food, springfield isn’t such a bad place.

especially since the weather is warm and the grass is green and the leaves are coming out on the trees.

tomorrow is DAD’S BIRTHDAY and we have many things planned. at least dinner, anyway. and cake.

what more does a person need, really?

actually, just cake, who needs the dinner.

here’s a picture of kevin that i took last march when we were in LA. was that just last march, a little over a year ago? hard to believe. we were hiking on the trail from the Will Rogers house, in the Pacific Palisades. i love this photo, and i just hung it on the wall above the computer.



throughout the day today there were at least a million things i wanted to write about, but now i can’t remember any of them.

if you see my dad, wish him a happy birthday.

ok then,

grace hughes.

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