My Greener Side


Starting today, Grandma J is focusing on her countdown to moving calendar. It's all about packing, cleaning shopping. There are purchases that have been on the back burner for a while, but with the upcoming move, they have jumped to the top of the "how I spend my spendable income list".

One luxury item will be a new flat panel TV because Huey, the maintenance guy at the new and improved compound, which is more like a spa, has offered to mount stuff and install stuff for Grandma J. And yes, I know that last sentence could have easily been three paragraphs.

That's why the timing is right for a new wall mounted TV, and decorator rods and pictures to be hung. Huey could easily become Grandma J's best friend. But what I really want to talk about is being green.


Grandma J went to Walmart yesterday to get some boxes so she could start packing. While she was making her way through the bakery hardware department, she saw these......




Green totes for only $4.50. The free cardboard boxes were tempting, but Grandma J bit the bullet and bought these totes to save a tree or two. There is an overlap of six days for moving stuff, so the same two totes can be used over and over....along with four older totes that Grandma J already has.



Oh yes, and I know what you are thinking! That's right, you saw that bottled water. Well, here's the story on the water. Grandma J hates water......really hates water. She hates bottled water. The thing is, she has to drink a ton of it a day, and Aqua Fina is the only stuff she can drink. A Brita filtered carafe of tap water is used for coffee and cooking. But here is the good news. Lookie.....

Aquafina is getting GREENer! Yeah for Aquafina.

And check this out! Here is a very green thing, Disney and The Nature Conservancy has vowed to plant 2.7 million trees in the rain forests bordering the Atlantic Ocean in Brazil. The effort is a promotion on Disney’s part, as well as an act of environmentalism.

Disney is planting one tree for each movie-goer who buys a ticket to “Earth,” Disney’s sweeping nature documentary that follows families of wild animals through their struggles.


I plan on seeing this movie, how about you?

GOOD DOGGIE ACADEMY

Lesson I. FINAL EXAM

JJ just finished with flying colors. He would like to give you an example of his work, and you can be the judge. Was he obedient and did he study hard? Did he do his homework? Or was he the teacher's pet?

Special Moments Like This....





........are just about the only thing that can make the rest of the world fade into the background...even if you are at a ball game, and you are supposed to be keeping the score book, and your son is pitching, and you also happen to be A-Ron's Mommy.


Or maybe it's not too late to reconsider the size of your family. Or maybe your husband has been in Iraq too long, and too many times. But........




These special moments are even more special when you know you can hand the baby back to his real mommy because you have teenagers, and you've survived so far.

The letter P


.....is for pizza because Grandma J spent the night in her safe place.... under tornado warnings, and ended up sleeping in. Really, that's not too important except for the fact that her BBF in Florida took every single P word she could get her hands on except ......














Brought to you by A to Z Mondays. Come join us!

Once upon a time, when the earth was still flat full of green grass and blue skies, Grandma J was just a little girl.

On Sundays, after church her whole family would take a ride to her grandma and grandpas' farm. They had goats, cows, chickens, turkeys, a blind cat with no teeth and a dog or two.

Since we always wore our Sunday best on these visits, we could fill our skirts with chicken feed and run like the devil try to sprinkle it about a little at a time. But, the chickens chased us for the feed. Grandma J used her original dump and run technique.

One day, when Grandma J's father decided he had it up to here with the winter blizzards and snow shoveling, he loaded up the family and headed to California.....almost that fast!

Once in California, the Sunday drives after church were long drives to the mountains to pan for gold in the babbling streams...in our Sunday best. Sometimes we headed to the desert to hunt for treasures....ummm Grandma J's father had some strange concepts to fill the grandparent void. I mean, when you live at the beach, wouldn't it be a no brainer to stay home and frolic in the surf? Collect shells? Driftwood?

Fast forward to today. After church, Grandma J and Phillip Johnny Bob stopped and picked up JJ.

Since she was longing for the good old days, she took them for a ride to see some bulls.

Not the same pretty bulls they saw a few weeks ago...no sireeee...today it was the big black ones.

The ones with the funny duck/bird things hanging around them.

No one got too close to these guys because they were big, and not as friendly looking as the pretty brown and beige cows.

click photo to enlarge

Who knows what those feathered creatures are? What's the story here? JJ thinks they are picking bugs off the bulls? Just a wild guess! I know someone knows....please?

Thank You For Being A Friend


Bea Arthur passed away today.....born Bernice Frankel, we knew and loved her as Maude, and as Dorothy Zbornak, a real Golden Girl......May she rest in peace.

Born May 13, 1922 - Died 25 April 2009 (aged 86)

OBSESSED

A Friday Matinee review

It's no secret that Grandma J loves nothing under God's heaven more than my little JJ going to a Friday matinee. This week there wasn't much to choose from. No chic flicks, no musicals except Hannah Banana, nothing in 3-D. Not even one new movie about security guards going wacko in a maul mall. So, not wanting to see a fight movie or violence, Grandma J decides to see Obsessed, because it has a boat load of suspense...and it's share of violence and fighting.


Derek Charles (Idris Elba), and his beautiful wife, Sharon (Beyonce Knowles), have finally "made it". After years of hard work, Derek earns a position as VP in his firm. The Charles' move into their new home in an upscale suburb of LA with their two year old son, and Sharon has plans to go back to school to get her degree. Life is good, and the Charles family couldn't be happier......we know this is gonna change,right?


The morning after moving into their dream home, Derek Charles has a chance encounter in the elevator with Lisa (Ali Larter), a temp who has been assigned to his firm. It turns out, Derek's assistant is out sick, and Lisa is his temp. He is a bit playful and friendly, something Lisa will take full advantage of.


Now, it seems Derek has a history of dating his assistants....in fact Sharon had been his assistant, and the deal was, he would only have male assistants once they got married and Sharon quit working for the firm.


When Sharon visit's Derek at work, Lisa barges in to Derek's office and introduces herself.


Lisa immediately crosses the lines of propriety and accesses personal files and information about Derek and his daily routine. This takes him by surprise, and he questions how she knows so much. It turns out she has been in contact with the sick male assistant, who upon his return to work becomes friends with Lisa.....yes Lisa stays on for a while as a temp, filling in for another assistant.


Her predatory aggressiveness starts to bother Derek, but he doesn't want to make waves since nothing has actually happened. The more he avoids her, the more she happens to be everywhere.


The stalking continues at the company Christmas party, where no spouses are allowed, and things get nasty. As time goes by, the stalking continues to escalate, and eventually, Derek's position in the firm is put in jeopardy, his marriage is crumbling, and he comes close to criminal accusations.


The Charles' find a family picture in their home with Sharon's head cut out of it.


The culmination of this suspenseful movie.....ala Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction, is when the focus switches to the two women....Sharon vs. Lisa unleashed.

I like the movie. Of course Beyonce didn't sing, but I thought her performance was good.



I give this movie 4 ½ chandeliers.

Friday Matinee on Friday ...

...is quite unique around here lately. But Grandma J likes to stick to tradition whenever possible.

I'm changing things up a bit. I'm going to see a suspense thriller!

OBSESSED

Yeah, hard to believe, right? But Beyonce is in it, and I know she'll break from the original script and sing "At Last" for Grandma J, just like she did in Cadillac Records.

Check back later for my review.

The Pause That Refreshes!

Sometimes we get caught up in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, and forget to stop and smell the roses. But even when Grandma J stops to buy flowers every week smell the roses and plethora of flowers in Walmart the garden, nothing can make her smile more that a picture received on her cell phone........



Especially when it's a picture of Beauty proudly showing Grandma J her gorgeous smile minus her two front teeth. So today I want to share my smile, and Beauty's with you.

And of course it would be hard to not notice Beauty's big brother, Andrew, lurking in the background now, would it?

Happy Earth Day

Grandma J is nothing if not earthy, and every year on Earth Day she bows at the alter of Mother Earth, then she goes out to eat an earthy meal....

She starts by picking only those ingredients that Mother Earth produces from the dirt of her belly and the loins of her trees.

This is my all natural Earth Day lunch, courtesy of Golden Corral with Mother Earth's blessing. It's important that Grandma J doesn't put dressing on her Earth lunch....because she doesn't like dressing.

Don't Hurt Me Bro!

or as they say in Chinese... 不要傷害我好朋友!

Tonight, I took my neighbor, (no not that neighbor), Donna, out to dinner for her birthday. We tried a new Mexican restaurant in our local tiny mall, called Hornduck Tavern. It's so fancy shmancy, the only thing I found on the Internet was their Temple Texas location, and a karaoke singer with them featured on her Facebook page. I'm serious. It looked the same but the menu wasn't Mexican....or as it's referred to here...Tex Mex.

The food was great, and the place was packed on a Tuesday night. The main dining room was still being remodeled, but the accommodations in the lounge bar were just fine.

Another event to celebrate was Donna and I both signed leases on apartments in a brand new adult complex gated compound that offers amenities more fitting our lifestyles. Only a few units are ready and we will be the first to move in. For me, I get an actual garage and a kitchen with a granite counter top. The granite part isn't important, it's the whole counter top concept that had me sold. I won't have to roll out pastry on the bathroom floor my dining room table.

Donna likes the sprinklers over her bed in the event one of her boyfriends gets too hot to handle...she seriously told me that.

We both like the idea of the pool being heated year around, and the concierge service that includes coffee and pastry on the house every morning. Oh yeah, and someone named Huey will come collect my trash off my front porch three days a week at 8 a.m. We will have a movie theatre which won't stop me from going to the theatre with the hand dip ice cream counter for first run matinees.

There's a ton of stuff that I probably won't partake in but it's nice. I took my daughter and the kids over on Easter Sunday to see if we could get in one of the units. As soon as my daughter walked in, she said "and the reason you have to think twice about moving here is....?"

OK, so Donna and I finish our double whammy celebratory dinner, and decide to get one of these Chinese massages in the mall. You've seen them, right? They usually set up next to the people who sell the beauty products from the Dead Sea. Grandma J told you all about her experience with the Dead Sea people...remember?

Donna goes first.......

..... and I wait because the other masseuse is in the middle of molding this man into her new sex toy.

Yeah, of course you think I'm kidding...but she was really getting physical and scaring Grandma J.

In the end, twenty minutes of a good Chinese massage was worth making a spectacle of myself in the mall. Have you ever had one of these mall massages?

One Silver, One Gold

The Silver was for the Long Jump, The Gold is for the 200 meter.

Grandma J's granddaughter...OK, so it's really JJ's sister, participated in the Texas A&M Consolidated Track Meet, District 12 AAAAA Division, last week. Since it's a three hour ride each way, and Grandma's can't ride on the team bus and we had torrential rain forecast here in Central Texas, we missed it.

Today, I went over to get a few pictures to send to 1SGT John in Iraq. I don't have any stats, but two years ago in 7th grade, Grandma J's granddaughter jumped 16' 4" and broke the middle school record. Now she's on the JV team in HS. Unfortunately the papers only put Varsity stats, and some athletes when questioned say, "I don't know", as a standard answer to grandmothers.

OK, that's enough pictures!

Then A-Ron jumps in and says "One more!"


So one more it is!