Awareness, Economy, and other news

 Helicopter we saw flying over the local grocery store. Had a lot of low flying ones around lately and they are LOUD

 baby mockingbird that my hubby found lifeless and floating in the water. Honestly thought this little guy was a goner but stuck him under a heat lamp and he was doing fine after that. Turned him loose and he was able to fly away. I've done a lot of animal rescues off and on through the years and really enjoy it to see them able to return to the wild and do great :) 

First off a couple of things 1. I can be followed on facebook at  http://www.facebook.com/Felistormdragon (my public profile where I share my art and such)  and 2. This is Lupus Awareness Month as well as arthritis (Rheumatoid) awareness month. I missed Sjogren's awareness month last month but as I have all 3 of these immuno diseases I want to share that and raise awareness on the subject. Read more on it at Lupus Foundation of America http://www.sjogrens.org/ and Rheumatoid arthritis I have found out that this runs on my Mother's side of the family and am learning to live with it (and not just survive though I am a survivor by all means) While a lot of people with these have to take a lot of different medications I am very lucky right now to only be taking one as my dr. was one who wanted to treat the symptoms as they came (this also helps because with lupus you constantly develop new allergies and problems and medications can prove dangerous...my sister had an allergic reaction to one of the most commonly given medications Prednisone and cannot take it and they were also fearful that I might do the same) I do take medications for pain when I have to but have found that staying mobile with low impact exercise does help (belly dance is great but been unable to do it lately) and taking it easy when you need to. It is mainly on my mind right now because I am having a flare up lately and I hurt a lot. It is hard for me to slow down when I am going through this but I sorta have to. Anyway with that out of the way...

I am still paying attention to the news as always just not as closely as normal (for me anyway I am a news addict so my normal is like a rabid need for the news LOL) Paying attention to the problems in Greece and Spain (the fall of the Euro and from what I am hearing the beginning of a domino effect. Greek crisis Euro zone gas prices locally seem to be falling a small bit which helps. Where a couple of my friends are in another state (temporarily) they are still up at almost $5.00 Still something to keep an eye on.

I have recently taken up being a volunteer somewhat and collect and report rain amounts. I do other reporting too like this but am unable to talk about that in any detail as it is confidential. (Kind of like secret shopper in a way but yet not LOL)  I enjoy doing things like that when I can. It may not be much but I feel like I am doing something in a way. 

I really hope also to find a way to organize my days so that I can actually get some more art done. O.o I have several started but unfinished pieces going mostly digital. 

End of School

 cloud that looked like a bird over our house  Things have been busy around our house this last week or so. We are on the search for fencing for our yard when we get time. We are now a house hold of 3 adults and 3 kids instead of 4 kids and two adults. Nothing feels odder than when your oldest turns 18 and graduates. My second oldest turns 17 this year so not much longer with her and my youngest turns 3 next month. (means my angel baby would have been 5 this year)  My son became a teenager this year as well  O.O Time sure does fly by!!! So anyway my mother is having cataract surgery which involves over half a dozen appointments but means that she will not have to wear glasses except to read after this which is pretty awesome. I'm having a bit of trouble with my Lupus as of late. Hurting a lot. Even my arms are hurting right now. Trying to not let it bring me down too much. Hoping this summer stays somewhat relaxed though I swear I feel like we are on overdrive all the time. 

I am hoping they have the local Barbeque this year like they did last year so that my youngest might get to ride a pony again. Maybe go to the lake or something I dunno yet. I am also hoping that in about 3 years we can look at moving to the country. That is a dream/goal of mine now. 

Thought I'd check in as I've been too busy to do the usual blogging.

On a side note we now know what all the police activity was about and interestingly enough we strongly believe it was to do with someone we do actually know that has popped up. That is about as much as I can say on here about that. 

A funny for today

A funny for today as I needed this. Found on Facebook and I've read it before but it still cracks me up...
Here's one for the ladies : 

WAX is NOT your friend 
CAUTION: Be prepared to laugh out loud... I laughed till I almost cried as I could just see this happening! (And I feel it too!) 

All hair removal methods have tricked women with their promises of easy, painless removal- The epilady, scissors, razors, Nair, and now... The wax. 

My night began as any other normal weeknight. Come home, fix dinner, play with the kids. I then had the thought that would ring painfully in my mind for the next few hours: "Maybe I should pull the waxing kit out of the medicine cabinet." So I headed to the site of my demise: the bathroom. 

It was one of those "cold wax" kits. No melting a clump of hot wax, you just rub the strips together in your hand, they get warm and you peel them apart and press them to your leg (or wherever else) and you pull the hair right off. 

No muss, no fuss. How hard can it be? I mean, I'm not a genius, but I am mechanically inclined enough to figure this out. 

(Y A THINK!?!) 

So I pull one of the thin strips out. Its two strips facing each other stuck together. Instead of rubbing them together, my genius kicks in so I get out the hair dryer and heat it to 1000 degrees. (Cold wax, "yeah... Right!") 

I lay the strip across my thigh. Hold the skin around it tight and pull. 

It works! 

Ok, so it wasn't the best feeling, but it wasn't too bad. 

I can do this! 

Hair removal no longer eludes me! I am She-rah, fighter of all wayward body hair and maker of smooth skin extraordinaire. 

With me next wax strip I move north. After checking on the kids, I sneak back into the bathroom, for the ultimate hair fighting championship. 

I drop my panties and place one foot on the toilet. Using the same procedure, I apply the one strip across the right side of my bikini line, covering the right half of my vagina and stretching down to t he inside of my butt cheek. 

(Yes, it was a long strip) 
I inhale deeply and brace myself... RRRRIIIPPP! 

I'm blind! Blinded from pain!... OH MY GOD! 

Vision returning, I notice that I've only managed to pull off half the strip. CRAP!

Another deep breathe and RRIIPP! 

Everything is swirly and spotted. 

I think I may pass out... Must stay conscious... 

Do I hear crashing drums? 

Breathe, breathe... 

OK, back to normal. 

I want to see my trophy- a wax covered strip, the one that has caused me so much pain, with my hairy pelt sticking to it. 

I want to revel in the glory that is my triumph over body hair. I hold up the strip! There's no hair on it. 

Where is the hair? WHERE IS THE WAX? 

Slowly I ease my head down, foot still perched on the toilet. 

I see the hair. The hair that should be on the strip. 

I touch. I am touching wax. 

SHIT!

I run my fingers over the most sensitive part of my body, wh ich I s now covered in cold wax and matted hair. 

Then I make the next BIG mistake... Remember my foot is still propped up on the toilet? 

I know I need to do something. So I put my foot down. 

OH FUCK!

I hear the slamming of a cell door. 

Cooter? Sealed shut! 

Ass? Sealed shut! 

I penguin walk around the bathroom trying to figure out what to do and think to myself "Please don't let me get the urge to shit. My head may pop off!" 

What can I do to melt the wax? Hot water! Hot water melts wax! 

I'll run the hottest water I can stand into the bathtub, get in, immerse the wax-covered bits and the wax should melt and I can gently wipe it off, right? 

WRONG! 

I get in the tub- the water is slightly hotter than that used to torture prisoners of war or sterilize surgical equipment- I sit. 

Now, the only th ing worse than having your nether regions glued together is having them glued together a n d then glued to the bottom of the tub.. In scalding hot water. Which, by the way, doesn't melt cold wax. 

So, now I'm stuck to the bottom of the tub as though I had cement-epoxied myself to the porcelain! 

God bless the man who had convinced me a few moths ago to have a phone put in the bathroom! 

I call my friend, thinking surely she has waxed before and has some secret of how to get me undone. It's a very good conversation starter- "So, my ass and hoo-ha are glued together to the bottom of the tub!" 

There is a slight pause. She doesn't know any secret tricks for removal but she does try to hide her laughter from me. She wants to know exactly where the wax is located, "Are we talking cheeks or hoo-ha?" 

She's laughing out loud by now... I can hear her. I give her the rundown and she suggests I call the number on the side of the box. YE AH! RIGHT! ! I should be the joke of someone else's night. 

While we go through various sol ut ions. I resort to scraping the wax off with a razor. Nothing feels better then to have your girlie goodies covered in hot wax, glued shut, stuck to the tub in super hot water and then dry-shaving the sticky wax off! 

By now the brain is not working, dignity has taken a major hike and I'm pretty sure I'm going to need Post-Traumatic Stress counseling for this event. 

My friend is still talking with me when I finally see my saving grace... The lotion the give you to remove the excess wax. What do I really have to lose at this point? 

I rub some on and OH MY GOD! I'M ON FIIIRRRE! 

The scream probably woke the kids and scared the shit out of my friend. 

It's so painful, but I really don't care. 

"IT WORKS! It works!" 

I get a hearty congratulations from my friend and she hangs up. 

I successfully remove the remainder of the wax and then notice t o my grief and despair... THE HAIR IS STILL THERE... ALL OF IT! 

So I recklessly shave it off. Heck, I'm numb by now. Nothing hurts. I could have amputated my own leg at this point. 

Whew! I think I'll wait til next week before attempting hair color...

Resting today

 glass lizard we found while redoing chicken run

It was good sized and I was told they thought they saw another out there 

Interesting clouds from front blowing in

Well over the weekend we got the coop redone and run moved over and redone. I am so very sun burnt and tired especially from having to convince the kids to help at the very least watch their little sister so I could work and they kept passing her off on each other. Poor kid. The run was moved over to the other side and actually looks a lot nice and has a better design (Ran chicken wire along the bottom so they couldn't dig all the grass up ) and has a trap door where we don't have to go in to open it. Just pull a cord. Then the inside we shrank it up  enough to put in a storage area on one side (to make sure we fit within regulations on distance as far as how close it was to the neighboring yard) I decided to make a half wall with chicken wire at top so we could look in from the open storage area which keeps it vented as well as sheltered. Fixed their feed trough (a refurbished rain gutter) to the wall and threw in some fresh shavings. Will take pics later today. They seem pretty happy though confused with all the changes. Found a small dog igloo for my oldest girl's A frame guinea pig hut for shelter for them (we are keeping that when she moves and using it for something else and getting her a new cage) It was 3 bucks at a yard sale. Also found a desk for my son for $5.00 that is really nice old style for his homeschooling (he asked for a desk) We have to go sign the papers this week. We were going to last week but too much going on. We moved the rain barrel over (fun to do while it is full....lost some water but not too much) my garden is doing good still. Have spent all week calling the city about their ordinance on fencing and can NOT get anyone to tell me anything. Fixing to go off what I think it is and put it up anyway or see if there is someplace else I can find out about ordinances. Getting annoyed with that part of it. Going to mow soon and do some more clean up etc. It is all ready getting pretty hot. The last two days that I've been working outside it has been in the 90s. Not ready for that and they've been saying it looks like this summer has the potential to look like last years. Today has been cooler....of course since I am not working outside LOL We do have errands to run though. We also found a glass lizard which was pretty good sized. We caught a couple of small mice that were hiding under the boards and where the chickens ate all the grass off the ground in the old run we turned the soil up and gathered earth worms to possibly try to make a worm bucket out of and are making that area a flower garden. 

Up too early

  Yet again my youngest is up before the buttcrack of dawn.

Shipping container on craigslist < I so want one of these. People have been buying them for bunkers, storm shelters, root cellars and sometimes they bury them and sometimes they don't. They are sturdy and usually fairly inexpensive and can be modified to be just about anything. I'd want to bury it. Still planning on likely moving here in about 3 years to the country (at least this is my dream/goal) so don't need one where I am now but hey. 
I will write a normal longer blog later but today looks to be busy and I am going to see if hubby will let me nap for about an hour so I can keep up. Got to go get the cat from the vet here in awhile and take the other one in for his shots and then later have lots of errands and general getting stuff done to do. On a side note yesterday while cleaning outside saw like 4 or 5 cops at a neighbors house and some lady getting arrested. Apparently there was a gun involved. O.o 

Well no more roo for now

Well my SIL came and got the rooster (am very grateful for that because that is a huge help with all this <3 he is so awesome) Unfortunately my youngest was VERY upset. Much more so than I expected even when I went to show her the other chickens are still there and all. She was very broken hearted and cried and cried. Kinda mad a momma for a moment but she seems okay for now but hubby decided he would take the cat in himself to the vet so she didn't have to see that. Even though he will be coming home the next day and all. Hopefully that will all go well. Now our next project is to move the coop around so we did actually get two things done. Been trying to contact the ordinance guy to find out about fencing and what the rules are with that before we try to put it up (still have to pick it up too) but so long as we continue to push along and get things done. 
Hubby picked up a couple pair of headphones today. A wireless pair which were for him but apparently he has to fight with them in his computer but hopefully he can use them and a pink pair for me (to go with my hair) which the kids are having a fit over. 
The kids are having a hard time understanding what all is going on and aren't cutting us any break. 

Craziness

This has been an insane week or two. One morning when I was asleep (Hubby and I take turns. I take first shift sleeping then him because we always stay up too late and then our little one gets up too early) anyway we had a couple of police come to our door asking him if he'd seen someone wearing all brown clothes with a backpack. He told them no because he hadn't and they began to question him wanting to know who all was in the home and wanting all his information etc. When they left he woke me and told me what had happened so I turned on the scanner to see what was going on and heard the same two cops carrying on a conversation via radio about us. They were talking about how suspicious it was that we had an alarm on our front door ($20.00 alarm you can get at walmart...works great but not all that big of a deal) anyways because our house does not appear like one that should have an alarm. Okay because apparently if you have an old house and all you aren't supposed to have things that matter to you or don't care if you are broken in to I guess??? That among many other reasons to have one. I mean our neighbors house was broken in to as well... Anyway then I proceed to listen to them going on about doing everything they can to find a warrant on us (there isn't one we don't do anything) they spent forever on this topic and were very frustrated that they couldn't find anything on us. Then I had also called in and asked if there was anything we should watch out for regarding this person wearing brown even though at this point I figured that was a load of crap. They didn't give any information on any of it and basically blew me off. Not long after all of this I get a phone call that someone had blocked the number (private call) and just sat and listened for a long time when I answered. You could hear people talking in the background. I hung up on them after a few. Well then a couple nights later we were trying to watch a movie and it was of course late (night owls) and we start getting lights shining in the window bright enough to be unignorable so we get up and look and realize it is a cop car spot lighting. They spent a good hour doing this before we decided to call in and ask what was going on (they wound up waking our youngest) They had been going around and around the block doing this and there were 2 or 3 cop cars involved. I was told that they thought there was some guy walking that needed help...(story did not fit for me) and that they had heard a dog barking down the road from me and were going to check it out but everything was over with..... They spent about another hour spot lighting til we gave up and went to bed...again their story sounded like a load of crap. Then we had city workers coming up and driving by the house really slow when my son and I were out doing yard work. Then a day or so later after I'd been saying for that length of time that they were going to do something we left the house for about an hour or a little longer and come home to find a notice on the front glass (waited til we were gone I felt like) that was saying we couldn't have chickens (I knew that was wrong and I will get into that in a minute) and that we had lean to shelters on our property. I was LIVID so I called and got an answering machine and it sounded like someone had picked up halfway through the message and disrupted it but didn't say anything. I went and told hubby we needed to go in before they left city hall for the day and we went down there and it was locked and we went outside just as they were pulling out from by the police dept (behind the building) so we caught up to them and asked about it and they wouldn't tell us anything til the next morning when they came by. Though I did manage to get in that it was my understanding that we can have chickens they just have to be such and so many feet away from other residences. When they did they told us I was right but we do have to move our coop and we offered to get rid of our rooster so that we knew he wouldn't bother anyone..that part has upset our neighbors. They all like hearing him surprisingly and the one especially wants us to see about getting a smaller rooster that might be quieter. (Like a bantam). They informed us that the lean tos they were talking about were our sheds that have been there since anyone can remember (Long before we even bought the place) So those are okay. We do have to clean up some (I.E. organize our wood pile) and clean up our carport was in a mess because we've been moving stuff around (and actually was not viewable from the road unless a vehicle was moved) and we have to put a fence up around our pool or take it down so hubby is picking up some fencing to put around it. I'd actually been waiting on this. I'm not sure what else they will try and pull but thankfully the guy is willing to work with us as long as we do everything we are supposed to which of course we will. We were told it was one person behind us who called (Who lives farther away than the neighbor that told us she loves hearing the rooster and doesn't really even hear him that often and that these people are never home....that is because they drive around and around our frikking block over and over and through the alleyway. They seem to have it out for us and we don't even know them that I am aware of. Been doing this for awhile) anyway then they said it was also two city council members leading me to wonder if this is related to the Thompson (city manager) deal. I had apparently gotten his attention with my newspaper blogs at one point in time and he was actually using city workers to try to find out who I was. (I was told this by some of the employees themselves it was a crazy ordeal but I am used to those by now) Mainly because 1. Why would TWO of them call in when only one of them is over my area? and 2. neither of them live close to my house and 3. Even if a neighbor had called them to complain that goes back to the 1st point....only one of them would have been needed to deal with it and 4. Why would they complain that I HAVE chickens when they themselves changed the ordinance only a couple of years ago? Makes no damned sense. 


"It is only paranoia if they aren't really out to get you" In any case so now we are doing what all we need to do and I am resisting the urge to spray paint a big mural with "fuck you" on the side of my house. Wouldn't accomplish anything. ;) We are also dealing with plenty of others things such as my FIL's health and my Mom's appts and then money issues, repairs, and my oldest daughter is graduating and not sure if she is moving out yet or getting a job or going to school or what and is going to be getting married. Plenty of normal life stuff to worry about. Ignoring my own health issues atm because we just don't have the time or vehicle to take care of them. I am getting my cat fixed tomorrow so have to keep him in tonight and have to try to get him to keep a collar on soon. I'm sure he will love me for that. 


I have thoughts and such that I can't even really blog about as well. :/ No time to think really and my head hurts all the time. Such is life. Things keep me awake at night because they stir around in the back of my mind at at night when it is finally quiet and I am laying there they slip to the front and hit me all at once. Then the dreams I have are so vivid and I am left the next day feeling tired.