Tell It To COACHIE

When we got our Wii this Christmas, one of the games we got to go with it was “de Blob.” I had seen a commercial for it on TV, and since I am easily manipulated, I decided we needed it. It turns out to be a really, really fun game, but unfortunately it is more of a one person game than Wii Sports or Mario Kart, so the kiddies don’t choose to play it too often. When they do, I always come out and sit on the couch, because I know sooner or later they are going to ask me for help and pass me the remote. I am awesome at de Blob.

For those of you who don’t know the game, basically the evil INKT Corporation has taken over Chroma City and removed all the color. You, as de Blob, jump all over the buildings and gardens, etc., repainting everything. When you paint a whole block of buildings, you liberate the Raydians, the citizens of the town who have been turned into Graydians. You basically throw your blobby self all over the place, do challenges, and the more different items you pick up, the more patterns, music, etc., you bring to the city. And here I will bow my head and pray that is both the longest and the last video game summary you will find posted here by me.

Anyhoo, little did I know that my world would one day become Chroma City (and that I would be the blob inhabiting). Unfortunately, in order to activate our joyful plans to shake the dust of MO from our feet, we must return our house to its original state. We painted almost every room of this house, because we thought we were going to be here for 3 years. Now, less than 2 years later, the thought of painting over all of our hard work makes me sort of sad, but particularly the kiddies’ rooms because I spent A LOT of time painting them. If you are not Erin, Doug, Kate, or one of the kiddies’ grandparents, you never got to see my handiwork. And you never will. In person that is. Here is Marty’s room:

Using a protractor (yes, a protractor - I’m not sure which is weirder, that we have a protractor or that I was able to lay my hands on it within a few weeks of moving) I cut a wave shape out of a manilla folder and then used it as a stencil all the way around his room I’m sure there is an easier way to do this, as well as an easier way to make sure it stays level (my way was repeatedly measuring the height from the floor to the folder in a most OCD manner). Anyway, in the end I was able to keep it level, and I was happy with the way it turned out. The kiddies call Marty’s bed “the boat” because the height of the waves makes his bed look like it’s floating. I chose that height very carefully - based on my strong conviction that the waves must be higher than the window sill so wouldn’t have to paint waves on that wall too.

The HP found these old decorative wooden fish I had when I was single and put them up on the wall. Of course, whenever things get very exciting back there, the fish get knocked off the wall, but when the room is straightened up and no one is in it, the fish look really cute.

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Remember that paint I had to pick up in the snow storm? Yes, well Marty’s room, sadly has been returned to its Army issue/institutional FLW white. So has our room, although I hadn’t really done any special painting back there. But I still have the front of the house and the kitchen, and for a few more weeks I’ve got the girls room.

Aislinn wanted blue, Lauren wanted pink, so I talked them into this stripey thing, and if I thought the wave was a lot of trouble, let me tell you, measuring stripes all the way around their room was even worse. I have mostly blocked out how I did it, except I know it involved a lot of tape and time with the electric level, but I promise you that the stripes are very straight - I’ve never been sent running from the room in horror because I noticed a deviant stripe. The tape was 1.5 inches, so the stripes are 3, 4.5, or 6 inches. It took me forever to come up with the pattern of stripes and then what colors to paint them (the height, once again, was based on the window sill). And then when I was done I was disappointed because I pictured the stripes on a white background, and as you can see, the background is not white.

You can probably tell that the girls’ bed conglomeration is rather heavy. Once it was in place, I couldn’t move it, and after measuring stripes around most of the room, I decided I could not face trying to make level stripes while squashed in behind the bed. That’s why the stripes just end in that weird stripe up to the window. I realize now that if I hadn’t shown you this picture, no one would have ever known.

The painted rooms look clean, but cold. Martin has already requested new waves for his new room in Kentucky, and I have to agree with him. It is a big pain in the behind, but the paint just makes everything seem more like home.

Yesterday I was going to write about how I’ve only lived in Missouri for 19 months, and yet I’m now on my fifth different hair stylist.  Who knew that my hair would drive so many people out of the beauty profession?  Unfortunately, the events of yesterday precluded posting of any kind, because by the time I finally returned home from my 9:15 am hair cut appointment (at 4:15), all I really wanted to do was curl up on my couch, and my couch is not in the kitchen near the computer.

Our local news “meteorologists,” like most local news “meteorologists,” predict the weather about as well as prehistoric man predicted meteors.  They were calling for snow yesterday, in all sorts of amounts, with all sorts of start and end times, but we woke up to no snow, and all of the snow on the radar looked like it was breaking up before it came close to reaching us.  So I set out for Jefferson City, about 97 miles away, to get a haircut (if you think that is a far distance to travel for a haircut, clearly you haven’t been paying attention to my tales of Missouri).  The trip was uneventful - no snow and no traffic.  The haircut was uneventful - no snow, no excessive use of hair spray.  When I checked in at home, I learned that the snow had begun at Fort Leonard Wood, but I wasn’t too worried, because the largest amount predicted was 4 inches over the course of the day, so I figured it wasn’t falling too hard.

As usual, I was wrong.

(Back at the homestead.)

On my way home from Jefferson City, I had to make a stop in Rolla, about 30 miles from here to buy paint (mini-rant regarding paint coming later).  As I got closer and closer to Rolla, the snow started to fall harder and harder.  Still, the roads were pretty clear, and I saw a few plows, so I was not too worried about getting home.  Then I saw the one idiot spin out in front of me.  He didn’t hit anyone, but he was now facing the wrong way on a two-lane snow-covered road.  And then I remembered, it doesn’t matter if the roads are passable because the idiots driving on them will make them unpassable in short order.

I managed to navigate Rolla and pick up the paint, and got on the highway to head back home.  The traffic was moving at about 30 (instead of 80) mph, but it was moving, so I figured I’d be home in about an hour.  That theory lasted about 15 miles, when traffic came to a complete stop. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of south/central MO, I can tell you that it is a series of ridges and valleys, so at times the highway is very steep and twisty. I was hoping that some semis were trudging up a hill somewhere and that traffic would begin to flow again.

An hour later, I was still hoping.

An hour after that, I was so hungry, I didn’t really care about the traffic anymore.

(my cellphone takes nice pictures, no?)

I sat within 100 yards of this spot for most of the afternoon. I was grateful that circumstances had kept me out of the way of whatever accident was ahead. I wondered if a funeral director would notice that I had a new haircut and feel grateful that it was so easy to style, assuming my head wasn’t bashed in. I was extremely glad to be in the HP’s car with his new satellite radio instead of my car with it’s lame assortment of country music or Christian rock. After 10 or so false starts, the traffic finally began moving again.

When I finally got up to see what the problem was, I saw: 2 tractor trailers that had slid off the road and crashed sideways into some trees, one of the trailers was cracked open and I could see piles of smashed brown boxes inside; 2 pickup trucks, one smashed on the side of the road, the other being held from sliding over the 20 foot dropoff (or having been recently pulled up the dropoff) by a tow truck; assorted other smashed cars; 4 or 5 other smashed tractor trailers; and lots of emergency personnel, truck drivers, etc.

As I drove by, I made eye contact with one of the rescuers who looked at me like, “See why you shouldn’t be out on the road, idiot?” so I looked back at him like, “It wasn’t snowing when I left and I have to get home with this paint and I’m not currently smashed on the side of the road so maybe I am driving properly for the conditions but since I know you’re probably having a rough day I won’t take my cellphone out and photograph the scene.” He looked away.

I started to relax once I made it past the accident, mostly because suddenly I was the only car on the road again. Then I noticed the other side of the highway which was at a stand still and every truck had a driver desperately trying to de-ice their trailer connections. The back up lasted almost to my exit, 13 miles away. As I passed all the other cars stuck in ditches, and I wondered to myself people felt the need to drive like dumdums every time it snows, another pick up truck spun out in front of me.

I got off at my exit and was almost home when a taxicab spun out in front of me. Fortunately for him, we were at a light, so he was kind of the star of the intersection. Everyone could see him and waited for him to do the hokey pokey and turn himself around. At least he waved a thank you once he got going again.

I finally arrived home to a delicious sandwich and even more delicious glass of wine. In the end it was sort of a pretty snow storm, and the streets are already clearing up (although I’m sure school will be canceled tomorrow).

I’m not going to pretend this isn’t cheesy.

Hopefully I’ll get a chance to answer the comments and write a post tomorrow.

Good night!

That’s what I could win if I post every day this month.  Is that enough to pull me away from my Tivo’ed episode of Lost just to write this down?  Apparently it is.

Fortunately, if I have time I will finally have some stories to tell of our past two days in the big city of St. Louis.

Cross your fingers that I could be the big winner!

Note to self:  Get a life.  Quick.

This:

Plus this:

was bad enough. But as part of the Sudoku game, there is another little game called Pair Match:

What you do is draw a line between each pair of matching numbers, but none of the lines between the pairs can intersect the lines between other pairs, like this:

You have 30 seconds to finish it, and as soon as you’re done, a new one pops up. The DS keeps track of how many you do in a row, and compares it to your all time “record.” The doofus guy on the top screen (whose purpose I’m not quite sure of, except that he is better than the half-shirted girlie doofus who is the other choice) looks very humdrum if you don’t break the record every time you play.

When the game is that quick, it’s easy (for me anyway) to end up spending a half hour playing hundreds of little games (just one more then I’ll quit, well maybe one more, well I can’t quit until I lose a game, well I lost a game but I’ll just play one more quick game and then I’ll quit, etc. etc. etc.). Somewhere in my mind I know I’ve got a million things to do, but somewhere else in my mind I guess I’m just desperate to cheer up the doofus.

Guess what else:

New camera.

Old camera. I guess given how beat up it is, I shouldn’t be complaining about the quality of pictures that the old one puts out. It still has its moments, but as discussed ad nauseum, we don’t know how many moments it has left. Hopefully some day soon I will use one or both of the cameras to take pictures of something other than the other electronic stuff in my house.