Savannah Scrapbooking

It's one of those moments... (Shameless mama bragging)

I am

so proud

of this

girl...

(Can you see the smile on her face?)

My girl, sigh... sometimes she just full on, no holds barred, takes my breath away.

And this evening witnessed one of those moments. 

This softball season has turned out to be a bit more complicated than those of years past.  Since there were only three teams in her age group, the great City of Savannah decided that it wasn't economically feasible to pay for the umpires to staff a league, which I totally understand because, I mean heck why waste the tax dollars to pay for officials so that some silly girls can play the sport they love.   (Insert sarcastic asshole voice.)

So Lizzy's team, the Inferno, was allowed to play in the 12u league which kind of bites because they not only are missing out on competition with their own peer group, but the parents of the younger teams are FREAKING out that their girls have to play our older team.  Needless to say, it's made things a little weird.  To keep things fair and square, our team cannot compete in the end of season tourney and our games don't really count against the younger teams.  Plus, Lizzy and the other 14 year old on our team have to play out of position when we go up against the really young teams.  That seems fair to me, and at least our girls are getting some much needed experience.

ANYWAY... this post wasn't intended to be a wordy soapbox about the complexities of our city's parks and recreation department.  It was supposed to be about the fact that my baby girl, gave her mama and her daddy something to smile about tonight.

So tonight's game was against our arch-rival, the Riptide (eeek!)  and Lizzy was asked to be starting pitcher, since this team, like ours, has fourteen year olds on it. Um, wait a minute... my girl hasn't been practicing her pitching because she is a.) A fourteen year old girl who would rather be golf carting around the hood scouting for boys and b.)  A fourteen year old girl living in denial about the fact that she would ever get asked to start because of the league's attitude toward our team.

And  yet, here she was tonight, warming up on the pitcher's mound.  Our usual pitcher, the illustrious Miss E, was moved to short stop so Lizzy could take her turn in the circle. Was I scared to death?  Um, yes. The team they were playing is definitely the best team in the league, and to be honest several of their girls looked good enough to be playing on high school teams.

But my sweet baby, got up there and slung that ball over and over and over again. 

And at the risk of sounding like a delusional stage mom, I've gotta tell you that she did SO freakin' good!! 

In fact, after the game one of the coaches told our coach that our starting pitcher was "close to being great."  Seriously?????  GREAT????  My baby!  And Big Dave's friend Gary, who knows a thing or two about softball told her that she's got a great arm and awesome 'velocity'... uh huh... I guess those spaghetti noodle arms come in handy for something after all!  And just imagine what she'd have done if she'd actually been practicing on a regular basis????

She got her ass handed to her, I will tell you that.  And for any of you who know softball, then let me say that the team we played was a 'watch and wait' type of team, which means that they didn't swing their bats, waiting to be walked.  And in girl's softball, a pretty much awesome percentage is 30% strikes, which means there's a 70% chance that the ball will not be a strike, and if you face a team who doesn't swing the bat, chances are they're gonna get plenty of walks.  Unfortunately, that's the Riptide's game plan and it worked tonight. 

But dangit, my kid hung in there.  In the end Coach Sarah had to replace her with our regular pitcher, Miss E because she was getting frustrated, but I couldn't believe how calm and poised she was during her time on the mound.  It was a joy to watch as she smiled while fighting her way through her fears of embarrassing herself and failing in her role as pitcher.  I couldn't be prouder (okay, well maybe if she'd pitched a shutout and won the game with a grand slam or something, but you know what I mean!)

Good job sweet girl.

Good job.

:)

 

 

Blog sneeze...

Let's have a bit of randomness shall we? I've got a sneeze full of snippets to share...

*1... Hello Beryl... you precious little subtropical depression bit of nonsense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your winds are whipping through the hundred year old oaks that cradle my home, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't stressing me out just a tad. Hurry up and get the hell out of here please!

*2... my ass hurts. Well, like the muscles deep in the cheeks, you know? I did some vicious exercises in my workout with my hottie neighbor yesterday and now I'm seriously considering the merits of standing up to pee. Just sayin'.

*3... um... I'm bored and need a good book to read. Any suggestions?

*4... Big Brother starts on July 12th!!!

Big Brother = Summer in the Dhu. Let the drama and disgusting evidence of the decline of humanity (blah blah blah, etc...) begin!

*5... My new favorite cocktail: Rum (hee hee), Crystal Ice Orange Mango ZERO calorie sparkling water, and coconut flavored soda water. Can you say SKINNY???? Of course, it does have sucralose in it which can turn your bowels into a bubbling sewer of doom if you're succeptable (as evidenced by the reaction of the one who will remain anonymous this past weekend.)

Pass the Kleenex, blog sneeze over. ;)

We survived Middle School!!!!

Praise Ye the Lord, hallelujah!

My baby girl, the oh so fabulous, kinda kooky-creepy, silly, weirdo-just-like-her-mother, Miss Priss is officially a rising 9th grader!

{Insert happy dance}

And I, personally, am THRILLED about it.  In fact, with her entrance into high school, I am one step closer to my goal of getting her grown and gone so I can retire to a nudest colony in the Caribbean.

I'm kinda shocked at how fast the last three years have flown by... phew, that was crazy speedy wasn't it?  They were three fairly good years, especially when compared to the barf-o-drama of the elementary school days of classroom parties, Georgia day costumes (gag) and projects that required entirely too much parental input for my lazy ass taste. 

Miss Priss got a good lesson in being independent through her years at SCPS middle school, where they whipped out the super sized garden shears to cut our apron strings.  It was quite an adjustment, but well worth it when I hear the words, "Nope, I don't need any help"  after I offer some input on homework.  Kudos to the teachers for preparing my baby for the next level of learnedness (I think.)

So now I will bask in the glory that is SUMMERTIME in Dhuland, and try to temporarily forget what it was like to wake up at 7am, yell approximately four hundred and eighty two times for the teenagaer to get her ass out of bed before she's grounded, while cutting spots of mold out of the last two slices of bread in the Sunbeam wrapper for the nine thousandth ham sandwich I've made in my lifetime, and worrying about foot fungus as I rarely set eyes on school socks in the laundry hamper. 

Because I know it'll be here again before I know it. 

{shudder} 

 

 

 

 

 

Ridin' the Rails to Trails... (Yet another reason why I love Savannah!)

In my continual efforts to find numerous and sundry ways to torture, torment and titillate myself, I decided to pack up the ol' bikeroo and head down to the trail that runs alongside Hwy 80 on the way to the beach.

It used to be the railroad track that ran out to Tybee way back in the good ol' days, like when my mom used to go out there to skate at the old pavillion.  They used to take the train. Cool right?

Nowadays, it's no longer a train track, but a six mile gravel trail that leads through some of the most beautiful scenery in Savannah. 

There are a couple of different options for tackling the trail.  You can either park your car and start down on the Ft. Pulaski end which would give you the full six miles down and six miles back, or you can start in the middle and go three miles one way, three back, then three the other direction and three back.  Or you can go willy nilly and go for however long your legs will carry you!  (Which is what I did, for a grand total of 16.76 miles.)

However, please be aware that even though you may feel like the Million Dollar Man while the wind is at your back, once you change direction and head into that wind without trees or buildings to block it, you're gonna have try a little lot harder. 

There are plenty of benches and picnic tables sprinkled through the trail, so you can always find a horizontal plane on which to pass out.  Just sayin... not that somewhere during mile 14, while pedaling against the wind and clamoring over twenty feet of washed out ruts did I ever once even consider such a thing.

The west end of the trail was blocked off last time we went running down there, we assumed because of some erosion or something, but today it only had a little piece of fence up with plenty of room to go around, and there was a bouncy blonde jogger heading back from the direction of the forbidden zone, so I figured I'd go check it out. 

There was definitely some erosion...

So I just closed my eyes and rode on through.  The bushes were thicker on this part of the trail, I guess because most people turn around when they hit the bridge, but I kept on trucking.  I mean heck, if Freddy Kruger didn't hack the bouncy blonde jogger to bits then it had to be safe, right? 

And I'm SO glad I ventured on because I found the coolest little area at the end of the trail! 

The picture doesn't do it justice (I took it with my boob-sweat soaked phone), but there are picnic tables, and momentos hanging from the trees...

 and a rickety homemade walkway out to the water...

It's got an official sign and all...

I mean that's pretty neato right?

It looks like a youth group has been there recently and decorated it with prayer banners...

I indulged myself for a few minutes, reading some of the prayers and nosing around the site looking at the names and dates carved, written and burned into the picnic tables and trees.  It's kind of magical in there in the dense shade of the oaks... I could've stayed all day.

Or maybe that was just my inner self-preservationist trying to avoid the three miles riding into the wind that stood between me and my car.

So, perhaps if you're feelin' froggy, you may want to take a nice walk or bike ride out there, I think you'd dig it. 

And now I'm going to change out the bags of frozen cauliflower on my knees. 

;)

 

 

 

 

RIP Geraldine... (I'm pretty sure there's a lesson to be learned here.)

Poor Geraldine!  Our little red hen, the ONLY frickin' hen we had that was actually earning her keep around here by laying an egg a day, has gone to the great chicken farm in the sky.

Yep. She's dead. 

And unlike the untimely demise of Echo, our Rhode Island Red, at the clutches of some wild chicken-ass eating predator, Geraldine's death was self induced. 

See, about a month ago, we brought home two new baby chicks (and for some reason I NEVER took pics of them...bad scrapbooker!) The chicks have been living in a pen in my mom's workshop for the last few weeks, while we waited for them to grow their real feathers. 

So last Friday, Big Dave built a barrier in our chicken coop so that we could release the babies into it without having them get pecked to death by the big chickens... simple right?  Oh sure, anywhere else in the world it would be simple, but not in Dhuland.  Our motto is, "If something CAN go wrong, it WILL go wrong."

And sure enough it did.

Maybe it's just a coincidence, I dunno, but Big Dave put the babies into their separate pen, Geraldine went bat-shit-crazy, flapping her wings and squawking at the interlopers, and the next day she was DEAD.

Dead as a fat red chicken on an old dirt floor.

Big Dave said it looked like she had been on her roost, took a HUGE dump, and fell backwards dead on the ground. I think she gave herself a heart attack over those damned babies!

And now we're left with Edith, who is a full on looney bird, that refuses to lay eggs no matter what we try, and two babies who won't lay their first eggs for months.  Grrrrr.... chicken drama.

Now I'm gonna have to buy eggs from the grocery story... bah humbug!  I've gotten quite spoiled with our little one egg a day hen house. 

Awww, poor Geraldine.  I'm gonna miss that fluffy lady.  RIP my dear faithful egg provider.

(And no we didn't eat her.)

I think the moral of the story here is that old birds shouldn't get themselves all worked up over young chicks.  Hmmmm... Yes, that works on a couple different levels doesn't it? 

;)

 

 

A Running Haiku...

Ten miles on Monday,

means a blister on my toe...

and bra burn too, ouch.

Dig it? 

;)

 

Show and Tell!

Well I'd say it's been a while since I've had any scrapbook layouts to share, but low and behold, miracle of miracles, I actually managed to complete a few this past weekend at Tybee.

Between eats, drinks and laughs with my kooky friends, that is.

So let's have a looky shall we?

Yummm... I am LOVING our new Cricut Expression!  It'll cut big fat titles and images like the ones above.  Needless to say there was a LOT of Cricutting going on this weekend.

How wonderfully random is it that I found a whole pack of little polar bear die cuts at Sandi's freebie table in Raleigh a few weeks ago?  Perfect for our Polar Bear Plunge pages!

This birdie paper was another freebie... SO cute! Man, and I forgot how much I love this notebook paper punch (on the journaling box)... meOW!

And this was one of those layouts that's been hanging around haunting me for EVER... well, at least for the last three years.  Finally got around to gettin' her done.

Love the colors on this one.  And I found the little owl button in one of my containers of randomness.  He's adorable fo' sho'!

Oh I'm diggin' this one... even though it's kind of a cheesy title.  I stole the pics off of one of Miss Priss' friend's Facebook walls, haha!

And lastly, this little friend...

Uh oh... the next one will be the big 4-0! 

Well there ya have it, a weekend's worth of scrapbooking. It sure was nice! And now that I've got the Penthouse fairly cleaned and organized, maybe I can get back to scrapping on a regular basis... one can hope! ;)

Tybee TIME!

Farewell sweet friends, I'll be on Tybee time for the next four days with these chickadoodles...

As you can see, we are VERY well behaved.

There will be laughing...

and napping...

and crying (I rented The Descendants)...

and water guns? (Tybee Beach Bum parade Friday night)...

and eating (Sid is a RIDONKULOUS cook!)...

and drinking (pina coladas, lemon/lime vodka, merlot, sangria, pinot grigio, NC wine, and Corona... and that's just Sid and I bwahaha!!)...

and basking in the sun...

and walks on the beach...

and dirty stories (50 Shades)...

and um... uh... what am I forgetting?  Oh... SCRAPBOOKING!!!

Chuckle... bring on the weekend!!

 

I'm kind of a badass you know...

Because badasses run so much that they wear out their earbuds...

Badasses wear out their running shoes, their knees, their sports bras, and their husband's patience when they announce every night at dinner how many miles they've run that day.

Badasses also wear out bags of frozen vegetables...

9 miles today... ouch!

Uh huh... I'm kind of a badass.

;)

Macy's Giveaway Winner!

Congratulations Deborah!  Your comment (Mrs. Cunningham from Happy Days) was chosen at random to win your pick of the three items offered in Macy's Mother's Day giveaway! 

You can see the items here and email me (jadanford@aol.com)  which one you select so M80 (the company who contacted me on behalf of Macy's) can send out your prize.

Happy Mother's Day!!!