And then there were two. Two teams that is. Last night was another excellent game that once again came down to the wire. I am not sure an old lady like me can take much more of this :).  As much as they would like to win, they are also ready to be done. 3 1/2 months is a long season.  At any rate, the worst they can finish now is second. Considering that last year they did not win a single game, they have come a long way and no matter if they win or loose Wednesday night, you can’t help but be proud.

6,151,680 Minutes, 12,045 Days, 1,716 Weeks, or 396 Months.  Sounds like a long time doesn’t it? Noodle told me “That’s Only A Little Bit Old”.  So how did we celebrate my 33rd year?

The only way you can when its 115 outside.  With swimming.

  And playing with motorcycles.

And cake. Lots and lots of cake.

Not only is it my birthday though its GOTCHA DAY!

  23 years ago, my aunt and uncle were handed not one but two sweet babies (TWINS!) that were welcomed into our family with open arms. I bet you don’t remember what you got for your 10th birthday, I still tell them it was my best one by far. The only thing that could have made yesterday better would have been to have both girls with us.  But when you live 2,500 miles away we will take what we can get.  (I had just gotten out of the pool , do me a favor and don’t look too close). 

Its never easy to live far away from home, but they have snow and we have this… 

Hershey just wanted to swim with the girls.

The girls My girl

Do you see those freckles on her nose? I love, love, love them!

Lots and Lots of Noodles!!

Today is going to be a pretty lazy day around Casa de Mar.

Noodle is still sleeping and I have no intention of waking her up anytime soon.

We are heading over to our friends this afternoon for swimming, eating, drinking beer and watching fireworks. I am not sure what says Happy Birthday America like that does. 

God Bless America and those who serve our Country.

You may think I am exaggerating (like I would ever do such a thing!) and maybe it was because it was MY girl who was playing but I think I was more nervous last night than I was when we were at Game 7 of the 2001 World Series.

As I said yesterday it was all or nothing last night. It came down to the bottom of the last inning with our girls having last bats. It was 9 - 8, we were down. We were at the very bottom of our line-up.  1st  (#7) batter gets to 1st,  2nd (* batter hits a pop fly and is out.  1st batter manages to steal her way to 3rd. (Stealing is extremely easy in our league).  Batter #9 comes up. God Bless her but she is built like a Weeble  and is not mentally all there.  You could have heard a pin drop where we were standing. We just hoped that she didn’t swing her bat and would get walked. Indeed! 4 balls and off she trotted to 1st. Back to the top of the line-up, Batter #1 comes up, NAILS the ball to outfield, batter on 3 rd comes home WE ARE TIED!  Right then time seemed to stop and resume in slow motion. Remember in Forrest Gump when Jenny and Forrest are walking after getting off the bus and the boys on the bikes start chasing him and Jenny starts yelling “RUN FORREST RUN”, it was JUST.LIKE.THAT! The parents were screaming and yelling and jumping up and down. RUN A RUN! The girl who no one wanted on their team, the girl, who in all honesty should not be playing the level she is SCORED THE WINNING RUN!  Sadly, she had no idea what she had done.  Not only did she have no idea, her parents were no where around to see what she had accomplished. I went over to the dugout and A was coming out. I offered her all the praise in the world and she wrapped her arms around me and hugged me like she had never been hugged before. It took my breath away and then and there I realized that it wasn’t the winning the game that mattered. What mattered was that she for the first time in a very long time was important and she was the girl that someone wanted.

* A great big shout out to my bloggy BFF Vixen for fixing my 2nd attempt at the team photo. I am at work so can’t post it from here but take my word for it - C.U.T.E. Thanks Vix!

Here is one of the better attempts of trying to get all the girls in the picture*. There is one missing so we will try again tonight to get all of them. I took this after the game last time, I think I will try to take it before the game this time to get better lighting behind them. I tried to center myself the best I could but as you can see I still cut a few faces off.

SORRY - PICTURE IS GONE.

As much as I bitch and complain about living at the ballpark, tonight is all or nothing for the girls. Win tonight on to the finals - lose tonight and the season is over. Just a little pressure on their little shoulders. Cross your fingers for them if you don’t mind. 

One thing I WILL NOT MISS? The little sing song songs they sing. OMG! They drive me bat shit crazy and I can’t get them out of my head once they start singing them.  Sure they are cute the first couple of time they sing them, but 2 hours in and 6 million verses later, I have had enough.

*Won’t be here long.

I had looked forward to Friday all week long. I knew it meant the end of the week followed by a 3 day weekend. My day was destined to be shitty for before I even opened my eyes.

• The neighbors dogs started barking about 5:15 and stopped about .2 seconds after I got out of bed
• Our friends who live on the next street over are out of town so we are watching their dogs. They have 3. 2 that live in the house and one who stays outside by his choice. Until yesterday morning that is. He was covered in mud and ran into the house. He is a great big scaredy cat and peed all over when I got near him. Great. Clean up mess, get dogs outside, go back home to get ready for work.
• Log onto computer just real quick to check emails. Decide to check to see if pay check is in bank account. Turns out there is NO money in account. Someone made a mistake with Noodle’s tuition automatic withdrawl and they took out over 3 months of tuition all at once.  FREAK OUT.
• Try to call school. Not open until 9. Call company that handles tuition. Very nice man figures out what happened. Explains that school has to offer refund not them.
• Realize it is the last day anyone will be at school until August. FREAK OUT.
• Run upstairs, wake Noodle up not so nicely, hurry and get ready for work.
• Back over to friends to let the dogs in. Bella hides under the bed so I can’t lock her in her kennel.
• Call work to make sure Bossman is going to be on time so I can run to school to try to fix problem
• Drag poor little Bella out from under the bed and get her locked up.
• Notice we need gas in truck. Get almost to gas station (about 15 mins away) and wonder if I picked up my debit card that was laying on the counter. Seems I didn’t. Of course I have no cash and no other form of payment.
• Turn around and go all the way back home. Noodle runs in and grabs debit card and cash laying on counter.
• Back to the gas station fill up truck (we have 4 different bank accounts, I know very confusing, but thankfully there was some $$ in this account still) $96.43, sadly I was happy it was less than $100.00. They have us so brainwashed.
• Drop Noodle off at Gma’s. She has a slight meltdown. Try to reason with her in front of my mom in way that won’t give Gma any points to use against me.
• Jump in truck get about 2 blocks away, realize I should have printed off the invoice thing nice man at tuition place sent me.
• Turn around back to Gma’s house. Wait, wait, wait for Gma’s dial up access to get going.
• Back on the road, on my way to school.
• Get to school, find secretary, explain situation. She would be happy to just credit that amount to next years tuition. Um, hello! If I could pay that amount up front this problem never would have happened.
• Secretary tells me if I don’t want credit it will take about a week to get me a check. FREAK OUT.
• Have small melt down in school office wondering how we can get by on the $6.00 that is in my pocket for a week.
• Decide to go over to rectory to see if priest is there and beg him to sign the check as soon as it goes through. He usually only signs them once a week. Give him the song and dance and beg pretty please . Walk away from rectory with big ol fat check.
• Back over to school office to buy scrip so I can go back to school next day to buy uniforms. (I would rather walk over hot coals naked than buy school uniforms). Use the last check I have.
• Go to bank to deposit big ol fat check and breathe sigh of relief that nothing else had tried to clear and nothing bounced.
• Finally get to work.
• MamaB calls, did I already get scrip? Run back to school to get scrip for MamaB, realize I have no more checks. (Yes, it was only about 20 mins after I wrote my last check).  Offer my left arm in exchange for  scrip with a promise to bring it when we come for uniforms the next day.
• Back to work.
• Check bank account all day long waiting for check to post.
• Keep thinking just how good a beer would taste right. about. now.
• 4:30 Gma drops Noodle off at shop. 30 min play by play of her day.
• 5:00!! Never thought I would be so happy to get the heck out of there.
• Off to the ballpark. Sweat, sweat, sweat some more.
• Scream, yell, scream, yell, sweat, sweat, sweat some more.
• Game is finally over!! We will get them next time girls - its ok.
• Try to take picture of girls, with me laying on ground (MamaB saw it online and thought it would be soo cute) with girls standing in circle over me looking down.  We are going to have to try it again next game. Need to figure out how to get everyone in photo.  (I couldn’t seem to get quite far enough away from them all and I think I had my camera zoomed all the way in, any ideas? I will try to post a few of the ones I took ).
• Start to itch. Realize I have grass everywhere. I mean everywhere. Ass sweat and grass are not a good combination, take it from me.
• TIme to go home, FINALLY! Go let neighbor’s dogs out, come home and drag myself upstairs, take a quick shower and collapse in bed.

Oh what a day.

Last night Noodle and I stopped at our favorite Tar-Jay store to get dog food. We circled the store picking up a few other necessities and some other random things that we most likely did not need but bought anyway.  After our shopping expedition was done we jumped into the shortest line and dumped our stuff on the counter. I left the 50 pound bag of dog food in the cart. Stuck on the bag was a $5.00 coupon that I pulled off and waited until our order was rung up before I handed it to the cashier.

What I have failed to mention is that our cashier was a perky little teeny bopper, who was 100% oblivious as to what was going on around her as her boyfriend was standing off to the side of her register talking to her about Peter’s party that was happening later. (I just went back and re-read that I wonder if it really was Peter’s party or a Peter party…?).

My total was something like $65.00 ish. I asked her, having  not noticed her scan my big bag of dog food, if she got my dog food.  $65.00 didn’t sound like quite enough but she looked at the register screen said “Yup” so I handed her the coupon. Off came the $5.00.

I paid, shoved the receipt in my purse took Noodle to the snack bar for an Icee and some popcorn and off we went. When we got home I took out my receipt to look to see how much something else was. Guess who didn’t pay for her dog food?  I had also bought dog cookies and that must have been what she saw when she looked (if she even really did). I guess not only did I not pay for dog food, Tar-Jay in a sense paid me $5.00 (because of my coupon) to shop at their store.

Usually it would have bothered me that I didn’t pay for something but in this case not so much. 

I may have been on my way to work this morning and I may have been waiting to make a left turn. Now, in my neck of the woods you do have to make sure no one else is coming before you choose to make said left turn, call me silly, but that may have been just what I was doing.

As I was maybe sitting in my big ass truck (that someone behind me in a wee bitty little car could not see around if they wanted to) waiting to make sure it was clear to go, and the person behind me may or may not have laid on their horn, I may or may not have rolled down my window and flipped them the big ol bird.

Said wee bitty car person may or may not have turned left right behind me. They may or may not also be the new people who are moving into the business next door to ours.

Some times I may or may not even impress myself with my social skills, or lack there of.

Would you like to participate or find out more about Self Portrait Saturdays? Click here!

I should have been working today but as my luck goes, my list a mile long of people in reserve to watch Noodle when Hubs and I both have to work has come up short. I told Bossman that I was just going to have to bring her to work with me today, which is fine with him but it kinda makes 7 hours seem like 70 when she is there somedays. Bossman out of the goodness of his heart told me to stay home with my girl today. Poor Noodle has been worn out lately and was thrilled when I told her we would have an extra day at home. Noodle is still sleeping. I on the other hand have been up since the crack of dawn.

Since I have been up I have been to the neighbors to let her dogs out. Ran to the grocery store and came home and started whipping up some fun things.

First we have lake dip, named for no other reason than we have it at the lake.

2 blocks of cream cheese

8 oz. salsa

8oz. shredded cheese

6oz. chopped olives

Mix together, let chill, dig in. All I can say is yummy. Serve with tortilla chips.

Next we have sausage balls.

3 cups Bisquick

2 cups shredded cheese

1 lb. sausage

Mix together, roll into 1 inch balls, bake on cookie sheet at 350 for about 18 minutes. These are best served hot. (I used mild sausage, but hot sausage is very good as well).

Then I made Eggless Banana Bread. I saw the recipe over on Susan’s blog the other day and had some over ripe bananas that needed to be made into something. I have not tried it yet, but man does it smell good.

Last but not least we have good old Rice Krispy Treats.

Still on the list are brownie bites.  Prepare brownies as directed on box.  Then I use these pans from Pampered Chef. Fill almost to the top, bake at 350. They take exactly 9 minutes in my oven. Yours may vary just a bit. Believe it or not, these freeze very well. Half of these will go in the freezer for a future camping trip, the other half we will take with us Monday to the MamaB house. (Pictures later!)

Now I am off to take advantage of being home and getting caught up on laundry.

Such a glorious life, I know.