TAKE COVER!!!

Hello good people of the world! I had some time so I thought I'd write some thoughts down. It's been fairly tame around the Bundy household for the most part. It's not a big secret that I am not a fan of Friday. I used to welcome Friday with open arms. I'd drive home with my favorite tunes playing in the car, windows down (weather permitting) and couldn't wait for what the weekend had in store for me. The older I get, the more my weekends are filled with laundry, dishes, cleaning, and....dun dun dunnnn.....the 19th Street Mafia. For those who aren't familiar with the 19th Street Mafia, I shall enlighten you. When we moved into our house there were three kids on this block. They were our neighbors and their youngest is 4 or 5 years older than our oldest. Owen was born and then there were 4. Along came Sarah and then there were 5. That's it. In the past 5 years or so, there have been several children move into the neighborhood. Somehow, in the mix of all of it, my house has become the meeting point for all these children. I'm not talking 5 or 6. I'm not even talking 10. I just wrote them all down on paper including my two kids. There are 18 kids that frequent my house. I guarantee that if you drive past my house when school is not in session, you will find endless children in my yard. At least 5 at a time. And this is even the case when we're not at home!!! And if we are gone, I swear they watch for my car and two seconds after we are in the house it starts. It's rediculous. Endless ringing of the doorbell, kids running everywhere in the yard. My kids in and out of the house trying to sneak multiple inside toys outside. Baby clothes, dolls, cars, swords, guns, chalk, pop cans, candy wrappers, pens, paper, crayons, moon sand. These are just a few of the inside toys that I have to go out and pick up afterwards. This does not include when the garage get's opened. Then we come into bikes of all sizes, little trikes, skateboards, balls, frisby's, etc. While it's great that they have friends and play outside and use their imagination, but their friends then go home. Leaving my kids and myself with the clean-up. My house constantly looks like a trash pile. Not to mention, my grass is shot. My kids will come in to use the restroom and 10 seconds in they are ringing the doorbell wondering if they are going to come back out!! Some days I just stay away from my house, just because I know the minute I pull in it's going to start. I'm not kidding! I'm afraid to come home!! The kids are great for the most part, don't get me wrong, but it defintely takes it toll on my sanity. So, there you have it. The 19th Street Mafia..

On to the dog. We have cattle and our last cattle dog, Fud, found a nice piece of carpet to eat and he died. Dumb ass. Anyhoo, so here they were without a cattle dog. Ryan rides Frost, our horse, in the pens and he does a decent job so the idea of a dog was put to the side for awhile. One morning Ryan decides to go to Bruce Nelson's to get a phone number. Bruce is a local guy in Greenwood who trains dogs to work cattle and such. A little inside information, for those who know Wes Boggs, it's his father in-law. So, he goes to get a phone number and what does Bruce send him home with? A puppy. He's a Border Collie and his name is Jed. Jed is a fairly large dog now and leaves big mammoth crap piles in the yard. Why can't he crap at the farm? He's there all day!! You can imagine my amusement when my daughter not only steps in it but actually slips and falls in it as well. Jeans - in the trash. Nope! I was not washing them. I understand that I will probably have several comments about the economy and how there are kids with no pants on so I can only apologize and donate a pair next time I'm in town. I can do cow shit, pig shit, horse shit, chicken shit (remind me later to tell you about the chicken poop poops), baby shit, big kid shit, goat shit, I can even go as far to say that I can deal with cat shit. There is something about dog shit that I just simply cannot do. I threw the damn things away.

There is a point to this rambling and I'll get to it right now.

I witnessed a fairly large pile of poo on the driveway the other day. THE DRIVEWAY!! Really? The dog can't even shit in the yard. Anyhoo - in fear that one of my kids or any of the other members of the 19th Street Mafia would step in it, I decide I need to pick it up. It was in the mix of all the beautiful fall leaves making it camouflage. Excuse me? Why do I care about the 19th Street Mafia stepping in it you ask? Well, that's a good question. It's because when they do, they tend to scrape it off either all over my front steps or on the house itself. No shit! On the house!! You can kind of see now why I drink like I do. It keeps me smiling!

So, back to the disposal. I grab this little hoe my daughter uses to clean the poop up and attempt to slide the crap onto the hoe using leaves and my shoe. It's not working as expected so I decide that poop is better in the yard than in the driveway, right? I carefully slide the plastic hoe as far under the crap pile as I can and with one swift motion, I fling it toward the side yard. I assumed the poop was dropped after the rain we had, however, I realized quite quickly that was not the case at all. It was a mere facade and I was a fool. When I flung that crap with all my might, it stuck to the hoe just long enough to release straight up in the air. I watched that crap in slow motion rise in the air and then burst like a $2,000 firework on the forth of July right above my head about 6 feet up. But there were no "Oooo's and Ahhh's" following this firework. It was more "OH SHIT!!!" I'm running for the door as I hear shit pellets hit the ground and my windshield. I'm covering my head and all hunkered down as if someone was actually shooting at me! All the while saying to myself, "no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no" as I'm running for cover. I'm sure the neighbors were laughing at me, yet again. "There Nicky goes again. What has she done now?!" And why was I covering my head? Did it really matter where the hell the shit hit me? It would've been horrible anywhere!! I hate dog poop. I will always hate dog poop, and I will not attempt to pick it up again.

**When you eat chicken poop, you often come down with a case of the chicken poop poops, per my nephew.**

**I was asked a good question today. If you ripped the wings off of a fly, would it still be called a fly?**

Well, duty calls and I better run. I hope you all have a great week!! And please, watch for dog shit. There isn't a substance much worse, in my opinion.

Pink Flamingos

I've decided to work from home today to catch up on some laundry and I said to myself.."Self? What better way to pass the time between phone calls and laundry than to write about pink flamingos!" So here I am...writing to you fine people about a story that is sure to make you laugh. Or maybe you will leave this page thinking, "She really is weird isn't she?" Regardless, as long as it makes you smile I will be content in being weird. We all know I'm weird anyway right? I've been called a lot worse.
I grew up being the only girl kid in my family, really. I had two cousins and a brother. All three, of which, were boys. Sure I had dolls and stuff but I was more inclined to make caves in the ground and play in them with my cousins G.I. Joe's or HeMan figures than to actually play house with the dolls. I was your run of the mill tomboy. In being a tomboy, I despised the color pink. It was way too girly for me and I always chose the black one instead. My hatred for pink continued throughout elementary school, middle school, high school, and up until about 3 years ago when I actually put it on and saw how versatile the color pink is. It can be cute, sexy, plain, or sporty!
Well, during my stubborn times as a pink hater, I asked my mother to watch the kids while Ryan and I went out on the town. I'm not sure why - but it ended up to be my mother and my aunt watching the kids. I would assume that they were just hanging out keeping each other company. We went out, had a great time, I'm sure, and we got home after the bar closed. After we had discussed the evening Mom went home and I went to bed. The next morning I wake up as usual, grab some coffee, and go outside for a smoke. That's when I saw them. Multiple pink flamingo's standing in my yard. I look down at my coffee, smell it for booze, look up again, and they are still there!! I can't even remember how long I just sat there staring at these pink flamingo's blowing in the breeze. I calmly finish my cigarette and go inside to ask Ryan why he would put such discusting yard ornaments in our yard! Especially when he knows I find them hideous.
The conversation with my husband goes as usual with him staring at me and I'm sure thinking to himself, "Jesus tits, here she goes again," while I'm explaining these pink flamingo's nesting in our yard. He then tastes my coffee for booze, and meanders outside to see what all the fuss is about. He starts laughing when he sees them and swears he has nothing to do with it. I didn't see these when I got home from the bar so someone must have put these out after we were asleep. I was not hammered when I got home and I was certain that I would have seen them!!! They were big discustingly pink flamingo's!!
I call my mother. I ask her if she saw the flamingo's when she left and she was convincing enough as she stated she had no idea what I was talking about and that maybe I should consider going back to bed. By the end of the conversation she was laughing at me as well.
I thought some more on it and remembered a few days prior to this incident I was reading in the paper where some church groups would go around and put stuff in peoples yards. You then would pay them so much money (a donation, if you will) for them to clear the yard of whatever was placed in it. I wasn't aware of my church doing this so I called Mom back just to make sure. She's laughing even harder now and told me that our church does not do this. At this point, I was just plain pissed off. I just dropped $50 last night at the bar! If I took the flamingo's out of the yard without paying whatever church put them there, I would be known as the ungrateful sinner who didn't donate! If I left them out there until I had the money to donate, I would be known as the girl who spent all her money at the bar and had to wait until pay day to donate to the church. So, not only were they, by guilt, forcing someone - ME - to donate to their church, they were also trying to "help me" by keeping me from the bar! NOT ONLY would I be pegged as one of the above people, I would also be known, for those who didn't know of the donation, the girl with pretty pink flamingo's IN HER YARD!!!!!
I stewed about it all day long. Who would do this? Especially to someone who doesn't even belong to their church? Don't get me wrong. I donate to my church and always will. I find absolutely NOTHING wrong with that. But I feel that a donation is voluntary and should not be forced upon someone. Now, I usually don't do things like this but I had made up my mind. I called my mother back later that evening and told her I was going to write a letter to the editor in the paper and tell them just how I felt. I was pissed, and this was communism. Forcing me to donate...pshht...
I heard nothing but laughter on the other end of the line, which in turn, pissed me off even more. How was this funny?? Why is she laughing at this issue??
Apparently, my mother and my aunt were in cahoots with eachother the whole night. When my mother left the house for the night, she and my aunt were playing Mission Impossible. Creeping around my yard after supposedly leaving and sticking hideous flamingo's in my yard without being discovered. They figured I would more than likely be drunk when I got home and the next morning would wonder what had went on the night before with the flamingo's that I didn't remember. When she realized how much thought I had put into it and the fact that I was going to state my rage in the local paper, she decided then was the time to tell me the truth. I believe I may have hung up on her.

Some funnies for you..We have a Wii game called Boom Blockers. In some of the levels, one in particular, there are several beavers standing in the backround dancing about. You can hit the beavers with your balls (<---don't tell me you weren't laughing at that!) and they fly backwards spinning in the air. Not that the beavers are your target - but they can be eliminated just as easily as the blocks can. Well, we had some family over the other night to play Wii and Owen was having a great time knocking over the beavers. Kids are so innocent, you know. But it's that innocence that makes them that much more funny!! Two comments were made by Owen regarding the beavers...

"HEY!! Behave your beaver!!!" - I don't know about you guys but sometimes those damn beavers just don't behave! No matter how much you try to tell them too!

"The Beavers are in excitement!! The beavers are in excitement!" - And this would be when they don't listen to you when you tell them to behave.

I hope everyone has a great day!!! I'm off to do more laundry and dishes before making small talk at the school playground!!