I needed a wreath for our entryway and couldn’t find one the right size for this silly wreath holder thingy-bob so decided to make one. Now after it is all said and done I’m thinkin’ it needs more ivory, darnit to heckoly!
My brother and his fiancee flew in the past weekend to do some wedding things (their date is August 7th). Their visit was VERY brief but we are just thankful we got to see them at all as it has been several months. We joined them in Grand Island on Sunday to do a lil’ cake tastin’ and all I have to say is…I want to know which tier has the red velvet at the wedding.
Jesse and the best mom in the whole wide world
Jesse, Adam and two hotties (named Linden and Shana)
We then joined Linden’s family at our most favoritest pizza place on planet earth…Bonzai Pizza. We haven’t been in years but we love it. I conned my brother to share a pizza with me that had ricotta cheese~yum yum yum!!! A little foosball and jukebox. All good. Jesse will be back next month for our niece’s graduation (yay!!!) and Linden in June for her first bridal shower (double yay!!).
The best pizza ever...Bonzai!
Being a NURSE means…
You will never be bored.
You will always be frustrated.
You will be surrounded by challenges.
So much to do and so little time.
You will carry immense responsibility
and very little authority.
You will step into people’s lives
and you will make a difference.
Some will bless you.
Some will curse you.
You will see people at their worst…
and at their best.
You will never cease to be amazed
at people’s capacity for
love, courage, and endurance.
You will see life begin…and end.
You will experience resounding triumphs
And devastating failures.
You will cry a lot.
You will laugh a lot.
You will know what it is to be human
and to be humane.
When Adam and I married his mom was working part-time as an LPN and has done so periodically over the years but has always thought about going on in school. She did it. She graduates in May as a registered nurse and plans on going on even. I believe she wants to teach nursing students actually. We are very proud. She was on the front page of their newspaper last week announcing that she was selected as the single student who represented the mark of excellence throughout the three campuses this college has and that she is their new Academic All-Star. We will be there in May cheering her on.
So. That being said. Saturday night at about 1:15 in the morning one of our dogs started crying. About 15 minutes later she started crying again and Adam finally woke up and grumbled and got out of bed and took both of them downstairs and outside for about 10 minutes (leaving me defenseless mind you). Not understanding why they never went potty, he gave up and brought them back in and upstairs. They both shot up the stairs and into my craft room which is right at the top of the stairs, at the opposite end of the hallway from our bedroom. He was like, what the heck and went in and turned on the light and both the dogs heads are doing the whole “back and forth~back and forth thing” while looking up at the ceiling. Lo’ and behold….a bat. I am not kidding. A beady eyed, vicious…full grown bat. With big wings and everything (probably even had fangs!). Flying in circles. The room is shaped just so that it’s sonar must have been bouncing off the walls and not telling it where the door was because Adam said it was just flying in a perfect oblong-like circle the entire length of the room over and over again. OH MY GOSH! Beady eyes. A Bat, people. Adam (who, unlike me, does NOT exaggerate) says it’s wingspan was about 16 inches.
NOTE: this is not really "our" bat...but I bet it looks just the same!!!
About this time I wake back up and realize Adam is still gone and holler at him asking where he is and he said we had a friend over. Well he was standing outside the guest room all nonchalantly, as it is next to the craft room, so I literally thought for some reason someone stopped over and needed a place to stay or something and said “who?”. Of course the easy goin’ Adam that he is he calmly replies, “a bat”. I promptly freaked. I mean, really lost it. Instantly sat up in bed, lights on, screamed at him “be careful, don’t let it spit at you!”. (Later my sister’s response to that comment was…they aren’t llamas, Shana). For some reason, though I swear I had read somewhere that they spit on people! So, Adam is in this room with one of my bath towels and swings at the bat and knocks it down. Kills it. At least that is what he thinks. He asks me what to do with it and I promptly yell “throw it out the window, quick” (I mean…yuck yuck…get rid of the thing!!!!!). He replies to me something about the dogs eating it in the morning or something and instead decides to carry it downstairs and throw it in the side yard but you have to remember that when he knocked the thing down it’s wings stayed completely spread out so he had to fold them in, accordion style. Yuck yuck yuck!!!! He took it and threw it out in our side yard and the minute it hit the ground it took off and flew away. Must have just been knocked out. I have since read that they can pollinate your bushes and grass~that beastly beady eyed thing had better do that since Adam was kind enough to let him live, I tell ya! (My brother just says Adam must be a bat-whisperer).
He didn't look like this...but I bet he could have!
Meanwhile I am already on the CDC’s (Center for Disease Control) website to see if they spit or not! Which of course they do not…but they do urinate on you to spread rabies. Aha…I knew they secreted in someway! Adam was relentless that the bat did not pee on him so I let him come back to bed. I then saw a picture of bat babies on the website and another episode of “freaking” began. Apparently male bats have a little reddish tint to their chest so I grilled Adam about what it looked like and he is all about how he was somewhat in self defense mode (or we could imagine he was thinking…I need to save my lovely wife from this killer beast!!!) and didn’t bother to look at the color of his fur for pete’s sake!
People. Let me tell you the real deal. For the past 8 weeks or so we have been hearing these scratching noises coming from that room and have been joking amongst ourselves that the “craft room is going to fall off the house”…ha ha, the joke is on us. Well, we thought Bob the bat was gone, until a half hour later. Scratch, scratch. I jumped. We both heard it. The scratches are still there. Every time I get up to potty during the night I am finding myself ducking and looking at the ceiling for bat babies. I’ll probably never scrapbook again as the craft room has now been dubbed “Bob’s room” after all. In fact the day after I had gotten a plant to liven up the corner in that room and I told Adam that I sure hoped Bob’s babies appreciate the beauty of it! My sister says to fumigate the attic. You can’t do that, it’s not like you can just go up with a can of RAID and that will take care of them. My brother said the humane thing would be for me to poke holes in all of my walls releasing all of the bat babies (he was joking of course).
There probably aren’t any babies but the entire point is enough to almost cause insanity and make me move to the lower level of our house. So, I leave you with a picture of Bob’s room with his new plant.
This past week my partner (who I am lucky is a great girlfriend too!) and I attended a trauma conference. We are now not only sooo sooo much more smart but an awesome time was had. To start with, check out where we stayed. This particular Embassy Suites is by far my favorite hotel on the mainland (nothing compares to Hawaii, I mean…come on!). I always ask for a room on the top floor so I can look down and look at the water streaming throgh the entire atrium with all of the fishies. I love love love it!
We had decided before the trip that we were going to eat at restaurants that neither of us had ever eaten at before. The first night we ate at the French Cafe. Neither of us ever having authentic French before, it was different for sure. A little pricey but we are glad we went. Probably won’t go again. I ordered these crab cakes for an appetizer and out came these two marshmallow looking things with a lil’ dollop of sauce on the top…looked like boobies. We couldn’t stop laughing. I ordered a steak and asked for it to be well-done, I guess in France this translates to jerky. Mary Jane had crepes which were good but she left hungry. We really liked the purple tree though, that was smack in the middle of the restaurant! Sorry for the quality of the pictures in the post as they are all from our phones. We also noticed towards the end of our meal that we were surrounded by strange company. The only other people in the entire restaurant were all men. VERY werid.
The next night we ate at a restaurant called the Twisted Fork which I am proud to finally refer to it correctly because until now I have been referring to it as the Crooked Fork. Now….this place is the bomb, I tell ya! We decided to eat the weirdest things on the menu so of course our appetizer was fried pickles (duh…what else would it be?!). I had a grilled cheese and fried egg sandwich and MJ had salmon tacos. The atmosphere rocked, animal heads everywhere, couches with pillows covered with cow-hide but also beautiful chandeliers….very cool.
Back to the conference….we DID learn and we are smarter now. I’ll leave you with this. A picture of Bob. I just know that if given the chance he would have survived. I would have saved him!!! Bob, the little piglet that is. Here he is after I successfully inserted a tracheostomy for his airway.
R.I.P. Bob