The *Longest Half Hour in a 24 Hour Period

The *longest half hour in a 24 hour period occurs approximately one half hour before the *second longest half hour in a 24 hour period.

The longest half hour in a 24 hour period begins at approximately the most difficult moment possible for the average human being to awaken from sleep, when, after a particularly long day of soccer games at Antarctica National Park followed by intensive thrift store shopping, the dogs begin their last ditch effort to let you know that they did not get their water with their dinner, and you try to hold very still, wondering what in the world their problem is, and hope they don’t know they were successful in their attempts to awaken you, irritated that you were going to have to go through all of that effort to go back to sleep and all of your “go to bed early”, “good health” efforts were for naught.

The second longest half our in a 24 hour period, in which you fight for your right to go to bed and go to sleep without everyone else in the household making irritating, blissful-sleep busting noises, begins at approximately 31 minutes before the longest half hour in a 24 hour period begins.

The *third longest half hour in a 24 hour period, in which get out of bed and stumble and stagger around trying to figure out what the dogs want and eventually no longer feel tired enough to fall back to sleep and instead blog about the longest half hour in a 24 hour period, begins approximately 30 minutes after the beginning of the longest half hour in a 24 hour period.

* Not really. It sure does seem that way though. It serves me right for neglecting the care of the two most beautiful dogs on the planet.

I trust that you are all asleep in your beds by now, if you’re in a time zone where you’d most likely be sleeping right now, and enjoying good dreams of ice cream sundaes, Laffy Taffy, and warm coats in cold weather, and I hope that you get to look forward to going to a Bible preaching church that is worth every minute of going to bed early on a Saturday night.

Happy Sunday to all, and to all a good [middle of the] night … zzzzzzzz

See? God does care!

We had an interesting day today. At the tail end of the boys’ school efforts, my parents brought over their old lawn mower. I had just given up on ever getting the lawn mowed. Our mower was damaged and we haven’t mowed in waaay too long and I finally said, “Okay, Lord. This is completely out of my control and I’m going to let go of it and let You handle it.”

Search Engine Terms – The September Edition

symptoms of dog swallowing razor blade 8-0 I’m thinking you don’t have time to Google something like that. Call the vet! Since blood doesn’t sit too well in the stomach, I would guess there might be some vomiting. Aside from that, I can only imagine. Call the vet! Poor doggy.

Did I mention razor blades on here somewhere??  How did someone happen across this blog with that string??

homeschooling the difficult child Define difficult! And then you could take lessons from Heidi.

Some things that have been encouraging to me in difficult situations:

Educating the WholeHearted Child by Clay and Sally Clarkson.

The Way They Learn by Cynthia Tobias

The New Strong-Willed Child by Dr. James Dobson

You know you’ve been away too long when

you get a call on your cell from the dog! I know it has been a busy few days but sheesh!

We were sitting out on dh’s parents’ back porch enjoying a brief visit. Dh had just poured himself a cup of coffee flavored sugar when his phone rang. He showed me that his caller i.d. showed the unique name for our land line. We wondered if Big H and The L.G. had gotten home from their trip to the Creation Museum but no one responded when dh answered. I figured it was Noah but I could not remember calling that cell from home, assuming Noah managed to hit the redial, so we panicked and bolted for home, spilling redpop all over me en route.  *sigh* On the way, we called the neighbors who verified that no one was in the driveway and that the doors appeared to be closed. We were just a few minutes away so we didn’t call the cops just yet.

When we arrived home, Mr. Man came inside and checked things out thoroughly before he let me come in. Everything was as we left it except for some trash from lunch courtesy of separation anxious Noah, my laptop was sideways on the floor and the cordless was off the hook.  Noah, who retreated to his spot under the table when he saw us, had cleared a spot for himself on the couch and had somehow managed to hit redial and the “talk” button without pushing any other buttons. Weird.

Today was sort of a different day anyway. Why not have the dog suddenly learn how to make phone calls?

I had to go have blood drawn for the Von Willebrand Panel. Here’s a page about von Willebrand’s that might be helpful.

Limitations
	A number of transient clinical conditions can raise the vWF levels of individuals with congenital deficiency into the normal range.8 vWF is an acute phase reactant and levels can increase due to stress, inflammation, acute infection, physical exercise, and following surgery.

So, what? The ridiculously high amount of stress involved in trying to get my dental bill straightened out this morning could actually give a false “normal”? If that’s the case, I should’ve turned into one big blood clot following my hyst. Or maybe I just don’t understand what I’m reading.

The lady at the desk at the lab could’ve been Molly Shannon’s sister. She was nice though I think she thought I was an idiot. She kept asking me questions and I kept trying to figure out what she was really asking. Life would be so much easier if my husband was either active duty or civilian, not a hint of both. Our insurance is military but he is civilian most of the time but there is no option for that.

Having worked in medical billing, when registration people ask me certain questions, I wonder if it’s for their information or if that tidbit needs to go on a claim form. Finally, she asked me something I wasn’t sure about and I just said, “What are my options?” It was to the point where I was like, “Look, I need to know what you’re seeing so turn that screen around, hand me the keyboard and let me do it.”

I just said “I was like”… what is this world coming to??

There I was rifling through my purse trying to find my insurance card as Molly Shannon’s sister and I were volleying questions back and forth. I was somewhat distracted by my inability to find my card. Where did all of those papers in my purse come from??

I systematically looked through each pocket about three times. That thing migrates through my purse, I swear! It almost never is in the same place. Just as Molly Shannon’s sister asked me for my insurance card, I saw it! *whew* I handed it to her.

My relief at being almost done with registration was short lived. She handed me back my card accompanied by a form with all of the same questions she had just asked me. I wondered if it was some kind of a trick, some sort of a pre-registration aptitude test. Was this part of the von Willebrand Panel? Is there something about viscous blood that causes a person to lose i.q. points which can be detected with a simple aptitude test, a sort of “front end filter”, if you will? I finally got through the small pile of papers, gave them back to Molly Shannon’s sister and sat down to await my turn with Dracula.

After donating a couple of gallons of blood, I decided to check out a nearby shop. I was pleasantly surprised to see *Wanda, a lady I got to know a little bit through Apples of Gold. She was helping a customer find a stuffed animal. Nothing unusual about that, though I have to say that I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a stuffed pit bull. \:-|

After getting all of our morning errands dealt with, Mr. N and I made corn tortillas with the tortilla press he just bought.  Visions of very thin fried cookies danced in my head.

Mr. N became jealous of all of the fun I was having smashing dough so I stepped aside and let him make a few tortillas himself.  While he was doing that, I turned on Food Network and watched Paula Dean make refrigerator roll donuts. (Canned Biscuit Dough Donuts and Holes)  MMmmm!  I am drooling just thinking about it!  I haven’t had a donut in a couple of years, ever since the whole dairy nightmare.

And now, to add insult to injury, we’re sitting her watching The Secret Life of …  They’re talking about double cheeseburgers.

I don’t know if it’s obvious or not but I am hungry right now!   I’m going to go make some popcorn before I do something rash, like make donuts.  With chocolate icing.  And maybe sprinkles.

Observations

It doesn’t have to rain for there to be a rainbow.

Sometimes baby dogs prefer dancing over walking.

Sometimes baby dogs prefer to just stand there looking beautiful.

Pink is pretty

There are times when it stinks to be a bug.

The obstructions of the indoors can’t diminish the beauty of a sunset.