Random Tuesday Thoughts – Kitchen Fires, Tattoo Update, and Fuzzy Heads

I’m typing this on Monday night as I sit with the relief of high speed internet compliments of the motel we’re staying at, and getting interrupted every 5 minutes by Hovering Hubby and Princess Nagger – so it will probably ultimately end up being cut short at some point. We realized this is our 6th stay here at this exact same motel, since we decided that splitting up the normally 18+ hour drive and doing it over 2 days is much more amenable to our mental state of mind vs. driving straight through like we did the first time we did the trip 4-5 years ago. Yes, we were insane at the time.

We had a great time visiting our friends in Louisiana – Princess Nagger was starting to pout on Sunday when she realized it was our last day…she tried to negotiate an extra day so she could swim in the pool one more day. She must have come to her senses because it was just as hot this morning when we were getting ready to head out as it has been all week – you know, 106 or something at 8:30 in the morning. I think she finally had enough of the heat like the rest of us have, so she was all buckled in her seat and ready to go when we said our final goodbye’s – we didn’t have any drama action, so that was a very good thing.

As we were finishing up getting our things together, the kids were busy trying to catch a dragonfly for Princess Nagger to bring home. When they decided to take a break on a log, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to take a picture…of course, Princess Nagger decided she’d rather have her picture taken with her eyes closed:

So I tried again…same result:

So I decided to have them do this instead (I had to flip the image to have it in the right order):
Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil. Ha! That got Princess Nagger’s eyes open! 😉

They did successfully catch a beautiful dragonfly, which they put into that little container you see in the pictures. But when we arrived in Tennessee later that night, we had to have a little discussion with PN about the fact that the dragonfly was very sad, his wings were getting damaged on the ends, and he would probably not make the final trip home to PA – it was better for her to set him (or her) free out in the grassy area – and so she did…with much protest and sadness, but she understood that it was for the best. Good luck little dragonfly!

If you saw my Friday Fragments post, you saw my teaser about the tattoo I got while on vacation with this picture:

After the dude got the outline done, he decided to take a 5-minute break…which ended up being a 35 minute break, followed by taking no less than 4 phone calls on his cell phone and stopping to do a couple of tongue piercings for two girls that walked in during my tattoo. I was getting a little miffed, because just as I got used to the agony of the needle, he’d take a break…so when he got started with the next part of it, I had to get used to it all over again. Apparently he was having girl trouble – I heard him say “She said she’s out to get me, so I don’t know…” Well, buddy, if you would turn off your cell phone and pay attention to your paying customer, maybe someone wouldn’t be ‘out to get’ you. I’m just sayin’. At any rate, here is what the shading looked like when he finally got around to doing it:

And then he took another break. Needed to go out and have a smoke – which he did outside the window while pacing and talking animatedly on his cell phone. I should have gone out there and eavesdropped…might have been able to get some great blog fodder from the one-sided animated conversation… 😉 He finally came back in – another 1/2 hour later, and finally tackled the color portion – this time when his cell phone rang (3 different times), he actually told whoever was on the other end that he was busy and would have to call them back. About time. Here’s what the finished tattoo looked like immediately following the coloring in:
And here’s the dude that did the artistry:

The tattoo should have only taken an hour to an hour-and-a-half tops…but Christy and I finally left there after being there for almost 3 hours. There were some interesting characters in the shop – the owner who looked like a biker-wannabe – complete with shaggy long hair, scraggly long beard and wild eyes…he was even wearing leather fingerless gloves on an excruciatingly hot sweltering day. Later another dude came into the shop that seriously could pass for his brother, if not his twin. They hung out and chatted, but it was hard to decipher what they were talking about because they mumbled and had a very strong Bayou accent.

In addition to them was the other guy who worked there – at least I think he worked there…when he wasn’t dozing in a chair in the middle of the shop, he spent a majority of his time chatting about random things…we had a hard time listening to what he was talking about because we were distracted intrigued by his extreme Mohawk and various facial piercings. He had some interesting stories to tell about his family…the theme to ‘Deliverance’ kept running through my head… Needless to say, both Christy and I were happy to exit that place and be on our way…in one piece. 😉

I was a bad blogger on Sunday – I didn’t take pictures of a perfect blogging moment… Christy was fixing dinner making her own version of homemade spaghetti and I vaguely remember hearing her say something like “Blah, blah, blah – then we’ll be ready to eat.” I was distracted watching Luke continue to place first in Mario Kart (I’ve decided I really do need to get that game) but then what she actually said sunk in “When the garlic bread is done, we’ll be ready to eat.”

Wait – did she remember to take the boxes of pizza out of the oven we put in there earlier when we left the dogs to their own devices and thought it was the safest place so they didn’t indulge their craving for pizza? What’s that smell?! Ummmm…Christy – did you take the boxes out of the oven? Aaaaaah! She opened the oven door and a huge cloud of smoke billowed out…I raced into the kitchen to help, she has asthma and I didn’t want her to end up having to make a trip to the ER because it was our dogs we were trying to keep the pizza from…so I grabbed the oven mitts from her and proceeded to try to remove the smoldering boxes from the oven. She saw flames and said “Wait! I have baking soda!” grabbed her box of baking soda and flung the powder into the oven. There was maybe a tablespoon or so left. And it missed the flames. Totally.

We were trying not to bust out laughing at the debacle, besides, we also didn’t want to end up burning down the kitchen, so hubby opened the back door and cleared a path from the oven to the back door so we could toss them outside. Then he went out to the shop and brought in a fan so we could blow the smoke out. A few minutes later he calmly said “Uh, can I get some water over here?” When Christy handed him a large glass of water, he immediately tossed it outside. Confused, we looked out the door…a portion of one of the pizza boxes and burst into flames again, fed by the wind from the fan. Yeah, we did have a good laugh over the whole thing after I thoroughly cleaned her oven and the smoke had cleared. We know how to create excitement and are available for entertaining at parties and special events.

The Princess Nagger is doing her usual jump from one bed to the other, and Hovering Hubby keeps asking me every 5 minutes “How’s it going?” so I guess I better call it a day on the randomness and get some sleep so I can be wide awake for the first half of the drive in the morning. I’m catching a cold, so I’m a bit fuzzy in the head – hey now, be nice…I’m really not all that fuzzy on a ‘normal’ day…just sometimes! 😉

It’s been an adventure trying to fight for internet connection and getting pages to load – I’ll be so glad when we’re finally back home and be able to not only sleep in our own comfy bed and get some real sleep, but be able to log onto my computer whenever I feel like it and have lightning fast internet speed so I can visit everyone in a much more timely manner and not have to give up mid-page load. While it’s nice to take a vacation and ‘get away’ from the normal day-to-day, it’s sure going to be nice to get home tonight! 🙂

Feeling Random? Then head on over to the Un-Mom for some awesome randomness. Everyone is welcome, and you’ll find out that Random can be more fun than a barrel of monkeys. I know, because I had to play with a barrel of monkeys this week! 😉