Geez, am I ever gonna be caught up catching up? Apparently, this week was mostly about me. Three of the five pictures are of myself. It’s kind of interesting that the better I feel emotionally, the more often I am willing to take pictures of myself. Not surprising, but lots of things that one understands on a knowledge level are interesting when applied on a personal level. Let’s hope that all these self portraits don’t leave me wishing I had purchased the extended service plan for my crackberry.

April 26 Silly Me I just love this picture. I snapped it to make That One smile, because he was having a rough day. Those of you who are friends on facebook will recognize it. And by the way, I decided last night that I am totally buying this hat, if it’s still at the store. And also another one, which I haven’t shown you yet. Time to live some dreams, people!

April 27 Crafty Me I finished another hat. I was sure this one would be too small for him, but knitting stretches. Apparently, it stretches a lot.

April 28 Amish Cockscomb I think I spelled this right. Correct me if I am wrong, please. My Grandmother used to grow this in her flowerbeds, always red. This year, for the very first time, I saw it in other colors: this light pink, and also in cream. I wonder if the other colors have always existed, or if they have engineered them through selective breeding. Err, selective cross-pollination. Err, screwing with nature.

April 29 Working Me Yes, this is what I look like out in the garden shop. It’s not quite fashionable, I know. But so far, my crow’s feet aren’t any deeper, my face is still white, and my hair in undamaged. I’ll take it.

April 30 Leeeeezard! Yet another lizard. Hey, I shoot what I see, k? K.

And, yay, a post without drama!

April 21 Dead This, my friends is the pile of dead plants that I pulled out of the garden shop when I returned from my two weeks out of their. Clearly, someone needed to check into life insurance rates for them while I was gone. They expired from a lack of water. I continued to pull plants for about a week. At one point, I set up an intensive care nursery for the ones I thought I could save, but my manager said we didn’t have time for that, and the plants I was nurturing were thrown away. Her call, store’s loss.

April 22 DaBaby visits On the 22nd, Mama was in town and brought DaBaby by to visit me. It was lots of fun getting some midday hugs and kisses. I miss my kids a lot when I am at work.

April 23 Lizard! If you look closely in the middle of this picture, you will see a wee reptile. I see them quite often at work, but they rarely remain still long enough to take a good shot. Today, I won.

April 24 Fire the Third Hmm, they still didn’t believe me. This was the day I cleaned the living room. It still looks pretty good.

This was also the night of catharsis. I continued to cry up until this night, and most of the way through it. I cried for a lot of reasons this night. For loss and betrayal and the grown up me and the little girl me and for my children and it just went on and on and on. But when I woke up on Sunday I was a different woman. Actually, I was my old woman again. The depression that had plagued me for a very long time (years) had lifted somewhat, and that laughing, fun loving girl I used to be was clawing her way to the top. Somewhere in that night, I faced the ugly truth that a lot of really bad crap had happened to me in my life, and I grieved for it, and I tried to let it go. That’s not to say I’ve been completely perky since that point, but when I get down, it’s for a couple of hours, not….for the forseeable future. I can deal with that!

April 25 Hello Old Me You may not be able to see it in my face, but I sure can!

Pull up that rustic furniture and sit a spell, why don’t ya? Oh, and grab some coffee, too. For both of us, hahahahaha

April 16 The Clean-up Begins On this day, the clean up began. I had given my kids two weeks notice to clean up their crap, or I was gonna burn it. And for two weeks, they sat around and did nothing to corral their junk. And so, on the 16th, I came home from work and dropping them off with their dad and I began to clean. I began in the small bathroom, and I cleaned both bathrooms that weekend. Here is the first of many shots I took that day, detailing exactly what I found and where I found it, just in case they were interested. Which they weren’t.

April 17 First Fire This is, as the title suggests, the first of several bonfires in which I burned excess stuff. The house is by no means spotless, because I’m not done yet, but I can at least walk through most of it now. And I told the kids the burnings would continue until the housekeeping improved. They started believing me after the third fire.

In other news, I continued to cry this day, and for the rest of the time covered in this set of photos. And somewhere around 11 pm this night, I rolled over in my bed, my chest heaved and the little gentle tears I had been crying for a week became sobs. And yet, that was not the end of it.

April 18 Finished Clapotis Yes, I still knit. This one was a gift, but I will be making one for myself. Soon. Like, as soon as I finish up some other stuff. You do realize that in knitting, “soon” is a relative term, right?

April 19 Spidey and the Man Purse I just love this picture. This is my middle son, who found a discarded bag in the house and packed it with the stuff he wanted to take to the ball game. And he wore that bag with such awesome self confidence that it just made me smile. That’s my boy, and he is his own man.

April 20 Relay for Life I didn’t end up going to this, but I did snap a pic of the flyer so I could remember the details and share them with That One in case we decided to go.

Let’s continue to slog through the backlog, shall we? Sometimes going through a month of pictures is depressing, because I feel so far behind, and sometimes, it’s like flipping on the fancy pants Murray Feiss lighting, showing me the patterns I missed as I lived through a certain segment of time.

In truth, I was surprised to find 5 pictures for these five days. I thought for sure I had missed one. But that was next week.

April 6th I sat in a courtroom all day. I knit the whole time, except for the time I was giving my testimony. I cast on a hat at 9:30, and by 5:30 I was 6 inches in, almost ready for the decreases. My cousin sat beside me, reeling out the yarn as I needed it, so it provided stress relief for both of us. He also demanded a hat. This one was pre-destined for That One, though, so cousin said to make his blue. In spite of the fact that I ran out of yarn, I was delighted to find out just yesterday that the hat will fit the massive head for which it was originally intended.

April 7th Back in court again, but before we left for the day, I snapped this pic from the porch that was Grandma and Papa’s and now belongs to Aunt Lady. The day did not end as we all wished it had, but the evening was a great time of laughing and sharing and seriousness and laughing. It’s interesting, this family of mine. I didn’t spend a lot of time with them growing up, but we are so alike in so many ways. And my uncle is a totally fun guy, which I never knew until this visit.

April 8th DaBaby, drinking sprite through two straws at once. We had McDonalds, she and I, the night I got home, for reasons I won’t go into here. It wasn’t pretty.

April 9th Back to the hospital.

April 10th I took this picture to share with That One, in lieu of the daily flower. It was in the hospital parking lot, and I thought he would like it.

Does this picture really need explainin’? I thought not. Here’s what you really need to know: Not long after I took this shot, I found my bony butt dumped unceremoniously and without provocation on the floor. Apparently, if you get tagged to replace a wrestler and you refuse to go into the fight, that makes you fair game. After I managed to get up off the floor, I was pounced on by all four of them, and ended up flipping over the back of the couch. At least I landed on the cushion side, right? Sure wish someone had explained the rules of engagement to me, though, LOL!

I probably would make the same decision, considering That One was trying to send me in after Country, who outweighs me by 40 pounds now. Of course, he outweighs me by a good deal more than that, and also has me by 11 inches height wise, so maybe not. But she’s meaner, so maybe so.

Also, I found the missing pictures from the 14-17th. I hid them from myself in a desktop folder clearly marked “HELIO PICTURES”. Next time I sit down to blog, we’ll talk about them, mmmkay? Kay!

Candy that looks as old as the birthday boy himself. I just love retro packaging, don’t you? It makes being a smarty-pants soooooo much easier!

You know, I have often been called funny. And I have often been called sarcastic. These days, I am both funny and sarcastic. I mean, I’m still sweet sometimes, but why just make people smile when you can make them groan *and* smile at the same time? The Bible does tell us that laughter does good like medicine. And when you are stressed, I submit that laughter is better for ya than all the gold coins in the world. Unless of course, you are stressed about money. Then you should grab the money and continue to be sullen and testy.

On this day, there was a madatory cashier’s meeting at work. At 7:30 pm. It aggravated me so much to have to go back to town that I took a picture to commemorate the event.

All was not sad, however. On the way, I tried to call That One on his cell with no success. He called me back *from home* mildly stating that he’d lost signal on his other phone. It was only then that I believed he would really, truly, totally, actually make it home for the ball. Although he had known since that morning, and we’d spoken no less than three times throughout the day. And he calls me a butthead. HA!

Remember all those pictures of the blue sparkly yarn? That yarn became this hat:

Don’t it make his brown eyes blue? Oh wait, they were blue already!