Pictures and continuation of Halloween

Eeeep, sorry. Time gets away from me like a hyperactive terrier lately. SO...

Party #3 was at our house on Halloween because my husband refused to go out "to some lame bar and pay cover to hear some lame band and have to try not to get into fights with jack-offs who are trying to cop a feel." Alrighty-then. A party at our house it is. We had quite the mix, from my husband former coworkers to new coworkers to spa people to massage clients to neighbors. Crazy fun. Spiked punch. Revelry and dancing.

So here is the Flamingo Lady from the boat party. Loved her.


I did not take pictures of the hanging out butt cheeks. (Sorry, Frank.) Didn't need to capture that memory forever. It's burned into my brain.

Here is Melissa in all of her poisonous glory.


And I, the Viking Queen, on a less-then-satisfactory boat. I would prefer one with sails and burly men with braided beards.


Two of my favorties at our party, Popeye and Olive Oyl.


Trouble. Pure and simple.



So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, the reason I am still sleep deprived and five pounds heavier than I was on October 29th.

The past weekend, AKA Halloween Debauchery

Party #1: I was forced into attending my daughter's 3rd grade party and bringing apple wedges with caramel dipping sauce. I spent 45 minutes cutting up apples, and then had to make sure that I brought 30 individual dixie cups to pour caramel sauce into because some mother would surely freak out about pig flu if all the kids dipped into one bowl. Then, being in the spirit of things, I put on a football jersey, painted two streaks of mascara under my eyes, and put on my husband's fake Hulk Hogan arms. I arrived at the school and not one other parent was dressed up. Pft. Nice. THEN I saw that some ignoramous had decided to forgo the "please bring your assigned item and ONLY your assigned item" and brought caramel apples on a stick. My daughter's teacher smiled sweetly at me and said, "I guess we don't need yours!" Well, sister, I'll tell you what you DO need, and it rhymes with my bist up your mass. I got hot in the jersey and arms, and bailed on the party early, because I had to get home and shower for

Party #2: A Halloween Costume Halloween Party Cruise on Lake Coeur D'Alene. I was excited about this one. My friend Melissa and I were going, and we were sure that the boat would be full of revelers just as friendly as could be and ready to have a blast. We got dressed at my house (I in my viking costume and she in her Poison Ivy) and braved the howling winds to get onto the boat. It was packed, not a seat to spare. Problem was, it was packed with...hoochies. Butt cheeks peeking out from beneath barely-there lion and pin-up girl and kitten costumes, their fake eyelashes so heavy they could barely hold their eyes open. Some had Hills-type boyfriends on their arms, dressed in Budweiser delivery-man shirts and aviator sunglasses. This was no fun and revelry crowd. This was seen-and-be-seen 20-somethings with attitudes. Crap. Melissa and I asked one of the bartenders if there was anywhere we could stash our coats, and she curled her lip at us and pointed to the floor. "Over there." We deliberately scooted over to the male bartender and asked for one of our two free drinks. He gave us a small glass full to the brim with ice and a thimble-sized amount of spiked punch. This was not looking good. We did another sad once-over of the boat and glommed onto the only non-20-something, a 65-year-old woman in a pink flamingo costume who didn't give a crap that she was older than everyone else by 40 years.

Shoot. It's time to take the kids to school. More later.

WHEW!

So I had a pretty busy summer, y'all, capped off by a visit to Chicago at the end of September and into October, which included a birthday party for a very hairy little Irishman, a naked rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" by one of the guests while riding a bike, and my fifteen year high school reunion. Shudder. I'd have to write a book to fill you all in, so here are some picture highlights. Sorry for the three-month abandonment.


I have become a hillbilly riding an ATV. I'm lost to the civilized world.


A cruise on the lake for Barry's work, which happened to take place at the resort, where I work. No one acted like they were at work. And by that I mean fishbowls full of alcohol.


The whelps in the forest in some National Park in Idaho near Lake Ponderay. (That's how dumb people spell it. The real spelling of that lake is ridiculous.)


I like these small people, most of the time. And I don't always look like an Orc in pictures. Thank goodness.


This is what my family does for fun on a regular basis. I LOVE my family.


I TOLD him he'd get punished if he drew on himself. He just had to find out the hard way.


Faith on her first river trip with the Dread Pirate (my dad) at the oars.


River trips. Thumbs up.


River trip water fight. A hallowed tradition.


I take full resposibility for the fact that this child is a tomboy, because I used to cuddle frogs and toads like they were pink, fuzzy stuffed animals, too.


My whelps and my niece at the Chicago Brookfield Zoo in September.


The whores at the bowling alley: PawPaw, The Handler, Nessie, and Mother Ninja. Hunters of Canadian Bacon in British Columbia every year.


The hairy little Irishman's birthday party. I...just don't have the energy to explain what is going on here, but the birthday boy is the one under the upside-down laundry tree.


Me at my 15-year reunion with two people who were actually not jerks in high school.


Aaaaand this is what happens when you wear your whelps out all summer. They get mad, strip off al of their clothing, and fall asleep.

I know not when I shall return

All I know is this: between work and maniac children and summer trips, etc, I'm losing it. My parents asked me to water their plants while they were gone for the week, and I COMPLETELY SPACED IT. Not just one or two days, the ENTIRE THING, dammit. I had to call them and leave a sobby, pathetic message on their voice mail from work. It probably wasn't even coherent. They'll probably send me a bill for their pet upside-down tomato plant. Anyway, forgetting something so entirely scared me badly enough that I decided that I need to cut a few things out of my hectic life for awhile. Unfortunately, dear blog, one of those things is thou. (Not that you seem to get very much traffic lately anyway, but I digress.)
I'm taking a break y'all, to scrape together my few remianing brain cells and try to get something resembling a functioning psyche back.

I've corrupted the Yute

I'm a second-generation river rat. My dad went on a Colorado Grand Canyon river trip in his early 20's and was bitten by the river bug so badly that he became a river guide. That is, in fact, where he met my mother, who was a passenger on one of his trips.

In my teens and 20's, he took me and my siblings on many week-long river trips, one of which was Cataract Canyon, a section of the Colorado River that kills a few people every year because it's so big and nasty. On that trip, the boat I was in flipped and we went through two of the biggest rapids in our lifejackets. The boatman cursed, the two other girls in the boat cried, and I laughed like a lunatic that I got to experience being eaten by the biggest whitewater in the U.S. Everybody's got some crazy in them, and this is mine. I LOVE BIG WATER.
(*I do not claim this is my ONLY crazy, smartasses.)

My dad, who I call the Dread Pirate, now lives 10 minutes away from me, and he spends his summers in a blissful gauntlet of one river trip after another. Last summer, he took me, my husband and his best friend Dan on the Clark Fork River in Montana. Here are some highlights.


Dan looks worried. He knows we're a little nuts when it comes to dangerous fun. My husband Barry is the big, white, almost transparent one.



Here we are approaching the rapid called Tumbleweed, aptly named, as it turns out.


Yeah, baby.


The disembodied ghost hand.


And there is my foot, as I was unceremoniously yanked right out of the boat. I was hanging on TIGHT. And the hands of a massage therapist are not weak.


They didn't even realize I was gone. I had to say flatly, from in the water, "I'm out. Of the boat."

That trip last summer was fun.

The Dread Pirate has told my seven-year-old daughter, who keeps asking when she can go rafting, that she is ready for whitewater when he can throw her into any body of water and she comes up laughing. Well, that kid has been in the pool, the lake, and the Spokane River every day since school got out, no matter how cold the water, so last week when we went camping and rafting on the Salmon River, my dad invited her to come with us. The rapids on the Salmon are no joke. At times, her eyes were so big they took up half her face. When we were done, she said, "Again."

Notice her little arms holding onto the boat for dear life. Haha.


Faith's first river trip, thumbs up.


She wanted to try rowing. The Dread Pirate almost burst with joy.


Faith's second trip, the next day. Bigger water, still smiling.

I asked her at one point if she really liked it, and her response was "Har har har! Bring it on!" The corruption of the yute is compete.

Proof I've been completely hillbilly-ized

I ride ATV's in the mountains with a whelp on the back and whoop and holler when I hit the big jumps.

This week, I am going camping on the banks of the Salmon River with my family. My dad, the Dread Pirate Jeffery, will be taking us white water rafting, and my mother will feed us dutch oven delicacies cooked over open flame.

I'm not bringing makeup, or any hair accoutrements except for rubber bands and bandanas. I plan to spend most of my time in a swimsuit. I hope I will not look at road kill and start drooling.

Be back on Saturday!

The Gays Are Coming!

Every summer, the town I work in is flooded by professional actors who come to do 4 or 5 shows for Coeur D'Alene Summer Theater. They are vivid and enthusiastic and stunningly talented.

**If you've been with me awhile, you may remember last year when my gay spa friend Eric made me, I mean, ASKED me to come to Sunday night karaoke at the Shore Lounge to sing him a Cher song for his birthday. Well, the room was rotten with summer theater people, as as I sat there, I shrank a bit with each mind-blowing rendition. These people don't sing a song, they perform it. They don't even look at the words, and they can make it funny or sad or quirky. And they are all gorgeous. I was bedraggled from just getting off a seven hour shift, massaging rich people, and I had on wrinkled khaki shorts and a droopy ponytail. I had long since sweated off my makeup. Pathetic as my appearance may have been, I held my own on the singing end, and the gays seemed to approve. Eric told me later that they would have been pretty vocal if they didn't like me. You don't mess with Cher unless you can do it right when the gays are around.

So tomorrow I'm taking my husband to his first musical at the Coeur D' Alene Summer Theater. My husband is not a muscial type of guy, normally. The only reason I know he'll love this one is because it's "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat". Joseph is his favorite story from the Bible, plus he's a rabid Elvis fan, and the Pharoah in "Joseph" is, essentially, Elvis.

Then, in about a month, Eric's birthday rolls around again. He's having himself another karaoke birthday party, and he insists that I sing for him, but this time in costume. I promised to do so because I love Eric. But now I really have to get it together. It's one thing to be able to sing just like Cher, it's quite another to have the look and the mannerisms. Eric said he wants at least one hair swing and "ho-o-o-o!" Crap. I have one month. The gays are coming.