E.T. Where's the #*@& Phone!?

So, my sister Haley, who is infamous for her rather bizarre gifts to me... exhibit A: the Golden Poop ... got me the Alien Gnome Bandits for Christmas. Actually, I opened it over Thanksgiving, because she wanted to be able to see my face when I opened it. I was easily persuaded to not have to wait until Christmas. I found them charming and learned that their names were Eldon and Tarak, or "E.T." collectively. Unfortunately, due to all the Christmas craziness, the little dudes were pretty much left to entertain themselves. I didn't have time to deal with them over the holidays, so I put them up on the piano until after Christmas.

But then it started happening... things started disappearing and reappearing in different areas of the house. The cats professed innocence.. at least I think that's what they were saying. My skills in speaking feline are still growing. So we set up the ol'nanny cam.

Lo and behold, we were not prepared for what we saw. The pictures that follow are explicit, but for anyone who is contemplating inviting Alien Gnome Bandits into their home, well, you need to be prepared, it's shocking.

This photo was found the morning after I herd (haha) a strange moo'ing sound in the middle of the night. Turns out Moontgomery the cow was being abducted. He later reappeared in the dining room in a bowl of fruit.

E.T. played it cool for a couple of days before nabbing their next victim - a member of our considerable collection of snowmen. From the photo, it doesn't appear that the snowman had an snowball's chance in hell of avoiding the horror in store for him. About a week later, the snowman's hat and scarf were found floating in the cat's water bowl.

From the next photo, it would appear that E.T. had been taking advantage of our three months of free HBO and had found a new hero. The Scream duck disappeared one night and was not seen again until he reappeared floating in the seat of honor in the pink bathroom.

As the days drew closer to Christmas, E.T. must have needed some decorations for their lair. A Christmas tree was absconded with... not yet to reappear. It'll probably show up on the curbside for the first trash day after the New Year.The most threatening photo was the last straw. It would appear that the cats, Sophie, Gizmo and Winifred, had made vain attempts to prevent E.T. from making off with their ill-gotten booty (or ill-booten gotty) because this photo can be interpreted as nothing short of a threat to them to leave the Aliens to their thievery.

It was shortly after this photo was taken that I had to make the hard decision to remove E.T. from our household. After all, Sophie, Gizmo and Winifred don't have opposable thumbs and thus aren't able to defend themselves from this deviltry.

E.T. are now at my office where my co-workers naively call them "cute" and "adorable". But already a strange stapler has appeared on my desk and one co-worker continually roams around the office in a daze always saying the same thing...

... Where Shall I Go, What Shall I Do? - Scarlett O'Hara

My aunt drives me crazy! She travels all over the world as a part of her job and feels free to email me pics of her travels when she daw-gone knows that I want to travel too. My current goal in life is to get a stamp in my new (but as of yet not used) passport!

The other day, she e-mailed me pictures from her current vacation on the beach in Florida. She tried to downplay how wonderful it was by saying it was cold and damp, but I could tell she was having a good time. And since it was 32 degrees here, I'm pretty sure I'd have swapped with her in a heartbeat despite how "cold" it was there.

Sometime this spring, she and mom are contemplating going out to San Diego to visit one of their sisters. I've been invited along, but I don't think I'll go because 1) Been there, done that (refer to my as of yet mental blog regarding the infamous train trip with Grandma Hollis out to San Diego); second, someone really ought to hang at home and take care of the livestock; and C) I have my own vacation plans in mind. (mwa-ah-ah-ah!)

I, Rosemary, am going to go somewhere this year. I have suggested to my fiend Jennifer who has not really had a vacation in several years, that she leave her hubby for a week or so and go on a Thelma and Louise-style trip with me (only without the driving off a cliff part - unless we get a rental... hmm.. mental note: investigate car rental rates) preferrably to the beach because we're both in need of some rest and relaxation. I don't know if she'll actually do it, but I've decided that since I'm now living rent-free and putting considerable bucks in my savings account, either way, Rose is going to take a vacation.

So where would I like to go? Well, the following list is my list of ideal vacations:

1) Egypt. Somewhere in the middle of reading Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody series, I decided that if I had to do it all again, I'd become an archeologist. Now, I readily admit that I don't like bugs, dirt, sweat, heat, mud, snakes, spiders, or the idea of working in a country where there are those who might be ideologically opposed to me, but I'm pretty sure that I'd have been a great archeologist. Probably would have found a tomb that would put ol'King Tut's to shame by now. But I digress. Since I can't do it all over and since I don't like bugs, dirt, sweat, etc, I'll have to go as a tourist. I'd love to see the Pyramids at Giza and the Sphinx. Just think of the blogs about that trip! Holly has told me she'd go with me, as she enjoys those books, too. Ah, excuse me while I Google the price of pith helmets!

2) The Beach. I came to the epiphany a while ago that I was meant to be born to sea-faring folk, or at a minimum to folk who live by the sea. Not that I'm saying the good Lord messed up by giving me to my current fam, but I'm just saying that somewhere along the line my ancestors moved west when they should have stayed closer to the water. There is nothing more wonderful to me than slowly wandering up and down the beach, with the water coming in and wabbling over my footies. I can't swim and I don't like seafood, except for Captain D's or Long John Sliver's, but I just need to return to the beach every so often. After certain amount of time passes, something deep in my soul starts yearning to sit in the sand and listen to the waves as then crash in and then go back out. Sigh...

3) England. I want to go to Europe, but I only speak English. I took French my freshman year in high school, but then the teacher quit and they hired a Spanish teacher and I cheesed, so I was NOT going to take Spanish even if it killed me! Humpf! So then in college, I took two semesters of Italian with my roommate Janna. But I didn't take anymore because 1) that's all DePauw offered and B) I transferred to University of Evansville, which didn't offer it at all. Unfortunately now, 26 and 21 years later, respectively, I can't speak either French or Italian... although I can generally hold my own with a menu at the Olive Garden. So I guess my point is that for my first trek to Europe, I think I ought to go to a country where we speak the same language, relatively speaking. That and I do love history, so I would enjoy going to the Tower of London and go see where the Battle of Hastings was fought! If I went in August, I could go see the island where Princess Diana is buried! (Do they still open it up for tours in August?) Oh, and I could go to Mrs. Miggins' coffee shop! And of course, since I'd be that close, I'd have to run over to see Scotland (the birth place of my beloved Gerard Butler) and Ireland.

Christmas Time is Here

Well, really Christmas time is over, and we’re patiently waiting for the New Year! It was another success and here is the wrap (hahahaha!) up of the events... After Thanksgiving, we got the tree and other decorations up. I’m happy to say that Sophie and Gizmo (especially Gizmo) weren’t even remotely interested in the tree. I say this because a couple of years ago I had to take my tree down 5 days after putting it up because my handsome guy was terrorizing it. This year, the tree (yup, same tree) was terrorized by someone else…

Winifred enjoyed her first Christmas tree despite the soakings she got from the evil purple spray bottle. Hardly a day went by without her crawling up the tree, knocking off and playing with ornaments, and just generally bothering the tree limbs. By Saturday, December 19th, when mom’s sisters’ families came over, I had to redecorate the tree with all the ornaments the little Turd had knocked off!

So come Christmas Eve, mom and I packed our toys into our little red (actually it’s tan-ish) wagon and prepared to go up to Indy to spend the holiday with the Sibs and what did we have to do BEFORE we could leave? Yup, we had to take down the tree. Sort of a bummer, but it was nice to come home and not have to worry about doing it afterwards.

As usual, I think my gifts were hits. I got each of the Sibs’ families the The Office Clue game. We played a couple of rounds – I won both, thank you very much, mostly due to my perspicacity (look it up). Hollian’s belated 21st birthday gift, a bottle of Bailey’s :), was a hit, too! I’ve already received a request from Natalie that I get her the same thing next year for her 21st!

Of the gifts I received, I got money for clothes from mom (BTW, the new bras fit great!), some gift cards, some DVD’s. But the prize for best present from this season goes to Haley. This adorable set of aliens making off with a gnome! I actually found the bigger yard version of this in a catalog a year or so ago, and I thought about getting it for Dad. But it was too expensive for me to get and I guess I never got around to suggesting a group gift from the three of us, so… Anyway, Haley found a smaller version and it’s perfect! It is currently sitting on the ledge of my desk at work. I had it at home, but the little critters kept making off with various things around the house. I figure they can run amok at work for a while.

The runner up in the fun gift category is Phil (see pic) from my Secret Santa, Shawn. The best part is when I opened it up and read the directions to add water to the dirt pellet and “fluff the dirt with a fork”! I loved it. Less than a week later, I come in to work and Phil has sprouted a head of hair, ur.. grass! I’m not sure how long the thrill of watching grass grow will entertain me, but for now, Phil is hanging with Bob, Ted, and Jareth the African violets.

Christmas did end up with a big uh-oh, though. Mom got sick and instead of getting better up in Indy, she got worse. I brought her back home and took her to the convenient care center and she was diagnosed with pneumonia. The doctor shot her up with some high-powered antibiotics and gave her an Rx for a Z-pac, but she wasn’t bad enough off to have to be hospitalized (I said ‘refrigerated’ at one point when I was talking to Boss #2 at work about it, don’t know where that came from). Unfortunately, I don’t have any paid time off until the new year due to my having sprained my neck muscles while hanging up my coat (don’t ask, it’s a short, un-interesting, and very painful story) earlier this month. And my aunt who lives less than a football field length down the road, well, let's just say it would never occur to her to volunteer to come over and hang with mom, her sister, while I was at work. Fortunately, Holly, who is off work until next week sometime, came down to nurse the sickee.