Crazy Lady on the Warpath

Blue spray paint is much more difficult to remove from a fence than Black. That is the lesson I learned today.

Yesterday morning, as part of Paige's school lessons, she and I decided to learn how to clean up graffiti. There is fence at the entrance to our neighborhood that seems to be a target for the local gangsters, and I refuse to let the punks own my street. The city is supposed to have a task force to remove graffiti, but I believe the longer a tag stays up, the person who painted it gets to bask in the glory of their feat. Stupid jerks. I have fumed about this for weeks and finally decided to try and clean it up. Carlos suggested we try Goo-Gone to remove it, and with some scrubbing, we got all of the black paint off. The fence looked as good as new. I showed it to Alyssa this morning as we drove to her orthodontist appointment and we marveled at it's glorious whiteness.

I came home this afternoon to find that the same fence had once again been tagged with the same name. Can you believe someone actually thinks they own my neighborhood? And that they can go around spray painting wherever they want to? They painted in broad daylight! (Stupid stinking jerks) Blue was their color of choice this time, and even though I had a crew with me (Paige, Christian, McKenna, Emily Dietrich, and Archer) It still took more time and a lot more scrubbing than did the black paint we cleaned yesterday.

So as I sit here typing with blue paint-stained fingers, I am planning my revenge against these creepy teenagers. This is going to be war. I am going to the store tonight and I'm going to buy the biggest dang bottle of Goo Gone anyone has ever seen. I will clean the graffiti every single day if I have to. These creeps will not claim ownership on my street. I'm even thinking about setting up survielance equipment or hiring a private detective or hmmm....maybe a hit man? This is war. I'm smearing on the war paint right now. (not really)

School is coming to a close, summer is here.

It seems that our blog has been a bit neglected lately. No worries, I already had my ice cream fix for the night, so I am ready to write. School is fast coming to an end for the year, and the kids (meaning children, not young goats) are quite excited about it. Christian went with Grandpa Rigby last night to a BEES minor league baseball game, and loved it. He came home with a silver baseball. Kennedy is studying math at Sylvan. That's costly, but for the first time ever, she is liking math and accelerating at it. I good investment, I believe. Alyssa got her hair chopped off today. I really like her haircut, but it makes her look old enough to pass as a legal adult, so my feelings on her haircut and new style are mixed. I will be posting a photograph. Chelsea is getting ready to head off on her tour with her singing and dancing group. She has to share a suitcase with one of her classmates, since Delta Airlines now only allows a single checked suitcase, as the students also have to "check" a piece of sound equipment for the trip (shame on the airlines, especially United, with its no-bag without extra cash policy). I am sure she will like Seattle. I know I would.

We are also getting ready for our trip to SoCal and Disney Land parks, where we plan on tromping around from ride to ride until we get sick, or until we have spent three days straight at the parks. Crazy? Yes, without a doubt. The ride I most look forward to is the airplane ride; especially the take off (I don't care much for the landing) I mostly want to go to the beach. I love the ocean, and really love to see when really big waves come thundering into the shore.

Last week, Christian, Kennedy and I went camping. It was fun. The kids liked the hiking around, and liked seeing how many lizards the could see. I lost track of how many lizards I saw. (FYI: the word for lizard in Spanish is lagartija. This is also the work in Mexico for push-ups. If you have ever watched a lizard, you will see it doing push-ups) We also hid a geocache on top of a hill, which I need to get listed before I forget about it. We found some old mines: I would sure like to know what it was they used to mine out of them thar hills. We were at Five Mile Pass, which is either in West Utah county or East Tooele County, amongst a bunch of off-road vehicles, but we didn't mind them. We also were able to leave the hills a little bit cleaner from trash than what we found them. That was a good lesson for the young ones. Most of the things we picked up where beer cans and beer bottles. I am not sure why, but soda pop drinkers almost never leave their cans, whereas beer drinkers seem to leave their cans and bottles all over the place. Obviously there is correlation (or maybe a coorelation) with alcohol, but I am not sure of the actual cause and effect. Is it that people who sit in the juniper trees drinking beer get stupid because of the alcohol and then leave their garbage? Or is it that stupid people who always leave their garbage about, like to go sit amongst the juniper trees to drink their beer? Anyway, we helped what we could in cleaning up some of the cans, hopefully making the place better than before we where there.

I guess I really got off on a tangent there. I am going to finish up and go read myself to sleep. I am currently re-reading "The Count of Monte Cristo" Dumas is definitely a romantic, but I like his writings (I have also read many of the d'Artagnan adventures (The Three Musketeers, et al.) which make history much more colorful that it really was). If you ever read this book, please make sure it says "unabridged." The first time I read it, I starting reading the unabridged version, then lost it, so I bought a new book. It did not say "abridged" but after I read it, I realized that it was. It simply didn't make much sense, leaving many unanswered questions. The abridged version was published by Scholastic, and they abridged it by simply cutting out whole chapters and sections. After I discovered the deceit, I wrote a scathing letter to Scholastic, and they offered to refund me my money. Any way, I highly recommend the book. It is much different from the latest movie under the same name, but he movie, nevertheless, is also on my recommended movie list.

Ok, and going to publish this now, typos and all.

Ice Cream

OK, so here I am, taking the time to write a bit instead of eating ice cream. Oh what a tragedy, indeed! It really is a sad statement of affairs when I put other things before ice cream. I mean, really, what is life coming to? Well, I guess that's all I have time to write now, as I just got back from Macey's grocery store with some Dryer's vanilla mixed with orange sherbet.

Updates!!!

Hey, everyone. Um . . . apparently, I'm supposed to post something. ;) Okay! I posted. Bye!

. . . Just kidding . . . :P

Let's see, what to write? Ah! I just went to one of my very good friends' benefit concert to raise money for her exchange trip to Italy. (Elise.) I played the harp for her there. I was told it went quite well, but I should have practiced more, because I messed up about a gazillion times. That's alright, though. Practice makes perfect, right? *says sheepishly* I also made a card for another good friend's birthday. (Wyatt.) It was the first time I had made my own card (well, the first time that it looked good at least.) and I'm also planning on sending him a CD mix of some of my favorite church songs.

School is almost over, and I'm VERY excited for the last week - especially for my Geometry class to be over. I'm also quite anxious for high school, as my Junior High holds seventh through ninth instead of the usual. So I'm a freshman . . . kind of . . . I guess I'm alright with it though. On our last week of school, we have promotion, yearbook day, and most importantly: Lagoon day! On Lagoon day, for those of you who don't know, the ninth graders get to go to the amusement park Lagoon and stay there basically all day with all of our friends.

Well, I'll have to say "See you later," for now. I've got a harp lesson today, and Chelsea has dance pictures, so . . . may God be with you 'till we meet again! :)
Luv, Liss (I'll post this after everything - it's my sign off on everything I post anywhere.)

My Girls Are Growing Up (Dangit!)

So tonight Alyssa played the harp at her friend's benefit concert and she did an amazing job. For some reason, when she began playing the harp, as well as the piano, her skills on both instruments really increased. I will post a pic. later but I have to ask Carlos how to get the photo's out of my camera. I am learning one device at a time, and I think by the time I get to programing the VCR there won't be such a thing anymore. (I Hope)

After the concert, Alyssa and Chelsea were hungry so we stopped at Apollo Burger to get something to scarf down. When I ordered at the drive-thru, the guy asked me in a kind of gruff tone how many fry sauces I wanted, because they would be an additional 25 cents each. (Who in the Heck charges for fry sauce, especially in Utah...it ought to be a crime!) So I told him two would be enough. When I pulled up to the window, I saw something I have been dreading since the day the girls were born.....He gawked at them...and smiled a very suspicious smile. The kind of smile that says "that girl's hot". Darn creepy if you ask me! Anyway, he gave us our box of food and we went on our way. When we opened the box, we noticed that there was not only an extra order of fries thrown in, but six (count 'em) six fry sauces!

We brought our bounteous supply of fry sauce home, and I sent the girls off to do their homework. Now I am left here with the image of the drive thru attendant smirking and gawking. I am totally creeped out. I think I will have a nightmare tonight.