Rhymes With Orange

Lots and lots of whining. Also swollen ankles.

I started to write a post all about our long and arduous trip to Grayling and after typing for about twenty minutes I stopped to read and realized that not only was it really long, it was really boring. So here is the incredibly short hand version. A section titled "What went wrong" for the those in the glass half empty seating area or "But at least we didn't die" for everyone else.

• The day before we left, Chloe decided to make herself a stiff drink using her bowl of water and ten dryer sheets.
• Thirty seconds after arriving at the Kadena base airport, we discovered that the carry-on containing all of our expensive electronics was still sitting in the hotel lobby.
• My feet, ankles and calves swelled to horrific proportions on the flight to Seattle.
• We almost missed the flight to Chicago because our baggage took and hour to get off of the plane and trying to get Chloe was about as easy and trying to do your own dental work.
• We arrived in Chicago just as our flight to Traverse City was canceled.
• We managed to get Chloe and catch a flight to Detroit, but our baggage had to wait for the flight to TC in the morning.
• We are still waiting for our baggage.

More about Chloe now because I'm sure that scared y'all. We had her locked in her crate while we were running errands (The hotel requires pets to be crated when you're not in the room) and some how she managed to reach through the bars to the dryer sheets almost a foot away, pull ten of them into the crate and mix them with her water. Oh.so.smart.

Ms. Chloe is doing fine. We were really worried about her for a little while, but several emergency vet phone calls and lots of force fed water later she's almost completely recovered. She's still coughing, but she's not in any danger, and the vet did tell us to expect the coughing. Other than a little coughing though, she's doing great. The old kitties are giving her a hard time, but she's settling in much better than we expected.

We are very, very happy to be here. Even if we don't have socks.

Leaving on a jet plane...

We are leaving in a day and a half! We are homeless! We are sleeping in a tiny room with an angry cat! We have lots of Yoohoo! Life is good =)

See y'll in a few days! (Pray for easy travel)

soon, I promise

kate will post again soon, i promise.

Until then, enjoy some pictures she updated in the albums... and enjoy me messing around with this post... WEEEE!!!! partay time!

What to talk about.. well.. I need to mention everything in the tags I added so...

Anger: I'm not angry right now

Annie: Hi Annie, i'm sure you'll read this

Bethy: Howdi Beth

Blondness: i'm not blonde...

Books: read any good ones lately? Share them in a reply. I'm fond of Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, chronicals of narnia and dave berry books

caspian: he's doing much better now, we had a major scare with him, but he's recovering nicely.

Chloe: I never noticed both of their names started with C... and here we thought C was for cookie... NO COOKIE FOR JOO

Daily: Hello.. at the tone the time will be 11:40pm on Sunday August 26th.. BEEP

Depression: sucks, nuff said

Family: hi everyone! I dont steal her blog often enough... love ya'll.

Goodbyes: Not yet, still have many tags to go...

Google search: search for my name... youll find some CEO's of coporations and stuff.. interesting.... What are some of the cool stuff that people the share your names have done?

happiness: opposite of depression. Much better and happier for all!

House: it's still standing. We need to repaint it soon...

Japan: it's a country.. we live here. hi Japan! and Hi Yoko Ono!

MSN Search: Did she ever post about google and msn searches? one has to wonder.. reply below.

Mike: Thats me!

Music: Itunes is great...

PMS: Never had it. explian below if you're a male and have had PMS.

Pictures: Weee... kate likes pictures

Piper: God bless her...

Quotes: I wonder what quotes will come from this post...

Random Stuff: i think this post covers this topic itself.

Romeo: poor guy, he was very cute and loveable.. if only he wouldn't have been so scared =/

Sadness: I'm kinda sad after talking about the pippa and romeo... meh..

Television: We'll be glad to watch actual TV... not AFN.. AFn is ok, but i'll be nice to pick whatever we want to watch, not what they want!

travel: Louisiana is next on the travel list

Worries: I worry about many things. Post what you worry about. We can talk about it...

yarn Stuff: I dont have any yarn stuff except the sweater she made me. She should make more stuff for me! I want toe warmers!

permalink: I dont think this is actually a topic, but I dont feel done with this post quite yet...

comments: I expect alot of comments! Now post! Comment away!!!!!

Oh, and thanks for all the birthday comments and replies! If anyone sent me anything personally, i'll get back to you soon! I promise. been busy, very very busy....

I hope ya'll enjoy the post!

-Mike

Keeping my opinion of jambalaya to myself.

So, who's up for Mardi Gras this year? Because y'all could totally stay with us. Seeing as we will be in Louisiana and all.

Yup, you read that right. We have a new duty station. We will be stationed in LA for a year. I guess we are scheduled to arrive some time after the new year. I'm a little disappointed because we'll be living (again) where it's hot and sticky for most of the year, but at the same time I'm happy that we won't be horribly far from my family in Florida. It means, we will be taking a road trip next year to visit everyone! Yay!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go practice saying "N'Olins" so they don't laugh me out of the state.

Home Again

HI Internet! I'm home! Didja miss me? ;)

We got home really late Monday night. The cats were overjoyed to see us and to show us all of the wonderful improvements they'd made to the house in our stead. My poor neighbor did her very best to keep up with them, but...well...I didn't remove all of the glass objects from around the house for no particular reason. They killed two of my house plants by shoving them off of high ledges, demolished all of the 3D puzzles Mike had on his dresser, spilled the entire two quart long-term water dish and managed to unhook one of the small water fountains we left running for them, so it sat there making sad grinding noises. They are SO exciting.

We had a great time on our trip. We got to see a lot of our extended family and spend time with our parents. We spent a fabulous weekend with Ms. Shoesonwrong where I got pictures of a local *Hobo Tree. Mike got to play lots of Warhammer with his bff, Tim. We met Tim's newest family addition, Logan Michael (I spent the whole time we were there nibbling chubby baby thighs. Mmmm!). I attended the opening of Gaylord's newest yarn store, Imagiknit (Visit, visit, visit!). We saw Nick's girlfriend, Miesha, in the Grayling High School rendition of "Anything Goes." We ate a lot of wonderful home cooking, and I drank way too many cinnamon dolce lattes at Starbucks. Oh, and I bought pants. LOTS AND LOTS OF PANTS.

We were very, very busy.

I miss everyone already, but darn it's good to be home =)

*Okay, the Hobo Tree. This is a Hobo Tree:

That's pretty much it. Ms. Shoesonwrong (Annie!) lives next door to a frat house, and we just happened to be visiting her during St. Patrick's Day. Plastic cups and wasted sorority girls lined the alley way. It wasn't pretty.

Where in the world is Kate?

Kate is in Saginaw with Mike's grandparents! Yay America! (This would be why no one has heard from me in a while...)

The flight wasn't bad, though I did seriously envy Mike's ability to sleep anywhere at anytime. I was awake for roughly 35 hours before finally collasping at my parent's house. I'm sooooo glad to be home =)

I know Rhymes With Orange hasn't been that interesting lately, but things have been really busy. I'll try to apply myself more when I get home, but for now? I think I'll go take a nap ;)

Bleach covers a multitude of neuroses.

We're coming home! Ahhhh! I'm so excited =D I didn't post about it sooner because...umm...I'm really not sure =p

We leave Thursday morning, so I'm running around like crazy getting things ready and bleaching everything. I spent all morning bleaching the floors, tile, cats.... Speaking of the cats, I'm really nervous about leaving the cats here all alone. My neighbor is watching them, but she'll only be checking on them a few times a day, and who knows what kind of trouble they could get into?

We're only going to be home for 2 1/2 weeks. It's gonna be wonderful. We'll get to see out family and our best friends. Oh! And I get to go to a yarn store opening! Yay yarn! (Not that I need anymore, but still. I must at least visit the yarn.)

And I'll be able to buy pants. Hooray for pants! I've lost two pairs of pants since November. I've worn them so much that the fabric became thread-bare and fell apart in places that are not patchable, and left my bottom quite chilly. The way one pair ripped it looked like I had cut them with scissors to make hot pants.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have things to bleach.

It was much bigger than a dinghy, but I chose to call it that the entire time because I like saying it. Dinghy.

So, I've been meaning to write this post for, oh, a WEEK.

Our sunset cruise turned out to be neither sunny nor a cruise. In the brochure, it showed two beautiful people on a wooden sail boat, sipping fruity tropical drinks while the most beautiful sunset slowly faded. Sounds great right? It was a lovely, sunny, warm day out and since this was our last day we decided to splurge and go on the cruise.

By the time we got to the docks at five o'clock, the sky was turning grey and the ocean was turbulent. The boat was waiting for us and was certainly not what we had expected. It was a fairly good sized power boat with a shabby interior and slippery decks. We decided to make the best of it though and boarded anyway. Once on board, one of the two men running the boat offered us bottled coke and showed us how to get up to the top of the boat. We took our seats and huddled close together, clutching our cokes.

The sunset was visible for a mere five minutes, but our little boat continued out on the choppy sea. Mike started humming 'Gilligan's Island' which lead us deep into conversation about different boat songs we knew. Before long, I was mentally rewriting the words to the song 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.'

"The legend lives on from the YYY on down, of the sea which they call Eastern China. The sea it is said sometimes loses her head and likes to swallow people named Katy!"

Upon my singing this for Mike, we hit a wave, and I got doused with sea spray. He thought it was hilarious. I threw my coke at him.

I'm sorry to say that I don't have any pictures, but even if I did I'm not sure I'd share them. Mike had his hoodie pulled tightly around his chin, and I had a lovely fro going on from the wind. It wasn't what we had expected, but we had fun none the less. Especially when we started plotting to take control of the boat and head for China ;)

We'll always have the sea, baby.

Vacation-y goodness

Our vacation was a lot of fun =) Although it didn't start out great.

It started out with pouring rain, my jeans ripping before even getting on the ferry, two twin-size beds and a bathroom so small Mike's hair brushed the ceiling.

It did get better though. We walked on the beach, got in some extra napping time, enjoyed the amazing food, took a (hilarious) sunset cruise and just enjoyed each other's company =)

I promise to tell you all about our funny sunset cruise in another post, but for now pictures.

Wrong way on a one-way

-Sung to the tune of Memory from Cats, the musical-

Posting, all alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was still posting then
I remember the time I knew what blogging was
Let the comments live again

I'm sorry for the lack of posting lately. When I'm alone, I post all the time because it's my therapy. I feel better, more connected with people. But when there are people to keep me company, I ditch the blog like last week's lasagna.

Saginaw makes me a bad driver. I spent the weekend with Mike's family and during my time in Saginaw I managed to: go the wrong way on a one-way street, get terribly lost just two blocks from his grandparent's house, almost hit a snowbank, get into the turn lane more than once to turn the wrong way on a one-way street and make a lot of people swear at me.

My search for a new pair of jeans is still on, and I'm getting really discouraged. I may just have to become a designer and make jeans for people with thin waists, thin legs, an exceptionally curvy butts. Why is this such a hard thing for them to make? If things fit in the butt, they bag in the thighs and waist. If they fit the waist and thighs, I feel like I'm being vacuum packed. I did find one or two pairs that fit everywhere, but they were so skin tight (like they were intended to be. meh) that there was no way could wear them anyway nice because they were, well, bad girl jeans *sigh* Hopefully I'll find a pair before I leave. Otherwise, I'm doomed. Doooooooooomed!