Laurie, Fudge, and Vern's Blog (342)

Every year, we go to my sister’s for Thanksgiving.  I am thankful she wants to do this holiday, because without her, the rest of us would just make reservations somewhere. Everyone brings something and we all have our signature dishes. She goes all out and pulls out her fine china, silver, and crystal goblets. I would be just as happy with Dixie paper plates, plastic silverware, and those cheap throwaway wine glasses you can buy at the Dollar store, so…

Every year, it seems that we start putting up Christmas earlier and earlier.  When I was growing up, we put our tree up the week before Christmas and my dad passed out funny gifts that he picked out for us based on things we had done that year. One year, I made him spaghetti and the recipe called for a cup of onions. I didn’t have real onions, so I put in a whole cup of dehydrated onions. Needless to say, I think we went out to dinner that…

I am getting ready for my Christmas cookie party in a couple of weeks and frankly, I think it is going to kill me. I have been baking and baking and have decided that it is a real shame that when my grandma passed down her recipes, none of them happened to be easy cookies to make like Chocolate Chip cookies. Leading the pack is one cookie that I hate making above all the others. Proving that I come from a long line of creative thinkers and bakers, these…

For many years, when our girls were young, we would take an annual Christmas picture and mail it with our Holiday card. I was the mom who, when they were growing up, never took a picture or had a camera at any important event. I have always been technologically challenged and I guess I did not want to miss out on something that was happening right before my eyes, because I was fiddling with the stupid camera. Once or twice, I did try and take a picture…

On Sunday, my husband decided to try and get the 5 million leaves we have all over our property blown into the neighbor's yard. Not really, but wouldn't we have the best neighbors if they told us that would be fine. Since I had stuff to do inside the house, Fudge came in with me to take her nap. Fudge loves to catch up on her beauty sleep in the afternoon and usually takes her naps back on our bed with two fans blowing on her. Let's just say for the purposes of this blog that she turns them…

I hate (not really) to keep writing blogs about my mom, but something happened recently and I can’t help myself. First of all, if you do not like inappropriate mom humor, you should stop right here and move on to another blog. I have said before my mom is 85 and has a great sense of humor.  First, I have to give you a little background. My mom loves to read and I recently recommended the Bride Quartet series to her by Nora Roberts.  My mother is a mature…

When I last left off, we were in the middle of a snowstorm in October, my husband was out of town, and a possible power outage was looming.  We also established that my husband knows I cannot operate anything with gauges, primers, hoses, safety locks, and leaf and/or snow blowers and is really the one at fault for what I am about to tell you, because he left me at home defenseless and clueless.  We also clarified that in the house was my daughter, who…

My husband is out of town for the weekend. He is being a good uncle and went to see our nephew (his godson) play football in one of his last games as a senior in high school.  I actually was happy that he got a chance to go and Thursday when he left, I was even counting down the minutes until he departed for the airport.  It wasn’t that I wouldn’t miss him, but all morning on Thursday, he was in my way. I went in the kitchen to make my oatmeal and there he sat on MY seat sipping that darn…

Last week, I had to have a tooth pulled. I had a root canal in that tooth years ago and for the last ten years I have had problems with the tooth from time to time. It always seemed to know to act up when I was on vacation, so in my opinion, it got what was coming to it the other day.  The only problem with severing my friendship with this tooth was I had to be the one to take it to the dentist for its final demise and I hate the dentist. He is a perfectly nice man, but nothing good happens…

My groomer is finally back after having surgery and ready to groom dogs again.  Sometimes, she grooms both dogs on the same day, but since she is still recovering, she decided to take one on Thursday and one on Friday.  I suspect, however, the real reason she opted not to do them together is because I sounded somewhat desperate over the phone and used words like homeless, matted, gross, and disgusting.  She probably figured it would be in her best…

Several weeks ago, I was a Jersey shore girl and spent the weekend with friends and my daughter in Cape May, New Jersey.  We left in a torrential downpour and any attempts to tease my hair like Snooki failed miserably.

It was disappointing to arrive in New Jersey with my own flat hair, but with all the rain and humidity I had no choice.  My one friend was born and…

Last week, I called our regular groomer to get Fudge and Vern in for an appointment.  As soon as I asked her if she had something available very, very soon, she said, “You must not have remembered. I have surgery tomorrow.” WHAT??  Well, of course I didn’t remember. I spend about 2 hours a day looking for my car keys, purse, reading glasses, or TV remote, and I am lucky if I get where I need to be going before dinner.  I have left car keys on the roof of the van and once drove to Gettysburg…

Years ago, before I married my husband, one of the things that convinced me that he was the one happened when he gave me a sweater for a gift in a size medium.  Maybe he needed new glasses or maybe he was a bad guesser, but no one had ever gotten me a medium sweater before and I was not going to let this man get away from me. Of course, I had to exchange the gift, as I was pretty sure I wasn’t even a medium at birth, but that was beside the point.  Now, years later, I have the…

Based on what I know about scary Halloween stories, I think I have a real doozy. A really great, scary story causes your heart to start pounding and increases your breathing rate.  You can experience moments of sheer terror and begin to feel panicky and on edge. The most frightening Halloween stories involve lots of trembling and screaming, and yesterday, I experienced all of these symptoms and more, after hanging up the phone after a conversation with my mom.  You see, she had just…

My mom and I usually talk first thing in the morning each day.  We all know that the older we get the fewer inhibitions we have and sometimes my mom will start talking about things I do not want to talk about before I eat my daily oatmeal.  Quite frankly, in my book, there is no good time to talk about some of the stuff she brings up. If she so much as utters the words bowel movement, my heart starts to race, my stomach starts churning, and I start trying to picture myself with a…

Three years ago, I lost a wonderful friend to Breast Cancer. She was 48 and left behind two teenage boys and her husband. This is going to be a long blog, but how do you sum up someone’s life in only a few short paragraphs?

After graduating from college with a degree in Chemical Engineering, my husband got his first real job in Baltimore, Maryland, at Bethlehem Steel.  He met another engineer there named Eric, who also lived in our apartment…

Years ago, when we bought our current home, we moved from the suburbs into the country. I had spent my whole life living in the city and was unprepared for the darkness that falls at night when you are used to streetlights. The first night I stayed alone at our new house I was on high alert imaging all kinds of thing moving about in the nearby cornfields and it did not help that my husband kept referencing the old movie Children of the Corn.  Sure enough, I started…

First, let me start off by saying, I love television. I know some people think it is mindless entertainment and prefer other forms of more intellectual stimulation, but I am not one of those people.  Show me the new fall line-up and I experience something akin to pure euphoria.  I have lots of members in my family who feel the same, and I guarantee you if they measured IQ with TV trivia questions, we could hold our next family reunion at a Mensa convention. I…

Lots of times here on DoodleKisses, I see members ask if they should stop crating their dogs at night. Many of those times, the dog is happy in the crate and it is the human who misses the doggie snuggling at night. Take my word for it, let sleeping dogs lie IN their crates.

In the summer, Fudge and Vern get too hot on any bed and prefer to sleep on the cold, hard floor. They might start up here on our bed for a little bit, but usually when my husband…