Photo journey

I’ve been taking pictures thinking, I’m going to blog about that.  Then I never do.  I suck.  But I’m going to throw all those pictures up here, and talk about them, quickly, so the post doesn’t get too long.

I know, looks like I’m fooling around.  I sent that to my wife, she asked what I was doing.  I sent this.

Going in there.  The catwalk above my head is the one I walk on while working.  That is not a door at the end of a hallway, that is the other side of 2 tanks.  I had to go in there to grab some parts that fell through the.  It was dripping, a lot, therefore the towel on my head.

Some cool clouds on my way home after work.

Kitty taking it easy with Samantha.

Sent this to my wife as well, since she was in Virginia.  Kitty has been very needy since she’s been gone.  As a matter of fact, hang on and I’ll take a picture of her now.

I included the laptop so you could see I actually just took it.  She is on my left leg, her arms are stretched underneath the laptop.  The cord in the USB port on the side above her is plugged into my phone.  Except the cord is wrapped around her.  And she’s purring.

I sent this to my wife.  I’m using her car while she uses mine in Virginia.  I told her I was making her car feel more like home.

I took the kids to the park after I picked them up at school.  That would be Samantha on the left, on the right is her “don’t call him my” boyfriend Blaine.  I actually talked to the kid.  Samantha said that he said I was mean.  I told him I was.

This is what I did when I got home.  I had to peel the label off my fruit jar for Samantha to take to girl scouts this evening.  She made a pumpkin candle out of it.  It was the only jar we had.  I have fruit for breakfast at work, hence, the fruit jar.

I made supper.  Although it looks kind of nasty in this picture.  It’s a cheesy, ham casserole.  Don’t be to impressed though.

It’s a box meal.  That’s the extent of my cooking ability.  We were going to make our own pizza’s but apparently I was supposed to thaw it out earlier and I didn’t realize it.  So that will be tomorrow’s supper.

While we were waiting for Samantha to get done at Girl Scouts, Trevor and I went to McDonalds and got hot fudge sundae’s.  Because we’re cool like that.

Now that those are posted, I see they were all taken in 2 days.  Friday and today.  That’s my exciting life I guess.

theEx and the JackAss

I got a text from theEx (I’m a poet and didn’t know it) asking if her husband, commonly referred to on this blog as, the JackAss, could take the kids swimming today.  I said that was fine but I would let her know as soon as the kids were up.  Eventually it got to where the JackAss was texting Cheri and making arrangements.

Um, you do realize that she gets your number when you text her.  JackAss

Apparently I don’t talk to him very well.  That’s because you treat me like crap, JackAss.

Notice, Cheri stopped texting him and he just keeps rambling on.  I’ve told him that I don’t have a problem texting him about the kids, but if you want to call me names and act like a 5 year old, then don’t bother texting.  Apparently that means I don’t talk to him well.

So she texts me and tells me to deal with him.  So here’s how that conversation went.

You can take them to their activities?  Like the 2 softball practices that Samantha missed because you were too lazy to take her.  Or the birthday party that you were supposed to take Samantha to, that you faked a phone call to the father and told Samantha that he didn’t answer so you couldn’t get directions.  That’s right, I talked to him too.  Why didn’t you GPS the address I gave you again?  Sure I’ll trust you for that.  Whatever.  JackAss.

Notice I didn’t say all that, I just simply said “It’s not up for debate, I said no”  Simple, to the point, didn’t make fun of him or anything.  Then decipher his response.  Tina’s rights?  She has rights one day a week, and every other weekend.  But I give them to her every weekend and told her she could have them anytime during the week if she gives me some notice.  Now she doesn’t ever take them during the week.  But the offer is out there.  Now she has had them quite a bit this summer, and I have never said no when she’s asked for them.  As a matter of fact, she took them on Wednesday (the 4th) and had them all the way through the following Monday (the 9th.)  So as you can see, she has them way more than her “rights” allow.

So instead of saying “oh, ok.” or in JackAss text “o,k” he runs his mouth.  And I’m the one that doesn’t talk to him well.

So, I’ll treat him like I do my kids.  You run your mouth, you won’t get what you want.  As far as punishing the kids, it wasn’t about that.  It was about, I DON’T TRUST YOU!!!  He’ll take the kids and then I’ll have to fight to get them back.  They’ll say they’ll bring them to their activities and they either will be late, or won’t show up.

And another thing that I didn’t tell him was the kids have friends spending the night on Friday night.  But I shouldn’t have to, I told him they had plans and even told them what their plans are.  That should have been enough.  Also, before all this, on Sunday or Monday, Tina and I text and I told her I would need the kids this weekend for scouts, so again, all he is doing is stirring up trouble when theEx and I already had this crap worked out..

I told the kids about this before bed.  I explained what happened, and why they didn’t go.  I basically asked them if they would get what they want from me by calling me names?  If there stepfather couldn’t behave himself, then he wasn’t going to get anything from me either.  They seemed to understand.  I told them that I’m sure that theEx and the JackAss (I didn’t call them that to them) will probably have a different story, but that is what happened.  Just let them say what they want to say about me, that they know the truth.

Holidays and off days

Had a good couple of days off from work.  I told you about golfing on Tuesday here,  Wednesday was the 4th so we did our traditional cookout which happens to be at the same place that we go to the pool.

Only this time, my cousin, whom I haven’t seen in probably 10 years, was there.  She hung out with us original four that were always together.  I’ve been telling my wife for the last year, anytime her name came up, I miss her.  Well, I don’t miss her anymore.  I talked to her for awhile and we got all caught up.  Came home, friended her on Facebook and now hopefully will keep in touch.  She didn’t get to meet Cheri though since it was too hot for her to go to the cookout.  She would have lasted a few minutes in that heat and would have been down for the count for a few days.

The thing I’m known for when swimming in the pool, is the butt dive.  What is the butt dive, you ask.  You stand at the very edge of the board, on your heels.  Then you just drop and land with your butt on the diving board and flip into the water.  It doesn’t sound like much, but everyone else that has tried it, has hurt themselves.  Well, I finally got my cousins kid to do it right.  The tricks are number 1, you have to land with your butt on the board, if your to far forward and you hit the edge, you’ll feel it all the way up your spine.  And number 2, spread your feet after you hit the board, otherwise you’ll hit them on the bottom of the board as you go over.  You can see in the picture of my cousins kid why spreading the feet is important.  Oh wait, come to think about it, I think my wife filmed me doing one last year.  Let me see if I can find that.  Hang on a sec.

Ok, I found it.  Ignore the whiteness of my fat gut.  Hopefully it won’t gross you out too much.  Here it is.

DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME!!!!

Wow, I can’t believe I shared that.  Anyways, after the cookout we headed home and hung out and relaxed in the AC.  Tina was supposed to take the kids that evening but cancelled on them.

So on Thursday, I asked what they wanted to do.  Something indoors that they wanted to do.  They said they wanted to go bowling.  So I got online and checked prices and decided to take them bowling.  I decided to go to Signature Lanes, it’s probably the furthest alley from home but I’ll show you why in a minute.

Samantha was upset because she didn’t get to use bumpers.  They had an age limit on them, but Trevor got to use them.  That was fine with me because it’s high time she learned to bowl without them so I worked with her.  She wasn’t doing too bad by the time we finished.  She had trouble aiming the ball but when she did manage to aim it right, she did well.

Before we started, I went over and ordered a snack and some pop.  Then we got to bowling.

We started bowling.  I took a couple of shots.  Samantha would only take a few steps before she threw the ball because she had trouble aiming if she ran up.  Trevor on the other hand, ran up there and chucked the bowling ball.  We got a few frames in and then our snack came.

Oh yeah, I ordered the super fries.  I spent many of nights here at the bar drinking and eating for free and this is what I ordered along with all those shots of liquor I was taking.  French fries with melted cheese, bacon, onions and green peppers.  The kids weren’t too sure about them but I had to fight them for them by the time they were gone.  We finished our first game.

Yeah baby, I still got it.  Trevor edged out Samantha as you can see, she struggled to not throw it in the gutter without bumpers.  Trevor on the other hand got to use them.

After this game I saw this lady bowling a few lanes down.  Oh my god, her hair was horrible.  It was like dreads.  I tried to get a picture of her, this was as good as it got.

You can’t expect any better than that from me, I took a bunch of photos but this was the best one.  I’m no “Misty’s Laws”, she’s a professional with her camera phone.  So you’ll just have to trust me, it was horrible.

I pointed it out to Samantha and told her that’s what her hair looks like when she doesn’t shower every day.  Hey, I might as well use this as a teaching opportunity.  We have issues trying to get her shower every day.

Anyways, back to bowling.  We started our 2nd game, kids were having a blast.  It was an enjoyable day with just the 3 of us.

      

Trevor really got into it.  He would throw the ball then stare at the pins to knock them down.  I swear he thought if he stared hard enough they would fall down.  Then when he hit some, he turn around and do a fist pump, it was hilarious!

        

The stare and the fist pump!

We had a great time.  Of course, I had a good time because of this.

Yeah baby, I still got it.  Samantha’s score went down but she did do better as far as keeping it on the lane.  As you can see, Trevor got better too, almost hitting 100 with his 95.

It’s been a good few days, until I went back to work today.  Blah!

Pool days of summer.

I’ve told you what I do on my work days, now a post to say what I’ve been doing on my off days.  I have a relative (I think) who has a pool.  I put I think because I don’t know what she is to me.  She’s my grandfather’s brother’s widow.  Not sure what that makes her to me, but what I do know is she’s been telling us for years “Come over and use the pool anytime.”  Well, now with the hour change at work, I have days off during the week so we’ve gone over to her pool a few times.

This was on Tuesday.  It was freaking hot out but I never got in the pool.  To many damn kids.  I took my 2 youngest over and let my cousin and brother know we were there so they brought their kids.  Plus an additional kid showed up from my “relative’s” side of the family that I didn’t know.  So there were 9 kids.  They had a blast.

Here’s what my daughter does, she goes off the diving board, goes down the slide. swims with her cousins and has lots of fun.  Most of you weren’t here last year, but this is how I taught her to swim in the deep end at her birthday party last year.  I’ll give you a minute to read how great of a parent I am.  Ok, you back now.  That’s right, after arguing with her for awhile, I threw her ass in the deep end.  But here she is a year later, swimming with the best of them.  Then I have this.

This is what my son does, plays by himself, in the shallow end.  I have tried and tried to get him to learn to swim and he just doesn’t care if he knows or not.  Yesterday, we were at the pool again (pictures to come later in this post) and I took him out to the area between shallow and the deep end.  I held him up with my hand on his stomach and told him to swim.  “Don’t let me go, daddy”.  “I won’t, just swim” was my response.  But he wouldn’t swim, I kept telling paddle, he would do it half-assed, barely moving   “Paddle, at least try to swim” I said.  But he wouldn’t.  So I let go, thinking he would panic and swim.  Nope, he dropped like a rock.  Didn’t even try to do anything, just sank.  So I grabbed him and pulled him up.  How can you teach anyone to swim (or ride a bike in his case) who just doesn’t care to learn?  And he truly doesn’t care if he knows or not, he’s content playing by himself in his own little world.  Don’t worry, he still loves me after his drowning.

He’s my little wussy boy.  That was on Tuesday, I worked Wednesday and Thursday and had Friday off, so we went to the pool.  Most of the same kids were all there, but it wasn’t sunny nor blistering hot.  So I decided to get in this time.

I took this picture up and down so you could see the cloud cover.  It was still plenty warm, in the high 80’s but without the sun beating down on us, it was much more pleasant.  We were under a thunderstorm watch but we figured we could get an hour or so worth of swimming in before we really needed to evacuate the pool.  We had a good time in the pool, my brother and I sat in the shallow end most of the time, watching the kids, and timing our shots with our water guns to hit the kids in the face.  I know, we’re mean.  Trust me, the kids deserved it.  I even shot 2 kids in the eyes.  But before you get angry at me, they were shooting me at the time, so I just have a better shot.  Well, better than Trevor, his 5 year old cousin shot me in the eye too at the same time.  It was like a movie, we both shot each other in the eye at the same time.  Don’t worry, no eyes were hurt during the shooting.  Although I thought I lost my contact during it, but I didn’t, so all was good.

We started swimming around noon and around 1:30, we told the kids to get out and start cleaning up all the pool gear and get it put away.

Here’s my brats after they got out.  I’m thinking the slicked back hair isn’t all that attractive on Samantha.  We gathered everyone up but had 1 minor problem.  A storm was coming and my brother and I were there with 9 kids.  The problem, how to get them all home with only our 2 vehicles.  I have a Mitsubishi Galant and he has a Jeep.  I took the youngest 3 in my backseat.  One kid (technically 2) needs a booster seat.  Trevor still uses one until his birthday this year.  But I let him sit without one so his 5 year old cousin could use it.  And a couple of the kids are old enough to ride in the front (damn teenagers) so we all piled in the 2 vehicles.  Before I got in the car, I took this picture.

Yeah!  Not pretty.  Pretty cool, but not pretty.  We got in the cars and decided to take them to our aunt’s house as it was close and my brother had a key.  As soon as we get out on the road, here came the rain.  As we were driving over there, the wind picked up.  It was howling, enough that if it had been swirling, you would have thought there was a tornado.  We get to my aunt’s house, we all pile out of the cars, and run up to the house in the rain.  All to realize, that my brother didn’t have my aunt’s key with him, it was on his other keyring.  So we all ran back to the cars and headed to my mom’s house.  Along the way, we saw all kinds of branches and half of tree’s down.  We eventually made it to my mom’s house.  Got inside, took a picture of all the kids in one room and sent it to my mom.  Told her we were having a party at her house and she wasn’t invited.

That was our exciting day yesterday.  And what I’ve been doing on my days off.  Which is why on my blog reading, I’m only on June 24th.

A Phone Cleansing

I’m bored.  And I feel like doing a blog post.  But I don’t feel like typing one out and getting into it.  So I decided to clean out my photo gallery on my phone of pictures I don’t need to keep on it anymore.  And I decided to share them with you.  No, not the nude pictures, the other ones.  Shhh!

I downloaded that to use as a profile pic for theEx’s husband.  He’s a JackAss.

That’s a picture of my TV paused on the news.  Notice the handsome bald man on the right? How about the boys head on the left?  Yup, that would be Trevor and I.  The Boy Scouts had a trip to the news station and we were standing there when they did a live feed.  I keep this on my phone to brag about being on TV, it’ll probably be the only time I’m on there until I kill someone.  Probably because of road rage, but that’s another story.

Yeah, not sure what this photo is still doing on there.

If my wife did this with her phone and blog, all you would see is pictures of the cat.  I take a few to show her and that’s about it.  This is how she was sleeping on me at one point.  Need a better shot?  How about this.

If this was a dog, I’d say she likes the smell considering dogs eat their own crap.  But she stayed like this for awhile.

This is a picture of this douchebag that shows up from time to time at our apartment.  He always backs in this piece of crap and can’t park between the lines.  I complained about him to my wife and I think I took this pic to forward to her to say “This Douchebag”

The wife and I went out to eat and I saw this girl.  I couldn’t zoom in enough without losing focus.  There was something about her that I couldn’t put my finger on.

Yeah, it’s not showing up on here.  I wish you could see it.  Maybe if I zoom way in.

Nope, that doesn’t show it either.  Let me explain it like this.  You know how you can see all the muscles in a horse’s body, how you can see the definition?  That’s how this ladies face was.  I don’t know why, if she was so thin or what.  But you could see the definition of her skull in her face.  I wish the picture would have came out better.

I saw this car pulling into my apartment complex.  Seriously?  Somebody would actually do that to their car.  I know there are some NASCAR fans out there, but come on.  I wonder if they get paid to have Pepsi and Frito-Lay advertised on their regular car.  I could be sitting on a gold mine.  I don’t care what my car looks like, I could advertise and stay at home.  Maybe I should spam everyone about this idea, send me $1 and I’ll give you a great idea to make money from home.  Genius!

Me and kitty snoozing.  I was supposed to be heading to the shower but the bed was calling my name.

I took this last night, in the Taco Bell drive-thru, at midnight.  This can was sitting on his bumper.  I assume it had been there while he drove down the road to get to the drive-thru.  Either that, or it was glued to his bumper for unsuspecting bloggers to take a photo of it.

Kitty and Cheri sleeping this morning.  She’s not going to like me posting this picture here, but the kitty is so cute.  Oh yeah, you are to honey!

I know, exciting stuff.  No wonder I can’t even hit double digits in followers.