TST/Wedding Dress Story

This week, I'm doing a two-fer:

Who Put Me In Charge of these People?

and Once Upon A Miracle

Texan MaMa has a fun little linky going on this week, and Rachel's TST is always a lot of fun.  After reading Texan MaMa's write up about her lovely wedding dress, it made me think of mine, which was well...we had a redneck weddin'.

RockCrawlinChef and I decided that we were going to have a totally low-key wedding.  And I mean, low-key.  I swore I was going to wear jeans and boots to the wedding.  How much more low-key can you get than jeans and boots?

About a week before the wedding, though, I started having second thoughts.  I didn't want to look at our wedding album in twenty years and regret not wearing a dress, so off we went.  I was actually looking for a sundress to wear at our reception BBQ (yep, we threw us a big ol' BBQ - as laid back as you can get), so we went to Old Navy, where I found the sundress for super cheap.  Ashinator wanted a dress to wear to the wedding, so we went to Ross.

Yes, I did.  I found my wedding dress at Ross for about $20.  Now it's not a traditional wedding dress by any means, but it was a white dressy-thing that would suffice.  And I could still wear my boots with it.

Now, like a true cowgirl who got married in her boots, the redneck wedding wouldn't be complete without climbing into the horse pen and getting a picture with the equine love of my life.

And as a little bonus, in case my $20 wedding dress from Ross and my cowboys weren't enough, here's our cake topper.

Which, by the way, cost more than my dress!

I Found It!

Way back in July, when I brought my Soda Stream home from filming Horse Master with Julie Goodnight, I said that I wanted to find some Coca-Cola syrup for it.  I hadn't been able to until a week or so ago, when a fellow WriMo saw my bottle and asked if we had a carbonation system of our own.  We got to talking, and it turns out that she and her husband have a Mr. BreakMate carbonation system and that Coke syrup is available through the website and that they just had ordered a case of syrup.  For $10, I procured my own liter of syrup and set about making my own Coke.

The syrup isn't as concentrate as the syrups from Soda Stream, so it took some playing around to make the perfect Coke.  I finally got it figured out; five shots of syrup per bottle of water.  It's a lot, but it's worth it.  Even if I only get ten bottles of Coke out of the deal (which makes it $1.00/bottle), I've saved money.

Not to mention the fact that I'm thrilled to death to be able to make my own Coke!

Holy Cow!

The CSN Stores promotional team has graced me with $100 to review their stores/products.  I've done reviews for them in the past and loved it.  If you've never visited their website, you should do so.  They've got so much stuff to choose from, I had a hard time deciding what to spend my money on.  One "big" thing or a few "small" things?  I opted for a few small things.

After much discussion with RockCrawlinChef, we decided to choose:

• The Hamilton Beach "Stay or Go" slow cooker.  We passed on our old faithful crock-pot to Digger last week and were in need of a new one.  What I think I'm going to like about this one is that it seals, so it won't spill all over Ripley when we take food places.
• Fox Run Craftsman's 3-piece Pizza Stone set.  Monster unfortunately broke our last pizza stone.  I loved using the pizza stone because it kept the kids from putting their frozen pizzas straight on the rack (okay, I'm guilty of that, too).  While I don't mind the straight on the rack thing, I did just clean the oven and it was disgusting.  Anything to prevent me having to do that again!
• Soda Stream carbonating bottles.  We love our Soda Stream and I was thrilled to see that CSN stores carried it and all of the accessories.  The one drawback to the Soda Stream is that it only comes with two bottles, so if you want a variety of sodas in the fridge, you're kinda screwed.  For $14.99, they are less expensive than buying from a brick-and-mortar store.
• Soda Stream grape soda.  Well, why not?  It's a flavor we haven't tried yet.  The drawback is that I couldn't order just one bottle, it came in a set of five.  We'll be drinking grape soda for the next year.

I placed my order today and everything I ordered, in addition to free shipping, is guaranteed to be here before Christmas Eve.

We Now Return To Our Regularly Scheduled Program

Whew!  I did it.  50,000 words in 27 days, ten days longer than it took me to finish last year.  At times, I doubted I'd be able to make it this year.  Being the competitive critter I am, I really need someone to push me. 

Last year, it was Molly.  I beat her to 50k by ten minutes.

This year, it was Dan who stepped up to push me.  We both updated 50k at the same time; it was too close to call.  I thought I had him.  I put my numbers in to update, pushed the button and both of our bars came back green (meaning we finished).  Only the Office of Letters and Light (who runs NaNoWriMo) will know who finished first.

I'll be back with my usual drivel in a day or so.

Of course, if any of you are interested in what's kept me so busy this month, head on over to my NaNo blog, HUNTED LYON.

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everyone has a fabulous day surrounded by family and friends.

'Cause I'm The Cool Aunt

Autobot asked me to join her for her sheet sheep (thanks Rach) heart dissection at school last week, and because I'm the cool aunt, of course I went.  And because I'm a blogger at heart, I took the camera.

The first tentative touch - eeewww

Finding the aorta - the opening goes all the way to the bottom of the left ventricle.

Where do we cut?

Apparently, sixth graders are not trustworthy with scalpels, but they're allowed dull scissors to cut their hearts with.

The left ventricle, bicuspid (mitral) valve and the left atrium.

Those stringy-things?  Yeah, those are your chordae tendonae - your heartstrings - so next time something tugs on your heartstrings, you know what they look like.

(Sorry, sometimes my science nerd comes out.)

My Sister...

...Cracks me right. the. hell. up.

Here's her FB status for today:

Nebalee: "You know it's bad when you're sick and you wake from a 3 hr nap feeling WORSE than when you went down. Shoot...I just gave that virus 3hrs of uninterrupted multiplying time. I must have the Motaba virus! If my eyeballs start bleeding in an hour, evacuate the town."

GunDiva: "Woohoo for Motaba! If it was Motaba-Zaire, you'd be dead already :)"

Nebalee:  "I'm hoping someone finds the monkey for the anti-serum."

GunDiva:  "Me too! I don't want to have to see you bleeding out of all of your orifices or have to call in the big bombers to set your house on fire."

There were random comments in there from her friends about "hope you feel better" and all that crap.  Yup, that's our family.  Just crackin' each other up, while the rest of the world can't figure us out.

It's CSN Review Time!

Quick note: if you receive an email from "me" with just a funny looking link, don't click on it!  Some stupid spammer hijacked my account.  I will *always* identify a link if I send it to you.

What will it be this time?  A briefcase? Probably not; that would require me to transfer all of my crap from my computer bag.  Cookware?  Possibly, but not because *I* would use it, but maybe RockCrawlinChef will!

Rachel did a review on a Rachael Ray Casserole Dish a while back and I've kind of been coveting that little dish (not in green, though, red's my color), so I may try it out.  The problem is, I could (and have) wasted an entire day playing around on CSN Store's website - there is so much to choose from!

Stay tuned...a review is on its way!

My Very Wise Son...

...once said:

So I learned that whn you start in the real world you live paycheck to paycheck to pay bills and your boss is an idiot.

That son o'mine is a quick learner.

A Pretty Darn Good Day

This year I've been able to meet some amazing blogger friends in real life.  It's kind of like internet dating, though.  We get to know each other pretty well through our blogs, so it really is like seeing a life-long friend when we meet IRL.  But there's always that moment of hesitation...that what if they're not so fabulous outside of the blogosphere.

I have yet to travel to meet any blogger friends, they've all pretty much come to us (thank goodness Mom and Bill have the lodge, which is a natural meeting place) and I think it takes some big ole hairy cojones to travel, in some cases, halfway across the nation to visit.

In August, we had High Country Rendezvous, in which we met Rachel (and Momma P) from Once Upon A Miracle and Killlashandra (and her fabulous hubby) from Southwest Mementos.

In October, we had Mrs Mom and Mr Mrs Mom from Oh HorseFeathers! and LT and Meg from Browneyed Cowgirls.

This week, we've had Momma Fargo and Bug (yes, you read that right - jealous much?) from The Boogie Man Is My Friend and T!nK from This Is How It Feels.


Okay, I haven't uploaded the pictures from today yet, but stay tuned, they'll be a comin'.

They've all been fabulous!  We've had the best time together.  If you have a bloggy friend who you want to meet, don't hesitate.  You might miss out.  And then you'd be sad.

TST: Half-Naked

It's that time of week again!  I've been lax about linking up, but Tuesday comes around and it's Wednesday before I realized that I missed Tuesday.  If you've never linked up before, head on over to Rachel's blog and play along - we all have things we can share.

Half-Naked

One would think that as Associate Dean, I wouldn't be spending a lot of time in the classroom teaching.  In the classroom, evaluating instructors, but not teaching.  One would be wrong.   I teach every bit as much as I did before I got promoted, only it's all last-minute teaching.  As in, the scheduled instructor suddenly can't teach the class, needs the mod off, or up and quits, so in goes GunDiva to teach the class.

This past mod, I ended up teaching ECG class to two students.  At least it wasn't a big class.  But then...if it had been a bigger class maybe I wouldn't have ended up in the position I did.

Not only do Medical Assistants have to recognize normal/abnormal ECG tracings, they have to be able to acquire the ECGs.  I don't believe in teaching "hypothetically".  I don't tell my students that "hypothetically, if we had a patient, you'd place the ECG electrodes like this...".  No, I make them do it for realzies.  Usually on each other.  However, when you have a class of just two students, drastic measures have to be taken.

Knowing that they were going to have to do multiple ECGs, I planned on having them do at least one a piece on me.  I had my sports bra on and put on a lovely patient gown with the opening in the front and laid back on the bed for them to hook me up to the machine.  Each student took their turn and got good tracings.  I sat up and started peeling off the sticky electrodes and was answering questions when suddenly the privacy curtain parted and my friend and co-worker's head peeked through.

"GunDiva, I have a quick question to...OH MY GOD!  YOU'RE HALF NAKED!"  The poor kid (I call him kid, but he's only a couple of years younger than me) turned beet red. 

Now, let me tell you about Mo.  We've known each other for twenty years; he's been a friend of mine and of Nebalee's since they were in high school.  He was one of my student athletic trainers and one of my co-TAs at CSU.  We've known each other a long, long time. He was also a Coroner's Investigator for ten years and married for several years.  He's seen the female body in just about every way imaginable (including from the inside when he assisted with autopsies).

I laughed it off and said, "It's okay, I've got a sports bra on, what do you need?"

He proceeded to ask his question, but was completely uncomfortable the whole time.  At one point, I was sitting on the bed, looking at him as he stammered through his question and I just burst out laughing.  He finally said, "We've known each other a long time, and this is the most we've ever seen of each other!"  It's true, we've just been friends and as such have maintained such conventions as being clothed during all of our encounters with each other.  Now, on top of being friends, I'm his boss.  Poor, poor kid.

He did get the last word in though, as he walked back into his classroom, I heard him announce, "Well, GunDiva can't come in here to answer your questions because she's half-naked with her class."

I'm Not Really Missing...

...I'm just posting more frequently at Hunted Lyon.  Come on over if you want a peek at what's got me so occupied this month.

I've got a great TST for this week; I just have to find time to sit and write it.

I'm trying to stay caught up on everyone's blogs, but not being very successful.  I'll be back to regular commenting in just a couple of weeks, I promise.

Say What?!

"I'm completely independent of my parents, except financially."

?!?!?

GunDiva of King Soopers (Southern Girl Gang, you might want to pass)

So, here I was on my vacation day, catching up on my blogs (oh, how I miss having reading time) and watching TV when a commercial comes on for these little puppies...

I wasn't really paying attention, but these called my name from the TV.  I tried and tried to ignore their siren call, but at last I gave in.  I managed to justify my trip to the store by combining it with things that the cats needed.  You know, like food and cat litter.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but the need for Pizza Rolls got so strong that I just did it.  I put on a sweatshirt and my tennis shoes and headed to the store.

No shower.

No deoderant.

Hair still wound up on top of my head from bed last night.

In the sweats I'd been wearing while lounging on the couch.

And let's not even talk about the teeth.

Being a good blogger, I took pictures (I'm still not sure why).  My phone, being a better blogger, refused to send them to my email for me to post (I think I'll have to thank my phone for that later).

Move over People of WalMart, here comes GunDiva of King Soopers.

Digger's All Growed Up

Today, Digger officially moved out.  He'd sort of moved out a while ago, but there was still a chance he'd be back.  When your kid "moves out" and only takes a couple of weeks' worth of clothes, you know that there's a chance he'll be back; besides, he had pulled that stunt once already.  He "moved into" his friend's house, but was actually just couch surfing since he didn't have a job and wasn't going to school.  When he came to his senses he moved back home and got his shit together gathered his feces.

He's been living in Wyoming for about a month and a half, but today's the day he actually moved his stuff out of the house.  He and his friends have found a nice four bedroom that they can afford and moved in earlier this week.  Today, they rented a U-Haul truck and loaded up all of their important stuff.  For Digger that meant his poker table, bed and space heater.  When I asked him about the space heater, I was told that the poker table was going to go in the garage and they needed a heater in there to play poker this winter (all in a well, duh, Mom voice).

I parted with one of my cast iron skillets and bought him a new set of pots and pans.  The original plan was to give him some hand-me-down pots and pans, but I decided it would be nice for him to have new ones.  Trust me, they're cheap.  I'm not an idiot.  He's living with two other boys his age and one of their sisters.  The pans are going to get ruined, but at least he can have something new to start out with.

I wasn't sure that I'd ever see the day when he'd be able to move out.  Before RCC and I met, Digger's disease ran our family.  I just didn't see how on earth he was ever going to get it under control and be able to live on his own.  Now, here he is; he has his disease under control, has a job and is supporting himself.  I couldn't be prouder.

He and his roommates invited us to join them for Thanksgiving.  We'll be going, even though it's a heck of a drive, because hosting your first Thanksgiving dinner is a big deal. 

I can't wait.

TST: Hunters?!

Can't believe it's that time again.  Actually, it's not, as I'm scheduling this post in anticipation of losing posting time during NaNoWriMo, but let's just pretend it is.  Head on over to Once Upon A Miracle to link up to share your dirty laundry best stories.  Those of you who love to laugh at my expense (it's okay, if I were you, I'd laugh at my expense too), be sure to head over to Mrs Mom's blog for her take on my trichophobia.

Hunters?!



A couple of weekends ago, Mrs Mom and the BrownEyed Cowgirls joined me at the lodge under the guise of working on Estes' feetsies.  In all fairness, her feetsies did get worked on, but we had all that free time on our hands and decided to go for a ride.

Picture shamelessly stolen from BrownEyed Cowgirls

You notice how we're all wearing orange?  And you see that pumpkin riding on the elk colored horse (Ranger)?  Yeah, I'll go for the orange over-kill when riding a horse that may or may not look like an elk to a lazy hunter.

We loaded up on the orange just in case there were hunters still on the mountain - it was cold cool and overcast; perfect hunting weather.

We were enjoying our ride, exploring the mountainside and giggling like a bunch of, well, girls.  LT, Meg and Mrs Mom rode up a hill to check out an abandoned mine shaft; Compass and I waited at the bottom for them.  They rode up, looked, and began to ride back down.

BANG! a shot rang out from fairly nearby - just the other side of the meadow where we'd just posed for our picture.

Now, Bill described how to make a fist with one butt-cheek to stay on Ranger a couple of weeks ago.  He may have described it, but I demonstrated it.  Ranger does. not. do. guns. 

Let me repeat that: Ranger. Does. Not. Do. Guns. Ever.

He snorted, grew about ten feet, and bounced a couple of time.  I forgot I had a hair phobia and grabbed on to his mane with both hands, while simultaneously perfecting the butt-cheek fist and grabbing onto Ranger's spine.

According to Mrs Mom, Ranger's eyes bugged right out of his head, but I'm pretty sure that she was mistaking them for my eyes.  I puckered up so tight that the anal inversion pushed my eyeballs right out of the sockets.

I'm also pretty sure that the only reason Ranger decided not to bolt after his little bouncing, blow up to ten feet tall, snorting session is that he was afraid of what I would do if he decided to take us for a ride.

It was the longest year of my life, waiting for him to calm down and willing my hands to let go of his mane.  They wouldn't listen.  I had to tell my hands a couple of times to just let go.  Finally, they responded and I worked on releasing my deathgrip on Ranger's back.

Eventually we got it all sorted out and calmed down.  None of us had any errant holes in our bodies or our horses' bodies, which is good.  There was also only one shot, which was good.  We hoped that meant that the hunter had gotten his deer.

Once it was all sorted out, we kind of looked at each other and laughed.  We got all duded up in orange "in case there were hunters on the mountain", but not a single one of us (GunDiva included) actually thought that the hunters might have, you know, guns and would be shooting.

Imagine, hunters with guns.  Huh.  Who woulda thought?

The really good news is that the hunters got their deer; we ran into them on our way back to the lodge and Compass was quick to offer up Eli to pack it out for them.  Talk about a good horse, look at how well he's behaving with a carcass strapped across his back...

Again, photo shamelessly stolen from BrownEyed Cowgirls.