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Finally I'm able to get in and post. I've been trying since Monday and Blogger has been giving me fits.
Also, you can now access this blog by going to my VERY OWN DOMAIN!
http://nelley.org.
Yes org. I can be an organization if I want, can't I?
A lot's happened since my last post. I'll fill you in.
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St. Patrick's Day was fun. We dressed in green, made a shamrock shaped cake,

and shepherd's pie for dinner.
At this point I came down with some uber cold virus and was sick all weekend and the following week as well. I'm still sneezing and coughing. I have my lovely husband to thank for giving me this gift of a cold. We had to impose a "no more kissing when we're sick" rule. Hard to stick to, that one...
My grandmother passed away on the 22nd of March. She had fallen and broken her hip about a month or so ago and her health had been steadily declining since then. I was not particularly close to my grandmother and had mixed feelings when she finally died. It was one of those times when death brought relief from the pain she was in from her fall and from the congestive heart failure she was suffering with and the dementia which had gotten worse and worse for the past 5 years. When I went to see her in the hospital a few days before she died, she didn't remember who I was, but she kept trying to tell me I had pretty hair. She always liked my hair and always complimented me on it. I held her hand and she tried to talk. It was hard because she had been on oxygen, which dried out her mouth and throat to the point where talking was very hard to do.
She died in the very early morning. I had been awake when the phone rang and my mom told me what had happened. I wasn't sad in a sense that I cried, but rather I was sad because I had never really had a chance to get to know my grandmother. She was incredibly shy and it was hard for her to show affection or emotion very much. She and my grandpa used to watch me when I was younger and I can remember going to their house, but it was hard to keep in touch as her health declined because I was living in Florida. So I guess the thing I was sad about was that I felt that there were things about her that I will never get to hear from her.
The funeral was on Friday. It was open casket (something that I had never experienced before). She didn't look like her at all. She had been covered with bruises from the IV's and so her hands and face were all covered with an orangey makeup that made her look like a wax figure in a museum.
All of the grandkids got up and said something they remembered about her and I knew then that I wasn't the only one struggling with not getting to know her. All of us talked about how we wished we could have known her better. It was nice to hear what everyone had to say though. When I have to go to another funeral, I hope it's like this one was.
I was able to take bereavement leave from work which, with the horrible cold I had, turned out to be a good thing. I would have had to take the days off anyway, unpaid, since I'm out of leave. I also got a chance to get some more packing and cleaning and organizing done. It was funny, my cousin's and I all compared how much bereavement leave we got from work when we went out to eat after the funeral. It's not a thing to joke about, but I guess that just shows you how my family pushes our feelings way down...just like gramma and grampa did. One of these days we're all going to have emotional breakdowns or something like that.
Easter wasn't bad this year. I made a cake (of course).

I took side dishes to my friend Tiffany's house and had dinner there. E is getting too old for egg hunts so we didn't bother with coloring eggs and all of that malarky.
Next weekend I'm going back for more sugaring. It's the 2nd in a series of 3 to get rid of...ummm everything.
The clock is ticking on my time here at work. I'm down to 3 weeks left...but who's counting.
ME! That's who. I am looking forward to getting the show on the road as far as packing and moving. I'm impatient like that.

Wax off

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine and I decided that we wanted to give our husbands a surprise when they came back from their deployment. We decided to get sugared! Sugaring is like waxing, only better. It is more sanitary, less painful, less damaging to the skin, and less expensive. We visited a place called The Sweet Spot in the Freemont area of Seattle.
Once inside, we chatted for a few to get to know the woman who would be seeing what we got and then it was time. I was "elected" to go first so she told me to strip down to whatever I felt comfortable in and lay on the table. I'm not a modest person so I left only my socks (you know, so my feet would stay warm...) and shirt on. She sprayed on something called a tonic which apparently "calms" my skin (Great, get it all nice and calm before you rip the hair out of it...). After a minute or two it was time to begin the sugaring. She put latex gloves on her hands and pulled a glob of molten, amber colored sugar paste from the pot. It looked like honey but was darker and very clear. It felt warm going on but pulled slightly as she applied it against the direction of the hair. So it was like all of the hairs were getting pulled at the same time (not the best feeling in the world I can tell you...).
"are you ready?"
"yep. pull 'em out"
"ok take a deep breath..."
I breathed in deep and she wicked the paste off my skin with a flick of her wrist. Ouch...
Ouch...
Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. It felt like pulling off a Bandaid. The part that I thought would be the most sensitive was actually the part that hurt the least (and you can just figure out which part that is on your own..). Once the right side was done she moved to the left. For this she got a new ball of sugar out of the pot.
"are you ready?"
"eh...no biggie..whenever" By this time it was a piece of cake.
"ok...deep breath..."
I breathed in deep and she wicked the paste off my skin with a flick of her wrist...
"YEOOOOUUUUCHHHHHHH!!" the room spun, I saw red and my whole body tensed up with pain.
"what the hell?? the other side didn't hurt NEAR that much!"
"Oh, I forgot to mention, most people are more sensitive on one side than the other. For most people it's the left." Now she tells me...
"Did I mention I am the Queen of torture?" she adds. Ha, I wonder if she puts that on her business card. Who knows, she might just get a whole new crop of clientele that way.
The second half of the sugaring was a series of "ouch", "OWWW", "HOLY....", "MOTHER...". Yeah it hurt a lot more and by the time she said "ok flip over" (yep, it was a Brazilian...clean as a baby's behind) my entire body was coursing with adrenaline and I was shaking. Sort of like the afterglow of sex, but without the sex.
When all was said and done, there was nothing left but pink skin. By this time, having spent the last hour in various compromising positions with a complete stranger looking at my hoo-ha, I was completely ok about running around with no underwear (In fact, my friend had to remind me to put pants on to go across the hall to use the restroom). It's funny how that happens.

Etiket and Protakol

In the words of Julie "this game is great!"
P.S. Watch out for the man riding on a kangaroo shooting laser guns at you.

He's back

I've been away. Sorry about that. It's been a busy 2 weeks.
Calls were made, elaborate plans were made, none of them panned out the way I wanted them too and we still had a great homecoming (that's what it's called when sailors come back from being deployed...homecoming).
Last week was a whirlwind of activity with cleaning, baking, sugaring(but that's another post), and lots of other "ing's". On Thursday night, E and I travelled to Everett to wait for the big day. After a lot of unplanned events, everyone else was in bed by 10pm so me and E watched a movie in our room and I soaked my feet.
Every time the ship comes back I get a picture in my mind of what it will be like when I see him for the first time in months. I don't know if everyone does this, but I get a little picture in my head (no, I don't picture the lame sappy thing where we run towards each other with outstretched arms...). I can see the people around us but once I see him it's like things move in slow motion and we just grin and put an extra speed in our step and once we meet it's like a movie where there's music playing and we kiss for a long time...blah blah blah. Of course it never happens that way. He inevitably has duty on the day they pull-in where he has to stay on the ship or he'll have the last watch where he has to shut everything down (that's what happened this time). Because of this he's gotten out of wearing his dress uniform just about every time. He gets off the ship, there are so many people that I don't see him until he's practically right in front of me, we can't stop in the middle of the rush of people so I get a big hug for a few seconds and then we have to keep moving.
We did hold hands though...

It's absolutely great having him back. Going from basically being a single parent to being a whole family can be tricky. I'm still trying to get it in my head that I can actually share some of the everyday stuff with him again. I'm adjusting to having another person in my bed again.
The idea of being able to have sex whenever I wan't isn't a bad thing either. ;)