I hate html

Ok, I've gone through and edited my posts with html coding so my images will work. That really makes blogging them more of a PITA, but I'll do what I have to. Now I've got some kids to put in bed. :)

Really something...

I know... none of my pictures are working anymore. I'll have to find another way of linking them in future posts. I had to beef up my privacy settings again after stumbling across a MAJOR creep. So... unfortunately my blog has to suffer for his sins. Poor little blog.

In other news my stuff still hasn't arrived from Korea. I called the transportation office yesterday. They called me back this morning to let me know they'd put a trace on our shipment and would call me back to let me know what they find out. It better get here soon. I'm getting annoyed. I want my stuff, my sewing machine in particular.

I need to go buy milk today. I decided that I'm buying sushi, too. Our supermarket has this little corner where Asian women (and a couple of men) roll sushi fresh all day. I can't eat the raw stuff, the slimy texture is too much for me. Maybe one day I'll warm up to it, but for now California rolls and sushi with cooked lobster/crab/shrimp are perfectly fine by me.

Need to mop my floors, too. Matt gets to come home for a few hours this weekend and I don't want the place looking like a dump. I was thinking about him last night... about my friends. And I thought, my friends are great. They comfort and sooth, perk me up. But it's different with him. In my ultra-cheesy blog when I said "he heals me"... I realized last night, in complete sobriety, just how true my alcohol induced words are. After a frustrating afternoon, made brighter by friends, I heard his voice over the phone and I could literally feel the stress lift and tension leave my shoulders and neck. It was kind of a strange sensation, not unpleasant... and I know it's happened before where just talking to him has made me feel 100% better, but I don't think I have ever been so aware of it before.

haha If I keep talking about him instead of this being the "Kate the something" blog its going to be "Matt's really something!"

The things she says.

She is quite imaginative. She just gave the following monologue:

Ghostes don't come in our house. They can't come in here. They only go in tunnels. And dinosaurs. Dinosaurs go in tunnels, too. Dinosaurs scare me. And Charlotte. And my Daddy.

She would have kept going but, idiot me, I interrupted her.

spoons

http://16handsgallery.com/store/Kitchen-Dining-p-1-c-251.html

Ok, so I just saw this in a sidebar ad... oh my gosh. They are fabulous. If I were rich my kitchen would be filled with such baubles.

16 Hands website

drinkin' alone

So tonight I'm tipsy and lonely. Four glasses of wine and no contact with husband for a few days does that to a woman. Or, at least does that to a woman desperately in love with her husband. I last saw him Sunday afternoon. And I missed him the second he was gone. I expected a phone call saying goodnight. No call. I thought, well I DID see him today, so I'll just hear from him tomorrow instead. No call. Dammit, I thought. No call the next day, either. I finally figured they were keeping him too busy to call or had instituted a new rule forbidding phone calls for awhile. This evening he finally called. After a stressful day his voice was like salve to my wounds.

He heals me. He cures me. He comforts, consoles. He loves. He makes me complete.

I know this sounds like some ridiculous tripe out of a cheesy romance novel... but this is my life. He is my life. (Well, him and our kids.) And only to get more romance-y, drinking tends to make me... well, in a word, horny. If he were here I'd probably want to seduce him. It wouldn't take much effort. (cue: laughter) I'd really appreciate just talking to him face to face, but the feel, taste, and scent of him would certainly be welcome.

So, instead of seduction or just contact with husband in general, I took photos. Wine drinking photos. Ya gotta channel that energy somewhere, right? I was thinking, as I photoshopped off a blemish, that it's a good thing I was tipsy. Because normally, under any other circumstance, I'd have seen that picture after taking it and thought "Eesh!" (which, coincidentally, though I do not know the correct spelling, is Korean for "Shit!") and deleted it. But, after taking a couple pictures of the wine filled glass I was inspired and ran upstairs and put on the reddest lipstick I own (which made me decide I need something redder) and took a couple more pictures. I am hoping that I captured something of the glowing warm fuzzy tipsy feeling you get after a couple glasses. It might need more photoshopping to soften the hard lines, it doesn't seem quite soft enough for the image I wanted to project... but the angle is perfect.

And now I'm sober again. Hmmm.... It's ok. Mr. Perfect has staff duty and just signed onto google chat. AWESOME! Forget Mr. Perfect. He's Captain Awesome. And I can chat with him till 2 am. And I will.

safety

Today I was perusing my flickr account, checking out some of my stats, etc. And I realized something. People are finding my pictures on google and yahoo searches. I'm a little surprised. When I clicked the link to yahoo the search I discovered that "our little girls" brings up at least a dozen of MY pictures.

Wow. Like. Seriously. Holy shit. It didn't really occur to me that people would google and come look at my pictures. I just figured it was going to be a few random flickr members viewing them. I'm not really an exceptional photographer, I don't expect much attention.

And, OMG, another blogger has a SLIDE SHOW of the pictures I took when I was making a strawberry pie. What's the etiquette on that? Do I message and say thanks? Do you want the recipe? Ignore it? After discovering what appears to be a glasses fetishist site linking to one of my pictures I am beefing up my privacy settings a bit. Shutting down 3rd party searches, I'm still leaving things open to flickr users but not allowing downloads for people who don't have accounts. I genuinely appreciate feedback from other flickr photographers (even if its critical or they tell me my toes are weird), I just don't really like people taking liberties with my stuff. I guess it's to be expected, but I don't have to play along.

better than nothing

I'm not 100% satisfied with these images, the lighting was poor and (I think) because I used the timer the flash didn't go off as expected. I'll have to do some photoshopping, I guess. Or corner Matt next week for some better shots. I also should have zoomed in more but I wanted to get in the kids standing on the floor...

(I did crop this particular shot just a bit.)



Anyway, today we got to spend a few hours with Matt. They let him take some time to go to Church and whatnot so we picked him up at 7:20 (anyone who knows me knows that I think this is an ungodly hour to be getting out of bed haha) and came home, had a nice breakfast, went to Mass, and then came back home and had some family time before having to take him back

Watching Matt walk from the barracks door to the car... it was an amazing sight. First, I've missed him a lot this past week. Being apart is never easy whether its a week or a year. I hate it either way. But, he also just plain looked freaking awesome. I think I might have drooled a little. You could see the... I can't think of the right words to use here, I want to say pride, but thats not right... maybe confidence? Thats not quite it, either... he just had this air about him. Everyone else outside the building was lounging and smoking, he walked out (carrying his laundry bag) with his head held high, purpose in his step... you could tell this was a man with goals... purpose driven... he is going places. It makes me a little giddy thinking that he's mine. (WOOT!)

When he got in the car he told me that when the others saw the car drive up and him walking towards it they said "Is that your taxi?" (A lot of the taxis on post are minivans) and he said "No, thats my wife." They replied "Oh, man, you're lucky!" They couldn't see me otherwise they'd have known I wasn't a taxi driver. They just thought it was awesome that his wife would come get him first thing in the morning. Well, frankly, what wife in her right mind wouldn't? (I suppose if the man is a jackass she wouldn't, but for the sake of argument he's as great as my husband.) She'd have to be awfully insensitive... or maybe just plain dumb. I was willing to get up at 5 if I had to to go get him (I was thankful when he said 7:20). I mean, when you only have 7:20 till 2:15 are you really going to waste any of that precious little time? I don't think so.

Random.

So about a week ago I am looking out my window and see a little girl walking into the wooded area between our apartment buildings (I suppose they are more like row houses or something, but this is military housing, so for lack of a better term, apartment), dragging behind her a vacuum. She stops in the middle of the clearing, sets it upright and walks away. I figure at any moment her mama is going to yell out to her to bring that thing back inside, it doesn't belong out there. No calls from mama. And it's still there. Through wind and rain and sunshine.

I edited this picture a little, saturated the colors and fiddled with brightness. I decided that the green was too dull in the shade, it was left looking washed out. This probably just means that I need to work on figuring out more of the settings on my camera, but I'll eventually figure it out. For now, photoshop to the rescue! I also noticed that if you look closely you can seen some sort of bug crawling up the back of the vacuum. At first I thought it was a spider until I viewed the image in its original size. I'm not sure what it is, but there are only six legs, and it looks like there might be small wings. Either way, the whole scene cracks me up. Vacuums in the woods. Who woulda thunk it?