Happy Birthday Payton!!

Nine years ago today I got the call that my 4th niece, Payton Elizabeth, was born. With a homemade sign on my dorm door announcing her birth I hightailed it out of Manhattan KS, college classes were still optional at that point, to meet the latest addition to my family.

While I'm pretty sure she didn't take a liking to me until after age 2, she's my only brown eyed girl and she was the only one I'd let be responsible for giving me my family nickname, Lulu.

With Bubba & Grammy & Papa at her First Communion.

Being Payton.

Love you Miss Payton, Happy Birthday!!!

Music Monday

Well I didn't watch the Hope For Haiti Now thing on tv, but I got on iTunes to preview some of the sweet music that they had on the show and I couldn't pass up the chance to share a Justin Timberlake video. It's a cover of Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah, probably featuring Charlie Sexton like iTunes says, but the youtube video says featuring Matt Morris. While it's no Jeff Buckley or Rufas Wainwright performance, I still like it.

I'm normally the type of person who will give directly to the Red Cross or an organization like that where I know my money will go to help those directly affected by the disaster and not get seized by corporate fat cats. But I'm making an exception this time because they say 100% of the proceeds from downloading these songs or this album on iTunes goes to organizations on the ground right now so I'll be downloading a few songs tonight.

Join me, won't you?

Leaves of Life

Yesterday was kind of a neat day in the Garrett family, my brother Brian was able to put up my Dad's leaf on the "Leaves of Life" Tree at Hays Medical Center. We were able to have a leaf in Dad's memory because of the donation given to the Oncology department from Dad's memorial fund. It only seemed fitting to give back to the people who not only took care of Dad while he battled cancer, but also took care of us and put up with our large, sometimes loud, fire-alarm-setting-off family.

The three tree trunks are sculpted out of red oak and the canopy of metal leaves bear the names of cancer victims and survivors.

It's a beautiful symbol of solidarity and hope for those who go there to receive treatments.

Love you guys!

Oh Dolly

I've learned two fun facts about today. It's National Popcorn Day and Dolly Parton's birthday. In order to pay homage to both, I'll provide the music video, you go grab a bag of popcorn to eat whist enjoying the video.

It was tough for me to choose which video to put here, but I decided to go with Amanda Gleason's new favorite line dance song.

Music Monday

I'm not generally a morning person, but when you wake up to this song on the alarm radio, how can you not be? Happy Monday, Martin Luther King, Jr Day and Winnie the Pooh Day!

Sorry Excuse For a Human Being Award

I was raised to use the word "hate" very carefully because it's a very strong word, so I normally try to stay clear of it's usage unless I feel very strongly about something. Well, guess what? I HATE my sorry excuse for a human being, piece of shit, neighbor.

When I got home last night from work, he had simple kicked the dead, burnt squirrel carcass so that it was halfway between his door and mine. Fine. I'm not going to knock on his door and tell him what to do, maybe he just got home and will take care of it in a little while.

I leave for work this morning and the damn burnt squirrel carcass is on my welcome mat!! "Oh no he didint". Venom is coursing through my veins. There is no wind to speak of that could have blown the thing over, and he doesn't have a dog, so that ass wipe must of kicked it onto my welcome mat knowingly.

I get my outdoor broom and send the carcass flying across the cement like a hockey puck so that it's out on the street/grass area where it will hopefully stay. No way in hell am I picking it up and putting it in the trash without a shovel.

This guy is on my shit list and if it wasn't for him looking kind of like Stanley Tucci in "The Lovely Bones"

I would have left him a strongly worded letter on his door. Instead, I'm just going to hope that karma takes him down. Preferably he blows out two tires after driving over a giant pothole and as he's stranded on the side of the road he's attacked by an army of angry squirrels.

For those of you still wanting to see photos of the dead squirrel I really couldn't take pictures this morning because I was still shaking with anger, but I found two photos on the internet already that should give you a good idea of what it looked like.

This first one shows the position the body was in...

This second photo shows about how burnt it was...

Grody with a capital "G"

This morning when I left for work there was something black and big and dead in front of my neighbor's door on the ground. I initially thought it might be a dead bird, perhaps a crow, but no. It was. In fact. A dead. Semi burnt. Squirrel.

(insert groans and dry heaving sounds here)

What the heck? How does that happen. First of all his car wasn't in his carport anymore so that means he had already left for the day and most likely saw the squirrel, stepped over it to get out the door, leaned over it to lock the door and left it untouched. But how did it get there? Did the poor animal spontaneously combust? Did my neighbor anger someone, causing them to leave a burning squirrel by his front door? Was the squirrel seeking shelter in the chimney and catch on fire when my neighbor wanted to have a little ambience?

You and I will never know, because I go out of my way to avoid conversations with nearly all my neighbors, but speculating is probably 92% of the fun.

I almost ran back into my house to get my camera so I could post a photo here, but then I decided that,

• That's gross and I really don't want that file on my computer.
• Not that many of you will really want to see a dead, semi burnt squirrel.
• It might be bad karma to post a photo of my neighbors misery on my very first blog post.