Tricks and Treats

Teats and Treats was the original working title for this entry; however, I chickened out when it came time to hit the "publish" button. Those two words pretty accurately describe my October 31st, but I was too afraid of what my handful of readers would think of me. I must keep things "G" rated and family friendly, you know.

Other considerations for a title were: Mashed Tatas or Putting the Boo in Boobies 

Sorry! 

Yes, I have been well aware that October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. It was nine years ago that I began navigating through my cancer treatment options. Quite honestly, I have to think really hard to remember exactly how many years ago it was that I got the call with the news. I even have to count on my fingers. It is not something that I think about, except for when I have to go get my mammies grammied. And that happened today.

Although the mammography equipment is sophisticated, state-of-the-art, digital, fancy-schmancy machinery, it still feels like this:

Thank goodness that it is a quick (and relatively painless) procedure.

Despite the fact that I had made my appointment weeks and weeks ago, the imaging center was barely able to squeeze me in during the month of October. Obviously lots of other women are aware of what month it is. Maybe it was extra busy since the center was running a two-for-one special... not really.

Whaddya think? I just might need this tee shirt for next October.

Although going to get the annual exam isn't necessarily a treat, there were no tricks -- I got a good preliminary report. Yay! 

It's hard to believe that it is Halloween. The month of October in the Lone Star State has been lovely. The trees are just beginning to hint that they will soon change color, but the temps are decidedly cooler. Thankfully, it is no longer 100° every day. It is just a little hard to say farewell to the tenth month, as I know that November will bring even colder temps. I might even be forced to turn on the furnace. Our goal each fall is to see how late we can wait to switch the thermostat over to heat. We usually make it to Thanksgiving.

Tonight, the temps were in the upper 50s, so we built a fire in the firepit and sat out on our front courtyard to greet the trick or treaters. As usual, I snapped a few pics of our neighborhood peeps -- the little ones are all growing up way too fast. 

Okay, so I just realized that the neighbors are going to have to share a post with my mammogram results. Awkward. 

Maybe that's why they all are smiling.  These people must be my bosom buddies. Yeah... that's it. 

One of the architectural features of our casa participated in dressing up. He must be the king of the castle?!

Our Pepperdiner sent this picture of her pumpkin art. How smashing! Not literally... I used smashing in the way the British use the term: excellent, first rate, wonderful, impressive.  

Come to think of it, it truly was a simply smashing day, from start to finish (and all points in between)! :-P

Instakitties

At the risk of causing people to think that I've become a crazy cat lady, here goes: Bartholomew and Jemima have their own Instagram account. There. I put it into print. 

Yes, these are our cats I'm talking about. 

So, I suppose you could say that the cat is out of the bag.

What can I say? We have social kitties at our house. Not only are they #catsofinstagram, B&J have had their own purrsonal Facebook accounts furever. They've actually got quite a few FB friends; however, those two are so busy napping that they rarely log in anymore to see what's going on.

Our Maine Coons have owned their shared Instagram account for a few years, but never really posted any pics until last year. True to their feline nature, they were merely Insta-creepers or stalkers, quietly and stealthily keeping a half-closed eye on Insta-activity. These two require MUCH sleep, you know.

My girls started out by posting the occasional picture or video, but rapidly lost interest. I decided to take over. After all, I am but a humble servant to the noble Smith beasties. And I AM a wee bit crazy. Besides, it is far too difficult for the kittehs to agree on what should be posted. We don't want any cat fights.

The Smith cats only have a few hundred followers, and that number is purrfectly fine with me.  I do not care about the number of followers, and neither do the beasties. B&J "follow" just under 300 (mostly Maine Coon) accounts, and many of those 300 are not active. There are way toooo many pet accounts in IG-land, and I simply do not have enough time in my week to devote to scrolling through pictures. Since the cats spend 90% of each day napping, they are of no help!

According to Friskies, 15% of all internet traffic is connected to cats. Wow! Cat pics and videos are virtually everywhere. FB, Instagram, and Twitter have ridiculously large numbers of accounts dedicated to felines. Social media truly is a strange animal. 

There are pet accounts on Instagram that have hundreds of thousands of followers. And there are many that top one million followers. 

Bart and Jemima wish to point out just a few Instakitties:

1. hamilton_the_hipster_cat a.k.a The Mustache Cat

When I look at this picture, I can hear ZZ Top singing:

They come runnin' just as fast as they can
'Cause every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.

Hamilton is one handsome boy who can claim 154K Insta-followers. As I was Googling images of this irresistable face, I found an interesting article about this rescued kitty. He's a Nor-Cal boy, so purr-haps that is why we feel a connection to him. Or it could just be that he's so adorable! 

2. nala_cat

Nala is the former shelter cat who boasts 1.6-ish million followers on Instagram. We are not included in that number, but I still thought you'd find this statistic a-mew-sing.

Or not.

3. iamlilbub

Lil Bub is yet another rescued kitty who has found fame on the Internet. There are over a half million people who follow this now-famous feline on Instagram.

4. romeoandramona

Romeo and Ramona are two more adopted fuzzballs who are quite photogenic. The owner of this dynamic duo is currently posting one picture/day of one or both cats posing with a wooden daily cat calendar. The calendar cats bear a likeness to R and R. These two may only have around 300 followers, but for me, they should be in the top ten of the furry heap of Instacats.

Then there are my two:

So why do I even bother with this silliness? Perhaps the "Maine" reason I've started posting on purrzle is that I want our Pepperdine daughter to be able to see images of her "favorite browns" pop up, when she checks her IG account. The college girl surely misses her cats, and I know the feline is mutual. 

Or maybe I really am becoming a crazy cat lady, and I'm just using #1 daughter's absence as a justification to snap and post cat photos. Hmmmm...

While there may be thousands "cool cats" on Instagram, my two MOSTEST favorite ones live at the Smith Haus, and are not-so-virtual, but very real. I've got globs of "tumblefur" on my hardwood floors to prove it.

Stylin' and Smilin'

Our favorite Pepperdine coed was featured in a collegiate fashion blog this week. I'll blog and brag about it -- just a little. 

 "Malibu Lou"

Falling Behind and Catching Up

I have fallen (It's fall. Get it?) terribly behind in getting things posted on my blog. Autumn is such a busy season. Winter, spring, and summer are pretty busy, too. Okay. Okay. It's all busy. But life is fun!

Are you ready for pictures and details from the past several weeks that really have no reason to be contained within the same blog entry?! The only thing that the following images have in common is that they were taken on my phone, or ended up on my phone by way of an iMessage. 

I truly have tried to find some common denominator to tie this entry together, but it simply cannot be done. If I keep looking for a common thread, I'm going to waste even MORE time; resulting in falling even further behind. It's a vicious cycle. The struggle is real. #bloggerproblems

Projects are not the only things that stack up on me. Teenagers tend to pile up around our house, too. See! We do have a lot o' fun at the Smith Haus. Maybe that's why I don't get everything checked off my "to-do" list or get INOKWACA updated very often. We simply are having too much fun.

Sufferin' succotash! It appears that my blog is not the only thing that has suffered from a little neglect. Our produce may be puny, but that won't stop us from trying to produce produce next growing season. I'm glad that Kroger, Sprouts, and Costco are nearby and have well stocked produce departments -- otherwise, we'd starve!

The "wildlife" 'round here suffers, too. This lil' guy got smashed in the garage door as it was closing. I didn't notice this until I returned to the crime scene many hours later. I'm still having bad dreams about this incident.

Hopefully, this pot of fall color won't be horribly neglected and turn brown.

Millie Girl helped me create this focal point for our front courtyard. We make a great team! I think it's gourd-gous.

I absolutely love autumn decorations and flowers. It makes me sooo happy that the fall-ish stuff gets to be out for nearly three months before the big seasonal switcheroo to Christmas decor. 

Moving from front yard to back:

The backyard is looking spruced up a bit after my sister came to visit. An imposing pile of ten and a half cubic yards of hardwood bark proved to be no match for Biff and Butch, The Thompson Sisters. (I can never remember if my seester is Butch, or if I am. We never really cared who got called what moniker, just as long as the vowels were not swapped between the two names. Oh, dear.) 

We took it one wheelbarrow load at a time, and we made it a point that no pictures were taken of the two of us as we toiled. It was hot. And a little breezy. We were sweaty. Suffice it to say that we looked akin to Burt, the chimney sweep, from Mary Poppins. 

As we "shoveled, wheeled and barrowed," we were smilin' -- just not for the camera. :-)

The job is not quite finished, though. We will need to order more material to finish covering some of the planting areas. My sister has long since returned to Washington State, so I guess I'll be barking without my sidekick, Buff, Biff, or whatever her name is.

When we are not tending to projects at home, there are plenty of things to do to help others.

One Saturday morning, we all rolled out of bed early to go lend a hand, or two, with the packing of 500,000 meals. Bags of rice, soy, dehydrated veggies, and vitamins are assembled and boxed by volunteers...LOTS of volunteers! These boxes then get shipped to Haiti. 

This is the second year that our family has helped our church, Compass Christian, with this effort, and it is a lot of fun. It is amazing that so many meals can be done in a traditional 8-hour work day.

My girlie and I worked on the supply side of the production, specifically with making sure the work tables were supplied with soy. We were literally dusted from head to toe with soy powder, our muscles ached, and we were ready for a nap after our five hours on duty. 

Look! Millie is still smiling after working sooo hard. She's the only one who looked good wearing a hairnet, so that's why there are no pictures of the rest of our fam. The Smith men had jobs that required a little more muscle, but they, too got to wear the same stylish headgear. 

We did not stay until the goal was reached, but with 700+ volunteers, the adage of "many hands make light work" was evident. The goal of a half million meals was actually surpassed -- and we had a hand in it!

These girlies needed two hands to hold the props for this picture.

Millie and Mak took a liking to this goosenecked gourd. It is pretty cute. And so are the girls.

We are already eight weeks into the fall semester of school, and everyone has fallen into a nice routine. Monday through Friday, Mr. Smith is always out the door by 6:45 AM. I sleep in just a few minutes later than that -- usually because there is at least one big, brown, warm, snuggly, purring cat curled up next to me. Sometimes Bart and 'Mima double team me. I usually am up by 7:00 so I can make beds, shower, feed the furry beasties, start a load of laundry, and pack Millie's lunch.

Napkin art is still alive and well. I really sorta, kinda hope that I will embarrass my teenager with my silliness. On this day, I felt as if my girlie needed a little punishment. Some days she gets Scripture or an encouraging message, and some days I get artsy. It all depends on how much time I've got. Some days are more creative than others.

Rabbit Trail Alert: The silly messages I write on the lunch napkins takes me back to the '70s when there used to be jokes and riddles on Dixie Cups. I rarely convinced our mother to buy these, but I certainly thought they were far out! Groovy, even. My corny jokes on Millie's napkins are probably funnier than the ones on the Dixie Cups. Well...maybe not.

I always seem to have plenty of pictures of the Smith cats. Purrhaps that is what is eating up so much memory space on my phone. 

Aren't they adorbs?

And these three are doggone adorable, too.

Keller High School football, friends, and a selfie makes for a fun Friday night.

We make time to FaceTime the Pepperdine girl several times each week. This was a screenshot from a recent conversation with our daughter. She had just been awarded the traveling trophy for catching a wave (her very first one!) at Surf Convocation. Swell!

I'm thinking a well placed, "Cowabunga, Duuuude!" would be appropriate right about here.

Never mind that she didn't hang ten, or five. But this surfer girl took the drop and rode a wave! No bailing, no falling or wiping out. She claims that it was not very pretty. 

Who cares how it looked?! A caught wave is a caught wave.

And with that, we are all caught up.

Two Thumbs Up

What a great turnout we had for our church's first ever drive-in movie night. There were 375 people (young and old!) in attendance. This fall outreach event was in lieu of  "trunk or treat" or hosting a fall carnival, and it was a blockbuster! Moviegoers gave rave reviews!

The "drive-in" was held on the site of our future church campus, so it was exciting to see where we are growing. If all goes as planned, we will have a building on this vacant lot by next fall.

These two waited in line for an hour to get freshly grilled hot dogs. Was it worth the wait? Those smiles say it all!