Freshly painted toes...

After lunch, I decided to paint the trim on my back door. I've been caulking for the past week and now it was time for paint. I was taping off the door and around the trim. The wind was blowing slightly, frustrating me to no end. After painting a section, messing up, ripping the tape off I decided to leave it for another day. I put the kids down for naps with a disappointed feeling inside. I read my book for a minute but still felt crestfallen. Then I looked down at my feet. They were a bit dirty and in serious need for a pedicure. I frowned at them. So I closed my book and proceeded to paint my toes.

Every single time I paint my toes, I'm amazed at how good it makes me feel. A fresh coat of shimmery, iridescent pink with no chips, or scuffs brings my self esteem up! Ahhh. So now I'm feeling better and will figure out the door some other day.

And lastly, here's a gem I found on the camera.

Yikes!

I'll fix you...

Okay, so my Jeep is old. When we got it, I looked down at the console and there's a display that alerts the driver when something is amiss with the Jeep.

I thought to myself, "That's cool!!" Merril noticed it and said, "Ross's Mom's Jeep had one of those. It was always flashing something about the back lights."

Mostly, it doesn't do anything but show me the time and date. It's told me that I'm low on oil and washer fluid and have a door ajar.

Three weeks ago, the dreaded error message popped up, "Rear Lamp Failure." It seemed pretty stern for a light bulb being burned out. So I checked and noticed a brake light out. Fixed the light and turned on the Jeep, same error. I ignored it for a while to see if it would correct itself. No dice. I checked the web and that led me in the direction of license plate lights. Sure enough, one was out. I replaced it, jumped in the Jeep, cranked it over and REAR LAMP FAILURE. Urg. I went back to my first plan of ignoring it to see if it would go away. I then I thought about back up lights. Therein lies my problem. Something's wonky with the back up lights. They come on half the time. Do I really care? No. Do I want the error light to go away, YES! It blinks the entire time the jeep is on. This thing has become my nemesis.

Fast forward to today. Eyes narrowed and hands on hips, I attacked again. I read more about this common Jeep problem and one suggestion was to replace the neutral safety switch, which could be pricey and out of my skill set, or bypass the lamp outage module, cheap! So I pulled it out, yanked the appropriate resistor off the module board and reinstalled it. Ta da!!

Now if only I could make the Jeep have a smiley face on it.

Wishing school didn't start tomorrow...

I know I'm probably the only one, but I'm sad school starts tomorrow. Maxine wasn't excited last week but she was excited tonight. It'll fizzle soon, I promise. Summer is time for sleeping in, no schedules, no homework, no bedtimes, and general laziness. And well, I'm lazy. Last week, Maxine was lamenting that I don't home school her. I asked, "Why do you want to be home schooled?" She said, "So I can sleep in, stay in my pajamas all day and not leave the house." With a raised eyebrow I retorted, "That's no reason to stay home babe." Maybe if she was bullied, maybe if she was having a serious social dilemma, but to stay in her pajamas all day? Maybe we're more alike than I'd previously thought.

Australi-yah!

We had a super fun time! We mostly were winging the whole trip but here are a few highlights!

We were flying standby so we drove to LAX to catch our flight. We could've flown from Vegas but we were a little nervous about not getting on in Vegas and thus, missing the flight to Sydney.

We didn't know we needed visas to visit Australia so we didn't get on the flight the first night we tried. Since we drove, we just picked up our truck and stayed in a dive motel. The next day, we purchased our visas online and went to the Santa Monica Pier. The weather was cool, about 75 so it was a nice break from 110.

Then we went to the Griffith Observatory up by the Hollywood sign.

The observatory has been in movies like Transformers, Charlie's Angels 2, Yes Man, The Rocketeer, etc. The inside is a museum about planets and space! Very cool and very free! I would recommend it to anyone with kids!

So that night we got on the flight to Sydney. Merril and I were still standby but were able to get seats next to each other. There were personal tv screens for each passenger and there was a ton of movies, tv episodes, music videos and games that you could pick from. Merril and I watched about 4 movies each. If I decided I didn't like the movie, I could stop it and pick a different one. Super great!

We got into Sydney early in the morning, picked up a rental car, and went to see the famous Opera House.

This is Sydney's Harbour Bridge. (I didn't spell harbor wrong, that's how the Aussies spell it.) Tourists can climb to the top of it. We would've but didn't have time. We drove to Brisbane.

This is me driving on the right side of the car, on the left hand side of the road. I had the hardest time making right-hand turns.

We met up with our friends, Nate and Sarah, and fell asleep.

I made Nate find me some kangaroos. These were out at Turnboll or Turnbull or some little coastal town like that.

The next day we went out to Bribie Island for fish and chips and to see the most beautiful beach ever! Miles of white, clean, soft sand. It was most excellent.

Another night we took the ferry to around the Brisbane river and saw the Brisbane Temple. (My picture didn't turn out, we were going fast and it was dark.)

Mostly we just goofed off and hung out with friends. We had dinner at friend's houses, saw all their American muscle cars they were rebuilding and had a great time together without the kids.

On the way home, I got bumped to business class and Merril didn't. He told me to take the seat so I did. I felt out of place the whole time. I really tried to mind my manners for 14 hours. I belong in coach with my peeps. But the food was great, I ate on real plates with real silverware, and the bathroom is huge in business class. Some of the passengers were pretty snooty. Here's the menu.

I also got socks, lotion, a chapstick, a pen, an eye cover for sleeping, mints, a real pillow and a nice comforter to sleep with. The seat laid totally flat. I don't think it's worth it.

Just a few things I want to remember about Australia:

-Burger King is called Hungry Jacks

-A burger Aussie style comes with a fried egg and beets on it

-Ketchup is called tomato sauce

-Breakfast is called Brekky

-Eggs have smiley faces

-Tim Tams are a type of cookie and so delicious!! (You can buy them in the states, Pepperidge Farm makes them. I bought a package at Wal-Mart yesterday.)

-The toilet is called a dunney

-Sticky date pudding should always be ordered for dessert

-Woolworth's is huge over there but they left the states long ago

-Everything is so expensive! A candy bar is $3! So is a can of soda!

-Meat pies are very popular

-Australia is very clean, looks like Hawaii and sounds like Britain

-It was awesome!