The Neon Nurse's Charting

As you may recall, my daughter Damaris and her kids recently moved away from Lamar, which made everyone down here sad. But at least Brush is not TOO far away and we can still visit.

Damaris and the girlies had a Girl Scout event to attend here Tuesday, and Damaris decided to make it a family holiday, staying over so they could spend extra time with us, visit school friends, and stuff like that. She called me Tuesday morning with a dilemma.

Lamar has two hotels with indoor pools. One is older and thinks it's all that and the prime rib platter with free dessert, but it's actually only so-so, and way over-priced considering how it smells of mold. But at the newer, cheaper hotel, the hot tub part of the pool was down for maintenance and being painted. So Damaris wanted to know which to pick.

Did I say it was morning? I tried, I really did, but factoring in so many variables broke my brain. So I just told her to do whatever SHE wanted to do, and she started accusing me of acting out the family joke:

Q: How many mothers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. It's fine, I'm okay, I'll just sit here in the dark....

I pointed out SHE is a mom too...and it got silly from there. We decided, as we laughed harder and harder, that we would just sneak out later, after the pool area closed, and sit in the hot tub anyway. We could find the mostly empty paint buckets and use those, meaning we would be sitting in ankle-deep coldish water opaque with paint, and probably those strings you get from latex when it has partly dried. There might even be some old cigarette butts from the painters. So we could sit there morosely in the dark and the gross water and share a motherly bonding experience.

Naturally when we eventually went down there with the kids, Damaris egged me on to pose for some pics.



I look a little funny because I am trying to mope without bursting into laughter.

We make our own fun around here, as you can tell. I have a sheet that is printed with fish, part of the House of Unruly Fish collection. And when its turn came round again recently to be used on the bed, I decided it was nicely fishy but otherwise sort of boring. To remedy that, I went on a hunt throughout the house for permanent markers. Yes, vast improvement! But a lot of work, even if Caro and Mike help out now and then. The visit from the kids was an ideal time to get lots more fish colored in!

Susan's Queen-sized Cotton Aquarium



Here's the end result of the great Shampoo-to-Glitter-Bubble-Bath Experiment:



I found out some things. Shampoo by itself is too thick. You need to cut it with glycerin and water, and then the glitter can get shaken up nicely before each use. Also? If you buy the cheap glitter, the color comes off both the gold and the multicolor kind. So BEWARE!