i'm gonna love you good and strong while our love is good and young....

ok the indigo girls show on monday at the turning stone was awesome. it was very mellow this year compared to last. but that was ok because trisha, jim and i were relaxing in style in our own private booth. missy higgins opened up and played with them for a bit. i highly recommend checking her out if you don't know who she is. her voice is amazing and she is very talented. i really hope they play there again next year. it is an awesome place to see a show. trisha, jim and part of my finger
a little ambiance

blurry and out of focus - amy and emily i am waiting for the return of billy, any minute, from atlanta. he has been gone since monday. and a cool thing, monday at 12:09 in the afternoon i was just getting on the thruway and looked up to see a plane take off. i had this feeling that it was billy's plane, and i found out later that it was. it was a cool little moment.

so today is his birthday. he isn't big on birthdays, what i mean is he doesnt get all excited (like i would). plus, he has EVERYTHING. i got him a little something that i know he will appreciate. and i made him a big pot of homemade chicken soup, one of his favorites. cant wait for him to get home....

luckily i had the office premiere to help the time pass. it was hilarious!!! i am so excited it is back!!

everything is getting bigger, bitterness won't last forever....

yeah! tonight i will be attending the indigo girls concert at the turning stone with jim, trisha and stacy. the three of us girls saw them there last year and it was amazing. i had seen them before almost 10? years ago in a gymnasium at st lawrence university. the venue at the turning stone is cool because it is a lounge with tables. this time we got our own booth. and it is an extremely small theater. i cannot wait!! i remember hearing the indigo girls for the first time on one of the few trips i took to vermont with aunt kitty to visit patsy and the family. i was maybe 13? and of course trying to tag along and annoy liz and janna, i discovered the swamp opheilia album that janna was playing. and i have been listening to the indigo girls ever since. i will try to take pics with the iphone, which should be easy.....

this is for jill....just something i thought was cute...

the people in this car probably thought i was crazy or paparazzi, but the plate said ASA. so i thought jill would like it. you can hardly read. billy said he could get closer but i didn't want to freak her out since i was taking pictures of her car.

bells will ring, the sun will shine, i'll be his and he'll be mine....

saturday's bridal shower for nicky was a success. it was a nice gathering of family and some friends. grandpa's glads were there for the party... some yummy goodies....mom's awesome pepper jelly
my fall inspired cupcakes for the fall wedding...

and let's not forget the vodka punch...cheryl aka martha stewart karpel.....

the girls scrapbooking...we all made a page for nicky and doug to start a "family album"

conversations.....
and the pile of loot for the new couple....

you're my cuppycake, gumdrop, snoogums-boogums, you're the apple of my eye......

i was in cupcake heaven tonight. i made them for nicky's shower saturday. i had to test a few. i think they passed.

the trouble with the maples (and they're quite convinced they're right) they say the oaks are just too lofty and they grab up all the light....

yesterday i had the day off. billy calls me from work.
"go on the front porch and look across the street" he says
"what am i suppossed to be looking at" as i get out there
"um.. the house across the street!!"
the tree fell sunday night and we just noticed it tuesday. no wonder i thought our house was going to cave in. i must have heard their house do just that. it still sits there as i type this.

one of these things is not like the other.....

so, this first picture that u see is my tv. it is my dvd-tv combo that i proudly bought myself some 4 years ago. and i have been watching it from that far away since february. so in this next picture is our new addition. a 42 inch LG plasma tv. yikes.
despite the fact that i have 42 inches of slick tv at the foot of my bed, i did manage to do my uphill/downhill climb on the elliptical. and my ipod played the sweetest set of music just for the occasion -
the 'ol beggars bush by flogging molly
separate ways by journey
settle for nothing by rage against the machine
seven nation army by the white stripes
sexx laws by beck
shades of gray by david gray
if that doesnt make the time fly by i dont know what does

one is the loneliest number.....

my one and only glad that grew. it finally bloomed today.

all we do crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see....

last night i was awoken by the feeling that trees were going to crash down on us. it was so windy. i was actually really scared, since we are literally surrounded by trees. this morning several schools were either delayed or closed. billy said that something like 10,000 or so were without power (according to google). my poor sunflowers are totally flattened. my mums were upside down. even stuff on my porch (which is enclosed with a couple windows opened) was knocked over. and there were branches all over the place. i know this is really minimal compared to texas. i could not even imagine experiencing that if i thought i was going to have a nervous breakdown last night from a few branches ending up on the ground.

there is a wildlife photographer stuck inside billy...

sometimes when i come home from work, billy would have already taken pictures of the random wildlife around our house. today was one of those days.



and he is always so proud.

my livingroom is a sports bar

billy's ultimate sunday - notice the two feet on the stool

fall staples are in my sight

swiffer while you work...

since there were people working on our house for the past week or so, the housework went by the wayside. there was no purpose in cleaning knowing it was just going to get dirty again the next day. so today billy and i tag teamed the house. i, dusting and swiffering, and he cleaning the bathrooms. which, for some reason i think he takes pleasure in cleaning the bathrooms. why? not sure, but i just let him get right to it and have his glory. i swiffered the downstairs first, went upstairs and finished with the actual stairs themselves. whenever i swiffer the stairs it always takes me back to the days of 317 webb street. those lovely days of getting ready for some big family affair. yes, the lovely days when i had to sweep and mop the stairs. it was always pleasurable to sweep with the broom, sweeping up with the dustpan every so often. and then mopping, oh the mopping. filling the mop bucket all the way in the kitchen and then lugging it up the stairs and the down the stairs, rinsing the mop over and over. and all the while i would think about how much this sucked. and how much i wish christmas was at aunt jill's or aunt sandy's this year so i didn't have to mop the stairs. when all the while i should have been inventing swiffers!! duh emily. think productively!! think of the money i could have right now!! swiffers! no mop buckets, no rinsing, no dust pans. just sweep and throw away. it takes me literally 5 minutes to clean these stairs with a swiffer. so to all of you teenagers out there who are stuck swiffering their stairs for some family affair and are hating it, take that angst and put it in a better place. think of inventing something better!!

my long two pointed ladder's sticking through a tree, toward heaven still, and there's a barrel i didn't fill.....

it felt so great not having to go anywhere this weekend. my friend tammy asked me to go apple picking with her and her two year old daughter, ferrah. they came to my house so we could all ride together. ferrah came in asking to see "my pretty things" and she proceeded to search my house for as many "pretty things" as she could find. before we left she stated that i "have lots of pretty things". then she asked me if i wanted to go apple picking with her. i said of course. we went to the beak and skiff orchard in lafayette. ferrah was so excited. we got to ride on a hay trailer and she was having a blast. and as soon as we got off she grabbed an apple and started eating it. then i look and she is working on two apples at the same time. we were only allowed to pick mcintosh and gala apples. we were never told why but i was thinking it was because the others weren't ready? i picked mostly galas.

after we were done ferrah made some sand art. she definitely knows her colors. she was so proud of her "pretty thing" that she made. on our way home in the car, out of the blue ferrah said "thank you emily for going apple picking" how cute and awesome it that!? she is so ahead of her time. tammy is such a good mom. ferrah's "nonie" has an herb garden. she makes soaps and other items. if you ask ferrah what she ate from nonie's garden she will say "chamomile" and if you ask her who else eats it she will say "peter rabbit'. on her way out of my house after we got back, she decided to try my lemon thyme. i don't think she cared for it very much, as much as nonie's chamomile. she was spitting it out all over poor tammy. luckily she had some water handy.

self evident - ani difranco

"yes, us people are just poems
we're 90% metaphor with a leanness of meaning approaching hyper-distillation
and once upon a time we were moonshine rushing down the throat of a giraffe
yes, rushing down the long hallway despite what the p.a. announcement says
yes, rushing down the long stairs with the whiskey of eternity fermented and distilled to eighteen minutes burning down our throats
down the hall down the stairs in a building so tall that it will always be there
yes, it's part of a pair there on the bow of Noah's ark
the most prestigious couple just kickin back parked against a perfectly blue sky
on a morning beatific in its Indian summer breeze on the day that America fell to its knees
after strutting around for a century without saying thank you or please
and the shock was subsonic and the smoke was deafening
between the setup and the punch line
cuz we were all on time for work that day
we all boarded that plane for it to fly and then while the fires were raging
we all climbed up on the windowsill and then we all held hands and jumped into the sky
and every borough looked up when it heard the first blast and then
every dumb action movie was summarily surpassed
and the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar looked more like war than
anything I've seen so far so far so far
so fierce and ingenious a poetic specter so far gone
that every jackass newscaster was struck dumb and
stumbling over 'oh my god' and 'this is unbelievable'
and on and on and I'll tell you what, while we're at it
you can keep the pentagon keep the propaganda
keep each and every TV that's been trying to convince me to participate
in some prep school punk's plan to perpetuate retribution
perpetuate retribution even as the blue toxic smoke of our lesson in retribution is still hanging
in the air and there's ash on our shoes and there's ash in our hair
and there's a fine silt on every mantle from hell's kitchen to Brooklyn
and the streets are full of stories sudden twists and near misses
and soon every open bar is crammed to the rafters with tales of narrowly averted disasters
and the whiskey is flowin like never before
as all over the country folks just shake their heads and pour
so here's a toast to all the folks who live in Palestine Afghanistan Iraq El Salvador
here's a toast to the folks living on the pine ridge reservation
under the stone cold gaze of mt. Rushmore
here's a toast to all those nurses and doctors who daily provide women with a choice
who stand down a threat the size of Oklahoma City just to listen to a young woman's voice
here's a toast to all the folks on death row right now awaiting the executioner's guillotine
who are shackled there with dread and can only escape into their heads
to find peace in the form of a dream
cuz take away our playstations and we are a third world nation
under the thumb of some blue blood royal son who stole the oval office and that phony election
I mean it don't take a weatherman to look around and see the weather
Jeb said he'd deliver Florida, folks and boy did he ever
and we hold these truths to be self evident:
#1 George W. Bush is not president
#2 America is not a true democracy
#3 the media is not fooling me
cuz I am a poem heeding hyper-distillation
I've got no room for a lie so verbose
I'm looking out over my whole human family and
I'm raising my glass in a toast
here's to our last drink of fossil fuels
let us vow to get off of this sauce
shoo away the swarms of commuter planes and
find that train ticket we lost cuz
once upon a time the line followed the river and
peeked into all the backyards and the laundry was waving
the graffiti was teasing us from brick walls and
bridges we were rolling over ridges through
valleys under stars I dream of touring like Duke Ellington in my own railroad car
I dream of waiting on the tall blonde wooden benches in a grand station
aglow with grace and then standing out on the platform and
feeling the air on my face
give back the night its distant whistle
give the darkness back its soul
give the big oil companies the finger finally and
relearn how to rock-n-roll
yes, the lessons are all around us and
a change is waiting there so it's time to pick through the rubble,
clean the streets and clear the air
get our government to pull its big dick out of the sand of someone else's desert
put it back in its pants and quit the hypocritical chants of freedom forever
cuz when one lone phone rang in two thousand and one
at ten after nine on nine one one which is the number we all called
when that lone phone rang right off the wall
right off our desk and down the long hall down the long stairs
in a building so tall that the whole world turned just to watch it fall
and while we're at it remember the first time around? the bomb? the Ryder truck?
the parking garage? the princess that didn't even feel the pea?
remember joking around in our apartment on avenue D?
can you imagine how many paper coffee cups would have to change their design
following a fantastical reversal of the New York skyline?!
it was a joke, of course it was a joke at the time and that was just a few years ago
so let the record show that the FBI was all over that case that the plot was obvious
and in everybody's face and scoping that scene religiously the CIA or is it KGB?
committing countless crimes against humanity with this kind of eventuality
as its excuse for abuse after expensive abuse and it didn't have a clue look,
another window to see through way up here on the 104th floor
look another key another door
10% literal 90% metaphor
3000 some poems disguised as people
on an almost too perfect day must be more than poems
in some asshole's passion play
so now it's your job and it's my job to make it that way
to make sure they didn't die in vain
sshhhhhh.... baby listen hear the train?"

ani difranco

a horse of a different color...

the bathroom is almost complete. i am not sure how i feel about it yet, but i can't walk in since the grout is still setting on the tile. it does look good, but its so different i need to get used to it. poor billy, his eyes are going crazy with all of these new colors. it would really suck to be color blind. and he is EXTREMELY color blind.

victory is mine!!!

victory! my kitchen is painted. it looks exactly as i had hoped. but to my color blind fiance it looks puke green. i dont know - you be the judge!!! i cant wait to finish decorating. i am going to do a fall theme. i am so excited about this it is scaring me. hopefully i will have updated pics on the bathroom tomorrow....

rainy day woman....

so my day started great. it was a rainy crappy morning and i got up, got ready for work, drove all the way there and the other hygienist was working instead. i totally went there on the wrong day. it has been so crazy there lately with sue breaking her leg, and they have added days that i originally had off to schedule patients that last week when i looked at the computer for today i just assumed it was me, since i usually work the 'alone' days because i work more often than the other two girls. nope. i still had the day off. oh well. it was not like i could sleep in with the work being done to our house, which is dragging on and on it seems. but i wont go there.

so billy and i had lunch at this cool place, the canal cafe. the interior was really cool. we had the best soup and shared a margharita pizza and pesto pasta. and i of course had to get chocolate cake to go. and i just suffered on the elliptical for it but i still feel good about it.

(pictures courtesy of my iphone 3G, i may be gloating a bit but i really don't care)

there's miles and miles of strip mall smiles waiting to check you out....

we should have people work on our house more often. billy and i had the day off today so we went to the mall to have something to do as the worked on the house. and we came home with iphones and a bag of clothes from the gap for me.....yeah!!!!! the iphones are awesome. i cannot put it down. it is sooooo fun to use. i would recommend one to anyone.
we also went to home depot to pick out the bathroom tile. it is a nice brownish - beige color that will go well with the blue paint. i think they will start that tomorrow. i cant wait for it all to be done. my kitchen appliances are in my dining room, the floors are a mess and my upstairs toilet is in the hall. fun fun fun.......

home improvements...

here is where we are in our home improvement stage. the hole is gone in the ceiling and the sheet rock is done. the tile in the bathroom is gone but we need the floor fixed from the water damage. they start again tomorrow. the kitchen will probably, hopefully be done in a day or two...