Cleaning up Cletusville

Remember Cletus and the Clampetts? If you do not, you really need to go to the search field at the top of my blog here and type in Cletus.

I'm serious. I laughed my butt off last night when I did that.
I feel that you all are quite deserving of a laugh, too.

Cousin Jethro used to come visit Cletus, and they would spend the day swigging from their own personal 2 liter bottle of Mt. Dew, bending over the engine compartment of one of the fleet... LIT cigarettes cocked behind their ears or temporarily placed ember-up in the crack formed between hood and car body on Jethro's car, parked next to the driveway. Seriously.

Evidently Jethro was interested in bending over more than the engine compartment, since he moved in with Mrs. Cletus and the spawn the same day Cletus moved out.

Now I was not well acquainted with them, but my guess was money trouble. Cletus had that big, expensive truck, she had a Camaro and they were always coming home with bags and bags from shopping. They were certainly not Goodwill bags.

All sorts of expensive names were on the side of those bags. We sometimes wondered how they paid for all their stuff.

So ANYWAY.

Cletus moved out in February.

Mrs Cletus and Jethro and all the little Clampetts were forced to move out in August.

Foreclosure.

They left all kinds of stuff in the house. It got trashed by vandals more than once. They visited one night to smash glass and break things that had been left on the porch. I called the police, but 40 minutes later, when they showed up, the little assholes were gone.

Later, those vandals or some others came back and opened up cans of paint that had been left in the house and painted weird faces and obscenities on the windows and on the walls. Food that had been left in the house was opened and strewn everywhere. Anything that could be pried loose was tossed into the mess or stolen.

I overheard the cleanup guy that had been sent by one of the banks that there was probably well over $30,000.00 worth of damage to the interior of the house.

The mess finally got cleaned up. Mostly. But the faces and the obscenities were still on the windows.

The window I could see directly across from my kitchen window said "Fuck" in pink and green. Every time I looked out my window, there it was. Painted on the inside, of course. Backwards. So I could read it.

The house was shown to probably 40 different families/investors. I think they took a look at how much work it would take to make the place livable and how much MONEY it would cost and said not just no but hell no. I can't blame them.

And seriously, no matter how great a bargain-basement price it was selling for, it was too much. What a pit.

When I left for work on Friday afternoon, the for sale sign was finally gone from the front yard. When I got home from work a little after six, cars were parked in front and on the side, and every light in the house was on. I could see fresh taping on the drywall in the lower rooms.

Best of all? No nasty words on the windows anymore.

Join with me in hoping that the house has been purchased by a family who will live in it and take care of it. A family who will not be nutty.

Not some investor who won't give a rat's ass who rents it as long as they have money to pay the rent.

And please. No one who will do anything like this .

End of the Cletus Era

In August, the remainder of the Cletus family moved out of their home across the street. It wasn't pretty. Evidently, they were going through foreclosure, and did not go away happy. They ripped slats and part of the railing off the porch so they could move larger pieces of furniture, I guess. I wish I'd gotten better pictures, but oh well. You probably get the idea.

Cletus and his Daisy-Dolly clone stopped by while Daisy-Dolly and Jethro, Cletus' replacement, were moving out. All of them stood around talking and then moving stuff into trucks. Then the two men stood around in the front yard, drinking from 2 liter bottles of Mt. Dew . (Yes, I know that's a stereotype and no, I'm not joking.)

Then, they all drove away. They left a horrendous mess. Furniture in the yard, garbage all along the driveway behind the house, overgrown weeds and vegetation everywhere... not nice at all. The actual mess was much worse than the pictures of it. You really need to click for the larger version, you can see all the way down the driveway.














There was an upstairs window with a portable air conditioner in it. Cletus had used a kitty litter bucket to prop it up.
Ami. Mental.: Oh geez, Cletus!
Remember?

They took the AC with 'em, but left the window standing wide open with the blinds hanging out. That window is on the North side of the house, which means that every time it's rained since then, water has gotten in.

About a month ago, on a Saturday night, we heard some noise from Cletusville. I got up from the computer and looked out the kitchen windows. There were some kids tearing things up on the front porch of the Cletus-hovel and I could hear breaking glass. So I called the police. Half an hour later, when they showed up, the kids were gone.

Hm. Surprise surprise.

A few days later, we saw pink and green paint on some of the downstairs windows. Now we thought that maybe someone had purchased the house and they were trying out paint samples. (In retrospect, that's a really stupid thought) A couple days after that, Eric came home from work and there were neighbors standing around out there. He wandered over to see what was going on, and found that 'someone' had broken all the glass on the back side of the house, the door was standing open, and the interior of the home had been vandalized. Paint everywhere. All the food that was left in the house (don't ask me) had been opened and strewn all over, flung onto the walls and ground into the carpet. There was broken glass everywhere, and evidently the Cletus and company had left furniture and computer equipment and garbage behind and it was now flung everywhere.

Not too many days later, a big truck towing a flatbed trailer showed up. I watched the guy get out and wander around the property. I saw him looking out the upstairs windows, so I knew he was in the house. He came back down and stood next to his truck, talking to someone on his cell phone.

Then, a neighbor came to talk to him, and I heard him tell her that he was from the bank that up until 'half an hour ago' had owned the house. But while he was en route to clean things up, the house had once again changed hands. "So it might be another month before things get cleaned up around here, but call the police if you see anyone over here." He went on to say that there must be about 30 thousand dollars in damages to the interior of the house.

Two weekends ago, on a Sunday morning, I saw two guys with armloads of 'stuff' walking out from the driveway behind the house. I called to Eric to run to the window and get a look at them, because I knew they'd been in Cletusville and I thought we should get a description.

About fifteen minutes later, they showed up with a pickup.

They backed into the driveway and loaded up the truck with stuff from the house and left. Fifteen minutes later, they were back for another load.

I asked Eric if we should call the police. He said, "Why? They're over there cleaning out things that would be thrown away when the bank finally comes to clean." He added, "Fuck them! They left this shit sitting here. It's a goddamn burglar magnet. I don't give a shit if they load up the whole house and take it!"

I had to admit he had a point. So we didn't bother to call. I mean, it wasn't like the police were going to show up while they were still there anyway, right?

Last Thursday, a large truck drove up about nine in the morning. The three men who got out spent the entire day cleaning, hauling away trash and doing yard work. They were back on Friday morning with even more guys, doing more of the same. The place actually looks decent now.

It's nice to have it cleaned up, but now I'm wondering. Will someone buy the house and fix it up and live in it, or fix it up and sell it to another Clampett?

I'm hoping for no more Clampetts, I really am. I think we deserve better.

War Zone or Patriotism/4th of July with Cletus

I can see the hills above Vancouver, Washington from my bedroom window. I saw hundreds of fireworks going off over there... and there were just as many going off here.

In Washington, one can legally purchase mortars and other fireworks that go high into the air.
Of course, once they go up, all the little pieces come down, sometimes causing injuries or fires.

I always count myself lucky that no one is shooting guns into the air in my neighborhood. Actually, I don't know that. It's just that so far, no bullets have dropped from the sky on me or mine.

Anyway. Fireworks that fly are illegal in Oregon.

It's not legal to buy them and transport them across state lines... a person buying fireworks in Washington is breaking the law when they drive over the border into Oregon. Not that the law is enforced.

I don't really care all that much unless it's affecting me. Last night, people were out blowing things up until 2 AM. Makes it difficult to sleep.

Inconsiderate dickheads.

During the fireworks shows that started at 10, it sounded like a war zone here. We've had poor air quality/circulation for a few days, and after everyone finished, there was so much smoke in the air it looked like the area was on fire. Just amazing.

I'm really starting to hate living in the city. It's always so noisy here. We're going to move in the next five years or so, I think. Waiting for the kids to move out so the move we make won't affect them much.

Picking out a small town somewhere more East... if we stay in Oregon. Oh gosh, there I go again, off on a tangent.

Okay, I'm back.

Last year, Lyssa and I were invited to go to a potluck at the home of one of our troop members/fellow homeschooling families, so we weren't home.

Eric stayed home. He's just not a social kind of guy. Cletus had a friend over, and they were setting off illegal fireworks. Out in the street. Aimed over our house. When the big chunks started hitting the roof, Eric got a little pissed off. He went across the street and told them off. We have Arbor Vitae along the back edge of our property line. The roof over the patio (ancient and dry.. sort of like me this morning) touches the trees and is, of course, attached to the house.

Idiots.

Yesterday evening, the Cletus-clone that has moved in with Daisy Dolly was outside with one of the Cletus-spawn, setting off fireworks. These were of the legal variety, but they were between the van and the house on dry grass.

Those Clampetts. No matter what else one says about them, it's quite evident that they're no relation to Albert Einstein.

One would think setting fireworks off in the street would be a little more intelligent, but then one would have to consider exactly who we're talking about here. :)

Alyssa took our little bag of fireworks out to set off, and little Cletus trotted over to watch. Followed by Jethro (the replacement Cletus) and a few minutes later, by Daisy Dolly.

We all chatted on a superficial level while Lyssa lit stuff on fire and the spawn watched. As others in the neighborhood were setting off stuff that flew, the little guy kept commenting, in a righteous tone, "Those are illegal!"

Spawn noticed some leaves on our roof and said, "Is that the stuff that fell on your roof when we had fireworks before?"

Evidently, last year made an impression on him.

Their house is up for sale.
I'm thinking that next year, we won't be spending the 4th with them.

How was your 4th? Are you feeling like a curmudgeon this morning, or is it just me?

Off to the showers. I'll feel better.

Bits and Pieces

First, today is the day we celebrate love (or whatever passes for it in our little universes.)

Eric and I do not exchange purchased gifts or cards on any occasions. We're at the point now that we
A. don't need anything
B. can just decide to go pick something up if we really want to.
C. aren't very good consumers, really.

:)

This doesn't mean we don't take care of each other, though..

Two weeks ago, he called me at work.
He said, "Can the budget stand pizza for dinner?"
When I told him yes, he said, "Do you want me to order some for you, too?" We order from a take and bake place. It's just up the street.
I had to say no, because every time I eat pizza in the last couple years, it makes me sick. I don't know if it's the grease, the tomato sauce, or the whole package, but I'm up and down all night with heartburn and a great thirst. It's sooo not worth it. So I told him not to worry, there were plenty of things I could eat for dinner when I got home.

I got home about 6:20. The cooked pizzas were on all the available surfaces in the kitchen, and my hubby was nowhere. I asked Lyssa where he was. She said, "Oh, he's out back on the patio."

So I walked outside to find him grilling me a steak.
He had gone out to get pizza, made a stop at the grocery store for steak, and was out making dinner for me IN THE COLD while his food sat ready in the kitchen.

Is there any way to doubt the love of a man like that?
Had I known 27 years ago that our love would grow to these proportions, I would have been totally intimidated.
It's big, folks.

~~~the outing was a success~~~

Alyssa had a great time on Tuesday, but it made her a little tired, I think.
She came home safely, nothing bad happened to anyone, and she wants to go on the next outing.

I want her to slow down a bit on the whole growing up thing. How did my small daughter turn into a beautiful young woman?
How did that little toddler person who used to climb into my lap, stick her fingers in her mouth, say around them, "Sing it, Mommy." and fall asleep become taller than I am already?

~~~~~and~~~~~~~
I read Kelly's blog Ordinary Art every day.
She linked to
The Only Thing I Know: A Mom Blog of Slacker Proportions: Why Exactly is a Raven Like a Writing Desk? (A 'Get Your Geek On' Kickass Giveaway)
yesterday, and I want that shirt. The rules are there.
And now the link to her blog is here. :)

~~~also~~~
A month ago, my Girl Scout troop turned in our cookie order. I ordered some cookies for our family. I can't eat mine because of my dietary changes. Anyone wanna buy some Thin Mints?

~~finally~~

On Sunday, I looked out the kitchen window, watching Eric put Rain-x on my windshield.
Mrs. Cletus (Daisy-Dolly, I think) came across the street and started talking to him. This is unusual. They've lived over there for three? years and the most we've ever done is a friendly little wave (hi there, Cletus and family!) in passing.

When he came back into the house, he told me that Cletus has moved out, and he and Daisy-Dolly are going to get a divorce. She's keeping the house, and wanted to hire Eric to do some work. He declined, since we have lots of work that needs to be done here, but told her that when she was ready, he knew some guys who do side jobs and won't rip her off.

No more big truck with truck nuts parked across the street. No more chunky men with no necks swilling Mt Dew as they bend over the engine compartment with their boxers peeking over the top of their jeans.

Please join me in a moment of silence.

Today's Religious Experience

It's been awhile since I mentioned Cletus.
He bought a brand new big truck a few months ago. He came home with it on a Saturday night, and on Sunday, there was a party over there.

Now I don't know what the ostensible purpose of the party was, but the star was definitely his truck. Groups of people (at least one in every group was either toting a bottle of Mt. Dew or wearing a pair of pants that had to be continually hitched up) were escorted out to the curb, the hood was ceremoniously opened, and excited conversations ensued.

A couple weeks later, everyone in the neighborhood got a good look at what Cletus was packing.

I know it's not a great shot, but I was trying to be unobtrusive about taking the picture. (if you click on it, you get a larger version) What cracked me up was this. I've seen truck nuts advertised online, and even seen one or two pairs around town. But I found it quite humorous that he bought such a small pair for such a large truck.

The nuts aren't dangling from his truck today, though. They just disappeared a couple weeks ago. I don't know where they went.

Would one call this a redneck castration?

Welcome to Cletusville.

The view out my front door today.
::sigh::

I sad.

Here's what remains of our front yard. About eight feet from the front door. Imagine how utterly thrilled I am with our municipal improvements!

To be fair ( and I don't know why the hell I should. That nice blogger award appears to have far-reaching implications, doesn't it?)

They will pay to replace every plant that had to die. They will cover my fence with some tarps (and won't that look nice!!!) until whatever we choose to plant takes hold and begins to provide a fraction of the privacy we once took for granted.

I don't know if you can tell how HUGE this rock is. It's a good 15 feet long.. at least the part that's sticking up. There's no way in hell that rock is EVER going to be dug up. The whole house would fall into the hole it would leave behind. Since they're going to have to make it below grade, I predict the lovely sound of jackhammers tomorrow morning. These assholes start earlier than I do, too. I mean, I'm up at 6 , but at 6:30 in the morning, who the f wants to hear heavy equipment just IDLING outside the house until they begin work at 7??? Not me, but they didn't ask my opinion. It *is* sort of funny that there's an obstacle this big, though, don't you think? And Cletus had to move his travel-trailer-that-doesn't-travel-and-no-one-wants-to-buy out of his front yard since they're cutting some of his property, too. Doesn't it just add to the ambience of our neighborhood? And although it's a digression (you don't mind, do you?) yesterday, when I saw him moving the trailer, he was wearing BRIGHT orange boxers and swigging from a 2 liter bottle of Mt. Dew while he worked. What a lovely sight for a Sunday morning. My religious experience for this week.

Here's where our beautiful hedges used to be. And if you're observant, you can see some of the root system that belongs to the venerable maple tree that stands there. I so hope the tree isn't permanently harmed by this.

Justin time...

I must share my disappointment with you, the three faithful readers of my blog. Remember the travel trailer that never travels? It belongs to Cletus. It's parked across the street. On Sunday, he moved it to the front yard, and we spied him taking pictures of it with a DIGITAL! camera!

I suspected he was selling it.

I was right.


The ad is on a local website featuring items for sale. In the ad, (he is asking 650 dollars for a 40 year old travel trailer...!!) he gives his cell phone number and his name.

Justin.

I'm so depressed. Justin? JUSTIN??

I could have believed Jethro. Buford has a nice country-come-to-town ring to it. Roscoe. Clem. Festus?

I won't be able to think of him as Justin, I can tell you that. He'll always be Cletus to me.

Soap and JimJoeBillyBob

Amy inspired this post today. If you don't regularly read her blog, you should. You should also buy her soap. Lots and lots of soap. Pink sugar is my personal favorite, but I'm loving the Awesome Almond, too. Nice stuff. Lasts three times as long as a commercial bar of soap, and soooo nice to my old person skin.

I was raised in the neighborhood of Butthump, Egypt aka Redneck, Oregon.
But we didn't stay there all the time, we did get out some. Trips East to Colorado and other places kept us from getting too JimJoeBilly-Bobbish.

However. Many of the kids who grew up in the same town had never even been out of the county. We took a class trip in the 8th grade, and came to the 'Big City'.(Portland) A good 75% of the class spent our entire shopping time at Lloyd Center (then Oregon's only shopping mall) riding up and down the escalators and using the elevators because they'd never seen one before. Quite a few of them got back on the bus without having purchased a single thing!

About 15 years ago, that same town got its first elevator. The schools scheduled field trips downtown to the bank so the kids could ride the elevator. I'm seriously not kidding here.

And when traffic got a little scary, a left hand turn lane was put into the area in front of the ONE local grocery store. The school district had to take out a full page ad in the local newspaper to explain that using the center turn lane to PASS THE SCHOOL BUS was illegal!

This is why Cletus cracks me up so much, I think. I thought I had escaped all that by living in the city. Of ALL the places in the universe that he could have chosen to settle, he ended up right across the street from me! I wonder if he's been to Lloyd Center.

Oh geez, Cletus!

What next? I do not know. Of course you remember the two pieces of wood he used here to prop up the AC on the ground floor.

But until today, I didn't have a picture of the unit installed in the upstairs window. You *must* click on this one for the larger version.

:::sigh:::

Yes, that is corrugated cardboard around the sides. Yes, it's a kitty litter bucket. No, I don't know if there's any kitty litter in it.

I tired.

Last night, a headache sent me to bed early. It's gone this morning, so that's a good thing. But I can't imagine how I got rid of it with all the noise in this neighborhood. I woke up at least four times during the (too short, too loud) night.

At 10:45, when we were deeply asleep, my hubby realized he had forgotten to turn off his cell phone. He didn't have a EUREKA! moment and get up to turn it off in case it rang... oh noooo. Instead, the DAMN THING RANG!!! And he doesn't have a pleasant or innocuous ring. No song, no cute little melody. Hell no, not him. Instead, he has a horrible beeping noise. BEEPBEEPBEEEEEP BEEPBEEPBEEEEP!! My daughter said it reminded her of a smoke alarm when she heard it last night. Yeah, that sounds about right. And we all know smoke alarms are designed to wake you up.

His boss frequently calls him in the middle of the night and leaves him a voice mail, knowing that Eric turns the PHONE OFF AT 6. I bet he will check it twice tonight! (He'd better.)

Cletus has alarms on his current fleet of cars. One went off around 3. It went off for about 3 minutes before he finally figured out it was his and hit the little button to shut it up.

We have train tracks about half a mile away. Most of the time it's really not bothersome, but occasionally the train stops out there. I'm not sure why. When it does, there are lots of crashing noises involved. When it starts up again, more crashing. I heard crashing twice last night. The second round of crashing came after I had drifted back to sleep. Of course.

We have a freeway a little further away. The traffic noise doesn't usually annoy me too much because after more than 10 years, I've gotten used to it. However, early this morning, there was some sort of police or fire action going on, and many sirens went by, followed by all the news copters flying over. I'm thankful the action was further down the road, because when it's close, they hover and go around and around and around and around. I mentioned this last year around this time.

Where's Rambo When I Need Him?
I want to go back to bed. Instead, I am going to shower, do some laundry, get ready for work.

I hate to admit it since I've said at least 50 times that I HATE it, but this year, I am actually enjoying the summer program. I think the kids are having a good time, which helps. We're making projects and singing songs and telling jokes and making messes.
Yesterday, the company brought in a huge flat plastic bin full of rice and beans. Measuring cups, sand toys... at the rate we're going, it will be about a week and the thing will be empty. It will have been swept up at a rate of about six cups per day and dumped into the trash.

We have beads. Lots and lots of beads. They'll be dumped into the trash at a slightly slower rate. This is because it's mostly girls playing with the beads and they're messy-but-not-as-messy as the mostly male crew playing with the rice and beans.

On tap for today:

Friendship bracelets. A word find puzzle I created with the kids I took to the zoo on Wednesday. More trivet activity. (We're making them with yarn on frames that Eric built for me.) I'll post a picture of one eventually.

I have the Balloon Rockets activity ready and waiting in the wings. It has to be a specific type of day for me to bring it out. A day with fewer kids, a lull in the activities and an hour or so to kill.

This post has been interrupted eleven times. Each time, it takes me at least a minute to get back into writing mode, thus making a bit of fluff that should just ZIP onto the page an hour-long chore instead.

And my family wonders why I don't sit down and write that book.
I just don't think the frustration is worth it.

Cletoris rides again!

Well, ol' Cletus is up to his usual tricks. All week long, they haul their garbage out to the side of the street. None of that put the garbage cans away crap for them!

When the wind blows (and it does... we live in the mouth of the Columbia Gorge and we get lots of it) the trash goes everywhere. He will look at it as he drives in and out of his driveway and actually step on it as he goes into the house. Once it's been put out next to the street, he evidently believes it's no longer his problem. Today we have quite a bit of his trash in our bins because it's trash day and it was in our yard. ::sigh:: Here's their trashpile this morning... sitting next to the trailer that never moves.






















And from the look of it, the Clampett family has a new air conditioner. Do you like the special stand Cletus made all by himself?

Big Pecker Contest

I'm probably going to be sorry I used that for the title.
(ever been google-searched? Slightly less invasive than an alien probe, but only slightly.)

Cletus (remember him?) owns the 3 story old house across the street. The upper floor is the attic, and I'm pretty sure the only things living up there are squirrels and spiders. On the top of the roof, waaaay up there, is a non-working, very old chimney.

Perched on the chimney is a metal bowl. Every spring, a woodpecker comes and sits on that bowl early on most mornings and begins tapping it loudly with his pecker.
(Why yes! That is juvenile humor! That's my middle name.)

taptaptaptap pause taptaptap... enough to drive ya nuts.
Echoes through the entire neigborhood.
Yesterday morning, we had a woodpecker on OUR house, too. He was pecking on the new vent cover we had installed over the bathroom when we had the roof done in November.

They were having a pecking contest. First the taptaptap from across the street, followed by the slightly smaller sound of the tapping on my roof. I rolled over in bed (it was about 8:30) and was going to nudge Eric, but he was up and gone. I got up to see what he was doing. He'd been in the bathroom, but the exhaust fan was on while he showered and he hadn't heard it.

As soon as I pointed it out to him, he said, "Shit! That's a plastic cover!" He put on his mud boots (untied) and shuffled out the front door. He grabbed a handful of gravel from in front of the house and chucked a couple rocks over the peak of the roof. He said the woodpecker hopped up to the crest of the roof, ready to rumble. When he didn't see any other birds, he went right back to our vent.

taptaptap taptaptap

I don't know if it was because Eric tossed another little handful of gravel up at him or because he told him to, "Get the fuck out of here." but he flew away.

This morning, Cletus' pecker was out again. (aaack, again with the juvenile pecker jokes!)

Our pecker was nowhere to be found.

I am Cletus of Borg. Your ass will be laminated.

It seems to me that the cell phones you fasten to the side of your head came out about the same time as the warning about how shooting all those waves into your brain can cause a brain tumor.

Which doesn't explain why my neighbor, Cletus is now wearing a cell phone. I think his is held on with duct tape.
His head sits directly on his shoulders since he has no neck. but he still looks sort of Borg-ish with that thing on.

So what's up with the whole cell -phone-attached-to-your-head anyway? I went to the grocery store today. I saw seven people with cell phones fastened to their heads, and five people with a conventional cell phone held up to their ear.

Someone enlighten me as to why someone would attach the phone to their head? I mean I know it's not mounted with thumbtacks, but still.

Happy Father's Day

Party at Cletus' house!! Be there! (or be somewhere else.)

Cletus and the Dinosaur

Our neighbors across the street are cousins of the Clampetts. We have Cletus (the slack-jawed yokel) Clampett and his herd of cars, Daisy-Dolly Clampett, the mother of Cletus' crop of half-brights, (four of them at last count... none of them anywhere near old enough to drive one of the herd of cars) a couple barking dogs (roop roop roop) and a cat who consistently craps in my front yard. Cletus' livestock (that he's constantly tinkering with at all hours...revving of engines and screeching of tires and metal ramps and more than I want to see of his butt crack as he bends over the engine compartment) consists of a van, a sedan that was really nice when they moved in, but was involved in an accident, (Instead of disposing of it, Cletus parked it in the back yard.) a big Chevy pickup that sounds like a dinosaur roaring (yeah, I do know what a dinosaur used to sound like, I'm old.) They have a smaller SUV, another sedan, and a broken down travel trailer that never, ever travels.

This morning, our son had to be at work at 8. If you remember my earlier post Not getting any younger, am I? you will understand why I was up once or twice during the night, as well as why I was up once again at 7 a.m. I went back to bed, but couldn't seem to get comfortable. I got up at 7:30 to make sure Junior was awake so he would make it to work on time, and when he left at 10 minutes before the hour, I was just drifting back off. I was warm all through, relaxed and having a nice dream when I heard a dinosaur roar! Once I was actually awake (a matter of about .25 seconds) I realized it was Cletus and his dinosaur.

At 8:20.
Saturday morning.

I hate when I wake up at the wrong stage of sleep and exist in a state of twilight consciousness for the rest of the day.

Thanks, Cletus. You're a fine example. Really.

Did I mention the hot tub in the front yard? Link in today's blog title.