Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life. ~ Charles M. Schulz

Well, Karen left for Las Vegas yesterday morning. Technically, it was morning...about 11:00 or so. She's not moving back to Vegas, but she does have a doctor's appointment there next week. After that, I think she will head to Kingman, Arizona to settle.

It wasn't a teary, emotional good-bye. She thanked me for "saving her life," she said. I don't feel like we really did that. Karen is a pretty resourceful person and I honestly believe she would have been able to land on her feet without our assistance. But, we made it a little easier for her. In any case, I think she was ready to move forward and make a life for herself. We were ready to have our house back to ourselves.

Tom expressed his relief in his typical smart-ass fashion. When he got home from work, he came in through the garage into the laundry room, took off his work clothes and boots, and walked nonchalantly through the kitchen, sporting a big smile, a twinkle in his eye, bare feet, bare chest and the back of his underwear resting about 2 inches below his butt crack. Real cute.

I have been cleaning out Karen's room since yesterday. There wasn't too much left, but there were some old boxes and other trash in the closet. Tom and I will be removing the furniture to the garage on Sunday afternoon so I can scrape the ceiling, paint the walls, mop the floor, paint the bed frame, etc.

During the closet cleaning, I came across a little ceramic crock with cigarette butts in it. Karen had apparently been using it as an ash tray. Finding it validated Tom and my suspicions that Karen had been smoking in the house, even though we had asked her to please smoke outside. Tom had come home a couple of times and said, "Pee-ew, it smells like cigarettes in here!" And one night, sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up and thought I smelled cigarette smoke, but I didn't get out of bed to check. We both tried to write off our suspicions to just exhaled smoke from Karen coming inside after having a cigarette outside and kind of leaving a trail of smoke behind her as she exhaled. Our suspicions were correct. We really did smell cigarette smoke and she had been smoking in the house. What a disappointment.

Moving on. The house is so quiet. I like it. And I'm excited to completely re-do the bedroom and have someplace nice, comfortable and private for Chris to sleep when he comes back in a few weeks to help Tom out again.

Speaking of Chris. I know he's been waiting for me to post the photographs of his new tattoo. Well, actually it is a tattoo addition. Many years ago, Chris got a tattoo of a frog on the outside of his right calf. All of Chris' tattoos have some very personal significance to him, but I don't know about the frog. Anyway, it was just a plain, green frog, nothing else, kinda looking like it had just attached itself to the side of his calf. He really likes a tattoo artist here, Ryan Cook @ Primal Urge, and had been thinking about having Ryan put some bamboo or leaves around the frog. Chris stopped to talk to Ryan one afternoon and Ryan asked him to just look up some stuff on the internet that he thought he might like, which Chris did that evening. When he found some pictures he liked, he asked Tom to draw something up for him to give to Ryan and this is what Tom came up with...



Kinda cool, huh?

So, Chris took the drawing to Ryan and his lonely little frog now looks like this...



How about a close-up...



The frog is no longer just green either. Ryan gave him some color. Chris really loves it.

Our plans for tomorrow are just goin' up to the boat, baby. I'm packing a lunch, we're putting bottled water in a cooler and we are going up to the lake so Tom can work on his sailboat (it's okay, he doesn't consider that "work"). I'm taking a book and some towels and I'm going lay down on the bow and read. Our first real day at the lake for this season. Just a long, warm, leisurely day. I think we deserve it.