Clean carpets + a bonus!

Mr. Crackers decided it was time to clean the family room carpet today & set out to find all of the pieces and parts to our carpet steamer. After searching for 30 minutes through the tangled mess of our basement crawl space, he reported that while he was not successful in finding all the parts he needed to get that job done, he did run across a folder full of pictures he wanted me see. I opened it up & realized that the folder contained the photos that used to hang on the walls of my cubicle when I was still a workin' gal.



This picture was taken on November 16, 1996. I know this because this was the date that Mr. Crackers proposed to me. We were staying at a cabin in the Tennessee woods for a long weekend with some of our friends. The weather was beautiful and we decided to go on a hike to a local waterfall. Our good friends J, who is on the far left in the photo, and KK who is taking the picture came with us. (I won't mention the person in the yellow sweatshirt since shortly after this picture was taken he and our good friend J split up & we all discovered that Mr. Yellow Sweatshirt was not the nice guy we thought he was...) Anyhoo, Mr. Crackers surprised me & all of our friends by dropping down on 1 knee and proposing marriage in front of the above mentioned waterfall. I can say with all sincerity that we were all completely surprised by that maneuver. That Mr. Crackers can sure keep a secret! This picture was taken right before we left on that fateful walk. I had no idea what was in store for me just 2 miles down the trail.







This shot was taken in 2000 at our then annual Halloween party. At this point, Mr. Crackers & I had been married for just over 3 years. For lack of any better ideas, we decided to dress up as Earl & Arlene of Earl & Arlene's Auto Body. Two completely fictional characters plucked right out of our demented psyches. We smeared black paint all over Mr. Crackers (to simulate motor oil) and he slicked his hair back. I was teetering on very high heels & had used an entire can of hairspray on my hair to fashion it into some kind of do (clearly I have no talent with hairstyling). I was also wearing more a lot of make-up (which is hard to see on my pasty skin in this picture) and Lee Press-On Nails in bright fire engine red. In hindsight I probably should have stuffed my bra. Something tells me that Earl would've like a woman with bigger bosoms...

Here is a picture from my cubicle that was taken there. It's a picture with my good friend KK (on the right) and M one of the best assistant buyers I ever had. KK was the woman behind the camera in the first photo and was one of 3 witnesses to Mr. Crackers' marriage proposal. I had a great time working with these two ladies. There were other pictures of co-workers hanging in my cube, but I will spare you the tedium associated with those pictures. You're welcome.

The obligatory baby shot. C as an infant - just about 4 months old. Man, I hated leaving him every day to go to work. Look at those cheeks, will ya'? I want to just reach into that picture and plant a big sloppy kiss on them.





Here's another picture of C - he's just about 10 months old. This was the most recent picture I had of him in my cube, even though he was 18 months old when I resigned & I got the heck out of Dodge (Atlanta) to head back home to Ohio.





These days, the size of my work space has increased. Instead of a cube, I've got the entire house as my working domain. You'll be happy to know I've updated the pictures.

Mr. Crackers never did find that part for our steamer, but you can't keep that man down for long. He went ahead to our local home improvement store and rented one for the day. Mr. Crackers, after 12 years of marriage you're still my hero!