Really, Truly Random

No theme today, just truly random thoughts.

My front bottom teeth form a ridge in the center so they are slightly higher than the rest of my bottom teeth. It’s not a reverse buck tooth thing. It’s just right in the middle. The other end of the front two teeth are at the same level as the others. I know this because I was just running my finger over the top of them. Why was I doing this? Beats me, but now I can’t stop doing it.

I wore sandals today, but because it’s so chilly outside, I turned the heat on in the car and had it blasted on my feet. Why didn’t I wear regular shoes? I just can’t bring myself to put on socks or stockings yet. And because I don’t have any that go with these pants. I don’t know what I wore with them last year, but I don’t have anything now. Guess I’ll have to go shopping.

Speaking of the weather getting colder, it’s happening a lot sooner than usual here. I got to thinking about my kids’ Halloween costumes and how I’m going to have to plan for them to be large enough to fit over the winter parka. Usually, Halloween is cool, but a long sleeve shirt or a sweatshirt did the trick. I’m not so sure about this year. We never thought about it when I was growing up. When you live in the frozen tundra of Wisconsin, it was a given that it was going to be cold. And rainy. You were definitely buying a costume three sizes larger than your clothing size in order to accommodate the layers of tights, long underwear, jeans, turtleneck, sweater, snow pants & parka.

Last night, I figured out, by accident, how to select a specific piece of an image and was able to cut, layer a nifty graphic, & replace it as a new image in PrintShop. I made a kick@ss logo for my father-in-law’s website. Did a fist pump and everything. Don’t you love it when that happens?

Dang light fixtures and shelves got dusted after last week’s random thoughts, but now the laundry is after me. We have two and a half piles (unfolded) of clean laundry, two piles of dirty laundry and an empty laundry hamper thingy. Guess, I should stop making stuff in PrintShop long enough to get that remedied. That’s poop. I’d rather play.

Cupie can read! She started reading short word books (like three words on a page type) at the end of pre-school and we were really proud of her. However, now she is starting to really sound out words with two letters making one sound (sh, th, oo, etc)! Only two and a half weeks into Kindergarten, three naughty notes home & a trip to the principal’s office (not proud of that) and she can really read!!

Now head over to Keely's to see more randomness (is that a word?)

Silver lining:

1. One of the things on my daughter’s kindergarten homework calendar is some kind of sorting activity. Guess who’s helping with the laundry? Two birds with one stone – that rocks!


2. I have a pair of pants with no cold weather appropriate footwear. [singing] I’m going to have to go shopping! [stop singing] I wonder if I can work that into one of Cupie’s homework assignments for September.

The Narrow Escape

My sister, Sissy(ingenious, I know), is guest posting today. She sent me this little story after returning from a trip to "The Great White North" (aka Wisconsin - I know it's August, but come on, it's Wisconsin, I think they've gotten their first frost already).


In Sissy's words:

Ok, so you know how you tell your kids things that they shouldn’t do and why they shouldn’t do them? Well, I am that kind of mom that speaks the right path, but doesn’t necessarily follow it!

Mimi (four years old) knows about cigarettes. However, I always tell her they are yucky and bad for you. She asks “Why?”

So I tell her cigarettes give you bad stinky breath, stinky cloths, wrinkles and worse, that you can DIE from them.

Granted, I do occasionally smoke however, I NEVER let my kids see me. I usually smoke when I’m out drinking. It just goes with the alcohol, why is that??

So I go on a trip to visit my family. I make sure I bring cigarettes for I know I will be drinking WINE - a few bottles of wine. You know at family gatherings you need alcohol to tolerate it all.

Anyways, the weekend goes by, I had a few smokes, and without thinking, put them in my purse and back home we go.

We get home, unload the car, and unwind from the 8-hour drive. Later that evening, I went to change purses, for the next day I had to return to work. Heaven forbid, I carry around my weekend, PINK summer bag which doesn’t make my work attire.

I place the cigarettes on the table. No need to transfer them to my work purse. The long weekend is over and there is no WINE in the house for me to enjoy.

A few hours later, Mimi comes running into the living room.

”Why do you have CIGARETTES!!”

Like a deer caught in headlights, I just looked at her, my stomach dropped to the floor. My mind is racing “Oh no, what do I say? What do I tell her?”

So I play dumb.

“What, what are you talking about, where are there cigarettes?”

She goes running back into the kitchen and brings them back to me.

One hand on her hip, the other shaking the package of cigarettes around, saying “These cigarettes MOM. Why do you have these? These things are YUCKY!”

Quick on my feet, I play the blame game. “Those must be Great Aunt DeeDee’s. Remember, she was smoking outside during our visit, maybe they got placed in mommy’s purse by accident.”

I continued, “You know mommy and daddy don’t smoke, cigarettes are bad for your health silly.”

Then Mimi is like “Ya, I know, but now we need to drive back up north and give them back.”

I simply said, “Mommy will mail them to her, would that be OK?”

Mimi thought that was a good idea.

WWOOO, that was a narrow escape, mommy got away with that!


Silver lining:

1. Even grownups still lie like little kids, we've just got more practice. Mental note: HIDE what every you don’t want your kids to see.

2. Kids are gullible and believe Mommy & Daddy know everything. All this will come to a screeching halt by the time they've reached six or seven, but we can live in bliss until then, right?

Don't Eat the Flowers!

My grandma is a remarkable woman.

When she was 85, she was "Gettin' Jiggy With It" at my wedding. I love that memory.

She says things like, "Beau-ti-ful" and "Won-der-ful" while exaggerating the vowel in the first syllable.

She is now 94 and still volunteers at a center that prepares meals / helps those in need. God bless my Uncle Dan who lives with her and helps take care of her. Dan also drives her everywhere because she can't see worth a darn!

While we were up in Wisconsin, Grams joined us for a Thanksgiving feast at my dad's.

Everything was delicious - turkey, dressing, home-made gravy, lumpy non-powder potatoes, pink jello stuff, seven layer salad, the ever present green bean casserole - mmmmmmmmmm!

Dan, in all his kindness, loaded Grams plate with a little bit of everything. When he was going back for seconds of seven layer salad, my grams said, "Oh, what's that?"

He told her what it was, to which she replied, "I didn't get any of that."

He said that she had gotten a little bit of everything. I also pointed out that there was still a little on her plate, as evidenced by the peas.

She bent her head down to look and says, "Oh, I can't see what's on my plate. I've just been eating what's here. All I know is I'm not eating the flowers." She was talking about the design on plate even though they actually had leaves on them.

Gotta love her!


Silver lining:
1. Being 500 miles away, we don't get to see her very often. At 94 we are blessed to still have her here on earth and we all got a chance to see her at least one more time.
2. We made my grams' year by being there for a holiday.
3. She is still getting around by herself (except for driving) and has a sound mind - we can all hope to be doing so well when we're that age.

The Trip Up

Last week was just too busy to get a post in before we left - SORRY!

The trip up to Wisconsin was quite uneventful.

We planned on leaving at midnight Wednesday, but ended up leaving at one. That in and of itself is quite an accomplishment for us. Usually, we set a time to leave for a big trip and end up leaving town well after the set time.

Before children we would go on float trips with a big group of friends. It always involved camping for one or two nights. I am not much of an outdoor girl and would prefer to sleep in a hotel, but my Eagle Scout husband will have none of that. As an Eagle Scout (the highest Boy Scout rank), he is all about being prepared (as per the motto) and in doing everything without modern conveinences while camping. This means we do not use lighter fluid. We make a chiminy do-dad, light paper at the bottom & hope it gets the charcoal hot enough to burn. Honestly, the way he was so anal about making a fire, I'm surprised we were even allowed to use matches. I'm sure if it were totally up to him, we would rub sticks together or if it was sunny, at the very least use someone's glasses to make a flame. There were usually eight to twelve other people there so I think in a survival attempt, he gave into the matches. If he is drastically out numbered it is in his best interest to not hold up the fire for cooking - you don't want an angry mob on your hands.

Camping also means we have to sleep in a tent. For him a tent needs to have enough room to stand up, change clothes, do a jig and have a lounge separate from the sleeping quarters. We used to have the "tajma-tent". It had it's own "living room"! I think it said it slept eight, which means it only sleeps six, and there were only the two of us. For me, he gave in to an air mattress and I no longer had to gather leaves to form pillows - he let me take my own.

Because we usually ended up leaving so late, we were the last ones to the camp site and had to set up our tent in the dark (even though the sun doesn't set until almost ten o'clock). We fought about it every time because (a) I'm bad at setting up tents and (b) I'm crabby because it's late. This tent set up became a source of entertainment for our friends. The would turn their chairs toward us, pass out popcorn & wait for the show to begin.

So anyway, one hour lag was a pretty big deal! The kids slept most of the way. Cupie woke up around 5:30 or 6:00 just as it was starting getting light. She looked out the window and said, "What's all that white stuff?" It was snow!!!! It's not like she's never seen snow before, but in St. Louis, it ususally melts before the end of the day. Snow that lasts more than a day is a novelty. Welcome to the frozen tundra baby!

Silver lining - We still have children after a nine hour car ride (we're not in jail for permanently maiming them either).

Ridin' Along in My Automobile - Part 2

Please read the previous post before continuing: http://lifemakesmelaugh.blogspot.com/2008/11/riden-along-in-my-automobile.html

We worked on our “laptop on a box DVD player” the other day.

First order of business was to find a sturdy box that will fit in the back seat. Now, it’s a pretty roomy back seat, but not any box is going to do. Computer boxes were our best bet for something quite sturdy, but most of them are too big. A computer monitor box is at least 2’X2’.

After taking careful measurements, we decided to cut one of the monitor boxes in half and sandwich the two pieces together to make one skinnier box. Initially, this didn’t work so well. The two halves don’t fit together very smoothly. Duct tape was in order. We needed to tape the two halves together in order to keep it together and the top mostly flat.

You know how tape has a tendency to un-stick itself from cardboard? Well, it does. We solved that problem by wrapping the duct tape all the way around the box – side to side & top to bottom.

We put the box in the back seat. It fit snuggly, thanks to our careful measurements, between the front & back seats.

Snug fit from front to back – check!

There was a problem though. It seems there is a small hump in the middle of the backseat floor. While the box fit pretty well, we needed to make sure it didn’t rock from side to side while on the road.

Second order of business was to stabilize the box. Lop off the bottom & cut a little curve in the bottom. That sounds like a good solution. Back to the car.

Stable from side to side – check!

Time for the laptop. We attached Velcro to the top of the box & the bottom of the laptop. This seemed to work out ok, but now we needed to plug in the laptop. Rob has one of those adaptor boxes with a regular outlet on one end and a thingy to plug into the cigarette lighter.

Power – check!

We put the girls in the back seat and went for a test drive.

Reality – big fat goose egg! There seemed to be some issues.

First, the girls complained that they couldn’t see very well. It was an old laptop so viewing the screen from an angle left much to be desired in the picture quality. There were a whole lot of dark spots.

Secondly, and overall more important, the front passenger seat could not be reclined. It seemed there was an obstacle. Oh, yah, it must be the box because it had to be wide enough to hold a laptop and the space between the two front seats was less than 12”.

I guess this wasn’t such a good plan. Good thing we tested it early. We still have time to order a new DVD system – it should arrive on Monday.

Silver lining:
Dude, do I even need to give you one? In retrospect, the whole idea was not such a good idea.

Ridin' Along In My Automobile

We are driving to Wisconsin to visit my family for Thanksgiving. It is a big to-do because we haven’t made the trek to the frozen tundra since my cousin got married more than three years ago.

Speaking of that wedding, we had one of those handy-dandy portable DVD players which kept Kate occupied. We had to listen to the same Baby Einstein video over and over, but we eventually tuned it out. Kind of like when your spouse is babbling on and on about designing a VPNISPVOIPRAMROMCPU (how do you pronounce that?) compatible computer network, the decision making process in choosing the right fabric for drapes, or fitting FASB amortization tables into the GL matrix.

Something went haywire with the power cord on that DVD player and we called in a warranty claim, got a shipping label & everything. We haven’t gone anywhere for a really long time so I didn’t think about it much until I came across it while unpacking our garage (one year after moving into our new house). It had never been sent in for repairs so it is now useless.

Back to the Thanksgiving trip. We no longer have a video system to entertain the kids on the eight+ hour trip to see my parents. Until, EUREKA, Hubby had an idea!

He has an old laptop with a DVD player in it. Could I sew some kind of bag and harness to hold it between the seats? I couldn’t believe I was actually considering this. I guess I could try to sew something – my specialty is straight lines so it could get interesting. What would we use for the harness part? Maybe elastic? No, too much movement. How about we just tie it up with rope?

Driving down the highway (or at every rest stop), I can only imagine the thoughts of the other travelers around us:

The elite in their limos: Suckers! They have to drive themselves. I think I’ll take a nap now.

The soccer mobile (AKA mini van): Glad I bought this mini van with the DVD player built in. What a bunch of hoosiers.

The couple without kids: We are sooooo buying a vehicle that has the DVD player built in. I don’t want to look like a hoosier driving around town. (Never mind that kids are expensive enough without going out and buying a special vehicle just to feed their need to watch videos 24/7.)

The grandparents: Those poor deprived children, their grandparents should get them one of the car systems for Christmas.

The other families traveling several miles with kids in the car & no DVD player: Damn! That’s a good idea. Wish we had thought of it.

We considered it further. Sewing something wasn’t such a good idea. There were too many complications – how to hold it up, creating a slit for the DVD drive to open, sewing something like corners, etc. We needed a new idea.

There isn’t a hump in the middle of the back seat, maybe we could put the laptop on a box. How would we keep it on the box? Velcro. OK – we have a plan!

Stay tuned to find out how well this plan was executed.

Silver lining: We’ll just see what happens . . .