You Want What?

The Earner is in the process of buying new sunglasses. We're so different in so many ways, but this really highlights the gap in philosophy between us. When I need sunglasses I go to Target and buy $10 shades that fit and are somewhat attractive. They block the sun, end of story.

When the Earner needs new sunglasses he pours over catalogs, searches on line, polls message boards, and spends exorbitant amounts of money on polarized lenses, brand names, and any other feature that brings up the price.

It'll be an early Father's Day, I guess.




We went to an alpaca farm yesterday for a shearing festival. It was lots of fun, they had baby alpacas, and how cute were the newly shorn ones, with their long gangly necks?

This conversation occurred while driving off the highway on a long and winding track through the woods to get to the isolated farm:

The Earner: Wow, I guess the alpacas like it quiet, huh?
The Clogger: Maybe they're very private alpacas.
Me: Maybe they're ninja alpacas!

Yes, my family thinks I'm nuts. And my multiple requests for an alpaca (they're on SALE!) went ignored.

The Invasion

I hit snooze this morning, woke up 10 minutes late, ran downstairs to put on a pot of coffee and grab the clothes out of the dryer, ran back upstairs to hop in the shower and...

ANTS!!!

Apparently the herd of ants currently residing in my walls (floors?) has minty fresh breath, because about a million of those little fuckers were trailing to the ring around The Earner's mouthwash on the bathroom counter.

Bleary-eyed and half naked, I vaporized them with some type of chemical bathroom cleaner spray, cleaned every item that was on the counter top, then wiped up their soggy remains and hopped into the shower.

This early morning ant removal caused me to be late, and the babysit kid and mom were knocking on the door and texting me as I hopped around drying off and trying to find my glasses.

Not a good morning, but the day has definitely improved. David Cook won (we ti-fauxed and watched this morning), we've had some wonderful Kapla block creations, and now the sun is finally out, so we're headed outside!




Is it a bad sign that any time I go to clean something the Clogger or Earner say to me "oh, were there ants in there?" I have been known to clean occasionally! I just try not to make a habit of it.

In Three Parts

Never ending rain and chill has caused me to turn the furnace on today. I KNOW!!! I run a tight ship around here and my policy is once flowers start blooming the heat goes OFF, but I can't take much more of the 61 degrees in this damp house and I'm so blooming tired that my bones are already aching. So I lose.

The Clogger is having oral pain. Dr Death put a spacer in for her last summer, and now she's got a tooth trying to come in and it's pushing on her back molars, causing pain all over the place. Appointment is later this week. She's a bit of a hysteric when it comes to discomfort. Hope that issue is resolved some day, or I'll never have grandchildren.

Our Sunday trip to Six Flags Great Adventure went well. The other Youth leader and I took 7 kids, plus my family, and it rained the entire day. Well, that's not true. We had an hour and a half in the morning before the skies opened up, then it was rain ponchos and a car ride through the safari until Mass, when it simply poured on all us poor souls sitting on the wet aluminum bleachers in the stadium, and then 20 minutes after Mass it cleared up again and we rode 'coasters with no lines until we left. The Clogger was most brave, riding Dark Knight and some other spooky coasters. I was very impressed with her. Less so with my spouse, who seemed to want to limit her to Wiggles World. He's still holding an image of the 3 year old screaming her head off on a rolling train at a town carnival... from SEVEN years ago. We'll have to work on that.

I'll be honest with you, ma'am, it ain't like mama fixed it.

I am aware that my paltry readership has dwindled in my absence, so in a valiant attempt to win the three of you back, I will be posting more than ever. New! and Improved! Now with Gravy!

I attempted biscuits and gravy for the Clogger today. She has been asking for them ever since my brother's wedding in January, where every morning at the Lincoln, NE hotel all of my brothers inhaled large quantities of fluffy golden biscuits smothered in creamy pale gravy with glorious nuggets of sausage floating in it.

So imagine her surprise when I plunked down in front of her a plate of flat bottom-burnt pucks of chewy dough with a gooey grayish-brown gelatinous substance on top of them.

Dairy and egg free is hard, people! Everyone ate them, no problem. The Earner even declare them "delicious." That may have been because I accidentally over salted the gravy, though.


* Anyone know where the title of the post comes from?

Annie Get Your Gun

Baz claims to be shy about the tiniest thing (including emailing perfect strangers to let them know of possible security leaks involving personal information), so it totally cracked me up when she texted me to tell me the story of her commuter confrontation with a young whippersnapper who was playing his rap music so loudly that HER car was shaking.

Even funnier was the followup phone call in which she said this: "We live in the sticks out here, people don't listen to rap music. Hell, we don't even listen to music. But if we do, it's very private."

And I don't want to hear it.

I know, I know. Let's pretend I didn't avoid posting for months due to laziness and fear of privacy issues (it IS a shared computer, after all) and instead just say I have been too busy traveling the world and engaging in exciting activities to do something so mundane as sit on the laptop and live my pretend life.

This would be partially true. But only if that sentence was edited like this: "I have been too busy as I sit on the laptop and live my pretend life."

So we'll just gloss right over that, shall we?

I'd like to blog brag talk about the Small Person, aka, the Clogger. She's been simply amazing, and going to Nickel City up near Buffalo a month ago did wonders for her skill level and attention to the details in her clogging. She is so much fun to watch these days. The group had a show yesterday and she was a blur of feet and braids.

Speaking of clogging, I'm not sure how it happened exactly, but I find myself as the group's seamstress. It could have had something to do with the part where I opened up my big mouth and said "I can do that," but the thought of 12 (or more?) skirts (ruffled, no less) and countless sequinned tops have my brain so addled that I'm a little fuzzy on the details at this point. I will be sewing during nap time for the unforeseen future.

Ah, yes. Nap time. No, this is not a regression of the Clogger into that lovely downtime that mothers 'round the world live for. The toddler I watch part time became full time for the month of May and he is a marvelous sleeper. So for 3 hours every afternoon my day comes to a screeching halt while we honor his sleep time. It's a beautiful thing.

In knitting news, I finished socks for a friend made from Trekking. I don't think I love the yarn, but the two socks, toe up, 1 circular needle method definitely helped my Second Sock Syndrome take a back seat. Now if I could just figure out the sizing issues that trouble my sock efforts I would engage in another pair. It's just such a crap shoot for me as to whether they actually fit the person they're intended for that it takes away the joy of the finished project.

I pulled out my clapotis again, and decided to take out all the stitch markers. They're annoying and distracting and were slipping under the stitches (some of them were the wrong size/style, but they were all I had) and keeping me from speeding along. I decided to purl (knitted side) and knit (purled side) the stitches that get dropped, and bingo, no stitch markers necessary! I am now on to the new issue of worrying about having enough yarn to finish this.

The blanket for the not-so-newlyweds is hovering around 2.5 feet long at this point, with no progress currently being made. It will come back into the rotation soon.

If the spirit moves me in the upcoming days you could come back here to find the story of how my tub broke while I was showering in it, or how the rabbit was nearly killed by the vet while being spayed, or how we used our stimul(ate my an)us check to buy new couches. Or possibly you won't, if the ants succeed in carrying me away.