One down...

After yesterday's panic (not the little ol' money thing. The chocolate thing!) My friend from Switzerland pointed out that Swiss chocolate is still safe to consume.

Whew!

National crisis averted. Now If that pesky money thing were as simple to fix. Perhaps Washington should put my Swiss friend on it.

And I Feel Fine!

These were the three news headlines on my homepage this morning.

Cadbury Recalls Chinese-Made Chocolates, Safety in 'Doubt'

Bush Calls Financial Bailout 'Extraordinary Deal'

Venezuela Set to Develop Nuclear Power With Russia

Some of the baddest bad guys are banding together to create nuclear weapons, Bush calls the biggest bailout since the Great Depression (THE GREAT DEPRESSION!) 'extraordinary', and the safety of chocolate is in question.

Does anyone else hear that old REM song 'It's the end of the world as we know it'?

Under Construction

Yes, you're in the right place. I'm just putting out the Fall decorations. It may take a few days to get it all done, so if something looks funny, just be patient.

Although, if you see a change that you don't like, like it's hard to read the font color or something, let me know.

Now if the temperature outside were just Fall like...

Stink!

Not even the Yankee Candle Company can help me now.

We had approximately 5 different dinners last night at 5 different times. We do that sometimes, the whole, find-whatever-you-can kind of dinner. I don’t want my children to lose their ability to forage for food.

So I learned a lesson.

When you cook slightly off broccoli and cauliflower in one of those steamer bags, it will smell bad. Very bad. And it will permeate your whole house.

There is one thing that will get rid of that smell, however; burning pizza in the microwave on a Styrofoam plate. The smell of burning styrene is a smell like no other and will easily overpower the bad broccoli/cauliflower smell.

If you then try to get rid of the bad smells by lighting a gingerbread candle, you will just make it worse.

Trust me, there is nothing you can do at this point except open the windows and then go outside.

So this morning my house has the slight smell of stinky soccer shoes (why does that kid insist of leaving his sweaty/stinky soccer shoes in the living room after a game?) rotten broccoli, burnt styrene, and gingerbread.

Turns out, this is a great diet technique. I have no desire to eat breakfast.

Che Guevara: Misunderstood Revolutionary, or Bad, Bad Man?

The Teenager had his first run up against the extreme liberals taking over our higher education system.

He sat in on a talk for extra credit in his Spanish class. The topic? Che Guevara. Our friend Che wasn’t really a bad man. He wasn’t really a Rebel, just a revolutionary. And bad, bad America took him out.

Funny, because when I read about Che Guevara, I see words like Extreme Leftist and Marxist Rebel Leader, Friend of Castro, Socialist, Communist and Guerrilla Warfare Leader.

I am glad The Teenager and I got a chance to talk about what he heard. I am quite sick of people vilifying America and rewriting history. Che Guevara was a murderer, anarchist, and an overall bad man.

I am glad The Teenager gets the opportunity to see some truly biased things at college while he is at home to assimilate what he is hearing with what he believes.

When he came home, he said that he didn’t know much about Che Guevara, but he was fairly sure the speaker was biased. Good boy.

I think we’re going to be doing a little bio sketch of Che this week and let the Teenager make up his own mind.

THE Books

Um, so, remember the books about the people, who may or may not be undead? Yeah, I finished them...in 12 days. These 4 books ranging in size from 500 to 750 pages.

Because, Oh. My. Goodness. Gracious.

I almost have no words. Almost, because well, I am a blogger and I always have a few words.

I am not a big fan of fantasy. Actually I am not at all a fan of fantasy. Usually I can’t stand it. I am also not at all a fan of horror. I will not watch any kind of scary movie. I can't take it.

I am also not a fan of undead things like vampires and werewolves and whatnot. Yes, I now they don’t actually exist, so you know the whole fantasy thing applies here as well.

And yet, somehow, the books (written for teens no less) swallowed me whole and simply would not let me go until I had read them in their entirety.

And Oh. My. Stars. What a ride.

I don’t even think I could do a review of them right now except to say they were riveting but I can’t figure out why. If someone told me a synopsis of these books I would politely say no thank you and then maybe think you were a bit weird for suggesting books about the eternally undead. Because Eww!

And yet I read them all in less than 2 weeks.

I will say that I don’t think they are for teens. I would not like my teens to read them. They are clean, but unrealistic in the area of the physical. Perhaps only a vegetarian vampire can muster up the self control required to be alone with his true love so very often and not give into temptation. (and the fact that I just typed that sentence in all seriousness has me giggling) It is more pressure than any real teen should have to face. NO ONE has that kind of self control and it should not be tested like that. So for that reason I am a little bit nervous for all the teen girls out there reading this book.

Also, I think I will probably be the only 30ish mom in the theater when the movie comes out. Because you know I am going to have to go see it.

Hagatha Goes Shopping

Walmart alone is enough blog fodder to keep this blog running for a good long time, though you may get tired of hearing about my Walmart-ian escapades.

Today my trip to Wally World was no exception. First I stop at the little gas station attached to Walmart. And I have to stop and say here that while gas is expensive, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. I paid almost 5 cents a gallon less than a few weeks ago and there was plenty to be had and no line to wait in.

It does, however, takes two transactions to fill up The Tank. It’s big in the way that the Woolly Mammoth is big. Big isin’t really a big enough word to describe The Tank and it’s drinking habit.The pump shuts off at $100. It takes more than $100 to feed her. So I ran it twice. I wanted her tummy to be full.

Then I went into hell Walmart to shop. First I must say that the guy in the slightly bloodied lab coatish thing, who works back in the meat department was creepy. I’m telling you he was checking me out. Not in a good way. I know this because I looked like Hagatha. It was 10 am and I was grocery shopping in hell Walmart, so you can imagine. So I know he wasn’t following me around because I looked good. I still don’t know he was following me around but he finally stopped when I left the food department and went toward the ladies underwear. I guess even creepy meat department guy has his limits.

Finally me and my overflowing cart made its way to the front. I am not exaggerating about the overflowing part. I had to stop and pick up that bag of chips so many times it’s probably chip dust by now.

I got up to the register and everyone from the check out lady to all the other customers who had to go behind me were horrified by the size of my cart. I was too, but what can I say? I’m feeding a pack of wolves.

Finally they got it all scanned, bagged and back in my carts (yes that is carts, plural. There should be a law of physics explaining why everything that fit in one cart, once bagged, suddenly expands and will no longer fit in the same cart).

I am merciful to the ladies with the screaming babies and wiggly toddlers behind me and I have no coupons to offer. I simply plan on paying the gargantuan sum and leaving, with the help of the gentleman who was forced to so kindly offered to help me to my car with my two carts full of food.

And here is where we hit our glitch.

My card is declined.

It was a beautiful moment. Here I am, standing with enough food to feed a small third world country, every cranky kid in the store and his even crankier mother in line behind me, and the card won’t work.

Like I didn’t stand out enough.

I told her to try again because I am a glutton for punishment. But I KNEW there was money in there. One does not go to Walmart to spend the equivalent of the bail out (remember when we used to say the National Debt, Ha!) without checking that the money is actually in the account.

After we tried a third time, (see, glutton!) I gave up and put in on my credit card.

Once I got home and spent hours toting in food and putting it away, I sat down with my computer to check out my banking account.

I noticed an email saying there was unusual activity on my account, so they turned it off. Know what that unusual activity was? Two transactions equaling a total of $175 at the Walmart gas station.

Have these people been watching the news? Don’t they know that it takes $175 to fill up just about anything but a Prius?

UGH!

Flashes of Brilliance

The teenager, who is a junior in high school, came home from his freshman level college class with a %100 on an essay for English.

Wow! The kid is brilliant, and I’m not just saying that because I’m his mom. Okay, maybe I am, but his teacher must agree a little bit!

And we won’t talk about his last Spanish test. We’ll just focus on the positive.

Look away from the C is Spanish.

Look! Over here!

An A in English!

It’s like a hangover only without the pesky alcohol.

Is it possible to have an activity hangover?

This weekend we went out to a nice dinner for Sir D’s birthday, we went to a RV show at the Dallas Convention Center (holy cow! I had no idea how big that place is!) We went to a soccer game, we went to a baseball game, we went to church, & we went to AWANA.

We (and I use that term very loosely) also cleaned sardines, bean paste and eggs off the teenagers car. What happened to TPing? It’s smells much better.

I can’t make my body get out of bed this morning. It’s in rebellion. It is tired.

There is simply not enough coffee in the world to infuse this tired body with energy today.

Is 9:30 to early for a nap?

Anyone know where I can find a gargoyle, or some sort of troll?

Something extremely disturbing happened at Will's soccer game today. No, it wasn't that they lost, that was just sad, but not disturbing.

I was sitting on the bleachers behind two teen boys. I don't know who they were, they didn't stay for the whole game. But who they are does not matter, what they are does. Boys of the teenage variety.

I was sitting behind them and I saw one elbow the other and then whisper something in the other's ear, and then they looked at Eve, who was sitting in a chair behind them. Eve was sporting her new layered hair style, wearing her hip new sunglasses and reading a book. So, okay, yeah, she looked kinda cute.

I SWEAR to you, one of those boys said to the other one "Hay, she's kinda hot." The other one agreed, then someone, somewhere did something with a ball and they were distracted.

I was stunned. WHAT????!!??

Eve is NOT hot.

She is eleven.

Eleven.

Eleven CAN NOT be hot.

I felt very much like grabbing those boys by the scruff of their scrawny little teenage necks (never mind that they were both bigger than I was) and telling them that my Eve was decidedly NOT hot. NOT HOT. Because instead of hot, she's ELEVEN.

But I did not.




I looked over at my little Eve and began to plot a way to add a tower to the south wall of our home. A really high tower. With locks. And no windows. And perhaps some sort of mythical creature to guard her.

Sadistic

There is something ironic, or perhaps sadistic about my library’s notification system.

I get an email every Friday telling me that the books I have requested are in and ready for me to pick up.

My branch is closed on Fridays.

They are emailing me to tell me that my books are sitting in that library under the little placard with my name on it (yes, I have my own spot at the library. I was taking up to much space on the Requests Shelf, so they gave me my own spot) and yet, I cannot go get them until tomorrow.

And the books that are there waiting for me, may or may not be the last two in the series about the people who may or may not be the eternally undead.

Humm, what to do?

Too bad Edward’s not real. I could have him zip in and grab them for me and no one would be the wiser.

Some Books About Some Humans...Or Not.

Okay, there are some books about some people that may or may not be being discussed at every highschool cafeteria, by every teenage girl in the country.

I may or may not have picked up the first book to see what all the hype was about.

That was two days ago.

I may or may not be in the middle of book two today.

I can’t remember where I put my children, and laundry is taking over my house, and the blog is strangely quiet.

Hypothetically speaking of course, I will be back when I finish the books about some people who may or may not be dead.

Ahem.

Dadgum That Murphy!

When I was a kid we ate ‘butter’ out of a carton. It was smooth and came to a little peak in the middle like a Dairy Queen cone.

It was not until I was an adult that I realize this for the farce that it was. That creamy fake yellow stuff was decidedly NOT butter. It was a substitute, with a pale resemblance to the original; an impostor.

You might think I am going somewhere deep with this. That the above paragraph is a metaphor for some great life lesson.

I’m sorry to disappoint you. This really is about butter.

Since I became an adult and was responsible for my own culinary choices, I have always chosen the real thing. Butter, real butter. In the rectangle shape, with all its hard-to-spread loveliness.

Since I love real butter, I have always needed a nice pretty container to hold it in. Enter the butter dish.

I have had many butter dishes in my time. I have had some funky ones.


I have had some antique ones.


I have even had ugly ones that matched that first set of Correlle dishes I picked up at the Salvation Army store for a song.


They have all been broken. I don’t understand this phenomenon. Butter dishes never last in this house. It is as if they spontaneously combust upon entry to my home.

I went to Wal-Mart and bought this one.


I hate this one. It has no handle with which to easily remove the top. It’s boring and always smudgy with greasy fingerprints.

I have had it for 2 years. This will be the last butter dish I ever buy. Even though it is made of glass and as such, extremely fragile, it has lasted. It has lasted because I hate it.

It is Murphy’s Law.



*By way of a disclaimer, these are not actual butter dishes I have owned. I started my obsession with butter dishes long before my need to chronicle everthing on the internet, these are simply a sample of the style of butter dishes I have loved and lost.

Cold Front

77° F 54° F
Partly Cloudy


The weather man said some of my favorite words tonight. ‘A Series of Cold Fronts’

I LOVE cold fronts. Cold fronts are some of the most wonderful things. God bless cold fronts.

Silk

Yesterday I spent some one on one time with my oldest daughter. She is 11 now; a young lady. No longer my baby. When did this happen?

We went to the eye dr to get my new contacts checked. I got new ones again. I am not convinced I will find any that will work. My eyes don’t like contacts.

After the eye dr, Eve and I went to get her hair cut. This made me sad. I held her off as long as I could, but she was relentless. She wanted layers.



DO you see that hair? She has the most beautiful hair. It is like individual strands of silk, it is so fine. It is also the most amazing color. People pay lots of money to buy the hair color she was given. I have actually had people ask me if we get her hair colored. She has the natural highlights that would make the Hollywood set green with envy.

And yesterday she cut it.



Look at those strands? They were on her head minutes ago.



Now there on the floor. It just seems wrong.








Here is the final photo. She is beautiful, even minus some hair. I’m just glad I managed to talk her into a few layers around her face and not all over her hair.

Where’d my baby go?

Really? In DFW.

So Saturday evening we're going to be getting a category 1 Hurricane over DFW. Did you read that? Cat 1 Hurricane. In north Texas.

Though, one weather guy said it might only be a Tropical Storm. Oh, well. Only a Tropical Storm.

I thought living several hundred miles inland, we'd not have to be worried about things like Hurricanes.

Little did I know.

It Has All Become Clear

Sir D got glasses today. The glasses were not too terribly expensive. We have insurance and we have some money left on our spending account, so really none actually came out of the bank account.

These glasses are going to cost though, make no mistake. Sir D had not been home with his new glasses for 10 minutes before he exclaimed that our TV was “lousy!”
“I mean, really! This TV is terrible, we need a new one.”

He mentioned that our rug really needed to be cleaned, and the house painted. He has also realized today that grass comes in individual blades.

Then he looked over at me; scrutinizing.

I was afraid he was going to decided he needed a new wife too, that his current one was lousy, now that he could actually see.

But he didn’t say a word.

Wise man.

It Begins Again, For the Last Time.

Today I'm taking Ann to the first day of her last year at The Scottish Rite Dyslexia Remediation Program.

One more year of 4 days a week downtown.

I can do this.

Here we go...

I Hope I can walk all the way up to the meeting room. Perhaps they'd be willing to move the parents meeting down to the parking garage. My car is big enough.

And on another note; it's only going to be 90 today! Fall really is coming!

I'm not here, I'm there.

I have a new post up at The Homeschool Review today. It's a Government/Election unit study.

Go check it out!

A few things.

Yesterday Bob and I went out to the eye doctor. I, to get contacts so I can have a little break from glasses, lest I develop a permanent indent on my nose; and Bob to get checked for the first time. (I know, I know! What kind of horrible mother waits to take her kid to the eye doc until he’s 14?)

I learned a few things.

While I do have slightly elevated pressure in my eyes (whatever that means) I do not have glaucoma, yippee!

Contacts have come a long way in 5 years. I can already wear these contacts for 5 hours, which beats my previous record of 4 hours before I rip the things out of my eyes in despair and discomfort.

Bob has healthy eyes, though he is farsighted like me. He needs reading glasses. That is how it starts. It only goes downhill from there, but I hate to discourage the kid so I let him believe in the ‘only reading glasses’ line they feed you at the eye doc.

We then went to the Most Hated Place to get some groceries.

Walmart is like Hell only with air conditioning. I know I have said this before, but really! Bob and I went there to get a cartful of food that will probably last 2.3 seconds in this house. My hip was in so much pain I was leaning over the cart like an old lady. Nice.

Bob was such an amazing help. I would point, while leaning over the cart, and say “popcorn, please” and he would grab the popcorn and put it in the cart. I’m sure it was loads of fun for this teenage boy to be at Walmart with his limping, wincing mother. But he handled it with all the grace and mercy his 14 year old self could muster. It was a proud moment.

I thanked him by getting his hair cut while we were there. At the Walmart. He was, interestingly enough, not terribly pleased with the idea. But I would have died right there in the Salon de Walmart, if we’d had to go anywhere else but home. And the haircut looks nice, I don’t care what anyone else says!

Today, co op started. All the kids went to their classes and I did not. It was weird to drop my kids and not stay to teach. But because just looking at those stairs leading to my old classroom made me weep in horror, it was probably a good thing.

Next week AWANA starts and so does Scottish Rite for Ann. By Monday of next week we will be at full operating capacity for this year’s school adventure.

It only get’s crazier from here folks.

Observations From My Bed

So I’ve spent much of the last few days in bed. I am having a major fibromyalgia flair up, which stinks big time. It is as if my hips have been replaces with the hips of an 80 year old. I am about to have to go dig my father in law’s old cane out of the attic.

Nothing says sexy like a 30ish year old woman with a cane.

Here are some observations I have made this weekend from my bed. (If this keeps up, I’m going to have to change the name of my blog to Life from my Bed)

1) Weather forecasters need to drink way less caffeine.

2) Weather forecasters and news people in general should NOT use metaphors. I heard more mixed metaphors than correct ones. FYI, weather channel lady: it’s batting a thousand, not batting one hundred. I don’t claim to understand this sports metaphor, but I know WRONG when I hear it.

3) I would not trade places with Bristol Palin for all the money in the world, poor girl.

4) In the sentence ‘The water is overtopping the levee.’ The term overtopping is actually correct. If you knew overtopping was a word before you read that sentence please raise your hand. I didn’t think so.

5) 17 year old boy + 5 soccer games in 3 days + 95 degrees +85 percent humidity = 15 hours of sleep in one night.

This will conclude the ‘observations from bed’ portion of the blog.