Completely, totally, and utterly busted

Today the Cheesefairy posted a funny story about her kid outing his daycare provider and her habit of letting him watch TV.

It reminded me of one of my favorite kid stories of all time.

My aunt Pony has always watched my cousin Amethyst's kids, starting when Amethyst's first daughter, Custard*, was a baby. Amethyst preferred that Custard not have things like TV or fast food, but Grandma Pony had other ideas. Ideas which she kept secret from Amethyst. Or so she thought.

You see, one day Amethyst was in a hurry, so when she got to the bank, she decided that instead of taking Custard inside with her, she'd just go through the drive-up window. As she loaded her deposit into the little vacuum tube and greeted the teller, a small voice piped up from the backseat:  "Fries, please."



Reading:  The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory

Playing:  Pressure Chief by Cake



*not their real names, obviously

At first I was afraid, I was petrified

We survived Baby Incognito's shower totally intact, and I think people had a good time. Hooray! I can't believe he'll be joining us in the outside world in only about a month!





New post over at the book blog.

Photo Friday

I recently made nursing necklaces for several friends (this one is for Baby Incognito, due May 5). The large beads are new, but the faceted spacers are from my mom's vast stores of beads. Stringing the necklaces brought back memories of untold hours stringing bracelets with my cousins, either for fun or to earn spending money by selling our wares at our moms' craft fair booths. Faceted beads will always remind me of childhood and the smell of fraying elastic and of home.

View the entire Photo Friday collection on Flickr.

lolkitters of the week

Click the photo to vote for Kitters!

View the collected weekly lolkitters on Flickr.

You can dress up like a sultan in your onion head hat

Brain full, must dump data:

Lo, the job, it does rock

This week at work, we had an activity session for kids which rocked pretty hard. We let the kids build their own version of the wicked cool airbag arrays that allowed the Mars Exploration Rovers to bounce safely to a stop on Mars.



We gave each kid a raw egg, up to ten balloons, and access to plastic shopping bags (prime parachute material), string, and masking tape, and let them go to town. Then, best of all, we took them out and let them drop their Mars-egg crafts off of the second-story roof. Sweeeeet. Naturally, the kids had a blast and so did I. I mean, come on...how often are kids told to throw an egg off of a rooftop? That's rad.


Things my husband does not understand

My love for this commercial:



(I don't fully understand it either, I just accept it.)

Why this Dooce post made me laugh until I had tears running down my face. (Seriously? That first animal photo nearly killed me dead.)

My undying affection for lolcats. (Psst!! Pretty please go vote for Kitters in the Jones Soda lolcontest :D )


Enter the Make Ur Lolcat Famous Contest


This may have been a bad plan

Late last week, the zipper on my cooler-style lunchbox bit the dust in a very definitive fashion. It happened as I was packing my lunch, so I didn't exactly have time to run out to Target for a replacement. No problem, though. Victoria's Secret shopping bags make perfect lunch bags (the second-smallest size, not the single-serving size), so I dug one out and have been using it since. As I was walking to my car tonight, it occurred to me that this might not have been the most fortunate choice of lunch receptacle. In fact, it's highly possible that when my coworkers see my stripey pink lunch bag, they think:



when they should be thinking:



I firmly believe underwear is a personal choice, and I don't judge, but when it comes to my own cheeks, believe me when I say that I am not a fan of scanty panties. Unless something NC-17 is impending, the gear had better cover the rear. I guess it would probably be somewhat inappropriate to staple a receipt for cute but highly decent and not at all skimpy bikini underwear to the outside of my lunchbag.





Reading:  The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory

Playing:  Stadium Arcadium by the Red Hot Chili Peppers

Foundations

When my parents got married, they bought a little house. When they were ready to start a family, they sold their little house to my mom's brother and his new wife and bought a bigger house two blocks away. In 1979, my cousin Amethyst was born. Almost exactly one year later, my cousin Anthony was born. A year and three months later, my cousin MacGyver was born. And then, ten months later I was born. And thus, there were four little children living within two blocks of each other, with two twenty-something stay-at-home-moms. My cousins and I spent most of our childhoods together. They were my surrogate siblings, my constant playmates. During the summers, Amethyst and I had sleepovers at one house or the other nearly every weekend. We'd spend the night in the yard barn clubhouse my parents built for me and my sister, or in the loft in the giant garage her dad built behind their house. We rode our bikes down to the neighborhood supermarket and blew our allowances on gum and Funyuns.

In March of my freshman year in college, Amethyst had her first kid, a girl (Custard). In the years since, all four of us "big kids" got married. The "little kids," our younger sisters--cousin Brie, born in 1984, and my sister and cousin Sunny, born in 1986--have dated and dismissed various boys, graduated high school, started college. Amethyst married her baby daddy, had another daughter (Pie), and last year got divorced. Anthony has two little girls with his wife. MacGyver married Danger, of course. Younger cousin Brie has a little son. Tonight I went over to my aunt and uncle's house--to my parents' first house--to have birthday cake and celebrate Custard's eighth birthday. Eight years, my God. Can it have been so long?

My parents still live in their second house, two blocks away from my aunt and uncle. All of us kids went to the same high school, two blocks in the other direction from my parents' house. Even now, our lives draw us back to these places, to these memories, to the solid foundation that our parents built for us, before we were even born.


Reading:  The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory

Playing:  Comfort Eagle by Cake (sound warning)

Because it wouldn't be Easter without Peeps

Washington Post's second annual Peeps diorama contest

first annual Peeps diorama contest

Here are my favorites:







OAEPBBR: Obligatory Annual Easter Peeps Boing Boing Post

Peeps research

Peeps doing research

Easter Eggs, Blog Style

Baby Incognito's due date is fast approaching, and the gang is getting ready for Teacher Incognito's baby shower next Saturday. It was fun shopping for a shower gift, and I also began to realize that it's going to be pretty hard to be an aunty on a budget. My instinct is to buy armloads of adorable miniature outfits, but my wallet says otherwise.


The cats my family had while I was growing up loved to be brushed, but Kitters has never liked it. I'm trying to teach him that brushing must be tolerated, since the tumbleweeds of hair he sheds are a lot more obvious on wood floors than they were on beige carpet. So far, he only puts up with brushing when I go against the grain and brush all his fur backwards. Weirdo.


I found this bizarro game at Walmart (of all places) and had to buy it. It's "PC nonviolent war." Instead of hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs, the suits are Peace, Love, Unity, and Diversity. The lowest ranking card in the deck is the Joker, armed with various weapons. I'm all for peace, love, and understanding, but this game strikes me as sort of hilariously over the top.


Our new table was delivered today, and it looks lovely in the dining room. No more undersized dinette for us! It has a butterfly leaf that expands it to seat eight.


Perfect for chilly early Spring nights.


We are hoping to adopt a dog very soon, but until we get the credit card paid down a little, we will continue to wait, not quite patiently.


Spring may finally be in the air.

Photo Friday

View the entire Photo Friday collection on Flickr.

lolkitters of the week

Click the photo to vote for Kitters!

View the collected weekly lolkitters on Flickr.

Bask in the glory!

Sometimes, my friends...sometimes the jokes nearly write themselves. I dropped off some cardboard at the recycling center last night, and found this priceless treasure at the top of the magazine bin:

Seventeen magazine, July 1984
Unfortunately, our scanner is not Vista-compatible, so you'll have to make do with some slightly blurry documentation.

You love his voice and marvel at his outrageous sense of style. Now with our "genuine imitation" Boy George braids, you can look Boy-ish, too!

Heaven Sent cologne...you don't have to be an angel to wear it! I'm not sure what disturbs me most--the model's opaque pink tights, which match her pink loafers, or the disembodied hand of her pink-shirted boyfriend off to the left there.

You know what? Forget about angels. Capture the magic of the unicorn with Magical Musk, the fragrance of hidden powers. Oh. My. GOD. Could this get any awesomer?

Unsure what shoes to wear with your painfully awful 80s shorts? Never fear! Seventeen has the answer! For your rad culottes, go for bouncy high-tops that sneak up over the ankle, and add one or two pairs of brightly colored socks for a funky, layered look. Stuck with highwaisted "walking shorts"? Go for loafers and folded-down socks--a classic reunion!

Check out this slammin' outfit!

Instead of an advertising spread selling a collection of clothes, this issue featured a spread of dresses that the reader could construct out of dishtowels. I am totally not making this up. In the back of the magazine, where one expects to see a list of items and prices, there was a small section of directions for how to assemble each dishtowel dress:

To make casing, sew bias tape on inside of skirt along one of the 78-inch edges, 1 inch down from edge and stopping 1 1/2 inches from each end of panel. Make a 1/2-inch buttonhole beside end of bias tape casing on each end of panel. What percentage of modern Seventeen readers would be able to follow this?

Even though it made the assumption that its readers took home ec and knew how to sew, this issue endeared itself to me by providing a "Mini Mag" feature on how to stand up for yourself:

Young women are often conditioned to believe assertiveness is unattractive--but the price of being "agreeable" can be surprisingly high...Having a clear idea of the treatment you're entitled to makes it easier to respond to challenges and demands. The New Assertive Woman, by Lynn Z. Bloom, Karen Coburn, and Joan Pearlman, lists the following points in a "Bill of Rights":  the right to have and express your own feelings and opinions; the right to be listened to and taken seriously; the right to say "no;" the right to get what you pay for; the right to make mistakes.

Finally, my dear friends, the most pressing question of all...


Why was former General Hospital bad boy and future beloved, bemulleted Uncle Jesse chosen as spokesceleb for a girls' depilatory cream? Wonders never cease.



Reading:  The Spymaster's Lady by Joanna Bourne. (My friend Tamsyn SWEARS it's good, even though it's a romance. I don't care how good it is, I am NOT reading it on my lunch breaks at work.)

Playing:  Godsmack

rainy Saturday hike

     

There's a small dump pile of old glass weathering out into the stream, and I found these old jars and porcelain canning lids in the mud.
I'm hoping to go back on my next day off and look for more.

old compact, found washed downstream
opossum skull