Michael Jackson died. I'm sorry for his kids. I'm sorry for his family. It's difficult losing someone you love, particularly when this was completely unexpected. All this hoopla, though? I don't get it. I mean, I understand that he was a wonder from a relatively young age. His life? Kind of shouldn't be put on a pedestal. He did questionable and bizarre things that frankly, I just don't get all the sobbing. His face was no longer originally his. That, too, I found flat out frightening to look at. By all the crying, moonwalking, tributes and programs on TV dedicated to him and his life, you would have thought he was royalty. Truly, he was just a very odd man who intrigued people by having them wonder what he would do next. (Much like Prince or the sign that he adopted or whatever name he has chosen to go by these days.)
Is it just me?
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
The week in review
This has been a long, tiring, sad and weird week. There have been happy things along the way, too.
- I've made a burning bush, devised a way for teachers to teach the 9 Plagues of Egypt to over 100 children, built a cardboard shack for Passover painting, raided my mother-in-law's herbs for parsley for the Seder plate and parted the Red Sea.
- Aunt Arlene died on Tuesday, which we are sad about. We are glad that her suffering has ended, though.
- I've had Chex mix breath all week. The snack folks we have on staff at VBS provide us with a morning basket of Chex mix. I get to it first and remove all the dark brown bread thingies and all of the wheat chex. Yum. Nevermind the frightening breath afterwards.
- Yesterday, I locked myself out of the house. This was as we were leaving for VBS in the morning. I had car keys, but no house keys. I hadn't hooked them to the carabiner on my purse when I used them the night before. Hubs was far out, about 40 minutes + away so I called our wonderful neighbor, Mike. He works for AT&T, was in a manhole and couldn't personally bail me out but did have me drive 20 minutes to his location, climbed out of the manhole, gave me his house key so that I could get my key and get back into my house. Since there was no traffic behind me, we conducted it as a drive by keying and all was well. Can I tell you how much we love having a neighbor like Mike?
- I saw a hummingbird nectaring at the milkweed Thursday afternoon.
- I was able to remove the baked on, caked on hairspray off of my bathroom floor. I've tried soaking it. I've tried using extra strong soap with bleach. I tried Lysol Bathroom cleaner. Finally, it dawned on me to use a Mr. Clean eraser. I was going to write about it on Works for Me Wednesday, but found that they make a Mr. Clean Eraser mop, so apparently some big-wig out there took my idea before I had it. :) It took an eraser and a half, but now it is sparkling again. I swear that no matter how clean my bathroom was, that darned floor looked filthy and negated any cleaning I had done. It was very disheartening to be finished, yet look like I hadn't touched the floor in a month of Sundays. I'm happy now. I even made Hubs stand and admire it.
- Yesterday I hung the sheets out on the line. Because of the unfortunate lock out incident, I was unable to get them hung out earlier. K- cautioned, "Mommy, I really think that you should keep those inside." "Nah. I think I have enough time." As soon as the last clothes pin was placed, rumbles of thunder rolled through the air. Crud. Back off the line and into the dryer. Ugh.
- The Japanese Beetles are back. We are going to have to run with a beetle bag to keep them from defoliating the Purple Plum this year. I've got my special spray (garlic, red pepper and something else) to spray on the tree. Argh with those beetles. They ate the whole tree last year. It was awful. They turned our little shade tree into a lace leafed variety.
- My tomatoes have blooms. Not big news to folks in other growing zones, but I'm pretty pleased!
- My peppers have baby peppers!
- Hubs and I were in our kitchen talking as I was preparing dinner. K- had run out back to catch butterflies with her net. I heard a loud THUNK! and ran back to check on her. She was fine and happily running with net in hand. The incident left me as soon as I knew she was fine. She wanted to go play in the driveway gravel and I said fine. I went up with her, checking pots for dryness when I hear, "Mommy, what's on our front porch?" It was a belly-up Robin that had apparently breathed its last breath not too long before. Ah! That was the thunk. She ran in to tell daddy about the dead bird, who was convinced that it was only stunned. I told him it had x's on it's eyes and the tongue hanging out. Soon the flies were going to swarm. Please get it off my porch! He did. We named it Suzy. She is now residing in our garbage can. Sad. Hubs believes that Suzy was being chased by a larger bird and smacked into the door. RIP Suzy.
- Ed, Farah and Michael. 3 in 24 hours. Wow. I think that is faster than anyone thought.
- I want to take a bath right now just something awful, but its lightning and I don't do baths in lightning.
- I got my excusal letter from the courts today. No jury duty for me! Hooray!
- No matter how much it rains, I still have to water the herb garden. The overhang on the house is too big and they just don't get an adequate drink.
- Apparently I was born in the year of the Ox. They were doing something at work and called to check on my birth year. Apparently, it wasn't a big sales day.
- I'm hungry. I want chocolate. PMS, perhaps?
- We have a VBS family picnic tomorrow night. I'll be a server lady and Hubs will be with K- as she eats, then plays on the bouncer slide. The bouncer slide? Use was provided to us at no cost. It is a rental from one of the preschool teachers. How kind!
- K- and I have been able to resume having our bathroom vase of flowers again. We both love a vase of flowers in the bathroom. We'll have one in there with fresh flowers all summer long.
- It was 91 degrees today. I know that isn't hot to many of you, but it was very humid, which made it feel even hotter. The hair? Oh, it is bound to my head right now. Mom was complaining about her hair Thursday. I told her to have mine during a humid day just once. She said no thank you.
- After my sister dropped the kids off to VBS Thursday morning, we sat on the floor, I was cuddling Leland and we were talking. One of the VBS helpers came through and told me how much more I needed another baby. "Oh you need another. You really do." God bless her, she kept going on and on. My sister's stock response anymore is, "Oh, she's just living vicariously." If the woman only knew.
- I must go mop my kitchen floor.
- A front was coming through and I ended up with a hum-dinger of a headache. Excedrin Migraine did not touch it. I decided to roll backwards, use Advil and it worked like a charm. I also watered my headache. Thankfully between the two, the headache went away. Yowza.
- I ran our bed sheets through a second rinse. I'm hoping that might help to resolve some of the facial breakouts that I've had going on. It's not bad right now, but geeze Louise! My skin was looking 15 again, only not in a good way.
- I'm rambling. Can you tell?
- My onions have bloomed an look very much like Allium. I may have mentioned that once before, though.
- We bought a new VCR/DVD recordable thing combo on eBay and while it came in lickety split, it is cracked. Bummer. I'm still awaiting word from the fine folks who sold it to us.
- Our LL Bean fire ring came in. Being a fire ring/grill is what made it legal for us to have in the city. The fire ring had been on back order for almost a month. We're excited to have it! :)
- Speaking of the Bean, on one of their daily markdowns last week, I purchased K- some shoes. I'm a finicky mom when it comes to shoes, especially "church" shoes. (She wears them to more than church, but that's what we call them.) I like rubber soles and as she gets older, they are harder to find. They were $34.50 marked down to $15.00. In fact, I just purchased these for her, as well. They were $9.99 and she LOVES! green. They'll look kicky with her uniform! She has brown ones in the same style that Hubs' mom bought her in January. I'm just keeping my eye out for winter boots for her. Their winter boots rock!
- Here is something that I found over at Homeschool Creations:
That's all for me. Have a great weekend!
- I've made a burning bush, devised a way for teachers to teach the 9 Plagues of Egypt to over 100 children, built a cardboard shack for Passover painting, raided my mother-in-law's herbs for parsley for the Seder plate and parted the Red Sea.
- Aunt Arlene died on Tuesday, which we are sad about. We are glad that her suffering has ended, though.
- I've had Chex mix breath all week. The snack folks we have on staff at VBS provide us with a morning basket of Chex mix. I get to it first and remove all the dark brown bread thingies and all of the wheat chex. Yum. Nevermind the frightening breath afterwards.
- Yesterday, I locked myself out of the house. This was as we were leaving for VBS in the morning. I had car keys, but no house keys. I hadn't hooked them to the carabiner on my purse when I used them the night before. Hubs was far out, about 40 minutes + away so I called our wonderful neighbor, Mike. He works for AT&T, was in a manhole and couldn't personally bail me out but did have me drive 20 minutes to his location, climbed out of the manhole, gave me his house key so that I could get my key and get back into my house. Since there was no traffic behind me, we conducted it as a drive by keying and all was well. Can I tell you how much we love having a neighbor like Mike?
- I saw a hummingbird nectaring at the milkweed Thursday afternoon.
- I was able to remove the baked on, caked on hairspray off of my bathroom floor. I've tried soaking it. I've tried using extra strong soap with bleach. I tried Lysol Bathroom cleaner. Finally, it dawned on me to use a Mr. Clean eraser. I was going to write about it on Works for Me Wednesday, but found that they make a Mr. Clean Eraser mop, so apparently some big-wig out there took my idea before I had it. :) It took an eraser and a half, but now it is sparkling again. I swear that no matter how clean my bathroom was, that darned floor looked filthy and negated any cleaning I had done. It was very disheartening to be finished, yet look like I hadn't touched the floor in a month of Sundays. I'm happy now. I even made Hubs stand and admire it.
- Yesterday I hung the sheets out on the line. Because of the unfortunate lock out incident, I was unable to get them hung out earlier. K- cautioned, "Mommy, I really think that you should keep those inside." "Nah. I think I have enough time." As soon as the last clothes pin was placed, rumbles of thunder rolled through the air. Crud. Back off the line and into the dryer. Ugh.
- The Japanese Beetles are back. We are going to have to run with a beetle bag to keep them from defoliating the Purple Plum this year. I've got my special spray (garlic, red pepper and something else) to spray on the tree. Argh with those beetles. They ate the whole tree last year. It was awful. They turned our little shade tree into a lace leafed variety.
- My tomatoes have blooms. Not big news to folks in other growing zones, but I'm pretty pleased!
- My peppers have baby peppers!
- Hubs and I were in our kitchen talking as I was preparing dinner. K- had run out back to catch butterflies with her net. I heard a loud THUNK! and ran back to check on her. She was fine and happily running with net in hand. The incident left me as soon as I knew she was fine. She wanted to go play in the driveway gravel and I said fine. I went up with her, checking pots for dryness when I hear, "Mommy, what's on our front porch?" It was a belly-up Robin that had apparently breathed its last breath not too long before. Ah! That was the thunk. She ran in to tell daddy about the dead bird, who was convinced that it was only stunned. I told him it had x's on it's eyes and the tongue hanging out. Soon the flies were going to swarm. Please get it off my porch! He did. We named it Suzy. She is now residing in our garbage can. Sad. Hubs believes that Suzy was being chased by a larger bird and smacked into the door. RIP Suzy.
- Ed, Farah and Michael. 3 in 24 hours. Wow. I think that is faster than anyone thought.
- I want to take a bath right now just something awful, but its lightning and I don't do baths in lightning.
- I got my excusal letter from the courts today. No jury duty for me! Hooray!
- No matter how much it rains, I still have to water the herb garden. The overhang on the house is too big and they just don't get an adequate drink.
- Apparently I was born in the year of the Ox. They were doing something at work and called to check on my birth year. Apparently, it wasn't a big sales day.
- I'm hungry. I want chocolate. PMS, perhaps?
- We have a VBS family picnic tomorrow night. I'll be a server lady and Hubs will be with K- as she eats, then plays on the bouncer slide. The bouncer slide? Use was provided to us at no cost. It is a rental from one of the preschool teachers. How kind!
- K- and I have been able to resume having our bathroom vase of flowers again. We both love a vase of flowers in the bathroom. We'll have one in there with fresh flowers all summer long.
- It was 91 degrees today. I know that isn't hot to many of you, but it was very humid, which made it feel even hotter. The hair? Oh, it is bound to my head right now. Mom was complaining about her hair Thursday. I told her to have mine during a humid day just once. She said no thank you.- After my sister dropped the kids off to VBS Thursday morning, we sat on the floor, I was cuddling Leland and we were talking. One of the VBS helpers came through and told me how much more I needed another baby. "Oh you need another. You really do." God bless her, she kept going on and on. My sister's stock response anymore is, "Oh, she's just living vicariously." If the woman only knew.
- I must go mop my kitchen floor.
- A front was coming through and I ended up with a hum-dinger of a headache. Excedrin Migraine did not touch it. I decided to roll backwards, use Advil and it worked like a charm. I also watered my headache. Thankfully between the two, the headache went away. Yowza.
- I ran our bed sheets through a second rinse. I'm hoping that might help to resolve some of the facial breakouts that I've had going on. It's not bad right now, but geeze Louise! My skin was looking 15 again, only not in a good way.
- I'm rambling. Can you tell?
- My onions have bloomed an look very much like Allium. I may have mentioned that once before, though.
- We bought a new VCR/DVD recordable thing combo on eBay and while it came in lickety split, it is cracked. Bummer. I'm still awaiting word from the fine folks who sold it to us.- Our LL Bean fire ring came in. Being a fire ring/grill is what made it legal for us to have in the city. The fire ring had been on back order for almost a month. We're excited to have it! :)
- Speaking of the Bean, on one of their daily markdowns last week, I purchased K- some shoes. I'm a finicky mom when it comes to shoes, especially "church" shoes. (She wears them to more than church, but that's what we call them.) I like rubber soles and as she gets older, they are harder to find. They were $34.50 marked down to $15.00. In fact, I just purchased these for her, as well. They were $9.99 and she LOVES! green. They'll look kicky with her uniform! She has brown ones in the same style that Hubs' mom bought her in January. I'm just keeping my eye out for winter boots for her. Their winter boots rock!- Here is something that I found over at Homeschool Creations:
That's all for me. Have a great weekend!
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Works for Me Wednesday: Pampered Chef Small Scoop
I love this scoop. This is the Small Scoop from Pampered Chef. I have my friend, Nora, to thank for my love and immense respect for the Pampered Chef small scoop. I have only used it for cookies, though you could use it for other things. If your cookie recipe says it will make 36 cookies, this scoop will scoop out 36 cookies. It seems to be cookie recipe size standard, so it works for me!A side note: I've known others to go with off brand scoops and they broke. I have made a seriously huge amount of cookies with this scoop and it shows no sign of stopping. My friend, Julia, would tell you that you get what you pay for. Pricey? Sure. Worth it? Absolutely! You'll have it forever!
Smiles in my day:
- The mayoral recall was defeated. For a man who was voted in by a decent margin, has worked as the mayor of this town for 22 years, a few people got their britches in a bunch and decided to try to toss him out. By about a 75% margin, we proved that we did hire him on purpose.
- K- had much fun with my mom Tuesday. She went there while Hubs' mom went on a casino trip with her friends. - The Nine Plagues room was successful and rather hilarious.
- My neighbor stopped mowing his lawn to come to our door and tell us that our laundry was flying off the fence at him. Oh, he wasn't upset. He thought it was funny, but he did want our clean laundry to remain clean!
- Another laundry line day tomorrow. We had so much rain last week (right, Jamie?) that the outside lines weren't an option. We had to do inside lines.
- K- is having so much fun at VBS. Friends from her preschool class are in her class so she is thrilled beyond words.
- Julia returned to work today. I was glad to see her. Her mom passed away last Monday and she hasn't been in since. I think that being surrounded by something to do and people to distract her from what's missing was helpful.
- Our previous co-worker, Laura, stopped in today. She stayed so long that she shut the place down!
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
After having been in IKEA for three hours . . .
. . . my dear, sweet 5 year old asks me, "Mommy, am I in a nightmare?" "No, baby. You're in IKEA."
It was a well spent 3 hours and yes, we ate there (we always do.) She was beautifully behaved, but I could see where 3 hours were not something she would have chosen.
But! We bought a bookcase, a banana fiber file box, a small set of pots, some small kitchen gadgets, replacement drinking glasses (I broke one, but IKEA isn't just down the street), a computer chair, and storage containers. What can I say? We knew that we were going there for a while. People, we spent it like we had it.
Smiles in my day:
- Moses and the burning bush were a success.
- The Nine Plagues are set to go for tomorrow.
- The bookkeeper had my "get out of jail free card" done when I got to work, so that I could fax it to the jury people. Hopefully they accept my hardship paperwork.
- I watched a snake shed its skin.
- Our new computer chair is quite lovely. Wow! Did we need that!
- Our new bookcase is much taller than I visualized, but we got the length dead on. Approximation of distance couldn't have been any closer! Oh, and Hubs built them both today!
- Hubs hung the hose hanger onto the outside of the house and changed the hose over to the new one.
- The iguana has been eating collards fresh from our garden. K-, too!
It was a well spent 3 hours and yes, we ate there (we always do.) She was beautifully behaved, but I could see where 3 hours were not something she would have chosen.
But! We bought a bookcase, a banana fiber file box, a small set of pots, some small kitchen gadgets, replacement drinking glasses (I broke one, but IKEA isn't just down the street), a computer chair, and storage containers. What can I say? We knew that we were going there for a while. People, we spent it like we had it.
Smiles in my day:- Moses and the burning bush were a success.
- The Nine Plagues are set to go for tomorrow.
- The bookkeeper had my "get out of jail free card" done when I got to work, so that I could fax it to the jury people. Hopefully they accept my hardship paperwork.
- I watched a snake shed its skin.
- Our new computer chair is quite lovely. Wow! Did we need that!
- Our new bookcase is much taller than I visualized, but we got the length dead on. Approximation of distance couldn't have been any closer! Oh, and Hubs built them both today!
- Hubs hung the hose hanger onto the outside of the house and changed the hose over to the new one.
- The iguana has been eating collards fresh from our garden. K-, too!
Monday, June 22, 2009
Spotty Spotterson
I'll be a tad bit spotty this week. I'm working and working Vacation Bible School-- eeek! It's always a terribly busy week. Add to that I forgot that I had been summoned for Jury Duty-- double eek!-- and I have to fax them information + a hardship letter from work. (They don't swing the additional make-up jury duty pay, thus I get out on hardship.) It's always good when you remember. I got the notification a few weeks ago, set it on the microwave to deal with it and remembered it today as I was driving into Pittsburgh. ARGH! [Hand over mouth.] Hubs says, "What?!" "Jury Duty!"
So, I'm in charge of decorating and right now I'm busy putting together the Nine Plagues of Egypt. The kids will get to Pick A Plague! when they come in the door and pin it to Pharaoh when their plague comes up. For the cattle plague, I really wanted the cute legs up cartoon I found, but the director really preferred the live cow. Killjoy.
Nonetheless, I'm buzy buzy backson this week. I'll be in and out. In the meantime, I must remember to bring the Burning Bush recording with me . . .
So, I'm in charge of decorating and right now I'm busy putting together the Nine Plagues of Egypt. The kids will get to Pick A Plague! when they come in the door and pin it to Pharaoh when their plague comes up. For the cattle plague, I really wanted the cute legs up cartoon I found, but the director really preferred the live cow. Killjoy.
Nonetheless, I'm buzy buzy backson this week. I'll be in and out. In the meantime, I must remember to bring the Burning Bush recording with me . . .
Sunday, June 21, 2009
To Hubs
We've been kicking around for 15+ years. In that time, you've become a father to two beautiful little ladies. You are a great father. You've turned K- into a "Clone Wars" (Star Wars) addict. You have what you named "Happy Daddy Day" every Monday. You walk with us every evening, hang out with us, provide for us, put up with us, understand that both of us are rather high-energy and crazy girls, but you keep coming home! You must love us or something! You wanna know "sompin'?" We like you. We like you a whole lot. We love you even!
Happy Father's Day!
Happy Father's Day!
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