Procrastination

Here I am studying for tomorrow night's exam, and my mind has been pretty much reduced to mush. I consider myself reasonably intelligent, but there are so many sentences in that textbook that I have to read three times to understand. One particular set of words, however, made me laugh right out loud, and it's either an indication of sleep-deprived immaturity or information exposure related insanity. I just couldn't get past "antidumping duties." It seems so paradoxical. It made my day.

Celebrity Dopplegangers

1. Jerry Garcia changed my oil

2. Jimmy Stewart repaired my tire

3. Albert Einstein frequents the sandwich shop

4. Elvis manages the nearby Chick-fil-a

I'll add to the list as my encounters grow.

Luck Part 2

Well, I was wrong about snow, and now it appears we will get some, which is perfectly fitting because I have a nonfunctional snowthrower dressed up in a tarp beside the house. With my luck, we will have 2 feet of very heavy shoveling snow. Oh, well, shoveling has worked for me for the past 30-some years.

Since most of us don't really need to go anywhere, I could technically let the snow just sit there until New Year's Eve when the temp is supposed to hit 50 degrees. Everything will melt, maybe. In the meantime, we can just park the SUV at the end of the driveway so that my better half can go to work.

I wonder how many people flew into a panic last night when the forecast changed and they couldn't go to the store for milk and TP because all the stores were closed on Christmas night. I have plenty of milk, but only 5 rolls of TP. Will it be enough? What if we have a TP emergency?

Speaking of TP, I am still waiting for my back yard to spontaneously bubble over since I found that empty bottle of antibacterial dishwashing liquid in the sink. Who poured the whole thing down the drain? Oh, my poor bacteria. I am certain the septic system is freaking out as I type. When the snow eventually melts and the ground is soaked, we will be able to track each other through the yard by our sudsy footprints.

Luck of the Irish

Ok, so I am not Irish. It turns out after all of these years of leprechauns and shamrocks and Irish Blessings (memorized, by the way) that I am Welsh. Not being Irish, I have no luck. See what I mean:

On the news of an approaching snowstorm, we were gifted a snowthrower. It had been sitting in a shed for a few years, so I expected some difficulty getting it started. First and foremost, I knew that as soon as the thing hit our garage, the snowstorm would be called off. I was certainly right on that one. Bummer--I love snow, but there will be little to none for us. It's just as well, though, because the snowthrower has turned into a vehicle of fuming frustration.

After finding the model and serial numbers, I downloaded the user manual so that I could buy the correct oil and mix it in proper proportion with the gas. Of course, I cannot do this without slathering myself in eau de gasoline. I followed directions to the letter, with the half gallon of gas and the oil and the shaking vigorously and the addition of the rest of the gas. I poured carefully. I turned the ignition, set the choke, pulled and pulled and pulled on the rope, but there was nothing. I then decided the carburetor must need to be cleaned, and I would approach that after Christmas.

Last night, I noticed an intense odor of gasoline in the house after the garage door had been opened. I thought it might have been the gas can, so I took it outside and left it there. This morning, the fumes were still there. I was a little afraid to start the car because I thought I would ignite the fumes and die horribly in a fiery inferno the day before Christmas. Obviously, I survived. As I walked around the car, there it sat: the snowthrower of gloom in a glistening puddle of 50:1 fuel mixture. Everything I had poured into that thing leaked right out on the garage floor. My world now smells like gasoline: the car, my clothes, the groceries.

I know it will all eventually evaporate, but for now my greatest concern is the smell attached to the Christmas presents hiding in the garage. How do I explain that Santa's reindeer drawn sled spilled gas all over our gifts?

FYI

I have decided I don't really want to blog any more. My mind may change later, who knows? I would delete the whole thing, but some of the stories about the kids are neat, and I'd like to keep them. I have come to the conclusion that the computer steals too much time away, and I am reclaiming my time.

TTFN!

I Hate Nature

Nature... yeah, right now I kinda hate it. Sure, I love the buds and leaves on the trees, being able to hang the wind chimes and open the windows, working in the dirt and growing my own garden; I even like the fine layer of pollen that has coated everything inside the house from said open windows, but the fact of the matter is that there are bugs out there. Ones that jump, crawl, fly, and creep. There are ones that could become entangled in my hair or crawl up my sleeve, or worse yet, touch the back of my neck. It might all be okay if only they would stay outside, but they have decided to be my house guests, too. Last year, I paid an arm and a leg to get rid of the clover mites that had taken over the inside of my house. This year, I simply cannot justify handing over my only remaining arm and leg to do the same thing, so I will have to live with what's here. Clover mites aren't the problem this year--sure I have seen a few, but not the exponential numbers of the past. Instead, those stupid springtails are everywhere in the basement and outside. My only recourse here is a massive amount of poison around the outside of the house, which may not even work because I have read that they are not insects. I'm not sure what they are exactly, if not insects, because they don't look like anything else in the animalia kingdom: certainly not fish or reptiles or even sponges, but I'll have to try to exterminate them anyway. I have also purchased some beautiful, huge houseplants to better my indoor environment, but it turns out that they have been housing millipedes, which I just love. Love em like I'd love a beautiful case of leprosy. Every day, I carefully inspect the carpets, looking for millipedes on the march. They won't survive in here: there's nothing for them to eat once they get out of the planter, but still, they are bugs in my house. Ugh. What if they make it upstairs and touch my pillow? I'd never be able to sleep again. That happened in college with a centipede, and I had to move out of my dorm room.

I do realize I am being completely irrational here. I always have water on my side because I have control of the hose, and no bugs will ever be able to wrestle it away, but I am just a baby when it comes to the crawly things. Give me a snake and a few mice any day, and I'll be happy. I can handle them because, well, I could handle them. They won't suddenly appear on my shoulder or in my hair or in my ear without my noticing their approach.

So, I guess the bottom line is that I don't hate nature. I just hate it when nature walks into my house and crawls around. That is where I draw the line.

Fun Water Bill Typo

Of course, I proofread everything I read--unintentionally, of course, but I do it nonetheless. So imagine my delight when the water bill came today, and it read, "[The] spring 2010 hydrant flushing program is currently scheduled to begin Monday, March 22 and fun for approximately eight weeks." What's funny is that I think as I read, so I got as far as hydrant flushing and immediately thought, "Fun." Then I read that it already started and that it would fun for a while. Was that some kind of Freudian slip? Do the water company employees greatly enjoy the hydrant flushing process? Or were they thinking, "fun," just as sarcastically as I was, resulting in some "fun" just slipping right in there?

I think typos make things fun. They show a little bit of fallibility, which we all possess and in which we should all revel.

Let me leave you with our new day-rhymes:

Monday is fun day.

Tuesday is blues day.

Wednesday is friends day.

Thursday is hers day.

Friday is my day.

Saturday is flatter day.

Sunday is pun day.

Squishy

All of the eggplant at the Super G was squishy. Tootsie felt it, Bubby felt it, I felt it. We all agreed: too squishy. We then got into a discussion of what else is squishy. Guess what? According to Tootsie, I am squishy--almost anywhere you poke me.

I love my children.

Stickers

If we could all take our advice from a five-year-old, we would know well that a sticker makes everything better. Yesterday, I did not feel well in the car. Bubby ever-so-sweetly declared that he would give me a sticker when we got to school. "A sticker will make you feel better, Mommy." And you know, it really would have because it would have come from Bubby, just to make his mama happy.

Old Faithful

Random detail: Old Faithful erupts roughly every 90 minutes. We watched it twice today on the live web cam here. I really want to go there with my kids. When I was 8 or 9, I visited Yellowstone and had the time of my life. My little people need to experience that, too. It's really much more exciting in person.