Pink Saturday

See Bev, The Queen of Pinkness, for a looooong list of more pinkies.
I got Lexie these cute little socks.
She isn't too fond of them.





The pink tongue is the best.

But she tolerates them for about five minutes.
Guess they weren't such a good idea after all.

Letters to...

Dear Shoplifters,
Thank you so much for adding the impossible to open blister packs to our lives.
Opening these flame-less candles took a big chunk of my day, not to mention all of my B vitamins. Really what are these made of, anyway? This material ought to be used by the military, to reinforce tanks or jail cells.



Dear Safeway Musac Makers,
If you must put “Three Times a Lady” in your music feed, you are just going to have to put up with my out of context maniacal laughter.
See, all I hear is “You un, ti, tee time da wady”
Ala Buckwheat. And that’s just how it is.

Dear Dr. Dentist,
When you are getting ready to do your root canal thing, surely there is a better way to test for the correct tooth than poking it with dry-ice-on-a-stick. Why did you take all those x-rays? And how am I going to get down from the ceiling? And what are you going to do now that I cleared your waiting room with my scream?

Lexie's Beauty Parlor

Time to pick the baby up from grooming and kindergarten!


Christina says she was a Good Girl!
Now she wants out of her seat.

New RED Lamp

Since Red is my color and practically everything in my house is red, I should have joined this meme long ago!
See Sue for beautiful crimson and scarlet items

Out of the mouths of Students

This is a Sunday rerun!
See Chari for more Sunday reruns!


Today I was playing around with my “Book In a Box” as I call my box of things I saved from when I was teaching school. I saved items that the kids wrote or said that amused me. I am in the process of categorizing into Things they said, Things they did, and well just Things.


Here are some of the things they wrote. I’m telling you right now, these kids were brilliant! I taught them everything they knew.

All trees in Washington came from seeds that came from airplanes.
The governor of Texas has the right to paint his employees.
When the war broke out, they turned the mission into a fart.
Covered wagons were called prairie schooners because they were used to schoon the prairies.

Three characteristics that define a society are TVs, Parties, and Fashion. (The answer was supposed to be; organized religion, an established government, and a common language- but she was close!)

Some people in Taiwan right now are ball-headed.

If you ever get the chance to see sharks reproduce, take it!

Germany’s religion is similar to ours. They have a big building in the city.

Abe Lincoln got his face on our pannies.


I picked Wyoming for my state because it is easy to draw.

If a possum knows its going to lose, it just “aks”
dead and most of the time it works!

Orca whales have pimples around their eyes, like my big brother.

Mammals are worm blooded.

The big blue whale has baleen wich is his other teeth.

Funny things they said:
“My mom can play the tangerine really well.”

“My health report is on Alcohol and Neurotics.”(Narcotics)

“Since I’m half Jewish, tonight we’re going to light the harmonica.”

“Mrs. Guinn, you sound just like a cowgirl.” (And I had been trying SO hard to lose that Okie accent!)

“Mrs. Guinn, from the back, you look just like a kid, but from the front you look regular.

“Mrs. Guinn, I like you because you’re so normal.”
(Well, I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but normal has never been one of them!)

Guinea Hens

A friend gave us three guinea hens.
This is not one of ours. They won't let me take their picture yet. They are funny critters. They walk all over the place together. When I say "together" I mean exactly that.
They look like synchronized swimmers. I don't know when they practiced, but they walk and turn and move as one.
Now and then they make a whole bunch of noise.
That's when I know exactly where Lexie is.

Invasion

Look closely.

See those tiny dots on my fingers?
They are both on roughly the same spot, one on each finger.
Tiny Blood Blisters!
They have been there for a week.
Now, blood blisters usually require a little bit of pain, don't they?
I should have noticed if I were to do something to cause these, wouldn't I?
WHAT could I have done to make these appear?
Nothing.
That's what.
Think about it.

I have been taken over by Pod People while I was sleeping.
These are the spots they poked their probes in.
Only plausible explanation.

Check out this web site!

http://www.veenacooks.com/Home_Page.php

Cooking a turkey dinner from shopping to table!

Creative Juices Flowing

I saw these little thingies that are for putting under the legs of your furniture. I got it at the Beyond part of Bed Bath and...

I have been messing around with them. I tried covering them with some fancy gold paper and putting a pretty little butterfly in the frame.



I put a picture of my cute little mama in one.


And this. Whatever I end up doing, me, being me, I am sure they will be far more gaudied up than these are.

I am working on three other projects right now. One is a decoupage on a 1x6 board to go over my window where I write and compute.

While messing with one end of the board, the other end knocked a full container of Mod Podge to the floor. It hit just right to make it TO SHOOT ACROSS THE ROOM.
It was everywhere and now I don't think my rolly chair will roll anymore.

Catalog Season, or Fall?

I find it difficult to believe that people are still using paper catalogs, when we have eshopping, Don't you?
As you can see it is gloomy and rainy in my world. I am amusing myself by taking pictures. My target is my new little hanging candelabra.
I got it at the PALO CEDRO GIFT GALLERY that I featured here before.

Following in My Decorating Footsteps

This sweet little 11 year old did every bit of this decorating at my house. Absolutely no input from me, other than a box of fall stuff!
THEN she took these photos of it all!

What Is Pinker Than Spam?

See The Queen of Pink for more.

School Bully Event

Just suppose that a local high school football team is taken to something they call a camp. Just suppose that a junior Boy is hazed while he is attending this camp. Now suppose he yells for help but the chaperones do not come to his aid. Suppose The Boy’s cries for help ignite the hazing to a higher level. The Boy is being held to the floor by three senior linebackers. Just suppose. Suppose the seniors are attempting to shave The Boy’s head and the electric razor is cutting him as other onlookers cheer the seniors to keep on. Suppose as The Boy cries and yells for help, he is thrown to the floor and his head hits hard. Now suppose an unknown person catches the event on video via his cell phone.

Now suppose the video makes its way to The Boys parents, who are physically sickened by it. Understandably, they would supposedly want to do something about it. Now suppose The Boy knows that he would be taunted and abused if he gets the seniors in trouble by telling on them. He does not want to become a pariah on his football team. Suppose the parents love The Boy enough to listen to his request to “Just let it go.” But let’s just say they feel the need to discuss it with the school authorities, who have also supposedly seen the supposed video of the event.

Suppose they arrange a meeting with the principal and the coach. Suppose they walk in and sit down and the principal says in his cheery principal voice, “What can we do for you, today?”

Suppose the football coach says to them, “Surely you don’t want to ruin these boys’ senior year of high school by having them kicked off the team, do you?” As if the parents are the guilty ones. Suppose he even compares the event to his small children scuffling in the living room. What if he supposedly tells The Boy’s parents that the senior boys’ parents drove several team members to the camp, “spending their own money on gas” as if that excuses their behavior.

Suppose the coach doesn’t realize that the purpose of every high school experience given to them by the adults employed there is to teach positive lessons to the stud0ents.

If this happened did they just teach an impressionable group of boys that if one can play a game well, one can misbehave and it won’t hurt him too badly? If one can be intimidating enough there will be no serious consequences?
Now, suppose all of this is true.

The Boy is my grandson.
He is Jordan.
Isn't he handsome?(The dog is Olivia)

An At Home Neil Diamond Concert

You are the sun.
I am the moon.
You are the words.
I am the tune.
Play me

I had myself a Neil Diamond concert today while I did some mindless household chores. I hadn’t listened to him singing his songs in a long time.

The memories flooded into my being. The music took me on a run of my life from the time I was about twenty-two.

The first time I saw him was at the Anaheim Convention Center. His newest song was “Cracklin’ Rosie.” Linda Ronstadt opened for him.

There were the concerts at the wonderful outdoor Greek Theater in LA, of course, both the ones we bought tickets for and the one at which we decided to be “Tree People.” Those Tree People always seemed to be having so much fun! Well, we had fun, too, naturally, but I was so beaten up that I could hardly move the next day and the clothes we wore were trashed.
I can’t hear “Brother Love’s Traveling Show” without thinking of myself standing, totally lost, in the forest that surrounds the Greek, wondering which way was out, but watching Neil down there with that one arm raised in the air.

I needn’t have worried about finding my way back to the fence. A kindly security guard escorted me back over.

We had an eight track tape of his called “Velvet Gloves and Spit” on a trip to Oklahoma one summer when the kids were little. We played it so many times that the kids knew all of the songs by heart; even that one about going on a family cruise, “You with your grass, Mom and Dad with their booze. la la la”
I have never seen that particular album since, but it has some great songs on it; “Coldwater Morning,” and “Juliet.” There was also a song that had a verse that I could SO identify with:

“The rich has a maid so she takes all her kids to the zoo.
The poor has no maid so she packs up her kids and goes too.”

Yep. Well, not the zoo so much, but to the beach.

I remembered standing outside in the aftermath of an Oklahoma ice storm, the January my father died. I sang softly to myself;
“And each one there had one thing to share.
They had sweated beneath the same sun,
looked up in wonder at the same moon,
and wept when it was all done for being done too soon.”

My daddy was fifty-two.

I remember the summer of “Sweet Caroline.” My sister Barbie came out to stay with us in California and I worked with the hub in an auction house. I got to dress up and go out where grown-up people were three nights a week and she got to stay home with the babies. I wore my wiglet, I believe. I was pretty sure I was a hot mama. Perhaps that’s where I got that one “points” that the social security people keep telling me I have.

When I heard “Play Me,” I thought of sitting at my kitchen table with my grandmother Mimi one summer. I was making curtains for Rob’s room and she was doing her nails. She told me that this is how a proper southern lady spends an afternoon. She was gently scolding me for digging in the garden and cleaning the oven, and other improper behavior I had engaged in earlier.

Then she suddenly said, “ ‘Brang?’ Did he just say ‘songs she brang to me’?”
Mimi didn’t cotton to poetic license.

I taught my first truly culturally diverse class, full of first generation immigrants from thirteen different countries to sing, “Coming to America.” They sang it with such joy and animation!

Many years later, I taught another class to sing, “Childsong” from Tap Root Manuscript.

“Stones,”
“Until It’s Time for You to Go,”
“Both Sides Now”
“The Grass Won’t Pay No Mind”

All the MEs that I have been through all these years!

The me up there with the "Wiglet?"
She can be laid to rest.
What were we thinking!!!??
P.S. I made that white dress I had on.

Palo Cedro Gift Gallery

I'll just shut up and let you look at all the pretties.
The last one is my new motto!












Yeah, I put the clock in twice.

The Nicest Thing

The nicest thing any one ever did for me was done by my mama.
When my son was sixteen, I went to Hawaii for three weeks. Mom stayed at my house with said son. She bailed him out of jail one Saturday night, and when I called home to check on things, she said, Everything is going juuuussstt fiiiiine."

I didn't have to fret over my jailbird son until I got home.

Seems he was partying it up at Newport Beach.

I got to go to a class at the NB Police station on Thursday night of the first week of school to learn how to be a better parent.
All of us in the class got lectured up one side and down the other.
We had to watch gruesome videos, too.
For all of you who are not teachers, the tiredest you can ever be is about Thursday night of the first week of school. Somehow Friday night you get your weekend second wind.

By the way, the son has turned into a model citizen.

Go see Lori for info on how to join in the NICE post!