Move Along - There's Nothing to See Here

A conversation

2011-02-20T09:25:00.006-05:00

Me: I bought that t-shirt.

Meg: Which one?

Me: The one that says, "If you consider the set of all sets that have never been considered, does it disappear?".

Meg: You're such a dork.

(short pause)

Meg: You should go on "What Not to Wear". They pay $5000.

Me: Why should I go on "What Not to Wear"?

(pointed look)

Meg: I love you.

(end scene)

Well, hello.

2010-12-02T12:28:00.003-05:00

Been a long LOOOONNNG time. I don't really have anything to say, but I thought I'd report that every cloud does indeed have a silver lining. The silver lining to the water-pouring-through-our-roof-into-our-attic-yesterday cloud is... HOT ROOFER GUY.

Marching to the beat of her own drum... and harmonica and guitar and cymbals and...

2010-04-17T08:10:00.004-04:00

Recently, I was told that while some kids march to their own drummers, Beth has her own one-man band.

Photo credit: Found this photo here.

Thank you!

2010-01-08T13:34:00.002-05:00

After leaving my last post up for a week, I am taking it down, as I do not want it floating out there for any longer. I appreciate all of your comments and emails. Some of you gave me some interesting things to look into and I was touched by the thoughts and well-wishes. Despite my lack of posting, I do still have some readers, and they are AWESOME ones. Thank you!

Turn it off! Turn it off!

2009-11-20T16:34:00.004-05:00

There seem to be a lot of posts out there (I'd link, but don't feel like making the effort today) mentioning celebrities that you (a general you, not necessarily YOU specifically, unless you've written one or more of these posts) like, love, admire and/or would sleep with given the opportunity despite any existing relationship. I even wrote a post like that the last time I posted. So today I am doing something a little different. Today I will list those celebrities who simply, by the virtue of their existence, annoy the hell out of me. To the point that I would rather stick hot needles in my eyes than spend one second seeing these folks on TV or hearing them on the radio. The ones that make me close my eyes, cover my ears and yell, "Turn it off! Turn it off!" So, in no particular order, the celebrities (that I can think of at this moment) that annoy me:

Tyra Banks - HATE her for no particular reason. I don't know her. I just can't stand to look at her or hear her talk.

Celine Dion - I have seen or heard her where I didn't run screaming from the room, but only once, and I think I may have had too much to drink and been incapable of running or screaming coherently.

Mariah Carey - NEVER seen or heard her when I didn't run screaming from the room (in my head, I wouldn't want to make a spectacle of myself), though I am CONSIDERING making an exception to see that movie Precious.

Dr. Phil - Self-righteous pompous jackass who makes an awesome living spouting advice that amounts to nothing more than common sense.

Kate Gosselin - The hair. I just can't get past the hair. Also, she makes up more words that don't actually exist than our old pal George W.

There are more, but I can't think of them right now because Amy is now screaming that I MUST attend to the fact that SHE IS FINISHED WITH HER POPCORN. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do about that, but I should go find out. In the meantime, what celebrities make you want to vomit and/or scratch your eyes out?

My imaginary boyfriend

2009-11-05T14:24:00.009-05:00

One of these days I'll get around to posting Halloween pics of my kids, but that takes some effort... you know, moving the little card from the camera to the computer and uploading the pictures. Instead, inspired by a thought I have every single time I watch Destination Truth (and I not only watch it, I DVR it to watch at my convenience because I don't want to miss any), I decided to pause the show (and it's a really good Yeti one) to see just how old Josh Gates is so that I could determine if it would be in the realm of possibility for me to marry him should something happen to my husband... Dum Dum Duuuuhhhhh.

He is 32. A LITTLE young for me, but maybe not. I'm 38, so it's within the realm of possibility, right? Anyway, he cracks me up. And he ain't too bad to look at, either. It really surprises me that with all the "these are my crushes" posts out there, I've never seen Josh on anyone's list. Well, he's at the top of mine (along with Johnny Depp, especially as Jack Sparrow - don't judge, I'd make him brush his teeth first).

I even like him in his librarian glasses. If I can't marry him, I'd settle for joining his expeditions. Really, don't you think that what they're missing is a middle-aged mother of four? I do have my SCUBA certification, though, and more importantly, I'd be willing to do the things they do. Well, except for the whole Chernobyl thing... I would've called in sick for that one.

Hubba hubba, baby.

Photo credits: Found these on the Internet. I'm probably violating someone's copyright. If it's yours, tell me and I'll credit you.

I am a GENIUS or a really really bad mom

2009-10-30T11:29:00.004-04:00

As I sit here typing this, little Amy is vacuuming the playroom. With her own vacuum. That we gave her for her birthday. Yes, my toddler is doing the housework while I am... well... not.

"How did this strange and wonderful (and possibly just plain WRONG) turn of events come about?" you may (or may not) be asking yourself. Well, Amy has always loved vacuuming. Before she got her own, she would either INSIST on holding the handle while I vacuumed (which slowed the job considerably, since normal speed would have resulted in baby whiplash and/or dislocated shoulder) or using the dustbuster. Since our dustbuster is pretty heavy for her and I really like being able to vacuum at a speed faster than molasses, I decided that I would get her a toy vacuum for her birthday. Then I saw the prices for toy vacuums. They aren't exactly cheap. The cheapest I found was $19.99, but it was not even remotely realistic and didn't even have real vacuuming sounds. Those run more like $35-$50. So then I thought I would check real ones, and I found some pretty inexpensive ones. I ended up getting her a little Eureka upright for $19.99. It even has an extendable handle, so we just don't extend it to make it the perfect size for a toddler. She LOVES it. It doesn't do the greatest job, but it certainly doesn't hurt.

Exploitation or just plain genius? What do you think?

This belongs in Amy's baby book, but I'm too lazy to go get it out

2009-10-27T11:10:00.012-04:00

For any of you who hate those parents who seem to brag on their kids, stop reading now. While I am actually not bragging here (just relating facts), it is most definitely going to sound like it. This is, however, my blog, and if I choose to record information here because I am too lazy to go find the baby book to record it there, and it is information that may be of interest in the future that I don't want to forget (because I forget EVERYTHING), and by doing so I sound like Braggy McBraggerson, then so be it. Also, there are probably way too many commas in that last sentence.

Anyway, now that I've gotten all the defensiveness off my chest and hopefully run off anyone who will accuse me of bragging, let me start bragging:

Dudes, my kid potty-trained herself AND SHE CAN READ. Now this would mean nothing (or it could be a little on the sad side) if I were speaking of my 15-year-old or even my 8- or 6-year-old. But guys, this is my just-turned-3-last-week-year-old. Also, the potty-training thing is not bragging at all, since it's not like she's even at an early age for it or anything, the good part about the potty-training is that it took absolutely no effort on my part. Good things that happen are good; good things that happen with no effort on my part are FANTASTIC. About two weeks before her birthday she simultaneously decided that she would now go on the potty (and has not had a single accident since that decision was made) and started sounding out simple words. Now she can read books as long as they consist exclusively of words with no more than four letters or so, though there are a few bigger words she either knows or can sound out. My other three kids were reading around age 3 1/2, but this one is blowing my mind starting it pre-three.

End bragging. Begin contemplating the difficulty in raising this child that I know is coming, since I have been ~~cursed~~ blessed with raising three other gifted kids as well. Amy will make number four, and I am already EXHAUSTED.

Given a random situation, do the possible tragedies or the possible happy endings go through YOUR mind?

2009-10-24T19:08:00.000-04:00

My mom was in town this past week. She is looking to move from SC to either CT (family there and home that she's always loved on the market that it turns out was built by her grandfather), PA (close to us) or FL (grew up there, friends, familiar with area). To that end, I was taking her around doing drive-bys of some properties so she could decide whether she liked them enough to ask a realtor to show her inside them.

I'm going to tell you a little story about what happened within a very short time span Tuesday afternoon and let you in on the scary way my mind works. Because do I think of all the possible good endings to a situation? Nooooooo. I have a talent for very quickly conjering up all possible tragic scenarios.

We drove past a farm with a roadside store that is a popular field trip destination in our area, particularly in the fall, when there are hayrides and pony rides and pumpkin picking and corn mazes. As we sped past, I noticed A LOT of people milling about the pony ride area and the entrance to the corn maze and then, after passing by where all those people were, just where the corn maze wall blocked my view of them and would block the views of all those people to the road, I saw something at the side of the road. I should mention that the road is, while not a major highway, a very busy two-lane rural highway where cars travel at pretty high speeds (I think the speed limit at the location of the farm is 45 mph, but cars regularly travel as high as 55-60 through there.).

My mom was talking about some of the properties we had seen and I was doing that half-listening thing while my brain was trying to process the scene, which it knew was somehow NOT RIGHT, though it took a few seconds before it registered exactly WHY the scene was not right. And the reason why the scene was not right is that the object on the side of the busy high-speed road was a little boy. A very little boy. A boy that looked to be somewhere between three and four. I interrupted my mom, "That's a kid." "What?" she asked. She hadn't seen him. I pulled over to the side of the road and got out of the car. "Be careful," my mom said.

So the situation was this: I was near my car anxiously waiting for a break in traffic so I could cross to the other side of the street to get to the boy. I was also about 40 to 50 yards up the street from him, due to the length of time it took me to register that a little kid was standing by a busy road with no adult in sight and pull over. [Possible tragedy #1 - The kid steps into traffic and gets hit before I can get to him. Obvious - anyone would come up with that one.] By the time I managed to get across the street and start sprinting toward him, another woman had spotted him and had stopped her car (and the traffic behind her) and was yelling out her window to him, "Don't move! Stay right there!" Unfortunately, she was in the same lane of traffic I had been in, which meant there was still the opposite direction lane between her and the kid. [Possible tragedy #2 (keep in mind I'm running a 50-yard dash all out and I'm STILL creating tragedies in my head) - The kid, who seems to be standing there in a daze, would either have his daze broken and step out into the street OR wouldn't understand what the woman was yelling and try to walk across the lane of traffic to her, either one resulting in him getting hit because despite a crazy woman sprinting down the shoulder of the road and traffic in the opposite direction completely stopped, cars traveling in the lane between the boy and stopped traffic were still flying by.] So in my head I was chanting while trying my hand at psychic communication, "don't move, don't move, don't move,..."

As I was running, I noticed that the woman in the stopped car had begun to nose her car into the oncoming lane of traffic. I immediately split my psychic powers between the boy and the woman, because the same chant applied to her. [Possible tragedy #3 - A car traveling in the lane between the woman's car and the boy swerves to avoid the woman's car and hits the boy.] After what seemed like the longest 50-yard dash in history, I got to the kid and placed my hand on his shoulder just as another car whizzed by. I turned him away from the road and started walking toward the corn maze while telling the woman I would take him and find where he was supposed to be. She drove off. [Possible tragedy #4 - The person who did the things I did wasn't me, but instead was a pedophile or some other person with less than honorable intentions.]

So in the time it took me to get out of my car and run 50 yards, I managed to come up with 4 possible tragic ends to the situation. Thank goodness it ended up like this:

The little boy looked up at me with tears dried on his face and one single wet one left on his cheek and asked, "What's your name?"

Me: "Mrs. Picklebottom. What's YOUR name?"

Boy: James.

Me: James, are you here with your school or with your mommy?

James: Mommy says school is on Monday and Wednesday."

Me (racking my brain to try to remember what freaking day it is, because I'm still pretty shook up, and coming up empty): OK, so did you come here on a field trip or did your mommy bring you?

James: Mommy.

Me: Let's go find her.

James (apparently realizing he has no idea who I am, starts pulling his hand out of mine): OK.

We started doing this delicate dance of him trying to not hold my hand, while I tried to hold his hand, because no way was I going to lose this kid before we found his mom. We found her and his baby sister (about 18 months old) waiting at the exit of the corn maze. She didn't know he had gotten out of the maze before her and was waiting for him. I told her that I had found him on the side of the road, but I don't think it quite registered. I think she still probably thinks that I found him wandering around with all the people near the parking lot or something. I was too flustered to clearly explain the situation and I think she was a little confused about what I was saying. I did ask how old James was; he had just turned four.

Neopolitan hair

2009-10-14T16:52:00.004-04:00

My oldest daughter is looking for opinions. She wants to dye her hair "neopolitan." In my house, hair is not a battle I choose in the whole "choose your battles" way of dealing with kids. I choose piercings and tattoos. They get hair and clothes (to a point). Anyway, she has come up with two ways to do this and wants to know what others think, so she asked me to post it here and ask your opinions:

I myself like the second option better. Mainly, I'm just impressed that she can render herself so well in a simple drawing with such little detail. Anyone who knows her and saw that would know exactly who it is.

Thinking outside the box

2009-09-30T07:21:00.006-04:00

Part of Beth's homework yesterday was a math sheet. The kids are currently learning about temperatures and measuring them, and the first question on the sheet was this:

1. Look for thermometers around your home.

I found ______ thermometers in my home.

The expected answer would be a number, right? After the kids were in bed last night and I was packing up bags for this morning, I looked over Beth's homework before I stuck it in her folder (yes, I know that checking homework AFTER the kids have gone to bed could cause logistical problems if there is something incorrect or incomplete, but really I only check for completeness, not correctness, since I think you learn something better if you've screwed it up the first time, and I have been known to drag them out of bed at night or extra early in the morning to complete something, so they've learned to do it all in the interest of sleep). Look at the question above again. Now look at her answer:

1. Look for thermometers around your home.

I found MEAT thermometers in my home.

And THAT is why they should have an actual child test these workbooks before they are released to the public. That question should OBVIOUSLY say:

1. Look for AND COUNT the thermometers around your home.

How many thermometers did you find in your home? ________

I did not have Beth change her answer to a number. I did explain that the type of answer expected here was a number, though it wasn't made clear by the question and therefore her answer was not incorrect. I put a sticky note on the sheet for the teacher and I think Beth's answer is WAY better than a number.

Flash Forward

2009-09-25T10:18:00.001-04:00

Did any of you watch Flash Forward last night? I think I might really like it. If you missed it and want to check it out because I said it looks interesting (which is as good a reason as any, maybe a better reason than most), it's being rebroadcast tonight. I don't remember what time, but it's on ABC. You can thank me later for turning your new fall TV frown upside down.

Drinking buddies

2009-09-22T09:47:00.002-04:00

Never underestimate the value of drinking buddies. They're the ones that say things like, "Maybe you should eat something with that."

Am I missing something?

2009-09-15T17:19:00.006-04:00

Today I got a Facebook friend request from someone... let's call her CB (those are her initials). I didn't recognize the name, but my memory ain't what she used to be, so I clicked over to see if I recognized anything about her: picture, info, whatever. I didn't, but still thinking that my memory could be at fault here (this has happened before and I contacted the person and she explained to me who she was and I realized that she OBVIOUSLY knew me since she knew things about me from middle school, but I still to this day have NO MEMORY WHATSOEVER of her, though I accepted her request anyway because to not do so at that point would have been just mean, plus I lied and replied, "Oh yeah, NOW I remember," to her message, even though I clearly did not, and WHY are those the people who update their statuses CONSTANTLY and post EVERY result of EVERY quiz or game and play EVERY quiz or game?), I decided to send her a message and the following exchange of messages occurred:

Me: Hello. I've received a friend request from you. Can you please tell me how I know you? Thanks.

CB: i just sent out a friend request [**uh, YEAH, hence my question**]

Me: Yes, I know. But who are you? How do I know you?

CB: we have never met

Sooooooooooo....... just what the hell am I missing here? I can't think of a response to this message that doesn't seem just rude, so I probably won't respond at all and will ignore the friend request, but I have to admit to a little curiosity about WHY.

I suggest that Facebook add another request called Random Stranger Request. Then I can send you (well, not YOU, because we obviously KNOW each other) a Random Stranger Request for what purpose I don't know, I can only supply so much of a genius idea, you know. Then if you ignore the Random Stranger Request, that means you are NOT a random stranger, so Facebook would AUTOMATICALLY add us to one another's Friends list. If you were to ACCEPT the Random Stranger Request, however, then anytime you or I tried to access one another's profile, we would get a flashing red warning:

STRANGER DANGER! STRANGER DANGER!

Little miss genius

2009-09-07T06:49:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, I had four cookies left in a bakery box. My three youngest kids were eating lunch and the 2-year-old, Amy, finished first. So I opened the box and told her to just take one so that Jo and Beth could each have one when they were done. She took out her cookie and said, "There will be one left. Who will eat it?"

Holy Budweiser, Batman!

2009-08-25T15:28:00.005-04:00

It's only two days since my last post which means, if you note the length of time between posts in the recent past, pigs are flying over a glacier in hell. No doubt the glacier will melt and the pigs will crash and burn immediately upon my hitting the "Publish Post" button, filling hell with the delicious aroma of BACON, thus rendering hell much less hell-like, possibly even heaven-like. Well, except for the pigs, who would still consider it quite hell-like. Anyway, I had to post this church sign that I passed the other day when I went to pick up my daughter from a friend's house.

The use of a beer commercial as the basis for this little gem just cracked me up.

Also, show of hands: Who thinks my title for this post is stupid and who finds it to be an inspired bit of brilliance? Because really, I can't decide.

How do you think they do those prison tats?

2009-08-23T07:10:00.009-04:00

Finally I can remember (most of) one of my bizarre dreams. Before I get to that, though, I want to just say, "Hi y'all! How've ya been?" I've been up to A LOT, including a long road trip with four kids, a 20th high school reunion, and various and sundry other things. I'll probably even get around to posting about some of it after the kids start back to school (Sept. 9th). In the meantime, enjoy the blessed silence from my little corner of the blogging world (except for today's post, of course).

Anyway, I had to post this morning because when I woke up, I actually could remember my dream, and my first thought was, "I think this comes close to one of Shauna's." Though frankly, some of her real life sightings would rival some of my weird dreams.

I was awakened from my dream by a truck-in-reverse beeping noise, though at first, in my half-asleep haze, I thought it was my oldest daughter's alarm clock. Since she was spending the night at a friend's house, I went to her room to check. By the time I looked out my bedroom window to find the its source, the noise had stopped and an ambulance was pulling away from a neighbor's house across the street. I have a somewhat amusing story about that neighbor, but it seems inappropriate to relay it here, juxtaposed as it would be with the whole ambulance thing. I'll try to remember to tell you that story later.

So, my dream. Yes I am FINALLY getting to it. I was sitting in a cafe-type restaurant with a friend of mine that I only see when I go to SC. We walked up to the counter to pay, and standing there was Jerry Bruckheimer and his wife.

I don't know how I knew it was Jerry Bruckheimer and his wife, since I wouldn't know them if I ran into the on the street and in my dream he looked like Larry David.

Anyway, I knew it was him, so I paid him for our lunch and I asked him for his autograph. For some reason, I had with me a pen and a pad of 8 1/2" x 11" ruled paper, and I started flipping through the pad to find a blank sheet. My oldest daughter is somewhat of an artist and she had drawn on EVERY. SINGLE. SHEET. Finally I found a sheet she had missed and turned to it. [At this point, I should note that I was wearing a sleeveless, spaghetti-strap type top (which I never wear), which will become important here in a moment.] I turned the pad to face Jerry (we had been talking and joking, so we were on a first name basis), and handed him the pen. He took the pen, then reached out and scrawled his signature across my chest with a big flourish while saying, "We are Bruckheimers! What do I want with paper?" To which I responded as I looked down at my chest, "Yes, but I can't KEEP this one." So he autographed my paper as well, then said his farewells and walked into the back room. At that point I bent over in pain, saying, "Owwwwwwww!" His wife, who had been standing there observing the entire exchange asked what was wrong.

Me: This is a ball-point pen, not a felt-tip.

Her: Oh, ouch.

Me: Yeah. Do you think any of this will be tattooed on me?

Her: What do you mean?

Me: Well, it broke some skin, like a scratch in the shape of his name, and the ink...

Her: Oh, I see...

My friend: Yeah, definitely could happen. How do you think they do those prison tats?

And cue the wake-up.

If you like pina coladas...

2009-06-10T19:02:00.003-04:00

I knew it had been a while since my last post, and it had been another while since my post before that, and well, I'm busy and really really lousy at time management. I wouldn't even have a post today except for Facebook. So those of you who are my FB friends may have already seen this, but it's all I've got.

I heard the song "Escape" yesterday. You know, the one also known as "The Pina Colada Song." I am too lazy to go find an n with the little tilde thing on top. Anyway, it made me wonder, and I posted this as my status:

In "The Pina Colada Song," do you think after they got over their amusement at the coincidence, they got pissed?

This generated the most comments on a status that I think I've ever gotten. Anyway, an old friend of mine has an unusual amount of ire toward this song and the man and woman in it. He got quite worked up, so I decided to write a few follow-up verses to the song to try to ease his mind. Here they are:

We left the bar to head home then; we had driven two cars.
I got to thinking about it, driving under the stars.
Hold on just a second; turns out I have half-a-brain.
My lady tried to cheat; my calm was hard to maintain.

'Cause she likes Pina Coladas, and placing personal ads.
She was trying to escape me, feels like a kick in the 'nads.*
She'd rather make love with someone else; in the dunes of the cape.
Now I'll make plans for her and then plan my escape.

I confronted her later about the personal ad.
She said since I answered, that I was just as bad.
And while that may be true, 'twas she who tried to stray first.
So I poisoned her champagne, then I sang her this verse:

"Don't care for Pina Coladas; you see, I much prefer scotch.
Making love in the cape dunes just gets sand in my crotch.
I might get more into health food; and try to extend my life.
So that after I kill you, there's time to find a new wife."

Turns out she was mad also, and she had poisoned my scotch.
She said, "Your time's running out now," and she looked at her watch.
So we both lay there dying; there was not much to say.
Health food would not help us; we wouldn't see the next day.

"So if you like Pina Coladas, I suggest telling your mate.
Go make love in the sand dunes, before it's too late.
Eat some cake and drink champagne and don't be an ass
So your loved one won't some day poison the drink in your glass."

*That one was a stretch, I couldn't find many usable rhymes with "ads"

Buncha books - issue 8

2009-05-26T13:06:00.015-04:00

It's time once again for a Buncha Books post. If you need a refresher on the ratings system, you can find it here. Once again, I must reiterate my disclaimer: It takes me a while to get around to reviewing the books I read, so don't hold me accountable for 100% accuracy when describing plots, characters and/or settings. Or even 75% accuracy for that matter. Hey, I do my best. I currently have more than 20 books waiting in the wings to be reviewed, so I'll get to as many as I can now and then try to do one or more Buncha Books posts sooner than later.

First up today is One Mississippi by Mark Childress. It's about a kid, Daniel Musgrove, from Indiana who moves to Mississippi just before his junior year of high school. He's an outsider and hates it. Then he meets another outsider, Tim Cousins, and things start to turn around for Daniel. There is a lot going on in this novel. There's Daniel's family, which is dysfunctional as well as unusually unlucky. There's Daniel's relationships with Tim and Arnita that are tainted by racism and dishonesty about an accident in which Daniel and Tim are involved and Arnita is a victim. There is bullying and homosexuality and the too often tragic effects of anti-gay sentiment. Overall, I found this novel well-written and compelling and would recommend. Four picklebottoms.

Next we have Hit Parade by Lawrence Block. I really enjoyed this book. The hero is John Keller and he's a hit man. He's not, however, a cold-hearted bastard, as one would expect of one's garden-variety hit man... Well OK, maybe he is, but he's a hit man with a code of honor. He also collects stamps. Avidly. When he's hired to do a job that would allow him to attend a stamp-collecting convention, he thinks it's perfect. Then he accidentally gets to know his target. This is the third novel in the series featuring John Keller. I enjoyed it enough that I'll probably, when my TBR pile is down to only ONE 3-foot high pile instead of SIX 3-foot high piles, read the tow preceding novels in the series and then the novels that follow. Four picklebottoms.

The Expected One by Kathleen McGowan is based on what is an interesting, though quickly becoming overused, premise. That being that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had children. So when I picked up this book, I thought it would just be another run-of-the-mill conspiracy novel. (I am not, by the way, knocking conspiracy novels, I ENJOY conspiracy novels; if I didn't, I wouldn't have bothered to pick up this novel off the bargain table.) It was not. It was quite different, in fact. The story revolves around Maureen Pascal, a journalist whose specialty is women in history. She begins having visions of Mary Magdalene's life through Mary Magdalene's eyes. She is then contacted by a man named Sinclair and asked to travel to France to meet with him, but he is mysterious about his reasons other than that they have to do with her visions. She divulges all to her trusted and beloved cousin, Father Peter Healy, a priest with whom she grew up, and he insists on accompanying her. Then follows an interesting story about followers and descendants of John the Baptist and followers and descendants of Jesus. The novel also contains excerpts from The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which gives her viewpoint on some of the well-known Biblical stories. It turned out to be a rather interesting read. As an added bonus to its story, the author claims in an afterward that she had to write the book as fiction, but in fact she herself has had similar visions and that the excepts of Mary Magdalene's gospel are based on actual previously undisclosed texts. So overall, I think it was a new twist on an old idea and I would recommend it, ESPECIALLY to those who like a good conspiracy. Four picklebottoms.

lost boy lost girl by Peter Straub is about a man, novelist Timothy Underhill, whose sister-in-law commits suicide for no apparent reason. A week later, her son disappears without a trace. After his sister-in-laws funeral, Tim tries to figure out what happened to his nephew, Mark Underhill. During this time, a pedophile who murders his victims is active in the town. Tim also discovers that Mark had an obsession with an old abandoned house where he thought the killer might be hiding. Was or is the killer in the house? What secrets does the house hold? Is Mark a victim of the killer? This novel, for me, was just OK. I did find it fairly interesting as I went along, but in the end it left me a little flat. I think I didn't really ever connect to the characters and the ending wasn't really explained to my satisfaction. There were supernatural elements, which is fine, but not really my thing unless it's Dean Koontz and his quantum-physics type supernatural stuff. Anyway, overall it was an OK read, though it wouldn't make me seek out any more of Straub's work. Three picklebottoms.

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher is a young adult novel about a boy, Clay, who receives a box of cassette tapes, and a girl, Hannah, who recorded them just before committing suicide. The tapes are being passed among various people who she claims had a role in her decision to kill herself. Clay can't imagine what he did and doesn't want to listen to the tapes, but he does. I enjoyed this novel. It is dually narrated by both Clay and Hannah (via her tapes). I couldn't put it down, because I too wanted to know what role Clay had played, since he was written as a thoughtful, considerate, just plain NICE guy, who had had a crush on the dead girl. My only disappointment in the novel I can't really mention without spoiling what one finds out about the role Clay plays in the girl's death, but I will say that I think I would have found it more interesting if Clay's narrative had been that of one of the other kids from the tapes. Anyway, at the end of the novel, Clay's view of others and how or if to interact with them is changed. Great young adult fiction. Four picklebottoms.

Lastly for this issue, because if I don't have a lastly, the issue will never end, and I've been not finishing this thing for WEEKS now, Happiness Sold Separately by Lolly Winston. It's been so long since I read this that I don't remember much about it, so I've just skimmed over the dust jacket blurb to jog my memory. OK, it's about Elinor and Ted, a loving married couple who did everything just right and in the right order. Now that they're settled and established, they are ready to start a family, but discover that Elinor's fertility is nonexistent, probably because of her age. She gets depressed, her husband finds himself involved with his personal trainer who has a young son and things deteriorate. Elinor discovers the affair, Ted tries to do the right thing, the girlfriend's kid is a complication. Can the marriage be saved? Somewhere in there is a stalker, though I don't remember if he's stalking Elinor or the girlfriend, and there's a big brouhaha at the mall that results in injury. Overall it was a pretty good read, though I think I liked Lolly Lolly Lolly's other novel that I've read, Good Grief, a little better. Can't say that for sure, though, since it's been so long since I've read either. I'm going to say three and a half picklebottoms.

And that is all folks. Except that I hope I'm not the only one that now has the "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your adverbs here" song stuck in her head. Gotta love that Schoolhouse Rock for earworms.

MacGyver lives!

2009-05-07T14:13:00.004-04:00

He is now a chubby middle-aged redheaded woman and blogs under the pseudonym Fiona Picklebottom. A couple of years ago, I bought a two-screen DVD player from Best Buy. It was not. My best buy, that is. It lasted about 4 hours before Beth snapped off the screen of the player side (there's a player side that takes the DVD and a monitor side). When I got to our destination, I found a Best Buy and returned it for a replacement. By not allowing Beth to touch the replacement, it lasted about a year before she forgot the 'no touching' thing and broke it again. In her defense, the player had a VERY BAD DESIGN in that the screen opened downward in a clamshell-like manner in order to insert the DVD. In the DVD player's defense, apparently that is a common industry STUPID design. These things are for kids, industry people. Adults are not (or shouldn't be) driving around watching movies. Use a little common sense when designing your products.

Anyway, we are taking another long car trip this summer (about 3 weeks), and since it's just going to be me and FOUR kids (Mr. Picklebottom can't take that much consecutive time off, so he's flying to meet us at one of our destinations for a few days), my sanity felt the need to do something about the DVD player situation. The screens for car DVD players are pretty small, so to avoid the kids possibly TOUCHING one another in order to all see, because the resulting whining for miles in a car would be hell on earth, the ideal situation is one screen per kid. I set out to accomplish this goal, keeping in mind that I had one extra screen from the broken set already.

I couldn't find where a 3 or 4 screen car DVD player existed at all, let alone for a reasonable price, so I had to purchase another 2 screen. This time, with prices having come down, I was able to purchase a better-quality player. I also purchased a cheap portable laptop-style DVD player for my oldest, figuring as a teenager she probably wouldn't appreciate having to watch the little kids' movies the whole time, so she could watch her own.

After getting home and unboxing everything, I discovered that the connections on the new player and screen were different from the ones on the old leftover screen. I looked online to see if I could find any adapter and splitter cables that would do what I wanted, but didn't have any luck since I didn't know exactly what the names of the cables were. So I hit the local Radio Shack (how does this place stay in business, no one I know will ever ADMIT to going there, like it's embarrassing or something), so I could peruse the cables and adapters and see if I could find anything that would work. Ultimately, because the salesman wouldn't just let me look, he HAD to help, I drew a picture for him, explaining what I was trying to do, and we found the cables. Actually, it took me a little while to convince him that yes, this would work, because he was scratching his head and trying to convince me otherwise. Then as I was leaving, he actually said, "I'm impressed that you knew how to explain all that." I answered (in my HEAD of course, I NEVER say these things out loud), "Why? Because I'm a GIRL?"

I put it all together, and IT WORKS!!! Even though I'm a girl!

Conversation with my sister-in-law

2009-04-30T16:29:00.003-04:00

I was speaking to the only one of my sisters-in-law to whom I've explained the entire leaving my old blog situation. Some of you know what I am talking about, some don't. To those who don't, I apologize. Suffice it to say that there are some in-laws who do not like me. At all. In fact, my family has been removed from their family's Christmas card list. That's as bad as it gets, right? ;)

Anyway, a wedding is coming up this summer, and it could possibly be the first time I'll see the other parties involved in the situation since the situation occurred (assuming I don't see them at one possible time prior). I recently did a small favor for my sister-in-law and was talking on the phone with her:

Me: So now you owe me.

SIL: Yeah? What do you want?

Me: I want any necessary rescuing or protection at the wedding. Don't let anyone punch me in the nose.

SIL: Oh I won't let anyone punch you in the nose.

Me: You can be my bodyguard. {pause} I can call you Al. No, wait. You can call me Al. I'll call you Betty.

SIL (laughing): Bye.

Me: See ya, Betty.

December digest

2009-04-20T14:17:00.024-04:00

Mid-April. Spring is in the air, the flowers are blooming, the weather is warming. What better time to cover the last full month during which I was incommunicado? The first half of December in the Picklebottom household is pretty mundane, but soon enough it is time to prepare for Beth's birthday. This year (well, okay, LAST year), Beth was turning six, so she was allowed to have a party. (With four kids, we limit parties to ages 1, 6, 10 and MAYBE 16 and 18, but we're not there yet, so who knows. Other years, the birthday child gets to select a friend or two for a fun activity like a zoo trip or a movie and ice cream.) She chose to have her party at one of those paint-your-own-pottery places doing mosaic projects.

This was her cake:

At the party:

Presents later, at home:

Treats that I sent to school for her class:

Pretty soon after Beth's birthday, which falls on the 20th, comes Christmas. I don't feel like typing much, since I'm multi-tasking by watching a movie while I write this (hey, I'm a busy lady), so suffice it to say it was a great Christmas and now let me regale you with pictures.

Jo decorating the tree:

The tree beneath which are the PRESENTS:

Christmas morning waiting for Daddy to wake up:

Beth's new hat (She had tattooed her face with tattoos she received for her birthday. We couldn't get them OFF.):

Mmmmmmm... marshmallow Santa:

Yeah, baby!!! Rock Band 2!!!:

Silly shots of Beth and Amy:

Call me the Crunch Master

2009-04-15T10:43:00.008-04:00

Oh, you thought I meant THIS:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Photo credits: Nestle Crunch bar came from here. Cap'n Crunch was here. Ab crunch was here.

Easter chicks from hell

2009-04-09T16:12:00.026-04:00

Yesterday, I went to the grocery store to pick up some coconut to make these. As I walked into the baking supplies aisle, I glanced to my right and saw these:

Wait. Take a closer look...

Little devil chicks. I just HAD to buy them. I'm pretty sure those devil horns are actually supposed to be wings, but COME ON... they SO do not look like wings. They look like devil horns. OR... maybe they actually ARE devil horns, and these particular chicks were made to add a whimsical touch to a platter of deviled eggs. It's possible. Anyway, I'm thinking of using them like some of you use your Mr. Pickleses^** (would that be the correct plural of Mr. Pickles?). I don't, however, wish to take them all along with me each time I go somewhere that I want to take a devil chick. So I will have to give them each a unique name:

Satan

Lucifer

Beelzebub

His Heinous Highness

Duchess of Devilishness

and

Sultan of Sin

Now I just have to decide which to take where, when. They're all just so devilishly adorable.

** After searching Swistle's site for Mr. Pickles for the link in this post, it appears that Mr. Pickles and the devil chicks are closely related. For some reason I had assumed Mr. Pickles was a sturdier variety of craft-chick. So perhaps the devil chicks' names should be Satan Pickles, Lucifer Pickles, Beelzebub Pickles, His Heinous Highness Pickles, Duchess of Devilishness Pickles and Sultan of Sin Pickles. Swistle, if you read this post, does Mr. Pickles have wings or devil horns?

Tuesday tidbits

2009-04-07T08:50:00.032-04:00

First I have to say that I love my title to this post, because I find alliteration absolutely appealing and awesome although asinine^*. Also, I like the word TIDBITS. I'm not sure why, since it sounds like cat food. Anyway, it just popped into my head, which means that I am probably inadvertently stealing it from someone else. So to that person, I apologize. Don't sue me, as you would be sorely disappointed in your winnings in such a lawsuit.
My kids painted Easter eggs this past weekend. What, you want pictures? All right *grumble,grumble*, I'll go get the camera and upload them if that'll make you happy. Just wait here a minute... {elevator music version of something by Bon Jovi} OK. Here we go. Sorry that took so long; Meg had (once again) stolen my USB SD card reader thingy and I had to go track it down. OK, TECHNICALLY it's not mine, it's my husband's, but come on people, you KNOW that makes it MINE. Voila (yes I'm too lazy to go copy and paste the accented letter):

Meg is missing from the photos because she elected to abstain from the activity. She was playing the teenage martyr because she was pissed that I hadn't yet made strawberries magically appear in the fridge. Apparently when she wants strawberries to make a smoothie, she means the very next time you leave the house, who cares if it's just to get the mail from the mailbox, SURELY there's a damn grocery store close enough by to take a little detour. For any of you who have little ones, prepare yourselves for teenage martyrdom, it is a COMMON occurrence.
Today is grandparent's day at Beth's kindergarten, which means that my MIL's sister (who pinch hits for my MIL in these situations, since she is 20 minutes away and my MIL is 2 hours away) is coming over. I should be cleaning, but I am typing this instead. It's because of my procrastination illness. I can't help it.
Beth has a boyfriend. She kissed him on the bus. Well, on the lips while they were on the bus. I had to tell her that kissing is not appropriate school-type behavior. She is SIX. I'm going next week to pick out my grave plot, since I'm sure I will be needing it in 7-10 years.
Back on this post, I said I was going to be giving away a used, dust-jacketless book that I picked up for $1 at a library sale. SURPRISINGLY (ha!), there didn't seem to be much interest in said giveaway item. With only FOUR comments on that post, the odds of winning are TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT!!! Lucky(?) entrants! Random.org awards the book to... Jess! I'm sorry Jess, but you commented and thus will be cursed with THE BOOK THAT NO ONE WANTED. Luckily, I already have your address (assuming I can find it in my email again), so you can't get out of it by not providing your address. *evil cackle*
And FINALLY... I recently came across this guy. You should check him out. Interesting guy, interesting family, the most ADORABLE little boy named Diego, for whom Amy would fall head over heels because COME ON... DIEGO? Her favorite ~~babysitters~~ characters in the world are Dora and Diego. She would be smitten. The PROBLEM is this: I left a comment on his blog and he came over here and checked me out. He left a comment on one of my posts that said he could tell I'm a really funny one. GAH! Now I'm afraid I'm going to disappoint him. (Though I guess I can only do that if he comes back.) Those of you who read here know I can only pull the funny out ON OCCASION, and even then it's not always that good. Or funny. Or entertaining AT ALL. WHY do you guys even read this? Are you GLUTTONS FOR PUNISHMENT? Gluttony is a sin, you know, one of the seven deadlies, last I checked (which OK, isn't very often). Wait, I seem to be getting off track here... what was I talking about... oh yes, Jason and his possibly, PROBABLY, unrealistic expectations of me. Jason. Dude. Please don't be disappointed. I want you to like me, I really do. Because from the pictures on your blog, you have a GORGEOUS home, one that would be SO MUCH NICER than a hotel should I ever find myself in California. You know? Just sayin'.

*Technically not alliteration, since APPARENTLY alliteration is "the repetition of usually initial CONSONANT sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables". *I* say it IS alliteration, because I don't believe in discrimination of any sort, even vowel discrimination.

Haircuts

2009-04-01T13:19:00.011-04:00

The BEFORE shot of Jo and Beth:

Amy's BEFORE:

AFTER:

Amy had NEVER had a haircut. This was her first. She wouldn't hold still for an after shot, and her hair doesn't look all that different. She had about 3 1/2 inches cut off the length (it was LONG) and had it angled around her face a bit.

Jo wanted bangs again (much to my dismay, since I just keep thinking that will mean another year of hair hell when she decides she wants to let them grow again) and a shoulder-length bob.

And the big, huge, MASSIVE change - Beth wanted a pixie cut.

Poor, poor Sandrie Annabelle

2009-03-30T11:54:00.008-04:00

I received this spam and it was just too entertaining to simply delete:

Beloved,

I am drenched with tears while writing this short message to you. It was heartbreaking news to me few previous days when my doctor notified me on complications on my heath condition which he officially made known to me. He further stressed that the complication I had in my human mechanism as a result of a secondary liver cancer which have destroyed all the organs in my body system. According to him, his said that this complication will lead to my imminent death since no medication can alleviate the high system of deformation I am encountering at this point of time in my system.

In the view of the above, I’m quest to find a trustworthy and upright individual whom I will entrust a reason sum for my investment in charity organization. I was brought up from an orphanage home where l got married to my late husband for twenty years without a 2kids, who died in a fatal motor accident recently. Before his death we were true Christians. We were trying to work on a project for the less privilege before this current situation. I will make available to you all information and officially authorized document which will endorse your claim as the beneficiary to the fund in question in the finance house where the fund is lodged. I have map out the modality on how the fund will be used to build a very big charitable or orphanage home of your in your locality of your choice provided you can manage this project to yield income.

Upon your acceptance to this investment proposal kindly get back to me urgently
In God we trust
Sandrie Annabelle

My response:

Dear Sandrie Annabelle,

I am truly saddened to hear of the complication in your human mechanism that is leading to your imminent death. I am unfamiliar with exactly what component of the body a human mechanism is, but I must assume that it is a very important mechanism. Perhaps you should be careful of the tear-drenching, as that could easily cause a short-circuit in one of your other mechanisms. It is also a shame that you are encountering a high system of deformation in your system. I imagine that must be scary to watch.

I am sorry for the loss of your husband and that the two of you spent 20 years without a 2kids, whatever that may be. You say that before your husband's fatal accident, you were true Christians and were working on a charitable project. That is quite admirable. I am somewhat saddened by the fact that you know of no one who you feel is a trustworthy and upright individual and that you have to reach out to a perfect stranger for such qualities, but I am honored that you consider me a trustworthy and upright individual and that you are willing to entrust a fund to me. I understand you will make available to me whatever I need to claim the fund. I appreciate that greatly. I think, however, that I can make things a little easier for you. Rather than dealing with all the red tape that no doubt the finance house where the fund is lodged will require, since you are so close to death, we should expedite things if possible. So let's do this: Cash out the fund yourself and then send me a cashier's check made out to my name to an address I will provide later. I will solemnly swear upon the life of your late husband that I will use the funds as you had originally intended. Oh, wait. You don't actually KNOW my name. That's OK. Just make the check out to "CASH."

Sincerely, in the name of our trusted Lord, your beloved,
CASH

Another book giveaway and a poll

2009-03-25T09:41:00.012-04:00

I know that I said that each time I read a book I would then let you vote on the next book I should read. Unfortunately, it seems that I read faster than I can find time to look up links and post, so the result has been that, while I HAVE been faithful in reading the books that won the elections, I have also read several books for which you did not have the opportunity to vote. To try to remedy that, today I am listing SEVEN potential next-reads for your voting enjoyment. Also, I am asking that you select TWO novels from the list. The top THREE selections will be my next three reads. I hope that by increasing the number of books you choose for me each poll, I can find the time for another poll before I am done reading the books on which you voted, so I will NEVER HAVE TO SELECT MY OWN BOOKS AGAIN!!! The poll will be open until 8:00am Friday, March 27th (Hopefully EDT, but who knows, really?). Your choices this time are:

The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond,

High Five by Janet Evanovich,

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury,

Fatal Flaw by William Lashner,

The Stingray Shuffle by Tim Dorsey,

Pandora by Anne Rice and

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.

Also, it has come to my attention that my prolific library-sale-and-bargain-table purchasing has led to my having two copies of yet another novel. This one is Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich. It is a hardcover that I purchased for $1.00 from a library sale and it is missing its dust-jacket. Still a perfectly good read, and really, isn't a dusty dust-jacket just as big a pain-in-the-ass as a dusty book sans jacket? If you would like me to send you this novel, just leave a comment. If you are familiar with the series to which the novel belongs, tell me how you are like the heroine, Stephanie Plum. Go ahead, you can admit it here. :) I will randomly select a winner to be announced as soon as I get around to posting again after Friday morning. POSSIBLY as soon as THAT DAY, but don't hold your breath or you'll turn blue.

Why my house is a disaster area

2009-03-23T12:54:00.020-04:00

At the end of last month, I went out of town for a few days, leaving my husband and children home. The house fared as well as could be expected, which is to say, it was still standing. To give credit where credit is due, the kitchen was clean (but then, no REAL meals were prepared, only take-out and kid things like hot dogs and nuggets were eaten) and Mr. Picklebottom had helped Jo and Beth to pick up a portion of their room, which is to say that SOME of the clutter was picked up in PART of the room. To be honest, after I got home I was not doing a fabulous job of catching things back up to the NORMAL level of squalor, but I had plans. Big plans. Getting down and dirty floor-scrubbing plans. Then I got sick. And simultaneously, so did Mr. Picklebottom. The kind of sick where doing ANYTHING AT ALL short of lying there in misery is impossible. There were four kids, though, who WEREN'T sick. So you can imagine what happened to the house when there were no adults functioning at a level capable of keeping the chaos in check. Which brings us to today.

After ingesting enough antibiotics so that by last Thursday I was functioning normally, or as normal as it gets for me, I was sick enough of all the mess to sit down and write down the things that needed to be done today WITHOUT FAIL. First of all, though it won't help the overall state of the house, the laundry still must be done. So I got it started. I loaded the dishwasher and washed dishes so the sink would be empty and I could FINALLY, after WAY TOO LONG, clean the little fish tank in which Jo's pet fighting fish, Calypso, resides. [The fish tank hasn't been done as yet, but it will be as soon as I publish this.] I also decided to hunt down and kill the dust bunnies right where they live, in their nests under Amy's dresser, crib and changing table. HOWEVER, while dressing Amy after her bath, Beth came in with her magnetic earrings, which basically attach to the earlobe with really strong, yet tiny, magnets. She pulled a necklace over her head and the earrings were pulled off her earlobes and proceeded to bounce across the hardwood floor. After gathering up what we could see, we were short one magnet, specifically one of the earring backs.

Now I couldn't vacuum those dust bunnies, because Beth was CERTAIN that the magnet had gone under the dresser, and heaven forbid I vacuum it up. So I had to first find the magnet. Since it was a really strong magnet, I thought I would just pass something long and metal back and forth over the floor under the dresser, the magnet would stick to it and I could go about my cleaning plans. So I went to the garage and came up with this:

After getting on my hands and knees, sticking it under the dresser and dragging it around for a while, I came up with nothing but dust. Lots of dust. So then I dragged the dresser away from the wall and ran the wrench around the baseboards, since there was a tiny gap between the bottom of the baseboard and the floor into which the magnet could have slipped. No dice. So then I followed the same steps underneath the changing table and the crib. Finally, I was left with sore knees and a very dusty wrench, but no magnet. In frustration, I let out a big sigh, looked down, and there was that damn magnet. Right in the middle of the floor where Beth and I had looked and run our hands over and finally determined that it must be under something. So YAY, I found the magnet, but my 5 minute dust vacuuming job turned into a much longer job that required a lot more effort. I will say, though, that Amy's dust bunnies have been vanquished. of course, after lugging the vacuum back downstairs, I noticed a couple of cobwebs. Next time...

You'll recall that I had started laundry. Well, I went downstairs to do the whole process of removing clothes from dryer, transferring clothes from washer to dryer and starting another load in the washer. I managed to get everything out of the dryer except one of my bras. A bra that I have only owned for a couple weeks now, as a couple weeks ago I was down to ONE raggedy bra and finally went to the store and purchased several so I could, you know, ROTATE their usage. It wouldn't come out of the dryer. WHY would it not come out of the dryer, you ask. Well, because of THIS:

One of the hooks had somehow hooked itself to the dryer drum. For the life of me, I could NOT unhook it. Now you would think that, hey, it got hooked on there somehow, so if I just REVERSE how it got hooked, it will come UNhooked. Yeah. That's what you would think. Thinking is overrated. And WRONG. No matter what I tried, and I tried every possible angle, it would not unhook. When I did finally get it out, which took A WHILE, it looked like this:

So there goes one new bra into the trash. At least I buy cheap-ass cotton bras from Target. Tell me these kinds of wonderful things happen to you. They happen ALL THE TIME to me.

So now, after cleaning Calypso's tank (only because I can't justify NOT doing it, the poor guy has been suffering long enough), I am going to sit down with a warm brownie and some ice cream rather than finish what I wanted to finish, since OBVIOUSLY everything I try today is subject to sabotage by the fates. I just hope Calypso and his tank survive the cleaning, it has been THAT kind of day. And that is why my house is a disaster area. Because I myself am apparently a walking disaster.

November notes

2009-03-19T09:21:00.026-04:00

Now that it's March of 2009, let's talk about November of 2008. I'll do it quickly, in bullet form:

Due to my grandmother's failing memory, I decided to make a quick trip to SC to ensure that we would have at least one more visit while she could still remember my kids. We had a nice time, and even took her on a couple outings to see the James Island County Park Holiday Festival of Lights (A-MAZ-ING, and it gets bigger and better every year, you really must go sometime) and to Charles Towne Landing.
On the way down, right at the bottom of Exit 266A (366?, 166?, help my memory Alice) in VA to be exact, my car died. It lost its ability to shift gears. So we transferred to a rental, left the car at a dealership in Alexandria and continued on our way. It was a much bigger hassle than I made it sound like here. Then on the way home, we had to do the whole transfer thing back to our repaired car. Overall, a royal pain in the ass, but it could have been so much worse; the dealership (Mazda) and the rental car agency (Enterprise) made everything go extremely smoothly. I'm sure it didn't hurt that one of my brothers-in-law works for Mazda Corporate, but hey, in that situation you'll take any advantage you can get.
Meg's marching band unit won The 2008 Calvacade of Bands Grand Championship in its division.
For the first time in, well, EVER, we stayed home for Thanksgiving due to a marching band performance that day. Now, I am one of those who feel that the matriarch of the family deserves to relax on a holiday just as much as everyone else, so I don't do the monster meal thing. Our Christmas tradition is grazing heavy hors d'oeuvres and sweets all day long. So for Thanksgiving, we had pretty much decided to order in a Thanksgiving feast or go out. UNTIL my husband went to Sam's Club. We had a ghetto Thanksgiving meal that I challenge you to rival. Here was the menu:

- Hormel sliced turkey in gravy
- Country Crock mashed sweet potatoes
- Country Crock stuffing
- Canned cranberry sauce (OK, that's the same EVERY year)
- Pillsbury crescent rolls

All microwavable except the rolls, which take less than 10 minutes to bake. Verdict? The turkey was pretty crappy, but Country Crock does a pretty decent job on their stuff. So, um, yeah. I am SO ready to head to the in-laws' place this year.

Some of my mom's boyfriend's family's pets:

Just call me Her Royal Highness Fiona... HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

2009-03-12T19:01:00.006-04:00

Jo had a school project she was working on this week on ancestry. She had to create a family shield, which was basically a poster board shield divided into quadrants with family info, such as the countries from which the family originated, words that describe the family and activities the family enjoys. The last quadrant was basically free-space, where she could put whatever she wanted. First she put our last name in big puffy letter stickers. Then we decided it would be neat to go back several generations on both sides (mine and Mr. Picklebottom's) and put all the different last names of the families that came together to ultimately result in Jo.

[Some background: My father has this cousin who is WAY into genealogy, and for some reason there was a point at which she sent my mother a bunch of genealogy research stuff and family trees. My mother had given it to me (because what did she care, she and my father were divorced and it wasn't HER family) and I had stuck it in a box in the back of my closet where it's been for YEARS. The only thing I remembered from it is that there is a note in the margin of the Queen of England's family tree with an arrow that said something like "These are your great-grandmother's parents. You and your brother are 10th cousins to the Queen." At the time, I thought it was pretty cool, until I realized that the royal family has been SNUBBING ME all these years. I never got an invite to a royal wedding or even to the Queen's big birthday bash. What's up with THAT?]

So because I couldn't come up with all the last names off the top of my head, I headed to the box to see what I could find. Turns out I'm serious frickin' royalty, dude. The Emperor Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, several King Edwards, King Ferdinand, lots of other kings, hell even Old King Cole (he WAS a merry old soul) was WAY WAY back there after one of the Caesars. All this is well and good, but I'm wondering... where's my share of the inheritance?

What's the 'F' word?

2009-03-09T16:16:00.003-04:00

That is what Beth walked in the door and asked me after school today. Yeah. So. It caught me a bit off guard. I told her it was a word that wasn't very nice and she shouldn't use it. She still wanted to know what it was. I refused to say it. Her response to my refusal? "It's OK, you can just spell it." HA!

Looks can be deceiving

2009-03-03T12:50:00.006-05:00

While it APPEARS that I have once again fallen COMPLETELY off the planet, I am in fact still around, though I am finding myself with NO TIME WHATSOEVER to post anything here and/or read and comment anywhere else. So once again, I will regale you with tales of coming attractions. Keep in mind my tendency to fall off the planet, however, and don't hold your breath on the aggressive execution [BOOYAH!] of said coming attractions. (The booyah will only make sense to you facebookers who are my friends. And then only if you read my wall. It will make sense to the rest of you after I post the story of my grandmother's memorial weekend, which is one of the coming attractions I will list below.) Since I am starting to get ahead of myself in the parentheses, let me go ahead and list coming attractions now. Some of them have been listed before in previous posts like this one, but as they haven't been done yet, they are still coming. So I give you, in no particular order, the COMING ATTRACTIONS:

November notes
December digest
The first part of January before I started posting again... something (yeah, I'm still working on this one)
Buncha books, issue 8
Bumcha books, issue 9 - the James Patterson edition
Buncha books, issue 10 (yes there are THAT many in the queue)
My grandmother's memorial weekend trip
Another thing or two that I had thought of before that now I can't remember
Another look-alike thing where I say something about the American Idol contestant Danny something-or-other looking like Robert Downey, Jr. Oh, scratch that since now I've already said it.

Now that you're all BREATHLESS WITH ANTICIPATION, I will depart until next time. Except for one thing...

Becky, you might have noticed you never received the book you won. Let me point out the obvious: The US postal service, which for the most part does a pretty decent job, sometimes SCREWS UP. It seems that sometime between October and now (which, WTF? it's MARCH), the package was destroyed, except for CONVENIENTLY the portion of the wrapping containing the delivery and return addresses and the postage (what is up with THAT?), which they returned to me with an apology form letter. So Becky, I feel bad. I owe you a book. No winner on my blog should end up empty-handed. So here's what I'm going to do:

I mooched a book called The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond from Bookmooch. After three months of not receiving it (you know what THAT'S like), I mooched it again from another person. Both copies showed up within a day of one another last week. I will be sending you one of the copies. I hope that's OK. I'm sorry the original prize didn't make it.

Prayer for a broken blog

2009-02-18T11:17:00.002-05:00

My blog is broken. The individual pages show up okay, but the main page only has the sidebars and no main body. Why? Please oh blog gods, magically fix this with no effort whatsoever on my part. Thank you.

Buncha books - issue 7

2009-02-18T10:52:00.004-05:00

Before we get into this post, I want to say that FINALLY my new motherboard arrived and my husband put it in, but now in true husband fashion, he is deciding whether or not to also, while he has the computer open on the workbench, install some fancy tape drive, a decision which, if the past is any indicator, could delay my getting to use my computer for another two weeks or so. My husband suffers from a lack of decision making ability. But YAY it's here, so SOMETIME in the not too distant future I will once again have access to my photos, which I will IMMEDIATELY back up to another computer, and I will be able to post my November, December and first part of January synopses.

Moving on...

I need to pump out some of these "Buncha books" posts so that I can pack up the already read piles on my bedroom floor and put them in my attic to be brought out again when my dream of an in-home library becomes a reality, which could possibly be when one or more of my children move out and I take over a bedroom (or two) for that purpose. So to that end, at some point in the last six months or so I read A Disorder Peculiar to the Country by Ken Kalfus. This novel has a very interesting premise: A husband and wife have reached a point in their marriage where they truly despise one another. Enter the 9/11 tragedy. The husband is heading to a meeting in the World Trade Center (WTC) and the wife is heading to Newark to catch a flight. Planes hit the WTC. The wife thinks her husband was at a meeting there, but he ran late and wasn't there when the planes hit. The husband thinks his wife is on one of the hijacked planes that crashed, but something had happened at work that made the trip unnecessary, so she didn't go. Both of them rejoice in the other's demise, but then they arrive home to bitter disappointment that the other has not perished after all. And it goes from there. I was disappointed in this book. With such an potentially awesome premise, I felt that it fell flat. I did enjoy the dark bitter humor interspersed throughout, and there were some scenes that made me laugh aloud, but overall I just thought it was okay. So I award it 3 1/2 picklebottoms.

There are a few of you wondering which camp I'll join when it comes to The Road by Cormac McCarthey. Because I am a rock star and my opinion MATTERS. Will I stand with lonely Shauna who loves it (by the way, Shauna, when I was reading it, everyone I ran into loved it, so you have that) or will I join the swelling ranks of haters? Well, when it comes to The Road, I'm middle of it. The Road. Get it? *collective groan* OK, lame. I'm the master of lame jokes. If they can even be called jokes, which I'm thinking is a stretch on this one, so let's pretend it never happened and move on. This novel was about a man and his son, who are traveling south on foot in a post-apocalyptic time, scavenging for food and clothing items and trying to avoid other people who may or may not pose a threat. Amazingly, the boy seems to maintain his childlike innocence and idealism throughout, even when faced with the grimmest of lives, though there are a few glimpses into the fact that, like most children, he knows more about what's going on than one would assume from his words and actions. I thought the book was stark and gray. Everything in it was stark and gray. Reading it made me feel stark and gray. Desolate. And yet, the fact that McCarthy was able to convey that grayness in the simple language he used was impressive. It took me about a third of the book to get into it, but then I liked it. I didn't LOVE it, but I'm firmly in the liked it pretty well camp. The ending felt unsatisfactory to me, but I don't think a satisfactory ending would have been true to the novel. Basically, I was left with an "okay, but NOW what?" kind of feeling, which I think may have been the point. Or one of them, anyway. So Shauna, while I don't quite get all the hype surrounding this book, I am leaning more toward your camp than the haters'. I thought it was a good and compelling book. 4 picklebottoms.

Third Degree by Greg Iles takes place over the span of a single day. Laurel Shields' awakens to find that her husband had apparently stayed up all night desperately looking for something. She then discovers she is pregnant, but is it her husband's child or that of the man with whom an affair had recently ended? When she decides to leave work early, she arrives home to find her husband is still there. The nightmare begins. I enjoyed this book. The main characters were all too human in that their actions would lead one to question their morality, yet one could also see why they made the poor decisions they did, making them all sympathetic to the reader. There really wasn't a good-guy, bad-guy thing going on here, just a human thing, where everyone was both good and bad and had to reconcile those parts of themselves while dealing with the fallout from the bad. Overall a good, edge-of-your-seat read. 4 picklebottoms.

The Serial Killers Club by Jeff Povey has what I think is a great premise: a support group slash club for serial killers. A problem, of course, is screening members. The club solves this by allowing members through invite only, publishing the invitations in personal ads. Unfortunately, one day a man is attacked and, in the process of defending himself, kills his attacker, who turns out to be a serial killer known as Grandson-of-Barney and who has one of the personal ads in his wallet. The man takes over the identity of his would-be killer and joins the serial killers club. A detective figures out what is going on and between the two of them they hatch a plot to eliminate the serial killers. It all sounds good, right? Like it would be a good read, right? WRONG. All of the characters are despicable with not a single redeeming quality between them. I don't know why I even finished the book, but I did. What a waste of my time. Don't bother. 2 picklebottoms, and it only got those because I managed to finish it.

Next by Michael Crichton posed a problem for me before I even read it: it came in multiple color schemes. Which to choose, which to choose... I ended up with lime green with purple lettering. Basically this novel centers on genetic research and experimentation and what is morally acceptable versus what may or may not actually be done. There is a bird that helps a boy with his homework and multi-lingual talking monkeys. There is a potential cure for addictions and overall juvenile behavior. I have always enjoyed genetics and so I usually enjoy novels with genetic experimentation as a component. This was no exception. I enjoyed it. BUT, I enjoyed other Crichton books much more, so compared to his own work, I thought this was sub-par. Overall, though, it was good. 4 picklebottoms.

I have fairly recently discovered Nelson DeMille as an author I really enjoy. I currently have two of his novels awaiting review, so I will cover Plum Island today. Plum Island is an island off the coast of New York state that houses a federal research facility dedicated to the study of animal diseases in the same way that the CDC in Atlanta is dedicated to the study of human diseases. When two of the island's scientists, a husband and wife, are killed, detective John Corey abandons his lazy days of recuperation at his uncle's beach house to try to solve the murders. Surely, the crime is linked to the island and the couple's research. Or is it? I continue to enjoy the lovable rogue that is John Corey, particularly his sense of humor, so this novel was a pleasure to read. Nelson DeMille is quickly becoming an author for whom I scan the bargain tables at my local bookstores (which is where I get most of my books) and the library sales (where I got two bags full of books this past weekend for $8.50). 4 picklebottoms.

Lastly in this issue of Buncha Books is T is for Trespass by Sue Grafton. I have followed the heroine, Kinsey Millhone, from her first adventure in "A" is for Alibi, and have really enjoyed all of the novels. I think I could be Kinsey Millhone, since I have her fashion sense and hairstyle, or her complete lack of both those things. Also, we are the same age and I'm damn good with a pistol. Or was last time I shot one, which has been at least 15 years or so ago, so you might want to get behind me if I ever try to shoot one again. You know, just sayin'. Anyway, this novel involves one of Kinsey's neighbors, a crotchety old man who falls and needs companion care. Kinsey tracks down the man's daughter, who finds someone and asks Kinsey to do a quick background check. The woman seems to pass muster and is hired. Kinsey takes an immediate dislike to the woman and feels that she is mistreating the old man, for which Kinsey feels responsible, since she cleared the woman for hiring. So she begins to investigate more deeply and uncovers some interesting and disturbing information. This book was on par with the rest of the alphabet mysteries, meaning I enjoyed it and it earns 4 picklebottoms.

The rating system can be found here.

Hey kids, rock 'n' roll

2009-02-17T09:18:00.004-05:00

I am WAY behind in my reader (somehow I've slacked off to the point of over 300 posts to read) and I'm working on the next issue of "Buncha books," hopefully to be done by Wednesday or Thursday, and I HAVE to move all my to-be-read piles of books and clean out underneath my bed because A NEW BED IS BEING DELIVERED TOMORROW (!!!!!), so today I am re-posting one of my favorite meme posts from my old blog (the blog which shall not be named, I think I will start calling it the Voldemort blog). I'm also thinking of making this one a note in my Facebook account just because I LIKE it. But only if I can include pictures in a note - does anyone know if that's possible? - since that is a big part of the meme. Also only if links can be included in a note. Anyway... *time warp music and wavy lines*

When I was in high school, some friends and I started a garage band. We called it "Luddan," because our lead singer, Jonny, and drummer, Mark, were brothers, that was their last name, it sounded like a cool band name and it was their garage we jammed in. I was the bass player and also sang back-up. Occasionally, I took the lead singing role, when we wanted the lead vocals to be sung by a female. I also occasionally played the guitar. We had kind of a hard-edge, alternative rock sound. We became very popular locally and started playing school dances, weddings and bar- and bat-mitzvahs. Our fans had even taken on a name for themselves, much like Jimmy Buffett's Parrotheads. Our loyal fans called themselves Luddanites.

By the time we all went to college, we were playing gigs at local venues every weekend and getting some radio playtime on the rock stations that sometimes featured music by local artists. Luckily we had all ended up going to various schools right around where we grew up in Charleston, SC, so we didn't have to break up the band at what we thought was the height of its success. We decided to book some studio time and put together an album to sell at our gigs and in the local music shops. We were so thankful for our apparent success, that we called the title track "Thanksgiving to the Gods."

That's my Weimaraner on the album cover. His name was Mr. Bojangles.

Luddan caught it's big break one day when a record executive was in Charleston for some sort of convention and heard one of our songs on the radio. He contacted us to sign for his label. Unfortunately, the day before the contracts were to be finalized and signed, the band's lead singer ate some Mentos and then (this was before anyone knew any better) drank a Coke. His stomach ruptured, and the stomach acid ate him from the inside out. The rest of us just couldn't continue after that tragic end to our lead singer, and the band broke up.

About a year later, I decided to use some of my old contacts around town to see if I could book some local gigs as a solo artist. On my own, I had adopted a more mellow sound, much like Joni Mitchell. It better suited my personality as a solo artist. An old hippie friend of mine came up with my stage name, "Zephyr Teachout." I became sought out for local gigs, and went back to the studio where Luddan had made its one and only album, and made what I hoped would be my debut solo album, to be followed by many more. I had written a song after Jonny Luddan had died, using words from his will, in which he stated that his friends were his estate. I found that quite moving, and decided that that song would be the title track for my debut album. I dedicated the album to Jonny.

I became an overnight success. My independent little album took the nation by storm, and then the world. Record companies were banging down my door to sign me, and movie producers were begging me to write songs for their films. It became overwhelming. Though I had hoped to produce multiple albums, the side effects of fame, especially the unrelenting hounding of the paparazzi, became too much to handle. I went into seclusion for about two years. Long enough for the public to forget the name Zephyr Teachout.

Upon my quiet and unannounced reemergence back into the real world, I decided that I loved making music too much to give it up entirely. Being in a band was more my speed, since public scrutiny would then be divided amongst the band's members. I contacted a couple of my old Luddan bandmates, and we put together a new band called Hazelhead Station. Our sound this time was something akin to Bob Dylan, By this point, we were all in our late 20s to early 30s, we had started families and other careers and were making music on the side. Once again, local success followed us, and we were in high demand in the clubs around town. We played many nights of the week and every weekend. The rest of the weekends we slept. Our families and jobs suffered. We decided to put together one last album with the original songs we had played but never recorded. We also wrote one last song to use as the title track, and titled it, appropriately, "Know When You're Finished." We knew, and we were.

None of the above is actually true. This is, in fact, a really cool album cover meme I saw over on Chicky Chicky Baby. The rules are:

1. The first title on this page is the name of your band.

2. The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album. Click the "New Random Quotations" button for more.

3. The third picture on this page will be your album cover. You then take the photo and add your band name and the album title to it, then post your picture. Please don't forget to give credit.

I'm not going to tag anyone. But do it if you want to, it's a lot of fun.

*Cover Art credits: The photo for the first album cover was taken by Luara :D, the second cover was taken by gi varga and the third album cover photo was taken by BigFrank.

More randomness

2009-02-11T15:50:00.011-05:00

This is my shirt:

Why don't people believe me?
A bad thing about having 5 females with long amazing hair, okay 4 females with long amazing hair and me with thin flat hair, in the house is how often the drains get clogged. Also how fast that little spinning brush thingy in the vacuum cleaner stops working because there is so much hair wrapped around it. Okay, TWO bad things.
My husband attended a catered meeting at work and brought home a big container of chicken salad that no one had eaten because there was too much other stuff. I packed some for Meg's lunch today. Then, I was spooning some out for myself and found a BAND-AID that looked like it had been wrapped around someone's finger. GROSS!!! And EWWWWWW!!! And DISGUSTING!!! I had to email the teacher in whose room Meg eats lunch to tell her to throw her lunch away. I also called my husband to tell him to tell whoever hired the caterer to never use them again. I'm still gagging. I don't think I'll ever eat chicken salad again. And damn it, I LIKE chicken salad. Or used to anyway.

Randomness

2009-02-10T12:25:00.004-05:00

Lots of unrelated things, in bulleted form:

There was a two-way tie for which book I should read next, so they will be the next two books I read. I'd type the titles out and link them to Amazon and all that crap, except I don't feel like it today.
Jess won the giveaway. Jess, I don't know what to do about sending the book, since you're getting ready to get in your car and drive cross-country to move to an as-yet-unknown address. I guess email me your new address when you get one; it'll take me that long to get around to packing and sending it anyway, just ask any of my previous winners. :)
My grandmother passed away Sunday night. I found out yesterday morning. I told my kids last night. Beth took the news the hardest. It wasn't until I saw how upset she was that it finally got through to me. I am SO SO glad we went to visit in November.
I've got to start doing The Shred again. I was doing really great and had gotten amazingly strong and then came January 2009, the month of the plague. Now that we're finally all feeling better, I can't get motivated enough to drag myself out of bed early.
I figured out the song that I wanted to remember but couldn't was "The Way" by Fastball. There's another one with a deep voice talking something about the city and being rich and pretty. What is it? I can hear the voice in my head but not exactly what it's saying. That last sentence makes me sound insane.

It's that time again

2009-02-06T16:48:00.001-05:00

I don't like when this happens on a weekend, since so many of you only do the blog thing during the week, but there's just no help for it. I finished Third Degree by Greg Iles, so it is time for you to select what you think I should read next. Since it is the weekend, I will leave the poll up through Monday night so those of you who are solely weekday bloggers can vote and thus enter the BONUS giveaway. Yes, once again, I have more than one copy of a book.

I had to re-stack my three to-be-read towers of books, since they were about to topple, and while doing so, I discovered that I had a brand-new hardcover copy of the book I had just finished, Third Degree by Greg Iles. Sorry, you don't get that one. But you CAN win the slightly used paperback copy that I just finished. It really is like new; I'm very easy on books. So go vote over on the right for the book you think I should read next and leave me a comment if you want to be entered in the giveaway. I'll let you know the winner on Tuesday. The randomly selected books from which to choose this time are:

The Rosary Girls by Richard Montanari,

The Wish List by Eoin Colfer,

The Hunt Club by John Lescroart,

Four to Score by Janet Evanovich and

The Expected One by Kathleen McGowan.

While I am waiting for the results, I am going to read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I know a lot of you DESPISED, HATED and LOATHED that book; Shelly's review is here. Because of that, I had pretty much decided not to bother with it. But then Shauna said she LOVED it, and because she seems to like some of the same stuff I do, I began to think that maybe I would like it too, despite the fact that Tess also likes some of the same stuff I do, and she was one of the ones who DESPISED, HATED and LOATHED it. Then when a single copy of it appeared on a shelf in front of me on sale and I flipped through it to see that it didn't look like a book that would take an eon to get through, which if it were horrible would render it unfinishable, I went ahead and bought it. So since it may never win a vote (unless it does so on the merits of misery loves company), I'll go ahead and read it over this weekend while I wait for your votes.

Do you ever...

2009-02-06T08:26:00.003-05:00

... consider committing a crime so you can go to jail, because hey, free vacation? Clarification: whatever type of crime sends you to one of those "country club" prisons, of course.

... consider faking insanity and committing yourself to the loony bin, because again, free vacation? Plus BONUS: good drugs.

... wonder if perhaps you're not faking on the insane thing, when you consider the things you consider?

Things that make you go hmmmmm....

2009-02-05T09:04:00.003-05:00

Dog: The Bounty Hunter. Last night as I was getting ready for bed, I flipped on the TV so I could turn off the light and still move around the room without tripping over the *ahem* Christmas boxes that I have yet to put into the attic. There was apparently some sort of Dog: The Bounty Hunter marathon going on. I have to tell you, that show is strangely addicting. I promise that if you ever stumble across it you will be mesmerized by that bounty hunting family. They are pure eye candy. I don't mean like decadent melt-in-your-mouth chocolate, I mean like Sour Patch Kids. Even though you want to stop, you just CAN'T. They are too much fun to look at. Also, how could you not love a man who looks like that, screams mothereffer as he arrests people and then tries to get them to let Jesus into their hearts as they travel to jail? How, I ask you?

Photo credit: Got Dog's picture here.

Filler

2009-02-03T09:28:00.003-05:00

My house needs some attention, and Amy has decided that every waking moment must be spent velcroed to my side, so here is just a little filler so you know I'm still around.

Kid conversation #1:

Beth (holding her medicine bottle): How do you open this?

Me: You don't. It's kid-proof.

Beth: How does it know I'm a kid?

Kid conversation #2:

Me (walking in a room to find Amy licking the mirrored closet doors): Hey! Don't lick the mirror. We don't lick mirrors.

Amy (as I turn around to leave after she stops licking the mirror): Mommy! Lick the mirror with me!

Me: [facepalm]

Buncha books - issue 6

2009-01-29T10:56:00.002-05:00

First of all, COME ON PEOPLE, a five-way tie? Fine, I'll just randomly select... Third Degree by Greg Iles to read next.

Normally, in a "Buncha books" issue, I try to cover at least 6 books. I don't know if I'll get to that many today, but I'll do as many as I can. I'm going to start with The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall. It's been a long time since I read this novel, so I hope I remember everything correctly. I'm having a difficult time trying to formulate into words how to describe this novel. Bizarre, yet strangely compelling, it is about a man, Eric Sanderson, who wakes up one day and can't remember anything, but he gets notes of direction from himself, as this is apparently not the first time he has woken up with no memory. Turns out his memory loss is due to a conceptual shark that feeds on thoughts and memories. Something has made Eric a target of this shark and he goes on the run to avoid it while simultaneously trying to find the person responsible for its creation and determine how to destroy it. He takes with him his cat, Ian, and along the way he meets Scout, who, as part of the Un-Space Exploration Committee, is trying to find the shark that is after Eric. I did mention bizarre, didn't I? This novel is ultimately about the power of language (I think, anyway) and I enjoyed the little extras that were thrown in. There was lots of word play, beginning right at the title (Raw Shark Texts = Rorschach Test). The evil mastermind behind the conceptual fish is Mycroft Ward (Microsoft Word). There is even a flip book contained within the pages of the novel. The novel ends in a "Moby Dick"-type standoff, but I'll leave it to you to read for the outcome. I think this is a novel that you'll either find intriguing or you'll hate with an undying passion and you may hate me for telling you that I found it intriguing and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys things that screw with your mind. This book certainly will. Four picklebottoms.

Next I'll cover The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes by Diane Chamberlain. This novel is about a young girl, CeeCee Wilkes, who is coerced into getting involved in a kidnapping plot as the guard of the victim, who is the governor's wife. She didn't realize that the victim was pregnant, and during the night, the woman goes into labor and has a baby. She then hemorrhages and dies. CeeCee goes on the run with the baby. The novel is about her life, the life of the baby and what happens when the truth is exposed. I really enjoyed this book. When my mom was in town, I gave it to her to read and she read it in two days. Four picklebottoms.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is a novel about the life of a man, Amir, who grew up in Afghanistan and his father's servant's son, Hassan, who grew up with him. As boys they were the best of friends whose favorite activity was running kites. During a kite running competition, something occurs that changes everything. Amir cannot forget his cowardice in the face of the unspeakable event and his feelings of guilt haunt him, even after he and his father flee Afghanistan to America. Eventually he goes back to Afghanistan, where he just might find redemption. This book is amazing. The author uses very simple language, nothing flowery at all, and manages to convey incredible depth of feeling. I highly recommend this novel. 4 1/2 picklebottoms.

Now, though I have a blue million books in the pile to be reviewed, it's only fair that I cover the ones you selected for me to read recently, so I will now review the two you've selected for me so far.

The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst is a somewhat odd novel. Linguistics professor Paul Iverson receives a phone call while at work from the police. His wife, Lexy, has died due to a fall from the apple tree in their backyard. The only witness to the accident was their dog, Lorelei. Paul becomes obsessed with teaching the dog to speak so she can tell him what happened. I won't tell you whether or not he was successful, or if he figures out what led to his wife's fall. I will tell you that it is a pretty interesting, though strange, novel. There were a few unbelievable coincidences, like Lorelei's origins, but given that this is fiction, I guess I can suspend my disbelief in that case. I've read some mixed reviews on this book, and to be honest, I think my opinion is a bit mixed as well. Overall, though, it was a pretty decent read. I'll give it 3 1/2 picklebottoms.

And finally, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. I love novels written from the point of view of someone with a mental disorder, and this was no exception. This novel was about a man, Charlie Gordon, who was born mentally retarded. A method to increase intelligence is developed, and after testing it on several mice, a mouse named Algernon being the most successful, the treatment is going to be tried on a human, Charlie Gordon. The novel covers, from Charlie's point of view, the changes that take place in his life following the treatment. Does the treatment work? If so, how well and does it "stick"? The novel is heartbreaking, yet hopeful, as is what he learns about himself and others. Four picklebottoms.

Odds and Ends

2009-01-26T08:56:00.014-05:00

First of all, they did have to intubate my grandmother Friday afternoon, but I haven't heard anything since then. I think the plan is to clean out her lungs and then try to remove the breathing tube. So we'll see.

Secondly, my husband fried the motherboard of my computer Saturday evening. Luckily, I married a compter geek, so there are three other machines on the switchbox and one connected via wireless for me to choose from to check email, blogs, Facebook and whatnot. He bid on a new motherboard on Ebay, so he should get me up and running by the end of the week. BUT, until then my intention of posting the "November notes" and "December digest" posts will have to be put off, since my pictures are on the hard drive that's connected to the dead motherboard. So maybe I'll get to a "Buncha books" post since it's been a while for one of those and the un-reviewed books are piling up.

Thirdly, I finished reading Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, so I need a new book. I want to give a little more time for voting (I wanted to post the poll this weekend, but didn't have time to write this post), so while I'm waiting for the 48 hours I'm going to give this time to end, I will be reading Step on a Crack by James Patterson because his books are always quick reads, so I'll be done by the time the poll ends. So the randomly grabbed candidates this time are:

The Alibi Man by Tami Hoag,

Mr. Murder by Dean Koontz,

Third Degree by Greg Iles,

Sam's Letters to Jennifer by James Patterson and

Rise and Shine by Anna Quindlen.

Go forth (over to your right) and vote!

Last, how do you handle this situation: I received a friend request from someone who went to my high school at the same time I did and whose name sounds VAGUELY familiar, but I can't remember her for the life of me. I feel bad for not having a clue who she is. I don't want to ignore her request, thus REJECTING her if I knew her, but I don't want to accept her request if I don't know her (or DIDN'T know her, I should say, since I obviously DON'T know her now). Anyway, have any of you been faced with this situation? I'm not really posting anything personal on Facebook, so really it's not a HUGE deal, unless she knows the folks who were the reason for my shutting down my other blog, in which case her friend request could be nothing more than a spying type thing. IF she knows them and IF she would do something like that for them. Not likely, but not impossible. Also, I am thinking of staring a new support group called "Over-thinkers Anonymous". Anyone want to join?

No news is good news

2009-01-23T08:24:00.005-05:00

My mother called this morning. My grandmother is in intensive care. She may not come out. Because she got a cough and due to lung problems in the past couldn't cough hard enough to keep her lungs functioning well-enough. My mom is looking through my grandmother's paperwork for a living will (though my mom has power of attorney, so I think any decisions are hers) and wondering how to handle a funeral/memorial service for a woman who was not religious at all and who only knew a handful of people. My mom abhors the idea of some minister who never met my grandmother a day in her life saying things about her life. We're thinking a small gathering at my grandmother's house with no service at all. My grandmother signed up years ago with some kind of cremation society, so that part is already taken care of. And there's always the possibility that she'll be okay, she's been okay before, but my mom is worried because I guess the doctors aren't sugar-coating anything.

I had just gone down with my kids in November because she was having mini-strokes that were causing memory loss, and I wanted her to see the kids at least once more while she could still remember who they were. There was also the possibility that it would be the last time we saw her, but I didn't think that could actually be the case. I just thought it would probably be the last time we saw her with her mental faculties mostly intact. Now I am doubly glad we went when we did.

My mom didn't hear from the hospital overnight, which was good news. She's going to spend the day at the hospital and she'll call me if anything happens. I'm hoping not to hear from her today, since at this point and until the bug that caused her cough is eradicated, opening up the possibility for improvement, no news is good news.

The times, they are a-changing

2009-01-21T08:24:00.007-05:00

I don't think that anyone can deny, regardless of political party or beliefs, that yesterday was a HUGE historical event. The swearing-in of the first black American president. So because I missed watching the actual event as it happened due to kid-type things such as bus-catching and nap putting-downing, last night I was flipping through channels to see what was being said about it. My 14-year-old, Meg, said, "I don't see why this is such a big deal." I was taken aback. She didn't say it in a negative way, no disrespect for the man or the office, she said it in a completely sincere manner.

So I tried to explain why it was such a big deal. That her grandmother, my mother, can remember when she wasn't allowed to drink out of the same water fountains as black people (she used to sneak over and do it when no one was looking, because she wondered if the water tasted different). That there were riots when schools were integrated. She said that yeah, she read her history books. I tried to explain that the inauguration that day was a confirmation of how far the country has come in regards to racial equality and relations. My husband and I kept trying to impress on her just how monumental of an occasion it was. We were unsuccessful. And then I realized...

Intellectually she understands. She just doesn't have the, "Wow, this is a truly historical event" awe-inspiring reaction that adults are having. She doesn't GET it. And that's a GOOD thing. It is just as huge a confirmation of how far the country has come in regards to racial equality and relations as the inauguration itself. To her, the color of someone's skin is just another physical attribute like hair color, eye color, height. It holds no more importance than that. Which is exactly how it should be.

The Facebook thing

2009-01-20T14:05:00.002-05:00

So. Today I decided to sign up on Facebook. So I did and then I sent a friend invitation to my brother. See, I need to test it out before I go all in. Also, I'm a little disappointed that I can't really see anything about the people that I may or may not know unless they are my friend, so I would have to send people friend invitations JUST TO FIND OUT IF I KNOW THEM AND WANT THEM TO BE MY FRIENDS. So unless there is a picture where I can see that, "Yes, that is who I think it is," I'm not entirely comfortable just blasting friend invitations out right and left. Also, as it turns out, I'm not entirely comfortable sending friend invitations to people I KNOW would accept, because then what if I just abandon the whole Facebook thing after the novelty wears off? I'd feel bad about making contact and then disappearing again, because really I don't have time to make an actual effort beyond the Facebook thing to stay in touch with anyone.

So what if I just sit here and see if someone sends ME an invitation. But then what if no one does? Will I feel disappointed or possibly rejected? Will I even CARE? I mean, I'm not in touch with these people NOW, so does it really matter? It's like high school all over again, which is interesting since most of the folks I'm thinking all this about are from my high school days.

So my brother is my only friend and so far my wall says the following (read bottom-up for chronological order):

Je.nn.if.er is not liking this third person shit any better than she does when her teenage daughter does it.

Je.nn.if.er is figuring out why her teenage daughter talks about herself in the third person.

Je.nn.if.er is wondering why she joined a social network when she is decidedly NOT (social, that is), as evidenced by the fact that she is now reluctant to send invites.

No one has called me Je.nn.if.er in 15 years except my mom. It's kind of weird; I've been J/e/n for so long now. Maybe I should just go UN-sign up. It'd be SO MUCH EASIER.

October overview and winners

2009-01-20T10:20:00.003-05:00

In my effort to cover those four months or so that I disappeared, I will now give you my October overview. Really only two things happened, Amy turned 2 on the 20th

and of course Halloween.

Beth couldn't decide between the detective costume and the vampire, so she was a detective at school (easier costume to put on and take off) and a vampire for trick-or-treating. Jo went as a black cat and Amy was a bunny.

Other than that, there was some leaf pile playing,

some swing set playing

and some general goofing around.

On to other business... Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes was selected as my next read and I am in the middle of it now. I decided that although my poll was only open for 24 hours, I would allow the commenters who commented after it closed to be in on the giveaway, since really 24 hours is not that long. So after removing my own comment from the running, the random number generator gave me 6 for my first winner and 5 for my second. So... [checking]... Becky wins Step on a Crack by James Patterson and Flibberty wins Simple Genius by David Baldacci. Winners please email me your shipping info so I can get your books to you.

What should I read next AND a giveaway

2009-01-16T08:50:00.001-05:00

First of all, thank you to my FIVE voters even though there were MORE THAN FIVE commenters (Come on, are you AFRAID I will be mad if I don't like the book you pick? Are you too CHICKEN to have an opinion and vote?)** last time. You unanimously selected The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst as my next read. So I am reading it. As a result of feeling too crappy to do anything other than read, blog and watch TV, I am about 15 minutes away from being done with The Dogs of Babel. So it's time to pick my next book. My random grab from my book piles resulted in the following choices:

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes,

The Blue Zone by Andrew Gross,

Step on a Crack by James Patterson [Wait a minute, this was a choice last time. I have ANOTHER copy of this book? It seems I have once again double-purchased a book. I have a paperback AND a hardcover. Hmmm... What should I do with the extra copy? Let me ponder that a moment...]

Paint It Black by Janet Fitch AND

Simple Genius by David Baldacci [Um, I seem to be holding a paperback copy of this book while looking at the spine of a hardcover copy in my book pile... Another troublesome problem.]

OK, so go vote in the poll to the right to determine what I will read next and leave a comment telling me why you chose the book you did. I will then randomly choose two commenters. The first one chosen will win my brand-spanking-new paperback copy of Step on a Crack, and the second one chosen will win my brand-spanking-new copy of Simple Genius. So come on, people... VOTE. You have incentive this time - WIN A FREE BOOK.***

** This is trash talk. I'm not very good at it. It is SUPPOSED to provoke you into doing what I want you to do. We'll see if it works...

*** This compromises the validity of the trash-talk experiment.

Multiple choice questions

2009-01-16T08:45:00.002-05:00

1. Which of the following possibly does not qualify for an insurance-covered flu shot, depending on the insurance company?

a) Pregnant women
b) Individuals under the age of 18
c) Individuals over the age of 50
d) Mothers in their thirties with several children who need to be fed and told to bathe and/or bathed and be provided with clean laundry and rushed through busy mornings so they don't miss the bus

2. Which of the following in my house has/have had a flu shot?

a) All individuals under the age of 18
b) The 50-year-old individual
c) The cat
d) The mother in her thirties with several children who need to be fed and told to bathe and/or bathed and be provided with clean laundry and rushed through busy mornings so they don't miss the bus

3. Who in my house has been sick since the end of December?

a) The cat
b) The 14-year-old
c) The fish
d) Everyone else

4. What is the average number of times each sick person has gotten sick WITHOUT more than a single day of feeling better in between?

a) 2
b) 1.5
c) 1.6
d) 3

5. Who, while still on antibiotics for the first illness, has now come down with what is quite possibly the flu?

a) The father
b) One of the kids
c) The cat
d) The mother in her thirties with several children who need to be fed and told to bathe and/or bathed and be provided with clean laundry and rushed through busy mornings so they don't miss the bus

6. Who has determined that priority one is NOT getting the mother better (that is priority TWO), but is rather to NOT get HIM sick?

I'm not even going to give you choices for this one; just take a wild guess.

Awesome gifts

2009-01-15T11:02:00.001-05:00

Before the holidays last year, I saw and read a lot of posts on what would be good gifts for husband, wife, kids, etc. None of them (disclaimer: THAT I REMEMBER), however, had much in the way of "have this and it is AWESOME". They were mostly of the "this would be a great gift" variety. So although the holidays are over, there are birthdays, anniversaries and other gift-giving events coming up throughout the year, so I thought I'd tell you that WE HAVE THESE AND THEY ARE AWESOME.

First of all, books. There are lots of good series out there, and I'm not going to go into those here. I want instead to highlight a couple books my middle two kids received for Christmas this year that are really good. First is How to Be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum by Keri Smith. I highly recommend that you click over and do a "look inside this book" thing. It might just be the coolest book I've ever seen. Jo and Beth each received her own copy. I think this would be a good gift for kids from about age 8 - 12. Maybe a little younger depending on the child; Beth is 6 and she loves it.

The second book may make many of you cringe. I did a little at first, but in the grand scheme of things, this is a good option. Many little girls love the whole princess thing. My 6-year-old certainly does. So when she saw How to Be a Princess by Bee Willey in a store, she immediately was drawn to it and coveted it mightily. It was the only copy and was a little beat-up, but I looked through it and saw that I might have misjudged. Indeed, you cannot judge a book by its cover. So I ordered it for her for Christmas. It is one of her favorite gifts. Here's what I like about it: It stresses politeness, courtesy, kindness and good behavior. It covers choosing a prince in such a way as to emphasize that a princess looks beyond appearances when choosing her prince, and instead focuses on his actions and how he treats others. On every page is a little "extra" such as a little story booklet or fold-out or a paper doll and clothing. So if you have to do something princessy, this is a good option. Age range is whatever the princess obsession covers.

Moving on to games... My oldest actually received this game the Christmas before last, but I have to mention it just because it is such a cool game. Dicecapades.

Never heard of it? Neither had I until I was walking through a local Barnes and Noble and saw it on a table. There was only one and although the box looked a little worn, the game looked neat enough to take the plunge and buy it. There are a bazillion dice (exaggeration) and the game involves trivia, motor dexterity, math, wordplay, etc. It is a really cool game for ages 12 and up. I really enjoy it myself.

Another good game for older kids and adults is Buzzword. It's a lot of fun and basically involves coming up with phrases containing a particular word based on clues. There is a lot of tip-of-the-tongue frustration and "oooohhhhh, I KNEW that"s when the answers are revealed.

Two other games were received by Jo. Flinch and Bananagrams. We haven't played them yet, but they look like fun. I'll let you know what we think after playing.

Lastly, I want to show what Amy, my 2-year-old, is enjoying and playing with the most. She loves puzzles and her two favorite gifts by far were Melissa and Doug's See & Spell Puzzles and Infantino Matching Colors and Textures Puzzles.

Finally, MY favorite gift that Amy received was this hat:

I'm really sorry I can't find it anywhere on the web (during the 5 minute effort I made), because I know you all want this hat for your girls now. I bought it at 50% off (couldn't afford it otherwise, it was $36 flippin' dollars for a BABY HAT, which I couldn't justify, but $18, while still a little high for a BABY HAT was justifiable by the sheer adorableness of the item, but still don't tell my husband I spent $18 on a BABY HAT) back in May from a boutique store that was going out of business. I just couldn't resist. The hat is fringed by little hanging pom-poms and each little pom-pom has a different little design stitched onto it. I do now know why, when choosing my pseudonym here, the name "Picklebottom" popped into my head. I had recently purchased this hat, which is made by Petunia Pickle Bottom. Is that not the cutest hat you've EVER seen?

What should I read next?

2009-01-14T08:46:00.003-05:00

Every time I finish a book, I then face the dilemma of choosing my next read from a towering pile (actually THREE towering piles) of books I've acquired but not yet read. It's a really hard decision for me because I want to read them ALL. So I've decided to add a new and EXCITING little number here. YOU, yes YOU, get to decide which book I read next. Each time I finish a book, I will grab 3-5 books from my piles and put a poll over to the right, where you can vote on my next read. Since I review the books I read here, you can essentially have me test read the books for you if you think they are ones in which you might be interested.

So anyway, last night I finished Plum Island by Nelson DeMille. This morning I selected for your decision-making pleasure, the following: The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst, Step on a Crack by James Patterson and either Brimstone by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child OR The Wheel of Darkness by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

I need some info on the Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child book (I'm looking at YOU Shauna, if you still come by here that is, I know it's been a while since I've been around). You might remember that I read a Preston/Child book a while back entitled The Book of the Dead (reviewed here) that turned out to be the seventh (I think) book in a series revolving around FBI Agent Pendergast. Being the anal retentive individual that I am, I prefer to read series books in order, even when they stand alone perfectly well. Since I also happen to buy most, if not all, of my books from bargain tables and library sales, or get them from Bookmooch, I don't happen to have all of the previous six to choose from, but I do now have two of them (assuming both of them come before The Book of the Dead), and I might as well read them in order. So Shauna or anyone else who might know, which of the two Preston/Child books here comes first?

Okay, now go VOTE. Because I'm drinking my coffee, but I have nothing to read while I am doing so. In the future, I will have to put these polls up the day before I'll finish a book, so there's one on deck. I guess today I'll just clean the house or something, maybe put away Christmas decorations, until the poll time is up. This time, I'm only going to give 12 hours of voting time, since I'm needing a decision NOW, but in the future I'll give 24 hours. Now VOTE!!!

For Nowheymama

2009-01-13T06:40:00.001-05:00

This is in response to a question asked by Nowheymama, but since it might interest someone else AND I can get a post out of it, here it is.

Nowheymama asked: Tell me more about Tae Kwan Do, please. Do the girls like it?

Tae Kwon Do is a Korean martial art (it may be THE Korean martial art, but I don't know). Apparently, it is also written as one word, not three like I have been doing forever. It means "the way of the hand and the fist." Wait, that's redundant... FOOT and fist.

Anyway, we originally started the girls in Taekwondo (hmmm, I like three words better, but from here on out it's TKD) when Jo was 5, because she lacked self-confidence and we thought it might help her in that area. Beth started because Jo did and she was the youngest (having just turned 3) ever admitted to our TKD school at the time. They allowed her in because she demonstrated the ability to pay attention and follow instructions. The age limit at the time was four, so Beth paved the way for the three-year-olds that are now admitted.

The sport did seem to help Jo with her self-confidence, though she is by nature fairly quiet and timid, so it is sometimes difficult to discern what is her non-assertive nature and what is a lack of self-confidence. Jo's ability to focus is a huge asset for her in the sport. About 2 1/2 years into it, Jo went through a period when she wanted to quit. I spoke with her instructor, and he talked to her and got her excited about it again. I don't know what he said, but it worked.

Beth turned out to be quite the athlete in all the sports she's tried, and TKD is no exception. She loves it and has never really had a time when she didn't. Both girls are currently enjoying it and are about 3 months away from earning their black belts.

If you are thinking of starting your kids in TKD, make sure you talk to parents whose kids go to various TKD schools to find out which school is right for your kids. There are national chains and mom-and-pop shops. The school we attend is one of the latter, and I think that, particularly for Jo, was the best choice for us. Our school also emphasizes getting out there and giving it all you've got rather than perfection of execution, though the kids are expected to learn all the moves (and some of the forms are long and complicated). No matter what kind of school you decide to go with, it is quite a commitment. We've been going for three years now, which is how long it takes to get to a black belt. It is also not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. On the plus side, at least at the school we go to, the instructors talk to the kids quite a bit about making good decisions, doing their best in all aspects of their lives (school, home, etc.), and so on, so it's not just the sport that they're learning. Overall, it's been a good experience for my kids, and while I'm not sure if Jo will decide to continue on to higher degree black belts after receiving her first degree black belt, I'm fairly certain that Beth will continue.

September synopsis

2009-01-12T06:55:00.001-05:00

I promised a September synopsis this week, so a September synopsis ye shall have. Let's see, September began with Labor Day weekend, during which I believe we did NOTHING. Then in one magical day, Meg started high school

(Notice it is dark outside. That is because she catches the bus at zero-dark-thirty.), Jo started second grade

and Beth started kindergarten.

Since Amy naps in the afternoon, I now have approximately TWO WONDERFUL HOURS of peace and quiet every school day. Two hours where I can get things done without constant interruption. It took me about a week for this time to be productive, as I couldn't at first figure out what to do with myself.

Let's see what else... oh, yes. You may remember this little item that I mentioned in this post (which I had to transfer from my old blog in order to link to it, so some of you may have 2 new posts show up in your readers; don't get excited, one of them is an old one):

If not, and you don't feel like clicking to the other post to read about it, it is a little styrofoam cup, decorated by Beth, with pumpkin seeds planted in it that she gave to me for Mother's Day last year. Well, by September one of the little seeds had turned into this:

It always looked a little (OK, a LOT) wilted in the afternoons, but perked up each morning. The yard is all dug up because we had just gotten public water and sewer hook-ups.

Also in September, Jo and Beth tested for and received their senior red belts in Tae Kwon Do.

The belts they are wearing are not their senior red belts, they are just regular red belts, but the shot I have of them wearing their senior red belts is vertical, and unless I go into Ph0t0shop or something and rotate the image, it shows up sideways here. Since I don't feel like doing the Ph0t0shop thing, you get the old belts. Imagine them with a black stripe through the middle.

That's about it, I guess. September in a nut shell. Coming soon - "October overview."

Where to begin?

2009-01-09T09:22:00.002-05:00

My mother left this morning, and so now that all the holidays and birthdays are done for a while, I am going to try to have a more consistent presence here and in your comment sections (yes, I mean YOURS). And by a more consistent presence I mean that I will do better than my recent 4 month absence, but don't expect miracles. There aren't as many or as long naps happening around here and I'm trying (only SLIGHTLY successfully) to keep on top of the clutter, which is tough around here with four kids who have apparently NEVER heard of putting anything away, so I will probably still be an erratic poster and commenter, but give me credit for trying.

Who else has yet to finish putting away holiday decorations? Anyone? Bueller? Just me then? OK, how 'bout individual piles of Christmas or Hanukkah (2 Ks, 1 N, NOT 2 Ns, 1 K like I always try first) loot scattered about the living room? Also just me? OK then moving on...

I'm trying to figure out how to cover the months I missed, and I'm not sure how to begin. I read A LOT, so I have quite a few reviews to write for at least the books I can remember reading. The others will just fall through the cracks. Maybe I'll do a brief overview for each month, then additional posts for any events or happenings that need more detail, then I'll tackle the book reviews a few at a time while I get back into what will likely be an erratic yet more often posting schedule. So if I can get back here later today, I will give you "September Synopsis." Otherwise, look for it next week sometime. I'd say Monday, but then I'd have a deadline, and OH THE PRESSURE...

Helllllloooooooo - o - o - o - o

2008-12-31T12:00:00.006-05:00

So. It's been a while, hasn't it? Is anyone still out there? Since I switched to a new blog back in what... July?... and then about two months later completely fell off the face of the blogosphere, only popping up to toast Jess and Torsten and to leave a total of about 5 comments scattered about, I'd be surprised if anyone is still hanging around. BUT, I take comfort in the fact that I and many others were too lazy to remove Tess's old blog or the mysteriously absent Flibberty from our readers so that when the two of them popped up again a few days ago after approximately the same length of absence, they still had readers.

A lot has happened (mainly with my kids, not me) during the past few months, but I'll get into that in a future post that I promise will happen pre-July. I need to upload some pictures and whatnot to illustrate, and my mother is arriving on Saturday, so it may be mid-January. I'll TRY to post some little things before then, but the big what's-been-happenings will show up then. In the meantime, if you're going to the Outback Bowl tomorrow, my oldest daughter (let's see what do I call her here... oh yes, Meg) will be playing alto saxophone on the field at halftime. OK, there will also be other kids from her marching band and some other high school marching bands, but I'm sure if you look closely, you'll see her.

Also, can you guess what one of the kids' gifts was this year?

Best wishes

2008-09-21T18:05:00.001-04:00

I wanted to take this opportunity, along with probably a half-gazillion other bloggers, to wish Jess and Torsten the best in their marriage. It has been fun keeping tabs on the preparations and giving input on the wedding gown, the jewelry, the invitations, the make-up, etc. It's hard to believe that the wedding will be here so soon. Then what will Jess write about? Married life? Maybe kids? Buying a house? Getting a dog? Whew. OK, there will still be plenty for her to write about. For a second there, I was afraid there would be a dearth of Jess posts. Glad I was able to reassure myself. Anyway, Jess, best wishes to you and Torsten. From what I've read over the past year or so, I'm sure the two of you will continue to be wonderfully happy together. Here's to the life of your dreams beginning with the wedding of your dreams (and the honeymoon of Torsten's)! Congratulations!

Unexpected and unintentional hiatus

2008-09-16T07:26:00.003-04:00

It seems that for the last week I have been unable to write, post, read and/or comment on my blog or anyone else's. Things are completely nutty here schedule-wise, and there doesn't seem to be a break in it for about another week-and-a-half to two weeks. So, while I will TRY to do a little blog hopping, success in that endeavor is unlikely. I'll be back soon - with so much going on, I have a lot to post, just no time to post it.

Potty training

2008-09-08T08:18:00.003-04:00

Conventional wisdom: Begin potty training when your child shows signs of being ready, such as asking to go to the potty.

Amy wisdom: If I say, "Tinkle? Potty?" Mommy will let me go upstairs, where I can refuse to have anything whatsoever to do with the potty. But I am upstairs. Which is exactly where I wanted to be. Score: Me - 1, Potty training - 0.

Buncha Books, issue 5

2008-09-02T08:09:00.000-04:00

FINALLY, I am sitting down to work on the fifth issue of Buncha Books. I have 15 books that need to be reviewed and one more that I'm sure will be done before I finish reviewing the 15. I think what I will do is try to cover eight books in this issue and then do another issue ASAP (next week if I can) to cover the other seven. After that, I need to set a few goals for myself, those being

1) Review the damn book IMMEDIATELY. It's not like it takes that long. Hell it takes more time when I wait to do it, because then I forget what the book was about and have to skim a little to jog my memory.

2) Compile my reviews once each month for a Buncha Books issue.

Sounds doable, no? Of course it does. Unless you are a MASTER procrastinator. In which case it is an excellent PLAN, the trouble comes with the EXECUTION of the plan. So we'll see how it goes. Anyway. Moving on...

If you want to take a look at past issues of Buncha Books, check out the labels section over in the right sidebar and click "Buncha Books". When I figure out how to make a link that acts like the label thing, I will include it in all my Buncha Books posts, but for now, viewing past issues will require a little scroll-and-click work. There are other book reviews too, that are not included in any of the Buncha Books issues. Those can be found by clicking the label "book review". All righty then. Moving on yet again...

Oh, wait, one more thing. I am adding a rating system. Instead of stars, I will rate up to five picklebottoms. You can read the explanation of the ratings system here.

Really moving on this time...

The first book I am covering in this issue is The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. This is a work of historical fiction written from the point of view of Mary Boleyn, the sister of the famous Anne Boleyn, about life in the royal court during the reign of Henry VIII. I do not enjoy historical fiction. In fact, I avoid it whenever possible. I firmly believe that "historical fiction" is another way of saying "boring." I think an equivalent phrase for "That movie bored me to tears." is "Sitting through that film was like reading historical fiction." Are you sufficiently convinced of my standpoint on historical fiction? OK, then, I'll proceed.

I only decided to try this novel because someone who promised me that she hated historical fiction said she LOVED this book and that I should read it. So I read it. And I LOVED it. It was interesting and fascinating and drew me right in. No, I have not changed my thoughts on historical fiction IN GENERAL, but I hear that this book has a sequel. If that is true, I MAY read it at some point. After I read the 937 (only a slight exaggeration) books piled next to my dresser in my TBR stack. In conclusion, this book gets my recommendation. Which we all know the author has been waiting for. What's a bestseller and a movie? Pfft. Nothing until Fiona gives it some picklebottoms. Let's see, I think I'll give it 4 1/2 picklebottoms.

Next up is a book I found on the shelf of the cottage where we stayed on vacation this summer. It is Codes of Betrayal by Dorothy Uhnak. This novel is about a man who is a police officer and the grandson of a notorious mobster. When his son is gunned down, the man falls into his old gambling addiction, loses his wife, becomes desperate and commits a crime to pay off his debts. Unfortunately, he stumbles into an FBI sting operation. To avoid jail, he must become an inside man in his grandfather's organization. He becomes a double agent of sorts. As he slowly finds out what really happened the day his son died, his commitment to his efforts wavers. Does he bring down his grandfather's organized crime syndicate or do his allegiances switch? Does his grandfather figure out what he's really up to?

I had never previously read anything by this author. I'm glad I found this on the shelf, because I enjoyed it. I recommend this novel and give it 4 picklebottoms.

Now I'm going to do a three-for-one. I picked up the first Stephanie Plum novel, One for the Money by Janet Evanovich on the bargain table at either Barnes and Noble or Borders, I don't remember which. Anyway, it was a quick, easy and fun read, so I Bookmooched some others in the series. So far I've read the first three: One for the Money, Two for the Dough and Three to Get Deadly.

Basically they are about a down-on-her-luck Jersey girl who needs a job, so she goes to work for her uncle, who is a kinky bail bondsman. So she becomes the world's most unlikely bounty hunter with a handsome policeman she's known since childhood, Joe Morelli, as her antagonist/love interest. In One for the Money, Stephanie is actually after Joe, who has skipped out his bail while trying to figure out who framed him for murder. In the process, she gets mixed up with a psychotic professional boxer. In Two for the Dough, Stephanie is after Joe's cousin, who shot and killed his best friend.

In Three to Get Deadly, she must track down the beloved owner of a local candy shop. All three were pretty good reads, funny and with some interesting characters, particularly Stephanie's gun- and funeral-loving grandmother. You either have a grandmother like her or you wish you did. These are great lying out on the beach or next to the pool books. They each get 3 1/2 picklebottoms.

Lost and Found by Carolyn Parkhurst was about a mother and daughter who sign on to do a reality show that's like "The Amazing Race" combined with a scavenger hunt. The mother made the decision to do the show because she and her daughter had grown so far apart that when her daughter gave birth to a baby one night, the mother had not even been aware that her daughter was pregnant. There are other interesting couples involved as well. There are two brothers, one who has a very ill son and becomes friendly with the mother. There is an uber-religious (how do you do an umlaut?) married couple who had met while going through some program to make them not gay, which of course they still were, but what better way to prove to the world they weren't than entering into a heterosexual union? There are two child stars who have faded from the limelight and want to regain some of their old notoriety. There are a few other duos as well, but I can't recall them at the moment, since it's been a while since I've read this book. Anyway, when I first picked up this book, I wasn't sure it would be my cup of tea. I'm not sure WHY exactly I thought that, but I was wishy-washy on even reading it. I'm so glad I did. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I think you will too. It gets 4 picklebottoms.

Next up is Beach Road by James Patterson and Peter de Jonge. Now I love James Patterson because I have kids. "What does one have to do with the other?" you ask. Well, I'll tell you. James Patterson's books have REALLY SHORT CHAPTERS. This means that often I can read an ENTIRE chapter between eruptions of sibling rivalry. That alone would make me like his books, but they are also GOOD. Beach Road is about a lawyer, Tom, who goes back to the area where he grew up. There isn't much going on there, so he doesn't get a lot of work. One night, two of Tom's best friends are killed and a young black high school basketball star is accused and arrested. Tom believes the boy is innocent and endures the wrath of his whole town, his friends, his family and his dead friends' families when he decides to represent the boy. This is a really good read and delivers a SHOCKING twist at the end. Four picklebottoms.

Our last review in this issue is The Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Apparently, this is the seventh in a series featuring Agent Pendergast. I, however, was not aware of this series or my OCD would have NEVER allowed me to read the seventh book before reading the preceding six. Luckily, this book stood alone quite well, though I am interested to learn more about the background of Agent Pendergast and his brother. In this novel, Agent Pendergast is in prison for a crime for which he was framed by his brother. There is a group planning his escape. In the meantime, at the New York Museum of Natural History, a bag of dust, at first thought to be a possible anthrax attack, is determined to be what remains of the museum's stolen collection of precious diamonds, which results in some very bad publicity for the museum. In a timely turn of events, a mysterious benefactor donates a large sum of money to be used to open an ancient Egyptian tomb exhibit. Strange things begin to occur surrounding the exhibit.

I enjoyed this novel and I think that I will pick up the preceding novels in the series to read after I read the books that are currently in my TBR pile. (My husband has kindly requested that I not buy any more books until it is no longer possible for the pile to fall over and bury small children.) So I will award it 4 picklebottoms.

Day 15: Slightly less ass, still being kicked

2008-09-01T10:56:00.004-04:00

This past week, I decided that if I'm going to kill myself with the 30-Day Shred, I should also adjust my diet and drop a few pounds. And by a few, I mean 20. After losing exactly ZERO pounds the first week, I cut calories back to about 1500 per day, give or take a hundred or two. I have to do things calorie-wise, because I can't cut fats or carbs as I do not have the willpower to look a slice of chocolate cake in the face and say, "No, cake. I will not eat you." I AM, however, able to say, "OK cake, I WILL eat you, but then I won't eat dinner." It may not be the way to do things, but I have learned after much trial and error that it's the only way that I am capable.

So this week I did Level 2 every day. I worked up from certain death while gasping and choking on my lungs to periodic POSSIBLE death. I will stick with this level for another week and then I MAY try to move to level 3, but I'm not going to make any commitment to that just yet. Anyway, I dropped only 2 pounds this week. While a bit disappointing, I'm not too discouraged as I am chalking up the lack of weight loss to the fact that it is that certain time of the month associated with bloating and water retention. I think next week will be better, and despite the lack of melting poundage, I am definitely in better shape physically after these past two weeks.

Buncha Books rating system

2008-08-31T16:08:00.005-04:00

I am working on issue #5 of Buncha Books for this week, but I have become sidetracked. You're probably not surprised by the fact that I am easily distracted. This time my distraction was the thought that a ratings system might be a nice thing to implement for my Buncha Books book review posts. So I went off on this tangent, but I think it was a productive one. Instead of stars, I will rate up to five picklebottoms. What the heck is a picklebottom, you are wondering. [See how I read your mind?] This, my friends, is a picklebottom:

I KNOW I'm not an artist. No need to point it out. Luckily I'll be using this image in a much smaller format. If you'd like to submit an image of a picklebottom for consideration, I will consider it, and probably gladly replace my image with yours. You will not receive any compensation other than my thanks and possibly credit in a post somewhere that you made the image for me. So you know, if my undying gratitude is enough for you...

Anyway, here is an explanation of the ratings:

One picklebottom will mean that the book was SO boring and/or bad (usually boring, see OCD tendency mentioned in two picklebottoms explanation below) that I couldn't even finish it, and thus could not possibly recommend it to you, EVEN if someone else (or EVERYONE else) considers it a classic. Examples could include The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane and The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. In all fairness to Stephen Crane, that is my 10th grade opinion, but I'm not willing to try to read the book again to see if my opinion has changed.

Two picklebottoms means that I was able to finish it, but it wasn't actually worth reading. Chances are that the only reason I finished it is that little OCD tendency I have that makes me HAVE TO FINISH any book I begin. Which should reinforce just how boring and/or bad those books are that only rate one picklebottom. Maybe I finished the book and thought, "Oh, that sucked. Why did I waste my time with that?" or I thought, "Meh. OK, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone."

Three picklebottoms means that not only was I able to finish it, it would make decent vacation reading or it was a fairly interesting read but wasn't particularly compelling. Books with this rating fall into a couple main categories. Either they are light, entertaining fluff that give equal or more attention to sexual tension and/or romantic involvements of the characters rather than to the actual plot, or they are more serious fare that is pretty good, but might lean slightly toward the boring side. While they typically wouldn't ever be mistaken for LITERATURE, I'm not too embarrassed to recommend them, though I may whisper the recommendation. Some examples of books that would get this rating are most of those written by Iris Johansen.

Four picklebottoms will probably be my most used rating. It covers most of what I read, because I have become pretty good at picking books that I like. Most of the novels by authors that I read regularly will get this rating. They might be light and entertaining, they may be darkly comedic, psychologically twisted, or focus on the inter-relationships of the characters. Basically, if I really enjoy the book and feel that others would really enjoy the book, it will receive four picklebottoms.

Five picklebottoms will be awarded to any book that I feel my life would have been wasted had I not read it before I died. OK, that may be an exaggeration, but these books are those that just blew me away. Books with storylines so unique as to be unlike anything I had read before, books that made me sad when they ended because I could have gone on reading them forever. Books that fascinated me or that contained language so eloquent as to be utterly captivating. Examples of books to which I would award five picklebottoms are Beach Music by Pat Conroy and The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

Some books may fall between ratings, in which case I will award them half-picklebottoms.

So if a book is light entertaining fluff, but I'm willing to give the recommendation in a loud and clear voice, it would receive three and a half picklebottoms. Now I realize that you may feel that some of the books I will award four picklebottoms might be light entertaining fluff, but if they involve murder, mayhem, mystery, courtroom drama, espionage, conspiracy theories, or anything that makes me wish I were a detective, private eye, CIA/NSA operative, vigilante, etc., they will get four picklebottoms from me, because these are MY reviews.

More miscellany

2008-08-29T07:04:00.001-04:00

[This post was originally published on my old blog on 8/28/07, so any time references are in regards to that date.]

Once again, with nothing else to talk about, I will resort to posting about the most interesting person I know... me. :) You can find the first post I wrote about myself here. So, on to more stuff about me...

I like photography. I really enjoy B&W photography. I don't use a digital camera; I still don't believe that they take pictures as nice as a regular one. I do use my husband's digital camera sometimes, when I know I want to put the images online, since it's easier and less time-consuming than developing and scanning. And someday I will use one of those fancy digital SLRs (probably the digital version of what I use now). But for now I'll just stick with my Nikon N80. If I had known myself better when I was younger, I might have worked to become a photographer, but alas, life goes backwards, and you don't really know what you'd like to study in college until long after you've graduated. Of course, my favorite photo subjects are my kids. I don't have my own darkroom, but someday I plan to.

I can't grow fingernails. When I was a kid, I bit them. Now I don't bite them, and they do grow, but they're so wimpy that they break off immediately upon achieving any length whatsoever. Oh, well. The ones that don't immediately break off keep getting in the way anyway, so I end up cutting or biting them off out of frustration. I don't understand how those people with really long fingernails function. I mean, really, how does the woman in this picture tie her shoes or button her shirt? Besides which, I'm sorry lady, I'm sure they took forever to grow and you're very proud (of what exactly, I'm not sure), but YUCK!

I rarely wear make-up. And when I do, it's minimal. Just blush and mascara. It's not because I think I have a natural beauty that I want to let shine through. Ha! It's because when it comes to make-up, I don't have the slightest clue how to do it. That, and I'm too lazy to learn or, if I did know, to take the time out of my day to apply it.

I LOATHE uncomfortable clothing. I would spend my life in jeans and T-shirts if that were acceptable. I wear jeans to church, even on Easter. I don't fall for those "dressing up is a way to show respect for God" arguments. I think showing up is what matters. When a special event occurs, I call someone and ask just how casual I can go. And invariably, I am the most under-dressed. But, if you read my last post about me, you know this - I don't care. :) By the way - SO NOT ME in the picture. I wish!

I have an extremely hard time starting things. I'm a terrible procrastinator. Even with easy things that will only take a few minutes. Once I do manage to start, however, I MUST FINISH NOW. To the detriment of other things. If a project has begun, I am compelled to work on it 24/7 until it is completed. Can you say obsessive-compulsive?

I once stepped over the piddly little barrier they have around things at Sea World and let the hyacinth macaw step onto my arm (I had a couple macaws at the time, so knew about how to handle them). People were feeding it and stuff, so hey, why not? The Sea World people came running out to chastise me. Hey, they shouldn't leave them just OUT like that, you know?

And that's enough for now.

Miscellany

2008-08-28T15:01:00.002-04:00

[This post was originally published on my old blog on 7/17/07, so all time references are in regards to that date.]

I don't really have a topic today, so I thought I'd just throw out some miscellaneous info about myself. Since I am SOOOOOO interesting. First of all, a crappy picture of moi. It was next to impossible to find a picture of me, since in my family, I'm the one who takes all the pictures. So this is from a day last spring at my daughter's pre-school. I was sitting on the floor looking up, which is SUCH a lovely angle, don't you think?

I am not getting gray hair! Yay! I am, however, getting white hair. Which I like better than gray, so I'm fine with it. Plus, since I'm a redhead, I'll be like 80 before anyone will notice it. I only have about 5 of them so far (but I can't see the back of my head, so there may be more). No, I will not color my hair. I will let it go white naturally.

I am apathetic. Pretty much completely and totally. Except when it comes to my kids. I may get riled up about something for a short period of time, but then it invariably burns itself out and I go on about my business. Not a great quality, I know, but hey, I don't care. ;)

I LOVE to read, and always have a book going. I'm anal about it, though, and I don't like to read more than one novel at a time. I have to finish one before I pick up another. This is because I have read so much that I often get plot lines and characters mixed up, even when I'm only reading one, so reading more than one at a time puts too much stress on me to keep everything separate. My most often read and enjoyed genres include mysteries, psychological thrillers, legal thrillers and southern fiction. Currently I am reading "Ender's Game (Ender, Book 1)" by Orson Scott Card for the "Something About Me" reading challenge, which is science fiction, a genre I usually avoid, but I am enjoying the book so far, and may read the rest of this particular series. Which leads me to...

I am not a joiner. Though I went out on a limb and did the reading challenge, I generally do not join things. No Gymboree, no "Mommy and me" things, no book groups, no nothing. I am a loner. I am not all that social. The few friends I have basically had to keep at me and at me until I finally gave in and did something with them. But those few friends are great ones, and I'm glad they harassed me until I gave in. :)

I love going to the movies, and I thoroughly enjoy going alone. It's been about 10 years since I've been able to do that, but it's one of the things I am most looking forward to doing in my old age. Not to say I don't enjoy going with other people - I do, but I like going alone just as much. (I'm also one of those people who will go to a nice restaurant alone and read a book while I eat.) I like most genres except horror and slasher flicks. Scary, I'm okay with, like "The Ring," but I don't usually see those either until they come out on DVD or are shown on TV. Favorite movie ever? I'm not sure. Loved "The Princess Bride" way back when, haven't seen it in a while. All the "Pirates of the Caribbean" were great, I thought. So maybe I go for swashbuckling and humorous, I don't know. What I do know is that the worst movie ever is "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover." We're talking major suckage there.

So that's enough for now. Can't give you everything at once. Got to hold something back for the next time I'm stuck for a topic.

Kawasaki - the disease, not the motorcycle

2008-08-26T08:28:00.004-04:00

[This post was originally published about a year ago on my old blog. I have edited for name changes and time passage.]

When someone says the word "Kawasaki," I'll bet you think of the motorcycle. I did too, until May, 2001. This is a long story. I never wrote it all down before, though it is something I have wanted to do. Now that I have this platform with whatever audience stops by, I thought I'd go ahead with it. For those of you that stick it out through the entire story, thanks. For those of you that don't want to plow through the whole thing, there is a rare disease called Kawasaki Disease that mainly affects children between the ages of 1 and 5 and is the main cause of acquired heart disease in children in the US. It's a rare and devastating illness, the first symptoms of which are a high persistent fever, not unlike a typical virus. If you have children, you may want to familiarize yourself with this illness.

One morning my 4-month-old daughter, Jo, woke up with a high fever (104.5 F). It was the Wednesday before Mother's Day, May 9, 2001. Tylenol would lower the fever, but 4 hours later it would come raging back. I took her to the doctor. The doctor that I usually see didn't have an open appointment, so I saw the doctor at the practice that I didn't like - the one who had told me that my 2-month-old (the same child, who obviously had chicken pox) didn't have chicken pox because... get this reason from a medical professional... she was too young to get chicken pox. Anyway, he sent us home with the diagnosis of a virus that would probably last around 5 days, keep using Tylenol for fever, push fluids, blah, blah, blah. Two days later, she wasn't eating and there was a HUGE swollen lymph node on the right side of her neck. So back to the doctor, and this time I got the one I liked. By that afternoon we were admitted into the children's hospital. And the nightmare began, because no one knew what was wrong.

IV antibiotics were begun immediately, because at the outset, some sort of infection was the doctors' best guess. But the antibiotics had no effect whatsoever. Specialists of every kind came to see us and tests of all kinds were run. The main doctor in charge of our case kept asking me if I had noticed redness in the whites of her eyes, which confused the hell out of me. It was the midnight spinal tap that finally did me in. We walked down the hall to the room where they do it, and the nurse said to me, "You don't want to be in there while they do this," and the doctor said, "It's better if you wait outside. We'll bring her right back to you." So I started walking back down the hall to the room, barely holding myself together. A nurse came up to me and put her arm around me while I walked, which pushed me completely over the edge, and I sobbed my way back to the room. (People being nice to me in tough situations always makes me cry, why is that?) She sat with me on the side of the little makeshift bed that the chair turns into until they brought Jo back to me. I had my head in my hands the entire time, and to this day I have no idea which nurse it was or what she looked like or if I ever saw her again during our stay. The spinal fluid was clear. The good news - not meningitis.

If you have never been in a situation where you don't know what is wrong and the experts can't seem to tell you either, let me assure you, there is no hell like it, especially when the one affected is your child. And our experts were some of the best. We were lucky enough to live near Philadelphia, so we had CHOP docs. You can't get much better than that. Yet they seemed flummoxed. Jo continued to deteriorate daily, and we honestly thought she was going to die.

As an aside, while all of this was happening, people were calling constantly for updates. I had not left the hospital since Jo was admitted, and just had my husband bring me clothes and toiletries. He stayed home with our oldest child, who was in school, while also moving his business out of a building that was being renovated. Flowers were sent, cards were sent, etc., but by far the nicest, most thoughtful and useful gift I received was from one of my sister-in-laws. She gave me her calling card number and said to use it for all the outgoing calls I would be making from the hospital room. At the time, my husband and I didn't have a calling card, and I wasn't about to leave the hospital to get one, so this was wonderful. I mainly used it to call her. When there were no more visitors for the day, and the floor was quiet, and the only lights were from the nurses' station in the hallway and the television, that's when I'd start to feel like I was going to lose it. So every night around 11:00, I'd call her. She'd talk to me for hours, never making me feel like I was imposing on her time, even though she had four kids and was going to have to get them up in the morning and off to school. We were on the phone every night until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. She knew I needed the distraction, and she provided it. She told me stories of when she used to teach really disturbed high school aged kids, and some of those stories were truly horrifying. She made me laugh (not at the school stories, other things) despite what was happening. She was my lifeline, and I'll always be grateful for it.

Finally, on Monday morning, the doctor came in and said she thought they had a diagnosis. It might be Kawasaki Disease. It was such a relief having a name to put to it, even if it was just a possibility. And Jo had woken up with red eyes! I said to the doctor, "The whites of her eyes are red. Why did you keep asking me about that?" She said it was another symptom of the disease. The other doctors on the team (yes, an entire team of various specialists had been created to try to determine what was wrong with my child) wanted to wait another day before beginning treatment to be sure (this is a disease that can only be diagnosed by the appearance of a myriad of symptoms, all of which were not observable in Jo as yet), but she felt this was the correct diagnosis, in any case the treatment wouldn't hurt Jo, the treatment should be begun ASAP if the diagnosis is correct and the treatment takes 12 hours or so to prepare. It was up to my husband and me to make the call.

I called my husband at work and had him look up and print everything he could find about Kawasaki Disease. While I waited for the information, I called my mother, who had decided to come up from SC to help out with my oldest while I stayed in the hospital. At the time, she worked for a cardiologist, and when she told him she had to take some time off because her grandbaby might have Kawasaki Disease, his response was, "Oh, shit." Not the news you want to hear from someone in the know. Shortly thereafter, my husband called back with info about the disease. I found out that no cause was known. It may be genetic, environmental, viral or some combination. There was no definitive way to test for it, only the appearance of several symptoms could be used to diagnose. It was so rare that some pediatricians had never even heard of it. Kids would get it, recover, and then die from heart attack, because the disease itself isn't what kills, it's the aneurysms in the coronary arteries the disease leaves behind. It's most common in Asians, most common in boys and most common between the ages of 1 and 5. My little white baby girl was the rarest of the rare. But everything fit. I was convinced, my husband was convinced. I called the doctor in and told her we wanted to begin treatment immediately.

That night, the intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) was begun. High-dose aspirin therapy was also begun. By morning, Jo was improving, so the "wait and see" part began. My mother arrived. I was ensconced in hospital life. Time of day, weather, etc. was all irrelevant. I took showers in a room down the hall, while a nurse babysat. Yes, babysat. There was a new nurse on the floor and she would come stay in the room with Jo so I could get a shower. She was a really sweet girl, and somehow I found out that she loved YooHoo (the chocolate drink, for anyone who is wondering), which is all that I really remember about her now. Anyway, by Wednesday, Jo was still not completely better. The result of the treatment is usually immediate, and when it's not, the treatment sometimes has to be repeated. So since the first treatment had resulted in obvious improvement, it was decided that the diagnosis had been correct and the decision was made to repeat the treatment.

Once the second treatment was complete, Jo continued to improve. Since the outcome of this ordeal now looked positive, I took a picture (see left) for Jo to look at when she was older. At some point around the 7th or 8th day, I left my mother with Jo and actually left the hospital to try to find a gift for the staff, mainly the nurses. They had been wonderful, and I wanted them to know they were appreciated. I finally ended up at a fancy little Italian bakery, where I walked in and asked for a tray of cookies. The lady behind the counter said that trays had to be ordered in advance and she didn't have anything extra today. I said okay and was turning to leave, when she saw the hospital bracelet (which the hospital makes the parent wear as well, for security reasons) on my arm and asked me about it. I told her the story and she ripped the order slip off a big tray of cookies and sold it to me, saying she would redo the tray for the folks who ordered it, because they weren't expected in to pick it up for several hours. The nurses were thrilled with the cookies.

We were able to leave the hospital after a 10-day stay, once Jo's eating had returned to normal. I cleaned out the room that Jo and I had lived in for 10 days, wrote a note to the staff thanking them for all they had done and left it with a small picture of Jo, to whom the nurses had really taken a liking, along with a 6-pack of YooHoo for the nurse who babysat for me, and took my now healthy and alive child back home.

Jo had to be on high-dose aspirin therapy for a while and low-dose aspirin therapy for many months after, because the disease causes an extremely high blood platelet count, which can cause clots that can break free and result in death. The high platelet count is a lingering effect and can take quite a long time to return to normal. Now besides the worry over Reye Syndrome if a child gets the flu or something while on the aspirin therapy, I had the added problem of getting aspirin tablets into an infant. I searched for liquid children's aspirin to no avail, so I had to continue what had been done in the hospital (which I'm proud to say that I came up with, not that it took a rocket scientist, when a nurse came in with aspirin tablets and couldn't figure out how to get a 4-month-old to take them). So three times a day for many months, I crushed aspirin into a little bit of water, and used a syringe to give it to her.

Now seven years later, Jo is a happy and healthy little girl. When this first happened, we thought that Jo would have to be followed by a cardiologist for the rest of her life, but I'm happy to report that last year we had our last cardiologist appointment. The doctor told us that the new medical wisdom was that the risk of cardiac problems for children who had never shown cardiac involvement within a few years of the disease was no different than if they had never had the disease. I have to admit to a very difficult time believing this, and I have had moments of panic on one or two occasions when Jo said that her chest hurt (turned out to be from falling or bumping into something). The doctor did say to call if Jo ever complained of chest pain, which gives further credence to my reluctance to believe her heart is just as strong and healthy as those of my other kids. But we were and are lucky. Some parents lose their children because it is either not diagnosed correctly or not diagnosed in time. Some kids are left with aneurysms that dictate their lives - no sports, no excitement, no amusement park rides, etc. Jo plays soccer, is a red-belt in Tae Kwon Do and wants to run cross country when she's older. Conventional wisdom seems to be that the treatment needs to be begun within 5 days of the onset of the fever to avoid cardiac involvement. We got in just under the wire.

For more information, family stories and resources, please visit the Kawasaki Disease Foundation website.

Also, check out this website by a teen who had KD.

Photo credits: Got the motorcycle picture here. The calling card picture cam from the Sam's Club website.

Some old stuff

2008-08-26T05:55:00.001-04:00

I've been meaning to do another Buncha Books post, because the number of books I've read and not reviewed is becoming overwhelming. Doing one of those posts after so much time has passed takes a while (I really should review as I go and set up a once-a-month Buncha Books issue thing.), so I've decided to transfer a couple more posts from my old blog here over the next few days. One is a post that was really difficult for me to write, as it is about a time when one of my children faced a potentially deadly disease. Since the illness is rare, I think it's important to get information out there when possible, so I have decided to re-post it despite it's lack of entertainment value. I will also, when I am done with my Buncha Books post, be adding a link in the sidebar to the Kawasaki Disease Foundation's website like I had up at my old blog. The other posts I'll transfer to fill out the time haven't yet been decided upon, but they'll probably involve some of the random info about me (because it is OH SO INTERESTING) and a fun meme or two.

Day 8 and a celebrity look-alike

2008-08-25T06:53:00.008-04:00

Day 8 of my health kick, and now that the cookies are all gone, I must refuse to make more and start eating better. If I'm going to kill myself with this exercise, I should actually make it possible to drop some weight by changing my diet as well. So I'll try to start that today. Willpower, feel free to show up at any time, now.

I did move on to Level 2 of the 30-Day Shred, otherwise known as the "Oh, you thought your ass was kicked BEFORE" level. I'm still having trouble lifting my bottle of water to my mouth. Even the kick-ass girl of the two assistants Jillian Michaels has cheated. You know there's one girl back there that does things a little easier for beginners and the other girl who does the kick-ass version? Yeah, I SAW HER CHEAT.

Anyway, there are several exercises done in the plank position, which is a freaking KILLER. I am now afraid to even WATCH Level 3. I think I'll do 2 weeks of Level 2 and then take a peek at 3 to decide whether to move on or not.

I was watching a show called "The Cleaner" and saw a kid on there who looked just like Joaquin Phoenix. His name is Shiloh Fernandez and here he is:

Here's Joaquin:

Maybe it's the moody look, but when Shiloh walked onto the TV screen, my first thought was, "Wow he looks like a young Joaquin Phoenix." What do you think?

A glimpse of control amid the chaos

2008-08-22T07:10:00.000-04:00

Jo, Beth and I made these AMAZING cookies yesterday:

Though it appears that they are cooling right on my counter, which would be okay, since it was CLEAN, they are actually cooling on wax paper. But I am not here to convince you of the sanitation level of my counter-tops. No, I am here as a public service to YOU and anyone for whom you will ever again bake a cookie. So as I was saying, we made cookies. Basically, we did the same as we did here, but instead of using chocolate chips, we used dark chocolate M&Ms and Heath toffee bits. Also, I think I have found the perfect amount of pudding mix to add - to a double recipe add one of the big boxes of pudding mix. It's a 6-serving box rather than a 4-serving. I have to say that I think these are the best cookies I've EVER HAD. Ever. Ever. In my life. And I've been around a while. And in that while I've eaten more cookies than most people eat in a lifetime. Really. So I know what I'm talking about.

Moving on...

A few days ago, Amy was setting up bowling pins all in a row. If one would get knocked down, she would say, "Uh oh, pin," and pick it back up and put it in it's rightful place. I thought this was pretty funny:

BUT THEN...

At my house, the playroom gets completely and utterly DESTROYED on a daily basis. Furniture covers pulled off the furniture and thrown on the floor or heaped back up on said furniture, crumbs all over the carpet, toys scattered everywhere, puzzles dissembled and scattered, etc. By the time Amy goes in for her nap, it is total chaos and you can't even walk through the room. So ~~every~~ most afternoons at nap time, I try to get in there and straighten up a bit before it gets ripped apart again later. Lately, I've been finding some odd order amid the chaos:

Hmmm... Thoughts?

Next, a random picture. Just a head's up for Kellogg's: Calibrate your Eggo machine, dude.

[30 Day Shred update: Day 5: Although I have not lost an ounce (I attribute this to the lack of change in my diet; I will try to do better, though making cookies was OBVIOUSLY not a good idea.), my ass is no longer being served up on a silver platter. Rather, *I* am starting to kick some ass. I think that I will continue on Level 1 for the weekend and move on to Level 2 on Monday.]

Paper plate parenting

2008-08-21T07:22:00.007-04:00

Last night I saw a commercial for paper plates; I can't remember which company (Dixie? Chinet?). I've seen it a few times and it always cracks me up because it seems to me so passive-aggressive, and I'm not sure I've ever seen a passive-aggressive commercial before. Anyway, it reminded me of this post over at All & Sundry yesterday, which I thought was pretty funny. Have you guys seen it? The commercial, I mean. A mother is feeding her kids dinner on (OH MY GOSH, HOW UN-GREEN OF HER) paper plates and says something like, "I'm PROUD to feed my kids on [insert brand name here] paper plates, since it saves time that I can spend with my kids." As if, "I DARE you over-the-top green people to attack me for my paper plate usage, because doing so would also be attacking me for being a good mother, and HA HA, THAT'S a no-no!" It makes me laugh every time.

I should point out, in the interest of full disclosure, that I use paper plates. A lot of them. And not a name brand, just the store brand, which means that when we have something greasy like take-out pizza, we have to double them up. Please don't be horrified. After all, I recycle (except peanut butter jars, they're too much trouble to clean first) and I turn off the water when I brush my teeth. There were even a couple of years that I had a vegetable garden. Also, while I do spend A LOT of time with my kids (how could I not, since I'm ALWAYS here?), I also have been known to lock myself in the bathroom for 10 minutes or so to get away from them. Most importantly though, I don't give a flying rat's ass what you choose to do or not do in your environmental efforts (if any) or your parenting methods (assuming you're not abusive, of course). Or anything else where there may be opposing sides. I'm full-on the "whatever works" bandwagon. And what's working for me this morning is chocolate chip Eggo waffles. I will make up for it this afternoon by baking dark chocolate M&M and Heath bits cookies with Jo and Beth while Meg is at marching band camp and Amy is napping. Wait... not sure how that makes up for it, but just go along with me on that.

Sending the wrong message

2008-08-20T13:30:00.002-04:00

I seem to be sending the wrong message with my last post. I am NOT UPSET IN THE LEAST. I was surprised at first and registered a brief moment of panicky concern, but then I realized that that reaction was uncalled for and that having a reader (if (s)he does become a regular) close by could be fun. Do none of you READ THROUGH TO THE END??? (By the way, kettle, you're black.) Note to self: make writing more interesting. People are drifting away in the middle.

How should I look at this?

2008-08-20T08:48:00.005-04:00

Yesterday, I was visited here by someone who works (it was a company ISP, but that doesn't rule out living in the town as well) in the town WHERE I LIVE, which is NOT a huge town. Now, my first reaction was mini-freak out. Does this person know me? Will this person recognize my kids at the grocery store or the Target? Do we go to the same restaurants? Could this be one of my kids' friends' mothers? What is the potential anonymity compromise here? But then I thought, "so what?" I have no family here, and those are the only ones that I'm really wanting to keep unaware of this place. Not that there is anything INCRIMINATING, but just because I present more of a friends persona here than a family persona. There is the protecting my kids issue, of course, in that while I do post pictures of my kids, I do not give any specific location-identifiers such as a school name or mascot. Most likely this person is just another mom and is completely non-threatening. Whoever it is got here from Swistle rather than a search and appears to be gainfully employed at an insurance company with the word "Mutual" in it's name. So I'm going to assume everything's cool, especially since I know where he/she works. :) If you live in a relatively small town where, even if it's a big city suburb and is pretty built-up, lots of people know one another and it's not unusual to run into people you know on a regular basis, what would your reaction be if one day you checked your statistics and saw a visit from your town? Oh, and if you're looking at this and thinking, "I think she's talking about ME," email me. Maybe we can grab lunch sometime. That is, if you don't mind a toddler with unpredictable behavior tagging along.

Thoughts of an insomniac

2008-08-19T06:10:00.001-04:00

Saturday night I couldn't sleep. I don't know if this happens to any of you, but right about ovulation time in my cycle, I get a few days of insomnia. (I used to also get a few days of severe, debilitating depression, but taking Prozac for those days each month that the depression hit fixed that, and it's been a couple years since I've experienced that.) When I can't sleep, it is ALWAYS because I can't shut off my head. It's probably that way for everyone, but I don't know because I am not in anyone else's head. We should all be grateful for that. My thought process Saturday night ended up with such a funny memory that I had to share: the memory of my most bizarre homework assignment EVER.

My PhD (which I quit before I did my dissertation) track required me to take a physiology course at the medical school. I was pregnant at the time, so I chose Reproductive Physiology. I was in the school of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, Systems Science and Risk Assessment, and found myself in a class containing myself and about a dozen nurse-midwife students (all female). Interestingly, and somewhat scary for their patients perhaps, I received the highest grade in the class. But there was one assignment that stood out to me. Our professor was an ex-nun, in that she had once been a nun, but apparently decided that she'd rather get some than get nun (none). The parentheses are there for any of you who are slow on the uptake today and need it all LAID out for you. (Oh, stop your groaning, most of you know I'm really a 14-year-old boy in a woman's body.) Anyway, the first few classes were dedicated to the structure of ge.ni.ta.li.a and the or.ga.sm.ic process (yeah, I just made up the phrase "or.ga.sm.ic process", but it sounds good, no?). This was also when the whole "G.-.sp.ot, does it exist?" debate was going on. So one evening (it was a night class) as class was wrapping up, Professor Ex-nun said, "For your homework tonight, I want you to go home and locate your G.-sp.ot." Good thing she said that "go home" part first. "Any questions?" Um, YEAH:

A) Will this assignment be graded on technique or results?
B) Can we work with someone else on the assignment or is this intended to be a solo mission? And speaking of solo-missions, isn't that a no-no in nun circles?
C) Will we be discussing how we did on this assignment next class?

I didn't actually ASK any of these, but I SO wanted to. What was the most bizarre homework assignment YOU ever got?

Day 1, Revisited: My ass. Still kicked.

2008-08-18T06:54:00.001-04:00

On Friday, I executed the first day of my exercising and ~~healthy eating~~ plan, in that I got up a 5am and completed (barely) Level 1 of Jillian Michael's 30-Day Shred DVD. You can read about that experience (if you haven't already) here. That was supposed to be Day 1, then Saturday would have been Day 2, Sunday Day 3, etc. Well, as Friday went on, I discovered that lowering myself to the toilet so I could pee was a bit painful for my thighs, as was walking DOWN stairs (I had to lean heavily on the wall). This led me to believe that perhaps I wouldn't be able to do the same workout on Saturday morning. I was oh so right.

I rolled out of bed on Saturday morning not without difficulty. I had muscles hurting that I didn't even know EXISTED. People talk about the core muscles. Well, Saturday morning, I could have pointed out EVERY SINGLE FREAKING ONE. The only parts of my body that I could move without discomfort were my fingers and toes (and I hope Jillian Michaels never reads this, because if she does, I'm sure she'll remedy THAT in her next DVD, since she likes to work both the BIG muscles and the SMALL muscles SIMULTANEOUSLY). On the bright side, it was that good, achy, I did something good for myself kind of hurt. On the not so bright side, it being a good hurt didn't change the fact that I was incapable of a real workout Saturday morning. I compromised with a little treadmill action. Sunday was a repeat of Saturday.

So today, although still a bit sore, I did the workout again, and I am starting over. TODAY is Day 1. Not last Friday. Today. And my ass is still kicked, though not nearly as badly. I think I'll be able to continue with day 2 tomorrow.

Day 1: My ass. Seriously kicked.

2008-08-15T06:08:00.005-04:00

When I finally bothered to amble out to the mailbox Wednesday night, I found my Amazon order containing Jillian Michael's box set of exercise DVDs and the 30-Day Shred. That was my cue that it was time for a health kick, time to eat better (or at least less) and get some exercise. Yesterday, I decided to watch the 30-Day Shred DVD to see what it involved before I actually started. It has three levels, and I had heard that they were pretty tough and that it wouldn't hurt to be in pretty decent shape before you even tried the DVD, so I figured I'd start with Level 1 and watched that. It consisted of a warm up, three 6-minute circuits that each contained 3 minutes of strength training, 2 minutes of cardio and 1 minute of abdominal work. Then a short cool down. A total of about 22 minutes. It didn't seem too bad. Ha HA! You know that old adage: "Looks can be deceiving."? Um, yeah. This morning I had my ass handed to me on a silver platter.

I got up at 5:00, threw on a sports bra, had a nice cup of coffee while I read a chapter of the book I'm currently reading, then moved furniture out of the way and turned on the DVD. Warm-up? Easy. Strength part of first circuit? No problem. Cardio? Not too bad, but starting to get winded by the end. Abs? OK. Second circuit. Strength? Tougher, but manageable. Cardio? Got winded earlier, but got through it by not doing the last two jumping jacks and gasping for breath instead. Abs? Tougher, since it's hard to tighten those abs when you're breathing like a pack mule that just ran a horse race. Third circuit. Strength? Once again, tough but manageable. Cardio? OH MY GOD, just kill me now. When did I get so out of shape? Can't. Breathe. Abs? Yeah. See: pack mule, horse race. I was so thankful when she got to the cool down, I could have kissed her, but I was too whipped to get up off the floor and walk over to the TV.

I suck, and other random things

2008-08-12T10:43:00.007-04:00

I suck. That is because despite good intentions of mailing out the prizes from my last PiF contest (I'd link, but not only do I suck, I'm too lazy to bother with linking today) last week, I only just managed to mail them TODAY. So yeah. Sorry, all my winners, but I think we've established that I suck. Before we move on away from my suckage and my overall suckitude that I am sporting today, I just want to say that it's not just me. Other people suck too. As a matter of fact, other people suck MORE. For instance, asshole drivers who think the right shoulder of the road is a LANE. So that means EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO LIVES IN PENNSYLVANIA. They're such bad drivers that they need SIGNS next to their traffic lights that say, "Wait For Green." Seriously, here's a picture:

Now, come ON. When I first saw one of these signs, I thought, "Well, DUH." Then I thought, "Maybe they mean 'No Turn on Red,' but then why don't they use a 'No Turn on Red' sign?" So all I can figure is that PA drivers need a reminder to wait until the light is green before they go, as opposed to just randomly and indiscriminately driving into intersections. Now THAT'S bad driving.

Today I saw a big truck that said, "Batesville Casket Company." Did they not consider that the name "Norman Bates" could possibly be the first thing people thought of when they saw the company name? Am I the only one for whom that was the immediate thought?

I have SO MUCH CLUTTER. No, scratch that. My husband and kids have SO MUCH CLUTTER. Why am I always the one who has to do something about it? Today I am tackling the lowest level of our split-level (it would be called a basement if it weren't a split-level house, if anyone knows what the three levels of a split-level house are called, clue me in please).

I ordered a Jillian Michaels box set of DVDs AND her 30-Day Shred DVD. They should be here tomorrow. Between that and the hundred push-ups thing that I printed out, I should be SMOKIN' HOT by Thanksgiving, right? Though I suppose that would be contingent upon DOING them. I figured out that there are three things standing in the way of my having a killer bod: 1) lack of a personal chef, 2) lack of a personal trainer (and I would need a kick-ass one ala Jillian Michaels) and 3) lack of a nanny. Well, actually I guess that boils down to one thing: lack of sufficient funding.

ATTENTION DANIELLE-LEE: Honey, email me your address and pick your book from my Bookmooch inventory if you want your prize sometime in the next century. We've already determined that it takes me long enough when I DO have that info to get a prize on its way, and I would feel so much LESS SUCKY if I were able to send you yours. Do it for me, 'kay?

This is what I found when I went in to get Amy up from her nap yesterday:

Photo credit: Got it here.

Wow!

2008-08-11T08:54:00.002-04:00

I'm not a rabid Olympics watcher. In fact, last night was the first I tuned in at all. I flipped on the TV while I was getting ready for bed and for a short time I watched before going to bed. I saw some swimming. Women's freestyle and the men's relay to be specific. And wow. Just wow. That men's relay finish was un-freaking-believable! If you didn't see it you need to. I'm actually going to spend a moment seeing if I can find it on YouTube for you... [on-hold music]

OK. Here's the entire race, but since it doesn't seem to have been posted by anyone affiliated with either The Olympic Games or NBC, I'm not sure how long it will be up:

Amazing, isn't it?

OUR children's utensils have more fun than YOUR children's utensils

2008-08-06T19:28:00.000-04:00

What? Don't YOU keep a slide in your kitchen? No? Then how do you expect your forks to frolic?

Which ones should I enter?

2008-08-04T08:27:00.006-04:00

First of all, an update to Friday's post: my husband loved his pictures. Secondly, I am heading to NYC today because Beth has two auditions. Her first one this morning is for a TV commercial for Claritin. Then she has another this afternoon for a print ad for Greendog Clothing. I had never heard of Greendog Clothing, because I either:

A) keep my head buried in the sand at all times,
B) went to the mall for the last time before I had children,
C) am hopelessly un-hip, OR
D) all of the above.

Guess which. *DING DING DING*

Anyway, my un-hip self did somehow manage to set up my cell phone on Twitter. I sent my FIRST EVER text message there. It said, "Test" and worked flawlessly after I screamed, yelled, stomped and seethed in frustration for about 30 minutes because I couldn't get lower case letters to come up. After threatening to flush him down the toilet, my phone came through with a little icon at the top of the screen that lets me know how his highness intends to present the words I type. I should tell you that I have the least technologically advanced cell phone currently in existence. It does nothing cool. It is a phone. Period. HOWEVER, on the plus side, I have not changed my cell phone plan since 2003, so I am still on the $29.99 a month plan. So there, all you fancy schmancy phone owners. On the minus side, I have NO IDEA what texting will cost me. I should look that up, but I'm pretty sure laziness will prevail on that issue. That is a long-winded way of saying MAYBE I will send a tweet or two while I'm walking the streets of NYC. I will not, however, RECEIVE any tweets on my phone due to my lack of knowledge of texting costs, but I will catch up on twitter when I get home later.

IN THE MEANTIME:

While you all wait with baited breath for my tweets, which I'm SURE will say things like, "Just ran into [insert big deal star here] and am headed to lunch with him/her," "Got cast as an extra in Law and Order because they were shooting in front of a building we walked past," or other exciting things, rather than things like, "On train to the city. Train sucks," "Train station stairways smell like urine," "Walking 14 blocks to next appt because am cab-hailing AMATEUR," or "Sweating like pig - it's freaking hot," I hope you will help me out below by giving me your thoughts.

I LOVE photography. I don't think I am particularly GOOD at it, but I love it. I am considering entering some of my vacation photos in a contest. There are several categories, but my photos only fall into two of them: scenic and people. I can enter a total of three images. Here are the ones I am considering:

Scenic:

People:

So what do you think? If you could enter three of these, which three would you choose? I should tell you that the pictures will be judged only on color and content.

I really shouldn't be allowed out of the house

2008-08-01T15:07:00.009-04:00

Today I had to run a few errands. I had uploaded our vacation pictures to Ritz to be printed (I'm old-fashioned that way - they're digital, but I NEED the physical prints), along with a couple 10x13 enlargements that I was planning to frame for my husband. Um, lets see if I can show you those... here they are:

My husband is very nostalgic about this vacation spot, so I thought framed enlargements would be a nice gift. They turned out really nice. I'll let you know later if he appreciated them.

Anyway, I also needed to stop by Barnes and Noble for a gift certificate for Meg's friend's birthday tomorrow. I came out with the gift certificate PLUS:

They're still in the bags, which is the odd background in the shots. The sad thing is that there are a couple that I MAY HAVE read before, but I just can't remember anything about them. I can't help it; the bargain tables SUCK ME IN every time. Hardcovers for less than the price of a paperback. How could I possibly resist? Yes, I am a book junkie.

Raise your glasses...

2008-08-01T10:29:00.004-04:00

... to Caroline and Brett. Today is (or will be depending on the time of the ceremony) their first day of marriage. May they be as happy 50 years from now as they are today.

... to myself and Mr. Picklebottom, who were married on the same date 10 years ago. I'd say more, but I don't want to jinx it.

Final prize pic and THE WINNERS!!!

2008-07-31T07:45:00.009-04:00

I'm still WAY WAY behind on everything. You'd think a week to catch up on what needs done after a week away would be reasonable, but it is NOT. I have not caught up much AT ALL. I didn't want to leave my contest entrants hanging, though, AND I received my fourth (AWESOME) prize and wanted to show you all, so I am taking a break from playing catch-up to post this. [Next week (hopefully): vacation pictures! Edge of your seat stuff, no?]

First of all, my totally awesome and amazing prize from Whimsy:

There was a drawstring bag full of BEAUTIFUL cards (is there NO END to the talent of bloggers?), pretty pens, stickers and ribbons and fancy brads, a flowery pencil case that I KNOW one of my daughters will want, candy and animal cookies, a magnetic pad AND a gorgeous journal. FABULOUS prize, isn't it? I LOVE it! As you can see from the picture, one of the varieties of candy included was Jujy Fruits. As you can ALSO see (if you look closely), the box of Jujy Fruits is opened. That is because, upon opening the package, I immediately opened the Jujy Fruits and ate a handful. Then I spent the next six hours extracting them from my teeth. Then I went back for more. What is it about Jujy Fruits that makes them worth all that teeth cleaning work and then a day or two of sore jaw muscles? I do not know. But there is something about them. The Mike & Ike's are next! And pink lemonade lollipops! I've never seen that flavor before, but it sounds wonderful! Am I supposed to be sharing with my kids? Oops. THANK YOU, WHIMSY!!!

And NOW, what you've all been waiting for... *drumroll*: THE WINNERS of my mega-PiF contest!!!! The winner of the first prize is... Danielle-lee from A Little Left of Lost!!! Prize number two goes to... the cubicle's backporch from her blog of the same name!!! The third prize is awarded to... Katie, my most loyal lurker!!! The fourth and final (but not really) prize will soon be on its way to... Adriane of Flea D'Lure!!! Ladies, I will be emailing you and/or commenting on your most recent post SOON, or feel free to email me at the address in the sidebar if you read this before I make contact. Also, don't forget that there is a book of your choice from my Bookmooch inventory included in the prize. Please go take a look and let me know what you want. Katie, I'll need you to email me - I actually think I have an email from you from a couple months ago, but I would have to go through about 2000 emails to find it, so have pity on me. If I don't hear from you in a few days, I'll take on that herculean task, but please don't make me. :)

There was also a bonus prize of children's books. That prize goes to... moo of Moo's Moo!!! Moo, all that contacting stuff I mentioned above, etc., etc., you know the drill.

Lurky week

2008-07-28T13:30:00.004-04:00

I'm back from vacation and ALMOST done with all the dirty vacation laundry, so I am starting to tackle the over 200 posts in my reader. I started reading and left a couple comments, then realized that due to the sheer number of posts, I will probably have to mostly lurk this week while I catch up, so forgive me the lack of commenting on your hilarious and/or touching posts this week. I will be announcing the winners of my mega-contest soon, so stay tuned. Also, in response to a question from susiewearsthepants: Thanks for asking; feel free to link. That goes for anyone who is wondering. Thanks!

Prizes, prizes and more prizes AND a multi-winner PiF

2008-07-17T14:50:00.003-04:00

Not too long ago, back when I announced the winner of my contest in the Group Effort PiF contests, I whined about my always a loser, never a winner status. Over the next couple of days, I discovered that I would have to eat my words, as my status changed in a MAJOR way. I won not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR, yes FOUR contests. UNBELIEVABLE!! I won Pantsfreesia's contest, Whimsey's contest, Parkingathome's contest AND Amelia Sprout's contest. I can now be considered certifiably LUCKY!

So far I have received three of my four prizes, and as I am going to be incommunicado for about a week beginning tomorrow evening, I've decided to go ahead with my Four-in-One Pay it Forward contest. In addition, I have several children's chapter books of which we have duplicates. So there will be a BONUS drawing for those who would also like to enter to win those. So really there are FIVE prizes here, and thus your odds of winning SOMETHING are pretty darn good. THIS TIME, I have assembled the prizes PRIOR TO the contest. This is mainly due to the bargain shelf FEEDING FRENZY I had last night at the bookstore.

But let's get to the PICTURES, shall we? I must first say that there are some mighty talented bloggers out there, as evidenced by some of the handmade items I received. First off, my prize from Pantsfreesia was a FABULOUS handmade tote bag with matching book covers, one sized for a hardback book and one sized for a paperback:

AWESOME, don't you agree? Next up, I received this BEAUTIFUL and amazingly timely prize from Parkingathome:

I LOVE Willow Tree stuff AND my tenth wedding anniversary is in a couple weeks. My plan is to hand this to my husband and say, "Look what I won for you to give me." The third prize that arrived was from Amelia Sprout, who makes some really cool stuff. I received an ADORABLE hot pink sock monkey, complete with a stuffed banana on the side (that sounds dirty, yeah I'm 12), a knit ball and a jar of delicious honey:

Such great prizes! And I still have one coming! Thank you all! This was so much fun! To repay the kindness (these were pay it forward contests after all), I will now move into the contest portion of this post. Unfortunately, I am woefully lacking in the area of talent of any sort, but particularly the crafty sort, so there will not be any handmade items coming from yours truly. However, I offer the following four prizes:

Prize 1:

Prize 2:

Prize 3:

Prize 4:

Each of these prizes will also come with a book that the winner will select from my Bookmooch inventory. In addition to the four winners that will be chosen, a winner will be chosen for a BONUS prize:

These books are those which, for some reason, we have duplicates. Some of them are brand spanking new, others are used. I realize that some of you do not have kids and may not be interested in the bonus prize, so I'll work the entries like this:

1) To enter the contest to win one of the main four prizes, simply leave a comment on this post. If you don't know what to say, tell me a neat thing you did on vacation this summer (or last summer if you haven't gone anywhere this year). Specifically, I am curious about fun and not too expensive things to do with kids, but I'm interested in fun things you did even if you have no kids.

2) If you also want to enter to win the children's books, just mention that in your comment and you will be entered in the contest for the main prizes AND the contest for the bonus prize.

Now technically, if I were to do these contests separately, it is conceivable that one of you could win multiples of the main four prizes. However, since the prizes are so similar, there will be four different winners chosen. In other words, if your name is chosen the to win the first prize, it will not go back into the hat for the subsequent drawings. (Metaphorically speaking, since I will use a random number generator.) EXCEPT in the case of the bonus prize. All commentors who express an interest in the bonus prize will be entered to win the bonus prize EVEN IF they won one of the main four prizes. Got it? Okay then, comment away...

[EDITED TO ADD: Oops! Forgot to say that entries (comments) will be accepted until noon on July 28th.]

2008-07-15T08:29:00.001-04:00

PiF prize reveal

2008-07-14T13:19:00.007-04:00

Ecchs got in touch and I have assembled her prize to be mailed tomorrow (I hope - I'll certainly do my best). Here it is:

It consists of a notepad, a journal (I LOVE these little journals. I don't actually KEEP a journal, yet I LOVE them.), a mechanical pencil covered in girly accessories like shoes and handbags, a set of 10 assorted notecards that I received from the artist that I can't bring myself to write on because I think they should be framed, and a book that Ecchs selected from my Bookmooch inventory, "Couplehood" by Paul Reiser.

I am planning (once again, I HOPE - I'll certainly do my best) to post my next PiF contest tomorrow (with pictures of the prizes I've received so far). If it doesn't happen then, it definitely will on Thursday. This contest will have FOUR winners, so be sure to enter! Once it's up, it will be open for entries until noon on July 28th, and I will announce winners the following week.

Playing with perspective

2008-07-13T08:10:00.001-04:00

[I am reposting this from my old blog. It was originally posted in May. While I retained the original posting date for most of my transferred posts, I decided to let this one be current. I really like it and wanted to share with the many new readers I have since my move. Oh, and no photoshopping was involved, other than cropping.]

What did YOU do this weekend?

What do YOU think...

2008-07-12T14:17:00.004-04:00

of "Bone Chokers"?