That's What She Said....

Amazingly, our home improvement projects are coming along quite nicely this week! It seems like during most undertakings one thing usually leads to another, and before you know it your initial project spawns 15 new projects you hadn't anticipated (bumping up your final costs exponentially). Well, that hasn't happened this time around (knock on wood). And guess what? We haven't killed each other yet. Not even once! Woohoo!

So you may be wondering-- what's blog-worthy about a home improvement project that's going according to plan? Well.... Most of you know by now that my sense of humor hasn't matured much past 3rd grade, so when I overheard hubby and the guys talking through their work routine, umm...I couldn't help but be highly amused.

Here, I'll let you be a fly on the wall:

"It's not quite fitting, I'm gonna have to pound it in."

"Give it a little tap-tap-tappy."

"Jiggle it a bit."

"Oh, that feels nice!"

"Grab it right there."

Heehee! Who woulda thunk they were talking about bamboo planks?

Anyway.... For those curious souls, here's a photo of the progress so far (although, in my techie-challenged way I managed to flip-flop the picture somehow, but you get the idea):

Oh, the joys of home-ownership! But, hey, aren't some of the best things in life hard? (Well, that's what she said....)

G'night everyone!

Lucky 13

LM has generously shared his nasty cold with Ruby Jane and myself. So far, hubby has escaped infection. (How does he do it??) The congestion got so bad I decided to try what one website described as "do-it-yourself-waterboarding" (a.k.a. nasal irrigation). Nothing like snorting a little salt water up your nose and then spitting it out your mouth, eh? Of course, it wasn't quite as easy as that for me.... More like snort, cough, gag, sputter, sputter, gag, well-- you get the idea. Maybe I just need help with my technique-- any experts out there wanna give me a little hands-on training? Could be a bonding experience! You and me, gagging ourselves with salt water over the bathroom sink, fluid and snot dribbling from most of the orifices in our faces.... Call me!

Anyway, it was another big week of quotes. With Ruby Jane contributing more frequently than usual. (Is it that "tweener" thing kicking in?)

1. LM: "Where's daddy?"

Me: "He's still not home yet."

LM: "What's going on with that rascal?!"

2. LM: "Even worser than having no comics is having no money. Then you'd have to play with stupid rocks!"

(F.Y.I.: LM must be pretty deprived because he doesn't even own any comics. Also, he happens to love playing with rocks. Go figure....)

3. Hubby: "Finish your lunch, LM."

LM: "But I can't! I'm loaded!"

4. Me: (as I sat at the table with Ruby Jane for a little arts and crafts time) "What should I draw?"

Ruby: "How about some ambidextrous carnivorous plants?"

Me: "Uhh...?"

(Just so you know, I attempted it, and found that it's very difficult to connote ambidextrousness in objects that don't actually have hands. Hmmmm-- I'm just not that good of an artist, I guess....)

5. Hubby: "Ruby Jane, put your glasses on."

Ruby: "But Dad, whenever I wear them and then take them off, everything is blurry!"

(We'll just file that one under "duh", sweetheart.)

6. Ruby Jane: (clutching a large dog bone and experimenting with puns) "Look, we got a 'bone-us' here!"

LM: (trying, not quite as successfully, to copy his sister's attempt) "Hey, look everyone! We got a 'boner' here!"

(Hubby was a bit more amused by this than I was, I admit.)

7. Me: (trying to help a less-than-enthusiastic LM with his homework) "LM, no complaining."

LM: "What do I get if I don't complain?"

Me: "You get to not be in trouble."

LM: "Ugh! I hate that deal!"

(I thought it was pretty generous, myself.)

8. LM: (lining up all the toys he was going to take to his grandma's house.)

Me: "LM, if you take that many, you might lose some."

LM: "Oh, nonsense!"

(Forgive me, it was a silly suggestion!)

9. Ruby Jane: "Mom, for some reason you've always reminded me of Elvis."

(Huhhhh...??)

10. Grandma: (frustrated by LM's wandering ways while out shopping) "LM, you either have to stick with me, your sister, or Lois."

LM: "Who has the most money?"

(I gotta hand it to him, he's always thinking!)

11. Ruby Jane: (after being questioned by her grandparents about her newfound modesty) "If you could only see the puberty I'm going through!"

(Oh, Rubes-- we all see it, babe....)

12. Hubby: "Mommy, we made cute kids!"

Me: "Yeah, when we put our genes together it turned out pretty good!"

Ruby Jane: (thinking I'd meant "jeans") "EWWWWWWWWWWWW!"

(I neglected to mention that, as a general rule, the jeans actually come off for that. We'll just file that lesson away for another day!)

13. LM: (listening to a particularly edgy Christian girl band) "This girl rocks, right? She takes it like a man!"

Stay tuned-- we're doing a major home improvement project this week. It may prove to be blog-worthy. Or not. We'll see! Have a good'n y'all!

Non-GMO Quotes

I have to admit, I'm glad this week is over. It began with some fun genetic testing for LM (and for those of you in my gene pool who might be interested, I'll keep you posted) and ended with LM barfing...a lot. (For my dad's sake I'll spare the details. Oh...except for one: if you've never watched partially digested broccoli fly out of your child's mouth like a projectile missile, you have missed a very unique scene indeed.)

Without further adieu:

1. LM: "My Transformer is so nice, even a bank robber's kid would want to steal it!"

2. LM: (giggling uncontrollably while we were out and about...in public).

Me: "What's so funny?"

LM: (trying-- for once-- to be discreet by keeping his voice low) "Ruby just let some air out of her butt!"

(At our burst of laughter, his "discreetness" vanished and his volume increased exponentially.)

LM: "I think it was a fart!"

3. LM: (immediately, and loudly, after high-fiving the particularly short man at our church entrance) "Hey, that man is almost as small as Ruby Jane!"

4. LM: (pretending his Megatron Transformer is singing) "I'm a hottie! I'm a hooooottttie! I'm a hottie, a hottie, a hoooootttttie!"

Me: "Do you know what a hottie is?"

LM: "What?"

Me: "It's someone who is really cute."

LM: (wistfully) "I'd like to meet a hottie someday...."

(Whoa, slow down there, buckaroo. I can't even think about that yet!)

5. LM: (noticing I wasn't eating dinner) "What are you gonna eat, Mom?"

Me: "Nothing-- I'm going on a date with Popi tonight."

LM: "Ooooooo, so you're in love with Popi! Do you kiss?"

Me: "Uh...no."

(Hmmmm, maybe "date" was the wrong terminology here.)

6. LM: (excited about...something or other) "Wooohooo! I feel like a queen who's just stabbed a dragon!"

(I don't know which should worry me more-- that LM feels like a queen, or that he might find pleasure in stabbing things.)

7. Me: "Ruby, don't use my lotion, it makes you smell like a woman instead of a little girl."

Ruby: "But mom, the more boys you attract, the better off you are!"

Me: (pausing a moment to find the right words to address this...atrocity).

Ruby: (enjoying my befuddlement) "Just kiddin'."

(Why does she enjoy torturing me so?)

8. LM: "I'm tired of us all sitting like a bum on a log!"

9. LM: (looking at a Japanese robot in a magazine) "Mom, can we buy that robot?"

Me: "No! It's 2 million dollars."

LM: "What if I say please?"

Me: "Still no."

(Nice try, though.)

Bonus Round: "If you were wise...."

LM's latest fascination is asking "if you were wise" questions. Almost everyday, he'll pull-out with a few doozies that are very difficult to answer. (Most having nothing to do with wisdom-- they're more like "which is the lesser evil?" questions.) Anyway, here are just a few:

"If you were wise, would you rather eat a thousand tacks, or a live scorpion?"

"If you were wise, would you stick your finger in Carson's butt, or get a parrot?"

"If you were wise, would you let a T-Rex eat you, or would you kill a dolphin?"

"If you were wise, would you fart on your teacher, or step on her foot?"

"If you were wise, would you eat a buffalo or a monkey?"

Think on those for a while. And next time you see LM, ask him to spin a few "if you were wise" questions for you! You might just learn something about yourself that you never actually wanted to know. (Like, I learned that I would rather stick my finger in my dog's bootie than have to deal with a parrot. I also learned, surprisingly, that I am capable of killing a dolphin.)

Until later....

The Joy Of Being A Parent Volunteer

It's a well-known fact that some aspiring readers (a.k.a. first-graders in my son's class) have trouble differentiating between the letters "d" and "b". Therefore, you might assume that the authors of the short books those selfsame aspiring readers learn from might choose not to include the word "ditch" in their fun little educational stories. Well, that is simply asking too much. There are lots of way ditches can be incorporated into these mini-tales. The upside, however, is that when you're the parent who is helping these wee cherubs navigate such difficulties of the English language, you have a front-row seat to the highly entertaining story they are creating without even realizing it. Let's just say that...oh, how about I leave it to your imagination?

Good times in room 102. Good times....

Extra! Extra! (Quotes, That Is)

My only regret of the day is that I didn't have a pad and pen with me when I took The Bopper out on our little date. You know, so I could record all of her antics for posterity (and this blog!). She'll be turning 4 in a few weeks, and well...she's a trip. (It's a little like taking LM out in public, actually-- a bit terrifying, but always amusing!) Like when we were at the store and an elderly gentlemen in a motorized cart came barreling down the aisle, and she stood with fists on hips hollering after him, "watch out! You almost hit me!" Or when, at lunch, she decided to showcase her many figure skating talents-- including a variety of jumps and spins all across the floor-- much to the entertainment of everyone nearby. All I can say is, it's a good thing I'm not a rookie with this sort of stuff....

But I digress.... Here are the quotes I did write down for the week:

1. LM: (trying to get hubby to follow him) "Alright, Seahawks' fan, let's go!"

2. LM: "Oh, I get why they call it hot coffee! 'Cause it's hot...and it's coffee!"

(I refrained from uttering the "duh" on the tip of my tongue, instead choosing to ponder the profundity of his statement. I think it was a bit too profound, however, because I just kept going back to "duh".)

3. LM: (getting annoyed with his sister's singing) "Hey, is there an off-switch for this woman?"

(Oh, the many times I have wished for that as well....)

4. LM: "I wanna show you somefin' awesome!" (Proceeds to take off his shirt and strike a muscleman pose.) "Look at these pythons!"

5. Me: "Why did you have a bad day today?"

LM: "'Cause I got in trouble!"

Me: "Why'd you get in trouble?"

LM: "'Cause I accidentally hurt Micah on purpose."

(Funny, but I totally get that!)

6. LM: (musing to himself as he played solo) "Stasis cuffs: I love 'em!"

(This is the same day he asked me where his MP generator was-- whatever that is.)

7. LM: (after hearing his sister talk about the boys who like her at school) "Ruby, even I have a crush on you."

Ruby Jane: "EW! LM, I'm too old for you!"

(Uh.... Is that the only problem we see here?)

8. The Bopper: (staring at the tumor on my dog's chest) "Why her booboos growin' so big?"

(Um...er...uh....)

9. LM: (upset with his sister who had just slammed a door in his face) "I need to have a talk with her! Can you back me up, Mom?" (He then proceeded to march into the room she was in, only to be quickly forced back out.) "If she wants a fight, then it's ON! We're gonna have a war!"

Me: "No, LM, no wars, please. Just leave her alone for a while."

LM: (not to be so easily dissuaded) "Hey, I have an idea! She can either eat some dirt, or calm down!"

(Just so you know, that idea is currently under consideration.)

10. Ruby Jane: (upon seeing me emerge for the day in pigtails) "Quit trying to be young, Mom."

Me: "Am I not young anymore?!"

Ruby: "No! Well, sorta...."

Me: (curious now) "What age is old, exactly?"

Ruby: "About 40."

(Phew! I gotta few years of youth left after all!)

11. LM: "Lies are somefin' we need to be careful of. So, if you don't want to tell it to your teacher, just tell it to your mom."

(Ummmm-- wait a minute....)

Enjoy the weekend, everyone!

Duct Tape Emergency!!

Tonight we did something we haven't done in years. And there are so many reasons why people shouldn't do this sort of thing-- reasons that quickly became apparent this evening. But we now also have a new reason not to do this particular activity. So, what is this "thing" I'm talking about?

Tonight we ate at a buffet.

I'll wait until you rub your eyes and re-read that.

Right as rain again? Good-- I shall continue.

I'm anti-buffet-- and not because I don't like them. Um, I love me a buffet. But I always overeat (gotta get my money's worth!). I always select the worst possible choices (fried okra, anyone?). I always have way more dessert than is prudent (so many choices-- so little time!). And, well, let's face it-- buffets are ghetto. Like, they're the Walmart of restaurants. I know I'm being terribly un-politically correct here, but you understand, don't you? We just shouldn't eat at buffets! But tonight we did. I had a coupon.

I do have to redeem myself somewhat by telling you that I started with a ginormous salad chock-full of fresh veggies of every color. I then chose poached fish, soup and mashed potatoes-- all in reasonable portions, mind you-- and drank nothing but water. But that brings me to another point of contention: buffets allow you to mix the most horrendous food pairings ever. At one point hubby came to the table with a plate of spaghetti, ham, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, jello and cornbread. Disgusting. (And if you're noticing that the nature of our meal was not gluten-free, then you've uncovered yet another dirty little secret of our sinful buffet night.) But let me back up to the original point I was trying to make in this paragraph-- that I was attempting to make wiser food choices than I normally do when given endless options. I even stopped when I was full! Hooray for me!

But the real lesson of the night? Never, ever, ever, ever take LM to a buffet-- ever. Oh, don't get me wrong-- he loved it. But he noticed a certain common denominator about the clientele tonight. Something that I was hoping he wouldn't notice.... That the average BMI of most of the diners around us was...let's just say it was well-above what would be considered healthy. We even had to ban the word "fat" from our dinner conversation because of the frequency, and volume, with which he was flinging it around.

At one point as we were headed toward the desserts he saw a particularly large woman directly in our path. He immediately stopped in his tracks, dropped his jaw, and stared straight up at her. As if in slow motion, I saw him raise his finger to point as his lips slowly formed the words, "Mom, she's...." but thankfully I acted before he could finish his thought. I spun him around and whispered in his ear, "don't say it, LM!" He nodded at me co-conspiratorially and I breathed a sigh of relief. I'm sure the lady heard it all, though-- she was about a foot away from this entire exchange. Ugh. I'm sorry, Ma'am....

Then, of course, there was all the chatter at the table (which LM made no attempt to keep quiet). Each time hubby returned from a trip to the buffet LM would say something like, "you're going to need to exercise when you get home!" or "if you keep eating you're gonna get fat, Dad." At one point LM pushed away his dish of ice cream stating, "I don't wanna eat any more 'cause I might get fat."

And before you automatically assume that "fatness" is a hot-topic around our house, think again. This is an issue LM has long been fascinated with all on his own. Obsessed, more like it. Perhaps you all remember the "Santa" phase of recent months past? (Where it was his custom to take a poll wherever he went on whether or not people-- child and adult alike-- believed in Santa. Those unfortunate souls who claimed to believe were then subjected to a lecture on the hoax of this grand tradition. Again, this is a topic that has not been discussed frequently in our home-- except to have told him, when he asked, that indeed there is no such person as the commercialized Santa. Well, he took that juicy little tidbit of info and ran with it. And by the way, the current poll he is conducting has to do with whether or not you drink alcohol-- so be ready with your answer, whatever it is.) My point is this: LM comes up with these obsessions without any help from us (other than the part we play in candidly answering his questions). What can I say? He's LM!

Needless to say, hubby and I were chomping at the bit to leave. Not only had I managed to eat a marginally well-balanced meal, I also wasn't on the verge of puking from over-consumption-- and I knew the longer we stayed, the more temptation might influence me. But mostly we just wanted to get the heck outta Dodge before we offended one of the locals.

Sigh.

Sheesh, They're On A Roll!

You would not believe the rapidity with which I've been able to collect quotes lately. It's like an invisible quote dam has burst around here or something! In fact, this post is gonna be a mega-sized addition of quotes (because at this rate I'll have just as many more to share with you by tomorrow).

1. Me: (concerned about the nature of his latest...um...movements) "LM, don't flush! I wanna see your poop first."

Hubby: (calling from his own throne in the other bathroom) "Wanna see mine?"

Me: "Uh...no."

(He may have mumbled something about that being "my loss", but I can't be sure-- I was already running the other way.)

2. LM: "I have a crush on Rachel."

Me: "Is Rachel a nice girl?"

LM: "Who's Rachel?"

(Uhhh.... The girl you...um.... Nevermind.)

3. LM: (after we'd finished talking about the children we sponsor) "Can someone sponsor me?"

Me: "Somebody does sponsor you!"

LM: "Who?"

Me: "Mommy and Daddy do!"

LM: "Can someone else do it?"

(While at times this could be a tempting proposition, I could not live without my daily dose of LM.)

4. LM: "Can I have some candy, Mom?"

Me: "No. Do you know why?"

LM: "Why?"

Me: "Because you're sweet enough already!"

LM: "But I'm not that sweet!"

5. Ruby Jane: (after I'd told a joke to the kiddos that I found particularly hilarious) "I'm glad you find yourself so funny, Mom."

(Yikes-- when did she become a tweener? And for the record, it was a really good joke.)

6. LM: "Grandma's just like Yzma, right?" (The "scary beyond all reason" villain from Emperor's New Groove.)

Me: "How so?"

LM: "'Cause she's old and crazy."

(So glad that Grandma doesn't read this blog, dear boy.)

7. Ruby Jane: "Mom! Tell LM to stop kissing me!"

LM: "I'm not kissing her! I'm just putting my lips on her."

(That affords me so many opportunities for comment I can't even choose....)

8. LM: "Mom, can I have some more cake?"

Me: "No, you've had enough for now."

LM: "That's no way to treat a kid! Only giving him a crumb of dessert!"

9. Lady at Church: "How are you feeling today?"

LM: "What are you? A doctor?"

Lady: "No, I'm just a friend and I know you've been sick lately."

LM: "Uh, can you just leave me in peace, please?"

(A little charmer, that LM.)

10. Me: "What did you learn today, LM?"

LM: "Uh...nothin'."

Ruby Jane: "I learned that Mr. Huseland has a weird thumb!"

(I'm so...proud??)

Are we really out of duct tape? Dang....