More Than a Bumblebee, More Than an Ant. . .

So much has been going on! We went to see Eddie Izzard on May 20th, which was great. First we ate at a topless restaurant. I didn't really get it, because everyone was wearing clothes, but our server announced that it was a "topless-style restaurant" so I feigned understanding and considered removing my top. No one else did, though, so I followed suit and remained overdressed. The place where we ate was directly across from the Detroit Opera House, where Eddie was playing, so after our meal, we meandered over there and gawped at the goodies. MuNKi asked to see a shirt in a Women's medium, which earned him all kinds of weird looks. Now that is incredibly silly, because it's EDDIE IZZARD, Man, and why WOULDN'T a guy be buying a woman's shirt? But I digress.

Here's the thing. iPhones should be banned from Opera Houses. So should innattentive bitches who (for some unfathomable reason) don't want to be there anyway and insist on playing with said iPhone throughout the entire show, thus scarring the retinas of everyone behind her with the blinding glare of the screen. How I wanted to give that chick an iSmack in the back of the head! I mimed doing it once or twice, but she didn't seem to pick up on my wrath vibe.

There was a mass (OK not mass, but largish) exodus from the show a few minutes in. I'm not sure whether it was Eddie's weird theories on God (doubtful, since Detroit is such a Godforsaken place ;-) ), his disappointing lack of drag, or the fact that they had wandered into the wrong theatre. It wasn't one of those "we're season ticket holders and we had no clue what we were in for" things, because Eddie wasn't included in the season package. Maybe they had already seen it all on YouTube.

Our Memorial Day Weekend included a day of soapmaking with the lovely Erica and her friend, the Soaping Goddess, followed by too much fantastic guacamole (made by the Soaping Goddess) and a barbecue, followed by a ceremonial scorching of marshmallows over a fire, and the sacrifice of many of said marshmallows to the Fire-Pit God. My children love fire. They love putting things into fire and taking them out again and then, yes, putting them back in. (in a sort of Eeyore-with-his-balloons-and-honey-pot way, but with quite a bit more drama) They love using toasting forks until the prongs glow like a cauterizing eyeball-gouger-outer, and they love flaming marshmallows. Mollusc had to get hosed off a couple of times. (She's my dainty one. OK, not so much.)

Monday brought the arrival of people I had never met before who had come to stay the night. OK, so I was a little stressed about that. But it all worked out.

And then, somehow, some strange how, it was Wednesday. I'm not sure what happened there. I do know that I should go see if MuNKi has managed to make the 3rd period of the Wings game appear on the wall.

I also have some bars of soap that I plan to sniff a lot and try not to eat.

Busy

~It's been so long since I made clothing that when I made shirts for the Bigs on Saturday, I cut out the sleeves wrong, so the stretch doesn't go around the arms. :-P Fortunately, they are wispy girls and can still wear the shirts. ^_^ Now I just have to get the FOE on the necklines without screwing it up. When I got out the FOE yesterday, a bunch of it had died an untimely death. I guess it had been curing in my stash for far too long.

~It was snowing when I woke up Sunday morning. Bleh.

~Strangers only come to my blog to look at my sister's panties.

~My appreciation for Jane Austen continues to grow. What a brilliant woman!

~My appreciation for audio books continues to grow as well, since I can "read" without guilt while I do otherwise completely mundane and painfully boring tasks.

~We're back to "abuse week" at TKD. Urg. But I feel good when I'm done (once I can breathe again.)

~Xavier is wunnerful!

~I had my picture taken with a little boy from my Monday evening class today. Awww. :)

~I got an adorable (hand drawn) picture of myself from a little boy in my morning classes last week.

~I have been exposing my children to the Young Ones. (Irresponsible parenting, say you. They'll finally understand all the things I say, say I. ^_^ )

Sunday Smattering

I'm off to play the grocery game in a few minutes. 3 of my kids have actually asked to come with me. At least one has wanted to come the last few times, which pretty much stuns me, because I loathed grocery shopping as a kid. Well, except at the ironically named "Dairy Lane" in Hong Kong (which, as far as I know carried no dairy products other than Klim and some ice cream) where my sis and I would go upstairs and read books like The Joy of Sex, or Sphinx (a trashy novel about a woman with 6 breasts), tucked into a LIFE magazine.

Speaking of shopping that I loathe, my favourite jeans have blown up. I have 2 pairs and they both blew out at the knee last week. :-( The ones I'm wearing right now also have a rip at the corner of one of the bum pockets. I can tell, because MuNKi keeps sticking his finger in it. All of this means that eventually I'm going to have to suck it up and buy new jeans. Which is basically pure torture for me. I SO envy guys, who can fall in love with a pair of jeans and still be able to buy the same exact ones 30 years later. AND they can buy them to length. SO not fair. Sigh.

If only I could go upstairs and read smutty books while someone else bought my jeans for me. . .

*****
UPDATE : I won again at the Grocery Game. Today's stats:

$280.64 worth of groceries for $97.51. Huzzah! I saved $183.13, which is close to twice as much as I spent! :-)

Out and About

After some local power outages 2 nights ago that didn't actually seem to affect us, we were without the benefit of the "intrawebs" until tonight. It didn't really matter, though, since I finished up a Mr. Darcy book that I need to return to a friend, and got a new review book in the mail today. The new book is "Firefly Lane" and so far is fantastic. Yay! The library is still without power, so I guess we're lucky to have it here.

Yesterday was a day of book shopping (3 new books for the Ancient History class we'll be starting, the newest Alex Rider, and a Garfield) and a night of LOTR watching. I love days like that.

Tonight is class and sparring, to be followed by more LOTR watching. :-)

The girls and I have been brushing up on our Black Belt curriculum questions. Now that they are 1st Poom (the 15 and under equivalent of first Dan) they have to learn the adult curriculum, which is a LOT longer. They're doing well, though, and I think they'll be ready when we test a week from Saturday. Still not really looking forward to that, but it's a positive experience in an esprit de corps sort of way. And oh, poo, I was supposed to order power gel stuff for that. Argh. I wonder if it's too late? :-P

Decluttering Streak

I've decided to work systematically around the house and declutter as ruthlessly as possible. I started with the BILLYs, and I already have a nice, big, overflowing box of books to take to the used book stores when we go back to Madison this Summer or Fall for my sister's wedding. Oh yeah. Did I mention that my sister is getting married? For the first time ever? Cool, huh?

Anyway, I'm thinking that taking and posting pictures of the stuff I'm decluttering might be kinda motivational. For me, at least.

I'm also thinking about sewing or quilting or braiding a rug to go in front of the kitchen sink. Trillian likes to sleep there, and I think my feet and knees would welcome the softness, too. Being the instant gratification junkie that I am, I'd prefer to sew it. I'm not sure if that's actually "done" but I think I could pull something off. Especially if it was pseudo-quilted. I'm not so sure about the braiding thing, as it involves ripping lots and lots of fabric into 2" strips and sewing them end-to-end and then braiding them, and then sewing the braided strip into a big coil type of thing. The edges are gonna be all fray-y. And as much as I enjoy The Fray, what if I hate the rug? Then I'll have ripped a ton of my fabric up for no good reason. Then again, it might help with the fabric decluttering. Especially if I ripped up prints that I no longer love. I'm sure you can see my dilemma here. No? Frayed knot, then. :-/

CLICK VIDEO HERE (The Fray won't let me embed them, dirty (and possibly pleasant) as that sounds. Oh, and don't look now, but is the piano player sporting a Hairrow? Look what I started! ^_^)

The One With No Substance

OK, so none of them have substance. What can I say? Not much evidently. I could give you a rundown of my very action-packed day, from Mollusc's Creamy Tomato soup (made from our tomatoes and rosemary) and croutons made from MuNKi's delicious Italian bread, to ducking various phone-calls from money-wanting people, to mucking out the garage for the second (and last) garage sale, to errand running and going out with BG and our 6 (collective) kids to JoAnn's ("No! say the boys, "Kill us now!" OK, so they weren't that dramatic.) and Borders (OMG would you all please be quiet for the 512th time! You're almost as loud as that dude who's snorting rather forcefully to himself over in the Independent Reader Fantasy section and who has quite the strong (though rather obvious) opinions on the (lame) Deltora series. (ie that you should read them in order, uh, ok) ) and laughing with BG over highly inappropriate things -- at least for the children's section -- and interpreting our (and by "our" I mean mostly BG's) dreams with a Dream Interpretation book that must be excellent in spite of the 5.99 clearance price tag.

I could blabber on about how we came back and met MuNKi and BG's husband for a delicous MuNKi-cheffed meal and talked and ate until 10ish, and how I then proceeded to get the rest of the crap ready for tomorrow's garbage garage sale while MuNKi continued to make an extremely long-cooking batch of apple butter from 12.7 of our 1,024 apples. And how I blogsurfed, had no access to the picture computer to upload my mantis photos, and absolutely no inspiration for a post.

Or not.

Smattering

~Prawn on the way home yesterday upon seeing a squished critter in the road: "It could be a dead monkey. . ." I think this was said in a self-comforting way as she is a fan of most critters, but not so much of monkeys, between the story of Mama (that's me) being attacked by monkeys, and the whole undead monkey thing in POTC. Before you gasp in horror, understand that we FF through all the creepy parts. This has the added benefit of making it a MUCH shorter film. ^_^

~CDs I got from the library: Echo and the Bunnymen, Nickelback, some Celtic stuff, Nelly Furtado, a Sting one I actually don't own (the 9/11 one), Inigo Montoya Mandy Patinkin (mostly because I had no clue he sang), Depeche Mode, a couple of Lenny Kravitzes, and a sound effects disc for the kids to play with.

DVDs I got from the library: Joyeux Noël; The Avengers (there's a movie of this??); Porco Rosso; Marie Antoinette; Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte Des Loups); Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter. . .and Spring; Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress; Arsenic and Old Lace; Danger UXB (used to watch this with my mom and was totally in love with Anthony Andrews); Firefly (saw the movie, but never the show); Alex & Emma; Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and some Chinese and French kid stuff. Yeah, there is no way I'll ever get to all of them, but now I can choose stuff as the mood strikes me. ^_^ And I can renew most of them a few times. Hey, who can resist when they're free?

~Quotes we tend to use a lot from children's books:

"Odd said Mabel. Very odd."

"Marmalade does not want the wooly worm."

"See the snow. See the snow come down."

Crazy Tuesday

True to form, Crazy Tuesday has been just that, and it's only 1/3 over. It started with 2 hours of TKD. When we got home, I took off my uniform, but left my sports bra and tankity top on because I'm going back for 4 hours this afternoon/evening, so why bother changing? We did lunch, and I'd started helping the kids with all the school stuff they hadn't gotten through when the doorbell rang. (I should point out that I did have pants on, thank goodness.) It was a guy with a teensy weensy dog that he'd found in the middle of the busy road bordering our sub. I was pretty sure it was the neighbour J's dog so I steered him over there. About 5 mins later I realised I'd seen J leaving as we came home from class, but as the guy hadn't reappeared, I figured maybe she was home again. A little later a different neighbour rang the doorbell. HE now had the dog and wanted to check if it was, indeed, J's dog. I told him I thought it was, so he said he'd hang onto her. Who knows what either of these guys thought of my strange attire. At least I had a bra on under my tank top. ^_^

A few minutes after this, the phone rang. It was some Academy of Dance and it was an 810 area code, which is Brighton, a nearby town. Completely contrary to the way I always handle phone calls from unknowns, I answered it just in time to hear a woman say "How Rude," and hang up. WTF? Even more contrary to the way I deal with strange phone calls, I checked caller ID and called them back. I figured I'd tell the woman that her message had gone off-target and she might want to try again. My call went to a machine which was cut off before I could leave a message. I called back. Whoever it was picked up and hung up. (Repeat several times.)

At this point, Prawn -- inspired, no doubt by the presence of the phone -- decided she'd like to hear the story from the library again (a recording you can call and listen to) so I called it for her and let her listen. Partway through she told me that the story "went beep-boop." I figured it was some glitch. When she was done, I checked caller ID to get the dance academy # again and there was another call on there from a "Private Number." Ah, that explained the "beep-boop." No doubt the Dance Person on her cell phone. And she thought I wasn't answering since Prawn was listening to the story, LOL!

I decided to call the dance academy again to clear things up before some weirdo started crank calling us at all hours of the morning, and reached a different-sounding woman who said she'd just gotten to work and had no idea what was going on. She apologised profusely. I told her I didn't care, and that I was just calling to clear it up so we didn't start getting a bunch of weird calls. I kind of wonder if someone crank called the academy and they checked caller ID and misdialed and got me. I'm curious now, but I guess I'll never know, since I don't know anyone who goes there.

I then got a call from a guy in Milwaukee who wants to talk to MuNKi about a job. Please no. (I didn't actually say that, though.) I'm pretty happy with our record-setting 4 years in one house, and I'd like to continue setting new records here.

So any takers on whether it's the door or the phone next? Or maybe something completely different.

Yeah, pictures are better than this, I know.

I Have Been

~Off the radar for a bit

~Afraid to open my email because of all the shit I have to wade through

~Not quilting, but I did buy some more hot pink fabric today

~Wanting to scrapbook without having the time

~Making sugar cookies way more than is normal for me (twice in the last week or so)

~Not reading A Breath of Snow and Ashes very much

~Watching Scrubs or films at night

~Enabling my kids' Webkinz addiction

~Sewing on patches for $, but turning down a chair-cover sewing gig for which there was no pattern (not my forte)

~Getting the kids back on schedule with schoolwork and stuff

~Shoveling (well, forking) goat mulch

~Teaching and taking classes and sparring and trying to figure out the new schedule that starts next week

~Hardly using the computer at all


What have you been up to?

Taking the "L" out of "Quilt"

I'm kidding, of course. Because if I did quit now, the quilt would look like Utah. ^_^

But I also don't have any pics, because MuNKi is doing brain surgery on the computer I need to use for picture uploading.

I have 34 squares right now. I'm still not sure how many I'm shooting for. I kind of figured I'd stop when I got sick of it. If I have to, maybe I'll cheat with wide sashing. (those strips in between) ^_^ And now that I see that frog quilt, I'm reminded that I have a bunch of those batik squares of my own from years ago, except mine are dragons and celestial stuff. Ooooh! I think I feel the next project coming on already!

Tomorrow we're off to a friend's house for sewing and swimming. The kids are very excited. :) And then it's class and sparring for MuNKi and me in the evening. I think all my testing pains are gone now. The only thing hurting now is my throwing arm from dodgeball. ^_^

It's No Accident

I can still vividly remember arguing with my older sister (when I was 7) that people had "accidents" not "accents." Ironically enough, this was outside of the hospital where we went to school at the time.

As it turns out, I do NOT have an accent. I know because my dental hygenist told me so.

So there.

Oh, and my dentist (who, as it turns out is Kevin Costner (at least from upside-down) - who knew? I suppose he fell in love with the area when filming here and I guess one of his movie roles must have prepared him for dentistry as a career) told me that I am "basically cavity-free by today's standards." Interesting. So I've got that going for me. Which is nice. ^_^

Day Zero!!

OK peeps! Technically, this is Pottergasm day! (it's 12:10pm) Wow, huh?

After a chat with Amanda, I realised that I would need to call the store in the morning and find out more about expected crowd sizes, limitations on customer numbers, etc. Yikes. I think we're going to have to skive off of red-belt classes. We need some of Fred and George's Skiving Snack Boxes. ^_^

It's not so bad if we do. We busted our butts in class today. Bigtime. I got plenty of exercise just laughing during warmups after the guy behind me made a comment during jumping jacks that I immediately misinterpreted. MuNKi joined in the frivolity immediately, realising instantly what I must have heard (or thought I'd heard) and there was some general silliness from there on out. I love this group of people! :)

We had a full house and got paired up on bags and worked so stinking hard! I soaked my entire shirt just in class. Usually it takes class and sparring to do this. Sorry if that's TMI. It just feels really amazingly great to work like that and come out still smiling. ^_^ And then it was on to sparring, where I got paired up with the sweatiest guy in class for drills. He literally rains on the floor. Seriously. That was a good match-up since we both have long legs. We killed ourselves even more, and still managed to have a good time. Somehow the guys paired up beside us both got broken. But they'll be OK. It wasn't anything serious.

Earlier today the sky opened up and just dropped an ocean on us. It was amazing! I love thunderstorms. The Littles and I left the house in dry weather, though there was a bolt of lightning rending the sky in front of us. By the time we got to the stoplight by the library (a block-ish away) it was HAILING. And when we reached the library about a minute later, I could barely see a thing. I let the Littles out and parked (fortunately the closest spot possible was available) and then RAN. Didn't matter. I was drenched. What fun! The wind was blowing like crazy. I gathered the herd, and we watched the wind and rain for a bit, then RAN to the car. Well, some of the girls started running the wrong way (towards where we always park) and by the time we were all in the van, yes, we may as well have been swimming.

When we got home, there was no lightning left, so the Bigs played out in the rain and hail. What fun. :) I love when the weather is hairy like that.

Have a very Harry day. ^_^

Rise and Shine!

I usually like to wake the kids up by putting in a CD in the morning. It has to be better than coming awake to a screeching alarm (or mother for that matter.) Vivaldi and general Baroque come in handy a lot for this, but there are plenty of other choices. Today it's Genticorum. The songs are peppy, foot tapping, hip shaking things that you can't ignore. The often raucous tunes are sometimes accompanied by bawdy lyrics. Good thing they're all in French.

What I'd like to know this morning, though, is whose John Mayer CD is that in the drawer and how did it get there? Also, my legpad is still missing. I'm beginning to suspect that there may have been some sort of horrifying improbability incident.

What are you listening to today?

What a Waist

Thank God there is some justice in the world. (though apparently there is at least one justice too many)

I can't get over this Pearson guy. You know -- the judge who sued the dry cleaners for $54 million after they allegedly lost his pants? The second pair of pants in as many visits, it turns out, Pearson having been compensated $150 and banned from the store after the first incident. But he weasled his way back in, much to the detriment of store owners Jin and Soo Chung.

According to the article, on the witness stand, Pearson broke down in tears and had to take a break from his testimony because he became too emotional while questioning himself about his experience with the missing trousers.

O_o

Pearson [who continually referred to himself as "we"] testified that Chung insisted [she had found his pants], saying, "These are your pants."

Pearson then rushed from the courtroom, overcome with emotion.

The judge ruled Pearson must pay the defendants' court costs, which amount to about $1,000. Bartnoff said she would consider at a later date whether to make Pearson also pay the Chungs' attorneys fees, which make up the larger portion of their legal fees.

I hope he loses his shirt as well.

Oy Vey!

We have a graduation party to attend. We were all invited yesterday. (He's a TKD classmate.) I should buy him a membership to some sort of Procrastinator's Society. Maybe later. ^_^ Right now I really need to scrap him a card. I want to get him something from Think Geek, but he's gonna have to wait for that.

Awake and Alive

I'm still here. I have a post brewing but I need to take a few pics. And first I have to help Sluggie make "fastest fudge cake" with chocolate ganache. Can you blame me for putting it off just a bit longer? ^_^

Well

The boy's father showed up and stayed for class today. That was a first.

Did he watch and take notes so he could help his kid study? No. He sat there reading a book.

Oh well, at least he showed, which is more involvement than he's ever shown before.

And now, because laughing is good medicine, I give you: Extremely Cute Baby and his Goofy Sounding Dad: (note - this is not my vid, nor is it one of my children, though I think I'd take him in a heartbeat. ^_^)

Any Wagers

as to how long I can go on without posting?

Oh.

D'oh! ~_~

OK, well, now that I'm here I may as well say something. Sorta.

We put in a paver patio by our front walk and it was backbreaking work. Without the help of good friends, we'd never have gotten done in time to get the rental compacter and brick cutter back before we had to pay for another day.

They look GREAT! Pictures to follow once I do something about planters at the edges. ^_^

Life has been seemingly hectic for the last week. I'm hoping things will settle down soon. I'm not sure that they will though. Holy Wednesday has been defiled by the necessity that I teach after school class at 3:00. However, it should only be for a few weeks. Then it will be defiled for the whole summer by kids' sparring. O_O On the plus side, the Bigs will be attending 3 hours fewer per week. And the Littles can take class together, so instead of having to try to get to 4 different age group classes, there will just be three. I hope. Unless I'm still needed to teach the 3-5 year old class.

OK. Enough rambling.

MuNKi has been making fabulous food and bread. We've had sleep-overs the last 2 weekends. The sun is shining, the peas are growing, and I think the tomatoes bought the farm due to frost.

I guess I need to face the fact that my blog is pretty much only rambling.

*shrug*

The kids are watching Spirited Away, which I definitely recommend, as long as you're OK with bizarro surreal weirdness.

Oh, and I finally caved and bought a Swiffer, something like 7 years after everyone I knew was going nutso over them. I just couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger because of the expense for all the pads. I think people found that a bit laughable. I'm still not big on the idea of buying cleaning pads to use once and throw away, though, so I bought microfibre cleaning cloths at the dollar store. They ROCK! Yay! :) Those things used to be somewhere between $8 and $24 when they came out. Now they're 2 for $1. Who's laughing now?

Mini Post

~I can do 400 situps now. Turns out if you do them in batches of 50 with 10-20 second breaks, you can just keep on going. :) I only have to do 150 for blackbelt testing, so no sweat there as long as I keep this up.

~I can do 150 pushups but it's not pretty. I need to work on those.

~I took some bird pics today that I think are going to look pretty decent. Maybe I can get them up tonight.

~I sheared Fishy's head for the summer. After the first 3 passes with the buzzer, I sent him in to show MuNKi, who was properly disconcerted. ^_^ Now I have to go out and paint blue arrows on his head. Later, dudes!

Random

~My ankle continues to improve. I still have to do a dorky little step-step thing to get turned for my kicks when my left leg is the supporting leg, but that's about the only problem. I can do back stance now, which I wasn't able to do last week.

~MuNKi* got a new Kitchen Aid mixer (if you're thinking of doing this, the Sam's (or Costco's) exclusive is a great deal) because he was going to kill the old one with all the heavy-duty bread making. The new one is rather large. I can now make 480 cookies at a time if I so choose.

~I bought paint for the front door yesterday. It's green. Very green.

~I feel inclined to plant a shrubbery. Perhaps with a path (a path!) Or at least to purchase several shrubs. Preferably flowering ones.


*no, I have no idea either, but there are apparently a lot of people involved with this.