A Blue Christmas

The-Guy-Who-Knows-A-Song-About-A-Chicken has a hobby that's going to get us food. I have a hobby that's going to get us shot by some guy with a chicken in his yard.

See? The-Guy is making a vegetable garden. And he's making compost bins to recycle our garbage and feed the veggies:I, on the other hand, am driving around Houston taking photos of people's misery.

It just flat out amazes me that so many people still have roofs covered in blue tarp. Is tarp really sufficient to keep rain out for four and a half months? And if so, why the heck do we even bother with shingles?






It's actually not a bad look at the bank's drive through. The whole light-shining-through-the-blue-plastic is kind of nice actually, and you know for certain that no one's great aunt Martha's memory chest is getting soaked in the attic. It's probably not even bothering the tellers a bit:


To give credit where credit is due, those pictures which seem to be taken from a moving vehicle were taken by my gal, since I didn't feel like killing us off just so people could see the blue tarps of Houston.

I mean, I've risked life and limb for this blog before, but I figured what the heck, she was already in the back seat and didn't particularly feel like dying either.

Hope everyone is having a tarp-free and possibly not even blue Christmas (although as I understand it, other parts of the country are having their own weather related problems) and a happy Chanukah!

Yet Again We Have Escaped the Public School System for Two Entire Weeks!

Ok, so we haven't totally shaken it - they sent my boy home with a homework packet.

Over break! Isn't there a law against that?

Still, conversations such as this will be way less frequent:

Me - "You need to stop working and go play!"

My boy - "Why?"

Me - "You've been doing homework since we got home! You're not going to have any time to play!"

My boy - "I've got two big projects due!!!"

Me - "When are they due?"

My boy - "Monday."

Me - "Okay. Well, you can work a LITTLE more. But then you've got to go play."

My boy's as playful as they come, by the way. It's just that fifth grade has been a LOT of homework.

And of course, no school for two weeks means no carpool for two weeks. That means no more fun games like, "How can a ______ kill you?"

In this delightful game my boy and his friend take turns naming an object. The other boy then offers some intricate scenario where that object causes an untimely death.

The game is played like this:

Friend - "How can a bottle cap kill you?"

My boy - "You open a bottle and put the bottle cap in your pocket. Later when you're at the gas station parking lot you reach into your pocket to get out money to buy a pack of gum. The bottle cap flies out of your pocket and hits the pavement. It causes a spark which lights the gas tanks on fire and you die from the explosion."

Me - "Couldn't you just choke on the bottle cap?"

Or something like that, because generally I don't take (too many) notes on their conversations. But the scenarios are very intricate and totally bypass some simple and more common ways to die. I'm sure all that exercise of their imagination is good for them. Somehow.

And since I never did put up any pictures from Thanksgiving:
It turns out that for the price of a few cockroaches, interminable traffic, no mountains, a hurricane or tropical storm every now and again, and what some people consider intolerable summers, you may also get to eat outside on Thanksgiving day. Sounds like a fair deal to me.

This is my favorite Thanksgiving photo:Why isn't my grandfather's wheelchair in the trunk? This was the subject of a couple of conversations, ending in one of my cousins calling my aunt's sanity into question. Let's just say that in my family we do things the hard way. Apparently. Or at least I do.

Happy first night of Hannukah!

I'm Losing My Mind (and anything else that comes into close contact with me)

because it's December and that's what I do EVERY December. So don't expect this post to make any sense. I'm only writing it because my blog was getting old and stale, and my daughter sprained a couple more things and got a few more x-rays and besides that, it SNOWED IN HOUSTON!!!!!

So we had to take pictures, because the last time there was snow in Houston was 2004, and it happens the kids and I were out of town that day.



Of course we had to be late to Hebrew school so I could take all those pictures and then we had to have this conversation:

The Gal, "We're late to Hebrew school.
Me, "You're not late."
The Gal, "Yes we are. Look at the clock."
Me, "Oh. Yeah. You are late. But it doesn't count because it's snowing."

The gal had to limp into Hebrew school because she had sprained her thumb AND her big toe. Her foot was too swollen to fit into her shoe, but in keeping with our track record (where my boy was sent into the boy's bathroom to wash out his brain by himself), she was not given a pass and was counted absent from her next class.

While getting her x-rays we were lucky enough to hear a woman say to the nurse behind the desk, "...and then I must have gotten an x-ray, because I remember taking my pants down."

Honest to God, she really said that. I didn't even imagine it, because as we rounded the corner out of sight, the nurse that was walking with us burst out laughing right along with the gal and me.

Also, I got complimented profusely on my arm pit hair last week. That hardly ever happens to a body. Ok, I've NEVER been complemented on my arm pit hair before, ever. And so of course I felt all proud of how fine and sparse it was.

Except, I'm not sure arm pit hair complements count when they're coming from someone whose job it is to yank out the hair by the roots using hot wax. Because basically she's complementing her own work.

See? It's December. Nothing even slightly comprehensible or cohesive here. Hope everyone is adequately surviving the holiday season. And please let me know if you see my brain around. Or my make up kit. Or my boy's cell phone. Or either of my check books.

Ebony Hutchinson Doesn't Live Here

I'm trying to tell as many people as possible, because apparently every third person in the United States is looking for Ebony Hutchinson and they're ALL looking at our house. And they don't mind calling at four thirty in the morning to find out where she is either!

So that's why our outgoing phone message now says something along the lines of, "Ebony Hutchinson doesn't live here. Don't call here any more. If you are looking for (list of names of people who actually live here), please leave a message."

Anyway, if you know ole' Ebony, maybe you can let her know she's got some things she needs to take care of?

Aside from a family member being apparently missing (Ebony MUST live with us! She gets so many phone calls!) the new place has been fantastic.

I learned the same thing I always learn when I move - I own way more crap than any human should. Who'd'a thunk this much crap could fit in a two bedroom apartment?I always start packing with all sorts of motivation, labeling two sides of each box just to make sure the labeled side isn't turned toward the wall. They start out quite exact, "stationary, school supplies, stapler, hole punch." But I can only keep it up so long:
Still not so bad. I can kind of tell what's in there. Later on I had to resort to this:At least I knew it was bound for the kitchen. But finally, you know, I had to get even more general. Because who has time for all that?The crazy thing is, I probably drop stuff off at Salvation Army once every month or two and the crap STILL creeps in at an alarming rate.

So the moral of the story is...I'm not sure what the moral of the story is. The crap that follows you into your house on a daily basis is relentless and insidious? The peeps looking for Ebony Hutchinson are definitely relentless and quite possibly insidious? Jill has nothing better to do than post pictures of her own moving boxes to the internet? Oh well. At least the movers had a little laugh.