I'm sure I can get an arm and a leg for SOMEONE'S soul around here...

A typical weekend morning at our house -

Older Gal (coming into the back yard) - "What are you doing?"

The-Guy - "Good Morning 'Older Gal'"

Older Gal - "Good Morning. What are you doing?"

The-Guy - "I'm scrubbing out the pool. Earlier today I took a run."

Me - "I put your soul up for sale on Ebay."

Older Gal - "Thanks"

Several seconds pass.

Older Gal - "Thanks? I didn't mean thanks.
I mean thanks, but I meant, can I see the listing? Why did you put MY soul up for sale?"

Me - "I thought it would get a better price than mine."

Older Gal (nods) - "Oh. Okay."

Older Gal heads back inside the house.

Several minutes later, Older Gal pops her head out the back door and calls out, "Did you put my soul up for sale because I'm young and virgin?!?!"

I didn't, but I'll highlight both those qualities in the description. That should up the bidding. Meanwhile, Kristine came up with a great idea: We can sell Sugar's soul nine times!

Except, I'm pretty sure Sugar may have beaten us to the punch on this one. He's already a pretty evil cat. Nimue, on the other hand, is fairly innocuous. I'll bet all nine of his lives are still up for grabs.

Speaking of which, have you ever tried to get a cat to pose with a flag of Israel so as to wish the blogging world a happy Israeli Independence Day/Yom Ha'atzma'ut? No? I thought perhaps Older Gal and I might be kind'a unique that way.

Here's are our best efforts. Notice that it's the evil cat who has reluctantly agreed to pose. He can't be all bad:
On a totally unrelated note, I'll bet you thought NPR meant National Public Radio:Last but not least, here are a couple of pictures from yesterday's flood:
I know, this guy has better pictures:But the water bubbling up out of the manhole covers was sort of graceful in it's own way. I probably needed video instead. At any rate, happy Yom Ha'atzma'ut!

Death by Entanglement

Please excuse my absence from Blogsville this week. I've been trying to figure out how to sell my soul to the devil so I can afford to send my kids to a private religious school. How do you do that anyway, just put it up on Ebay or something?

I'm KIDDING!!!!!! I mean, I'm sure my soul has some flaws and stuff, just like anyone's, but I'm more or less fond of it and don't have any immediate plans to put it up for sale. I do really want my kids to go to religious school though.

Also, LOOK! They sent me an STD!!!!!Ok, they sent me some medication via standard delivery. Still, I bet whoever designed this label had a good laugh.

And I saw a warning on the bottom of this guy, Thomas, who my boy used to call Tommit:I know, you can't actually read it. It says, "CAUTION: Entanglement possible. Keep away from hair."

Really?!?!?!? Entanglement?!?!?! That's the best they could do? Not, "CAUTION: Choking possible. Do not remove wheels." Or, "CAUTION: Intestinal tearing possible. Do not swallow magnet." I mean honestly, hair entanglement doesn't even involve dismemberment, much less death.

At any rate, the warning is too hard to read way down there at the bottom. The Older Gal didn't even see it. It should have been written right across poor ole' Tommit's face.

Because when I showed The Older Gal the warning she admitted she had been using Tommit to brush the cat. I'd have hated to be around if that caused any entanglement. After all, any entangling of my bipolar cat might actually cause death.

Now that I think about it, it takes a mighty brave person to try brushing my cat with ANYTHING. Maybe HER soul would get a better price than mine on ebay. After all, it's for a good cause. Besides who's to say the devil would get the highest bid?

I'm KIDDING!!!!!! But I might need to go put one of those evil eye bracelets or something on me and the older gal now. Also if you wouldn't mind spitting in our general direction over here as you read, I think that would help keep the devil away too.

Just, y'know, try and aim away from your computer keyboard. Thanks!

Because my Car Registration Sticker DESERVES to be Showered in Affection...

Every so often my gal rolls her eyes and says, "Only YOU mama!" But doesn't everyone make declarations of love and devotion to their car registration sticker?

Because it was a big pain in the neck to get that sticker. First, I had to be pulled over by a policeman who happened to be the first to notice it was a month and a half overdue. Then I had to find all those papers that say the car is mine.

And then I had to bring in all those papers to the tax office which, as we all know, is never as simple as it sounds. And then I had to go again, because the papers I brought weren't good enough and they wanted different copies of the very same papers.

And so then I was so happy to have my very own car registered in my very own name that I told my gal was I was going to kiss my registration sticker every time I got in my car. 'Cause I'm sure everyone does that.

So now that we have my total and complete normalcy established, let's move on to some random pictures. Look, I may live in the fourth biggest (and first ugliest) city in the United States, but this is still my way home:And I took a sign picture this week too. I know the REAL subtext on these kinds of signs is always, "Please don't sue us!" But I always want to whip out a sharpie, change the period to a comma and add "you moron" to the end of the sentence (changing it from "always stay with your baby when using this table." to "always stay with your baby when using this table, you moron.")This one cries out for the same adjustment:I think they'd sell better, don't you?

Look! A Soap Box! And a Recipe!

National TV Turnoff week falls in April, so I thought it would be fun to finally post the Passover recipe I've been promising from two years.

And I was going to celebrate TV Turnoff Week from up top a soap box:

Research now indicates that for every hour of television children watch each day, their risk of developing attention-related problems later increases by ten percent.

Children in households where the TV is on "always" or "most of the time" are less likely to read than are children in other homes.

In a study of preschoolers (ages 1-4), a child's risk of being overweight increased by six percent for every hour of television watched per day.

Number of 30-second commercials seen in a year by an average child: 20,000
Number of minutes per week that parents spend in meaningful conversation with their children: 38.5

Heavy TV viewers exhibit five dependency symptoms (two more than necessary) to arrive at a clinical diagnosis of substance abuse.

TV has been linked to depression among teenagers. Alas and alack I lost or tossed the article from my local paper, but found one at World News Network

The moral of the story is: if you're interested in making your child's teacher's life easier (and doing your child a favor), turning off the TV is a great start.

Also, I promised a recipe for chocolate covered Matzoh.That's not actually my picture. It comes from here. But it's more or less the same stuff.

This treat uses all four ingredients allowed during Passover, and truth be told I'd eat it all year long if I didn't mind weighing 3,982 pounds:

3-4 boards of matzah (yes folks, Jews eat BOARDS during Passover. Because that's all the food allowed)

3/4 cups of butter (The older gal uses unsalted in all her recipes. I always thought one used salted butter unless a recipe specifically called for unsalted. But I don't know why I thought this. Anyone a butter expert?)

12 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 cup brown sugar (I usually use light brown, but I accidentally used dark brown this year and it turned out just fine)

-Melt butter with sugar on medium heat, stirring constantly.
-Bring to a low boil and cook 3-4 minutes.
-Grease cookie sheet with butter.
-Lay matzah on pan and fill empty places with pieces of matzah (in other words the entire cookie sheet has one layer of matzah)
-Pour sugar mixture over the matzah
-Cover with chocolate chips
-Put into a 350 degree oven for a few minutes, just until the chocolate chips are soft and melty.
-Spread chocolate evenly over the matzah with a knife or spatula
-Refrigerate
-Gain 70 pounds just by looking at it

More info on the tube:
TV and young children
CA State University: TV & health
France bans TV for kids under 3

Voted Least Likely to Become an Alcoholic

I can imitate a binge drinker pretty well, but no matter how hard I try I don't think I can attain true alcoholism for this reason: I often forget to drink.

I'm all stressed out about one of life's greater or lesser hassles and I go straight to the garage for an axe. Because it's unladylike to gnaw on the type of chocolate that The-Guy buys and I can't figure out any other way to break some off:But then I remember this about anxiety and stress: Stimulant BAD. Depressant GOOD. My brother has even, on occasion, had to remind me: "Maybe you should have a drink."

So if I do become an alcoholic, I'll have to have somebody follow me around all the time reminding me to drink.

The sky was magnificent yesterday morning. My picture in no way does it justice, because as usual I was trying to snap it from the driver's seat of a moving vehicle:Seriously though there was a point where the freeway turned and the sky opened up and I just couldn't figure out why there wasn't car accident after car accident caused by drivers mesmerized by the sunrise.

There's still a lot of roofing left to do from the hurricane around here. That blue stuff is still tarp, yes indeed-y:STILL. You may or may not remember that the hurricane was way back in September.

I saw this sign at the grocery store the other day. I noticed that the section is called, "Healthy Meals":Now I'm no doctor (or a nurse or dietitian or a nutritionist) or anything, but a bunch of chemicals that I can't even pronounce, thrown together in a box doesn't even constitute a meal in my book, much less a healthy meal. Here's the ingredients list on one of those suckers:I realize it's illegible, but I'd be willing to bet most of that stuff isn't even food.

Here's another rose The-Guy grew for my scratch and sniff blog:Anyhow...that's about it from here for now. I'm getting google searches for chocolate covered matzoh. Seeing as two years ago I told one or more people that I'd post the recipe, I guess that's coming up next.

Church of the Latter Day Kitty Litter

You know how when life gets to be too much, every now and then and you wish you had a giant eraser to wipe the thoughts out of your brain and then you're all, "Maybe I should become an alcoholic!"

But instead you just promise your cat that you'll spend the entire summer petting and adoring him because surely that's gotta be akin to meditation and less self destructive than becoming an alcoholic on purpose. Besides, he's a really needy cat who would probably thrive on the attention.

No? It's just me then? Ok, well you know how sometimes it's fun to just sit around and make up new religions to take your mind off things? No?

At any rate, I decided to invent a new religion called Church of the Latter Day Kitty Litter, so either way please send huge donations of cat food (hairball prevention formula, preferably) to the branch opening near you...

Because who could be more deserving of an entire religion devoted to him than my cat Sugar? He's fairly friendly (when he's on his bipolar upswing) and RARELY bites anyone's face off.

Look at how he protects us from harm!

And by harm, I mean vicious star of David garland that I put up for Hanukkah, of course. As I've posted before, he guards all the feminine hygiene products:

He's even into recycling:

So go ahead, worship him from on high...or while he's way up high...however that saying goes:

Once I dated this guy who came dangerously close to calling me names when he told me that he defines a "crazy cat lady" as "any woman who lives alone with more than one cat."

At the time I realized I had only narrowly missed his implied insult. After all, I lived alone with two cats on the weekends when my kids spent with their dad.

Now that I shacked up with The-Guy-Who-Knows-A-Song-About-A-Chicken, I figured I was pretty much out of the running for "crazy cat lady". But now that I reread my post, I'm wondering if maybe his requirements were actually a little too stringent.