Nothing Says Fun Like a Few Kajillion Deadly Man O Wars

I got to go to Galveston for a work conference last week with some coworker-friends. A couple of different drunks were kind enough to take some really good pictures of us. But my boss was with us. And I like my job. So I decided against posting them.

After the conference, The-Guy-Who-Knows-A-Song-About-A-Chicken drove in with my boy and my sweet pea. And it was wonderful and the weather was beautiful. And the beach was...well, it was a beach, which means it was paradise.

Except for the man-o-wars. Those things are deadly, apparently, and the beach was more or less carpeted with them. That kind of put a damper on the swimming and wading and stuff.We wandered around The Strand, but for some reason, I took most of the pictures in the alley.
I'm sure Galveston must have been breathtakingly beautiful some number of hurricanes ago. There's still some Ike recovery going on a year and a half after the most recent one though.
We heard music at the Old Quarter.The owner told my gal to reach her hand up as far as she could, then told her that's how high the water had been inside!

The amazing thing was that it was kind of hard to tell. The walls were covered with pictures of people who had played there, which he said had been either sent to him or had been restored.

All in all, except for the man-o-wars, me losing my favorite hoodie sweatshirt (It's black with a zipper & says KPFT. Have you seen it?), and my friend's son puking, it was a perfect couple of days. I even saw a motorcycle made of wicker! So what could be better than that, I ask you?!?!?

I Think We Made the Library's "Most Wanted" List

My brother asked me how anyone could run up a $93 bill on their library card when the fines are only 10 cents a day and I was all, "Oh! It's easy! Let me tell you how!!"

I have a lot of practice, because not only do I have $50 library fines on my own card from the city public library, but I have a similar fine at the county library.

So a $93 bill on my (almost) stepdaughter's account was barely even a challenge.

But almost anyone can accomplish this heroic feat if they put in adequate effort. This how it's done, folks:

-Send two children on a school field trip with their (almost) stepsister's library card
-Keep all 9 books well past the due date, and even past the end of their school project
-Carefully count and return the books without realizing that one book actually went home from the library with another child
-Have a random child give your boy the book back, unrequested, after already having pleaded one's case with the library and having been threatened with creditors

Houston is particularly unfriendly in the credit report area. Business around here tend to send people to a credit agency at the drop of a hat, even the public library.

It does have its advantages though. For example, in Houston, when it rains it pours. And when it pours, the crawfish come scampering out of the school parking lot:I'm not sure why they were in such a hurry though. It's a Jewish school, after all, and those guys aren't even kosher.

Plus, Houston has The International Festival. We saw Joe Ely and Ozomatli, who were both absolutely fantastic.

I can't speak to how popular Ozomatli is or isn't but there was a big crowd and many of them seemed to know the lyrics. I can speak to the fact that they put on an absolutely incredible show, and it's worth seeing whether or not you like what they've released on CD.

My sweet pea had an art opening.Hers are the ones on the right, up above her left shoulder.

That's about it except I have a never ending supply of papers I have to write and I travel for work today. I'd totally advise you to rob my house, but as it turns out, everyone else will still be here.

Have a good weekend everyone!

For the Love of Red, Glowey Eyeballs People! Or for the Love of Moths. Or something.

This morning The-Guy-Who-Knows-A-Song-About-A-Chicken rid our bedroom of moth cocoons while I researched "benevolent sexism" for my classes.

Every once in awhile he would wave his collected casualties at me, at which point I would squeal in disgust and then return to my reading. But he swept the kitchen first, so I'm sure that balances everything out. Somehow.

Besides, we're fighting gender stereotypes along different lines here at Camp Twipply Skwood. My 12 year old boy has been doing his own laundry for about a year and a half. I'm not sure the constant nagging is any less work for me, but maybe one day he'll discover the benefits of clean clothes.

Yesterday he described his hatred of this particular chore with an explanation along these lines:

Him - I HATE doing laundry! I would even choose being able to wash my clothes by wearing them over being able to make my eyes glow red.
Me - You mean you would rather be able to wash your clothes by wearing them even more than you would like to be able to make your eyes glow red?
Him - Yes! I would just put on my clothes, walk around wearing them, and they would be clean! (mimes actions) I would rather do that than EVEN be able to make my eyes glow red!
Me - Yeah, me too.

To be honest, I haven't fully investigated the benefits to being able to make one's eyes glow red, but I'm all for anything that reduces laundry and housework in general.

I saw this sign in a lobby. Actually, I saw this posted in many different places around a lobby. I won't say WHAT lobby, because obviously their password is a big, giant secret and far be it from me to expose that which they guard so preciously:Anyway, I'd be chattier, but I already wrote a seven page long paper today and I can't seem to get my eyeballs unstuck from the computer screen. As I do I have to reintroduce myself to the great outdoors. It's a beautiful weekend here in the land of cockroaches, floods, and the occasional hurricanes! Happy Saturday all!

This Blog is a Bargain. Apparently.

While innocently doing my schoolwork this weekend, I ran across an article on making a living by blogging. "Don't expect to make more than $50,000," it warned. But, it said, you mostly have to write about certain things to make a living. Let's see...they were sex, famous people, and something else I can't remember.

So yeah. My family sat three rows behind Lyle Lovett and his mom in the (totally awesome) Anderson Fair movie last weekend!!!!

And I have a whole category on dating and another on vibrating boobs. Does that make this blog worth $50,000?

No? Drat! I wish I could remember what that third thing was...

Anyhow, DJ Kirkby came over here looking for pictures of homemade tortillas awhile back. This is what I do for those kids o' mine: I make them a few dozen tortillas most every Sunday to pack in their lunches. (Recipe here!)Also, I took a bunch of pictures of mailboxes. I guess I was just impressed that they were all more or less on the same block of the same street.

I took this one's picture out of pity. It looked a little sad.

This is the one that originally caught my interest.

It's quite a variety for one street, isn't it?

I saw the Anderson Fair movie, The-Guy-Who-Knows-A-Song-About-A-Chicken miraculously installed a shower door without even cursing a bunch or running back to the hardware store for something he didn't know he needed, and I wrote more essays for school than you can shake a stick at. That's been our week so far - hope you're having a good one!

100 Years is a Long Time to Spend on This Planet

Hello people! I am very busy these days stringing together words to form sentences and turning those sentences into APA style written essays in order to prove that I listened to and read stuff I was supposed to listen to and read. Or maybe it's to prove that I thought critically about stuff I'm supposed to listen to and read. Either way, it's time consuming.

How else have I made myself busy this week? Let me count the ways: Passover and wedding planning and school work, but also we celebrated my grandfather's 100th birthday!
In the words of my cousin Bernard:

Today we celebrate my grandfather's 100th birthday (Popo)... He lived through the great depression, both world wars, the Golden Age of the 50's, the social upheaval of the 60's, the freewheelin 70's, the conservative 80's and not once, in any decade, did he ever get a meal in a resaurant he did not want to send back. Happy Birthday Gramps!

Also, I pet a horse.

I helped The-Guy-Who-Knows-A-Song-About-A-Chicken pull up the carpet in the hallway. Usually by "helping" I mean that I watch and take pictures and hand him the occasional tool. But this time I actually pulled out some carpet tacks too.

By the way, don't try this first picture at home, at least without shoes and safety goggles.

Is it bad that I like the bare boards so much? You'd think I was raised in a barn! But you'd be wrong. I was raised in rural Arkansas*...which is, like...a world of difference. I mean, I'm sure there's SOME difference...

And The-Guy-Who-Knows-A-Song-About-A-Chicken and I went on a day trip, which is one of my very favorite things to do with The-Guy.


Anyway I'm off to write more essays. Maybe I could just find a relavant blog post to turn in. Surely I've written something around here on individual versus collective oriented cultures...now what would I have tagged that?

*among other places

I'm Afraid of Receipts Now

I heard something on the radio yesterday morning about receipts being chock-full-o BPA, maybe even more than most plastics. And so of course I had to look it up and find out that, yep, receipts are just as scary as the rest of life.

I can't decide which is scarier, receipts or going back to school for my Master's.

I had this conversation with The-Guy-Who-Knows-A-Song-About-A-Chicken:

Me - (whining about how scared I am to be going back to school)
Him - "You're smart. You'll do fine. You've got nothing to worry about."
Me - "I'm not afraid of the work! I'm afraid of staying up late!"
Him - "Yeah...you usually do fall asleep pretty early..."

These days, I'm lucky if I stay awake longer than the kids. I'm not afraid of the classwork at all. I'm afraid of being up past 10:00 on a weeknight.

I've been scaring my gal too, with my driving. But we were on a high overpass, so it wasn't that hard:

Her - "You're in the middle of the road!"
Me - "Of course I'm in the middle of the road!"
Her - "No, no! You're in the middle of the non-road!"
Me - "No I wasn't."
(Purposefully driving onto the shoulder.)
Me - "We would have felt the bumps. See? Like this."
Her - "But I DID feel the bumps!"
Me - "Well why didn't you tell me?"
(Changing lanes so slowly as to spend several moments straddling the line between the lanes)
Her - "Now you're in the middle of THIS road!"
Me - "I'm changing lanes! I like to change lanes slowly. And carefully."

I pass this place every day. Exactly how good does food have to be in order to precipitate momma slapping? It isn't exactly scary, but it does sort of make me want to make sure all my cooking is mediocre:Oh! And if you enjoyed Cock Flavored Soup, I found some ball cake to go with it!And also some preserved vegetable:Because I have to find ways to amuse myself while The-Guy shops.

So that's life right now: I don't have a wedding dress or invitations, but I do have a bunch of brand spanking new phobias that coordinate perfectly with the fear of my own wedding. Plus I have great skill at amusing myself in a grocery store.