Bail Bonds Go with Everything

Once upon a time when my brother was maybe 5 and I was around 7, my mom & dad left us with friends for the weekend. This family ground their own wheat to make the flour to make whole wheat bread, and they showed us how to milk...I'm pretty sure it was a goat and not a cow...for the milk for breakfast. My point is, refined white sugar and surely Little Debbie type snack cakes were not a staple in this family's diet.

So anyway, the parents come in to ask us if we like oatmeal for breakfast.

Oatmeal? What's oatmeal? My brother and I turned to each other.

We didn't know oatmeal.

But we DID know oatmeal cookies. More specifically we knew the Little Debbie type of oatmeal cookie with the yummy white cream in the middle.

I stopped at three different stores today and never found these kind of oatmeal cookies, so I had to borrow a picture here:

My brother and I decided that obviously if the brown things on the outside were the "cookie", the white creamy icing on the inside must be the "oatmeal". Oatmeal. Cookie. Made sense to us. And what kid doesn't like pure sugar for breakfast? Yes! Some of that white creamy icing sounds like the breakfast of champions! We had obviously hit the jackpot.

We assured the unsuspecting parents we definitely liked oatmeal, only to refuse to eat the hot unsweetened bowl of mush which was served to us, the same gluey stuff had turned our own mother against oatmeal for life.

I tell you this because if your own child or a child you have known has clamored for a food that was later refused, there may have been a similar misunderstanding.

The only other information I really have to share this week is that bail bonds go with everything. Apparently.

Bail bonds and tacos, for example:


(I apologize for the lousy picture, but it's hard to take at night from a moving vehicle. I assure you that the last word is the bail "bonds" though.)

Next up, bail bonds and a hair cut. Bail bonds and a hair cut kind of confused me at first, but I guess you want to look your best in court:


And that's about it, except for this sort of scary picture of my bipolar kitty:

He's not that scary in real life. Except for sometimes. Hope everyone is having a good week!

Update: To clarify any misunderstandings, we did NOT learn of the oatmeal cookies from our parents! I'm afraid we had previously learned of the snack cakes from other kids' lunches. I'm not sure of why we didn't learn of unsweetened, unflavored oatmeal from other kids' lunches...

How One of My Kids Might Have Turned Out Semi-Okay So Far Despite me.

Once upon a time that handsome teenage boy-o-mine in the sidebar used to be a cute baby that I apparently never listened to.The person next to him is the Sweet Pea, who more or less always demanded that you listen to her.

So one day I'm pulling out of the drive through ATM and I hear a little voice from the back seat,

"Ah LEDDER! Ah ledder Mama! Mama! It wote you ah LEDDER!!!! Aaaaah LEDDERRRRRRRR!"

I wondered what the baby was squawking about, but not enough to turn back around to see. If I HAD pulled back around to see, I would have found out that the letter he was talking about was the machine spitting back out my ATM card. But instead, I got a phone call from the bank later.

The second time we were at the grocery store. Kroger had bulk bins back then and I began my shopping trip by scooping out some kind of nuts or trail mix or whatever when I suddenly screamed and dropped my bag of bulk food. There were BUGS in the bin!

I recovered from the trauma, did the rest of my shopping, checked out, and suddenly realized I couldn't find my car keys. I searched the store, checking the aisles bemoaning our fate of obvious food poisoning as our milk, eggs, or whatever perishables I had in the cart got warmer and warmer.

In desperation, I asked the baby in the cart, "Jared, did you see what happened to my keys?" As if none of the frantic searching had even occurred, he calmly answered, "I think you put them by the peanuts."

I hadn't, in fact, "put them" by the peanuts. I had dropped them when I screamed. There they were right there on the floor by the bulk bins and we were free to go home in time not to spoil the food and end up in the hospital from rotten eggs.

Happily ever after. Except, I probably still don't listen to him enough.

I Guess I'm Out of Practice - I forgot to make a title for this post.

Hello world o' blog! If there is anyone left to read after I have ignored the blogging world for such a long time. Apparently I took a little unannounced blogging vacation.

Here's my new website idea: meet'ya-halfway.com. It would be for all those times your brother suggests meeting halfway between New York and Texas to go like, camping or something, and then you agree it would be awesome but neither of you ever does anything about it.

You'd just put in the two places you're coming from and find out the best spot to meet. And if there's more than one best spot, it could rate them based on places to see and things to do, or best restaurants or hotels or whatever.

So if someone could please be kind enough to invent that website...or point me to the one already invented...

Meanwhile, for pictures...the Sweet Pea has been keeping us busy at the orthopedic place as usual. Here she is getting an MRI of her wrist:
And I saw this shampoo at Target:
What does men's hair actually have to endure? I mean, women's hair gets curled and straightened and styled and teased and dried and constantly attacked by "product". But men's hair...I thought it led a relatively easy life of a trim or hair cut here or there. Maybe the occasional ball cap or something.

I hope everyone has had a good couple weeks while I've been not-blogging!