Worm Massacre

My friend Jodi and I have been walking around our neighborhood most mornings. We chat.  We laugh.  We commiserate.  But today? We saved lives.

From yesterday into the overnight last night, we had a very heavy rain.  So heavy, in fact, that the rain flooded the worms from their earthy little homes and pushed them mercilessly onto the streets.  There were thousands of worms on the streets.  Some were smashed and some were already dried up, but many were waving their little heads at us, signaling, “Help us, kind ladies!” with their sweet little noggins.

First we walked carefully (and Jodi was pushing a stroller, so she drove carefully too).  Then we gave up on that because the street was littered with them.  After a few minutes, I admitted to Jodi that I really felt terrible about the worms, blindly writhing in agony on the macadam. 

She felt bad too.  We decided to save them.

That’s right.  We picked up the worms and threw them back in the grass.

We are heroes, people.

Jodi wanted to name them.  I drew the line there, and said we mustn’t get too attached to them.

But secretly, I named this one Mr. Longfellow.

Sometimes when you are busy saving lives, you become covered in gore and carnage.

                                         Jodi’s sneaker                                                                                                                                  Stroller wheel

Jodi sent me this one after she got home…seriously, how did the worms get up on her stroller? 

I can’t help but think some of them leaped onto the stroller in a Hail Mary move to save their lives. 

After our walk, Jodi and I headed to our own houses with mixed feelings.  Happy that we had saved so many lives that day, but sad that so many lost souls were beyond help, and also maybe a little skeeved out at the slightly gummy, sticky feeling our fingers had taken on.

Farewell, good friend with the kind heart and gummy sticky fingers.  I’ll see you tomorrow.

Christmas Card Rejects

I had a whole year to come up with a Christmas card photo. A whole year!  Why don’t we take a look at what happened…

Our first big photo opportunity was in Niagara Falls. 

Usually someone is looking kind of funny, but I struck gold with this one…and it’s blurry.  Bonus!

My hopes were probably way too high when I snapped this one after the Maid of the Mist.

During our trip to Lititz Park, I decided to take some pictures before we headed home.  We should have just headed home.

Jack=eyes closed:

Ben= eyes closed:

Maddie= eyes closed:

I give up.  Let’s go home.

The beach!  Why, that’s the perfect location to get family photos!

Two eyes open out of six?  Geez Louise.

I have about 50 more photos with somebody’s eyes closed.  I promise I won’t show you another one, but trust me, I’ve got plenty.

The beach at Cape May was crowded.  It was very hard to get a photo without another person… or shall I say family barging in.

This is a nice one.  Except for the couple right on top of Ben’s head.

Let’s try something else.

Or maybe not.

In October, I decided to put sweaters on them and head to a nice leafy location at dusk.  Good lighting, good background.  What could go wrong?

Why is this so hard?

Sometimes I tell them to say funny things to make their smiles more real, like “Okay, everybody say,' ‘Uncle Dave has diarrhea!’”  Unfortunately, sometimes it backfires.

About 130 pictures later, I had two photos that I liked.  And one is not quite clear.  Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

Last week I threw some Christmas lights on the floor and told the kids to lay on their stomachs in front of them (I saw this idea on Pinterest).  First of all, I placed the kids at a bad angle and they all looked a  little bit spooky.  Second of all,  Jack just couldn’t take his eyes off the lights:

Also I don’t like the look of the carpet.

So now it’s the end of November and crunch time for Christmas cards!  Which do you think I should pick?

This:

Or this:

Or maybe a collage with these three:

Help!  What do you think?

Midnight Madness

I never had any intention of shopping at midnight.  That is crazy talk!  At midnight on any given night you can find me curled up in bed under my toasty electric blanket dreaming of carbs and sun-drenched beaches and being late for school and rushing to the bus stop only to notice I am in my underwear but hoping no one notices and getting on the bus anyway, and then realizing I can fly!

Anyway.

I do not do much at midnight besides sleep.  However, yesterday the Black Friday circulars arrived at my door, and I made the supreme mistake of looking at them.  The item Ben is asking for most was on sale at Best Buy for $100 cheaper than I’d find anywhere else.  Also there were lots of great deals at Target, and since I find it hard to resist Target on an ordinary day, I decided to head there too.

Full of turkey and pumpkin pie, I mapped out my strategy.  First I’d head to Best Buy, and although I knew there’d be a crowd at the door, I would be smart and sit in my car and watch those suckers standing in the cold, then when the workers open the doors allowing the crowd to push its way in, I’d unhurriedly exit my car and go get my bargains!  After Best Buy, I’d head to Target and then possibly Kohl’s if I still had the energy. 

My alarm went off at 11:15, I got dressed, kissed my sleeping family goodbye, and drove the 30 minute drive to Best Buy.  On the way to Best Buy I passed the Target/Kohl’s shopping center.  It was filled with cars.  I saw no open spots at all.  What?  Who the heck shops at midnight? I continued on to Best Buy.

The first thing I saw was the Best Buy parking lot, which was filled.  I needed to park at an adjacent parking lot for an LA Fitness Center, which was also filling up.  Right about then was when I glanced toward the Best Buy door, hoping to gauge how long I’d need to sit in my car before joining the crowd. 

I was flabbergasted.   There was a line, 3-4 people deep, that extended from the door around all four sides of the extremely ginormous box of a store.  It dawned on me that the line held way more people than the safe capacity of the store would hold.  Which meant I’d need to wait possibly hours in line as a safe amount of people shopped, then eventually get in the store to find my Doorbuster Bargain sold out. I was the sucker.

I decided to wave goodbye to my $100 savings and move on to Target, although I didn’t have high hopes for Target having already scoped out that parking lot.  And once I got there, I just did a drive-by, because the line into Target extended further than I could see, and the only parking spots available were somewhere in western Montana.

I drove home hanging my head in shame:  mortified that I even joined the crazed shopping masses to begin with, and disgraced that I didn’t have the fortitude to stick with it and bag my bargains.  And frankly, part of me is really ticked off that the merchants of the world made me do it.  I realize they didn’t twist my arm or hold a gun to my head, but why, why, why does the shopping get earlier each year?  We need to say NO to the MADNESS, people, and reclaim our Thanksgiving, our uninterrupted sleep, and our dignity! 

Also, if anyone knows where I can find an xBox cheap, I’d appreciate it.

Lately

I’ve been busy. 

Using Blurb.com, I’ve been converting my blog into a book!  I began this bog almost three years ago in order to scrapbook my photos and family stories.  I took a Scrapbooking class once and was really very bad at it.  I just didn’t have the artistic vision to make a page beautiful. However, my blog has helped me capture those photos and memories so well.  But what happens if someday Blogger’s server crashes (I’m not sure those are the right terms…but you know what I mean.)  My blog would be lost, like a scrapbook that turns to ash in a housefire.  Hence the decision to make the blog into a book (that could also burn up in a housefire, whatever, shut up.)

I have to tell you though, that three years of blogging is a lot to organize.  I’m having to rewrite some things, choose templates that fit the right number of photos and text for each blogpost, and on top of that, Blurb is really slow.  I don’t think it’s my computer, because it’s usually pretty speedy, but when I ask Blurb to delete a page, for instance, it will do it…after about a two minute wait.  I usually must wait 20-30 seconds after most moves (which seems crazy slow), but the Delete a Page move is the most annoying.  I’m enjoying the whole process though, and it’s fun to take a walk down Memory Lane (it’s mostly fun…but I’m embarrassed at how bad my writing was in the beginning, middle, and sometimes even the end.  Man, I use way too many exclamation marks!!!!)

So besides the blog business…

I found this ladybug inside my house, which I think means good luck.  Except, doesn’t the ladybug’s house burn down in the little nursery rhyme? Maybe I should rethink the book.  Anyway, I put her outside on a pumpkin for a nice little photo shoot, but she promptly fell off and scurried away, which I think means she’s taking her luck and/or housefire with her somewhere else.

Dave and I repainted the shutters on our house last month!  He did the top floor, I did the bottom, and then I also painted the bench, front door, and storm door (I had to as I also changed our paint color from Faded Pukey Maroon to Sherwin William Tricorn Black.  I think the house looks much better now as our old shutters were so faded from the sun.

Before:

After:

Also, I took the screens off the windows, hosed down the whole front porch, and then washed all of the windows until they were squeaky clean.  It’s probably the last time I’ll do that until we paint the shutters again in 2021,  just sayin’.

I’ve also had two photo shoots this month in an effort to get a Christmas card photo.  For the first one, I took the kids to Founders Hall where the foliage was blazing away.  For the second one, I threw some Christmas lights down on our living room floor and stuck the kids in front of them.  I got some good results for both, but I also got some bombs.  Here’s a sneak peek at some bombs (because I’m saving most of the bombs for my Annual Christmas Card Reject Post, click here to see 2009’s rejects and here to see 2010’s rejects):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

School conferences were about a week ago, and they all went well.  Jack’s teacher asked if I noticed the Community Helpers bulletin board in the hall, which I hadn’t.  She thought I would be interested in seeing Jack’ s contribution to the bulletin board.  Oh boy.  Did I get a nervous feeling in my stomach. 

The theme of the bulletin board was how community helpers help people.  For instance, one child wrote “I would like to be a policeman so I can help children cross the street.”  Another child wrote, “I would like to be a teacher so I can teach children how to read.”  So admirable.

Jack wrote:

Hmmm.  Maybe I need to whine about the orthodontist bills at a lower volume from now on.

Brace Face

After wearing an expander for about two months (and for 5 more months), Maddie  finally got her braces!  She’s been so excited to get braces for years.

Here she is ready to get started:

What’s funny here, is that I quietly asked her, “Can I take a before picture?”  And she looked to her left at all of the slightly older teens sitting in the other chairs and whispered, “Mom!  No!”  So I asked her, “How about from here?  Just smile.  No one will know!”  But you can see she is feeling self-conscious.

During:

I have another photo of DURING that I won’t show you, but I took it to show her.  They put these huge C-shaped plastic inserts into her mouth to hold her mouth open.  Holy cow.  She looked kind of…creepy.  I almost couldn’t look at her.  I definitely can’t publish that photo!

After about 45 minutes:

She’s thrilled, and suddenly looks like a teenager to me.

The next morning she was not so thrilled.  Her poor mouth hurt all day.  This morning it felt better, but only slightly.  I told her it will all be worth it when they come off and she has a gorgeous new smile, but two years seems really far away to her right now.

Melancholy Metaphors*

Maddie was as tiny as a daisy.

Ben was sleepier than his mother.  (Who was chronically sleep-deprived from January 2000 until somewhere around 2007.  So that’s saying a lot).

Jack was newer than a present under the tree.

Maddie was sweeter than an angel.

Ben was scarier than a dude who makes a mask out of the leg of his father’s old pants and writes “Sae Owt” (Stay Out) on his bedroom door.

See?  Sleep deprived.

Jack was stickier than a baby covered in marshmallow crème.  Mom was dumber than a post for keeping the marshmallow crème on a low shelf.

Goofier than…  

…Santa’s elves, or possibly…

…Goofy himself.

Cheesier than the dairy aisle at Costco.

Also more romantic than the electric blanket aisle at Costco.  You have to admit, it’s true.

*I realize these were mostly similes, but I couldn’t find a good word to be alliterative with Simile in the title.  Here’s a bonus photo to soothe those of you offended by my poor literary usage:

Totally Tired, Easily Exhausted, Sincerely Sleepy, Utterly Unawake