OK, Ick

We switched from my beloved DirecTV today to Comcast. The bundle just saves us so much money that I couldn't justify not doing it. Anyhow, the comcast guy is here, and he had the tv turned to a local affiliate while he tinkered.

Some show called The Doctors (?) was on. It has a GROSS factor of 11 out of 10. They were talking about some stomach cancer, inherited, that killed like 7 out of 10 people in one generation. So the next generation all had THEIR STOMACHS REMOVED!

I almost removed my stomach after the next story, though. They talked about weird eating habits. One guy was a proponent of the raw meat diet. Have fun with your parasites, dude.

But the weirdest HAD to be the guy who cooked a three-course meal out of... wait for it... his first child's PLACENTA.

I thought soap operas were bad. Sheesh.

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Killer Strikes Again

Ahhh, the joys of having a new dog.

We thought our kitchen was dog-proof, but a few weeks of rainy days showed that even the best-nailed-down molding could be pried up with puppy teeth. All of my rugs got chewed to bits, but hey! That's an excuse to buy pretty new rugs from TJ Maxx! (and I got this cool rug with a rooster. I'm so proud!)

So, now that sunny summer has come, the dogs are outside most days - all day! We got a new fence as our old one was certainly not Houdini proof. The new one is aces until the boys forget to close a gate. Then, out goes Loki. He's not a runner, just a curious dog. He comes right back when called. But nowadays, it's usually bearing gifts.

Two days ago, it was a mole.

Today, ~sniff~, it was a bird.

~~~~~

We've been doing a lot of swimming; stinky, moth, and I. I felt the sun was a little strong today, so I checked my back when we got home. Last year, I got the crap burned out of my back when we were at Virginia Beach. When I checked my back today? I still have the marks from last year's burn. I know because I haven't worn that swimsuit since that fateful trip. But I can still see the lace marks.

A friend of mine just turned up with a huge amount of skin cancer on her arm. I was never a sun bather, but she was a sun-avoider. Terrified of skin cancer, she was, cos her mom had it. And now, despite her precautions, she has it. Good thing she's paranoid, because this little tiny mark, that the doctors thought was a flu-shot scar, ended up causing a 3x1 inch hole in her arm. The docs still don't know if they got it all. Suck city.

~~~~~

I'm still getting used to this Mac OS. The touch pad still makes me swear sometimes, and setting up the new scanner/printer (it was free, and now I'll have a printer at school! Yee haw!) was like pulling teeth! HP doesn't like MAC all that well. But I now have 5 wires coming out of my desk. 4 of them are power cords. 1 is internet to the modem. C'est tout! For a semi-ocd girl, it's a thing of beauty. Or a beautiful thing, as Vic might say.

Well, I'm off to type more addresses back into address book. Just wanted to see if I could get my photos cleaned up after the big switch, and then see if I could upload. Yes, still getting used to the Mac, but liking it as I learn. I guess I'm not so old as that, if I'm willing to learn new tricks.

later, gators.

(*)>

I Like War

Summer has started. Yipee! I've already had the kids out on 4 Batan marches. They're becoming inured. Must think of new torture, soon.

The way it works this year, when the boys get real antsy, we go for a "walk". Which is at least 40 minutes long. If they get talky-backy, well, they write sentences. This way I've got both gross and fine motor skills being exercised. I've also got "trivia contests" which cover the crap they have to learn before they go back to school this fall, and we read every day.

Sheesh, I think summer is busier than the school year.

But before summer actually started, I had 2 weeks where I was still at school and Stinky and the Moth were not. I got all of it covered except the last 4 days. I took one of those days off. For the other three, we hired a nice kid from down the street to babysit.

The first morning that she showed up, John said to Sean, "why don't you tell her what you like to do, Sean."

Sean looks at her seriously and says, "I like war."

Nice.

The other parents in the neighborhood alternately send their kids to our house to play - yes really - Americans vs. Indians (the boys made that up) or some other such boy game, or they avoid us like swine flu. We have nerf guns, and missile lauchers, and bow/arrow sets, thanks to all the Harvey uncles. The families who send their kids deep down think guns are ok, but are embarrassed to admit it. Other families eschew us completely. They do NOT like guns.

So I have this set of cap guns that I was going to use for forensics in the science bashing session at the end of the year - caps give off enough crap to do a gun powder residue test - but the school police nixed it. The cap guns are too realistic looking, I guess.

So we have them at home.

Dudley's birthday party (see a few posts down) is in 2 weeks or so. When we go, we're thinking of presenting the cap guns as a gift. What do you think? A little evil goes a lonnnnnng way.

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Liar!!

Little mothy has become quite the tall tale teller.

Last night at supper, for some reason, we were talking about girlfriends. Sean has a girlfriend... tim has a girlfriend. And of course, Daddy had more than his part in the teasing.

Tim turns to dad and says "you have a girlfriend, too!"

Dad says, "Mom doesn't count!"

Tim says, "Nuh uh, the lady up the street. That one time you made me go home by myself so you could watch tv with her..." and the story goes and goes. John's jaw is dropping farther and farther.

It's all completely untrue. And tim told it quite convincingly.

I guess he should be getting ready for law school sometime soon.

~~~~~~

Stinky is doing well; this constant muck of a spring has been quite to his taste. He comes in every day swathed in mud and then proceeds to destroy my bathroom. Boy heaven. He also loves his new doggy and "hates" his brother.

Just today, they were out playing at the fort. Sean's best friend in the 'hood is a bit of a Dudley Dursley. He proclaimed himself grand high emperor of emperors today and declared that Tim couldn't be in the army. For some reason, Dudley likes to pick on Tim. Tim can take care of himself, though, for sure. I have a feeling that soon, the grand high emperor of emperors will be sporting a big black and blue mark.

~~~~~

School is still winding down. Unbelievably. It seems like the friggin energizer bunny. But we're almost there. Almost there. Maybe this summer I'll figure out this new operating system and be able to post new pics and print stuff out. Until then, as the babes and dudes of the Lawrence Welk show used to sing, "Adios, Au Revoir, Auf Wiedersein" (goodnight)

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trials and tribulations

No, I don't currently have any of those. You'd think that would be a good excuse for not updating. But the fact is, I have no excuse.

We have had several computer woes at the dusty aviary. Our memory challenged machine has finally given up the ghost - either that or the two gerbils we hired to run the processor finally kicked. So, my computer time is mostly at school, and I usually don't have time to blog here.

School is rapidly coming to a close, but some would say not rapidly enough. Our grades go in next friday. Our last day of school is june 23. You might be saying, WTF? I know I was. How on earth am I supposed to motivate whatever kids choose to come (and we're already down to about 50%) to do ANYTHING let alone stop them from being destructive?

At our last teacher meeting (and didn't I leave business to avoid meetings? Dammit.), I decided to ask the other science teachers if they wanted to plan our last two weeks together. Share the misery, as it were. Our department chair was out that day, so, being the ENTJ that I am, I just took over. So, now, the last two weeks look like the best weeks of the year. We're doing all sorts of fun stuff - gameshows, olympics, orienteering, making things go boom - and keeping it science. And if no kids show, well, that's just fine! We'll still have each other to talk to!

~~~~~

On the home front, all is well. The moth just turned 6 last week. On his birthday, I played "Birthday" by the Beatles to wake the boys up. I started singing "you say it's your birthday!" and Tim rolls over, out of sleep, and says "FINALLY!" What a cutie :)

He really is, though. Lately, the kids are really into John Williams music, since I bought them a 4 disk set. I have heard the theme song to Jaws about 10000 times; stinky adores it. But the best was when John and I were sitting in the living room and mothy runs through to the bathroom. All is quiet for a minute or two, and suddenly we hear the theme song to Star Wars. John turns to me and says "I guess everything came out ok." all deadpan. He's like that.

Sean has been working off a debt - he lost one of the two way radios we let him use, AGAIN. We let the boys roam pretty wildly in the back "meadow/forest", but we need to be able to contact them. (We used to let Sean roam the neighborhood with the radio until the time he called us about the white van without windows following him. Seriously. Sheesh, I have to stop watching LMN.) Anyhow, Sean has all these pockets in his cargo pants, but carries the radio in his hand. Puts it down to take a leak and forgets it. First time, we forgave. Second time, he's working off the debt to buy another one.

He works off the debt by picking up dog poop, of which we now have copious amounts. He actually enjoys running the vacuum, which is weird. But he's getting there. He is so excited for school to end, it's not funny. He hates school. Sad but true.

Tim, on the other hand, loves school, and his "cheachers". "Tim, it's TEACHER, t-t-teacher." "Oh, it starts with T? OK. T-t-cheacher."

Reminds me of c-c-c-bookie, Ron.

~~~~~

Another may done, another june to begin. Memorial day has passed and once again I stopped by to say hey to many of the ancestors. It's weird, but I actually like doing that. Kind of a - thanks for living and making it so I could too - gesture. Next year I think I'll take stinky with me. He'll groove on the graveyards, I think. But for now, it's a pilgrimage for mom and me. Makes her awfully sad, which I can understand. They're her brothers and sisters, her husband and parents. I think it makes her feel lonely. But I think she likes to do it, anyhow.

Hope you're all, all 3 of you who still look here once in a while, doing well. Maybe I'll stop by again sometime and let you know what the toilet song of the week is. (This week, it's Axel F. You know, from beverly hills cop and recently used in Monsters Vs Aliens. What can I say, my kids are weird, just like me.)

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Hanging My Beak In Shame!

OK, so I haven't blogged well in a long time, if ever. But, well, whatever. I have put up several pics from the last months over at photobucket, albums "winter to spring", "christmas pageant 2008" (never mind that it's Easter...) and Loki.

Loki is our new pup. He's Titus's cousin. We went to meet him in early march, and he looked like this.



Now, he looks like this.


And he lives up to his namesake.

We have had this past week off, so I have done all the things that have been sitting around, like blogging and taxes and such. We even visited John's family and went to the aquarium. Am I really this gray? Sheesh.

Speaking of gray, my mom went home last month. But uploading my pics, I found this on. Yes, it's true. I got Grandma Harvey to use the computer. Here is proof, for posterity.

And now, everything is done, just in time for school to come back. 10 more weeks. It's gonna fly!

(*)>

More KidIsms

Previously, I've documented the presence of such Aviary terms as "fire-steaks" (barbeque) and "dirty sugar" (never did figure out what that was - just not good tasting). The moth came up with a new one yesterday.

I am home with the kids, so we're tromping around. We got out of the car at the local strip mall to go to the video place. It smelled... well, fragrant. They had just dumped a huge load of mulch, and that stuff stinks when first delivered. Tim gets out of the car and says, "Eeeewww, it smells like New Jersey out here!!" 

Of course, I laughed a great deal. Then I tried to figure out: why New Jersey? So I asked.

"Dad always says New Jersey stinks!"

ain't it the truth!

(*)>