Cars Trump Appliances, Apparently

That's Larry, over to the right - or a reasonable facsimile of him, anyway.  (Minus the hat)  You see, that's how you dress after bringing your car in to the local shop because you heard a strange noise from the rear brakes.  Who knew that replacing the entire brake assembly could cost the same amount of money as a new stove and a new dishwasher would have?  And how essential are those back brakes, anyway?  Shouldn't the front ones be enough?





 
Have I introduced you to our friendly neighborhood mechanic yet?  He's over there to the left.  Nice of him to let Larry keep his shoes...






[Barrel photo credit: Culture Vulture]

[Moneybags image credit: Upgrade Travel Better]

For Your Viewing Pleasure...

Why the British freak me out...

(Gah - can't get it to embed properly - you'll have to click on over - it's worth it)

Sick For The Holidays

We had a typically festive weekend for our family - after attending Christmas Eve Mass in all our holiday finery, we came home and watched Rachel throw up repeatedly.  Yes, folks, just as I was getting my appetite back, I got to witness a puke-fest.  That weight just keeps a-droppin'!  The only bright side is that I had just stepped out to deliver a loaf of cranberry bread to our next-door neighbor when the barf machine started up.  Larry had to handle it, thus assuring that he will fall prey to this stomach bug also.

David managed to break our router on Thursday, meaning we have had no wireless for 3 days.  I've tried to be brave for the children, but even the little ones know something is gravely amiss.  No phone, no IPod Touch, no second computer.  It's been hell.  Think Donner Party, but with less food....

And now the library is kicking me out.  I've become a vagabond, having to search for my next wireless fix in order to keep all my Words with Friends games going.  Whither next?  A Starbucks, perhaps?

Holiday Weight-Loss Tips

Worried about gaining weight over the holidays?  Follow Suburban Correspondent's handy guide for keeping those unwanted pounds away!

1. Cancel Chanukah party (with its attendant calorie-laden fried potato pancakes) due to best friend's parasite-ridden children.  Whew!  One hurdle jumped!

2. Approximately 10 days before Christmas, contract a cold with a wicked sore throat.  Add in 2 cold sores on the inside of your lower lip.  Voila!  You can't ingest anything without extreme pain!  This should get you through all those pre-holiday pageants and parties quite handily.  Careful!  Wine hurts too!

3. As the sore throat wanes, make sure to pick up a stomach bug from your 10-year-old son.  Perfect for keeping you from tasting any of the treats you still have to bake for everyone else!

4. Fail to recover from said stomach bug within 48 hours.  Lie in bed on the third day and decide you have some sort of intestinal cancer.  Wrap presents for your children (the last you'll ever give them) while weeping copiously.  Burns more calories than wrapping cheerfully!  Stop frequently to blow nose and lament your poor motherless children's bleak future to your confused husband.  That burns more calories, also (the nose-blowing and lamentations, that is, not the confused husband).  You are on your way to becoming one svelte sick chick.

5. Recall that laughter is the best medicine.  Forget your troubles (and your hunger) by reading about how Kenny Loggins ruined one innocent 7-year-old girl's Christmas.  ROTFL.  And, hey, all that rolling on the floor laughing burns extra calories, too...





[sneezing photo credit: Salon]
[photo credit: Hyperbole and a Half]

Snow Day Directions

Follow these steps:

1. Mittens, snowboots, hats;

2. Sleds and shovels and snowmen;

3. Cocoa with cookies.

Repeat until exhausted.  (The parent, that is - the kids just keep on going...)





[Snowman credit: Ahoy, Hanoi!]

Bathroom Blogging

Hey! I can blog from the bathroom with this new blogging app for my IPod Touch.

No pictures, though...I have to draw the line somewhere.

Now I'm wondering just why anyone would want to blog from the bathroom. Of course, I don't know why anyone would want to use the amazing technology that is the Internet to share dumb pictures of cats, either; but they do.

Says the person who posts pictures of her mouldy leftovers...

Hmmm...I can't seem to find italics here. I don't think I can blog without italics. And boldface - where's my boldface type?

I must persevere, regardless. Because really, this post is a cry for help - an urgent plea from those of us inundated with the plague that is/are stinkbugs. It is freezing cold outside, which means - according to my extensive research - that these nasty creatures should all be peacefully hibernating in my attic.

Apparently, no one has told the stinkbugs that valuable piece of information. They are here in the bathroom. They are in the den. For all I know, they lie in wait for me in the bedroom. Resistance is futile. If you never hear from me again, you will know why. But I will go down fighting.

Gah - typing on this tiny keyboard is making me nauseous. Must. Stop. Now.

Santa FAIL

As a bunch of the neighborhood kids were heading downstairs to play the other day, I overheard one 10-year-old girl speaking, uh, carelessly (if you get my drift) about Santa.  I grabbed her by the arm and hissed, "Debbie! Susie still believes in Santa - DO NOT ruin it for her, okay?" Debbie, startled, was nodding her assent when I noticed another neighbor girl - aged 8 - standing next to her, listening to our conversation.  She was looking, I noted with dismay, a tad crestfallen. 

"I still believe in Santa," she said, in what can only be described as a tone of uncertainty tinged with desperate hope.

Way to ruin a kid's Christmas, eh?

[Image credit: bigoo.ws]

Elizabeth Edwards - RIP

Farewell, Elizabeth!  There are many among us who have admired your courage and your strength and, yes, your resilience.  It's not easy to be a woman, especially as we hit middle age and beyond, even without the challenges that you yourself faced.  Women are expected to weather life's disappointments and even its tragedies with an almost super-human grace; so your willingness to share with us the reality of living with the unlucky trifecta of bereavement/betrayal/illness was a much-appreciated gesture of compassion in an often unforgiving world.

Your race has been run, honorably and bravely, dear lady; go in peace.

Yosemite Sam Makes Me Money

 

Why not?  It works.

I've assigned David, our local computer expert, the task of figuring out search optimization whatevers.  I told him if he made me extra money, he could have half.  Plus, that'll keep him too busy to start hacking into the Pentagon webservers. 

The Boy Who Knew Too Much...I wonder who will play David in the movie?  And is it normal for a 13-year-old boy to be reading Dreaming in Code?  Because I'm getting a little worried.

Bugs Bunny, Tweety Bird, Fred Flintstone, and Me

Well, Sarah has solved for me the riddle of the mysteriously increasing blog stats - apparently, as she informed me in the comments yesterday, everyone on Facebook is searching the Internet for images of their favorite childhood cartoon characters to use for their profile pictures.




Now, a lesser person than moi would undoubtedly try to take advantage of this situation, perhaps even attempt to optimize their search whatevers to extract even more traffic from this profile-picture craze.  Imagine!  Posting random cartoon character pictures on your blog just to attract more "eyeballs," as the Internet folk call it!  And even (on the advice of a certain computer-savvy teen)  listing the character names - Bugs Bunny, say, or Tweety Bird or Fred Flintstone  - all to improve the page's meta http equivalence...or something like that...



I swear, such money-grubbing opportunists are making all us Internet hacks look bad.  How will I ever be taken seriously as an artist again?

On the other hand, I could really use some extra yarn money...














[Bugs Bunny image credit: Hollywood.com]


[Tweety Bird image credit: blogs.voices.com]




[Fred Flintstone image credit: manhattaninfidel.com]

The Wonder That Is The Internet

It is nothing short of amazing just how many people are searching for images of Wilma Flintstone.  And landing here...

So much for attempting to write sparklingly witty prose - all I needed to up my stats was a picture that appears on the first page of the Google image search results.  Silly me.

********

Oh, and since I didn't make it clear enough, our family (fingers crossed) does not seem to be suffering from parasitic vermin.  We were at risk, so I treated all the little kids' heads and washed all our bed linens, etc.  But so far?  So good.   Except for the nightmares , of course...

Gosh, I'm Fun

I didn't look this happy.

Didn't do much today - just hung around the house and processed 6 laundry loads of sheets and blankets, piled theoretically lice-smothering goop on 3 children's heads in order to smother any (hopefully) theoretical lice which may have taken residence thereon, watched Fiddler on the Roof with the kids to make up for using a hair dryer on my 10-year-old son, and conscripted David to make an extra lasagne for my suffering friend.  Because no matter how bad my day was, hers was worse.

You see, in an unfortunate confluence of events, she discovered lice on her 2 youngest kids' heads the day before her oldest son's college applications were due.  And her 8-year-old daughter spent the day sobbing because her mother cut her (infested) hair.  And her 2-year-old was traumatized by her older sister's screaming during said haircut. The teen daughter hasn't run away yet, but we consider that imminent.

So, yeah - I won't complain.  Not much, anyway...I even made it to Knit Night this evening, where I probably convinced any childless knitters there to get their tubes tied by regaling them with tales of parasitic invasions.  The life of the party, that's what I am...

[Image credit: wedgienet.net]