Words on Wednesday

This is from May 2004.

Havoc and his swimming puddle.

He’d been wanting to play in water outside & I had been having him splashing in large plastic bins of water. But they are not built to withstand that sort of pressure, or they were actually needed to hold other stuff so as a solution it wasn’t working.

DH came home from work one day and said “Look I found one of those blow up ring pools really cheap”

It had no size on the bag but Havoc was only 19 months old so I figured it would be fine.

We both thought probably it would be a foot deep.

Yeah, no. It was about 2 feet across

It was about 3 inches deep & that only because I dug out a bowl shaped area in the gravel for it to sit in.

Havoc had a lot of fun with it though, using the hose to fill it up, adding bubble stuff, splashing around, scooping bubble water on his baby brother (then 4 months old) & then refilling the puddle.

The following year we bought a 6 foot wide one, then in 2007 we got a 12 foot one & in 2009 we got a 16 foot one.

But my favorite is the puddle.

Wordy Wednesday

It was 1985, their thoughts were short & so was their hair.

On the left, with the cigarette in his mouth is my husband’s best friend Max. I believe he was home from a 2 year stint in the Army & this was the summer before he started college.

On the right, with the cheesy 70s porn star mustache, laughing his fool head off because they’d been smoking funny things, is, gods help me, my future husband.

Who,  by the way, had gotten rid of the mustache by the time I met him 4 years after this photo.

This pair of 20 year old stoners would eventually become responsible family men & contributing members of society, but at the time of this photo, you’d never guess it.

Wordless Wednesday

Historic peace accord signed this weekend

Now I just hope the dinos can come to some sort of agreement with the bounty hunters & then the summer will be quiet.

At least among the toys.

Words on Wednesday

My latest manicure. Inspired by Pinterest. I have a board of different manicure photos.

You Tube has a bunch of videos on how to do water manicures or water swirled manicures. I’d explain but seeing it written down is a detriment. It sounds so much more complicated than it is.

Basically polish colors are dropped in water, swirled around & then you dip a nail in them.  There is more to it that that but with a bit of practice it really is fairly easy.

Remember, I am basically lazy. I’m not going to make too much of an effort for anything. So if I can do it, you can do it.

Words on Wednesday

Welcome to 1975! Christmas 1975 as evidenced by the nativity set on top of the tv.

Note the dark wood paneling, the orange & brown carpet, the orange kiddie chairs, the brown curtains and of course the tv. We’d had this tv for about 4 years at this point.

They would remodel this basement in 1988, just around the time 1970s décor was coming back into fashion. It like the rest of the house would end up all blue & white.

You can, if you squint, see a mark in the middle of the tv screen. That is not dust on the negative. That mark is actually where the tv screen was cracked one Saturday morning when my brother took a swing at me with a glass soda bottle, missed, and hit the tv instead.

We were regularly left alone in the basement family room for hours on Saturday mornings. My parents left out bowls and a box of cereal & put small Tupperware bottles of milk for us in the fridge so we could get our own breakfast & they could sleep in.

I’m not sure what my brother was doing with a soda bottle. I know he got it from the garage, since that’s where they was kept, but we had no way to open one so he couldn’t have been drinking it. I also don’t know why he swung it at me, probably we were arguing over whether to watch Scooby Doo or the Banana Splits.

My parents FREAKED when they saw it. And not just because we would spend the next 6 years watching tv on a chipped screen but also because had the tv screen been less sturdy, or my brother been older than 4 & stronger, he could have shattered the glass & possibly caused the tv to explode & catch fire & burn the whole house down & we all would have died “including your hamsters too”.

I don’t recall much specific of my mom’s freak out, but I do remember the bit about the hamsters.  Weird what sticks in your head.

So great an impression did she make on me, that I am, to this day, freaked out when my kids get too close to the tv while holding something.

And by too close I mean 10 feet away.

But it has not stopped me from setting out bowls, cereal & putting milk in easy to pour containers on the weekend so we can sleep in.

I have my priorities.

And soda comes in plastic bottles now.

Words on Wednesday

Havoc has been sick. Wednesday last week he complained of a headache & vague muscle pain so we gave him some Tylenol.

Problem solved!

Temporarily anyway.

Thursday the school calls around 10:30a to report Havoc has a fever of 101.9 & a cough & needs to come home. DH was in the vicinity so he picked him up, which was good because I received neither of the two calls the school made to my phones nor the follow up call DH made informing me he was picking Havoc up.

Have I mentioned technology, especially telecommunications, hates me?

School policy is no one can come to school within 24 hours of having a fever & since they discovered the fever, they know he’s not supposed to be back Friday.

I would have totally sent him as he had no fever the rest of the day, nor that night, nor in the morning Friday.

Friday night he did spike an impressive 102.6 fever that the Tylenol totally took out.

Saturday he was fine. He was his high energy self. We went to the Air & Space Museum with no reports of headaches, no fever, no general ‘not feeling well grouchiness’. It appeared it had passed.

But Sat night he had another fever of 101.3. Tylenol took it out.

Sunday we were deliberately low energy. Lots of laying around reading & watching TV. No fever occurred at any point.

Monday we sent him off to school his usual cheerful self, with a slight complaint about his leg hurting but he’d slept on it funny so we discounted it.

Then at 10:30a comes the call again. 101.9 fever. 24 more hours at home.

This time he really did appear sick. Low energy, aches & pains, no appetite. None of which was present last week or over the weekend.

That photo was taken about 1pm Monday. He slept about 2 hours after coming home and fell asleep again around 5pm (much to Mayhem’s disappointment) and stayed asleep until bedtime.

Tuesday he was home with me. Much brighter & alert than Monday, still low appetite & lower energy  & a runny nose. He spent most of the day laying on the sofa watching Mythbusters & some series about the history of weapons on the History Channel. No fever.

He has a pre-scheduled doctor’s appointment on Friday for his annual well child check. I called the office to see what they suggested about having him come in and what with the randomness of the fever they said to hold off unless it becomes constant.

I’ve sent him off to school this morning as he seems normal.

Only time will tell if he stays there. 

Words on Wednesday

Look what finally arrived yesterday!

And by finally I mean it was pre-ordered on July 20, 2010 with a late Nov release date.

Which made it perfect for Mayhem’s Xmas present.

Then I was sent notice that the release date would be late Dec.

Ok, could still make it for Xmas and if not, well, it can be a birthday present.

The nice thing about Mayhem’s January birthday is that delayed Xmas presents can easily become birthday presents.

Then I was sent a notice of the release being moved to late Jan.

Fine! So it might be a day or so late as a birthday present, still it’s fine.

Then I was sent notice of a late March release date.

Really LucasArts? Late March? Really?  For something expected out 5 months earlier?

How poorly planned was this game release anyway?

But at long last the Big Brown Truck of Joy arrived with the game & within minutes the little gamers we absorbed in it.

They are actually playing together, which is unusual.

Mayhem is the gamer & he’s got a plan when it comes to new games. The plan does not involve getting his brother to go along with him. It involves no brother at all.

Once Mayhem has gone through the game once*, then Havoc is allowed to play & they go after all the goodies, easter eggs & high score things that Mayhem overlooked or ignored in his rapid quest to complete the game the first time through.

But they are playing this together. So far, it’s going well**. They have been playing for 4 hours***, with a small break for a quick meal & homework & there has only been one outright fight about Havoc not cooperating, which mostly involved Mayhem shouting “Over there Havoc, go over there” and Havoc shouting “No we need to go over here” and ended with a “FINE I’M NOT PLAYING”**** from Havoc that lasted until that scene was over, when he rejoined.

Honestly, the Wii games have done more to increase cooperation between the boys than damn near everything else we have done.

We have Wii Lego Pirates of the Caribbean on pre-order now*****. We ordered it in January with a May release date.

I’m dubious.

Let’s see if Disney Interactive has their stuff together any better than Lucas Arts does.

*Mayhem going through a game the first time can be painful to the listening audience as he gets incredibly frustrated and screams, cries and generally pitches a major fit whenever he gets stuck. But he will not give up on it. He plays through the tears & shrieks.

**You might disagree with me if you were in the house right now. But I have the bar set really low for ‘things going well’. How low? So low you would need a shovel to dig up the bar to see how low it is. “Nobody is bleeding, profusely” is the main requirement.

***Yes I just admitted to the whole internets that my kids played a video game for 4 hours.  They will probably do so for the next few nights until they have cleared the levels, after which the ‘exploratory phase’ of gaming will begin & game playing will fall back to less than an hour a day. We only get new games 3-4 times a year so I really don’t give a rap how much time they spend on them the first week as long as the homework gets done. No point quoting statistics or authority recommendations to me. I know them. I just don’t care in this instance.

**** “FINE I’M NOT PLAYING” is the second most heard shout from the living room during game time. “IT’S CHEATING!!! STUPID FING IS CHEATING!!!” is the most heard game time shout.

***** Every gamer has their ‘thing’. The games they cannot wait to get their grubby little hands on. The games they buy the instant they hit the shelves. Ours are the Lego ones. Lego Harry Potter being the only exception. They boys were not into it but they haven’t read the books yet. I expect their opinion will change once they are more familiar with Harry

I’m experimenting with footnotes instead of in paragraph parenthesis (my usual method) to see if it helps the flow of the narrative any better. Once again, I am dubious. What do you think?

Words on Wednesday

From the bin of long forgotten projects.

Project started April  3, 2002

Photo taken April 30, 2006.

Progress made in nearly 5 years since then?

0%

Words for Wednesday

This is one of the 6 photos I have so far managed to take for my project. But I have a system in place now & a spreadsheet. I feel much better now that I have a spreadsheet.

This is Thor, who is HUGE in real life. Seriously huge. He fully takes up and actually overhangs the seat of a kitchen chair when he lays on it. Here, he is on my bed, reading my Kindle. I had set it aside to listen to Mayhem reading “The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog” in various funny voices and the screen saver kicked in after a couple minutes. It a random screen saver. This time it happened to be birds. Thor, who had been laying next to me, shifted his bulk so he could look at the birds.

If you have cats you have probably seen them watching birds through a window. If so you have probably heard that strange semi-chirping noise cats sometimes make while watching birds through a window. I’ve always assumed it was a “Wish I could chase & eat those birds” sort of running commentary.

Thor started making those noises while watching the screen saver. He stared at it. He touched it lightly with a paw. He sniffed at it. And he chirped at it the whole time.

The screen saver does not move. It’s just a static picture of birds. I think after awhile it changes to another picture but that didn’t happen while Thor was watching.

Of course when I reached for my camera to take his photo he turned to look at me & that broke his concentration. After that he sort of watched the Kindle out of one eye & just chirped occasionally until I picked it up.

Still, days later, he will come over to the Kindle when I leave it on the bed, check it out and turn around in disgust when it isn’t showing birds.

Words on Wednesday

What was the oldest thing in my pantry? Just how old was it?

Make your guesses below & come by Friday to find out!

Wordless HA!

The problem with having Star Wars ornaments on the tree is that they very often are off the tree and part of whatever adventure the Clone Troopers are having.

Wordless Wednesday

please see last week’s disclaimer regarding the honesty of that title

The holiday season has officially begun here the House of Demons.

Elvin, our Christmas elf, arrived for his annual visit early this morning, much to the boys’ delight.

Wordless Wednesday

Ok it’s not wordless. It never is wordless. I always have something to say about any photo I post. But generally not enough to qualify as ‘wordy’ Wednesday and my thesaurus falls short on one word synonyms, beginning with W, for “just a few words or maybe a couple sentences” Wednesday.

I suppose this lead in does make it ‘wordy’ this time but really, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the photo, so IMO it doesn’t count in the word total.

Anyway, here is the photo.

On the 20th of the month I take self portrait for my 365 project. About a week or so ago I noticed that the (proportionally) few grey hairs I had on mostly my neckline area, and therefor hidden unless I wore my hair up, had been joined by new, much more prominent, grey hairs on my brow line & felt this development should be documented for posterity.

Because someday I will look at this photo and think “I looked so YOUNG then and had hardly any grey hair at all” and “Why did I always go so long between eyebrow waxings back then? What WAS I thinking?”

Wordless Wednesday

Socks – malicious creatures that will not stay in the dirty clothes hamper no matter how often you put them there. Also very prolific at reproducing on the floor but easily lost  in the wash

Wordless Wednesday

A dreary rainy morning

Back to school

Word-ish Wednesday

Have I shared Havoc’s latest hair cut with you?  I don’t think I have. It was all his idea. My contribution was to drive him there & pay for it.

And to put it off for as long as possible

Obviously we couldn’t get it done until AFTER the family photos in Wheeling.

And it had to wait until after we had been to the beach because we have so very few beach photos & the scrapper in me didn’t want the hair detracting from the beach setting.

He wanted an Airbender type hair cut, or a mohawk if the arrow was too difficult.

Obviously, given that it isn’t a straight arrow it was sort of a challenge.

He’s never watched the Avatar Airbender cartoon series. Nor has he expressed any interest in seeing the movie.

He just thought the hair was cool.

And I thought “Its just hair. Its the most expendable & constantly renewing part of the body.”

And I thought “He’s 7. It’ll be cute. Colored mohawks are sort of a right of passage for the 6-8 year old male set locally”

And I hoped “This means we get the goth/emo posure crap of the way now right? We don’t have to deal with the ‘statement’ hair when he is 15 now. Been there, done that. Right? “

Oh you so wish it were so Mom.

Wordy Wednesday

I’ve been in need of new workout shoes for longer than DH has been in need of a new phone. But like him I failed to take action because the shoes still worked mostly and would be expensive to replace. But eventually the foot cramps got to me and I made the hour long trek to the running shop to discuss new shoes and take their various foot assessment tests.

I have weird feet.

I have unnaturally narrow heels, my pinkie toes lay sideways to my foot, arch problems and I run on the outside of my feet and a couple other things that I am forgetting at the moment.

I buy pricy athletic shoes to offset these things when I work out & run.

And you should see what I spend on boots that fit. (or have spent, being that I could only ever afford one paid of custom made boots & they cost two weeks pay in 1996)

My doc & the shoe specialists at the running store both thought barefoot running would be helpful. And I thought it certainly would be cheap!

But my gym has policies against that sort of thing.

So these Vibram Five Fingers were suggested to me. These are the KSOs. You wear them without socks. They look and feel like water shoes.  Like I should be at the river or lake, not at the gym. 

And they are not at all attractive.

Not in the least bit attractive.

Ugly in fact

But oh my!

They are wonderful for running. My feet did not get all sweaty like I feared. Even though they were a little large they didn’t rub or anything (they come in European sizes, 38 is snug on me, 39 is loose & you can’t get 38.5s) Every toe having it’s own little pocket feels weird and takes getting used to, and my pinkie toes did not enjoy the experience the first couple times. My calves hurt in places they hadn’t before as well, but now it’s fine. I like running in them and my feet don’t cramp up when I do aerobics type classes. The foot cramping thing is why I rarely took aerobic type classes.

And they are water shoes too. I can wear them to the gym and to river.

So I am liking them.

But they are so unattractive & I’m the only one at the gym with them & feel conspicuous in them. They make my feet look huge. Normally I just got straight from the gym to whatever shopping I have to do but now I change shoes because I feel so self-conscious in these. Like if I were in Wal Mart all these people would be looking at me and wondering “what the hell does she have on her feet?” and I don’t need that attention from the people of Wal Mart.

disclaimer – I bought these shoes, ugly though they are, with DHs hard earned dollars because they seemed right for my feet. The store was having a sale at the time but everyone got the discount regardless of whether they were a blogger or not. In fact, they showed no interest at all when I mentioned I was a blogger because you don’t need special shoes to blog & the running store employees only care about things you need special shoes to do

Wordy Wednesday

The other side of my college life.

  

This photo was taken in my freshman dorm room, probably in late 85. The overexposed patch of whiteness I am holding is my very first college paper.

Proof that I did study!

At least during the first semester of my freshman year.

That paper was several pages long. It was typed on this typewriter/early model word processor thing my dad bought me when I asked for an electric typewriter.

(Back in the day they had these things called typewriters. The keyboard made the letters appear on PAPER instead of a screen. It had 0MBs of RAM, but an endless battery life. Then they made them electric, which typed a little faster & you didn’t have to reset the paper roll yourself at the end of a line. It did it for you. Word processors, that could save your typing & even let you edit it ON SCREEN, were just coming out. I would own one in 1991)

What I had looked like the keyboard half of a laptop. With a very narrow, one line wide, screen that ran half the length of the keyboard up at the top. You typed on it and the sentences marched by on the screen. But you could only see what was on the screen. You could add tabs & things but there was no carriage return like on a typewriter, just this tiny one line high screen. So you couldn’t edit easily and you had to pretty much write the whole paper out longhand first because you couldn’t see more than about 60 characters of what you had just written at a time and could not write free form & then go back and fix it later.

But everyone thought it was the greatest gadget ever.

I eventually typed it all up & printed it out,edited it, went back through it 60 characters at a time, corrected it, printed it, repeat. Took me about 4 tries to get right. (this would be a foreshadowing).

It was a paper on Margaret of Anjou, queen of England’s Henry VI and a major player in the Wars of the Roses. I would, over the course of 7 years and 2 degrees, rewrite and reform this paper 4 times. Even now, 20+ years later there is nothing I don’t know about Margaret of Anjou (excluding any source material that has come to light since 1992)

Had I realized that this paper would be the foundation for 4 more papers, each one more thoroughly researched & more heavily footnoted, I would have chosen a subject with more source material. I would have chosen Mary Tudor or Mary Queen of Scots. Possibly even Jane Gray.

Why didn’t I switch material for later papers?

The second time I wrote this paper was sophomore year and I was taking 2 English lit classes plus a journalism class. I did endless writing that semester & it seemed an easy out to just update the old one, make the changes the professor said detracted and change the slant to match the class theme. I still had all the footnote cards. It was a one night job.

The third time was my senior year taking a grad level course. We had a list of topics to choose from for an in depth project we had to present at various points during the semester. I was taking Intense French level 3 & 4. (4 hour class, 5 days a week as opposed to a 50 minute class 3 days a week). I was making my second attempt at passing algebra. There was another history class too. Margaret of Anjou was one of the topics. It felt like fate.

The fourth time I was in grad school. And pretty much it never occurred to me there was any other topic I could write about but Margaret of Anjou, especially for a women’s history class paper. That paper was the worst. I turned in it 3 times before getting final approval. The teacher kept wanting me to expand on various topics & there just wasn’t any info to expand with.

This was before the internet. We had cards in a card catalog that we had to thumb through to find the location of books that might give us information, while being in the actual library. Or we had to request the library get it from some other library for you.

Honestly? I barely remember how I used to get information.

Now I can just google her and cut and paste.

I envy people writing papers these days. Its all there! At your fingertips. The information! The sources! You can see everything you type on the screen! You can move large blocks of text around & add graphics! You have spell check!! You don’t have to make carbon copies or paint White Out over your errors and then retype the correction. There was only one size & style font – Times New Roman.

One problem I had with every paper that wasn’t a biography was ending it. Biographies have a natural end – so & so died in insert year at insert place. They are buried at insert place and here is a fact about that. The end.

In case you haven’t noticed I suck at ending wordy posts.

The end.

Wordy Wednesday

I found this photo from April 1986 while doing some scanning last week & my sons both asked me what I was doing in the photo & I thought I’d share the story with the world.

In my little boys’ minds I am watering down my juice, just like I always water down theirs. And I must be on a picnic since I am sitting on the ground.

Not quite.

This photo was taken at about 8am on a Friday morning in front of the Sigma Chi fraternity house at West Virginia University. (please keep in mind for the rest of the story that WVU was Playboy’s #1 Party School in the nation for 1985-87. The drinking age at that time was 19.). My sorority, Alpha Omicron Pi had had a ‘Wake Up’ for the Sigma Chis that morning.

We arrived at the frat house about 6:30am bearing donuts and McD’s breakfast muffins, fruit, orange juice, tomato juice and vodka to make screwdrivers and bloody Mary’s. Once everything was set up, we ran screaming through the house, banging on doors and waking everyone in the house. (a couple dozen guys lived in the house). Then we all had breakfast together, with most of us choosing the boozy drinks to get a head start on the day’s Giffin’ (pronounced jif-ing, as in TGIFing, or getting drunk on Fridays) which was a college tradition, though it didn’t usually start until noon on Fridays.

First class of the day is 8 or 8:30 so the party began breaking up just before 8. I am the only person in the photo, but actually I am part of a group of people who were topping up their beverages prior to departing for class. Several of us were headed to Dr Arnett’s ancient history class at 8:30.

Dr Arnett was an awesome teacher. He told the best stories about people, places and events back in the time of the Egyptians & Romans & because he told them like stores they stuck with you, even 25 years later. I had him for several classes & was one of his TAs in grad school. He was also a very tolerant teacher & short of disrupting the whole class let you get away with anything (though DH has a story about a history class he took with Dr A, where during a mid term exam a well known member of the WVU football team stood up and started asking people “What’s the answer to number 2?” and Dr A remained hidden behind his newspaper the entire time). He was also very well travelled and had been to many sites featured in his class lectures. We called him West Virginia Arnett.

This particular Friday we all felt the booze was acceptable because he was presenting a slide show to the class, one fondly known as Toilets of the Ancient World. (I got to see it 4 times in my 7 years at WVU). He hits the salient points of his recent lectures with the photos (actual pots, weapons, house layouts, etc) but there are always photos of the plumbing or other waste disposal systems in use at the time period, along with diagrams of how the water flowed, how pit locations were chosen and where the sponges on sticks were kept. It is one of his most highly entertaining lectures and even better if you are half buzzed at the time.

I had another class that morning, but I can’t recall now what it was, probably English or journalism (my major at the time), possibly geography & probably I skipped it to take a nap so I would be rested for the afternoon’s activities, a pig roast at another frat house (Delta Tau Delta, they aren’t at WVU any longer) and then a party that night at another frat house (Sigma Phi Epsilon, they’re gone too) and then some late night bar hopping in Sunnyside, collapsing at home around 3am & then sleeping until noon Saturday, at which point there would be a trip to the library, some homework done & then plans made for that night’s outings.

A day in the life of a sorority girl in 1986. Not a typical one I admit, but not a unique one either. There was a lot of partying for all of my undergrad years, but the drinking age went up to 21 and new rules were created & by grad school things were starting to be different.

From what I have read in recent years Greek life at WVU has apparently changed a good deal since I was student in the late 1980s.

It’s probably for the best.

Somewhere there are photos of me studying with friends & of me giving presentations to my various journalism classes, me doing my various work study jobs & there are even photos of me dragging my tired, cranky self up High Street to my 7:30am, 5 hour long, French intensive class that met 5 days a week for 6 weeks IN THE SUMMER!

But those stories are not nearly as much fun to tell.

Disclaimer... the vodka featured in this story is an aberration in the alcohol regularly available to college students at that time. Mostly we had beer. I don't like beer, never have. So while I did party my way through 7 years and 2 degrees at WVU, I was more sober than that phrase implies. However, all bets were off on Dollar Shots night at the Dungeon.

Wordless Wednesday

 

One of my favorite baby photos of Havoc. He was 6 weeks old. My mother was very insistent that he needed sunglasses in the Florida sun