The Job Shadowing Incident

Friday Great Scott (The Husband) took The Younger Daughter to school with him for her job shadowing assignment. When his first class walked in and inquired about the new kid, he told them, "She's the new student from Juvenile Hall. She has to sit next to me because she has a history of stabbing people with scissors."

The believed him completely. The Younger Daughter was thrilled.

Friday Quote: On Coffee and Women

"I like my women like I like my coffee: scalding, dark and bitter."

--Great Scott
(whose Christmas gifts are under reconsideration)

Thanksgiving Eve--Surprise Me List

Infamous for his War on Whining gratitude posts, Randy of Everyday Thoughts Collected asks for Thanksgiving lists of those things for which we are grateful but which are a little unusual. Skewed, in fact. So here it is, dear twin, the Quotidian Light list of Thanksgiving peculiarities.

1. Dirt. (For repotting the orchids.)

2. Socks with individual toes.

3. Benadryl for when the children are too crazy.

4. Alcohol for when the husband is too crazy.

5. Morrowind, for when one simply MUST live life as a lizard in a dress robe.

6. Children who want cooking utensils and badgers for Christmas.

7. Wormer.

8. Small dead animal carcasses on the front porch. (As opposed to in the house.)

9. The word "no." As in, "No, we're not going anywhere for Thanksgiving."

10. Individual cups in bras. (Great Scott seconds this one enthusiastically.)

The Wonders of Technology

My first memorable experience with the wonders of technology occurred when I was two and began with a phrase I'd heard at my father's feet, where I often played while he studied at his desk or worked with a soldering iron and circuit boards: "I wonder what would happen if I did this." My father's mantra firmly in mind I sat behind his chair one evening with an admittedly pilfered X-Acto knife in my chubby little hand and considered a wall socket. "I wonder what would happen..." That night I learned one of the hard facts of life: technology can bite.

Forward twelve years. I have a boyfriend, a boyfriend who is three years older than my fourteen-year old self, a quiet boyfriend, it is true, but one who is kind, has a good sense of humor and how loves Star Trek even more than I do. What's more, he's fascinated by computers, and my father just happens to have built one himself from the ground up. The boyfriend comes over to visit. Whether he's visiting me or visiting the computer is a moot point; he's in the house, and my father isn't looking at his watch and asking loudly if "he's" still here, something Dad will do often in the years to come. I have learned another of technology's wonders: it attracts men.

Twenty-five years after this I'm crawling over ceiling joists, running cables and joking with Dad about networking my PC's and Great Scott's Mac, something that we both know makes my husband's hair stand on end. I'm not sure why he doesn't trust us. Just because we've spent some long nights trying to recover significant memory loss on one of my computers or had to wipe hard drives and start over, just because Great Scott sometimes comes home to find one of the PC's lying on its side with wires exposed and me up to my elbows in its innards, just because he knows my father has a penchant for working on electrical lines during storms without turning off the power first, is hardly reason to not trust us. Right? I'm thinking this may be technology's most wondrously utilitarian as well as entertaining value of all: making the husband nervous.

Comics

One of my favorite cartoons ever.

And a close runner-up.

Thirteen Recent Moments of Serendipity or Sheer Amusement

1. Finding a given-up-for-good earring on the school parking lot this evening as we left the girls' spring concert. It was one of my favorite pair, one I lost Wednesday afternoon.

2. Seeing three deer in the field last night, while walking. One leapt out of some trees rather near me and ran, making startled deer noises, across the field and into the woods. The other two studied me at length before running halfway across the field and then stopping to study me some more. They did this so long that I expect they will present their theses at the end of this semester.

3. Finding purple salvia at the local grocery store's parking lot greenhouse.

4. The Older Daughter's deciding to forgo the school reward field trip in order to do something alone with me that day for a treat.

"Are you telling me you'd rather do something with your family than with your friends?" I asked, astounded.

She looked at me as if I was utterly brainless, "Well, yeah!" I am still reeling in befuddled wonder.

5. Sitting at my table with my father soldering phone wires and fastening them to receptacles and talking or not talking, as the mood struck us.

6. A working internet connection.

7. And phone lines that don't buzz in our ears.

8. Walking down to the creek in the rain while we were under a flash flood warning and watching the water tearing past at four times the width of the normal stream bed.

9. Looking out the window during last Friday evening's slumber party to see the younger daughter and her two best friends in the driveway having an all-out mud fight .

10. Hosing them down afterward. In well water.

11. Overhearing the younger daughter tell her father over dinner, "I like 'Red Green', even if it is a show for middle-aged men!"

12. Participating in the napkin fight that erupted as a result of the above comment.

13. Lying on my stomach across a made bed in the middle of the day, watching a steady rain soak the earth outside the window and listening to it on the leaves and grass. Luxury.

Thirteen Things to do on A(nother) Snow Day

1. Let the children sleep in.
2. Let the husband sleep in.
3. Sleep in.
4. Throw the cat off one's head.
5. Make scones with real butter for breakfast.
6. Do laundry...and more laundry
7. Pull out season 3 of Hercules: The Legendary Journies, the one you bought and stashed away before Christmas in anticipation of potential snow days.
8. Listen to delighted cheers.
9. From the husband.
10. Join in the general mockery and delight of cheesy dialogue and fight scenes.
11. Let the husband field The Older Daughter's question as to why the females in Hercules wear clothes that facilitate pneumonia.
12. Wonder how much more Hercules we can take.
13. Listen to the news and discover school is out again tomorrow. Good thing I've got seasons 5 and 6 still hidden in the bureau drawer.

Friday Quote: Kitty Koans

I have found myself participating in compulsive activities of late, doing meaningless things in a driven manner simply to block out the rising rattle of thoughts have begun circling in my head like manic buzzards--like manic buzzards on meth. This morning, I need to slow down the interior. I also need humor. Following are several koans (thoughts or questions intended for meditation) from Henry Beard's Zen for Cats.

What is the sound made by a single jaw chewing on a mouse?

If there were no inside, would you still want to go outside?

If you encounter the Buddha on a garden path, bite him.

What is so special about the weeds in the big pots in the living room?

Why does the vacuum cleaner fall silent when its tail comes out of the wall?

Day Six

School is canceled again tomorrow for both Great Scott and both girls.

I know why ferrets eat their young.

If You Can't Beat 'Em...

Great Scott turned off the television tonight and walked over to my desk. "[State politician] has a new slogan for her campaign," he told me. "'There's something wrong in Washington.'" He paused. "I guess she wants to be in on it."

The Stinger

Tonight the dinner conversation whirled around a wasp I had just sprayed in the window. It lay kicking convulsively, and the younger daughter kept turning around in her seat to mourn its torment.

"The poor thing," she moaned, "it's in pain!"

"Nonsense," retorted Great Scott. "Your mother does not torture insects!" After a meaningful moment of silence he added, "She's a Republican." Another moment passed. "And she'll never do it again."

Indignity

The girls spent the weekend with their grandmother not long ago. She took them to the Build-A-Bear Workshop and bought them stuffed animals for which they were able to select clothes and accessories. Both girls chose stuffed cats. Imagine their delight this morning when they discovered that the stuffed cat clothes fit The Great Golden Sun Cat.



He should have been grateful. The other option was a pink cheerleading outfit.

Friday Quote: On Winter

"Killing turkeys causes winter."

--Original source unknown

Don't Tell Whoppers

This afternoon I brought home a box of malted milk balls.

Older daughter: Oh, look! Wumpers!

Mommy: (giggles) Whoppers.

Younger daughter: Mommy! Can we have some Whompers?

Mommy: (laughing now) WHOPPERS.

Older daughter: (laughs too) Ok. Sorry, Mom! Can we have some Whuppers?

Sooner or later they're going to call them "Whimpers," which by that time will be an apt description, at least as far as their mother is concerned.

Saturday's Child

This morning at breakfast I recited for the girls an old rhyme about the days of the week:

Monday's child is fair of face;
Tuesday's child is full of grace;
Wednesday's child is full of woe;
Thursday's child has far to go;
Friday's child is loving and giving;
Saturday's child works hard for a living;
and a child that is born on the Sabbath day
is blythe and bonnie in every way.

After I'd explained to them that the poem's writer evidently hadn't understood that the Sabbath isn't Sunday, but Saturday, and emphasized the need for accurate understanding of the facts before any sort of literary undertaking, they clamoured to know upon what days of the week they had been born.

Mommy: Saturday. Both of you.

Older daughter: You stinker!!!

Mommy: I had very little say in the matter, Young lady. You were the one who decided when to be born.

Older daughter: Hey! I didn't know it was Saturday! There wasn't a calendar in there!

When Two People With English Degrees Reproduce

Our younger daughter came home telling me about her music class this last week.

Daughter: And when the teacher took role, I answered, "Here, O Mighty Dread Sovereign Whom I Shall Ever So Serve!"

Me: (raising eyebrow) And what did she say?

Daughter: She said, "Where did you learn all those big words?"

Me: And you said...

Daughter: My daddy taught me!