Tag Archives: Funny

Just For Laughs

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Little Cowgirl got a pink iPod Shuffle from Santa for Christmas this year.

We’ve had as much pleasure watching her enjoy as she has received from listening to it. We love to hear her sing along with the songs.

For this first month, she has been expressing surprise and excitement at the songs Santa knew she liked and loaded onto her iPod. Most recently, she yelled from the back of the suburban (in the louder-than-usual-because-I’m-wearing-headphones voice) “MOM! MY IPOD HAS ‘OH I SING OF LETTUCE” ON IT!”

…….?????????……..

I asked if she’d sing a little bit of it for me.

This is the song I never realized was about salad.

Have a great week!

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Five Things I learned about taking your children snow skiing for the first time…

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(1) Your first glimpse of the mountains will be more exciting than the last time you saw them (because this time you are going to ski down one!

(2) The closer you get, the more amazing the mountains will be. (Side note: people who get carsick should sit where they can see out the front window the best – in the front if you are an adult or in the middle of the back if you are in a carseat.)

(3) You will all look like cute little bundles of winter clothes – ask a nice stranger to take your picture.

(4) Remind your husband to take some pictures; he is actually much better at photography than you are.

(4b) There is nothing cuter than your honey and your littlest riding up the lift together.

(5) Put your children in ski school. They will be able to do this after a day (and a half):

Things I learned on our most recent Road Trip with Kids

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(1) Do not leave for a trip the morning after a Red-Neck New-Years 40th-Birthday Party when you were not the DD.

Yes, that is me singing karaoke wearing a bra that shows under my tank, feather earrings, a hunter’s hat and a (fake) tattoo. Also not pictured are the cammo army pants, belt with my name on the back, and shotgun. All redneck party items came from my own closet, thank you.

(2) Even if you have been identifying with the Libertarian Party and their principles, sometimes the 1980s reruns of “The Dukes of Hazard” are more intense than you bargained for, but they can sure help pass a 500-mile drive.

Oh NO! Will they get away from Boss Hog’s evil plan?!

(3) If there is an American Girl Doll store where you are going, and your daughter has an American Girl Doll, you should take her there despite your feelings about the expensive items. It will be fun and there will be a doll she will want her picture with.

A skiing American Girl Doll! Little Cowgirl used some Christmas money to buy her own doll a pair of pink eye glasses. No, I don’t know why aside from the fact that they may have been the only thing she could afford in the store besides a pair of doll panties.

(4) Do not brag about your dog to the people who have offered to watch her. Do not talk about her subservient nature and obedience training. She will run away and make you look like a complete ass hat.

(5) When your dog disappears in a large, strange, metropolitan area do everything you can to find her. Support your friends who she ran away from who are doing everything they can to find her. Sign up with lost pet sites, notify all the authorities and shelters, notify your veterinarian and microchip provider. When the flyers your friend napalmed the area with find your dog, take them champaign.

It will be worth all the effort in the end.

I am working on a post as a resource for owners who have lost a pet. I was fortunate to have so much help, and I’d like to pay it forward.

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Why am I holding a liver?

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My husband and I still laugh about a song we heard on a (comedy) radio morning show years ago. It had to do with why a person might suspect he has ADHD. The ‘main character’ in the skit is a genius surgeon, and throughout a surgery, once he says hand me the scalpel, he talks non-stop about seemingly unconnected things. Finally he ends with “why am I holding a liver?”

This is me.

I had been sitting at the computer for half an hour trolling through the year’s pictures. I couldn’t remember why I was looking through the pictures in the first place. Then I noticed a strange bonking sound. I went to find out what it was and realized that I’d put eggs on the stove to boil an promptly forgot about them once I sat in front of the laptop screen. As I was draining the eggs (they were VERY well done) I saw dirty dishes in the sink – which I thought I had already done. I opened the dishwasher to put the dishes in and found it was half full of clean dishes. Then I remembered that I had been emptying the washer of the clean dishes when I decided I would boil eggs at the same time because I was going to be in the kitchen anyway, so I had closed the door of the washer to get the pot I needed and forgotten about the clean dishes. This was beginning to make some sense now. I was really getting somewhere. I finished the dishes and the eggs were ready to come out of their cold water bath. I went to put them in the refrigerator and saw the first Christmas Card of the season hanging on the door. AHA! When I’d gone to retrieve the uncooked eggs the first time, I had seen that card and realized I had better get on the ball ordering my own if I wanted them out in a timely fashion.

Which reminded me – THAT’S why I had been looking at the pictures in the first place.

At which point I came full circle and headed for the computer again.

Why am I holding a liver?

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Conversation with a seven-year-old

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My daughter was over at a friend’s house.

She mentioned casually to the mother “Do you know my friend Jackson?”

Friend’s mother “Yes.”

Seven-year-old, “Well, when I grow up, I’m going to marry him.”

Friend’s mother (surprised), “Oh! I see…”

Seven-year-old, “I haven’t seen him in a while, so I can’t really remember what he looks like.”

Back by request: It all comes out in the wash – 9th edition

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1) A penny, a foreign coin of some sort.

2) A plastic key that came with some junk mail, currently the key to the clubhouse, I’m told.

3) Gifts from Nature.

4) Sighting scope from a cap gun.

5) Caps from said gun.

6) Bottle cap.

7) Twisty tie.

8) Corn kernel.

9) Collection of lego items, including Harry Potter cloak.

10) Various metal or broken pieces of something taken apart. I’m not asking what.

11) Hair tie, band aide remnant.

Anything interesting in your washing machine recently?

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Five Reasons I’m Not A Great Homeschooler

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There is no such thing as a perfect fit. How often do we find ourselves saying, “Well, in a perfect world…” but the ellipsis itself answers the question. Here are some reasons I’m not the world’s best homeschooling mother.

1) I have too much to do.

We run a large (comparing acres to number of employees) family farm. I do a large chunk of the office work, along with being ‘on call’ to run parts, people or vehicles at any time. I’m not sure it adds up to 40 a week, but it’s not too far from that. I volunteer in our Parish. I run (almost) every day. I blog (albeit inconsistently). I am obsessed with nutrition and want to make everything from scratch and have sliced, fresh, *living* food every day. I’m sure I don’t’ have to explain to you that there just aren’t THAT many hours in a single day. So I’m constantly juggling what needs to be done RIGHT NOW and what can wait a few days. Which brings us quickly to number two:

2) What can “wait a few days” is typically housework.

I have an entire category named “our house and the drudgery that is cleaning it.” Seriously, need I say much more? I try to stay on a schedule but honestly, it is never going to be as important to me as the items I just listed in my first reason. Which is such poor way of managing life because the secret here is that I absolutely HATE when the house gets away from me. It makes me crazy. And depressed. And I’m mortified when someone drops by, which is always (literally, without fail) one of the two weeks of the year I’ve literally let everything go.

3) Lack of patience.

Many of you who read this are going to laugh. How could a person who homeschools be impatient? Many of my friends will protest, “You are SO patient! I’ve seen you! You handle your children so well!” And to you my dear friend I say, could you please-please-pretty-pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top come and hang out at my house all the time? Because I am ever so much more patient with an audience.

4) I am overconfident.

I tend to be like this in every aspect of my life until reality (or having a baby) knocks me back with a hard punch of humility. I have an “everything is going to work out just perfectly” attitude about most everything, most of the time. It’s unrealistic and unfair. It sets me up for disappointment, and worse for disappointing.

5) Can anyone say scatterbrain?

My mother is still horrified because I admitted to her that (already) once this year I forgot to take my sixth grader to band. I mean it – completely forgot. Didn’t even realize it until the next day. I’ve done the same thing with tutoring. And playdates. And a dentist appointment. Once, at the end of a school year, I found an entire piece of curriculum I’d purchased and totally forgotten to use at any point. It wasn’t written on my schedule, so I never thought of it again (even though it was sitting right there on the school shelf alongside everything we were applying each day). Honestly, that’s quite ridiculous.

So there you have it. The top five items that create a poor fit between myself and our lifestyle. Yet I’m doing it, and it is going really well. Proof, once again, that if I can homeschool, anyone can.

Predictably, you can look for a post about why I’m great at homeschooling coming soon.

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Summer-Feral

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This is a replay of a popular post from last summer – I was reminded of it last night when my children came in the house at 10:00 (!). It had been dark for nearly an hour and they were the dirtiest they have ever been in their lives.
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It is usually sometime in July that you can be sure your school-aged children have completely exorcised the civilization and schedule of the other three seasons.  They are like calves who have been hand-fed, who are gentle and responsive, until they’ve gone out to pasture and experienced the far-reaching openness, the lush and expansive grasses, the coyotes and flies.  By autumn they have grown into wild, confident, wary beasts.  Here are some signs my children have been showing of becoming wild beasts:

 

When they wake in the morning, they immediately do one of the following things:

Turn on the television without even thinking to ask

Head out the door – still in their pajamas

Put on their bathing suit

 

Some physical signs that my children are savage:

Tan lines (I swear I sunscreen them…when I can catch them)

Hair that has been in the pool, dried on its own, washed before bed, slept on, and still hasn’t been combed as we head back for more swimming.

Energy expended depends on the placement of the sun in the sky and the resultant temperature.

 

 

Other random signs that my three children are good candidates for cro-magnon studies:

Unlikely to respond to calls sent outside in thier general direction unless they are hungry and the inside of the house smells like food.

Foraging behavior – for example, one day last week Farmer Boy never ate an actual meal, but grazed on an entire loaf of cinnamon-raisin bread.

Territorial conflicts are common and generally settled with war-like behavior.

 

I suggest there is a simple way to test whether or not your brood has gone summer-feral.  What were they wearing when they got up yesterday morning?  Ok, now…were they wearing the same thing when they went to bed?  Also ask yourself…how long has it been since they bathed?  I mean full-on, whole-body bathing that includes dressing, combing and primping afterwards?

 

What other signs of summer wildness have appeared around your home?

Down on the Farm

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Here is the catch-up post I promised about what has been happening on our farm since wheat harvest ended.

My Farmer spent several days in this souped-up rig, planting short-season soybeans (that means it takes less days for them to reach maturity) into some of the wheat stubble.

Check out this bad boy.

He ran very long hours – hoping to get all the beans in the ground before a chance of rain. Once the rain came (thankfully), we went on a family outing My Farmer refers to as “Land Looking.”

On a land looking venture, one drives about, examining one’s own crops, critiquing neighbor’s crops, checking rain gauges, carry (how firm the ground is), and weeds.

It also provides opportunities for snapping cute photos.

We had an unpleasant surprise on one of our sojourns:

Someone left us a present on the road. We wish we could have returned it.

And so began the tire-changing ritual that all rural dwellers come to know well.

Of course, Dad had plenty of help, so I just took pictures.

Cowgirl and her buddy went for a walk.

*insert 'Andy Griffith Show' theme song here*

“Hey buddy, we have a flat tire. Do you want to help change it?”

LOOOOOOOONG pause...

He answers, without even looking up from the book and I swear while he is still reading, “No thanks. I’m sure my brother can handle it.”

The switch was made and we were on our way again.

In other, unrelated news, I’ve been trying to do some cleaning in

THE PIT OF DISPAIR

(the basement storage room).

Look what we found:

Why yes, those ARE two "Atari" computers - one from each of our respective childhoods...

And who knows why, but they were extremely good for brotherly bonding. They asked to read a book together before bedtime. This is how I found them (in my bed) an hour later.

While visions of Asteroids danced in their heads...

Our farming tasks have become focused on cutting and baling hay, getting all the machinery ready for corn harvest (hoping to avoid a repeat of the first several days of wheat harvest) and keeping the weeds at bay.

So tell me, where is the weirdest place you have ever had a flat tire?

Wheat Harvest 2012 – A Pictorial Diary; The First Two Days

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A combine broke down.

Any time you see the sides open like that, it’s not a good sign. That is like seeing a car pulled to the side of the road with the hood up. There is someone INSIDE the back of this beast…also a very bad sign.

The man inside the beast is My Farmer (H.O.T.T. people).

The breakdown required a four-hour round trip drive for parts, almost two full days of mechanic-ing (by the man in the picture) along with the help of four other people and a tractor at critical points. And lots of welding. As soon as he tightened the last bolt, My Farmer’s dad (who we partner with) pulled into the shop with the other combine limping along with a bearing that was out.

This forced My Farmer to stop for a beverage. It was either that or cry. There is no crying in farming.

All this breaking down afforded lots of ‘fun’ downtime at the shop with the kids (fun applies to the kids only in this sentence).

See the combine behind Cowgirl? Just out of major internal surgery. My Farmer was doing a quick bearing-dectomy to the other combine while I took this picture.

In the first 24 hours of cutting our wheat, there were three more troubles including the following: A pickup that wouldn’t start, a pickup that blew a brake-line (or something else I don’t understand that made it not work), A semi trailer that broke down (something to do with it’s brake drum) which required a run into and across town for a replacement part, and what you see below.

Yep, that's my van. I think this is why most farm families don't run minivans, despite their alluring cup holders.

Farmer Boy and I changed the flat ourselves, putting on the little donut spare, and the next morning I drove into town and paid *someone else* to fix my tire (you should gasp here as farmers don’t usually do those sorts of things). It was actually quite fun – I sat around with six old guys and shot the you-know-what for half an hour. We ruminated about the price of combines, the right color for combines (green – duh) the price of wheat and hay. Then we all speculated about my flat tire and argued about how fast (or slow) you should drive on a dirt road in order to avoid said flats.

I think I just need big motor-cross, monster-truck tires on my minivan.