Tuesday, October 28, 2008
New Biblical definition for meat? Vegetables?
Monday, October 20, 2008
Roofies
Men working on the house is very tranqualizing. I'm happily serene that it's not me 50 feet up on a 45 degree slope, and grateful as they climb the ladder with heavy loads that my quads aren't directly involved.
But sometimes I wonder if it's more calming to do the work, rather than think about it. Irony is having the roof shingled with 50 year rated asphalts, when you know Oklahoma weather will toast them in 10. If they aren't busted up by hail or torn off by a tornado, then I'm sure the heat or varmits will do them in. From what I hear, I should feel lucky that my thirty-year shakes lasted ten.
I guess I should be figuring this into the insurance bill. Let's see twenty grand divided by...Yuck! Math--more thinking!
I'm not pitying the insurance company, they upped the car insurance $800 because my teen had a (not her fault) wreck that totaled the car. Silly me, thought I was paying insurance for such an event! They do have a responsiblity to their stockholders...after all.
As a mere customer, we should just plan for those eventualities--good planning means good insurance, I'm reminded.
And it's okay that the roofers smashed a solartube, because they assure me that it's covered by insurance.
Wonder how much that's gonna cost?
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Happy Birthdays
This is the portrait of one happy birthday boy. I have gone out and flung money right and left in an attempt to provide a happy day to him and all he wanted was a burger on the grill.
In lieu of the college daughters skilled wrapping, there was this. Hey, it worked.
Just what he wanted! The means by which he can finish another of my projects long begun. I sense some chagrin in the happy expression. Thanks so much for nothing, honey.Monday, October 13, 2008
Privacy Blogged
It’s a whole new world out there. Parents no longer have to spend time frequenting small-town coffee shops or calling their neighbors to keep tabs on their children, they just climb up their child’s wall. It takes a little more brain power, but difficult has always been inherent to parenting and we can best this challenge. (The hacking services of the tattle-tale tween sibling can be bought cheap.)
Teens have always felt impervious to everything and that hasn’t changed. They are the untouchables, invincible and indestructible like Superman, and like that superhero, they are most vulnerable to the patently obvious. I hear stories of teen after teen who have been shutdown, cut off, timed out—deleted for infractions that they, themselves memorialized for posterity on their personal wall space. (FYI, Underage biting of beer cans online will get your wall deleted and you grounded until the warmth of spring comes.)
Parents have the ace in the hole, the kryptonite, a one-up on the teen game. This is something teens can never wrap their minds around, something they can never hope to understand, because it cuts right to the heart and cannot be circumvented. We were once them and that means they can't win.
However, they are not left totally bereft, without hope or abandoned, we offer them the same tools our parents offered us—the best was a gift of advice, “Choose your friends wisely.” (Smart friends don’t post photos of friend’s transgressions or discuss last night’s illegal party antics online to invite peer review.)
Such is the power of the net to teach lessons. This generation has redefined the basic right of privacy as they revel in public forum of their lives. They offer it up to be previewed by the masses. Now, every public place is monitored and every act in schools, malls, and offices is scrutinized and it’s a great preparer for the future.
Worry not about what your parents find out on your wall, but what your employer knows about your eclectic collections and choice in bath fixtures.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
As I Lay Dying
Have you ever read the book As I lay Dying by William Faulkner? Yeah, Faulkner, the great literary giant. Get it sometime from the library to peruse, if to do nothing more than open your eyes about the books that college bound high schoolers are required to read.
It's written in the vernacular of 1930's back woodsese. I think it was such a literary success because persons who wrote literature back then could not imagine a literarri, literariarian, literachi (a writer) who was educated could create such an indiscipherable dialogue in four differing voices of hick.
I wrote like that long before anyone thought it was cool and I did it without even trying! This book is even more backwoods hick than I am, and it's written without commas, periods or even subject and predicates in sentences. I thought the lingo was character driven, (total and complete idiot) but in his next book I reviewed, (The Bear) Faulkner wrote the same--and it's a bear.
The back cover gives the clue that it's about the trek of a family who wants their beloved mother to be buried in another county, but they have to wait... first for her to die and then to ride across country with the ever-ripening corpse. It's all about their comedic antics.
Maybe? But, I couldn't understand even one page. It's sad and I'm heartbroken that it's so apparent that I am so obviously not a college bound individual.
----------------------the real meat of the story-------------------------------
I'm not feeling well, so that book came to mind.. (but, not that sick) and it's time to go to Utah for our annual marathon. I traditionally put in a marathon right before we go, cleaning, cooking, packing, and arranging, etc... I try to make it easier by keeping a record (jottings) of what I did last year so I can just make revisions, reprint, then reprimand and reprove the children for what happened last year in my absence.
I looked back to my 2004 blog and I was sick that night before too and here is the will I wrote in Faulkner note format:
"the real reazn I'm ritin, 'ncase thes is ma laest pistle... keep'n treazur dalways... it'd be albout potties but it seems that rottin' corpses are beder subjecs...
aaneeyway,
If us two, (Dave and I) perish, (Oun't think I'm at sick, but Aidan is and last minute I'm a trian to arrange alternate rangemnts for im.) (Dia's insulted ta think she'd stay to tend... (“In't it illegal fer yer kid to do that,” she asks?) I swear, I didn't birth that one.
aaneeyway,
If we perish, not by illness, but by plane crash, (“ats not a bad way to go overall”...said Grandma Hansen),
aaneeyway,
...thays a will in ma drawrer here in OK. It's a holographic... at maens riten n signed by hand (complete b.s., but these are legal in OK., because so many of us are kicking off and being hauled cross country to be buried by total inane idiots who can't speak or write legibly...)
aaneeyway, just sos ya know.
_____________________
And you thought I wasn't a great writer. After this epistle, judging purely by the inane writing style, doesn't it make you think Faulkner?
It's midnight and seminary starts at 5 at my house, so I'll be going now.
By the way, does anyone know where my black bag is with the brown stripe that I take everywhere on every vacation with me? It's lost. I can't begin to pack without it.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Another Relaxing Vacation
Me, Terina, I said that first.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Aidan Awarded
Coddiwomple at Walmart
So here I am; wandering about in a purposeful manner toward a vague destination--in Walmart’s parking lot. If practice makes perfect...
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The jetsetters are back! The two teens enjoyed every moment. Ask us, go on, ask us, the parents, when we have ever been to Europe? Never? Th...
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It's the other hand this time, and the bullet we dodged last year with the hand break (yes, it has been a whole year... you are a whole ...
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So here I am; wandering about in a purposeful manner toward a vague destination--in Walmart’s parking lot. If practice makes perfect...