Censorship and the ARSE....

School started yesterday and everyone is trying to get back into early bedtimes and early rising. So...at 9pm I was laying in bed and had just started a new book. Generally a good read will help me drift right to sleep...last night, not so much.

I had stumbled over this particular book at the library and was looking forward to giving it a shot. The kids were in bed, I was snuggled under the blankets, all was quiet...I started to read.

A dozen pages in, I am interested and engaged, I flip to the next page and see two black marks. Upon closer inspection I discover that someone has taken a black ink pen and scribbled through two curse words on the facing page. Where it not for my encyclopedic knowledge of curse words I would not have been able to decipher the original text.

I was intrigued, amused, and no longer sleepy...I had discovered an ARSE (analretentiveshiteraser)....

I flipped through the next couple of pages and noticed several more blackouts...and in a few cases the ARSE had added her own text, words I guess she found less offensive. In one case she substituted "jerk" for "shite heel"...

I went to the end of the book and begin to work backwards. Let me just say that the ARSE is nothing if not dedicated...she continued her scribble campaign through all 350 pages. She may have become even more zealous toward the end, blacking out the word "fart" and even on occasion marking through the portions of some compound words she found offensive....

I spent at least half an hour thumbing through the book. I just could not wrap my mind around what it would take to make a person check out a library book and then deface it that way. If the ARSE was so offended by "colorful" language why in the world would she check out a book about a gritty detective and his soap opera wife who discover Elvis and Marilyn Monroe's secret love letters. Everyone knows that gritty detectives have potty mouths...

It took at least an hour before I was able to get back to reading the story. Even then I was unable to really get in to it; the censorship was just too distracting. In the few pages that I did manage to read before giving up I found two words that the ARSE missed...

So I left her a little present....

Day 5 and I am still alive...

My hands need to be kept busy...so I have tried....

One of our BloggyFriends is having a little boy, (Margaret) and she lives in Texas so I couldn't resist this pattern when I saw it.....cowboy baby booties....

..

A giant teddy bear that needs me to sew his eyes on so that Rob will stop smacking people with him and calling it "blind justice."

A crocheted necklace for Miss-D...my first attempt at such a thing...

Tissue Paper flowers...

I have also finished 3 books and am knee deep in a Rosetta Stone Spanish lesson....

5 days and still smoke free...

Ahem...

I wasn't going to blog about this because it is embarrassing...and coming from the woman that brought you "Coming In A Little Hot" that should say something.

I quit smoking...my last cigarette was at 8pm Sunday night. I have been taking Chantix for a while and changing my habits to make this time as easy as humanly possible. Yesterday was not too bad...I just tried not to think about it...oh, and I spent most of the day shopping and getting a manicure.

The headache that I have had off and on for the last two days could be because I haven't had any coffee (didn't want to tempt fate, coffee and a cig always went so well together) or just that school hasn't started yet and the boys are driving me nuts.

I was really good, I did not yell at them once...when they got annoying I just said, "boys, if you don't behave Mom is going to go buy some cigarettes."

Yeah, that probably put me right on the Hell Train Express....but it worked and I didn't smoke, scream, or throw a screaming nutty.

I also gave up this little hobby to make quitting easier.

So, lets recap shall we? No coffee, no booze and no cigarettes....

I will be posting as my sanity allows....

Fugly Feet?

Do you have callouses larger than some of your toes? Dry heels with cracks big enough to store your spare change in?

Say goodbye to your foot woes....forever...or at least for the summer.

I have developed a sure fire way to have beautiful smooth feet....WHILE YOU TAN!!!!

First you will need to locate an "Old School" public pool.

The kind with the rough cement bottom that made your feet bleed as a kid. If you arrive at a public pool and do not see bandaid wrappers in the trash can you need to find a new pool.

Pack your children and all of their pool accoutrement, don't forget the water proof bandaids, and prepare to spend at least 90 minutes at the pool.

This is no-guilt beauty. The kids are perfectly entertained and will not need you to do a thing but "watch this" for the next 90 minutes (as long as they know where the band aids are and how to apply them).

Relax, tan...and when it is time to go...

90 minutes in the pool will have softened up even the most skanky feet, drag them on the bottom of the pool as you make your way to the ladder. You will need to make sure that you get the sides and bottoms for maximum exfoliation.

Yeah you are going to look pretty strange...but people will probably think you are just peeing in the pool, nothing gross like scraping off an inch of funky foot skin.

And the winner is...

Mrs. Schmitty!


The bottom autograph is courtesy of Mr. Jon Bon Jovi.

In high school my Dad was sometimes called in to be the "Rock Doc" for bands preforming in our city. Often he would return with a good story and several back stage passes. One night he got them for the Ratt/Bon Jovi concert. This was at a time when Bon Jovi was opening for Ratt, we had never heard of them.

After Bon Jovi finished we were able to meet them back stage. Dork that I am I got into a discussion with the keyboard player about...my Grandmother's Hammond Organ. Yes sir...I am awesome. He did offer to take me onto their bus and show me his organ...

Later, we (Dad and my little brother were with me) were standing around while Jon Bon Jovi was signing autographs and talking to some of the "girls" who made it backstage. My overwhelming coolness struck again and I muttered under my breath, "I would just die if he kissed me." Apparently my Dad took this as a challenge, he got Mr.Jovi's attention and said, "Would you please kiss my daughter?"

You always hear people talk about wanting the earth to open up and swallow them...it is hard to fully understand this desire until you have wished for it fervently yourself.

Mr.Jovi did kiss me; I was so stunned that I let out a little surprised "oh" after it was over to the amusement of all. As I write this my cheeks still turn red remembering it....

Ticky Taco

Friday night Magnuts asked to borrow a flashlight so he could take another look for Taco. Less than a minute later we heard him screaming that he had. Rob rushed in to try to capture the wily beast...

FYI...apparently it only takes about 24 hours for a domestic hamster to go feral.

When she was finally returned to her cage she paced the cage and every time one of us got near she rared on to her back legs and with wild googly eyes said "whatchu lookin at bee-ach!?"

I was tempted to grab my camera and snap some "not control group" pictures for all of the future science fairs we will be forced to participate in.

TANGENT ALERT! : When I was a kid my Dad helped me do my science project. We used a couple of house plants, one (control group) got plain water, the others got amphetamines...

Taco did manage to calm down, and thank God it wasn't the kind of calm down that involves her assuming room temperature. We live on a farm and have to put out rat bait or be over run. So far so good.

Hope you all had a great weekend...Here is a little preview of tomorrow:

We cleaned out our attic and I found this in one of my scrapbooks. Recognize any of the names?

Peas and Taco

We went to the Farmer's Market yesterday. I wanted the FlyingMonkeys to experience the "joy" of shelling peas....

When I was younger than Magnuts I was shelling peas. My best friend and I watched cartoons and shelled them until our thumbs were green. I wanted my kids to have this kind of fun...plus now I have this awesome freezer that needs to be filled.

Turns out that the difference in price between a hamper of peas shelled and un-shelled is only about $3. Thinking that the experience was more important than the fiscal logic I bought a 1/2 hamper of the wonderful white field peas and a 1/2 hamper of Zippers (easy to shell).

The white peas are not a lot of fun to shell. I shelled the entire bunch myself. MonkeyBoy shelled half of the Zippers by himself...at 11:30pm we were still shelling and watching TV.

It was at this time that Miss-D appeared with an empty hamster ball and tears in her eyes. Rob had put Taco in her ball for a little exercise and the lid had come off. We all searched for her...to no avail. Miss-D pulled out her laptop and found a website dedicated to helping people find their escaped hamsters....here are a few of the ideas:

-place flour on your floors so that you can identify their foot prints and track them back to their hiding places....

-place tin foil strategically around your house so that you can hear it rattle when your little pet walks over it....

-build a hamster trap....a shoe box with a hamster sized hole cut in the end, turn it on its bottom so that the hole is facing the ceiling, cover the hole with a paper towel with a treat on top of it.

-leave a trail of food all the way to the open cage....

Most of these ideas require that you check them every 20 minutes. It was after midnight...so...no. We did shut all of the toilet lids and we also put her cage on the floor with the door open...just in case.

This morning...still no Taco....and I still have peas to finish....

Y'all cross your fingers for Magnuts.

Dear Mr. President,

We at Reevesfarm would like to make known that we support drilling.

As a matter of fact if you would like to survey our farm and and find that the only suitable place for drilling is in the middle of my living room...that would still be just peachy.

Let me know if I need to start rearranging the furniture.

Your friend,
Laura

Rockin' at Sams...

Who would have thought that spending a Sat. night at Sam's club with my family could be such big fun?

We spent about 2 hours just wandering around and loading up a giant cart. As we made our way back up to the front of the store Magnuts and I noticed three college boys standing around a big screen TV attempting to play Rock Band. They were laughing at each other because even on "easy" they were unable to keep up with the game....Magnuts snickered.

About 5 minutes later we passed by that area again, this time no one was playing and Magnuts begged me to let him play one song. Before he even had the guitar strap adjusted people were stopping to watch him. He selected "expert" and it was on...

His little fingers were flying and people were stopped in their tracks. The college boys were back, employees lingered in the area to watch, during the solo there must have been 15-20 people standing around in amazement.

I especially loved how, at the conclusion of the song, he whipped the guitar off and announced "I am the best."

Nuts...

No, Jesse Jackson's latest gaff is not the subject of this particular post...funny as it was...

Today's post is about the extreme joy I am feeling this morning. As soon as I finish writing this the FlyingMonkeys will be helping me clean out and organize my laundry room so that the new freezer will fit.

Thatsssss right, a new freezer chest...the perfect way for me to satisfy my food hoarding needs.

Nuts, right? It is not really hoarding, there is just something about having a stocked freezer and pantry that makes me uber content.

Although, I may be tempting fate.

Several years ago I had my Grandmother's freezer chest. It was one of those 14 foot monsters, the kind that could easily hold a couple of dead bodies and a months worth of frozen pizzas. After we got it set up on our carport we headed to our local meat place and Sam's with most of our tax refund in an attempt to fill it up. I even had a garden that year. I carefully harvested tomatoes and bell peppers, prepared them and froze them...I was soooooo happy.

Then one day I went to get some burgers out of it...

There are really no words to describe what I found when I opened it. Consider that it was late summer in south Alabama....and someone had unplugged the freezer...it had been off AT LEAST a week....

I still have bad dreams about the smell.

My new freezer will be smaller and in my laundry room...a place the kids never go so it is unlikely that it will be accidentally unplugged.

Gotta get ta cleanin...have a good weekend!