Wool Sweaters and Getting Rid of Food Baby

Part I

My husband watched a video today about getting rid of "Food Baby." You know that pouchy thing that resembles being pregnant, but caused by eating?

Part II

During my Mitten Knittin' class last month, besides learning how to REALLY knit a mitten, I learned about felting, and that if you take a wool sweater and boil and agitate it, it will shrink. To demonstrate to my husband, I put on an XL wool sweater I got at a second hand store, explaining how it will get small.

Part II

Hubby: Will that work with my Food Baby? Will it shrink if I boil and agitate it?

Opening Day for Deer Season

(Disclaimer: Read no further on this post if you're a vegetarian or wear or use leather products.)

My friend Rachel put on her FB page this morning: "The sign is on the door -- We interrupt this marriage to bring you the hunting season."

My friend Janey put on her FB page: "RUN, Bambi, RUN!"

This reminds me of a couple I knew years ago. While the daddy went off deer hunting, the mommy took the girls to a movie in a theatre. What was playing? You guessed it: Bambi.

Go to sleep, little baby!

Many of you know that this summer I became a grandmother. I have my grandbaby's photo as my desktop background. Each night before I put the computer into hybernation, I say to the screen, "Go to sleep, little baby." Then I press the "sleep" key and the light go out.

My First Attempt at Knitting a Toddler Mitten

It looks more like a duck-hood, as my DH so gently put it.

Texting While Driving

And THIS is what happens when you drive a tractor while texting!

Arrrgh. It be de 9th Talk Like A Pirate Day!

I be talkin' all de day long, like a pirate, see? All me pirate jokes be used last year. But this year, I be readin' a Louis L'Amour book called THE WARRIOR'S PATH. It be told in the 1620's along t'east coast of new America like. I be readin' it, thinkin' it be all about frontier men and Indians like. Den dis mornin' while readin' de story, guess where de hero done sails off to? Port Royal, Pirate Capital! ARRRRGH. It be a fittin' surprise fer dis day, me buckles . Yes, it be.

Hopin' ye have smooth sailin' fer de rest of dis here day like.

Arrrrrgh.

Talk Like A Pirate Day Be Tomorrow!

Argh, me hearties! Tomarrow it be Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Argh. Be ye rememberin’ it all t’day long, like.

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe, cont.

I'm standing next to my husband, explaining to a friend how stressful it is on us from the long-taking work on our house from May's storm.

"We constantly make word substitutions, or revert to pointing at something in order to communicate," I said. "Our brains are mush."

"Yes," agreed my husband. "And forgetful, too. Just this morning, I forgot my binoculars."

We looked at each other and cracked up laughing. We both KNEW he'd meant to say glasses. We're praying our friends and acquaintances will understand, and hopefully, whenever our house gets fixed, we'll go back to a new normal.

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe, cont

I was only gone for a few minutes. Honest.

There have been construction workers and masons and plasterers here off and on all day. My poor hubby came home from work, exhausted, so attempted to catch a few winks before supper. With the workers gone, I suddenly remembered I hadn’t picked up the mail. It’s only 70 steps from our front door. 140 steps all together. When I came back into the house, my groggy husband was laughing on the phone. I almost picked up an extension, because, from his joviality, it had to be a relative, especially since he was talking on his cell phone, a number which only a few people have -- which also meant I couldn’t have picked up an extension, anyway.

When he hung up, he told me he was so embarrassed that even his eyeballs hurt. The voice on the other end sounded exactly like his brother in Wisconsin. The voice said, “Hi. I’m Bob your plasterer.” Well, as it happened, BRUCE, our plasterer had just left our house a couple of hours earlier, so DH responded, “You are such a con artist. Oh, har-har-har! Some contractor you are.” Apparently, the person on the other end of the line became defensive at this greeting, and explained that he couldn’t get back to him sooner since his wife was dying and they were at the Cleveland Clinic. This definitely wasn’t his brother. But why did he even have our cell phone number?

A million apologies later, my husband finally hung up and tried to find a place to hide, even though Bob couldn’t see him. I tried to assure him that some day, when our house is all put together again, and we can look back on things which happened during this time, that he would probably find this funny. He moaned pitifully before slinking off into the basement.

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe

This morning we “lost” our dumpster. It was full, from our stuff as well as a neighbor's. A semi-truck came, sinking its wheels onto our lawn, and drove the rusty old thing away.

Many neighbors still have their dumpsters from the storm which struck our area in May, or else their dumpsters have disappeared because their houses are completely repaired. Not ours though.

Somehow, we felt helpless watching it leave. Because our house isn’t fixed, and now we don’t even have a dumpster, my husband commented, “It feels like we’re second class recoverees.”

Now, we're keeping our eyes out for the return of an empty dumpster in our green-ish yard. That would mean workers would be returning to... work. Yea for dumpsters!

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe

One of the problems of stress and lack of sleep is memory messing. For example, although it’s been over seven weeks since the storm struck our house, I’m still flipping on (and back off) light switches in rooms without power.

Another big problem is word substitutions. At first they were frustrating, then scary (to happen so often), but now we just laugh at them, and live with the hope that someday our memories will return to us whole once more.

Another example: After our construction workers left, I checked the blue tarp over our empty space which would someday hold a window. Because a storm was coming, I informed my husband that “the construction guys buttoned down the tarp.” Of course, I meant battened, but the image of these strong men taking the time to button a large tarp to a house set me into a fit of giggles. (Perhaps you needed to be there… Perhaps you're glad you weren’t.)

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe

Because a tree crashed through our old windows, now at last, six weeks later, our new windows showed up in our construction person’s red truck. My husband looked out and said, “ I wonder if it was a pane to drive them here?” I groaned and he continued, “You should have seen through that.”

Tired and Stressed Out Conversation

So… we’re at the breakfast table, listening to the Amish workers next door using power tools, when my husband asked how they got to town if they don’t believe in driving cars, or how they could use power tools if they don’t believe in electricity.

I then remember a fact we learned at a fair years ago. “Remember that one fair where the pigs ran for the mash? Mash for the Dash?”

DH: “I think you mean, Dash for the Mash. Wasn’t it in New York?”

Me: “Yes, of course. Well, it was at that fair, in one of the buildings where we learned… was it the Amish or the Shakers? I can’t remember which. But a man invented a vacuum cleaner and a woman invented… something that men use… Am I rambling.”

DH: “Of the ten things you tried to say just now, three were probably lies, three were made up and three were true… Crap. What did you do with the other one?”

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe, cont

After having cleared out our three refrigerators from the week without power, I stated to my husband, "I have a new food rule."

He responded, "Eat anything you want?"

I blinked, then amended, "I have two new food rules: eat anything you want, and don’t keep leftovers in the refrigerator more than two days."

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe, cont -- Plan of Attack

The morning after the storm, our son went to the store for supplies for us, then drove five hours to get here. He gave us a much-needed shot in the arm with his enthusiasm, youth and strength to help with the clean-up.

The following morning, the first thing he said to us was, “So? What's the plan of attack?” My husband responded, “Surrender?”

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe -- electrical breakers

While we were without power, my husband turned off the breakers. With two tree through our house, we didn’t know what electrical damage had been done, nor what would happen when the power came back on.

When the power returned six days later, we had to check the breaker switches in the basement, one at a time to find out which rooms they went to. They were marked by a previous owner in “doctor’s handwriting,” i.e., difficult to impossible to read. With cell phones on, my husband and I communicated which lights came on in which part of the house. When he switched the one to the master bedroom and den-home-office, a light flickered, and the breaker immediately switched off by itself.

My husband ascended from the basement chuckling. The breaker switch for the master bedroom and den was labeled as “Bug and Yard.”

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe, cont -- kid's tornado observation

A few days after the tornado, I needed to get a haircut. I wanted to do something to make me look pretty. My own hairstylist lives in a town a half an hour away. I didn’t want to spend that much time away from our storm-damaged house, so I went to a cheap local place. The young stylist gave me a cut which looks like she put a bowl over my head, but that’s a different story. Something else amusing happened at this new place.

A father and his six-year-old son were there, getting their haircuts. The kid started talking animatedly about the tornado, and with large gross motor action, showed everyone how “a branch flew right past my cheek.” That was a scary-enough retelling, especially from a child’s point of view. But then he added, “… and this is my favorite cheek.”

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe, cont.

I’m not so sure if this is so much funny as it is curious or creepy. The day after our tornado, the birds were acting very strangely, especially the starlings. They stood on the squirrel shield of the feeder or on the grass beneath it. They tilted their heads to the side and opened their beaks, and froze, remaining like that for minutes at a time. The starlings eyes were also a brighter white than I’d ever seen, especially against their shiny blue-black heads. (Try as I might, I can't find the photos I took of them! You'll just have to believe my words.)

Probable explanation for their behavior/look: The weeks and days up to the storm, the temperature had been in the 30’s at night and 50’s during the day. The day after, it was 90 degrees. I’m thinking their peculiar action was merely because they were suddenly hot. Although, personifying them, perhaps they were in grief of their nests, chicks, and friends who didn’t make it through the storm. (Okay, NOW who’s being creepy?)

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe – The Mailbox Story

We came home this morning to find the city taking down our 100’ leaning hickory tree. After we got home and the guys took a mini break, my husband went out and took down our mailbox, which was beneath the tree. He brought it to the house and leaned it up against the railing on our front porch. We figured we’d get skipped for mail today, but with everything going on this past week+ with the tornado, that was not a big concern.

When the hickory guys left, my husband went to put the mailbox back on the post. He noticed the mailbox door ajar. When he looked in, mail was inside it!

So… if we would have put the box up on the roof, would it be delivered up there?

With so much to sigh over during this ordeal, it's the little things which crack us up. Now I just can’t get it out of my head to put a mailbox up on our roof to see what happens.

Burglars

We had a tornado come through our neighborhood last week. We still have no Internet. Monday night, I went to my husband's office to use the business Internet while he was at a meeting. We returned home at 9:30 p.m. to find the front door closed, but unlocked.

Since the tornado, our mental states have been random and shaky at best. My husband was unsure if there was actually someone in the house, or if we'd left it unlocked. (He usually checks things like that before we leave.)

So I cried out, "Hi, we're home!" Stupid thing to do if there was truly a burglar in the house! Because there was no running or crashing escape, we advanced further in. "Is anything missing?" I yelled to my husband, who started checking the far end of the house. I heard a door open and shut in the hallway. He shouted back, "Oh, no! All our bedroom furniture is gone!"

(Because we're missing part of our bedroom walls, we'd moved all the furniture from there into the living room a few days earlier in preparation for reconstruction work.)

Tree Removal Humor

A tornado went through our neighborhood a week ago. That wasn’t funny in the least. But there was no human loss, for which we were all very grateful. But the noise! Generators screeched all night long, and chain saws buzzed all day. Because there was no power, people worked from sunup to sunset.

At 8 p.m. a few days later, while trying to cut away at the base of our 60-year-old fallen oak suddenly the tree removal guys stopped their machines, even though there was another 90 minutes worth of daylight. It was eerily quiet.

My husband commented: “They stopped! I wonder if they got stumped?”

Coke and Mentos

I so totally relate to this video. It reminds me of things my siblings and father used to do. You can see something coming... wait for it...


http://video.yahoo.com/stupidvideos-24317891/justplainstupid-24039268/high-flying-mentos-mix-25339747.html#crsl=%252Fstupidvideos-24317891%252Fjustplainstupid-24039268%252Fhigh-flying-mentos-mix-25339747.html

Animal Joke

Question: What do you get when you cross a kangaroo with an elephant?

Answer: Holes all over Australia.

It's all about the Timing

May has been crazy. (Anything different from normal? Not so much.) But it seems that instead of blogging, I've given in to other priorities this month. I thought of lots of great funnies to post here the past few weeks. There was this really good one I had for May Day, and another for Mother's Day, and several entries from my son's 3rd grade journal we just re-discovered cracked me up. And that end of the world business? I could have posted lots about that, too. But I let the month keep slip-sliding away. I did end up doing a lot of writing and a lot of yard work, but neither of those were too very giggly to write about here.

ALL THIS brings me to a very important point about humor: timing. I could share a Mother's Day funny here and now, but it wouldn't be nearly as amusing as it would have been then and there.

So... until another day, keep looking for funnies.

The Proper Way to Hang Toilet Paper

And the battle goes on...

Which is the proper way to hang toilet paper? With the roll hanging next to the wall, or away from the wall. Check out this Squidoo site for reasons and photos:

http://www.squidoo.com/Ways-To-Hang-Toilet-Paper

Brotherly Humor

Our two sons decided to have a reunion in Las Vegas, each taking a couple of their friends. Late one night, the “boys” were sitting around a table when an inebriated girl came up to them, followed by her friends. She spoke first to our older son.

“It’s my 21st birthday. You’re cute. Are you married?”
“Yes.” He tapped his wedding ring.
“But are you happily married?”
“Yes! But he isn’t.” With a sly smile, he pointed to his brother. She turned on him.
“So are you married?”
Honest son that he is, he answered, “No.”
The girl then asked, “But are you happily married?”
He thought about it for half a sec, then answered, “Yes!”
The girl moved on to another table.

Video Link Thursday

And for the last Thursday of National Humor Month, 2011, I give you The Rev. Billy Bob:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5EhFFlc66o

Fly in the Soup Day

(Personal note: Today, I’m in Grand Rapids, MI, leading two workshops at Calvin College’s Youth Writers Festival working with middle school and high school youth. The name of the two workshops? “Getting on Your Funny.” Guess what I’ll be talking/teaching about?)

And for our final Fly in the Soup joke during this year’s National Humor month, here is an example of Escape or Release humor.

Customer: Waiter, waiter! There’s a fly in my soup!
Waiter: Oh, thank goodness! I thought it might be that mouse again.

Funny Foto Tuesday

This is not my own photo, and admittedly, a bit on the crude side, but I couldn't resist including it this month to show different types of humor. For you Dr. Who fans, you will either love it or hate it. (Passed on to me by Scott Jefferies/ Bill Binns)

Store Sign Humor

At a local restaurant, they often advertise “Half Off Buffet.”

We just wonder which half is missing? The bottom half? The left half? Do they give out half plates? What?

National Humor Month -- Clean Jokes #5 & #6

Question: Where do rabbits go when they get married?
Answer: On their bunnymoon.

The name of a best-selling rabbit book: HAVING BIG FAMILIES by Y. Nott

Personal Story Funny

My mother had a heart attack. (That, actually, was not very funny.) As soon as I was contacted by phone, I threw clothing enough for four days into a bag and within ten minutes, was on the road. I made the four hour drive in a little over three hours. I arrived at 11:00 p.m., and was informed by an in-law that I couldn’t see my mother. Rebel that I was, I replied, HA!

I jumped back into the car and drove to the hospital. When I went into her ER room, she seemed to be sleeping. I didn’t say anything, but just stood over her. Suddenly her eyes popped open, and she cried out in surprise. That set off all sorts of alarms and whistles on her machines. The nurses to came rushing. They gave me threatening looks, while both my mother and I tried to stop laughing. Great, I thought. I’d come to comfort my Mom, and instead nearly killed her with a second heart attack.

When I got back to my parents’ apartment, I’d discovered that there wasn’t a single piece of clothing I’d thrown into my bag which matched anything else. Mother recovered, just fine, but I’m guessing the nurses are still talking about the mis-matched clown who tried to kill one of their patients in the middle of the night.

Funny Video Link Thursday

And for Peter and Amanda...

The "Talk"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCjMGOvMghY

Fly in the Soup Day

(Today’s joke is an example of Rationalization Humor.)

Customer: Waiter, waiter! There’s a fly in my soup!
Waiter: Now there’s a fly who knows good soup.

Funny Foto Tuesday

In honor of our son, John who came into this world laughing and continues to embrace the funny: A Funky Cactus.

Another Funny Road Sign

Near VanBuren State Park (MI), there is a big brown information sign along the road just before the Park. It reads: “Michigan Critical Dunes.” Is this a warning to all who enter that the sand dunes will criticize us or find things to complain about? (I wouldn't blame them.)

National Humor Month -- Clean Joke #4

(Apologies for the delay -- computer crashing....) Joke: What lies at the bottom of the ocean and shivers? A nervous wreck.

Another Family Funny

When bathing my infant son, he pointed to something in the tub and asked, “What dat?” From his previous experiences, there were occasionally brown floating things in the water, but this was not one of those. It was a bug. I said more for myself than in response to him: “shark.” The poor kid quickly scooted to the far end of the tub. I didn’t even know he knew the word. Maybe he didn’t, but in his little mind, that thing in the tub had a name, and he was getting away from it. (Bad, bad Mama!)

Video Day Link -- The Lama Song

Need I say more? Except... here it is...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMYN4djSq7o&feature=related

Fly in the Soup Joke Day

Today’s joke is an example of Miss-The-Main-Point humor. Customer: Waiter, waiter! There’s a fly in my soup! Waiter: Hey! What do you think I am? I’m a waiter, not a lifeguard.

French Creek Sign

Our family has always liked to hike. In the southern Black Hills of South Dakota, there's a trail which follows (and crosses numerous times) French Creek. At the trail head is this warning sign. Thing is, it does not even mention the fact that there are free roaming bison in the area, and that every year someone is gored. And, yes, we did hike a portion of this lengthy trail, backpacking in and spending the night.

Nite Crawlers

There is a restaurant south of Jackson, Michigan, called Nite Crawlers. They advertise a special Friday Night Fish Fry. How ironic is that... for those worms?

April Clean Joke #3

What do lawyers wear to court?

Lawsuits.

A Personal Funny

When I was 19 years old, I was a chaperone for 50 inner city high schoolers from Des Moines on a cultural trip to Minneapolis. It was a long drive. Most of them slept through the Shakespearean play. We stayed at a hotel. As the other female chaperone and I patrolled the halls after curfew, we smelled something funny. My partner recognized it as marijuana.

I knocked on the door from which the odor emanated. No answer. I knocked again, identifying who we were, and that they had better open up, RIGHT NOW. Still no answer. I pounded on the door, telling the occupants through the closed door that they had better stop what they were doing or the hotel would kick us all out in the middle of the night, to say nothing about getting arrested. It was late. Not a peep of a response. I didn’t feel like packing up and getting 50 sleepy kids back on a bus to another state. So we went to bed.

In the morning, I checked the roster of rooms where our people stayed. I was going to really chew those girls out for being so stupid. It was then that I discovered the room I pounded on in the night was not one of the rooms on our list of kids.

Video Link Day

Welcome to yet another day of National Humor Month.

I'm trying to remain disciplined. I really am. Last month I decided to have Thursdays be "share a video link" day for this bit of humor every day in April. Thing is, I really don't like opening forwarded links from friends. Some email me links only, and never even say "howdy." That being said, snatches of video are very common. SO, I gave in and will share at least one video link with you.

Because I learned how to type on an old-fashioned typewriter, when this clip first passed by my I could honestly relate to it.

A Senior Moment: http://www.myspace.com/video/vid/105171780