Church and Taxes

Last year, a church near the downtown postoffice offered free stamps for people filing their income taxes.

My DH commented: "It it their philosophy, 'If you can't lick 'em, join 'em?"

Medical Staff No-No Phrases

While seeing my dental hygienist today, I joked with her how certain phrases should not be used by medical staff. The #1 biggest no-no (IMO) is "Oops."

She has been at her job for over 30 years. Some of it is mindless routine work, for her, anyway. She told me how one day as she had sharp metal tools inside a man's mouth, she muttered, "Oh, darn!" His panicked reaction made her quickly respond, "Did I say that out loud? Oh, no. You're fine. It was nothing." What caused her comment was the fact that she'd just remembered something she'd forgotten to add on her grocery list that morning.

One Tired Old Cactus

Saw this poor old guy on our hike this week in AZ.
Is that a crutch, a walking stick, or a pillow?

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?

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?”

Animal Joke

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

Answer: Holes all over Australia.

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

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.

April Clean Joke #3

What do lawyers wear to court?

Lawsuits.

Clean Jokes #1 & #2

I've designated Saturdays during April as the day to share jokes I've heard. I’m going to break my discipline on day two of National Humor Month, by giving two jokes (v.s. one). Yay.

What do you get when you cross a dog with a frog? A croaker spaniel.

What do you get when you cross an adult with a moan? A groan-up.

A Family Funny

I don’t have a single funny thing to share today. APRIL FOOLS!

Time for a family story. When our family moved from wintery Buffalo, NY, to sunny Rapid City, SD, our one son was in 7th grade. Mind you, it does snow in the Black Hills, but usually just up north, and you have to do driving to look for it. In our 8 winters there, our street was only plowed four times. Although, solar snow removal and four-wheel drives were the norm.

Our son went three years just putting on a sweatshirt if it got cold enough to do so. But one week, the temperature stayed in the teens for several days. He finally agreed to wear a coat to school. He put it on. His arms stuck out from his elbows down.

BAD MAMA! He’d grown a lot in those three years, and because he never wore winter coats, bad mama hadn’t thought to buy him one. Bad Mama!!

National Humor Month – The Intro

Today starts National Humor Month. Isn’t that fun? An entire month set aside to find amusing things in life. In fact, later this month, I will also be teaching workshops in Grand Rapids, MI, to middle school and high school students, titled, “Putting On Your Funny.” I’m ready!

When I was a K-2 (kindergarten through second grade) teacher, April First was a day I just set myself to endure. Kids came in and said things like, “Mrs. Carlson! You’re wearing two different colored shoes!” Of course, I’d look down, and they’d scream, “April Fools!” and roar with laughter. I’d dramatically roll my eyes and respond, “Oh, you got me.” Now when I write “endure,” I mean the ability to act like I’d been fooled for about another fifty times on that day.

One year as a fifth grade teacher, I had a particularly needy group of kids, some whom the police already knew by first name. Along comes the month of April. I told the kids that every day during this National Humor Month, we were going to take time for telling jokes or funny stories. This time their eyes rolled. I lifted a jar, and continued, “You may put in here jokes you find funny.” A couple of the needier kids immediately got out their pencils and started writing. I added, “The stipulations are: 1) They cannot have vulgar language or swear words, or any words you would not say to the principal; and 2) They cannot put down any person or group because of race, culture, or religion.” One boy crumpled his paper and threw his pencil across the room. I never bothered to even peek at the joke he’d started to write.

So now we roll around once more to National Humor Month. I’m no longer teaching elementary kids, and I no longer have little kiddles at home to pull pranks on me. But I do have this blog. (Ha!) Do I have 30 jokes I could share this month, one per day? (You betcha.) Am I going to do that to you. (What do I look like? A kindergartner? Don’t answer that.)

This month I shall ATTEMPT to follow through on the following:

Mondays – record amusing life observances
Tuesdays – Funny photo I’ve taken
Wednesdays – Fly in the Soup Jokes
Thursdays – YouTube or lol Internet links
Fridays - Personal Funny Family Stories
Saturdays - More Jokes

Michigan Snowbird Resident

Gone south for the winter.

Store Sign Humor

Traveling down the road, DH wanted to know what a BOGO chicken was. I laughed, confessed I didn't know the first time I'd seen those letters either, then explained it wasn't a type of chicken, but stood for Buy One, Get One. The display of my worldly knowledge only confused him further. "If you pay for a chicken, don't you get one -- the one you bought?"

So... we have decided that BOGO should actually be BOGOF, although that may be confusing to others. It makes a lot more sense.

How To Make Decisions

My husband and I were watching a series on DVD. It was near bedtime. There were two episodes left in the two-year series. Should we be foolish and stay up to watch those two, or be wise and get ready for bed?

I was too tired to decide. Apparently, so was he. “Let’s flip a coin,” I suggested. Of course, neither of us had a coin on us, so that meant one of the potatoes getting off the couch just to find a coin to make a late night press-the-button-or-not decision.

On the table next to me was a clean dinner knife I hadn’t used for a snack. “I’ll flip the knife. If it lands on the rug pointing towards the TV, we’ll watch it; if it lands pointing towards us, we’ll go to bed.” At that very logical-to-me solution, there were some threats about what might happen to me and the knife if it landed in the flat screen, but I courageously flipped it anyway. So, how did it land? Exactly perpendicular, i.e., sideways.

I know how we interpreted that, but how would you have?

Christmas Elf Joke

(Old one:)

Question: What's an elf's favorite music?

Answer: Wrap Music.

SeaGulls Talk

When my first born was about six years old, I took his brother and him to a local park in Western New York. The boys were running around and playing, when First Born walks up to me, face pale and concerned. At first I thought something had happened to his brother, but they were both safe.

"What's wrong, honey?" I asked.

"That sea gull just cried for help," he informed me.

I listened, and sure enough, it did sound like the sea gulls were crying "H-EELP!"

It took a while to convince my poor, concerned son that that was just sea gull talk for "Hello." (Makes you wonder where he got the idea that animals can talk, doesn't it?)

Fall Hiking -- Stick Snakes and Doing a Francie

I love fall hiking. The colors are amazing; the weather is unpredictable; and the number of two-legged critters are limited. On a 2-hour hike today on new trails, two thoughts occurred to me: 1) Stick Snakes, and 2) Doing a Francie.

Stick Snakes. These guys make me jump and yelp every time I hear and spot one, especially in the fall. They happen when someone hiking behind you happens to kick a stick along the trail just right, and it goes sailing under the fallen leaves to your side and in front of you.

Doing a Francie. I have a good friend named Francie. She is very conscientious about keeping the trails passable. She will pull fallen branches to the side of the trail out of habbit. With 30-60 mph winds the past couple days, the wooded trails are littered with branches and trees. Of course, I couldn't move the fallen trees, but as I hiked along, I'd slip my walking stick under the smaller fallen branches and fling them off trail. I dubbed it "Doing a Francie."

An OLD, OLD Joke

Did you know that tennis is one of the oldest sports? Says so in the Bible. It says, “Joseph served in Pharaoh’s court.”

A Fly On Our Wall -- Consequences

Getting ready for bed, I heard a crash coming from the kitchen as plastic things cluttered to the floor. Then came my husband's steadied, angry voice: "Whoever did that should be shot... slowly!"

Not knowing for sure what happened, but reasoning that since only two of us live in the house now, and he wasn't claiming to be the one who "did that," and only slightly worried about the consequences of my words, I said from the bedroom: "Buh... aaaaa... nnng."