CarpeBanana

Miss Dog Lover had to have a tooth extracted yesterday. She was most displeased that the surgeon did not return the tooth, and composed a note making her case to the tooth fairy. The best part of that was, as Miss Dog Lover was getting ready to go, I came across Mr Music standing in the hall outside her room, praying for her.

Devastatingly Handsome is doing some fall cleaning and stacked the old World magazines to take to a friend. I made the mistake of flipping through one and re-read this article about a lady who had her pool stolen. Now, it was bad enough way back in July but I figured we’d hear what had happened. I googled to see how the story ended up and all I could find was people speculating about alien abductions.

This is all putting me in some sort of state I have a vague memory of from Psych 101, the kind of thing where you can’t go to sleep because you are waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think it was called “seeking closure.” So a quick search shows me the cool thing I even remembered how to spell: seeking pragnanz.

So, if anyone knows where this lady’s water went, please post, and get me back to a state of closure.  Please.

I have, uh, borrowed, this meme from my friend T. Too much fun to pass up. 

My secret names:

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car), Susu Odyssey 2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie), Maple Walnut Shortbread 3. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal), Red Blue Whale 4. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first), Too identifying.  5. SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink), The Green Cocoa (Yuck on that combination) 6. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers), Earl Harry7. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter), Fibick Frankfurt 8. SPY NAME: (your favorite season/holiday, flower). Autumn Lilac 9. CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + “ie” or “y”) Pomegranate Jumperie 10. HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree), Sawdust Willow 11. YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”), The Reading Downpour Tour

Yesterday was a bad day. Not world class bad day like this:

but just pesky bad, like this:

At dinner Devastatingly Handsome was eating some granola with milk (yes, a real dinner was cancelled in favor of P & J sandwiches, banana splits, and granola for those who were still hungry) and mentioned, “Sesame seeds float,” and it struck me that this was the best news I’d heard all day. That kind of bad day.

And, how cool is this, just as I was about to post, this came in my inbox from GCFL:

Bad DayA little guy is sitting at the bar just staring at his drink
for half an hour when this big trouble-making biker steps
next to him, grabs his drink and gulps it down in one swig.
The poor little guy starts crying.

“This is the worst day of my life,” says the little guy
between sobs. “I can’t do anything right. I overslept and
was late to an important meeting, so my boss fired me. When
I went to the parking lot, I found my car was stolen and I
don’t have any insurance. I grabbed a cab home but, after
the cab left, I discovered my wallet was still in the cab.
At home I found my wife in bed with the gardener and my dog
bit me. So I came to this bar trying to work up the courage
to put an end to my life, and then you show up and drink the
poison!”

We had an ugly spider (OK, there is no other kind) in the house the other day. Miss Language took some photos but he wasn’t cooperating so the best she got was this, as she gave him his freedom on the front porch:

I wondered what he is, but it took a few days to figure out why his little yellow triangle bothered me, this is it: we have been having a Star Trek fest and next up for watching was Gamesters of Triskelion, so, natch, his bright yellow triangle put me in mind of the battlefield:

yes, the very battle field that has a strong resemblance to the radioactive danger sign:

No wonder the spider needed to go.

This in from last Sunday’s sermon on Matthew 13:1-24, a quote from Matthew Henry:

A parable is a shell that keeps good fruit for the diligent, but keeps it from the slothful.

Academic pursuits are also shells. Sometimes our children only worry about how hard the shells are to open but maybe they need to focus on how good the fruit within is.

When I read blogs about raising and preserving food, grinding grain, making clothes, etc, I feel my lack of domesticity. But, from time to time I actually do things on my own. This realization struck me today as I mixed up my own container full of cinnamon-sugar.

Now, understand, no one taught me how to do this, and I do not even have a recipe. It just comes natural.  :)  I thought about doing a tutorial but decided it was probably not worth the digital film.

When I googled for the cinnamon sugar picture, I looked for a “do-it-yourself” one, too ~ hoping for something like a badge to award myself for brilliance. But google had something even better. Doing-things-yourself can be taken to an extreme. Who would really want a home laser eye surgery kit? Especially when the scalpel is cutesily renamed the scal-pal. Ack. I know my limitations. I am a blinker.

I’ll just stick with mixing cinnamon-sugar, OK?

This year Miss Dance is blessed with studying geometry, although she does not yet recognize all the joy that entails. We have made some of our own applications. The best is the ballerina’s favorite, the “Betweenness of Points theorem.” The following drawing demonstrates AB + BC = AC by Betweenness of Pointes:

Impressed? Neither is Miss Dance.

Any of you who remember Larry, Daryl, and Daryl will be interested in knowing about the Pointe Sisters’ cousins, the Ray Brothers. Seems there are three of them and Ray B spends most of his time between Ray A and Ray C…

This is another post thanks to the Touch of Class catalog that I get and love about 2% of their offerings and laugh at much of the rest. A new catalog came last week and it did not let me down.

Yesterday I showed the Right and Wrong ways to hang my little animal strip. Today I am talking about Good and Bad dining room chairs.

Now, these chairs from the new catalog are not really horrid, (notice my restraint in not commenting on how I could see exactly what is going on submensa (under the table?) between Mr Music and Miss Dog Lover. Of course we never have issues like that around here),

but, they lack the oh-so-necessary book storage rack so one’s reading materials are handy at meal time. That is enough to make them Bad chairs around our place.

This, on the other hand, is an example of a Good chair.

It’s the little things that mark the difference between the homes that have “a touch of class” and the homes which have been “touched by class” in the learning sense.

I believe in moral absolutes. Some things are Right, and some things are flat-out Wrong. It is an unending battle to fight Wrong and set it Right, even in our own homes.

This is Right:

This is Wrong: