Instead of calling the cops, I'll just tell you

Ben packed a duffel bag of crap to take to the Y while Julianna was in dance class.  Here is what I found when he opened it when we got there:

nylon rope (about 9 ft)
flashlight
black light
listening device from a spy kit
bug vacuum
goggles
bottle of water
calculator
broken Gameboy
light saber
cat pee smell

R.I.F.

I've read more in the last month than I've read in the last 2 years.  I used to read all the time, and then it just got hard to find the time and then other things took priority.  I'd periodically try to read a book and sometimes I'd get through it and sometimes not. But lately I've been on a tear.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde  It was recommended as a book that "made me think of you." by a couple of people, which always makes me nervous, but I gave it a whirl.  It was fun.  Kind of a Sue Grafton-meets-Douglas Adams thing.  I enjoyed it, but am unlikely to read the others in the series as the heroine just didn't grab me as one I want to spend more time with.  So, I can see why others thought of me, but apparently I need to step up my game.

Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett.  It's the penultimate of the Rincewind books in the Discworld series.  I've been reading them to Steve when we're on car trips.  Hilarious.  I love, love, love these books.   Janet the Hinjew mom has been telling me to read them for ages and she was dead-on.  We adore them and see Rincewind as a personal hero.

Is Underground by Joan Aiken.  I've been reading Julianna the Dido series that started a-way back with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, one of my childhood faves.  But I only read the first three as a kid and now there are many more.  A really captivating group of characters and I love to do all the accents when I read.  Reading this and the two previous books left me a bit Britain-soaked, though, so I read...

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson.  I've wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail forever, so I really enjoyed his account of his attempt.  It's laugh-out-loud funny as well as really informative.  I learned all sorts of stuff and I'm totally jazzed to hike and camp this summer.

Boomsday by Christopher Buckley.  I actually read a book before the Washington Post review even came out!  I just saw it and picked it up on impluse b/c I loved his Thank You For Smoking and Little Green Men.  Funny guy.  It's a romp as well, very insider-DC.  The premise is that the 20 and 30 somethings get fed up with the Boomers hogging all the resources and come up with a plan to allow them to commit suicide before they become a drain on Social Security.  And yet, funny!  Buckley is great at dialogue, which is critical to me.

Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani.  I enjoyed it, but not as much as I thought I would.  People go ape for this series.  It IS funny and full of good characters, but they seemed a bit too Northern Exposure Quirky.  And the heroine is one of those women who distances herself from real life with books and wears that as a badge of honor.  I find that annoying.  But I do have the feeling that it's the sort of book in which the characters get into you and hang around and I'll end up reading another one eventually.  It's set in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia, so it was fun to see the accent written to sound like one of my Grannies.

Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster.  I picked this one up off the bargain table b/c I liked the title and saw the word "funny" all over the cover.  And while there IS humor, by the end of the first 30 pages, I wanted to find the author and punch her in the throat.  I flipped to a few random points, read a bit and then tossed it in the PBS pile.

I'm currently about 15 pages into Goats by Mark Jude Poirier.  I'll let you know.

ANTM was a lame clip show, although we did finally get to see where that panel-mocking photo came from.  Nothing new, really except my growing love for Natasha.  Shear Genius was fun, even though they eliminated Gay Frodo.  Lost was pretty awesome, as is any episode with lots of Jin and Sun, God's most perfectly constructed humans.

Musing on spring

Why do some people not like dandelions?  Why, given the choice between solid green and green with fuzzy yellow polka dots do some choose the former?  I walked down to Bev's this morning and I so enjoyed walking through dandelions and violets.  I love spring flowers--tulips, lilacs, the usual--but those little wildflowers just make me happy.  When I see the occasional lawn that is utterly devoid of yellow spots, I think, "Hm.  Small golf course."  And they're such cool little guys anyway--growing to just under your mower's height.  How can you not love a clever flower?  And so tasty are the greens!  Embrace the dandelion!  Before it destroys you!

I will note here, with pride, that if you google "devil's jockstrap" I'm the #2 hit.  I think that goes in the ol' alumni update for sure.

Back to spring--we have baby hamsters!  One of our fosters gave birth the day after her arrival.  She seemed untroubled by the process.  We went in to check on her and she was climbing around on her igloo with one baby hanging out and another one at the foot of the igloo, clawing at the air.  They are not cute.  We left her to it, as we were told it was stress that sometimes causes them to snack on tasty babies.  Angela told us that we could expect her to be grumpy and scarce at first.  Then, when the babies get mobile, she'll spend all her time trying to keep them in the nest.  Eventually,we'll find her sacked out in the corner, asleep.  At that point, you are free to handle the babies b/c now she hates them.  I find that it's kind of a speeded up version of human motherhood.  So now we're still in the stage where she cries all the time and doesn't even bother buttoning her shirt because the damned babies are just going to want to nurse again in 10 minutes anyway, so why bother?  Do we think she still looks fat?  Do we even love her any more?  could someone please just hand the water bottle down or chuck a sunflower seed in her direction because DAMN she is tired.  Is Oprah on?   Soon they'll be really cute though.  I shall take many photos.

I don't want that to frighten any out there in my reading community who might be pregnant for the first time (YAY!).  But yeah, it totally, totally sucks for two months. After about 6, 7 weeks, you'll get a shower and then you'll feel a lot better.  Really.

Random shopping rant

Overheard in line at Borders today:

[clerk on the phone to a customer's answering machine]:  Mr. White, this is Mike at Borders, your order has come in.  We have your King James Bible on DVD, Deepak Chopra's "Search for Meaning", the "Left Behind" set on audio, and the Complete Nightmare on Elm Street Collector's Edition.

I totally cracked up and the guy that was ringing me up rolled his eyes and said "I know!"  I thought about how fun it would be to size people up by their book purchases the same way I do in the grocery store.  And then it reminded me of the guy that came to our multi-apartment yard sale several years ago.  He purchased a stack of vintage Playboys and a box of disposable gloves.

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So I got it into my head that I was going to buy espadrilles on Sunday.  I was in the mall for our weekly Small Angels rodent adoption event.  So I left Julianna with the others and headed to Boscovs (I know, but this is the "old mall" where, as Chris Rock so aptly put it, the white people USED to shop. Now it has Boscovs, Bon Ton, a Payless, and an ever changing series of Everthing $insert number here stores where everything seems to have "fallen off of a truck."  And the mall has this weird uneven floor like they just slapped tile down without ever smoothing the earth.).  I've long said that Bon Ton smells like my Granny (the way she used to smell, that is, don't be gross), but damn if Boscov's doesn't look like her closet.  It's like an Alfred Dunner tent sale in there.  After wading through the Norton McNaughton and Rafaella to get to the shoes, I was not shocked to find that they did not carry the platform wedge hip espadrilles that would transform my summer wardrobe.  Oh, they could transform it all right, just not the way I was hoping.

So I headed to Bon Ton for a whiff of Gran and some hope.  I finally FIND their shoe dept (what, are they ashamed to sell shoes?  No signage, no logic to the layout of the store...and seriously, how does ANYONE find anything in a dept store?  If you needed, say, a black T shirt, you'd have to first figure out what dept to go to--misses? sportswear? career?  And further, in the Bon Ton, the high end Ralph Lauren-y stuff is in the front of the store in this clean area with, like, two shirts per rack.  Like a total of 30 items of clothing in 1000 square feet.  Andalllll the rest of the dreck is cramed onto spin racks so tightly that you can hardly see anything.  Welcoming.) and discover they have an eNORmous selection.  Like, Zappos has a Frederick outlet or something.  Even so, I can't find exactly what I had in mind, but I did try on these shoes by M.U.D.D. that I kind of liked.  Hippie chick espadrilles with a crocheted strap over the toe and over the heel...but then ankle laces.  I am nearly 40 and I am not a ballerina, so I'm not sure I should be in ankle laces.  I tied them at the ankle (not lacing them up my leg so my calf fat could bulge out between the Xs--hot!) and looked in the mirror.  Pretty cute.  I think I can get away with it.  I don't THINK it's too mutton-dressed-as-lamb, and they're cheap, so hey let's get 'em.  Off I trot to the counter.

Someone is there already, purchasing many items.  Not all of which are shoe related (this will be important later).  She is purchasing them for her 93 year old mother (Bless her heart!) who just doesn't have a pretty, comfortable shoe (well, bless her heart!) but she has always liked to be pretty (of COURSE she does)...etc.  And she has coupons.  And she has to figure out which items will generate the most savings when paired with which coupon.  And aparently Bon Ton makes this simple by assigning coupons to different departments and with different amounts and stipulations so that you need a fargin' lawyer to do your shopping, provided you are ever able to FIND the damned shirt you were looking for in the first place.  It's clearly going to take a while.

 I can see another "Service Center" (and they really should put quotes around it on the sign) and head for it.  There is a woman hanging clothes next to it. She is disinclined to indicate that I am visible. "Uh, excuse me?  Are you working this register?"  "I'm sorry?"  "This register [I indicate in case I've suddenly lapsed into Dutch again], are you working it?"  "Yes," She looks at the box in my arms as if it were a live chicken (and not the way I look at live chickens, either). "But you have shoes."  "Yes.  I would like to buy them.  With money." "Well, shoes have to be rung up in the shoe department because they get a commission and we don't"  More than a hint of bitterness I might add.  Ooookay.  Maybe we're done buying Mama's Shoes...and there are now 4 people in line.  All buying non shoe items which they can purchase wherever they like.  And I put my espadrilles back.  Perhaps I am not meant for ankle straps after all.

OMG!! PONIES!1!

We all had our first riding lessons today!  heaven.  Heaven, I tells you.  I loved it all, the smell of the horses, the sound of the clip clop feet and of the grass munching.  The nickering.  Love, love, love it.  I've been away from horses too long.  Lily got her little lesson first.  I led her around the ring a few times and then Deanna (the instructor) put her on a lounge line.  For your viewing pleasure!


Here are Julianna and Rhiannon after catching Veronica and Maple:


And then Lily.  She was confident.  In the video, you here Deanna say "Was that scary?" You can't quite hear Lily's "Nope." As if it were the silliest thing she could imagine.



She's on Peaches, who was the horse I rode today.  Did I mention I got to ride a horse today?  YAY!!


Rhiannon and Julianna.  This is Julianna's first ever lesson, so please excuse her poor seat. :O)


Okay.  That's all.  Nothing funny really, just girls and ponies.  Yay!

Nastalgia

I was in the grocery store, looking at the German food section.  Mostly pickles and saurkraut and other things I don't want (let's face it, we didn't go to German restaurants when we were there), but then I saw Tchibo coffee!  That's what we bought there, the Tchibo cafe was right around the corner and I could just grab a pound.  Ah, such good coffee it was.  But I am very happy with our current coffee, be it from Starbox (as the kids insist is must be) or the home roast.  But still, could I get a mental trip to Germany for the price of a 1/2 lb of coffee?  So I just brewed up a bit.  I may never get this horrid, horrid taste out of my mouth.  Like civet scat filtered through the devil's jockstrap.  Was it this bad there?  German chocolate is still delicious, I trust that bread is too...but the coffee?

Spring? Is that you?

Ahhh...I can hear birds chirping.  This is an improvement over the freight train roar of the wind.  I'm no longer worried that Mildred and her home will come sailing up and smack into my bedroom windows.   Sunday night, the wind knocked her house over.  Steve and I trudged out in the dark to right it (with me hoping I wouldn't find her little ruby slipper clad feet sticking out from under it).  When we set it up she just said "Brawww?" and hopped back on her perch.  The next morning, I went to let her out and she poked her head out and thought better of leaving.  She'd laid one egg Sunday morning, but that was all we go with all that wind trauma going on.  But this morning--egg!  Lily ate the last one for lunch...I was a bit weirded out all of the sudden.  39 years of egg eating and it dawns on me that it is made inside a chicken and comes out of its butt.  Um...ew.  I suspect it will be less weird when we have more chickens and thus, more eggs. And no, I don't have the ETA on those chickens yet.  Isn't one enough for you people?  Get your own chickens if you're so eager.

For the record, I'm now hooked on Shear Genius on Bravo.  Haircut competition.  It's awesome, much better than that horrid Top Design.  One woman actually wept about how much she loves hair.  You can't beat that.

And, Operation Sewing Space continues apace.  I'm hoping to get back to bag making soon, getting Six Gables Originals churned out.  So save your pennies.

and, ROSE!  Thanks for coming by, babe.