Sunday, October 31, 2010
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Random Thoughts
One of the most meaningless words in the English language has got to be "luxury". Everything from my clearance-bin sheets to my poor-quality carpet was sold under the "luxury" banner. Come on, people, luxury is a penthouse apartment in NYC with enough enough original artwork to make the Met blush, not a crappy, K-Mart-brand hand towel that falls apart after three washings.
Children should come with shut-down buttons that don't allow their systems to reboot until 9 a.m.
Nothing makes me quite as twitchy as a Christmas stocking that has been hung the wrong way. The nail should be placed in the upper right corner so the toe of the stocking points left. The other way is backwards. Backwards, I tell you, backwards!
If I'm ever First Lady, I'm going to have my inaugural ball gown taken in three or four sizes before it's donated to the Smithsonian so that everyone who comes through will comment on how thin and fit I must have been.
Why do babies refuse to eat pears or applesauce and then take great delight in chewing on a petrified grape that has been residing with the dust bunnies under the couch?
Our house is under contract. I refuse to mop the kitchen floor again until after the movers come.
I love the word "ubiquitous". I feel like throwing it into all of my conversations just because I like the sound of it.
A sandwich always tastes better when it has a nice, salty potato chip in the middle.
Today I went to the craft store in search of Halloween-related items and found myself being serenaded by Christmas music. There is something so jarring about sifting through the bin of fake jack-o-lanterns while listening to Frank Sinatra sing "Jingle Bells".
Sometimes I think taking a small goat to the store would be easier than handling my almost-four-year-old.
Children should come with shut-down buttons that don't allow their systems to reboot until 9 a.m.
Nothing makes me quite as twitchy as a Christmas stocking that has been hung the wrong way. The nail should be placed in the upper right corner so the toe of the stocking points left. The other way is backwards. Backwards, I tell you, backwards!
If I'm ever First Lady, I'm going to have my inaugural ball gown taken in three or four sizes before it's donated to the Smithsonian so that everyone who comes through will comment on how thin and fit I must have been.
Why do babies refuse to eat pears or applesauce and then take great delight in chewing on a petrified grape that has been residing with the dust bunnies under the couch?
Our house is under contract. I refuse to mop the kitchen floor again until after the movers come.
I love the word "ubiquitous". I feel like throwing it into all of my conversations just because I like the sound of it.
A sandwich always tastes better when it has a nice, salty potato chip in the middle.
Today I went to the craft store in search of Halloween-related items and found myself being serenaded by Christmas music. There is something so jarring about sifting through the bin of fake jack-o-lanterns while listening to Frank Sinatra sing "Jingle Bells".
Sometimes I think taking a small goat to the store would be easier than handling my almost-four-year-old.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Grammar Police
I fully admit that I'm prone to the overuse of commas (and parenthetical remarks), but that doesn't stop me from becoming excessively irritated when I run into a few of the more common grammatical errors that plague written communication these days. I very nearly had to quit facebook after receiving my hundredth notification that one of my friends had taken a quiz containing "your" (meaning "you are") as part of the results. "Your a good person/guy magnet/movie star..." Aaaghh. Make it stop!
Maybe it's a side-effect of being surrounded by a CUL8R text generation whose most formal method of communication is email, but regardless (not to be confused with "irregardless"), if I see one more college-educated person mistakenly interchange "there" and "their" (or especially "they're") I won't be responsible for my actions.
And as long as we're discussing things that bother me, nothing brings on a neck-scrunching convulsion faster than an apostrophe unnecessarily parked at the end of an unsuspecting word: grape's, for example, or tomato's. Or a picture of said "tomato's" that says "A picture of the tomato's and I." It's me! Me. Me. Me.
The only problem with my revealing this grammar-related neurosis is that now you know how to torture me. Lock me in a room and make me listen to tapes of someone saying, "Her and me ec-scaped" or "I could care less" and it will be five seconds, tops, before I'm curled up in the fetal position whimpering about the proper usage of "it's" versus "its".
Yeah, I'm asking for it. I fully expect a slew of comments pointing out my sentence fragments and misplaced quotation marks. And the fact that I just started this sentence with "and".
I never said my neurosis was hypocrisy-free.
Maybe it's a side-effect of being surrounded by a CUL8R text generation whose most formal method of communication is email, but regardless (not to be confused with "irregardless"), if I see one more college-educated person mistakenly interchange "there" and "their" (or especially "they're") I won't be responsible for my actions.
And as long as we're discussing things that bother me, nothing brings on a neck-scrunching convulsion faster than an apostrophe unnecessarily parked at the end of an unsuspecting word: grape's, for example, or tomato's. Or a picture of said "tomato's" that says "A picture of the tomato's and I." It's me! Me. Me. Me.
The only problem with my revealing this grammar-related neurosis is that now you know how to torture me. Lock me in a room and make me listen to tapes of someone saying, "Her and me ec-scaped" or "I could care less" and it will be five seconds, tops, before I'm curled up in the fetal position whimpering about the proper usage of "it's" versus "its".
Yeah, I'm asking for it. I fully expect a slew of comments pointing out my sentence fragments and misplaced quotation marks. And the fact that I just started this sentence with "and".
I never said my neurosis was hypocrisy-free.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Curious About George
Today I was having a problem with my cell phone that sent me running to google in search of a solution. Since I was in a question-asking sort of mood, instead of searching key-word style, I phrased a full question for the google gods to answer. As soon as I typed "Why does my...?" a whole list of suggested searches popped up:
Why does my eye twitch?
Why does my cat lick me?
Why does my dog eat grass?
Why does my stomach hurt?
Why does my dog eat poop?
Why does my cat bite me?
Why does my dog stare at me?
Why does my back hurt?
Why does my dog eat dirt?
Apparently there a lot of people out there who are full of questions about their furry friends. My favorite? "Why does my dog stare at me?"
I have a sudden urge to crack open my Far Side collection...
Why does my eye twitch?
Why does my cat lick me?
Why does my dog eat grass?
Why does my stomach hurt?
Why does my dog eat poop?
Why does my cat bite me?
Why does my dog stare at me?
Why does my back hurt?
Why does my dog eat dirt?
Apparently there a lot of people out there who are full of questions about their furry friends. My favorite? "Why does my dog stare at me?"
I have a sudden urge to crack open my Far Side collection...
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
By the Numbers
Number of children living in my house: 3
Number of children with colds: 2
Number of children who have teeth coming in: 2
Number of teeth trying to come in at once: 7
Number of times I was up with a baby last night: 7
Number of suspected ear infections: 1
Number of days the house has been on the market: 19
In one week:
Number of showings: 7
Number of times I was given 15 minutes of warning that someone was coming to see the house: 2
Number of times I vacuumed the entire house: 6
Number of times I cleaned the bathroom mirrors: 14
Number of times I windexed my kitchen sink: 5
Number of times I wished I could take a nap: 97
Number of times I actually got to take a nap: 3
Number of times I got to take a nap longer than 15 minutes: 1
Number of times I ate candy as part of a "balanced" breakfast: 4
Number of times I regretted it: 0
Number of times I let Michael play Super Mario on the wii: I plead the fifth
Number of times I told Michael to stop crying: 17
Number of times he was crying because he stuck a piece of apple up his nose: 1
Number of times I laughed because he stuck a piece of apple up his nose: 3; ha ha, make that 4
Number of times Michael helped me clean up without complaining: 15
Number of times I felt grateful for him: at least 37
Number of reasons I hate moving: 722,496
Number of reasons I hate trying to sell my house: 369,900
Number of times a day, on average, that Michael says, "Mom, we don't say hate!": 2
Number of times I've been interrupted while writing this blog: 16
Number of children with colds: 2
Number of children who have teeth coming in: 2
Number of teeth trying to come in at once: 7
Number of times I was up with a baby last night: 7
Number of suspected ear infections: 1
Number of days the house has been on the market: 19
In one week:
Number of showings: 7
Number of times I was given 15 minutes of warning that someone was coming to see the house: 2
Number of times I vacuumed the entire house: 6
Number of times I cleaned the bathroom mirrors: 14
Number of times I windexed my kitchen sink: 5
Number of times I wished I could take a nap: 97
Number of times I actually got to take a nap: 3
Number of times I got to take a nap longer than 15 minutes: 1
Number of times I ate candy as part of a "balanced" breakfast: 4
Number of times I regretted it: 0
Number of times I let Michael play Super Mario on the wii: I plead the fifth
Number of times I told Michael to stop crying: 17
Number of times he was crying because he stuck a piece of apple up his nose: 1
Number of times I laughed because he stuck a piece of apple up his nose: 3; ha ha, make that 4
Number of times Michael helped me clean up without complaining: 15
Number of times I felt grateful for him: at least 37
Number of reasons I hate moving: 722,496
Number of reasons I hate trying to sell my house: 369,900
Number of times a day, on average, that Michael says, "Mom, we don't say hate!": 2
Number of times I've been interrupted while writing this blog: 16
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Oral B: Formula 666
The following substances are of the devil:
Glitter
Easter grass
Christmas tree icicles
Styrofoam
Foam peanuts
Suckers (and any other candy that is meant to be licked)
Peanut butter
This list has remained fairly stable for the past ten years, but I have a new item I would like to add:
Toothpaste
Yes, toothpaste. I know toothpaste is technically a good thing. (Imagine how much faster my teeth would fall out of my mouth if I didn't have a little Colgate to polish my pearly whites! With my genes and no toothpaste I think I'd be needing dentures by about next Wednesday). But, I swear Michael could not get any more toothpaste smeared around the bathroom if he filled an aerosol can with the stuff and sprayed it over every smooth surface.
With that and, um, other substances one finds in random places in a little boy's bathroom, I've been cleaning the bathrooms three or four times a day. I'm about to start wearing a bottle of Lysol and a roll of paper towels as wardrobe accessories.
Why the sudden obsessive need for cleanliness, you ask? Well, I figure pink toothpaste smeared into the sink and yellow highlights on the already-ugly vinyl flooring around the toilet are not the most effective ways to say, "Buy me."
Yes, our house is for sale.
I have not even begun to come to terms with it yet. Mostly I'm wandering around in a dazed sort of way mumbling something about losing Wegmans and never having toured the White House. You see, at least once a day I miss something about living in New York City and I only lived there for a year. So I can't even imagine how much I'm going to miss Virginia, where I've lived for almost one-quarter of my life.
Sigh.
But, new adventure awaits in Salt Lake City. Sure, we won't have Smithsonians in our backyard, but then, we might actually have a backyard! And my husband might be able to come home for dinner more than twice a year!
That settles it. Westward, ho!
Glitter
Easter grass
Christmas tree icicles
Styrofoam
Foam peanuts
Suckers (and any other candy that is meant to be licked)
Peanut butter
This list has remained fairly stable for the past ten years, but I have a new item I would like to add:
Toothpaste
Yes, toothpaste. I know toothpaste is technically a good thing. (Imagine how much faster my teeth would fall out of my mouth if I didn't have a little Colgate to polish my pearly whites! With my genes and no toothpaste I think I'd be needing dentures by about next Wednesday). But, I swear Michael could not get any more toothpaste smeared around the bathroom if he filled an aerosol can with the stuff and sprayed it over every smooth surface.
With that and, um, other substances one finds in random places in a little boy's bathroom, I've been cleaning the bathrooms three or four times a day. I'm about to start wearing a bottle of Lysol and a roll of paper towels as wardrobe accessories.
Why the sudden obsessive need for cleanliness, you ask? Well, I figure pink toothpaste smeared into the sink and yellow highlights on the already-ugly vinyl flooring around the toilet are not the most effective ways to say, "Buy me."
Yes, our house is for sale.
I have not even begun to come to terms with it yet. Mostly I'm wandering around in a dazed sort of way mumbling something about losing Wegmans and never having toured the White House. You see, at least once a day I miss something about living in New York City and I only lived there for a year. So I can't even imagine how much I'm going to miss Virginia, where I've lived for almost one-quarter of my life.
Sigh.
But, new adventure awaits in Salt Lake City. Sure, we won't have Smithsonians in our backyard, but then, we might actually have a backyard! And my husband might be able to come home for dinner more than twice a year!
That settles it. Westward, ho!
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