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June 30 Movie PreviewsThis weekend we watched Wall-E. We sat thru lots and LOTS of previews. Ben quickly got the hang of previews.
Space Chimps, coming out this summer.
BEN: I don't want to see that.
Beverly Hills Chihuahua (I swear I am not making that up), coming this fall.
BEN: I want to see that. The dogs are singing!
Some other movie, coming this fall.
BEN: I don't think I want to see that one.
Some other movie (there were a lot of previews), coming this Christmas.
BEN: I DON'T want to see that one!! I don't want to miss Christmas!! June 29 Morality thru Star WarsBEN: Whenever anyone says they're going to tell one me, I just say, "It's not me!" MAMA: Um, OK. But if you DID do something wrong that someone wanted to tell about, you shouldn't like, you should just say you're sorry. BEN: Yeah, but I just say I didn't do it! MAMA: OK, but if you DID do it and you say you didn't, then it's a lie. BEN: Well if I did it then I say sorry and sometimes I have to say it two or three times. MAMA: OK, well sometimes you have to say sorry a few times because the other kid didn't hear it or you didn't say it nicely enough. But back to the lie thing. [and here is where Mama made a calculated attempt to manipulate her son and may have made a tactical error...] When you lie, you're on the path to the Dark Side. BEN: But, but, but... if I say like 10 lies I'll be on the Dark Side? If I tell 20 lies, I'll be on the Dark Side? MAMA: Um... [crap, crap, crap] I don't know how many lies, but you shouldn't say ANY lies. If you say even one lie you're on the path to the Dark Side. So you shouldn't ever lie, OK? BEN: OK. But I've only ever told one lie. I've only ever told one lie, that's all! MAMA: It's OK, Ben! [yes, now Mama is back-pedaling from the fear of the Dark Side she has implanted deeply into Ben's psyche...] It's OK. Just, uh, don't tell any more lies and you'll be OK. June 10 Six Blue RingsWe have quite the Nerf arsenal around the house now. We have one large sniper rifle, one semi-automatic 6-shooter, 2 single-shot pistols, and I think one more. We also have several different kinds of darts: orange with blue sticky suction cup tops; black darts with blue sticky suction cup tops; slim-line orange darts with orange rubber tips; and slim-line black darts with orange tips that have teeny holes cut into them so the dart whistles like a bottle rocket when it zooms past your left ear.
This seems to happen quite a lot around our house. The shooters range from Steve to Ben to any number of Ben's friends.
With this many guns around, you'd think ammo would be equally available. Well, the fine makers of Nerf have designed their weaponry such that the darts are not all interchangeable. The Longshot sniper rifle will only work with the Longshot slim-line orange darts with the orange rubber tip. The 6-shooter semi-automatic will only shoot the orange darts with the blue sticky suction cup tips. Only one gut will shoot the bottle-rocket darts.
And the darts are not easy to find. The Longshot dart refill packs regularly sell out at the Hasbro site where they are cheap. (Read $5 instead of $15 on Amazon.)
So, we often find ourselves on a big ole dart hunt pushing up cushions, tossing aside blankets, digging under the couch, to find darts.
And, when darts break, as the sometimes do, we set them aside on the offchance I'll go pick up my glue gun and hot glue the tips back to the styrofoam darts.
We have a collection of 6 blue sticky suction cup tops on the wide white wood bannister surrounding our stairs. At some point, someone stuck them all to the wood in a rather creative pattern forming a very nice hexagon.
And there they stayed.
I don't know for how long.
But now, that we've finally moved the blue sticky suction cup tops to the basement where my glue gun is, we are left with a wonderul reminder of their previous position.
Six blue rings.
The blue from the darts bled onto the white wood of our bannister and left six blue rings. Very evenly spaced rings with uniform thicknesses. Quite the work of art, really.
Except that I CAN'T GET RID OF THEM!!
Tried Simple Green. Tried Windex. These were the two closest all-purpose cleaners I had. Neither worked. Tried spit, even. No luck.
So, now, everytime I walk upstairs I see them.
Six blue rings.
Quite a vivid color. Lovely really.
If they weren't on my bannister. June 05 All I wanted was a puffer-fish cake...Sometimes life doesn't go according to plan. Tuesday, June 3rd. Steve's Birthday. Planned Agenda
Actual Progression of Events
Simple plans just never seem to stay simple. Sigh... By the way, this is what my cake was supposed to look like:
and this is what it ended up looking like: June 01 Ah, the sweet smell of spring...Soil. Rusty shovels. Disintegrating bulbs rotting in the ground. Plastic tubs.
But first, a word from the backseat:
Busy day today. We planted 6 pieris, 7 day lilies, 2 davidii, 1 fancy-schmancy plant, 3 azaleas, 2 ilex sky pencils, and about one thousand annuals for color. OK, maybe not 1000 but Auntie Karen got pretty excited about being able to come out and do real gardening rather than the weeding we usually stick her with when she visits.
Why so many plants? Because when we moved in here almost 4 years ago now the yard was so completely overgrown we ripped out almost everything in the front yard and either tossed it or moved it around to even out the spacing. Our yard has been nekkid for a very long time. We hired a very nice landscaper lady to provide us with THE PLAN. She offered to have her company come out and implement THE PLAN for the low, low cost of upwards of 20K.
We declined. Politely.
So, today, we took the time to plant three of the beds according to THE PLAN. Our neighbors seem quite pleased our yard is finally getting dressed. It's as if our yard has put on its pants finally.
Maybe next year it will put on its shirt too...
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