Well, once again I’m a day late and a dollar short, but I’m going to talk about the OP. Seems like it’s all I ever do, just wander in and blab on about the OP, completely ignoring all the wonderful hijackidness that’s happening all around me.
Anyway, what is this “mattock” that Rue has in his garage? As I read it, I was filled with questions. Could this be a tool that I haven’t heard of? A mythical beast? A new name for one of the members of the Rue zoo? But I knew, deep inside, it had to be a tool I had never heard of. I could feel my manliness slipping away as I rushed over to Google to find this “mattock,” whatever it may be. Well, you know what? It’s what I have been calling a pick-ax all my life. Here’s a picture of one. They also come in pretty colors. Ok? Ok. Here’s some more. They were used in WWII as entrenching tools. Oh, and a late entry, the triple-tined mattock. Well, that was informative.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a garage. Pitty me and my apartment-living life. The End.
I’ve got pleny of nuthin’
And nuthin’s plenty for me.
Once again, Rue’s thread leads to a song being stuck in my head. Thanks, darlin.
While we’re on the subject, is this song from Porgy and Bess or maybe Showboat?
And this is not a hijack, because Rue did start his post with the line I quoted (I didn’t the “originally posted by” schtik 'cuz I figured everyone would be able to remember where it came from). Anyway, just because we seemed to have been fixated on garages and various tools does not mean that talking (writing?) about something from another part of the OP is a hijack. Not that I have anything against hijacks, especially in a Rue thread–because really, what is the point of a Rue thread if not to be hijacked? I do prefer hijacks that flow naturally from the OP, but that’s just me and we could start talking about whether a hippo or a rhino would make a better pet without dirupting the spirit of the Monday Morning Post. Of course, that would be a hijack, but so’s you uncle.
Garages and closets. Harumph! I don’t wanna talk about garages or closets. Except to say that I have a great big closet out in the driveway that looks like a garage, with a garage door looking door even. But it doesn’t open. Actually it does open but it doesn’t lock so I fixed it to not open and piled a bunch of stuff against it inside so that if anybody did get it open, it (the stuff) would fall on them .The door might fall on them too, I dunno.
(veering past the OP): I had nothing last night. We went to visit BumbaBaby last night. He was 4 days old. Today he’ll be 5 days old. He’s clever that way. He lives with his parents and big sister. They were there too. Anyway, after he was all changed and awake, I held him for a while and talked to him, doing that male-bonding stuff and all. But he kept trying to get me to feed him, and that’s when I told him; “I got nothing.” He was upset about that and then he tried to eat his hand. But pretty soon BumbaDaughter came in and she had the right stuff. She has an advantage in that.
I have a mattock in my shed. Out here they’re called hoedads. The end.
Sorry to hear about BettieRue. The ‘people I work for’ (hereinafter referred to as ‘the pinheads’) have Strider locked up in the hold of the heavy and assigned me a 50 year old DS-32. Something about the Bejeebers drive messing up their delicate instruments or something. At least I get to sleep aboard. Hi to Bettie.
Garages are for Oil Changes and to store one’s tools (including one’s collection of power saws, grinder, and lathe) in. NOT to park in. Thought everyone knew that.
And Rue, the word you were looking for (about reading books), since you say you read them Consecutively, was that you were NOT reading them Concurrently.
Just FYI.
Sorry I can’t help hijack this one - all DogDad and I did this weekend was some tie-dyeing.
Wait, wait. I evidently missed something last week.
What in heck happened to the Bettie? Geeze, she was such a sweet ride. All the vapor-heads drooled over that thing. My current flasher (yes, another one) got impounded by the Barneys on a backward little dirtwater called Sol III for some bizarre buerocratic reason. Otherwise, I’d jet out there and lend you a hand. Or a cyber-prosthetic pseudopod if I can get it fixed.
I gotta’ go, because lighting and tornados are supposed to be bad for electronic equipment.
Angel Pants, the pool didn’t really “eat itself.” That was just poetic license on my part. It actually just collapsed. A good descriptive term would be “spontaneous auto-deconstruction.” Another good term would be “rupture.” Try to picture a sheet metal analouge to a triple hernia. Not very interesting.
Big hugs to Ellen. We love you, sweetie.
I really gotta’ go now, guys. The lights are flickering.
I have a mattock, too. However it’s not in the garage because I haven’t got one of those. But that’s ok, really, because if I did have one my car would never get washed. Which it did today on account of a middling fierce storm which blew through here.
I had no pie either, boo hoo. I spent all weekend at work so I also didn’t have any fun.
I had today off and my brother cooked so I had a nice dinner of salmon, polenta, and spinach. And homemade ice cream for dessert. My mother also gave me a glass chicken, to replace the glass chicken that my black kitty broke last week whilst she was conducting aerial acrobatics in the kitchen. It’s not a solid glass chicken really, it’s a two part dish that looks like a hen sitting on a nest. There’s always tons of them at the flea markets. I think it was a law or something about fifty years ago that every household had to have a glass chicken. I use mine as a sugar bowl.
Oh, good luck there Ellen. (I am not now, nor have I ever been, cool. Not even in winter.)
And speaking of brothers…(up there somewhere, go look) I have four of them but I never can get them to do any yard work. They make me do all my own mowing, the meanies. I really should get to it, the grass, excuse me, weeds, are getting kind of thick out there. I’ll have to use my backup mower because my main mower is currently a dead lump sitting in the storage room at the back of my house.
The same storage room where my mattock resides actually.
The circle of my post is now complete. I thank you for your attention.
My glass chicken is a ceramic chicken pitcher that I got in Sicily. I’d given it to my mother, and she gave it back, eventually. The tail is the handle, and the contents flow out of the chicken’s mouth. I don’t use it as a pitcher - it’s just decoration. Even though it’s trimmed in blue and my kitchen is in greens. Not worth fretting over.
We don’t have a pool, but my mom does and she has to scoop frogs out of it every morning. She said this year, there’s a bumper crop of frogs. And rabbits. I think it’s because she no longer has cats. But I could be wrong. Yeah, like that could happen.
We had a ceramic blue chicken/nest combo. My mother made it in ceramics (shocking eh?) They kept junk in it like pins and half full match books and pennies.
Our house had a bunch of ducks because our last name means ‘he who lived near a lot of drakes’ or ‘hunter of drakes’ so people started giving us ducks as a joke. After the move the ducks stayed packed away in a box.
Today I will spend the day with my feet up high (as they are all swollen and sore - aah the glamor of pregnancy) and watch my shed construction begin! Oh to have a shed and be able to put the magic bus back in the garage before the snow flies!
Rue the cartoon that made you think of me was just special. Actually it is kinda like me floating around in the pool in my big ol’ floatie chair. Cept, I ain’t holding a glass. It’s a beer can! HAH! Actually I have a holder thingy on my big ol’ floatie chair so I can put my beer in that when I’m not drinking on it. Oh who am I kidding, like a beer in my hand would ever get put down.
Ex a big hunk of sheet metal with a hernia. Not a pretty picture. I had to have a beer after reading that so I could get it outta my head. NO, I did not drink a beer at 8:00 AM. I read yer post last night at 7:30 PM. I just didn’t respond til now, cause I remembered I had to go water (yet again!) my newly put down sod.
I don’t have a glass chicken. Well, not unless you count the deviled egg plate with the big chicken painted in the middle of it. Yep, tacky as all get out… really it is as hideous as it sounds… but I like it. I think a glass chicken pitcher like FCM has would be nice.
I have a mental picture of tanookie all stretched out on a chaise lounge ordering big, burly, hunky construction workers around while they build her new shed. It’s a good mental picture tanookie just lie back and go with it.
Oh, and I have two mattocks. I just didn’t know it til lightingtool educated me up on mattock being a pick ax. I just called 'em pick axes. Maybe I should give em separate names, just so they’d know which one I’m talking to. Err… that is if I ever actually talked to my tools. The mattocks reside in the storage shed with the lawn mowers, edger, weed whacker, and other assorted yard stuff and tools. There’s also an artificial Christmas tree that’s never been taken out of the box in there, but it’s not a tool or yard stuff. Just an artificial Christmas tree. Maybe I’ll put it up by the pool this year. Probably not tho. Well, maybe if I could find some pink flamingo Christmas lights for it. I worked pink flamingoes in a post. No MMP is complete without a pink flamingo or two right?
Oh, wait… I was going to tell Mama Tiger: The shelves I put in are at 29 inches. The ones that were already there at 66 inches. Since the boys still have short clothes since they’re just little yet and most of their clothes go in their chest of drawers anyway, we can hang whatever we need to on the original shelves and have the new, bonus shelf for extra closet loading.
Hey Lightingtool! That last one is just like mine! The choppy hoe part and then three prongs on the other end. Only mine has dirt and dried mud (which is “dirt”) on it here and there. And there’s a nick in the choppy hoe part. (I take good care of my tools, yessiree Bob!)
I also have a knock-off G.I. entrenching tool. (That would be Army “G.I.”, not tummy “GI”. If you need a tummy GI entrenching tool, you gots BIG troubles.) I take it camping. It’s good for around the fire since it has the shovel so you can move the flaming logs around (but if they aren’t flaming too much I just put on my lather gloves) and the shovel head can be twisted down to the hoe configuration, or you could bring the pick out and use it like a poker. It’s a marvel of modern technology, only the tech isn’t so modern.
Rhinos would make a better pet Kallessa. Hippos make better sammiches.
The Fibber McGhee Garage Safety No-one’s Gonna Break In Here strategy. Genius Bumba. (Too bad about your lack of working boobs though. I’m sure BumbaBaby will forgive you though. If you buy him cool stuff. Like a mattock.)
“Hoedads”. Sure. Now you’re just making things up. The end.
I have a bunch of cows in the kitchen tanook’. Not like a herd of cows, just a cow picture and some magnets and a cow cookie jar and stuff like that. (A cookie jar shaped like a cow, not a jar for cookies for cows.) No ducks though. But then I wouldn’t get ducks to play off my name. I’d get fish.
-Rue. (King of the Mattocks)
Eeek no cows! Every other female in my family has a kitchen filled with cows! I refuse to conform to the cow kitchen rule! (In retrospect my non conformity is a good thing because the munchkin runs away screaming at the sight of a cow)
In our old house we had a kitchen and a dining room so I had my blue hearts kitchen and my sunflower dining room. Here in the new place there is one really big room so things are a little confused. I got around it by painting the top of the wall yellow and the bottom of the wall blue and putting a plaid ‘border’ across the middle and decorating the whole room willy nilly with sunflowers and blue hearts.
Oh and thanks for the mental image swampbear, now I need to get a sitter for the munchkin and see if I can convince Parallax to play hunky construction worker with me
Ooo glass chickens are being discussed. I love the glass hen-on-a-nest chicken! I recently acquired one and love it in all its glorious semi-tackiness. It nests in my kitchen, very near my glow-in-the-dark Virgin Mary statue (those of you keeping up will remember her). I also have a ceramic wall clock featuring a large, handsome rooster. I’m not really ‘into’ poultry, per se, I just buy the cute stuff when I see it. Sometimes it’s chickens, sometimes it’s not. I’m pretty anti-duck, too, and moderately anti-cow, too, tanookie, though it makes me somewhat happy to open a drawer I lined with cow contact paper.
And can I just say you guys are the best? Your expressions of care and concern have left me feeling fuzzy all over!
That shelf height sounds great for the munchkins, Rue. You’re a good shelf-builder. Of course, give them a few years; you won’t be able to see the closet for the crap piled on the floor in front of it. But it takes a teenager to do that to a room, so you’ve got a few years to prepare your intestinal fortitude yet. And no, you don’t need a digestive GI trenching tool to prepare your intestinal fortitute, fortunately.
We don’t have a mattock, but we do have a ten-pound sledgehammer (never did know why Papa Tiger decided to buy that except it’s a Great Big Heavy Guy Thing[sup]TM[/sup] and he loves Great Big Heavy Guy Things[sup]TM[/sup]. Since about two days after he bought it, we’ve been using it as a doorstop for the back porch screen door so the dogs won’t go through the screen. Works great. Sits there on the dirt between the screen door and the brick entryway and holds that door open no matter what. It’s held it open through two tropical storms and a hurricane in the last year, and I figure if any storm comes along strong enough to blow away a ten-pound sledgehammer, I ain’t gonna be here to see it anyway.
But I think we need a mattock or three. I’ll have to buy him one for the next gift-giving occasion. Along with the next workbench. See, his work schedule just changed and now he works a week and then has a week off every other week. He had darned well better find some more projects to keep him busy, because I married him for better or worse, not for lunch!!
I have lather gloves, too, Wintermute. Aren’t they wonderful? I feel so…kinky standing there in the shower exfoliating away!
We have a nice, large 2 car garage. There’s room enough for 2 cars and lots of STUFF. There are two walls of shelves floor to ceiling, just full of tools and such. But my car lives in half the garage, the other half is occupied by a large Irish Setter (he stays in there while we are at work) which he shares with the Harley. Hubby’s SUV gets to stay outdoors. The big garage also is home to lots of P.A. equipment and road cases.
We do not have a mattock (but I think I’ll get one…looks handy), but we do have an axe (not a pick-axe, though).
I didn’t have pie this weekend, but we did make a fresh peach cobbler and ate it with vanilla bean ice cream…yuuuuuummmmm!
I have a glass chicken in my NO DUCKS kitchen (more on that in a moment). It’s just a tiny little one that holds toothpicks and sits on the window sill above the sink. I love my little chicken. Regarding the ducks (or better, lack of them)…I can’t stand ducky decor. Hubby used to bring home rolls of paper towels with ducks on them from the grocery store just to get my goat.
swampbear, I don’t have an artificial Christmas tree in my yard, but we do have an arborvidae (sp?) next to the mailbox that Hubby decorates like a Christmas tree every year, complete with a light-up star on the top.
