And the firefighters. I’m an EMT with a volunteer company and sometimes I get to ride along on calls like this. They put out the fire, and then sometimes - depending on what you were burning and where - you might get fined. Then when we go back to the firehouse, we laugh about it. “Damned numbnuts was burning brush and set the whole damned yard on fire.”
Oh - and I’m taking Firefighter I this fall. I must be insane.
swampy, I hope your teeth are feeling better. My visit with the orthodontist was painful. I got new wires all around and my teethies are very sore. I need a liquid diet today and tomorrow. I’m thinking about washing some Advil down with beer for lunch.
The good news is I should get the braces off by December. Yay!
Yeah, I assume that when I show up at the firehouse tonight to join the department, I’m gonna catch all kinds of hell. What VWife dished out on me yesterday will pale in comparison…
Tomorrow is going to be my real baking day. We’re out of bread. Well, almost out. Crap! Tomorrow is Dad’s birthday party! Must buy him a present! I wonder if the Japanese restaurant we go to does gift certificates? Ooh, and maybe a sketchbook from the art store.
Someone at the coffeeshop next to work commented that my watch was really tough-looking for me. I must not have been wearing enough black and chains. I will rectify that. My watch is a white and silver face mounted on a wide black leather wristband. Driving Husband and Quasi-Daughter got it for me… last year? Can’t remember. Anyway, it’s cute.
I have to go to the dentist soon. I think I have a cavity. The solution to this is to make more desserts.
Bobbio you are a brave man to show up to volunteer after almost burning down Mayberry. Maybe Maddy the Vunderdog can be the mascot.
Biblio my teethies are fine thanks. The gums always feel a little sore after a cleaning but that did not stop me from chowin’ down on some leftover ribs and N.O.T. salad for lunch. I think beer and Advil [sup]TM[/sup] would make a fine liquid lunch. I never had braces cause I didn’t need 'em. I’m glad too let me tells ya!
Mika I say go retro. 70’s all the way. Lime green shag carpets. Avocado green appliances with poppyseed red countertops. Mirrored tiles. Naugahyde living room furniture. Polyester drapes! I suggest watching the entire Brady Bunch series for decorating ideas. That Carol Brady was queen of 70’s decor.
I know somebody whose name is spelled Naan. Whenever I read that LiLi is baking Naan I go :eek:
You might want to leave your Adventures in Arson off your application.
Good luck with joining - so you want to be a firefighter?
I was talked into taking Firefighter 1 this fall. I thought I was done after EMT, but somehow I was talked into the Fire 1 class. I have a feeling it will be me (41-year-old woman) and a bunch of 18-year-old guys. Which could be fun… or really intimidating. We’ll see.
I fourth a love for tradtional hymns and good organ music. Contemporary Christian music is an oxymoron–at least for church singin’. Just sayin’. #1 son threw up at practice and I cried OR how to have an emotionally exhausting Monday without working at it.
See, I go pick him up (cuts are made in the afternoon round) and he says that soccer sucks. They made him run. A lot. Hard. Repeatedly. He threw up (no breakfast; refused to eat). Fuck soccer. He likes to play soccer, but not train for soccer. So what if some of his friends are in it. They made him run. They made him sprint. The coaches were nice, but they made him run. I listened until we got to the car.
And then I lost it. I meant to stay all calm and nurse-y and reasonable, but I lost it. I started to cry. I didn’t yell at him. I told him how worried I was about him. How he sits in this womb in the basement and does WoW constantly (or so it seems). How I don’t need him to be busy like his sister, but that there needs to be balance. How I miss my fun and funny, intelligent, sweet boy. How now all he does is grunt at me and sigh when I ask him to do anything. I hate this (not him, never him). I apologized for crying and then told him that if he hates soccer this much at the end of the season as he does now, then he can quit it, but that he needs to do this–not just for HS, but for life skills later on. And then I shut up and we drove home.
Comments?
Yeah, seriously, I want to join the department. It’s been something I wanted to do since we decided to put an offer in on the house in Mayberry.
As far as the arson thing goes, it won’t matter. Half the department showed up yesterday, plus the sheriff and the local ranger, so they know who I am and that I want to join.
If I’m lucky, they’ll consider me as someone who needs to go :smack: a few times, instead of being an out-and-out dumbass. Besides, I never did call them back for any of the hotspots and flareups that I took care of myself over the afternoon. I should get a little credit for that…
I have a feeling Biblio would keep any extras in case she feels like a snack later.
Rigs IANAP (I Am Not A Parent) but I don’t think you did a bad thing. Maybe playing a season will be the thing that makes him decide he really likes soccer. Practice and conditioning is never fun. The playing is the fun thing. Maybe when he starts playing he’ll realize the practice and conditioning is worth it because it helps with the playing. Don’t beat yourself up over this, 'k?
Okay - I’m back at home now, so in proper honour of my earlier first MMP post, I have made Chocolate Silk Pie!
I hope this will satisfy the “when come back, bring pie” brigade, as well as FCM’s alleged chocolate cravings!
Also hoping this will get me out of any goat-involved initiations!
Lovely story, kai. I’ve been on commercial whale watches twice, and while we did see humpback whales, the boat was too large to get the up close and personal experience you did. Was Mr. Workaholic envious that he missed it all?
I spent the weekend house hunting. It’s my first official week, and I’ve already seen about 18 houses (with a few more we just skipped because they had the same layouts as ones already seen). I’m tired of my lengthy commute, and I’m tired of paying rent, and I want to be enough closer to where most of my job leads are coming from that I don’t automatically discount a lead because of the driving distance. I’ve seen two very strong contenders already.
The minuses are that they are pretty expensive, they’re town houses instead of single detached, and they’re in a planned community, which means a Home Owners Association with all the attendant shit.
The pluses are they appear to be well built, they’re huge, they’ve got sprinkler and security systems, the garage is part of the building so it’s accessible from the inside (yeah! no more clearing snow off the car), and the association is responsible for snow removal and such like.
And there’ll be more to see, soon. On the one hand, kinda excited about having a home that’s mine again and looking at homes can be fun. On the other hand, hate, Hate, HATE all the hoops that must be hopped through to find, finance, buy, and move in, plus all the compromises that have to be made because I am not independently wealthy. Or even dependently wealthy.
kai, you win major major points for that MMP. Great stuff!
So good of you to notice I was gone all weekend. I feel so loved. Anyway, I totally forgot to tell all of you: I managed to go see my relatives in Jacksonville after all. See, I had a two-part flight anway. Panama City to Atlanta and then Atlanta to Newark, on Sunday night. My dad changed it so I left from Jacksonville instead. I took a bus over on Friday after the last set of presentations and spent the weekend with them. It was great to see them again. Their kids are adorable: one 7 year old and two 4 year old twins. SO CUTE.
They’re observant Jews, so it was a chance for me to get back to my upbringing, as it were. Especially since it was the Sabbath, so no TV and no computer. The whole idea behind Shabbat is that it’s a day of rest and reflection. I think I managed to fulfill that. Sunday we went to the Jacksonville Zoo and saw bonobo monkeys for a little while before I had to go. That was fun.
I watched Airplane! on the airplane from Atlanta to Newark. Very existential, and very hilarious.
Pun time! Last Friday was the tail end of the boat puns. Now it’s time to bark up a new tree with dog puns!
rigs: hugs Sorry about the thing with your son. Hopefully this will help him learn. I think you did the right thing too. Better you speak up than let it get worse.
I don’t feel at all bad about making him do it. I feel bad about the crying–I probably embarassed the hell outta him. And maybe me a bit, too.
He doesn’t take much initiative-never has. But the world has been easy for him. He is in the gifted program–not even trying. He is tall, slim and attractive and girls call him. He has friends. It’s just that he is not living in a real enough world–I’m probably not making enough sense here. He needs to know what it is to struggle–not out of sadism, but so that he knows that perserverance and trying do make a difference. He hasn’t had to try, yet. He hasn’t wanted anything so badly that he’ll do about anything to get it.
That’s fine for almost 15, but speaking as one who also didn’t have to try real hard (except in math and I gave up on that early on), I had my awakening freshman year, first semester. I was failing 3 classes and had a D in the 4th. I woke up quickly and started working, hard. Made Dean’s List, twice.
Better he should get this lesson now, IMO. That’s all.
Just for argument sake, Biblio, let’s define “extras” as any that have been layin’ around long enough to need dusting. I think it’d be fair to send any dusty 18 yr. olds to Drae, don’t you?
Rigs I never had to try real hard in school myself. I had a tougher time with calc and trig and the like but even then I could make a B without breakin’ a sweat so I never tried to do enough to make A’s there. Besides, I really thought (and still do) they were useless to me. Not puttin’ down any of you calc and trig afficianados, ok? Anyway, it would probably have done me good to have had someone to push me to work a little harder, so I still think ya done good. The crying part was just the mama in you who hates seeing her little boy all upset, that’s all.
Spats, ok, I liked that pun. Plus, I’m glad you got to go visit with the Jax kinfolk. A little gettin’ back to the roots can be a good thing.
OOH! Y’all remember a little while back me telling about seeing lizards gettin’ busy on my back porch? Well, I have at least three little bitty baby lizards scurrying around back there now. That is just so jake! Not as jake as whale spotting, but still jake.
Terriffic MMP Kai. Whales are so cool! [sub]People who want to kill whales are so uncool![/sub]
I used to have a long tape from* ‘Songs of the Humpbacked Whales’* that I would put on continuous play on my reel-to-reel on Halloween night. I had to quit doing that though, ‘cause nobody was coming to the door. I wonder why.
I agree with you about the church music Lissla, I am in no way religious, but I used to go to Christmas mass with some Catholic friends just to hear the music. I even knew a couple of songs in Latin. Sadly, no more. The GirlChild[sup]TM[/sup], and her family, who live about a mile away, occasionally get us to go to their Lutheran church for some thing or other, (usually to watch #3Granddaughter perform something), but they sing these really insipid songs. Quite often to the tune of some popular ditty. Christians are great for ‘borrowing’ stuff from others. They don’t even sing the good old fashioned hymns we used to belt out as children. le sigh
Speaking of granchillin, #1Grandson has a baseball tournament up this way this week and the whole family is coming up to stay with us. For those of you who aren’t keeping score, I’m speaking of The BoyChild[sup]TM[/sup] and family, who live about 100 miles south of us. They’ll be here tonight through Friday night. Hopefully they will remember that Grammy and Papa (that would be Wifey and me) never got any pictures from #1Granddaughter’s wedding. But I’m not holding my breath. :rolleyes:
We set our yard on fire once. Well, not ‘we’ so much as The GirlChild[sup]TM[/sup]. See, we had a terrible infestation of ground hornets. For the uninitiated, these are like bees that live in holes in the ground. We had thousands living in our front yard. We called a friend of ours who did pest abatement and he told us to wait until dark when the little buggers were in their holes and then pour a little gasoline in the holes and that would kill them. So that night Wifey and I went out with flashlights and old Tupperware containers with gas in them and poured gasoline down a couple thousand little holes in the ground. I was working the parking strip and Wifey was done when The GirlChild[sup]TM[/sup] came out of the house and said something like “what happens if we light them?”. Then I heard the sound of a match being struck, followed immediately by a gigantic Whoosh!!! I turned around and the entire west end of our front yard was on fire! I jumped in the truck and got it out of the driveway and away from the flames while Wifey got the hose going and everything was copasetic in a couple of minutes, and then the volunteer fire fighters showed up. In everything they had! (The fire station is 3 blocks from our house.) The yard was fine, and I meant to get rid of that juniper hedge anyway. Junipers burn really well, BTW.
Oddly enough, The GirlChild[sup]TM[/sup] and her Hubby joined the fire dept shortly thereafter.
Well, today’s my day off. I’m considering how to [del]waste[/del] best allocate my time. I want to clear the brush from around the little shed and get a look at the fench behind there that probably needs replaced. I also wanted to crawl under the house and see if I can get to the Northeast corner of the foundation, where I suspect dryrot. And then there’s that extra hard drive sitting in a box in the computer room. And the security camera for the shop. Hmmm…. is it time for lunch yet?
rigs, don’t sweat the cryin’ stuff. Boy needs to know that his actions affect those around him as well as himself. They don’t KNOW this automatically at 15. So, him seeing that he upset his mom to the point of tears will have an effect…even if he doesn’t admit it till he’s in his 30s.
Ummm…That would be fence not fench. :smack: I’m right out of fenchs, also finches, the little ingrates. I put up a feeder for 'em and everything, but they never come around anymore. They never call, never write. Ingrates!
Maybe Maddy the Vunderdog can be the mascot.
