Archive for December, 2009
Snow and Tell
When it comes to fun, there’s nothing like being tangled up in skies, upside down, toppled over, face-first, fanny skyward, twisted up together with all your kids in a gigantic jumble of frozen tundra. This is really livin’.
“I’ll show you how this is done,” you can mutter into the avalanche. “Nothing to it, but to slip your ski up and over and then under and out, then sideways and longways, zappo, zingo. You”re back on your nose.” Easy as pie. (Suddenly, that makes a lot of sense as I NEVER, EVER have been able to make a decent pie.)
Today, we are off into the white unknown. After staying up late last night to prepare, trying on warm clothes, practicing our racing slaloms on the edge of the bathtub (that’s the only way we can see really good in a mirror) we are ready to hit the slopes.
A fabulous way to ring out the old year, if I do say so myself. I just wish we weren’t taking the dogs…
I will report back today, so long as we get out of the E.R. before nightfall.
How to shatter your nebula in one easy step
Leave it to me to figure out how to sprain my kidney and shatter my nebula all in the name of thrifty household repair.
It all started when I put a load of sheets in the dryer… Two minutes into their cycle, I heard a buzz. “They can’t be ready yet,” I said to the disposal.
“Buzz,” said the dryer again. “Well, I guess they are ready,” I whistled to the sponge.
But, nope. I was wrong. The dryer just kept on buzzing…and the sheets were still wet as could be. I did a lot of “harumphing,” banging, clanging, climbing around. I unfastened the dryer vent that goes outside, peeked in there for good measure. (Nothing visible because it’s very dark in that long, winding thing.) Turns out it was a mistake to look inside that long thing. Never ever do that.
To peek inside there, I had to climb on the dryer and somehow my left slipper was stuck on the dryer door and my right slipper was stuck on the window sill… This is a bad thing, especially when the dryer door flings open. Thank God I had a hip bone to cushion my fall. Only now my whole left side is numb, black, blue and purple. There goes my centerfold modeling contract with National Geographic.
I decided that 5 days before Christmas is a terrible time to buy a new dryer so I kept at my fix-it plan despite having the wind knocked out of my epidermis. I realized that the dryer knob felt funny so I took it off and got a wrench-like device and turned the little knob under the knob. Voila! This fixed my dryer.
At least I will have dry sheets to line my coffin.
I suggest calling a dryer repair man if you hear a buzzing coming from your dryer.
The Best Place in the World for Breakfast!
If you want to have the best morning of your life, one where you roll back to a time before you were ever born…one where you feel yourself slipping inside an old movie or becoming part of a Norman Rockwell painting, head out to the lazy town of Wilton and mix it up with the locals at Bert’s Diner.
This throwback diner is everything you ever dreamed a diner should be. From the gleaming rounded stainless ceiling, the red leather booths, the black and white checked floors and glass block windows to the gigantic drippy cinnamon rolls, frisbee-sized pancakes and piping hot cocoa - Bert’s is a diamond in the rough and ready world of rural small town America. But guess what? It’s only a 20 minute drive from Sacramento at Grant Line and Wilton Roads.
Yes, the round soda fountain counter chairs spin. As do the tales from the locals who holler out jokes to each other as if they were on a sit-com set of Cheers.
One of the best parts about this place is Andy Burcher, a 40-something waiter who has worked at Bert’s for the better part of 3 decades. While Bert’s is his real love, Andy moonlights in a “real” career in the business world but can’t stay away from the good vibes at Bert’s. Hard to imagine what it would be like without him bouncing through the place, taking orders, sidling up beside old pals. Andy, it seems, knows everybody and everybody knows him. His easy way makes us feel “way” at ease. (Someone should make a sitcom out of this guy!)
“Hey kids,” he says to a couple of old folks. “Don’t tell me the number of the order, I can’t count.”
“What’ll it be? Bourbon, coffee or beer?”
“You’re easy to cook for, that’s what I like about you, Millie,” he says to someone else.
Laughter flows like the coffee….filling up your cup when you’re not even looking.
Bert’s is owned by Mark Seib who bought the diner 20-plus years ago when it had a loyal following of regulars. Mark didn’t have the heart to change the name from Bert’s. So Bert’s it is.
How can you walk away from Bert’s without a smile on your face? Especially if you skip jogging and have a pancake instead!
All Tied Up In Knots
Help Before I Strangle Myself!
So what’s a mom to do when she has no idea how to tie a tie and the little boys have to be all dressed up for the Christmas pageant??
I could attempt to tie those ties myself. But my efforts, I’m afraid, could lead to a little strangulation. (my own) Or ooooops, I could slip on my knot, and wind up face-first on the guinea pig. I have tried tying ties many, many times. (At least twice.) And each time I end up so frustrated I find myself cutting the tie into little strips and duct taping it together to make a little knot. Then I super-glue the whole get-up it to my boys’ throats. The kids hate the glue gun part of my tie-tying travails. And they especially dislike it when I sit back and celebrate my job by chomping down on a mouthful of jelly beans, pointing at them, laughing my head off while their faces turn redder, and redder. “You aren’t choking are you, Guys?” (This is one of the only ways I get to eat their jelly beans because they are simply unable to eat when they are choking.)
But this year, I got smart. Really smart. Besides, we were out of jelly beans.
I donned my Superman suit, lassoed the boys using their new ties, flung them to the couch, and popped open my trusty laptop to YouTube! Hooray, I knew YouTube could be helpful in a wholesome way one day or another!
In a few seconds of searching, YouTube found a push-button video tutorial on how to tie those ties! It helps when you have a 9-year-old who idolizes the 14-year-old and will perch right next to him, emulating his every move. In about 2 minutes, the boys were all tied up and ready to go. Voila!
How To Tie a Tie
Tiger Woods is Making Me Skinny!
Tiger Woods is making me skinny!
True enough. Let me know if this is happening to you. Here’s the reason he’s affecting my average weekly weight gain.
Before Tiger I was never so bad at baking cookies. I swear! But something about society today has really changed the world inside my kitchen. It’s not my fault at all that I have burned another tray of what-would-have-been-perfect peanut butter cookies. I am not, not, not responsible for this latest disaster. But I’ll tell you two people who are:
Bill Gates AND Tiger Woods. First of all, without today’s high tech world and Bill Gates, I would not have such instantaneous access to info about Tiger Woods. Do you guys have any idea what you are doing to ladies’ kitchens all over the world? We’re talking smoking towels, burnt rice, smoldering cookies, scorched noodles?
If it weren’t for Tiger Woods and today’s snazzy technology, I would not think I could read stories, write stories and bake cookies at roughly the same time. I would not have put in a wireless hub, bought a wireless laptop and then set up my office right up near the cookie dough. If it weren’t for instant news online about everybody’s everything, (Tiger!) I would be more interested in thinking about stuff like butter and baking soda. If it weren’t for the beeping email forwarding me the latest joke (Bill Gates!), I might have remembered to set some kind of alarm to tell me when to check the cookies. If there were no entertaining blogs that could sweep me away from my apron and my beaters, I might be paying closer attention to the potholder.
What I need is an App that will take the cookies out of the oven for me while I wile away my time in the world of instant information addiction.
Maybe Tiger Woods can hook up with someone on that…
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