Treasures From My Yard.

I was sitting here thinking about how I’m so funny and all and I make my kid laugh when I tell her my funny funny jokes … See, here’s proof that I’m funny …

So anyway, as I was saying, I was sitting here thinking I should title this post, “Mary: Totally Hilarious,” when I suddenly started cracking up.  No, not because I’m drunk or totally hilarious (although I am, you know because I told you, plus Shelby was laughing at me in that picture) but because of my sister.  When she was in grade school, the school library had this program where the parents could buy a book for their kid’s birthday.  The kid would get his or her picture taken with the book and then the book would be donated to the library.  The school then hung the picture up with a caption that included the name of the child and the title of the book.  My parents bought a book in Lara’s name which just so happened to have a very unfortunate title.  The upshot is that, for years, the school had a picture of my sister holding a book with the caption, “Lara: Totally Disgusting.”  It’s probably been 15 years, but I still crack up every time I think of that.

Last night, as I was coming home from peeping in on my neighbors across the street (they had eggs and sausage for dinner), I spied a piece of blue paper in my yard.  Yard nut that I am, I went to pick it up and throw it away.  But I was intrigued by what it said, “Fly Shot!”

I don’t know.  Maybe the author of the note was leaving a message for her significant other.  (You can tell a girl wrote it by the way the exclamation point has a bubble under it.)  Like, “Baby, I shot the fly, it’s safe to come home now.”  Or maybe she was trying to remember the name of some fancy sports move and suddenly remembered it was called “fly shot” (even though the correct term, as we all know, is “pop shot up the line drive”) and wanted to remember it forever and so inscribed it on a blue sticky note.

At any rate, it’s pretty cool that it ended up in my yard.  Now the poor forgotten note will be treated kindly by history and made immortal in my funny funny blog.

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Why you should vote for me for President.

My opponent voted against giving cute puppy dogs to a good home.  He voted against letting underprivileged children get new text books and against allowing white children to go to public school.  He voted against ambulance rides for the elderly.  All this while simultaneously raising his own salary and murdering innocent hamsters for fun!  Not to mention that he worships Satan every Saturday night with his shack up gay illegal alien lover!
 
I’m Mary and this post was approved by me.

Okay, that was stupid.  I’m just so tired of the political ads.  Like anyone believes that the opponent is ever as horrible as they say.  There’s one woman running out here who casually throws into her commercial that she’s a breast cancer survivor.  I am very grateful that she survived that ordeal and I feel for her, I really do, but come on.  That’s got to be ridiculous even by politicians’ standards.

Anyway, on to more important things (like talking about me since this is my blog and all).

I’m sure you have heard Ron White’s “Tater Salad” segment.  You remember the part where they send over his criminal record and satellites are hooking up then he does the Morse code/shorthand thing?  Well, I experienced that first-hand the other day when I went to get different auto insurance.
 
I sat with my insurance lady and we discussed it, got a quote, and then ordered the insurance.  She asked me if I had anything on my record in the last 3 years.  I said I figured I had a couple speeding tickets but wasn’t quite sure.  You see, not only do I have no sense of time so that a ticket I got 4 years ago literally seems like 2 months ago, but I also plead down a lot so I don’t actually get convicted of all my speeding.  I can never remember which ones I pled out of.  I bet I could hire a computer guy to make me a spreadsheet, but it would be inhibitively complicated and expensive so I’ll just go with it.
 
At any rate, we ordered the insurance and she goes to print a copy out for my records.  The first page had the insurance summary and then all these other pages started printing.  It was my freaking driving record!  It was six pages long!  I was like, “What the hell?  I don’t think I’ve had THAT many in three years!”  Apparently, Missouri has changed the rules so the insurance companies no longer get your record for the last 3 years, they get your record from when you started driving!  Well, shoot.  Next time I change my auto insurance through this broker, I’ll probably have to donate a ream of paper to the cause.  There were 3 pages of “emission” citations alone!

The important thing is though, that our congressmen and women are too busy changing stupid insurance rules to worry about starving puppy dogs and keeping poor kids out of public schools.

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A Practical Guide to Sex in Marriage.

I know that all my readers hang on to my every word and remember everything I write.  Therefore, I know that every one of you all will remember about me helping my mother organize her office last summer.  I came across some very interesting books in that little closet of hers.  There were two that were printed in the 1930’s that I thought were very interesting.  The first was Sane Sex Life by Dr. H. W. Long, published in 1937, copyright 1919.  The other was A Marriage Manual: A Practical Guide-Book to Sex and Marriage by Drs. Hannah and Abraham Stone, published in 1939, copyright 1937.

Both of them were rather funny and insightful.  Funnily insightful, if you will.  I thought to myself, “Self, your faithful readers would love to see excerpts from these books.”  So I sat down to write the funniest post on 1930’s sex the world has ever seen.  That’s when I learned something about myself.  I am a prude.  A very serious prude.  I kept having visions of my dad reading this post and obviously I can’t write about sex if my parents are going to read it.  I’m just not that kind of girl.

Be ye not dismayed though, I am not too prudish to share the dedication from A Marriage Manual with you.  The good Drs. Stone dedicated the book to none other than their daughter!  I guess it is pretty ironic that the authors of the book can dedicate it to their daughter but I, as a daughter, am unable to blog about it on the likely chance my parents will see the post.  Go figure.

Here’s the cover:

And the dubious dedication:

 

I’m trying to think of an appropriate ending for this post.  “Happy Ending” just seems too obvious.

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I’m sorry I haven’t written anything in a few days.  I know how the world looks forward to the brightness I bring to the lives of everyone I touch with my blog.  But, you see, I have been very busy writing letters to Canada telling them that they suck.  (Is that a hate crime, by the way?  Do they have a first amendment in Canada?)  At any rate, I am very put out with Canada.  They finally produce one good thing called Corner Gas and then, just as I’m getting addicted to it, they snatch it away like crack from a street-walker.  It just isn’t right.

I’ve also been thinking about all the things I know.  To be honest, that didn’t take a full eleven days, but I did think during the eleven days I was gone.  One thing I know is that Canada isn’t the only thing that sucks.  Biting gnats suck.  They bite too.  Our neighborhood seems to have a gnat infestation; there are swarms of them.  If you don’t believe me, you should refer to my post with the spider web picture.  Anyway, the suckers, bite.  Does anyone know how to get rid of swarms of gnats?

Did you know that Scrapper’s Solution will take pine sap off a baby’s fingers?  I learned that a few months ago but forgot to pass that tidbit of information on.

I wanted to be like the cool bloggers and post pictures of my fall leaf projects, home made chili, apple picking jaunt, and the pumpkin patch.  But my leaves haven’t changed yet, my homemade chili picture just looked like a big red blob (although it did taste good), I didn’t make it apple picking, and my camera batteries died at the pumpkin patch.  I guess I’m not what you’d call a Jingo Blogger. 

I did catch a couple pictures of Shelby before the batteries died.  She picked out 2 miniature white pumpkins and we got her 2 pie pumpkins to carry around.  She does enjoy that.

 

My alert friend Karena sent me this sign she spotted somewhere in Louisiana.  I try not to make this blog political because everybody with a keyboard thinks they are a political analyst, but I’m tired of this spend, spend, spend the taxpayers’ money crap.  Now Bernanke is talking about another stimulus package.  I’m all for getting some of my money back, but they already spent my money on stupid crap.  So where is this money for the new stimulus package going to come from?  I’m sure they’ll just raise my taxes to pay for it.

I have to go scan some book pages into my computer so I can blog about something funny like you expect from me and so that one guy will keep praying for my soul.

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Vintage Thingie Thursday!

What’s that you say?  It’s not Thursday?  I know it’s not Thursday, you goof!  But, as you all well know, I am nothing if not an over-achiever!  Or a medium-achiever.  Okay, a so-so-achiever.  But, if I don’t post on Wednesday night, then I don’t get it up until Thursday night and that’s just not cool.  You need to see my vintage thingies for the full 24 hours. 

Plus, I turn vintage myself tomorrow and I’m afraid that I will suddenly forget how to do things that 20-somethings know how to do – like use my computer.

This week I decided to bring you my mom’s wedding dress.  Okay, not the actual dress so much as a picture of the dress.  I have a very good reason for not having the dress anymore as you will see in a moment.  At least you will if you stick around that long.  As a side note, my folks will have been married for 32 years in January!  I present to you, the dress in all it’s 1977 glory!  (Don’t worry, my dad no longer wears blue suits and ruffled blouses.  He does, however, still wear that same style cowboy boot!  When you think about it though, it’s kind of hilarious to see an infantry veteran in a ruffled blouse – I wonder if my kid will get such a kick out of her parents’ wedding attire …  )

I know that, by now, you are all wondering, “What’s the big mystery about the dress’s where-abouts?”  Well, you see, after giving birth to 3 daughters who were all well over 9 1/2 pounds (I, myself, was 10 pounds and 10 ounces), my mother gave up all hope of any of her offspring actually fitting into her itsy bitsy teeny weeny wedding dress.  We did something else special with it.  A lady at our church took my mom’s wedding dress, cut it up, and made my daughter’s Christening gown.  The seam in the skirt and the buttons are all from the original wedding dress.  Shelby was baptised last December.  I can’t believe how little she was!  Time flies by so fast.

This is just a picture of me to prove that I did, eventually, grow out of my Amazon Baby stage.  It was taken last month at my kid’s first birthday – before I turned vintage.  And, yes, I’m a Rhinestone Cowboy!  (Not really, but I know that’s what you’ll start singing when you see my shirt.)

Don’t my eyebrows look good?  My neighbor plucks them for me.

If you want to see more good stuffies, you really oughtta bop on over to http://www.anapronaday.blogspot.com.  Seriously.  You should do that.

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My Trip to Jail.

My husband, Meat Galore, has always firmly believed that every red-blooded American should be arrested and go to jail at least once in his or her life.  I totally disagree with him and always have.  To that end, I have never been arrested.  Until today.

It all started on a dark and rainy afternoon (today) when I went to Martin’s Milliner Mart to buy a hat hoping to keep the rain off my head.  It was a gorgeous hat.  A work of art.  I put that beautiful hat on my head and walked out of the Mart into a cloudy rainy day.

Suddenly, a timid person screamed and fainted and a rabid squirrel dashed across the parking lot.  There was a county sheriff a few feet away who pulled his firearm and said, “Freeze, woman in the hat!  Get your hands up!  Hands up!  Do it now or I’ll taze you!”  Not being one who is partial to being tazed, I did as he suggested.

As he handcuffed me and read me my rights, he told me that I was being arrested for, “…wearing a hat that might frighten timid persons, children, or animals,” which just so happens to be illegal in Missouri.  Well, isn’t that just my luck?  The first time in my life that I find a wonderful hat that doesn’t make me look like a dork and some timid person has to go screaming about it.  Blah blah blah.  The sheriff hauled me in to book me for this serious security breach.  I was a little disappointed in the jail.  I was hoping it would be all fancy with cable TV and LCD screens with 4 star catered meals like I keep hearing the other criminals get.  But, oh no!  Not poor ol’ Mary!  Here’s where I ended up …

The food was terrible.  You’d think that, with a jail like this, one could expect Aunt Bea to at least bring one some fried chicken.  All I got was cold Vienna Sausages and off-brand pickles.

Luckily for me though, the State of Missouri considers drunkenness to be an inalienable right; so after Meat Galore came to throw my bail, I went and exercised one or more of my inalienable rights as a Missouri citizen.

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Pinecone! How may I help you?

When I was a kid, our family took a yearly vacation to Estes Park, Colorado every June.  Those are some of my best memories.  Oh sure, it wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops.  There was the time my dad backed the car into a huge 10 foot diameter tree.  Or the time my youngest sister didn’t pack any shoes except snow boots that were too small because she couldn’t find her shoes before we left home so my mom hollered at her.  And who could forget all those picnics in the rain and subzero temperatures?  Okay, to be fair, none of those are bad memories.  They all make me smile and sometimes I even guffaw out loud (gol, if you will). 

One picnic in particular stands out.  We went on a hike as a family up to Gem Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park.  The plan was to eat lunch at the top.  When we got to Gem Lake, it was breathtakingly beautiful.  But man was it ever cold!  It seems like the wind was blowing 30 miles an hour.  Keep in mind, it was early June in the Rocky Mountains.  Not being one to deviate from the plan, my dad set up his camp stove and broke out the dehydrated backpacker’s rice (that stuff is actually pretty good).  We all stood around and shivered while Dad cooked it up.  Then we each found a crack in the surrounding rocks to break the wind and stood up to eat our rice.  After we snarfed down our food, we started the descent.  A hundred yards down the trail, the wind was blocked, the sun was shining, and it was a nice 75 degrees.  Good times.

These are the things we remember.  I could go on all night about my memories of Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park, but I won’t bore you.  Just suffice it to say that I hope my daughter has such great memories of our family vacations.

I have to leave you with one last story though.  My dad emailed me this picture of one of the cabins we stayed in at the YMCA out there.  The cabins all have mountain-y names, and this particular year we stayed in PInecone.  My youngest sister was a ham and every time the phone rang, she picked it up and said, “Pinecone!  How may I help you?”  For some reason that cracks me up to this day.

This post is a thank you to my parents for all those good times and warm memories.  Thank you, Mom and Dad.

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Vintage Thursdays – With A Little New!

Don’t you just adore my non-superfluous use of an exclamation point in my title?  Say yes!

I’m all about finding useful uses for my thrift store finds.  At least that’s what I tell Meat Galore when he asks me how much more crap I’m going to be bringing home.  I found these vintage records at our local thrift store (like it’s real hard to find records at thrift stores – ha!).  When I got home, I realized that I do not own a record player.  And I haven’t since about 1985.  Well, that left me in a bit of a pickle.  Turns out, you can make bowls with these things! 

It’s pretty easy, just put the record on an upside down bowl on a cookie sheet at 200 degrees for about 10 minutes.  Then take it out and shape – but hurry, you have less than a minute before it cools.  Don’t worry though, the records can be reheated (I won’t tell you how I know).

Just a note, in case you are not always real quick on the uptake like me, small records (are they called 45’s?) curl upward, while the regular size ones melt downward.  The little one is my favorite.  It makes a great catch-all for keys and such.  My apples look really cute in the big bowl.

 

 

Isn’t that the cutest tea towel you ever saw?  My mom made me a whole set.  Sunday through Saturday.  I know today is Thursday, but Thursday is in the wash, so I am using Tuesday.  Anyway, the tea towel isn’t vintage, but my mom was upset that I showed my baby blanket a couple weeks ago and didn’t provide any recent samples of her work that she says is better.  Anyway, I heart my little doggie tea towels.  Here’s a bigger picture.

Thanks for looking at my stuffies!  For more vintage thingies, go check out http://www.anapronaday.blogspot.com. 

 

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