Flair While You Wait (because I wouldn't want you to be all bored or anything.)

For the last couple of weeks or so, I've been pretty much brain dead, moody, teary, or D) all of the above. And I have some pretty strong opinions about blogging while brain dead, moody, and/or teary.  I mean venting a little bit is fine, and we all do it,  but for weeks on end?  Ugh.  Spare me.

Spare all of us.  


So until I get my self back together - - or at least as together as I ever was - - here's a little something to do while you wait.

 Have fun, keep blogging, don't do anything super-exciting without me, and I'll see you soon.

Hello From Under The Bus!

So last night, as previously mentioned, we took the youth ice skating. Yes it was bitterly cold, and no I did not really take smoothies. I wasn't actually in charge of refreshments. It was a young men's activity - and they had invited the young women along because, well, everything's more fun with the young women, right?(I mean, if you're a young man?)

But I was in charge of driving my own vehicle, and I am (with lots of help) in charge of all the girls. Which is why I have a policy that everyone rides home in the same car that brought them. Every driver is responsible to check his or her car for the correct riders, and then you can safely assume that everyone got home, right? RIGHT?

It's a simple system, but apparently you have to have everyone on board for it to work.

I guess one driver didn't really understand the system, prompting a discussion back at the church 30 minutes later of "Hey, where's Genna?"

Which was immediately followed by me making a phone call to Genna's mom to see if Genna had made it home, which she had not. Apparently though, she HAD called her mom to tell her that I (me) had left her there after she told me she was going to the bathroom. And Genna's mom was anxious to tell me how she felt about her being left behind. And let's just say she wasn't happy. (and I guess I don't blame her...)

As I listened to the frustration in her mom's voice, part of me wanted to say Hey!

• I wasn't in charge,
• I wasn't the driver who left her,
• She never told me she was going to the bathroom,
  

and you know what else?

• 37 other kids made it back to the right car at the right time. It's not like she didn't get the same directions as everyone else.

But I decided that the mature thing to do was to just let her get it all out and to apologize profusely.

I used to think that maturity was sort of an outlook on life based on experience and compassion that you can bring to a situation.

The older I get, though, I realize that maturity mostly means that I'm just too tired to get all into it, and I don't want to keep talking about it.


Just throw me under the bus. I'm getting used to it down here.

HOA - This Time It's Personal

Well, this post about our HOA (home owner's association) will probably not be what you expect. Yes, we have problems with our neighborhood, but we're not being hounded by the HOA. We ARE the HOA.

The Brain has the dubious honor of being the current president of our subdivision, which when you think about it, is quite possibly the world's most thankless job. There's no pay, no prestige, and rarely does anyone even say "thank-you". Mostly people are just a little crazy about something, and they want The Brain to Do Something About It.

You may have already noticed at some point in your life, that there are people in the world who are off their rockers. They just don’t see the world the same way as everyone else. Apparently crazy attracts crazy, because they’ve all ended up here. With us. (Wait, what does that say about us?)

If you don't believe it, come to my house and listen to a week or so of the phone calls and emails we get from our neighbors, who, without exception, all seem to have been hit right between the eyes by the Crazy Fairy's magical Wand of Insanity.

All The Brain wants to do, really, is keep the neighborhood normal. That’s it.

Ya wouldn’t think it would be that difficult, would you?

But the challenge comes in where one person’s normal, is another person’s Vietnamese roosters being kept in their backyard for the big Autumn Celebration which is 3 weeks away.

Oh the phonecalls.

At least they didn’t call at 5:30 am every morning - when the roosters woke up everyone within a 3 block radius.

And three weeks later, the problem was solved with the death penalty for the roosters. (Another thing the neighbors were a little vocal about.)

Then there was the time our neighbors at the top of the street installed a peeing-boy water fountain in their front yard. Nothing says class like a peeing boy permanently installed on your front lawn. It’s always fun to critique what someone else thinks is “art”. But the angry neighbor phone calls won out, and they ended up having to replace it with something else. (Everyone in the neighborhood still calls them the Peeing Family, though. I have to give a little nod to karma for taking care of that one.)

Then there's the couple who absolutely "does not have time" (use your sarcastic airquotes there) for yard work; including either mowing or even watering their expansive lawn. Naturally they live on the corner where you enter our subdivision. Yes, the very first house in the neighborhood. Last year they racked up hundreds of dollars in fines, but every time The Brain went over to ask what he could do to help (he even fixed their sprinklers for free), they gave him another sob story about how they just don't have time.

Maybe it's just me, but if you were racking up weekly fines, wouldn't you FIND time? Or at least pay someone to come and do it? Or sell your house and move to a condo where you can live in a yardwork free zone and never have neighbors knocking your door down again?

You know, everybody here has a rule they want enforced AND a rule they want overlooked. It's enough to drive you... Wait, I think I'm already there..

Who knew that when The Brain wanted to "get involved" and "make a difference", it would make him the Mayor of Crazytown.

And I? I am the Crazytown answering service.

Fala Portugues?

I'm not on vacation, but I am out of town watching my sister's kids while she is on vacation and out of the country.

And incidentally, I've been watching entirely too much of the National Geographic tv show: Locked Up Abroad which mainly consists of people who are either really really cocky, or really really naive, serving prison sentences for many years in 3rd world countries as punishment for whatever illegal thing they may or may not have known they were doing. The drug dealers I don't feel sorry for. I mean, they made their choices, and heavens to mercy, if someone offers you an all expenses paid 3 week trip to (insert very foreign and exotic destination here) - including shopping sprees, bar tabs, and outlandish clothes budgets, and all you have to do is just bring back a few teensy weensy packages for them, well, you probably deserve what you get.

But I do feel very sorry for the tourists who get kidnapped, or somehow blackmailed into things they did NOT want to do in the first place, and now they are stuck in a Nepali, or Peruvian, or Thai jail for the next 8-10 years WITH NO PAROLE OPTIONS.

It's making my imagination run crazy. Because I do not want to have to start learning Portuguese to communicate with my sister and her husband for the next, you know, 25 - life. And because as much as I love these little people I am watching, and would do anything to take care of them, the idea of being a mom of 8 is sending my imagination on it's own rampant all expenses paid vacation to WorryWorld. And the combination of worrying about how I'm going to get enough SkyMiles to get these kids some visits so that they don't forget their mom and dad, and worrying about how I'm going to get out all the chocolate chips that have been ground into the carpet before they get home, well, let's just say, I hope the bar tab really IS included, because here in WorryWorld, there's already whole lot of Diet Coke goin' on.

The Case of the Missing Tweezers

May I Have Your Attention!
It has recently been discovered that my eyebrow tweezers are missing.

Yes, these are the same tweezers I have owned for approximately 3 years now, when I bought the really really good ones. Yes, the last place I saw them was the same drawer where they have lived for said 3 years.

Here's what we're going to do:
We'll turn off the lights (and the computer) and everyone will go to their bedrooms. Then in 2 minutes everyone will come back to the kitchen and when we turn on the lights, the tweezers will be sitting in the middle of the table.
That way I won't have to know who took my tweezers AGAIN, and as a bonus, we will no longer have to tolerate a significantly growing unibrow.

Ready? Go!


Dangit. I really thought that would work.