Ni Hao!

alternate title:
We Had a Fantastic 2 weeks in China, But I'm So Glad to be Home - or at Least I'm Pretty Sure I Would Be if I Could Wake Up Enough To Be Over The Jet Lag.

Although we got back from China last night, I don't think I've actually used the word "ni hao" (the Chinese word for "hello") for at least a week.  The Chinese seem to prefer to be greeted in English - for some I'm pretty sure it's the only English word they know - and they love to both use it and hear it! It was very charming.

The trip was amazing.  I should probably be opening mail or something, but I'm not really coherent enough to do something that takes brain power, so naturally blogging comes to mind! Anyway, here are some of the highlights!

First day in China and we discovered that there really are these oriental buildings everywhere!  I thought they would only be in museums and older parts of town.

We rode bikes on the wall around Xi'an.  The wall is about an 8 mile perimeter around the original city, and so beautiful.  It was a super fun, though we wished we'd started earlier in the day and beat the heat a little.

If there's one thing they do well over there, it's architecture and lighting.  It was fascinating.

How do you go to China and not have Peking Duck?  (Which apparently they are trying very hard to rename Bejing Duck)  It was very very good.  I've never had duck before, but it certainly wasn't the strangest thing I ate.

Of course, the Great Wall.  See how steep it looks?   Seriously,  they should have named it the Great Stairs.
My sisters and I wore our running clothes so we could run on the Great Wall.  We got about 2 miles in, but it was definitely not the smooth continuous run we anticipated.

Street Food.  Chicken, pork, lamb, yes that is squid, and there are several other things I never did identify.

 Scorpions

 Oh yes I did! (well, at least the tail!) It tastes like chicken.
Really.

 The Brain ate 5 whole ones.  

That was as close to eating a spider as I ever want to get.  EV-ER. 
More to come, but first... sleep! (because heaven knows I don't want to do some laundry or open my email or something constructive!)

This is NOT Supposed to Happen

alternate title:

You Can't Call Me Paranoid Anymore Now That It's Actually Happened

So last night, The Brain and I were laying in bed snuggled up and barely drifting off to sleep, when I felt a light tickle on my arm.  It sort of sleepily occurred to me that one of us had let our arm hair get a little long, or something, but no biggie right?  Until I felt the tickle again, and it occurred to me that my arm was not actually in contact with his arm, AND THERE WAS SOMETHING TICKLING MY ARM.

As I felt that thought come together in my head, I screamed something unintelligible and the next thing I knew I was standing across the room by the wall, brushing my arm repeatedly, and asking

"is it????  IS IT????"

The Brain - knowing that I have feared exactly this situation for  -well at least the 25 years he has known me - - searched the recently vacated sheets, and found the world's biggest longest legged dusgustingly scary and creepy spider   what he said was some sort of small insect.    The lights were out and he didn't really get a good look at it to know for sure what it was.  Or so he said.    But I think we're both pretty clear on what it was.   Knowing my current state of near hysteria, however, he refused to say it out loud, for fear I would go off the deep end of the hysteria diving board, and land at the bottom of the pool.

  And also I think he knew that  he would never get back to sleep if he said aloud the phrase "Yes, there was a spider in our bed" or anything like unto it.

Anyway, being the true hero he is,  he actually killed that giant spider unidentified bug that shall remain nameless WITH HIS BARE HANDS and carried it to a watery grave in the bathroom.

*swoon*

After which he turned on the lights, and patiently shook out every sheet and blanket in an attempt to demonstrate that it really might be possible to actually get back into that same bed with those same sheets and think about going back to sleep.   And he almost had me, too.
Until he looked up to check the ceiling.

THE CEILING!?!!?

Which gave my paranoia a whole new level.


It's a good thing he loves me.  It was a long night.

Notes to Self on The Brain's Business Trips

The last few times The Brain has been out of town for business, I've made some notes to myself to help me cope better in the future.

Sometimes the notes look like this:

• $@*(#)@@#$%&*(%#^

But mostly they are helpful things, like:

• Don't let the kids make curfew extensions. This can only end in tears.
  

and

• Make sure to wash the bed sheets before he gets home.

Because for me, coming home after staying in a nice hotel for a couple of nights would be hard enough. It would be completely un-doable with dirty sheets.

I would be happy to come home to homemade cookies, though, so that's another note I have.

• Make cookies. The house will smell great,
  

And as most wives know, a great smelling house covers up a multitude of other oversights. (*cough* Forgetting to get the trash out on trash day *cough*)


Anyway, I think keeping this little notebook has made me a leeeetle bit better wife. Maybe.


The Brain will be home tonight (YAY! ) so I've jotted down a few notes I've made from this time around:

Notes to Self:

• When The Brain is gone, there will be a spider in every room in the house. I don't know WHY you keep thinking this time it won't happen. There's no point in going into denial, you're just going to have to kill them. There's also no point in calling Lizzie to help, because she will scream in your ear and grab your shirt every time the spider moves a leg, and everyone in the room will dissolve into giggles, and in the meantime the spider will be making it's way to the next room.
• Where it will pretend to be a new spider.

• Also when the Brain goes out of town= not a good time to start a scary novel. You already know you are a 'fraidy cat, and yet you insist on reading until you get sleepy, which you never will, because you will be laying awake at 2 am wondering what that noise was, and if the creepy shapes are coming in to get you. This is never a good idea.
• And yet you keep doing it.

• *Packing for girl's camp is not your forte'. Yes The Brain got all the equipment out and ready before he left. But you forgot to ask how the backpack should be packed. Google is your friend, but if you had any forethought at all, The Brain would have happily done it for you before he left.
  
• And I bet it wouldn't have taken him an hour to do it, either.

I think there were a couple more things, but they were on the paper where I may or may not have spilled my water in the middle of the night in a possible panic that I might have heard a spider on the ceiling. Heaven knows you can't be too paranoid about that kind of thing. (Because what if there really IS?)

Maybe my thoughts from this time aren't as practical as some of the earlier entries, but I think they're important things to remember nonetheless.
(You can see how those 4 hours of sleep last night have really kicked in and helped my thinking stay crystal clear, right?)

So this afternoon I'm washing sheets and baking cookies. YAY!

And next time he starts packing his suitcase, I'll be out picking up some bug spray, a drowsy Nicholas Sparks book, and some Rocky Road Ice Cream.

Because Rocky Road Ice Cream is the key to making the whole system work. Srsly.

See? Spiders ARE Scary.

Personally, I think the bars should start out a LOT higher. But they got it mostly right.

(Thanks, Dave!)

see more Funny Graphs

JustRandi Vs The Brain - Round 2

We debate, you decide.

One of us thinks that when you take the empty canning jars back down to the basement to store them until the next canning season, it is better to store them upside-down, thus preventing creepy spiders from crawling in and meeting their doom.

Note the fact that this will also prevent anyone from having to PICK UP A JAR FULL OF SPIDER CARCASSES to wash it out before the next use.

The other person thinks they would rather store the jar right-side-up. Yes, you have to wash out the spider remains. BUT AT LEAST YOU KNOW WHERE THE SPIDERS ARE.


Upside-down? or Right-side-up?

Dumb, But Really Scary Things That Scare Me

Knowing there was a spider right there before I left the room to get a tissue, and now I'm back and it's not there and I can't find it and it's time to turn off the lights and go to bed.

I actually get scared of being scared of heights. Because I'm not always scared of heights, but I get so nervous that I might be, that it makes me a little dizzy, which is even scarier when I'm by the heights, which I wasn't really that scared of in the first place.

Opening my google reader after not being on my computer for 6 days. I love reading people's posts, but the thought of trying to catch up with however many hundreds of unread posts are out there is worse than the thought of spiders ON LADDERS, and has actually made me postpone getting online a few extra days.

See? Dumb... but scary!

Sadly I'll have to wipe that slate clean and start fresh.

... which is a better deal than I'm going to get from the spiders.

Why I Don't Want To Put On My Shoes Today

You know that creepy feeling when you find a spider first thing in the morning, and then you're kinda creeped out the rest of the day?

I mean, every time my hair brushes the back of my neck, I jump.

Yeah, I hate that.

Welcome to spring.

Is This Mean?

I admit it. About 10 years ago I ran out of patience with the normal April Fool's Day pranks from the under age 10 set.

"There's a spider in your hair! Ahahaha... gotcha again!"

I had 4 youngish kids, and ugghhh. I'd done it for 12 years already. I just couldn't take another round. So that year I told my kids that it wasn't April 1st. The date was actually March 32. You know, because we had to make up for the missing days in February.

And they bought it.

And they wrote March 32 on all their school papers. And they went all day long thinking that April Fool's Day was tomorrow.


.

.

.

They still think they were CHEATED out of the holiday that year.

But I think it was the Best April Fools Joke EVER.