Cool? Nope, Not me

Just when you think you may be one of those "cool" moms,
you know the ones that the kids aren't embarrassed by, I hear this:
"Hey mom, um, when you stop the car and we get out and the doors are open..... can you, um, turn down the music until the doors are closed?"
My answer was to turn up the music until the car was rocking on it's wheels.
"MOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMM!" Both of them looking desperately around to see which of their friends might be witnessing this.
I turned it back down to normal and suddenly it didn't seem quite as bad when they opened the doors and dashed for their class.
Do not mess with me children, I am old for a reason.

Adventures with Iggy

Sometime in late spring of last year we got a free baby iguana...

We named him Iggy in honor of Jeffs childhood pet.

This is one of his early baby pictures:

Since then he has grown and been a fun addition to our pet family.

Being an iguana, he enjoys being up high so he can look down at all of us lowly humans.

One of his favorite places is up above the patio door which he gets to by using a long 2 x 4 covered in carpet. We leave him here for part of each day.

This evening I was in the kitchen when I glanced into the living and saw this....

Knowing something was up (or NOT up anymore), I checked it out and found this in my silk plant:

 After I apprehended the wanderer, Kitten checks out the plant to make sure nothing else interesting is hiding in there.

And 20 minutes later what do I find?

Kitten and Iggy sitting in a (cat) tree...

K*I*S*S*I*N*G

Iggy deals with it by putting on his best "If I close my eyes maybe it will go away" face.

This time we collected him and put him where he isn't as likely to get into any trouble.

Kitty Fuzz

 September 2013 we brought Kitten home from a trip to visit the grandkids in Arizona.
She has been an unending pleasure and delight.

You need to work quietly? Let me sing you the song of my people!

Lounging amid Carmageddon after a visit by the 5 year old

But by far the most ridiculous thing she does is beg for you to turn on the water faucet every time you go into the bathroom.

It starts out normal enough....

But always ends up the same way.

I think it's her favorite part of the whole experience.

The following pictures pretty much sum up Leo's contribution to life in our household.

A Morning with Taylin.

One of the reasons we chose Arizona as a landing point in our journey was so we could see our grandkids who we have had precious little time with.

I now get to enjoy morning like these with my 2 year old granddaughter Taylin.

And finish the day with a nice Hello Kitty cup of milk!

The Dynamic Duo are growing up.....

There they go... off to 8th grade.
Where oh where does the time go????

Arizona Bound

Late on the afternoon of July 31st, Jeff and Jeffrey hopped into a 26 foot U-Haul (pulling a 12 foot trailer) and Katherine and I captained the van (complete with cats and an iguana) and we were off on a new adventure in Arizona.

None of us are hoping it's our final landing spot but for the time being it's going to be home.

Blue Toenails for Everyone

So it doesn't take a genius to see that I have completely neglected my poor blog.
I haven't been idle however.
I started a page over on Facebook last month called "A Little Slice of Vintage Life" and have spent quite a bit of my time promoting it and delighting in the fact that my "likes" on the page have marched to over 1000.
But I haven't been here too much.
When I dropped by this morning I noticed that I had once again collected some new followers despite my lack of effort so I thought maybe I should give this a try again.
It's not like the Dynamic Duo has stopped giving me material.

I had just picked them up from Karate and was heading out the driveway on the other end of the complex when Katherine noted the "Foot Massage Parlor" tucked in the back corner.

K: Look Mom, you can get a whole hour's worth of a foot massage there for only $40.

I didn't know how to tell her that I doubted any foot massaging would be going on during said hour.
Our pretty little town, with it's extremely low crime rate and extremely high real estate prices hides a dirty little secret... We have more "Foot Massage Parlors" per capita than anywhere else in the United States. I may be exaggerating a bit but if you drive the boulevard, there is one in almost every strip mall so I bet I am not too far off with my statistics. And I am quite sure we do not also lead the nation in foot fetishes, so I can be pretty confidant that there are other things going on behind the curtained windows beside hot oil treatments and loofah scrubbing.

J: I don't think I'd like to have someone rub my feet, it hurts.
K: Yeah, Gabby kicked the pedicure lady in the face once because she rubbed too hard.
J: See? I told you.
K: Hey can I paint your toenails if I don't rub your feet.
J: Um, I guess so, can I read while you're doing it?
K: Sure, That'll be fun. Let's do it when we get home.
J: OK, but make sure you put on a base coat before you put on the color. Then make sure you put a topcoat on afterwards so it doesn't chip off. And you can't paint them pink, or even red. Do you have blue? (I'd really love to know how he even knows about the proper method of toenail painting, but I kept my mouth shut).
K; Yeah, I'll paint mine blue too, then when we take our shoes off at Karate it will be joke and everyone will laugh because our toenails will match.
J: OK, but remember I get to read while you're doing it.
***Pause***
Me: Jeffrey?
J: Yes?
Me: You don't mind having your nails painted? You don't think anyone will make fun of you?
J: (eye roll): Geez Mom why do I care? It's not like they'll be pink or anything. And it they made fun of me I would ignore them because they are dumb and I don't care what dumb people think.

Well there you have it.

He's been listening to me all this time.
Who would have thought!

Homework Hell, Part 2

2 - (-3) = 5

Of course this makes perfect sense.

Can you see the sparks and smell the smoke and hear the gears grinding to a halt as I try to explain this to the dynamic duo?

"Well you see children, when you subtract a negative you are actually adding a positive.
It makes perfect sense.
No really.
It does.
No, I'm serious, that's how it works.
The rule is: Two negatives make a positive.
Yes, I know I've said that two wrongs don't make a right, but this is different.
I don't know WHY OK?
Just accept it as fact and finish your homework."

I think I hate homework more than they do.

Probably because I thought I was all finished with school and now here I am spending an hour or more a day on solving Algebra problems, making Neolithic tools, coloring maps of Mesopotamia  and looking up who were the axis and allies of WW2.

Yes, they are doing most of the work but I need to supervise because half the time neither are headed in the right direction and it's easier to cut them off at the pass and send them back 5 or 10 minutes instead of having them redo an hours worth of work done incorrectly.

And that wouldn't be quite so bad if I didn't have to argue with Katherine every 15 minutes about how I am right and she is wrong.

Oh wait...

I got that backwards.... SHE is right and I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.

"MOM, you CANNOT subtract 13 from 3."

My eye begins to twitch.

I try (gently and without irritation) to explain to her that Yes, actually you CAN take 13 from 3. That she has done it for the last 4 problems. Nothing has changed. The number line has not suddenly stopped at zero. She rolled off her chair in frustration, hands on head in a simulated faint. "I don't get it!"

Obviously.

So next I try to explain an easier way to figure out certain problems. A way I was taught when I was kid. A way that makes perfect sense to me and seems ridiculously easy compared to how she was trying to work it out. I am greeted with a raised eyebrow even Spock would be proud of.

Sarah wandered through and whispered "Don't worry Katherine, Mom is Old School.... it's OK if you don't understand what she's saying."

Katherine nods in understanding. "They taught them different back in the day, didn't they?"

Yeah, way back when, when we were learning by firelight and writing on cave walls.
At least then we didn't have to do this crap like charting points on a graph to make a picture.
That even after the 4th attempt the damn thing still looks like a butterfly who was injured in an unfortunate netting accident.
And no matter how we both try we can't seem to figure out what was done wrong.

I'm done.
And so are they.
No one cares that they will not get an A on the graph.
They are just happy that the rest of the work is done and they can each have a homemade cupcake and fall into bed so they can do it all over again tomorrow.

 Hallow-freakin-lou-yah

The Scale of Awesome

So the dynamic duo is now in middle school

They are all grown up and mature and no longer require close supervision to make sure they are getting along and playing nice.

Oh, yeah.. who are we kidding.

Basically I am on the verge of abdicating my throne.
(You did know I was queen of the household didn't you??)

Tonight my subjects were unhappy with their assigned homework duties of studying for their "top-o-GRAPHY" quiz tomorrow.
(It's to-POG-raphy Jeffrey, I might have already mentioned that once or twice or fifty times this evening).

Frankly, I didn't know there could be so much bickering and fussing over who was going to make the flash cards and who got to hold them first. Apparently there is some mystical phenomenon that causes you to immediately rise several levels on the scale of awesome if you are in charge of flash cards. And anyone else who is NOT in charge of said flash cards might as well give up hope of ever even registering on the scale, now or in the future. I was unaware of this and am glad that my children are here to educate me.

I decided that I would allow them to work through their bid for superiority themselves and eventually they did work it out.

And work it out they did... because suddenly there was a moment of intense giggling and hooting which lasted far too long and was far too loud for any studying to actually be going on.

I stepped in and put a stop to that...
Yes siree... none of that "having fun when you should be studying" nonsense allowed in THIS house!!

and they immediately went back to arguing about who did a better job on the map of Mesopotamia that they had to draw.

I just can't win.

The more you know...

 Watching the closing ceremonies. Katherine informed us that one of the members of One Direction is afraid of spoons. 

The things 13 year olds have filed away just waiting for the right moment to spill what they know.

A Visit to the Huntington Library in Pasadena

In an effort for the kids not to spend the entire summer holed up in their room on electronic entertainment and to broaden their cultural horizons, we took advantage of the Huntington Library's free day.

They give the tickets away on the first of the month for the following month. I had to fight the hoards on line by hovering over the "get tickets" button well before 9 AM when the ticket agency opened because I discovered the month before that Free Tickets are like Free Money and they were snatched up and gone within 2 minutes of opening. Making me have to try again next time.

And it also happens to be a pretty freakin' long way away from our house. Probably an hour by the time we navigated the freeways (and stopped to let me use the bathroom). Or maybe it just seemed like an hour with all the "Are we there yet?" and "How come it looks like we're going to Disneyland? Isn't this the way we go when we go to Disneyland? Why don't we just go there instead...???"

Eventually we arrived, parked and headed in.

This used to be a private residence back in the day.

I loved this:

Beautiful flowers:

The view from the top of the hill. You can see out into Pasadena.

First we made our way down into the Japanese Gardens:
Love this giant bell. There used to be something you could strike it with but I guess people abused the privilege so it's not there anymore.

They have this beautiful tea room open to look at but you can't go inside:

Zen Garden:

The Bonsai Tree Garden.
These were SO incredible:

We went into the giant greenhouse which was incredibly humid but the plants were beautiful:

The orchids in a cage:

The center dome:

This plant (on the right) is in the process of producing one HUGE leaf that will be 15 foot tall.:

This looks like something out of Dr. Seuss:

They thought this huge leaf was worth posing in front of:

Hey, go stand in front of the giant urn and I will take a picture...
No not go look goofy.....
Smile... stand there and just smile....
Oh never mind....

We finally made it into the main residence which was incredible:

A Gutenberg Bible:

Sarah, Jeff & Jeffery admiring Blue Boy:

Pinky across the gallery:

George Washington:

I couldn't use my flash so this picture is blurry but it gives you the idea of how impressive the galleries were:

Outside looking out at the grounds: