Way Back Wednesday ~~ 1971

Here is a much more recent picture than last Wednesday.

This is my mom and my cousin Joey. He was Aunt Em's son. He lived with us in the back apartment (maybe 300 sq ft) for several years with his wife and her teenage son. To this day I don't know how they all fit in there.

This photo was taken on Easter Sunday 1971 in our living room.

My mom just loved those long dresses.

The bunny statues (there is a large one and 2 babies) came from the studio (CBS where my parents worked as Make-up artists). They were set dressings for a show that was filmed there and rather than see them thrown out my dad brought them home and we used them every Easter for a quite a while.

I love how my mom has pulled the drapes all the way over behind the chair in an effort to create a background. Those drapes hung on those floor to ceiling windows for 30 years until they were little more than shreds and Jeff and I replaced them.

The chair was  gift from one of the founders of the Tombstone Epitaph newspaper and one of my moms prized possessions... that is until one of our cats decided to use it as a scratching post and destroyed the fabric. Eventually I inherited it and I passed it on to someone who was willing to restore it.

The pictures on the wall were etchings made around the turn of the century.
There were 2 matching ones and they too eventually got passed on to someone who was willing to restore the frames.

I'm sure we were all waiting for a nice honey glazed ham that was cooking in the oven and I was probably in a sugar coma from all the candy that the Easter bunny had brought me.

Homework Hell

There are times I would rather sit for a root canal than help with homework.

Jeffrey seems to think that homework is a form of sadistic torture that was designed specifically to destroy his after school life.

No matter how simple the assignment, no matter how little there is to do, it has become something to dread from the moment the school door opens and he is released into the afternoon sunlight.

There seems to be an infinite number of things for him to do before he can settle down and actually get to work once he gets home.

He's starving, he's hot, he's tired, his hand hurts from a traumatic 4 square injury incurred earlier in the day, the cat misses him so he has to spend time with her, he can't find a pencil that works.

The list could go on forever.

When he gets home I will feed him, let him put on shorts, take a 5 minute rest, get some ice for his hand, pet the cat and find him a working pencil.

Then he has to sit and do whatever horrific thing his teacher has assigned without another word.

Well that's the plan anyway.

Today was "write your words in alphabetical order" day. One of our favorites. (not)

After trying to figure out how many different ways there are to sit in a chair without falling off, I was informed that he had no paper.

That will slow you down.

Paper found and provided.

10 minutes later I was informed he didn't have his list of words.

I couldn't figure out exactly what he had been doing for those 10 minutes but whatever it was he was sitting quietly so I guess I cant really complain.

I had him borrow the list from Katherine since they both are using the same ones.

Then he informed me that he had a hard time remembering the alphabet and thats why he hated this particular assignment so much.

Jeffrey, you are 9 years old and the school district in their infinite wisdom and has labeled you gifted and I do not think they were referring to your uncanny ability to drive me up a tree faster than anyone I have ever met.

I told him to sing the alphabet song (in his head) while he was looking for each word and that should fix the problem.

I have discovered Jeffrey has no internal dialog.

After hearing ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP (etc etc) for the 10th time, I headed into the laundry room to vacuum.
At least it would be quieter.

"MOM!"

(La-la-la... loud vacuum humming..... I don't hear anything)

"MOM!!!"

(Off goes the vacuum.)

"WHAT?"

"Are you going to be making all that noise right now?"

(Is this a rhetorical question?)

"Well I was planning on it...why?"

"I can't work under these conditions."

(You can't WORK under these conditions????
What have you been doing, talking with your union rep?)

I stuck my head around the corner and the look on my face must have said a lot more than any of words I was trying hard not to say.

"Ummmmm never mind.. it's OK.... I got it.
You can continue....."

He better "got it".. because at this point if he didn't, I was going to give it him.

I do it all for you.....

How many homemade Oatmeal Raisin cookies are too many to eat in one day?

I am currently running a clinical trial and will let you know when all results are reported, verified, documented and ready for publication.

Aren't you lucky to have someone like me who is willing to put their weight loss on hold just so you can know the answer to these deep philosophical questions?

No, really I don't mind.

You're welcome.

Let no good deed go unpunished ~~ Sea Monkeys Need to Eat too!

Sometime earlier in the week I had had enough of walking past the kids room and seeing a general mess directly inside the door. The weird thing is that if you actually walked INTO the room and turned the corner, it was pretty neat.
But the bookcase next to the door had lots of stuff besides books piled on top of and in front of it.

So in an effort to neaten up my view I removed a shirt, a pair of underwear, 2 empty ziploc bags, a tissue that somehow missed the trashcan, 10 lego pieces waiting for someone (me) to step on them barefoot, a handful of silly bands and a small gift bag leftover from Katherine's birthday party that upon inspection appeared to contain nothing.

I distributed the items into their appropriate location including the trash into the trash can.

Fast forward to yesterday evening and the commencement of the bedtime ritual which that night included feeding the ever expanding Sea Monkey population. (Mommy, why are those Sea Monkeys stuck together... go ask your father dear...)

Katherine announced she could not find the Sea Monkey food even though she claimed not to have moved it. Jeff sent her back into her room assuring her neither of us had touched it.  (Famous last words)

5 minutes later she was still looking and dad was not happy that things were taking so long.

"MEL!! Did you see a small pink bag Katherine says she left on the bookcase that had the Sea Monkey food in it?"

(Does throwing it out count?)

"Well..... I think I might have seen a bag, but there was nothing in it."

"There was a packet of Sea Monkey food in it.... what did you do with it?"

(ARGH!!!)

"I might have thrown it out....."

"You're kidding!!! Well go get it from the kitchen will you?"

(Sure, I'd love to except I just threw the kitchen trash bag out....and it might not even be in that bag..... how many are out in the can by now?)

***SIGH***
"Lemme check."

Out I went into the night equipped with a flashlight and the creeps from having to be out there alone with the full moon shining overhead.

I had to go through 3 bags of kitchen trash which contained eggshells from Sunday, leftover spaghetti from Monday, half a roll of paper towels that were used to sop up a juice spill on Tuesday, pizza crusts, coffee grounds, a bag of lettuce that had seen better days, avocado peels, broccoli and asparagus ends, a couple of sweet potatoes that had sprouted and developed soft spots and who knows what else.

All I can say is none of it smelled good. And I had to make 2 passes to find the dang thing which turned out to be in the first bag I opened but somehow overlooked the first time through.

I was rather cross (and smelly) at the whole situation and tried to use it as a lesson to the children that they should not clutter everything up because this can happen with more important things than Sea Monkey food.

Jeffrey was quick to point out that since the Sea Monkeys could not eat anything BUT Sea Monkey food there probably wasn't anything in THEIR world as important as that.

I think the whole point was lost on him.

Do you remember these ads on the back of comic books from years ago?
My dad finally let me get some but my mother wouldn't let them stay in the house because she was convinced they were nothing more than a bowl full of worms...

But what I TRULY wanted a kid was either one of these.... I could never get up the courage to order either because I was sure my mom would have had a coniption fit if either showed up in the mail... but I cut the ads out and kept them in my drawer just in case I ever lost my mind and decided to do it anyway.

Way Back Wednesday 1939

A day to post old pictures and enjoy the memories.

This is one of my favorites:

This is my dad in Enid, Oklahoma working as a car hop at Frazier's Drug store.

The date is July 4th 1939. He was 13 years old.

He's carrying old time coke bottles and glasses on a tray that  you can see fits on the side of a car.

And speaking of cars,..what a great one behind him!   I would guess (but am not sure) that it is a Chrysler. 

I love those huge white walls.

I see that cigarettes were already big business as shown in the window display.

Here is picture of Frazier's in present day.

Back in the day it had a bowling alley upstairs where boys worked as pin setters.

Are all of those legs really necessary?

What is it about our house that spiders find so inviting?
I keep finding them wandering around like they own the place and it's driving me crazy.

It's not that I'm afraid of them (outright lie)....
it's just that they have so many unnecessary legs.

Seriously, why do they need so many?
They just get in the way. And scare me.
And if you're going to be spending time where I live it's best not to scare me.

And as much as I really just want to squish them and flush their carcass down the toilet, I generally can't get myself to do it.

Yesterday morning as I was preparing the usual Sunday morning pancake feast, Jeff caught sight of a multi-legged trespasser hightailing it up the kitchen wall.

He declared it non poisonous and caught it under a cup. Somehow a few of those unnecessary legs got caught in the process and it fell out of the cup and onto the counter with a couple legs pointing in several (wrong) directions.

We stared at it helplessly as it dragged itself around in circles.

GUILT!!!

Now what? Squish it and put it out of its misery? What if it's injuries weren't fatal? What if it was only temporarily injured? Do they have spider hospitals where they set broken spider legs?

GUILT!!!

I slid it back into the cup and gingerly tossed it out the door into the grass.

Maybe those extra legs really are unnecessary after all and they will simply fall off so he can continue going on about his business.

One can only hope.

Forethought

"Mom, when am I going to get a car?"

"Jeffrey, you're 9 years old."

"Yeah, but the sooner I get started practicing, the better driver I will be when I actually get my license."

I ask you, why don't I think of these things?