Saturday, January 30, 2010

Sunday Scramble

Yay!  It's time to scramble!  Don't forget to link up your SS posts after you're done reading (and, God willing, commenting).  Let's get this show on the road!

 

  • Yawning.  What is up with it?  Even just typing the word I'm yawning.  I actually Googled this very thing this week and guess what I found out?  Scientists don't quite know why we yawn.  They say it could be the body's response to needing more oxygen, but if that were the case, why is it catching?  When's the last time you saw someone yawn and didn't yawn yourself?  It just doesn't happen!  And for that matter, why do animals yawn?  Okay, I've gotta move on because I'm going to crack my jaw if I yawn one more time.

  • I have this hair that shows up a few times a year, right over my clavicle bone.  Unlike the rest of the man hairs on my body, this one is always very fine and usually blonde.  Well, the little fucker showed up again this week but it wasn't blonde.  Oh no, now it's gone on to turn gray.  I don't understand what makes a single hair grow in this one spot, or why it seems it's not there one day, but the next it's there and 3" long.  And curly.  I actually plucked it out and saved it.  Tried getting pictures of it for you all but it was just too fine to show up on a picture.  I'm sure you're all sighing with relief.
  • Have you ever been poked in the head with an eating utensil?  I can now say that I have.  Last weekend Mikayla asked me if I wanted to try a spoonful of her ice cream, knowing I can't have a bowl myself.  But as soon as I reached for her spoon she pulled it away from me and cradled the bowl under her non-existent bosom.  I grabbed for it anyway and that's when she took the spoon and poked me in the head with it.  This is just one reason I've nick-named her Bitchayla.  But I got her good because I then grabbed her and stuck my whole hand in her ice cream and took out a nice hunk of cookie dough.  Oh yes I did!
  • Speaking of nick names.  Where the hell did they come from?  James to Jim, Robert to Bob, Richard to.... Dick.  Heeheehee... I said dick.  Please someone, tell me how this happened!  I can understand Linda to Lin, or Stephanie to Steph... that's just shortening the name.  But how on earth did we get DICK from Richard?
  • Am I the only one who feels jipped when the hole in my bagel is big?  Sometimes I think I'd be justified in eating an additional half to make up for the enormous gaping hole in the middle.  It's just not fair.  In my opinion there should be a set ratio of delicious, chewy goodness to... hole. I want consistency dammit!  Did you hear that, Lender's? 

    • So, there's this elderly lady in my neighborhood that obviously enjoys long, casual walks at night.  If you're driving around at about 7 p.m. you're sure to see her.  The girls and I call her "Old Lady With Cell Phone and Cigarette" because we have never seen her walking without the cell to her ear and a cig in her other hand.  I think it's lovely that she takes walks to keep her blood circulating, but I wonder if depleting her oxygen intake with the cigarette, and burning brain cells with the cell phone is counter-productive to her cause.  And just who the hell is she talking to anyway?
    • This week my friend Ethel and her friend, Lucy, had a big birthday bash.  For their chihuahuas.  I shit you not.  There were homemade dog cupcakes made with duck, there were goody bags filled with homemade treats, there was even a huge cake for the humans.  
    And I missed it all.  I totally forgot about the damn party!  Do you realize the blog fodder I could have gotten out of that?  Not to mention I could have spent two hours in the company of many many adorable little dogs.

    Ooh, but I do have some puppy pictures that Ethel sent me!

    Here's Cheech doing a handstand as he eats his cupcake.  He's also being schooled in the art of yoga.



    Frasier, the super pug with Margarita, Lucy's dog.


    Even Michelle went to the party and she's allergic to dogs!  Of course she was obligated, as she is the dogs' godmama.  I didn't even know Cheech and Chong were Catholic.

     

    Fred, making sure the puppies eat daintily.
     
     

    The human cake.  I notice there are candles on there.  Must ask Ethel who blew them out, the dogs or the humans.
     

    • The other night, while sitting out here in my bitch cave I suddenly heard someone belting out the last line of the Star Spangled Banner.  I thought to myself, is that Larry?  And if so, why is he singing the Star Spangled Banner?  I don't take him as a sports fan...
    Would you?
     

    It turns out Ethel also heard his backyard debut, but unlike me, who was able to determine whose voice it was, she went running outside thinking there was an injured cat.  I shit you not.
    That's all I've got this week!  I can't wait to see who links up and what you have to say.  I was really overjoyed that so many joined me last week!  Thank you!!!

    Favorite Bloggy Quote of the Week:

    Comes to us from ThatGirl at That Girl Blogs, speaking to the CEO of Apple:

    Dear Steve Jobs,
    Women don’t want to buy anything called iPad.  It reminds us that we get iPeriods and that they iSuck.  It makes us think about messy iUnderwear, iTampons, and yes.  iPads.
    Hold a focus group next time.
    Love,
    ThatGirl






    Pssst! If you love me, you might love my stupid sister more. Go visit her at Jill's Believe it or Not, and tell her I sent you!

    Thursday, January 28, 2010

    My, But Your ( o ) V ( o ) Are So Big!

    Ah yes, large boobies.  Many of us have them.  Some of us actually enjoy having big ones.  Not me.  At least, not since nursing two children, at which time my girls deflated and starting pointing due south.

    But few of us have the pleasure of owning ginormous globes such as my beloved sister, Jill, has.  I mean, these things are right up there with the 8 wonders of the world in my opinion.  Imagine if you will, a rack of such enormity that if you got to feeling a little front heavy, you could just cup your hand under one of the girls and flip it right over your shoulder.   Eyes behind your head?  Nah, boobs behind your back is much more impressive!


     Here Jill decorates her cleavage with a cherry tomato.


    Okay, there's actually a reason for this post.  You see, a couple weeks ago Jill had her first mammogram.  For most of us, even those of us with fairly large ta-tas, the process is quick and uncomplicated.  We go in, get our tits squished in a few different positions and then leave.  Not so for Jill.

    To get straight to the point, her boobs didn't fit in the machine.  At least, not all of each boob.  Jill says she was mortified but after hearing her detailed story it sounds more like her and the boob tech were having a titty party (get it?  pity party?  Titty party?) and laughing hysterically the whole time.

    So with the help of a crane, the tech finally hefts one of Jill's bazoombas up on the little platform.  But as I said, the platform is not as large as Jill's splayed breast, even before the masher comes down.  So Jill did not have to pose in just a few awkward positions, but many, with the tech hefting and tugging Jill's globes hither and yon just to get pictures of one entire boob.


    Jill, dingbat (but funny girl) that she is, said, "Gee, I thought the bigger the breasts, the easier the tests!"  Nyuck nyuck nyuck.

    Then, trying to be helpful, she told the woman that she has little to no feeling in her boozamas (Sinead's word) so to feel free to yank and tug as much as necessary.  I used to have a picture that proved Jill's numbness in the booby area... a picture of her with a pin stuck through several thousand layers of skin, but she forced me to delete it.  She couldn't, however keep me from talking about it now, could she?

    So, boob tech gets her girls in there, twisting and yanking to her heart's content, and then asks Jill, "Honey, do you see any fluid coming out of your nipple?"  To which Jill said, "How should I know?  My nipple is all the way over there!"

    Finally, the whole ordeal was over and the tech said, "It may take longer than usual to get the results.  The lab guy is going to have to piece these films together to get one whole image."

    I am so going with her for her next mammogram!!!



    Don't forget to get your discombobulated posts ready for this week's Sunday Scramble!!!  Mr. MckLinky will be up and running late Saturday night!


    Pssst! If you love me, you might love my stupid sister more. Go visit her at Jill's Believe it or Not, and tell her I sent you!

    Tuesday, January 26, 2010

    Tuesdays At The Table With Cole

    Can you feel my excitement?  It's palpable, no?  This is my first time joining Cole for Tuesdays at the Table, although I read her recipe posts every week.




    It just so happens that tonight I made this incredible homemade artisan bread and it was so damn easy that I'd be remiss in not sharing it.  You don't even have to knead this stuff.   Easy peasy and so delicious that it's all Mikayla ate for dinner tonight.  Sure, it was pure carb loading on her part but when you see your child (who generally turns up her nose at everything you make) tear into a loaf of bread like that, it kinda makes your heart sing.






    5-Minute Artisan French Bread



    Ingredients:

    1-1/2 Tablespoons dry yeast
    1-1/2 Tablespoons course ground kosher salt
    3 Cups warm water
    6-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
    Cornmeal for baking pan


    In large container with lid, mix yeast, salt and water.  Stir, then immediately add flour.  Mix until there are no large dry lumps of flour.

    This dough will be VERY sticky.  Cover container but don't make completely airtight.  Let dough rise for 2 hours.

    Uncover and sprinkle with flour, then, with more flour on your hands (still sticky!) pull off a grapefruit-size portion of dough and shape into a round ball, kind of pulling the top over the sides and to the bottom.

    Sprinkle baking pan with a small amount of corn meal to keep bread from sticking.  Place dough on pan, sprinkle lightly with flour and let sit out to rise for 40 minutes.

    Preheat oven to 450 degrees, putting an empty baking pan on the lowest rack.  Using a serated knife, score bread in several places to prevent cracking while baking.

    Place dough on middle oven rack and immediately add one cup of water to empty baking pan on lower rack to aid in steaming the bread.

    Bake 30 minutes, cut, and gorge yourself.

    Here's a short video that demonstrates the entire easy procedure. 





    Make sure to visit Cole for more great recipes!


    Pssst! If you love me, you might love my stupid sister more. Go visit her at Jill's Believe it or Not, and tell her I sent you!

    Monday, January 25, 2010

    General Mills Cereal = Num Yummy!

    I was lucky enough last month to grab a really great "Spark" on My Blog Spark where I was provided with cereal coupons from General Mills.  Not just coupons, but coupons for free cereal.

    My girls already eat quite a few of the General Mills line of cereals.  Madison especially loves Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Mikayla is all about Lucky Charms.

    One great thing about doing this review is that since it wasn't my money I was spending, I didn't hesitate to try one of their new cereals... Cookie Crisp with sprinkles.



    Madison loves this stuff!  I dare say she's even passionate about it.

    And Mikayla?  She's all about the Reese's Puffs cereal.  (excuse the lousy pictures... Mikayla took them at 6:30 in the a.m.)




     

     Num Yummy!
     

    All gone!




    The other neat thing about doing this review is that it brought to me information that I wasn't even aware of, terrible mom that I am.  Did you know that General Mills cereals are made with whole grains?  Yes, they are!

     And here's another great bit of info I found:

    This week General Mills announced a commitment to further reduce sugar in cereals advertised to kids under 12 to single digit grams of sugar per serving. The company has already been reducing sugar in cereals while increasing key nutrients, such as calcium and vitamin D, and providing whole grain.
    To me, that is fabulous news!  Kids get enough sugar from cookies, juice and things like that.  It's nice knowing that their breakfast food doesn't need to have a bazillion grams of sugar for it to taste good.  And I can tell you from personal experience, these cereals taste very good.


    Thank you to My Blog Spark for giving me this opportunity, and a big thanks to General Mills for providing the coupons!!!




    Pssst! If you love me, you might love my stupid sister more. Go visit her at Jill's Believe it or Not, and tell her I sent you!

    Saturday, January 23, 2010

    Join Me For The Sunday Scramble



    Well, here we go.  The first official Sunday Scramble meme.  I'm curious to see how many, if any, of you will join in with me!

    As Pooba Would Say, "A Turrible Turrible, Mess

    This past week Jason did a post on his kitchen's multiple junk drawers.  Yes, he actually blogged about that.  Even made it not too boring, in fact.  Which got me to thinking about my junk drawer and how much crap is probably in there.  I didn't catalog it as J did, but I did take a couple of pictures.  I'm just thankful that Jimmy got it in his head to organize it a bit a few weeks ago so it's not too turribly embarrassing.







    My question is, do we really need all that crap?  I mean, I even see a fake flower boutineer.  Is that even close to how that's spelled?


    WTF?

    And while I'm at it, why did Blogger upgrade their editing program, only to take the spell-check out?  Does that make any damn sense to you?  I'll be honest and say I'm a pretty good speller, but come on, sometimes there are words that you just don't know how to spell.  I want my spell-check back!


    Justine Is Awesome

    Nope, not tooting my own horn here.  I'm talking about Justine Carrelli, the American Bandstand dancer from back in the 50s.  If you stopped by here last week you would have seen this post about how I came by the name Justine.

    After finishing that post I searched hunted her down the web looking for any current information on Justine, and lo and behold, I found her.  She's a real estate agent in Las Vegas these days.  I sent her a quick email to tell her I was named after her and to my surprise, she responded the very next day.  I thought that was super sweet of her!  When I called my mom to tell her, do you know what the first thing she asked was?  "Is she fat?"  That's another WTF moment for sure.

    Forever Friends

    I haven't mentioned my oldest and dearest friend Sinead in quite a long time, but if you're a long-time follower you may remember hearing about her.  Friends from the ages of 3 and 4, we've stayed close all these years.  It's actually a little surprising because we haven't even lived in the same state for the past 15 years.

    Sinead's hubby is Navy and they've moved quite a bit in the last 10 years or so.  California to Virginia, Virginia to Hawaii.  But now they're moving here to Florida!  And not just Florida, but to the Jacksonville area!  Holy crapola, for the first time in a decade and a half we'll be within driving distance of each other.  Well, her driving distance, not mine.   The panic disorder and all that.  I hope "Nade" isn't too camera shy because if she even dares to tell me I can't blog about her (with pictures) in the future, I'll just kill her.  Or write her off completely.  You hear that Nade???

    Sinead and Justine, circa 1976?  Notice the smears on her face?  I don't think there was a day of her childhood where she wasn't sporting some kind of crap on her face and/or clothes.  Piggy.  Wow, that just made me remember Sinead's word for "pig" or "piggy".  It was pigro!  Weird.



    Sinead and Justine, circa 1978 or '79?



    I can't wait to sneak pictures of her with food smooshed on her face again!  Bwaaa haaa haaaa!


    Just Pop It, Please!!!

    For the past 2 or 3 months I've had this spot on my shoulder blade which itches almost constantly.  I'd rub it on door frames, I'd wiggle back and forth in bed to rub the sheets on it, but no matter what I've done I can't get rid of the itch.

    It's a pimple!  It's an itty bitty, teeny tiny pimple and it's causing me the itchy-bitchiness from hell!  Why I didn't suspect a pimple from the get-go is beyond me, but there's a problem.  I can't reach the nasty little bugger.  The other night I threatened bodily harm to Jimmy if he didn't take my pimple popping implement to my back.  It took a bit of whining shouting, but I got him to do it.  He pressed and he pulled to no avail, causing me considerable pain while doing so.  He then said, "It's not a pimple!  It's a skin tag or something!  All I've done is make it bleed."

    The next day I had Mikayla look at my back.  She said, "Daddy was picking at the wrong spot!  Here, lemme at it!"

    Unfortunately, she was unable to get rid of it and now I'm stuck here waiting for another opportune moment to force ask Jimmy to give it another try.  Until then, I'm eternally itchy.

    Word Twist

    Do you have certain words that you always type incorrectly, no matter that you've typed that same word a millions times?  For many years I couldn't even type my own daughter's name properly.  Mikayla came out something like Miklalya or something.  And YouTube.  Holy crap, almost every time I put that into Google I type YouTubel.  Why does my ring finger insist on hitting that L?

    Favorite Bloggy Quote of the Week

    Brought to you by Jason, of The Jason Show, while explaining the health benefits of potatoes in any form:

    Low in carbs, low in fat, low in calories, and packed with vitamins, minerals, calcium, anti-oxidants, protein, probiotics, lycopene, iron, omega-3s, folic acid, potassium, lithium, progesterone, testosterone, estrogen, podium, immodium, and fiber, potatoes just might be nature's most perfect food!
    So, now it's your turn to link up your scrambled thoughts, if you choose.  If you choose not to, it's okay.  I won't cry or anything.  Sniff.  Sniff.  Really.  It's okay.  I'll still love you.  Sniff.  Sniff.





    Pssst! If you love me, you might love my stupid sister more. Go visit her at Jill's Believe it or Not, and tell her I sent you!

    Thursday, January 21, 2010

    It's Almost Time!!!

    Because of the poll I put up, I do know that there are quite a few of you that are ready to make my Sunday Scramble a weekly meme.  Now, put your money where your mouth is (and your fingers where your keyboard is) and let's make it happen!

    What IS the Sunday Scramble?  Well, it's just a chance for you to put up a quick (or not so quick) post about the little things that have gone on throughout the week... things you probably don't find important enough singularly to blog about, but as a whole can make an amusing post.

    It's for those of us who find our brains feeling scrambled more often than not.  It's me, giving you permission to be silly, random and even incoherent.  No need to tell a full story, no need to even make sense.  If it's popped into your head in the last week, type it up and publish!

    I'll be putting up my Sunday Scramble post on Saturday night, around 11:00.  Mr. MckLinky will be in attendance to take your name and post, so please, come back then (or Sunday any time) and join the madness that is the Sunday Scramble!


    Pssst! If you love me, you might love my stupid sister more. Go visit her at Jill's Believe it or Not, and tell her I sent you!

    Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop: The Strangest Dream Ever

    Oops.  I totally forgot about the Writer's Workshop this week, but when I saw Kat's prompts, I knew I had an old post that would fit perfectly.  And wow, talk about a blast from the past.  When I wrote this I had been blogging less than a month!  Wow.




    So please join me in a look back at one of the strangest dreams I've ever had.

    I have to share the horrible nightmare I had last night! Now, to set it up a bit, I have to first tell you that last week, my now-ex- friend Becky found a tick on her daughter's leg. Now those that know me, know that I love critters great and small, but aside from a dragonfly, I do NOT like bugs. And, as I always sit out on my back porch to email and blog and am not screened in, I am no stranger to the nasty blood sucking skeeters. And let us not forget the spittle bugs,who while sitting on a leaf and eating it, disguise themselves by blowing a secretion out their butt that bubbles up to hide them. Ooh! And the stupid golden brown beetles that keep clocking themselves against the light fixture, before then falling down into my coffee mug or my keyboard. Oh, and my HEAD. Yes, they love landing in my hair, which grosses me out to no end.

    As I sit here right now there are beetles circling overhead, cicadas singing in a nearby tree, spittle bugs plastered all over the stucco, and a lone tree frog singing his heart out. I do love the ribbits though. I can't get enough of tree frogs, which is why I have a huge one tattooed on my right shin. Jesse Tat But back to the bugs. Florida is known for its bug population and I can attest it is true. We have bugs as big as helicopters, and more stinging/biting things than I care to think about. Five different species of poisonous snake, and a nice variety of spiders, the most scary being the black and brown widow, (which I'm constantly killing back here), and the brown recluse.

    So it's no wonder that once in a while I'm going to have a dream that centers around arachnids and creepy crawly things. So there I was last night, sleeping like the proverbial baby,
    when all of a sudden, my dreaming self starts scratching my scalp. Suddenly, I felt something. No, TWO somethings, sticking out of my scalp. OMG, I have TICKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TICKS in my HEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!! In my dream I start frantically trying to get hold of the tick's body to pull it out, but it's too slippery. Keeps sliding out between my fingers! So I move to the other one. Same thing. Can't grasp it!!!!!!!!!!!! So then I start tugging on my hair so hard that I woke myself up. I was in a sweat, freaking out, wondering, should I wake Jimmy up? Or can I handle this on my own? So I quickly went into the bathroom, flipped on the light and stared at myself in the mirror for a moment or two to compose myself before separating my hair to find these horrible miniature vampire-like critters with their heads embedded in my scalp, sucking the very life's blood out of me.

    On the count of three... One... Two... Three. Separate hair. Stare in disbelief and then let out a huge sigh of relief as I realize my stupidity. I didn't have ticks after all. That was just a dream. I had been feeling something slippery though, but it was nothing more than the blue hair extensions Larry put in yesterday!! I was squeezing and pulling those bastards for all they were worth thinking they were bugs!!!!! If you've never seen a synthetic hair extension, it's put in with a kind of tape and glue right near the scalp. See?
    Hey! While I was sleeping it really did feel like a bug sticking out of my head! Go ahead, you can laugh now, I won't hold it against you. But I tell ya what, it scared the bejeesus out of me at the time. I can't believe that I didn't realize what I had been pulling on when I first woke up. I literally didn't think about the extensions until I was starting straight at them. But now I can safely sing, "There ain't no bugs on me. There ain't no bugs on me. There may be bugs on some of your mugs, but there ain't no bugs on me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

    P.S. Just looked down to find a moth in my coffee! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!





    Pssst! If you love me, you might love my stupid sister more. Go visit her at Jill's Believe it or Not, and tell her I sent you!

    Monday, January 18, 2010

    I've Got Nothing But An Idea

    What do you blog about when there's literally nothing interesting to say?

    Well, you could tell your readers that you haven't shaved your legs since Christmas Eve, but that wouldn't be interesting. 

    You could torture them further with photographic evidence...


    But no, I won't do that.

    I'm literally looking around me, trying to find something to write about.

    Nope.  Nothin'.

    So while I've got nothing of any interest to write about, let me ask you all a question.  What would you think of my making the Sunday Scramble a weekly meme, maybe with a Mr. McLinky for others to join?  Kind of like Friday Fragments, but for those of us who feel more scrambled on the weekend?

    I put up a poll on the right side-bar if you want to vote there.  Let me know what you think.  And I promise that if I keep this up, I'll keep my posts must shorter than the last Scramble!


    Pssst! If you love me, you might love my stupid sister more. Go visit her at Jill's Believe it or Not, and tell her I sent you!

    Saturday, January 16, 2010

    Sunday Scramble II



    Here I am doing this for two weeks in a row.  That's some kind of record for me because I don't stick to anything.  Well, except blogging.  Seriously, when I think about it, aside from staying married and still loving my kids to death, I flake out on every other damn thing and always have.


    Flakier Than A Croissant

    There was the crossword puzzle year when I just couldn't get enough of them.  It's all I did all day.




    There was the year or so that I sold colored aquatic snails online.  That got old real fast.  I had four or five tanks going and my hands were always covered in snail slime.  They were cute little boogers though.

    Here are a couple of violets mating.




    And here is what a female's egg clutch looks like if the mating has been successful.




    I won't even tell you what I had to go through to get a viable clutch to hatch.  Oh, the horrors!

    There was the year I went on Weight Watchers and lost 52 pounds.  Worked out 5-6 days a week for about 2 hours at a time.  I do believe those pictures fried with our old computer but that's probably a good thing.  Don't wanna depress myself more than my usual, ya know?

    *added at the last minute*  Oh, craptastic!!!!  I was on MySpace (hate that site) trying to find my best friend from High School (no luck dammit) and decided to look through pictures I posted on there years ago.  Wouldn't you know I found the picture I was thinking about from my thinner days.  I don't want to put it here because looking at it makes me sad.  I could actually look at the following picture and say, "Wow, I was kinda pretty."  Now?  I don't even see myself in that other Justine, and it hurts.  It also makes me realize just how much I've aged in the past 6 years.  It's kind of scary.  But, you know me... honest to the core.  So, after finding the picture I couldn't not post it.  Crap.  Shit.  Damn.




    Excuse me while I go kill myself with a blunt object.

    Anyhoo, then there was the year I went through the Fly Lady cleaning stage.  Too bad that one didn't last.





    Inappropriate Lust

    Yeah, so, I think we all, from time to time, find ourselves unnaturally attracted to a hot actor on the scene, right?  I'm not too proud to say that I have, what would you say?  A I-want-to-lick-him-from-top-to-bottom-then-bottom-to-top crush on Edward Cullen.






    So what if his character is only 17 years old?  In actuality, he's like, what?  A thousand years old or so.  That makes it okay, right?

    Well, that and the fact that Robert Pattinson is actually 24, which at the very worst only makes me a cougar.  I can live with that.

    But last week I came home from Wal*Mart with a Robert Pattinson calendar and Jimmy was all affronted and shit, saying he's just jail bait and he doesn't want him hanging on our fridge where he, Jimmy, would have to stare at him day after day.  Actually tried to demand that I bring the calendar back.  Bite me, Edward Jimmy!

    Guess who's hanging on my fridge?  Unfortunately, it's just Robert Pattinson, because when I first clapped eyes on the calendar I just thought, "EDWARD!" and snatched it up.  It ain't Edward, with his pale, frosty good looks and amber eyes.  It's just plain ol' Robert.

     

    Okay, yeah.  That works too.  Yum.



    Raise Your Hands

    My kids are so damn lucky that Jimmy loves going to concerts.  Or maybe Jimmy is lucky that my kids love going to concerts.  Guess it works either way.  Mikayla listens to a lot of hip-hop, but also loves bands like Van Halen and The Beatles.  Madison is all about rock, has been from infancy.  She'd be in her car seat nice and calm, but the second a System of a Down song came on (and we're talking heavy rock here) she would start bopping her head and swinging her little baby arms all over the place.

    Now that she's a much more mature 8 year old (ahem) she is all about Nickelback and Bon Jovi, especially.  Last year Jimmy surprised her with Nickelback tickets, and last week he surprised both girls with tickets to see Bon Jovi in April.  You would have thought he told them that we'd won the lottery and were moving into a mansion on the beach.  For the past week I've heard nothing from Madison but "Jon Bon Jovi this" and "Jon Bon Jovi that", and "Did you know that Bon Jovi...?"  He's on her computer's desktop now.





     Everybody Wants Some

    Now that I've mentioned Van Halen, it reminds me of the other night while sitting at the dinner table with the girls.  For some reason, I guess the way Mikayla's hair was messed up, I told her she looked like David Lee Roth.  When David Lee Roth had hair, that is.






    Hair, yes, but sadly, no taste.  And nary a bulge.


    She mistakenly thought this was a compliment, and took my camera into the bathroom for some diva shots.




     
    Do you see the resemblance?


    Eggcellent Surprise

    Please tell me I'm not the only one that gets a kick out of cracking open an egg and finding a double yolk, then crying out, "Cool!  Double yolk!"


    Coonie Love

    I know some of you remember my good friend Rocky the Raccoon from last year, right?  Remember, he used to come out of the woods when I called to him and even came within inches of me and let me take his picture?






    I've missed him since we moved to the other side of the street, but either he or one of his coonie friends have decided that they want my food, whether it's in a garbage bag or not, and whether it's inside my lanai or not.  If Jimmy would just fix the damn screen once and for all I wouldn't wake up to this.






    Look!  I caught the bastard red-handed!  Okay, I didn't, but Strudel's raccoon toy was out here at the time of the crime and Madison thought it made for a great photo op.


    Work It Girl!

    It may be horrible, but I find it immensely pleasing to watch my girls do manual labor, especially in the kitchen.  Mikayla actually washes dishes better than Jimmy.  On further thought, that's not saying much, but still, she looks damn cute doing it, doesn't she?





    She even did my many coffee mugs.


     


    And while she was busy doing that, Madison was cooking dinner.  That's right... she actually asked me to let her dip, bread and fry the pork chops.  I did the actual frying, but the rest was all her!





    Look at the concentration on her face.  That could be because I scared the bejeezus out of her about getting splattered by hot oil.


     


    Cold As Ice


    Everyone throughout the country has been having a bit of an arctic blast this past week, and Florida was not exempt from the frigid temperatures.  One morning last week I came out here for a cigarette around 6:30 a.m.  It was 20 degrees.  Twenty.  Degrees.

    An hour or so later Jill calls me and says this:

    "My windshield is covered in ice! I can't believe this!"

    Uh, yeah brainiac, that's what happens when it's frickin' freezing out!  I cannot believe she called just to tell me that.  And believe me, that's all she wanted to tell me.


    I'm Officially Twisted

    This week, Angie, over at Seven Clown Circus, was giving away 5 of her favorite things.  I hit the jackie when I won this awesome Twisted Silver bracelet.



    Woot woot!  Thank you, Angie!


    Favorite Bloggy Quote of the Week

    Comes from Stephanie at Mama Still Wears Gucci.  I have no clue what the hell she's talking about, but had to love her quote and coordinating picture evidence.

    "He's been on the Douche Radar for a long time, but he really went above and beyond the call of Douchebaggery with his remarks to Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh on his "news" program recently."




    So, was that scrambled enough for ya?  Any scrambled Sunday thoughts you'd like to share with me?


    Btw... it's driving me CRAZY not knowing who it is that frequents my blog from Shoreham, NY.  Please please please tell me who you are!


    Pssst! If you love me, you might love my stupid sister more. Go visit her at Jill's Believe it or Not, and tell her I sent you!