Tag Archives: funny

Chocolate Addiction

Chocolate Addiction

Today I was working on someone’s computer and noticed that this particular person had a candy bowl on her desk that was stocked full of Reeses cups, Peppermint Patties and Hershey’s Nuggets.  I am not exactly sure why but this irritated me.  I take that back…I know why it made me mad.  It drives me crazy when a skinny person keeps candy around and doesn’t eat it. Good candy too, not Smarties or Jolly Ranchers.  It's especially annoying when just this morning (for the second time this week and it's only Tuesday) you've told yourself "it's time to get back on the old diet." What kind of person can stare at a bowl of peanut butter cups all day and not eat them.  Is it some kind of subliminal message to the world about will power? Is this some kind of inspirational lesson for us fatties?   “Look at me, I’m so skinny and can pass on this candy all day long.” “I can type emails click clack click, and make spreadsheets with my skinny fingers and I don’t touch this candy.” I mean why is this bowl there anyway if no one is going to eat it? Is it for visitors?  Who is going to reach in and take the candy in front of her?  Not me, I have to sneak my office candy so no one passes judgment on me. Nope, I think the only people who will eat her chocolate are other candy bowl loving skinny people.

I know this is just my issue.  Most other people are normal around chocoalte. This is America after all and if a skinny person wants to have delicious candy just lying around they have a right to do so.  I’m just saying the concept is foreign to me.  I was only there a few minutes when temptation really started setting in. The smell of peanut butter and chocolate started to make me feel woozy.  I fixed her computer as quickly as I could.  I had to get out of there fast.

It’s a good thing she didn’t have any Snickers bars or she would have come back to find an empty bowl with a five dollar bill and a chocolate smeared note that said “I’m so sorry.”

Think I'll walk past her office on the way out today…just to check on her…you know, to be sure her computer is working still…and if she's not there (please, please, please) maybe pick up a little something for the road.

 

 

 

 

 

Haircut

Haircut

 

 

Ladies if you have a man who loves you very much

He will do many things for you like clean and cook and such.

And if one day you find your messy hair needs just a trim

Fire up your brightest sweetest smile and aim it right at him.

At first he may protest a bit and go out in the yard

He’ll tell you that he can’t do it; he might lose his man card.

But let him fuss and make excuses, let him pout and whine

Tell him you believe in him, he’ll sigh and say “Oh fine!”

Go get him some good scissors, the sharpest you can find

And then take off your fancy shirt, this part he will not mind.

Tell him to be careful you do not want him cut

Don’t get mad if time to time he stops and pats your butt.

Show him how to comb it out and make the ends all even

Speak sweetly to him, build him up so midway he's not leaving.

Talk him through it as he snips, he’ll quickly get much better

Remind him often as he goes it cuts easier when it’s wetter.

When he’s done praise him lots and tell him that you’ll sweep

Tell him that he’s earned a nap, go on now go to sleep.

Remind him that you love him and you’re glad he is your honey

But most of all please thank your man for saving you some money!

 

 

Car Wash

Car Wash

He wanted to watch the Disney Channel.  I wanted to talk.  Our conversation went like this…

Me: So how do you like Mommy's new car?

Him:  I LOVE IT.

Me: How does Mommy like it?

Him: She does.

Me: It's very nice.

Him: She doesn't want it to be messy.

Me: That's good.  You can help her keep it clean.

Him: She doesn't want anyone to fart in it.

Me: Well then she better not give Uncle Alex a ride anywhere.

Him: We took it to the carwash.

Me: Oh that's fun. Did you like it?

Him: No

Me: Why not?

Him: It freaked me out.  It was freaky!

Me: Freaky?  What was freaky about it?

Him: The big brushes. They were so freaky.

Me: Yeah they can be scary.  Was anything else freaky?

Him: No, just the brushes.

Me: Was Mommy scared?

Him: No, she's a grown up.

Me:  One day you'll have a car and will take it to the carwash.  Hopefully you won't be scared anymore.

Him: I won't have a car until I'm a grown up.  I just said grown up's aren't afraid of the carwash. DUH!

 

Ok, he didn't really say duh…but believe me it was implied.

 

Tattletale

Tattletale

 This adorable three year old is my grandson. I know I'm a little biased but he is a fantastic kid.  He is smart and funny and kind.  He is also a major tattletale. I know that tattling is a typical preschool behavior and it's important to teach kids the difference between tattling and reporting.  Some things need to be reported to an adult.  For instance if your older sister singes off your eyebrows during a seance. That should be reported. (I'm just saying.)

Children have a very keen sense of justice.  Just try to divide up a bag of candy among a bunch of kids and you'll see how much fairness means to them. I think as they start to learn right from wrong they are super quick to point out when someone has done something that they perceive to be against the rules.  Riley definitely has his own ideas of what is acceptable and what is not. 

This kid takes tattling to a new level. He tattles without discrimination.

One day he and Daddy were playing ball in the house. Unfortunately a picture got knocked off the wall and the glass cracked. Daddy hung the picture back up and said "Mommy will never notice."  In the moment, a three year old can be quite conspiratorial but the minute his mother walked in he immediately pointed to the picture on the wall and said "Daddy broke it." 

One of his favorite people to tattle on is Grandpa.  He loves to run in to the kitchen to tell me what Grandpa said or did. Recently it was "Grandpa told me to put my toy next to my suitcase and not in it."  I am not sure what he hopes will happen. Maybe he thinks I'll take away Grandpa's dessert or send him to bed early.  He has even ratted out his own mother for ummm…pooping. In fact if anyone leaves the room for any reason he will announce to all assembled that "so and so has gone to poop." I've found myself sitting in the potty yelling out "oh no I'm not!" and hurrying up so no one thinks he is right.

Just the other day when I picked him up for a play date he immediately told me with great indignation that his mother would not buy him a toy at the store when he asked for one. "She told me I already had toys and I didn't need it." Oh the horror…someone call CPS. What a terrible mother! He was seriously ticked. He is constantly telling on the cat for making a mess by her food bowl and he tattles on his uncle for having a dirty room.

Up until recently I thought I was exempt from the tattle monster.  He and I are pretty tight.  I am one of the people he most frequently tattles to. However a few nights ago this little Benedict Arnold tattled on ME.  He was playing on the kitchen floor while I washed and dried a few dishes.  As I reached for the dishtowel with a wet dish in my hand a few drops of water dropped on his head. He jumped up and said "you got me wet!"  I said I was sorry but that didn't soothe him.  He said "I need to go tell Grandpa what you did."  I said "no you don't" but he said "Yeah, I really do" and he went running off to the livingroom to tell on me.

As he grows older I'm sure he'll outgrow this little habit. He will learn about keeping secrets and telling little white lies. He will learn that first grade is hard for a tattletale.  He will learn to discern between what needs to be reported and what he should keep to himself but for now I'm enjoying hearing every little thing.

Now I need to go remind Grandpa that it's no cookies for him tonight.  This kid knows how to hit them where it hurts.

 

 

Bull in the China Shop

Bull in the China Shop
I make my husband nervous when we are in antique shops.  It seems that every time I touch something I knock something else down or something falls to the floor.  He gasps and says "Honey be careful!" Once I dropped the lid to something and his eyes got big as saucers as it clanked around on the ground. I said "I'm sure they are used to people dropping stuff all the time."  He didn't look soothed.  Sometimes he just walks away from me because he doesn’t want to be around when I break something.  I haven't  broken anything yet but I’m sure that it’s only a matter of time. I guess I’m not graceful and can’t delicately lift a plate off a shelf without upsetting the things around it.  I have a domino effect on stuff. I pick one up and three fall over. I am the proverbial bull in a china shop.
I think my real issue is I’m not happy with just looking at what’s on top, what can easily be seen.  I like to dig around. I like to poke underneath and behind.  I like to look for the treasure that might be hidden underneath something else. When you do that things get jostled and you’re going to make a little noise.  While I hate that I embarass my husband, just like with people, if you look beneath the surface you are sure to find something wonderful.
This past weekend we threw together a last minute out of town get away to visit thrift, antique and junk shops.  We hadn’t been away in a long while and we needed to hit the road.  Turns out we really needed to hit the road because a bad storm knocked out the electricity at our house and in 100 degree weather we needed to find air conditioning and fast. We headed south to Richmond Virginia, capital of the confederacy and home to Virginia Commonwealth University.  As it turns out also home to some really cool thrift and antique shops.  I’ve always been a thrifter but since becoming a Pinterest fanatic I’ve also become interested in Upcycling. Upcycling means taking something old or useless and converting it in to a new product that is useful or has a higher value.  In other words you take some old piece of junk you find in a thrift shop and you make it in to something cool to put in your house.  My mission this weekend was to find a few of those old pieces of junk.
What we found was this place.  We liked it so much we went twice. I came home with a solid wood antique window shutter for $12.  Not exactly sure what I’m going to make with it but I know it’s going on a wall when I figure it out.  My husband is building an antique tool collection and he bought an old hand saw and file for about $5. I got this old cookie crock.  It was missing the lid but otherwise in perfect condition.  The thing is heavy…solid.  It spoke to me.  It said “You are always making cookies…you need me in your kitchen.”  It cost $4.  I have repurposed it to hold my kitchen utensils.  We found lots of old goodies for not very much money.  Call me a simple woman but I got so much pleasure from digging through what basically amounts to other people’s old stuff. If you haven’t heard George Carlin’s routine about “Stuff” you must check this out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac
This place smelled like my grandma's attic which was one of my favorite places to hang out as a child. I  found things that were familiar…things I had around me when I was a child. I would pick up something and say “My grandma had a mirror like that” or "My mother had a pan just like this." I couldn’t pass a Pyrex bowl without picking it up. I’m not quite sure why but there must be some deeply seated memory attachment to it.  I found a red toy  chicken from a farm set we had as children and I remembered playing with those  Little People toys for hours and hours with my brothers and sisters. I wish like anything I still had my Fisher Price  doll house.  I can remember every detail of the thing from the fireplace painted on the living room wall to the thin little foam mattresses on each plastic little bed. I remember the daughters braids and the way the dogs ears stood up. I loved that little people family.  They had a perfect little house and a perfect little life. 
I'm not sure why I'm so drawn to this old stuff lately other than I'm getting older myself.  I wonder 50 years from now what will be important to my grandchildren and their children. What will they pick up and say "remember when Grandma used this?" The idea of a part of me sticking around in my belongings and in my stories makes me feel really happy.
 
Now I'm off to eBay to see if I can find myself one of these.

 

Sucky Day

Sucky Day
Today was a good day at work.  I might even go so far as to say today was a fun day at work.  I got to play with a new toy and you know us nerds…we love our toys.
 I had mentioned to one of the principals I work with that the computers in the school were very dirty inside.  I mean filthy dirty. One time when I opened one up there was this enormous dust bunny living inside.  He had turned the central processing unit in to a couch and he was kicked back watching Netflix by the glow of the internal battery light.  His little dust bunny children were playing over in the RAM somewhere and his wife was warming a pan of lasagna on the power supply.  I SWEAR!  This same school had multiple power outages this year due to a family of squirrels taking up residence in a nearby electric transformer box so needless to say they were not taking dust bunnies or anything else furry and damaging very lightly.  The principal bought a PC vacuum and today was my first chance to put it together and give it a whirl.
 
Can you say Bye Bye Bunny?  This little project was right in my wheelhouse.  I am in to instant gratification.  It’s why I like to mow the grass and paint a room a new color.  The results are immediate.  Sucking the dust out of computers is the same way.  It would be an understatement to say that I really got in to it.  I took some before and after pictures and showed the front office staff.  While these ladies were squealing and carrying on with “oh that is so gross” and “that’s disgusting” I was saying “I know isn’t it awesome? While they were repelled by the notion of all that dust and mess I was thrilled by it.  The dustier the computer the more satisfying it was to me when I vacuumed it out.  I told the bookkeeper “I’m going to suck the hell out of this school this summer.”   
 
It’s the little things in life that make me happy. 

 

Fix the Bed

Fix the Bed
A few weekends ago we were sitting around telling stories, laughing and generally having a good time when my best friend said “Have you told them the story of when we broke the bed?”  She loves to do that when there is someone new in the room. I had not told this particular story to present company but of course the minute she mentioned it they were intrigued.  Honestly I hadn’t really planned to tell this story on my blog. It’s a long one and while it’s funny to those of us who were there,  I’m not sure it has broad comic appeal.  However, today I was looking through pictures trying to find something for the story I had intended to tell when I came across this.  This picture was taken a few seconds before the 100 year old antique bed we were on gave out and hit the ground like a ton of bricks. 

 

Telling this story is bittersweet because one of these beloved children isn’t with us anymore.  One day I’ll tell you that story but not today.
Don’t be fooled by these smiling faces.  They are the faces of children who will abandon you the minute the going gets tough. The one holding the camera is the same friend who dragged this story out of me around the dining room table not long ago.  She is the mother of two of these hoodlums.  The other three are mine.
 My first husband’s parents owned a house on beautiful Smith Mountain Lake in south western Virginia.   It is the only thing I miss from that marriage. The place is picturesque. The house is furnished and decorated with antiques.  You have to use a step stool to get in to the beds.   I loved it at the lake house but I was always a nervous wreck when my kids were small worrying that they would break something.
This particular summer (probably 1995 if I have to guess) my kids and I went to the lake for a week along with my best friend and her two boys. The Dad’s would be joining us on the weekend. We fished, swam, explored, and soaked up the sun.  We went to a Mennonite auction. We crashed a local fireman’s fundraising dinner.  We put a fish in the freezer with the hook still in its mouth. It was a fun week.
The picture of the kids on the bed was taken on Thursday. I know because when all hell broke loose I kept thinking I’ve got twenty four hours before my husband gets here to fix this.  I was in bed waking up from a nice little nap, reading my book and enjoying a rare moment of peace.  The silence was suddenly broken by a familiar voice saying “Go get her guys!” and next thing I knew I had five children jumping up on the bed on top of me. My friend ran in with the camera snapping away taking pictures. “Ha ha…you got me….so funny guys.  Ok now everyone off.”  I’m pretty sure I said something like that but I didn’t have a chance to hear their response because suddenly I heard this loud cracking sound and before anyone had a chance to even process what was going on, the bed hit the floor with a WHOMPH that I’m fairly certain could be heard echoing down the lake. 
My memory of the next few moments is fuzzy.  I think I was in shock.  I felt like throwing up. I laid there for a second stunned and that’s when the traitor children jumped up and scurried out of the room as fast as their guilty little legs could take them.  They knew what was about to go down was bad and they wanted no part of it. When I started to come to my senses I was aware of this piercing cackle, a choking, gasping laughter coming from the floor next to me.  My dear friend had fallen to the floor and was laughing so hard she was in danger of giving herself a seizure.   
I remember what happened next like it was yesterday.  I screamed at her “What the hell are you laughing at? I am going to be in so much trouble.  What are we going to do?  I will never be allowed to come back here.  My husband is going to kill me.  WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?”  The louder and more upset I got the harder she laughed which just pissed me off even more.  We were stuck – her laughing me screaming for a good five minutes or so. The kids lingered just outside the bedroom door with the older ones peeking in. I jumped up and started pacing around the room.  “What am I going to do?  This is bad.  This is really, really bad. I can’t believe this.”  I was frantic.  My friend finally calmed herself enough to speak and said “Stop freaking out. We’ll fix it.”  Are you kidding me!?  I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to slap that silly grin right off her face.  Fix it?  Fix it with what? We are out in the middle of nowhere.  The closest Home Depot was over an hour away.  I was starting to feel like I might pass out.  “Of course we’ll fix it.  All we need is some wood, some wood glue and a few nails.  We’ll have it like new tonight! Trust me” she said. 
We pulled the mattress off the bed and examined the damage.  Turns out it was only one piece of wood that was broken.  If we could replace this one piece of wood we might be ok but how?  I told her “go find some tape so we can tape this back together and take it with us to the store.”  She came back five minutes later with band aids.  She couldn’t find the tape so we used about 10 band aids to tape this four foot piece of wood back together.  I ran for the phone book to look up the nearest hardware store.  There was a small hardware store down the road so we rushed the kids in to the car (still in their swimsuits) and headed there.  When we explained our problem to the owner he said “well ya’ll are gonna have to have a piece of wood custom cut.”  I started to get dizzy again.  Custom cut?  That’s it I thought.  I’ll never come back to this beautiful place again.  I must have looked like I was going to cry because he suggested we go down the road and visit his friend Tim the custom cabinet maker.  Maybe he could help us out. “I’ll call him and warn him, err I mean tell him you are on the way.”  I dared not get my hopes up but this Tim was our last chance.
It was clear as we pulled in to the parking lot at Tim’s shop that he was a craftsman.There was wood everywhere.  Little did he know that he was about to add Knight in Shining Armor to his resume.  We told the kids to wait in the car, and grabbing our broken bandaged up  board we went inside. Tim met us as we came through the door.  “Can I help you?” he said.  “We broke a bed” I said.  He looked at my friend, he looked at me, he looked back at her again and said “You did what now?”  I can only imagine what was going through his head.  My friend thrust our piece of wood in his face and said “We need another one of these.  Can you help us?  If we don’t fix this bed her husband is going to kill her.”  Poor guy just shook his head in confusion.   I am sure my eyes started to fill up again because he quickly took our piece of wood and said “Give me an hour or so and I’ll see what I can do.”   “Halleluiah” I thought, this might work.   We took the kids for ice cream to kill an hour and then went back to the wood shop.  Tim charged us $5 for a duplicate piece of wood cut to the exact proportions of the original. I was so happy I threw my arms around him. He saved my butt. I could hear him laughing at us as we went out the door.

 

 

We made a quick trip back to the hardware store for nails, wood glue and a hammer and then went back to the house to fix a bed.  I am proud to say that bed will never break again.  There are so many nails in it and so much glue on it that it is easily 10 times stronger now than it was before it broke. It’s been  about 17 years since then and so far as I know our repair still holds.  If anyone ever decides to climb under that bed they will be in for a surprise but it’s not my worry any more. 

The morning we were getting ready to leave my friends son came to us and admitted that he had broken an antique plate that had been sitting on the dresser in his room.  I looked at her and said “I got the band aids, go get some of that dang glue.”  Piece of cake.
 
 
 
 

Keep Calm and Eat Chocolate

Keep Calm and Eat Chocolate
Dear Walmart Cashier,

Thank you for your friendly greeting and personable manner.  I really thought you were the exception to the usual indifference I normally get at the register.  That is, until you scanned the Snickers bar that sat between the rye bread and shampoo and asked me if I wanted it.  Oh wow.  How rude.  What makes you think it's for me (it was) and what makes you think I was going to eat it the minute I got in the car. ( I did.)  You don't know me. You don't know that I had to eat lunch early so I could go to a meeting so by the time I dropped by your store on my way  home from work I was starving.  You don't know that I made it past the potato chip aisle without adding anything to my cart.  Those crunchy salty little bastards were calling out to me but I stayed strong and moved on.  You don't know that I spent a solid two minutes staring at the doughnut case trying to decide which was more fattening, glazed or  chocolate frosted . You see I'm trying to eat better and make healthier choices.  I'm trying to avoid sweets and things that are not good for me.  I was pretty darn proud of how well I had navigated through your aisles and made it safely to the register with nothing bad in my cart.  I would have been fine too if the woman in front of me didn't have an issue with her credit card.  While you and she ironed it out my eyes wandered over to the candy display and most specifically to the Snickers bars.  Unfortunately, Snickers are one of my favorites.  In my mind I heard a voice say "Snickers really satisfies" and as if in a trance I picked it up and threw it on the belt. Well you know what happened next.  So let me tell you something about me Lady…next time I've got a candy bar on my belt don't bother asking me if I want it for my purse….just give me the damn thing and no one gets hurt. 

-Felicia

 

Smooth Criminal

Smooth Criminal

I like rocks. I’ve always had a thing for them. I have a bunch of them in my jewelry box and other places around the house.  I’ve been accumulating them for years.  I have a pretty decent sized one in my glove box. My family refers to it as my “rape rock” meaning if someone menacing ever comes near me they are going to get a rock upside the head.  You can do many things with a rock.  Did you know that if you are hiking in the woods on a hot day and you run out of water you can put a small stone in your mouth and it will help alleviate your feelings of thirst?  I learned this from a scout leader on an actual hike in the woods.  I didn’t put a rock in my mouth when she suggested it because I wasn’t actually dying of thirst; however this crazy lady was popping them in her mouth all day long. She only took it out when she wanted to eat her GORP.  (GORP = good old raisins and peanuts which by the way would make you more thirsty in my opinion) Every time she said “Want some of my gorp?”  I would seriously crack up. There may be a reason none of my kids stuck with scouting.

 
The other day my husband I were shopping at a small hardware store and we saw this fake rock that you would put in your garden.  It said “Grandpa’s Garden.”  We both had an “awww” moment because he’s a grandpa and he loves being a grandpa. However we both agreed that the decoration on it was kind of hideous. It had a scary looking ladybug and I think that ladybug’s should always be cute.  It was also covered in flowers which for a Grandpa’s rock was a little girly if you ask me.  My last complaint was that it was plastic.  I mean if you’re going to put a rock in the garden put a ROCKin the garden.   “Cute idea but I can make something just like it on a real rock for free!”  I told him. 
 
I’m always admiring oddly shaped and cool looking rocks outside of restaurants, stores or anywhere else they are used in landscaping or are there naturally.  I’ll pick one up and say “oh look, I like this one” and my husband will say “Put it back, you can’t take it.”  To which I argue, “It’s a rock, who really owns a rock? The earth?  The universe? Applebee’s? 
 
Until Saturday that is…. 
 
We saw that plastic rock at the hardware store and it changed something. As we turned in to our neighborhood we drove past the community center.  They have these medium sized landscaping rocks all artfully arranged with flowers and bushes.  I looked at him and said “That would be the perfect size rock for your garden.”  I fully expected his usual response. Instead he grinned at me and whipped the car in to the community center driveway and said “Quickly.”  I jumped out of that car so fast it was a thing of beauty.  It took me only a moment to find the perfect one.   I was back in the car within seconds.  As we drove the last minute up the street to our house I held the rock to my cheek to feel its warmth. Few things feel as good in your hands as a sun baked rock.  We took it home and I painted it.  Not my best work by any measure but this little rock means something to me.
 
I know it’s a silly thing to be proud of someone for helping you steal a rock but I am.  My husband has a stressful job and I’ve been trying to get him to relax a little more lately.  When he pulled accomplice to one of my capers, he gave himself completely to the moment. For someone who has a hard time with that, this was HUGE. 
 
Hey honey…how’s your throwing arm?  I haven’t been toilet papering in years. 
 
 

The Bees Knees

The Bees Knees
 
This morning my husband and I were talking about something (can't remember exactly what at the moment) and I was being my usual ornery self.  Our conversation went something like this:

 

Joel:  You're a pip.
Me:  A pip?  As in a singer?
Joel: You're a pistol?
Me: What does that mean?
Joel: You don't know what a pistol is?
Me:  I do, it's a gun.  What does that have to do with me?
Joel: (big sigh) Ok, you're a firecracker.
Me:  As in dangerous?
Joel: (big sigh with eye roll) You are the bees knees baby! 
Me: Bees don't have knees.
Joel: (big sigh, eye roll, with exasperation) You my dear are the cat's pajamas.
Me: Do you know any compliments from this century?
Joel:  (big sigh, eye roll, exasperation and long pause) Boo, you so fly. Gurl you're so PHAT it's ridonculous.
Me: …What were you saying about kitties in pajammies?