Fun with dryer lint

Here is what happens when you leave your family alone for a week and they do laundry for you. They discover fun creatures out of dryer lint.

Bryon was folding up the clothes and Grace found this destroyed and linty former Kleenex? She told him it looked like a turkey. Sure enough.

They did a little embellishment and here it is!

A Map of the World

Grace came home Thursday with a map of her world so far. You'll see above it includes the holidays written over on the bottom left along with her favorite places as continents which include: the beach, Colorado, California, Missouri, USA, Africa, the Ocean and one I just can't make sense of.

Pretty creative I thought! I got out our Children's atlas and tried to show her some other places but she wasn't too interested, even though she did take the atlas to school the next day to show her teacher.

Take that Amerigo Vespucci, you ain't got squat.

Food Rules

Michael Pollan is an awesome journalist and author of now five extremely interesting books on food; where it's come from and where it's going. He has a short book out now called Food Rules and I'd like to share those rules with you. As a disclaimer, I have to tell you in full disclosure I DO NOT follow all these rules and infact consumed 6 Peeps and an entire row of Thin Mints this week. Those, in Mr. Pollan's eyes, are most assuredly NOT food. Still we three are inspiring to continue to do better, eat better and be better.

Food Rule #1 is:

Eat food.

"These days this is easier said than done," Pollan writes, "especially when seventeen thousand new products show up in the supermarket each year, all vying for your food dollars. But most of these items don't deserve to be called food - I call them edible foodlike substances. They're highly processed concoctions designed by food scientists, consisting mostly of ingredients derived from corn and soy that no normal person keeps in the pantry, and they contain chemical additives with which the human body has not been long acquainted. Today much of the challenge of eating well comes down to choosing real food and avoiding these industrial novelties."

Peeps are without question an "industrial novelty". Tasty yes, but NOT food.

Just start looking at the ingredient lists on your "food". You may be surprised AND disgusted. Or maybe not. Either way, a little knowledge is a good thing and a LOT of knowledge may save all our lives.

But Wait, There's More.

If ever there was a personality profile for prospective infomercial targets, Grace would fit it. Every time she spends ANY amount of time watching television, she is enraptured with the virtues of all the "miracle" products available for sale on television.

I wish I could remember ALL the products she's parroted the virtues of to me and told me that we should try. What I do remember is KaBoom! She saw them clean that disgusting shower tile with one spray and swipe of the cloth which left it sparklingly white and said "Mama, that is AMAZING, you HAVE to try that!" " Look, you just spray it on and then wipe it off and it's sparkly". Uh, yeah, I have tried that actually and it was significantly less than sparkly and in fact pretty toxic smelling. But still.


Then between her birthday and Christmas there were the BENDAROOS. "Look Mama, you can make ANYTHING out of them. You just twist them and stick them together and you make things". Uh, yeah. I saw the Bendaroos at Walgreens and got her some for Christmas. They were $20. I should have ordered them from the television because THEN I would have gotten the "But Wait, There's More" 2 for one special.

Then there was Moon Sand. "Moon Sand," she told me, "is AMAZING, because it doesn't DRY OUT, EVER. You can leave it out and play with it and it doesn't dry OUT"



We got her some Moon Sand for Christmas too. It was pretty amazing. Also EXTREMELY MESSY and got EVERYWHERE, just as sand is apt to do. She has played with it once. I don't remind her about it because I don't want to clean it up. It is mercifully buried in her closet under a host of games, puzzles and sports equipment.

About 10 minutes ago, she came running down the stairs after watching "The Shaggy Dog" on some kids channel upstairs to tell me about an "AMAZING tooth paste holder". "You know," she says "how you roll the toothpaste up and it's IMPOSSIBLE?" "Well this thing, you just put the toothpaste in it and push the button and BOOP, there is the toothpaste, morning and night. It's AMAZING and I think it's only like a buck".


Please God, let her never learn of QVC and the power of the credit card.

My Valentine

Bryon was a very sweet Valentine this year :) Grace spent the weekend with Nana so Friday night he fixed me lobster bisque, a heart shaped ribeye, lobster and roasted new potatoes with gorgonzola cheese. It was WONDERFUL. He also got me a massage which I get to go have on Monday.

Then we went upstairs and watched Zombieland.

Does it get much better than that?

Is that a Quiver Critter in your pocket?

Bryon's latest Redneck Endeavor has been coyote hunting. Now, as of TODAY, no actual coyotes have been dispatched of, but he's been out several times "hunting" and now has some new toys (see above).

Our friend Chris has been borrowing a distressed rabbit call (some sort of machine that emits high pitched squeals) and they've gone out three or four times now. They like to go out after a big snow so they can track them better.

Now what they are going to DO with a bunch of dead coyotes, I have no idea.

For now though, I think the coyotes are pretty safe.

Beep, Beep.

The Island of Destroyed Things

Here you will find the SECOND dead armadillo in our yard since Ruger joined our family last February. I can't believe he's been here a year. It has been a LONG year.

Ruger is unlike ANY other dog we've ever had. He's a mess. He jumps on everyone and everything and is so stubborn he makes Briar (our dear old black lab who died the winter after we moved out here) look downright demure.

Ruger knocked Grace into the pond last week and is VERY LUCKY he is still pissing on the grounds right now. Luckily for him, he is still very cute and his owners have a a ridiculous sense of animal responsibility towards him or he would be so gone.

Above is his hunting and toy depository, otherwise known as the Island of Destroyed Things. This hump of ground in the front lawn was eventually supposed to become a flower bed, but I think that would be a foolish and fruitless endeavour at this point. For one, because Ruger is a complete an uncontrollable digging fiend and two because he has obviously already claimed it as HIS. You can't argue with a stubborn dog my friend.

He drags all sorts of things up onto that hump and proceeds to destroy them from his perch of dominion. We've lost two UPS packages near this vicinity as well. A neglected UPS package on the front porch is Ruger's gift from the gods. The first thing was actually made of stainless steel so it survived fairly well, the second package was the trampoline REPLACEMENT jumping mat. ( see http://medley3.blogspot.com/2009/12/you-might-be-redneck.html if you don't know THAT story)

All I can say is that Ruger must have doggie angels looking out of for him, because luckily I found the package before he actually started destroying the contents. The box was toast, but the mat was untouched.

For my birthday last year, I bought hog panels and Bryon fenced the garden so we could keep the beast out. THAT was a good thing.

What Ruger doesn't know is that his days of rampant pawing and destoying our belongings are numbered because our neighbor is a retired vet tech and dog trainer and just as soon as the cast is off her broken leg, he's fixin to get a rude doggie training awakening.

Training (for him and us) is the only way that dog is going to survive until summer.

Lesser Evil

Last year I really tried to clean up my cosmetics and health and beauty products and change to more environmentally friendly and healthier products. I gave up my Cover Girl Rose Blush (a 7 hazard rating)for Kiss My Face 3Way Color, Ruby Red (a 3 hazard rating). I looked up all the products I and Grace use on the Skin Deep Cosmetics Database http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/ and started trying to pair down those chemical hazards to a much lower level, usually at least by half.

Still not replaced is my Cover Girl face powder (a 7 hazard), my Maybelline waterproof mascara (a 5 hazard), and my Nexxus Versastyler (a 6 hazard). Otherwise, we are doing pretty good. I'm still using up Suave Kids 2 in One shampoo and conditioner (a 5 hazard) for Grace but when that is gone, we are going to find something else. I thought about just combining the shampoo and conditioner I use into the same bottle, but combined they add up to a 5 hazard anyway. So am I accomplishing anything? I'm not sure.

She likes the smell, but I figured out if I add some drops of essential oil to some healthier fragrance free stuff (even just water for detangling and combing her morning hair down) she's happy. Strawberry and orange is what I have.

So here I thought I was doing good by replacing my Oil of Olay Sensitive Skin Day Lotion with SPF 15 to Jason Red Elements Daily Lotion with SPF 15 (half the amount for the same price) and finally looked it up today. The Oil of Olay is full of ingredients I can't pronounce and chemicals but comes in overall at a 4 hazard and the Jason's half full of "natural" plants and elements comes in at a 6 hazard.

Geez, sometimes you just can't win for losing.

Artistic License

Monday I worked from home and picked up Grace when school was out. She watched some Sponge Bob upstairs on the big screen while I worked for a couple more hours in my office. Finally she got bored and came in to do some artwork.

The picture above is what she presented to me from her easel. It's our family. I'm the big one on the left, Daddy is in the middle and Grace is on the right.

Now, I think you can see why I was a little more than curious about the DADDY picture. I pointed to the long hangy down thing in the middle and said, "What's that Grace?"

She said, "It's a tie. Boys wear ties. And girls wear dresses"

Well, yes they do. Mystery solved.

She went back into the living room for another round of Sponge Bob and then a few minutes later she came back in and said "Mama, did you think that tie was Daddy's potty box?".

Well, yes, yes I did.

Then we had the talk about how we wouldn't WANT to draw people's potty boxes on our artwork, right? Right.

Grace said, "Well I didn't really know HOW to draw a tie."

It looks fine, I said.



I let Bryon approve this post just in case he had a problem with it. He said, hey whatever it is, it's long, so why not.

Indeed.

Shower of Shame

I love my shower. What I don't love is cleaning it.

I had a party of Sunday School ladies coming over last Sunday so as every good hostess should, I cleaned the house, and finally my shower. Cleaning the shower is difficult, and awkward and messy so I generally avoid it until I can actually SEE the gunk building up with my extremely nearsighted eyes.

Mercifully, most of the time I can't really see that well at all since wearing glasses in the shower is obviously problematic.

So Saturday, I spent a good part of the day cleaning, straightening and organizing pre party guests. Now, was one of those very nice Sunday School ladies going to be LOOKING in my shower? Not likely. And, if they did, well they would have gotten what they deserved right? But of course they wouldn't look.

Still, it was more than a little disturbing to go in there WITH my glasses and my full 20-20ish vision and take a good hands and knees look at things.

It was not a pretty sight.

I finally scraped off the last fins and tails and heads of the rubberized tropical no skid fish that had molded and mildewed onto the floor and by the time I was finished I had that sucker sparkling.

Of course, having a clean shower floor and NO rubberized tropical no skid fish glued to the floor creates it's own hazard. At least when it's dirty there is a little more traction.

I've seen some disgusting showers and mine is nowhere CLOSE to what is possible. I haven't actually seen her shower, but one of my friends has a death pact with her girlfriend that if she is to die suddenly and unexpectedly, the friend is to go IMMEDIATELY to her house and CLEAN HER SHOWER, so no one will ever discover her secret.

I think that is a great idea.

Who would like to be my death pact, shower cleaning friend? Perhaps we should just get a call list in place in the event of ALL of our deaths so someone could immediately take over and destroy the evidence of our showers of shame.

I have to say that once it IS clean. It's heavenly.

Grace sometimes gets to take showers back there but usually takes baths in her bathroom. Bryon has tried to get me to let her take showers with me, the whole kill two birds with one stone argument. But seriously, the only places I am ever ALONE anymore since becoming a parent are in my CAR when I'm WORKING or in my SHOWER and I'm not giving either one of them up.

For that 10 minutes, I have a little piece of heavenly peace and quiet. I don't think that is too much to ask.

Now, if only someone would clean it for me. The car too.

Life would be perfect.