Ms Genevieve’s Family

Why is it...

nobody@vox.com(Jamie) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:45:52 -0400

that when I'm not looking for a pair of nail clippers or scissors, they're so abundant, I'm tripping over them. When I am looking for a pair of nail clippers or scissors, they're as elusive as the Loch Ness Monster. I'm gonna start chaining them in "they're place" like a bank pen. The same goes with pencils and pens.

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More books and homeschool

nobody@vox.com(BULLETPROOFsoul) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:10:55 -0400

Well, not actual books. I have no more room on my shelves unless I start chucking books...which will not happen. I just asked my husband the other day if there were any books that we had that he didn't want. He says NO. Hmm... so that's out. Next thing on the list: audio books. I have been finding free ones and downloading them to listen to with my son later on. It's going to be part of his homeschool reading comprehension, as well as sparking his imagination. I want him to be able to hear words and translate them into pictures in his mind. I am planning to get a few of the books from a library so we can read along with the audio, but that will be a little later after he has heard them a few times. Then we will talk about how his vision of what happened is similar or different than what is shown in the books. Should be an interesting adventure.

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QotD: Soups On

nobody@vox.com(BULLETPROOFsoul) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:06:54 -0400

Which TV chef would you want to have prepare a meal for you?
The extremely obvious answer: Gordon Ramsey.
You know you won't get snot in a bun when HE is in the kitchen!

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Know Thy Enemy

nobody@vox.com(Jamie) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:26:02 -0400

"License to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. Man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit - ever. They're like the Viet Cong - Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that's all she wrote." Carl Spackler

I posted about voles in the past, the little bastards. Voles are rodents that look all cute and mouse like. They look up at you with their little blinky eyes and their cute twitching noses and then when you aren't looking, bam, they take out all of your Irises like they were made out of gravy. They tunnel under the ground, in some places it's so bad it feels like you're walking on a sponge, and eat all the roots of your plants.

I've tried everything to get rid of them. Carl Spackler's got nothing on me. I've flooded their tunnels with enough high pressure water to knock every protester at the Beijing Olympics flat on their back. They just thank me for the swimming pool. They say it's really refreshing after a long day of tunneling under, over and around the anti-vole barriers I've constructed. I've tried all the old wives tales. Juicy Fruit chewing gum, that just got stuck in their fur and irritated them, that's when they went for my Daffodils. High pitched sounds didn't work, it just drove them into my pond garden where they chewed away my Astilbe and Peony's as retribution.. Poisons and smoke bombs seem to actually make them bigger and stronger, kind of like the Incredible Hulk, only way less green and without the purple shorty pants. I even bought two huge bottles of Caster Oil, facing self-humiliation if the 16 year old clerk at the drug store knew what people used Caster Oil for, in an effort to chase them out of my yard and into bumpasses yard so that they could ruin his plants. Voles are supposed to hate the smell but it didn't seem to bother them a bit and for that they ate my Lily Of The Valley. I've done everything short of filling the tunnels with gasoline and lighting it on fire because I don't want to end up with a Darwin Award and embarass my friends and family. It's like I've got Super Voles or something. Now I've just got to find their Kryptonite.

This spring I dug up all of my flower beds (that's a lot of work!) and put chicken wire in every one and the bastards still got through. They're relentless. In the evening they sit in their little hot tub they got courtesy of me and mock my efforts, like the little evil geniuses they seem to be. Just last week I was working in the garden and saw a Hosta wiggling weirdly. It wasn't windy, so I touched it and the leaves fell to the ground like the petals on a fading rose, though only seconds ago it had been a perfectly healthy Hosta. Those sinister little beasts have so little respect, they ate the roots while I was working right there.

Then I wondered, just what do I know about voles? Besides that they're tunneling bastards that are ruining my gardens, so I went off on a quest to find more information. Well, low and behold, it turns out voles aren't bastards after all! They're socially monogamous, though un-faithful, they're known for sleeping around. So they aren't bastards, they're hussies. However, they do spend most of their time within family units, which is good news for me. I read about a wonderful vole killing method that I just can't wait to try. Dry Ice. I'm gonna buy a block of it, save some to play with, of course, break the rest into bits and shove it down every hole I see. The CO2 puts those bad boys to sleep forever, just like on CSI. And now that I know that they aren't bastards, I can kill them all at once. I'd feel bad but I feel worse when they gobble down my plants like they're out at a Chinese buffet. I guess I'd better dig up all those Dahlia's first, though, because if that doesn't work, you know what they're going for next.

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I Have To Have This...

nobody@vox.com(Jamie) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:34:32 -0400

for the Halloween Maze. It fits right into the Carnevil theme and matches my vortex room and dot room like the perfect pair of shoes....

Vortex Tunnel Illusion

If I can't have this I might, literally, explode. I guess I haven't gotten my fill of black light paint after all.

Dot-Room

I thought I had.

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QotD: Lights, Camera, Action!

nobody@vox.com(BULLETPROOFsoul) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:05:44 -0400

Would you ever consider having your life taped for a reality show?

If you didn't notice the pattern of reality shows...if you have a life to begin with, you won't by the time the show is over. Can you see why my answer is an emphatic

NO!!

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And so it begins..

nobody@vox.com(Jamie) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:30:27 -0400

The school year that is. W00t! First I'm gonna read. A book. One without pictures even. Then I'm not gonna watch cartoons. Not a single one. After that I'm gonna go to the grocery store and celebrate with the other stay at homes. The upper echelon SAH's get together and have mimosa's (I heard that straight from an upper echelon SAH's mouth.), we regular mom's are just happy to be able to go somewhere and push the cart by ourselves, so it's right there with us, imagine, when we want to put something in it, and not having to say no three million and forty seven times a trip. There's no alcohol involved but there's a feeling of celebration like no other day of the year.

My morning didn't quite start the way I would have liked. Instead of DeWitte getting Nathan on the bus and then coming back up to "cuddle" in a child free house=a complete lack of inhibitions (You know what I'm talking about parents!), I woke up to the door being thrown open and DeWitte yelling that he's got to drive Nathan to school, the bus passed him up, the bastards.

Kind of strong language from DeWitte that early, this is the same person that encourages me to use the word shoot instead of shit. As in "Wow..Cleo just beat the shoot out of Gerturde!" (those are the cats). Apparently, the bus stopped where the bus route paper said it was supposed to, but that's two houses down, even though Nathan's the only kid that catches the bus on the block.

When he got home he was still riled up (I wouldn't be surprised to see a blog post.). I told him I'd work it out this afternoon when the bus dropped Nathan off. As far as the morning celebration, there's always lunch time, because the house is child free all day! Woo!

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Thrills, chills, and bills

nobody@vox.com(BULLETPROOFsoul) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:55:54 -0400

Well, anytime I go to the mailbox to get the mail I either get thrills or chills... and almost definitely at least one bill. At leas they aren't all over the top of my budget. I am so thankful that I was able to find car insurance that is cheap. I don't spend more than 200 dollars on my electric bill right now. I just hate checking the mail anymore due to that random forgotten bill that pops up every so often. If I could remember to keep money in the bank, I would just make them take it out of there every month so I wouldn't forget. Ah well... such is adulthood.

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Hey Janie...

nobody@vox.com(Jamie) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 19:01:01 -0400

Look, I caught them in mid-shrink.

Shrinking-Can

Their website says the cans come in 3 and 6 oz., so I guess even the 5.5 oz. can is shrunken, too. And not only did the can shrink, they managed to make the calories in the tuna shrink.

Shrinking-Calories

From 70 to 60. They're like magic over there at StarKist these days.

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I am SO buying one of these...

nobody@vox.com(Jamie) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 14:58:34 -0400

the next time I've got an extra hundred bucks.

Worm Composter

It's a worm composter. No, it doesn't compost worms, the worms compost for you. I'm a fanatic composter, if the rabbit won't eat it, into the compost it goes. My biggest beef, though, is it takes so long. This bad boy holds up to 12,000 (I hope Nathan doesn't decide they're pets and try to name them. That's a lot of names.) Red Wiggler worms and they can compost 5-8 pounds of food a week. A week! And as an added bonus, the bottom bin stores worm tea. That stuff is to plants what spinach is to Popeye. And if that isn't enough, the worms reproduce quickly, so when you've got too many for your bins, the extras can go right into the garden and everybody knows that more worms=better soil.

I'm gonna have one killer vegetable garden next year.

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