Revenge is sweet

I may be spending my vacation helping my mother de-clutter her house, but at least I can get my own personal type of revenge.  

Internet - behold, my mother in her "boy haircut" phase in junior high school!

Luckily, her hair grows fast, so by senior year she cleaned up pretty nice.

Now, all I have to do is hide MY junior high school photos and make sure I'm the only one who knows the login for my blog editor ...

Congratulations are in order

Congratulations to my parents, who, after years of putting up with the old equipment, have finally committed to buying a new stove and oven. You can't imagine my shock when my mother casually mentioned today that their cooktop was sitting on the floor in the kitchen and the double oven was next in line for the wrecking ball. Of course, she was calling to ask for recommendations on new stoves because they sort of removed the old stuff before they bought replacements, but it can't take that long to get a new stove, right?

The old appliances were a thorn in their side from virtually the moment they bought the house, but until today they managed to limp along without replacing them.

Since 1985.

Wow. I'm not sure if that proves their thrift, ingenuity, or lack of common sense, but I'm sure it says something.

In honor of this momentous occasion, I present a quick multiple-choice question.

Which of the following choices did not apply to my parents' kitchen?

1. It made my 12th birthday party more memorable by having an oven door fall off in my mother's hand when she was checking on the pizza inside.
2. It lit once lit up the house like the Fourth of July when one of the heating elements arc-welded itself to the floor of the oven.
3. It baby-proofed itself by requiring you to push in and turn two obscure knobs by at least a certain amount in order to turn on the oven, and even then sometimes it would shut itself off.
4. It possessed an oven that was never actually at the temperature you set it to - on a good day, you were lucky to be off by only 25F.
5. It had a stove burner that was so warped that pans would wobble and or spin when you used it.
6. It necessitated conversations like, "No, don't use that burner, it takes forever to heat up. Use that one, but remember that it gets much hotter than whatever you set it to."
7. It hasn't had two working ovens and a working broiler in at least 10 years.

Answer: None of the above.

Stuffed animal overload

Liza never plays with her stuffed animals, but since most consignment stores won't take them - and most of them were gifts, anyway - we're accumulating quite a morass of stuffed stuff underfoot. There's a really useful way to corral them and use them as a chair, but the $60 price tag was a bit high for something that was going to be used to store something we don't use, anyway. But Liza has been lusting after her friend's bean bag chair, so I thought we'd try a little self-help.

Found a free pattern online, found enough fabric in my stash and another one of my mother's free zippers, carved out enough time to sew by parking the kid in front of a seemingly endless stream of the same two Blue's Clues episodes over and over again. This morning, it was done.

You can tell she hates it. It's a traditional bean bag chair, only instead of tiny little styrene balls, it's stuffed with that giant dog I knit for her and some polar bears and Blue and whatever else we had laying around.

It would be cooler if we had the clear windows to help locate the contents, but since she never actually uses the contents, who gives a flying fig where any particular animal is located inside? As long as it's not poking you anywhere when you sit on it, one place is as good as another, I suppose.

If you're not crafty and don't have the fabric laying around, it would probably be easiest and cheapest to just go buy a vinyl one at Wal-Mart and throw out the liner that has the beads in it (or stick that part in the attic to use once the stuffed toys are outgrown or smashed flat).

Liza of the Dance

The freakiest thing about this video is that the only thing that could have inspired it is the penguin dance scene from Mary Poppins, which features Dick Van Dyke doing some softshoe. How she got from that (and my mother doing The Twist at the wedding reception earlier this month) to Irish step dancing, I will never know.

Needless to say, the Lord of the Dance videos I dug up on YouTube tonight were well received. Gotta go request the full video of that and Stomp from the library.

Obligatory Mother's Day post

I'm not sure which is cooler, the fact that Liza addressed my card all by herself (complete with hand tracing at the bottom):
... or the fact that Jason found a card that was both hilarious and appropriate.

Okay, the kid handwriting wins, but only by a nose.

More dress-up goodness

She can't decide if she's a bride or a Fly Girl.

Funny how much tackier this looks than the exact same outfit made in hot pink.

Part 2 - proof that I am not as heartless as I seem

... at least when it comes to candy on Christmas day.

See this? It's not even 8am

and I'm letting Liza have as much chocolate as she wants from her stocking (and mine, and her father's, and some of grandma and grandpa's, too).

And she's opening presents, and we haven't had breakfast (or even coffee) yet.

Thanks for making the "beautiful Clara nightdress," Grandma!

Nope, not a good decision

Yesterday it was 60F and occasionally sunny. I got lots of raking done while Liza tromped through the leaf piles like a good little toddler.

Today it's doing this:

It looks like one of those restaurant pellet ice machines exploded in my yard.

So which day does my mother, She Who Hates To Drive In Precipitation Of Any Form, pick to drive to my house?

Hi, Mom!

Look, mom! I got her to wear it!

It is officially her Pretty Fairy Princess Cozy Night Dress, in case you were wondering. Adjective Girl strikes again!

Proof that it's dangerous ...

... to leave me alone with your computer for two hours when you've got funny photos saved in an obvious folder. Tsk, tsk.

Sorry, Mom, but it's a thumbnail on one of the first folders that shows up if I open "My Pictures." That's not even paying lip service to burying the embarrassing photos.

Thank you for the dress, Grandma

Gotta love it when you totally deconstruct a dress to make a pattern from it, combine that with sale fabric from JoAnn's, and end up with a new dress for like $6. The only thing better: convincing my mother to do it for me. So how are you coming on the denim version, Mom?

This marks the first time I've been able to actually pose the kid, as in, "put your hand on the slide. No, the other one. Okay, get your other finger out of your nose. That one, too. Stop lifting up your skirt. Look, can you just put that hand on your tummy? Your tummy. No, dude, your tummy - right here." If only I could have gotten "stop pooching out your stomach" to penetrate the layers of her brain, we'd be golden.

And I believe this shot was the smile I got for, "Say, 'vomitus maximus!'"

Looks like our zucchini problem has been solved

When I went back to my garden to see if it needed water, I found I wasn't the garden's only visitor this morning. I think the deer I saw the other morning several streets away from our house have finally found my patch of herbivore heaven. Because this used to be three lush zucchini plants ... and this tomato used to be about a foot taller ...
and this green pepper actually had leaves yesterday.
Think I can positively identify them by the bite mark they left on one of the victims? They do that on tv all the time.
In between bouts of cursing and throwing garden tools, I keep trying to tell myself that it could have been worse. The deer only ate leaves, no actual vegetables, and anything aromatic was left alone. So the cilantro that is going to bolt any day now and be worthless? Untouched. Nasturtiums, marigolds, onions, and rosemary were left alone. But the peppers, zucchini and tomatoes were all decapitated. I think the deer are just leaving the veggies for later, or maybe they're just sharing the wealth with the raccoons.

I vented my frustration to my parents, who both suggested using The Percy Solution ... that is, invite my father-in-law and his rifle to come sit in the backyard for a few days. When I pointed out that discharging a firearm in a suburb is probably prohibited, my mother said something about some kind of soap, and both gave me suggestions on how to build an elaborate fence around my garden. Neither one appreciated the brilliance of my suggestion that there should be a coyote rental service. You know, just rent one and stake it out in the backyard. Maybe I could temporarily adopt a really angry pit bull?

Jason was skeptical that anything like coyote urine or bear scat or mountain lion vomit would keep the deer away. "You have to make it smell like one of their natural predators. Go buy a six-pack of the cheapest beer you can find, and hang the empty cans around the outside of the garden." We could make a CD of us yelling "YEEEEEE-HAWWWWW!!" and firing guns into the air, too, which would make us really popular with the fireworks-toting, trash-talking driveway basketball players down the street. Actually, if the cans wouldn't attract so many bees and hornets, it would probably be a good idea - the shiny cans would probably keep the squirrels and birds away, too.

I went online, and found a plethora of information on commercial deer repellants here:
http://www.walnutcouncil.org/deer_repellent_study.htm

Turns out that once again, Mom was right - Dial soap, hung around the area to be protected, was their best combination of price and protection. I think I'll stop by the grocery store and pick some up on the way home from picking up my mother-in-law this afternoon. If only I'd known in advance that we were going to have the deer problem this week, I would have encouraged Percy to come along, too :)

I'll let you know how the soap works. In the meantime, I have at least one crop the deer can't get to - my couch potatoes are coming along nicely this year.

See what my mother found?

I think she sent this to me mainly to prove that she is, in fact, actually going through the piles and stacks and boxes and files of old magazines at their house in Maryland. Why, oh why, would you save a Good Housekeeping from the 70s? Nothing good can come of that, mark my words.

Another reason my mother rocks

Tucked in with the yard-sale finds my mother sent for Liza was this little gem for me:

Explains a lot about my formative years, doesn't it? Needless to say, it's got a place of honor on the bulletin board over my desk.