Jib Jab Jingle Bell

It's not even December and I'm already getting in the holiday spirit!  And when I say I'm in the holiday spirit, I mean that I've been playing with Jib Jab, making my favorite holiday cards.  Here's some screen shots from the one I made of my parents, sisters and me:



The Whole Family



Dad and Mom

Dad, rocking out

The whole fam again

If you want to see the whole card, click on this link.

Now I'm at work in a math class and the kids have an assignment and they are actually doing it and being quiet so I was playing around and made another one.  I don't have my computer here at school, but I have my own school account, but I don't have access to very many of my own pictures so I just took some off my blog.  This one is me, Mitch and a honey badger.  Here's some screen shots:

You can see this card at this link. Next I think I'll make one with Kira and a couple of chickens. 

Now go and make your own cards and paste them on to Facebook and then make sure to friend me on facebook so I can laugh too.

Kira in the Car

We came home from our Thanksgiving weekend yesterday and I had to take a picture of this.  This is how Kira holds her iPod when she watches Balto and wants to give her hands a little rest.  

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  Remember last year when I liveblogged Thanksgiving?  Well, there hasn't been quite that much excitement this year.  My dad doesn't have any revelations for us like last year when he shared with us that L.L. Cool J. means "The Lady Loves Cool James," but we did have a nice conversation about mean things teachers used to do to kids back in the good ole days.  My dad said that when he was in school he had a little, mean woman teacher that was an ex-marine and he said, "She had skin like a marine, too," whatever that means, Dad.  Anyway, one day a kid was tipping back on his chair and he fell over backwards and this woman said ominously, "Pick your chair up.  Sit in it.  Tip it back." and made him repeatedly pick it up, sit in it and tip it back and fall until he started crying.  Beth got spanked in front of the whole class in first grade because she tripped a kid named Rusty when he was passing out papers. 

Last year was also the year that my dad and I played that fateful game of social chicken that ended with us both going to the winter parade.  I thought he learned his lesson but he wrote me this email yesterday:

Sarah:

FYI: Just read this in the Journal:

"Twas the Night Before Christmas Parade & Parade Party. 7:00 PM Friday evening followed by the All-New After-Parade Family Party. S'Mores,marshmallow roasting, hot chocolate. Just thought you might like to know for your planning purposes. Dad

Dad, don't dare me to go again because I WILL and DAMMIT I WILL BRING YOU WITH ME AND WE WILL STAY UNTIL THE BITTER END WHEN WE ARE BOTH STUFFED WITH S'MORES, HOT CHOCOLATE, NEW FRIENDS AND HOLIDAY CHEER.  Don't play with fire, old man.  YOU WILL LOSE.

THOR and Twilight: Movie Reviews

I didn't think I'd ever see Thor because it looked so stupid.  Then I saw that Natalie Portman was in it and she doesn't usually steer me wrong.  And Kenneth Branagh directed it and he's pretty good, so I thought I'd give it a chance.

Thor is a space god; nay, a NORSE space god.  His dad, Odin, wants to retire and make Thor the king but on the very DAY that Thor is going to assume the throne, King Laufey, a space frost god/giant gets in to Odin's weapon's room and tries to steal some glowy blue thingy that everyone is in love with.  Thor wants to kick ass and take names, but Odin wants to avoid war so he banishes Thor to the human realm on earth for being impetuous and arrogant.  BUT, just to give Thor some hope, he sends his super-duper hammer down too. I don't know if you knew this about Thor, but to him every problem is a nail and his hammer is always the solution.  He's heavy handed.  He falls in love with Natalie Portman and to save her life and to save earth he has to destroy the rainbow space bridge to earth.  With his hammer.  Of course.  Natalie Portman, you let me down.

I also saw Breaking Dawn Part I this weekend.  It was a must-see for anyone who has read the books and already invested time and money in to seeing the other movies.  It got horrible reviews, which I can understand because there were some parts during the movie where I was hanging my head and pretending I was doing something else because it was especially embarrassing.  Like when the werewolf pack got together in a tense meeting and telepathically yelled/real-life growled at each other.  It reminded me of the old Transformer cartoons that I never watched when I was little because they were so ridiculous.

In this movie Edward, the 100 year old vampire stuck in the body of a 17 year old boy, finally marries the love of his life, human 18 year old Bella Swan.  They have a gorgeous wedding and then go on a honeymoon and finally consummate their relationship which, if you don't know this about vampires, they are super strong and so Edward is wary of doing it with Bella because he's afraid she'll get hurt, which she does.  She gets all bruised up but she's totally in to it because she's a masochist.

Soon she finds out she is pregers with a demon/vampire baby that is consuming her from the inside out.  Edward is shocked that she got pregnant because he didn't know that sex sometimes results in pregnancy even though he's been taking high school health classes for about 80 years. Way to go, Edward!  He is worried about Bella because the baby seems to be killing her which was disturbing to watch because Bella really did look skeletal and deathly for about half the movie.  The gestation only lasts a few weeks because fyi: vampire-human embryos/fetuses/infants/children grow at an astronomical rate.  The baby is breaking Bella's bones and when she finally has to deliver, the baby breaks her spine with a kick or something and they can't get the baby out because the birth sac is made of vampire skin and so is impenetrable by anything other than vampire teeth so Edward has to chew the baby out.  Literally, chew the baby out of Bella's stomach. Bella is dying from blood loss and trauma and shock so Edward has to try to save her life by plunging a syringe of vampire venom directly into her heart to change her into a vampire which will heal all her injuries and make her immortal.  It works.  The end.

Breaking Dawn Part II comes out next year and then we find out what Bella's special vampire talent is (she's a shield) and there is the ultimate vampire/werewolf war.  Will the Cullen's come out on top?  (yes) Will Edward and Bella be happily married? (yes) Will their baby go nuts and kill every human in a 200 mile range? (I wish)  We'll see!

Miscellaneous

I've been sitting here in a chair by the fireplace dozing like a grandpa, periodically waking myself up with snorts, trying to recover from an injury.  I somehow pulled a muscle in my groin which makes me think that I must sleep walk or have a split personality who thinks she can actually do the splits because there is no way I did anything to cause myself this much pain while I was conscious.  I didn't even know I had a groin.  I thought that was in the realm of hernias and testicles, but I googled it, and women do have groins.  It's basically just your crotch/upper/inner thigh muscles.  Everyone has those.  Bet you didn't know that, did you?

Mitch left me.  For the weekend.  God, I can't believe you thought I meant he "LEFT me" left me.  Why don't you have any faith in our marriage?  Anyway, he took the kids to the cities because Kira has a hockey tournament.  So I'm here all alone and injured.  HEAR THAT, INTERNET PREDATORS!?!

I saw a bear this morning running across the road while I was driving to work.  It was pretty exciting especially because he wasn't in my yard destroying my property.  They are beautiful and majestic when they are in someone else's yard.

I've been spending my convalescing time googling stuff like groin and hernia.  (FYI - make sure that when you want to know about hernias, you're not on Google Images because OMG FOR GROSS.)  Earlier today I was looking at pictures of tigers because of the book I just read, and I saw a picture of a liger, which is a hybrid of a tiger and a lion and they grow to be enormous.  Like 800 pounds of giant scary cat.  So then I got interested in seeing other animal hybrids so I googled "animal hybrids" and I spent about the next twenty minutes laughing.  People are so funny.  I don't know what is real and not real.  Here's one I suspect is real:

A cow/buffalo hybrid.  Yeah, I can see that.  That could happen.  Buffalo are a lot like cattle.  This looks like a reasonable hybrid.  I believe it.

Next, a zebra/horse.  Do I believe this is real?  Yeah, I think I do.  I like it.

But do I really believe that a beagle and a squirrel had a baby with a squirrel body and a beagle head that loves to hold Milk Bones in his tiny squirrel hands?  I don't think I do. I suspect someone has photoshopped this.

Okay, I do not believe this one.  The reason is that if a chicken and a cat had a baby its head would not be that big.  That's just ridiculous.

These two made me laugh.  A tweety-bird and a shark.  Come on.  That's not real. Where does it live?  Apparently it's a walker wherever it lives.  I can tell by the shoes.  And the lion/hamster, I love it.  It's so fierce and adorable and again with the shoes.  Animals in shoes are hilarious.  If my groin didn't hurt so much I would put some shoes on my dog right now.

I think this is supposed to be a camel/eagle/tweety hybrid.  Don't believe it.

This one I DO NOT believe AT ALL.  For one thing, T-rexs are extinct and even if they weren't, a T-rex would NOT like a kangaroo.  If it was real I don't think its arms would just hang out of its neck and what really gives this picture away is that the baby kangaroo doesn't look anything like a T-rex.  In fact, most hybrid animals can't even breed, so, there you go.  REFUTED.  In fact, I don't believe most of the pictures I saw.

No.

No.

No.

I wish.

Ick.

No. (thank god)

Come on.

Mommy and Son Time

I pick Sam up from school every day.  It's about a 15 minute drive back home and I think NPR is conspiring to make us feel uncomfortable and not make eye-contact by playing creepy, sexual news stories whenever the two of us are in the car together.  Today there was a story all about how this gang in Washington DC is driving runaway girls into prostitution at younger and younger ages.  They said that these poor 12 and 13 year old girls will be pimped out 15 or 16 times a day.  It's good for the gangs because it brings in thousands of dollars and there is virtually no overhead except for the drugs and alcohol to keep the girls compliant (good business plan!).  Sam and I really enjoyed that story so much.  Other things we've learned about while riding home from school:

1. Exactly what Herman Cain did to the woman in the car from the woman herself. Thanks Gloria Allred!  You're such a great advocate for your clients!

2.  Incidence of sexual assaults at Occupy Wallstreet protests.

3. Clitorectomies

4. Exactly what Mr. McCreary witnessed in that Penn State locker room IN GRAPHIC DETAIL.

5. Systemic rape in war-torn Islamic countries.

6.  How important it is to give your adolescent children he HPV virus and why, in graphic detail.

Usually we don't acknowledge the stories because then we will be letting the other one know we are listening to it, but sometimes (clitorectomies) Sam gives up and says, "Can I change the channel?" and he changes it to a music station where we can hear all about how Bruno Mars wants to have some really nice sex with a really nice girl, or how Rihanna likes to have sadomasochistic sex.  Yay!  You might think that these would be "teachable moments" but I never planned on teaching my 14 year old about clitorectomies or sadomasochism so I didn't need the icebreaker, thanks anyway, Radio.  

Oh well, when Mitch was a teenager his mom saw an Oprah show about how teen boys were accidentally dying because of practicing auto-erotic asphyxiation.  His mom said she'd never forgive herself if she didn't warn her boys of the dangers of choking yourself while masturbating, so she sat them down and they had that awkward conversation.  Mitch started walking around all the time with a rope around his neck.   He still does.  

That's a funny story.  I'm going to go tell it to Sam.  

Cup O Joe

Kira has to be outside at the bus stop before the sun comes up.  Doesn't that seem a bit harsh?  It is.  It's brutal.  Now it's getting to be winter so it's getting cold and it's still pitch dark when she's out there waiting. She HATES it.  She's tired and cold and understandably doesn't want to get on a stupid school bus before seven a.m.  The other day while I was pouring myself a cup of coffee she said, "I'm so cold, pour me a cup-o-joe will ya?"  So I did.  Then she said, "I'm not going to be able to finish this before the bus comes so I'm just going to drink it outside and then I'll put the cup in the grass and you can pick it up later, okay?"  So that's what she did.  She took her little penguin mug outside and drank her morning cup-o-joe while waiting for the bus.  And now she does it every day. Weird?  A little bit.  I wanted to take a picture of her but it's pitch dark and cold outside.  I'm not going out there!  Are you nuts?!

I love the internet

Isn't the internet wonderful?  It has made my life so much richer in so many ways, but none quite like this:

These are postcards sent to me by fellow-blogger Kady at A Lady Reveals Nothing.  She found a website called Postcardly that makes postcards from pictures you download and sends them to the people you tell it to.  Nothing is quite as delightful as being surprised by a postcard made from a horrible picture and sent to you via snail mail, which is a novelty these days.  Kady had a comment contest (or something, I can't really remember because I didn't win the big prize) but if you commented on one of her posts, she would send you a postcard of herself.  I requested the bikini pic and on the back she wrote:

If it's bikini you want, then it's bikini you'll get (Lesbo.)  Thanks for reading my stupid blog.  I read your stupid blog too.  Every single post.  Which means you sort of owe me a 'bikini in a waterfall' photo."

 I cracked up when I got my postcard and it has been on my fridge ever since.  Recently Kady got a new iPhone that she uses mostly to tell Siri she pooped her pants, but also to take pictures of herself using the Fatbooth app.  I love her fat pics so much and I said something about how I would like a postcard of her fat face so she sent me one!  Wow!  What a treat!  Seeing her fat face in my mailbox made my whole week! Thanks Kady!  And you will NEVER get a picture of me in a bikini.  Sorry!

Book Review

I am reading the BEST BOOK right now.  It is called The Tiger, A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant.  It is about tigers and people who live in the forests of the far eastern Russia.  About a decade ago a man named Markov, who lived in the woods, came across a dead boar, an obvious tiger kill and he took the hocks.  Apparently that is a big no-no because tigers don't like when you steal from them and they know who did it. Markov kept one of the hocks for himself and brought the other one to a logging camp near his home. The tiger stalked Markov for days, destroyed all property with his scent on it, including his latrine, killed his dogs, killed him, ATE HIM, and then stalked the loggers who had the other hock.

The book tells the story of Markov and the tiger and the Tiger Inspection team, but it also tells a very compelling story of how predators and people have gotten along through time.  The chapter I read yesterday outlined the idea of ethology, a concept introduced by a guy named Jacob van Uexkull.  The idea is that all creatures share a common environment, but their realities inside that environment are vastly different.  He says it's like if you blew a bubble around each creature that is full of the perceptions which it alone knows.  His example is of a woman and her dog walking down the street.  She notices a for sale sign, a policeman coming toward her or a broken bottle in her path, whereas the dog notices the scent of cooked meat coming from a restaurant, urine on a pole and crumbs on the sidewalk.  The two are walking down the same path but having vastly different experiences.  The same goes for every creature.  Predators need to get into the minds (or bubbles) of their prey in order to successfully hunt it.  Tigers are especially clever when they do this, so if a tiger decides you look delicious and he's really hungry, or you have wronged him in some way, he is going to get revenge, you are pretty much dead meat.  It's fascinating.  Apparently tigers and people who live in the same environment have had sort of a deal not to kill each other for thousands of years, but sometimes people or tigers break the deal and then watch out!

I have about half the book left to read because apparently this tiger isn't done hunting people.  Yikes!  Can you imagine knowing that a tiger was out there coming for you?  When the Tiger inspection people were investigating the "crime scene" they noticed fresh tiger tracks all around.  They knew the tiger was close, that he considered Markov his kill and the people were interfering with it.  When they realized this, they knew the tiger was probably watching them but they couldn't see it anywhere.  Just then they heard a deep growl that seemed to come from all around.  They left the scene to try to figure out what to do next.  SOOOO scary!

There was also another interesting story in the book about predators and prey.  A scientist was interested in learning why baboons, who have so much bravado in the light of day, stay hidden in caves at night to avoid big cats.  He wanted to see what it would take to get them to go out in the dark, so this man hid in the cave during the day and then after the troop of baboons came in and went to sleep he jumped out and scared the crap out of them.  They totally freaked out, but they would not leave the cave so apparently whatever was inside the cave with them was not as scary as what was outside in the dark.  I don't know how wise it is to scare a bunch of baboons in an enclosed space, but I guess the guy proved his point.  Baboons know how scary big cats can be and will sacrifice one or two inside the cave with the scary unknown rather than risk the loss of the whole troop outside in the dark with the lions.  Spooooooookkkkyyyyyy!!!

I highly recommend this book.  It is very suspenseful and written very well.

I'm so very versatile...

I woke up this morning not feeling the best because I am having a mid-life crisis.  Why?  Oh, because I'm 41, I'm a substitute teacher (OMG), I've never lost the weight I swore I would lose, I have disgusting night sweats/farts and facing all these facts is sobering, to say the least.  Then I got on line and saw that Angie at Angie Uncovered has passed on the Versatile Blogger award to me.

Thanks Angie!  Actually, to be perfectly honest, when I saw what she wrote about me I thought "Omg, that is so sweet!  Oh crap, now what do I have to do?"  because that is just the kind of person I am and as a blogger, I'm not all that versatile.  I'm kind of a one trick pony.  Maybe this is kind of like getting awarded Miss Congeniality in a beauty contest, or winning a "participant" ribbon at school track and field day.

So, the conditions on getting the Versatile Blogger award are to acknowledge the person who gave it to me with some nice words, tell five little known facts about myself, and then pass the award on to five worthy bloggers.  So here goes.

_______________________________

Angie

I got wind of Angie's blog through The Fred Effect.  He really likes her so I thought I'd check her out.  I like her too.  She's funny and irreverent and always makes me think.  She's feisty and she puts her kids in laundromat dryers if they get lippy.  

You gotta respect a lady who has the cojones to do that!  She's also written some beautiful things on her blog like this, that I find inspiring. Check out Angie!  

___________________________________

Five little known facts about me

1. I always put the salt in the pepper shaker and the pepper in the salt shaker. I don't do it on purpose but when I fill new ones I always think, "okay, I did this wrong last time and I was sure I was right.  Do the opposite of what you think," and then I do it again and never change it because they never run out at the same time.  So if you ever come to my house for a meal expect to shake the shit out of the pepper shaker to get five measly flakes, and expect to get enough unwanted salt on your food from one little shake to make you thirsty for a week. 

2. I once fed my whole family a turkey that when I took it out of the packaging I was pretty sure was past it's prime because of the over powering dead-body smell.  I just cooked it longer than usual.  It was delicious and nobody got sick, but also, nobody appreciated it when I told them I was sure the turkey was rotten before I cooked it.  Lesson: keep your trap shut when you serve rotten yet delicious food to people.  Ignorance is, apparently, bliss.  

3.  My sisters and I stole a bus-tour in Washington D.C.  The bus was a double-decker open-top and the website said that it was a "hop on hop off" type tour.  You buy a ticket for 31 dollars and then you can hop on or off any of their busses all day.  We hopped on and nobody was there to take any money.  We toured for about an hour and then hopped off.  I felt more invigorated than guilty.  I think this might lead to a life of crime.

4.  When I was about eight years old I used to put super-balls in my tube tops because I was sure I was convincing the whole neighborhood that I was in the midst of puberty.  I can't believe the confidence I had that I was fooling everyone.  Turns out I wasn't really fooling anyone because not only was it obvious that a scrawny second grader isn't in puberty, but I wasn't very careful about making sure the superballs were the same size or that they were even.  People probably just thought it was a clever place to keep my balls.

5.  I love to pick things and peel things which is not a little known fact about me, but what is a little known fact is that when Sam was little and would get scrapes or bug bites, he would never EVER pick the scabs and if left to his own devices would let them heal on their own until the scab fell off (can you imagine?) When he was sleeping I would sneak into his room and pick the scabs that I had spotted that were totally ready to be picked.  I'm not proud of it, but if he wasn't on to me, and if he still got as many scabs, I would do it again.  

____________________________________

And the Award goes to...

1.  Anne at Life Is Good because she is my friend, and I love her and I love reading her blog.  She is a great mom and wife and is honest and funny and positive.  

2.  Kady at A Lady Reveals Nothing because she has just about the funniest blog I've ever read. Her blog is about her life of travels and adventures, tampons and poop, her crazy family and her adorable roommate.

3.  Jane of Jane's Junk and Treasures.  Her blog is about decorating and organizing.  She's funny and has great taste and does some amazing projects.  She hasn't been blogging that much lately because she's busy being a good daughter, but she'll be back and when she is, check her out.  

4.  Lawrence at The Lawrence and Julie and Julia Project.  I'm giving him the Versatile Blogger award ironically because of the ridiculous corner he has painted himself into blog-wise.  He is watching the movie Julie and Julia every day for a year and blogging about it, much like Julie Powell made a recipe from Julia Child's cookbook every day for a year and blogged about it.  He's almost to the end and he's losing his mind.  

5.  A. from Milk and Cake.  I don't know if she wants me to put her name on the blog because it isn't even on her blog, so I just put A.  I stumbled on her blog a few years ago by pushing Next Blog and I've read her ever since.  She is very Versatile!  She blogs about her family, her job, her projects, food etc, etc.  I especially love the projects she does.  She's very creative and I would love it if she would come to my house and make me some stuff.  

Working

I haven't been subbing nearly as much as I would like this year so I am taking jobs that last year I would have turned down.  For instance, gym.  I'm not a gym teacher.  I don't like noise and I don't like to try to yell over loud echoing noise in humongous gyms because my voice isn't very loud.  But I do have my very own whistle for just such occasions!  I taught middle school gym last week and they were swimming in the pool.  They are very cute in a pool because some of them are soooooo skinny that they can barely float.  Fat is like a life vest.  My fat is my life vest.  I'm only tubby in case I ever find myself stranded in the ocean for days at a time.  I could do it.  I could tread water for days.  In fact, I couldn't NOT tread water.  I could never drown because I'm too buoyant. So if you ever hear that I drowned, I have been murdered.  I pop up like a cork.  Even when I try to be stealthy and swim under water, my butt pops up.  Oh well.  I'm not chunky, I'm buoyant.  Like a bubble.

I taught third grade last week which is my favorite grade, but this particular class is about 1/3 behavior problems so it was a challenge.  You know what I've noticed about kids since I've been teaching?  Little boys who have mohawks or earrings are little assholes.  And I've seen the same boys without the mohawk and they are NOT assholes when they don't have that strip of long hair running across the top of their otherwise bald head.  Moms, don't let your little boys get a mohawk.  It's not cute and it turns them into little dicks.

Beth's Help

Amy and Beth and I were determined to get some good pictures of ourselves while we were on our trip.  We are constantly taking pictures, but they are usually of our kids who don't really take bad pictures.  Beth was a bit stunned by my total inability to take a good picture, which led me to record some Bethisms (thanks for the idea Kady and Summer) so she thought she'd help me out by snapping candids of me when I wasn't expecting it, thinking that maybe if I didn't know a camera was pointing at me, she could capture the real me.  These are some of the shots she got.

Walking the streets of Annapolis:

On the train to NYC:

And then: Finally!  A half-way decent one!

(That's me on the left)

Bethisms from our trip:

"Amy, you re-ran over that squirrel"

"If I took my kids on a plane, I'd drug them."

"The new cool will be having LESS Facebook friends!"

"What are you doing with your face?"  said everytime she looked at a picture snapped of me.

Thanks, Beth!

Does this make you mad too? Why does it make me so mad?

I got in the car after work and I caught the last five minutes of Talk Of The Nation on the radio and was instantly enraged.  Usually I only half listen to the radio but something about this caught my attention.  A man was talking about how nobody understands his plight and how much he's sacrificed in his career and personal life, and how his male friends can never understand what he's gone through and how his kids are better because of it blah blah blah blah, and I thought, surely this man must have done some amazing, heroic act so I kept listening to hear if it was something like donating his bone marrow to 1000 strangers, or saved a family from a burning building, but no.  What, you ask, could the heroic thing he did that he and Neal Conan both were patting him on the back on a national public radio show?  What amazing sacrifice has he made?

He stayed home and raised his kids.  Yeah, that's right.  There was a show all about how wonderful and  unique and noble this guy is because he took on the unbelievably difficult job of care of his own offspring.  I was driving, and frothing at the mouth and was digging out my phone to call in to the show and then the show ended and now my only outlet is to write about it on this blog.  When a woman stays home and takes care of her own kids BIG DEAL.  If anything there are hints that she's selfish because she isn't contributing to the financial well-being of her family because really, shouldn't the woman of the new millennium really be expected to bring home at least half the money AND take care of her kids and family and house?  Not only did this man on the radio not express any guilty feelings for not possibly doing enough for the family, but he got on the radio and bragged that he provided the primary care for his own children!

In this same vein, a friend on Facebook posted an article that some idiot woman wrote in to an advice column to ask about how come her friends with kids always say they are so busy.  What are they doing all day?  How hard is it to take care of a couple of kids?  AAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!  Here it is:

I love the reply, btw. But why is it that when a woman does a job, any job except maybe race-car driver, the general consensus (from both males and females) is "Eh, so what.  Couldn't she possibly do a little more?" But when a man does it he brags about it and pats himself on the back and gets paid more money than his female counterparts.  Yeah, women still only make about 80 percent of what men make for doing the same job.  Maybe it's because men know how to toot their own horns better than women. I don't know, but it really bothers me. The thing is, I stayed at home with my kids when they were small and I totally agree with the braggart on the radio that it IS a hard job, but I would NEVER go on a radio show and brag that I decided to do a job that millions and millions of other people do every day, and act like I invented the idea of providing primary care of my own children. And the fact that he got a national platform to brag about doing something that women have traditionally done for thousands of years, what the hell? 

You know, I don't know why this makes me soooo mad.  I only heard about five minutes of the show so maybe the guy really did do something phenomenal.  Just a minute, I'm going to look it up....

Okay, I looked up yesterday's show and the guy is named Pat Byrnes and he stays at home with his daughters and he writes a cartoon about being "Captain Dad."  The cartoon is kind of cute but again, how many moms stay home with kids and then write hilarious blogs about it?  Tons.  None of them get on Talk of the Nation.  Here is something Byrnes said that exemplifies why he pissed me off so much:

There are more than 150,000 stay-at-home dads these days, according to the 2010 Census, but Byrnes says there's more to it than that. "There are a lot of dads that kind of share the responsibility," he says. "I mean, I know at least two firemen [who] work their, you know, 24-hour shifts. They got a couple of days. You know, they trade off with the mom. So that's becoming more and more common where dads are, you know, manning up and taking care of the kids."

Manning up and taking care of the kids?  Seriously?  Men who work but also look after their own kids on their days off should somehow be praised for it?  Oh my god.  

My Favorite Picture

Oh my god, we are so in love

Russian Samovar

I have a couple of stories for you from my sister's vacation.  We had tickets to see Wicked at the Gershwin theater for Tuesday night, so before the show we planned on eating at Russian Samovar.  I chose that restaurant because when I looked up "good placed to eat in Midtown" when I was planning our itinerary, that name kept popping up.  I'm not much of a fan of Russian anything, but that restaurant kept getting rave reviews, so I thought we should check it out.  When we walked in I didn't think we were in the right place.  It looked like a bit of a dive.  What caught my eye was the light fixtures with wires hanging out all over the place.


Here's a picture of Amy and you can see the light fixtures, but you can't really see the wires.  Oh well, believe me, it was a bit weird. 

We decided to be totally Russian and drink vodka and eat caviar.  The waitress who was an adorable Russian girl with a thick accent brought us a list of flavor infused vodkas so we ordered some. 

The first one I got was lemon and it was pretty good.  Next I ordered a chocolate one and the waitress looked me square in the eye and said, "No."  I said, "Pardon?" and she said, "No. Is no good."  So I told her to get me a good one.  She brought me pear.  It was good.  We ordered our caviar:

See, it's served with little pancakes and onion and boiled egg and sour cream.  It was surprisingly delicious.  A bit fishy but guess what?  It's FISH EGGS!  I ate fish babies and they were delicious.

"Thank you ma'am, your babies were delicious."

Sometimes I feel bad about eating meat because I've seen footage on factory farms and how meat is processed and it is so barbaric and gross I can hardly stand it, but I don't think I will ever think of fish as an animal.  When we go to the Great Lakes Aquarium and see all those fat salmon swimming around it just makes me ravenous. 

Anyway, we had a wonderful time there drinking vodka, and eating appetizers and desserts (cheesecake and little tiny doughnuts with a raspberry sauce that was so good you could have eaten it with a spoon).  We loved our waitress and so we were trying to figure out how to say thank you in Russian and when I looked it up on my translator on my phone, this is what came up:  Спасибо.  I was looking at it for a few seconds and my sisters said, "What does it say?" and I said, "I don't know.  I don't know how to pronounce 'six'," but we figured it out and thanked her in Russian like the dorky tourists we are. 

Because we are middle aged and have to pee every 20 minutes, we asked our adorable waitress where the bathroom was.  She pointed us through these heavy velvet curtains to a staircase and said, "Up there," so we went upstairs to the exact room where Mikael Barishnikov took Carrie on their date on Sex In The City.  It was totally empty until a tough-looking man came shooting out of a back room, looked us over and said, "You must go downstairs."  We told him we were looking for the bathroom and he said, "Downstairs" and herded us to the staircase.  We decided to hold it.  When we were walking to the theater Beth said that the waitress probably sends women who she thinks would be good for selling into white slavery up the steps (aww, thanks!) but the guy got one look at us and thought to himself, "No.  Too old.  Too fat.  Couldn't make the profit margins," so he shooed us away.  Rejection!  We couldn't make a profit as sex slaves. Oh well, one less thing to worry about, I guess. Which reminds me of one more quick story from the trip:  One day we were walking around downtown Washington and there was a guy playing a banjo at an outdoor produce market.  He was just playing, not singing.  He was pretty good until I walked past him and he started singing "Where have all the young girls gone...hmmmm hmmmm hmmmm hmmmmm...." to the tune of Where Have All the Flowers Gone.  Hey Banjo Guy, you are no spring chicken either so SHUT IT. 



Another picture of MEEEEE!

Remember when I told you I am the most unphotogenic person in the world and you said to yourself, "Face it honey, you're just not as good looking as you think," but then felt bad for being so snotty?  Well, I may not have the face (or body) of a supermodel, but I really really am unphotogenic and it is well known in my family.  After my Grandma died and we were super sad and cleaning out her apartment, we were looking through her photo albums and my aunt would giggle quietly to herself and then show me a picture of my Grandma and me where I look like a total fool (every picture) and say, "This is a good one of you."  Some of them my face looked like I was a serial killer, some of them my hair was sticking out in tufts from my temples for no reason, and some of them I was in adolescence.  Mostly I just looked incredibly fat.

Well, I sent her a picture of my sister and I and Corn Husk Lady and this is what she said, "Whoa!  CUTE PICTURE OF YOU!  WTF!"  and I don't know if she is being sarcastic like when she was looking at the picture of me and my grandma when I was in my twenties but was wearing a polka-dotted dress fit for a toddler and for some reason was making my mouth like I had an overbite and no lips, or if she really means it.  You be the judge.  

Other than the fact that my left eye socket looks empty, it's not too bad!