Hummingbird Feeding Frenzy

The hummingbirds are going nuts at my house.  There's at least ten that fight over this feeder and I get hardly any business at the THREE other feeders I have hanging in the yard.  There is also one hornet that has been hogging this feeder all day.  You can kind of see him in the video if you look.  He thinks he's really tough because he chases the birds away but he better watch it because sometimes I find hornet corpses in the nectar and I suspect that the hummingbirds wait until just the right moment and poke them into the holes with their pointy beaks when they get the chance.  Watch it, you asshole hornet, or I will be fishing your dismembered corpse out of a nectary grave.

Kira in the Car

Kira motioned for me to open my hand because she had something to give me.  I cautiously did it and she gave me a cherry pit that she had been sucking on for about an hour.  She wanted to show me how clean she got it.  When I figured out what I was looking at she nodded her head and said,

"What do you think of that?  Smooth as a baby's eyeball."

I've got what you're looking for

Every so often I look at my Statcounter page at my blog stats.  It tells me how many page views I get, and where hits come from, and most interestingly, what people typed into a search engine to get directed to my blog.  I think I am supposed to use that to cater my posts more to my audience.  You know, "know your audience?"  Ever heard of that?  Well, based on recent searches, I don't know how to cater to my audience.  They seem to be interested in animals:

"great white shark pooping"

"a pitcher of a sturgeon"

"monkey in make-up going to the gym"

"female sheep vagina"

"Teeth Of Cow"

"ugly llama"

Well, I know they didn't learn much about a great white shark pooping because when I read that I said, "Hey yeah, what's that like?" so I googled it.  The person curious about shark poop must have gone past a lot of sites to finally get to mine.  There are literally hundreds of videos of sharks pooping on the internet.  Hundreds.  Probably thousands.  God, I love the internet.

I don't really understand what the person who was looking for a "pitcher of a sturgeon" was looking for.  A fish you can drink?  A doctor you can drink?  Does he mean picture?  Does he mean surgeon?  I don't know.

I really want to know why someone wanted to see a picture of a monkey in make-up going to the gym. Generally I find that monkeys don't wear make-up when they go to the gym.  They just have to shower after the workout anyway so why waste the time and make-up?

I like how the sheep pervert specified that he wanted to see a female sheep vagina.  And I love that he got sent to my blog to find it.  Yes, I have featured pictures of some sheep nudes that I took myself on this blog, but don't worry, they were very classy.

Who googles "Teeth Of Cow"?  And why capitalize every word?  Is it a title?  Just a minute, I'll google it; nope.  Not a title, the first thing that comes up are the image results for cow teeth.  Lots of pictures of people prying open cow lips to show the cow's teeth.  Did I mention that I love the internet?

Much like the person who googled "female sheep vagina," the person searching for an ugly llama didn't have to be so specific.  All llamas are ugly.

a doi

There are Hotdogs in the Fridge

Last night Mitch and I came home from a weekend at the lake and discovered that while we were gone Sam cleaned the house and did a bunch of chores because he was home alone.  The house was literally cleaner when I got home than it was when I left. " Now THAT's how to raise a child!  GOD I'm a fantastic parent!"  I thought smugly to myself.  After Sam told me that he put my clean laundry in my room and that the dishes in the dishwasher were clean, he went to bed.

I put in the movie Chasing Mavericks about a kid who wants to surf monster waves and gets a pseudo foster father to help him do it.  I was watching the movie, still feeling pretty satisfied about what an OUTSTANDING parent I am, when I saw that the kid in the movie had the world's shittiest mother.  The first time we see her in the movie she is drunk, sleeping a bender off, totally oblivious that her kid almost died in the ocean and got a ride home from a strange man in a VAN.  When the kid came home he tucked her in and she rolled over and said, "There's hotdogs in the fridge," and passed out again.  Then he poured her booze down the drain.  "Oh.  That's too bad," I thought.  "He's not as lucky as Sam."

And then later in the movie the kid, who is about the same age as Sam, was heading out the door and he said something about how he washed the laundry and the dishes, and his mom's uniform was pressed and on her bed.  "Hmm,"  I thought, "I'm having a feeling of deja vu.  Weird."  Then I thought back to before I left my baby for my weekend of leisure while he stayed here and worked and cleaned the house, I actually said the words, "There are hotdogs in the fridge!"

"Oh. My. God,"  I thought.  Is Sam so good because he has to be?  Am I the shitty mother from Chasing Mavericks?  Is Sam the parent in our relationship and I'm so shitty I never even realized it???  Memories started flooding back:
~The time when he was a toddler and we played with a tiny plastic Sammy and Mommy dolls and he always wanted to be Mommy:  at the time I thought it was because he loved me so much.  I now suspect he was modeling proper Mommy behavior for me.
~The time when he was about five and was telling me a story about my dad and said, "...and then Grandpa (you know, your dad) said I could...."  At the time I thought he was a good story teller, but now I suspect he thought I was an idiot because I couldn't put together that his grandpa is my dad.
~When he would always insist on holding my hand in the grocery store parking lot; at the time I thought it was because he loved me so much.  Now I think he was guiding me safely to the store.

My child has been raising me for his whole life and I never even realized it.  Holy shit.  What does this mean?
I think it means I should write a parenting book because HOLY SHIT, I AM AN AWESOME MOTHER!!! Have you SEEN how good my son is?  IN YOUR FACE!  (That will be the title of my parenting book - In Your Face! or maybe Holy Shit I am an Awesome Mother!  or maybe There are Hotdogs in the Fridge)  I'll have Sam start working on a first draft.

Now that we are all clear on who is doing the parenting and who is being parented in this house, I have some bones to pick with Sam about how Kira is turning out.

Summer Vacation!

I have been having a lot of fun lately, and I know when I tell you about it you are going to be jealous and then probably write me off and not pay any attention to me anymore, but I'm going to risk it.  You'll get over it.

On the 4th of July Mitch and the kids and I went out on Mitch's brother's Mat's boat to watch the fireworks. It was glorious!

The Coast Guard stopped us because the four kids and I were sitting on the bow.  The kids were all wearing life-jackets so they gave us five Dairy Queen coupons for "all the kids on the bow wearing life-jackets."  Hey!  They thought I was a kid!  And they also thought I was wearing a life jacket.  Time to lose some weight!

On the morning of the fourth, my friend Shelly and I went to the Duluth Rowing Club for a rowing lesson with our gym trainer, Jeff.  He is a rowing coach.  He took Shelly, another teacher named Jane, and me out on a four person boat.  It was so much fun!  The weather was perfect and the water was like glass.  Apparently over the last hundred years or so the boats used for the sport of rowing have been designed and improved and engineered to be perfect rowing machines, but that didn't stop us from giving Jeff suggestions on how the boat could be better.  You are supposed to cross your hands left over right in the middle of the stroke.  Shelly suggested that right over left would be better and I suggested that maybe they should just make the oars shorter so no crossing was necessary in the first place.  Jeff explained that the boat is designed to be perfectly balanced when the rowers put their left hand over their right hand, and that the oars needed to be the length they are for the optimal amount of leverage in the row.  We are still skeptical.  

He has a lot of patience.  

A few days later I went to see Brandi Carlile in concert.  She was FABULOUS!  She has so much talent packed into a tiny, adorable little package.  What a voice!  It was an outdoor concert along a river in Des Moines.  Gorgeous night!

A few days after that my sister Beth and Mitch and I went to the Richard Thompson/My Morning Jacket/Wilco/Bob Dylan concert here in Duluth.  It was a lot of fun.  My sister Amy was heading to Duluth that evening and said, "I'd really love to go to the concert with you guys if it wasn't Bob Dylan."  Apparently she's not a fan.  Amy and Beth went to a Dylan concert many years ago when they were teenagers and apparently he just stood in a dark corner and sang unintelligibly.  He was pretty good this time but he didn't say one word to the audience and at one point when he was singing Beth said, "I wish there were subtitles."

Later that night my sisters and I came back to my house and celebrated Amy being back from Afghanistan by eating Doritos and Top The Tater, drinking Miller Light, and learning how to twerk from instructional videos on the internet.  Oh, you don't know what twerking is?  It is the latest gross dance kids are doing to horrify their parents.  Basically you squat down and shake your undercarriage.

Beth got pretty good at it with some practice but Amy is hopeless.  Her twerk was mostly arms with not much going on below the waist.  We kept yelling, "Less arms!"  but that just made her shake her arms more.  I don't know why that happened because arms aren't even a small part of a good twerk.  When I do it I feel like I'm really moving, but apparently I'm just sort of standing still making pigeon movements with my head.  SEXY SEXY SEXY!  

Dadisms

Last weekend Mitch and his brother Mat brought all of our kids up to Rainy Lake to spend TWO WEEKS with their grandparents at the cabin.  The girls are going to attend a hockey camp.  While Mat and Mitch were there over the weekend they had to pack two weeks of parenting into a couple of days which resulted in some good "Dadisms" that I'm sure the kids will remember and tease them about for many years to come.  When the teenage girls got a little snotty and entitled and generally teenage-y Mat told them,

"I think you're special. Grandma thinks you're special.  But nobody else does and someday Grandma is going to die, and someday I am going to die. Then who will think you're special?  Nobody."

Thanks, Dad!

International Falls is a small town and the girls are planning to ride bikes around town which led to this exchange between Mitch, Mitch's dad, and the girls:

Mitch: This is a smaller town than you're used to.  The boys are going to be more aggressive here because they have to be.  

Mitch's Dad:  Yeah, you're going to have to skate harder to keep up with the boys.

Mitch:  You know I'm not talking about hockey, right?

Girls: ..... Yes.

Last year when the kids were getting ready to spend a few weeks at the cabin Mitch asked them if they were all packed which led to the inevitable sigh and strained whiny, "Yes, DAD." And Mitch said, "Do you have your toothbrushes?"  They didn't.  Then Mitch yelled this gem:

"Come on!  This isn't a holiday from hygiene!"

Which has had me laughing for over a year.  The kids still don't find it funny but someday they will.   

Brief Jerky

It was our wedding anniversary over the weekend!  Mitch tells me that the fifteenth anniversary is the one where it is traditional to give beef jerky.  In fact, he sent me a link to a website that makes "brief jerky."

I understand the (gross) principle behind edible underwear, but I think it would be more practical to make it thong-like and made of fruit roll-up material or cotton candy.  Beef jerky is a little tough and salty.  You don't want to spend all your foreplay time chewing and drinking water to quench your unquenchable thirst.

Happy Anniversary to me! (and Mitch)

Hidden Pictures

After dinner we were just sitting around and Mitch found a Highlights Magazine that we just got in the mail.  I don't know why we get Highlights Magazine.  I certainly never ordered it.  Our kids are teenagers, they don't read it.  I think Mitch ordered it.  Why would a 40 year old man want Highlights?  I wouldn't have known how to answer that question one hour ago, but since then Mitch has told me (although he didn't specifically admit he ordered it).  He said, "Highlights of this Highlights Magazine:  The picture find and the riddles.  Lowlights:  all the stories."  I happened to be at my computer while he was working so diligently on the picture find and I had the the chance to capture what happened after he got serious and got a marker.    

Mitch: ... Well... I'm really kicking ass now...

Mitch:  Yes.  Is this a toothbrush?  Yes.  It's gotta be.  Yes.

Mitch:  That is clearly something.  Is it a golf club?  Sure it is, but which way does it go?  Oh, that way.

Mitch:  What is this?  It's clearly something.  Is it a flower?

Me:  No, I think it's an egg.

Mitch:  There is no egg on the list.  It's not an egg. 

Mitch:  This looks like a sock but it's not on the list.  Why would they put a sock in here?

Me:  Are there bonus items?  Maybe it's a bonus item.

Mitch:   There are bonus items!  It's a bonus item!

Mitch:  Cupcake.... where's the fucking cupcake.  It's got to be somewhere.  

Mitch:  OH!  I've been looking at that egg all the time and it's the cupcake!

Me:  So you thought it was an egg too.

Mitch:  No, I said it's not an egg.  It's the cupcake.

Me:  (laughing)

Mitch:  WHAT?  I LIKE these!

Mitch:  I can't believe that dog didn't have anything on him.

Mitch:  I got an A on this.

Mitch:  (paging through the rest of the magazine)  Just because the kids don't like this magazine doesn't mean it's not a good magazine.  (continuing to page through)...... maybe it's not.  

Mitch:  Hey!  The riddles!  What will happen if you throw a white hat into the Red Sea?

Me:  It will turn pink?

Mitch:  No.  It will get wet!  

Me:  Ugh.

Mitch:  Why was the police officer always sleeping?  

Me:  (sigh)... I don't know.

Mitch:  She was "A-RESTIN'"!!!

Me:  Oh jeez.

Mitch:  Why did the mattress store employee get in trouble?

Me:  He was sleeping on the...HE WAS SLEEPING ON THE JOB!!!

Mitch: No, he was a pedophile.

(I don't think that last joke was actually in there)  Anyway, here is his hidden picture puzzle: