FINALLY! Someone has come up with a useful function for french fries. 😉
Month: June 2008
Saturday Photo Hunt – Bad Hair
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This week’s theme: Bad Hair
You know you’ve been blogging too long when you start posting the same pictures over again. 😀 NO one has bad hair days like MK. I swear, he woke up like this – no gel.
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Friday Five, er, Fifteen
This post is brought to you by the number 15.
(Please feel free to answer any, or all, of these questions in the comment section. I’d be curious to read your answers).
The first two sets of questions came from the Friday 5 website , the last set of questions came from the Friday Fiver website.
Sorry, I just felt like answering questions today and I thought the following questions were interesting:
Sediment
1. When was the last time you had your hands in dirt?
Do you mean on purpose? The day before yesterday when I had to dump the plant MK gave me for Mother’s day into the trash. I TRIED to keep the thing alive but my thumb is not only black, it’s charcoal. I can’t keep plants alive to save me. So obviously, I’m not a gardener, so obviously, I don’t put my hands in dirt very often.
2. When was the last time you had your hands in clay?
I’m not sure I’ve ever had my hands in clay. Maybe when the kids were little and we played with Play-Doh. So to recap, I’m not a gardener and I’m not artistic. Geez, I’m boring.
3. When was the last time you had your feet in mud?
Ugh, never! My mother once told me that one of the first words out of my mouth was “dirty.” I don’t like being dirty, I don’t like feeling dirty and I’m certainly not going to put myself into a dirty situation. (Unless it’s something naughty with my husband, but we won’t go there. *winkwink*)
4. When was the last time you had your feet in sand?
Let’s see, that would probably be when we went to Florida for a family vacation about … three or four years ago. We drove/flew to Florida four years in a row and we got so burnt out on beach vacations that we really have no desire to go back any time soon. Doesn’t that sound trite – burnt out on beach vacations. Pfft.
5. What part of your life could use a serious cleansing?
Wow. What a loaded question. However, I’m pretty satisfied with my spiritual life (Christian), personal life (everything is going well and I don’t feel any discontent), and emotional (solid as a rock, thankyouverymuch). So, I’d have to say my life is pretty seriously cleansed right now. I’m a happy, well-rounded individual. And why do I feel guilty admitting that?
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Annoyances
1. What’s something people do in public that really annoys you, even though it’s probably not a big deal?
The fact that people are CLUELESS when they’re shopping. I ESPECIALLY dig the people at the grocery store who take up the whole freakin’ aisle (angle their cart so that the entire aisle is blocked) while they thoughtfully stand there and tap a finger against their lips as they decide on which brand, of the same food, to buy so that I’m FORCED to wait impatiently while they make up their damn minds. HELLO?! You’re not the only shopper here! Make room dork! (This doesn’t really upset me … heck, who am I kidding, having no courtesy for others annoys the ever-loving-crap outta me).
2. How readily do you ask strangers to stop their annoying behavior?
I don’t. I just fume and think really evil, bad thoughts in my head. However, I’ve been known to give them the stink eye a time or two. (Hey, don’t discount my stink eye, it’s QUITE rude, let me assure you). Unless it’s my family and then I’m QUITE verbal, let me assure you.
3. What’s something you do in public that probably annoys others?
My aggression. I can not stand indecisive people. And this bears repeating – I can not stand indecisive people. Make a decision, yes/no, this way or that way, this brand or this brand … ACT. Grr. So, I have a tendency to park my cart in an out of the way place at the store and simply muscle my way through, or reach around the clusters of indecisive people to get what I need so I can move on and end this little tortuous activity we call shopping. I’m on a mission people, it really is in your best interest to get the hell out of my way.
I’m sure that’s annoying to some people. *grin*
4. What’s your theory about why it’s so easy to get annoyed when one is behind the wheel of a vehicle?
Two reason, really. Stupidity and distractions. Honestly, I think a vast number of people were born without common sense, or a lick of sense, as the saying goes. Some people are simply incapable of seeing the big picture or anticipating the consequences of their bad decisions. Honestly, some of the things people do while driving – what are you thinking? Oh wait, you’re not.
And seriously folks, hang up and drive. Stop telling your life stories to your passengers. Buckle those children in and let them cry (I promise their emotional well beings will survive until you have a chance to pull over somewhere and tend to their needs). You are not only responsible for getting the people in your car safely to their destinations you’re responsible for not crashing into other people so they can safely get to their destinations. And if you think I’m an aggressive driver now? Just wait until my boys start driving – you haven’t SEEN aggressive until that happens.
I’m just saying. *shrug*
5. What regular, minor annoyance have you learned to tolerate?
Oh, let me count the ways:
1. The silence my husband greets me with after I’ve asked a question and I’m waiting for him to digest what I’ve said and answer me.
2. The fact that my oldest son hunches his shoulders and acts like he’s scared of the world.
3. My youngest son’s distractions with EVERYTHING and his unwillingness to be rushed, under any circumstances.
4. The fact that I can not eat chocolate, in it’s purest form, without bloating up like a woman in her third trimester and farting every time I walk from the gassy build up.
Seriously, I could go on forever, but you have lives to get back to … so let’s just say pretty much everything annoys me. Some days, other days, I’m completely laid back and nothing bothers me.
Wow, answering these questions was therapeutic – I feel so RELIEVED! (Hence my sidebar emotion for today. hehe)
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1. What’s your weather?
Right now? It’s raining. In fact, our weather guys were calling for tornadic activity last night but to my knowledge, nothing happened (unless I slept through the sirens and I somehow doubt that because a pin could drop and I would hear it – OH! Another annoyance, I’m a super light sleeper. Okay, I’ll stop now).
Here’s a picture of our current radar:
Nothing too major at this time but check back in an hour – the whole state will likely be a lovely mixture of greens, reds and yellows. (Our weather is insanely unpredictable).
2. Where are you on your way to?
I’m on my way to pick up my nephews. I promised them they could spend all day today, tonight and all day tomorrow with us. My boys are WIDELY excited about them coming over. Me? Not so much. Not because of THEM (they are sweet, well behaved boys) but because I know I will get little to no sleep tonight. Two reasons: 1. I never sleep well when the guys have buddies over – I’m responsible for their well beings! This haunts me! and 2. I have to sleep with my husband (whom I don’t normally sleep with because he snores something FIERCE).
3. Are you good with directions?
Yes and no. I’m good when I’m feeling confident and well rested. And no, when I’m feeling hormonal, edgy and tired. I Mapquest everything. I also suck at GIVING directions.
4. Do you know your neighbors?
Nope. Well, I semi-know the neighbors to our north. He’s a pretty well-known radio disk jockey and his grandson used to come over to our house every Friday night (before he grew up and started driving) so we talked through that experience. But the rest of my neighbors? No. And I have no desire to get to know them. Oh sure, I’m nice when I run across them, you know, the dainty wave and polite smiles, but they are all older adults and well, I just never made the effort. (I’m such a wuss).
Now, the neighbors to our south I dislike, pure and simple. They are sloppy, messy, lazy folks who can’t be bothered to pay their trash bill (their can is currently overflowing with trash because our trash truck, the same company who picks our trash up, has bypassed them for the past few weeks) or PICK UP the trash in their yard (I usually end up doing it when I simply can’t stand it anymore). They also have several years worth of phone books still littering their front stoop and their house is rotting away because they haven’t bothered to have it painted or repaired. The simple fact that they don’t take care of their responsibilities discourages me from wanting to get to know them.
5. What do you smell?
Right now? Warm flesh. I’ve been tanning and I smell like sunshine, lotion and melatonin.
Memory Lane
My mom, when she was a freshman in high school. She’s so pretty!
Take it, Before I Change My Mind
Thursday is the day I post a bit o’ fiction.
This was originally published February 27, 2007
This prompt fiction piece was written in a hurry and hasn’t been edited (much). I use prompts to free / speed write – just some warm-up exercises.
You can find a ton of writing prompts at Write Anything. Click over today and write YOUR version!
Here’s one:
Writing prompt: While you are volunteering for your favorite charity, a man walks up to your table and hands you $1,000,000 in large bills. He walks away weeping, but never says a word.
Tell his story.
“I hate to tell you this, husband of mine, but you’re going to hell. And I ain’t burnin’ with you, buster.” Mary leaned against the makeshift bar and scanned the crowd. She continued talking, keeping her voice low and even. “You’re a thief, Stan. You were born a thief, you’ve lived your life as a thief and you’ll die a thief.” She leaned in close to his ear, her lips barely grazing his skin. “If you don’t give that money up right now, right this very minute, I’m walking out that door. And you’ll lose the only good thing that’s ever happened to your sorry life.”
Stan heaved a heavy sigh and silently agreed with her. Mary was a difficult woman, but she was right. He loved her and she was good for him. He could feel his entire life of conning people out of their hard-earned cash weighing down on his shoulders. He wanted to change, he just wasn’t sure how to go about it.
“Okay.”
Mary stiffened beside him and looked at him in surprise. She had issued the ultimatum because she wanted him to change, their lives to change, but she hadn’t really expected him to agree. The truth was, she would never leave him, she loved him too much. She quickly squashed her astonishment and nodded. “Well okay then.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Do? Mary chewed on her lower lip. She hadn’t thought this far ahead. They were at a charity function. Her kid brother was heavily involved with raising money for some such charity (in truth, she wasn’t even sure what the charity function was this week) and she had agreed to stop by to show her support. She glanced around the room and quickly assessed each person’s personal need by what they were wearing and their body language.
“There.” She nodded toward three women sitting around a table. Two women, both blonde, were leaning toward each other and chatting under their breath. They were drinking what looked like margaritas. The third woman, a small-framed person with hair the color of copper, was quietly watching the auctioneer. She lifted the bottle of water to her unpainted lips every few seconds as if to give her something to do.
“Give the money to that red-headed woman over there.”
Stan stared at her. “Are you crazy? Do you know the hoops I had to jump through to get this stash?”
Mary simply stared at him. Though she hadn’t expected him to go along with her request, now that it was happening, it suddenly became very important to her that he go through with it.
Stan issued another gut-wrenching sigh and nodded. “Fine.” He picked up the briefcase and walked over to the woman. He ignored her shocked look as he placed the case on the table, snapped it open, and began placing $1,000,000 in cash before her. He felt the tears rolling down his face and continued counting.
When he was done, he nodded to the woman (he noted she had one of those sexy beauty marks just to the right of her mouth), and walked away. He did it. He felt strangely … free. He smiled at Mary when he reached her. He leaned in and whispered softly into her ear. “Tonight better be my lucky night after this.”
Mary simply smiled in return.
A New Book to Mooch
I just added another book to my Bookmooch collection:
I Am No One You Know by Joyce Carol Oates
Book blurb:
I Am No One You Know contains nineteen startling stories that bear witness to the remarkably varied lives of Americans of our time. In “Fire,” a troubled young wife discovers a rare, radiant happiness in an adulterous relationship. In “Curly Red,” a girl makes a decision to reveal a family secret, and changes her life irrevocably. In “The Girl with the Blackened Eye,” selected for The Best American Mystery Stories 2001, a girl pushed to an even greater extreme of courage and desperation manages to survive her abduction by a serial killer. And in “Three Girls,” two adventuresome NYU undergraduates seal their secret love by following, and protecting, Marilyn Monroe in disguise at Strand Used Books on a snowy evening in 1956.
These vividly rendered portraits of women, men, and children testify to Oates’s compassion for the mysterious and luminous resources of the human spirit.
If you want it, then mooch it from me. 🙂 Bookmooch, that is. I’m a member of Bookmooch which is an online forum to swap books with other bookworms. Here’s a brief explanation:
Give & receive: Every time you give someone a book, you earn a point and can get any book you want from anyone else at BookMooch. Once you’ve read a book, you can keep it forever or put it back into BookMooch for someone else, as you wish.
No cost: there is no cost to join or use this web site: your only cost is mailing your books to others.
If you would like to join Bookmooch (or if you’re already a member, look me up!) and mooch books off of me, you can find my inventory and my account information here. My Bookmooch ID is: take2max – in case the link doesn’t work and you want to find me. 🙂
Sorry, I’m only shipping to the U.S at this time. International shipping just isn’t in the budget right now. 😦
I’ve got some bookmooch points burning a hole in my pocket. Any bookmoochers out there that want to get rid of some of their books? If so, leave me a link to your inventory in the comment section and I’ll take a look!
Blogging For Charity – My Way
Let’s see a show of hands, how many of you participated in last year’s Blog-a-thon?
*spends a moment to count hands*
And wasn’t it one of the most fun and inspiring 24-hours of your life? Well okay, maybe not your life, but wasn’t it FUN?!
Well, if you haven’t heard, the blog-a-thon is off this year, at least, officially. Life has been beating the administrators down and they simply can’t host it this year. They promise to come back next year but what about this year?? Waah!
I participated in the ‘thon via my writing blog, Write Stuff, which has since been restructured and renamed Write Anything last year. Me, Tammi, Andrea and Dale all took shifts – I started the ‘thon off, then Tammi took over, then Andrea followed suit, Dale ran the graveyard shift and I hopped back on at 4:00 in the morning and finished it off. The ‘thon started the last Saturday of July at 6:00 a.m. and ran until 6:00 a.m. Sunday morning.
You know how challenging it can be to think of something to post once or twice a day? Try posting EVERY THIRTY MINUTES! It was insane trying to stay ahead of the clock, but MAN, it was fun and so INSPIRING! My creative juices were not only flowing, they were OVERflowing.
Our charity was First Book. We feel very strongly that every child deserves a chance to read and exercise his/her imagination. So we blogged to raise money for the program to supply books to underpriviledged children. I believe we raised close to $400.00. So not only was the ‘thon exciting and challenging on a personal level, our efforts went toward a worthy cause, too.
But this year, the blog-a-thon has been cancelled, er, officially. There are a few people trying to run mini-thons (here and here) which I think is great and I may participate in them, but the bottom line is, I really want to continue the tradition in my neck of the woods, er, cyberspace. I’m toying around with the idea of maybe making another small community here at WFK. Just someplace we can gather, exchange links and charities and have a place to call hub.
Are any of you interested in forming our own little mini-thon community for the July 26th 24-hour charity blog-a-thon? Oh silly me, if you don’t know what in the world I’m talking about or what a blog-a-thon is, you can read more about the program at the official website.
Anyway, if you’re interested, just let me know in the comment section (or contact me – my email is in the sidebar), and we’ll go from there.
But for me? I’m totally doing the ‘thon this year. On my WFK blog – I might take a shift at Write Anything if the other writers are interested in participating this year (I haven’t talked to them yet). And then I’m taking a vacation from blogging for a week and will be posting … well, that’s a surprise. You’ll just have to check back (or check your feeder) for the details. 😀
Write From Karen 