While Mommy's Away...

So one night last week I came home from a class and discovered ET dyeing her sisters’ hair purple in the bathroom.

Yes, I mean BOTH Boo and GG. And herself.

I guess I should be thankful she left Baby Girl’s hair alone.

The good news is: The dye didn’t take. It was Kool Aid. Their hair still looks perfectly normal.

ET couldn't understand it. She'd gotten the recipe from the internet. Which should always be trustworthy.

The bad news is: Their father didn’t realize what they were doing the whole time.

Oh, well. At least they weren’t actually SUCCESSFUL…

The Going to School Blues

 

"Calvin and Hobbes" by Bill Watterson

It's getting on towards the end of the school year, and we've had a lot of whining recently in the mornings, particularly from GG and Boo.

You know the drill, whining, "I don't WANNA go to school!"

(ET, although she glowers at everyone all morning in true teenager form, goes off to school with a resigned air and hasn't been doing this as much.)

We've had some complaining about stomachaches too, but that's another story. Sufffice it to say, my general policy on staying home from school sick is: If you don't have a fever, and you're not throwing up, your butt is GOING to school!



This morning, GG looked at me sorrowfully right before leaving to wait for the bus.

"I don't want to go to school today, Mommy. But I'm doing this for YOU!"

Well, THANK you, dear.

Soul Surfer: I give it five stars!

Last night I took my older girls to see "Soul Surfer," which I highly recommend, by the way.

That's the one about the girl surfer who had her arm bitten off by a shark and got back on the surfboard with one arm. It was filmed here in Hawaii.

(I was going to give it "two thumbs up" in my title, but I was afraid that would be tasteless.)

This movie had something for everyone: scenery, suspense, a shark attack...

Don't laugh. That shark attack was a big draw for my kids.

I really enjoyed it and came away inspired to be a better person.

No, seriously! It was a very inspiring movie. Even my 14-year-old was unable to be blase about it. We were able to have a great conversation about perserverance.

And it's definitely okay for kids; for a movie that's pretty much ABOUT a shark attack, they minimized the gore big-time.

But the movie was really more about how she got back on the board AFTER the attack, of course, with the help of her Christian faith. I thought the whole thing was really well-done.

It was apparently based on the book Bethany Hamilton wrote about the incident. She is super-cool, as we can see from this photo.

Of course, my kids asked me how they'd made the actress look like she only had one arm for more than half the film.

I mean, obviously, Annasophia Robb still has both her arms. Nobody's THAT much of a method actor.

I told the kids they must have digitally removed the arm from the scenes, frame by frame. Later we looked on the internet and I saw they'd used a green-screen somehow, judging by her greened-out arm cast here.

The other thing I found interesting were the photos they showed of the real people after the movie. It's cool when a movie is based on a true story and they can do that.

But it was amazing how NORMAL the real people in the photos were, as opposed to their gorgeous Hollywood actor counterparts we'd just seen up-close-and-personal for two hours.

I thought the same thing after I watched "The Blind Side," actually. The movies are just so much prettier, and cleaner, and slicker than real life.

I mean, the real people were pretty good-looking to begin with, honestly. But I guess no one in real life can compare to someone with a make-up and camera crew.

So all I need to do now is get a movie made about my life, and Hollywood can pretty me and my family up too!

Do you think Catherine Zeta-Jones might be available to play me?

Ant Infestation!

We're being taken over by ants!

Tiny black ants are driving me nuts by showing up all over the place. As soon as I kill a bunch of them in one place, there they are in another place!

Now, I understand that we live on a tropical island, and a certain amount of insect activity is to be expected (as per the brochure issed by the military housing office)....however, the ant population seems to really swell occasionally. Like right now.

It's like a plague around here. They even infested my Bible! That's GOT to be against some kind of commandment.

Anyways... YES we've had an exterminator come. YES we've done our own spraying also.

And YES we've sealed up all food and cleaned up all food crumbs to stop attracting them.

(Which is difficult when you have two toddlers roaming the house like Hansel and Gretel leaving trails of food, by the way.)

So we're getting it under control.

But Boo just came home and said that all the backpacks and lunchboxes at school got invaded by ants too.

Actually, her exact words were, "My backpack is full of ants. I need a new one." This said while bringing said bug-infested backpack INTO the house.

I told her a small bug infestation wasn't grounds for an entire new purchase, and helped her take the backpack into the yard and clean it out.

Although, come to think of it, maybe I could use that line to get a new HOUSE.....

Would that work on the housing office?

Offended by The World Wide Web?

Is it just me, or has the internet gotten really rude lately?

I mean, it's always been trying to make me click on things using weird tactics, like that photo of the grandpa's head on Wonder Woman's body, or that lady in the black dress that gets fat and then shrinks up skinny over and over again.

And it's always offered me dates with "local" singles, men OR women, so I can take my pick. Gee. Thanks.

I have often wondered if these people are REALLY local. Like, if I knew someone in, say, Nome Alaska.....would they have the same photos displayed as I do? Do the rest of y'all have that dude in the mountain-climbing gear, or the off-center and out-of-focus long-haired guy? I'm just asking.

But now it's started making me insulting offers, like "Date sexy Chinese girl."

There are so many things wrong with that offer, I can't even SAY them all! I shudder to think what might happen if I accidentally clicked on it.

And no, I didn't. Not even in the name of research.

 Also I'm annoyed by the over-aggressive fan pages on facebook who tell me things like, "If you love your daughter, click LIKE!"

Okay, how about we don't rate the strength our familial relationships based on how many FAN PAGES we clicked LIKE on?!

But maybe I'm getting a little oversensitive...

By the way, the signpost picture at the top is from http://www.cheapinternetdeals.org/.

I tried to find a photo of that incredible shrinking and growing lady, and it appears that the Sensa weight-loss company has removed her. I read a couple of comments about how people found her offensive...


I guess maybe I'm not the only one who thinks the internet is rude.

Anybody else had any freaky offers pop up?

And are those singles really local or not?

April Fools?

April Fools Day is not my favorite holiday.

I don't actually know what my favorite holiday is, but rest assured: it's NOT April Fool's Day.

I'm not trying to be a hater here, but pranks and mischief are just not my cup of tea.

I think it's my Inner Mom.

St. Patrick's Day isn't my favorite either.

It's nothing against the Irish. I don't approve of the sanctioned pinching.

But I digress. We were talking about April Fool's Day.

Several of my friends on facebook posted April Fool’s Day jokes yesterday about being pregnant.

Wow.

Talk about tempting fate, huh? This just seems like a bad idea to me.

It will be interesting to see if any of them end up REALLY sorry in about nine months….

Can Someone Please Poke Out My Eyes?

There’s something seriously wrong with commercials nowadays.

It seems like they are determined to force me to  look at images that should NEVER be in front of my eyeballs.

Case in point: The Charmin Bears.

I mean, I may be seriously dating myself here (and this WAS a little before my time), but remember when commercial spokesman were too classy to even mention their competitors by name and always tested their product against “Brand X?”

Classiness in commercials? Those were the days.

Of course, I suppose they were also the days when advertisers used people dressed as physicians to sell cigarettes…

Now I admit that was a jerk move. (But it did look classy!)

But now, do you REALLY have to talk about (ahem) male enhancement on TV? REALLY?!

Every time I watch Lifetime, they’ve got to show this footage of older people smiling suggestively at each other, and the heading upstairs hand in hand. Oh PLEASE spare me!

And it’s not just that. The demonstration of feminine products in TV ads has been grossing me out for years. When they start pouring that blue water on the maxi-pad? Ewwwwwwww.

But now we’ve got to talk about EXACTLY what we use toilet paper for? And actually SHOW it, albeit on cartoon form?

Come ON! We all know what T.P. is for. Can’t we just leave some things unsaid?

And unPICTURED?! (I’m talking to YOU, amorous Grandma and Grandpa!)

Please Charmin! No more close-ups of the cartoon bears’ butts!

I’m begging you!