Monday, June 25, 2007

Why You Never Leave a Child Alone




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Thursday, June 21, 2007

Under No Cicumstances

Do NOT go out in the early morning hours to garden, mow grass and pull weeds where there is poison ivy, then rush inside and go to the bathroom without washing your hands.

Excuse me now while I go scoot my butt across the rug like a dog.......



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Monday, June 18, 2007

Snakes on a Drain

It’s over!

Well, not really, we still have a lot of unsold goods and not-so-goods to pack up, but the doors to sell hell are closed.

It was hot. If you ever wanted to r-e-a-l-l-y get to know your family, (and I can’t imagine why you would want to - trust me) spend several days in a double-car oven, working at a garage sale with them, while all manner of humanity wanders by, pawing through tools and treasures.

The tools sold well. The treasures...not so much. There isn’t a lot of demand for fur coats in June. And everyone seemed to be able to live without a Rockwell collector plate.

The massive depression glass collection displayed in my previous post has been trimmed a bit, but as groovy so succinctly noted, few people are interested in one more thing to have to dust. I see an eBay store in grandma’s future.

The Campbell’s Soup cups and glassware that Peter noticed didn’t draw any takers. Perhaps we should have included actual soup.

On the last day of the sale, I dragged myself out of bed at 4 AM and sat on the toilet, rubbing my eyes and face. I felt severe stubble around my eyebrows, and realized I hadn’t plucked in days. I pulled open the makeup drawer and got out my trusty tweezers and magnifying mirror. Raising the mirror to eye level, I attempted to focus my bleary vision. In the mirrored reflection I saw not only my eyebrow stubble, but something slithering.

I spun around (not easy to do when you’re sitting on a toilet) and saw a small snake retreating behind the faucet. Apparently the lack of human activity in the house and the excessive outdoor temperature had driven the little bugger indoors. I can speak rationally about this now, but when I first spotted it, all I did was scream.

A screaming woman trying to exit the bathroom with her panties around her ankles, after flinging tweezers at a snake at four o’clock in the morning is a sight to behold, I was later told by my amused husband.

The snake was equally terrified.

Husband (my hero!) threw a towel over the terrified snake, carried it outside and released it. Since we live out in the country, this has happened a couple of other times in the 20-odd years we’ve lived here, but I will never get used to it.

But it made leaving to go haul two tons of stuff out onto a driveway, a whole lot easier.


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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

My Husband’s Butt and Other Finery

Well, we’ve moved 8,729 pieces of stuff into my mother-in-law’s garage.

Every one has been washed, so it is not the unwashed masses yearning to be free - it is the washed masses yearning to be sold.

The sale to end all sales (I hope) starts tomorrow.

Every member of the family was drafted into service. Mom-in-law, myself, husband, both sons, daughter and an aunt, have all gathered priceless treasures and deposited them in the garage.

Toby, the cairn terrier was more interested in retrieving anything that was placed low or on the floor, grabbing it and dragging it back into the house, though. Toby does not like change. Toby thinks we are crazy. Toby is right.

Despite Toby’s best efforts to maintain hearth and home as he knew it, the garage is now packed to the brim. The sale starts tomorrow. My sanity should return some time next week.

Here are some pictures - my favorite is of my husband’s butt, which, even when we’re exhausted, will cause me to wink at him when he turns to ask me for more price stickers.

Click to enlarge (the pictures, not my husband. I’ll handle all of his enlargements - LOL)







Mom is selling more than 250 pieces of Moon and Stars depression glass in all colors.





And dozens of collectors plates.


There was so much stuff, we had to put the overflow in the living room.







See the craigslist ad here:


There’s more, but I’m too pooped to post - LOL

Gotta go make more signs now....hope all of you have a wonderful day!



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Sunday, June 03, 2007

Twittering Scrotums

Caution: This post contains political incorrectness


It’s 4 AM and there’s a fat man in leopard prints pants on TV. I don’t know why.


The satellite TV isn’t working because it’s raining. It’s been raining forever. I wanna know how big a cubit is (a free humor book to the first person who can tell me what a cubit is)


I can only get three local channels without the magic satellite signal, and I can’t check the on-screen guide to see what retarded old movie this is. Two of the local channels are showing infomercials. Even in my depleted mental state I will not watch an infomercial. That leaves some 90’s teen movie on the remaining channel. It’s colorful, and has pirates, which should be enough for my reduced brain function.


Ahhh...pretty colors...nooo, brain is insisting it must know...stupid brain. I Google the only celebrity I recognize, Corey Feldman, (Googling Corey Feldman sounds like fun, but only would be, if Google was wearing a studded leather dog collar and carrying a whip.)


Here we are...the best review (unedited, cause that’s what makes it “special” and yes I mean retarded) from IMdb:


National Lampoon: Last Resort - this movie was soooooooooooo FUNNY! I seen it on USA when i was obsessed w/ corey feldman and i used to tape all his movies that were coming on....Anywayz while i was watching it i couldnt help but realize how stupid it was but thats the whole point!


Uh, OK. I got up for this?


No, I got up because of the friggin’ rain. Incessant, mind-numbing rain. Rain that drips like Chinese water torture and keeps me awake and yes I know that saying, “retarded” or “Chinese water torture” is politically incorrect and I don’t give a flying monkey.


A flying monkey carrying a letter of the alphabet.


This is how I explained e-mail to my mother-in-law.


How did we get from retarded pirates to my mother-in-law?


It’s easy when you’re me (thank your lucky stars that you’re not).


As loyal readers know (all three of you, since I never have time to visit anyone else’s blog and therefore my readership has fallen like so many incessant raindrops) I’ve been spending a lot of time with M-I-L. She’s family, and she needs me, so it’s OK that I’m losing my mind.


She bought a computer.


She’s planning an estate sale to get rid of a lot of Pop’s things, since he passed away in February. Now it’s June. God, how’d that happen? Anyway, she has all sorts of collectibles that she wants to sell, and some people at bingo suggested we put them on eBay. Damn them. So she wanted a computer.


Guess who gets to teach her how to use it?


Ever tried to explain the Internet to your grandma? After a while you just sigh and say that there are tiny flying monkeys that take the words off the screen and carry them through the phone line to somebody else’s computer.


About to lose my mind from all of this, I bitched to Amy, who has the patience of a saint. Amy is a smart woman, whose advice to me was, “Never let her see your blog.”


Amy, who is wise in the ways of the Internets also hooked me up with Twitter.


Twitter is a new (to me anyway, since I get to spend about four minutes a month online these days) website that lets you leave little IM-type blurbs about what’s driving you crazy.


This is another thing I will not be showing Grandma


Grandma is not grasping the basic terminology of cyber-world.


She wanted to make lists of the things that we are going to look up on eBay, so I installed Word on her new computer. Grandma called it Microwave Word.


I enlarged the font, once I got out of the bathroom, where I went to hide and laugh without hurting her feelings.


Now she calls it Microscrot. Picturing an operating system designer with a miniaturized scrotum is easy after you spend a few days trying to figure out Vista. Get me the dog collar and whip again.


The Worst Salesman in the World warned us. We went to look at computers and talked to SuperSlacker.


He informed us (in exasperated faux geek talk) that all new computers are equipped with Vista and there’s nothing you can do about it. Nope, you can’t install an operating system you know how to operate on it - voids the warranty.


He went on to say that nothing would work with it, not even the free printer in the ad that drew us to the store.


Grandma didn’t understand anything he said after “Whacha want?” (Which I’m sure is in the employee handbook as the proper way to greet customers wanting to drop hundreds of dollars in your lap) and SuperSlacker assumed (wrongly) that I knew nothing about computers. Ha! I speak geek you fool! (I may not actually understand how all of this stuff works, but I know the terminology by God, and can BS with the best of them).


Plus a menopausal, sleep-deprived woman who’s driven ten thousand miles to haul her mother-in-law to the computer store in the incessant rain is not one to mess with.


I laugh at your extended warranty offer! No - “DPI” does NOT stand for digital photographic images, it’s dots per inch, you jackass! I will NOT purchase anti-virus software for $49.99 when I can download AVG for free! You will NOT sell me a five-dollar printer cable for twenty-seven bucks!


Now stop quivering and carry it all out to the car or I’ll sic my tiny flying monkeys on you.




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