A Tale of Two Phone Jacks

There is a certain phone jack that is more important than any other phone jack in our home. It's the one in the Man's room. Thursday it went belly up. Here's how it went down.

Thanksgiving night the Man comes home and discovers that he is unable to get online. Not a terribly big deal since it was very late. Probably just a glitchy thing. But Friday morning, yours truly was unable to access email. Now things are getting serious.

The first thing we do is check the phone line outside that wraps around the house to the room. Back when Marco was a bad little puppy, one day he was able to not only reach this line, but rip it down and chew it into many tiny bits. We both hoped the current problem was a repeat of that-- the Man fixed it himself in no time flat. But alas no. Marco's "Eating everything he sees" days are long past.

Trying out the kitchen phone into the suspect jack verified that the problem wasn't the computer (big sigh of relief), but the phone jack itself (new sigh of frustration). This problem is more mysterious than a chewed up wire, I'm afraid.

So now we are waiting for the phone company to come out and poke and prod and most likely pull out about two pounds of animal fur mucking up the works. That's my theory anyway.

But let's return to the importance of this jack. It is one overworked fellow! First, it is hooked up to a phone and the answering machine. The loss of the phone is just inconvenient. The loss of the machine is a bit of a relief actually! (I could move it somewhere else in the house but....) The fax machine is also part of the package, but it only gets used in that capacity maybe twice a year, so we can do without it for a little while. No, the big problem comes from the fact that our Internet connection is DSL wed to that jack and that is not going to fly at all!

But here we are all back online and going strong with the "Going to Vermont" laptop in my bedroom. I have to say that I LOVE having this up here. Love it! The Man on the other hand is quite miserable without his #1 procrastinating excuse at his fingertips down in his room. Matter of fact, I'm so in love with this situation (I even have a little desk all set up in here!), that when the jack problem gets all fixed, I'll be very reluctant to give this up. There might be a riot. But for now I'm going to play some cribbage online, maybe waste some time finding cool stuff on Youtube, read a bunch of blogs and then do some shopping. Hurray!

Family Pictures

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday. Ours was packed with family. Literally. Thanksgiving Day had my mother's house bursting at the seams with dinner for 31. That was followed by games, movies, a puzzle, dodging thrown wooden blocks and general grazing on the leftovers. Occasionally you would have to step outside for some fresh air just because all the air in the house was already in use.

Friday was quieter with ordered in pizza, more games and paraffin hand treatments all around. Lavender...very nice.

But Saturday was the grand finale. We had to take the big group picture since most everyone was in town. Big props to Bob from Rodriguez Photography for making this a success (and getting Summer to smile). To fit all our shining mugs in one shot, we moved all the furniture and used my living room. Completely crazy how many people were in my house! And because a bunch of fam had to hit the road early, we did this at 9 AM. Check out the little video that the man shot. Now he made this with my little digital camera so the quality is not so great and it makes this annoying clicking noise, but it's enough to get a flavor of the morning.

Okay, so it's REALLY grainy and noisy, but that's what you get. (Sorry Man. :( You probably aren't happy I posted this either! ) It's a big love fest because everyone is getting ready to leave; some for home, the rest out to breakfast at IHOP since Hazel's was already packed and strangely enough didn't have enough room for 20 more people. More pictures and stories to come!

Pizza Rolls

Warning: This is not the recipe to make pizza rolls, it's just the step by step process which I am showing to make you insanely jealous... and hungry.

These babies are the best! It's the ultimate Grammy treat. First there's the dough, lots and lots of dough sitting around rising and doubling and doing all the things good dough should.

Then it gets rolled out REALLY thin.
It get cut into squares and rectangles and shapes with no names by the pizza cutter.

You have to test the oil and the dough, so some little pieces are dropped in. And yeah, that a big thing of Crisco back there. That's what we're cooking with people!

Those lovely test pieces won't go to waste though. A sprinkle of cinnamon and sugar and they are good to go!Meanwhile, this bowl of pepperoni and sausage all chopped up into tiny bits comes out. That must mean it's almost time!
A spoonful of the mix goes on each little square.

And a pinch of cheese on top of that!

Then they get folded over and sealed together making a little pillow of pizza.

It's time for them to go for a swim in the hot oil.

And that's it! That's the boy snagging another one. And who can blame him!

Literary Greatness

Last night the man did his first fiction reading at Cleveland State reading from the novella. You want to read it? Here's the complicated way to get a copy. His book is listed on page 19, order form on page 86. Or I just discovered that it is also for sale over at Amazon which is so thrilling to me that I can barely type this!

The reading was in this little room at Trinity Commons that, if it wasn't for the interesting architecture, one could be a tad bit insulted that you were being asked to read in a room whose everyday use is obviously the storage of sheet music. Anyway, here's the man reading..

Okay, that's really Neil Gaiman and not even a picture I ever took of him. (Any of the pictures I've ever taken of Neil are just a blur of a man in black. Can't imagine why....) The actual man was one very tightly strung banjo before and during the reading and I'm certain the appearance of my camera would have sent him running through the stained glass windows to the street below. While he was all set to read some juicy bits and pieces of the book, the MC of the night caught him off guard with a request of one of his poems. The poor man held it together on the outside, but I could tell he was in tiny little shredded pieces inside. But once he started reading from the new book he did amazing. Funny, smooth and not a person in the room shifted in their seat the whole time. When it was all said and done and everyone had gone home, he posed for this shot, mostly just to show off the windows of said storage closet. He's not going to like that I posted this, but that's how the cookie (and the writer) crumbles!

Congratulations babe! You did great!

Halloween Wrap-Up

Halloween went off smoothly around here. I gave out glo-sticks again and they're always a giant hit. I love putting them right on the wrists of the little ones because they get so excited about it. Since Daylight Saving ended a week late, trick-or-treating started when it was still light outside which was a bummer for the jack-o-lanterns and the glo-sticks, but within a half hour it was dark enough. Speaking of pumpkins, here's what the kids finally carved.

Here's the girl's ghost.

And the boy's skull.

And here are our intrepid trick-or-treaters. That would be Cho, the girl, the boy and the brother. They brought in quite a haul, but had more fun back home trading candy with each other. It was a regular bull pit!

The kids here are posed in front of the scariest thing in the yard, our dead tree. This tree has been dying for years and yet still it stands. It's the tree lawn tree making it the city's problem. I've reported it several times, but I've never seen anyone out here looking at it. Not that it would take a very long look to figure out that it is not going to get better by itself. Since it's already November I'm guessing we are going to be living with the corpse for another winter. I guess it would be cheaper for the city to replace all our windows or some one's car than cut it down. That must be what they're thinking, looking for the most economical way to deal with the situation. It is a great landmark for finding my house though--"Take a left and we're the first house on the right with the big dead tree".

It was a lovely tree in it's day though. Here's the man conquering it one spring day in 1994.

I know it's not an easy life being a tree lawn tree and this big guy has suffered long enough.

Trick or Treat Pre-Teen Style

Happy Halloween to you all! What is it about Halloween? Why is it that this time of year we get such happiness from trying to scare ourselves on purpose. It has to tap into the same type of rush you get from riding roller coasters and jumping out of airplanes. But that's not what I'm talking about today. Today it's about the boy and girl.

When you are big bad junior high students you have to take your first good hard look at this trick or treat situation. This is the first year where people just might raise an eyebrow at you when you show up at their door. And then at the end of the night you find yourself with a bag of Dum-Dums from the "Big Kid Bowl" that every house has tucked away just for the kids they think are too old.

There was a dance at school, a couple of weeks ago, but it wasn't a Halloween dance. You could wear a costume if you wanted to, but most didn't. Today you could wear a costume to school if you wanted to. But what stressful situation! Do you wear a costume and find yourself alone dressed like a zombie in a sea of kids who are too cool for this nonsense? Or do you not wear a costume but then everyone else does? It's enough to make your head explode! The girl took some costume pieces along to change into after gym if enough of her friends decided to dress up. The boy passed on the whole thing.

Tonight is trick or treat and I know they are not going to pass by the opportunity to go get all the loot they can. But we didn't go costume shopping. The plan is to just put something together, whatever they can find, tonight and then go out. A bit lame I think, but it's been their choice. Up until yesterday I wasn't even certain that they were going out trick or treating. They haven't even carved their pumpkins yet. The man and I did.

Here's the man's creepy zombie hand. It looks way cool lit up!

Here's my little kitty pumpkin (are you surprised?) hanging out with skeleton dude.

Eventual all kids find out about the big Santa lie, but they still get Christmas. But with Halloween, when you outgrow it, it's really over for awhile. You go into a Halloween limbo; too old to be cute, too young to go to keggers. Oh, yes, that's when Halloween comes back, when your all grown up and Halloween parties take on a whole new dimension. My grandparents were huge Halloween people and my grandma made the two of them elaborate costumes every year and they always won the contest at those swinging parties. You should see the pictures! Maybe I'll try to dig a few up...

Happy Haunting!

Halloween Campout

This past weekend was the big one. I organized and pulled off my first multi troop camp out at Camp T. We had 11 troops and 141 people out there on Saturday and the weather was awful. It is cold and drizzly and muddy all day. Completely miserable. But despite that, everyone have a terrific time. It was a Halloween themed camp out. The girls in my troop were the aides and worked all the stations and kept the fun going. Here's the shirts that we made for ourselves. They took orange shirts and cut out the face then wore black underneath.

We had a cook in the camp kitchen making all the meals so we didn't have to worry about that. The day consisted of lunch, pumpkin painting, baked apple making, archery, two crafts, an all over camp treasure hunt, dinner, a haunted hayride and a Halloween dance party with glo-sticks and tattoos. They spent the night, had breakfast and cleared out. Everyone was exhausted. I'm still sore today. Here's what my van looks like with 150 pumpkins in it.

Some of the painted pumpkins...

And keeping the songs going while waiting for dinner.

My girls did such an amazing job! This was their first time being aides at an event and they kept their smiles.

And Weaver, we had cupcakes with birthday candles in them and sang Happy Birthday to Juliette. Her birthday is on Halloween and was born 147 years ago. We almost had enough people there!

A Dark Funk

I haven't blogged in a while, but not from lack of ideas. Unfortunatly everytime I sit down here the first thing I do is check my email. Usually the traffic of my inbox in close to nil everyday. (Unless my sisters and I are trying to schedule a night out!) But lately, the emails are lining up like orphans with their empty bowls. It's so sad. And by the time I'm done putting out fires and drying tears I just can't stand sittting here anymore. So, just now, I have fought back all impluses and started to write to you, my loyal three readers, without checking on how the masses are drowning without me.

Today I want to tell you about my least favorite piece of clothing. No, not bras. I feel bras have a very important place in society which becomes abundantly clear whenever you see someone deciding that today is her day to be free. No, this piece of clothing will probably be shocked at my scorn since it is adored the world around. Simply, it is the black t-shirt.

What? How can this be? This a staple in any wardrobe, no? It's like declaring I don't like socks! Well, I do like socks, very much, but black t-shirts are a complete puzzle to me.

Here's how I see it: If it warm enough to wear short sleeves, then it is too warm to wear black. Simple as that. And if it's so cold that you have to wear a sweater or jacket over your black t-shirt, then it might as well be any color. The Man feels the same way about black t-shirts by the way. We once took an overly long t-shirt shopping trip trying to find cool shirts for him to wear to Vermont. We found cool shirt after cool shirt, but everyone that we liked was black making it unwearable, therefore un-buyable. We didn't buy one shirt all day. They made cast t-shirts for "Joseph" over the summer. But they printed them on black shirts so I didn't get one and my own name was on the back! That's how much I don't like black t-shirts.

Here's the only time you can wear black t-shirts:

1. If you a bouncer in a dark bar.
2. If you are a vampire in New Orleans.

That's about it. Otherwise I see you for what you are: You are either looking cool and to prove it your arms are blue with frostbite OR you are looking cool but you are a giant sweaty mess underneath. Either way, it's not for me. Is it that I am not cool? Perhaps, but I'm willing to carry that stigma for my own comfort.

Chim-chimney

How often do you look at your roof? I can say that my roof, being way up there, doesn't get much of my attention. But earlier this summer, while lounging in the backyard my eyes traveled up to that big plain and found this..

Oh My! Now I'm not a masonry expert, but I was pretty sure that wasn't what chimneys look like. Here's another view. Can you see the brick in the gutter? In this shot it just looks like another leaf, but believe me it's a brick. On the roof.

Thus began my education into chimneys. I heard a lot of this: "Oh no, we don't do rebuilds. Used to. Don't anymore." The guys that did come out would give a whistle about the steepness of my roof and quote off some ridiculously high estimate. Not good. But then we found a guy not afraid of the roof, who seemed to know what he was doing and was reasonably priced. Here's he is (or maybe one of his crew) up there working hard yesterday.

There's guys were really terrific. They tore down the old chimney, built a new one, swept out the chimney and then put a liner down it to prevent this from happening again for a long time. They were done and gone in five hours. My only complaint was that not once during the afternoon did the crew burst into song and dance up there with brushes in their hands and sooty faces. A tad bit disappointing I must say.

One thing was for sure, it was a crazy noisy project. Marco stayed outside and kept on eye on the whole operation. The chimney guy was worried that all the noise would make him a nervous wreck. But during the noisiest part of the day, the part where my old chimney was being dropped brick by brick into the back of their truck, I went to check on the dog. Passed out cold on the back porch! What a guy! The cats on the other hand were basket cases. Poor Jack had the worst time. After it was all over we went searching for the cats. We found the girls quick enough, but not Jack. We searched and searched in all his usual haunts and then in just any place we could think he might have jammed himself. Eventually he came out on his own and we all so relieved to see him we dove after him. That sent him scurrying away faster than I've ever seen him move. We found him again squeezed behind all the board games in the basement. We coaxed him out, but he was still skittish for the rest of the night, jumping a mile at any little noise. Poor, poor little guy!

Anyway here's the new chimney with its shiny little hat. Now, we should probably do something about those gutters..

Bonfire Night

Here's the boy, the girl and "that other girl who's always around" at the big annual bonfire last night. This is as as close to the fire as they could stand, but still it was super hot. Every other year it's been nice and cool for this event, but this October it has been unseasonably and uncomfortably warm. The mosquitoes were awful and everyone was just reeking of bug spray.

But despite that, it was an excellent time. There was a ton of food and we all ate until we regretted. The kids took walkie-talkies and ran around in the dark woods searching for each other. They said the walkie-talkies made the whole night for them. And they were my idea, thank you very much! A big thanks to the Bartlebaughs for another memorable night!

Lessons with Zombies

Today was my first day back to work! I've officially been on "green" to go back to work since last Monday, but I just haven't gotten any calls. In desperation, I emailed my boss last night and begged for work. And it worked. Not that I really love my job, barely even like it, but staying home alone with just my thoughts and these animals is starting to damage me mentally.



This year I will be referring to my students as zombies. When when I say zombies, I don't mean these kind of zombies....



No, no, not the shuffling moaning type. I mean more like the "28 Days Later" type of zombie. These guys...
Zombies who are super crazy, run inhumanly fast and never, ever tire out. The extra scary type of zombie.

The parallels between fast scary zombies and schoolchildren and pretty amazing:

• They both can run really fast. And the kids can run their mouths even faster.
• They both often have something unidentifiable and disgusting on their faces and hands.
• Neither children nor zombies are very picky about what they eat or where it was just before they ate it.
• You can't ignore a zombie when it's in the room. Same with kids.
• Neither group knows how to speak a distinct language; it's mostly mumblings, whining and drool.
• They are both predictable only in the fact that you never know what they are going to do next, but it's a guarantee that you're not going to like it.
• They never quit or tire out.

I think I've made my point. My zombies today were of a very little version, kindergarten sized. Still they were full-fledged zombies. I only had the half a day which was a quarter of a day too long!

Orderly Ringing Out

My grandmother has been cleaning out her attic and giving me bits and pieces to sell for her on Ebay. Being laid up here, the timing was good for all this, so I took on the challenge. One of things she gave me was a big shoebox full of stamps that she bought off some friend years and years ago and they originally belonged to that friend's brother. Anyway, she bought the box, stuck it in the attic where it's sat for who knows how long and now it's here. It's a mess, truly. I don't even know where to begin. Most all of the stamps attached to a little corner of the envelope they rode on and cancelled. They are from all over the world. They look pretty old. And that's as far as I've gotten with them. Whenever I think I'll go through them, the task overwhelms me and I quit before I begin.

But one slip of paper in the box was really neat. It was a quarter sheet of paper that The Man found mixed in with everything else. This brother, the collector of all these stamps, must have worked in a plant near the end of WWII and received this notice. I like to imagine the kind of person who wrote this a meticulous person who liked all the i's dotted and t's crossed. I've typed it out in it's entirely. We've been watching a lot of that new Ken Burns movie, so the timing on this pretty good. Enjoy.

It must be evident to all of us that sometime in the near future the word will come that European hostilities have ceased.

The news may come at any time, day or night and to save confusion it seems logical to advise what action we will take regarding plant operations.

When the news is received, whether by day or night, it will be signaled to our employees by the code for "V" - Victory. The whistle or other signaling device designation starting and stopping time will sound three blasts of one minute each with a fifteen-second interval between each blast, followed by a long blast of five minutes.

Operations will be suspended and employees , other than those needed for plant protection and shutting down furnaces or other activities involved in suspending operations, will be released until the beginning of the first shift on the second day (not including Sunday) following V-Day. For example-

If word should come at any time between 12:01 a.m. and 12:00 midnight on Tuesday, we would resume operations on Thursday a the beginning of the day shift.
If word were received at any time Friday, the plant would resume work Monday a the beginning of the day shift.

If the word were received on Saturday, the plant would resume work Tuesday a the beginning of the day shift.

We trust that, regardless of the excitement that will naturally be universal, orderly ringing out and departure will be maintained.

What a different war this was. Every aspect of everyone's lives was wrapped up in the war; how you shopped, where you went and how you worked. No one ever forgot for one moment during their day to day lives that there was a war going and our boys were dying over there. Our nation was at war and every member of our nation was an active part of the effort. How very, very different from our war today...

Paging Mother Nature

Check out the monstrosity that was left on my doorstep.

This ugly thing is almost three inches thick and WE'RE NOT EVEN IN IT! It's the Cleveland Area phone book! Why, oh why would I need to have this in my house? If I desperately needed a number in Cleveland I would call Directory Assistance or look it up on-line. This phone book offends me in some many ways!

We get about four phone books a year, which is way too many, but this is the first time we've gotten the Cleveland one. Who decided that we needed this? The amount of paper in it fills me with horror. Everyone in town got one of these? Can you even fathom how many trees were killed to make these complete useless books? Never mind that I've gotten along fine my whole life without ever needing one of these numbers, but where in the hell do they expect people to store something like this. It's deeper than most every drawer we own and shelf space is at a premium around here. I can't imagine that anyone is going to keep this phone book longer than a week. The sad part is most of them will end up in the trash, in a land fill. Mine is lucky enough to be heading straight to the paper recycling bin. Hopefully in it's next incarnation it will come back as something more useful. Like toilet paper.

Friends Indeed

This one is for Weaver who knows what it's like to be a mom in a yucky situation and doesn't mind lending a helping hand. Circa 1994, here's Brewer, Weaver and Brookie all jammed on our tiny love seat.

And true to her nature, here's Stella joining them because nobody was allowed to have fun without her being right in the middle. In this case she got right on top!

I wish the lighting was a little better, but you can get the gist of the situation! Thanks so much you guys! I owe you big!

Fundraising Hell

Nance once told me that all my problems were a direct result of allowing my children to be involved in things. You were right! You were right!

We are currently hip-deep in order forms for three separate fundraisers all happening right now. We have the Girl Scout Nut Sale which this year has made the jump to include magazines. (Anyone need a renewal?) Then there's the Boy Scout Popcorn sale which is just always such an easy sell. (That should be dripping with excessive sarcasm.) The only good thing going for popcorn this year is that they brought back the tin of un-popped corn and added a straight up $25 donation option for those who want to support Scouts but hate popcorn. Finally, the music department at school is having a sale of boxed chocolates, snacks and strangely enough, kitchen gadgets. Oh and did I mention that both the girl and boy are a part of this one, so it's actually like we have four fundraisers going on. It's too much! TOO MUCH!

Jumping for Joy

Good news from Dr. Feet today! While the bone is not 100% healed, x-rays show that the break is well aligned and I am officially off crutches!

No more crutches!

No more crutches!

I am still stuck in the hideous boot for another two weeks, but that's nothing, no big deal at all. And now I can drive! Next week I'm going to start back to work but just for half-days. It's a long day on your feet subbing and I don't want to mess things up by going too fast now. I'm also going to pass on jobs in those buildings with stairs probably for another month just to be on the safe side. Can you tell that I'm happy about all of this? This painting just about sums up how I feel!!!

Singing River Weekend

Our weekend out to Singing River was a big success. The weather was a little cool, but it stayed sunny all day and crazy starry at night. We had 12 girls out with us this time. Our afternoon lunch down by the river was every one's favorite part without a doubt. The girls built a fire and cooked out hot dogs and marshmallows for s'mores on the beach. Then after lunch...well...you can see where the girls ended up! Only a few fell in but they all had a big wet time finding clam shells and sinking ankle-deep into the clay on the opposite bank. It's been fairly dry, so the river was very low and slow, perfect for kicking around in. And going into the river wasn't an unplanned thing; these girls brought towels, extra clothes and shoes just for this! And yes, Weaver, they went up to Olive's Grave, but not at midnight, sorry to say. My foot and I had to stay behind for most of the hiking, which didn't make me, my darling co-leader or my girls very happy. But there's always next time!