Vinegar II

I have a new theory, purely anecdotal.

I think deniers of vinegar would actually really like and use it more if they had not already satisfied their need for something acidic with other things such as fruit, soda, juice, gatorade, crystal light etc.

Teaching the 7-8 yr olds

I substituted in primary on Sunday with the 7 and 8 yr olds. They were so funny! I asked what stories they knew about Jesus and one girl said, "Jesus cleansing the lepers." They asked what leprosy was and I said it was a disease you can get where your fingers and toes sometimes fall off.

At the end of class I asked what we'd talked about and they said, "The sacrament, and Jesus!" I was so proud. Then I asked, "What are you going to think about during the sacrament next week?" and one of the boys yells out, "Fingers and toes falling off!" Totally hilarious.

Excavating the flower bed

Can you seen the hole? Not in the pot...

My front flower beds are filled with clay and I've struggled for years trying to get things to grow in them. I finally decided I'd had it and started digging out the blasted stuff and uncovered this tunnel.

A few years ago I had a gopher problem, it kind of felt like Caddyshack. No matter how much bait/poison I put out, new mounds kept appearing and my plants kept disappearing. How much poison can one rodent ingest? Apparently quite a lot, like two packages of rat poison--those little green brick things.

I looked at traps but they are vicious, and then there's the small problem of emptying the trap.

I tried gopher bait which required poking around with a long stick until I found a tunnel, digging down to the tunnel, depositing a spoonful of stuff that smelled like carrion, and then carefully covering up the hole so as not to bury the bait. I was just sure the gopher, or worse yet a bunch of rats, would appear at any moment and crawl all over me as I crouched on the ground.

I don't know which method worked but eventually new mounds quit appearing.

What are the odds of me finding a gopher carcass? Sick.

Grreat!

Tony should be shaking his fist.

Grr is for Grray, Grrandma, & Grrief! Apparently even Seattle isn't natural enough to appreciate that people under 60 years of age might have gray hair.


Grrief, this is what people are giving me. I paid a visit to the northwest to see my sister Maria who just had her first baby. On two out of three days I was accused of being the baby's grandmother! Grrandmother??


The first incident was a random lady in a parking lot. She looked at the baby, then at me and said, "That's a tiny one, grandma." I was thinking what a weirdo she was for talking to herself in the third person when I realized she was referring to me. I was so perplexed, distraught etc. I had to eat $15 worth of salad.


The second was a carpool mom whom Maria had just told, "I'm taking my sister to the airport." Next thing I know, this person is asking if Hugo's my first grandchild. Uh no, I'm Maria's sister.

I admit that yes, I am old enought to be Hugo's grandmother. But Maria's mother? She is six years younger than I! Grr is for curses on all of them! Both my accusers, I might add, had gray hair themselves-one abundantly so.


Maybe instead of SoJ I should be called SoGray. I will not color my hair.

The Yard's never looked better.

Whoops, I meant for theses to be at the end.

This is girls' camp, fabulous piece of property that.

Nice warning.

Princess bandaids.

Mmm, fabulous food in my yard.

Ah, here's the yard.

So fun to run barefoot in the grass.

The most recent bird's buried under that tree.


The yard now looks like a herd of cattle passed through, I'm done with it. Bring on the snow.

Yard Trauma--The continuing story.

I love this stuff. Need I say more?

Had more bird trauma but refrained from taking pictures because it was gruesome. I was watering my flowers and noticed a bunch of bird feathers. I looked around the corner and there was a mangled, decapitated bird with a big old puncture wound through its chest. That bird had not been there 30 minutes before.

In the time it took me to jog around the neighborhood someone's pet--going out on a limb here and saying "dog" due to the size of the wound and the freshly deposited poop in my yard--trashed the bird, desecrated my back yard, and left. Grr!

Moth Terror

Does this picture not make you shudder?

The other night I started drifting off to sleep before I'd turned out the light. I opened my eyes after however many minutes of those weird half-awake dreams and saw a black thing on the ceiling. At first I thought it was a cockroach and sat bolt upright in bed. Then I realized it was a moth!

Mind you this was during all that rain we had just a week or two ago so all my doors and windows had been closed for days. Where had it been hiding that it suddenly appeared full grown in my bedroom? Germinating in my closet?? Sick!!

I trapped it in my very small bathroom and I had to go in there to try and dispose of it. Horrifying. It took a good fifteen minutes of shrieking and swatting before I was finally successful. Totally overwrought.

The next day I was out working in the yard and I felt a tickle on my leg, I looked down all annoyed and there was a moth crawling on me! I totally screamed and did a freakish little dance trying to get the thing off me. I know the guy who lives behind me totally witnessed everything.

I hate moths.