The most interesting (and useless) thing I have learned this week

Were you aware that ear wax glows under an ultraviolet light?

Letters to the universe

Dear Stupid cold,
I realize that no time is the perfect time for me to be sick, however, now is really not a good time for me.
Just wondering if we could reschedule this whole sore throat, runny nose, headache, coughing thing for another time.
Please let me know what time would work best for you so that I can arrange to be out of town and miss your visit completely.

Signed,
Seriously, I don't have time for this




Dear manufacturers of Mucinex,

First off, I would like to say how much I enjoy your product, it does what you say it will do, and to some extent, has offered me some relief from the symptoms of this stupid cold that I have not been enjoying for the last while.

Last week, I went to purchase a new package of Mucinex, when I discovered that not only do you have a regular strength, but now an extra strength!

I almost bought the extra strength because anything extra strength has got to be better than regular, right?

Upon further reading of the label, I discovered that your "extra strength" actually had twice the amount of active ingredients in each capsule, but you could only take 2 doses a day, whereas the regular strength has half the ingredients but you can take 4 doses a day.


Extra strength = 1200 mg per capsule x 2 doses per day.............total 2400 mg.


Regular strength= 600 mg per capsule x 4 doses per day..........total 2400 mg.





?????





Seriously? Who do you think you're fooling?

Signed,

The consumer who will continue to buy the less expensive regular strength.






Dear Lady sitting across from us at the restaurant,

Even though your bra straps are beige, we can still see them because you are wearing a halter top.

Seriously, you are not fooling anyone.

Signed,

The Fashion Police.





Dear Department of Transportation,

Why are you digging up all of the roads that I drive on?

Signed,

Late for everything due to the amount of road construction everywhere I go.

Dear middle aged man who just cut me off on the freeway,

Are you aware that the cute little red convertible that you are driving doesn't hide the fact that you are bald?

And fat.

Signed,
Not impressed




Dear Justin Bieber's hairstylist,

Stop that! Please!

Perhaps your talents would be better used on old fat men trying to hide their bald spots, in fact, the other day I was nearly hit on the road by a guy that could have used your services.

Signed,
Step away from the hair dryer!


Dear Diet Dr. Pepper,

You are awesome!

Signed,

Your jittery friend.

You can't carve zucchini into Jack-O-lanterns

Remember earlier this summer when we planted our garden?

We weeded, we tilled the ground, we planted various kinds of seeds.........

One of my kids planted an entire row of zucchini?

I mocked said child, and teased them mercilessly about the number of zucchini that we would be blessed with, and the number of creative ways that I would be cooking said zucchini, and how sick we would be of eating zucchini and that we would probably be finding a myriad of other non food uses for all of that zucchini that would be overtaking not only the garden area but our entire back yard.........


Well guess what?


None of the zucchini plants grew.



Zero.





Zip.





Nada.



Before you start thinking that maybe one or more of the children had something to do with this, I will add that none of the seeds that we planted in this area of the garden actually grew.

The entire middle section of the garden was completely bare.

I thought that maybe there had been something wrong with the seeds, so I went out and bought some healthy pepper plants and planted them in that area, however, within a day or two, they were completely dead.

The weeds, however, seem to be thriving.

I felt really bad about this, we planted a gazillion seeds in hopes that we might get a few plants. In that plot, we planted zucchini, yellow squash, cucumbers, bell peppers, and jalapeno peppers, and none of them grew. I was beginning to feel like a gardening failure.

Fortunately, on either side of this barren patch of land (barren except for the stupid weeds which seem to be growing quite well, thank you) we did have some gardening success.

The cute little pea plants were growing!


Or at least they were until I sent one of the offspring out to weed the garden, then the pea plants just disappeared.

This kid felt really bad when they realized what they had done.



Wait, come to think of it, this particular child has never liked peas.



?????

There were also two cute little lettuce plants that sprouted up, or at least we thought that they were lettuce until they started getting really tall and began to resemble weeds.

On the other side of the garden, the pumpkin plants were beginning to grow. 5 cute little pumpkin plants had sprouted and seemed to be doing OK.

Fast forward to today, we now have 5 very large pumpkin plants, (one vine is over 15 feet long!) and so far it looks like we'll have a several pumpkins!

We were hoping to grow enough so that the kids could each carve one for Halloween, and so far it looks like they'll each get at least one.

I'm hoping that next year we might be able to grow something that we can actually eat.

Max the future architect?

Max is an interesting kid. (probably an understatement)

Wherever we go, he observes everything closely, and then when he gets home, he builds whatever he saw with his Duplo blocks.

You wouldn't think that Duplo blocks would be that versatile, but I have to tell you, it's amazing what that kid can build with those brightly colored, chunky blocks.

Take last week for example, in the last 7 days, he has built the following.

1. A very accurate model of his school, he even included the playground. (He built this so his pet imaginary birds would have a place to go to school, unfortunately, naughty bird wasn't in the mood for school, and knocked it over)

2. A model of the ice skating rink, complete with bleachers and a garage for the zamboni. He built this in the very center of his room and instructed us not to step in the middle because the ice was very slippery and we might fall.

3. The high school football field, including both the bleachers where we sat at the first of the game,* and the ones we moved to after we decided that we didn't like sitting in the visiting team's section due to the fact that we were the only ones cheering when our team made a touchdown. (one of MANY touchdowns I might add)

He did not, however, build any cheerleaders, which surprised me slightly, because they were jumping around right in front of us the whole first half. This however is the subject of a post that I was going to write, but have decided against, due to the fact that I might offend someone who knows the exceedingly cheerful cheerleader (from the visiting team) that I was itching to mock.

4. The big inflatable slides from the company picnic.

He built a remarkable likeness of these slides. When he went to bed that night, I noticed that he had knocked them down. A while after he got up the next morning, he had me come into his room to see the slides. Apparently, he had taken the air out of them before he went to bed because it was night and nobody would be using them, but now that it was day, he had put the air back in them. Sure enough, he had rebuilt (reinflated) the slides.

5. The Bingham Copper mine.

We took a family field trip to see the mine. It's the largest open pit mine in the world, and can be seen from space.

When Brielle heard that we were going to the mine, her first comment was "I don't think that Max has enough blocks for that one."

Sure enough, when we got home, Max headed straight to his room and built his rendition of the mine.

6. The new SUPER car wash we took the car through to after visiting the mine.

There are few things in life that Max enjoys more than going through a car wash, and this one didn't disappoint. It's the kind that has multiple brushes and waxes and foam, and then to top it off, UNLIMITED time for the vacuum.

He built a copy of the car wash, and cleaned many of his toy cars.

7. On labor day, we took the kids to a local burger joint downtown, then made a trip to the cemetery to visit some family grave sites.

Today I could hear Max building something with his blocks so I went in to see what he was doing. He had made neat little rows of blocks, some in small towers, and some taller towers.

"Look Mom" he said "I made a garden of for dead people!"

* I don't really like football, we actually went to see the marching band at halftime, because CJ is in the band, and because they are awesome.

Stupid virus!

All summer long, everyone in our house was healthy.

Extremely healthy!

School started a few weeks ago, and now we're all coughing, and sniffing and sneezing.

Coincidence?



:0(

First day of Kindergarten (and other random stuff)

Last week was Max's first day of Kindergarten. 15 minutes before my alarm went off I woke up to Max's face, just inches from mine.........

"Hey mom! I'm awake now and I'm going to get dressed really fast so I can be ready for school!"

3.2 seconds later, he was back, completely dressed in his new school clothes.

"I'm ready to go now! Come on mom! Let's go! It's time for school!"

I talked him into waking up his siblings, who unfortunately, did not share his enthusiasm.

An hour later, I dropped the kids off at school. Max was so excited, he didn't even look back to wave at me.

3 hours later, I picked him up. As soon as he got in the car he said "Mom, I DIDN'T miss you, and I don't think you missed me either."

He was wrong. (I'm pretty sure he missed me)


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Yesterday I got an email from Twitter telling me that I had 5 new direct messages. It had a convenient link for me to click on so that I could sign in.

The funny thing is that I don't have a Twitter account.

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Yesterday a song came the radio and my kids freaked out "NO! NO! Turn it off, I can't stand this song!"

"Why?" I asked, don't you like the girl singing it?"

"It's not a girl!" they yelled, "It's Justin Beiber!"