Hair's the story...

Terry did a great grand weeding of the corner of the yard where we have tulips and lilies and other low maintenance things, and he transplanted some of the lilies to a different planter. I don't know if the sun was in her eyes, or if Annie is just skeptical at their odds of survival. And Terry just came in from watering them and confirmed that statistic, they are looking pretty droopy. Evidently when you transplant something you're supposed to water it every day, go figure.


Alyson doing what appears to be work, but don't be fooled. That's the corner thing there, I bought some wildflower seed thing to spread out in that area, hoping that the weeds I actually bought for there will help choke out the weeds I don't want there. Wildflowers are at least pretty weeds, and not just boring overgrown grass.

We had a Memorial Day cookout like we usually do, and our friend Tim opted to be the entertainment this year. He's one of those long haired types, but the hair on top has been steadily disappearing, thus he's kind of been working a "skullet" type hairdo more and more lately. Plus he's in a weight loss competition, and it's getting to the end, so of course getting rid of hair (and going on an all ice cream diet when you're lactose intolerant--thankfully we haven't seen him since he entered that part of his plan) will make the difference. Tim is veeeeery competitive.

Back view of long-haired hippie type freak. Well maybe not so much hippie, because they are all stoned and peace loving. Tim, not so much with the peace loving. :)

Tim's lovely girlfriend Amy doing the honors. She had never done such a thing before, but I think she did an admirable job. I probably would have cut his ears off or something like that.

We get this look from Tim a lot, usually followed by the sentence "God, you're such an idiot," or some other loving phrase.

The results of the near scalping. We kind of think it looks like a dead rat, or maybe something you would pull out of sewer grate, which yeah, could be a dead rat.

After. See, this guy doesn't so much look like a serial killer, and small children may no longer cry at his approach. Now we just have to do something about the scraggly little Satan beard.

Al has been dissecting a cat for her Biology class, a task she has taken great relish in, she likes to come home and tell us the ooky details, preferably while we are eating something. One of the cats in the class (not hers) was pregnant, and the people who were working on it were too squicked out to extract the fetuses, so she did it and of course had to pop one in a jar and take it home. She said it's little face is kinda cute but now it's all curled up so you can't see so much. I thought it was wild that it has those itty claws. And of course we sat around trying to think of a name, and we settled on BANDIT. You know, cuz that's such a cool name, for like, an animal. Not a human being. And not if it's a girl. ( That's sort of an in joke to my fellow MCR fans, well not so much fans in some instances, but just people that know about stuff like Gerard Way naming his kid something strange) But the best part is that this little cat fetus can't poop on my bed like SOME feline in my house did, but that's a story for another time.

F-F-F-Fuh-Field Day

This is Alyson being butt-hurt that her Dad had the utter audacity to strum a couple plinka plinkas on her birthday ukulele before she did. Evidently he sucked the soul out of it and then she could no longer bond with it or something equally dramatic and stupid. In the end it didn't matter, because we ended up sending this one back, because it was supposed to come with an instructional dvd and it didn't, so of course they had to send a whole new package, which of course had no dvd either, so we called and told them that obviously the description was full of wrong, and they gave us fifteen bucks off, so smiles all around. And I don't think I've even seen the replacement ukulele, because we were afraid to even, you know, touch the box, lest our negative energies seep through the packing material and sully the musical soul of the instrument.

Annie's field day was last Friday. Late May, right? Should be nice, right? Oh hell no, not if you live in the frozen pit of the North. Terry wore shorts, and wasn't even going to take a jacket, at which point I gave him the Mom look and he schlumped back into the house to get it, and he was damn glad for it when we got there. An arctic wind howled across the field, rendering us frozen. He couldn't feel his knees by the time it was over. This is Annie practicing for her standing jump. She inherited her athletic prowess from us, so not so much with the ribbons.

Giving it her all in the 100 meter dash. She's probably wincing from the icy cold blast she's getting in the face. Seriously, it was not warm.

The shelf Terry put up for me, and yes it's ever so slightly crooked. Or maybe our whole house is crooked, because he assures me he used a level. And look at that travesty, my Umbrella Academy figures out of the package. Hey, if I pay 40 bucks for itty things I don't need, I'm gonna play with them! Annie did the cool drawing of the moon with a shooting star for me.

My good friend Danielle came to visit me on Saturday, which required her driving a couple hours just to have lunch, so I know she kinda likes me. I think we figured out that it's been a couple years since we've gotten together. Let's put it this way, I think last time I saw her she had short hair! We had a fun time hanging out, eating lunch and going to the liquor store, two of my favorite things. :)

Real absinthe, the genuine article, imported from France. None of that Southern wormwood, this stuff is the real deal. Terry almost dropped a load at the price, but I was all "My prrreeecious," and I pointed out I do have a job so I should be able to waste my money on what I want, so he gave in. I haven't tried it yet though, I'm kinda askairt. Plus I'm going to be like, rationing it out over the next five years. Hope the United States stopper-bys are having a nice Memorial Day weekend.

Happy Birthday Al-ligator!

This pic was supposed to be at the end of the entry, but then I accidentally deleted and I can barely figure out how to post much less move things around, so now my flow is all messed up but frankly it feels like I've been working on this entry almost as long as I was in labor with this child, so it's staying. Okay, the beginning of Al's emo phase. :) Gotta love the Ghoul costume. And considering she wants to be a medical examiner, it's good she has no problem with skeletal things.

The obligatory Oh my God Mom, oh no you dint', oh yes I did well that means you're going in the bad old folks home later on and this blog will be why. Happy 17th birthday to my first born daughturd!

We loved this little outfit so much, not only did we make Annie wear it too, we saved the thing, along with a few other select items. I am really bad at guesstimating ages from pics, so lets just say she had to be older than 9 months, cuz that's when she started walking. She was all precocious like that, although to be honest, she didn't walk WELL.

Getting the infamous ding-dong from her Grandpa. Basically you just pretend like the kid is the clapper in a bell, and you do this sing-songy "Ding-Dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong." And no, we're cruel and all, but there was no version where you throw the kid down and yell "ding-dong ditch" although in retrospect, that totally sounds like something we would do. The kids are always sad when they outgrow this game. Also, I think Grandpa looks like Jean Luc Picard with big glasses (google him if you don't get that reference, and shame on you!)

Getting a pony ride from Dad the same day, evidently we were grasping for photo ops. This was back when we were good about taking pics and videos. Terry and his Dad have matching glasses! And aw, look at that shiny shiny hair on Terry. I think the little jumpsuit thing Al is wearing was made of corduroy, and was a hand me down. We had a lot of those, thanks to my sister in law, because Al's cousin is only a year older than her.

On our old deck at Easter, forced into a dress that Nanny sent. Aw, isn't she cute? She's totally hating on us for shoving her in a dress, not even counting the indignity of the huge bow in her head, which was some old hair clip I had left over from the 80's.

The last day of school one year, young Al was having fun just a-swangin' at the playground. And then not only did she fall off (or maybe the swing broke?) but she nose planted onto the hot playground surface and did a combo burn/scrape thing that took most of the summer to heal.

She still gives us this look, rather regularly I might add. I think in this particular instance, she had the chicken pox and we were taking umpty leven pictures and she was sick of it. I think she was on her way to bed after brusing her teeth, because that looks like a big water spot on her shirt.

Typecasting at the preschool play, she was a little raincloud! We thought it would be closer to reality if the cloud had been black. But, she's looking pretty happy here. I think she liked that preschool. I remember one time they were having their little circle time after the Christmas party and the kids were each saying what they wanted. Everyone else was all reasonable with dolls and footballs and such, and then Al says "I want a cape like a superhero so I can FLY!" and then she got up and started zooming about the room. She's always thought out of the box. :)

I hope you have a wonderful birthday Al. I know I bitch and moan at you a lot, but I also love you, think you are smart and beautiful, and that you can do anything you set your mind to. I'm so proud of you. Oh, and this is from your Dad too, because he scanned all the pics in for me because you know there's no way I can figure that stuff out.

WE LOVE YOU!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

Tea with Miss T

My new silver tea service, compliments of my brother and his wife, who got it for um, buying a house? Opening a bank account? I don't know, they did something with a bunch of money and they got this thing which is way better than a toaster, but they didn't want it, so they passed it on to my Mom, who passed it on to me in the big purge of last month. She mailed it to me, along with my shoes that I had left down there including the one dirty sock I had left in one of my shoes. She is nothing if not thorough. At any rate, I kinda dig it. The itty vase has flowers from this reeaaaaaly good smelling bush that grows next to my porch, it smells a lot like jasmine. And Annie is totally going to have her friends over for tea and a Doctor Who viewing, so we can get all Anglophile like up in here. Which brings me to one of my fave Britishers, Miss T. We chat usually at least once a week, tell each other our bidness, and generally have a good time. And she is nursing a nasty treadmill injury right now, so I hope the following cheers her up.

There ya go, Miss T. I know this pic looks photo-shopped, but those are the actual things she sent me for my birthday. Ya gotta wonder, who sees fake moustaches! and thinks of me, but heck, we had a lot of fun with them. Al's is creepily the same color as her hair, and she totally looks like a dude. And we were trying to look all serious on purpose. I think Annie looks like Super Mario or something.

Another part of the Miss T presents, the beloved Chunky Kit Kats. Our store recently stopped carrying these (and ours weren't even these bountiful "duo" types) and Terry had a big time sad going on. But now we have actual British ones, and peanut butter even!! That's Al's hand trying to creep in and make off with the goodness. I'm sharing though, even though Miss T said I didn't have to.

My mugwort and liverwort, but the blooms didn't show up so well in this pic. I totally got these plants because I thought they sounded like something Harry and Hermione would have to hunt up for potions. And they grow in the shade, which we happen to have quite a bit of in Michigan.

A random pic of Ghost that I found on the camera. I'm thinking this was camera shenanigans while I was at work, evidently he had wedged himself into the lowest shelf of Annie's bookshelves, and Al and Annie thought it was like the funniest. thing. ever. because they took like eight pictures of the event. He looks like he's saying, "Seriously?"