Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Remember When...

Do you remember when you were a kid and you actually played with toys.  These days I think most of the toys play by themselves and the kids just watch.  They whistle and beep and light up and move and talk and flash and pee, poop and throw up all by themselves.  Just add batteries.  I remember the smell of a box of brand new crayons.  The really big one with the sharpener on the back!  Awesome!  And puzzles!  We'd go to the beach and just have a puzzle going all the time.  You could walk by on your way out, pop in a piece and be on your way, happy and satisfied that you had done your part.
Remember being bored?  Maybe your best friend wasn't home, or it was raining out, and you just thought you were gonna DIE from boredom.  You always found something to do eventually.  Maybe not what you wanted to do, but I never heard of anyone really dying from being bored.  My mom would always say "Are you bored? I can find something for you to do" which meant either vacuuming, dusting, cleaning your room, folding laundry, washing the dishes, mowing the lawn or any other not-fun things that involved some sort of work.  I'd shut myself in my room.  You must be busy if you are shut in your room.  Maybe doing homework....HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!  No, I'd be going through my book shelves or my closet, or I'd rearrange my bedroom furniture.  Or I'd draw.  NEVER homework.  You just don't do that when you are bored.
I remember when we were really young, when we'd get something like a new refrigerator...some sort of large appliance.  We (the kids) would get the box.  It was always HUGE!!!  We would play with that box for hours until it fell apart.  Now THAT was fun!
I also remember me and my friend Pam packing a lunch (bologna and mustard sandwich and chips) and going up on the hill to eat.  We lived in up state NY and "up on the hill" was probably some one's enormous backyard.  They never knew we were there.  If they did they never said anything.  We'd eat apples right off the apple trees.  I don't think kids are allowed to do much of that kind of wandering anymore.  That's sad.

I was just taking a short stroll down memory lane.  Thanks for coming with me!

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

When will it be spring

Ok...Sing this to the tune of When Will I be Loved by Linda Ronstat (yes...it's an old tune)
And feel free to add your own verse.  I only came up with a couple.

When Will It be Spring?

I am freezing,
And I'm sneezing.
When will it be spring?

I'm all bundled up,
And I'm fed up.
When will it be spring?

When I wake in the morning,
and it's 15 degrees,
It almost breaks
my heart in two.
I'm missing my bees!!    (Lame, I know, but it rhymes with degrees)

My lips are blue,
And my toes too!
When will it be spring????


...and that's all I have.  SOOO please add more!  :o)

Sunday, January 9, 2011

The world is a scary place

What has happened to human beings??  How did we become so cruel and angry and mean and spiteful?  A woman is laying in a hospital with a gunshot wound to her head.  A 9 year old girl is dead.  Crazy people are picketing funerals of the soldiers who died protecting the freedoms of the crazy people.  You can't drive down the road without worrying some road-raging nut is going to shoot you on your way to or from work.  All I can say is WTF???  It seems like over the past few years life has gotten quite a bit more frightening.  All you hear about on the news are horror stories about the way we treat each other.  Bombings, fires, shootings, stabbings, abductions, rapes...it just goes on and on and on.  What happened?  I know there have always been wars, and there have always been crazy people, but doesn't it feel like things are spiraling out of control?  People being shot execution style on the side of the road.  Children watching TV in their houses being killed by bullets coming through the windows.  You hear more and more about minors committing horrendous crimes.  Everyone owns a gun.  Why is that?  They say it's to protect themselves.  Hmmm....maybe if NO ONE except the police had guns, we wouldn't HAVE to protect ourselves so intensely.  My opinion, and it doesn't matter to anyone but me, is that our freedoms are out of control.  So-and-so wants to be able to stand on a street corner and talk about how he loves the devil.  He can because it's freedom of speech.  Crazy church people can picket funerals because it's freedom of speech.  The right to bear arms tells us that any whacked out drug dealer or pimp can own a handgun legally as long as it's registered.  And clarify this for me...outside of a war zone, why do we need automatic weapons???  We are majorly messed up, people.  Sure, there are good people out there.  But they are starting to be outnumbered by those who don't really care about life, their fellow man, or anything else except for themselves.  It makes me so sad.  It makes me ashamed of what we've become.  And it makes me wish for simpler times when there were rules and laws and when you did something wrong you were punished for it.
To those of you who are the crazy-funeral-picketting-church-people...I hope there is a special place in Hell for you.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

A day in the life

Actually it's more along the lines of about 2 hours.  THIS is what I go through just about each and every day now, and may I just say...DON'T ever give your kid a game that he can only play on YOUR Wii!!  So here it is.  I get home and Danny wants to play his DBZ Wii game.  I told him he has to wait for me to get home because I don't want him breaking MY Wii.  He's waiting for me at the front door, controllers in his hands.  "How do you turn it on?!"  All I can think of is I need to pee.  I get him set up, ask if he's good, then go about taking off my coat.  "Mom, watch me!"  *sigh*  So I bring in some pictures that need sorting and I sit there and watch him get the crap beat out of him by another character.  After a while I get up to get a drink.  "MOM!  Aren't you going to watch me?!?"  "Danny, I'll be there in a minute!"  I sit and watch for another 10 minutes, then tell him I'm going to take a shower.  "Are you good?  Do you need help with anything before I go?"  "Nope"  Great!  So I start running the water for the shower when I hear "MOM!"  I come rushing out of the bathroom to hear "Watch this!"  JEEEEEEZ!!!!!  "No Danny.  I'm going to take a shower.  You're on your own for a bit".  I'm in the shower, shampoo on my head when >knock knock< and the door busts open (this is pretty typical.  He knows he HAS to knock, but we're still working on waiting for an answer before opening the door).  "Mom!  Come see this!"  "......Danny, did you notice that I am in the shower?"  "You need to see this Mom!  It's cool!"  "It'll still be just as cool in about 5 minutes"  "MOM, I want you to see this!"  "Danny!  I'm in the freaking shower!!  It'll have to wait!"  SLAM goes the bathroom door.  2 minutes later >knock knock<  "Mom can you come see now?"  "No!  I'll be out when I'm out"  About 3 minutes later I turn off the water.  Not 2 seconds go by before >THUD< (we've moved beyond mere knocking)  "Can you come see now?"  "Danny, I am standing here soaking wet.  Give me 5 minutes!"  I grab a towel and I hear from the living room "I'm waiting for you!".  Oh    my    gosh!!!!  I'm going to have to kill him.  I dry off, get my pj's on and still with a towel on my head, go into the living room.  What he needed me to see was him getting the crap beat out of him by a different character.  Fascinating.  I watch this for about 5 minutes and very casually get up to go dry my hair.  "Mom, you're gonna miss it!"  "Miss what???  You're getting beat to hell!  Is that what you want me to see??"  "No Mom!  I'm gonna win and you'll miss it!"  ARRRGGG!!!  I sit for a few more minutes, the just get up and walk away.  My hair by now is a frizzy mess and I'm freezing and grumpy.  FINALLY Jim comes home.  Just in time...Danny turns the game off and goes in the basement!  Talk about good timing!!  Later on Dan comes up and says "Mom I'm getting good at that game right?"  "Yes Danny.  You are getting fantastic at that game."  "Can I play again tomorrow?"
*sigh*