It’s my sister’s birthday on Saturday the 3rd. I am posting this early to give you all time to go out and buy her a card and/or a present. I just remembered that I bought a card for her a couple of years ago that I never gave her, so it’s time to find it and dust it off. I think the last time I saw it, it was in junk drawer #2, aka the drawer where we keep the restaurant menus, scissors and tape. Not to be confused with the drawer with the playing cards, screwdrivers and rubber bands.
Everyone has two junk drawers, right?
Anyway, Happy Birthday, to my lovely sister, who is younger than me but I will deny it until we are old and decrepit. Which may be soon.
Photo take today at Strawbery Banke, Portsmouth NH, as Mr. Dump made every effort on the planet to give me a typical touristy vacation day. They have some old-fashioned toys available for today’s modern child to try out. Junior was VERY taken with rolling a hoop and trying to get the little wooden ball into the cup. (Shades of Stewie Griffin, anyone?)
He was also very taken with the Jacob’s Ladder toy. Seriously, we were amused by how much he loved these hundred + year-old toys. I could trade in a bunch of his video games and buy some little wooden toys. I’ll bet that would go over really well.
Actually, this is a kid whose most valuable possession is a beat-to-hell blue plastic bat. So wooden toys might be good.
Please note the blinding sunlight in this photo (actually screwed up most of my photos so I have to add fill light in post-processing). After we grabbed a traditional Irish Pub [late] lunch at Molly Malone’s (Mr. Dump had bangers and mash, nuff said.) we headed home – into the worst thunderstorm so far this summer. And that’s saying something. I’m waiting for the power to go off.
My son had a sleepover here last night and all he got me was a short video movie he made with his friend. The file is stored over at flickr (they do video now too) and I think MAYBE you can download this one to watch on your iPod. I’m not sure if it will let everyone, or just me because it’s in my account. Actually, can someone let me know? If you can’t, I can try to upload the M4V version here with a link. Because I know you want to watch this daily on your iPod or iPhone. I know I do.
Junior’s Little League team finished the regular season in 2nd place. They had a bye the first round, which is cool, so we didn’t have any games yesterday. This morning there was a [very very damp] practice, and their first playoff game will be Tuesday. Because of the strict pitching rules in Little League being twice as strict during playoff games, they let Junior practice pitching this morning on the off chance that they run out of the regular pitchers and have to start plucking people out of the lineup to finish the game. He’s thrilled, but I’m thinking that it would not be a good thing if he had to pitch, simply because he’s never done it before, and having the pressure of trying to pitch well in a playoff game…well, I’d just rather we not have to dip into that pool without more practice.
Happy Father’s Day everyone! Enjoy all the dad-activities you have planned, even if the plan is to not have any activities.
I suppose someone has already come up with the idea of mom badges. They would work like girl scout badges – if you do something worthy, you get a badge to wear on your mom-sash. Or perhaps your mom-vest if you’ve earned a lot of them.
I get to wear the “Dying in the Heat Watching Little League Games badge.”
Junior played on Sunday (he had to be at the field at 1:30pm for a batting practice before the game) and on Monday night. Even though it started later, so you’d maybe assume it would be cooler, Monday was definitely the worst of the two games, because at least on Sunday there was a breeze. Man, what a difference a breeze makes! I was seriously starting to feel a bit panicky last night about how overheated I was getting. I was pulling the ice packs out of the little cooler I had and was applying it to my neck and wrists, just to keep things cool.
So I grant myself a mom badge today (it’s lovely, it’s got bleachers with those wavy heat lines coming off of them with a background picture of a baseball.) Anyone else earn one the past few days?
Just in time for Big Papi to go on the DL for a month or two, Junior decided to name the little boys Manny and Papi. Or Manny and David, which sounds funnier to me. To keep the “Z” thing going (Izzy, Suzy) I may call the little guys by their last names. I think it’s nice to have a theme.
Speaking of Junior, yesterday he told me that at school he read my blog about the pudding skin. Do you know what this means? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS? I’ve been writing this darned thing for so long that my kid is now a reader? Holy cow, that freaked me out. Now I have to make sure I remember that my 10 year old might decide to pull up my site at school and share with his teacher and friends (*waves to his teacher and friends*)
Now I’ll get in trouble if I talk about him. Well, I’ve always tried to be nice, I’ll just have to be nicer now.
I like Junior – he’s a funny kid. I don’t know what I’d do if I was stuck with a kid who didn’t have a good sense of humor. And by good, I mean one that amuses me, personally.
This may not translate as well as I’d like, because it was part of a larger conversation, and you have to know about the kinds of snacks that parents buy for their kids these days. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of Fruit Roll-ups or Froot-by-the-Foot this is going to whoosh past you, granny.
I admitted publicly that I like pudding skin. Mr. Dump started to propose a method of exposing as many sides of the pudding as possible so that you could get a LOT of pudding skin out of one cup of pudding. And then Junior suggested Pudding Skin by the Foot. Well, that did it for me. The concept of a long strip of pudding skin that you unfold to eat brought me to tears.
But looking back, I don’t think I’d buy it. Because part of the beauty of the whole fruit roll-up product is that it doesn’t require refrigeration. If you leave pudding skin out, you’ll really have pudding jerky, and I don’t know if I’m ready for that.
Junior [okay, really, me] is responsible for selling a box of candy bars for Little League. So I brought the box into work, because really, how many candy bars have I bought over the years?
Every day I put a new sign on the box, showing off my mad sales skillz. For two days I touted them has “health bars” [mental health, silly!] and Jon Lester’s Secret Weapon. Today, I posted the following sign. I’ll let you know which was the most effective.
The thing about living in New England is that you’re never really that far from the ocean. And if you’ve had to run an errand to the Apple Store in Salem NH, you’re REALLY not that far from the ocean. So we took a detour out to Hampton Beach. It was fairly bustling, considering it’s still the middle of May. There were plenty of people sitting on the beach, some in bathing suits, even though it wasn’t all that warm. Perhaps they were visiting from Antarctica and considered it to be blistering hot?
We intended to park at the Hampton State Park and walk on the rocks, but apparently there was some kind of mega tow truck show or something. These are the tow trucks that you see pulling fire engines and dumptrucks, the kind that make you really wonder what kind of gas mileage they get. Anyhoo, they filled the ENTIRE parking lot, so we had to go down to the lots near the bathrooms and stuff.
At North beach there were a TON of people surfing. Not that there was anything too special about the waves, but it’s been kind of crappy so I think people where just happy to get the heck out of the house.
This is the poem I got for Mother’s day this year. I did not expect a poem, but I was very happy to get it. It was written on a piece of foamy stuff with a magnet on the back so I can keep it on the fridge.
I started to write my mom a poem but it was not as good as this one so I just gave up altogether. I can honestly say that nobody has ever, ever, written me a better poem than this one, and I doubt they ever will.
My Mother’s Day Poem, by Junior
My mom appreciates Mike Lowell But I hope I make her complete Without me there could be a hole My mom appreciates Mike Lowell
We work together like some moles But she also makes my heart beat My mom appreciates Mike Lowell But I hope I make her complete.
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