The Big DumpTruck

I wish I’d had my camera this morning on the drive in to work. There were two places that I wanted to stop and take a picture. One was of this house with about 15-20 wild turkeys in the front yard. (I think they were wild turkeys. Coulda been turkey buzzards, I suppose. I was going by at a pretty good clip, so I couldn’t stare into their beady little eyes to try to determine what they were.)

The other was of this really huge, nicely shaped maple tree. All green, except for this little clump of maybe 5 or 6 leaves that had turned red. It was just so funny, seeing a big green tree with this spot of red. You know by Monday, when I’m driving by again, there will be more than that one clump. But it looked great and I’m mad at myself for not having the camera. Not that I have a lot of free time in the morning to just pull off the road and start snapping pictures.

Oh, and to celebrate Friday, here’s a recent picture of Phantom. He gets his jingle bells removed in a week and a half…don’t tell him, though, we want it to be a surprise.

Before I forget, the best part of last night’s game happened in my living room, when Junior referred to Tek as “the C Captain.” Okay, so for the rest of the night, we called him the Sea Captain. Cause, you know, he’s the captain and he has the C on his uniform. Get it? Get it? I need a drawing of him piloting a boat of some kind now.

And hats off to Edgah, by the by, for showing up and getting busy. He gets a lot of crap from Red Sox Nation (Hey, Bill, wanna see our RSN card? We paid for it and got it in the mail, dude!) but he was in tip-top shape last night.

I never got that eye of newt, so I never got my brew made and sent out to the Red Sox. Of course, my potion was going to be for pitching, and it turns out that maybe what I needed was a “don’t let the ball roll past you” potion. My bad.

What are the Boston area bloggers going to talk about if the season ends in a night or two? My God, football is only played weekly. Baseball gives us a reason to bitch and moan and scream and cry on an almost daily basis.

I just noticed that my watch was a day late, because there were only 30 days in September. But I’m not complaining…it’s WAY better than my old Timex “let’s show 32 through 39 and 00 as valid dates” watch. This one, a Christmas gift from mom and dad last year, is my first “nice” watch (a Citizen) in probably 20 years. One day off, I can handle.

Juniorism of the week: Well, it happened a few weeks ago, but my sister didn’t tell me about it until we went out for her birthday/girl’s night out on Tuesday. Apparently one evening when they were watching him for us for a couple of house, the Amazing Bob built one of his patented “cooking fires” and the kids were going to do marshmallows. Deb has actually spear thingies she uses, but the kids wanted sticks. Bob told Junior not to head over to a certain area because it was full of poison ivy. Junior’s response, with hand raised in a stop-sign kind of thing: “Don’t worry Uncle Bob, I’m good at science.”

He then proceeded to come back over to the fire with a perfectly useless “stick” that was actually more like a floppy poison ivy vine covered with leaves. Oh ya, he’s good at science. I will note for the jury that the reason I didn’t hear this story until Tuesday was because they didn’t want to say anything and were waiting for me to tell them that he’d “somehow” gotten poison ivy on his hands. Which he never did. It was evasive maneuver #16 – “Don’t tell them you broke the lamp until they notice the lamp is broken…”

I think it’s time to pull out the big black kettle, put on my way cool kinda sparkley black cape and my big witches hat. No, not for dressing up for Halloween. I think it’s time to create some sort of magic brew to kick the Red Sox Pitching up a notch.

Good Lord, people, how much are we paying you to throw the ball over the plate in some sort of unhittable manner? That’s what I thought.

I don’t actually have a recipe for improving pitching, but it must involve eye of newt, which seems to be ubiquitous in witch recipes. It must be the salt and pepper of caldron cooking. I can probably come up with spider webs, looking up at the light fixture in my hallway. Eek. Gotta dust that puppy. Not the real puppy, the light fixture, silly. Where is your head?

So then the question is, do I avoid watching the game today. I think maybe I will, if at all possible. Then again, living with Mr. Dump, it’s not possible.

Not tater tots, silly. I mean the children. The two boys and the girl. Well, not the short boy – he’s too fussy and hates fizzy drinks.

I got my step-kids to drink Moxie over the weekend. I know, you’re thinking to yourself, “Moxie, didn’t they stop making that during WW1?” No. No they did not. They still make it, and the Coca-Cola company distributes it. They had it on the menu at the place that used to be called the Time-Less Diner up in Merrimack NH, which is now Joe’s something-or-other under new management. (Anyone know what happened with that, by the way?)

Their take? Nasty nasty nasty aftertaste. You drink it and think it’s kind of got a root beer undertone, and then, after you swallow, the burning aftertaste kicks in. Gah.

I’m such a good step-mom.