My Long Lost Twin

I think I met my long lost fraternal twin separated-at-birth last year. Not really, but maybe mom has a few questions she should answer.

I went with my son to buy a used car and the guy that sold it to us was filling out the paperwork with his left hand.

"Oh, you're left-handed," I say. "Me too."



"Well, technically, they say I'm ambedextrous, but there are really only two things I do with my left hand. Write and eat."


"You are kidding me," I say, "those are the exact two things I do left-handed."


"Yeah, when I was a kid," he said, "they tried to give me left-handed baseball gloves, but I kept putting them on my right."


"That is really weird." I am getting a little freaked now. "They used to try to get me to use left-handed scissors, but I kept going up and exchanging them for the rights."

"I also bat right-handed," he said.

"Me too!"

Oh, and did I tell you, this guy had red hair? Not quite as bright as mine, but red nonetheless and he looked to be my exact same age.

I left the car lot with Ricky Ricardo echoing in my head, "Mom, you got some splainin' to do."

So...me being a smarty pants and a genuine pain in the butt, when John came home, decided to torture him a little. This is a sport I practice often and get a good deal of satisfaction out of. I do get bored during the day, after all. So I ask him, "Honey, we've been married a long time. What are the two things I do left-handed?"

"Uhhh..."

I raise my eyebrow, hands on hips, foot tapping.

"This is not going to end well for me," he says.

I give him a hint, "It's the two most important things you do. One of them is the reason I have to sit at a particular spot when we go to a restaurant."

He started guessing everything except the two things. I was getting tired of playing this game and actually a little hurt by this time, so I let him off the hook and told him.

I turned to walk away.

He hates it when I walk away mad, so he blurts, "What do I do left-handed?" He asked me in a very nah-nah-nah-nah-nah tone. He thought I would say, "Nothing" because that is what he truly believed.

"You drink your coffee left-handed," I growl.

His jaw hit the floor. "I do drink my coffee left-handed," he realized.

I lick my finger and make a floating 1 in the air. Then I pretend erase it, lick my finger again, and make an invisible 100 in the air. BURN!!

A BIT OF TRIVIA

When I was in Florida last year, Grandpa Peanut, notices me eating with my left hand and says, "Did you know that about half of the U.S. Presidents have been left-handed?"

"Really?"

"So left-handed people must smart," he says. He is the sweetest, big huggy bear.

When I got home, I looked it up and, sure enough, 6 of the 12 presidents since the end of WWII, including Obama, have been left-handed.

Not only that, but in 1992, all three of the contenders were left-handed. So, Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Ross Perot were all up there at their podiums, writing with their left hands. Cool!

The reason that this wasn't noticed until the end of WWII was that kids used to get cracked on the knuckles for writing with their left hands and forced to switch to the right. I actually remember teachers trying to get me to write with my right and this was as late as 1968.

Emily's Big Accomplishment

She is parking in the driveway!

I had to take this picture at night so she wouldn't catch me blogging about her.

In the immortal words of Dr. Seuss, "This may not seem very important I know, but it is, so I'm bothering telling you so."

Emily and both of the other kids insisted on a manual transmission car when they were teens so that they would be forced to learn to drive it. She has finally gotten good enough at clutching to pull into our slanted driveway. For the past 4 months, she has been parking on the street to avoid the embarassment of stalling it on the driveway. She finally felt she had gotten good enough with her clutching skills to park in the driveway. I'm so proud.

She had the car for about 2 months when she said, "Mom, I really like this car."

"Well I'm glad you like it."

"I feel BAAAD driving it."

She cracks me up.



THANK-YOU, JOHN
For these beautiful flowers you sent me yesterday. They go perfect in the new pink office.

Two Funny Things

A STORY

I was reminded the other day of something my son had said when he was little, probably 5 or 6 years old. We were in the car, driving through a strip mall parking lot. We had to stop to allow a pedestrian to cross in front of us. It was a middle-aged man of Asian descent.

My son said, "Look mom, a Japanee."

I instructed, "No, honey, it's Japaneeeese...neeeese."

He corrected, "Nuh, uh, not when there's only one."

I do understand the logic.

A PICTURE

I am apologizing in advance for this photograph. I found in somewhere on the internet. I know it is very sophomoric of me, but I just couldn't help myself.

Nothing like good, old-fashioned fart humor to brighten your day.

Hanging Dog

John sent me this story yesterday.

A lady was telling her neighbor that she saw a man driving a pick-up truck down the interstate, and a dog was hanging onto the tailgate for dear life! She said that if the pick-up truck driver hadn't been going so fast in the other direction, she would have tried to stop him.

A few weeks later, her neighbor saw this truck at the Bass Pro Shop in Daphne, Alabama.

The pick-up truck driver is a local taxidermist with a great sense of humor!

Can you imagine how many people try and stop this guy?

THE BUS STORY

I was in 6th grade. My sister was in 4th grade. She had been annoying me on the school bus and untied my shoe. Not wanting to let her get one over on me, I grabbed her and said, "Get down there right now and tie it back."

She crouched down over the top of my shoe and tied it back. It should have been a red flag that she was so compliant.

When the driver came to our stop, she ran off the bus. I couldn't move. She had tied my shoelace in a knot to the leg of the seat in front of me. The driver kept waiting and waiting. I couldn't budge. I couldn't get the knot out.

He finally had to get up, come back to my seat and cut me loose with his pocket knife. I took off running after her to cheers from the other children, "Get her! Get her!"

I would have posted this on Flashback Friday, except I didn't have a picture of it. I do, however, have a picture of me after she knocked out my two front teeth.

Flashback Fridays

I have imprisoned my baby sister in the new birthday doll bed. I am not sure whose birthday it was, but since our birthdays are 9 days apart, it was probably for both of us.

Don't worry, she got me back many times. Someday I will tell you about when she tied me to the bus.

Valentine's Day Centerpiece

I warned you that this was the crappy crafts blog. This Valentine's Day centerpiece takes about 15 minutes to make. You probably have everything in your house already except for the flowers. It really helps cheer things up, especially if there is a foot of snow on the ground and your entire house is beige.

Added bonus: if you get too bummed, you can eat the candy. Of course you will have to pick off all the melted wax.

This is what it looks like when I blog. This is pretty typical every morning. I have to go tinkle, but I don't want to disturb them. They do make good foot warmers.

I know this is a short post, but I am going to paint my office today - DOWN WITH BEIGE!!

Most Embarassing Moments

In the immortal words of Jimmy Buffett, "If we couldn't laugh, we just would go insane."

So...because I woke up to this...

Which made me want to do this...

I thought we could all make each other laugh so we didn't do this...

Since nothing makes me laugh or makes me feel better about myself more than hearing other people's most embarassing moments stories, I thought we could share. I'll get the ball rolling.

Here is mine:

It was Thanksgiving Day. I was 19. I had just moved to this area with my family from a little town in the middle of a corn field about 65 miles east of here. We were staying with relatives until we could find a house to rent.

Our imposed upon relatives decided to go to a friend's house for Thanksgiving Dinner, so we went out to eat. Back then, there weren't that many places open on Thanksgiving Day, but we found a nice buffet.

We got a table and my sister, age 17, and I went up to get our food. I am going through the buffet line in front of her. Did I say it was Thanksgiving Day? We get to the end of the buffet and there was a young man carving a turkey. You know how they do, there is a guy with a big knife and fork carving a hunk of meat under a glowing red light.

I look at him and say, "I'll take dark meat."

This kid looks at me like the top of my head just popped off and spring-loaded snakes just blew out. He doesn't move or say anything.

I am confused, so I turn around to my sister and say, "Right, Cindy?"

Cindy doesn't know what this kid's problem is either, so she nods and says, "Yeah, dark meat!"

The cuddly young carver puffs, "This is a roast beef."

I turned redder than my hair, "I'll take some of that then," and slinked back to the table. Cindy was right behind me with her plate of roast beef turkey.

I don't think there has been a single conversation between me and my sister in the last 26 years that "Yeah, dark meat!" has not been interjected somewhere.

Okay, I showed you mine, now you show me yours!

Greetings from Russia

John emailed me some pictures from Russia I thought I would share. This is a Russian baby stroller. How about those wheels?
This is where John is staying. It is called the Shifaly. To be more precise, it is called the Shifaly hotel/sanitorium. They claim the sanitorium part of it is for people who need rest and relaxation, sort of like our spa. I am not joking when I tell you that he was checked in by a nurse. I don't know of too many spas that require the employment of a nurse. I have told him to be careful where he falls asleep and to make sure his door is locked at all times.

He told me about the bath water at his "hotel". I insisted on a picture. Makes you feel squeaky clean all over doesn't it?

This is a mural that is in a restaurant where he goes. I thought it looked more Irish than Russian but, hey, what do I know about art?

I hope you can see the fabric tied to this tree. It is difficult to distinquish, but this is where newlyweds tie pieces of cloth to symbolize the hope of a long, happy, prosperous marriage.
I think it's interesting to see new customs of other countries that I didn't know about.

Steven Tyler on Parenting

Did you ever see a celebrity on a talk show and either like them more or like them less after you have seen their true personality? Well, as true as it can be with the publicists and pr coaches.

I saw Steven Tyler, the lead singer for Aerosmith, a few years ago on a talk show talking about being a dad and he cracked me up. He was saying how kids keep you grounded and that, when you have kids, it was impossible to keep an inflated ego.

He was talking about a night when he was doing a concert and all these hot girls were in the front row, throwing their bras and panties at him. They were telling him all the things they wanted to do to him and how they wanted to have his baby.

Then, he goes home and one of his kids looks at him and says, "Gosh dad, why'd you wear that shirt? It makes you look fat".

I was with Emily the other day and I asked her, "How do you like my new scarf? It's my shabby chic scarf."

"Don't you mean your chubby cheek scarf?"

Ahh, Steven, we are so much alike...

A Weekend Makeover

The girls and I always tend to get into a little bit of redecorating mischief when John leaves town. Emily's bathroom had been driving me crazy for awhile with the depressing beige paint and the construction grade fixtures.

We painted the cabinet on Saturday.



We painted the walls and hung the mirror on Sunday.



A few finishing touches and the room looks a lot better. It's a much happier room now.