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11 August, 2010

Thought for the Day

Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A Beauty Bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air — explode softly — and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth — boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap either — not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peace and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination instead of death.

--Robert Fulghum

07 August, 2010

Shades of Beige


Exciting color palette, no? In real life, up close, these are all very different shades of beiges and yellows, painstakingly selected one at a time by holding them up to my tile sample. In the photo, they're more like different shades of boring! I'm ok with boring though, because I've come to the conclusion that paint shouldn't be the decoration in the home. It should be the foundation.
Even if you wear blue eyeshadow, you wouldn't color your whole face that way.
We had always considered yellow for both the living room and the kitchen, bot never at the same time. And it will make things easier to choose one shade for the whole downstairs. Yellow/beige will also look good with hardwood floors, should we ever decide to go that route. And once we pick a paint, we can figure out what to do with the empty walls.
Next step: finally deciding to use the tile above (or not) and actually ordering it. Once we have it in hand, we'll decide on the paint color. And then after we've painted? Our next door neighbors bought scrap marble at Lowe's for windowsills and it's beautiful. We're totally stealing that!
And then once the weather cools down, we're finally going to paint (or more likely just white prime) the garage. The bare drywall out there is really starting to annoy me.

05 August, 2010

Self-Writing Posts

The problem with blog posts that write themselves is that they don't publish themselves. Below is an e-mail exchange between me and Janette, about an e-mail exchange between me and Scott. It's a week old. Sorry for holding out on you for so long!


Janette,

I thought you’d get a kick out of the e-mail exchange between Scott and me this morning…

ME: And did you notice the two clumps of Elph hair upstairs in the hallway? I can tell you they appeared between 6:05 and 6:30, and that when I saw Milo at 6:30 he had a clump hanging off his mouth like the “bad kitty” on the pajamas!

SCOTT: Yeah,I heard the ruckus when you had just gotten into the shower, but it didn't continue for more than five seconds. I figured it was the two boys, guess I was wrong!

ME: Well I guess Elphie wasn’t happy with him at all. When I was toweling off, she was “hiding” (really, I guess she thinks she’s invisible) behind the orange shower
curtain and TWICE Milo went to jump into the tub and she swiped at him mid-jump
and made him fall. It was kind of hilarious, but poor Milo missed out on his morning “fresh” drink.

SCOTT: awww! I feel bad for both of them! I've seen them both this morning, not sure about together though

ME: Nah, don’t feel bad. It’s what siblings do. Well, I assume it’s what siblings do. Didn’t you and Janette ever rip each other’s hair out? ;-)

SCOTT: nah, just hand to hand combat, and mind games. :)
* * * * *

Aww, poor kitties. Well, the drama is just part of being siblings.

We bickered a lot. Scott was a PEST, at least that's the way I felt when I was in my teens (remember the age difference). I kept my bedroom door locked from the time he learned to crawl until I moved out. I swear-to-gawd he learned to walk by pulling himself up on my bedroom door knob and letting himself in. LOL!

I only remember hitting Scott 'for real' once, though we did have the very typical sibling wrestling matches. We were arguing over something stupid and forgettable and he was clearly losing when he suddenly and very dramatically yelled 'OW!!! Whaaaaaa! Mom, Janette hit me!!!! Whaaaaa!' And I hadn't laid a hand on him, the little snot.

I knew I was going to be in a world of trouble so I did the only reasonable thing. I smacked the holy crap out of him. I figured if I was 'going to do the time, I may as well do the crime.' That was one of the very few times in my childhood when I remember getting into real trouble. But I'm certain that smacking him up front prevented years of resentment.

Ask him if he remembers it, he was only about 6 or 7 years old at the time. I can SEE it like it was yesterday, we were standing in the hallway just bickering away until he became a little drama queen. Let me tell you, that was the first and last time he ever tried that little trick!

Other than that the worst thing I ever did to him was pull the warranty to the refrigerator out of mom and dad's dresser and tell him that it was his adoption papers. Much drama ensued and it took mom forever to convince him otherwise. THAT was awesome!