Aug 30, 2011 | Uncategorized, What's going on |
1. Last week on a trek to the mailbox, I came upon a cucumber on the sidewalk. It was wrapped in plastic, just lying there in the sun. Having never come across a cucumber on a sidewalk before, I was unsure of any cucumber rescuing procedures. So I just left it there. After all, somebody might go in search of their missing cucumber and who was I to stand in there way? It reminded me of the time Katie was over and, on the same sidewalk, we found a lobster.
New York is weird.
2. We have two computers in our little family. Christopher has a laptop and I have a computer that doubles as the tv because we’re real fancy-schmancy over here. Due to a series of unfortunate circumstances, the computer part (not to be confused with the tv part) of my computer no longer works. The store where we purchased it provided exactly ZERO assistance, so we gave it to someone Christopher worked with in hopes that he might work some sort of computer magic. After many weeks my computer was returned to us and by some miracle, IT WORKED! For all of a week and a half. In that week and a half our personal computer fixer left the Army. We are now faced with a terrible, terrible problem. The computer went into early retirement/crashed/ showed the blue screen of death immediately after I put 998 pictures on it and deleted them off my memory card and before I put them on cd’s.
There is great mourning amongst the photographers here at Dandelions and Daffodils, Inc.
3. They say once you get married you will learn all sorts of new things about your significant other. Happy things, weird things, disturbing things, you name it. I have discovered my dearly beloved’s GLARING LIFE MISTAKE.
He doesn’t not know how to properly butter bread.
It came as a great shock to discover I married someone who puts butter in the middle of bread, moves it around a little, and calls it BUTTERED. I am extremely meticulous about my buttering. The butter has to reach each and every edge or I won’t be able to eat my bread in peace. His method of buttering doesn’t bother him in the least, but it makes me very nervous. I have taken it upon myself to be the designated garlic bread maker of the family. It’s the only way I can be sure of getting my correct butter intake.
4. Someone found my blog by googling ‘yellow children in Africa’. I have no idea how or why.
5. When I picked up my new prescription today, I asked the pharmacist what the potential side effects are. She pointed to a pile of papers she was putting in my bag and said, “all the side-effects are listed here. Of course, the worst side-effect is that YOU’LL DIE.”
How reassuring.
Aug 25, 2011 | It's all relative, Uncategorized, What's going on |
Look who came to visit me this weekend!
It’s my favorite lives-in-the-north Grandma (not to be confused with my favorite lives-in-the-south Grandma), my mother, and my sister!
They arrived around three o’clock and promptly spent the next three hours looking at and discussing Allison’s cuteness. Really, who can blame them? Just look at the child! She is extreme cuteness personified.
After supper I took them all on a tour of Fort at Which We are Stationed, here on out known as Fort A.W.W. A.S.
Right off the bat they made fun of me because my driving was slightly jerky. They were not sympathetic at all that I have only SUCCESSFULLY been driving a standard for the last week or so, and never with such energetic people as my passengers. Christopher’s not exactly what you’d call a boucing off the wall passenger.
As soon as we pulled up to the gates of Fort A.W.W.A.S., I began conducting my very informative and in-depth tour. I will admit there were times when I wasn’t quite sure what I was talking about. “And here is where, wait a minute, I think this is where the guys who do the…oh never mind, it’s not…”, but I should be given some slack because it was my first time conducting a tour with Sarah’s Touring Enterprise.
I think they learned a lot from me. “And if we turn left here, we just might see the…oh, look to your right, everyone! Look to your right! Do you know what that is? It’s a humvee, but not just any humvee! This one actually has soldiers in it and is rolling down the road! That’s is not something you see in your neighborhood every day is it, folks? You may read about about them in your local paper, but you have never seen one at Fort A.W.W.A.S. Oh, look! I see something else approaching! It’s a…it’s a…never mind. It’s just a regular ol’ car. We are now approaching where Christopher works. Folks! I see some soldiers! No, I don’t know what they’re doing but if I were to guess, I would say walking down the road. After all, they are walking down the road. We will now cross over a road called, um, I can’t pronounce that name but we’re going to cross it anyway. We really don’t have a choice now since we’re already half way through the intersection.”
They also learned from an expert how to decipher many of the initials on various Army signs. “Over in front of that building you will see a sign that says ‘1SQ, A BT, HHC 101 CAV’.” I would then proceed to tell them exactly what that meant. (Side note: In case anyone with real military experience –hello, husband!– reads this, I know that’s not exactly proper army lingo. I just don’t remember anything else.)
Here I am showing Grandma office buildings. She was very interested in those for some unexplainable reason.
I drove them to the park on Fort A.W.W.A.S. so they could see the woods, the pond, and the river.
The purple flowers that I’m holding were a souvenir gift from the tour guide to her tourists.
If you would like your own purple flowers from Fort A.W.W.A.S., just let me know. After all, I know the tour guide quite well.
Jul 31, 2011 | Uncategorized, What's going on |
This weekend we went on an overnight adventure.
I was assigned the task of researching a suitable location. To best keep track of any and all exciting attractions, I made a highly professional chart. I am a travel agent in the making.
Poor Buffalo was barely in the running. Niagara (or ‘Niagra’, as I spelled it) was high up there until we decided we should wait until we can visit it from the Canadian side. And so Cooperstown became the winning contestant.
After I finished that chart, I was informed by the Accommodations Committee (aka Christopher) to look for attractions in the Utica area, as that’s where we would spend the night.
Notice the far right column. It’s important to have your travel priorities in the correct order. As it turns out, searching for eating opportunities was pretty much the only thing we did in Utica. The exciting attraction options were rather limited. Starved Rock Park seemed pretty wonderful until I discovered it’s in Illinois. I have gift for finding fun things to do in places we are not thinking of going.
The hotel in Utica was lovely. I always judge hotels based on the number and quality of their chandeliers.
Our first stop in Cooperstown the next morning was the Baseball Hall of Fame.
I do hate to boast, but please note which team is above the Yankees.
These young men made some wise wardrobe choices.
We can’t leave out Christopher’s team, so here is the Braves debut here at Dandelions and Daffodils.
I personally would enjoy watching a bunch of grown men play baseball while wearing this hat.
I promise he was happy to be an this trip with me!
Our next stops were the art museum and farmers museum. The goat at the Farmer’s Museum was very attracted to Christopher. I think it was a sign that we should have taken him (her?) home with us.
I would have taken the baby sheep too, but I don’t think he (she?) would have enjoyed spending four hours in our trunk on the ride home.
After the farm, we found more eating opportunities (like I said, PRIORITIES) then headed for home. Our trusty GPS, Tom, was a little underperforming which may have resulted in frustration on the part of the driver, but we made it home safe and sound.
The End.
(You know what I should have bought at the gift shop? A large bottle of The Ability to Tell a Story in Less than 6,000 Words.)
Jul 25, 2011 | Uncategorized, What's going on |
Friday
Friday brought about a long-anticipated trip to the brand-new Joann’s craft store. Let us have a moment of silence in which we reflect on how coincidental it is that Joann decided to re-do her store at the same exact time that I moved to town. We didn’t buy any craft supplies (I didn’t even venture into the clearance department because that aisle is a total time sucker), but we did get dowels and twine to stake up my tomato plants.
That evening during supper we were having a discussion about our favorite actors and actresses. It probably comes as no surprise that I refer to all my favorite actors/actresses by their first name and leave off their last name. We’re BFF’s and they just don’t know it yet. I mentioned that I was a fan of Patrick (Dempsey), and Christopher said, “He’s just a haircut with a voice”. Based on that statement and the ones that followed, I take it Christopher and Patrick are not BFF’s.
Saturday
Saturday started off at the unholy time of 6:45. I had a first aid class at 8:00, so I rolled my self out of bed and into my clothes. There was a lot of stalling and “I don’t believe in getting up this early on a Saturday” between the rolling out of bed and into my clothes, but it is not worth documenting. We arrived at the class only to discover that apparently the instructor did not believe in getting up at 6:45 either. Without the instructor the class could not go on, so we suddenly had a whole unplanned day before us. We decided to do something bold and exciting…we went grocery shopping. I mean really, THE FUN NEVER ENDS around here. It was actually more exciting than you’d think because I discovered that shopping at the commissary is half the price of shopping at Price Chopper. I’m all about saving money. After all, saving money at the grocery store means there’s more money to spend at the craft store.
That afternoon we went to the Apple computer store at the mall to have the laptop looked at. Due to the apparent popularity of the store, I didn’t think it would be the appropriate time and place to mention that I prefer PC’s.
I had a J. Crew gift card burning a hole in my wallet, so after the Apple store we went over to see if they had anything with a price tag under $150. They did, and I bought this cute blue dress.
Sunday
After church, we made our weekly puppy-viewing trip to the pet store. I’m not sure who thought it would be a good idea to week after week look at cute animals we aren’t going to buy, but one of these weeks we’re going to be powerless to resist the puppy urge. One of the few things cuter than puppies are babies, so it works out well that I went to meet a baby I’m going to babysit for after the puppy trip. I considered putting the baby in my pocket and bringing him home to Christopher, but I wasn’t too sure it would go over well. For some reason, he likes to talk out possible life-altering acts before they happen and we hadn’t discussed this one. The baby’s parents probably would not have enjoyed that either. Basically it would have only made me happy.
Please note- The girl you saw running around the house all weekend with a towel/rolled up newspaper/hat/flip flop chasing and whacking at flies absolutely was not me. I would never do such a thing, even if they had been flying around the house for the last SIX days.
Apr 20, 2011 | Uncategorized, What's going on |
After years of much discussion and no action, Mom, Elizabeth and I finally visited the Lousia May Alcott house.
The tour guide pronounced Lousia’s last name “All-cot” whereas I say “Al-cot”, but since it can be ever so hard to teach an old dog new tricks, I will continue to say “Al-cot”.
I do believe I just referred to myself as a dog.
We had a little difficulty finding LMA’s house because the house we thought was her house had a sign out front stating in no uncertain terms that it was closed for the season. I insisted that we were not at the correct house because 1) I had checked the website and, according to the calendar, it was indeed after April 1st when the house was to be open and 2) I knew from driving by her house on previous occasions that she did NOT live in a pink house. Mom insisted that it must be her house because the sign outside the door said “home of Louisa May Alcott and Nathaniel Hawthorne”. Elizabeth had no clue either way so all she did was make occasional comments about the rain which were hardly helpful. To solve the problem, we used our lifeline and called Carol for help. She hopped on something called the internet and pointed us in the right direction, which happened to be 100 feet down the road. In the end, both Mom and I were right. LMA did live in the closed house for a while, but the house we wanted to visit was not pink.
The house was much larger than I was expecting, but it was still quite cozy on the inside. The only picture I took of the inside was of their breakfast table(of course I had to take a picture of the food!) before Tour Guide Jamie declared it a no-picture zone.
We then went to the Minuteman National Park visitor center because yesterday was a big day in American history. We just so happened to be visiting Lexington and Concord on the very anniversary of the day the Revolutionary War began. It was nothing short of a miraculous historical coincidence.
Jan 13, 2011 | Uncategorized, What's going on |
There’s something big going on in our neck of the woods this week. No, Daniel and Erika aren’t expecting a baby yet.
After weeks of 1 1/2” on the ground and days of 28 snowflakes* falling from the sky, the SNOW has finally arrived!
For once, our fine governor was correct in announcing a severe weather advisory {he was bound to be right sometime}.
Being the fine New Englanders that we are, we spent the day playing Blurt, watching Tuesdays with Morrie and shoveling.
I use the words “we shoveled” very loosely as I did no shoveling whatsoever.
* That’s only a small exaggeration
