Bouncing Here, There, and Everywhere

I was visiting on the phone yesterday with my niece. Although, I use the term "visiting" very loosely because since she has hit this magical age of 13, she rarely has the ability to speak in anything other than 1-word phrases. Yesterday, though, she was unusually chatty.

As we talked about her new routines for the season, I was reminded of a very particular way that she used to bounce here, there, and everywhere. As a family, we refer to it as Naked Gymnastics, and I'll be honest, I really wanted to make that my post title, but I decided it might inadvertently seem wildly inappropriate.

So, when Brit was much younger (I told her I was going to tell this story, and she asked me to stress the MUCH YOUNGER part) and it was time to get ready for bed, my parents would send her to her room to take a bath. Now, before I continue, I need to tell you a few, key points...

Key Point #1 - Since the time she started gymnastics, she has cartwheeled, flip-flopped, and generally pranced everywhere she goes.

Key Point #2 - My parents have various gymnastics apparati (is that the plural for apparatus? in the house which encourages said flip-flopping.

Key Point #3 - Her bedroom used to be the garage, and my dad converted it. So, the floor sounds like a loud upstairs floor.

Back to the story...she had been sent to her room to take a bath, and all of a sudden, we hear bump, bump, thwack, thud. And then it happens again and again and again. So my mother goes to check on her and see what is going on.

Mother opens Brit's bedroom door to see Brit cartwheeling, flip-flopping, and prancing around her room nekked (my family is from East Texas, so that is the proper way to talk about the state of being unclothed). It seems that while she was waiting for the bathtub to fill up, she got sidetracked by pull of doing a few more gymnastic-like moves, and thus was born Naked Gymnastics.

Anyway, here is my niece now in this past season's gym pictures. (I apologize for the poor quality of the pictures. They were scanned in. Also, sorry to those of you have seen these pictures numerous times.)

Who Knew?

Yes, what you are seeing in the picture is a child-safety sticker (the "randomly generated number" stickers that come in 2 or 3 parts).

Yes, these normally go on the backs of toddlers or babies when we have nursery or a special event.

Yes, the back you see before you is most definitely not that of a baby or toddler. In fact, it is the back of a 5th grade boy.

What makes this so funny is that we normally put them on the backs of babies and toddlers rather than their fronts so that they forget about them. However, it seems to work equally as well with 4th, 5th, and 6th grade boys because there were a whole slew of older elementary kids that didn't realize their sticker was still in place until I peeled them off and dismissed them to their parents.

I wonder if the whole "put a bubble in your mouth" works with them too. Hmm...just a thought.

Roasted Potatoes

Last night, I decided it was time to once again attempt to make a pan of roasted potatoes. For those who know me well, you know that for some reason I do not seem to possess the ability to roast vegetables to an edible state. I have read numerous cookbooks, websites, etc. on how to do this properly and yet I have still managed to mess up countless pans of roasted vegetables.

Last night, though, I was feeling daring.

As I set about in my preparation, I read and reread the directions. As the potatoes were in the oven, I literally sat on pins and needles waiting. When it was finally time to pull them out, I took a hesitant bite and discovered that they were E.D.I.B.L.E. In fact, they were better than edible. They tasted good.

After doing a little happy dance and enjoying my supper, I decided that I would make a pan of brownies for work today. I have made these brownies numerous times, and they really are quite yummy. So, this would be a nice end to a successful cooking evening.

Apparently, I had used up all my good cooking karma because as I set out to make the brownies, I accidentally sprinkled black pepper into them rather than salt (I picked up the wrong shaker). I tried to pick out as much of the pepper as I could and then kept on my way.

The next thing that happened was that I dropped my bottle of vanilla extract on my kitchen counter...my OPEN bottle of vanilla extract. On the plus side, my kitchen now has a strong vanilla scent to it, and I won't need to buy a glade plug-in for quite some time.

Lastly, and worstly (yes, I know that is not a real word) of all, as I was pouring in the oil, I dropped by glass measuring cup into the glass bowl I was using and broke the measuring cup. At this point, I decided that the office really didn't need brownies (nor would they want brownies that had glass shards as one of the ingredients). So, I took the whole bowl and just dumped it in the trash.

On the plus side, I finally conquered my fear of roasted potatoes!!!!!! (I am still happy dancing today. Perhaps, I will try roasting some carrots next.)

Re-Post "Going Out in Style"

Today marks the one year anniversary of my grandfather's passing. My mother has driven to Troup to be with my grandmother where they will hold an informal memorial service.

As I was visiting with one of my friends about this, she suggested that I re-post my final "Granddaddy" story as a tribute because it didn't matter the situation, there was always a tremendous amount of laughter in their lives.

So...here it is...

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Going Out in Style

I have to own up to something. On Sunday morning Lisa K. told me that I was not allowed to write another sad post because the last one that she read had made her cry. Since my post from last night did not adhere to her request, I thought I would throw in a funny one this morning just to swing us all back towards laughter.

Here goes...

By Sunday morning, my grandfather had been nonresponsive for a little over 24 hours. Since my grandfather always worked to look presentable, my mother and her sisters decided to freshen him up a little. They washed his face, gave him a good shave (with an electric razor), and put lotion on his face, hands, and feet.

While all of that was part of his normal "get ready for the day" routine, they did decide to add a couple of steps that I feel fairly safe in saying he would have NEVER EVER EVER done himself. The first was mousse. Yes, my mother decided that the little bit of hair he had on his head needed some product. So, she pulled out her can of mousse and styled him up good.

If that wasn't enough to test his masculinity, my mother's baby sister pulled out her tweezers. Do you see where I am going with this? Yes, she proceeded to pluck his eyebrows (apparently, a nonresponsive patient can remain nonresponsive even through the pain of a good plucking). She said that she mainly worked on his uni-brow and a handful of stray hairs, but I would like to state for the record that he looked a little more metrosexual than I have ever seen an elderly gentleman look.

Later in the day, as we were sitting around him and visiting, someone remarked that he was beginning to look a little jaundiced. His kidneys and liver had started shutting down, and so we chalked up the color change to that. However, as we kept talking about it, my mother mentioned that she thought the lotion had something in it. On closer inspection, we discovered that the lotion did indeed have something in it. It was a Self-Tanning Lotion. Yes, apparently we self-tanned my granddaddy. He looked better than George Hamilton. After laughing quite a bit about the bronze-like effect of his face, hands, and feet, we told him that first we were sorry and second that he at least looked good.

From his hair to his eyebrows to his self-tan, he was most definitely going out in style.

Grocery Stalking

Last night after church, I needed to go to the grocery store to pick up a handful of items because all I had left in my house was a jar of peanut butter (which is totally good in itself, but I should probably try to incorporate other food groups), a can of black-eyed peas, and spice jars of ginger, nutmeg, and basil.

So, I walk into the grocery store on the produce side, which is a little maze. Once you follow the maze all the way through the produce section, you then have the freedom of perusing the other aisles at your leisure. It always reminds me of my mother forcing me to eat my vegetables before I could do anything else (I still have childhood trauma issues with zucchini).

I stop first at the strawberries, and I notice this little, old man in front of me also getting strawberries. As we move around the little maze, he stops at plums, and I do too. I watch as he very intently chooses the plums for his bag, and I try to copy exactly what he was doing, because I really have NO IDEA how to select produce correctly.

Next, he moves around to the pototates. I wasn't really planning on purchasing any potatoes, but he seemed to think they looked good, so I grabbed a few as well. This continued on through the rest of the produce department.

Now, while I should be a little embarrassed to admit doing that (because I ended up with a couple of things in my cart that I had not intended to purchase...by the way, does anyone know how to cook leeks?), it is the next thing I did that borders on grocery stalking.

As he left the produce section, he headed towards the meat department, and yes (my head is hung in shame), I followed. What can I say? By this point, I was really curious as to what he was going to purchase. It was kind of like my own interactive reality show--perhaps a much calmer version of Supermarket Sweep (how many of you will own up to having watched that show), and all of the SS followers know how important the meat section is.

Now, as he made it to meats, I reminded myself that while it was more than a little unsual that I was following this little old man through the store, if I continued to purchase all of the same items he did, that might border on "wrap-me-in-a-straight-jacket-because-I-obviously-can't-make-my-own-choices" unusual.

Anyway, as he walked through the meat department, I kept a safe distance behind him like the spies do in the movies when tailing someone. He stopped in front of one of the cases, and placed a package in his cart, but I couldn't tell what it was from my distance of two cart-lengths behind. As I neared the case, though, I saw that he had chosen one of the animal bone segments.

I didn't even slow my cart down. I did a big u-turn, pulled back out my shopping list, and went in search of the tortillas.

By the way, I am still needing to figure out how to cook leeks.

RIP, Precious Hair Dryer, RIP

Well, today was the day...the day I had been dreading for so long. In the midst of drying my hair, my hair dryer died. If even for a moment I held any hope of it actually ever working again, the smoke coming out of the barrel dashed those hopes.

So, I did what any normal girl would do. I panicked. Not only was I standing in my bathroom with sopping wet hair, but the only thing I had to use on it was a tiny little travel hair dryer. Yep, you know what I am talking about. Those of you who treasure your full strength blow dryer as much as I do understand the absurdity of using a travel one.

I worked through it none-the-less, and as I did so, I formulated a plan on what type of hair dryer I needed to purchase TODAY and how much that might cost.

Now, before any of you judge my hair vanity much further, I would like to offer up a defense on my behalf. There are very few items that I feel so strongly about. Yes, one of those is my hair dryer (the others are my vacuum cleaner and peanut butter), but if you understood a little about my blow drying history, it might not seem so over-the-top.

Because I have lots of hair that is naturally frizzy (think of Bellatrix Lestrange from HP), I struggle to make my hair presentable. Letting my hair dry naturally was just not an option, so in college, I used the two dryer system. Yes, I owned two hair dryers, and yes I plugged them in and used them simultaneously. On days that my arms would start to get tired, one of my roommates would grab one and help out.

So, you see, when I finally found a hair dryer that was high powered enough and worked beautifully, I bought it.

That brings me back to today. I have laid my hair dryer gingerly on my bed, and I have even shed a tear or two on its behalf. Now, though, it is time to pick myself up and start the shopping process for a new one as I am out running my errands today.

In the meantime, I need to change my grocery shopping list to read Diet Sam's Cola and Cereal-in-a-Sack rather than their name brand counterparts, because if I have to choose between quality groceries and a quality hair dryer, I am going with the blow dryer EVERY time.

Summer Hiatus

A radio show I listen to on my way to work most mornings has the tag line of "back and better than ever." Well, I don't know about the "better than ever" part, but the "back" part is true.

After a short summer hiatus and even a decision to stop blogging altogether because I had run out of things to say (yes, that does occasionally happen), I have decided to resume my reality via blogging. It seems that once the stress of the summer lifted, I could see more on the horizon than just boxes of Capri Sun and pipe cleaners.

So, never fear, my loyal readers (all 2 of you), I have re-entered the blogging world.