Out and About with Nee

I bought some fly paper covered in moth pheromones as the next stage in the escalating Battle for the Pantry. The first thing I caught was a bag of chips that had been improperly stowed on the top shelf, then I caught myself trying to get the chips off. Finally, after about a week, I caught a larva. It was still alive after four days, so John and I elevated it to the status of pet (albeit one we don’t feed), and he named it Wormy Little Bastard, a pet name with a storied history on his mother’s side of the family. Yesterday Hannah spotted another larva in the pantry, so John stuck it on the fly paper next to WLB. Hannah thinks they make a cute pair. We didn’t come up with a name for it, which is just as well, because it made a break for freedom, and John had to crush it. Sayonara, little worm.

John asked me what I wanted for my birthday, but he thought I wasn’t being serious, or was asking for something cheap to let him off the hook, so he bought me some DVDs instead. But I really wanted it, so I went out yesterday and bought it for myself. Isn’t he cute?

Flying Pig Watering Can

Hannah had a week of school vacation last week, and we actually managed to keep her fairly occupied. Her friend spent the night once, another friend came over for a play-date, we took Hannah and yet another friend to the dreaded JumpInn, and we went into town for the Fasching Parade. Hannah insisted we go early to stake out a good spot because she was paranoid about claim-jumpers. She had already pictured the evil-doers in her mind, hanging around to pinch her spot as soon as she moved and taunting her about it: “Someone will jump in front of me and say, ‘Ha Ha, it’s my place now, you little twit’.” See how she planned to react?


Unfortunately, she did not foresee that neighboring parade viewers would be a bigger problem than potential place-stealers. Between the cuteness of the toddler on our left and the aggressiveness of the 12-year-old on our right, Hannah figures she had a 20% loss in candy receipts. Her haul was still ¾ of a plastic Halloween pumpkin plus a baseball cap and a wallet, so it was nothing to sneeze at.

She went all out on her costume, let me tell you. It was basically the same as her costume on the last day of school before the holiday:

Business Woman Costume

Except she added lipstick, shades, and a headband to transform herself into a millionaire.

I got out my sewing books and taught myself how to knit after the semester was over. Not being happy to just knit practice squares, I immediately started a project. It turns out that the hat ended up too small for Hannah, so it is winging its way across the ocean to my 5-year-old niece Fall, who has a much smaller head.