Nee, Queen of the Inappropriate

As a child, I had a bit of a chronic lying problem. Just a bit. I outgrew it, but then I discovered a new kick--saying the unexpected. I've spent a large part of my life looking like a 13-year-old kid, so I make sure to offset that by talking like a sailor.

The first time I met this person, Bill, in John's extended family, he asked me about my hometown. "What's there to do in [Hometown]?" That was my cue. "Not much but have sex." (1) People still talk about the night I met Bill.

Technically, I am telling the truth, but as Emily Dickinson said, "Tell the truth but tell it slant." I tell it in a way that exponentially increases the shock value. I can only manage this in English, so my poor family has to bear the brunt of my odd statements.

After dinner last night, Hannah had wandered off to play on the computer, and John was smiling at me across the table. I was resting after eating all that dip (see next entry) with my cheek on my hand. "You look so pretty," John told me. That was my cue. "I'm tired. And my ass burns."

(1) Since our county had the second-highest teen pregnancy rate in the state at the time, it had to be one of the top activities.

Hannah, Spice Girl

Hannah has been honing her cooking skills on the whetstone of my spice cabinet. She and her friend started with "spice soup" back in the day. Fortunately, they were satisfied at first with making very small quantities. One day they got a bit carried away, but with the help of a couple of eggs and some flour, we were able to transform the watery mess into some savoury crepes that even Hannah would eat.

It occurred to me that if I could rope Hannah into using her skillz for good instead of evil, she might be more likely to eat something resembling food. So last night she whipped up some dip, which her dad and I enjoyed with some raw veggies.



Hannah declared that she only likes making stuff for *us* to eat, but she deigned to eat 1/2 of a slice of cucumber with dip on it. Now I'm worried that her body will go into shock from that blast of vitamins.

Stew-Pot Post

In no particular order:

I suck at shopping. I don't like it, and I'm not good at it. We needed new sheets (due to my last shopping disaster), so I went to a place where I had previously gotten the wished-for sheets (before the cats sliced a hole in them). After diligently looking for 15 minutes, I found the right kind (not the t-shirt material, but linen) and bought them. When I got home, I found they were for larger matresses than ours. John is so sweet, he just tucked them in tighter and said "don't worry about it!"

Something similar happened at the hardware store. It took 2 trips, and I still don't have the right-sized screwdriver for my project.

And it almost broke my heart at the grocery store to pay over 20 bucks for 2 bottles of shampoo and a package of razor blades. I am not meant to shop; I should live in a cave and be a hunter and/or gatherer, although I'd probably screw that up, too, and starve to death.

You can tell when you're (too heavily?) invested in someone else's blog when you dream she's invited you to her sleepover *even though you've only ever commented twice* and you're all fangirl *squeeee!* about it.

I was tired and lazy Monday evening, so I bought a roasted chicken and fries on the way out of the grocery store. I heard Hannah humming in satisfaction in the back seat of the car on the way home and asked if she was eating the fries. "Noooo." Are you warming your hands on our dinner? "Mayyyy-be." What do you mean by that? "Jeez, Mom. Don't you get it? Hel-lo!" Oh--hel-lo! Why didn't you say so in the first place?

Flowers, Glorious Flowers!

If you do not weep with joy at the sight of these Thanksgiving cactus blooms, your heart is made of cold, black ice.

Talkin' about the weather

John likes to give me a hard time because I have spent so much time talking about the weather; he says I'm all elderly. But I don't like to be cold or wet, and we are smack in the middle of cold, wet season, so there is a lot to talk about, i.e. complain about.

Check this out: 11 days ago, this was the view from the front of our house:



Nice, eh? I failed to get a photo of the tree-line up above this, but it was equally spectacular.

Then 4 days ago we got enough fine-grained hail, as evidenced by the residue on this car next door, that Hannah thought we'd had our first snow:



She had to wait 4 days until today to have her wish come true:



It is not quite cold enough to stick, but we've had occasional flurries all day, mixed with cold rain. Ick! So in 11 days, we've experienced the height of fall and the onslaught of winter. I need to get more sweaters!

Switched at Birth?

No one who has actually seen Hannah and me together would ever doubt that she's my child.



See?

But sometimes I wonder if there was some kind of switcheroo in the hospital nursery. To wit:

The child does not like gummy bears. Or cheese. Or pants. (I don't hold it against her for not liking licorice--not many people do.)

She (still) loves pink and sparkles, although not necessarily in the form of her own clothing anymore.

Given the choice, she only reads books about witches and ghosts. Of course, our library only has 2 basic options for her age group: ponies or witches/ghosts/vampires.

In short, she's definitely mine, but not my clone: she's her own person.

It still makes me sad, though, that she doesn't want to read the Little House on the Prairie series, or many of the other books I liked as a kid.