Month: February 2012

2nd Annual Missy Wraps up the Oscars

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Wow. We’ve passed an anniversary. This time last year, I made fun of the Oscars for the first time on my blog. Here we are again. One year later. Same event. Different movies. Has anything really changed?

No.

Last year I said there was only one way to watch the Oscars. With cynicism and at 11:15 for 15 minutes. Last night I called The Informinator and scolded her for not watching every moment. What has happened to me? I’m escaping the stress of moving and running school fundraisers by watching people who bring their body parts to the Oscars like pets to be admired. Good grief.

So here’s my too-involved take on 2012.

  • Ben Stiller and Billy Crystal standing on each other’s shoulders are still shorter than the average man.
  • Christopher Plummer should stick to white gloves and Julie Andrews.
  • Super Duper Loud and Seriously Close might have won were it not for the Terribly Confusing and Awfully Disconcerting title.
  • Angelina Jolie is actually already dead and they exhumed her body and hologrammed her in for that presentation. There’s no way that skinny ghost was still alive. I was aghast. Really, ask Todd. AGHAST.
  • Robyn Porch made the pie in the opening movie montage. I went to tiny little Florida College with Robyn. How cool is that?
  • The Artist? Really? A SILENT FILM? There’s a reason they did away with silent films. It’s called MICROPHONES. Talkies, people. You don’t step back 100 years just to be cute. I don’t cook over a fire now. Why would I do that? I have a cook top. When I do cook over a fire, my marshmallow ALWAYS catches on fire. I think my point is made.
  • There were only 2 songs up for Best Song. What’s up with that? Muppet or Man vs. the Rio song? Were there no songs written in adult movies this last year? That’s just weird.
  • JLo. I know you got it going on and stuff, but showing half your boobs does not make them more attractive. In fact, they looked kinda smashy and weird and I’m sure you paid $500,000 for that one dress, but I hate to tell you: It wasn’t worth that. Also, put a jacket on.

And the Moscars (that’s Missy’s Oscar) go to:

Best Picture: The Muppet Movie
Best Actor: Walter in the Muppet Movie. He is up and coming, I’m pretty sure.
Best Actress: DEFINITELY Viola Davis. DEFINITELY.
Best Original Score: Mario Galaxy Soundtrack for the Wii. Really perky stuff.

Still can’t help it….Here’s one more.

.Reading time 1 minute.

This one is worse.

RESCUESD DOG READY FOR HIS FOREVER HOME HOME (Tampa Bay)

Date: 2012-02-23, 7:30PM EST
Reply to: gmdgq-2855084343@comm.craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]

Hi I am Mr Sweet. I am a yellow labrador rescue dog. I was SAVED by a nice lady who came and got me from a certain death at a very high kill shelter. Many of my buddies died there as I saw them take them to a room and they came out lifeless. I got so SAD I would be next any hour or any day??!! Then this nice lady came and said you will NOT die today and started calling me by my name (Mr Sweet). I’m a handsome one year old boy,and I only weigh 30lb. I love to play with dogs, I’m ok with cats, and anyone really!!! 🙂 I am a playful boy and aim to please my forever family that me and my foster mom are currently looking for… Can you be my new forever family?? I have been fixed, Micro chipped, and UTD on all my yearly shots. I am a healthy, happy and playful sweet boy ready to come to meet you. Please text or call my foster mom to meet me. 305-896-0463 I look forward to meeting you. There is a one hundred dollar rehoming fee to cover some of my expenses, and for future rescues. Thank you!

I can’t help it.

.Reading time 5 minutes.

Sometimes I just HAVE to read Craigslist. Before I post today’s Certifiably Crazy Ad of the Day, I will tell you the end of the “Got a Dog when I was 6” story. This is the part I haven’t told my kids.

We loved Benji for 11 solid years. Toward the end, he had a stroke of some sort and could no longer walk in a straight line. He walked sideways. That was both pitiful and a little bit funny.

But one late night while staying at St. Teresa Beach, he wandered off. Sideways. And walked sideways across the little highway. A truck not driving sideways hit him.

And it was sad.

But I didn’t post on Craigslist about it.

I just blogged about it 24 years later. And now…….here’s your ad of the day. Grammar has been left untouched. Enjoy.

SWIPER needs YOU ASAP (USF/Busch Gardens)

MEEEE—OOOWWW! That’s cat for hello and I want to love you forever! Try saying it? Doesn’t it make YOU feel great inside too, to know a cat wants to love you forever? My name is SWIPER, just like in Dora, and I am an 11 month old gray wish orange swishes and black ring-tail female KITTEN/CAT (that means I am sooo playful that I still think I’m a new bundle of joy, but my age says I’m almost a full grown cat…hmphf…LOL). My humans adopted me when I was barely 6 wks old and I’ve been loved and pampered ever since, but life has taken a toll on my dear humans. While they love me beyond love, they are raising two disabled little grandsons and are being forced to move away to find the right services for them. They found a new house by a special schoo, but that house won’t allow any pets, even with a special deposit. My humans are CRUSHED, and tried to negotiate, especially now that I am to be a mother myself VERY SOON, but the new landlords said aboslutely NO! I am truly a wonderful young feline, and I don’t cause any trouble…have always been around other cats and know to take the high ground if the dogs want to play too rough, and I like to go outside, but then come in to eat and catch some ZZZZZ’s or snuggle. Although this is my first litter, I have helped socialize other newborn kittens a few different times, so it wouldn’t take YOU much effort to feed me, do my litter and just make sure no other living thing eats my babies…..I will be a FANTASTIC mother! I PROMISE I will be good to you and your family if you’ll love mine too until they are old enough to eitehr keep with US, or to re-home…I PROMISE! My humans are running out of time to find me a REAL home, and I don’t know if my human mom will surivive if she must take me and my unborns to a shelter to take my chances! PLEASE don’t let sadness become the fate of all of us! MEEEE—OOOOOWWW!!! lets make a forever love connection! My humans even have litter to get you started if you want it! PLEASE call ASAP….813-464-5837 and leave a message if the humans can’t answer immediately as they are chasing those grandkids! The pics of me won’t upload here, but if you text, they have pics to share showing GORGEOUS, SPECIAL ME! God Bless my new family when they call…AMEN!

This ad is really kind of touching. If only it weren’t written from the perspective of a crazy cat named Swiper having a load of babies out of wedlock.

You had me at “let’s make a forever love connection.”

No, you did not.

 

Bedtime stories

.Reading time 5 minutes.

Every night, they ask the same question. “will you tell us a story, Mama?” and every night, though I am certain I will kick myself in the teeth later, I cringe and beg them not to make me. The problem is not that I don’t like talking to them. And it is not that I don’t appreciate that they want to hear what I have to say. And I am not too busy.

The problem is that I am out of material.
Way out.

I’ve told them every interesting Little Missy story I have, from the driving the car through the plate glass window when I was 2 to burning down the kitchen when I was 10. (My iPad just tried to autocorrect burning to “brining.” Brining down the house would be a new twist on an old story!) I have a lot of good stories. I did a lot of weird stuff as a kid. But you can only tell the same story so many times, ya know?

Last night, when I groaned over having to think too hard, AG said, “just tell an old one, Mama. We don’t mind hearing a repeat.” Good thing. Because I was fresh out of thinking cap juice.

“OK,” I conceded. “Real quick I will tell you about the time I got my dog.”

And I proceeded to tell them this bad version of the story. When I was 5, turning 6…or was it 6 turning 7 (I will wait to hear from Mom on this one), we were told that we were getting a very different kind of Christmas gift. What is it? What is it? We were dying to know. We had been begging for a dog for quite awhile, but we had no idea anyone was listening. We had been given the stock answers that come from the Status Quo Manual of Parenting. You won’t take care of it. I will end up doing everything. Dogs are too much trouble. They are dirty. Etc. All of that would end up being true. My brother and I did jack squat to take care of that dog. Oh, I blew the storyline, didn’t I? Now you know I was getting a dog that Christmas. As if.

Anyway, we still didn’t know. All we knew was that we had to go to Crawfordville to look at something. You probably haven’t been to Crawfordville and probably know nothing about it. Say the word to yourself. What does that conjure up in your mind? Yeah, it was that kind of place. Scarytown. When we pulled up outside a dirty little shack, my brother and I had fear in our hearts. Were Mom and Dad going to sell us? Were we about to meet our real parents?

Of course, I am just being an idiot right now. I have to embellish the story to keep the boys awake. And you.

Outside this little shack was a cardboard box. Inside that box were puppies. Poodle-terrier mixes. Adorable. My parents made the announcement that we could pick out a puppy and before they could finish their sentence, we were screaming the shrill screams of kids at a carnival.

We had no trouble agreeing on the puppy for us. It was the small, white one. And his name was Benji.

And we loved him, though we did jack squat to care for him.

And that was the story I told the kids.

“That’s how I got my.dog,” I said.

Mama’s Boy, who seemed almost asleep, spoke up in a quiet voice.

“I thought you said you were going to tell us how you got your BLOG.”

“Oh o, boy, that’s a really boring story,” I replied, chuckling.

“How DID you get your blog, Mama?” AG asked, interested.

“I designed it and I started writing.”

“You’re right, Mama. That isn’t an interesting story.”

Ha. At least you don’t have to read it, boy. At least there’s that.

How dumb am I?

.Reading time 2 minutes.

No, I mean it. How dumb AM I?

All my life. All my 41 years of life, I have sporadically heard the term “milquetoast.” I have heard this term and somehow never seen it; never known where it originated; never looked it up.

And yet, I knew what it meant. Because so often I am the milquetoastiest of the milquetoasty. I know that it means to be “weak and ineffectual” or “plain and unadventurous.” I know it means you have given in before you got good and started.

But although I knew what it meant, I had no idea where it came from or what it LITERALLY meant. I was picturing a soggy piece of toast.

Milk toast.

Because who wants milk toast, right? Who wants the piece of toast that the glass of milk turned over on, rendering it soggy and cold and clammy and useless? No one wants that. It made perfect sense to me that it would be milk toast, because I hate milk and it sounded like a perfectly awful thing to do to toast and it worked fine with the metaphors in my head.

Except that it isn’t milk toast at all. There’s no milk within 5 miles of this term.

It’s this dude. Caspar Milquetoast. A wishy washy, mamby pamby.

Huh. I feel pretty dumb right now. Especially since I have a degree in talking and writing properly.

So, what I want to know is? Is there anyone else out there that didn’t know this? Or am I the only one hiding under some milk toast?

Illness

.Reading time 5 minutes.

I am a sick woman.
I have taken to shopping Craigslist for things that are weirder than iPod nanos.
Lately, it is pets. Because–you know–I’m so good at managing the living creatures already in my care. For sure, I should get a dog. A dog, mind you. But the real fun in Craigslist pet perusal comes from pulling up the pet ads and reading them all. Straight through…like a novel. It’s awesome.

I will just paste in a few. That way, I can empirically prove my point.

Submission #1— Fancy rats- Russian blue, dumbo, Rex, and more!
Various color/coats/ears available. We have solid color rats, hoods, and caps available.

All are socialized, healthy, and ready to go to loving homes!

Regular fancy rats start at $5, Russian Blues start at $10. Discounts available for purchases of 2 or more.

Siamese litter available in about 3 weeks, now accepting reservations.

Please contact for pictures or to schedule a time to pick out your new ratty baby!

Is fancy a type of rat or is this owner just trying to convince me that his rats are more attractive and affluent than, say, the rats I am poisoning in the farmhouse we are due to move into? All are socialized. Socialized? Do they go to dances? Play team sports? I can’t wait to schedule a time to pick out my ratty baby. Can’t.wait. Also got to get me a Siamese rat birth reservation. Because the only thing better than a rat is a Siamese rat. Wait a second. They don’t mean ‘conjoined’, do they? I was picturing two rats joined at the elbow….and was hoping for a discount for buying two or more.

Submission #2 — Lost Miniature Pig!
He is an unaltered male miniature pig 40 pounds or less.

He doesn’t even come to knee height.

He was living in the barn with the baby cow because he thinks he’s a cow, but periodically got loose.

I found him the first couple of times but this time I’ve had no luck.

I live on Darby Road.

Wilbur is all red with small black spots on his body. If you’ve seen him please contact me! I miss him terribly and have only waited this long to put up the ad because I thought I would find him like last time and couldn’t accept he was gone.

The pictures I posted aren’t very recent but its what he looks like. Call me with info on his whereabouts.

I have only two things to say here. Unaltered? What? And he thinks he’s a BABY COW. Wow.

Submission #3 — Bearded Dragon Babys
i have some bearded dragon babys for re homing

i have reddish orange bearded babies

there 4 weeks old eating everything they can catch i feed them 1/4 crickets dusted in calcium
and some greens

30$ each

Oh, please. $30 for a horrifyingly ugly reptile? No, thanks. How about YOU pay ME because I survived your grammatical hackery.

Submission #4 — So I gave the hint I wanted a puppy (Pasco)

Date: 2012-02-14, 5:22PM EST

So I asked for a puppy for Valentine’s Day or soon as can be. Well my hubby gave me the look oh you really were serious. What?! So I showed him a few ads over the last few days and he said okay I will check into it. He is in the dog house now. So now here I go. Stay at home Mom looking for a dog that is no larger than 20 pounds. No preference in sex. Need a cat friendly dog or the opportunity to see if the dog is okay with the kids cat. I own my home and have a fenced in yard with a tent that my husband will be sleeping in for a few days. A rehoming fee/adoption is not a problem. So please email my husband to literally get him out of sleeping in the new tent in the back yard. Thanks and Happy Valentine’s Day!!

Hahaha!

Love it! Drama. Intrigue. Conjoined ratty babies with interchangeable ears. I think this blog needs a separate category for Craigslist Crazies.

And that’s a wrap.

Now That’s Love…

.Reading time 7 minutes.

Now, listen. I don’t need Hallmark to drum up fuzzy feelings for all the people in my life. I don’t feel the need to rush out and spend $4 on a rhyme I could have written myself. I’m a sucker for Hallmark movies all day long, but I don’t buy into the fabricated holiday hype.

That said, I did intend to celebrate this day with the lovies that live in my house. And we looked forward to it. We bought steaks, potatoes, broccoli, and special napkins. Actually, the napkins were purchased for us by our next door neighbor, so you cannot accuse me of falling prey to the Heart Shaped Napkin Company.

We set the table at 4 p.m. We tidied the house. At 5, Todd came home to grill the steaks. And though I apparently don’t buy in to all the hype, he does. He came in the door with a Hallmark card for me, for Beloved, and for Snuggletoot. In his other hand was flowers for me and a stuffed flower (think Beanie Baby, but in carnations. I know. Weirdest thing ever. And yet they loved it!) for each girl. There were gummy bears and bags of Starburst and Double Bubble.

“Aww, sweetie, thank you. I got you this….” I then shook his hand. No, I didn’t. He got a hug. And nothing else. Because I didn’t think we were exchanging gifts. And you know, I don’t do that kind of thing. I just try to be polite and stuff. That’s a gift, right?

I was determined for this day to go well and end well. Todd was grilling and I was finishing up the sticky rice (don’t ask…we should have been born asian) in the microwave. When I opened the door up, the plate on top of the rice bowl came sliding out like a kid on a greased sled.

It was piping hot.

I mean, PIPING hot.

I had a choice: Catch it and burn my hands, or let it go and deal with piping hot shattered glass. What would you have done?

I caught it with the “aplomb of a circus performer” (that’s a quote from Lea!) and brought it to safety on the stove. I used the skin left on my hands to wipe my sweaty brow and we were back in business.

It really wasn’t that bad, but if I hadn’t caught it, this would be a very different blog, I assure you.

The meal was gobbled down by even Picky Pea Pants and though you are expecting me to tell you my perfect day jumped the tracks, it never did. We ended the night reading the “Going to Town” chapter in Little House and realizing how super spoiled we are. Laura Ingalls about lost her lunch because she saw two houses standing together in one place. My kids think they should have a house on each coast and one in the mountains. Ah well. Perhaps next year, instead of gummy bears and heart shaped napkins, they’ll each get a house.

There was a lot of love. And there will be tomorrow, too, Hallmark.

But I digress.

I really didn’t stop here to talk about me. As if. I have a blog. Who am I kidding?

I’m here to talk about my Papa. That man knew how to love. For months, since his passing, I’ve been meaning to post a couple of things he penned during the war. This seems like the perfect day to finally get around to this.

This photo shows an album page from my mom’s album. He is pictured with his army brothers. He’s the handsome fella in the middle. And below that picture is a scan of a letter he wrote home to my mom, who was a 1-year-old baby he truly didn’t want to leave behind.

The letter said this:

February 1945
To Daddy’s Darling:

This is the first letter I have ever tryed to write you and I am afraid that when you are old enough to read and write yourself that you will think Daddy is very poor at writing, but someday you will understand that he loves you and Mommy better than anything else in the world.

It was not my idea to be away so much since you were born. It’s that someone with more power than you and I has said I must go. This I have done and I am trying to do a good job so I can come back to you and mommy before too long. Until I see you I want you to be a sweet little girl and do what you mother says. She is a good mommy and will only tell you what’s best for you. I know you will do all this. I only wanted to caution you.

From one who loves you very much,
Daddy

And I’ll leave you with a little poem that will never make the cover of a greeting card, but means a whole lot to our family.

Happy Love Day. Go hug someone. (Not just anyone, though. You should at least know them. Otherwise, it will be awkward at best. At worst, they might punch you, which is the exact opposite of what you want on a day like this. There is no card for that…)

Little House in the Big Neighborhood

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Good Valentine’s Eve, peeps. I apologize again for the lengthy dry spell on this blog. I have found it difficult to type what I didn’t find interesting. Tonight, however, my son made me laugh pretty hard, so I thought I would do a little Ode to Mama’s Boy.

A long time ago, when Mama’s Boy was barely 4 years old, if that, and had a tiny, raspy little Linus voice, we were sitting across each other eating lunch. He was eating something ridiculous like chicken nuggets, I feel sure. I was eating a bowl of tuna. He looked up from his food and very seriously asked me, “Mama, what if everyone in the world was named Uncle Doo Doo?”

I spit out my bite and started laughing. And I didn’t stop for about 10 minutes. Because I was picturing the world he had asked me about. How very confusing. And backwards. But it was fun to imagine. He laughed, too, after a few minutes, but only because I was laughing and he got caught up in the moment. He really had no idea that what he had said was funny.

Tonight was like that.

We are about 60 pages from the end of Little House in the Big Woods. We read most of this series a long time ago, but we are re-reading it as a family and getting a whole lot more out of it this time around. Tonight’s chapter was about the dance at Grandpa’s house. Grandma was tending to the maple syrup on the stove while everyone else danced. And when the syrup was ready, people would file out into the clean snow, put some snow on their plates and file back in to have some hot syrup ladled onto the snow. The syrup would harden into candy and everyone would lap it up and go for more. There was a whole lot of description about this process that, frankly, I didn’t think they would find interesting or even listen to. But as I was finishing up this section, Mama’s Boy rolled over in his bed and said with a dreamy tone in  his voice.

“What if all that syrup was Jolly Ranchers and those people were me? I would love that.”

As we were finishing up, I told them where we were in the book and what the remaining chapters were titled. One of them is called “The New Machine.” AG thought that chapter sounded intriguing. I commented that the Ingalls were on the brink of the Industrial Revolution and that machines were starting to come into play a little bit. To this, Mama’s Boy responded, “I bet it was a peanut butter and jelly squirter. Those go good together.”

I think he went to sleep hungry.

I am thankful to live among weirdos, where I feel like just one of the gang.