my life as a newspaper, the leap day edition

HUMAN INTEREST:
Stephanie's BRILLIANT 17-month-old granddaughter, Mayah, recognizes her letters, oh yes she does. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom gets the credit.

SPORTS:
Stephanie's AMAZING son, Kevin, is playing Ultimate Frisbee for Harding University and they are the number one ranked team in the nation (really)!

In playing this so-called sport earlier in the season, Kevin's cranium collided with the ground, rendering him concussed. When consulting with the E.R. physician, Kevin asked, "What should I do?" The doc replied, "Next time, don't land on your head."

ENTERTAINMENT:
If Stephanie's cowboy husband made movies, they would all be over in approximately 11 minutes... roughly the time the villain makes his first appearance. The bad guy would steal a car/rob a bank/shoot an innocent bystander/roll his eyes at a cop, then BANG, the "good guy" would instantly shoot the bad guy.

Movie over.

In other news, I recently saw both "The Descendants" and "The Artist" at Maiden Alley Cinema. Exceptionally good movies, though I didn't think the "The Artist" was artsy enough to deserve the Best Picture Oscar. Maybe if they added Olivia Newton-John in roller skates and some E.L.O. music...

EDITORIAL:

WHY predictive texting? Are we so lazy that our phones think we can't finish typing entire words??? (My finger is exhausted!) So, I type out the words I want, and my phone changes them into other words. For example, Andy made a NICE play against me the other day in Words with Friends and I tried to say, "Ooohhh, NICE play." What he got instead was, "Popgun, NICE play" as though Popgun is my own little nickname for him. What??? How does OOOHHH become POPGUN??? I'll have to admit, though, sometimes it can be funny ... like when one of my more reserved postpartum clients texted to say, "I'm thinking about pimping."

She quickly sent a second text that read, "PUMPING!!! I'm thinking about PUMPING!!!"

GENERAL NEWS:
Do you drink Mountain Dew or Orange Crush or Gatorade Ice or ANY soft drink/sports drink that is a bit "cloudy" in appearance? It might interest you to know that clouding agent is called Brominated Vegetable Oil or BVO. It contains bromine, a poisonous chemical whose vapors are both corrosive and toxic. BVO is used in light-sensitive photographic paper, as an additive in gasoline and as an agricultural fumigant. BVO causes numerous health issues including iodine deficiency, cancer, heart disease and kidney disease, to name a few, and has been banned in over 100 countries, just not in the U.S. because they know we'll feed our kids anything.

OBITUARIES:
Mice. They were preceded in death by other mice. They are survived by many more mice, who had better stay out of my house if they want to remain on the survivor list.

LIFESTYLE:
I have an artsy doula client (whom I just love!), but whose extreme right-brainedness makes even creative ME feel like an accountant. When making our last appointment she texted: "Let's meet at the coffee shop sometime before darkish." Darkish? What time is darkish? Is that as the sun is setting, or that half hour after it has set, or the few minutes before total darkness when everyone on the street looks like a silhouette? And even more, how much "BEFORE" darkish is before? Half hour? Ten minutes? I didn't know. To be safe, I showed up an hour and five minutes early and waited in the van. Pretty sure the barristas thought I was casing the joint.

BUSINESS:
Over the holidays I took one very rare day off from work. My co-worker (who happened to have a badly scraped up nose) texted me, "Great. With my nose, I'm already Rudolph, and now you're gonna be Splitzen."

CLASSIFIED:
I have a text on my phone that SHOULD be classified, that simply states: "I want you to look at his penis". I would put it in context, but that would take all the fun out of it.

COMICS: ('cause I always save the best for last)
As I was driving downtown last Saturday night, I passed by the Catholic Church just as a large crowd was leaving the building. I thought to myself: Mass Exodus.

Then I laughed, 'cause I tickle myself.

the wrath of cohen

Some pictures really are worth 1000 words...

...and boppin 'em on the head

Once upon a time, Walt built an entire career on one, then he let a bunch of them make Cinderella's ballgown. The Mighty one was a superhero, and the Mexican one was super Speedy. Spielberg brought a little Russian one to America, and E. B. white let his sail a boat in Central Park. There were, apparently, three blind ones, though Bart Simpson's was just Itchy. The one in the nursery rhyme ran up a clock, and at some point you have scrolled around your desktop with one. Tom chased one who often stole cheese, you've probably let a giant one named Chuck E. serve you pizza, and Laura Numeroff gave one a cookie.

So why am I completely freaked out to have one in my house???

I was sitting in my chair, as I often do when I chat or write...one foot tucked under me, the other foot in the floor, laptop in, well, it's called a laptop for a reason. Then I sensed it. You know that feeling you get when there is SOMETHING else in the room with you. I peeked around the laptop and THERE IT WAS, not 4 inches from my foot. I screamed silently (since there was no one else at home or in the woods to hear me, I obviously wouldn't have made a sound anyway), quickly tucked BOTH feet under me, and watched it watch me.

Ewwww.

When it was a safe distance away (safe distance = 3 car lengths), I went to get a mousetrap. Not finding one, I came back with a broom, as I guess I thought I could use it as a getaway vehicle if I saw her again. I say "her" because she was small. And kinda cute. And completely gross. And though I NEVER gave her a cookie, she still left little chocolate sprinkles in her wake. *Shudder.

I used to have gerbils as pets. Explain this to me.

Anyway, a couple of days and a mousetrap-shopping-spree later, the cowboy trapped one and notified me via text. I breathed a deep sigh of relief until the second text arrived stating "what a big sucker he was".

No, no she wasn't.

She was a wee little thing. Dainty. Delicate. Disgusting. And apparently still vacationing in my house and inviting her friends.

Oh, where is a hungry snake when you need one???

She - let's call her "Mini Mouse"- tormented me for days, zipping around corners, scurrying under sofas, bounding across the bedroom floor, forcing me to leap into bed and pull the comforter up on all four sides to make CERTAIN she did not have an access ramp to my mattress. Once she even stared me down from the back of what USED to be my favorite reading chair.

Finally, today, I broke down and bought glue traps. I don't like them. They are inhumane. Or inrodentane. But this cohabitation arrangement had gone on entirely long enough; it was time for this unwelcome tenant to go. The cowboy lined up several traps in a row, baited them with cat food (which works great, especially in the absence of an ACTUAL cat) and within a few minutes we heard her. Then we saw her. She raced under the couch, around the leather cube, across the brick hearth, landing on one of the glue traps with all the finesse of an Olympic medalist, and went flying across the floor like a sticky Jamaican bobsledder.

I will not tell you what happened next, though a reference to Little Bunny Foo-Foo would be appropriate.

Go ahead, Good Fairy, goon me.

The End.
I hope.
I really, really hope.

six-word snow stories. seeking solutions.

I love snow. Did you know? Love it. Some of the best memories of my life are wrapped up in this frozen water-wonder. Stirring homemade hot chocolate. Building snowmen. Driving through Land Between the Lakes. Snuggling. Warming by the wood stove. Sleeping late on snow days. Creating snow angels. Bundling up so thick with layer upon layer that you can hardly move. Catching snowflakes on your tongue. Watching the Northern Lights from the nursery window over a snow-blanketed city. Breathing in the ice cold air and watching the whole world turn white. Love it. Love it. Love. It.

This winter, not so much. Our average high temperature for January this year has been 50 degrees. FIFTY. It's like perpetual November. We've had a couple of wimpy little flurries that melted off before lunch, and I have only defaulted to wearing socks maybe 5 times and a coat only twice. Not even a coat, really, just a jacket.

But I haven't been Snow Happy all winter. Not a single day of 'roads too icy to drive' or 'snow too deep to get out in'. (Which, for the record, is 5" for Kentuckians. For Alaskans there is no such thing "too deep to get out in".)

As January draws to a close, I will live vicariously through some of my favorite "snow movies" in the form of a quiz. You KNOW how I love my movie trivia. :) So, in the succinct tradition of Hemingway, I will give you a 6-word synopsis, you can guess the film.

(Special Kacey challenge: Six-degrees of Kevin Bacon for each answer.)

1. One dream. Four Jamaicans. Twenty below.

2. Morgan Freeman narrates Emperor's Antarctic mating.

3. Frozen alien thaws. Digests Antarctic researchers.

4. Through the armoire, Lucy finds winter.

5. Kidnapping. Pregnant sheriff. Wood chipper. Ya.


6. Global storm. Kids stranded. Quaid rescues.


7. Yukon gold panner loves wolf-dog.


8. Crazy Kathy hobbles captive Caan. Ouch.


9. Isolation at Overlook. Redrum. Here's Johnny!


10. Who's the fairest of them all?



 

"Take a deep breath. I smell snow. It’s coming. It’s just my favorite time of the year. The whole world changes color. I love snow. Everything’s magical when it snows. Flakes, flurries, swirls, crystals, whatever form it comes in, I’ll take it. Sleigh rides, ice skating, snowball fights, I’ll even take curling. I love curling.” ~Lorelei Gilmore