My son, the wordsmith

He is a Chip off the ol' block.

His name isn't chip. this is a just a saying that means he is just like his mom. See previous post about strange phrases. Does anyone realize that when they use this one that they are calling themselves and "ol' block?" It's not really the image I'm trying to put out there about myself.

Anyway....

Last night I was reading a book to J about a diamond heist mystery. We were reading about the crime and it said "Just then the jewerly store alarm went off." He stops me and with a very puzzled expression asked "Why does it say that the alarm went off? Didn't it just turn on?"

That's my boy!!

Lexiconologist ©

Many know that I love words… in fact, my friend helped me coin the word Lexiconoligist©. That is what I like to call myself now. I am trade marking that title and next year it will replace “life coach” where it calls for an occupation on my taxes. Caveat: This does not mean that I’m good at spelling… if you’ve read my stuff for long that is easy to pick up on… but I dyegress…. (<----- Angie, that was a joke!)

What I love almost as much as large interesting words and their meanings is thinking about phrases and their origins. My personal favorite, because I haven’t figured out yet, is “Let’s paint the town red!” I also like “crossing the Rubicon” Ask me what it means sometime. Why in the world do we say such things? And isn’t it interesting that some of the most nonsensical ones get handed down generation after generation. I think that is really very cool.

I am seriously considering applying for the graduate scholarship in Folklore at USU. I love Prof Siporin (and his amazing storyteller wife) and his classes were a joy to take. My favorite thing was collecting camp song lyrics and I had a great idea for a collection after his class was done. Also this phrase thing.

I know of a missionary going to the Southern states and it got me thinking about countrified sayings like “I felt lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut” and “She was more nervous than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.” *snork* You know, all the things that the narrator would say right before a commercial during the Dukes of Hazzard show. If I get the scholarship I’ll start my research at tvland.com .

BTW: Did you know that you can watch full episodes of old TV shows online? I showed my kids Family Ties, Gillligan’s Island, and a super awesome Charlie’s Angels. I forgot how much I loved Alex P. Keaton, how much I wanted to get marooned on an island and build cool camp gadgets like the professor, and how much I wanted to be a beautiful spy lady. I’m getting off topic again. Sorry.

So back to crazy phrases. I was subbing (is that really a word?) for the reading ladies in a kindergarten class. One group got away from me and well… ate me for lunch. *writes that phrase in research notebook* I’ve tried to stay vigilant and not let things get to far out of hand. In other words, I no longer trust the innocent looking 5 and 6 year olds. I’ve become a sinic. (<----- other joke!)

One sweetheart of a tiny blue eyed blondie tried to explain how many pieces of candy the regular teacher rewards them with (they are always so helpful in teaching me how to do the job right.) 1 whole smarty for every time they raised their hand sounded fishy to me. *makes another note* (how did it get from smelled fishy to sounded fishy?) The other kids were all holding their breath and listening very closely to my answer to that. So I narrowed my eyes at her, squished my lips to one side and said “I think you are pulling my leg.”

All five kids, at the same time, tipped over in their chairs to look at my legs under the table. *laugh out loud* HA! It was a riot. And best story ever for my folklore thesis. Doncha think?

Little Bits Bin

You know when you run across a strange little piece of something and you are not sure what it belongs to. It looks important but it is little and has become separated from it's group so you feel sorry for it and you keep it safe on your counter in a little dish.

Because you now have a place for little lost things more tiny gaget-y do-dahs begin to gather there until you have a cluttering bowl that overflows with puzzle pieces, peices of crayons, a pencil erasure, polly pocket shoes, a coin or two, magnetics, a rubber foot from your electric fry pan, a twisty tie, parts of mcdonald's toys, a die, half of a keychain, etc etc.

One day you really notice this annoying cup and it makes you mad. You dump it out and decided that you need to put everything away, once and for all. Most of it, you discover is junk and worthless. You decide if no one else cares enough about this to put it where it belongs then you will keep the change and toss the rest.

You do. It feels wonderful. You clean the counters. They shine and are completely clutter free. You even take a picture of a sparkly kitchen. *happy sigh*

You feel so great that the next day you decide to make bread. (This is the day after the garbage gets picked up.) You get out your wheat grinder because your flour bucket is low. And it is then that you remember where you have seen that little plastic part before. You know, the one that started the countertop lost and found collection. It is the one part that you cannot work the grinder without. *gnashes teeth*

It only costs $1.75 to replace. Plus $5.95 for shipping and handling, of course. And allow 2 to 3 weeks for delivery.

Poor T's Teeth

My darling brave daughter has inherited my teeth. poor thing. She has teeth too big for her little mouth. Also her teeth are stubborn. I blame this on her dad. They won't fall out. This whole tooth growing process is near the top of the list of questions I want to ask when I get to Heaven.

"Could you, please explain to me what is up with the tooth thing? Why aren't babies born with them? a speechless helpless baby is hard enough without adding miserable crankiness while teething. also, why do they have to fall out? The rest of our bones grow with our bodies. I'm not saying it's a bad plan. In fact, I'm sure there is an excellent reason. I just want to understand what that is."

I have this question all planned out cuz I've thought about it every time there has been a tooth transition with our kids. Especially cuz in our family I am the designated tooth puller-outer.

2 week ago T had to go to the dentist to get 4 teeth pulled. They were way over due and were not budging. Xrays showed that everything behind them were stalled and causing problems. *Ugh*

She had a set of 4 taken out 6 months ago and that didn't help. So they decided to pull the rest. She is a trooper tho and suffered through the puffy-lipped, scary bone-crunching experience with a toughness I wouldn't have mustered. These things were MONSTERS! They still had sharp claw-shaped roots locked on to the permanent teeth. Yikes! I was going to paste pics of them on here but they are too scary looking. *shivers*

She has also dealt with the after effects without complaint. Poor thing. She now has no teeth that actually fit together to chew with. And those that are there are now tender and sore cuz everything moving at once.

After this, braces will be a cinch.

Easy Being Green

Sunday was a wonderful Spring day. It was perfect for our Easter / Stake Conference / Day of Rest / Spring Break. After Conf (which we get to have at awesome Logan Tabernacle) we hung out in our backyard soaking in the sun and laying on the coming-out-of-hiberation lawn. I LOVED being on my tummy in my sock feet with the sun warming the back of my hair. I put my head down on my crossed arms and breathed in the smell of spring grass and warm earth. Ahhhhhhh. It was as if my soul was waking up from a long winter nap. I could feel my spirit uncurl from the fetal position that it assumes in yucky winter weather and stretch itself. I love that smell so much it almost hurts. I know that if I was blind that I would still have the same favorite color. That smell is the color green.

p.s. Tues and Weds has been rainy wetness. The lawns all look gorgeously lush and ready to mow. J got out of the Jeep on weds morning as I dropped him off for school and took a big sniff. He looked back at me, squinched up his nose, and said, "It smells like worms out her." He also has a nose for spring. *snork*

J is for July

My 7-year-old is a chip off the old block (me.)

He got up last week on a drizzly chilly day, crawled into my cozy bed, snuggled into the warmth and said "Mom I wish that I could wake up in the morning and it would be July. *sigh* I lOVE July."

Later that morning he was still pondering that sick-of-winter thought and decided to make a list of everything he would do when July finally came. Here is the list:

• park day
• yellowstone
• sprinklers
• fossil mowtan
• campeen
• Hawaii
• take beautiful pichers
• swim at pool
• play with frends
• trampoling
• gardin
• bear lake
  
• ride bikes

Village Idiot On Demand

Okay.. How hard is it to run a VCR? Put the TV on the show you want, put a tape in, and push REC, right? This is the way most people do it. I on the other hand am an idiot! *arg!*

I just had the most difficult time EVER working the VCR. It was a simple thing. I just wanted to make a copy of the Saturday morning and Afternoon sessions of conference for my friend. Comcast has them On Demand for free. (Hope I don’t get in trouble by admitting that I was doing that. It’s probably why I had such a stupor of thought about the whole thing.)

My friend feels bad for the trouble I had but it was so NOT her fault that I haven’t got a brain in my head. I was happy to do it for her and volunteered for the job.
She brought me her tapes and I threw them in, started the Sat morning session, and hit record. They are 2 hours each and so I just let it play with the sound down and went about my day. I had to leave and because it was On Demand I couldn’t set the timer on the VCR to stop so I just let it record until I got back to stop it. I rewound it to the end of the first session so that I could record the afternoon on the same tape. So far so good.

The next day, I started the afternoon session recording and wanted to hear a few of the talks again so I cranked the volume and cleaned my house while I listened. I got a phone call and so I muted the sound. when I saw it was the last song I text-ed my friend that they were ready and she could come pick them up.

Being a perfectionist I rewound a little and checked it. I found out that the last talk was minus sound. Apparently, when I muted the volume what I actually had done was muted the cable box and not the TV and so no audio went to the VCR. The picture was good but the sound was absent. I got it set up to re-record the last talk (Pres. Ering’s awesomeness!) but didn’t have it done when my friend stopped by so I had to admit my mistake. No prob. She is a good friend and didn’t make fun. She said that she always wanted to learn to read lips. *ha!* I told her I’d run it over to her when it was done.

Finished. I rewound it (and checked the playback at the first, cuz you know how I am) and found to my dismay that I when I turned the sound down for that session it was the cable box again and so the talks were in whisper mode. *ack!* Fixed it. re-re-recording set. 2 hours later and I was setting the second session to record on a non-cranked volume. When it that was halfway done taping I realized that I had recorded the wrong morning session. I had taped Sun AM instead of Sat AM! *ugh*

(to my credit they do all look and start the same... a shot of beautiful grounds while the choir sings and the voice from above says, "Welcome to the 179th Annual Conference of the LDS Church...all copies or transcriptions of this broadcast without express written permission... etc, etc, etc... *sigh*)

I let the afternoon finish and rewound to re-re-re-recorde the correct morning session.

2 hours later I completely spaced stopping it and it ran over the afternoon session which completely ruined it and required a whole NEW taping of the afternoon session. *grumbles*

Finally done. I rewound the thing, (making myself not check ANY of it!) turned it over to my friend, and made her promise to not breathe a word to me about it if something was wrong with the tape. *gnashing of teeth*

LDS Funness

I love Conference Weekend. I love the talks, I love the feelings, I love the music!

I love the shows about the church around the world that KSL puts in between sessions.

I love the projects I work on while I watch (last Fall I made a Levi Quilt and this year I digitally restored damaged antique photos! Way fun!) I also love the LEGO party that my kids have while they watch/listen.

Most of all, I lOVE day long church that I get to attend while in my Jammies!! *happy sigh*

Here is how to keep the fun lasting longer: I just found out that if you go online to the conference stream/download area that you can download (for free) the music mp3’s from all the sessions (even the YW Broadcast!) Click here to sample and download music from this April 2009 session and/or here to watch/listen/download the talks or subscribe to the Conference Podcasts. Yippee!!

p.s. check out the great Easter things on the homepage www.lds.org

p.s.s. Have you seen the NEW ERA supplement web pages? more jokes, mormonads, and fun games/ puzzles that go with the magazine. www.newera.lds.org

p.s.s.s. Genealogy fun-ness. The church has a complete Pioneer database that is searchable by name or wagon train that has links to online journal entries, news articles, and biographies for all wagon and handcart companies from 1847-1868. Tons of resources at a click! Woohoo!

Tortured in Nylon

Okay.. here is a shout to all the girls out there who have ever worn nylons. What is with these things? I lifted a new pair out of the box/egg thingy and they hung there in the air much like I imagine Peter Pan’s shadow must have looked. I pondered them and tried to convince myself that I could squeeze into these 12-sizes-too-small-leg-raisins. I felt like a snake that was trying to fit back into its shed skin.

(S’s noticed that these sad wrinkled things look like the poor unfortunate souls in Ursula’s garden in the Little Mermaid movie. *laughs* Once you get this, you will think of that every time you put a pair on.)

I finally got everything squeezed and tucked into these contraptions and realized that I had snagged them right above my knee with my freshly trimmed fingernail. *gnashes teeth* With only 5 minutes till walking out the door, some fast repair work had to be done. Every nylon wearing woman has a bottle of clear fingernail polish handy just for this type of emergency. A little dab of this sticky stuff will fray-check the tiny tear and hold embarrassment off for one more wearing.

I went to church and didn’t think of the little run again until after sacrament meeting when I stood up to go to the next meeting and felt my epidermis tear as the nylon that was now glued to my skin shifted and took a few hundred layers of skin with it. ow.

After church, I set a new speed record for getting out of those middle throttling torture devices and made the mistake of holding them up in front of me again. They were now a stretched out saggy-baggy-elephant imitation of legs. I submit that if anyone wants to feel badly about the size of their thighs, forget trying on new swim suits, just put on a brand new pair of hose! It don’t matter what size jean you wear, doing the new nylon dance /battle will make you feel bad about it and then even worse when you take yourself out of them again.

I am so going back to knee-highs... 'cept I wear them too long and they fall down. *sigh*

Lets all go back to petticoats, K? I like the idea of wearing a pair of capris under my dress. Here is hoping that all nylons go the way of pioneer bonnets, whalebone corsets, and bustles.

The Eyes Have It

It happened. My mother told me that it would when I was exactly this age. She was right.

I was getting ready for church and put on my necklace. I turned the clasp to the front and bent my chin down to see it and I couldn't. Everything was fuzzy. I blinked and squinted but nothing changed. I had lost my eyesight. eek!

I've been in denial a little. I started noticing that one eye wasn't seeing as well as the other. I would close it while birdwatching, all the while blaming the focus on the binoculars. *laughs*

I finally had to admit that it is my focus that is off. I've seen my friends start to hold things out further in front of them in order to see better on close up things. I guess I'm going to have to teach my husband how to put necklaces on for me or just start wearing longer ones. *sigh*

Snowy Traditions

I really dislike winter. Oh I like how it looks for Christmas time and as a novelty of the changing seasons. But, I detest being cold such that Winter is by far my least Fav season. I do try to make it into something fun and, at least once a year, have an outside playdate with my kids. I try to choose a warm (relative to winter, of course) sunny day. It also has to have the perfect snow (sunshine is a secret ingredient of this also cuz it melts the snow a little and makes it more sticky for building stuff.

2 years ago we didn’t have a big enough snow so that there was any snow to speak of in the spring. and last year I was not in a good enough place to be the “fun” mom. I thought that, after the big melt this year, that mother nature wouldn’t be cooperating again and I wouldn’t be able to pull It off.

Then we got dumped on. More than a foot overnight! We had gone from the sunny greening grass beautiful day lets’put-up-the-tramp and get the porch swing out to scraping the driveway again 3 times in one day. This was the day!

I jumped into my snowpants and dived in. The snow wasn’t awesome but it packed okay and with T’s help I built a fair enough fort. Because this was new snow the thing was perfectly camouflaged from the bus stop vantage point. Once inside and hunkered down we could not be seen. T invented a brilliant way to make a peeky hole (handle of the broom) and we made a weapons cache and staked out the bus stops.


First was the junior high kids. They weren’t as easy to surprise. But we still got in some good licks. Of course, the girls ran by just out of our range squealing and fast stepping in their girlish shoes, but the boys launched a counterattack. They are much better shots then when they were little and have had a few years practice on me doing this to them.

It was fun tho. S just casually got the mail and then was our photographer for the next round. I guess the novelty of this little game has run out for her. My nephew, being the oldest and wisest of that group, said “Oh yea, Lisa, that’s real mature!” but he was the one that stuck around the longest, fired off the most return fire, and obviously liked it even better than the little kids did. We must be related!


Then it was time to ambush J’s grade school stop in the other direction. Of course this wasn’t as great as it used to be because the bus stop has moved. Used to be that all 20 kids had to pass our house to get home and it was a perfect ambush spot. Now we only get 3 kids walking by plus J.

Of course, he was the slow one on this day and we had launched our attack and were holding the invaders off when he finally noticed what was going on. He immediately skirted the blast zone and ran into the house. hmmm not what I was hoping for. When he finally came out to join the fray he was able to breech the defensive wall by attacking from the unprotected rear.

I am definitely finding a better spot next year.
We had a great time and now the snow can melt and not return until next Christmas thank you.

TA DA!

So I finished my book finally (thanks to a friendly kick in the pants).. I was totally dragging my feet because I was afraid that I would not be happy with what it turned out to be like in the end. That would be a blow. Turns out that I am pleased. Not thrilled - I still see lots of problems with it, but, I like it.

The best part is that the thing is out of my head and actually printed on paper. I can't tell you how good it feels to hold it in my hand. It is still rough around the edges but it is to the point that it would be okay to let people actually read it.

I feel very vulnerable however. I didn't realize how much of my heart that I would put into it. It is, after all, my brain child and I have been working on it for years. I know it needs critical inspection and feedback to bring it of age and make it better but I am going to have to pair friendly critiques with lots of chocolate. I'm glad that the first readers are my good friends. I know they will be kind and I am counting on them to be helpfully honest.

Yeah me!! *claps*

and hello blogging again!