Finally- A Legitimate Use For The Poof

You know the poof.  The bath poof.   You get them every Christmas.  From well meaning people.  Who think you aren't washing yourself properly and need some help in the shower.

I used to think they were great.  And then I started thinking about the bacteria festival that goes on in those things after just one use and I was done.  D-U-N.  DONE.

And then k-ster started seeing them and thought I liked them, so every Christmas, he gets me a couple.  I even made a big deal last year about how I don't like them.  And please don't get me any more.

He thought I was kidding.

When I left it with my Christmas presents and didn't do anything with it right away, he brought it into the shower and stuck it to the wall with the handy suction cup.  In case I forgot what it was for.

And it sat there until today.  Because I take most of my showers outside and didn't really see it there.

But today, it was time to clean the bathroom.  It's been stinking lately.  Of toilet.  No matter what I do, all I can smell is toilet.  And after all my scrubbing today, it still smells like toilet. 

I realized that I can use the poof to scrub---- the bathroom!!!  OF COURSE!  It lathers nicely when I put Ajax on it and it's a nice handful of scrubber.  I just went crazy in the tub, scrubbing and having a grand old time!

Now, I can toss it in the wash after I use it and when it falls apart, I won't care because I used it.  For scrubbing!  Just not on my body.

**Don't criticize me for my harvest gold bathtub.  What, you don't scrub the very tub you grew up using?  The one that was put in circa 1970 something?  When all anyone could see were 4 colors:  brown, orange, gold and avocado?  It's lost its luster, so it's a bitch to clean, but now that I have my handy dandy poofs, nothing can stop me!

I thought I'd wrap the package all neatly with a picture of the floor.  Yep, the original linoleum.  From the day linoleum was invented, I think.  I have this in two bathrooms!  I'm so lucky!

Feel Good Friday

It's so hard to find Feel Good Friday moments lately.  My days pass in a frantic haze.  But I'll try.

We did a one mile walk or run this morning at school and I chose to run.  I enjoyed it and didn't even get sweaty.  It was COLD!

Along the lines of physical activity, I taught my spin class tonight and it was fun.  Kind of like old times!  Part of this is because I found a lot of music that had been deleted out of itunes, for reasons I still cannot understand.

K-ster made supper on Wednesday which pretty much preserved our relationship because I had a lesson until 7pm and was hungry before I even went.  It's amazing how when someone else has made supper, eating it at 7:15 isn't such a big deal.  If I had had to make it myself, I probably would have gnawed off my hand in the process.


Lia sophia has COMPLETELY lost their minds.  From now until Christmas, you can buy 1 item at full price and get TWO at half price.  As always, the most expensive items are half price!  Truly insane.  Let's get shopping, ladies!  I'll have it shipped to you in time for the holidays if you get your order in by December 16th.

And the best thing to feel good about:  we have two half days and then 3 days off next week.  The half days are actually full days for teachers, but I only have to teach in the morning, so this is a good thing.

Now go write your own feel good Friday moments and then come back here and tell us  where to go!

Turks and K-ster

It happened again.

We had some visitors. 

They were quite as plentiful as last time and they were definitely younger and smaller.

No matter their size, I just think wild turkeys are the most bizarre creatures! They are so prehistoric looking.  I always feel like I'm looking at dinosaurs when I look at them.

They paid us a visit the other morning, just as we were both leaving.  They didn't seem too fazed by us and since there were no males, nobody got all puffed up and aggressive.

K-ster has an app on his phone for animal calls, so he played the turkey call.  I figured it was so digitized they wouldn't even know.  It was intriguing.  They didn't immediately react, but they started making noises and moving toward the sound.  He played it a few times. 

 THen he was like the pied piper, ushering the turkeys down the lane.

Everyone wants to know if he got one.  You cannot shoot females.

Plus, it's way too easy when they are dining right in your driveway.  And he's too much of a softy to really kill one.  I'm pretty sure.

Besides, who shoots a turkey at 7:30 and then hops in the truck to go to work???

An Afternoon With Inspector Clousseau

Have you seen The Pink Panther?  The recent one with Steve Martin?  I watch it every year with 7th grade and I just about fall down laughing every time.  I love Steve Martin and he is so hysterical in that role.

If you haven't seen it, you may not get the humor in this post.  I'll try my best.

Inspector Clousseau is a bumbling idiot and one of his most outrageous problems is his accent.  It is the worst impression of a French accent you will ever hear.  The worst. 

One of his problems is that he cannot say certain words at all.  And so, he brings in an accent coach to help him.  She sits there and painstakingly tries to get him to say words properly but try as she might, he says them horribly and can't imagine what the problem is.  One of those words is hamburger and it happens to get him in big trouble later in the movie.

Well, yesterday, I believe I worked with the very Inspector himself.  I have a new student who never had French and has no clue.  He doesn't try to have a clue.  It's been a tough 3 months and I finally blew the whistle and called home.

Since I am the first French teacher these kids have, I am more concerned with their vocabulary knowledge than perfect pronunciation.  I know, some people are gasping, but I'd rather they learn the words and then they can fix their pronunciation later. I know I still do.  It's a lifelong thing.  And God knows many of you out there hated your language teacher because all she cared about was how well you said it and to this day, you can't speak it at all (I hear this from parents all the time).

I tolerate a lot of very bad accents for the sake of good grammar.  And then I sometimes have mental breakdowns over common, every day words and we all have a good laugh.  And then they still pronounce it horribly. 

 Example:  BONJOUR

You said bonJOUR.  The accent is on the JOUR, not the BON.  SOmehow, I get a at least one kid every year who says BONjour and then it starts to spread and the next thing I know, the kid is in 8th grade and he has a band of others who also say BONjour.  But I digress.

So I called home and he stayed today.  This is how it went:

Me:  Ok, you have a choice, is it mon, ma or mes (pronouned moan, mah or may).  ?

Him:  ummm, grumble mumble, ummm MION.

Me:  you have a choice, is it mon, ma or mes (pronouned moan, mah or may)?

Him:  mumble umm MION.

Me:  is it mon, ma or mes?

Him:  MION

Me:  is it masculine, feminine or plural?


Him:  masculine


Me:  ok, so is it mon, ma or mes?


Him:  mion


Me:  Mon?


Him:  yeah, mon


a few sentences later:


Me:  ok, you said it's masculine, is it mon, ma or mes?


Him:  MION.


Me:  did you say it's masculine?


Him:  yeah


Me:  ok, is it moooooon, maaaaaaa or meeeeeeees?


Him:  MION


Oh my effing God HELP ME NOW!!!


a few minutes later:


Me:  is it mon, ma or mes?


Him:  MON!


Me:  GREAT!!  Perfect!  Now, is this one masculine, feminine or plural?

Him:  masculine

Me:  oui! so which one is it?

Him:  ummmm, ma, no I mean MION!

SHOOT.ME.NOW

When Left To My Own Devices

I watch shows on TLC.  I just can 't help it.  I like them!

You've read about this obsession and this one too.  The one k-ster hates the most is this one.

But when k-ster wasn't around on Sunday evening, I had to watch 19 Kids and Counting.  I love this show.  This is nothing like any of those others I linked to, because no one is being outrageous.  Except that they had a million kids.

And they went to Europe this summer, so I had to see  how they did that!

They fascinate me.  I am amazed that they keep having kids.  And that the kids do their best to get along on camera.  And that their oldest son got married and the wife just sort of fell into the fold of all of the other girls in the family and she just finished having her second baby.

It mystifies me that they can function.  And that Jim Bob, the father of them all, just plugs along like the politician he once was.  There is no doubt that when the family started to get way too big and costly for one man to make enough money to support, he used his politician ways to get a network to support their hungry mouths.

And now Michelle is pregnant with #20.  And #19 almost died, so she is really risking it with this one.

I want to know how these kids will all turn out.  I look at them and wonder which one will be the big rebel and turn on the family.  I wonder if any of them will go away to college or if they will all just stay nearby like the oldest one.  I wonder what the younger kids will think when they are adults and realize just how weird their lives were as they grew up from the very beginning on camera.

I wonder when these kids will actually enter the real world.  Because they go to church where their father runs the church.  They go to school at the kitchen table.  They go on vacations that are really missions.  They only time they go into the real, real world is when they go shopping for their crazy amounts of food.  At  what point will they have to actually learn to function with alarm clocks and deadlines and a "normal" life?

And the thing I wonder about the most is what kinds of drugs Michelle is on that she can remain so blase, cheery and peaceful with everything and everyone.

But, then k-ster walked in and saw me watching Sister Wives.  Don't worry.  I'm not too fascinated by Sister Wives.  I can't stand the husband, so this holds no interest for me.

What An Infomercial Can Teach You

When I first bought my Dyson vacuum, I was going to fall magically in love, like they promised.  I thought I would have so much suction, I'd be vacuuming up the remains of my ancestors from these floors.  I was certain my dirt cellar would pull right up through the main floor because the suction would be so great.

I was also sure that I would LOVe the ball that allows you to twist and turn this thing all over the place.

But I quickly learned that I didn't love it.  The suction was fine, but it was a hazardous machine.  I gave myself a bloodblister.  I thought it was very ergonomically inappropriate.  All of that freedom in the handle allows you to really make your wrists turn in weird ways and it hurts.

Then I caught my first glimpse of the Dyson infomercial and learned that it's actually easier to carry it like this.  Ok, so it became a little less of a danger to carry it, but I still wasnt' in love with it.

And then I recently saw my second glimpse of the infomercial.  And I learned that I dont't have to do this anymore when I want to use the crevice tool or fabric brush.

I had no idea the pole can come out and you can just connect the tools here at the end and have a totally flexible end!  You just push the little but that you see by my hand and the rod comes out and then you can stick the tools on right there.

So much more user friendly!  I used to literally hold my elbow up really high so I could hold that rod at the right angle so I could vacuum the couch or whatever and I it really bothered me.  I thought maybe the Dyson had a height requirement!

But, no matter how much I learn to like the Dyson, this is Gwenstopher's reaction EVERY time.  They haven't shown how to not scare cats during the infomercial.

Why I Can't Go INto Politics

This is exactly why I can't go into politics.  I would be just like Rick Perry and say stupid , stupid things like this and then try to laugh it off.  What an idiot!