By Bell | December 22, 2011
One comment

Hold on…

It’s been another busy week around our house…with no anticipation of stopping for another couple of weeks. Who decided to name this “Christmas break”? I’m not on vacation. And even though the kids don’t have to go to school…we have them busy at the house doing odd jobs and helping us.

Between my work..which is experiencing a 25% increase over last year’s sales (normal boost for holidays is around 15-18%)…and AT’s work..I’m wondering how we ever get ANYTHING done. But, in my head, I know the crazy will settle.

AND- I’ve learned not to create a time intensive project for myself…I need to plan ahead. If said it before and never really listen to myself.
Project for this year? We are dubbing all of our know VHS and CompactVHS tapes over DVDs.Chapter cuts, title cuts, descriptions. Yep.
The cool part? We are more than halfway finished with all of them. My family had around 38 VHS tapes and around 40-ish Compact VHS tapes. I will be done with all of these today. whew! Love my Daddy for being the guy behind the camera for all these years. It’s been soooo much fun to watch all of these. I hope my siblings appreciate the copies I’m making for all of them. I’m pretty sure they will.

AT has 20-ish tapes from his Dad. He’s started them. Funny stuff.
And…we have about 8 tapes from GAC’s parents. We did those first…but have to do them again. Yay for learning, right?

What else are we up to?
Well… Pigpen has decided to learn magic. From his magic kit. That he got for Christmas LAST year. : /
And MastaG has pretty much isolated his activities to (unless asked to do something) texting on his phone…or playing his video game.

We finally put up a Christmas tree.

WeePT FINALLY cut her first tooth. It’s been a mean, angry little bump under her gums for weeks. Now? A very sharp little sliver. She’s making the funniest faces. It must feel weird in her mouth.

Slingblade?

Silly baby

And then.. Sunday night, after spending the last 4 hours on the floor playing at a family event…we get home, plop her on the floor… and like a fat little inch worm, she takes off “crawling”.

And so far, she hasn’t forgot. I doubt she will.  : )

(Yes…she’s going after the dog’s Kong)

Category: Kids, Ramblings |
By AT | December 19, 2011
One comment

Hardhead contest

When Pigpen went outside with the doberman to give him some exercise, they had a meeting of the minds, prompting the question:
Does a 9 year old boy or a 3 year old doberman have the harder head?

You decide…

image

 

Category: Kids, Pets | Tags: ,
By AT | December 18, 2011
No comments

Mobility haiku

So mobility
WeePT will soon achieve
Was scooting tonight

Time to face some facts
And it’s a hard ass truth, folks
Nothing will be safe

So yes, it’s on now
Just like a force of nature
Or determined kid

Category: Haiku | Tags:
By AT | December 17, 2011
One comment

Is it over yet?

Ah, the holiday season.

Folks will disagree, but my theory is that the amount of stress you have as an adult in December is directly proportional to the amount of glee you had in said month as a child.

If that’s the case, young AT had super kickass holidays and young Bell had even better ones.

I have a solution for my younger generation…  I’m making their holidays lame this year.   They’ll thank me for it one day.

Category: Ramblings |
By AT | December 14, 2011
No comments

A brief moment with WeePT

image

Hello.
I’d like to have a word with you about green beans.  And bilingualism…

Category: Kids | Tags:
By AT | December 13, 2011
2 comments

Oak Ridge is still a backwards ass town, but it might be getting better…

Remember a few years ago, there was that whole fiasco about some people wanting to build a Target in this particular retail starved town, and then a whole bunch of other people complaining that the city would have to shell out a chunk out of pocket to help turn a formerly wooded hillside into a shopping haven?

Remember?

Me neither, really, because of the steady diet of alcohol to deaden the stark  realization that the once cool little dumbass town I live in had fallen so in thrall with jackholes and misanthropes that they couldn’t afford to spend money they wouldn’t ever miss to bring a opportunity to the town that would have improved it vastly.

Not that I’m bitter.

A tiny glimmer of hope, however, has been sparkling way out in the distance the past few weeks, in that…

(Ed note: WeePT really needed to add the following to this post)

jnjncbn          b b                         ggggggggg  b hnnnnnnnnnhhn1nh

(AT continues)

…there’s actually retail development happening now.  Or maybe.

Granted, it’s Oak Ridge retail development, which means that one of the two things announced thus far is a Panera Bread, which will move from it’s existing spot to this new one.  The other, however, is an Aubrey’s Steakhouse, which is known for making some crazy ass good food, and for which I’m mighty excited.

Adding to the backasswardsness of it is the fact that, as I understand it but can’t entirely confirm from the somewhat poor online news reporting this town has these days, the thing is entirely paid for by a tax on businesses.

Meaning that my favorite dive, The Other One, is paying for development to allow competitors to come to town, while receiving no assistance or services from the city to keep itself in business.

Still, tho, at this point I’m thinking cracking any number of eggs would be necessary to bake some sort of retail into this dumb ass town…

Category: Oak Ridge, Ramblings |
By Bell | December 11, 2011
No comments

Mid-holiday Haiku

Time just seems to fly
Between turkey day and now
Santa is coming

End of November
Feels like a whole month is left
There’s plenty of time

Then I realize
There are only 6 days off
Left to do the things

Like shop, shop and shop
Which I really hate to do
And then decorate

School functions pile on
Work is busy with crazies
Gotta shop for Spot

Started a project
Should have done it earlier
But, three-quarters done. : )

Excitement is nice
But hides itself behind stress
Gotta coax it out

Holiday concerts
are already done this year
School is out too soon.

Hard to see our friends
Waved to some at the parade
It was so cold out.

Thinking of my fam
Some are traveling a’ ways
Hard times for others.

I’ll be so happy
When we all get together
Seems like forever

Tree isn’t up yet
Everything else is ready
Lights are very nice

Baby is asleep
Walmart always wears her out
I does me that way.

Groceries are bought
Lights in the yard are sparkling
Dinner is cooking.

AT is so good
We tag-team to get it done
It’s pretty awesome.

I love holidays
Stress, chaos and lack of time.
Worth every (EV/RY) minute.

: )

Category: Haiku |
By AT | December 9, 2011
2 comments

So I was working from home the other day, and…

WeePT was helping me work from home a few days ago, and we had just finished breakfast and a little bit of play time (play time being that she plays on the floor while I sit behind her and supervise my laptop and my baby), and it was getting on time for the 10:30 bottle.

Alas, I had no clean bottles.  We are modern people (please), and use a dishwasher and two children to clean most of our dishes, but the bottles Bell and I hand clean with a cute little bottle spongy thing so they don’t get cloudy, and it hadn’t been done in a few days.

Alas, the dishwasher and two children had apparently been off the previous day, because the sink was full of dishes.  Ah well.  So was the dishwasher, except these ones were clean.  It appeared that there were obstacles in our bottle path.

So, WeePT saddled up for a daddy ride, and we started emptying the hell out of the dishwasher.  I was almost done, had just stacked the pyrex bowls in the pantry, when there was a crash like the scalded banshee of 14 hells from behind me, and glass was suddenly all over the floor.  And I’m not talking about “oh, no, I broke a glass”, I’m talking about solid pounds and pounds of glass.  If I had a smelter, I would be able to make the greatest lifesized glass buddha you’ve ever seen.

I don’t know about you, folks, but when metric shit tons of glass falls 3 feet behind my back and disintegrates all over the pantry floor, I like to stand there and gawk at it for about 15 seconds, just so my brain can fully process exactly what happened.

WeePT, on the other hand, is of a different sort.  She gave it about the same 15 seconds I did, and then let loose with an most impressive display of chest tied baby enthusiasm and foot kicking.

Long story short, the glass got cleaned up (we think it was a vase that one of the aforementioned kids placed precariously on the shelf 5 feet above the ground), the floor got swept and mopped, the sink got emptied, the bottles got washed, and the baby got fed.

And nobody got cut…

Until about 20 minutes ago, when my finger found a tiiiiiny piece of glass on the top of the dryer.  Which is situated fully 4 feet over and 3 feet above ground zero.

Crazy…

Category: Work | Tags: , , , ,
By Bell | December 9, 2011
No comments

Bab bab bab bab

Yeah.. I know.
AT is SUPPOSEDLY going to post some awesomeness here today.
We’ll see.

In the meantime, here’s some cute baby stuff for those of you that need your “fix.”

Category: Kids | Tags: ,
By AT | December 8, 2011
One comment

Regarding all this content lately

Why hello there!

So when we started this place back up, I had every intention of keeping up my writing as in the days of yore, popping some kind of new nugget of wisdom up on a daily basis, and letting the words flow from my fingers like grease from the skillet at a Waffle House.

Unfortunately, internet, as you by now have guessed, that hasn’t happened.  See, the problem with internet wordsmithing is that if you miss a day or two, it builds up in your head, and you convince yourself that you need to write something crazy awesome since you’ve kept everybody waiting.

Alas, you end up staring at the post screen for an hour trying to find that crazy awesome thing to say, and alasalas, it never comes.

True, like Bell said, we’ve been busy.  Two full time jobs, two older boys, and a baby tend to leave little time for luxuries like writing, or eating, going to the bathroom, bathing, etc, but that’s still not a good excuse.

No, for me, it is almost like my mind is completely vacant, which isn’t by itself anything new, but in the time that I find that I can fake having some semblance of depth, I’d rather do something like watch TV.  Which kinda sucks, because I do love the writing when I got something to say.

So, I’ve broken the ice, so to speak.  Tomorrow the crazy awesome begins.  Unless there’s something good on TV…

Category: Ramblings |
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