Tag Archives: NaBloPoMo

New Toothbrush?

I have always struggled with remembering when it is you are supposed to get a new toothbrush. I’m sure there is a rule of thumb, I’m just unclear what it is.

Once a month?

Every six months?

When the bristles squish out?

I’m sure there are “rules” about this, but my squeamishness of all things tooth related makes me unwilling to google it. (Sort of like how someone with arachnophobia would be unwilling to google “Black Widow” no matter how much they love their Marvel universe). I suspect it doesn’t matter.  In our house a toothbrush would never make it that long anyway.

Because a new toothbrush is probably warranted when they fall in the garbage.

Or when you lose it.

Or when you forget to pack one on vacation.

Or when a dog chews on it.

Or when the kids use it to scrub the sink and mirrors.

But one thing I know for certain.

When Jane explains to me that she had to use her toothbrush to push the used toilet paper off the seat into the toilet because otherwise her hand would get dirty. Then it is, for sure, time for a new toothbrush.

This has nothing to do with toothbrushes of any age.

This has nothing to do with toothbrushes of any age. Cassie is just cuter than any toothbrush I’ve encountered.

Afterwards, when the horror had left my face, and I was done explaining why that was a bad idea as well as why she no longer had a toothbrush.  I thought about the matter of fact way she used her toothbrush to do her dirty work while I was watching and wondered what else I hadn’t seen…

New toothbrushes – all around!

 

Mundane Monday: Marble

I am a pack rat of tiny things.

A plastic ring from a friend’s wedding, a tiny ceramic frog, dice, every bead that ever fell from a necklace, old buttons, a tiny alien… and a blue marble.

My marble is just one of many I had as a kid. It was not the biggest, nor the smallest. It wasn’t the one with the iridescent swirls or the one that looked like a globe. My marble is bright, light blue and shot through with tiny bubbles. If you hold my marble up to the light it looks as though the makers trapped a part of the sky, or perhaps a tropical sea, within it. Long ago, in high school, I put my marble in a yellow tin covered with sheep. I nestled it in a sea of paper clips, safe and hidden. As the yellow tin, the paper clips and my marble traveled with me over the years it was been joined by a pack of safety pins, a soda tab, part of a sea monster, a teeny dragonfly, a goggle clip and other tiny treasures.

I am a tiny pack rat.

Today I wanted to photograph my marble. My bright, blue, bubbly marble.

My marble was gone.

My children are not only tiny pack rats themselves, they are thieves.

A search of drawers, toy boxes and forgotten corners turned up six other marbles.

green marble

None of them were my marble.

 

My marble was going to be my contribution to this weeks Mundane Monday Challenge, but the green one will have to do.

 

Three Cheers For Meat!

It wasn’t intentional, raising such a meat lover. It just sort of, happened.

I mean, it’s true, I never ate anything green until I was 12, 24, 30, but vegetables now routinely infiltrate our meals. And, along side those much contested vegetables are the animals. Birds we’ve been out hunting go straight to the table and everyone agreed that Archibald tasted delicious. So while vegetables have often been a sore subject around the dinner table, the girls have grown up knowing where their meat came from and occasionally what it’s name was. Something that turns others’ stomachs has been a fact of life for the girls for so long as to be a non-issue.

Now deer season and the source of most of our red meat for the year has arrived. Personally, I have yet to be convinced that waking up early and sitting in a tree in the cold would be a super fun plan, but one morning John left the house to do just that. When the girls asked where he was, I told them he was out hunting and maybe, if we were lucky, he’d bring a deer home

“Yay!”, Jane cried.

“Yay for meat!”, she cheered as she jumped up and down.

“Meat! Meat! Meat! Meat!”

I guess, thinking back to her involvement last year, I shouldn’t be surprised. Jane helping grind meatThe picture might be a year old but she’s lost none of her enthusiasm for the rewards of deer hunting!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Ornate

Weekly Photo Challenge: Ornate

Interpreting this week’s different photo challenges had me all a fluster.

First it was “mundane.” Turns out I don’t really like the word “mundane.” While I was trying to take a “mundane” picture I took this one and discarded it as being far too fancy, or shall I say, ornate.keyhole

Later, when I went back to look at it, I felt that even though it is very ornate by my home’s standards, it’s really a rather mundane photo after all.

I was all set to look again when I discovered that you can call it an escutcheon plate and that sealed the deal. Something with such a fancy name must be ornate!

Also the strange twist in perspective both frustrated and intrigued me. I’m not sure why it was happening and I couldn’t make it not happen and still catch the afternoon sunlight. So I’ve decided that it just makes it more ornate.

I shall call it, The Twisted Escutcheon Plate. With a name like that how could it not be ornate?

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

So, Cinderella’s a cyborg…

And now I know three quarters of you just dismissed this book with that information but hold on!

It’s Cinderella.

Cinderella!

A timeless fairy tale that’s been told all over the world, if you are going to make a step into the realm of science fiction, this is the place to do it!

Would I recommend it? Yup, I would. I know. Crazy, right? But Cinder’s no wimpy Disney princess, she’s a cyborg mechanic! But I do have to warn you, there are two more books after this and the fourth is coming out really soon and they are fantastic and large and really hard to put down!

Boyfriends Beware

The following is a public service announcement for future boyfriends of my children.

At approximately 1000 hours last Saturday this rooster was seen threatening the girls.dinner

At approximately 1001 hours on Saturday John exploded out of the house to the children’s rescue.

And at approximately 1001.05 hours Archibald the rooster was no more and we had a new dinner plan.

This concludes today’s public service announcement.

Mundane Monday: Firewood

The past few weeks I’ve noticed that greydaysandcoffee has been participating in Mundane Monday. And I thought to myself, “Self, you should do that too!”

And then I forgot.

Repeatedly.

But today- today I remembered! Camera in hand I went to turn something “mundane” into a beautiful photograph.

Turns out, I’m bad at mundane.

I keep wanting to give things a second chance.  I don’t want them to be, mundane…

“Hmm how about this chair?” I asked myself. “This chair isn’t mundane! I got it out of my family’s garage and painted it brown and then I painted it red and I have to keep gluing it back together when it falls apart! This chair has history!”

The door knob? Anything but mundane. Look at it! It’s full of swirls and lines and hey! That could be an “ornate” photo challenge! But not mundane.

The wood stove? Couldn’t possibly. Not only did we move it from the old house, how many people have a wood stove? Besides it’s full of fire! Fire is not mundane.

The silverware? The table? The floor? My boot? Too many stories, too much history, possibly too much caffeine.

Yes, today I discovered that “mundane” is not my word.

I did make firewood all day though and firewood is pretty mundane. I mean, if you don’t think about what kind of tree it is and why it was cut it down. Also you need to try to forget how you hauled it to the wood pile and ignore the the different noises the splitting maul makes as you split it, and then of course when you stack it there is a bit of an art to get those stacks to stay up and hold tight and the shape of the pieces matters…

*sigh*

I love my firewood.

In the end, I took a picture of a piece of firewood. It’s just firewood. It’ll be burned in our wood-stove to heat the house. The tree it came from had a nest of ants in the middle of it and they smoothed the wood to a velvety appearance as they made their tunnels and did their ant things. Which possibly makes it one of the most un-mundane pieces of firewood I could find to photograph.firewood carved by ants

But like I said, I’m bad at mundane.

 

Black and White Sunday: Day’s End

My brother and I sat on the tailgate of the truck as we waited for our parents to hike out of their field. Laughing and talking, sharing a drink and pulling burrs out of the dogs. Enjoying the day’s end as the sun sank until everything glowed in it’s own halo of light.
Trip black and white

Discerning readers may notice I shared this picture once before, in color, but as one of my favorites from the Montana trip I couldn’t resist fiddling with it again.

I think it’s better in black and white, how about you?

39165-nolasugar_bwbadge_pm

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…