The following post is supported on three legs, like a little stool.
Most, if not all, of you will be familiar with "The World's Shortest Melodrama". For those of you that aren't familiar with it, here's a good example
Equipment: One piece of paper accordion folded into a bow shape.
Cast:
Damsel (bow in hair)
Villain (bow on upper-lip as moustache)
Hero (bow at neck as tie)
Script:
Villain: You must pay the rent!
Damsel: But I can't pay the rent!
Villain: You must pay the rent!
Damsel: But I can't pay the rent!
Villain: You must pay the rent!
Damsel: But I can't pay the rent!
Hero: I'll pay the rent!
Damsel: My hero!
Villain: Curses! Foiled Again!
That's the first leg
Now, many of you will already know that my son is an avid Sesame Street fan and, recently, the "Word on the Street" was "moustache". Like so
As a result of this, my son and my husband have taken to occasionally placing their index fingers under their noses and exclaiming loudly, "Moustache!"
It's comical to watch and makes me laugh almost every time.
That's the second leg.
Okay, here's the third leg. Yesterday, I showed my moustache loving son "The World's Shortest Melodrama" using my finger instead of a piece of paper. He loved it and immediately began copying me. Then I folded up a piece of yellow construction paper and we used that for a while.
Here's the result. My husband, who laughed when I translated this for him, said it seemed oddly apropos.
Same set up and cast
Script:
Villain: Pay rent!
Damsel: I can't!
Villain: Pay rent!
Damsel: I can't!
Hero: I am a hero!
Villain: Oh no!
Damsel: Yay!
Usually, right around Christmas time, I decide to do some kind of homemade project. I did two this year, but this second one is probably something of a more difficult undertaking. The last time I made a gingerbread house, I used a kit and it came out predictably well. This year, however, I decided to make one completely from scratch. Here's the story.
When I first decided to build a gingerbread house, I knew right away that I didn't want to build a typical gingerbread house. I toyed with the idea of building a gingerbread castle, but the more I looked at other people's castles the more I began to think that such an undertaking might be very, VERY complicated (a word which here means entirely too hard, stressful and frustrating for me). Then, after a while, I got to thinking about the original gingerbread house, featured in the Grimm brothers' verison of Hansel and Gretel and I wondered how easy it would be to make a model of that house. Then, once I had a concept in mind I moved to the next step. Planning.
The planning phase of building any house usually involves a floor-plan and blueprints and my gingerbread house wasn't much different. I bought a foldable foam-core base and a piece of posterboard and began to try to figure out what my house should look like. To be technically acurate, it would need a little room in back with the witch's next meal in it. Anyway, I doodled around until I had a template. Then, I cut it out and taped it together to see if it would fit. Let me tell you, right off, here, if you are following this hoping to get some tips on cookie house building. If you choose to make your own pattern, allow at least 1/4 inch of wiggle room if some of your pieces have to fit together.
Anyway, now that I had my plan and my pattern, I went onto the internet in search of a good, first-rate recipe (which I will not be posting here because I don't know whether it was my fault or the recipes. Either way, I wasn't happy with the way the cookies turned out). Put it together and baked it. That was last night. Silly girl. You know better than to stay up until three in the morning baking cookies. Yeah, I know. So anyway, I think I may have rolled out some of the cookies too much because most of them shrunk a little.
Once I had the cookies ready, I needed icing for assembly glue and candies for decoration. I also needed something edible to make the people out of. Here's a list of the treats that made it onto this house.
- Red Hots
- Werther's original candies (they make great window panes)
- Cakemate green sugar (for grass)
- Mini-meltaway mints (the kind they sell right around Christmas time for no reason that I readily understand)
- Spice drops
- Miniature candy canes
- Round starlite mints
- Rold Gold Pretzel twists
- Ready-made commercial fondant (to be molded into the Witch and 3 kids)
Once again, the icing recipe didn't come out exactly the way I wanted it to, so no recipe here either. The upside, though, is that it did its job and stuck things together properly.
As you can see by the pictures, even though the ingredients were (in my opinionated opinion) substandard, the finished product actually turned out pretty good. My family are certainly looking forward to eating it when the time comes.
I'm sorry I didn't get on and tell you about how the housework went yesterday. I'm afraid I was pretty tired after working the day before. I expect to have another of those kinds of nights, but less strenuous, one hopes.
*********************************LATER*********************************
Pardon the interruption. I just had to spend an hour and a half in clearing my daughter's floor. I still respected much of her privacy. I didn't take things from shelves or her toybox, I just picked everything up off the floor. I was tempted to just rake everything up and put it all into plastic bags, like my dad use to threaten to do to me, but I used restraint.
Regarding yesterday, I did get the refrigerator clean, but I also worked myself into the ground so I didn't get anything else done that day. I also managed to clear the top of my desk, a job that took most of the afternoon. I clonked out right around nine and slept through until noon :-( Anyway, the regular household chores still need doing. If I act fast, I ought to be able to finish them in an hour. Then I still need to clear the floor of my own room. Hopefully, that won't take altogether too much time. I'd like to have it done before I go to bed. My husband, sweetie that he is, has said that he won't allow me to pull another all-nighter, though, because I am grouchy and hard to live with when I'm tired.
On a side note, I had strange dreams during my nap this morning involving my wedding ring and long hallways leading to I don't really remember where.
I'll try to write again tomorrow and let you know how the inspection seemed to go.
Well, you'll all be pleased to know that I finally seem to have gotten my act together and am making progress, slowly but surely, in the area of the housework, though I'll admit I had to hide my lappy from myself in order to do it. I'm nearly done with the laundry, the dishes are mostly done, and my daughter's room looks much better. I anticipate working on the refrigerator tonight after my kids are both in bed and I may make a little headway on clearing my desk before I hit the sheets as well. Following my husband's suggestion to just put things away rather than fill up boxes and then place them hopefully someplace like the contents might somehow put themselves away is working really well.
My daughter has accepted the responsibility of a personal wastebasket, (somewhat unwillingly I'll admit, but still) and I'm pleased to say that placing reminders into my PDA to help her get her chores done is working out very nicely. She actually earned her sticker for completed daily chores today. I was well pleased.
Anyway, back to the subject of housework. I anticipate finishing a number of projects before Thursday morning, when our annual housing inspection takes place. Here's the list.
- Clear and organize my desk
- Clear the little end table we keep the newspapers in and put the things on it where they belong
- Clean the fridge
- Clean my room
- Clean my kids' room (if necessary).
There will likely be another entry under this title tomorrow, so stay tuned.
My husband went in for back surgery this weekend. Nasty business, but I, for one, am glad that it's over with. Now we just have to get through the 6 months of recovery.
(sigh)~~
Any and all prayers and well wishes headed in our direction will be welcomed and made at home.
"Did it snow much when you were a child - tell something about it, what did you do?"
When I was a child, we had snow almost every winter, sometimes up to two or three feet of snow and sometimes as little as a quarter of an inch or so. Whenever it snowed, me and my brothers would rush to the coat closet and throw on all our snow duds (coat, boots, hat, mittens, scarf) and go out and build. With my brothers, it usually meant snow forts and, following that, snow fights. One time, though, we tried to build a snow couple; a snow man and a snow woman. The snow woman fell apart before we could get her completely built. Another time, we had so much snow, we tried to make an igloo. Of course, our fingers froze before we finished it and, the next day, all the snow had turned into ice. The day after that, we had a thaw and so, what little we'd accomplished was destroyed.
I think the best part, by far, about playing in the snow, though, is being able to come inside for a nice, hot cup of cocoa afterwards. Sometimes, as a special treat, my mom would float marshmallows in it, either a handful of the mini ones or one of the regular-sized ones. We'd sit around the dining table with red noses and red fingers just huddled over our mugs of cocoa, like we were trying to drag the smallest amount of warmth from it, and just sip it.
I miss that.
Yesterday, my daughter got into some sort of accident which shoved a piece of wood underneath her left big toenail. Poor kid. I managed to get it out with a pair of tweezers and a very small precision screwdriver, but not without the help of my husband, who had to hold her down and hold her foot still so that I could grab the splinter with the tweezers. When we finally got the thing out, it was probably about half an inch long and about an eighth of an inch wide. My daughter was profuse in her gratitude and we were both shaking when it was all over. Considering the size of the sliver and the emotional ordeal we'd both been through, I thought it wise to take her to Baskin Robbins for icecream. While we were there, we met some rodeoers from Oklahoma who were here for the fair and said that they had just pulled a nail from the heel of one of their horses because it was placed wrong and giving the horse pain. I felt sorry for the horse and the rodeoers seemed nice, too. After that, we went to Hastings and bought some books for me and a stuffed owl for my daughter. We both agreed that, even if we knew ice cream would be involved, we never wanted to go through that again. Ever.
I got this one from the blog of my husband, jaklumen. Who he got it from, I have no clue.
How to play if you want to play, too:
Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to people, including me. You can't use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It's a lot harder than you think! Repost it as "My Life According to (BAND NAME)
1.Are you a male or female?
Good Morning Girl
2. Describe yourself:
Midnight Dreamer
3. How do you feel:
a. Feeling That Way
b. Loved By You
4. Describe where you currently live:
City of the Angles
5. If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
Mystery Mountain
6. Your favorite form of transportation:
Walks Like a Lady
7. Your best friend is:
Can't Tame the Lion
8.Your favorite color is:
Lights
9. What's the weather like:
Winds of March
10. Favorite time of day:
Why Can't This Night Go On Forever
11. If your life was a TV show, what would it be called:
Destiny
12. What is life to you:
Don't Stop Believing
13. Your current relationship:
Stone in Love
14. Looking for:
Escape
15. Wouldn’t mind:
Kiss Me Softly
16. Your fear:
Ask the Lonely
17. What is the best advice you have to give:
Be Good to Yourself
18. If you could change your name, you would change it to:
Suzanne
19. Thought for the Day:
Never Walk Away
20. How I would like to die:
Loved By You
21. My motto:
Patiently
This is something I put together using MS Paint. My husband often suggested that these kinds of things should be on their gravestones when they died, even if they were only graffiti'd on. The full names and birth dates are all accurate. I got the death dates by rolling a 30-sided and 12-sided dice. Enjoy, Dudes!
PS. For those who aren't conversant with Bill and Ted, check the following link: Bill and Ted
Under pressure from various family members (you know who you are), here are some of the very latest pictures I took with my our brand-new camera.
This is the most recent photo of me. Unfortunately, it illustrates just how fat I've become. Then again, it also showcases my favorite hat: the Pirates of the Caribbean ballcap. Now, I know, just looking at it, that it looks thrashed. Believe it or not, it looked like this when I bought it. I like it because, no matter how long I own it, it will always look as good as new.
After I took this picture, I wasn't sure why I did. Jak contends that, if you look closely at it, observing whose hand is on top and the fact that his fingers appear to still be reaching out, you'll understand. Anyway, that's why it has the title it does.
This is Jak in his hat. Yes, it's a cheapoid straw hat he picked up in a supermarket. I think he looks good in it (I know, I'm biased). He bought it to keep the sun off his face and the back of his neck. So long as it does that, who cares what anyone else thinks?
This is my son. When I took these pictures, he was strapped into the stroller. The shot to the left came first. I just stuck the camera in front of him and, when I went to snap the picture, he smiled big and reached for the camera. Classic! The second one I took because the first one sort of chops his chin off. Unfortunately, he didn't grin as big the second time, but he still looks almost unbearably cute. Don't you think so?
This is Jak Jr. in his leash and harness. I forget exactly where I got this, but man is it ever useful. I stick him in it when I want to control where he goes without limiting his mobility. Check out that huge smile! He was fussing a lot after Jak and I'd been resting a while, so I let him out of his stroller, stuck his monkey on his back and let him loose.
When I let Jak Jr. loose, Princess offered to hold on to his leash. So, I told her to make sure that he didn't go to far or out into traffic, gave her the leash and let her handle it. When he stopped to pick flowers, I called to her and asked her to smile. This is the shot I got.
Well, that's all I'm posting for now. If you want to see more, you'll probably have to take a look at my web album on Picasa. I didn't put all the pictures there. Just the good ones. Search for "wavemistress" if the link doesn't take you straight to the album.
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Recent Comments
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Princess Thunderstorm said:
Yes. The ants certainly seemed to be enjoying the thing just as much as we were. read more
on Tackling an American Holiday Tradition -
jaklumen said:
UPDATE: Since we are not free of our ant infestation, this had to be tossed. read more
on Tackling an American Holiday Tradition -
LBeeeze said:
Playing around or learning online is always lots more fun than cleaning, at least it is for me.When I was... read more
on Housework report, day 1 -
jaklumen said:
From what you told me, it DID go well. I was half to 3/4 asleep at the time. read more
on Housework report, day 3
on The World's Shortest Melodrama