Monday, September 27, 2010

Fall Ball Comes to an End

Summer started out filled with baseball. Myles loves it. As long as his team wins. His dreams of being drafted by the major leagues before he even enters high school are very vivid. But really he loves the game. He has become one of those guys that can spout off the answer to any baseball trivia question out there. And he's only 12. I've tried to stump him. Can't do it.

He definitely loves the time spent with his friends in the dugout. Loves the snacks from the concession stand. Loves regaling us with his stories of wrongful calls by the umps and glorious plays made in the outfield.

I love how much joy he gets from the sport.

Unfortunately, what I seem to get from the sport is an unfortunate tan. I spent several days following his season opener two summers ago begging my family to take me to the burn unit at the hospital after receiving the worst sunburn of my life. And it left me with a beautiful tan line across the lower portion of my thighs that wouldn't fade until the following spring. Burn scar. I have learned to wear a hat because fine blonde hair doesn't protect the scalp from the sun. And it's extremely painful to blow dry your hair with a sunburned scalp. This year I felt like I'd gained some knowledge in the baseball season sunburn department, but still was left with those unfortunate burns on the small strips that didn't receive quite enough sunscreen.

I'm basically a red hot mess from May through July. And, this year Myles decided he wanted to play fall ball. I sat out in the cool fall air this past Sunday. The weather was really beautiful. Myles had a double header. Since I was prepared for the day to be cool, I wore long sleeves.

Guess what? Back of the hand sunburn.

The sun hates me.

The feeling is becoming mutual.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Rummaging Around

It is time for the annual rummage sale that happens at the fairgrounds in my little town. Yipee!! I loves me a rummage sale. I have gone every year that we have lived here and have always found something fabulous. This year, just like last year, my sister came up to rummage with me. Some of our great finds included Taylor Swift and Twilight tshirts for our daughters, some awesome jammies for the kids, and my personal favorite... Snowpants! I found Myles these awesome jammie pants
They are covered in Cheeseburgers! He loves them. And on our second trip down there, Myles found me this fabulous shirt


Wicked! Yay! And in my size. I credited him with the Rummage Sale Find of the Day.

I also picked up these super cute jar glasses for only ten cents a piece and I found 8 of them!



But really the most fun of the rummage sale is when my sister and I search through the table of tshirts looking for tshirts for ourselves. We have picked up YMCA tshirts, Zios Pizzaria tshirts, and tshirts from locations we have never visited. These awesome shirts generally bring us mocking and ridicule whenever we wear them, but love them we do.
Our general rummage sale strategy is to pick up everything we see that we may be interested in, haul all that crap around with us and then weed through it before we pay, putting back 75% of the crap we've been carrying around. This strategy results in excessive sweating while shopping, and sore arm muscles for days after the sale. But that's our plan and we're sticking to it.

So, during our weeding out process this year, I hold up a purple sweater that I was hanging onto for myself. "Do you think this is cute, or too teenager-y?" I ask Stacey. Her hesitation gave me my answer. I turned the sweater back around to look at it again because I thought it was cute. That's when I noticed the tag. it was from Justice for Girls. So that sweater wasn't even teenager-y, it was elementary school-y. My fashion sense may need some updating.

Then, I had picked up a tshirt that had a lion drawn on it. I grabbed it because it was really soft and the lion was kind of neat looking. But, it had a saying on the front. And I couldn't tell for sure what it said.


"What does this say?" I asked Stacey.
"Howard Forever?" she said.
"No, I think it's N-O-W-A-N-D, not Howard," I said.
"Oh, well I don't know what that means," she said to me. "No Wand Forever? I'm not sure."
Hmmm. Is this some brand name? A designer's name? Nowand Forever? No wand Forever. The lion reminded me of Narnia, so maybe it had something to do with that. Wand brings Harry Potter to mind. But, whatever. I'll google it at home before I leave the house wearing it to prevent questioning that I can't answer.
Fast forward to later in the day. I have shown the kids their loot, and thrown everything into the washer. While transferring everything to the dryer, I remember the No Wand Forever shirt and decide to solve this mystery. Onto Google I go. For all you non-morons out there (I, sadly, fall into the complete moron category) , Google will correct your spelling when you misspell something you are searching for. That's when I learned that No Wand Forever was actually Now And Forever. Ha ha. Neither me nor my sister could figure that out.
Total double blonde moment. We are blondes Now and Forever!

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Doggie Doo Doo

Guess what I was doing at 4:20am this morning? Cleaning up doggie diarrhea. From a Great Dane. It wasn't pretty. I woke up to his crying and howling and eventual insistant barking.
"Damn it, Boris," I sleepily croaked. He never wakes me up this early whining like this so obviously something is up. And upon reaching the hallway we keep him penned up in, SOMETHING WAS UP. Thankfully, the smell was too overpowering, but the entire hallway and most of the lower portions of Boris were not pretty. So, outside he went.
While he ran loose outside (we have no fence and I wasn't going to touch him to hook him to his rope, and in his current state, he wasn't going anywhere anyway), I cleaned up the hallway and threw yet another load of poopy blankets into the washer. (We've already been dealing with this problem for the past 24 hours). So, I did some quick online research and cooked up some white rice for Boris to eat. As a thank you for this homemade delight at 4:45am, he promptly pooped all over the back porch. So he went back outside and I put my cleaning gloves back on.
I'm not sure what state the house will be in when I return to it this afternoon. I may have to just leave it and move on.
Reason #1 not to choose a Great Dane for a pet: intestinal maladies are the things of nightmares. A sick elephant could not produce a greater disaster. Also, that cute face over to the right...
well, it's a whole lot less cute at 4:30am when it's covered in poop.