Metz Darling

Yesterday I went to work with it all gloomy and rainy.

When I left the sun was shining so brightly mere squinting was not doing the trick.  Especially since I drive West going home.

Rooting around in my purse, I couldn't find my sunglasses.  Then I remembered I'd left them in the van from our family excursion over the weekend.  I did however, have my son's bright yellow Finding Nemo sunglasses.

I don't think I made it a mile down the road before I gave up and put them on.

Too small, uncomfortably pressing on my face, slightly distracting with the frame in my peripheral vision.  Not to mention the annoying little tiny Nemo sticker on the upper corner of the left lens.

But the best reward of all was not the protection from the sun's glare.  Oh no.

It was the exaggerated looks of confusion and outright staring from the people in the other cars.

Took me back to the days of dressing up in my fanciest of clothes and galivanting around the small towns and countryside of SW Michigan with my friends Matthew & Dennis.  The looks we'd get from people. 

Oh, and here's a pic of a moth newly emerged from its crysalis.  My Mother In Law took it when we were on our family excursion at a local nature preserve.  The hand holding it is a field guide leading her and my daughter and a group on a nature walk.  My husband, son, & I were with another group doing some bird watching.

 

Isn't he beautiful?

 

A while back I discovered Twitter, just before the big boom with Ashton Whatshisname and Oprah.  I "follow" about 60 some people, some of which I am not ashamed to admit are considered "celebrities".  Mind you, my choices of who to follow though are based on the thought provoking "tweets" they post, as well as the genuine ability to make me laugh.

Among those celebrity Twitterers I follow is author Neil Gaiman.  When he posts a link, you can bet I will click it, because I feel that his links are never a waste of time.  This more recent one is no exception.

"neilhimself Dear (fightforyourrightobookburn) Christian Civil Liberties Union, whatever side you're on, I am now on the other one: http://bit.ly/twerps"

Unbelievable.  Book burning.  A lawsuit to demand the right to burn and ban a library book.  I thought those days were long gone.  If you don't like it DON'T READ IT!!  If you don't want your kids reading it then that's your business and up to you to enforce that (ha), but to deny others... GRRRRR!!!! 

 

Then, just as I was recovering from that, I heard about this on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me from this past weekend.

Oh My GOSH! HELLO!!>???????

There are no words to describe what I'm thinking right now.  Well, polite words that is.

Really, I just sat there dumbfounded when they were talking about it on Wait Wait, then of course I laughed at the "Heaven-O!" and their musings that workers might rebel by saying, "Heaven-O, how may I HELLp you?"

Seriously though, WTH?

Ok, gonna stop the rant now.  Feel free to chime in with your thoughts.

Oh, and if you to have a Twitter account, feel free to stop by and say Hello!  :-)

http://twitter.com/MetzDarling

PS:  I've also fallen in with the facebook crowd, http://www.facebook.com/Metzdarling

 PPS:  Forgot to add this very important public service message from Neil Gaiman as well.

"neilhimself No! Do not arm squirrels! They will take over the world if you do. http://bit.ly/1950k"

 

It's that time of year again, time to dust off those tornado sirens.

We (Americans) love our extreme videos.  Extreme car chases, extreme girls going wild, extreme animals being their naturally wild selves, extreme uncomfortably close accidents, extreme watching guys get their tender spots crunched.  Fun!

Ooops, left out the Extreme weather gone wild videos. That is one of my guilty pleasures.  Thing is, I've got a huge phobia of storms.  Even a mild thunderstorm can cause me to get agitated an nervous. 

I am terrified of being caught anywhere near  tornado.  Yet I cannot stop watching these guys.  I've been following them for a while on their website. http://www.tornadovideos.net/video-gallery before they were on Storm Chasers.

 

(note, this isn't one of their pictures)

I don't know, maybe I'm partial to them because one two of the guys is are from my home state of Michigan.

Anyway, thought I'd give them a shout out because they deserve it, as well as the other storm chasers out there.  The ones out there for the thrill AND the educational aspect of it.  The stuff they learn could save lives one day.

 

This was one of those so full and busy weekends you're too tired to go back to work.

Saturday we worked on some household chores, moving stacks and stacks of wood for our "Build It In One Day" Deck project. (HAH!  As if!).  Then yesterday was the Town of Riverhead Street Painting Festival.  Gabby, my Mother In Law Suzanne, and I went.  The "boys" stayed at home.

 First up, we hit the Lego Exhibit.  Some local boys made some awesome lego models.  The big big set on the center table here is from an ongoing collection made by a young man, 18 yrs old now, who actually left more than 1/2 of it at home. 

Then some sights from the arts & crafts fair and activities along the way.

 

 

 

Giant Checkers Game

Craft Fair

 

 

 

 

Music, poetry, storytellers...

 

 

 

Art & Architecture

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sharing fun with the family dog(s).

 

 

Street Painting!

 

And apparantly the papparazi were out in full force as there were Gabby sightings everywhere!

 

 

 

 

 

Now, just when you thought this post was over!  On to today, Memorial Day.  Gabby and Ben rode with their Great Grandpa for the Memorial Day Parade.

 

 

And those darn papparazi were at the parade and got Miss Diva Gabrielle and her assistant Benjamin.

 

No word yet on the audio.  If you REALLY can't wait to hear it, PM me with your email addy and I'll email it to you!  :-)

 DANGITDANGITDANGIT!  I cannot get Vox to upload the audio.  Any of my peeps able to give me a hand with this I will be most appreciative.
 

Today was the Riverhead, NY Street Painting Festival.  One of the features was a free recording studio session for kids and others to record 1 song.  Professional quality recordings with a producer and everything.  The Rothman Family Diva Miss Gabby chose to honor us with a performance.  :-)

 

 

I'm not so blind (or deaf) to say it was just perfect, but DANG, my kid is good!  (Buffs Genes)

 

 

 

More pics and review of the street fair to follow.

I have found the secret to getting little boys who don't want to go to bed to actually WANT to go to bed.

Ben is having an EEG tomorrow, early in the AM, prescribed by a neurologist because he has some quirky neurological tics.  (LONG story for another time).

Part of the requirements for this EEG is that he be tired so they can get a certain reading.  So they asked that we keep him up as late as possible tonight.  We laughed, ha ha ha, Nooooo problem, we'll have a harder time getting him to bed than getting him to stay up.

Around 7ish I told him "Guess what Ben, you get to stay up as late as you want tonight!"

Typical challenging child he is, "How late exactly?"

Me:  "At least til' midnight."

Him.  "YAY!"

Around 8:30ish I can see he's tired, I offer a snack to give him some energy.  Around 9ish he's still flagging and actuallyl asks, "How much longer before we can go to bed?"

LOL, note the use of the word "Can" as opposed to "have".

I said, "Three hours, why are you tired and wanting to go to bed?"  Which of course prompted the expected, "Me?  TIred?  NO I'm not tired, just asking is all, nothing to see here, move along..."

9:30, I had to give him a tiny infusion of caffeine, tiny I swear.  He's so unused to it within 5 minutes he was running around the house like crazy.  But that could've just been from the excitement over having such a rare treat. 

9:45-10:30 he kept looking at the clock and asking if it was midnight yet.

He made it from 10:30 to 11:00 without asking, but about quarter after 11 he asked again.

Now it is after midnight and we're going to bed.  And I think he is secretly very happy.

The fun part will be waking him up EARLY after this very long night.  Wish us luck.

 

There’s this moment, in everyone’s life where we have a brief glimpse of crystal clarity of just knowing.  Knowing what’s going to happen next, knowing the right or wrong thing to do, knowing what to say or to write.

 

These moments are usually so fleeting that we haven’t the time to act upon them. 

 

Oh my god that’s PERFECT, I must write this down immediately, where’s my notebook?  CARP!  I left it at home, well I’ll write it on the back of this map.  (Yes, once upon a time maps were printed on paper.)  Now where’s a pen?  (Rummaging through glove box,) Aha!  No, that’s a tire gauge, here’s one!  It’s dead!  CARP CARP CARP!  The idea is fading faster and faster by the second and the cars behind you are laying on their horns for reasons you cannot fathom, aha!  Your son’s crayon!  Pen Crayon to paper map and . . . nothing, I’ve got nothing.  (Sometime thereafter a nice man in a uniform taps on your window but that’s not important right now).

 

Open your mouth to speak and someone or something passes into your field of vision or a loud noise or loud mouth slaps your eardrums, and the distraction, minute as it may be is sufficient to cloud your mind or trip your tongue.  By the time you’ve realized you had it, “it was RIGHT there!”, it’s more than gone.  There’s this thin ghost of the knowing, you know you knew the answer but what exactly that answer was, is gone.  And no amount of prompting or pushing will recall it.  Sometimes a secondary residual clarity will strike, usually around 3 am you’ll awaken from a sound sleep shouting, “Harry & The Hendersons!”, your spouse will snort and mumble, “that’s nice dear go back to sleep.”  (Well ok YOUR spouse maybe, mine will more likely whack me with a pillow.) And you’ll drift off back off, confused why Harry & The Hendersons was such an important thing for you to say, yet somehow strangely satisfied that you were able to say it.

 

This thing I’m describing, it is something a bit different than Writer’s Block.  Although it is a blockage of sorts.  But it doesn’t just affect writers.  No, this is something more along the lines of Life Block.  It is related to those moments where you think of the cool witty things to say ten minutes after you should have said them.  But Hindsight being what it is, is nothing compared to the Clarity Fog.  Even that is not quite the right term.  I have a theory, call it wacky and wild if you will, (pauses) you could at least wait until I’m finished describing the theory before calling it wacky and wild you know.  Where was I?  Oh yes, the Clarity Fog, we’ve all heard phrases like Karma’s a Bitch, Life got in the way, God laughed, Fate Laughed, etc…

Well…I theorize that if we were able to harness the energy and knowledge from those Clarity Fog moments we’d be able to generate enough power to put Congress into Stasis and jump start the constitution again.  Ok ok, no politicizing.  Really though, stop and think about those moments in your life when you saw it, you just KNEW the answers and they added up to a lot more than 42.  But a hairy spider fell onto your face and gave you the heebie jeebies, and after doing the Eeeeeeek Dance you’d forgotten all the answers.  Or how about the time you saw another set of answers (or possibly the same ones as the 1^st set) and your cat chose that moment to hork it’s dinner and the last month’s worth of dinners on your prized Amish quilt?  What about when you opened your mouth to deliver the answers in such a way to silence all rivals once and for all, when a puppy overpowered you with it’s Frito scented breath.  Hmmm?  Seeing a pattern here?  Nature is indeed intervening.  We weren’t meant to hold such power and knowledge.  I’m telling you. 

 

But!  I have overcome this and am about to share with you the ultimate answer. 

My friends, the answer is, Oh look a few kittens playing with some sparkly looking yarn!  No!  Must resist!  Shiny!  GHAHHH! I will tell the answer I will…the answer is…Kittnz!!!

 

What were we talking about?

Why is it we'll watch and laugh and love old tv and movie family comedies, calling them classics and lament the lack similar quality today?  But any attempt to match that quality is instantly looked up on with contempt and scoffed as being derivative or a sad sack copy.  I mean I understand that there are VERY few of the many attempts to actually hit the mark but I get the feeling that our unwillingness to accept any substitute is the very reason there aren't many decent family comedies being made any more.

I know there are some, but most movies labeled "Family" are really not.  They're for the kids only, with as many fart and other gross jokes they can squeeze in a 90 minute feature with some "wink wink" jokes meant for the parent forced to take their 7 yr old to the theater to see it.

I think that's why I like the High School Musical series so much.  Yeah it' syrupy sweet I know.  But it was JUST right for kids of the age it was aimed at.  No overt sexual overtones, music that didn't involve explaining what "sexy" means to your 5 yr old.  Yeah, I liked it so sue me.  ;-)

What started this was my daughter has reached the point now where she's able to cope with movies she once found overwhelming.  With her emotional disability she struggled with wanting to watch the same shows and cartoons her friends were watching while being so frightened by the merest mention of illness or suggestion of emotional or physical harm to a character good or bad. 

You should've seen the look people gave us over the years when they'd ask Gabby who was her favorite Disney Character or show and she'd say she didn't know any.  They thought we were some kind of barbarians that didn't let our kids watch even Disney movies.  But that was Gabby's choice all along. 

Even my own Mom looked at me like there was something wrong with me that my kid didn't know about Beauty and The Beast, or Cinderella, or Sleeping Beauty.  Or any of the other Disney classics.  Toy Story? No.  Peter Pan? No.  Pinoccio? No. 

It wasn't for the lack of trying.  But after many sleepless nights as she had nightmare or anxiety attacks, I finally learned that sitting with my baby girl and watching the Disney movies I grew up on was not meant to be.

So fast forward now to Gabby age 11.  We just watched the two Witch Mountain movies.  She loved them!  Laughing the whole way through.  Last night we watched That Darn Cat.  Complete with the fight for the gun at the end and she handled it, laughing when the bad guy got kicked in the shins by the heroine. 

Since she loves musicals so much we're going to go for My Fair Lady and Sound of Music next.

Plus we're lining up a slew of classic Disney live action films from the library.

To many people that don't know Gabby's history it's a case of "what's the big deal?" or "what do you mean she's just now starting to watch Disney movies at 11 yrs old?"

They can't understand how very very happy I am that my little girl is able to process and handle and ENJOY these movies now.  And it doesn't matter if she's 11. She's watching them now and we can enjoy them together.  And I can't tell you how happy I am that we don't have to go to the theater when those fart joke movies come out.  Thank goodness she has better taste than that.  :-)

Oh, and if anyone wants to share good classic family film or tv show titles we can watch on dvd that would be awesome!

Just for me, and anyone who gets my obscure jokes.

Voting links below the pics iffen you wanna.

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Guys!  If you  haven't already check out one of my favorite stops every single day.

www.loltheist.com

I mean, lookit!

http://loltheist.com/2009/03/10/you-think-south-beach-is-bad/

And not only do we find ways to put funny capshuns on religious art there's often a WTF moment or two here and there.

Such as this post http://loltheist.com/2009/03/06/does-that-qualify-as-your-own-personal-pillar-of-salt/ about this article.  http://www.examiner.com/a-1873794~Christian_salt_seller_hopes_to_shake_up_market.html

Ceiling Cat often makes an appearance too.  http://loltheist.com/2009/02/17/lets-see-if-the-scratchy-tongue-cycle-helps/ .

There are also very useful public service messages, http://loltheist.com/2009/02/12/aim-for-the-head/ .

Of course the fact that yours truly sometimes has a creation or two on there shouldn't influence your decision to visit.   ;-)

Be warned.  If you find captioning religious artwork and wink wink nudge nudge commentary on oddball religous stories you don't wanna go there.

Otherwise, if you don't mind that kinda stuff.  You can haz fun at www.loltheist.com!