This was pretty fun(ny) to watch! Here it is...the 1984 Macintosh!
- posted by Christine @ 12:29 AM

 
I'm sitting next to my little boy in the theater today when I keep hearing this clicking sound coming from him. I knew he'd been eating popcorn, but it just sounded odd. I finally whisper in his direction. As he turns around, I see a hand on each side of his face, as he sawing back and forth. Yes, he's flossing.

I thought it was funny for about 5 seconds until it donned on me--where'd the floss come from.

I lean over and ask, "Alex? Alex? Where did you find dental floss?"

He pulls it out of his mouth and whispers, "It was on my leg."

All I can saw is ewwww.
- posted by Christine @ 6:03 PM

 
Lucky for me, I suppose, I don't recall seeing any of these movies.




You know, I've witnessed huge crowds on TV before, swarms of people as far as the eye can see, or the occasional trampling of people at a soccer game in a far-away country, but I've never myself been in a crowd like that before, well until today. I was on the verge of "get-me-the-hell-out-of-here-or-I'm-gonna-lose-it."

And it's not as though the big Christmas Tree Lighting in in Downtown Seattle is something I'd really want to attend anyway. Actually it sounds boring, but for some reason, maybe it's because my house is finally clean, I thought it would be fun. After a few mishaps, we took the "is it finally dead yet" monorail downtown and wandered around before the event, which we thought started at 5:00 but it was really 5:30. So we stood on the street and listened to a couple of off-key choirs before the big show. It did seem to get crowded as we stood there, but perhaps because a walk-way of sorts had formed in front of us, I hadn't realized just how many people were around us.

Ok, so countdown, light the tree, now watch the the fireworks off Macy's roof...OK, done, now we can go.

The crowd didn't budge.

At one point I'd lost my son but found him again, tears in his eyes, circling around in his little puffy black coat. From that moment on I grabbed his arm and wouldn't let go.

Being short didn't help, as I was pretty much at the mercy of where some big guy behind me would push. My husband, being the loud/obnoxious type, started yelling, "FREE STUFF AT THE GAP!"--the Gap being in the direction we wanted to go. Sure people laughed, but no one moved. I guess it's a sign of my age, but I started to think about all the what-if's....what if someone yells fire or bomb or just freaks out in general.

Thinking back on it, I've probably been in crowds like this before but not with kids.

Luckily the people we were sardined up against were all friendly and nice, and for the most part, they felt bad for me with the kids and would try to let us squeeze by. It seemed like forever, but finally the crowd eased up near the end of the Westlake block and we oozed our way out of there and back up to the monorail, where we did the Japanese subway thing.
- posted by Christine @ 9:12 PM

 
Wiht the Thanksgiving holiday quickly approaching, I decided I'd invite the family over. After all, I haven't had a real family gathering since my husband's I'm-going-away-to-the-Middle-East party in 2004.

And I don't mind, really, but it means I have to Clean My House.


We have a big house (soon to be bigger), lots of space to put things. Things that don't really have a home. Things that we don't need but someone decides to keep anyway. Even if I officially decide it's trash, my son will come along and decide he wants it, so the useless object will once again be stashed somewhere in the house.

My husband is a pack rat. No, I don't say that to his face, but he is. And he owns a lot of stuff. As well as a lot of little projects going on in various parts of the house.

My stepson is a total slob, but he'll be leaving soon so I won't be able to blame him.

So my conclusion is that it's everyone else's fault the house is messy.

So I started a really big clean up recently, beginning with a big upstairs hall closet that I quickly discovered stepson had been using as some sort of a recyling bin (I believe that's where my little guy's kareoke machine came from), and now have muddled my way down to my office, reorganizing book shelves and cleaning out drawers. The sad part of all this is that I have discovered actual physical evidence that I'm a bad housekeeper. A 1997 phone book. Christmas cards from relatives that have long since died. An old diaper. **

I decided today that I'm really jealous of people that can just have company at the drop of a hat and their house looks nice. I do manage, somehow, to keep the entrance way and living room pretty clean for "emergencies"-- but, as a friend pointed out today, we live in fear of someone needing to use the bathroom (thank you for the chuckle, S. CA friend o' mine).

Anyway, I'm spending valuable cleaning time posting on here, but wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there in cyberland. I'm off to tackle another pile.



**I really don't want to discuss this one.
- posted by Christine @ 9:25 AM

 
Whoever gave my 7-year-old son a Karoke machine, well, I don't like you. Actually I think he gained it through the process of older child handing down to younger child. I think it came with tapes that you could sing along with, but my son isn't one to sing in front of anyone (not manly enough).

No. Instead he likes to see how loud he can make the feedback with the microphone next to the speaker. And when he grows tired of that, he decides to yell his demands to me at the loudest possible volume. This morning I was awoken to, "Mom! I'm hungry! Feed me!" through a loud speaker attached to a squeaky microphone, smiling boy holding the contraption. If that doesn't make you want to put your head under the pillow and die, I don't know what does.
- posted by Christine @ 2:33 PM

 
After spending another $15 at Petco today (a 2-3 time a month visit), I'm thinking of trying to raise my own...crickets. Gross, I know, but may be cost effective. If anyone has any cricket rearing advice, email me.
- posted by Christine @ 5:03 PM

 
I've never cared much for Halloween. In fact, if I didn't have kids, I wouldn't participate at all. It just seems like a dumb "holiday" -- right up there with Valentines Day. I've never lived anywhere that I could pass out candy to trick-or-treaters (minus one year in college, we had some kids come up to our college apartment. I should have taken a picture to remember that momentous event!).

I don't have kids that are nice little trick-or-treaters that look all cute in their costumes and marvel at the idea of getting candy. No. I had one kid wear half her costume and then complain about it the entire time and then another kid that wouldn't even wear his costume, which remained in his seat in the car throughout the evening. I explained a couple of times that the dirty little boy in the turtle neck and motorcycle sweater was actually a "cranky 7-year-old." No one questioned that.

I had an additional child this year, my nephew who was the only one who would actually wear his entire costume, so the 3 kids, me, and a tag-along husband went out to make an evening of Halloween cheer for 3 kids who didn't need more candy to boost their moods.

I found a neighborhood that looked promising and after several minutes of my son arguing about wearing his costume (which he decided to wear 5 minutes into the treating, but it was too late by "mom time"), and us yelling to the nephew to please get out of the car (only to discover he didn't know how to open the door to get out), we started on our way.

It was a nice neighborhood, mostly old people, but they seemed happy to see the kids. I squeezed in some treak-or-treating etiquette tips in-between houses when I realized my nephew had just pushed the door open to the first home we'd approached without even knocking (whoops!). At some point a couple of boys, maybe 13 or 14, caught up with us and followed us from house to house. I didn't mind them, except for the time when someone apparently wasn't fast enough to the door, and one kid yelled, "Hey! Hurry it up!" Moments later an old woman, wearing tubing in her nose that was probably attached to a hidden oxygen tank, appeared. Hopefully she hadn't heard the obnoxious kid.

Of course every house we went to had better landscaping than ours, so I would hear comments from the tag-along husband such as, "Why don't you do something like this in your spare time? and "How come our house doesn't have an intricate brick walk way lined with lacy Japanese maple like this one?" (or something like that).

Two houses didn't have anyone answer the door. Instead, there was a basket that said, "Take one" on the front porch, filled with clear baggies that contained some form of advertisement. Can't any holiday be sacred? *smile*

At any rate, when we'd reached the last house on our little journey, we turned around, only to miss the short cut, which lead to a lot of whining and groaing from our three little ghouls.
- posted by Christine @ 11:51 AM

 
This is interesting, although a bit depressing.

200,000 years for all trace of man to vanish from earth.
- posted by Christine @ 11:59 AM