This is my husband, Phil (and Pipsqueak).
He works for the federal government. He may even know where the Ark of the Covenant is hidden.
One day we had ordered Chinese food and he was picking it up, rather than have it delivered. As he was leaving the restaurant with our order, a lady was walking in the door. She said to him, “Good luck with the deliveries.”
Yeah. Not quite.
Nevertheless, Happy Chinese New Year!
Hellmann’s or Best Foods Mayonnaise? Did you know that it depends on which side of the Continental Divide you are on? It is Hellmann’s East of the Rockies and Best Foods West of the Rockies. So what do you think it might be if you are in the foothills of the Rockies?
We’ve got both!
Which do you have, Hellmann’s, Best Foods or both?
Do you know what the temperature is at the weather station just two blocks from my house?
100.6 F
Yeah, baby.
Though the official city temp right is 96. So now who’s all smug about living in the foothills with the view and the woods and the creek, and not on the other side of I-25, which is the hot and dry plains.
Did I mention I don’t have air conditioning?
Did I mention I’m pregnant?
Yeah. Yay me!
It’s a well established, scientific fact that where ever I live will experience immediate, catastrophic and record breaking heat. If I’m pregnant, it’s even worse.
So here I sit, sweating it out, feeling slightly nauseated and cursing the day we moved into Pioneer House. Really – who doesn’t have air conditioning in this day and age?
I closed all the windows at 8:45 this morning in a vain attempt to keep the cold night air in. I banned all use of the oven or the stove until the situation gets better. I’m willing to slip the a/c guy an extra $2000 in cash under the table if he’ll move us up to the top of his two week waiting list.
I can’t believe I did it again.
Let it be known that on August 7, 2007 I wrote the following on my blog:
“Yesterday was the hottest day in DC in eight years. You know why, don’t you?
Because I hate summer and I live in DC. As soon as I leave, temperatures will plummet and snowfall will break centuries old records. It happens everywhere I live. ”
And leave I did and the snowing commenced. As far as I can tell, it’s still snowing there.
My super powers are awesome, aren’t they?
So…life in Colorado continues to be interesting. On the night we returned from Disneyland, I woke up in the middle of the night to a strange sound. In my overtired and overly tanned but not quite sunburnt state, I was dreaming that I was hearing the astroblaster from the Buzz Lightyear ride that we’d ridden about two or three times a day for the last 5 days. When I woke, I heard the sound again and then again. And then I realized it was that sort of horn sound from a police car. I was wondering vaguely what might be going on when I fell back to sleep.
Later I learned that two houses down from us, a neighbor had left their garage door open and called the police…not because of a burgular but because a ginormous papa bear had gotten into their garage, opened their freezer and had pulled out and eaten their stash of deer meat, buffalo steaks and ribs.
The lesson here – put your freezer in the basement.
Did I ever mention the three bears we saw walking across the street one day while on our way home from the library? Philip saw those same bears, a mama and her two cubs, going through another neighbor’s trashcan on trash day.
And then tonight, as I was sitting through an hour and 15 minutes briefing for the parents of Religious Ed students, I learned what the security procedure is if they have to lock down the campus because of bears or mountain lions. Apparently, both have been known to cruise around and a mountain lion was once spotted sitting in the tree right outside the church.
And to top it all off, it snowed all day on Monday. Yes, this past Monday, which just happened to be the last day of summer.  I’m just glad that we have enough room in the children’s closets to store out of season clothes so we were able to get cold weather clothes out without much fuss.
I gotta tell you, I really like it here!
“Mama,” Bip said to me during lunch. “I have someting to tell you, but I didn’t want to get in trouble.”
“Okaaay…,” says I, wondering what sort of mess I was about to be cleaning up.
“I had a little accident in my underwear and pants.”
“Oh, Ok, well, that happens. Did you change your underwear?” I asked.
“No.”
Of course he didn’t. But at least this was minor and well within the scope of my parenting abilities. “Well, you need to get clean underwear when you have an accident.”
“No, no, no, mama! Listen – you just leave them alone and leave them alone and leave them alone. And then…you have…”
“Clean underwear.”
I think I’ve mentioned that I was high school friends with Glen Phillips of Toad the Wet Sprocket.
And another high school friend ended up being pretty darn famous, too.
Now it turns out that I once went to the movies with one of this season’s “Dancing With the Stars” contestants. Oh yes, little ol’ me went on a date with Chuck “the Iceman” Liddell.
I haven’t seen him since high school, but back then he wasn’t exactly dancing material. He was a wrestler and football player and I won a lot of money off of him during the 49ers Super Bowl winning season of 1986-87.
I’ve never watched “Dancing With the Stars”, but I think I’ll be tuning in this season. I think hot chocolate in my 49ers mug will be in order.
(yes, all 3 guys knew each other. I think the four of us were in the same honors English class as sophomores.)
…leaving the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Philip and I, our friends that we are sponsoring into the Church, our parish priest and one of the members of our church who was there for support. The three military men were in uniform, looking very handsome indeed. We were just walking along the front of the basilica when one of the men said, “Newt Gingrich just got into that white car.”
Parked in front of the basilica were two tour buses and in between the two buses was a white car, but from where we were, we couldn’t see who was in it.
After a round of, “Really?”, “That white car up there?” and “No way!”, I said, “Let’s catch up and look.” So we sped up a bit and as we passed the white car, we turned to look at the passenger.
And lo and behold! there was Newt Gingrich himself.
We did what any grown up would do – we grinned and waved. Newt waved back and one of the guys started to walk closer to the car. And Newt did what anyone who finds himself being peered at by three guys in uniform, two women and a priest would do – he rolled down the window.
So all three of the guys rushed up to shake his hand. I would have, too, except I was wearing heels and I would have hand to run to get to the car in a timely manner. I shook Philip’s hand right afterward, though, so it was almost as good.
Or course, we were all wondering just what he had been doing at the basilica and when we got home, I looked on the internet. Turns out, Newt Gingrich is becoming Catholic and was participating in the Rite of Election himself. Cool.
No doubt you’ve all seen the Rankin-Bass Christmas movie “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” Do you remember when Herr Burgermeister says, “Toys are hereby declared illegal, immoral, unlawful AND anyone found with a toy in his possession will be placed under arrest and thrown in the dungeon. No kidding!” We laugh because it is such an outrageous thing to say. Toys! Illegal! Bah, what will they think of next?
Well, welcome to Sombertown, folks. On February 10th, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) will take effect and all toys sold in the US will have to be tested for lead and phthalates. Sounds good right? Keep those cheap, imported, lead laced toys out of the hands of our children!
The problem is, every toy currently on the shelves will have to have been tested or pulled from the shelves. Not just toys either. The way the law is written it applies to bicycles, clothing, books, craft kits…ANYTHING marketed at children under 12 years old. Good ahead, click on that link in the last sentence and see what’s about to happen to your local libraries.
Have you ever bought a knit Barbie dress, a handmade doll cradle or cute hair bows at a craft show? What about cloth diapers from a work at home mom? I have. But you won’t be able to anymore. The CPSIA applies to these, too. Testing these products will be too expensive for these “manufacturers” and they will have to go out of business. And you’d better believe that the big name toy manufacturers will pass on the added expense to the consumer. Already one European company, Selecta, which makes some of my favorite wooden toys has pulled out of the US market.
You can read more about it all here:Â All Worry and No Play
So what can you do? Visit the Handmade Toy Alliance, read what they have to say, follow the links at the bottom of their homepage to write a letter to your Congressmen. This is serious, people. Imagine what is going to happen when this law goes into effect.
In the words of Kris Kringle, “Watch out for that dolly. She’s a hardened criminal, I hear.”
We used to have a huge collection of coffee mugs, I bet many of you do, too. Some were gifts and some we picked up for ourselves. But really, how many coffee mugs does one family need? We pared our collection down, giving away some and putting others into storage. We only kept our favorites in the kitchen cupboard. I have my one favorite coffee mug that I use almost every morning.
Doesn’t everybody have a favorite coffee mug? My parents, not being able to find the perfect mug among our collection, even brought 2 of their mugs to live at our house for when they visit. Yes, they really did, because the perfect coffee mug is that important.
It was this paring down of the coffee mugs that caused me to be rummaging around in my cupboards on Saturday night. Boo and Philip were off camping with the Cub Scouts, so I was hosting our church’s ladies craft night at my house. This way I didn’t have to hire a babysitter for Bip and Pumpkin Girl and still be able to craft. My contribution to the night, besides the meeting place, was zucchini bread and pumpkin spice lattes. So you see, I needed coffee mugs.
One of the mugs I came up with was this one.
It made me think back just a couple of weeks ago when I found this on TV:
I went to high school with Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell, before he was the Iceman, and he gave me that 49ers mug for my 18th birthday. It was particularly meaningful because he was a Packers fan. This was back in the day when the 49ers were a dominate force in the NFL and the Packers were an “also played” kind of team. So upon discovering him in some pay-per-view special, I googled him and found his website. It’s more of a PG rated site, so click at your own discretion.
I swear to you, I really don’t make this stuff up!
So this morning, I’m sipping left over pumpkin lattes in my 49er mug, remembering my 18th birthday and Chuck Liddell and all my friends at my grown-up dinner at a “fancy” restaurant birthday party and how my boyfriend who lived in a different town wasn’t there. He wasn’t a very good boyfriend.
And just because the good Lord likes to make me squirm, this old boyfriend is now living in the DC area and works at the very same building that Philip does. They ran into each other on Philip’s first day of work. They had lunch together.
I’m not making this up, really.
Another good friend from high school grew up to play in the American Idol house band and was the musical director for Josh Groban’s back up musicians.
And now my latte is finished and it’s time to put the mug in the dishwasher and start school, so enough with the reminiscing.  Amazing the journeys your mind takes with one simple coffee mug.
Copyright The Mac and Cheese Chronicles 2020. All rights reserved. Images and content may not be used without express permission.
