leave four or mor'n you're just plain "eg-no-ra-moose"

When I was a child, whenever we traveled, we would stop at just about every Cracker Barrel we saw. This, of course, was when the food was good- I'm nothing but disappointed by them now. (Take note, Cracker Barrel bigheads! Just in case, somehow, no one has mentioned it to you, you are ruining your own business with the crap that you now serve. You give down-home cookin' a bad name!)

I'm sure, among many of its other fine qualities, one of the reasons my mother would stop there often was the store's ability to shut us (read: loud, obnoxious brats all a-quivery with pent up energy from being in the car for the last seven hours) the hell up. Plenty to look at, enormous checkers games, and, at every table (and several at ours because mom would, ahem, acquire them from the surrounding tables) were those triangle peg games. The ones where you leap one peg with another, and then take the jumpee off the board until only one remains. I used to challenge myself by starting the first empty space at odd places around the board because it was so easy.

And behold! Linky lovin' from my sister!

...Holy hell. When did I get so stupid???

I'm Killing the Earth.

The kids and I spent about 45 minutes breaking down boxes to be recycled tomorrow morning. We hauled the piles outside, and by "piles" I mean "holy hell we are so frickin' consumerific".
We stacked all those pieces of cardboard into two neat stacks.
We then placed the two recycling bins on top of the two neat piles of cardboard, with a paperbag of loose paper that weighed easily fifteen pounds in between. (Because, you see, while we don't have to sort plastic from glass, Paper. Does. NOT. Go. IN. The. BINS. (But the hell if I'm binding the loose papers with twine. The BAG is made of paper. You may recycle that, too! (Who even owns twine? And if you do, you shouldn't admit to it in public.)))
The theory is the bins will keep the piles of cardboard from blowing all down the street. And across the street. And up (yes, UP) the hill that pretends to be our driveway. And up that other hill that is actually a cliff that is the neighboring property. Like it did last recycling day. Dammit. I got my slippers wet and the recycling dude (who, I hope, keeps his spare teeth at home in a glass waiting for him to take a shower and be civilized when he's finished saving the planet? Because I pretty much wash my recyclables, so I don't know what the rest of you guys are doing to your recyclables to make that guy so dirty. Using them for a toilet, I imagine) saw me without a bra when I was chasing cardboard into the ditch. For godssake, the man's job is hard enough without having to see me like that.
The end result is, I know I don't find all that cardboard, so not only am I bad recycler, I'm actually a polluter. I'm actually making the environment worse by recycling.
But it's the trying that counts. Which is a great lesson. For the kids. Because that's what it was. A lesson. Not me making them do my work help me because my ears were falling off from the cold.

The Books are to the Floor as the American Smog is to Canada (yes, that's where we send it)

Emily is in tears at the top of the stairs, where I meet her on my way up.
"Why?" is all I need to say.
"Because I can't organize my desk drawers!" This is the task to which I set her about ten minutes ago.
"Yes. Yes you can. Know how I know?"
She gives me a shrug. But before I can elaborate she bursts out with, "Just because I can organize a closet doesn't mean I can organize dra~werrrrr~sss!" (We can all hear that whine, yes?) (Also, she is kick-ass at cleaning out a closet.)
I herd her into her room. Sort of. Mostly I just shove her through the doorway and stare aghast at the wreckage. Nay, the carnage. Because a tornado must have been knifed to death in a dank alley. Then someone set off a bomb in said alley and blew all the crap into Emily's room.
"Er, Emily? Why did I tell you to clean out your desk drawers?"
"I thought my room was clean when I told you it was." Fake innocent look.
"And, my love, what do you think, then, you should be doing?" Who cares if the drawers are messy when Littlest Pet Shop creatures and clothing are to the floor what an oil-tanker is to the Pacific?
"But it's impossible! It's too much to clean!"
"Are you for real?" I march her to my own bedroom. "Look at this. Now whose room is the bigger mess?" (Shut up, peanut gallery.) She gives me a pathetic whine. "WHO has more to clean up?" My voice is getting louder, but only in I-can't-believe-you're-going-to-try-to-complain-ity. "And! My room is twice the size of yours!"
"Yeah, but," she digs through her brain, tears still streaming, "you have Daddy to help you!"
I just stare at her, askance, in incredulity.
The weeping stops as she gives a wet snort-laugh.
She knows when she has been beaten. There is no defeating my clean-laundry-ridden, desk-paper-strewn, books-piled-everywhere logic.
I ask her, "Wanna trade?"
I've taught her well. She flees before I can turn her into my indentured servant.

There is No Title That Could Make This More Spectacularly Awesome.

My kids. They left cookies and beer for Santa.

Not the First Time I've Said It, Apparently

Going down to the basement, I find that Connor has, having claimed to have put some pottery pieces into storage properly, actually left them spread across the floor. This causes me to yell up the stairs, "I'm gonna kill your son!"

Ethan, without a second's hesitation responds, "Which one?!"

What do you mean, Jurassic Park isn't appropriate for first graders?

Remember Jurassic Park? Remember the little girl? They're sitting, waiting for the t-rex to emerge, attracted by the bleating of the goat. "What's going to happen to the goat? He's going to eat the goat???" The pansy, jerk lawyer makes a comment about her eating lamb chops. She responds, "I happen to be a vegetarian."

Ethan thinks on this a moment. "Maybe... the t-rex... is a vegetarian."

The Hospital Would Have Been Pleased with a Non-Turkey-Related Injury to Fix

Did you know (and this is going to be a really big revelation here, folks) that if you inflate the tires on a dolly, it actually works better? Sam, father-in-law, and brother-in-law found this out the... easy way? I dunno, what do you call it when someone decides to make his own life easier rather than harder? This, of course, was only after they moved the first 300 pound tree stump up the hill. With flat tires. And swearing. That qualifies as the hard way, I suppose. The easy way almost turned Thanksgiving Day into ER Day when Sam was practically run over when they started up with the second tree stump, envisioning the same resistance.

Also, I helped. You know, in that way you see the wife on the sitcom "helping", making the husband repeatedly move the sofa around the living room in search of the perfect arrangement. Only I did it at the top of my voice from the driveway. Plus sarcasm. And some snark. And maybe the bent over at the waist laughing my ass off didn't help the situation. But, hell, someone has to oversee these operations.