still sewing...

Ok... as much fun as I have writing silly tales about our family, I know a few of you are scratching your heads thinking, "where are the QUILTS???"

Ooooops... not a quilt...  But I *have* been sewing.  Really.  A little.  A very little... my other job is playing working as a substitute teacher.  Who would have guessed that I would be in demand during the month of October?  Or that after a couple weeks of subbing nearly every day I would spend a couple of bleary days sneezing and dripping and snuffling my way around the house?  Occupational health hazard, I guess. 

But, look!  After a couple of (healthy) days off, we have a cute little zebra running around our house!  Ok... so I cheated a little.  A discount store near us had these great stripey pajamas on sale for almost nothing.  Seriously... who wouldn't want to snuggle up to their honey at night looking like a honkin' snortin' zebra?  Well, I guess I wouldn't have lined up waiting for those jammies to hit the shelves....  But a cool thing about this store is all the mis-matched sets!  Apparently a few honeys didn't mind the stripey pants.  There were extra tops on sale for just a couple dollars.  And an extra top was all I needed to make a hat and tail to complete the ensemble!  I even have a sleeve left.  Anyone out there need a tail to add to those stripey pants???

And, yes... I'll leave you with a bit of quilting.  I have some great, bright dots and a few fun Kaffe Fassette's prints that I've been reluctant to cut into.  Something about wanting to find the perfect pattern for them.  Like perfect has any chance of happening with me at the rotary cutter!  I finally dragged the buggers out and started slicing away.  Just a simple Jacob's Ladder block, but I love the way the black stands out and the star points kind of flicker around.  First part of one star, then part of another.  Only one dilema.  I just pulled these things out and started piecing.  No idea what for.  Maybe a baby quilt (several friends having babies right now)?  Or a Project Linus quilt?  Scratch all that... two kiddos walked through and fell in love with these bright blocks.  My quilting just got doubled....

Have a happy day! 

Hubby's solution...

Have I mentioned that my husband and I are the parents of teenagers?  Two teenagers, to be precise.  With two more rapidly approaching teen-hood.  Add in the boys that are now quasi-members of our teen zoo and all the buddies that drop in for food hang out here, and there is a distinct lack of brain cells circulating in this house.  Parenting teens is a great exercise in multiplying fractions.  One teen, one brain.  Two teens, half a brain.  Three teens, a quarter of a brain.  The herd of teens running around our house?  Oiy!
 
For the uninitiated to this teen phenomenon, it goes something like this.  Teen brain wakes up and realizes it has a sister.  Down to half power.  Somehow, the brain still manages to get ready for school.  Then the teen body carting this brain around steps onto the school bus where most of the remaining brain cells get sucked into a vortex of co-mingling teen brain.  One of my kids says she sleeps on the way to school.  I think she is actually experiencing a state of shock while her brain tries to adjust to the current loss of function.  Or perhaps she is getting ready to bail out any remanining cells upon entrance to the great brick building called high school.  It really is an amazing phenonenon to behold.  High school functions in some special kind of time warp.  Distinctly separate from the reality most adults inhabit.  The teen brain just doesn't stand a chance.  The vortex of brain cells is too strong.  Soooooo... when the teen steps back off the bus in the afternoon, still reeling from the onslaught of "teen-brain-itis" and with teen friends in tow, we are dealing with something like a genetically altered version of the kid that slept at our house the night before.           

The sharing of brain cells has resulted in, well... teenagers.  With all the prerequisite loss of logic.  And a hefty dose of sass.  With some pouting thrown in for good measure.  My husband has always relegated dealing with teenagers to me.  Something about having all girls and possesing the respective anatomy.  Like estrogen is some mystical element vital to accessing a teen girl's brain.  He fails to understand that there is very little brain left to work with and I am actually an adult and therefore, by nature, thrown out of the teen-brain loop.  But I've gotten used to dealing with teen-brain.  Perhaps a better description is that I'm a bit numb to it.  I've developed a strong resistance to getting sucked into teen reasoning or reacting to erratic behaviour.

I should know better than to leave poor hubby unattended during an outbreak of teen-brain-itis.  Really.  He is inaduquately prepared.  And missing estrogen.  But I left the house briefly last night with one of our teens to return a boy to his actual place of residence.  When I returned, hubby described the horrific aftermath of my less-than-60-minute desertion.  The remaining teen ran into computer problems trying to print out a report.  Functioning on end-of-the-day brain power, this was a serious issue and quickly escalated to falling apart.  Enter unprepared dad.  Sensing rapid loss of control of said situation, he reacted the best he could.  He gave our 16-year-old a TIME OUT.  Pointing to a chair and everything.  Needless to say, this did not go over well with said teen.  By the time I arrived home to plug the printer in, dad and teen were nearing some cosmic eruption of epic proportions.  Yes... I just said, PLUG THE PRINTER IN.

Have I mentioned the vortex that seems to have engulfed our home?  And that it feeds off of teen brains?  And that we will have a third teen in January and a fourth teen in a year and a half?  Multiply by all the additional kids hanging out here and it sure makes for interesting life at the little brown house on the hill....

Sooooo... since I can't seem to catch a picture of a teen detatched from other teens, I'll leave you with a photo of hubby and me.  This was taken a couple of days before the printer issues, so there may be a bit more gray in hubby's hair now....

   

       

Clunk-o-War...

Oldest kid is 16 now.  Oh boy....

Seems like just last week, the BIG QUESTION of the day was what color cup the Victor of the cup-o-war got to use for dinner.  Yup.  Cup wars were big around here.  Whining, shouting, tears, hair-pulling.  Whatever it took to win the covetted cup.  And woe to mom if the pink cup was not washed in time for the meal.  Not that it deterred the battle.  The troops would just duke it out over the second-favorite color... 

But now, the BIG question is about car keys....  I hopped into the driver's seat last week 'cause we were running late to church.  From the excessive amount of pouting that ensued, you would think that I had committed a far greater sin than gyping the kid of 20 minutes of driving time.  Like maybe something along the lines of withholding chocolate.  Or telling the diaper story.

Soooo... for the past few months, Hubby and my dad have been busy checking out Clunkers-by-the-side-of-the-road.  Both guys have been regularly reporting on trucks and cars parked in the weeds.  Oh boy!  A grown-up-male (oxymoron?) version of the cup war.  At least the guys don't have enough hair to resort to hair-pulling....  Really, I didn't take the competition too seriously.  I figured the challenge was just barely heating up.  No time-outs had been issued or even threatened.  I was sure we had months of car one-upmanships to endure before a winner was declared.  Until dad called up mighty proud of himself.  Guess what he found?  Um hmmmm...  Dad is Victor of the clunk-o-war. 

Actually, I'm not even sure it qualifies as a clunker.  Hubby has had every tire and tube and gasket and what-all-else torn off the little white car in his quest to inspect the winning clunk.  And hubby would show no mercy if he felt the clunk was not properly qualified for ferrying his daughter back and forth.  But all he could find was a gasket that needed replacing.  Huh.  Go figure.  A clean win.  With no messy battles or fist-fulls of hair.  Victory by sneak-attack before battle was even fully declared.  Score one for dad!  

I'd celebrate dad's win, but I'm guessing both contestants are out scouring the roadsides for clunk #2.  Second kiddo starts driving on a permit in June...  

And oldest kiddo?  She figures she made out pretty well in the clunk war.  Until it's time to pay for gas.  Maybe then she'll let me drive to church....