Oh boy

Bizarre vignette of the day: Jessie lying on the beanbag happily chewing on a toy with Fred straddled across her back, his little legs barely touching the floor, merrily humping away.

Seriously, this is what passes for normal in our house!

It's called an elevator

Watching The Big Bang Theory last night (my current favourite), the scene in which Sheldon and Penny are having a conversation as they walk the numerous flights of stairs to their apartments. On each landing they pass the elevator doors, criss-crossed with 'Out of Order' tape. In the ad break 9 Year Old Boy turns to me and asks "Mummy, why are so many of those rooms out of order?".

My morning fix

I'm at the computer with my morning cup of coffee catching up on my blog reading (also know as avoiding the housework) so I thought I'd share a few of this morning's favourite links:

From Shoewawa, boot wearing season is over here in NZ with summer on its way, and I couldn't afford these in a month of Sundays, but I love love love these Thomas Wylde boots.



The heel, the multiple skull buckles, even the slouchiness (which wouldn't normally win me over) - available here.

From Fashionably Geek, no I haven't reversed the picture, this watch actually runs backwards. Leonardo da Vinci was left-handed (like me) and the theory is that his backwards writing was not an attempt to write in code, but rather to avoid smudging the ink as he wrote.



And it's beautiful to look at. Available at The Unemployed Philosophers Guild, the same site that carries the Dali watch I love so much.

The Boston Globe's Big Picture blog is a favourite of mine - the photo collections are always stunning, and today's Antarctica pics almost have me thinking it would be worth braving the cold to go there (I said almost, I seriously hate the cold).

(Image: Zee Evans/National Science Foundation)

And to end, something a little ghoulish. Ugly Overload has some mosquito photos that will have you reaching for the insect repellant.



And now I should start my day, but tearing myself away from the window may be a little difficult. The lady across the road has had a gardener in the last few days, and today he's out there shovelling topsoil. Young? Check. Tanned? Check. Topless? Check. Toned physique? Check. EEB looked somewhat suspicious when I tried to convince him that maybe he should go in to the office today rather than working from home. I wonder why...

This is what you get for having kids

After the post about the bean bag explosion EEB's mum emailed me with the story of the time she had taken EEB and his sister shopping and they managed to open the zip on a bean bag and spill the beans all over the store. EEBM quite rightly pretended they weren't with her (oh how many times have I done that).

It's no secret that children were put on this planet to embarrass their parents. When 9 Year Old Boy was a toddler he couldn't make his 't' sounds, and replaced them with 'f'. Imagine if you will how much fun it is when, in the middle of a busy doctor's surgery filled with old ladies, your son announces that he has just seen out the window "the biggest f**k ever"!

Then there was my friend whose daughter went to play at a friends house and decided to indulge her artistic side. Not long after she came home her mum was startled to receive a phone call from the friend's mum, who just wanted to let her know that a certain little girl had written on her son's penis. (Can't have been a very long sentence, one imagines). Luckily the friend's mum had a sense of humour.

When I was a teenager, living with my foster family, my one and a half year old foster sister decided her doll's hair needed washing and promptly did so ... in the toilet!

Thirteen Year Old Girl has always had a knack for asking awkward questions. On one occasion when she was teeny we arrived at my grandparents' house for a family gathering. Great-Grandpa was nowhere to be seen, and upon enquiring wee girl was told he was in the toilet. "Is he sitting down or standing up?" she asked the assembled family members.

Fast forward to another family gathering, wee girl's dad was somewhat uncomfortable at the time having been stricken with epidydimitis ('epidydimis' being the tubing in the testicles, 'itis' being an infection - you do the math) and wee girl was under strict instructions not to jump on him. Well she arrived at grandparents' house, bounced straight onto Great-Grandpa's lap for a cuddle, stopped for a moment then turned to GG and asked very seriously "Grandpa do YOU have infected testicles?".

All I can say is they better look after me in my dotage, because I've earned it!

Does this mean I'm a grown up?

I'm glued to CNN watching the US elections. Also, GO OBAMA!

Still not entirely clear on how the American elections work, is it just me or is it all very complicated? If it weren't for hours and hours of West Wing viewing I wouldn't have even the faintest idea what was going on!