Sunday, June 13, 2010

Man, I love the rugrat sometimes.

Conversation I just had with Malia:

Me: We'll watch Life and then there is a show about Hawaii and how it was made.
Malia: I don't need to watch that.  I already know.
Me: Oh yeah?
Malia: By volcanoes Mom, duh!  I can't believe you didn't know.
Me: I did know.  I did not know that you did.
Malia: Sure you did.  I love you, you don't have to pretend to know stuff to impress me.

That's right, my 6 1/2 yr old patronizes me.  I'd be angry if it weren't so funny.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

I learned something new today.

Malia and I headed to the store this morning to pick up some knitting supplies. She's learning at her daycare, so she wanted some stuff so that she can work on her own projects rather that sit around and watch a movie in the afternoon. She's been hard at work since we got home, but I can't show you anything because she's crafting with specific people in mind and I promised not to give anything away. I'll make sure and keep track of her progress and show it off after she's presented her gifts. Keep in mind that some of them are months away so I apologize in advance if I forget some.

Anyhow, after leaving Walmart, we headed to Denny's for some breakfast. Yeah, sue me, I eat at Denny's. Their coffee doesn't suck as bad as it used to, and the rugrat likes that she can get grapes with whatever she eats. Anyway, we're eating and I had finished and was just relaxing and we had the following conversation:

Rugrat: Well, this chicken has finished laying her eggs.
Me: (confused look)
RR: That means I'm done eating mom.
Me: Oh, okay then. (still slightly confused)
RR: It's a figure of speech mom, I don't really lay eggs. I'm a mammal.
Me: That's unfortunate because we could save a lot of money if you could lay eggs.
RR: Gross mom, I wouldn't eat an egg that I laid.

As you are no doubt aware, this is a pretty good example of most conversations we have. Educational and absurd. =) Well, when she's not arguing with me like she's a teenager. An example of that really entertained my cousin Jess and her husband at my Grandpa's 80th birthday party last weekend where this occurred:

Rugrat: Mom? (asked something, but I don't remember what)
Me: No, you can't
RR: Moo-oom, when are you going to treat me like a young adult?
Me: When you are one.
RR: I am.
Me: No, you aren't, you're not even 7 yet
RR: You never let me do anything. (said under her breath as she stomped away.

Jesse (husband of Jess - yes, it's fun) was cracking up and I don't blame him. It is funny, even though it worries me to think about what her teenage years will be like.

Anyway, back to today. After we left Denny's, Malia pointed out that the clouds looked really low and I told her that we could drive through them if she liked. She told me that wasn't possible, so I set out to show her that we could. We headed south and up Little Cottonwood Canyon. Not too far up the canyon, we hit clouds and drove on through. She was pretty quiet and eventually asked if we could just turn around and go back down. So, I turned around at Snowbird and we headed back down. I snapped this picture just before we headed back into the clouds on the way back down.
When we got almost to the bottom she let me know that she'd rather not do that again. Apparently, driving up in the rain and being on the side that looked down the alternately steep tree-lined cliff, or abrupt drop into the fast moving creek made her "nervous" and she didn't like it. So, while I am sad that she was upset and wish she'd said something sooner, we did learn that she's not a fan of heights. Not something we knew before today. She did think driving through the cloud was cool because it "rained" even though it wasn't raining.

So ends today's adventure, if only because my new door isn't here yet. They are scheduled to be here at 2. WOOO!!!! My fingers are almost healed from the fiasco of a week ago.


EDIT: Before anyone yells at me, I did come to a stop to take this picture. There were no cars behind me.


Monday, June 7, 2010

I promise, I had a plan...

About a year ago, my sister Kami and her husband replaced their front door. When they did this, they gifted me with their old screen door. I have enjoyed having this door, and have been planning since receiving it to fix it up and replace the hard golden plastic inserts with screening to allow for air flow. Especially when one side of them broke a lot and the lack of symmetry has pestered me. So, Saturday morning, bright and early, I started my attack. First things first, I had to remove the aforementioned hard plastic. Here is the pre-starting picture of the door and you can see on the right where the plastic is missing.

I learned the hard way that the plastic in there is very sharp when it's broken. It took me only about 30 minutes to pull it all out, but oh did it end up being a painful half an hour. Here is a picture of some of the larger chunks. If you really want to look closely, you can see some blood drops from the second of the injuries I sustained. Just as an FYI that's as gory as this post gets. I didn't take pictures of the actual injuries because I was to busy bleeding and cursing.

After all the fun of tearing the door apart and waiting an hour for my injuries to stop bleeding through bandaids, I began to attempt to screen the inserts. Holy crap was this frustrating. After 2 1/2 hours of trying every way I could think of, I threw in the towel. The rugrat and I jumped on in the car and headed to Lowe's. I have a guy coming to measure this week and I should have the new door installed and the old one hauled away by mid next week. In the interim, this is the view from inside. The upside is that it gives me fantastic air flow, but the cotton and blossoms blowing in mean I have to vacuum more often.

I also learned something after injuring myself. I managed to cut the pads of my left thumb and pointer finger. The pointer finger is the one that dropped blood all over as it was more of a deep stab than a cut. Anyway, what I learned is that I don't open anything right-handed. I do most things with both hands, but there are a few things that I do with one specific hand. Apparently opening anything in a wrapper or a jar or a bottle, I only do with my left hand. Unfortunately I would forget this every time, so whenever I opened something, I ended up having to change the bandaids because I'd start bleeding all over again. My poor fingers!

So, I learned three things.

1. I should never try to screen anything ever again. I do not have the patience to do it. Nor do I have the ability to do much of anything without injuring myself.

2. I learned that I open things solely with my left hand. Because of this, I should be more careful when I decide to try something that I don't have patience for.

3. I also learned that if I try really hard, I can just curse in my head instead of out loud. Yay for the rugrat because I'm pretty sure her ears would have burned right off.

Thus ends my adventure in screening. I hope to remember to post pictures of my new door when it's in.