Even Moms Say The Funniest Things

My mom and stepdad are in Texarkana for my (deceased) grandpa's army reunion. It's a WWII group and there are fewer of them every year. My parents are honorary members and go every year.

So today my mom called to check on me and to see if I still had my hair (it's been one week since my treatment).

I told her I thought the inch I have would probably go today or tomorrow.

While we were on the phone, I asked her if she remembered it was my anniversary.

She said she didn't, but that if she was home with her calendar she would. Or at least she thought she had it written down and would.

She apologized and wished me a happy anniversary.

I asked her if she knew how many years I'd been married. She said, "Let me get my purse."

I told her to guess without getting it.

She said, "Forty...."

Me: "I'm only 45!"

My mom: "How many is it then?" (I'm wondering if she realizes that I'd have to be her age to be married that long...)

Me: "26 years."

My mom: "Would you believe me if I told you I was trying to be funny?" With a giggle.

Me: "No!"

I call it a "Tooth Island."

Only our youngest would come up with that one. None of us had even heard this label until Hubby got home and Caboose was showing it to him.

Only our youngest would be clowning around most of the time while I was trying to take a picture of the "Tooth Island."

I Didn't Know Mascots Wore Cups

Overall we are a sports family. Chatty would be the biggest exception.

Today around our house there was some discussion about Pablo Sandoval, nicknamed the Kung Fu Panda, getting hit by a baseball in an area that would be the least desirable place for a man. The clip was shown on ESPN's Not Top Ten or one of their similar lists and so talk was rampant. Except for Chatty. She wasn't around when we were all talking about it.

Hubby has been out of town for the week. Tonight at the dinner table Buddy asked him if he saw what happened to the Kung Fu Panda. Buddy told Hubby that he didn't think the Kung Fu Panda wore a cup because he actually acted like it was painful (Buddy plays catcher and of course wears a cup, has been hit sometimes by foul balls, and says as long as you have a cup it shouldn't hurt that bad).

Chatty chimes in, "I didn't know mascots wore cups." (She thought it was a random character, not an actual team mascot, like when the president characters ran out at Nationals' games, and he got hit by the ball. Although the Presidents are tied to the Nationals and aren't really random, but that's where her thought pattern was going.)

I think this one tops the bucks and points.

And yes, having a boy that has played baseball for so many years has led to cup being a common part of everyday vocabulary, other than one you drink from.

Copycats

My mom sent me an email to tell me about today's Family Circus cartoon that was in the paper.

Wonder if they got the idea from one of my kids?

♫ ♪ Later On ♫

♪ ♫ we'll conspire... ♪ ♫

or in the case of at least one of my kids, we'll perspire.

That child, which shall remain unnamed, told me on Sunday that they (so I don't identify whether it's a he or a she) just figured out what the word was in the song. They'd always wondered, because they didn't think it was perspire, but that made sense since they were by a fire and all. So that had to be it.

We have a cat who is not conspiring or perspiring by the fire, just enjoying it as a source of heat.

This is the first winter we've used the fireplace since it had a noxious smell every other time we'd tried to turn it on. This fall, we opened all the windows and ran it for about 10-12 hours to burn off all the smell, which had something to do with the seal and I don't know what else. It worked.

So now the cat is no longer having to use the heater vents as a way to keep warm.

He seems to be totally okay with that.

Caboose's Newest Joke

He thinks of them in the shower. He says that's where he does some of his best thinking.

I do some of my best thinking in the shower too, but it's certainly not jokes.

Question: "What do the toughest guys eat?"

Answer: "Macho Cheese!"

Curly Hair

It's no secret that I've always wanted Marcia Brady hair. I think I've said it more than once. My cousin even made up an unflattering nickname for me when we were growing up that was completely related to my hair. CBFH.

Every person that asks me if my curly hair is "real" also asks if I've always wanted straight hair. Usually they have straight hair and have always wanted curly hair.

I didn't let my hair "go" until I turned 40. All those years of fighting it and time spent fighting it and little did I know that my Hubby would love it this way.

He likes to squish it up on the top by my scalp. About the only time he can get away with it is when he leaves very early in the mornings and I am asleep. Sometimes I wake up when he squishes my hair. That doesn't always make me very happy.

I think he has probably even made some analogies about my hair, but nothing that has ever really stuck in my mind. Until last night.

For some reason he squished my hair when he got home. One of the kids was standing there. They probably gave him a weird look. He said, "It's like a water hose. Or a straw."

I've even squished my own hair since then trying to figure out those analogies. I can't even come close.

The Closet Italian

When my cousin's family came to visit just a couple of weeks ago, they arrived in Detroit in mid-afternoon. Since they were attending a baseball game that night, it is an hour from the airport to our house, and another hour from our house back to the ball field, all in different directions and assuming traffic is slightly cooperative in the metro-Detroit area, they chose to eat a nice dinner and go straight to the game prior to spending the night at our house.

They ate at Giovanni's, according to reviews the best Italian in at least Southeast Michigan, if not the entire state. Jeff, Jennifer, and Meredith all spoke highly of it.

So we're talking about it the next day on the way to Frankenmuth, and Caboose hears us say the name of the restaurant.

"That is such a cool name. Now I have my fourth name. Luigi, Giovanni, Erica, and Whitney." Those are the names of the four children he's planning to have some day. He'd been struggling to find that fourth name.

See, it's been about a month since he told us he was going to have to find a wife that liked the name Luigi. Apparently the ones he's willing to fight for are Luigi and Erica. We told he might need to marry into a good Italian family if he had hopes for Luigi, although if he gets his way and you put it with our last name, he will get his fair share of strange looks.

Of course he is only ten years old. Planning his future, but still ten years old.

*Sparklers*

"I command you to play Mario Cart with me."

"I command you to be quiet."

I must have been a boring kid. My excitement was trying to spell my name in the air in cursive before the sparkler died out.

Catdog is...

...14!

Betsy is going to have to order a lot of croissants based on her comment.

Jessica is very smart because she knew exactly what Caboose was thinking. I think that makes her smart.

Caboose thinks 14 in French (quatorze) sounds like catdog in English, at least when spoken with the French accent by the people on the cd-rom. That's how he remembers it.

Of course he was born in New Jersey to parents that were born and raised in Arkansas, has a brother that was born in Louisiana, lived most of the first six years of his life smack in the midwest outside of St. Louis (on the Illinois side of the river) where there is no accent, lived in Virginia for two years, and then ended up in Michigan where there is just a bit of Norwegian/Canadian twist to the accent. Plus it seems like we have a lot of friends from New York that have a strong accent undertone (think of how they say the word coffee).

So I'm not really sure what words in English are going to sound like the French words to him, as long as it helps him remember them.

It Sounds Like Catdog In English

Do you know what number that would be when spoken in French, according to Caboose?

I can finally post again (I hadn't been able to do anything on my blog since last night) and thought I'd throw one up for fun before leaving for Buddy's ball game. This happened to be part of our discussion at the dinner table.

Latin and Cow Milk from a Straw

We've moved on from French and Blank Socks.

Sparky and the boys are learning French. Sparky is learning French since that is the primary language they speak in Togo, West Africa, where she wants to be a missionary. The boys are learning it because they think it's cool, fun, and they want to talk to her so no one else knows what they are saying.

All the kids are learning Latin. We're using Prima Latina to start everyone at the beginning together. It makes it easier for me. We're learning Latin to help with vocabulary.

When I told the kids we were starting Latin a couple of weeks ago, Caboose was excited. He said, "Now I'll know three languages." I told him Latin isn't a language that is spoken in any countries anymore like English or French. He no longer saw the need to learn it.

Today during our lesson they were supposed to remember to call me teacher in Latin. Magistra. They were doing that, Salve, Magistra, and then Buddy piped in, "It sounds like you would be something we would be drinking milk out of - the straw part."

I went along with it and said, "I'm a magic straw." Although there is no 'c' sound in there.

And then to finish it off, Caboose chimed in, "You don't have things you squeeze milk out of like a cow."

There were three kids and one mom who are a lot smarter than one 10-year-old at the table, and we were totally cracking up. Sparky was laughing so hard she was crying.

I just gave the zip-the-lip sign and we're waiting until he's older.

French and Blank Socks

When Sparky got home from Africa, she asked if she could learn French instead of Spanish since that is the language spoken in Togo. I found an instant immmersion cd set at Sam's Club that promises it is as good or better than Rosetta Stone for under $20. It's at least a start for the remainder of this school year to get her familiar with some words and pharases.

The boys have both decided that they want to learn French too. They've learned a few foods, numbers, simple phrases, and colors.

Caboose was telling me the colors he remembered the other day. In the course of the conversation he couldn't quite remember white, so I told him it was blanc.

So everyone starts saying blanc over and over. It gets a little irritating sometimes, but I try and bite my tongue since they are learning and not intentially trying to annoy me.

Then I told them how they could remember it. White is plain, like blank, like blanc.

So we proceed into a discussion about socks. It's not hard for me to get there. I have a way.

When Buddy was little, as in under 5-ish, he wore the cutest socks. Socks with stuff on them, like dinosaurs, and construction stuff, and firemen stuff, and lizards...you get the idea. He didn't own white socks, because he didn't like, in his own words, "Blank Socks."

Back when we went to my grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary celebration at church, for some reason we knew my cousin Jeff liked socks with stuff on them, but grown-up stuff, like paisley or grown-up designs, not plain khaki or black or blue or brown, so Buddy was all pumped about talking non-blank socks. I don't even know if Jeff remembers, but here they were with Buddy counting off all his different ones as he told him.

I have little snippets of his old socks in his scrapbook because I also have fond memories of them. His "blank socks" comment ranks as one of mine and Hubby's favorites.

And now, Buddy only wears blanc socks.

Pillowcases and a Fancy Shirt

Yesterday I popped into Marshall's to pick up a pair of white pillowcases for my pillows. I need to put my flannel ones away, and I love to get the high quality pillowcases at a really good price.

While I was on my way back to the front to check out, I couldn't help my eye from wandering to the sides. There was a shirt hanging on the end of a rack where it didn't really belong. It stuck out. It was pretty. It caught my eye. It spoke to me. It appeared to be my size.

I did not have time to try it on, but I was willing to get it and take it back if I had to. But I did not want to have to.

Isn't it pretty?

I'm saving it for Mother's Day. I'm going to have to go buy a skirt though.

I've showed it to every member of my family at different times since last night. The most fun was showing it to Sparky. I prepped her on the way with, "What's the one thing that makes this shirt not fancy?" All because of her issues with fancy shirts. And dresses and any other item of clothing really.

She said exactly what I thought she would. "It's white."

Then as she left my room she said, "Except that wedding dresses are white, and those are the fanciest dresses you can get, and a wedding is the fanciest day of them all."

Overheard at our house tonight...

After a day of sledding at a party, Caboose had on pajamas but didn't appear to have had a shower.

So I checked with him and asked if he had.

His response, "I had two showers yesterday."

That must be how homeschool math works.

Humph!

Last night Hubby did the unthinkable.

He realized Buddy was taller than me.

None of us had realized it before that.

Of course, it could have been the illusion of the fluffy hair I have (that's why I had to use my finger and show you where my head really is).

He's a full inch taller than me now.

I had Hubby secretly follow Buddy up the stairs to see if he ran off to tell the other kids.

He did.

Buddy said to Sparky (our resident shorty at 4'11" who will always be my favorite child!), "Sparky, I just accomplished something that you'll never be able to say you accomplished."

Of course the plan was to tell her he was taller than me knowing that she never would be.

But before he had the chance, Caboose chimed in with his two cents.

"What, you kissed a girl?"

Buddy says over everyone's laughter, "No, I'm taller than Mom!"

Of course it lost some of it's impact by then.

Secret vs. Play-Doh

I think it's obvious that we have some pretty strange funny conversations in our house. The last few days have been no exception. Oddly enough, they do not include Caboose. At least not this one.

One of my recent CVS bargains was this Secret. Chatty was the recipient.

Somehow Sparky discovered it. All I really know is that she thought it was cool and she discovered it was a gel (like I didn't know that because I bought it).

She progressed to comparing it to Play-Doh. Now I'm the first one to admit that I have fears of permanent damage to my children because I didn't let them play with Play-Doh when they were little. Maybe like once, but that's about all I could handle. It's just too messy. I couldn't even do it outside. And me of all people should understand the desires of children, seeing that I continued to (gently and in a completely funny way) berate my mom for not getting me an Easy-Bake Oven when I was a kid.

Of course I then got it for my 31st birthday just to shut me up.

So Sparky told me all about how the deodorant comes out like the Play-Doh on the hair people.


Of course if I could have actually found a picture of the Play-Doh squishing through it might have been more effective for the visual, but this was the best I could do.

So pretty much for the last two days we've been talking about Chatty's cool new deodorant. Exciting days at our house.

From Jericho to Gezer — the Land of the Olderites?

In our defense, we encourage our children to refer to people as older rather than old. And I can't think of any time that Hubby and I have ever used the word geezer, even in jest. Ever.

************

Sparky reads to Caboose from the Bible every night when he goes to bed. The other night she was reading from Joshua 16:1-4 "The allotment for Joseph began at the Jordan of Jericho, east of the waters of Jericho, and went up from there through the desert into the hill country of Bethel. It went on from Bethel (that is, Luz), crossed over to the territory of the Arkites in Ataroth, descended westward to the territory of the Japhletites as far as the region of Lower Beth Horon and on to Gezer, ending at the sea. So Manasseh and Ephraim, the descendants of Joseph, received their inheritance."

Last night out of the clear blue, Caboose tells Buddy, "There was a town named Gezer in the Bible."

Buddy says, "I bet that's where all the old people lived."

Caboose says, "Yeah, I bet that's where all the old people moved."

Buddy says, "Yeah, all the old geezers. I bet that's how old people got to be called old geezers, because the Bible is from a long time ago."

A few minutes later out of the blue, Buddy says, "I bet that's where Methuselah lived."

We've now been informed by Sparky that they learned it from Zach and Cody on one of the Suite Lifes on Disney Channel. They just had something this week on the msn homepage that Zach and Cody taught boys bad behavior. I guess I have some verbal proof now.

And two boys will be heading to Respect 101. Just as soon as we can get done giggling about it.

Did She Drink the Cholesterol?

Caboose is going through a phase where he has to go with Hubby and me whenever we go run errands together. If it's just me or just Hubby alone, he stays home, but if we both go, he has to go. He's afraid we're going to die and he won't be there with us. We're hoping he outgrows this phase soon, because it's getting a little stressful for us too.

Lately he's been bringing his DS along with him, but then when we get to the store he wants to carry it in. He'll be in the middle of a game and not want to stop, or not be at a saving point, or something crazy like that. So the other day Hubby and I said, "If you come with us and it's not at least as far as Ikea, then you can't bring your game."

Tonight we made a quick run to Wal-Mart together and so Caboose came along. Since he didn't bring his game it required him to make conversation. Who knew there was so much to talk about?

Since there were some dark clouds he talked about rain and how it formed, thunder and lightning and how it formed, hurricanes and tornadoes and how they form, and which one of the two can cause more damage.

Somehow we mentioned spiders. It could have been me mentioning it first, Betsy over at My Five Men being on some sick spider kick all of a sudden and creeping me out, but I can't remember. That made Caboose start talking about the black widow Hubby found right before we left Virginia last year.

Caboose asked if it died, to which I answered a definite yes. He asked why we didn't just step on it and get it over with. Well, Hubby had it contained already when I got home, and once we got it in that jar it seemed like it would die pretty fast. Who knew those things were such stinkers.

If you haven't clicked over and looked at the old posts yet, we stuck an alcohol-laden cotton ball in the jar to suffocate it since it was still alive seven days after being put in the jar with no air holes poked to help it breathe. Tonight on the way home from Wal-Mart Caboose asked, "Did she drink the cholesterol?" Well, the spider did attack the cotton ball, which was what he remembered, and I told him I wasn't sure if she actually drank some alcohol or just suffocated.

Hubby told Caboose that drinking cholesterol would have been pretty bad for her too.

I'm just glad she's dead.

They Say the Funniest Things

You probably think this post is about Caboose.

It's not.

I might pay big for this post though.

The good news is, Hubby likes the blog. I hope that counts for something.

See, the middle of last week, Hubby got sick. He even had to miss a day of work. He never had any fever, just really bad congestion, which goes straight to his chest. Makes him cough bad, sound bad, and basically feel like he's been hit by a truck.

Since this is VBS week and we are still operating with just one vehicle, I am transporting him so that I can have it the rest of the day. He has to be at work by 6 a.m.

I.am.not.a.morning.person.

So when I talked to him Monday at about 6:40, exchanged pleasantries, which aren't usually very pleasant for me, not being a morning person, he says to me in the extremely deep, gruff, still sounding sick voice,

"Do you like my deep sexy voice?"

I immediately hear some shuffling and muffling at the other end of the phone. That is followed by,

"I was talking to my wife."

Immediately followed by this from me,

"Who was that?"

Basically, it was one of his co-workers a couple of cubicles over. He heard him and popped his head over to see what in the world was going on. Hubby told me he had to be pretty red at that point.

I feel sure he was.

And in my defense, I cleared this post with Hubby before I posted it. I was a good wife. This time.