Livin’ The Dream

Last night…as I was falling asleep…somewhere offstage someone began playing the slide flute.

 

Ssssszeeerrrrrrup! Sssssssszzeeeeerup! 

You know the slide flute.

The slide flute makes it sound like clowns have been sent in and will shortly be doing zany hijinks in the center ring.

 

Ssssszzzeeerrrrrrup!

But the auditorium is dark and I can’t see crap. And other than the slide flute, it’s completely quiet.

 

Ssssszzzzeeerrrrrrup! Ssssssszeeeeerup! 

This is the dumbest show. Hubby and I seem to be the only people in the auditorium.

But when Hubby starts laughing, I think he must be able to see the clowns from where he is. Which is weird because you would need light to see anything in here.

So I turn to him to find out what’s so funny. And in the process I wake myself up just as the final slide flute noise floats past my face.

 

Sssszzzeeeeerup! It’s coming from my own nose.

God bless and gooooooooodNIGHT!

French Idiots

Gorgeous sunny Saturday in summer – and I come up from the basement where I was running on the treadmill.

Nah! No running outside when the weather’s like that!  What a stupid idea.  Running in the dim basement because that’s how I can also watch Below Decks Mediterranean while reading my Nook á la fois!

Can I get some snaps for using a French idiot in my blog?! Snap, snap, snap!

I DARE you to find another blog where they use French idiots to describe all the stuff they’re doing at the same time they’re running on the treadmill. Idiots. French idiots.  You know what’s funny?  Spell check keeps changing idiots to idiots.  I give up.  IDIOTS!  Nope.  Tried to slide it in there; it didn’t work.

When I come up from the basement, Sissy, who has probably 4 weeks of summer left before gulp! highschool, is sitting on the family room couch reading A Separate Peace by John Knowles.

She raises her sunflower face to me, all bewildered and says, “I don’t think there are any robots in this book. There can’t possibly be robots in this book.”

Oopsie. Tee hee hee.  I may have given her the impression that this coming-of-age book about boys in a boarding school during World War II had robots in it so as to encourage her to read the book sooner rather than later.  Because there’s nothing worse than spending the last week of summer vacay before highschool starts by hurriedly and panickedly reading a book you had all summer to read, especially when you could be spending the last week of summer buying all the cute highschool outfits you can find.  Can I get some snaps for THAT insight?!  Snap, snap, snap!

She then adds, “Can you tell me for real if this book has robots in it? Because I don’t really like robots and I was kinda bummed to think it had robots in it.”

No, Sweetie, there are no robots in A Separate Peace. That was just an example of me raisonne comme une casserole – another French idiot meaning “me demonstrating poor logic.”  Sonny?  He would’ve been all over robots.  Sissy?  Not so much, so my bad on that.

Idiot. IDIOT.

Gah!  Still no. I must use the word idiot in my blog a lot instead of the word idiot.

Oy, je donne ma langue au chat.

And yes, that’s another French idiot.  It means “I give up.”

Not a Creature Was Stirring…

When the dog begins to randomly walk into the living room while no one’s there, with a friendly look on his face and his tail slowly wagging – acting for all the world like he sees dead people??!

Suspect dead people.

But if the dead people start leaving tiiiiiiiny liiiiiiittle poopies all over the living room rug??

Begin suspecting mice instead.

Dead people don’t leave little poopies, I think. Nor do they gnaw the bottoms out of every chip bag in the pantry.  Nor do they create some weirdo stash of dog food in the winter scarves.  Which is how we discovered the mouse problem in the first place – when we were sorting out the winter scarves, second drawer down in the laundry room, and found a stash of dog kibble surrounded by little poopies.

Uhhhh, gross. And now no one in the house will ever wear a scarf again.

Also? Houston, I think we have a problem.  (And when I say “Houston” I really mean “Hubby” and he agreed there was a problem so he set a trap which he stuffed with chips and dog kibble.)

It worked!

We walked away from the experience believing we got the one mouse in da’ house.

Oh, hoh, hoh. Foolish mortals.  Turns out we only got the muth-ah mouse.  Who had, before she dined on a final serving of chips, stashed her babies in the living room, specifically in the piano.

Thus the dog’s subsequent and super creepy “I see dead people” behavior.

By the bye, you know what’s really, REALLY hard to get off a piano?!? A mouse.  Especially if all you’re using is a coffee can and grown lady screams to entice it.

mouse on the pianoAnd even harder that one mouse?? Three.  Three mice in a baby grand piano.

Thank Heaven for Houston. I’m not 100% sure how Houston got those cute l’il rat bastards guck, guck, guck out of the piano.  I didn’t see it because I was shuddering and crying – while researching plague and pestilence – in another room.  So this will go down as a great mystery in our marriage since I don’t ever want to actually KNOW how Houston got those mice out of the piano.

Muth-ah mouse out of the laundry room and three baby mice out of the piano? Done and done.  We are now done with the mice.

Until Houston accidentally cc’d me on a text to Sissy wherein he mentioned that he had caught TWO MORE MICE in the living room and set some traps there so she was to keep the dog out.

Yep.  Two.  More.  Mice.

What the frickin’ WHAT?!? Mystery, mystery! La, la, la, la.  Mystery.

But NOW we’re done, right? Yes, I believe that NOW we are done with the mice.  Now.

Kinda wish it HAD been dead people after all.

Snake In The Grass

When Sonny was in first grade we went to LegoLand. The rides were slightly tamer than all the ones at Disney World which just a few short years previously we had to berate Sonny onto – until it occurred to us that berating little boys onto Disney World rides was counterintuitive at which point we stopped and thus descended into an endless loop of It’s a Small World.  That is, until Sonny noticed the snake charmer boy ‘bout round twelve and that was all she wrote.

So when LegoLand came around, Sonny put everyone’s mind at ease by stating that he wasn’t afraid of rides anymore. “Oh really?”  replied Sissy.  “But what happens if a mummy POPS! out at you on the Lost Kingdom ride?!”

Sonny calmly stated, “Well…then I’ll scream like a grown lady.”

Fast forward to a recent week-end this summer. I was sitting on the couch reading my Nook through my eyelids while the kids and dog were in the back yard.  I heard my name, moaned low and urgent through the open window. Mmmmmoooooommmmm.   Whose eyes don’t POP! open at a sound like that?!  And that’s when I saw a rattlesnake about 4 feet long, coiled up and buzzing to beat the band*, striking at the knuckleheaded dog who was coming in closer for a cute and curious sniff.

I screamed like a grown lady.

I mean, I screamed like such a grown lady that was ever grown, that’s how loud I screamed. And then I ran out to the backyard to corral the dog who had tucked tail after strike two.  The dog, who hates screaming (not that it happens a lot at our house, you understand) knew something was up and was trying to make his getaway from me as well.  But eventually I was able to grab him, hoist him high and run into the house with the kids.

Ding, dong!

Apparently I had screamed like such a grown lady that four – count them, four – neighbors (plus someone’s granddaughter) came to the front door to see what all the grown lady screaming was about.

When they heard the garbled report of “rattlesnake in the backyard” they trooped through the house to see it. But it was nowhere to be found.  So they trooped back through the house and out the front door and I politely walked them down the front walk.  As I was returning, I spotted the last foot of the snake disappearing under our front porch.  It must’ve come all the way from the back yard to the front porch and even though I noticed there was *no* rattle on its tail as it was slipping under the stoop, I had to scream like a grown lady again.  Whereupon half the original group of neighbors (plus someone’s granddaughter) marched back to share that it wasn’t a rattlesnake, just a bull snake that makes itself look and sound like a rattlesnake.

Oh, oopsie. Ha, ha, ha.  That’s awkward not knowing a pretend rattlesnake from a real one.  So just ignore all the grown lady screaming then – my bad.  Also?  No wonder why we haven’t had a rabbit problem in the front yard this year.

*And yes, it is time to play our “80’s Song for Every Moment in Life Game” whereupon I will submit the winning entry titled “Keep On Loving You,” a song which first appeared on REO Speedwagon’s 1980 album Hi Infidelity:
You should have seen by the look in my eyes, baby
There was somethin’ missin’
You should have known by the tone of my voice, maybe
But you didn’t listen
You played dead, but you never bled
Instead you laid still in the grass, all coiled up and hissin’