Dictators

Have you all seen J.C. Penney's Hitler tea kettle? Voila!

A picture of the kettle on a billboard in Southern California has left some drivers "steamed" because in glancing quickly up at the board, they thought for a moment that they were looking at a huge picture of the dictator's face, rather than a water-boiling vessel.

The article led to this exchange which appeared on my Facebook news feed among people I don't know, but would embrace if I ever meet them at a bad puns convention:

Dispatches from the Diamond

Friday night I had my first taste of a little league baseball tournament and I was in people-watching heaven. I have a minor obsession with subcultures and hardcore baseball families fed that obsession perfectly. I'm not talking about people whose kids play baseball. I'm talking about people whose entire identity is little league baseball. They wear shirts like this:

And shoes like this:

And get this pedicure:

Third Grade Picnic

Happy Memorial Day Weekend! In keeping with my trend of being not able to do anything more than just report on my activities because I've been too busy to think, let me tell you about the Girl's Third Grade Picnic. If this is the kind of stuff that holds no interest for you, then just move along (but check out the picture of the ice cream truck menu at the end of the post). On the off-chance that you might have to plan some kind of similar event, then this might be one of those actually useful posts that I write from time to time, mostly by accident. About six weeks ago, someone clued the two other third grade room moms and me that we had to plan a party for the third graders to celebrate their "graduation" from elementary school. The PTA gave us a budget and some minimal guidance and we were on our own from there.

One of the other room moms reserved the pavilion at our local park, which is within walking distance of the school. We kept our fingers crossed that it wouldn't rain because our plan B was to beg one of the churches to let us use their gymnasium for a couple of hours in exchange for allowing them to convert all the children. JK!

Here's a picture of Tim Tebow to make up
for the religious joke.

Play Ball!

Because I know you've all been wondering, the Boy's team won their league championship 19-15. Go White Sox! The boys were all thrilled:

The little boy in the blue shirt is the younger brother of one of the players and became the team's batboy/mascot/good luck charm. He awesomely wore a Chipper Jones jersey, baseball pants, and a batting helmet to nearly every game and every practice. I'm not sure if the kid owns any non-baseball clothes.

May Madness

Literally Dozens of Loyal Readers: Where have you been? Where are these tips that you promised? We're waiting and we're a little disappointed in you.

Me: I'm so sorry. I know that the last you heard of me I was revealing the source of senior citizen vibrators and then I vanished off the face of the earth. The end of the school year and sports season hit last weekend with special intensity. Let's just say that you know that you're busy when you don't even have time to complain about how busy you are on Facebook.

Let me tell you about about my Sophie's Choice (writ much smaller and less dramatic) for last Saturday morning. The Girl had a soccer tournament about an hour away, with games on Saturday at 8 and 12:30. The Boy had a playoff game for baseball at 9 and the Baby had her ballet recital also at 9. The K coaches the Boy's team, so he had an easy time picking the baseball game. That left me with deciding whether I should force the Girl to drive to the tournament with a teammate or miss the Baby's first big girl dance recital. Tip: If you have to choose one child to disappoint, pick the one least likely to remember. So, Mom took the Baby to her recital.

They are measured for their costumes at the beginning of the year and she's grown two inches and gained five pounds since then, so that tutu is basically a very cute tourniquet.

Boobs

Just to get you caught up on the week's breast news, on Monday Angelina Jolie wrote an op-ed in the New York Times revealing that she'd had a preventative double mastectomy because she carries a faulty gene that gives her a 87% chance of getting breast cancer. Angelia has come a long way since the days when she wore a vial of Billy Bob Thorton's blood around her neck and French kissed her brother. Once she became aware of the plight of refugees, she became a Special Envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and is very involved in human rights issues. She has used her celebrity to bring attention to important issues, and her op-ed is another example of this. She could have remained silent about her surgery probably no one would be the wiser, but by publicly acknowledging the surgery and her reasons for having it, she highlighted women's health issues, which is never a bad thing, IMO.

On the lighter side of talking about boobs, did you all see that Disney gave some to Merida, the heroine from Brave?

Photo: Disney/Pixar

Sound Advice

The Internets were buzzing this week about the story of the Swedish man who died from multiple bee stings after trying to have sex with a wasps nest. Only, then it turned out not to be true. My faith in the human race was momentarily restored and then I saw this:

That's a grown man who got stuck in a highchair at a McDonald's in Ireland and had to be freed by the police. You'll be shocked to learn that alcohol had a role in the incident. Apparently, he sat in the highchair, then consumed a McCwrap and was unable to extricate himself from the seat. (I just made that up.)

Vermont Country Store

If you've read my blog more than a couple of times, you'll know that I love me some eccentrics. Give me your Civil War reenactors, your Bronies, your cage-fighting groomers, you will find acceptance here with just a smidgen of gawking:

One of my favorite eccentrics, I've never even met. Dad has an acquaintance whose main business is buying and reselling the free promotional textbooks that professors receive from publishing companies. His secondary job is as a dealer in gold coins. He travels everywhere by bicycle and he drinks his own urine, which he carries around with him in a jar. I've never met him, but doesn't he just sound too good to be true?

My all-time favorite eccentric catalog is the Vermont Country Store. In the market for something that was rendered obsolete decades ago? Electric typewriter? Rotary dial phone? VCR tape rewinder? Cassette Recorder? All available from VCS. Alternatively, you could buy an iPhone, load some apps, and use it to replace all of the foregoing products.

Here is a review of the cassette recorder, which gives you an idea of the age and mindset of most of VCS's customers:

I'm so torn. Part of me wants to help her with the bulging battery cover and part of me wants to tell her that when you purchase an item outmoded in 1988, you're not a a great position to complain about "weeny" cords.

McCwrap

McDonald's got some free publicity last week when Charles Ramsey, the hero who helped free three kidnapped women in Cleveland, mentioned the restaurant multiple times in interviews. Ramsey was eating a McDonald's lunch when he heard Amanda Berry screaming and ran to help her while possibly still clutching a half-eaten Big Mac in his hand. I think McDonald's could use the boost because this is the sign at my neighborhood McDonald's:

Word to Your Mother

I hope you all had a good weekend. We were busy, busy, busy with year-end activities and sports for the kids. We've been incredibly swamped with stuff, which is why I haven't been able to post the last few days. We did take some time out on Sunday to celebrate Mother's Day. The "children" sent me a lovely bouquet of flowers from Foxgloves & Ivy (the website is wonky, but the flowers are very pretty) and a necklace. In a role-reversal, Mom gave me some cute Vera Bradley flip flops like this:

Available in Decatur at Seventeen Steps.

The children all made their own gifts, as well. The Baby decorated a flowerpot at school:

Which was very cute until she realized that the flowers were plunged into green play-doh (not capitalized because I think it's homemade) to hold them in place. She then deconstructed the entire gift, pulling out all the flowers, the pink Easter grass, and finally the green play-doh. After she got tired of playing with the individual elements of my gift, I put it all back together and cleaned up the stray Easter grass and play-doh that had fallen on the floor. Nothing like a gift that keeps on taking.

While I love the Baby's gift, I think that when kids get a little older and can make their own gifts, you get some really awesome stuff. Which brings me to the Girl's gift, a coupon book, and the Boy's gift, the most awesome Mother's Day card ever.

Funny Video

I just saw this video. Soooo cute:

Happy Friday!

11 Things That Shouldn't be Produced in Camouflage Print

My good friends Mama June and Sugar Bear were lawfully (maybe) joined in holy matrimony last weekend. They went an untraditional direction with the attire, and both the bride and groom wore camouflage to the wedding. Here's a good picture of the groom, bride, and Honey Boo Boo, herself:

Just in case you were wondering, June's dress is not the same earth-roaming fish camouflage pattern on the tablecloth from the K's white trash birthday party:

I believe that the pattern on Mama June's dress is a classic mossy oak.

I thought this might be a good time to talk about camouflage making the leap from the foxhole to the mainstream. Honestly, though, is there really a wrong time to talk about camo?

One-off Tip

I'm working on a long post about camouflage (really), but I wanted to share a tip for the day, so here you go:

Bag Lady

Until this weekend, I did not know that there is a hook under the handle of the small double-decker shopping cart at Whole Foods:

Perhaps I am the only one who didn't know this, like when I didn't realize that the "gulf" in gulf stream refers to the Gulf of Mexico. What are you waiting for? Start hooking! Um, just to be clear, I mean the legal kind of hooking.

At a Quad Junction (Formerly Known as a "Crossroads")

Yesterday, the Boy and I had the following conversation:

Boy: Mom, I want to have two world records.
Me: Mmm, okay.
Boy: First, I want to be the first Lebanese President of the United States.
Me: Okay, that's good. What's the second record?
Boy: I want to make a law to rename how roads come together. If two roads come together it's a double junction. If three roads come together it's a triple junction. If four roads come together it's a quad junction.
Me: You don't really have to pass a law to do that. You just have to get people to start using those names. Basically, you need a Twitter account and lots of followers.

I'm happy with those goals, especially considering his recent ambitions included being a supermarket bagger. I hope that it doesn't make me too much of a helicopter mom to admit that I had slightly higher aspirations for him than bagging groceries. I know I'm a snob. As for being the first "Lebanese" President, I didn't tell him that Thomas Jefferson beat him by nearly 300 years.

Hint-a-Day May

I'm going to try something new for the remainder of the month of May. Every day I'm going to post something that someone might find helpful. I feel like I spend a lot of time here just trying to make you laugh and since I can never be sure that I'm succeeding in that regard (since I'm not standing behind you while you're reading my posts...yet) I figure that if I tell you something helpful, this will at least ensure that you haven't wasted your time here. Because:

Garage Sale Friday

Seven months into blogging and this is the first time that I can't come up with a cohesive topic for a post, so I'm just posting some random things that I've screen grabbed and found on my camera. Consider this to be a garage sale post, where you might find some weird crappy things or a Picasso that's been hanging in some one's bathroom for 50 years. Let's all hope for more Picasso than crap.

I'm Confused

Former Girl Next Door, Holly Madison had a baby named Rainbow Aurora who is perfect, according to Holly. According to this picture from Us Weekly, she may also be a dog:

Oh, Holly, your baby has the glossiest coat! 

I know you might expect me to have some bon mots about the baby's name, and I hate to disappoint. Having been an avid viewer of both The Girls Next Door and Holly's spin-off Holly's World, I would have expected nothing less for Holly than: Weather + Disney = Baby Name. Other possibilities are Windy Belle and Summer Jasmine. If she had a boy I'm afraid he'd be Storm Gaston or something. Frankly, I was more surprised that Kendra has a baby named after the main character of King of the Hill. Her formula was Sports + Rock Star = Baby Name. Little Hank's name should be Lax Jagger or something. But then he'd be a sock:

Imagine my surprise upon Googling Lax Jagger to find this. I love the Internet.

I May Be a Man...

when it comes to buying gifts. Ha! Almost got you there. Yesterday, the Baby and I were in the drive-thru line at Chick-fil-A and a man sporting numerous gold chains walked by our car and into the restaurant. Eagle-eyed Baby had an opinion:

Baby: Why he wearing all that jewelry? (she really does talk like an Asian dictator speaking English)
Me: Maybe he thinks that it looks nice.
Baby: Maybe he forget that he is a boy.
Me:  Do you forget that you're a girl?
Baby: No!
Me: Me either. I'm pretty sure he remembers that he's a boy. He just likes to wear a lot of gold chains.
Baby: I think he forget that he's a boy.

So, I may have unintentionally lied to the Baby because there is a time when I forget that I'm a girl, and that's when I have to buy gifts. I become the biggest bro and I just want to buy a gift card (better yet, a crumpled envelope full of wrinkled dollar bills) and be done with it. This is an unfortunate quality, especially at this time of year when we have Mother's Day next weekend and end of the school year teacher and coach gifts to purchase.

Smoking Mittens for everyone! Don't smoke?
Well then, you've already won.