Freaky Frugalite

OK, to make something perfectly clear– the following is not a criticism!!! It’s an observation.

I was dropping Entrecards and visited the entertaining Geek Mom Mashup blog. She has an interesting post about a Japanese-invented gadget (actually, they are stickers that you place on the toilet) that encourages proper “aim” for kids who use the toilet. A common complaint among moms is that the kids whizz all over the place. Yeah, I have kids and I remember those potty-training years, and all I can say is THANK GOD THAT’S OVER. lol. Besides childbirth, potty-training is the worst!

Anyway, I was absolutely stunned at the idea of stickers. Are stickers and such things really necessary?! Back in the old days, a swift little swat on the kid’s backside, or forcing the child to clean up after himself (*GASP*), was enough to solve the problem! What is this new fad where mothers are resigned to be their child’s slave? There is no way on God’s good earth that I would ever spend our hard-earned money on toilet stickers because the durn kid is too lazy to aim correctly! No wonder the youth walk around like they are God’s gift to earth!

Disclaimer *sigh* This post is not intended to criticise, disseminate, or otherwise offend Geek Mom or her devoted readers, or the Japanese, or Moms Against Spanking Kids (MASK), or anyone who happens to use said toilet stickers, or anyone who to this day still cannot aim. However, I am very comfortable offending youth who walk around like they are God’s gift to earth and to their parents who encourage that.

The lilacs are in bloom here. I have only two little lilac bushes, white and Princess Pink. But my neighbors have one side of their yard fenced with huge lilacs. The bushy tops are so peppered with purple blossoms that the neighbor is scented with them. It’s enough to drive me mad. I absolutely LOVE the smell of lilacs. The only negative thing I can think of when it comes to lilacs is that their bloom time is so brief.

My son helped me snip off a few tender blossoms from my shrub. I have the jar of them beside me and I am swooning. They are just amazing flowers. I’ll have to get a photo up of my pride and joy– my little lilac tree that I have been nursing. It is rewarding me this year with a knockout quantity of blooms. The little buds are just about ready to burst with their deliciousness. For now, here’s a borrowed photo. Can’t you just smell them from here? Ahhhhhhhh. So although I might get Kentucky Derby Party Invitations and watch them “Run for the Roses,” what would really knock my socks off is if they ran for the lilacs!

I’m nursing my wounds after finding out that my submission into the Renuzit Home Makeover contest didn’t make the semi-finalist list. It’s kind of how I felt after trying out for cheerleading in high school. There were 31 girls for tryouts and only 30 cheerleaders were needed. Guess who didn’t make it. :-p Story of my life *sigh*

Anyway… I was surfing Entrecards tonight and saw that my three blogs that I work on there have made the top three for their categories. I was flipping! Here are the screenshots, for posterity to remember me by, lol. It’s not exactly a cpm award, but this sure makes ALLLLLLLLLLLLLL that card-dropping worth it!

Freaky Frugalite for Trends:

New York Renovator for Home and Garden:

New York Traveler for Travel:

All is not doomed, lol. Now, if I can only figure out a way to raise $60,000 to remodel this lousy old house… *sigh*

I read this hilarious story at MakesYouLaugh. They didn’t say where they got it, but I wonder if it really happened! LOL, ouch!

A boss dialled employee’s home phone number and was greeted with a child’s whispered, “Hello?”

Feeling put out at the inconvenience of having to talk to a youngster, the boss asked, “Is your Daddy home?”

“Yes,” whispered the small voice.

“May I talk with him?” the man asked.

To the surprise of the boss, the small voice whispered, “No.”

Wanting to talk with an adult, the boss asked, “Is your Mommy there?”

“Yes,” came the answer.

“May I talk with her?”

Again the small voice whispered, “No.”

Knowing that it was not likely that a young child would be left home alone, the boss decided he would just leave a message with the person who should be there watching over the child. “Is there anyone else there in your house?” the boss asked the child.

“Yes,” whispered the child, “a policeman.”

Wondering what a cop would be doing at his employee’s home, the Boss asked, “May I speak with the policeman?”

“No, he’s busy,” whispered the child.

“Busy doing what?” asked the boss.

“Talking to Daddy and Mommy and the fireman,” whispered the child.

Growing concerned and even worried as he heard what sounded like a helicopter through the earpiece on the phone, the boss asked, “What is that noise?”

“A hello-copper,” answered the whispering voice.

“What is going on there?” asked the boss, now alarmed.

In an awed hushed voice the child answered, “The search team just landed the hello-copper.”

Alarmed, concerned and more than just a little frustrated, the boss asked, “What are they searching for?”

Still whispering, the young voice replied, along with a muffled giggle:

“Me.”

I’m joining the brigade of homeschooling moms who are praying for Robin at Heart of Wisdom blog. I have no idea who this woman is; I found her blog via Entrecards a few days ago. She’s an author and a homeschooling mother of eleven children. She’s been plagued with various health problems, including anemia. Serious complications have sent Robin to the hospital in critical condition, and a friend is posting to her blog right now.

I’m concerned because the medication Robin is on is making her very depressed and she has lost her will to live. I have been on heavy medication (for back pain) and I know how this crap can really mess up your thinking. The doctors don’t seem to know what is causing her condition, either. Please pray for Robin, for a speedy and supernatural recovery. Those kids need prayers, too.

I don’t know what it is, I’m just sitting at my computer, bawling. I hate it when moms have health problems. We try to be so strong for everyone and it’s heart wrenching when things come crashing down like this. My son just came over to give me a hug.

Hey guess what I found? It may be a little too late for Mother’s Day, I don’t know. But it’s still nice. Wind chimes! I spotted these hummingbird wind chimes. I think they are gorgeous! There’s a beautiful collection of wind chimes and loads of other luxury home decor items at the website Upside Living. The stuff is so beautiful.

My grandmother collected wind chimes. She had them all hanging from the ceiling in her “davenport” room (the old-fashioned word for her enclosed porch). After she died, her kids got most of the nice ones. I did get a few smaller, tin ones. I have fond memories of sitting in her “davenport” and watching those chimes spin. Sometimes I would stand up on the arm of her couch and shake one or two to get it to tinkle. (All when she wasn’t looking, of course). I have one of her chimes on my porch and it is the sweetest sound to hear when the wind blows. I just love chimes. I’ve found that the important thing is to get a good quality chime, or else it will rust through. The copper ones are best, from what I hear. This hummingbird one is professionally tuned!

Upside Living has other things that I would think are perfect for Mom or Grandmother. Better hurry, though! But even if it doesn’t come in time, you can always do what we do (I am notorious for ordering gifts too late): I print out a photo of the item I am buying and put it in a nice card, and I blame the postal service for its tardiness! How’s that for ingenuity?

Talking about my daughter was she was a baby made me want to sort through my photos of them. We were a poor, young family back then, and I didn’t take as many photos as I wish I had. Video camcorders were outta-this-world, crazy, crazy expensive, so we don’t have the kids on video. I really regret that. We did, however, get them to Olan Mills for photos from time to time. Here’s my favorite of the two girls when they were little.

Aren’t they adorable!?

That’s probably the best studio portrait I own of any of the kids. I was never too fond of Olan Mills, but they did offer good deals back then. I’m glad we went with them. Those photos are precious. We went through a “poor” period after having the boys, so I don’t have any nice photos with them.

Maybe I’m subconsciously going through the photos because it’s almost Mother’s Day? I haven’t been through them in a long time, lol!

Being a mom has been the biggest blessing to me. I have four incredible kids, wow. When I think about it too much, it chokes me up!

Sheesh. I’m getting all sentimental and Mother’s Day is still three days away….

When my daughter (child #2) was a baby, she was colicky and restless. How I remember staying up nights with that baby! We joke about it now, but it was during her infanthood that I started drinking coffee (before I’d been a tea drinker). I needed the caffeine to keep me going, because that baby slept for only 3 or 4 hours in any one stretch of time, up until she was about eight months old. It was, lol, a “nightmare.” But she was the cutest little baby so I couldn’t have possibly been mad at her. It’s just one of those things that’s part of being a mother.

I’d read back then that, to encourage restless babies to sleep longer and better, it helps to have a fan running or a tape recorder running all night. Here in Upstate NY where winters are bone-chilling cold, and especially in my drafty apartment, I couldn’t run a fan. And the tape recorder kept everyone else up. We settled on an old radio tuned into static, for the white noise. Unfortunately, sometimes the dial would slip or the radio transmission would change, and we’d hear the faintest strains of Ozzy Osbourne at night…

We’ve moved to a house in town, and holy cow this town is noisy. It used to be a quiet little town, but an ice cream stand opened up down the street and a gas station enlarged it’s business. And the car dealership down the road now deals in motorcycles. It’s really a pain. And I’m being very polite when I say that…

So we started our little “white noise” routine at night again. We have been using a little air filter. I don’t know if it was conditioning from those early years, but my daughter sleeps better with noise in the background, after all these years. And we no longer hear those deafening motorcycle mufflers at 2am.

But guess what?! Our air filter sometimes picks up and emits radio signals. Maybe it is trucks with CBs driving by?! I don’t know. But I swear at night I sometimes hear men’s voices. It gives me the heebie-jeebies.

I just saw this website for White Noise Machine and guess what– they actually MAKE little machines for creating white noise. And all these years I’d been using the stupid radio and the expensive air filter! I’d much rather have a machine dedicated to white noise, to avoid those “slips” in transmissions where we pick up interference and start hearing the strains of “Stairway to Heaven” on FM. :S

P.S. The White Noise Machines also block snoring spouses. LOL! I won’t go into that; that’s content for a whole ‘nother post!

I read this amazing story at Tidbits of Tammy. The exact same thing happened to me, but I thought I had somehow forgotten how much my gas tank could hold. This now makes me very suspicious:

This is a true story, so read it carefully!

April 24, 2008, I stopped at a Kangaroo BP gas station, located at 1325 Main Street, Cartersville,GA. My truck’s gas gauge was on 1/4 of a tank. I use the mid-grade,which was priced at $3.71 per gallon. When my tank is at this point, it takes somewhere around 14 gallon’s to fill it up. When the pump showed 14 gallons had been pumped I began to slow it down, then to my surprise it went to 15, then 16. I even looked under my truck to see if it was being spilled. It was not. Then it showed 17 gallons had been pumped. It stopped at almost 18 gallons. This was very strange to me,since my truck has only an 18 gallon tank. I went on my way a little confused, then on the evening news I heard a report that 1 out of 4 gas stations had calibrated their pumps to show more gas had been pumped than a person actually got.

Holy cow! This is CRIMINAL! See, I have a minivan, and the manual says it holds 13-14 gallons of gas. However, there have been occasions where my van slurped up much more than that. At the time, I thought it strange, but I figured I must have misread the manual (we have had six minivans over our lifetime). Maybe I am still in the wrong, because I lost the manual and can’t check. However, I’m going to be paying attention more frequently to how many gallons go in the tank! Here’s more from Tammy:

Here is how to check a pump to see if you are getting the right amount: Whichever grade you are using, put EXACTLY 10 GALLONS in your tank, then look at the dollar amount, if the dollar amount is not EXACTLY 10 times the price of the fuel you have chosen,then the pumps are rigged. In my case as I said the mid-grade was $3.71 9/10 per gallon, my dollar amount for 10 gallons should have been $37.19.

I’m also going to refrain from those attendant-served gas stations. One time we were swindled by a teenager when he charged our card more than our gas cost. My husband decided not to press the issue (although I was ready to throw the kid in jail, because I just KNEW he was swindling other motorists).

Anyway, pay attention at the pump! Gas is expensive enough with the government tax crooks and the oil exec crooks stealing from us!

Well, I’m stuck. No activities for me. My back is officially down and out and I’m on self-prescribed bed rest until the swollen disks decide to settle down and stop giving me pain. A few years ago, when all I had was a desktop computer, this kind of bed rest drove me NUTS. I couldn’t take the desktop to bed with me, and I was in too much pain to read books, so I just laid in agony for weeks. It was really lousy.

A few years ago I got a laptop, and what a Godsend! Now, when I have to put my feet up, I can take my work (or play) with me. It is still a little difficult laying down sideways and trying to type or use a mouse, but a laptop is the next-best thing to an lcd mount where I can be semi-reclined. Maybe someday I’ll get something like that. But for now, I have to type sideways!

I don’t expect I’ll be laid up for too long. This time, I caught it early before I really strain myself too badly. Last year I was bedridden for six weeks. It was AWFUL. It was because I ignored the pain and just kept going, going, going. I guess I’m getting smarter in my old age.