It's still the economy stupid! And my "Seinfeld" moment

In my last poll, the very unofficial results showed that the economy is the most important issue in the upcoming election. For what it's worth, in college economics was explained  to me in terms of pizza and beer. There's an economic term called "utility" which refers to the satisfaction one derives from consuming.  So for example, say you are hungry and thirsty, and you have a slice of pizza and a beer. By the time you have eaten pizza and drunk beer until your sick,  the pizza and beer have reached their maximum utility and "diminishing returns" have kicked in..

If I'm completely in error on my brief explanation of economics, remember I'm a journalism major, not the Treasury Secretary; although, maybe that post will be open soon.

Continuing with the economic theme, my husband (and I) did our part to attempt to jump start the economy like the broken car it is--by buying a car. Meantime we traded in our Volvo with 103-thousand miles on it.

We had the car detailed before trading it in, and it turns out we made a good call.

Seinfeld reference alert:

I never watched Seinfeld very much, but I believe there was a famous episode where Jerry buys a car the smells like B-O, and he can't get the smell out. Bear with me here, I'm almost ready to make my point.

Our Volvo had an interesting problem, too-- a mouse nest --complete with mouse bathroom --in the spare-tire compartment. This boys and girls, is why having the car detailed was a good idea.

I grew up in a rural community, and field mice made themselves comfortable--EVERYWHERE!.

So the incident with the Volvo, kind of brought back happy memories--NOT!

You'll all be happy to know that I checked out our other car, and it appears to be mouse-free.

I draw a line in my ipod

Most days, I take my son to school.  It gives him a little more time in the morning, and I (usually) like our time in the car on the way there.

But not today.

He's messing with my ipod, dialing in the music he wants to hear.  I figure it's going to be Blue Oyster Cult again.

I should be so lucky.  Instead Primus blares.  I believe I have made my feelings about Primus known in a previous post.

I tell my son to pick something else.  He does.  Problem is--it's Frank Zappa with Captain Beefheart. 

Son proceeds to tell me that his dad told him that these are two of my least-favorite bands.

So now I'm getting the picture. Son is deliberately trying to get a rise out of me.  I tell son that I will speak to dad.

I get home, go downstairs to my husbands work station.  I put my hands on my hips and glare at him.

"Guess what your son wanted to hear today?" I ask.

Rhetorical question so I don't wait for a response.

Husband starts cracking up, just like son did.  It's so much fun to irritate me.

Next time my son wants to hear something I can't stand, I won't give him the satisfaction of blowing a gasket.  

I'll just get a bullet to bite.

"Why were you born short?"

Okay.  I admit it.  I'm height challenged.   My 10-year-old son is getting ready to surpass me, if he hasn't already.  

He asks me, "Why were your born short?"

Indeed that is the million-dollar question.  I'd like to know the answer myself.

But I say to him: "Do you want the easy or the hard answer?"

He goes for the easy answer first.  I tell him that none of us gets to choose how tall we are.

Then he asks for the hard answer.

I tell him I have a missing chromosome.  I think most people have 46.  

I'm not most people.

The chromosome talk quiets him down.  He doesn't quite know what to make of my revelation.

Someday he'll realize how lucky he is that he doesn't have my DNA.

In the meantime, since he will soon be looking down on me, I'll have to come up with some creative discipline techniques, like threatening to hug him in public, or biting him on the knee.

Put a shirt on!

Almost every morning, I take my son to school.  On this day, before driving him to school, I adorned myself with a workout outfit my son was quick to tell me I had no business wearing.

That's one of many things I love about him--brutal honesty.

The outfit consisted of blue cropped pants and a top.  Son took umbrage with the top-- a tank top with a "racer-back". If you believe my son, the top didn't cover me enough. So he said:

"Are you taking me to school in that?"

This cracks me up, as my son has been known to choose sweaters to wear on a 90-degree day.

But today,  he's my fashion police.

"Yes," I reply.

"That's just wrong!" says the fashion police.

"Why?"

"Put a shirt on!" fashion police commands.

I do, and as always we hear Blue Oyster Cult on the way to school.

Yes, I did actually have to get approved to be a parent.  I sure fooled them, didn't I?

My Boy the Extra Terrestrial

So my son has just earned a blue-striped belt in Tae Kwon Do.  I worked all weekend trying make a movie of the pictures my husband took at his recent belt test.  I had no problem making the movie, but had a hard time figuring out how to share it in a way that would look the same to the viewer as it does to me. 

 I told my son I made the movie (more like a slide show).  It was originally set to the music of Weird Al, but my son requested that I use Blue Oyster Cult's "Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (E.T.I.)"  Click below to see the result:

And that concludes our broadcast day.

Grandma Underwear or Thongs

There's a scene in the movie Bridget Jones's Diary where Bridget prepares for a hot date and chooses to wear enormous, tummy-control panties instead of a thong that would make her look like sumo wrestler.

Cut to the other day:  I was visiting my cousin's granddaughter in the hospital.  For reasons I don't completely understand, on the television was VH1's Rock of Love, featuring Brett Michaels, formerly of the band Poison.   The goal of the show, as I see it, is to be pretty enough to be worthy of a "relationship" with Brett.

One contestant says of another, something along the lines of, "He'll never want her, she likes grandma underwear!"

Oh the humanity!

A brief debate ensues in the hospital room. Just what's so wrong with grandma underwear? Even my cousin's daughter, a young woman in her 20s, takes the stand that comfort is more important than "pulling a thong out of your butt crack".

Besides ladies, if a man wants you for your underwear, give him the underwear, and keep yourself.

Life in Eden--a work of fiction

Eden was a 41-year-old woman, who stopped growing at the age of 10, and therefore, depending on who was doing the looking, looked no older. This would come in handy when she wanted to get into Disneyland, or a movie perhaps, passing as a child to save money.

She was as wide as she was tall,  looking a bit like a ball, or one of the oompa loompas from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (with Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka). 

Nevertheless, cute as a bug. Honest.

When she was born, the doctor said, "What's with those creased toes!"

It's true, Eden had (and still has) creases where her toe-knuckles should be, one of her many endearing anomalies.  In response to the doctor, her mom said, "No worries.  It's just the Hobbit in her.  Her father's a Hobbit you know".

Her real father may have been a Hobbit, but Eden was raised by a substitute father (SF), who agreed to take on the challenge, provided that Eden go to Harvard, get straight A's, and never marry.

Rebel that she was, Eden did marry at age 27 (she looked like an 8-year-old at the time). She didn't go to Harvard, and she most certainly didn't get straight A's. Still SF remained loyal.

The man Eden married, a giant named Bruce, liked to go by the nicknames Thor, or Darth Vader.

With Bruce/Thor/Darth Vader being tall, and Eden..well..not being tall..people would sometimes joke that Bruce and Eden liked to "play Gulliver", a reference to Gulliver's Travels, when in truth, they liked to pretend they were Rocky and Bullwinkle, with Eden as the plucky squirrel, and Bruce, as the moose:

moose: Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of hat!

squirrel:  Again! That trick never works!

Had they had a biological child, the mind boggles as to what Bruce and Eden could have produced, a baby with antlers and a bushy tail perhaps. Instead, they adopted a baby from the planet Austin.  The planet Austin has two moons and five rings. Everyone on the planet mews like a cat, and wears their underwear backwards.  It costs $12,000 to visit the planet, and once there, you may or may not get to leave.

Bruce and Eden did get to leave with a male Austinling, who answered to several names including:  Bubs, Foofer, and The Bird.  Interestingly, The Bird's first teeth were his canines, but hey, his toes weren't creased.

Before becoming a mom, Eden worked in radio and television for seven years, booking guests and writing scripts. Bruce/Thor/Darth Vader managed software developers that he called "clones." When The Bird came into their lives, it was time for a change.  Eden took a job with family friendly hours. Meantime, The Bird was placed in a learning center called "Lord of the Flies".

The Bird protested, and eventually Eden decided to become a full-time Mama Bird. Little did she know that she would soon need a lobotomy.

Every once in awhile, Eden's body would jerk like Doctor Strangelove.  After much deliberation, doctor's declared that Eden's brain was another endearing anomaly--so endearing in fact--that they wanted it for medical experiments, so a right-frontal lobotomy was performed. Surprisingly, this changed Eden for the better, as afterwards she was able to actually understand the book Gravity's Rainbow. However, she couldn't find her nose without Map Quest.

Eden's story inspired many others to get lobotomies, to see if they too, can come out on the other side as super-intelligent creatures. Unfortunately, only doctors in New York will perform the procedure for that purpose.

this post inspired by my cousin