A flick of the wrist is all you need

Have you noticed that watching someone manipulating their iPad is like watching someone trying to rub a greasy spot off a window? Whats with all the frantic hand movements and furious flicking of the fingers? Why can't they use a keyboard like everyone else? Show-offs!

Make a splash

How to get rid of a motorcyclist that insists on riding too close behind your car? Drive your car through a big puddle and watch him appreciate the big splash you make....he'll soon backoff. Been there! Done that!

Too much child support

If I ever take to driving a Hyundai Santa Fe with "family car stickers" on the back window,  you can cart me off to the "sanatorium for over enthusiastic soccer mums"....








(This sticker is quite cool though...)

Life lessons....

I have learned a few lessons tonight. I received two new yoga DVDs in the mail and was eager to try them out:

Lesson #1 - do not do yoga poses on the floor when the cat is next to you, nose licking and hair chewing is not part of the routine.
Lesson #2 - do not drink a couple of glasses of wine before attempting the tree pose.
Lesson #3 -I don't know what it means to make my eyes "easy" or "soft", but I think I can "find my center".
Lesson #4 - lycra shorts and pony tails are kind of off-putting

The rubber gloves will be next....

Just back from a short trip to Texas (Richardson to be exact, just north of Dallas). I had the worst experience on the outward journey thanks to the over-zealous Logan airport security. First of all it is now mandatory to walk through a whole body imaging machine, the kind that show a virtually naked image of you. You have to link your hands over your head for this, very uncomfortable in more ways than one. After that a big, female security guard was waiting to "pat me down". That is a strange way of describing what involved her rubbing her hands over all of my body while I had to stand there looking like the Da Vinci Vitruvian man. I felt humiliated. Then to cap it all off, a male security guard emptied my case of its contents, undies and all, and confiscated a bottle of hair styling cream. Not just any old "Walmart" styling cream, but "Bumble and Bumble", $30 a bottle styling cream. I was mortified, and furious at the same time. Enough was enough! I have to admit that I forgot my role as a respectable wife and mother for one minute and directed a number of colorful descriptive phrases in his direction. I didn't calm down until I arrived at my hotel and had downed a couple of large Margaritas. Travel! It was never good, now it is a nightmare. I hate it!!

Imagine waking up next to this?

I followed one of those Ad links off a website I was viewing, to arrive at an advertisement with the title "Sleep research leads to a simple snoring solution". Its not that I snore (apparently I don't), but I was fascinated by the picture that accompanied the advert. This "simple" device supposedly prevents snoring. Good grief! Why not just stick some duct tape over your mouth and be done with it?!

A terrible day caught on camera

Just been watching a program on the History channel about the events of 9/11/2001. It was a program made up of snippets of film taken by people on the street at the time. It was very moving, and at the same time shocking to see how bad things were when the towers were on fire. The TV news reports all concentrated on the towers burning, and ultimately falling. But this footage showed the panic of the people on the streets and in nearby apartments, not knowing whether they should run or stay where they were. And when the towers collapsed, the enormous cloud of dust and debris that rolled through the streets at incredible speeds, as the people all tried to outrun it. Very scary stuff. I thank my lucky stars that I was not there at the time. In fact, I was many miles away in Madrid, in the middle of a meeting with a customer. I was meant to fly home the next day but of course, that didn't happen. I remember being worried that I would never get back and see my family, and checking out whether it was possible to get a cruise or ferry from Spain to the US!! Seems silly now but at the time I was deadly serious.

Anyway, an excellent program from the History Channel. God bless all that lost their lives on that terrible day.

Hopefully not a 7 year itch?

My daughter Emma has come into contact with poison ivy. If you are not from the US, then you will have no idea what this is - I know its not something that grows in the UK anyway. Its an ivy-like plant that grows in wooded areas, and it releases an oil called urushiol that gets absorbed by the skin and causes itchy, oozy rashes. But the really nasty thing about it is that soap and water will not wash away the oil, and the oil will spread to anything it touches, including your clothes or any other part of the body. Therefore it spreads very easily. So far Emma has it in varying amounts on her torso, legs, arms, face and feet. There are various products on the market to help get rid of it, and lots of home remedies too. I am trying the "Tecnu Extreme poison ivy scrub", dishwasher soap and caladryl routine currently. We'll see if it works. Makes a stingy nettle seem irrelevant. Nasty stuff.

Makes me feel homesick

I don't usually copy other's blog posts, but this is a bit of an exception being about my home town of Newport in South Wales. My brother in law Martin posted a YouTube clip of Goldie Looking Chain's "Newport State of Mind (You're not from Newport)" which was pretty good. But I personally like this version better, "cos I luvs the Welsh accent mun". Here it is in all its glory...Newport (Ymerodraeth State of Mind)

Cheesy jokes

Jokes from my kids (off the Cheezits commercials)...

What do you call cheese that is not yours?
Nacho Cheese!




Knock, knock
Who's there?
Interrupting Cheese
Interrupting Chee...
Cheese!