Grandmas can be pretty great.

I’m going to get all corny and mushy on you here tonight.  That’s your fair warning, if corny makes you gag, then just stop reading now.

My one year old daughter Shelby loves to go through peoples’ purses.  No, smart aleck, we did not teach her to go for the wallets, it seems to be a natural instinct for her.  One Sunday, she was sitting in the pew between my mom and I going through my mom’s purse.  She took every item out of my mom’s make-up bags and then systematically took every item out of my mom’s wallet.  Shelby really likes to carry around credit cards (or hotel keys, Costco cards, anything that resembles a credit card).

This week my mom brought Shelby her own little purse.  She filled it up with all the things Shelby likes.  There was a silk scarf, a mini hand cream, and a string of beads.  There was a makeup bag with a body pouf.  And last, but definitely not least, there was a wallet full of old hotel keys and expired savings cards for Shelby to pull out.  Shelby had so much fun with that purse.  Her grandma obviously loves her and these are the moments that a child remembers as she grows older.  These are the things that make her feel loved, accepted, and safe.  I hope she can always feel that way and I hope she will always have a nice relationship with her grandma - that is so important.

Vintage Thingies Thursdays - Funny Cook Books.

Most of you all know by now that I am a sucker for vintage children’s illustrations.  That said, I’m also kind of immature and I crack up at some of the things that used to be printed in childrens’ books.

I stole this Betty Crocker’s Cook Book for Boys and Girls from my mom last night.  Shhhh.  Don’t tell her.  I mean it.  If you tell her, I won’t share my favorite pages from the book with you.  I’ll make you close your eyes while the rest of us have fun.

It doesn’t look like this book was ever even used and the copyright date is 1957.  Here’s the cover:

I really heart this next picture and I asked my mother, who is a very talented embroiderer (is that a word?) to embroider it for me.  I reckon that I better return the stolen book so she can get right on that.

I really liked this idea for ice cream and cupcakes until I noticed the ears on the little guy.  The ears kind of creep me out a little bit.  Strangely enough, the eyebrows don’t bother me at all.  Although my neighbor would say they need to be plucked.

The Pig in a Poke looks more like the satan goat to me.  I’m not sure what message I would infer if my mother had put that in my cereal growing up.  I probably would have been very scared.  I’m also fairly certain that “Fatso” and “Old Hobo Joe” in black face would not go over well in today’s cook book market.  Okay, well there are some groups who would like Old Hobo Joe, but the Bush Administration doesn’t count.

Kidding!  Totally kidding.  Please don’t send me hate mail.  Well you can if you want, just be warned that I will publish it in my blog.

I also learned this evening that there are 2 kinds of hot dogs.  There are weiners which are short and skinny and there are frankfurters which are long and plump.  Frankly, I thought the green dancing weiners (or are they frankfurters?) look more like dancing pickles.  But that’s probably because I have yodelling pickles on the brain.  I’m kind of digging the straw pig that’s watching over the pigs in the blankets though.  I wonder if I could make that …

I’m not touching this next one with a ten foot pole. 

Okay.  Maybe I will.  But only because I want to know what’s up with that banana and I’d also like to know who serves a replica of a dead bunny for lunch. 

Here we have another picture of the scarey satan goat pear.  The banana lady in the hat is pretty cute.  I think they should have given the orange buck teeth.  Wouldn’t that be cool?  I’m not real sure what to say about the banana in the lower left corner though …

This next picture should reassure all you boys out there who are worried about cracks in your whiz nut bread.  Betty Crocker says it’s supposed to be there. 

Last but definitely not least.  The kitchen manners.  There is nothing funny about these rules.  Stay out of your mom’s way and pick up your stuff when you’re done.  I might have these enlarged for my own kitchen.

Did I ever tell you about the super-cute vintage chairs I bought at a garage sale for a dollar each?  There were 2 of them and, after I dragged them home, my husband told me they were hideous and asked me to please return them.  Well, the woman who was having the garage sale where I got them would not take them back without a receipt so I took them to the local lay clergy’s thrift store.  In 20 minutes (while I was still there), some woman came in and paid $10 each for them.  And that, my friends, is why you should never listen to your husband.

If you’d like to see some other vintage stuff - and, trust me, you do - go on over to Confessions of an Apron Queen at: http://anapronaday.blogspot.com.

This year’s must-have toy.

I was in Estes Park this weekend at a scrapbook retreat.  It was gorgeous as always.  My friend, Jackie, and I wandered into town to blow the stink off (as my dad calls it).  We went into this little shop with all sorts of neat science and nature stuff; at the back of the shop was a childrens’ toys section.  That is where Jackie and I stumbled upon what I know has to be on every kid’s Christmas list this year.  An electronic yodelling pickle.  For real.  What kid wouldn’t want one?  And at $13.95, it’s practically a steal!

 

My favorite part of this toy is that it is apparently a drunk electronic yodelling pickle.  It’s not as great as the waving Jesus night light that my mom got me one year, but it’s still pretty great.

Jackie also convinced me to post this picture of her radio on my blog because she thought it was funny.  However, I’m afraid she’s trying to trick me and Q-Tip is actually some sort of super famous singer and everyone loves him and I’m the only one who doesn’t know who he is.  If that’s the case, well I guess I just blew my cover and you all now know how seriously uncool I am.

Oh!  It’s my turn to play with our new electronic yodelling pickle so I have to run.

Meat Galore in St. Louis; Part 2.

This will be our second (and last) installment of the Meat Galore in St. Louis series.  I know you all are extremely saddened by that.

According to the nice man who conducts the Zooline Railroad at St. Louis Zoo, there are 10,000 animals there.  We walked around for about two hours and saw approximately three.  That is 3 animals, not 3,000.  And those three were all asleep except for the anteaters that were so loathsome and stinky that they made the baby cry.  To be fair, once we figured out our way around, we did get to see a lot of giraffes, monkeys, Somalian wild asses, zebras, tigers, and some other animals I can’t remember off the top of my head.

But Meat Galore had his heart set on seeing an elephant.  We passed 700 signs (okay, that’s an exaggeration, it was really 682 signs) that pointed to the elephants, but we never saw an actual elephant.  On the train back the conductor said, “On your left, behind that grove of bamboo, is were we keep our elephant herd.”  I think he’s a liar because I know for a fact that Meat Galore and I cannot possibly have overlooked an entire herd of elephants.  Being the wonderful wife that I am, I bought him an elephant postcard from the gift shop.  It is now prominently displayed on our fridge (the postcard, not the gift shop).

The good news is that I got some great animal ass shots.  And I don’t mean donkeys.  Pair the shots of animal butts with my superior Photobucket photo editting skills, and you get gems like this postcard that I made:

When Meat Galore and I were younger, I used to say dumb things just to get a rise out of him.  Actually, to be honest, some of the dumb things I said were because I was having a brain fart.  But the rest of them were just to get a rise.  Sadly, he doesn’t fall for it anymore so my dumb statements are totally lost on him.  Like on our trip when I said I wished they would have run the Missouri River parallel to I-70 so that we’d have something to look at.  In the old days, he would have given me a startled look.  He didn’t even blink when I said it last week.  Sigh.

To end on a high note, Meat Galore is convinced that his right foot is shrinking.  He’s not worried though, he just puts two socks on his right foot now.

Meat Galore in St. Louis. Part I

Meat Galore and I took Shelby to St. Louis this weekend.  This little trip created so much blog fodder that I will have to divide it up into several posts.

Last night, we were driving around downtown St. Louis looking for some place to eat dinner.  Meat Galore (who is, arguably, the whitest person I know - for goodness sakes, he makes cheese quesadillas in the freaking microwave) pointed to a sign and said, “That Celebrity place looks good.”  I had to respond, “That Celebrity place is a soul food buffet.”  He told me that he didn’t think so because there was a picture of mashed potatoes and gravy on it. 

On the way home this afternoon, we took a little side trip into Boonville to stretch our legs.  When we came to this intersection, Meat Galore said, “Man, they’re screwed.”

Stay tuned for more misadventures of Meat Galore and Mary.

Treasures From My Yard.

I was sitting here thinking about how I’m so funny and all and I make my kid laugh when I tell her my funny funny jokes … See, here’s proof that I’m funny …

So anyway, as I was saying, I was sitting here thinking I should title this post, “Mary: Totally Hilarious,” when I suddenly started cracking up.  No, not because I’m drunk or totally hilarious (although I am, you know because I told you, plus Shelby was laughing at me in that picture) but because of my sister.  When she was in grade school, the school library had this program where the parents could buy a book for their kid’s birthday.  The kid would get his or her picture taken with the book and then the book would be donated to the library.  The school then hung the picture up with a caption that included the name of the child and the title of the book.  My parents bought a book in Lara’s name which just so happened to have a very unfortunate title.  The upshot is that, for years, the school had a picture of my sister holding a book with the caption, “Lara: Totally Disgusting.”  It’s probably been 15 years, but I still crack up every time I think of that.

Last night, as I was coming home from peeping in on my neighbors across the street (they had eggs and sausage for dinner), I spied a piece of blue paper in my yard.  Yard nut that I am, I went to pick it up and throw it away.  But I was intrigued by what it said, “Fly Shot!”

I don’t know.  Maybe the author of the note was leaving a message for her significant other.  (You can tell a girl wrote it by the way the exclamation point has a bubble under it.)  Like, “Baby, I shot the fly, it’s safe to come home now.”  Or maybe she was trying to remember the name of some fancy sports move and suddenly remembered it was called “fly shot” (even though the correct term, as we all know, is “pop shot up the line drive”) and wanted to remember it forever and so inscribed it on a blue sticky note.

At any rate, it’s pretty cool that it ended up in my yard.  Now the poor forgotten note will be treated kindly by history and made immortal in my funny funny blog.

Why you should vote for me for President.

My opponent voted against giving cute puppy dogs to a good home.  He voted against letting underprivileged children get new text books and against allowing white children to go to public school.  He voted against ambulance rides for the elderly.  All this while simultaneously raising his own salary and murdering innocent hamsters for fun!  Not to mention that he worships Satan every Saturday night with his shack up gay illegal alien lover!
 
I’m Mary and this post was approved by me.

Okay, that was stupid.  I’m just so tired of the political ads.  Like anyone believes that the opponent is ever as horrible as they say.  There’s one woman running out here who casually throws into her commercial that she’s a breast cancer survivor.  I am very grateful that she survived that ordeal and I feel for her, I really do, but come on.  That’s got to be ridiculous even by politicians’ standards.

Anyway, on to more important things (like talking about me since this is my blog and all).

I’m sure you have heard Ron White’s “Tater Salad” segment.  You remember the part where they send over his criminal record and satellites are hooking up then he does the Morse code/shorthand thing?  Well, I experienced that first-hand the other day when I went to get different auto insurance.
 
I sat with my insurance lady and we discussed it, got a quote, and then ordered the insurance.  She asked me if I had anything on my record in the last 3 years.  I said I figured I had a couple speeding tickets but wasn’t quite sure.  You see, not only do I have no sense of time so that a ticket I got 4 years ago literally seems like 2 months ago, but I also plead down a lot so I don’t actually get convicted of all my speeding.  I can never remember which ones I pled out of.  I bet I could hire a computer guy to make me a spreadsheet, but it would be inhibitively complicated and expensive so I’ll just go with it.
 
At any rate, we ordered the insurance and she goes to print a copy out for my records.  The first page had the insurance summary and then all these other pages started printing.  It was my freaking driving record!  It was six pages long!  I was like, “What the hell?  I don’t think I’ve had THAT many in three years!”  Apparently, Missouri has changed the rules so the insurance companies no longer get your record for the last 3 years, they get your record from when you started driving!  Well, shoot.  Next time I change my auto insurance through this broker, I’ll probably have to donate a ream of paper to the cause.  There were 3 pages of “emission” citations alone!

The important thing is though, that our congressmen and women are too busy changing stupid insurance rules to worry about starving puppy dogs and keeping poor kids out of public schools.

A Practical Guide to Sex in Marriage.

I know that all my readers hang on to my every word and remember everything I write.  Therefore, I know that every one of you all will remember about me helping my mother organize her office last summer.  I came across some very interesting books in that little closet of hers.  There were two that were printed in the 1930’s that I thought were very interesting.  The first was Sane Sex Life by Dr. H. W. Long, published in 1937, copyright 1919.  The other was A Marriage Manual: A Practical Guide-Book to Sex and Marriage by Drs. Hannah and Abraham Stone, published in 1939, copyright 1937.

Both of them were rather funny and insightful.  Funnily insightful, if you will.  I thought to myself, “Self, your faithful readers would love to see excerpts from these books.”  So I sat down to write the funniest post on 1930’s sex the world has ever seen.  That’s when I learned something about myself.  I am a prude.  A very serious prude.  I kept having visions of my dad reading this post and obviously I can’t write about sex if my parents are going to read it.  I’m just not that kind of girl.

Be ye not dismayed though, I am not too prudish to share the dedication from A Marriage Manual with you.  The good Drs. Stone dedicated the book to none other than their daughter!  I guess it is pretty ironic that the authors of the book can dedicate it to their daughter but I, as a daughter, am unable to blog about it on the likely chance my parents will see the post.  Go figure.

Here’s the cover:

And the dubious dedication:

 

I’m trying to think of an appropriate ending for this post.  “Happy Ending” just seems too obvious.

I’m sorry I haven’t written anything in a few days.  I know how the world looks forward to the brightness I bring to the lives of everyone I touch with my blog.  But, you see, I have been very busy writing letters to Canada telling them that they suck.  (Is that a hate crime, by the way?  Do they have a first amendment in Canada?)  At any rate, I am very put out with Canada.  They finally produce one good thing called Corner Gas and then, just as I’m getting addicted to it, they snatch it away like crack from a street-walker.  It just isn’t right.

I’ve also been thinking about all the things I know.  To be honest, that didn’t take a full eleven days, but I did think during the eleven days I was gone.  One thing I know is that Canada isn’t the only thing that sucks.  Biting gnats suck.  They bite too.  Our neighborhood seems to have a gnat infestation; there are swarms of them.  If you don’t believe me, you should refer to my post with the spider web picture.  Anyway, the suckers, bite.  Does anyone know how to get rid of swarms of gnats?

Did you know that Scrapper’s Solution will take pine sap off a baby’s fingers?  I learned that a few months ago but forgot to pass that tidbit of information on.

I wanted to be like the cool bloggers and post pictures of my fall leaf projects, home made chili, apple picking jaunt, and the pumpkin patch.  But my leaves haven’t changed yet, my homemade chili picture just looked like a big red blob (although it did taste good), I didn’t make it apple picking, and my camera batteries died at the pumpkin patch.  I guess I’m not what you’d call a Jingo Blogger. 

I did catch a couple pictures of Shelby before the batteries died.  She picked out 2 miniature white pumpkins and we got her 2 pie pumpkins to carry around.  She does enjoy that.

 

My alert friend Karena sent me this sign she spotted somewhere in Louisiana.  I try not to make this blog political because everybody with a keyboard thinks they are a political analyst, but I’m tired of this spend, spend, spend the taxpayers’ money crap.  Now Bernanke is talking about another stimulus package.  I’m all for getting some of my money back, but they already spent my money on stupid crap.  So where is this money for the new stimulus package going to come from?  I’m sure they’ll just raise my taxes to pay for it.

I have to go scan some book pages into my computer so I can blog about something funny like you expect from me and so that one guy will keep praying for my soul.

Vintage Thingie Thursday!

What’s that you say?  It’s not Thursday?  I know it’s not Thursday, you goof!  But, as you all well know, I am nothing if not an over-achiever!  Or a medium-achiever.  Okay, a so-so-achiever.  But, if I don’t post on Wednesday night, then I don’t get it up until Thursday night and that’s just not cool.  You need to see my vintage thingies for the full 24 hours. 

Plus, I turn vintage myself tomorrow and I’m afraid that I will suddenly forget how to do things that 20-somethings know how to do - like use my computer.

This week I decided to bring you my mom’s wedding dress.  Okay, not the actual dress so much as a picture of the dress.  I have a very good reason for not having the dress anymore as you will see in a moment.  At least you will if you stick around that long.  As a side note, my folks will have been married for 32 years in January!  I present to you, the dress in all it’s 1977 glory!  (Don’t worry, my dad no longer wears blue suits and ruffled blouses.  He does, however, still wear that same style cowboy boot!  When you think about it though, it’s kind of hilarious to see an infantry veteran in a ruffled blouse - I wonder if my kid will get such a kick out of her parents’ wedding attire …  )

I know that, by now, you are all wondering, “What’s the big mystery about the dress’s where-abouts?”  Well, you see, after giving birth to 3 daughters who were all well over 9 1/2 pounds (I, myself, was 10 pounds and 10 ounces), my mother gave up all hope of any of her offspring actually fitting into her itsy bitsy teeny weeny wedding dress.  We did something else special with it.  A lady at our church took my mom’s wedding dress, cut it up, and made my daughter’s Christening gown.  The seam in the skirt and the buttons are all from the original wedding dress.  Shelby was baptised last December.  I can’t believe how little she was!  Time flies by so fast.

This is just a picture of me to prove that I did, eventually, grow out of my Amazon Baby stage.  It was taken last month at my kid’s first birthday - before I turned vintage.  And, yes, I’m a Rhinestone Cowboy!  (Not really, but I know that’s what you’ll start singing when you see my shirt.)

Don’t my eyebrows look good?  My neighbor plucks them for me.

If you want to see more good stuffies, you really oughtta bop on over to http://www.anapronaday.blogspot.com.  Seriously.  You should do that.