Eew! What's that in your beard?!

Roald Dahl, the man who write Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, has a cookbook.

No good can come from this, you say? You don't know the half of it.

To wit, I give you Mr. Twit's Beard:

EEW!

Help! My kid is turning into a surly teenager!

Oh. My. God. It's official.
EVERYTHING I SAY IRRITATES MY KID. Yes, he's 12, going on 13, and it's starting in earnest. My approach is:

"I understand that you're irritated." (Wait for yelling to stop.)
"I understand that you can't change the way you feel." (Wait for yelling to stop.)
"But you will change the way you behave or you'll be seeing a lot of your room in the next six years. Understand?"

I know, irritating, but I don't know what else to do. Besides actually follow through on the threat.

Ooh. I just tried it. He said, "No." Then he whined softly. We'll see how it goes. Past that, I'd take any advice you all have!

Dr. Livingston, I presume...

In a fit of insanity this morning, I took the kids to IKEA. Why is it that every time I leave that store, I feel as if I'd been on a two-week safari in Africa? I stumble out into the light and sink gratefully into the soft, welcoming driver's seat of my car.

The goal is to make this:

out of this Kivik sofa and his buddies:

Well, sort of. We've identified it as "Mid-Century Modern", and I had already decided to use the grid of square frames before I realized what the style was called. We're putting up reproductions of Florida citrus crate labels in  big square black frames. My grandmother worked at one of the plants in Eustis as a young woman, so it's kind of cool for us. All I need now is a funky lamp that the kids can't destroy. Wish me luck.

Is it a bad sign...?

... that when I'm looking for a few glass beads for an impromptu craft project, I know which couch to find them in? And don't ask how long they've been there. ;)

Bongos please...

My sweet girl-child has started spontaneously writing beat poetry. At least that's what I'm thinking it is.

Allenn Ginsberg, eat your heart out.

Poleaxed...

They've breached our defenses. We have been vanquished. Yes, we have succumbed to The Contagion - our first of the winter. It's a nasty, sinusy sort of affair, accompanied by a low-grade fever that, combined with the sinus headache, leaves a person feeling like they've been poleaxed. I think it was this poleax here:

And where, you may ask, were we exposed to such a savage influence? The only unusual place we've been is the dentist. It takes having the germs pushed into our mouths to get sick. Yay us!!

In the mean time, I went out and got my new trees Saturday! Pretty soon, it'll look like we actually care what our property looks like -- but only in the front yard. ;) And... AND I think I've got The Boy convinced that he can operate the new lawn mower. Mwaaa-haa-haaa!!!

Now I just have to wait for him to regain his senses from this nasty virus.

Hunger Games (Danger Will Robinson!)

My friend from Up North told me that her 13-year-old boy's favorite book is The Hunger Games. It's apparently very popular among his set. So I tried it with The Boy. Big mistake.

My sweet boy didn't even make it through the first two pages. He got to the place where the ugly yellow cat hates the narrator because she had tried to drown it as a kitten. I had to explain that way back when, before they had cats fixed, people would sometimes drown a litter of kittens because there were too many already. Y'know, better than letting them starve as adults. When times are hard, sometimes you just can't feed another hungry mouth.

He is now too sad to read at all. Possibly ever again.

What does that say about my kid? Srsly, 'cause I have no idea...