Category: Random Thoughts

The junk that pops into my brain

Strange Talk

~ JodiLea ~ 3 Comments

Kansas Farmland

My parents both came from families that had many colorful interesting sayings & expressions. My father was born into a Kansas farm family. My mother was born into a West Virginia mountain coal-miner’s family. This makes my sister and I Hickabillies. For some reason we are proud of this.

The other day one of my father’s favorite words popped out of my mouth. I had not heard (or used) it in years. It’s funny how your subconscious mind stores things from childhood that you don’t even know you remember.

did·dly·squat (dĭdˈlē-skwŏtˌ) noun, Slang:  A small or worthless amount.

Origin of word:  Too insignificant to piss on. (I don’t know if that’s true, but it makes sense.)  Used in a sentence:  “I got diddly squat for my bonus this year”;

Dad drove us all crazy with this expression:  “We?? You got a turd in your pocket?” You might be saying “What???” to your screen.  I know, it’s a strange one. It took me months to get it, and  dad had to explain it to me (hey, I was a dumb kid!)

Grandma often hollered at us when we were being rambunctious; “Too much laughing always turns into crying!” Sis and I would just snicker and roll our eyes. And damn it all, she was right. Somehow during our giggling & carrying on somebody got pinched, poked or scraped and ended up crying. One day my sister’s precious Ooffy, her old stuffed dog’s head flew off.  Her scream reached decibels never heard before by human ears. Imagine a couple of screech owls, trapped in a metal barrel. That would have been music.

I remember it like it was last week. A mind-numbing horror to witness, especially for a five-year old. They only way to get her to calm down was promising her  Ooffy would have surgery to re-attach his head and he would be OK. Grandma took headless Ooffy into her bedroom and sewed him back together. Then bandaged him up. Whew! My sister still thinks it was my fault, 45 years later.

Not only was Grandma right, but her words of doom actually came out of my mouth last Saturday when my granddaughters were playing and giggling (quite loudly). They turned to me and said, “What???”  I simply rolled my eyes and said, “never mind”.

Not a minute later both of them were crying.

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photo credit: Stuck in Customs via photopin cc

Organize Smorganize

~ JodiLea ~ 1 Comment

I fantasize about living in a house that has a place for everything, and everything in its place. I know it can be done, I’ve seen it on TV and even in a co-worker’s office. My office is nearly as bad as my house. In both cases I have too much crap many things and not enough room to store them in.

This will not be the case at our new house. We made sure that there was plenty of storage, both inside and outside. Not that we need the room now. There is nothing in the house yet except some things for my office bookshelves. Which are in boxes because the book shelf is TBD.

I have my sweet new dishes, bowls & matching mugs in my new kitchen. You guessed it – they are in boxes. I can’t wait to put them away in my new cupboards. I want to skip the hard part and go directly to the fun stuff like decorating, buying furniture, a desk and organize everything into its place.

But first I must organize the house we are living in, which we will sell soon, God willing. 24 years of living in a house (with a pack rat no less), means you have a lot of crap  things to weed through and make decisions about. I HATE making decisions. I have started going through things I  we don’t want and putting them in different boxes. One box is for the Vets to pick up. One box is for garage sale items. Even though I won’t decide to have a garage sale until there are things we want to get rid of that we think people will pay money for, there is a place to put them.

Junk waiting to be sorted  Organizing looks very much like a mess, while it is being done. It also takes up twice the space when stuff is separated and spread out. This is how we have been living. We are so accustomed to the disaster that is our home, we forget that people who don’t live here might find this  uncomfortable.  Get over it.  Be happy you don’t live here.

Another box is for the crap  stuff  the kids left in their rooms. They all have been warned. We are NOT moving  your abandoned crap  stuff from your childhood up to the mountains. So sorry. Yes, we know you don’t have room for it because we never did either. We feel your pain.

What Mommy Doesn’t Know…

~ JodiLea

Eyes

My daughter had a class all day last Saturday and she had asked hubby and I if we could watch the girls.   I pretended to think about it.  But it was an offer we couldn’t refuse. Like she didn’t know. Why doesn’t she just tell us when we are going to watch the girls? It would save time and texting.

Let me say up front that much fun was had by all and nobody got hurt. Grandma did re-learn some old tricks, however. I’m sure my daughter is fully aware of these things, so I didn’t bother  to mention them…

The things I re-learned Saturday:

Babies don’t know from grooming. Miss C. never seems to be bothered by her soft curls falling into her face. Her hair is a bit “wild” at times, but she looks so darned cute and I’m afraid to piss her off by trying to tame it into a pony tail.  So .. I don’t.  Well, Miss C. got frustrated during lunchtime and pushed her hair out of her face.  Using her open-faced peanut butter and banana sandwich. To her credit, it really did the job of keeping her hair in place.

Babies think they can fly. I don’t know where they get this idea.  I’m pretty sure little Miss C. can’t fly, which is why I freaked out when I was holding her and she pushed off with her legs and launched herself away from my body, her arms leading her like Superman.  I lunged and snatched her out of the air and back into my arms so fast, it was like time went into reverse. I know that for half a second that baby was airborne. Maybe they can fly, and it’s the landing we freak out about.

Today’s cartoons suck. What ever happened to the classics? Kids today are deprived of  The Roadrunner, Fog-Horn Leg Horn, Yosemite Sam, and the ever lovable Tasmanian Devil. I did not see one decent cartoon available for Miss P. Thank goodness for On-Demand and re-runs of Scooby-Doo, Tom & Jerry, and Micky Mouse. Miss P. is too old for Sesame Street, but graciously lets Miss C. watch Elmo now and then. I do my best to get Miss P. interested in classic movies & Disney.  But sometimes a girl just has to watch iCarly, or worse –Bratz!  If you have seen either show you can feel my pain.  At least she doesn’t beg me to watch Sponge Bob Smartie Pants  anymore.