The path

I didn't realize it until after I took the picture, but it almost appears that there is a path to the play structure through my flowers and bushes.

In reality, the bushes and the flowers just haven't filled in the spaces between themselves yet.

Just goes to show you what the right framing can do.... help make you look like a better gardener than you actually are!!!














Dawn

The more things change....

I just wrote a blog post on the YF&R network in which I used the "dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria" line from Ghostbusters. And that got me to thinking about a post I wrote back in 2006 under another column about my penchant for reciting lines for movies.

Rather than rewrite it, I just decided to dig it out, dust it off and share it:

I'm going to make a confession that will probably cement my fate as a certifiable weirdo, but I thoroughly enjoy reciting movie lines ad nauseam. I also have been known to watch particular movies over and over so I could get the intonation and inflection of the lines that tickled my fancy just right.

I'm not sure when my penchant for repeating movie lines actually began, but I do know that it was cemented in college by one of my Prowler bandmates. He was really good at mimicking Bill Murray's character in "Caddyshack." And for some reason, I just took to it and made it my own.

It would seem I have influenced my children in this area as well. There have been several occasions where my son has recited lines from "The Cat in the Hat." We have been known to say, when we actually do see a Rhode Island license plate while driving, "Hey, look, Rhode Island license plate. You never see those."

When we do this, my husband just shakes his head and says, "You all watch too much T.V." That may be true. I have a different theory, however. I think that those of us who have a proclivity to recite these lines are frustrated performers. I figure that I'm really a frustrated stand-up comedian because most of my favorite lines are funny. At least they are funny in the context of the movie.

Amazingly, there are people out there, believe it or not, that do not - I repeat DO NOT - think that reciting lines from movies is funny. Since I am I am not one of them and this is my column, I'm going to share with you my favorite lines from movies. Of course you will notice most of these are from a looooong time ago. That is because most of the movies I see these days are more kid-inspired, but I have to admit that a line from my daughter's "Mermaidia" DVD in which a couple of Fungi are saying, "Lefting! Lefteroo!" to describe the direction they are heading is finding its way into our daily speech patterns.

So, here are my most favorite lines, in no particular order.

"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." - Inigo Montoya, "The Princess Bride." This is particularly good if you can use Inigo's accent. Otherwise, it might fall flat at the company picnic.

"The fish is talking." - Sally, "The Cat in the Hat."
"Sure, he can talk. But is he saying anything? No, not really." - Cat, "The Cat in the Hat."

On particularly windy days, I will say, to no one in particular, and sometimes just to amuse myself, "Will the wind be so mighty as to lay low, the mountains of the earth?" - Peter Cook in "The Secret Policeman's Ball." (In my single days, I actually had this, complete with the weird voice, as the greeting on my answering machine.)

"Everything's under control. Situation normal." - Han Solo, "Star Wars." You have to say the line kind of sing-songy, and only when things are totally out of control.

I have found that the original "Ghostbusters" is a treasure trove of one-liners, that I have been able to use quite frequently in everyday life. For instance:

"Listen! Do you smell something?" - Dr. Raymond Stantz. I found this works well in a house where two kids talk over each other most of the time.

"Where do these stairs go?" - Ray Stantz
"They go up." - Dr. Peter Venkman

"Human sacrifice. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria." - Peter Venkman

I have also managed to use the line "I figure all I need is a lobotomy and some tights." - John Bender, "The Breakfast Club" - on a number of occasions that made perfect sense to me.

But of course, my all-time favorite line is, "So I got that going for me, which is nice," uttered by Carl Spackler in "Caddyshack" after the Dalai Lama tells him that he won't get a monetary tip, but on his deathbed, he will receive total consciousness. You can pretty much use that line any time you feel the futility of a situation getting the best of you.

Why do I find it necessary to utter movie lines? I wanted to make sure I wasn't like, a freak, or something. So, I did a little Internet research. I found that reciting movie lines is done quite frequently, but it is more of a "guy thing." One dude on a blog site commented that he and his college buddies were constantly reciting lines from "Stripes" and "Caddyshack," and he noticed that most women did not join in, but rather rolled their eyes and labeled the activity as "immature."

Well, there you have it. Here all this time, well at least for the last 8 years or so, I thought I was a middle-aged woman and really, I'm an immature, college guy.

I suspect both my children will be immature college guys as well. So I got that going for me. Which is nice.

I'm four years older than when I posted the above, and I'm STILL an immature college guy!

Dawn

Deborah is a rock star

She's tall and a little on the scrawny side, but hopefully that will change now that Deborah is a rock star.

Of course, I'm speaking of Deborah Norway, the maple tree in our backyard, and her new "skirt."

I actually made the pattern for her "skirt" using a dog leash, a bolt and a piece of chalk. (High tech, no, but I'm thinkin' points for creativity???)

I put the dog leash around Deobrah's "neck" and slowly circled the tree, using the bolt to scar the ground a little wherever the chalk line didn't show up very well. Then I used a spade and cut into the soil slightly -- enough to see but not big enough to show up if the circle was not a very good circle.

Thankfully, the circle was a circle, because it was pretty hot out there, and I hate to think of my crabby quotient had I had to make the circle more than once.

The next step, digging out the sod, was....

How can I put this nicely?

Yucky to the nth power.

I even watered the ground ahead of time. But getting a good deep spade cut into the clay that we call soil required jumping onto the spade, holding onto poor Deborah with one hand while rocking the spade back and forth to loosen up the soil with the other hand.

And then there was the scraping.

My son spent much of his Saturday scraping this or that. He had barely finished helping his dad scrape the dried grass gunk off the bottom of the mower deck when I enlisted him in the ever-so-fun job of scraping soil off the backside of the sod.

This little process of digging and scraping took about three hours to complete. By the time we had reached the middle, I had reached the end of my rope. (Truth be told, I was just plain old exhausted.)

So we saved the rest of the transformation for Sunday afternoon. While I cut up chickens, the rest of the family dug in the edging and started hauling rocks from our rock pile. I got done chicken cuttin' and helped them with the last two loads (or was it three?).

It was a lot of work to give Deborah a rock skirt, but we all thought she looked pretty cool with her new rock-star look.





Rock on, Deborah!

Dawn

Digging around the trees

My son was just lamenting the other day how we had no big trees in our yard. We've been living on "My Two Acres" since 2000, and I suppose the trees in the yard were planted two to three years later, so they've really only had a good seven years of growth.

But there is some real kick-butt potential. An ash tree that became part of a flower bed about four years ago is growing substantially better than the other trees.

Now, if I didn't have a job, I'd be making flower beds around every single one of the trees in the yard. (There are currently 11 trees without beds and three with beds.) But since I don't think I could keep up with 11 more flower beds, we're doing the next best thing: Digging up the dirt that has slowly turned to grass around each tree.

I was going to start "dirting" around the trees last night, but the soil was so compacted (we have a lot of clay in our yard) I gave up and took my kids to Shakespeare in the Park instead. (Well, at least we got some culture!)

Today, I enlisted my son to do a little watering around each tree to loosen the soil a bit. He did.

Then, it rained.

Guess tomorrow's job will be dig, dig, digging, in the dirt, my old friend!

Dawn

You can offer, but...

"You may need to offer your child a new food 10 to 15 times before he or she will eat it, nutrition experts say."

North Dakota State University Extension Service food and nutrition specialist Julie Garden-Robinson offered that helpful advice in a news release I posted on North Dakota Values.

I could only think, "I'm doomed."

You haven't seen anything until you've seen an 8-year-old "taste" something by gingerly licking it, or taking -- literally -- a crumb from something and putting it in her mouth, then spitting it out with disdain.

I may have mentioned once or twice that my daughter is a picky eater. While she may jump from big rock to big rock in flip flops with youthful glee (and much to MY chagrin), she's like William Shatner as the PriceLine Negotiator when it comes to trying a food she's absolutely "sure" she won't like. (Just in case you aren't familiar with the Pricline Negotiator ads, William Shatner always wins.)

So, even though I keep trying, she now drinks a lot of her vegetables and fruits in those new juices that have a full serving of each in them. (Obviously invented by a mom with a picky eater!)

Now, if they could just make hamburger taste and look like cheese, I'd be set.

Dawn

Meltdown Mondays

I know I just waxed philosophical last week about Mondays, but this is two crabby Mondays in a row for me. Maybe I'm crabby every Monday and everyone around me is just too darn nice to mention it.

But, when even YOU notice how crabby you are, well, maybe it's time to rethink the whole blowing a gasket thing and try some positive self-talk, or at least trivial and unrelated distractions.

So, here are my tips for how to avoid Meltdown Mondays....

Use those three red lights you inevitably hit (and there are only three lights on the way for heaven's sake) to do some deep breathing and stretching, especially if you tend to "hold your tension" in your shoulders, like me.

Or use that same time to figure out what Roger Waters is saying in the Pink Floyd song Nobody Home in the verse that sounds like it starts with "I've got an oblong helix burn." (Hint: the words are actually, "I've got the obligatory Hendrix perm.")

Remember that the coffee you just spilled all over your "dry clean only" shirt doesn't matter because you never follow the "dry clean only" instructions anyway.

Keep in mind that maybe it wouldn't hurt to close a program once in a while when your computer says it is out of virtual memory and won't let you access programs!

Always remember that everyone else isn't leading a perfect life, even if you think they are. I just heard a story about driving with mononucleosis, sleeping in your car and nose rings that made me think, "You big baby! You have NOTHING to be crabby about."

And when you think you are just too tired to take another step or do another thing, put on your gloves and pull some Canada Thistle. Make sure you water the thistle (I KNOW, isn't that just silly?) before you pull them, because you get more of the root that way. There are few things more satisfying than pulling those prickly buggers by the roots, from your tender wildflowers, to give you a feeling of accomplishment.

Well, it worked for me, anyway!

Dawn

300

This is my 300th post. I don't know if that is true, that is just what Blogger tells me, and I'm apt to believe it.

In fact, now that I think of it, I often believe what people tell me. Does that make me gullible (to a glass half-empty kind of person) or trusting (to a glass half-full type)?

Judging from the negative and positive ways I described the half-empty versus half-full glasses, you probably know which side of the fence I think I'm sitting on, don't you?

I think of myself as a positive person. Except when I'm driving. I'm pretty sure that there is a cosmic conspiracy against me getting a green light when I'm driving. Seriously.

And if I should happen to make it through a green light, it will be at the very last second before it turns yellow, which will most assuredly mean that the next light will be red.

Why is it that I can be so darn positive until I get behind the wheel? Probably because I'm always in a hurry to get somewhere. In a hurry to get to work. In a hurry to get to the grocery store during my lunch break. In a hurry to get home to let the dog out and get back to work. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.

Like this afternoon. My daughter had a program at her day camp; all the way to the other end of town and beyond. I hit a lot of red lights. I was late. But I got there just in time to hear her say her line in the skit, which was, "I got it from J.C. Penney."

So even though I may be a rushing, glass half-empty kind of driver, it's all for a good reason.

Hey, I have some swamp land to sell you...

Dawn

How does my garden grow?

I timidly peeked into the garden Tuesday night to see how it fared after more than a week away.

I was pleasantly surprised. The corn had grown, the carrots were looking pretty darn good, and another pumpkin plant had sprouted, so where there were two, there were now three.

The weeds weren't taking over the space either. (Thank you, Adam, my son, for doing a very good job weeding before we went on vacation.)

I picked a few weeds, but decided that watering was a higher priority. So, while the garden was being watered, I ambled out to the flower garden around the play structure. I was pleasantly surprised there, as well. The bare spot were I planted cosmos and marigold seeds had filled in and the bushes were noticeably bushier.

So I'm feeling pretty smug about my gardens right now.

And it just goes to show you that, sometimes, you just have to take a step away for a little bit to get some perspective. At least that's what I'm thinking I needed to learn from my week away.

Patience, grasshopper. Patience!

Dawn

A Monday to remember

It's never fun coming back to work after a week away, even though you've tried to work ahead as much as possible in preparation for that week away.

It's even worse when your first day back is a Monday. Monday's are notoriously funky, and by golly yesterday's Monday was one to remember, at least for me.

I started the day in a panic, because I had set -- but forgotten to turn on -- the alarm on my clock. There would be no early morning exercising for me.

I get ready, wake my husband and daughter (my son is spending the week at Grandma and Grandpa's) and pack a lunch for my daughter, who is attending a crafting day camp all week long. "I will put the cold pack in her lunchbox right before we leave so it will stay cold longer," I say to myself.

Guess what "self" did? Yep! Forgot the cold pack. So several miles down the road, I ask my daughter, "Is the cold pack in there?" She looks in the lunchbox, then at me. "No." she says.

I flip the car around and head back to the house. I won't be to work on time today!

We get to the day camp and find out they have daily swimming (guess I missed THAT memo!) so you promise your daughter you will run home over the noon hour and get her swimsuit and bring it to the front desk.

Once I get to the office, I pretty much keep my nose to the grindstone, except for filling up the spill-proof coffee cup a couple of times. I look at my watch and realize it is already 12:15, and I need a bathroom break. Badly.

There are still several people in the office, so I don't announce the fact that I'm going to the bathroom.

I go to the bathroom. I get back to the office door and turn the knob. It doesn't turn. You know the saying "The lights are on, but no one is at home?" Well, that had literal meaning for me. The lights were on, no one was inside and the door was locked.

I get a little cranky. I say something to the effect of "No, people! NO!" and pound on the door, (like THAT was going to do any good) and disturb a lady in the office next to me holding an interview. (I apologize.)

I run to another office and ask if they have a master key. No dice. The master key is, ironically, locked in our office.

She offers me the phone, so I dial the cell number of one of my coworkers. They were all going to lunch together and drove all the way back to let me in, (thank you) so I could drive home, get my daughter's swimsuit, let the dog out, drop off the swimsuit and get back to work.

And this all happened before 1:30 p.m.!

I'm happy to report the rest of the afternoon was much less Monday-like and I can laugh about it all today, because, well, for starters it's Tuesday. And the trip to the day camp did not require a hurried trip back home to pick something else up.

And when I had to go to the bathroom, I took my keys with me!

Dawn

What I learned on my summer vacation

I was on vacation with my family last week touring the North Shore of Lake Superior. Here are a few things I learned...

Supper at 9:30 p.m. is not as crazy as it sounds. (I remember that happening more than once as a kid growing up on the farm.)

Everything tastes really good at 9:30 p.m., especially when you've been hiking and climbing around on Taconite boulders most of the day.

I am an overly cautious, "be careful on those rocks" mother.

I got sick of listening to myself be an overly cautious, "be careful on those rocks" mother, but STILL couldn't stop myself from saying it.

Waterfalls are really, really cool. And I will hike many miles just to see them.

If you can't feel them bite you, but you are suddenly covered in itchy bumps, did something really bite you? (The answer is yes, but the "what" is still a mystery.)

Unless you are from the North Shore, you don't expect fog to still be hanging around in the middle of the afternoon.

Betty's Pies are as good as they say.

You can't drive 120 miles with the electricity plug for the camper bouncing along on the ground without it pretty much getting destroyed.

Electrician's tape and a little electrical knowledge can patch that plug up enough to get you back home with your brakes, brake lights and turn signals in working order. (The knowledge was my husband's, not mine, by the way.)

You can find a camp site near Itasca State Park at the last minute on a Friday night on your way back home and for that, I am extremely grateful! (I wouldn't suggest, however, that you try this same tactic!)

The headwaters of the Mississippi are inspiring: From humble beginnings come mighty great things.

Dawn

Funny headlines

I subscribe to this online communicator network and one of today's gems was awkward headlines written by journalists on deadlines. I have to admit, it really made me laugh, so I thought I'd share a couple with you that would have made milk spurt out of my nose if I had been drinking milk and reading the headlines at the same time.

And speaking of milk, here's the first one...

Milk Drinkers are Turning to Powder

(Guess I'd rather have it come out my nose than turn to poweder, wouldn't you?)

And here are a couple more...

Enraged Cow Injures Farmer with Axe
Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim
Stiff opposition expected to casketless funeral plan
NJ Judge to Rule on Nude Beach
Dealers will Hear Car Talk at Noon

(I wonder if it was a car like Kit from the old Knight Rider television series?)

Have a happy and SAFE Independence Day holiday!!

Dawn

Murder of crows

I don't know why this keeps coming to mind, but I just saw another news release that referenced a group of animals (in this case, a "herd") and it reminded me again of all the funny little names we have assigned to groups of animals. I could remember a few, but there were a lot more that I had forgotten.

So, naturally, I "googled it."

Did you know that a collection of crows is called a "murder?" Or that a bunch of bison is a "gang?"

While I can't say I've ever seen a bunch of ferrets together, when they are, it's called a "business." A group of flies is also called a "business, they often give me "the business" and I have seen so many of them together, I keep thinking, "There HAS to be a way to capture them all and START a business."

Goats travel in "tribes."

Several monkeys are called a "barrel."

And a group of apes is called a "shrewdness."

So, if you have a barrel of shrewdness, what does that make you?

It's a fun list, worth sharing with kids (of all ages....ahem!!!).

Check it out at Animal Congregations, or What Do You Call a Group of.....?

Dawn