funny things heard around the house

Nate looking at small kitty tunnel:  I used to fit in this when I was a little kitty.

I’m sure you did.

***

Nate:  This car stinks.

Jake:  it’s ’cause of my feet.  They stink

***

Jake:  Hey Mommy!  I ate those really yucky things.  They were delicious.

(talking about pickles)

***

Nate:  Mom, you want to hear about my super powers?

Me:  Sure.

Nate:  My super powers make the clouds go away.

Me:  That’s a good power to have.  Are you going to use it today?

Nate:  I tried, it must be broken.

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nefarious characters

My dear sweet husband, Dave (being a pilot), loves everything to do with airplanes.  I am continually amazed with his vast amount of knowledge.  Any exciting, or out of the ordinary happenings in the aviation world, he knows of, and by default I do too.  Recently he told me this rather amusing tale.

Dave:  Did you hear about the recent small plane crash.

Me:  Umm, no, should I have?

Dave:  A man smuggled an alligator on to a small commuter jet.

Me:  An alligator?  Why? What was he going to do with it?

Dave:  I don’t know, so he could sell it to some nefarious characters.  (yes, he said nefarious characters, which I find incredibly amusing.  I don’t know why, I was expecting “alligators fetch good money on the black market”  or “the guy really liked reptiles”)

Me:  laughter.  belly laughter.  lots of belly laughter.

Dave:  What?  I used nefarious correctly.

Me:   I know, it’s just funny.  So what happened with the alligator.

Dave:  If you think that’s funny wait for the rest of the story.  So, the alligator got out and the stewardess freaked out and ran to the front of the plan.  All the other passengers freaked out and they followed the stewardess.  When everyone ran to the front of the plane…

Me:  Samuel Jackson jumped out and said “I’m sick and tired of all these, mother fucking alligators on my mother fucking plane!”

Dave:  No, the airplane crashed.

Me:  No really, what happened?

Dave:  Really, the plane crashed.  Everyone died except for one guy.  That’s how we know what happened.

Me:  Was that guy Samuel L. Jackson?

Dave:  No, really, it’s a true story.

Me:  sure

 

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I like to do it

last minute.   I always think that this year will be the year I start shopping for Christmas in July.  Or this year, I’ll plan to make Halloween costumes in August.  Every year though, I slack and then I slack some more.  I wait until the last possible moment.  It’s just how I roll.

I thought I was going to be lucky and miss out on Halloween this year.  Alas, it won’t be so.  Last night at dinner I told the kids to hurry quick and think of a costume.

“You have until Friday and frugality will be rewarded handsomely”.

I suggested that Nathaniel and Jacob could be Peter Pan and Captain Hook, McKayla could be Wendy.  Mike could be a lost boy, and Marshall could be Captain Smee.

Jacob:  Yes!  I want to be Captain Hook with a hook!

Me:  Thank you for being an easy child.

Nathaniel:  I want to be Tinkerbell with a wand!

Me:  No gender stereotypes at our house.

Mike:  I want to be an army guy (which he has been the last four years in a row!)

Me:  Surprise, surprise, at least we can reuse the costume from the last few years.

Marshall:  I want to be Sokka!

Me:  What the heck is that?

Marshall:  The guy from Avatar (this was said with an implied duh! at the end.

Me:  So no one wants to be the cast of Peter Pan besides Jacob?

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Sometimes

sometimes you look around and wonder, how the heck did this happen?

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What did you just say?

I find it fascinating how we butcher the human language and how it so quickly changes and morphs.

Here are a few of my favorites.

Don’t be a heel. Dave thinks that I might be the only person in the world who says this.  I think he’s just lived a terribly sheltered life without much culture.  He also thinks I may have made this up.  I beg to differ, but I’m also happy to take credit for it because I think it’s rather amazing and inventive.

Dave:  What does it mean then?

Me:  You know “Don’t be  a heel”.   Like don’t be like the heel on a loaf of bread.  No one likes a heel.  Let me use it in a sentence for you.  “Don’t be such a heel, stop teasing me about my colloquialisms”

I don’t want the scab! I find it very funny that Mikey calls the heel of a loaf of bread the scab.  Rather descriptive and probably accurate, but disgusting nonetheless.

I want to go to scrubscouts! (this is done in a very whinny voice and usually involves squeezing out some crocodile tears!)  Apparently according to Jacob, it’s not cub scouts, but scrub scouts.  They do lots of cleaning every Monday.  I should really invite them to my house.

Olly Olly Oxen Free Which my friend immediately responded with “Are you speaking English”.  I’m guessing that like Dave she lived a culturally sheltered life and never played hide and seek before.  Which then got me thinking, I wonder if my kids have any idea what that means. Turns out they didn’t but they do now.

Refrigilater. My older three kids called the refrigerator the refrigilater which I still find incredibly cute.

I also love the things we mishear and then we repeat it and insist our way is correct.

I have always called a white board a “wipe board”. I guess it sounds close enough to white board that no one ever called me on it, until Dave that is.

I remember distinctly my sister insisting that we were singing Row, row, row your boat wrong.

Me:  The whole song has like 9 words in it.  How are we singing it wrong.

Her:  It’s gently down the street!  STREET!

Me:  Why would you row your boat down the street.  Don’t you think stream would be a better choice?

Her:  My teacher said STREET.  Sing street!

Sometimes being a parent, I think I deserve a an honorary degree in linguistic studies.  Every day I have to constantly translate from toddlerese into English.  Sometimes I even get the rare grade-schoolish.

Mikey:  My AWANA leader called and their isn’t AWANAs tomorrow.

Me:  What do you mean it’s cancelled?  Why?

**This is where I have a little mini-breakdown because I look forward to Wednesday night.  For only $100 for the whole year, the church will take all 4 of my boys for almost 2 hours.  It’s like pure bliss.  I drop McKayla off at youth group and for 2 hours a week, I have no children.  Dave and I can eat in peace or fornicate like newlyweds.  I can go to the grocery store.  I can hang out with my friends.  It’s bliss.  Marshall of course hates it.  Every week he complains and every week I tell him to take one for the team.   So the prospect of AWANA being cancelled sent me into a tizzy.  I called my girlfriend.

Me:  Did you get a call that AWANA was cancelled?

Her:  No?  I got a call that it’s NACHO night!

Me:  Ah!  Mike heard “it’s NOT CHO (like your) night! Which is even funnier because all of his leaders are incredibly white and probably have never even pretended to say NOT CHO in their lives.

 

What’s your favorite colloquialism or mishear?

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Go ahead and guess

Do you want to know what I’ve been doing for the last month? Go ahead guess.

well, yes, I’ve been teaching the children.  Every day from about 8-4.  More days than not, I’ve made someone cry and they’ve made me cry.  And in case I was wondered how much I sucked, Marshall feels like its his job to remind me.

Marshall:  When I go to college I’m going to be super smart at everything but science.

Me:  Why?  I think your pretty good at science.

Marshall:  But you never teach us science.  Remember last year when we did science every day?

Me:  Okay, get out your science book.  We’ll do science.

Thank goodness for the wine of the month club.

And yes, we did get lice again. My kids’ heads must not know that they are homeschooled and shouldn’t partake in the whole “lice experience”.  This time no boy head was spared.  Everyone got their head shaved.  Yet again, I learned that I’m not a barber.

It wasn’t another outbreak but a reinfestation.  I’m pretty sure that our public library is the culprit.  They have lots of stuffed animals.  Some of them are rather large, like a life-size alligator and a mouse bigger than me.  These are super fun to put on top of your head and/or rub your head all over.  Now when we go to the library I won’t let the kids play with them.  My older kids caught on pretty quickly.  The twins on the other hand, it’s taking a bit longer.

Mike:  Nathaniel, don’t play with the big alligator.  They are covered in fleas!

This of course is done in the mock whisper, it’s loud, very loud, but said kind of raspy. Which I find hilariously funny because all of the other people at the library instantly look up and snatch their children up and decide to head for home. It’s like a win/win for me.  Nathaniel instantly drops the alligator, and for the few remaining parents who didn’t hear Mike, Nathaniel shouts “Fleas!  Fleas on the alligator?  I hate fleas!” and the library clears out.

But those aren’t what I’ve been really busy with.  Go ahead keep guessing.  You’ll never guess though.

No we didn’t have another trip to the ER.  We have been to the doctors at least once a week in the last month or two.  I told the receptionist that we really need a frequent visitor card, 10 visits and the next co-pay is on them.  This week I told the doctor that our family alone is probably going to buy her a condo in Tahoe.  She gave a polite chuckle, which makes me think that I’m not to far from the truth.  We did have 2 trips for x-rays for McKayla.  I’m glad to say that she doesn’t have a broken ankle or a finger, she’s just clumsy.  Jacob has also split his chin open, which probably could have used a stitch, but with a middle name like Adventure, I think he really needs a scar.  Nathaniel, not to be left out, decided to cut his hair and swallow a marble.  Wasn’t that sweet of him.  I now get to make sure the marble passes.  How fun!

Yes, we did go camping.  Three times in less than two months.  I feel rather outdoorsy.  The dirt and I have made peace.  Unfortunately the bugs and I have not.  Maybe next year I will like the bugs more.  I’m thinking about getting a membership to REI and buying some more camping gear.

So do you give up?  Go ahead give up!  You’ll never guess anyways.

Really?  You gave up? That’s kind of pathetic, giving up so soon.

Okay, I’ll tell you.

I’ve been gleaning.  My girl friend found a farmer who let us pick his leftover tomatoes.  So three of us and our kids went out in the middle of nowhere and picked tomatoes.  We picked and picked and when we felt like we had picked enough, we couldn’t stop because there were so many good ones left.  I picked hundreds of pounds of tomatoes.

I’ve spent the last few weeks peeling and canning tomatoes.  Somewhere around quart 23, I called Dave at work.

Him:  Whatcha doin?

Me:  I’m canning tomatoes.  As I was peeling tomato 219 I thought it would be cool to figure out how much money I’m saving us.

Him:  That’s awesome!  How much do you think?  You’re so resourceful!

Me: I think that all of these free tomatoes may actually be costing us money!

Him:  What?

Me:  Well, I can buy a can of crushed tomatoes for like $2.00.  I had to go buy more quart jars.  That was $12.  And it takes me about an hour and half to prcoess these tomatoes and then can them.  So for a dozen jars, I’m making like $4.00 an hour.  Really, I think a one armed kind in China making barbie dolls might be making more money than me.  And then, I’m so exhausted, I was thinking about ordering a pizza, which would eat up all of my profits, so really, all these tomatoes are costing me money!

Him:  Well, if you don’t want to do it, just throw them in the trash.

Me:  I can’t do that!  That would be so wasteful!

So I continued trudging along.

24 quarts of crushed tomatoes

12 quarts of salsa.

12 pints of bruschetta

12 quarts of spaghetti sauce.

and I’m still not done. Every time I think I’m done, the green ones ripen and I have to start all over again.

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