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An Older Cousin’s Job is to Help Teach.

July 15, 2009 Rachel Callahan Wordless Wednesday - as IF I could be wordless.

Eli came over, and so, of course, had to have his first training in jumping on the trampoline.

Only problem was, Ali.

Every time he’d get the momentum to stand up,

She would completely wipe him out with her own, much greater, momentum.

And then, completely obliviously look at him with puzzlement.

But, luckily, Eli enjoyed the ride – both up AND down.

Ali, however, put on her ruby slippers and left him in her trampoline dust.

Check out My other Wordless Wednesday – Trampoline Encore – at B-Sides.

Check out everyone else’s Wordless Wednesday at 5 Minutes for Mom.

A Neighborhood Mystery is Afoot. . .

May 14, 2009January 6, 2014 Rachel Callahan Investigative Report, Utter Silliness, Weird Strange and True

A few days ago, I walked out to get the mail. When I got there, I was quite puzzled by the sudden appearance of this:

NO, not all the dirt and grime on our mailbox. That’s always been there and has no projection of being removed any time soon.

A raised, green reflective dot, about the size of a quarter, had suddenly appeared.

Why? Who decided that I needed a reflective dot on my mailbox? Isn’t it a federal crime to mess with mail or MAIL CONTAINERS?

So I started looking around.

Across the street: Freddy and Christie had the very same dot.

(You can see it’s reflective properties in that picture)

I widened my investigation. Next door: They had a RED dot!!!!

In fact, upon further investigation, most of our neighbors had the RED dot.

But then, some neighbors had no dot at all (for instance, Alice had NO dot, which assuaged my fears that they were marking bloggers).

(Then again, Freddy hasn’t blogged in about 10 1/2 decades, so he most likely wouldn’t have gotten marked in that case)

Ali and I did an unofficial mailbox survey while out on a walk yesterday and discovered that:

33.65% of mailboxes had no dot .
64.35% of mailboxes had red dots.
In the whole neighborhood, there were only two houses with green dots. Ours and Freddy and Christie’s.

I am quite puzzled as to the meaning of these dots.

Are we marked for execution?

Or are all the red dots marked for execution and we’re marked to be spared?

My un-fun, logical theories are:

There’s a new person doing the newspaper route who can’t read numbers, so in true equal opportunity form, someone went through and marked with colors. Maybe green means we get the weekend papers only, red means daily, and no dot means no paper. (I need to survey Alice and Freddy and Christie’s paper practices to help prove this theory.)
Maybe they are related to garbage pickup. (Although this would be a riot since we’ve never paid for our garbage pickup due to being completely unable to get them to send us a bill. Half the time I think that they just pick up everybody’s garbage without regard to the fact that we have no sticker, and the other half of the time I think that it must be on auto-draft out of the former house-owner’s checking account, and in a very un-accounting like fashion, they never look at it. Oops.)

My preferable, more inventive theories are:

Someone is going through and marking the excellent neighbors (green), the bad neighbors (red) and the neutral or hermit neighbors (no dot). We are being classified and a neighborhood caste system is being created. Which means, of course, that we are at the top echelon of neighborhood caste society. YESSSS.
A city is finally looking at annexing us and is surveying the neighborhood for people who already have code violations. Like, for instance,
- The man with 200 white homing pigeons in his backyard (housed in 6 huge birdhouses) = non-annex material.
- The people with the skateboard park in their backyard = non-annex material.
- Freddy and Christie, with their immaculate yard, house, and fence = annex material.
- But then again, we have a green dot. So I guess that blows that theory.

Anyone else have any theories?

Or better yet, has anyone else had any mysterious mailbox dottage happen in your neighborhood?

Kitty and the Cats.

February 8, 2009 Rachel Callahan Utter Silliness, Yes I'm a beach bum. What of it?

I have had the song “Benny and the Jets” stuck in my head all day, because Ali and I decided this morning that Kitty and her three cats should be a band. So we’ve been singing it all day: “Kitty and the CATS”. Then, in a complete random twist of irony, the song actually came on the radio on our way home from dinner. I mean seriously – I haven’t heard that song in decades.

Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration, but it’s certainly not on normal rotation. So Ali and I will both be singing “Kitty and the Cats” for the foreseeable future.

Now, onto a recap of our day. Quick Disclaimer: This post will be a completely disjointed pile of pictures and thoughts, so don’t expect some beautiful weaving together of a story here.

Mainly because I followed up my dinner of Steak and Potatoes (which always makes me sleepy – which makes me believe in that “eating for your blood type theory, since it’s the opposite of what I’m supposed to eat. Oops. There I go on a tangent. Told you) with a big slice of super-icing-ey King Cake, something that I L-O-V-E but have been avoiding like the plague (I even took this picture of of the delicious looking ones at Bruno’s last week with the thought that I might blog about my super self-control:).
However, being down here where Mardi Gras is an official holday and the King Cakes are GENUINE made it so that I couldn’t fight the temptation anymore.

So I am in a fog, a diabetic coma, and my eyes are involuntarily darting from side to side.

Now that I’ve cleared that up.

Last time we were down here, Ali was obsessed with attempting to sit in their tiny beach chair that held coasters. Although she acknowledged that the chair was too little for her this time, the temptation of trying to crawl through the cat tubes was too strong for her.
After all, it DID look like her crawling tubes at home . . .
Maybe if I go in backwards. . .
After giving up on that endeavor, she decided to play puzzles with Kitty:
After that, us girls went outlet shopping while the boys did some work of some sort.

Banana Republic had some awesomely horrible huge rubber boots. And since Mom was able to finally free Ali from the grip of intense fear of boots (aka “Silly Shoes“) by buying her some rain boots, I figured it was time to torture her with boots again:I’m sure she’ll forgive me one day.

After that, she found a car with Garfield in it.
After having a deep conversation with Garfield,
She drove him all around the outlet mall, much to his excitement.
After shopping and naptime, we played a little in the back yard. Much to Mommy’s nervousness, Daddy let Ali walk down the pier:
But she didn’t go without repeating to herself, “Ali be CAREFUL, Ali be CAREFUL”, and looking back every now and then to make sure Mommy was coming:
We had to have a good run in the yard. For some reason, their backyard just begs to be run in:
Yes, she wore those Mardi Gras beads all day.
Jaci should be proud of her soccer skills – we got in some good kicks.
While we were going “up,up,up” and “down,down,down” with Ali over and over on the porch stairs, I noticed that the guys were demonstrating all kinds of creative uses for a roof.
Such as, climbing exercises,
And pillows.
Go figure.

We had some family swing time (don’t you love my rainbow cozy clothes??),
And a little spinning around time. Back to that whole “yard who begs to be run around in” thing,
Then collapsed in a dizzy heap. Or, as Ali calls it, “bizzy”.
But the most important thing we learned all day was provided by the toll bridge company:
That’s right, people: feel free to leave your wipers on, but only if it’s sunny out.

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