In Utah, a sixteen-year-old at the beginning of his sophomore school year, was riding the school bus for the first time. His dad waved good-bye to him and he promptly asked his mom to please tell the dad not to wave at the bus anymore as he rides off. Well, not only did the boy’s dad decide that he would continue waving, he made the decision to do it in costume…every day for 170 days. Yes, every school day he dressed up and waved, but never in the same costume. There was Little Mermaid, blushing bride, Hulk, Kiss, Batman, a ghost, Princess Leia, Mr. T, the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, hula girl, Braveheart, a lamp, Mister Clean…the list is quite extensive, and the costumes, elaborate and absolutely hilarious – definitely worth looking up. Dad says that he only spent $50 for the entire school year because friends and neighbors were able to loan him costume essentials. His wife took pictures and created a blog to document each day. Dad became known as the very popular, “Wave at the Bus Dad.” A man that puts that much time and effort into something for his child must be one heck of a dad.
LISTEN UP: If you are taking your entire family with you to shop right now, leave everyone at home but YOU, or send another adult in the family. This is ridiculous. Families of six in line at the grocery store. Babies teething on the grocery basket. This is not a party and we DON’T want your family next to us. ☹
On Saturday, I spent the day trying to make my little backyard, ‘tent-caterpillar free’, so we could enjoy the beautiful weather and sit on the porch. I worked hard and about 2pm I looked down at my watch and thought that it had stopped running, so I spent the next few minutes wondering how I was going to get a new battery, etc. Then about an hour later, I looked again and realized that my watch was still running…it just seemed like a whole day had passed. Dang, this extra time is weird. So, I went back to my caterpillar cleaning. It just seems like the days pass so slow during home confinement.
What’s the difference between a well-dressed man on a bike and a poorly dressed man on a unicycle? (the answer is at the end)
Tent caterpillars: I always try to do as much as I can naturally, without chemicals. When you spray with chemicals, you also kill lizards, grasshoppers, butterflies, bees and all other good things that we need for food supply for everyone, including you. I spent the past couple of hours at my desk trying to find something natural to get rid of these pests. They’re just so BAD this year. I found that vegetable oil applied to the nests got great reviews, but I believe we are past the nest phase. I found that just plain old soapy water in a sprayer seems to be the best, easiest and cheapest way to control them. It is supposed to take care of them within the hour, and I wanted something that wouldn’t leave oily spots on my outdoor furniture or stains on the brick. I’m going to try it this afternoon and I’ll let you know. As if coronavirus wasn’t enough for us to be battling right now. Tent caterpillars. They’re in clusters on my back porch and every time I open my back door, there’s at least one that falls on me. I don’t like them, but animals and bats treat them as a tasty appetizer. Black bears in particular, feast on these caterpillars and may eat up to 26,000 a day, with caterpillars often becoming the bear’s main food source in late spring. Though they are voracious caterpillar eaters, I cannot at this time, recommend that we import bears for South Texas pest control. Unfortunately. Update: The soapy water works great. It takes a little while, but it does work. My son said that we are just giving them forceable bubble baths. I told someone that I was making them wash all their little hands, all the way up to their elbows for 20 seconds, then they just give up and go away. Then you must clean up all the poop. Sigh. Just some stragglers were left last night.
Do any of places of worship still have big church bells. I read that in Kentucky, they are ringing the bells at a certain time each day, as a way to stay connected to their parishioners since no one can gather in prayer, they can be united in prayer. Wouldn’t that be sweet to hear the bells once a day. Churches?!?
RECENT BIRTHDAYS: Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is 90. Actor Alan Arkin is 86. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is 80. Game show host Peter Marshall is 94. Actor John Astin is 90. Actor director Warren Beatty is 83. Rap artist MC Hammer is 58. Singer Celine Dion is 52. Author Judith Guest is 84. Ordinary People. International Tennis Hall of Fame Jennifer Capriati is 44.
Rock musician Eric Clapton is 75. Actor Paul Reiser is 64. Mad about You. Actor Richard Chamberlain is 86. Dr. Kildare and The Thorn Birds. Musician Herb Albert is 85. Actor Christopher Walken is 77. Actress Rhea Perlman is 72. Actor Robbie Coltrane is 70. Actor Ewan McGregor is 49. Actress Shirley Jones is 86. The Partridge Family.
Remember: It’s hard to touch your face when you have a glass of wine in each hand.
I was sitting at my desk just now, updating my will, when I felt something in my hair. Surprise. I shook my head and out fell a handful of dill seeds that I thought were bugs when they hit the desk. While working in the garden earlier, I had pulled a big stalk of dill out of the ground and I guess some seeds fell in my hair. Ahhh. The life of a farmer 😊. Dill seeds, SOOOO much better than web worms that give me the heebie-jeebies. (hee·bie-jee·bies, noun, a state of nervous fear or anxiety. “It takes a lot more than a measly coronavirus to give me the heebie-jeebies.”)
In checking with my friends to see if they are doing ok through all this, one reply was, “Everyone is doing good. This will pass.” My first thoughts were what you go through when a kid swallows a penny. You must go through a lot of poop to see if the penny passed. I guess that’s what we are doing right now. Waiting for the penny to pass.
Hoda Kotb’s emotions got the better of her on the “Today” show as she concluded a segment with New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, who donated $5 million to help with the outbreak of coronavirus in New Orleans. “Drew, we love ya,” Kotb said. Then she dissolved in tears, and co-anchor Savannah Guthrie jumped in to take over. Kotb was a news anchor and reporter at the CBS affiliate in New Orleans during the 1990s. I cried, and even now, my eyes are full of water just typing this. Our world is so full of good. I hope every single individual sees the good before it’s all over, which I pray is soon and hope it changes every single one of us for the better. We certainly need it. Former Texans DeAndre Hopkins – $150,000. Ryan Reynolds & Blake Lively – $1 million. Bethenny Frankel – 1 million masks. Kelly Ripa & Mark Consuelos – $1 million. Rihanna – $5 million. Billionaire Kylie Jenner – $1 million. Angelina Jolie – $1 million. Disney – 100,000 N95 masks, and the list goes on forever. But doctors, nurses, police, fire and emergency personnel that are donating far more than money.
The Kentucky Derby is always the first Saturday in May but it’s been changed to September 5th. Country House, who won the Derby in 2019 after the first horse over the finish line was disqualified, has been retired because of a foot ailment. He never raced again after the Derby and was last seen in a pasture surrounded by a bunch of fillies, smoking a cigarette.
National Geographic came down on false stories circulating right now…dolphins supposedly swimming in Venetian canals and elephants making themselves at home in a town in China, getting drunk on corn wine…most people were glad to learn the truth but some, quite a few, were angry. “Isn’t this like telling your kid that Santa isn’t real, right after the child happily sat on Santa’s lap at the mall?” “Shame on you. You should have let us believe the lies that brought a little bit of sunshine to our hearts in these dark times.” NG responded with true animal stories like REAL swans in an Italian canal. You just can’t win.
Facebook: The 17 Stages During a Pandemic…1. Ignore. (this doesn’t pertain to me!) 2. Canceled Events. (yikes, SXSW and the NBA canceled) 3. Worried. (maybe this does pertain to me!) 4. Panic. (we have NO FOOD – we have NO CLEANING SUPPLIES) 5. Bulk Shopping. (if one is good then ten in the basket is great) 6. Vigorous cleaning (no one is coming over, so why does this matter?) 7. Potential Sickness (awareness of others with a little sneeze or cough needing to be tested) 8. Judging Other Shoppers (Ha-Ha, what are they going to do with 48 rolls of toilet paper?) 9. Toilet Paper Shopping (wait, do we have enough toilet paper, let’s go back to the store). 10. Acceptance. (we got this) 11. Enjoying Free Time. (Netflix, books, home repairs, puzzles, gardening, YouTube videos, watching Jimmy Fallon live from his summer home, and all the things we never have time for) 12. Boredom, then 13. Insanity. (I can’t take this any longer – how does the cat stay inside all day long?) 14. Bonding. (or perhaps un-bonding – spending uninterrupted time with someone that you really love or maybe loved and now you’re just not sure) 15. Eating ALL the Food. (normally happens on day #3). 16. Hope. (we can go outside!) 17. Back to Normal. (pure appreciation for everything that we have always taken for granted) Moral of this story…when this is over, let’s live each day like tomorrow might be a pandemic. What do you say?
Never ignore a person who cares for you, because someday you’ll realize you’ve lost a diamond while you were collecting stones.
There’s a new FX series called Breeders, which looks at what every parent knows but rarely admits, that they would die for their children, even though they may sometimes want to kill them. There is a dad, mom, aging parents, a mortgage, and of course, parenting. It sounds pretty good and since you have a lot of time on your hands right now…
I have always heard to clean the inside of your dishwasher, just put a bowl of vinegar in the bottom of the machine and run a regular cycle. Diluted vinegar is said to be a natural non-toxic cleaning miracle, killing bacteria, dissolving hard-water deposits and cutting through dirt and grime without the expense of the name-brand cleaning products. But according to the American Cleaning Institute, “distilled white vinegar is good at descaling your coffee maker and leaving windows streak-free because the acid reacts with the organic chemicals in stains and dissolves them away but just as it eat away at coffee stains, imagine it doing the same thing to other surfaces in your home.” Vinegar is great but not in all situations. Here are nine examples from Consumer Reports of where you can and need to use a different product to clean. 1. Steam Irons – read the manual. 2. Granite, Marble and Soapstone – it can etch, pit, scar and dull natural stone, so use mild detergent or something made especially for this material. 3. Dishwashers – Affresh or Finish, both dishwasher cleaners. Your dishwasher has so much rubber inside and sometimes it will react with the vinegar and eat it away. Hmmm. It’s a little late for me because I have already done this… 4. Electronic Screens – dish soap, Panasonic recommends a 100:1 ratio of water to soap. 5. Wooden or Stone Tile Flooring – some companies will even void the warranty if there are any signs that vinegar was used. 6. Knives – keep all metals away from vinegar. My children spilled pickle juice down the refrigerator once and just wiped it off instead of rinsing it off. It left spots all over the frig. 7. Ranges – it won’t hurt most of the range parts because they’re coated, but vinegar is not a good degreaser. Use an alkaline cleaner like ammonia or Borax. 8. Small Appliances – just avoid the rubber, metal and stainless-steel parts. Might as well use your dish soap here also. 9. Washing Machines – vinegar has been used as a fabric softener or getting rid of stains and odors in laundry but see above on dishwashers…rubber hoses, seals. It can eat through them. Hope this helps.
Stay home, be safe, healthy and show them that Brazoria County isn’t going to take this anymore. We WILL flatten the curve quickly.
Lisa
Answer to the joke: ATTIRE 😊
