Something's not right here... ;-p

   You know how sometimes you look at something and your brain registers that something's just not right about what your seeing? Well, that's been going on for awhile now, with something we see on the corner of our neighbor's house. At first, it truly was a 'am I seeing what I think I'm seeing' situation. And we found it kind of amusing.
    Now however, as you can see by the picture, there's no denying what your seeing, and we find it considerably amusing.
    Here's what we're seeing -

                        (click on the picture to get an ever better view)
      The vine seems to have grown UP their drains down spout.
      They have workmen working on their house this week. They had been working on the interior. But I just heard what sounded like a chain saw start up, and overheard a conversation about how he had picked up a weed whip, etc..  Shall be interesting to see if it's still hanging there when they leave.

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Next week, I 'plan' on linking this particular posting up to:
~ "the simple things", are hosted by Rebecca, at 'simple as that' (http://rebeccacooper.blogspot.com/).
~ "Show and Tell Challenge('s)", are hosted by Chelsey, at 'Paper Heart Cameras' (http://paperheartcamera.blogspot.com).
  ~  "True Story Tuesday('s)", are hosted by Rachel, at 'Once Upon A Miracle'  (http://tris-adventures.blogspot.com/).
~  "Outdoor Wednesday('s)", are hosted by Susan, at 'A Southern Daydreamer'  (http://asoutherndaydreamer.blogspot.com/ )

A chuckling tribute to my mom

    The following email came via my dad. I decided to use it as a posting seeings how Sunday is Mother's Day. My mom was an English major. But much to her shurgrin, I was not.
    Oh, I love words mind you. I love the scenes one can visualize via putting certain words together. The tales they can be used to tell.  The warmth they can be used to spread. The beautiful music some people's voices make when reading them. Etc.. I think that the English language can be a very beautiful wonderful thing.
   But it can also be an ever so frustrating one. For every rule applied to it, there is umpteen dozen exceptions. And how in the heck the 'phonics' system is suppose to work, is beyond me. Way to many words are not spelled any wheres close to how they sound like they should be. And punctuation. Yet again so many conflicting rules.
   I could go on, but I'll spare you. (Who just applauded?!! ;-p)
   In honor of my mom and Sunday being Mother's day, here is today's chuckle courtesy of my dad - 
 
You think English is easy???

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse refuse more.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture. 5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass  drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row ...
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. 

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?  

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.. 

English was invented by people not computers and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why when the stars are out they are visible but when the lights are out they are invisible. 

PS. - Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick' ?

P.PS. Why is a bra singular and panties plural?

Then there's this- a two letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is UP
It's easy to understand UP , meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report ?

We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UPexcuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP . We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. 

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP ! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP ,you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP .. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP...
When it rains,it wets the earth and often messes things  UP. When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry  UP .One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP , for now my time is UP , so........it is time to shut UP !  

Oh... one more thing:

What is the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night? U-P


{sorry the sizes of the fonts are this are so mixed up on here.  I tried getting them all alike.... aw well.}

today ;-p

MARCH  FOURTH !!!! :-p !!! :-b !!!

if you have no idea what in the world I am referring to, go HERE  o;-p

Laughter :-p!

    Tomorrow I'm going to be posting various tips about coffee. I was gonna do it today, but I forgot to verify one little detail with Brian. I just called his cell phone to leave him a message, hoping he'd call me back on his lunch break with the answer. Then I heard his phone ringing in the other room... guess he won't be calling me back today.
    So... which other thing was I going to post today? I did have several other things in mind which I could choose from.
    But then I opened an email from Karen G_ski. It contained a link to a You Tube(TM) Video, and ever so surprisingly (to me at least), my computer downloaded it (I did have to let it start, click on pause, wait sev-er-al minutes while it finished downloading, use the courser to push the bar back to the beginning and then click on 'play'. My wait proved to be oh so worth it!!!)
    Karen had written, "Had to pass this on haven't laughed this hard in a long time." at the top of her email. I was up for a good laugh. And I wasn't disappointed. It was indeed a good laugh!!!
    The video clip is of the comedian 'Jeannie Robertson'. I had previously seen a clip of her doing a routine she'd titled something about "Don't go rafting with Baptist" or something similar, and had enjoyed it immensely!!! This clip had to do with "Pound Cakes". It's funny!!! ;-p  Which fits Jeannie's cretto of "Keep Um Laughing"
     I hope both that your computer too lets you download and watch this clip, and that you too enjoy and get a good laugh out of it. After all, laughter IS the best medicine!!!

      POUND CAKE

   [in case your computer doesn't allow you to follow that link, here is the web address for the clip - http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=-YFRUSTiFUs#t=65]

Singing Anesthesiologists ;-p

    After already having done yesterday's posting, I opened an email from my Aunt Carol which made me laugh to the point of tears! Seriously!  I KNEW I needed to share it with all of you!
    The email included a link to the web blog 'Not Totally Rad'. The sites by-line reads, "Shedding invisible light on medical imaging".  The laughter started as soon as I read this line under the You-Tube link: "Posted by The Samurai Radiologist".
    The You-Tube link features five Anesthesiologists in Minnesota, who really can sing! But they are also comedians. Listen to the words of their version of "Waking Up Is Hard To Do" - hilarious!!!
    I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! 
    Your Link to Laughter

"your time is coming" ;-p

    There was an email in my in box this morning, from my husband. When I opened it, I saw that he had actually just sent me a copy of what he was sending to Byron and Cyndi (our son and daughter-in-love). He had written "your time is coming" in the subject line. O-k-a-y.
    I started reading, and chuckling, and chuckling, and chuckling!!! The only reason I was not laughing right out loud, was due to Brian being asleep in the living room, right around the corner from where I was chuckling to the point, I had tears running down my cheek's.
    Last night when I headed up to bed, I was debating which thing I was going to post today. Those things are still 'on hold'. I know that to not share a good laugh, is just wrong. Actually, it's depriving others. And I sure don't want that on my record!!! ;-p Enjoy -

"THE CURSE OF CURFEW

By W. Bruce Cameron

My eyelids snap open at exactly twenty-two hundred hours, responding to an inner alarm that sounds whenever a daughter is out on a school night. Curfew has darkened the land, and any children caught outside the perimeter are now subject to arrest and the torture of telephone deprivation.

I pad down the stairs to my daughter's bedroom. Every light is on and her stereo is blaring, sure signs that she's not home. It is now two minutes after ten o'clock, and normally I'd call 911 but those people got surly with me last time because I phoned it in as a "possible child abduction" due to the fact that my daughter's date wore an earring.

I glance out the window and freeze: The boy's car is in the driveway.

Well okay. I flick on the outside lights, helpfully flipping them on and off a few dozen times so the occupants of the car will know what time it is.

There's no reaction. I peer at the vehicle, but the windows are dark and pitiless, coated with the light mist that is falling. What are they doing out there?

Well, that was a bad question to ask myself! I try another burst of light-flicking just to give myself something to do, but I know the only way I'm going to be able to settle this matter is to go out there, knock politely on the window, and spray the two of them with the garden hose.

I'm not garbed for such a diplomatic undertaking--I have on a pair of pajama bottoms and nothing else. What I need is some protection against the elements, something waterproof. With chains and hooks hanging from it. And grenades.

Okay. I open the coat closet and discover where my son put all the junk last time he cleaned the living room. I could try my own bedroom closet, but I don't want to take the time. For my bare feet I find a pair of duck slippers--big, puffy clunkers with plastic duck heads on them. There are no umbrellas, but I do find a hat--one of those hunter caps with ear flaps that tie under the chin. This one is an incandescent orange so that fellow hunters won't think that maybe they ought to open fire on the thing wearing the ear flaps in case it is a deer. The hat is so bright it seems to be giving off its own light--I look like a cross between Elmer Fudd and a road flare.

Naturally, even though I am searching through a coat closet in my house, none of my own coats are available. I finally decide to struggle into one of my kids' old jackets, a nylon job with a picture of Daffy Duck on the back. I have something of an outdoors motif going.

I survey myself in the mirror before heading out. Regrettably, the tight hem of the jacket falls a couple inches short of bridging the gap to my pajama waist, creating the odd illusion that my stomach sticks out in a roll of belly flesh. I toy with the idea of tying the ear flaps under my chin, but decide not to go that formal. I grab a flashlight and step out into the rain.

I'd forgotten that my duck slippers quack when I walk in them, which threatens to ruin the element of surprise. Actually, it is less a "quack" then a "wheeze," as if the ducks are lifetime smokers.

I  bang on the implacable car windows, wait a moment, and then yank the door open, the car alarm splitting the night air.

No one is inside.

When I get back into the house, my daughter and her date are standing in the kitchen, looking concerned as I quack in out of the rain.

"Hi!" I call cheerfully.

"I just needed to use the telephone..." the boy stammers uncertainly. With a quick glance back at my daughter, he scampers out of the house.

"Oh, Dad, how could you do that?" my daughter demands, whirling and bolting from the room.

I stand there in the middle of the kitchen, scratching my head.

How could I do WHAT? "

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