'Mother of the Groom' or 'Hooker'

At a recent wedding, the mother of the groom wore a uncharacteristically gaudy outfit and was dolled up to the point of having a comment made about her appearance that she looked like a 'hooker'.

I have never actually met a prostitute, so I'm not sure what one looks like. I only have the movie or television stereotype to go by, but even though I wasn't there, I'm certain she didn't look exactly like that.

However, I completely understand what I think is the real meaning of this comment ... the sequins, elaborate hairdo, fancy makeup job, unfortunately high heels .... they combine to create an image that does not in any way resemble the person underneath the facade.

I have witnessed this phenomena myself on several occasions, and I don't understand what possesses people to do it. I mean I can understand dressing to impress, but please. Do yourself a favor and don't try to look like someone you are not. You will always look like a fake. Its extremely unattractive and rather pitiable.

Miriam and I and our Chicken Necks ....

We had a 'few' friends over for Ed's birthday on Sunday ... I say a few as there were only two families, but as each of them are quite large that was about 18 people plus Ed, Matthew, and I makes 21 people in my little ranch .... good thing we like each other!
My friend Miriam and I had our picture taken and the first time she was a little disappointed because the picture showed her double chin.
So then the friend taking the picture (Wendy) told her that we have to stretch our necks out to get rid of the double chin .... we were totally cracking up and stretching our necks back and forth .... picture a barnyard of chickens strutting around ....

It was a fun party!

Over 100,000 people turned 52 yesterday ... my husband was one of them.

So my husband and I are perfect together .... but sometimes he is really a nerd.

So I say to dear husband last night something about how special he is because today is his birthday ... and he replies that he's not so special as lots of people were born on this day. I say yeah, but not so many are turning 52 .... so then he proceeds to calculate an estimate of how many people in the world celebrated their 52 birthday yesterday. You gotta love him. He is a piece of work.

First he had to list the assumptions -- some of which we realize are false, but make the problem too complex to do a simple estimate and they aren't false enough to make a significant difference for purposes of our discussion:

• 6 billion people in the world



• Youngest 1, Oldest 100



• Constant distribution of current ages from 1 to 100



• Same rate of death from 1 to 100



• Constant distribution across specific days of the year - in other words we are not taking into account seasonal spikes in birth rate

Then to do the math in his head:
There are 365 days in a year, over a hundred years that is 36,500 possible different birthdays. Divide 6 billion by 36,500 .... he rounded to be able to do the math easier and came up with 100,000 as the number of people celebrating their 52nd birthday with him.

I just did it on the calculator and its actually 165,000 for each day. Which is actually only 0.0000275 % of the total world population so ... I think I am right and he is still pretty special!

Pumpkin Carving and Painting

I love pumpkin carving and painting! That and handing out candy on Halloween night are some of my favorite Halloween things to do!

When I was a little girl, my Dad was a farmer. He would grow pumpkins to sell at the farmers market and my Mom would paint cute faces on them ... She would always do some for us too, and we would beg her to let us keep them as long as possible! Mine are not as cute as hers, but I still have a fun time doing them!

Ed loves to carve pumpkins. The last few years he and Matthew have found a fun carving pattern online and used that for their jack-o-lantern's face. Last years was a pirate/skull face that required using a drill to carve out each individual tooth in its spooky grin! This year they went a little simpler with the 'scary flame' jack-o-lantern.

Stadium Pal

I think David Sedaris is freaking hysterical ... One of my favorite sarcastic sites (Dooce) had a link to this video. I just about peed my pants laughing. I would buy one of these for my DH except I'm afraid he might use it!

Scrapbooking in the Poconos

My sister and a couple of friends went to a scrapbooking weekend in the poconos this weekend. It was so much fun and I was so productive! I made 24 pages! Also made 16 Christmas cards for a card swap we're doing.

I'm working on finishing up Matthew's albums... I printed out a bunch of pictures for the books I made him for his 7th b-day, but I wasn't able to get through them all. I might have been a little ambitious ... I printed out pictures from age 2 (the earliest pictures we have as we only have copies of the digital pictures and evil BM won't let Ed make copies of the film pictures) through age 6.5 ... a huge stack of pictures! So I' didn't finish them all in time for his brithday, but I'm still wading through them as he really loved his book.

Here are some of my favorites from the scrapbook pages I made this weekend:

Matthew's October Pack Meeting

Matthew's pack went on a hayride and pumpkin picking for their October pack meeting. Of course the event started at 4:30 and Ed's visitation doesn't start until 5:00. So he asked to pick Matthew up early and Kathy refused. She instead insisted on bringing Matthew to the event and handing him over to Ed at 5:00 when his visitation starts. It doesn't seem to matter to her that the judge told her that any time his father asked to have him early that it was her responsibility to give Matthew to his father early. Or that maybe it might have made it easier on Matthew to not have to transition between his parents in the middle of an event. She really doesn't care about anyone but herself. October is the perfect month for her ... she doesn't even have to dress up as she is a witch all year round.

Anyways .... here are some pictures from the pack meeting ...