here comes the tooth fairy again

Look at that toothless smile. Look at those freckles. Look at those blue eyes.

latest

• I cooked lunch today. I made Kung Pao Chicken so I had the opportunity to go to the garden and pick a bell pepper and a few young onions. It came out pretty good. I always do a Google search for a recipe I want to fix and I choose the one with the least ingredients and a degree of difficulty no higher than 3 (on a scale of 1-10). I thought it was as good as any I've eaten at a Chinese restaurant. Dorothy agreed. Of course, she loves any meal that she doesn't have to cook herself.
• I've used this blog before as a soapbox to rant about certain pet peeves; cell phones being one of them. I don't like to see people driving and talking on the cell phone. When I get a call while driving, I pull over. I have to get out of the vehicle to get the dang thing out of my pocket. Last night I was glad my grand daughter Tara had a phone with her. She and a friend (the friend was driving) went to Tulsa (80mi away) to pick someone up at the airport. Tara called me and told me they were lost. They took the wrong freeway at some point and didn't know how to get back to the airport. I kept her on the phone and talked them back onto the freeway and through two interchanges until they could see the airport exit sign. So I was glad we could communicate so readily. I would hate for two young girls to get off the interstate on the wrong side of town. This is out of character for me, but, thank God for cell phones.

a house husband's work is never done

I picked these chiles out of my garden this morning, roasted them, peeled them then stuffed them with cheese.
Then I dipped them in batter, fried them and served them with spanish rice and frijoles enchiladas. The rice was a mix and the beans came from a can but everything else I made myself. Dorothy loved it.

out of the mouths of babes

Kelly emailed this exchange between her and Marley (6): I walked into the living room and asked Marley and Hunter what they were doing. Marley with her normal attitude says: "Oh Hunter is teaching me knowledge, when I already know knowledge!

vfd

During rainy weather we don't get many fire calls, but we do get calls like this one. A large tree blew over the road during this morning's storm. Some passersby help our men to clear the road. I'm still not up to responding to calls like these so I show up with my camera.

dorothy's trimming

Dorothy did a good job on the shrubs. The yellow greeen one is a euonymos japonica and beyond are two barberies.

quote of the day

There will be a time when loud-mouthed, incompetent people seem to be getting the best of you. When that happens, you only have to be patient and wait for them to self destruct. It never fails.
-- Richard Rybolt

shrubney

I was attempting to watch the news this evening when Dorothy asked me to show her how to operate the electric hedge clippers. They are the same clippers we gave Kelly for her birthday last month and we're borrowing them to do do our own shrubney.

I went outside and gave her a detailed demonstration of how to prune a bush. I started at the bottom, holding the trimmers at a just so angle. Changed the angle for the middle of the bush and showed her how to taper toward the top for an almost perfect globe shape. She took the clippers and proceeded to trim the shrub with a technique completely different from what I showed her.

Why do women do that? Why do they ask a man for advice only to do the opposite? Is that their way of eliminating at least one plan of action that's sure to be faulty? I didn't ask her any of those questions. In fact, I didn't say anything at all. I just went back to my recliner and finished watching the news.

a beautiful monday morning

I woke up this morning at 7:30 and I was alone in bed. I got up and rambled around the house looking for Dorothy but she was no where to be found. Her car was in the driveway. I was beginning to think she was kidnapped until I looked out the kitchen window and there she was pulling weeds in the garden. I grabbed the camera and took this picture.

When she finished that row she came in and we poured ourselves some coffee and sat under the maple tree. We love to hear the sounds of the birds in the morning. The buzz of the hummingbirds as they compete for access at the feeder. The distant drilling of a woodpecker. This morning a red-headed woodpecker was working away at the trunk of a Redbud tree in our yard. Both Dorothy and I tried to sneak up on him with the camera but he would skitter around to the opposite side of the tree trunk with each of our movements. So I took a picture of Lizzie under the maple instead.

another toothless child

Look who's turned up toothless. Except in the case, unlike Hunter's, Marley's tooth came out naturally. She can expect a visit from the tooth fairy tonight.

quote of the day

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.
--Garrison Keillor

tv is not for me

Have you seen those commercials where the guardian angel is distracted and lets the person whom he's suppose to protect fall out of an airport jet bridge, go over a cliff attempting to hang glide, etc? I'm sure that's meant to be amusing, but I don't find injury to be funny at all. For example, those funny home video shows have more than their share of people flying over the handle bars of motorcycles, falling off roofs, getting entangled in the trampoline springs or missing the jumping surface altogether and hitting the ground. Everyone gets a big laugh. The tape usually stops just after the incident. I always imagine that had the camcorder continued to record, we would see the paramedics arrive and cart the poor soul off to the hospital. People getting injured is not funny, nor is the stupidity that caused them to act in a way that was very dangerous for them.

Other shows I can't watch are of the medical/crime scene investigation genre. When I see a huge needle being jabbed into a person's chest, the top of a skull being power sawed and lifted like a lid to reveal gray matter, limbs separated from the body, or people impaled by pipes like a human shiskabob, I pick up a book or get on the computer. Why not just change the channel? Because Dorothy loves those shows.

rock star?

With Hunter's tooth missing smile, which he got from a backyard injury, he thinks he looks like a rock star. I guess he does have something in common with Keith Richards. Hunter fell off the monkey bars and Richards fell out of a coconut tree.