Recycling for Science, not Crack

So yesterday my 10 year old & I had to work on her science project. We're building a Solar Water Heater. My husband had to cut everything, and our job was to nail it together and paint it black (which my daughter thought could've been a pretty bright blue. Perhaps?)
My husband gets to looking at the parts, and he's talking about how expensive copper is nowadays. "I heard, didn't someone rob some construction site for the copper wiring?" All the time, he tells me. Crack heads.
Ah, yes, crack heads. I start thinking about how I attained the parts in the first place. We used almost all recycled parts, which I was proud of. To get the parts, I had to call the dump.
"I need the coily thing on the back of a refrigerator, but with the freon removed." The dump manager says he got refrigerators all the time, and if I'd wait a couple days, he'd hold one back for me.
"I need some metal roofing and a window, too." He tells me he'll keep his eyes open. So a few days later he calls to say he has my parts. Bring a screwdriver, he says. I pick up the kids from school and it's one of those heatwave days. Unfortunately, my jeep has no air conditioning, so we've got the windows open and our hair is flying. I put into the parking lot and we go in.
"Hi! The manager told me he had our parts for my daughters science project?" The woman says he's left for the day, and points to a pile of random trash.
"There's a fridge. Good luck!" Hmmm. The kids sit and play around the dump near the grassy part, and I trying to figure out how to take apart this refrigerator.
"Look! A spoon!" Shan says.
"Don't touch it!" I don't want to be here very long, I'm thinking. The coily thing happens to be stuck or welded to something at the bottom, so I'm trying to pull the part back and forth to get the rusty metal to finally break. I need to reach the other side, but stacks of washers and deep freezers are in my way.
And bicycles everywhere. My hair is sweating to my face, cars are driving by, and I'm pulling hard on this coily thing. I finally manage to get it off, and hand it to Naomi. I let her carry it, since I have to find a way to get a giant sheet of metal roofing in the back of the jeep. I step on it until it folds, then drag it over to the lot.
Okay, so this is for sure a long boring post, but after my husband brings up the infamous crack heads, I imagine those cars passing probably were not thinking highly of me dragging the kids to the dump and trying to force that part off the old fridge.
All in the name of science, I swear.

This weekend we're going on a mini vacation for my little ones birthday. We've told them we're going to a pig roast in Kentucky. We're really going to Disney World. :).
"Pig roast?" she says.
"Yep, it'll be fun!"
"Can I have a party?" No, I tell her, we're going to be out of town. But maybe we'll find a Chuckie Cheese somewhere on the way for lunch. She's never been to Chuckie Cheese so she perks up a bit (Chuckie Cheese is about 50 miles way from us). By the time we get to the hotel, the kids will be asleep in the car. They won't actually know that we're not in Kentucky til we pull up at Disney, which I think is cool.
I'm giddy too, cause I have this crazy affliction...for Caricatures. You know, the silly drawings you get at theme parks. They used to do that in malls, which was a great idea- but it's been phased out and replaced with booths that sell Egyptian nail files or spinning hanging wind doo dads. All too often cool things get phased out.
Mall Caricature's are one of those things that are due to come back.

(I know these things, keep your eyes open for them!)

What else is new? Spring gardening is going well, but I did run across a wee snag. As a child, I was the one who ran out on the sidewalks to save the earthworms when it rained. I considered bugs little friends. While I still love little earthworms, it's time to end my friendship with certain creatures that will not leave well enough alone, and it's a tough breakup. Fuzzy caterpillar eating away at my rose leaves.

"Kill it," my husband say. "Step on it." I can't do it. I can't. I mean, it even took me awhile to learn to smash spiders in the house, growing up with the omen of bad luck if you kill a spider at night. (Yes, the time you least want to see a spider is in some strange cultures when it's bad luck to kill it.)

Fuzzy precious had cleared a branch of leaves, and I was feeling irate. Not irate enough to smash it. So I put my shoe into an ant mound, leaving an indention in the middle, and I dropped fuzzy into the center of the angry teeming mound. I stood, transfixed. The ants gathered atop their victim, and fuzzy writhed to and fro, making little a c, little u.

(Karma! God I'm in trouble...)

The ants piled in the shoe print, and I couldn't take my eyes off the flowing scene. I briefly thought to rescue him, but the ants were too tough and intimidating. I walked away from the sight not feeling too good about myself.

The next day, once again, a fuzzy precious on my roses. I'd been weeding with the mattock. I threw little caterpillar down on the water meter lid, and smashed it with the flat end of the mattock. His head popped off and green goo flew onto my pants and shirt. Argh.

I took a Facebook quiz "What color crayon are you?"

I was cornflower blue. Am I really? I don't know. I think I'm really purple. Or maybe I just want to be purple. Some of the quizzes I can predict.

Which peanuts character are you? I was Linus. Of course.

Which Muppet are you? Rolf the dog. Easy. Of course, everyone wants to be kermit, but let's face it, it's like with past lives- everyone wants to be someone well known in a past life (take my mother's claim to Chief Joseph) but most of us really were just the ordinary joe or jane. A salesman, soldier, a mom that cuts crust off sandwiches day in and out. A gas station employee. One day you'll incarnate again and say 'I bet I was so and so,' when really you were exactly who you are now, unknown but hopefully content to be so.

I'll take Rowf. Cool.

Welcome to my blog! I'm really happy you stopped in :D.

Let's Thank the Aliens for the Banana

"The aliens brought the bananas. They brought several foods, I believe corn as well. But definitely bananas."

My mother is an expert on many things. 'Aliens' is one of the many. I grew up with the aliens for as long as I can remember; my mother read the book Aliens Among Us and was forever changed. Inside the book, a list of questions to help you find out if you are, in fact, an alien.
My mother could answer every question alien-positive.
Do you have extra ribs? Why yes, my mother does have extra ribs. (oddly, this is true.)
Does your body temperature average lower than normal? Yes again! My mothers body temperature runs 97. The questions went on and my mothers clarity came to being.
For those of you (the 99%) who are unfamiliar with the book, basically it is talking about your soul, not your physical being. My mother didn't land here, she believes she incarnated here in a human body from another planet to gather information. My oldest brother believes this too, often in a drunken stupor hearing the spaceships coming to retrieve him.
This explains why I've never been a fan of Star Trek.

Anyway, the aliens do have interplanetary meetings, and we are in the meetings as well, but our representative meets with the group through astral projection. (Okay, stay with me- I'm just explaining the belief system that goes along with this...)
Because doesn't everyone Astral Project? I'm being funny. Sort of?

There have definitely been times when I had difficulty with some of the things my mother said or did. Like the time we went into the Indian Herb shop, owned by a real Indian Chief, Chief Lone Eagle, headdress and all. However it ended up, they got into a discussion on Native American Indians. (My mother happens to be an expert on this topic.)
"You don't know what the Indians went through!" says Chief Lone Eagle.
"Oh, I do know what the Indians went through! I was Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Indians in my last life!" (I can still hear her, indignant with her French pronounciation of the Nez Perce, 'Nay Persay.' As well as child of Alien, add child of Chief Joseph to my list. At 13, I was embarrassed. Doesn't everything embarass you when you're 13?)
My mother plucking dandelions fron the tiny eight feet of grass space in front of the mega apartment complex we lived in. "What are you doing Denise?" "I'm making salad!" she'd reply happily. I'd worry if some sort of dog may have peed there. And I'd No Thank You the salad.
I learned things like 'fairies are real' and 'Albert Einstein is a walk-in here on Earth, and he waterskis' (Surely you don't want me to explain walk-in...) When I wanted to wear saris or sequins, I became a 'Princess from India in my past life.' I never looked at plants the same again after my introduction of Linda Goodman's chapter on plant studies, the picture of a tomato passing out before being dropped in a blender too vivid for my child mind.
But I also learned things that stayed with me, like the white light prayer, and the idea of having a spirit guide. I learned the omnipresence of God, one that devoured every religion into itself. I grew up unable to judge anyone by a belief system, they were all acceptable, and just neccesary steps in the the individuals process. The God my mother taught me created all the religions, as well as the tiny things like spring leaves. (And the aliens too. LOL.)
I was taught the idea of being my own judge in the afterlife, and looking back at some regret or cruelty (what judge could be harsher?)... it may make me more careful in my choices.

I learned openmindedness. spirituality. acceptance. I learned to take what I need from the things I heard, and make light of things that didn't apply to me. (I guess I won't be invited to the next Alien Summit?) Not everyones truth is the same truth. As not all of my mother's truth is mine. My mother taught me all this, and she did it all with a stunning French accent, often while drinking wine with the gay waiters she worked with, me delighted with my own cherry filled Shirley Temples.
Quirky mother, quirky me? Ha! It explains alot.

So I was not slightly surprised when my mother informed me last month the aliens brought the bananas to help us survive. Old hat now.

Are you still here?
To change the subject, my left knee is hurting today. Hopefully from running with the incline too high on the treadmill. But, I found a tick on me the other day, so tiny I thought it was a mole, and stuck there like one. I pulled it off and ran to my husband with the thing. He wouldn't take it, and it started crawling. I started screaming bloody murder, crazy screams, and my husbands eyes grew wide and strange at my screaming, my crazy insane tick-on-my-hand screams. So the hypochondriac in me says my knee ache is most definitely Lyme Desease, but the sane wee voice says treadmill.
(I can hear you now, kind reader, mentally saying I'm seriously screwed up!)

Perhaps I'm sharing too much. I think I'm going to go hard boil some eggs.

Have a cool day!