People Eaters

For once, based on reality.  HT to my husband who was there for it!

Crazed Collage

Crazed expressions of horror, anger, joy, and shock. Can you count how many faces are on here?
Also, there's a sneak peek of tomorrow's comic.
#tbt #tbl #throwbacklucy

Won't You Be My Neighbor

Won't you be my neighbor?  Today's TGILucy was inspired by the recent Open House across the street from us.  It was like I couldn't tear myself away from the window, wondering WHO might be our new neighbor.

Baby Decoy

When I was a youth, I didn't know that people that I perceived as being self assured could be insecure, that those who appeared to be stuck-up were just shy, and that if you're at a loss for words, all you had to do was present a decoy.  This method works on people that you do and do NOT know how to talk to. 

Fry-Day

I relish these punny jokes.

Don't Quote the Quote of the Quote Board

Almost as soon as I joined Pinterest (however many years ago it was...two?...thirty?...are there such a thing as years in Pinterest based on the number of pins pinned?  Because I have 12,656 at the moment of writing this post, so I'd make a pretty Methuselah right now), I began to see an increase in low morale amongst the female of my kind.  No, not just the Mom-breeders, but the crafters, the non-crafters, and us over-sharers of memes.  Blogs like Pintrosity gave us some hope that others were also failing as miserably as we at making everyone's first pin: the impossible cookie ice cream bowl, but after a while I began to see despair memes.

These memes displayed depressing expressions that I recall from my college days when people would see that I was an art major and then basically hate-compliment me.  You know, the kind like, "I'm so jealous that you can draw."  "Ugh, I can't draw a stick figure, I hate that you can paint realistically!  Haha, just kidding, you're so talented.  I hate people like you."

Okay...thanks?

Image from despair.com

I know that I won't survive a zombie apocalypse by running or hitting things (except by accident or at very very close range if the zombie has my Dove Chocolate), but I don't hate you because you are a graceful gazelle of a human, who could wield a battleaxe to chop off a zombie's head while leaping over the rest of us meerkats.

But back to those memes.

New ones appeared that were about how we were pinning but not doing, looking but not baking, planning but not marrying (you should see the amount of wedding boards!), and then ones about how angry we were that others were doing things better than we ever could.

So I leave you with this thought, plan, look, pin, then DO or do not.  But don't compare yourself based on the myriad of ideas that you're not doing right now.  It will only steal your joy.

And to husbands, don't quote the quote board if your wife only wants affirmation that her store-bought playdough and pixelated images are just as good as Becky's.  Please.

Something Wickham This Way Comes

This comic took quite a while to do and it's worth noting because, if you rush art (like Irmgard will here), you end up with disastrous results.

Remember, if you can't read the comic, click on the image.

HOT HOT HOT!

There's two ways to politely deal with hot food. Wait patiently until it is cool or, if you tried it too soon, discreetly use a napkin to remove it from your mouth. 

Then there's the option to yell, "HOT!" repeatedly around the mouthful, hoping that it helps. 

I've done this.  Around a mouthful of coffee, home fries, or bacon.  Been there, shouted that, got the tee shirt.

Snow News is Bad News

Whisper of Love

Can I please get a raise of hands as to how many people will message one another and be in the same room?

Because seriously...all.the.time.

Honey-Do List

It's usually in the shower that I remember everything that needs doing and, as soon as I exit through the Magical Portal of Forgetfulness, it's gone like a puff of shower steam.

I guess I'll be saying this till I'm blue in the face, but these characters only look like my husband and me!  We're not nearly this rude to one another.  As a friend puts it, we are are quite "shmoopy."

Coating of Snowy Reality

This comic may be a bit meta, but it makes me laugh.

And where we live we are getting pummeled by snow, we live in polyester down-filled coats the size of Rhode Island, and have a fear of running low on bread and milk (remind me again why we don't have our own chickens and cows?), I thought that this would be quite an appropriate way of ushering in the first blizzard of 2015.

For those of you just joining us, Irmgard is Lucy's cynical and fashion-savvy sister, Leo (Lucy's husband) loves coffee almost as much as Lucy, and Krystall, the blonde, is their cousin as well as Irmgard's roommate with the terrible singing voice.

Remember, if you can't read the text, open the image by either clicking on it or opening it in a new window.

Showering

Note: the caption says FEELS like.  If you choose to actually wear clothes while showering, that's your own business.  Her dress is merely for illustrative (and of course family-friendly) purposes.
Although with the speed at which I need to hop out of the shower, remaining fully dressed is sometimes an option.

Dishocalypse

I love the Food Network.  It's clean (as in I can watch it in front of ages 0+ and not worry about content), I get ideas for amaze-sauce food, and, hey, it's entertaining!  But then there's the preparation.  Have you ever downloaded one of their recipes?

Let's take the Lobster Tail.

Prep time=20 minutes.

LIES.

I don't have clarified lemon butter, lobsters, skewers, a fire pit, and the coal from the kidney stone of a volcano demon lying around the house.

They should make a drop-down menu for situation-based prep time.

Single person who is prepared and lives in Hawaii: 20 minutes

Mom: 25 years

First is the time to get the kids in the car.
Half an hour to forty minutes, because we have to go potty, make a new potty chart, give a cookie reward, find the baby's/Cinderella's lost shoe AGAIN, retrieve hats, go back in for wipes, possibly a snack, flush the goldfish down the toilet that died in between cookie chart and lost shoes and hold a funeral--make sure to call priest and find out if they do last rites for goldfish-- complete with tissues made from toilet paper, leave at last, and then turn around again for the list because by the time I reach the store I will be distracted by the angered cries for free cookies from the cookie club.

Then the fifty hours IN the store trying to find the bizarre ingredients that are staples in Martha Stewart's home but no one else's and then the seventy hours IN the checkout with the inept bagger and the new cashier.  How do I ALWAYS get the trainee?  And I've been there, that new cashier, so I am very patient and kind, more so than the three year old who practically stares laser beams into anyone who addresses him with a smile.


Then we have to load the car.  Seventy hours after rebagging the two lobsters separately so they don't maim their precious tails that were 80 bucks a pop, we are ready to go.

Three days later we're home.

Walk in the door.  And everyone screams for food, even the volcano demon.  So I put some minutes for sandwich time (short order cook pro here), cleanup time, likely bath time for baby and volcano demon,and  then nap time.  And by then a week has passed, I have had a coffee (cold, not iced, just cold, and two weeks old), the lobster has taken up residence in the cereal cupboard and terrorizes the two year old who has named the lobster Fluffypants and tries to pet him.

Now it's time to find the necessary cooking devices that I got as a wedding present and never thought I'd use.  There are some skewers at last (shaped like lightsabers) and, hey! a cupcake display.  So now it's time to find a good cupcake recipe.  Fluffypants helps to make the batter and the kids lick the bowl and the husband pouts because he didn't get to lick the beaters, but he was sleeping anyway.  Then there's the time spent wondering how many times one can use the word "so" in a sentence while the two year old screams at you while you type a blog post instead of shoveling yogurt in her face and the five year old eats the cupcakes even though he was supposed to be arranging them on the display.

After a month the volcano demon finally passes his charcoal kidney stone and I heat up the fire pit that I had the kids dig under the pretense that it would be a pool some day.

Cook Fluffypants.

Eat it while the two year old wails and the five year old cries that you ate and cooked their pet.

Remember that there was a second lobster for your husband to eat and discover it beneath the slats of the three-year-old's car bed.  Three-year-old and lobster, dubbed Captain Claw, have the same laser beam glare shooting into your head.

Leave Captain Claw as a pet.

Cook up some frozen chicken strips for your husband.

Three years later, do the dishes.

Twenty years later, let the grandkids dry said dishes.

When in a wheelchair, write a letter of complaint to the Food Network to amend their prep time.  Pat Captain Claw on the eye-stalks as he putters around my lap.

Sounds about right, yes?

Karaoke Christmas

I've never seen an Ugly Sweater Party
I hope to never see one...
But I can tell you, me harty,
I'd rather see than be in one.

And that concludes my horrifying parody on Ogden Nash.  I wish it concluded Ugly Sweaters...

Making Up for the Holidays

The amount of times that I have mascara running or my hair attacking the sky or my shoes mismatched and NO ONE HAS TOLD ME is quite a high number.

Fleece Weather Problems

I shed on my husband's fleece coat merely to mark my territory.  It has nothing to do with stress or many children or the fact that I steal his fleece and wear it more than my own.  Honestly...

Happy Wife, Happy Life

11/7/2014 EDITED to correct car content.  Dammit, Jim, I'm a wife, not a mechanic!

I am Groot

Geek Dads