It must be true — I read it on the Internet

Those of you with teenagers and/or cats — please read the following and tell me if you think that’s it true. Then, remind me to put my vet on speed dial :}. Good joke: Teenagers are like Cats
I’ve always been pretty convinced that toddlers are like dogs — so I guess this makes sense also.

EXCUSE-MOI

Cause yeah – YOUR privacy is a heck of a lot more important than keeping more young girls from getting raped.  He had been indicted – he left (fled?) the country – honey at some point you lose your right to privacy.  (and only 19 months??  I thought “16′ll get you twenty“)

Am Ex sued for aiding fugitive search

NEW YORK, July 22 (UPI) — A former New York attorney who pleaded guilty to statutory-rape charges is suing American Express for allegedly helping authorities during his 2006 flight.

James Colliton, 44, served 19 months in jail and was disbarred after being found, reportedly with the assistance of American Express, in Toronto after prosecutors sought him on allegations of having sex with three underage girls. Now he alleges his rights were violated, The New York Post reported Tuesday.

“They no longer entertain a presumption of innocence,” Colliton said to the Post. “Instead, American Express puts on its Batman suit and says, ‘We’ll tell authorities his every move.’”

Colliton’s Manhattan Court suit filing seeks $4.9 million and says he was “unlawfully detained in three different Canadian prisons” Feb. 24-27, 2006.

American Express declined comment, saying that its attorneys hadn’t seen the lawsuit.

Published: July 22, 2008 at 12:11 PM

Splish splash

Last Tuesday I was sitting at the pool with my nose in a book.  I looked up to see the Princess in the DEEP WATER?  I almost went up to her teacher to ask “Who are you and WHAT have you done with my daughter”?  MY daughter, in the DEEP end?

So, I then told the Princess that now that she had mastered the deep end, she could go off the diving board.  For the past week she’s been saying that she doesn’t want to go off the diving board, she’s never going off it, and she scared of it.

So, yesterday I was sitting at the pool again, this time with my pen in thank you cards, and Princess and her teacher came up to announce to me that Princess had, in fact, gone off the diving board.  Princess went again so I could see, came home and called her dad, her Aunt, her Uncle Crem, and her g-dmother.

Today I brought the camera.

Interestingly, our neighborhood pool offers both group and private swim lessons.  Last year we missed the sign up for the group lessons and decided to sign up the kids for private lessons (which are exactly $5 more per week than *group* lessons with the local park district, and the local park district lessons are the least expensive group lessons around — so it’s not like we’re putting a bunch out of pocket to have high priced “private” lessons – it’s still quite the bargain).

This year we decided to go with private lessons again, as it works pretty well for the price, and we get to sleep 90 minutes past when we’d need to be at the pool for group lessons (there are no morning people in this house).

I’m glad we did — because somehow the teacher Princess has had has managed to get past her fear and into a bold brave girl.

Back in the summer of 2003, Chip had become comfortable in the water and I spent most of the summer sitting at the pool reading (I wanted to read the first 4 books in the Harry Potter series before Order of the Phoenix came out), and now, after 5 years, it’s finally time that I can be at the pool and not keep a constant watch on my child.

Well, I must go slather on the sunscreen.  I’m kidnapping my neighbor’s kids (she needs to get some stuff done so I”m going to empty her house)

We need more Fruitcakes

As I reported in an earlier blog post, one of my big events this summer happened this past Thursday, when I went Incommunicado (and for some reason I had to send a text message to tpgoddess telling her (someone that would appreciate it) that I was going incommunicado as I turned off my cell phone.

This is MY review, you can check buffett news for a more official version, with links to two reviews.

First of all, kudos to Spouse. I don’t know if you’ll believe this — but I, yours truly, ramblingmom, AM the people his parents warned him about. Yet he still married me and puts up with the Fruitcakes I want to go to concerts with.

Back in March we got tickets (the day they went on sale) for Thursday’s concert. And we waited and waited and waited, and eventually the day of the concert dawned.

Now, if I were going to put in an order for what kind of weather I’d want for an outdoor concert, I’d want it to be coolish — not cold but not hot. Certainly not humid, and no thunderstorms. I don’t think we could have had a more perfect day/night.

Having limited time (and money) we opted to pack a picnic to have in the parking lot of the concert. I don’t think we’d call it full fledged tailgating — as we weren’t there as early as the serious tailgaters, but at least we enjoyed some chicken, some cheese and crackers, and the required margaritas (I forgot the veggies — yet somehow life went on).

We went into the concert and got our (cheap, far away, and high up) seats. We were hanging and part way through the first set one of the people from the group behind us came and told them that there were good seats in another section. A song or two later Spouse and I were discussing whether or not to wander over and see what the other section was like when we heard a sudden really LOUD tumbling noise. I guess someone had pushed his neighbor down the stairway. The guy that had landed at the bottom of the stairs (next to Spouse) had gotten up and was looking at the top of the stands. I told Spouse “LEAVE NOW” Spouse started doing what most people do — and watching the actions and I repeated “LEAVE NOW” so we did. I reported to the nearest usher about the disturbance and went in the other direction. I’m not a big fan of drunks (so WHAT was I doing at a JIMMY BUFFETT concert??) but ANGRY drunks are to be avoided at all costs.

By the time I left my clothes smelled like a mix of cheap beer (somehow when the drunk tumbled down the stairs I got something spilled on me) (actually — bad beer, not really cheap because bad beer was $8 a glass – and we didn’t buy any) and cigarette smoke (even though smoking wasn’t allowed). My legs we a bit tired because even though we moved to different “seats” I rarely “sat” down during the concert. My voice was sore, and I knew I’d be wiped the next day.

In other words it was AWESOME!!!!!!!

Thursday July 24th, 2008

Hot Hot Hot 1 Hey Good Lookin’ (Jimmy solo acoustic) 2 Homemade Music 3 Tiki Bar is Open (with Sonny Landreth) 4 Fruitcakes 5 Miss You So Badly 6 It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere 7 Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes 8 Cheeseburger In Paradise 9 Come Monday (with the Beach Band) 10 Jamaica Mistaica 11 One Particular Harbour 12 Take Another Road 13 Brown Eyed Girl Intermission 14 Skinny Woman (with Fingers Taylor and the Juke Joint Duo) 15 Sweet Home Chicago (with Fingers, the Duo, Mac and Sonny) 16 Scarlet Begonias 17 The City (Jimmy leads) 18 Son Of A Son Of A Sailor (with Fingers Taylor) 19 Volcano 20 Makin’ Music For Money (featuring Nadirah and Sonny) 21 School Boy Heart 22 A Pirate Looks At Forty (with Fingers Taylor) Band Intros: Tina Gullickson, Nadirah Shakoor, Ralph MacDonald, Peter Mayer, Doyle Grisham, from Hendersonville TN, Mac McAnally, Fingers Taylor, Roger Guth, Jim Mayer, Robert Greenidge, John Lovell, Sonny Landreth and Michael Utley 23 Far Side Of The World 24 Southern Cross 25 Margaritaville First Encore: 26 Fins Thanks to the Coral Reefer band and Lightnin Malcolm and Cedric Burnside, the Juke Joint Duo 27 We Are The People Our Parents Warned Us About Second Encore 28 It’s a Big Old Goofy World (by John Prine) Note: Sweet Home Chicago was last played on 08-05-2006 at the Tweeter Center in Tinley Park, IL

Yeah — these outfits do match. A few years ago Chip’s school had a dinner dance/fundraiser with a Luau theme, as I had nothing appropriate to wear I bought us some Hawaiian wear. So it’s been sitting in the closet for a while and I figured I’d drag it out cause this was the PERFECT place to wear it.

By jove I think I’ve got it

Last week at my father-in-law’s funeral I asked my buddy Crem for many favors (some of them involving stopping and getting me expensive coffee drinks — that’s what friends are for ). At one point I asked him to drive Auntie and Uncle MN from the funeral home to their hotel — at the same time I wanted him to drop off some stuff at Kinko’s (geographically this makes sense — since the hotel is close to Kinko’s and in relatively the same direction). So he asked me where Kinko’s was — the conversation went something like this …

Where’s Kinko’s?
It’s up on busy street — across the parking lot from Starbuck’s
Where’s Starbuck’s?
Right across the parking lot from Kinko’s (of course silly isn’t it obvious).

I guess y’all be calling on me next time your GPS breaks down, eh.

Fast forward to this week. On Thursday I had a hair appointment. Now I LOVE my hairdresser. Brilliant woman as she “gets” me and my hair. Basically I want the best looking, but lowest maintenance hairstyle. I only use a blow dryer when it’s 20 degrees or lower out, and I don’t want to get any style that needs to be shaped on a regular basis. I do go to the hairdresser regularly — HONEST — I mean I’m there every 6 months (or 12 months or 24 months). So she knows what I need and works with it. My biggest decision when I go in is to figure out how short I want to go.

So Thursday morning I start to have a conversation with Spouse about my hair. Now we’ve been married 15 years, and we dated for a long time before that and he’s a bright man. He’s got a Ph.D. so we know he’s got to have some gray matter. And he’s smart enough to know to avoid telling me what to do (so that I don’t then go and do the opposite of what he says). So Spouse was no help.

As I’m on the way to the hairdresser I get the brilliant idea to call Crem for his input. This conversation goes something like this.

Got a minute
Sure
I tried to ask Spouse his opinion about this, but he avoided the topic since he wants to stay married
I think I have a meeting
Seriously — what should I do with my hair?
What should I know … call a girlfriend.
OH good idea.

I mean I know we’re pals and he loves me and all — but sometimes I have to wonder — is the reason that he’s unattached because he’s been hanging around ME to long. And he’s figuring if this is what Spouse gets for getting married Crem just might be sensible enough to not want any part of it??

Say I’m old fashioned

Hill?? What hill??? I don’t remember any hill???

My father-in-law recently passed away. As part of the post funeral duties, Spouse’s mother, sister, and Spouse split up the thank you note writing.

Today we got a call from SIL saying that we didn’t need to worry about addressing envelopes for thank you cards, as they made labels.

Call me a relic, but for some reason after people have gone out of their way to help out with the kids or give their gives of time or talents or money or just make sure to ply ramblingmom with coffee(and copies) I think I can take the 45 seconds to write a name on an envelope. I think it makes things a touch more personal.

Excuse me while I go grab my walker and touch up my gray hairs and put my Cary Grant videos in my Betamax

I’d make some comment about 8 track tapes — but man that’s for all you YOUNG folks .

Message to Obama

This is not about politics – but this is a way you can send a message to Obama about one of the first decisions he will make if he wins the election (or not). I guess (according to a letter to the editor in my local paper) that, win or lose, the Obama family will be adding a dog to the family after the election. (And KUDOS to Barack and Michelle for *NOT* adding a dog during an election cycle).

There is a group called the Best Friends Network that has an online petition that you can sign, to tell the Obama family to get a rescue dog.

Recycling, it’s not just for paper anymore.

(Hmm, I can’t think of a time I’ve ever clicked both “politics” and “animal rescue” categories at the same time.)

Queen – You’re My Best Friend

Parenting — I R doin it WRONG

The other day Chip and I were out shopping.  Okay — as a normal 11 year old boy he doesn’t have any nice clothes, and I needed to get him appropriate clothing for his grandfather’s funeral (I got a suit for $25 – but then when adding in a shirt, dress shoes, socks, …..)

Anyway — when we were at Kohl’s we found some t-shirts that were 2/$20.  I saw one that I wanted, so I told him that he could get one (mostly so I could get the other one).

See — here’s MY new shirt …

I showed it to Princess and she said

“It’s JUST a FROG”

KERMIE!!!! JUST A FROG????

Parenting — I R doin it wrong.

Music Monday

DEAN MARTIN sings BIRDS AND THE BEES

For more information (or to see the inspiration for this music video) click here only if you dare.

Protected: Continuing along that line of thought …

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password: