The BoneBlog

Long ago, my mother instilled in me a duty to give blood. She gave blood quite frequently. I used to give blood religiously every 8 weeks -- my friends and I even made an outing of it. Fortunately, I lived in cities where there were blood centers -- one could just walk in and donate. That isn't the...

THREE FRIGGIN' HOURS. →

So, Ethan has a habit of grabbing items out of the refrigerator and making off with them at top speed. A previous example of this was the strawberry syrup . This morning the warfare escalated. This morning . . . it was the fish sauce. Fish sauce is made of fermented fish . When we, the policia , gave...

Lemme Tell You 'Bout Nasty. →

Laurel recently begged me to help her send a letter to Evan . She called Evan to get his address, I eavesdropped of course, and oh my god , the conversation was so hilarious. Laurel has this voice she uses for Evan which just oozes an "I really REALLY like you" message. They had a cute little...

Young Love, Part Two. →

Day Five You already saw me on the Bobcat here . Greg's coworker felt he was betraying mankind by allowing a woman to see how much 'fun' it is to run that kind of equipment. I'd like to take this moment to remind everyone that, having grown up on a farm, I firmly believe that while it's...

Patio Project 2007, Days Five through Seven. →

This is another patio weekend. Greg was really stressed with too much work on his mind, so I took over some Bobcat duties for the afternoon: Yeah, I know. High fashion, right? Poor Greg gazed wistfully out the basement window while I worked on this. I told him to get back to work. heh....

Just One of the Reasons He Married Me. →

My mom is going to be SO thrilled with this photo. I think I'll have it enlarged and framed just for her: She found it in the rock wall behind our house. Yeah, not the one we're covering with our new wall. No, no, of course not. The other one. It has to be three feet long. Sweet....

Lookee What Laurel Found! →

I walked into Ethan's room to fetch him this morning to find him like this: He did that to his shirt all by himself. There's something wrong with that boy....

Whatsamatta Dis Kid? →

One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn't belong. har har! Greg's boss and Laurel enjoying the Wii (yes, that is green paint on her shirt from her summer courses): Speaking of Greg's bosses, here's a BIG thank-you to Sherwood, who showed up yesterday...

Wii Wii Wii. →

We are trading cameras. Old Camera: Canon PowerShot G3 (photo taken with new camera) I know it's silly to have developed an attachment to our old camera, but I did. More than four years ago, Greg and I were about to get married and we wanted a digital camera to record our honeymoon and the beginning...

Out With the Old, In With the New. →

I married a technological savant. This is a great situation for me because that way I don't have to worry about stuff working. If my computer goes down, I just stomp around shouting, "GOD! I HATE this thing! Stupid computer! Argh!" (and we wonder why Laurel does that) until it gets fixed...

Fruitful Servers and Debit Card Crises. →

Clear the highways. Ethan's got his first set of wheels: As you can see, he's got the idea of the petals. Unfortunately, his execution of the idea is imperfect. He isn't quite strong enough yet to haul his hefty self around. Now he knows how I feel when I'm lugging him around the St....

Rite of Passage. →

I admit it. I obsess. It's almost always over the little things, and it happens more now that I stay home. Example 1 : We have had a total of 3 assignments in my Intro to Law class. I got a perfect score on the first two, and on the third I got a 70 out of 74. I should be happy, because the average...

Obsess Much? →

I make a lot of posts in jest about what a holy terror Ethan is. All of those posts are fundamentally true, but what they don't convey is how all the trouble is worth moments like this: The truth is, I wouldn't trade this for the world. I know when I look back, I'll desperately miss this...

Little Man in Training. →

That thievin' little thuglet. Every time we open the door to the refrigerator, Ethan absconds with the strawberry syrup. He runs top speed as far as he can get, then starts taking swigs. I finally managed to catch a photo: He'll make a fine man someday, won't he? Well, at least it's sugar...

The Strawberry Syrup Thief. →

...and the other one's holdin' apple juice: ...and the other one's pickin' a nostril:...

'Cause I've Got One Hand in my Pocket... →

Everybody says boys are easier to raise than girls. Everybody lies. They lie, lie, lie. It's a vast conspiracy of the same ilk that causes so many mothers to tell a mother-to-be how AWFUL labor is and how PAINFUL delivery is, and how TERRIBLE newborns are. My experience has been that toddler boys...

I Don't Care What Anybody Says. →

I think I'm in love with the Korn MTV Unplugged album. This is one of the best sets I've heard since Nirvana's and Alice in Chains' Unplugged shows: All the songs are good and they used some crazy instruments you just don't typically see these days. Anyway, here are some video examples...

Yum, Yum, Korn. →

I love Paul Harvey . I always have, and I associate his radio program with the smell of brown beans cooking at my grandmother's. Whenever I hear Paul Harvey, I smell pinto beans. I'm sure lots of people have those types of associations. Anyway, remember this post about overprotective mothers...

And Now, the Rest of the Story. →

Yesterday Vinnie endured a particularly trying day. Ethan alternately beat Vinnie with a butter knife; attempted to jump on him, smacked the dog in the face, teased him with a snack, tried to roll him over while he was napping, dumped his food all over the floor, and chased him back and forth through...

The Devotion of a Dog. →

Laurel is clearly a union sympathizer. Today at the grocery store while Ethan struggled to buckle his cart seat belt, she found a cardboard flat and was fanning him with it. "Laurel," I said, "Please stop. Just stop. Just put it down." "But Mom," she insisted, "the...

Laurel-isms, Part XIII. →

Greg's eye looks a little worse, but he can still see, so we figure it will heal: Ethan woke up in an ornery mood and started jumping around on our bed. Our bed sits up very high, but he's able to climb onto it now and he JUST GOES CRAZY. I think it is clear from this photo that Ethan is pure...

The Day After. →

Thanks to PawPaw and Sherwood for lending a hand today, and to Andy for helping us out yesterday. The weather, it mocked us today: We had our second equipment casualty (I just bought this tamper yesterday): Greg took a shot in the eye while trying to break up a stubborn boulder in our way, and it may...

Patio Project 2007, Day Four. →

To my husband: Six years ago, I was an out-of-shape loser who smoked. I was hanging on the edge of hopelessness, trying to raise a child myself while working at a dead-end job and struggling under student loan debt that would’ve made Hercules stagger. In a last act of desperation, I uprooted myself...

Happy Fathers Day! One week early! →

We managed to get most of the patio base in and compacted. We started around 9 this morning (after picking up supplies) and are quittin' now, at 6:40. Starting again at 7:45 a.m. tomorrow. ROCK! I have blisters in places I didn't know were possible, and my back hurts. Greg and I are both sunburned...

Patio Project 2007, Day Three. →

Ethan started his day on the deck watching the Bobcat (he's in charge of supervising his dad until PawPaw comes): Living in good old Jefferson County, Missouri, means we are encouraged to park our cars in the front yard: Which we actually did for the following reason. We took our first load of gravel...

Patio Project 2007, Day Two. →

Dear god, what were we thinking? (I had to get bossy with Greg before he would flex his muscles for the camera)...

More Than We Can Chew? →

I know, I know. I'm a blogging fool today. I have to be, so I can go on hiatus over the weekend to help with that dang ol' patio. Well, that and my short attention span isn't allowing me to concentrate on reviewing my material for class tonight. Ethan just learned to climb into his high chair...

Wishful Thinking, Part Deux. →

Yesterday was a day rife with frustration. Not only were we dealing with the delivery problems, but our power kept going out. For extended amounts of time. Every time our power goes out, I hear Greg cursing downstairs, because with all the servers down there it means more work for him. In addition, he...

Power Outages. →

I often enjoy listening to Dave Glover in the evenings, so long as he stays away from politics. Laurel thinks it's cool because she's met him. Unfortunately, that means the radio is often still tuned to 97.1 in the mornings, when Jamie Allman is on. To say I don't care much for Jamie Allman...

Laurel-isms, Part XII. →

Please note: In order to pronounce the title of this post correctly, you must say 'twenty-oh-seven,' like Dave Sinclair . You may view a sample of this in video at the end of the post. Greg and I are building a retaining wall and patio. We finally made some decisions (I know, can you believe...

Patio Project 2007, Day One. →

And sometimes there are two. I had my first night of class last night. It was great, and I really like the professor. Most of the students are non-trads like I am, and some are tentatively returning to school after 20 or 30 years. Old habits are hard to break. When I was in college the first time around...

There's Always One. →

A few weeks back I entered Laurel into the local library's Get Caught Reading contest. The idea was to catch people reading, photograph them, and submit them for voting. The winner gets his or her photograph printed on a Get Caught Reading poster. As anybody who regularly sees this blog knows, Laurel...

Caught Reading! →

Laurel used gift cards to purchase the new Maximum Ride book by James Patterson yesterday at approximately 2:00 p.m. This book is 405 pages long. She just finished it . It's a damn good thing we live near a library. There is no way we could afford to keep her in books if we had to purchase them all...

We've Created a Monster. →

As if four years of college weren't enough, I still haven't backed away from my decision to return to school for an additional certificate. It's been 9 years since I graduated from Mizzou . Things have changed mightily in the collegiate world. They have technology . . . and they use it ....

Here We Go Again. →