Addiction

Hello, my name is Ruth and I'm addicted to TV. (Hi, Ruth) It started as a child, hours and hours of TV. When my mom married the man we call dad (he adopted us from our bio-dad), he had some new rules. The easiest one was the "no-thank you helping". You had to try one bite of everything served at any given meal/function. My brother and I are the least picky eaters I know! We'll try anything. The toughest rule was "only 2 hours a day of television". Seriously, is that even possible?

We quickly found ways of skirting this rule. Our driveway was 1/4 mile long so we could see the folks when they turned into the driveway. We kept a dishcloth in the fridge and put it on the back of the TV so it wouldn't be hot when they came in the house. Various other sneaky methods were devised but that was our favorite. We were major latch-key kids and had a lot of time to figure things out.

Don't get me wrong. We lived on a five acre ranch in California. There was plenty else to do and plenty else was done. My mom taught us to read when we were each 4 years old (mostly to get us out of her hair) and while my brother never took to it like I did, we did a lot of reading. But not as much as our TV consumption.

My husband is always on me about how much TV I watch and how I can't live w/o a show and how pathetic and sad it is that I tape shows when they overlap. He's right but, too bad.

TV is the perfect compliment to my other addiction. Yarn. I can sit on my ass for hours and feel productive! (Course, my ass is getting huge, need to move it more!)

OK, so there's this new channel that is perilously close to fusing said ass to the couch permanently. It's called Chiller. It's all the cheesy, psuedo-scary, schlock you can stand. It has one of my favorite shows ever - only not really. Alfred Hitchcock Presents. I have a ton of Hitch's movies on DVD and I used to love the show. The ones Chiller shows are the weird colorized version of Hitch's promos wrapped around 80's versions of the shows. It's disappointing, I was hoping for the original black/whites but it's also kinda cool because you get to see a lot of people before they were famous. So far, the best sighting was of Joaquin Pheonix
as a child trying to hire a hitman to take out his dad. He was listed as Leaf Pheonix in the credits.

So yet another addiction is scary stuff. When I was under 5 years old and we used to go visit the bio-dad, he'd let us stay up late and watch Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone. Also, when we'd go visit his parents, I'd sneak into his sister's closet where she had a huge hidden stash of Tales From The Crypt comics. (Chiller channel also shows the Tales From the Crypt episodes, albeit a little more edited then when they were on HBO) I've always loved scary books and movies. I used to think I didn't really like slasher films but I'm finding that may not be the case.

I read a lot of Stephen King, Jeffrey Deaver, and Michael Slade. My book cases are segregated into the scary side, the chick books side and misc. in the middle.

You know, I actually had a plan where I was going with this post but seem to have lost it. Sorry about the rambling. I didn't get much sleep last nite. I'll try to be more coherent next week.

Lost

I got myself lost yesterday. I hate being lost. It scares the crap out of me. When I get scared, it comes out as anger first then, if it's a prolonged scared, breaks down into tears. I had to go to I-25 and I-70 yesterday and while I was driving there, I saw a sign that said "I-225 to I-70". I chickened out on my written directions and took the I-225. Which basically sent me in the opposite direction then curved back and eventually crossed the I-25 again. 20 minutes later.

I held it together better then usual when lost. I didn't snap at the boys and I didn't cry (almost). I wonder how long it'll take me to get used to where things are around here. I lived in Tucson for 3 years before I stopped confusing Speedway with Broadway. Yes, I can read street signs. The two streets are so similar in make-up and style of buildings that it's easily confused when you're trying to remember which building is on which street.

OK, so having explained my feelings about being lost, I think I would be fine if I were, in fact, Lost. As in the TV show. That's not trying to find something, that's survival mode. I'd be fine with that. I (for reasons that are for another day) am very concerned with survival techniques. I'm a worst case scenario kind of girl. I learned a lot about survival techniques while camping w/our dad as a kid (not that he ever put us in any kind of survival situation, he would just show us techniques for fun and education) and in the Army (again, never in a bad situation, just as training purposes). One of the best books I've ever read was "Life of Pi". A fantastic, brilliant, creative book in it's own right but I also gleaned many new survival techniques!

So, whatjda think about last nite's episode of Lost? My husband and I are addicted to this show. When we moved out here to Colorado, we left early in the morning on Lost nite and it was the nite of the last episode before that b.s. hiatus they took mid-season. My husband's friend, Chris, came out with us to help with the move and to see CO. Chris is also a big fan. We actually planned (and succeeded) to stop somewhere for the nite in time to feed the kids, get them in bed and be able to watch Lost uninterrupted. We could've pressed thru the nite with the driving and made it to CO sooner, we chose to watch Lost! Last nite's episode was very cool, very Alfred Hitchcock presents. Love that show.

Washie, Washie

Here's your Tuesday tip. This is not necessarily related to yarn.

This recipe will wash anything out of anything.

1 cup powder Clorox 2, 1 cup of powder Cascade dishwashing soap.

Run the water into the machine, add the powders, swish around. Add items to be washed, stop the washing machine and let things soak for an hour or overnite. Run as usual.

This works best with the hottest water the dirty items can stand but also works well with warm or cold water.

I found this recipe in one of the Tightwad Gazette books.

I never had a chance to use it until I moved out of a house and was cleaning out a closet. My grandma's good muslin sheets (which I thought were in my cedar chest) were on the floor of the closet and had been used by my Rottweiler as a bed. 3 years of grass, mud, and blood (in heat stuff, she's not a killer). Ground in and, I thought, hopeless. I remembered the recipe and gave it a shot. It cleaned the sheets completely.

It also works great on grease and other uncleanable stuff, too.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to Dave's dad Charles "Chick" Moline. He's the best FIL a girl could have!

Spring!

Well, Spring in Colorado is spectacular! (This post will be picture heavy - good luck!) The boys and I planted a bunch of seeds. We used makeshift pots for the seedlings (I cut some oatmeal boxes and juice cartons in half). We planted seeds for green beans, tomatoes, bell peppers, small peppers (we'll see if they are hot or sweet once they are picked) and sunflowers.

I love this next shot. Ladybugs are cool and they are everywhere right now! There were two on top of each other and the boys asked what they were doing. I told them, "They are making baby ladybugs." Trev asked, "You make babies by doing piggy-back rides?". I said, "Kinda".

We are hopeful about our seeds. We never tried to plant a garden in Tucson. Partly because it's too hot and everything dies too easily. Mainly because I have been known to kill cactus!

Here's some pics of flowers that are spontaneously growing at the base of our tree in the front yard. Thank you to the previous tenant or whomever it was that planted them. They are lovely!

Nobody planted these, they plant themselves. Dandelions are my favorite flowers. Pull 'em, spray 'em with pesticides, yank 'em out, stomp 'em. It doesn't matter. They always come back. I love that kind of persistence and they are pretty.

Here's Trevor playing in the dirt and helping plant seeds. He's a good helper.

Enjoy the Spring!

Worm Day

Today it rained for a few hours straight and even had some big, slushy, flakes of snow coming down with the wet. The boys were going crazy so after naps, I took them for a walk around the block.

We saw a coupla fat robins in the trees. When we looked down we saw why. The boys started collecting worms and I got them to throw them onto the grass lawns as we walked.

Davis wasn't as adept at getting the squirmers up and often came up with pieces instead of whole worms. "Look Mommy, I got his face!" Poor squirmers. What's worse - drowning in the gutter, being eaten by birds or having your face pulled off by an almost-4-year-old?

Good and Evil

Not counting children's books and knitting books, I'm reading two books right now. The one on my nightstand is Black Dahlia Avenger by Steve Hodel and the one in the bathroom (don't judge, we all read there) is Letters From Earth by Mark Twain.

Mark Twain is a smart, opinionated, funny man. I don't think I can honestly say I've ever read anything from him. I take that back. I tried to read Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court but it was depressing and boring to me. This letters book is definitely NOT boring.

It has letters from Satan who is visiting Earth millenia after it's inception to see how things are going. He sends letters to his other angel buddies (Gabriel and such) on the sad and confusing state of the human's view on God and religion. There are also writings about/from Adam and from Eve's diary. Today, from Eve's diary we learn about the introduction of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. They are told not to eat from it as they will surely die. Eve writes about how they have no concept of what good or evil is as they have never been exposed to evil. They have no baseline for what evil is and as such, you can't compare and know what good is. They also have no concept of death and therefore no fear of it. They are a scientific couple and are being driven mad for the not knowing. They decide to eat the fruit, then they will know what death is and get it over with and then they can move on with their lives. Then they get distracted by the sighting of a new animal and go off chasing it to study it. I love this book.

I once worked on a woman at the spa that was in Tucson for a symposium of women on/for/about religion. She had a wonderful theory about that tree. She felt it wasn't so much a Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil but more a Tree that allows judgement. We can't make judgements of others as a) that's God's job and b)it is our judgement of things/others/ideas that cause people so much grief. Her idea was that God was trying to spare us this grief and keep that burden for himself.

Further in our conversation, this woman told me that some of the other women in this symposium were from Iraq/Iran and similar countries. They were thanking the Americans for coming and helping them and that this was the first time in their lives that anyone had asked their opinion or listened to them on any level. Can you imagine? (For a better view on that kind of life read Reading Lolita in Tehran or The Handmaid's Tale.)

I have very different views both about religion and the war in Iraq then this woman but her ideas intrigued me just the same.

The Black Dahlia book is pretty interesting. It's written by a man who believes his father was the culprit and that LAPD and the DA's office engaged in a massive cover-up. So far his reasoning about his father is pretty sound. I haven't reached the part where he explains his theories about the why/how of the cover-up. It's well-written but his father was a really crappy dad and that puts a bit of a taint on the whole theory for me. We'll see.