point all your fingers here

I took this photograph at the beginning of the month. Why yes, that is my coffee machine SHOOTING SCALDING WATER INTO THE AIR. The situation has not yet been remedied and I will point all “uh hi, why are you not blogging?”  fingers here. Also, I have been getting my house in order to prep for fall/preschool/biblestudy/meetings/etc aka busy busy coming up very soon… and trying to housetrain Olivia. Mostly that one. She chewed up the pointy tip of my favourite shoes. I bought them in June so they’re by far the shiniest thing in my shoe collection, and while not very expensive, I have a hard time finding nice shoes for my creepy long-toed feet and thusly this is kind of a personal tragedy. Of course it had to be the toe of a pair of pointy toed shoes. *shakes fist at the skies in general*

Fastest little drunken-monkey walker there ever was. That was 8.5 months old, which was, yes, three weeks ago, thanks for reminding me how behind I am. She was more drunken monkey and less fast then, actually. Now still walks like a drunkard, but she is getting faster. I am still fastest, thankfully.

Some of her other hobbies include: tearing up flyers, grabbing anything she can reach off the table, trying to eat the dog’s food, trying to empty the dog’s water to splash in, trying to splash in the toilet, swearing baby swears at me while I hypocritically ‘play in the toilet’ with the toilet brush, trying to bullride the vacuum cleaner, jumping on other babies, running into things, running over things, running through things. Poking things with other things, trying to eat small objects, trying to eat large objects. Trying to feed things to people/babies/toys via eyeballs. Trying to bullride our shit zhu. Trying to feed our shit zhu to lull her into a false sense of security so she can be tackled to the ground and ridden.

Bless our shit zhu for her eternal patience and for licking little fingers when what she really wants to do is bite them, by the way. RUN, LILY, RUNNNN!

 

I know. How can this cute little bitty be the mobile menace I claim she is?

Also, Chris is picking up a bear today. For decorative purposes. Like, a real live one, minus the live part. I’m pretty zen about it because it’s going to live… uh, I mean, not live… in our friends’ house. No, they both want it to be there and are quite excited. My friend Rachel will somehow make it look chic instead of ‘dead bear on wall’ because she can make a handful of weeds, some rocks, and a beer can look like an expensive floral decoration. No lie.

Oh wait. It got here before I hit publish. Behold.

The children are enthralled.

And I apologize for my ipod photos. Haaaa. Lazy month, photographically speaking.

UPDATE: Okay, the bear is actually going to live in my house ‘for a while’ apparently. We’ll see.

Bear part deux

So, Chris and I were having a conversation about the bear. It went something like this.

So, by the way, did I ever tell you how much that bear mount is going to cost?

Um, no. I didn’t really ask, I wanted to first wrap my head around voluntarily having a dead bear in the house before I had to deal with how much we were going to actually have to pay for that to happen. How much?

Well, I’ll probably break it up into a few payments.

Shit. How much?

Did you do something different with your hair today?

I straightened it. How much?

It looks good.

Stop trying to change the topic. How much????

Normally he charges (really really obscene amount) so I got a really great deal.

…. HOW MUCH?!

(less obscene amount but still a million times more than i’d want to pay for a dead bear in the house, considering you normally couldn’t pay me. The things you do for love.) Normally he charges that much for a rug.
I had cut and skinned it and rolled it up to bring it to him for that, but …. what?

I think I just threw up in the back of my mouth a little bit.

Oh, sorry about that. Anyways, since we got to talking and found out we were related, he gave me the choice to have the rug or the mount for the price of the rug!hu

Lovely.

Did I tell you how we’re related?

Yeah, through me. The universe thinks it’s really funny, let me tell you.

(both quiet for a minute)

You know… I thought you’d be a little happier for me over this bear thing.

Oh, I am. I couldn’t be happier for you. I’m just not really happy for me.

(long laugh) Okay, fair enough. Well said, well said.

So……… I never did get a birthday present.

What?! Yes you… …. ……… shit. Uhhhh… hey, so…guess what I got you….

If you say bear, I’ll give you three guesses what I’m going to do to you with that rifle.

bear in the bedroom

No, that’s not a misspelling referring to shenanigans in the bedroom. It’s actually more like a correct spelling referring to absolutely no shenanigans happening in the bedroom EVER AGAIN. Possibly.

See, Chris has been bear hunting. And last Saturday he ‘bagged a bear.’ That is the cool hunterly word for it. So aside from the fact that he’s convinced himself that he’s going to convince me to eat bear meat – ha, I’m not even going to justify that by acknowledging it – he expects bear to become part of the home decor. Initially, to save money, he was going to have the guy that does this make a bear skin rug. I could have maybe handled that. Maybe. Possibly.

But no. Guess what? He and the guy that does such things get to talking, and guess what? GUESS WHAT? Turns out we’re FAMILY. How lovely! Family discount all around! 3/4 bear mount! We’ll get into that in a moment, first we get to the fun part. Guess how we’re family? Guess. No, really. Guess.

THROUGH ME.

The universe laughs a good long belly laugh on my behalf. Thanks, universe. Of all the surprisingly many places for Chris to have gone to get this bear turned into some lasting trophy, he manages to locate one of my many distant relatives. Suuuuper.

On to the 3/4 mount. I know, my response to my husband telling me we get this with grand excitement was, “uh….. huuuuuuuh?” Well, enlightenment. That describes a head, two paws doing some bearish pose, like, one paw down and one paw up or something, and a partial torso. Thankfully the bear will not be making a scary face, apparently. So, of course, the next question was obvious.

“And…. where are you planning on putting this?” “Oh, we can put it in our bedroom until I get my hunting room!” “Uhhh… no. How am I supposed to sleep with a dead bear staring at me?” “Oh, we can throw a blanket over it at night.”

Yeah. Big furry chastity belt, that’s what that is, right there.

And yes, the plan (on both our parts) is that he eventually has a room to stash his hunting gear and dead animals and stuff. Somehow he seemed slightly annoyed when I cheerfully pointed out when the kids are bad I can make them go sit in that room for five minutes and scare the pants off them.

You’re right, that’s mean. Imagine the therapy my poor kids will need.

I don’t know when this bear is supposed to wind up in my house, or where it’s going to wind up, but I’ll keep you posted. I’m sure you share my mixed sense of amusement and horror.