Yesterday, when I (Sister) went in the den to get my karate suit on I saw a mouse run across the room.  I screamed and I ran and told Mom that there was a mouse in the house.  The picture you see is of Serafina, our cat stalking the mouse in the house.  When we came back from karate, we helped Serafina catch the mouse.  To help her catch the mouse we lifted up the couches with stools and she went under the couch and caught the mouse. It was too bad though that she never got to eat it.  We let it go outside.  And since yesterday, she has not caught any more mice.  And I hope that she catches them in the house but brings them outside and eats them not play with them in the house.

“Mom, mom!  Did you see mine two plus three equals five?”

“Wow, that’s really great, Brother.”

“Yeah, I did it all by mineself ’cause that’s how I learn and get a rocketship.

It’s good to have goals, isn’t it?

This past December on an unexpected trip to OKC we visited the Omniplex. Excuse me … that’s what it was called back when I was a kid. Recently they’ve gussied up the place and now it’s the Science Museum Oklahoma. Sounds respectable and imposing doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. Imposing, that is. They have all sorts of hands on exhibits, a planetarium and one of those big 3D movie domes in addition to all the traditional museum-y stuff. Oh and they have a three-story indoor “tree” house. Pretty cool.

Even with all the changes one thing remains exactly the same. It’s an exhibit of metal wires looped and twisted and intermingled with a series of buckets and pulleys and trip lines. Inside this maze of metal run ten or twelve or twenty ball bearings looping, twisting. The paths of each are constantly changing as the metal tracks arrange and re-arrange themselves as if by magic. Eventually one lucky ball achieves the goal. Ding! A bell rings and the show begins again.

I remember watching mesmerized as a 5th grader. Will remembers it from high school when he and a bunch of other math geeks spent way too much time calculating the minutes between bell rings and predicting which ball would get the honor. So we shared a passing of the torch moment as Brother placing his hands on the glass gazed in wonderment at the display.

Did you play?

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Elaine over at Blog In My Eye found this intriguing exercise.  Describe your life in exactly six words.  The idea comes from the book Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure which sprang from this story. 

Legend has it that Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in only six words. His response? “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Last year, SMITH Magazine re-ignited the recountre by asking our readers for their own six-word memoirs. They sent in short life stories in droves, from the bittersweet (“Cursed with cancer, blessed with friends”) and poignant (“I still make coffee for two”) to the inspirational (“Business school? Bah! Pop music? Hurrah”) and hilarious (“I like big butts, can’t lie”).

We’re not nearly on par with Hemingway around here but I made an attempt all the same.

*Jumped off barn roof.  Bloody nose.

*Took best friend’s guy.  So sorry.

*Crashed car while naming seven dwarfs.

*Almost married the wrong person.  Oops.

*4 credits from graduating.  Left college.

*Found true love. Growing a family.

Then I realized the task required not a series of six word thoughts but only six words.  Hmm, my life in half a dozen….

“All things work for the good.”

*****************

I don’t know if you’re supposed to tag anyone for this but I would be interested to see what Leslie would come up with because, being the Queen of Haiku and all, she knows how to say more with less.

I’m also curious about Jenni’s perspective.  Someone who boldly uses words like “troglodyte” and “proclivity” will most certainly rock this vocabulary exercise.

And if you feel so inclined, please play along.  You could even go here and submit your entry. 

Who know’s you might get published.

You know your hubby loves you when he takes a large chunk of his only true day off and devotes it to a major overhaul on your computer.  (He may have munched on chips n salsa and watched Talladega Nights while waiting for various installations and such but those are not details I want to go into right now. … Though I would appreciate it if you’d offer up a prayer to the Lord Baby Jesus for his soul … and his sense of humor.)

For some time now my computer has been grinding and halting and throwing up random error messages in protest of its use.  Prompted by Heather’s Ubuntu adventures, I seriously considered switching to a new OS altogether but because I love my Money (That’s Microsoft Money as in financial tracking software not as in “the love of … is the root of all evil” money.) there was nothing for it but to restore the factory settings and then spend the next 3 hours uninstalling all of the unwanted junk.  Finally, things are back to normal… technologically speaking, of course.  I make no such claims about the rest of life.  I may at some point try the Linux path but for now I’m going to give Windows a few days and let the dust settle.

Some parting thoughts:  If you don’t like your current blogging editor I found a couple for you to try.  ScribeFire (which will be my choice if I every do make the Linux leap) integrates with Firefox seamlessly.  The set up was incredibly easy (It’s just a Firefox extension.) and the features while not as rich as my next suggestion are far less cumbersome than Wordpress (which powers this blog) or Blogger (which I have used in the past.)

My next suggestion and my personal choice (for now) is Windows Live Writer.  I wrote about it before while it was still in beta.  Actually I expected it to stay in beta forever.  After all it was Microsoft and it was free and never shall those twain meet except in beta.  Even so, I’ve been using it successfully for quite a while and after the big cleanse needed to reload it to, if nothing else, retrieve my out of control draft folder.  You know, all those thoughts I quickly jot down in reflective moments but never find the time to expound upon.  Don’t laugh - I know you do that too.  So, I re-installed the program and what to my wondering eyes did appear? … no, not Rudolph … but something almost as mythical.  A free, non-beta, Microsoft product.  I will warn you that the install included several “extras” that I had little interest in but you can opt out of them if you stay alert.

Okay, enough tech talk.  Let me know if you try one of these or if not, what do YOU prefer?

If, because you discovered he’d written on the piano keys (all 88 of them) and then found him scrawling his name on a wall, you took away your son’s pencil and later banned crayons for the day, don’t be surprised when you find caveman like drawings on your chair and table and sofa; carefully rendered by a dirt covered rock.

Did you ever play marbles as a child?  No?  Me neither.  But I totally wish I had because… what fun!  By no means did we follow these rules… waay too complicated instead we made up some simple house rules.  Big circle, 10 marbles, take turns trying to knock them out.  Around here a bag of marbles with a “Tolley” (or Shooter) is about $2.50.  I’ll bet they’re at least that cheap in your area.  Why don’t you go find out and reclaim some childhood.

Anne Kroeker’s has started hosting Monday Funday recently.  I mention it because there are some good ideas floating about over there and because I thought of her carnival this weekend during Brother’s Un-Birthday Party.  Sometime early in the day Brother declared he wanted a party.  Always accomodating (HA!), Sister began making preparations.  With very little adult supervision help she decorated the bedroom with balloons, made paper party hats, pulled out games to play and turned on some groovy music. (Because “No party is complete without music, Mom.”)

Sister found out I was making muffins for breakfast the next day and as soon as they appeared from the oven she stabbed one in the center with a candle claiming them as party food.

Once the party began there were puzzle races and a hilarious game of Party Line.  You remember that one don’t you?  The first person whispers a phrase to the second person who whispers it to the third person and so on.  The last person says the unusually altered and often humorous phrase aloud.  This was especially fun with a three year old in the mix.  Next, our hostess brought out the snacks and we sang “Very Merry Un-birthday” while Brother blew out the candle.  A little dancing and a game of Guess Who? rounded out the hour.

Is today your Un-birthday?  It is!?  Well, then this is for you!

*edited “until I could resist any longer” - because in my haste to avoid a double negative I failed to put any negative at all.

For about a week now Brother has bounded out of bed each morning to delclare, “Oh, mom the sun is rising it’s time to go to school!” He then collects his backpack, packs a lunch and walks down the hall to the toy/computer room. There he will play for almost an hour before returning “home”. Today had only one variation. He “waited” for the school bus. And waited and waited until I could resist no longer. I donned my schoolbus driver persona and picked him up along with two or three pretend passengers and drove them all to the toyroom. There he is now. Happily playing school. To each his own, I suppose.