Tell It To COACHIE

It’s a hair-raising experience.

Last November my sister Erin, the librarian, sent me an e-mail that said this:

Would your kids have any interest in this? Or are they already doing it?

http://www.the39clues.com

Since I am so very busy doing so many important things, I read the e-mail but didn’t click on the link. When she asked me about it later, I think I vaguely said I hadn’t had a chance to check it out, you know with the whole busy/important things thing going on. So she wisely took matters into her own hands and gave Aislinn the first book of the 39 clues series and a pack game cards for Christmas.

I was, I must admit, more than a little skeptical about the whole thing. There are going to be 10 books to read, and all these online games and puzzles, and trading cards and clues, etc., and I figured there was no way it would be done well. I figured the site would keep crashing or the books and games would be either really hard or much too easy or really boring. As it turns out, I was wrong - really wrong.

The first book is entertaining and, it shocks me to admit this, we are reading a chapter each night before bedtime. As a family. In the living room. As if we really have become prairie dwellers who don’t have a TV. The computer games are not only challenging, but they are actually fun, and the whole thing is full of little history tidbits that I’m sure the kiddies are learning in spite of themselves. Then again, they still think that they might somehow win the $100,000 prize, so it may be pure greed that keeps them interested, but that’s okay with me.

Do what?

Before we moved to Missouri, I had lived on post among the Army people for a good six years, and I thought I had heard every variation of the southern accent and every southern expression, but now I have two neighbors who, when they haven’t heard what I’ve said, instead of saying “Excuse me” or “Pardon” say, “Do what?” I don’t understand this, as I have repeatedly told my mid-Atlantic family. If I say “The sky is blue” or “It’s cold out here,” how is “Do what?” the proper response in any context? Of course, the whole “Do what?” response is easy to avoid if you just speak really loud (or vote for Obama in which case you will be shunned and no one will care what you say at any volume, but that is a story for another day). No, I can live with the “Do what?”, but the southern expression that really grates on me? PawPaw.

One day long ago, I was at the beach with a friend and her 2-year-old daughter who was shovelling popcorn into her face like she was afraid a passerby might stop and try to steal a kernel. My friend told me that her daughter had just learned that lots things with the word “Pop” in it were especially good, like popcorn, popsicles, lollipops, etc. I agree. There’s also popovers, pop tarts, sody pop, pop music (in small doses), etc. But my favorite pop is my PopPop. It’s a good name for a grandpa (you know, if you’re not going with “Grandpa”) - it’s easy to say, and it implies a bit of action and fun.

The name PawPaw can not be said in less than 5 seconds, and drawing out all that “aw” just makes me picture a fat old man on a broken rocker on his front porch chewing on a straw. I know there are many many PawPaws out there that don’t fit this description, but I’m sorry, that is the only image that comes to my elitist East Coast mind. And don’t even get me started on MawMaw. The only worse names I’ve heard are MiMaw and PiPaw which might as well be HeeHaw.

The point of all this? There isn’t one, as you were warned the other day.

So how is everyone?

HA!  That is a trick question, because no one, other than my sister Carroll and possibly Becky, will actually leave a comment and tell me how they are.  While I realize that none of you is trying to wound my tender heart by coming and going and never saying a word, sometimes when I’ve written something that I think is really funny or smart and no one stops to comment, not even to say, “That is one heck of a run-on sentence you’ve got going there,” I wonder whether I’m wrong, whether what I’ve written is neither funny nor smart, and whether you guys have just rolled your eyes, retched a little, and desperately moved on to my sister’s blog where the writing is actually witty and insightful.

But it is a new year, time for a new start, and thus, I have come up with a new philosophy:  If I simply stick to writing meaningless crap that invariably causes eye-rolling, retching, desperate fleeing, and silence, I won’t have to wonder what is going on in all of your pretty little heads.  It’s fool-proof I tell you!

So let’s begin shall we?

Since the kiddies were small, we have placed our manger scene on top of an armoire so that we would not find ourselves spending Christmas with a bunch of headless sheep and amputee wise men. Our “star of wonder” is a gold star ornament that we hang from the ceiling, and we light the whole scene from the back with an uplight behind the armoire. It looks quite beautiful if I do say so myself. And I do. And you’ll just have to take my word for it because I don’t have a picture of it.

But the 12 days of Christmas have passed us by, so the manger scene has been packed into the shed for another few months (until we move and pack it into another shed for another 7 or 8 months), and we have busted out the snowman collection, because there is nothing sadder than going from a fully decorated Christmas house to a stark, undecorated January house, especially in Missouri. The HP staged all of the snowmen on top of the armoire while he was packing and unpacking and repacking the Christmas decorations. For reasons I won’t bore you with, unplanned collections of snowmen on top of armoires in our house are referred to as “Hodge Podge Lodge” (which was a show on PBS when I was little that the HP never saw and that I don’t think I ever saw, it probably came on after Mr. Roger’s or something, but it’s such a catchy name and so descriptive don’t you think?).

So yesterday while the kiddies were at CCD, the HP asked if I wanted to do something about Hodge Podge Lodge, but what I really wanted to do at that moment was drink some tea and then make some eggs. Later, knee deep in laundry, I forgot all about the snowmen, so the HP made a few moves on his own, most of which look quite charming and well-placed around the room.

Hold that thought.

One of our snowmen displays is this cute little number that was a gift from my sister-in-law:

It is quite sparkly and snowy, and I’ve always liked it. I still like it, except that now in it’s current placement, it starting to freak me out a little.

Behold:

Is is just me, or does this little tableau look like a mountain top in Snowmanistan, where warring snowmen warlords are hacking of the heads of villagers and hanging them up to intimidate and subdue the population? And that snowman standing on the far left? That is the snowman from Rudolph, who always seemed so nice, but you know how duplicitous the warlords of Snowmanistan can be.