"the clarification you require to get through your day"

a thought occurred to me in the car yesterday.

on our little road trip to explore the miles and miles of country roads we've so nicely transplanted ourself in to.

on our way out to visit our friends bill & tammi and their kids mckenna and grace.

on our way out to surely overstay our welcome by not leaving until 8 o'clock last night.

on our way out to sponge pizza and cheesey bread off of them.

on our way out to hug their necks and tell them how much we've missed them.

on our way out to laugh manically at everyone who chooses to remain in frozen colorado while those of us with two brain cells to rub together have moved ourselves to the land of warmth and fire ants.

on our way out to sit on a swing underneath the oak trees, to feed deer, watch our kids play in the sand, and to plan gardens.

this is the very thought that occurred to me and the very one that i must now convey to you.

urgently.

riley is NOT the boss of wyatt's belly button.

how do i know this?

because wyatt informed us of this exactly 3,963 times in the car yesterday on our 160 mile roundtrip roadtrip.

so allow me sum it up for you again - in the event you're still operating with the confused notion that riley is, in fact, the boss of wyatt's belly button.

RILEY IS NOT THE BOSS OF WYATT'S BELLY BUTTON.

now you may get on with your day.

sweet sweet revenge

this is what happens to naughty dogs in the Jackson household:

superhero costumes.

plastic-y vinyl vests.

masks with your ears pulled through the eye holes.

belts.

and you’re all like “WHAT? that patio furniture deal was like MONTHS ago.”

and i'm all like “yeah, and I’m STILL ticked off about the cushions. i am so leaving you to the mercy of the kids.”

i'd suggest gettin' your POWER RANGER ON there aunt bea. and be happy about it.

p.s.

oh, the new site will be conveniently located at:

www.lorijackson.net

you're probably wondering right now how i came up with something so incredibly spiffy, descriptive, unique and creative.

and the truthful answer is this: i don't know, sometimes i stun myself with these flashes of brilliance.

that and lorijackson DOT COM was already taken.

we're not live yet but when we are we will be live.

how's that for setting the bar high?

it's the fingernails

so it's been kind quiet in blogger world lately.

i'm chalkin' it up to 2 things:

first, i'm having a nice, pretty new site made just for me.

my own little home on the web. that's been an interesting exercise though 'cause it feels a little like i'm decorating my own little corner of the World Wide Web so it's been wildly important to me that it be JUST PERFECT. that's the kind of functioning obsessive compulsive person i am.

plus, i don't want you talking behind my back about the dust bunnies hiding under my navigation bar.

but really it's been all about the fingernails. this is point number 2, in case you didn't notice already.

i can't type with 'em, and i can't find the clippers.

i blame it on ms. boucher.

as she's dead and all i'm not implying that her spooky aparition visited my bathroom and took the clippers. most likely it was a kid - one of mine - who's lost all 200 pair of scissors in our household and is now using my fingernail clippers to give the stuffed shrek doll that screams "DONKEY" when you grab its foot a haircut. not that shrek needs one or anything.

ms. boucher. miss boucher. mizz boucher. mizzzzzz martha boucher.

old maid piano teacher extraordinaire.

there's more to be said about ms. boucher but today we're just going to talk about fingernails.

she hated 'em.

and no, they did not have to be long and sparkly to incite her white-hot tweed-suited anger.

even a nub could set her off.

it was a quiet anger, though. one that would begin percolating as i would arrive for my lesson in time for the prerequisite "sight reading" practice over on the tiny electric piano while patrick, the prodigy student, was finishing up his lesson.

patrick never let his fingernails get too long. he had weird hair though. kinda scoopy and floppy and too styled. like an unwarranted combover to cover an imaginary bald spot.

anyway, i'd be sight reading away the theme from "Ice Castles" on the tiny electric piano and the click click click of my barely there fingernails would give me away.

then i'd get THE LOOK and i just hated THE LOOK because really, down deep, i'm a pleaser so while my brain was busy calling ms. boucher names like "you big giant booger head" i was quietly dying a thousand deaths over disappointing her with my evil fingernail growth.

as time passed i got better about clipping my fingernails regularly. this always bought me a few extra minutes to read Archie comic books before my piano lessons. which is always a good thing.

and then i got used to them being short. really really short.

my productivity depended on it. especially when keyboards became an integral component to my day-to-day life.

let's face it, long fingernails really can hamper certain activities like typing, gardening, and picking at blackheads.

so that's my excuse.

i can't find my fingernail clippers and you CAN NOT imagine how painful it was to even type this latest installment when "this" comes out as "5y8w" because my fingernails are now too long to hit the right keys.

so, in closing, let me say this:

i yqtei o9tn r8qjwefwoq!

and i mean every word of it.

those indians are sure nice folks

so let me frame this for you ...

1. bought a macbook laptop.

2. loaded quicken on the mac

3. re-created our entire financial "sichiashun" on the mac ... both personal and business.

4. couldn't do something really simple in quicken on the mac.

5. spent 2 days attempting to communicate with quicken.

6. quicken hates mac, they told me they intentionally left that part out of quicken for mac just to irritate me.

7. quicken has no plans to play with future macs.

(BIG SIGH)

8. bought a new desktop PC, along with quicken 2008 for PEEEEEEEEEECEEEEEEEEEEEEES.

9. quicken 2008 loads nicely, finances are happy again and my bank loves me.

10, now, on to the fun stuff for my new PC, such as screen savers, email and whatnot.

11. the "good" folks at best buy told me i could load my existing office 2003 on Vista as i'd rather spend the $300 gazillion dollars they're charging for office 2007 on things such as ringtones for my cellphone and candy.

12. office 2003 installation gives me RUNTIME ERRORS ON LINES 60, 253, 56 and 79.

(i know what you're thinking ... NOT LINE 79!!!!!!)

13. office 2003 pouts like a big giant crybaby and won't load.

14. i ring up bill gates and let him know the folks at best buy are lying butt-heads and office 2003 won't load.

15. good ole bill rings up sayed shafaquat in india to personally assist me with the office 2003 temper tantrum.

16. sayed whispers sweet nothings in my ear ... things like "msconfig" and "disable boot".

17. sayed saves the day, office 2003 loads and my new Vista computer sings happily before i resort to sticking my cold wet finger in its ear.

18. like i said before, those indians are sure nice folks.

i'll take the chapstick for two thousand pat

this better be dang good chapstick.

you see, we recently purchased a new shiny black german-engineered vehicle. it's a CAR, which is pretty cool given that we'd spent 20 years taking things like snowdrifts taller than our house in to consideration when buying vehicles. this fact pretty much kept us in the SUV/4WD category for a lot of years.

after we bought our new CAR the nice car dealership people sent us packing with the grownup version of a birthday party treat bag ... a bottle of wine ... a couple of nifty coffee cups ... john got a baseball cap and i got a $25 gift card to Saks Fifth Avenue.

cool.

now, as you know, we live pretty close to the Bass Pro Shops but not too close to a Saks.

Bass Pro Shops tossed me out on my hiney when i tried to cash in my $25 Saks gift card on a camouflage teddy. you know, to give john a little valentine's thrill. so, this evening, i resorted to shopping at www.saks.com with the clearly defined mission of spending no more than the $25 on the gift card. including tax and shipping and the oh so mysterious "handling" charges.

HA

HAHAHHAHAHA

i looked. i mean i really, really looked. then i looked some more.

then it became an obsessive mission ... find the ONE THING on www.saks.com that costs less than $25.

chapstick.

yep, chapstick.

"sugar" chapstick to be specific.

i was so excited ... evidently sugar chapstick will only run ya $22.50.

tax on sugar chapstick is gonna cost ya $1.41.

shipping and "handling" clocks in at a low low price of $4.00.

"but wait", sayeth you math wizards. "that adds up to $27.91"

well, yes, i did have to put $2.91 on my credit card in order to have my sugar chapstick delivered right to my homebound lips.

i was feeling pretty good, and all, licking my chops in anticipation of my new sugar chapstick jetting its way to my poor chapped lips.

sugar chapstick. i bet brad pitt wears sugar chapstick.

and then i reached for my trusty tin of carmex in order to soothe my newly chapped lips and realized i just spent $27.91 on CHAPSTICK.

$27.91 on CHAPSTICK. oh yeah, i got a smokin' deal.

all i've got to say is it better taste better than the grape Bonnie Bell lipsmackers i used to wear on a cord around my neck in grade school. well, i wore it looped around my neck until the day i left it hanging on my mirror and my little brother dustin broke in to my bedroom and ate the entire tube of grape Bonnie Bell lipsmackers and got sick.

i'll let ya know how my newly sugared $27.91 lips turn out.

february the 82nd

it was 82 here today. a muggy 82 i might add.

it's february. from my 20 year frame of reference 82 degrees and february aren't uttered in the same breath unless there's a beach vacation on the horizon.

we wore shorts and t-shirts. got sweaty just playing catch the slobbery ball with aunt bea.

today. on february the 82nd.

i just checked 9news.com to see what kinda weather the good folks in colorado are enduring right now.

alright, i'm gloating.

right now, in my old 'hood in colorado it's 13 degrees and it's been snowing and snowing and it should continue snowing right through tomorrow morning.

right now, in a happy warm place in south texas i just got through turning on the upstairs A/C so dear daughter could sleep comfortably after she was sweatin' out to the tunes of hannah montana and her gazillion dollar movie earlier this evening.

last year: 13 degrees and 4 feet of snow.

this year: shorts and t-shirts ... possibly the house will get to try out its spanking new gutters tonight if the raindance worked.

last year: potty training a lab puppy in 4 feet of snow.

this year: i don't really care if the dog is potty trained ... as long as she pees in the pool and not on my carpet.

HOWEVER, the fact that i'm having to SHAVE MY LEGS in february is starting to tick me off.

impress your friends and neighbors with this trick

oh, the joy of being a parent. our kids teach us so much.

for example, yesterday my 11 year old daughter came home looking like she'd been making out with a spider monkey in the back row of a movie theater.

yep, she was sporting a couple of hickeys. remember them? those little (or sometimes not so little) bruises acquired when another human being sucks on your neck?

if you don't know what i'm talking about, just pay close attention the next time you're standing in line to ride a roller coaster or you're picking up a 12 pack of crunchwrap supremes from the teenager at the taco bell drive-thru. chances are you'll get an eye full.

except hers weren't on her neck. imagine bruises around her mouth ... kinda like alice cooper makeup.

"whadja do to your lips?" i asked innocently when she got home from school.

"whadda mean?" she replied. innocently.

"go check 'em out." i sweetly demanded.

okay, so it appears you don't have to actually involve another human being in the hickey-giving or hickey-receiving process. turns out a little bitty eraser, as in the kind you pop on to the top of a pencil, will do. spider monkeys probably work too but the for the purpose of this demonstration we'll just stick with the pencil eraser method of self-hickey application:

step 1: squeeze the open end of the eraser in to a slit.

step 2: stick the now-slitted end of the eraser on to the skin all around your delicate lip area where it will open up and create suction, thereby sticking all by itself to the skin all around your delicate lip area.

step 3: repeat steps 1 and 2

step 4: repeat steps 1 and 2 again until you are out of erasers

step 5: lipsynch "slow ride" by foghat (which you have mastered thanks to hours and hours of practice on the guitar hero) for your friends with erasers hanging off your face causing them to fall on the floor in hysterical laughter and shoot milk out of their nose at the lunch table.

step 6: check out your brand new "eraser hickeys". ah, the sweet smell of victory.

they're still pretty vivid today, over 24 hours later, so chances are if you've got a big social event coming up like a wedding or a deposition or something you could get 'em going a couple of days early, time permitting, and still impress everyone with some manufactured evidence of your wild monkey-suckin' passionate love life.

well, i gotta run, tomorrow night's bunco night here in the neighborhood and i'm thinking a couple of hickeys is just the thing i need to get the ladies buzzing with jealousy over a rousing game of dice.

question of the day

people often ask me "Lori, how do you keep your house so clean?"

okay, not really, but sometimes i wake up at 4am dreaming that people ask me that question. then i get up and go to the bathroom and wipe the dog hair off my feet before i get back in to bed.

but here's the catch. it's CLEAN dog hair.

so, grab a cup of coffee ... i'm about to share with you an undershared method to keep your house neat and tidy even when you live with dogs.

because this part is formal and all, i'm going to break down and use the CAPS key. here ya go ...

Step 1: Get Yourself a Labrador Retriever. Actually, I find an AKC registered Labrador Retriever that looks, acts and bays like a Bloodhound works best.

Step 2: Move your frozen behind to the subtropical regions of Texas and be sure you buy yourself a house with a pool. This is a must.

Step 3: Get yourself the niftiest ball-throwing device since the invention of the slingshot ... it's called a "Chuckit". The "Chuckit" makes Tony Romo's throwing arm look like a girly-man. I can easily get close to 100 yards on that thing with a tennis ball. Okay, so I haven't actually measured that but I can get the ball over the neighbor's driveway without throwing my back out. Plus you won't ever experience the "Bloodhound-masquerating-as-a-Labrador Retriever" slobbery, gooey-ness on your hands again.

Step 4: Have a little agreement with your "BHLR" (that's code for "Blood Hound Labrador Retriever" as typing it all out is making my fingers tired and causing my mind to wander to the bite size Chick-O-Stick candy we bought at Bass Pro Shops before Christmas) ... I will chuck the ball (get it? get it? "Chuckit" ... CHUCK IT ... those crazy ball throwing inventors sure knew how give it a name) ... and you, my beloved BHLR ... will go get it.

Step 5: CAUTION: This is a "multi-step" step ...

Me: Bend Over, Chuck the ball.

BHLR: Run Run Run Get The Ball Run Run Run Bring It Back.

Me: Bend Over, Chuck the ball.

BHLR: Run Run Run Get The Ball Run Run Run Bring It Back.

Me: Bend Over, Chuck the ball.

BHLR: Run Run Run Get The Ball Run Run Run Bring It Back.

Step 6: Repeat Step 5 until your BHLR's legs begin to shake and they're too exhausted to even open their jaws wide enough to let go of the ball, this is when you strike.

Step 7: Turn the quivering mass of overheated BHLR out in to the backyard and soon they will be paddling around the pool, even when the temperature dips below freezing. They will exit the pool and attempt to shake their water all over you before returning to the pool for another go 'round. This is a good time to hide behind the grill.

Step 8: Repeat Steps 5 and 6 and 7 several times a day.

We find that the laps around the pool not only serve to clean off the BHLR's hair, but to also loosen it up nicely so that when the BHLR is allowed back in the house to roll around on the brand new carpeting in order to dry off, the nice, clean hair sheds off nicely.

plus, nothing says "Clean House" like the smell of a wet dog.

least that's how we do it it 'round here.

happy new year, i want boots

happy new year everyone.

i've decided i want boots.

cowboy boots.

or, rather, cowgirl boots.

we celebrated new year's eve down by the River. no, not in a van.

(that's a obtuse reference for all you SNL/Chris Farley fans, God bless him.)

and we spent a little time shopping like tourists. you can't shop for touristy stuff in Texas without checking out the fancy cowboy boots.

that's when i decided i want 'em.

i actually have some that are serving as decorative vases in bubba-lou's bathroom right now ... they used to fit until i had TWO GIGANTIC BABIES and my feet swelled and never showed me the courtesy of unswelling.

now they don't fit so they're holding cat's tails and covered in spiderman toothpaste spit at the moment.

doesn't matter, 'cause i wouldn't wear them anyway 'cause i'm all about the Ariat FatBaby boots right now.

so, as we're riding in the car to pick up aunt bea at the kennel this morning, i announced to john that it might be fun to live on some real land (like 20+ acres) and have ATV's to roam around on and maybe, possibly, even a horse or two.

he didn't say anything back to me which i took to mean "i could really shoot this down right now but you just sit right over there in the passenger seat with your little pipe dream of sitting on the porch watching me work the land all shirtless and sweaty with muscles rippling in the sun wearing nothing but wranglers and a beat up cowboy hat."

or, maybe he figured out it's just 'cause i want an excuse to buy myself some FatBaby boots and i can't really justify them with a trip to the Wal-Mart gardening department and a ride on the 10 cent pony out front of the grocery store.

sigh.

i'm sure if i had them all my new year's resolutions would come true and i'd probably start cooking for my family like a good mother should and maybe, just maybe, the middle east conflict would resolve itself peacefully and there would be no more nastiness in the upcoming elections and i would no longer find it necessary to wax my upper lip.

big sigh. i'm kinda diggin' the lime green ones.

they don't scream "city girl" at all do they?