More rain in the forecast, but we’re sorta on the edge of the zone, so I’m hoping for more sun. Like yesterday. We did have overcast for a lot of the day, but the sun came out for most of the afternoon and evening. Temps got into the low 90s and while the humidity was lower, the air can hold a lot of moisture at 92F…
So I decided to do some outdoor work. I ended up soaked to the skin with sweat, but I got the back yard mowed, some weeds pulled up in the garden, and some cleanup and reorg in the stored stuff on the patio. I’m not done yet, but I did make a start. I even got the shop vac out and cleaned up some more of the glass chunks from when I broke the back door. That was what, two years ago? I don’t know where all those chunks were hiding, but they have started to appear in earnest in the last week or so. Strange.
Also spent some time sorting through 5 pounds of costume jewelry I picked up at Goodwill. There was some nice stuff in there, and one name brand piece. There are a couple of pieces that I’ll have to test but that sure look like silver. I’ll put about half of it back in auctions, keep a few broken pieces for the GS jewelry making craft session, and let the kids have a couple of other pieces. I really don’t understand why the T shirt people don’t grab any jewelry that’s in the bins. It’s $1.19/ pound. There pretty much HAS to be $2 worth of jewelry in a pound… I’ve found James Avery silver, nice vintage necklaces, bakelite bracelets, and even a few watches that brought ~$5 – 10 each. I’m glad they leave it for me I guess.
Today I’m taking small child to a week long day camp at the local nature center. Surly proto-teen will be home this week, skulking around the house and shirking her chores. At least she’ll be watching the puppy so I can do stuff.
There’s lots of stuff needs doing too, and since my wife’s away, I’m stuck home, and anything I do that reduces the piles here will have an outsized impact. The days will be start and stop, what with dropping off and picking up younger child, but I hope to get something done in between.
It feels like time is getting short. I’m not sure what comes next but I want to be ready. Or at least try. That means stacking stuff, and for me that means getting rid of unneeded stuff, to provide space and funds for needed stuff.
Keep stacking.
nick
I can see how it happens with jewelry. My wife has all the stuff from both of our mothers. Most is costume jewelry, but there’s bound to be some real stuff in there. She’s put off sorting it out (or paying a jeweler to do so) for decades now…
Before long, these will look like the good ol’ days.
As the joke goes, having a teenage daughter is sort of like having a haunted house: there’s a lot of moaning and slamming of doors and occasionally you’ll see a human-like shape out of the corner of your eye.
The Brat shirks the very few chores we give her*, not starting until I yell at her to get off of her bed and sneaking away as soon as my back is turned. Even when she knows darned well that I’ll take away her precious laptop (she doesn’t have a phone or tablet) for four hours when I find that she left a fifteen-minute chore** half-done, she can’t help herself. She sure makes it difficult to remember that she’s really bright.
* I’d prefer to have her do her own laundry, cleaning her room, doing some of the dishes, helping with the cooking, helping with general household and yard cleaning and upkeep, getting groceries when given a shopping list and a credit card. You know, the stuff needed to prepare a teen for moving out and having a house or apartment. Buuuuut the resident grandma keeps butting in and taking the laundry or whatever away from the kid because she’s feeling useless and bored. In practice, the kid’s only regular chores are to vacuum her own room, put away her folded laundry, and weed-whack. And she can’t even manage that.
** Which typically takes her an hour or more.
BTW, another not-a-joke: If you think a toddler’s temper tantrums are bad, wait until you’ve taken away a teen or preteen’s electronics.
@stevef:
or blocked her internet access. Been there, done that…
G.
I remember the line as “Laugh while you can, monkey boy!”
Perhaps we should both re-watch.
One of the worst pieces of competent, and even slick writing I’ve run across recently, when I went looking for a bit more info about the french girl from Better Off Dead.
That is some pro-level cut and paste, smeared together, and made somehow smarmy by an author who chose not to use a last name…yuck.
Written by a computer for computer consumption. Not to be morbid, but that’s where the obit writers would start.
A bigger star would have an obit “package” maintained at CNN. I’ve noted before that everything on Michael Cimino’s death probably came from the Clint Eastwood-targeted files in Atlanta.
You have to scrounge for information on 80s cult flick favorite people. Go back 20 years, when most dropped out of the Hollywood mess to raise kids, and you have the 9-11 event dominating media at a time when a lot of 80s classics were getting new prints and DVD transfers.
Sadly, unlike “One Crazy Summer”, none of the DVDs I’ve seen for “Better Off Dead” have commentary, and Cusack never does them even if he hadn’t disavowed much of his 80s career.
I’ve heard Jennifer Tilly on with Dennis Miller in the last few years. She’s a font of “Where are they now” type information on former co-stars as is Curtis Armstrong if he surfaces somewhere.
The last time I saw Armstrong was with Svengoolie of all people.
I almost forgot “One Crazy Summer” and the DVD commentary.
Savage Steve Holland, Bobcat Goldthwait, and Curtis Armstrong.
Goldthwait and Armstrong talk up how people think they are both dead even though Armstrong appeared in “Supernatural” and “Bobcat” directed one of the most fun/dark black comedies of the last decade, “God Bless America”.
“God Bless America” has a huge poster at the Murray Brothers’ restaurant in Florida. My wife and I giggled at that since most of the tourists streaming through the place would flip out and leave by the 15 minute mark of the movie.
I do that at school when I am subbing. I despise the little snot muffins sneaking to use a cell phone. It is disrespectful when I warn them at the beginning of class. Some give up the phone without issue, some give me a hassle, others require the vice principal and get removed from the room.
If it is their first offense one of their parents must come to school to get the phone. Second offense and the student goes to alternative school. Those second offenders are the ones that really complain. They also don’t like when I take their phone on Friday as they may be without all weekend and Monday before getting their phone back.
A person would think, with the penalties well documented, my well known within the school stance on cell phones, they would not take the risk. But they do. The lure of answering that text, checking snapchat, is just too strong. Most of the time they get caught. And I am ruthless, accept no excuse.
The rub is that I also inform the students if they have to use their phone, ask me, and I will generally let them use the phone for that purpose. There is little need to be sneaky. That is what annoys me.
Perhaps we should both re-watch.
–one line is from John Big Booty, one is from Dr Emilio Lizardo… so we’re both right.
(although I’ve crossed the streams by using the Firefly version of the curse word- and some people hear the line as “IT’S LIKE my godd@m planet monkey boy.”)
The movie has so many “name” actors it’s stunning, and so many quotable lines…
n
I like Repo Man from the same time frame, but not as a recommendation for kids, yet. “Find one in every car…”
Catching up …
The Kamel on why voter ID laws are wrong: “People in rural settings would have to photocopy their ID to send in. There isn’t a Kinko’s or OfficeMax nearby to copy stuff.”
I’ve seen UPS Stores in very small towns around here, and Walmart usually has a Fedex (formerly Kinkos) if a bigger standalone store isn’t nearby. True Value stores also tend to offer copy services in small towns in Florida if an alternatives don’t exist.
Kamala is attempting to support the frequently dropped fake statistic used in Prog circles that 25% of blacks in the US do not have ID of any kind and a requirement to acquire a card to vote is a kind of poll tax, even if the state provides the card for free.
Big news – Billionaire flies ‘to the edge of space’.
Now, what about that carbon?
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2021/07/whats-carbon-footprint.html
I like Repo Man from the same time frame, but not as a recommendation for kids, yet. “Find one in every car…”
The DVD commentary with Michael Nesmith and Alex Cox is worth the time if you have a recent release of the “Repo Man” DVD, Anchor Bay or Criterion Collection.
Nesmith did two commentaries for Pacific Arts’ “Repo Man” and “Tapeheads” about 20 years ago before getting bored with the medium and moving on.
While not for the kiddies either, “Tapeheads” closes with what is possibly the 80s finest cameo gag.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyKzdvZU3pg
A lot of Pacific Arts catalog and other 80s minor classics couldn’t get made today.
Speaking of Buckaroo Banzai. I watched “Nobody” before leaving for Vegas. The ancient and still alive Christopher Lloyd is awesome in it.
Vegas has entered its 100º 24/7 period. Hotsy totsy.
Speaking of Buckaroo Banzai. I watched “Nobody” before leaving for Vegas. The ancient and still alive Christopher Lloyd is awesome in it.
Christopher Lloyd was the guest star in what served as the 2019/20 season finale of “NCIS”.
2020 should have been a big anniversary year for “Back to the Future” which probably explains why “NCIS” scheduled the sweeps stunt. Get much beyond the 35th anniversary years, and films start to lose principal cast members to time.
Followup to the execution shooting in Chicago last month
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9776613/Police-Man-arrested-San-Diego-Chicago-slaying.html
may have started with a minor car accident. Don’t let them get you out of your car.
n
In elementary school it makes sense to not allow devices. You can’t even trust the kids to not distract themselves with bubble gum let alone a smartphone. Watches are becoming an issue with this age group as parents are using them to LoJack their kids, so you’ve got third graders with an Apple Watch.
In college nobody cares. Of course, in college, nobody cares if you even show up to class. The “my students better be listening to every word I say” attitude seems to be an elementary and secondary education thing. I sat behind MANY students with their laptops open (my college days were pre-smartphone) who were shopping or playing games while the professor lectured. I still chuckle thinking back on my freshman year at college as
kidsyoung adults would raise their hand and ask their professor if they could go to the bathroom and the professor would look annoyed and reply, “You’re an adult. If you need to go to the bathroom, then go. I’m not your mommy.” Anyway, point being, it’s funny how much the K-12 school system gets worked up over behavior that, in a few months time (in the case of high school seniors), will be completely acceptable at college.I’ve always believed in giving people enough rope to hang themselves. I don’t care if you’re sleeping in class, reading a novel, or playing on your phone. If you can manage to pass the class without ever paying attention then more power to you. If you fail, then that’s on you. As long as you’re not disrupting the class or distracting other students, then you can fail or succeed as a result of your own choices. Your teacher isn’t going to follow you home and make sure you study and do your homework, so why do they need to make sure you’re paying attention?
At my nephew’s high school a parent that was irate their child’s phone was taken away called the local police department and reported it as stolen (basically, told the PD that so-and-so stole my kid’s phone and you can find them and the phone here, but left out the part about so-and-so being a teacher). The policeman, principal, teacher, parent, and student were having a heated discussion in the office on the matter. I never did hear what became of all of it.
Corporate America mostly stopped caring. I can remember people being mortified if their cell phone happened to ring in a meeting. Now, at my last several employers, a solid third of everyone in the conference room is staring at their phones at any given time and all of the corresponding beeps, chimes, chirps, and rings are largely ignored. It’s been normalized and now very few people even notice let alone get upset about it.
@chad, different funding models result in different behaviour. In college, they get the money up front and keep it no matter what happens.
In public education, they get paid based on attendance. There are probably in district penalties for poor student performance too. In ours, the district will take over schools that are poorly run and don’t improve. That upsets fiefdoms and applecarts.
College is voluntary, attendance at elementary and highschool is compulsory.
The public schools are run like prisons, they use the language of prisons, and the only requirement it to be there for a length of time, just like prison. Can’t let the prisoners do whatever they like, they might stop thinking of themselves as prisoners.
n
Corporate America mostly stopped caring. I can remember people being mortified if their cell phone happened to ring in a meeting. Now, at my last several employers, a solid third of everyone in the conference room is staring at their phones at any given time and all of the corresponding beeps, chimes, chirps, and rings are largely ignored. It’s been normalized and now very few people even notice let alone get upset about it.
Corporate America cares, but your activity is quietly logged for future reference, particularly, in the last few years, any “policy violations” which can be used to terminate with cause in a lot of states, denying you the ability to collect unemployment benefits.
Don’t ever think they aren’t paying attention, especially anything you do with a corporate-issued laptop or phone. If you’ve had a variation of “respect in the workplace” training recently, with participation certified by an online quiz or attendance log, they’re definitely watching.
Unfortunately I have no choice. School and district rules that I have to follow. I had one student who would put his head down and slept. I gave up even bothering, his problem, not mine. Then the vice principle came in the room one day. She woke him up, made him stand up, stretch, and then sit upright in his chair. During the teacher’s planning period I was called to the office and informed of the rules and that I was being paid to make sure the classwork was accomplished and the rules were followed.
Up to that point I really did not care if the students did their work, or did anything in class. But my toockus was now on the line.
As for verifying work, ain’t gonna happen. A lot of the stuff is online, in Google classroom, to which I do not have access. I am not allowed the credentials for the teacher’s computer, I am not allowed to access the WiFi as the district will not provide subs a userid and password. Some of the teachers put the assignment on Google classroom and tell me to look at the assignment. I have to inform them I cannot.
Some classrooms I am supposed to take roll using the online system. But I don’t have access. I tell the school that and it just falls on deaf ears. Sometimes the administration and teachers are as stupid as the students.
As for virtual learning, it doesn’t work, period, case closed. The entire fiasco has wasted a year of education and enforced a bunch of lazy kids that want everything handed to them. Future welfare leaches.
That’s Big Bootay!
Just look at these names, it has to be a joke-
John Ya Ya
John Smallberries….
—————————
“this is all too much- race wars in New Jersey, a woman named John…”
————————–
“what’s with the watermelon?”
-“Don’t ask.”
n
“At the End of the World (8) (Black Tide Rising)” by Charles E. Gannon
https://www.amazon.com/End-World-Black-Tide-Rising/dp/1982125470/?tag=ttgnet-20
Book number nine of an eleven book fantasy apocalyptic series. I read the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Baen in 2021. I will order and read the future books in the series as they come out in MMPB. In fact, I already have number ten on order.
Six USA teenagers are signed up to take a summer cruise on a seventy foot ketch (two masts) with a 60 year British old sea captain in the waters around the southern tip of South America. Their timing is perfect, the zombie virus spreads around the world like wildfire during their cruise. So where do they go from here ?
BTW, John Ringo graciously allowed Charles Gannon to muck up the sand in his playground and we get this gem. There is another book from Gannon already released in the series that I have ordered when it is released in December.
My rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (603 reviews)
In my experience, people here may look at their phones, but they are on mute. Of course, there haven’t been a lot of physical meetings for a while, but I don’t think that will have changed.
“And there it is, the Cuban crisis is Trump’s fault”
https://gunfreezone.net/and-there-it-is-the-cuban-crisis-is-trumps-fault/
“These people are flacks for Communism and suffer from total TDS.
Generations of Cubans have been fleeing that country for seven decades, but somehow the poverty only became unbearable because Trump.
The mendacity and evil of these people know no bounds.”
Somehow, short of lining them all up against a wall, journalism needs to be fixed in the USA. I know of no other way than OFD’s solution, lining them all up against a wall and starting over.
They’re typically muted here as well, but if one does make noise it’s generally shrugged off without the scowls, sighs, and eye rolls that used to follow.
I don’t mute mine, but that’s because I have audio notifications turned off for 99% of my apps and I rarely get called (“WHY are you calling me when you could be texting or emailing me?!”). Funny enough, in a quiet meeting even the vibration can be amusingly loud (especially if they lay their phone on the table).
The people who have switched to using their cell instead of a land line for everything and thus have handed their number out to the whole world have to keep theirs silenced because otherwise it would ring every 10 minutes. Likewise, the ones with audio notifications turned on for stupid shit like social media and games have to keep theirs silenced or it would chirp every time someone liked their most recent comment. My wife is bad about this. If you take her phone off of silent it would make a noise every two seconds. She’s got apps with audio notifications reminding her to stand and stretch, telling her a friend just uploaded a new photo, somebody just drove past the house, etc.. It’s ridiculous.
I find it entertaining and enlightening how much Trump still lives in their heads. My in-laws were all Trump this, Trump that. No one even mentions Hillarity or Obamma.
n
“And there it is, the Cuban crisis is Trump’s fault”
I’ve always believed that a second Trump term would have included lifting the Embargo in a “Nixon goes to China” moment.
Only Trump could have sold that in Little Havana. Plugs? Fuggedaboudit.
Phones in meetings are mildly annoying, but I don’t fault people for being bored in meetings nor for having something better to do. It’s often the fault of whoever set up the meeting — it probably didn’t need to be a “synchronous” meeting at all and could have been handled better by writing a memo and sending it to whoever needed it. Or two thirds of the people there didn’t need to be.
The phone-use situation at work which I won’t tolerate is one-on-one meetings or small working sessions in which the other person gets a call, looks, takes the phone out of the room, and comes back two minutes later, maybe with a meaningless apology. If it were something timely and important, like his kid’s daycare is closing early and he needs to leave work early to get the kid, then no problem. But it’s never that. It’s always the wife calling to say hi, nothing which should have interrupted at least two person’s work during work hours. The same goes for stopping everything to reply to a series of texts and then asking the others to go over what he missed because he wasn’t paying attention to the work he was being paid for. I’ll put up with it once, suggest that the phone should be put down unless it’s an emergency, and then walk out when, invariably, it happens again a few minutes later. And then, as often as not, I’ll get bitched at for being unprofessional in the office.
But if you respond with a comment about Clinton’s corruption or the senile pedo groping children, you’re the one being an asshole and causing trouble in the family get-together.
As the cynical observation has it, When you treat others the way they treat you, apparently that’s being a jerk.
Re-watching “24” of late. I had started with Season 4 when it was originally aired and decided to finally get to Seasons 1 – 3 so those DVDs can get traded in at the second-hand bookstore. I thought we were done after Season 3 when my wife said, “So where’s the next season?” Found them all for free (with some commercials) on the Roku channel. In the middle of Season 6 right now.
Also watching the final season (#7) of Bosch on Prime. Three episodes in and not their best work but still good if you like character-driven cop shows.
Still waiting for the next season of Ozark (no date announced yet). Wild show worth checking out imo.
“Boy Scouts of America reaches initial $850M settlement with 60,000 men who brought child sex abuse claims against the organization – with the amount set to rise to $1BILLION”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9748029/Boy-Scouts-America-reaches-pivotal-agreement-victims.html
“The settlement was disclosed in a Thursday filing with the US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware
It comes more than a year after BSA filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors in the face of more than 275 abuse lawsuits in February 2020
More than 84,000 men joined the largest lawsuit before a November 2020 deadline for victims to come forward
Their claims of child sex abuse by volunteers and troop leaders span six decades”
I don’t know what to think about this other than I don’t like the fact that it is killing the Boy Scouts. I find it hard to believe that there were 84,000 abused scouts. I do suspect that the lawyers will end up with most of the money.
I find it hard to believe that there were 84,000 abused scouts. I do suspect that the lawyers will end up with most of the money.
–yep.
n
@lynn:
I agree. I suspect this sort of thing is why the late RAH had such a down on the profession, as in “The Day they killed the Lawyers” reference (it’s not described, there’s a throw-away quote) in The Number of the Beast, to name but one instance.
Edit: Originally from Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part 2, Act IV, scene 2.
G.
Well, thought we were about to get clobbered with a storm. Temp dropped about 10F, wind got variable and gusty, and a few drops splattered on the patio, with thunder not too far away… but now the wind has stopped, and we haven’t gotten the downpour.
I spoke too soon, thunder again…
n
?)(*@){(*)*&@{@ Comment lost to an accidental alt-left.
To summarize what I typed: Hard numbers are hard to come by but squishy numbers show that public school teachers sexually abuse children at a much greater rate than do Boy Scout leaders, Catholic priests, or guards at Juvie. Absolute numbers are much greater, but there are more teachers than the other categories and they have much much more access to children. One study — sneer quotes possibly needed, as the tone was more sensationalist than one would expect in a serious scientific writeup — said that even controlling for the number of adults in each profession and for the amount of contact with children in a year, public school teachers were still more likely to commit sexual abuse.
Like the semen frosted cookie guy…
n
RV glamping until Friday. Spring Lake RV resort. We have been here before and like the place. Electric, Water, Sewer, Cable hookups. Nice place, small, not too crowded, good people own the place. TV coax went bad, TV signal was horrible. Trip to Walmart to get another cable. No apparent damage to the cable. Oh well.
To summarize what I typed: Hard numbers are hard to come by but squishy numbers show that public school teachers sexually abuse children at a much greater rate than do Boy Scout leaders, Catholic priests, or guards at Juvie. Absolute numbers are much greater, but there are more teachers than the other categories and they have much much more access to children. One study — sneer quotes possibly needed, as the tone was more sensationalist than one would expect in a serious scientific writeup — said that even controlling for the number of adults in each profession and for the amount of contact with children in a year, public school teachers were still more likely to commit sexual abuse.
How do you like these hard numbers ?
“The Boy Scouts have said that between $2.4billion and $7.1billion, including insurance rights, might be available for abuse victims. Attorneys for the tort claimants committee, or TCC, have estimated the value of some 82,500 sexual abuse claims at about $103billion.”
The attorneys are presenting an average claim at $1.2 million. That is unreal. Especially since it appears that many of the claims will be word of mouth only, no proof. That is ripe for fraud.
And yes, I’ve been nailed by the alt-left thing or the escape button several times now.
Like the semen frosted cookie guy…
n
Dude, I had no idea. And I did not want to know.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/mark-berndt-fed-schoolchildren-cookies-2804601
They should build a stocks in front of the school and chain him to them for a few weeks.
Regarding Alt+Left (which, in many browsers, is the same as the left-arrow on the browser menu to go to a previous page) – there’s a short discussion of this here https://superuser.com/questions/1626524/disable-alt-left-to-navigate-back-in-firefox .
I don’t see what “Esc” key does – nothing in my Firefox.
I don’t see what “Esc” key does – nothing in my Firefox.
Sorry, I thought that was what was killing me in the “text” mode of the comment editor. Either it was fixed or was just an imaginary problem.
Or “PBDAC” ….
…. Problem Between Desk And Chair
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/07/fda-add-new-warning-johnson-johnson-covid-vaccine-related-autoimmune-nerve-syndrome/
–not what I want to hear, but I am past the time for onset, I guess.
n
They should build a
stocksGALLOWS in front of the school–FIFY
n
@Ray Thompson
“I am ruthless”
That’s a good character reference in this group.
Gee, waddayaknow… https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9779781/Climate-change-Just-25-mega-cities-emit-52-cent-worlds-urban-greenhouse-gases.html
n
That was definitely my problem a while ago. I don’t know what I was trying to do but fat-fingered whatever it was.
Forms on some web pages are recoverable if you alt-left away or follow a link or even close a tab. I don’t know how they do it; several possibilities come to mind, each of which is rather heavy on processing or local storage or networking. I’m not suggesting that Daynotes should have such a plugin, merely mentioning it as a technical oddity.
I went into law school knowing that people are scum.
That is, I thought that I knew people were scum. First year courses showed me that people are scummier than I’d ever encountered, read about, or imagined.
Tort law showed me that people are whining, chiseling scum, desperate to get a payday for any wrong, no matter how slight or imagined.
Contract law showed me that people are chiseling scum (and that judges are often worse scum than the scum before them).
And criminal law. Ugh, criminal law. People are more disgusting and depraved than I could ever have imagined. And this coming from a man who crucified a man. (The crucified guy was already dead, but still.)
@Lynn
“BTW, John Ringo graciously allowed Charles Gannon to muck up the sand in his playground and we get this gem. There is another book from Gannon already released in the series that I have ordered when it is released in December.”
Gannon did rather well with Eric Flint’s “Ring of Fire” universe also.
Can’t kill a man born to hang??
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9779477/British-soldier-smashes-ROOF-lands-kitchen-parachute-fails-open-exercise.html
n
According to SteveF I should also be twoothless with only a couple of enameled appendages in my pie hole by virtue of living in Tennessee. It’s not like crossing into Alabama where you have to break out a headlight and a tooth.
My mishap involved the pilot chute coming out but the main chute just sitting there like a lump. I opened the reserve and came down a bit fast but under control. But then the main chute came out but didn’t open and instead wrapped around the reserve’s shrouds, collapsing the reserve chute. I came down pretty fast and hit pretty hard. Walked away, though.
A former coworker was an avid jumper, hundreds of jumps. He winced when I told my tale. “Yah, that happens. They don’t always walk away from it.”
-scratch head- That doesn’t sound like anything I’d say. It’s West Virginians I bust on for being snaggle-toothed hicks. (With good reason. There’s something in the water in much of West Virginia which dissolves enamel, resulting in tooth decay and loss. A quick web search found only PFAS, which is relatively recent and wouldn’t explain the century-old stereotype.)
BTW, we had a blast last night about 11pm. Our dog tried to eat a medium size frog. I heard a lot of yelling from the back patio and went outside. Our dog, Lily, was foaming at the mouth and dropping foam everywhere. My wife told me she had eaten a frog. My daughter was totally freaked out.
So I went back inside and google “what to do when your dog eats a frog” which brought up Cane Toads which are indigenous to south Texas. That got serious in hurry. Then I went back outside and asked the wife was it a toad or frog. She said she did not have a clue. I told we needed to wash out Lily’s mouth with hose no matter what as dogs are allergic to both species. So we are washing out her mouth with the hose (not easy !) when a frog jumps out of the grass . The wife yells, “that is it !”. So I grabbed the frog and said, “this is it ?” and she says yes. There is no way Lily could have swallowed this frog. This is a frog, not a toad, I think, but I am not a frogologist. Meanwhile, Lily is trying to eat the frog again.
https://www.aspca.org/news/trouble-toads-getting-bottom-toxic-threat
So we take Lily in through our bathroom door and wash her mouth out real good in the tub with a couple of water bottles. Then my wife gets the doggy toothbrush and livertoothpaste and brushes Lily’s teeth. Lily responds afterwards by slinging the livertoothpaste all over the bathroom including me. I stand up, grab a paper towel to wipe off the livertoothpaste and sit back down on the tub wall. But, I missed the tub wall and slide off into the tub which is deeper than the bathroom floor by six to eight inches. Next thing I know, my back hits the bottom of the tub and the back of head slams into the tub wall. I did miss the side spigot. I laid there for a while dazed while the wife is yelling at me “are you ok”. I then managed to roll over and get out of the tub, now soaking wet and covered with livertoothpaste. Of course, I hit the front spigot while getting out with my head.
So, things quieted down, I took a shower and went to bed. Lily woke me up at 6 am wheezing. I got out of bed and checked her out since that is a bad sign. But, Lily was doing the running in place thing while sleeping. I went back to bed after the obligatory pit stop. When I got up, Lily and cat were chasing each other around the house causing a general ruckus. All normal !
BTW, that is way better than my nephew. He took his adorable two month old German Short Hair Pointer puppy out to their family farm outside Luling, Texas Saturday. 15 minutes after they got out of the truck, the puppy was bitten by a copperhead three times. My nephew rushed him over to the vet who gave him a couple of thousand dollars worth of anti-venom. A very expensive snake !
This is the third dog to be bitten by a copperhead on their farm. I am sensing a pattern here.
Toads are frogs. Sort of like butterflies are moths.
Aside from that niggle, sounds like you had fun. Especially the liverpaste.
Lot’s of accidents in the bathroom.
Falls, scalding water, soap in the eyes, towel rack not grab-bar rated, seat not up/down as anticipated, pee on floor, toilet paper out, cat/dog present make floor slippery, squeeze wrong tube onto toothbrush, hairbrush make you bald, scale break window on way out, etc., etc.
Probably safer to jump from airplane and do business in mid-air.
Probably safer to jump from airplane and do business in mid-air.
Never p!ss into the wind. 🙂
I am dtill chuckling from Lynn’s story. So good you can make light of it.
As the saying goes, “gotta get back on the horse.”
@lynn, IANAD but any concern about the possibility of a concussion?
Jeez, just got the older child to bed. Youngest went around 10:15 which was still an hour later than optimal. There are going to be grumps in the morning.
At least no one here ate any toads.
n
Next thing I know, my back hits the bottom of the tub and the back of head slams into the tub wall.
@lynn, IANAD but any concern about the possibility of a concussion?
Nah, I would have passed out totally for that. I have got about a 3 inch diameter bruise on the hairless crown of my head that is tender. My son says that I am an idiot (nicely) but we already knew that.
Jeez, just got the older child to bed. Youngest went around 10:15 which was still an hour later than optimal. There are going to be grumps in the morning.
At least no one here ate any toads.
n
That idiot frog is sitting on the back patio right now. And Lily wants to go check him / her / it (not sure what frog pronouns are) out real bad. Real bad.
And with all of the rain, our mosquito population is exploding. Frogs eat mosquitos. So he is not going to get the boot from the back yard. In fact, I would like for a few of his friends to come up from the front ditch.
I had a half dozen frogs looking for girlfriends for the last several days. Looking all night. Looking LOUDLY just outside my office windows. Tonight, silence.
Funny how that works.
n
There are other options…
https://people.com/home/christina-haack-revealed-she-smoked-bufo-toad-venom-but-what-is-it-a-doctor-explains-all/
ADDED
From the article…wouldn’t you know it…
Hunter Biden, the second son of U.S. President Joe Biden, also admitted to smoking toad venom in his 2021 memoir, Beautiful Things, in an attempt to help him break free of his addiction to crack cocaine.
Just saw an article about the quirky actress we were talking about a couple of days ago…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-9781893/Anna-Kendrick-lead-psychological-thriller-girls-trip-gone-horribly-wrong-Alice-Darling.html
–doesn’t sound like my cuppa, but some of her other work listed sounds interesting… and some of her quotes sound like she’s a nice and an interesting person too. Rare in today’s world.
n
Apropos of nothing: For whatever reason, the Swiss news had a small report about Sean Pean directing a father-daughter film in which he put his daughter (who apparently has very little acting experience) into the lead female role. And then decided to put himself into the main male role.
It was supposed to be an endearing tale, but it struck me exactly the other way around: How entitled does he have to be, to choose his daughter, instead of just about anyone else? To give himself a lead role? And how normalized is nepotism in Hollywood, that this is considered endearing? This surely wouldn’t fly in any other industry…