By Heather O.
Just so you know, ‘Random Crap’ is code here at MMW for ‘I have nothing profound to say, my brain is actually slowly turning to mush, but we put something up to keep y’all coming back because our traffic stats are sacred’. I tell you this in the interest of full disclosure, lest you think we tricked you somehow into thinking this blog was thoughtful. We are now no longer liable for your brain turning into mush as you read us. See? Sometimes it pays to have a husband who studies the law.
I joined Facebook yesterday at the request of a friend I haven’t seen or talked to in years. I like this friend, and she has exceptionally cute children whom I miss very much, so I decided to join the revolution so I can troll the internet for pictures of other people’s kids I know and decide if they are as cute as mine. Behold, yet another way to completely waste my time sitting on my bum, ignoring my laundry.
Poor laundry. It’s like the drunk red-headed uncle at the family party nobody likes to talk to, but everybody knows is there. Especially when it starts to stink.
The only problem with Facebook is that when I find other people and link them as friends, I discover how exciting their lives are, and again, I want to ignore my laundry and whisk my family away to some African jungle Safari just so I can take pictures, post them on my profile, and say SEE? We’re cool TOO!
Hmmm…now there’s a thought for Spring Break…
I got a flyer in the mail last week with a big picture of our local hospital on it. The flyer read, ‘Do you want to work here? We have a job for you on the weekends! Call us!’ My mouth fell open, because yes, I do want to work there, and I was just wondering if they had a job for me, and it was sort of something like out of the movies. If I worked there on the weekends, Dh could stay with the kids so we wouldn’t have to spring for childcare, and I would be able to patch the hole in my resume that is the year 2007.
But having a job would seriously cut into my Facebook time, not to mention COMPLETELY conflicting with my jungle safari plan.
Life’s full of tough choices, dang it.
Spring is here, which means, of course, that our garden is up and going. I planted lots of good stuff, and proudly pointed it all out to DH when he got home from his business trip. He said, “You didn’t plant them in straight rows.”
Well, of COURSE I planted them in straight rows, except for the part where I had some extra seeds in my hands, which I just sort of brushed into the dirt because I didn’t feel like composting them, or throwing them away, or actually getting up and walking the three steps to where the seed packet package was and putting them back in.
It should be an interesting harvest.
But everything is labeled with some very cool professional looking label thingies I picked up at Home Depot, so that makes up for it all. Besides, most people around here don’t know the difference between a radish stalk and a weed, so they still think we’re cool for even having a garden, even if it will look a little higgledy piggledy AND we’ve never been on an African safari. We have good neighbors who just love us for WHO WE ARE.
Plus, we’re going to let them have some free blueberries from the blueberry bushes that I am ordering today, so even if they don’t like us, they will have to suck up to us if they want some of that free blueberry goodness. And I’m ok with that.
New word for the day: oviparous. Anybody know what that means? Well, I’ll tell you. It means that an animal lays eggs. And how do I know this? Because I had the following conversation with my 6 year old last night:
“Mom, isn’t it funny that a spider lays eggs AND has hair? Spiders are sort of like mammals like that.”
“Spiders aren’t mammals, honey. And their hair is different than ours. Spiders are called arachnids.”
(in his best “DUH” voice), “I KNOW spiders aren’t mammals, mom. They’re oviparous, but they still have hair, which makes them HALF oviparous, and, like, sort of HALF mammal.”
Even DH had never heard the word oviparous. And that man has the vocabulary of Zeus. (Ok, I don’t really know if that means anything, what I’m trying to say is that DH uses lots and lots of big ‘ol words.)
See? There you have it. A new word for y’all. Our brains aren’t mushy after all. Don’t ever say we don’t teach you here at MMW. We are nothing if not educational.




wow. The things one learns!
Hey, maybe that job at the hospital is going with a crew of dr.s *to* a jungle and doing the whole safari thing over spring break. Probably something to protect people from oviparous arachnids, or planting special veggies to boost bone health in native tribes. You never know. You could get the job, do whatever with the hospital folks and then come home and write up a huge post for FB.
You’re cool like that! Well except for that laundry pile. Yikes!
Comment #1 by s'meeMarch 19th, 2008 at 8:53 amI can’t wait to hear what sprouts up in your garden! It would be fun to just toss all the seeds in a big envelope and randomly scatter them- no? Is that a bad idea? There’s a reason I don’t garden, beacause that sounds like a good idea to me…
I had no idea spiders were Oviparous. And your DH does inded have a wealth of $10 words in his vocab reservoirs.
Comment #2 by Tracy MMarch 19th, 2008 at 9:47 amGoodness! I’ll have to read through the rest of your post later; I just got to the “neglecting laundry part”; gotta go!
Comment #3 by ResearcherMarch 19th, 2008 at 9:47 amMy daughter came home from Kindergarten last year talking about the word oviparous. I seriously had to look it up on the internet (spelling it the best way that I could) to learn what it meant. It’s amazing what kids learn at such a young age.
Comment #4 by lizMarch 19th, 2008 at 9:49 amHmm…. Tracy, randomly tossing seeds would be fun, but not necessarily conducive to a productive garden. Different plants have to be spaced at different intervals, and plants have vastly different space requirements. For example, if you are planting squash, they need LOTS of room in your garden to sprawl, and if they are tangled, and don’t have enough room, they don’t flower as well, and bees can’t pollinate them as well. A radish grows straight up, and doesn’t even need bees, but can’t have another radish seed right next it, or else the radish’s growth gets stunted.
Also, you need to rotate crops and soil because different plants pull different nutrients from the soil, so you need to know where things have been planted, year after year. There are also different heat and light requirements, and vegetables aren’t all happy being planted at the same time every year. I put in lettuce, spinach, carrots, and radishes right now, because they can handle and even like frost. We are waiting until after the danger of frost has passed for the tomatoes, peppers, and peas.
I’m not an organized chick really by nature, but I’ve learned the hard way that gardens thrive when they are well ordered.
Ok, I’m done geeking out about my garden. Sorry.
Comment #5 by Heather O.March 19th, 2008 at 10:15 amResearcher-
Is that your nice way of saying, “My what an excessively long post!”? Sorry, guess I’m feeling wordy today.
S’mee, you have an excellent way of looking at things.
And what’s up with teaching kindergartners the word “oviparous”? Clearly something new from MY kindergarten days.
Comment #6 by Heather O.March 19th, 2008 at 10:17 amNo, I don’t mind length. I seriously, actually just saw the washer repairman out the door and need to go get caught up on the laundry. I’ve managed to make it to my advanced age (mid 30s) without ever reading James Joyce (by choice, not simple illiteracy), so after about three or four pages of random you-know-what I would start asking, “what’s her point?” but to answer your short question at great length, it’s like Goethe said, “When ideas fail, words come in very handy.”
Comment #7 by ResearcherMarch 19th, 2008 at 10:28 amIs not knowing what is in your garden kinda like not knowing that is in a can that the lable has fallen off of?
Comment #8 by JSMarch 19th, 2008 at 10:48 amTracy you could always try that with flower seeds. My dad bought a can of wild flower seeds one year and planted them in a huge flower bed in our front yard, it was beautiful. I’ve wanted to do that ever since, but hubby likes things planted just so.
Comment #9 by moddyMarch 19th, 2008 at 11:07 amSo Heather, did you ever find out what the job on the weekends at the hospital was? I’m dying to know, cause I just have to know those things, you just can’t leave it hanging. Well I guess you could, so I’m asking in my best voice with a smile on my face.
Sorry, moddy. It was a job filling in per-diem as a speech language pathologist. That’s what I did for a living before I became a mom.
Comment #10 by Heather O.March 19th, 2008 at 11:45 am“A vocabulary like Zeus.” Ha! Awesome.
Comment #11 by MarisaMarch 19th, 2008 at 12:54 pmDon’t you hate when your 6-year-old one-ups ‘ya! It is a good thing I don’t have a 6-year-old. It is not nearly so painful being shown up by a 7-year-old.
Comment #12 by JennaMarch 19th, 2008 at 1:32 pmall’y'all are just waay to funny… thanks for the laugh today… (specially like the red headed uncle/laundry diatride… gotta run to the br)
Comment #13 by nancyMarch 19th, 2008 at 1:46 pmnw
I joined facebook a couple of months ago. Why, you ask? Well, to play silly word games (prolific and noggin, both kinda like boggle) with my brother and sister, of course. So, now I waste a lot of time playing silly word games. But I also talk to my brother and sister more, and I can label it “family bonding,” so it’s all good
Comment #14 by VadaMarch 19th, 2008 at 2:53 pmHeather O–I think I found you on facebook….are you standing on a mountain trail with shorts on? please say yes….
Comment #15 by miggyMarch 19th, 2008 at 3:59 pmHA! No way would I put a picture of me in shorts on the internet. NO. WAY. Not me. Sorry.
Comment #16 by Heather O.March 19th, 2008 at 5:25 pmBoth Facebook and MySpace kinda scare me- And I have no logical reason why- I mean, I blog for heaven’s sake- I put all kinds of stuff out on the internet. Why the other sites make me pause I have no idea.
Comment #17 by Tracy MMarch 19th, 2008 at 6:10 pmI’m with you, Tracy. I guess because it’s more info about how to directly get in touch with you, and you use your real name (although you don’t have to, I guess). It’s a tool specifically designed to make it easy for people to find you. It’s protected in the sense that you are in charge of who sees your profile, but it still feels a little bit more exposed than a blog.
Comment #18 by Heather O.March 19th, 2008 at 6:15 pmWhat a coincidence. There was a spider in my bathroom the other day. I forgot to have anyone remove it. And now, thanks to my acute arachnophobia, I can’t pick up the dirty laundry on the floor, so it’s sitting there, damp and stinky.
Comment #19 by Susan MMarch 19th, 2008 at 6:25 pmI’ll throw some more words at you. Viviparous is the word that describes animals that give birth to live young. More controversial is ovoviviparous for animals that form an egg inside the uterus and it hatches there, ending up with them giving birth to live young. Some scientists feel that’s a stupid distinction and do not use it, since obviously when it comes down to it, there’s an egg involved somewhere in all animal’s development, even if it’s not a shelled one.
Okay, the zoology major will shut up now.
Comment #20 by FirebyrdMarch 19th, 2008 at 6:34 pmI love the random crap posts, especially becuase the replies are so random too.
So here’s my randomness:
My family has had the stomach flu for a week now, and I’m SICK of CLEANING UP PUKE! Also, bitter that my Dh “gets” to go to work, while I take care of kids’ puke, and mine. He soooo owes me. (We are on the verge of getting better, though. So That is good).
Other tidbits of randomness: I used to have aracnaphobia (and general bug-a-phobia), but then I realized and dealt with the underlying casues of it, and I don’t have it anymore! But I still leave dirty laundry on the bathroom floor. I have no excuse. I’m just lazy like that. Of course, that is until I get on my cleaning jag (which co-incides with my PMS). Anyone else have the urge to clean during PMS? Probably just me…:)
Comment #21 by mellocelloMarch 19th, 2008 at 9:21 pmSusan M,
Comment #22 by mellocelloMarch 19th, 2008 at 9:29 pmjust sos you know, my above comment wasn’t meant to make you feel like you should get “cured” of your arachnaphobia or anything. I reread it, and it sounded sort of snooty of me to say that. I didn’t mean to make light of it.
This post made my day. I love the random posts.
Comment #23 by RWMarch 19th, 2008 at 10:49 pmFacebook isn’t so bad I’m on there with all my sisters and we have a grand old time. Myspace is a little teeny-er (no, not as in smaller- actually I think it’s bigger…) but you can stalk people much more easily on myspace.
Comment #24 by Al-anonMarch 20th, 2008 at 5:08 amI guess that’s bad if you’re the stalkee but I love to look up old friends and acquaintances. I can find out what they’re up to without actually having to contact them, which is really what I want to do anyway. Actually contacting them requires me to act interested in their lives when really I just want to make sure that I’m doing better than they are.
That probably makes me a bad person.
Wow… my head hurts- too much info for 5am
I have that job, and I have to wake up early to get to read my blog people… maybe I should quit– I can read more, and travel.. and…
Comment #25 by MelMarch 20th, 2008 at 5:26 amDon’t worry, Mello, I make fun of my phobia all the time, as does everyone else in the household. They do enable me though. My husband and kids are very good about taking care of spiders for me. I was very frustrated when my youngest went through a “don’t kill any living creature” phase, though.
What was the underlying cause of your phobia? I can’t think of what might be underlying mine. I can’t even think of a spider without shuddering.
Comment #26 by Susan MMarch 20th, 2008 at 8:44 amwellllll, since you asked, here’s the story:
When I was about four and five years old, my mom and I lived in a basement apartment with her boyfriend. This place was INFESTED with bugs. Mostly ants, but roly-pollies, and spiders too. These two years were not the happiest for me, or my mom. Her boyfriend would spank me HARD, over and over, for the littlest things, and he did it *a lot*. There were drugs around, lying to my friends to cover for my mom’s boyfriend and his drug use, and other things…plus, he hit my mom a few times. It was not a good place to be (combine all that with the bugs)..and there you have it! Phobia born! Well, after I got married, my DH and I talked about all the crap that went on during those two years, and I had the breakthrough that maybe I was so afraid of bugs becuase I associated them with all the pain and fear from my childhood. Once I connected those dots, I was not nearly as afraid of bugs. I still don’t *like* them, but I no longer think I might suffocate or pass out if I see one. I just get my DH to squash it if he’s home, or I do my “carnal amazon-woman banshee yell” and squash it myself with a big boot or something. Yuck. I could NEVER have done that before my “breakthrough.”
Comment #27 by mellocelloMarch 20th, 2008 at 9:59 pmHeather. Hey, I’m an SLP, too. And is your dh an atty?? Cuz mine is too! I know of a few of us out there (Couples w SLP/Atty combo). weird. so about that per diem thing… if you’re serious, why not try contract work on your own terms? I like that better than per diem… how’s that for random?
Comment #28 by hayngrlMarch 20th, 2008 at 10:21 pm