Mild Violence

This weekend the Pilver family crammed into the car and drove a couple hours to my nieces birthday party.  She celebrated at a bowling alley complete with an arcade and roughly 74 screaming kids.  I like bowling alleys, what’s not to like?  There’s bowling, which is fun even if you are as terrible as I am.  You can always find gobs of junk food.  One rum and coke served is roughly the equivalent of seven rum and cokes and they charge you two dollars.  They have an arcade!

I was pumping quarters into the skee-ball machine, hogging it from all the little kids with big patient eyes when Mr Pilver came up to me and told me he had to show me something.  There was a Terminator Game:

Here we have a gruesome face and an image of a gun, pointed directly at my face.  Now, in my best Crocodile Hunter voice I’ll say, “Let’s have a closah luk!”

I severely doubt many parents hand their kids a pile of tokens and remind them to only play the non-violent games.  It’s basically a frenzy of running from game to game and plopping the tokens in and grabbing tickets and moving on as quickly as possible.   But, why bother having the stickers when they really mean nothing at all?  Although, in reality, skee-ball can become highly violent when you are playing next to the young boy with bad aim who just inhaled twenty-four ounces of Mountain Dew and a few packs of Starburst.

Even an article about MySpace doesn’t care about MySpace

Justin Timberlake apparently is working for MySpace.  He is trying to get it going in a new direction, being as it is an unused social networking site at this point.  Thankfully I never deleted my account and I can zip back there any time I want, which at this point is never. But forget about MySpace for a minute.  Look at the conclusion of the article.  The final thought the author of this story wanted to leave you with:

So, is it HOT or NOT?

Movies You Haven’t Heard Of!

There’s a lovely store in a town near where I live called The Variety Store.  It’s a fitting name for the store, as there seems to be no general theme of what they sell.  Think dollar store with items of many prices.  I’ve been in there a few times needing odds and ends of what nots.  They also sell things that no one needs, including movies you haven’t heard of.  The other day as I was driving past the store, I noticed the ever changing sign in the parking lot of The Variety Store acknowledged this fact.

This made me laugh and caused me to long for a movie I had never heard of as well.  Then I remembered the movie I purchased there last spring based on the title alone.

Honey Baby, Honey Baby!

I know from the poster alone you want a taste of what the movie is like.  So here’s a video I found on YouTube that should entice you to find the film and watch it in its entirety.

Lucy Says, “Hi.” (or something like that)

Lucy started smiling a couple weeks ago.  It really melts your heart to see a tiny baby smile.  Her smiles are wide mouthed and adorable, and usually accompanied with coos that sound a lot like, “hi”.  I finally got some on video.  Before I had Lucy I figured I would leave the parental bragging posts to The Max’s life and spare one child in our home from future embarrassment, but that’s not fair to Lucy.  Here’s the first of hopefully dozens of moments she will have floating around the internet forever.

Egg Coffee

Well, it only took five days for me to break my resolution.  If I post twice today will it make up for my laziness?   It was laziness that prevented me from posting.  Last night I drank a beer, and I was down and out before the last of the bottle was gone.  So, today we are going to talk about something that will wake you up!  Egg Coffee.

It is that easy.

Supposedly, this concoction is something founded by Scandinavian Lutherans ie all the old ladies in my family.  The recipe is beyond simple and the result is fabulous.

I am a coffee snob.  I never meant to be this way, but ten years of making and studying coffee and espresso for a living left me unable to enjoy a cup of joe that was less than great. I’m always on the lookout for the best of the best coffee shops.  Sadly, in my area there are very few good ones.  The best coffee I enjoyed around here, amazingly, was in the entrance of the Central Washington Hospital on the morning I went in to deliver Lucy.  The next day I sent Mr. Pilver down to the lobby to the coffee stand to buy me another latte and it was no fluke.  It was fantastic.  I cannot drive fifty minutes to the hospital for coffee every day, I cannot even justify driving to the nearest town with the price of gas.  So, I am stuck making my own.

My coffee maker is not wonderful, so one day I decided to throw some egg shells in like my dad used to when he’d percolate coffee on the stove.  I’m obsessed with finding the origins of things on Google and Wikipedia, and I looked up putting egg shells in coffee to see where it began.  And it turns out you can put the innards of the egg in the grounds before brewing as well.  I was worried about whether the egg would cook and I would face death by salmonella  in my experiment.  It did cook, and it tasted much better than without the egg, smoother and less bitter.

Try it next time you make some coffee.  With seven chickens laying we always have extra eggs so I have started using an egg a day in my pot of coffee.  Post lottery winning I will buy a ritzy espresso machine and create world class lattes in my own kitchen.  Until then it’s egg coffee for breakfast.

Toast

I haven’t watched this.  I just ate toast.  I needed a post.  AND, that rhymed.

Bye Doggy

I don’t feel like writing much of a post today. Today Mr. Pilver’s dog, Bailey, was put down.  Bailey lived to be fourteen years old and had been having a hard time walking for quite some time.  She took a fall around Christmas and within a few days couldn’t even stand up.  Bailey may have not been the best dog in the world, but she was easily the best dog I have ever met, a dream of a pet.

We buried her in the flower bed, where she loved to lay in the summer because the dirt was cold from being watered.  Mr. P. added a plate of table scraps, a stick, and one of her toys before sprinkling some of his mother’s ashes (She passed away in 2005 and was the one who him Bailey).

When I moved out to Washington to marry Mr. P., Bailey was quite upset that her place in the bed was taken.  And for some time, we had to share the other side of the bed.  She always snuggled for a few minutes, grew too hot for the blankets, and resumed her spot on the colder floor.  I’m lucky to have a husband who loves me so much, but I was happy to share the top spot in his heart with Bailey.  Actually, I think he loved her more, she was that good.

Bailey 1997-2012

Dreams are a good time

I had a dream, a long time ago.  In this dream everyone in this bizarre class I was taking had to sing all the lyrics to the song chosen for them or they failed the class.  I was terrified of the song choice the instructor was going to give me.  Everyone who was in the class screwed the lyrics at some point of their song exam.  When my name was called, I walked to the front of the room and waited for my sure doom.  The instructor said to me, “Hold On by Wilson Phillips.”  KILLER!   I belted out the entire song from beginning to end with no mistakes.  Break free from the chains, indeed.

A resolution I am sure to break.

It happened again.  The calender ran out and I had to buy a new one.  This New Year was unlike most in the recent past.  We stayed home and partook of a family night complete with Monopoly (I won) and home made party hats. The Max was growing bored around ten o’clock and I figured he would soon fall asleep.  So, I decided to create a New Year’s time capsule.  We drug out the craft supplies and went to work on a new tradition I hope we continue for a long time.

Inside is a piece of paper listing all the things we liked best about 2011.  Of course it began with the arrival of Lucy.  Also, our trip to New Mexico was a highlight.  Around a dozen events made the list of the Pilver Family’s favorites.  I figure we can do this on or around New Years every year.  Someday we’ll have a bunch of pieces of paper with things we loved about each year listed inside a decorated old Skippy container.

I don’t have any resolutions this year.  I would like to become a minimalist in order that I have less things to clean.  Mr. Pilver and The Max are both pack rats, so I doubt that will be accomplished. I know, I’ve got it!  I resolve to blog every day in 2012.  Let’s see how long that one lasts

Happy New Year to you all!

Breastfeeding in Public: Get over it.

Raise your hand if you’ve never seen a boob.  Of course you have. Boobs are awesome.  Kasey Kahne, some NASCAR guy, saw a boob the other day and it grossed him out.  I don’t begrudge Kasey for being grossed out.  I pity him for his ignorance, and I cannot believe that this is still an issue.

I don’t like to play hard opinions often, but I will now.  Feeding a baby in the best way for the first year of their lives includes breastfeeding.  Breastfeeding mothers go out in public.  Breastfeeding occurs in public, mostly hidden under a blanket.  But if a mother does not have access to a blanket, or if she simply chooses to not cover, GET OVER IT. It’s a boob.  You’ve seen them before, and you will see them again.  And in this case, it’s not because a mother is starving for attention or would like to turn you on.  She’s feeding a baby. If there were no taboos attached to breastfeeding, this supposed attention whoring would hardly be possible.

I breast fed The Max for a year.  It was awesome.  It’s free food, better food. When I brought Lucy home from the hospital I figured I’d better cover her up when Max was in the room, because I did not want to make him uncomfortable, seeing his mom’s boob and all.  That lasted about two feedings.  Baby’s get hot and sweaty and uncomfortable under a blanket for twenty minute stretches while you are feeding.  Max got over it within a day.  I hope being around when Lucy breast feeds will lead to him being comfortable when he sees another mother breast feed in public someday.  It’s completely normal.  It always has been completely normal.

If you have a problem with public breastfeeding, you are wrong.  Very few things are black and white in this world.  There is no gray area here though, get over it.