What's Rattling Around in My Head

1. DramaQueen did not test into the gifted program. She’s kind of bummed about it. I’m kind of bummed, too, because she tests high in two of the four categories, so I guess she’s just supposed to continue being bored and unchallenged in those two.

2. I still don’t understand Twitter.

3. It’s possible that my ancestors came from an area around Dunakin castle (named something else now) on the Isle of Sky. I would like that to be true just because I like the name Isle of Sky. One of my brothers is the family genealogist and actually enjoys roaming around cemeteries and poking around in dusty old papers.

4. One of my relatives forged some documents trying to establish that we had our own clan. I think it more likely that we were peasants hanging onto a protector clan by the skin of our teeth.

5. Sometimes I think about the fact that I’m here because my ancestors managed to survive the Black Plague.

6. For some reason, after I drop Firecracker off in the morning and start my drive to work, whatever song is playing on the radio will make me cry. This morning it was Bruce Hornsby’s That’s Just the Way It Is.

7. WiiFit. Is. The. Best. Thing. Ever. So far I excel at the hula hoop.

8. Why did Taylor Swift get a recording contract and why does anyone like Love Story, which I vote one of the suckiest songs ever?

9. Except, there’s the Jonas Brothers. Rolling Stone actually compared them to the Beatles. That reviewer was obviously smoking crack, probably supplied by the bros’ record company.

10. DramaQueen thinks my music sucks and all the singers look weird. And so the generational conflict begins.

11. Yet DramaQueen has not yet figured out that it is very uncool to watch ballroom dancing.

12. I think coupons are a frakkin waste of time. I get so tired of the same old advice about online coupons (most of the sites list the same deals and more than half the time they aren’t coupons at all but some in-store deal for something I don’t need in the first place). I don’t use half the products that appear in these coupons, and the coupons that require multiple purchases are particularly useless. How many things will I buy name-brand? I won’t buy store brand of: Mac N Cheese (Anything but Kraft is immediately detectable as not-Kraft. My kids have radar or something), cereal (man the knock-offs taste awful), coffee and ice-cream. You could spend hours just printing, clipping and organizing the bloody coupons.

13. You can save a lot of money by just not buying anything. No need to use the coupons for the fruit roll-ups, the pre-packaged meals, or the disgust-o snack food.

14. Have you noticed at Walgreens that you don’t even have to have the store coupon on you? You don’t even have to know about the coupon. The cashier keeps their newspaper insert at hand and checks it against your purchase and then just zaps the coupon with her laser to register the savings. That rocks.

15. Now, if someone invents a card where I can download the bloody coupons and hand it over at the register which it automatically checks for matching items, that might be worthwhile.

16. I have got to do something about off-season clothes storage. My closet is the size of a broom cupboard, and my clothes are plotting a mutiny. Already I cannot find some of them.

17. Our dishwasher is exhibiting a desire to remove itself from our cabinetry and advance face down into the center of the kitchen.

18. I have 9 years’ worth of photos in boxes. None of them are in photo albums.

19. From the amount of mail we get, I think at least 12 other people use to live in our house, a number of whom the IRS and Social Security are trying to contact.

20. For reasons I cannot comprehend, Dear Husband does not like Monty Python. Now I have no one to laugh with me over The Upper Class Twit of the Year or The Ministry of Silly Walks.