Six Word Saturday Template: You’ve got poop on your shoe

No shit. This is how I’m spending my Saturday afternoon.  And not because I have a horse.

“What’s the scoop on poop?”  You my dear readers may ask…

Well. The family is about to drive about 45 minutes each way for the honor of scooping Hawthorne the Horse’s poop.  It’s a tradition now.  In the fall we drive to a friends ranch, scoop a trailer full of poop and compost it for next year’s garden.  We get the best produce.  So, I guess you could say, that’s some good shit. The proof is in the poop. Excellent excrement lends to an effusion of edibles.

I’ll stop now.

And, hands down it beats doing homework!

Happy Six Word Saturday.

Six Word Saturday Challenge is courtesy of Show My Face, Six Word Saturday

The world is a curious place, my friends, full of mayhem, malarkey and coincidence.

I definitely should not be blogging. For all the usual reasons these days, homework, homework and more homework. Oh, and I almost got killed three times this morning. Surely that’s a sign that I should skip homework, right?

Anyway, I had a new visitor to my blog today, (Yeay! Hi Tinkerbelle!) who apparently appreciates my stupid Halloween jokes. This factoid becomes important a bit later….

So I’m cruising along this morning to Spanish class. BTW, I finally figured out how to make accents and tildes in the proper places in text! Hurray me. So, now I can properly type, ¡Hola! Buenos días, ¿qué pasa? with all my upside-down punctuation and accents. After all we wouldn’t want to get my tu-s mixed up with my tú-s, crepe confused for crepé, or sábana with sabana. I mean, you wouldn’t eat tissue paper or see a lion in your bedsheets, now would you?

Hmn, where was I?

Ah, cruising along this morning on my way to Spanish class. I had to swerve quickly to avoid not one, not two, but three potentially nasty accidents where persons of dubious driving acumen pulled out in front of me. I happened to be moving along at 75mph in a red car on a four lane divided highway, and these imbeciles somehow overlooked me and pulled out, from a stop, directly into my lane and did not accelerate as if their life depended on it. Good gravy people, I have a wonky eye and I saw you coming from a mile away! I have a red car. It may be a P.O.S. but it’s still red! The first incident I watched thinking, “Surely this ‘tard is going to accelerate, surely. Jimminey Christmas, Captain Kidd, he’s not accelerating!” *Honk horn!* *Honk horn again* “Good gravy!” *SWERVE* *Tires squeal* “Breathe! Janie, breathe!”

By the time the 3rd incident transpired I was a hardened woman. Honk! HONK! HOOOOONNNNKKK! Swerve! “Get your ass outta my way dipsh*t! Where’d you people get your licenses? Cracker Jack boxes!” Obscene gesture.

Apparently, I missed getting the memo that today was almost-get-killed-on-your-way-to-Spanish-class day. I know because when I got home I checked my in box… Nope, no memo.

But as I drove home I was thinking of how I could use this for some blog fodder even though it’s kinda scary and perhaps not really funny at all and I really shouldn’t blog I should get started straight away on doing homework. But we all love stupid driver stories, right? As long as we don’t actually get into the accidents anyway. So, imagine my surprise when I decide to check out Tinkerbelle and see what’s going on in her blogdom first and find she posted about assessing one’s driving skills. Hmn. Curious and curiousier.

Coincidence? Yeah probably.

So, now I must banish myself again to the ol’ homework grind.

A thousand licks of a black moor…. Now that’s clean!

So, what began as a county fair prize is now a family obsession. Leif, who rolled his eyes and shook his head disparagingly when I gave the spud a dollar to play the ping pong ball game to win a fish, said to me when we went shopping for a fish tank:

Leif: Hey, let’s get a big tank and get more fish.

Janie: Seriously?

Leif: Yeah, I love fish tanks.

Janie: But you gave me the hairy eyeball about the spud winning the fish at the fair!

Leif: Yeah, whatever. Do you wanna get a big tank?

Janie: Well, I guess it would look cool on my buffet.

Leif: We could watch fish TV.

So, a week later, what started as a $1 whim has end up to be like a $130 investment. We are now the proud owners of this:

And it’s so cool.

Yesterday, we went rock hunting, because the fish needed some feng-shui-ey decor and I was not going to spend $5 for a bag of ugly colors-not-appearing-in-nature pebbles and $10 for a resin “cave” for fish modern art. Instead we drove and hour and 45 minutes, Rupert in tow, to the big lake and, in a rain storm replete with thunder and lightning, we hand picked all the rocks in the tank that are bigger than a pea. Two and a half hours later we scrambled up from the beach and changed out of our muddy wet clothes in the front seat of the Jeep and went to the BEST ITALIAN RESTAURANT EVER. We were cold, damp and hungry, and if we didn’t think about how much money we spent on gas and dinner, we could congratulate ourselves on saving about $15 on fish tank decor.

After driving home, we spent a racy Saturday night boiling rocks and arranging the tank. Then, ice cream and drinks at hand, we sat watching fish TV until 10:30 (last night’s programming included the Cannes festival award winning documentary where black moors lick the algae off a snail- just look at that shine!) and picking out names for our fish.

Spud named her goldfish Libby.
The plecostomus is named Sparticus.
The serpae are named Jose and Hosebee (say it out loud).
The black moors are named Penny and Cletus.
The tiger barbs are Nemo and Marlin.
The black high fin tetra is named Hyphen.
The shubunkins are named Harley and Quinn.
And, the snail is named Gary.

Yes, I know. We live on the wild side. We really need to settle down.

The Best Days of Summer part 2

Greetings blog friends! Here’s where Janie tortures you with the rest of her July Holiday photos, treasure hunting was good at the swap meet:

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The Best Days of Summer

Every year at the house of Jones we eagerly anticipate our county fair and the swap meet in the next county over. At the fair we get to see all the critters, eat gyros, watch silly shows, ride the carnival rides, and watch the draft horse pull. Some years it’s parka weather, with rain and wind. Some years it’s sunburn city in spaghetti tanks and sandals. This year was the latter category. But regardless much fun is always had. And now I will torture you with photos from the fair (swap meet photos will follow tomorrow):

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We fish you a happy holiday

Friday we took the spud to the county fair.

We had a blast. The spud was tall enough and brave enough to ride all the rides. Of course she also wanted to try all the carnival games, but I was not about to shell out a truck load of cash for her to either come away empty handed or worse yet, win a crappy toy that she didn’t need and would soon be forgotten in the deep dark recesses of her closet.

However, near the back of the fairgrounds we came upon a game where for one dollar you would get 6 ping pong balls. If you could land a ping pong ball in one of many little cups you won a goldfish. I had a soft spot for this kind of game, as once as a young spud myself I actually was allowed to play this game at a fair and won a fish. So thinking there was no chance that chance would favor my family twice in two generations, I let the spud play. Her second ball went right into a cup as if meant to go there. A perfect toss. So then I stood there sweating it out that she’d get more balls into cups. Luckily, I think, we only walked away with one fish, but the guy handing out the fish was kind enough to grant our request for one of the multicolored fish. It’s really rather pretty, for a cheap feeder goldfish.

Good job, Spud.