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trystinnA friend doesn't go on a diet because you are fat.
A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday.
A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend-and he's a priest.
All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.
Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead.
Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you.
Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.
"Car designers are just going to have to come up with an automobile that outlasts the payments.
Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?
Do you know what you call those who use towels and never wash them, eat meals and never do the dishes, sit in rooms they never clean, and are entertained till they drop? If you have just answered, "A house guest," you're wrong because I have just described my kids.
Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.
Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.
Education is so important when it comes to domesticity. I don't know why no one ever thought to paste a label on the toilet tissue spindle giving 1-2-3 directions for replacing the tissue on it. Then everyone in the house would know what Mama knows.
Everyone is guilty at one time or another of throwing out questions that beg to be ignored, but mothers seem to have a market on the supply. "Do you want a spanking or do you want to go to bed?" "Don't you want to save some of the pizza for your brother?" "Wasn't there any change?"
For some of us, watching a miniseries that lasts longer than most marriages is not easy.
For years my wedding ring has done its job. It has led me not into temptation. It has reminded my husband numerous times at parties that it's time to go home. It has been a source of relief to a dinner companion. It has been a status symbol in the maternity ward.
Getting out of the hospital is a lot like resigning from a book club. You're not out of it until the computer says you're out of it.
God created man, but I could do better.
Graduation day is tough for adults. They go to the ceremony as parents. They come home as contemporaries. After twenty-two years of child-raising, they are unemployed.
Great dreams... never even get out of the box. It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and say, "How good or how bad am I?" That's where courage comes in.
Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.
Have you any idea how many kids it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen? Three. It takes one to say, "What light?" and two more to say, "I didn't turn it on."
House guests should be regarded as perishables: Leave them out too long and they go bad.
Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter productivity.
Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.
How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?
Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes. It's unbridled, it's unplanned, it's full of surprises.
I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.
I don't know when pepper mills in a restaurant got to be right behind frankincense and myrrh in prominence. It used to be in a little jar that sat next to the salt on the table and everyone passed it around, sneezed, and it was no big deal.
I have a hat. It is graceful and feminine and give me a certain dignity, as if I were attending a state funeral or something. Someday I may get up enough courage to wear it, instead of carrying it.
I have a theory about the human mind. A brain is a lot like a computer. It will only take so many facts, and then it will go on overload and blow up.
I haven't trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I've never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex.
I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes.
I was leafing through a magazine where there was a before-and-after picture of a woman who went from a size 5 to a size 3 by liposuction. Was she serious? I've cooked bigger turkeys than her "before" picture.
I was terrible at straight items. When I wrote obituaries, my mother said the only thing I ever got them to do was die in alphabetical order.
I was too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security and too tired for an affair.
I will buy any creme, cosmetic, or elixir from a woman with a European accent.
I'm going to stop punishing my children by saying, "Never mind! I'll do it myself."
I'm trying very hard to understand this generation. They have adjusted the timetable for childbearing so that menopause and teaching a sixteen-year-old how to drive a car will occur in the same week.
I've decided life is too fragile to finish a book I dislike just because it cost $16.95 and everyone else loved it. Or eat a fried egg with a broken yolk (which I hate) when the dog would leap over the St. Louis Arch for it.
I've exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.
I've never vied for power in the family before. Pointing a box at the garage door and saying "Open!" was never a big deal, but holding that television tuner and realizing I alone control what is flashed on the screen brings out the Iacocca in me.
If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.
If you can't make it better, you can laugh at it.
In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn't danced in television.
In two decades I've lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.
It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows.
It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.
It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.
Just think of all those women on the Titanic who said, "No, thank you," to dessert that night. And for what!
Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.
Making coffee has become the great compromise of the decade. It's the only thing "real" men do that doesn't seem to threaten their masculinity. To women, it's on the same domestic entry level as putting the spring back into the toilet-tissue holder or taking a chicken out of the freezer to thaw.
Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.
Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.
Mother's words of wisdom: "Answer me! Don't talk with food in your mouth!"
My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.
My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.
My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?
Myths that need clarification: "Everyone in California lives on a white, sandy beach." False. The only people who live on California beaches are vacationers from Arizona, Utah, and Nevada who own condos.
Myths that need clarification: "No matter how many times you see the Grand canyon, you are still emotionally moved to tears." False. It depends on how many children the out-of-towners brought with them who kicked the back of your seat from Phoenix to Flagstaff and got their gum caught in your hair.
Never accept a drink from a urologist.
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated.
Never have more children than you have car windows.
Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.
Never order food in excess of your body weight.
No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there is wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick.
No self-respecting mother would run out of intimidations on the eve of a major holiday.
On vacations: We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies, and the sand out of our belongings.
Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I'm taking with me when I go.
One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child's name and how old he or she is.
Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.
People shop for a bathing suit with more care than they do a husband or wife. The rules are the same. Look for something you'll feel comfortable wearing. Allow for room to grow.
Phrases and their actual meanings: "My teacher has never liked me." Expect a phone call before lunch from the teacher informing you that your child has been launching hot dogs by compressing them inside a small Thermos and then removing the lid quickly.
Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It's gossip.
Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead.
Sometimes I can't figure designers out. It's as if they flunked human anatomy.
Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.
Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.
The age of your children is a key factor in how quickly you are served in a restaurant. We once had a waiter in Canada who said, "Could I get you your check?" and we answered, "How about the menu first?"
The art of never making a mistake is crucial to motherhood. To be effective and to gain the respect she needs to function, a other must have her children believe she has never engaged in sex, never made a bad decision, never caused her own mother a moment's anxiety, and was never a child.
The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.
There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, "Yes, I've got dreams, of course I've got dreams." Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they're still there.
There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.
There is nothing more miserable in the world than to arrive in paradise and look like your passport photo.
There is one thing I have never taught my body how to do and that is to figure out at 6 A.M. what it wants to eat at 6 P.M.
There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.
There's something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she's only measured water in it.
What's with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?
When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he's doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911.
When humor goes, there goes civilization.
When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me".
When it comes to cooking, five years ago I felt guilty "just adding water." Now I want to bang the tube against the countertop and have a five-course meal pop out. If it comes with plastic silverware and a plate that self-destructs, all the better.
When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it is a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway.
Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.
Why would anyone steal a shopping cart? It's like stealing a two-year-old.
You become about as exciting as your food blender. The kids come in, look you in the eye, and ask if anybody's home.
You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren't dying. They're merging into big conglomerates.
Youngsters of the age of two and three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub.
Erma Bombeck - how I do miss her"
Personal Note: Someone please remember to cremate me with the Cellery Salt.
A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday.
A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend-and he's a priest.
All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.
Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead.
Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you.
Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.
"Car designers are just going to have to come up with an automobile that outlasts the payments.
Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?
Do you know what you call those who use towels and never wash them, eat meals and never do the dishes, sit in rooms they never clean, and are entertained till they drop? If you have just answered, "A house guest," you're wrong because I have just described my kids.
Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.
Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.
Education is so important when it comes to domesticity. I don't know why no one ever thought to paste a label on the toilet tissue spindle giving 1-2-3 directions for replacing the tissue on it. Then everyone in the house would know what Mama knows.
Everyone is guilty at one time or another of throwing out questions that beg to be ignored, but mothers seem to have a market on the supply. "Do you want a spanking or do you want to go to bed?" "Don't you want to save some of the pizza for your brother?" "Wasn't there any change?"
For some of us, watching a miniseries that lasts longer than most marriages is not easy.
For years my wedding ring has done its job. It has led me not into temptation. It has reminded my husband numerous times at parties that it's time to go home. It has been a source of relief to a dinner companion. It has been a status symbol in the maternity ward.
Getting out of the hospital is a lot like resigning from a book club. You're not out of it until the computer says you're out of it.
God created man, but I could do better.
Graduation day is tough for adults. They go to the ceremony as parents. They come home as contemporaries. After twenty-two years of child-raising, they are unemployed.
Great dreams... never even get out of the box. It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and say, "How good or how bad am I?" That's where courage comes in.
Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.
Have you any idea how many kids it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen? Three. It takes one to say, "What light?" and two more to say, "I didn't turn it on."
House guests should be regarded as perishables: Leave them out too long and they go bad.
Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter productivity.
Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.
How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?
Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes. It's unbridled, it's unplanned, it's full of surprises.
I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.
I don't know when pepper mills in a restaurant got to be right behind frankincense and myrrh in prominence. It used to be in a little jar that sat next to the salt on the table and everyone passed it around, sneezed, and it was no big deal.
I have a hat. It is graceful and feminine and give me a certain dignity, as if I were attending a state funeral or something. Someday I may get up enough courage to wear it, instead of carrying it.
I have a theory about the human mind. A brain is a lot like a computer. It will only take so many facts, and then it will go on overload and blow up.
I haven't trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I've never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex.
I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes.
I was leafing through a magazine where there was a before-and-after picture of a woman who went from a size 5 to a size 3 by liposuction. Was she serious? I've cooked bigger turkeys than her "before" picture.
I was terrible at straight items. When I wrote obituaries, my mother said the only thing I ever got them to do was die in alphabetical order.
I was too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security and too tired for an affair.
I will buy any creme, cosmetic, or elixir from a woman with a European accent.
I'm going to stop punishing my children by saying, "Never mind! I'll do it myself."
I'm trying very hard to understand this generation. They have adjusted the timetable for childbearing so that menopause and teaching a sixteen-year-old how to drive a car will occur in the same week.
I've decided life is too fragile to finish a book I dislike just because it cost $16.95 and everyone else loved it. Or eat a fried egg with a broken yolk (which I hate) when the dog would leap over the St. Louis Arch for it.
I've exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.
I've never vied for power in the family before. Pointing a box at the garage door and saying "Open!" was never a big deal, but holding that television tuner and realizing I alone control what is flashed on the screen brings out the Iacocca in me.
If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.
If you can't make it better, you can laugh at it.
In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn't danced in television.
In two decades I've lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.
It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows.
It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.
It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.
Just think of all those women on the Titanic who said, "No, thank you," to dessert that night. And for what!
Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.
Making coffee has become the great compromise of the decade. It's the only thing "real" men do that doesn't seem to threaten their masculinity. To women, it's on the same domestic entry level as putting the spring back into the toilet-tissue holder or taking a chicken out of the freezer to thaw.
Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.
Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.
Mother's words of wisdom: "Answer me! Don't talk with food in your mouth!"
My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.
My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.
My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?
Myths that need clarification: "Everyone in California lives on a white, sandy beach." False. The only people who live on California beaches are vacationers from Arizona, Utah, and Nevada who own condos.
Myths that need clarification: "No matter how many times you see the Grand canyon, you are still emotionally moved to tears." False. It depends on how many children the out-of-towners brought with them who kicked the back of your seat from Phoenix to Flagstaff and got their gum caught in your hair.
Never accept a drink from a urologist.
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated.
Never have more children than you have car windows.
Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.
Never order food in excess of your body weight.
No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there is wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick.
No self-respecting mother would run out of intimidations on the eve of a major holiday.
On vacations: We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies, and the sand out of our belongings.
Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I'm taking with me when I go.
One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child's name and how old he or she is.
Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.
People shop for a bathing suit with more care than they do a husband or wife. The rules are the same. Look for something you'll feel comfortable wearing. Allow for room to grow.
Phrases and their actual meanings: "My teacher has never liked me." Expect a phone call before lunch from the teacher informing you that your child has been launching hot dogs by compressing them inside a small Thermos and then removing the lid quickly.
Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It's gossip.
Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead.
Sometimes I can't figure designers out. It's as if they flunked human anatomy.
Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.
Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.
The age of your children is a key factor in how quickly you are served in a restaurant. We once had a waiter in Canada who said, "Could I get you your check?" and we answered, "How about the menu first?"
The art of never making a mistake is crucial to motherhood. To be effective and to gain the respect she needs to function, a other must have her children believe she has never engaged in sex, never made a bad decision, never caused her own mother a moment's anxiety, and was never a child.
The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.
There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, "Yes, I've got dreams, of course I've got dreams." Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they're still there.
There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.
There is nothing more miserable in the world than to arrive in paradise and look like your passport photo.
There is one thing I have never taught my body how to do and that is to figure out at 6 A.M. what it wants to eat at 6 P.M.
There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.
There's something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she's only measured water in it.
What's with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?
When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he's doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911.
When humor goes, there goes civilization.
When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me".
When it comes to cooking, five years ago I felt guilty "just adding water." Now I want to bang the tube against the countertop and have a five-course meal pop out. If it comes with plastic silverware and a plate that self-destructs, all the better.
When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it is a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway.
Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.
Why would anyone steal a shopping cart? It's like stealing a two-year-old.
You become about as exciting as your food blender. The kids come in, look you in the eye, and ask if anybody's home.
You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren't dying. They're merging into big conglomerates.
Youngsters of the age of two and three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub.
Erma Bombeck - how I do miss her"
Personal Note: Someone please remember to cremate me with the Cellery Salt.
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Re: still working on courage...
Date: 2006-01-10 07:08 pm (UTC)Yep, insane herb freak here.
Re: still working on courage...
Date: 2006-01-11 03:06 am (UTC)Wonderful idea!
I have all of the above for herbs and spices too :)
seperate cupboards... good idea. wouldn't want the guests to make mandrake or mistletoe tea *wry grin*. And some of my herbs are NOT safe except in very particular usages.
I'm rusty, just recovering but lovelovelove brewing of all kinds.
Re: still working on courage...
Date: 2006-01-11 03:44 am (UTC)* With a red Sharpie I draw an X with a large dot over it (i.e. the poison symbol, pirate symbol of skull and crossbones) on any herb jar containing an herb that is poisonous when eaten. Three wavy lines above the "skull" means its poisonous to inhale. Makes a simple reminder, especially when others are using my supplies to make incenses!
* I buy those rotating spice racks (with the little bottles) at Thrift shops for herbs, resins, etc. that I have smaller amounts of. For a few bucks, you have yourself a great herbal organizer of things you don't buy in bulk, i.e. amber, etc.
* I keep a spreadsheet (I'm aware I have OCD issues here!) of all my herbs, their locations, their cateogory (i.e. resin, wood, herb) and the amount on hand, for easy reference when ordering. I cannot possibly be in the only coven where someone will ring me up and say "I'm ordering nettle, valerian, etc. in bulk, need any?"
* As a memorization process, when I add new herbs to my collection I make up a double sided large index card of its uses, names, diagrams and pictures, etc. to help me become more familiar with it!