Velveteen Mind

What's your nut factor?

Guest post by Maternal Spark

Hi Velveteen Mind readers. My name is Heather and I blog over at Maternal Spark – a blog for and about creative moms. I have to admit I’m a little nervous showing up over here, with a new audience full of people I don’t know. What do you expect from me anyway? I normally write about creative inspirations, roadblocks and projects but I don’t know if you guys care about any of that so instead I’ll go with the random weirdness that is me. I hope it helps you with your holiday shopping. That will make sense, just stay with me people.

I am the one on my family’s shopping list that everyone groans over because they don’t know what to buy me. They ask “Hey Heather, what do you want for Christmas?” and I say, “I don’t know, I don’t need anything.”

Case in point. I still have $200 in my wallet from my birthday. It was my 30^th birthday. Nobody knew what to get me so I ended up with cash. I originally had $250 but I spent some on notebooks and a novel because I love buying books. Anyway, that money is still unspent in my wallet because I can’t figure out what to buy. My birthday was in August.

Then today, we were driving home from some random errand (likely picking up some sort of baby paraphernalia) it was so minor I’ve already forgotten. But my point is, we drove past some garage sale signs and I flung open the door of the minivan and ninja rolled out of there – towards said garage sale. I gave some old lady who was eyeing up a collection of cut glass tableware the stink eye and she cowered in fear, moving out of my way.

I snapped up a pair of glass salt and pepper shakers that were topped with silver wrapped around pearlescent buttons. I thought I’d found my treasure for the day but then, I turned around.

There on the table, amongst the vintage doilies and an avocado green blender was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen (that week). A giant nut shaped, nut bowl with crackers and picks. Whoa! That baby was coming home with me, no doubt about it! Guess how much I paid, guess come on…….$2! Only TWO BUCKS!

That two dollar nut bowl gave me more joy than any                                                   $200 from-the-mall-purchase could ever provide.

No wonder nobody knows what to buy me. Poor suckers.

Anyway, my point here is to think about that person on your gift list who you never know what to buy for and go looking for their giant nut. It certainly isn’t about how much money you spend…it’s about the nut factor.

Well guys, it was fun playing in someone else's park today.  If you enjoyed this post come on over to my sandbox to say hi.  You can find me at Maternal Spark - it's where Creative Moms Shine!

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Rickrolling 101, or Holy crap that's a lot of YouTube links

Guest post by Musing 

I'm in the car with my 19-yr-old daughter and 17-yr-old son. They're chatting about different things when I hear the word, "Rickrolled."

"What's that?" I ask.

"Oh. My. God," my son says. "You don't know what a Rickroll is?!? How can you be on the Internet as much as you are and not know what a Rickroll is?"

"FAIL!" says my daughter.

My son huffs. "A Rickroll is when someone gets you to click on a link you think's for one thing, but instead it takes you to a music video by Rick Astley."

"Who's Rick Astley?"

17-yr-old son slaps his forehead.

Daughter explains, "He's a pop singer, and his song Never Gonna Give You Up was a big hit in the 80's."

"Ah, no wonder," I say, "I totally missed 80's music. I was too busy popping out four babies that decade."

Son says, "You are so not cool, Mom."

"I'll have you know I'm one hip mother," I say. "Who drove through a blizzard last year so she could scream herself silly at a rock concert? Who wants a tattoo on her back as soon as she can afford one? Who has a humongous crush on a certain Gundam Seed pilot?"

"Oh dear god," my son says, shaking his head.

Back at the house we look up The Video and, wow, it seems this Rickrolling thing is a YouTube phenomenon right up there with The Dramatic Chipmunk, World of Warcraft dances, and Fred.

What's the Password for Sleep?

Post script but one for you to read before this craziness...  I saved this post as a draft last night in case I woke up this morning and realized I had actually just gone insane.  Although this is completely unintelligible, it makes me laugh so I'm going to post it.  Plus cheat and date it from yesterday because GoBloMeMoFo!

~~~

Sweet tea + Claritin-D + moonlight = Trucker pills. Apparently.

I say "+ moonlight" because:

Sweet tea + Claritin-D + sunlight = Sleeping Pills.  Absolutely.

It's 3 a.m. and I am still awake.  Goose received a couple of free kids' meal coupons at a local restaurant from school today and we also happened to receive some much appreciated anniversary cash in the mail, so we spent dinner out as a family this evening. 

By the time that surf-n-turf extravaganza was over, I was exhausted and ready to sleep the sleep of the dead.

That was six hours ago.

I'm one of those periodic insomniacs that insist on toughing it out, tossing and turning and refusing to get out of bed because surely I will pass out any minute now.

Instead, my mind starts this bizarre What's the Password for Sleep? game.

This usually happens when I've started a new job or project that requires learning a new coding system.  For instance, I used to work in an inpatient mental health ward and would track the patients' activities on a coded chart every 15 minutes.  Codes were recorded for what room they were in and their activity, e.g. "common room" and "claiming that fairies are eating her hair" would be coded as "CR" and "FH". 

We may not have had a code for the fairy hair bit, but you follow me.

After particularly difficult days... let's say days when a schizophrenic would threaten to lick my kneecaps off if I didn't give them an extra hour outside for smokes...  insomnia would hit.  I would find myself lying in bed for hours and just as I was about to fall asleep I would think, "What's the code for sleeping?"

But it was never so simple as just remembering the code, because most of the time it was something randomly infuriatingly dream-like, such as "What's the code for fuchsia fish?"   

Right.

Tonight?  Tonight's code quest has been the result of spending the day working on HTML code for a few website projects.

Every time I am just about to fall asleep, I think, "What's the align code for entrance to the jamba cave?" 

I don't even know what a "jamba cave" is.

Good grief, this is turning out to be a long night.

By the way, does anyone know the code for bolding carrots?

 

 

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