auntlada

I have heard since I was a child that weddings and funerals were prime opportunities for burglars, especially weddings in areas where the bride's family displayed gifts in the home for people to see before the wedding. (I swear that was a thing. I don't know if it still is.) People who did that got a family friend to stay in the house during the wedding.

Or why they post pictures that say, "Hey! I'm not home right now."

I'm fond of singing Friends in Low Places in the car, but today, I'm going to go with this one: Although I discovered in the car yesterday that I still know all the words to this:

Sour cream and onion without dip. With dip, plain Ruffles (I find they stand up to the dip better), unless it's cheese or bean dip, then some type of tortilla chip. My favorite that I can't find here is Herr's creamy dill pickle chips. Our vending machine at work had them for a while, but not any more, and I have never seen them in a store here. It's hard to pick a favorite chip. My least favorite is anything with the words "hot," "flaming" or "spicy" in the name.

Thank you. God help me, I'm not a young parent, though. I'm an old parent because we had a child late. I don't have the energy any more to do any extra hobbies. We are fortunate in that both of us work primarily on computer and our worksites will allow us to work remotely some of the time, so we take turns staying home to work. I don't know what people who can't work from home do.

The presumption that I have more time is what irks me. My schedule has changed, but does not include more free time. I telework some days and go into the office on other days, and on the days I'm home, I also have to oversee my son's school. It doesn't take a lot of work because he doesn't need a lot of help, but there's another person in the same room doing his work and occasionally (sometimes more than occasionally) wanting to show me things or ask me things or tell me things. When it all started last spring, my schedule was worse because we were all at home, and I was making school lessons and grading them for my son because for the first two weeks, the schools were just closed. When they put up lessons on the district website, the lessons were not good and didn't take him any time at all to finish. Since my husband and I still had to work, we found/created more lessons so our son would have something to do. I did not take up any new hobbies -- or even return to any of my old hobbies that I no longer had time for.

I'm with everyone who picked beach 2 with the cocktail from beach 4.

Or Henry's death on MASH.

I was looking up Prismacolor pencils because I thought I remembered that some are softer than others when I ran across this site that you might find useful: https://www.thebalancesmb.com/best-colored-pencils-4160786. I cannot vouch for the information or the prices, but it might give you some ideas.

I occasionally have thought I saw appeal in being a SAHM, but if there is anything I've learned from this pandemic, teleworking and having distance/virtual school, it's that being a stay at home mom is not appealing to me. Now granted, I'm still working my paid job when I'm at home so I still have housework on top of that, but I want to go out to a workplace of adults. In fairness to my husband, he does as much housework as I do. I cook most suppers, but he does cook at least once a week usually, and he washes dishes. I do laundry (because I trust no one else to do my laundry). He also cleans the litter boxes, a task that became his when I was pregnant and which I somehow just never seemed to take back. Both of us do other cleaning, as does the boy. Truthfully, though, my housekeeping is haphazard at best. I hate it, and not having a paid job would not help it. His father does a lot of housework type stuff, too, though, as did my father, which is a little weird because my grandfather never did anything around the house and didn't really care to be around children for long periods. Child-rearing was women's work. (This was a long time ago.) Possibly my mom convinced him because her dad did a lot. And we both have volunteered at school, although I'm usually the one to go to the parties (back in the time when they were in school and parents got to go to parties). I enjoy spending an hour or so with the kids, though, so I don't mind it. I just take annual leave or skip my lunch hour.

Raisin bran -- preferably Great Value raisin bran. Oddly, I find it has more raisins than Kellogg's or Post. It's also the only way I'll eat raisins. If I could find Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs, that would probably be my favorite.

I thought I had nothing to contribute here, but on reflection, there is something in Grey's Anatomy that has always bugged me. There should probably be a lot, but I can gloss over the increasingly unbelievable things -- deaths, amputations, cancer, crazy people, fires, floods, etc. -- that happen to the hospital and the people in that hospital because it's a TV show. But I just don't understand why the chief of surgery is the top person in that hospital, just below the board. Is there not a hospital CEO? A CFO? Our hospital has both those positions, along with several vice presidents who are over various areas. It seems to me that the chief of surgery would be one of the people in senior leadership, but not necessarily the head honcho, and particularly not the one who is always called on to speak to the press about disasters -- particularly when the chief of surgery always seems to be singularly unqualified to speak to the press or even issue a public statement. Shouldn't the hospital also have a public relations/communications and marketing department (or at least a chief communications officer) that helps with that sort of thing?

It's a tough choice, but I think it would be a particular local furniture store.

I hate lemon in tea as well. My tea order is always, "Iced tea no lemon," said without punctuation between because you've got to get it out quick before they move on to the next person. If the tea comes with the lemon stuck on the edge of the glass, I take it off in as conspicuous a fashion as possible and give it to my husband, who likes lemon. If it's in the glass, I send it back because, yes, once it's in there, it has polluted the whole glass of tea. All I want in my iced tea is tea, water, ice and sugar. I'll drink it without sugar if sweet tea is not available, but never with lemon. (I know I can add sugar at the table, but once the tea is cold, the sugar doesn't mix properly, and the waiter will only mess up the balance when the glass is refilled.) My grandfather always said, "If I wanted lemonade, I'd ask for it." I have gotten to where I can drink flavored herbal teas if I think of them as a spiced orange or spiced apple drink, not tea (which they really aren't anyway).

I think that article is fake, although it is possible that some people eat fried spiders, as there are people in the world who eat spiders. But moa are extinct. as is Haast's eagle -- both according to New Zealand Birds Online (http://nzbirdsonline.org.nz/name-search?title=moa&field_other_names_value=moa&field_search_scientific_name_value=moa and http://nzbirdsonline.org.nz/species/haasts-eagle). And the gardening thing appears to be a fake also (apparently New Zealanders like to pull the legs of other people around the world): https://www.buzzfeed.com/bradesposito/nz-garden-ban, https://www.aap.com.au/new-zealands-new-food-bill-doesnt-ban-gardening/ and https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/labour-weekend-gardens-what-to-plant-to-survive-auckland-hose-bans-and-water-restrictions/QT5HUY2VSUHROJP4S7LFNWUGRI/, which tells you what to plant that will survive drought according to the headline (although you can't read the article without a subscription).

Although cordless phones won't necessarily work without power. And I just realized that I no longer have a corded phone. I used to keep one for that purpose, but I don't know what happened to it. It's possible I donated it to a theater group.

This is a problem at my workplace for several people. After one co-worker who doesn't usually reply all did so and accidentally shared her health news with everyone, we discovered that "reply all" is apparently the default on an iPhone. There may be a way to change it, but she was having trouble finding it if so. I don't have an iPhone, so I don't know. I just got a robocall that said it was a second notice for the vehicle owner that the factory warranty something something (I hung up). I've received several of these lately, and it's always the second notice. I know it's a scam (somehow), but always wonder why it's always the second notice. I suppose people fall for it or they wouldn't do it, but shouldn't you notice that you never received a first notice and that if you ignore the first second notice, you just get another second notice and never a third or fourth notice? I'm putting way too much thought into it, I know. I just find it a little amusing.

I saw it available on BritBox today.

I just started a subscription to BritBox through the BritBox website. And then I discovered that if you subscribe through the BritBox website, Amazon doesn't care. You can't then sign into on Amazon Prime even though you have Prime. You have to get a subscription through Amazon Prime. (That's my peeve for yesterday and today.) I decided to stick with the way I got it and just get the channel on our Roku for watching on the TV and watch it on the BritBox website when I'm at the computer.

It's the same way the TV designers insist on removing all the walls so everything is "really open." Sure, it makes the rooms seem bigger at first glance, but (to me, at least), eventually it makes the spaces seem smaller because they keep encroaching on each other. Also, everyone can see your messy kitchen (you know, during all the times you're entertaining), and you can't sneak cookies without having to share them with your kids. Also, the kitchen noise really interferes with the TV -- not that they discuss where the TV is going to go because that would be gauche, even though these particular designers depend on the TV for their livelihood.

My husband did the opposite for his pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving this year. He didn't realize we had both sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk and didn't look at the label. So the pumpkin pie had no sweetening at all. I didn't try it after he did and said it tasted wrong. He said it wasn't horrible; it just wasn't sweet. My son liked it, but he had as much Cool Whip as he did pie on his plate so I suspect he didn't miss the sugar.

Check the food forums for holiday food, baking and more.

I'm afraid to even google it because of what's going to start showing up in ads. The cartoon bidet ads are bad enough.

Lady Lefty Sausage, Egg and Cheese Biscuit of Love's Travel Stops and Country Stores.

I had senior pictures done at school. That's the way my school did them. I suppose some kids may have done separate senior pics, but none of my friends did. It just wasn't a thing. I used to post on Instagram. I was doing a thing where I tried to post a photo I took every day. I quit because I got tired of it and didn't have time. Also, it was a pain because I wanted to take photos with my actual camera, not my phone, and Instagram is not made for posting from a computer. You can do it, but you have to make it think you're on a phone. It's a pain.