Seriously? Excuse me while I take 100 showers now.

The hubs cannot handle lizards or toads – they totally give him the willies. I’ve seen him crush a B52 cockroach with his bare hands, so the lizard thing does not mean he is a pansy in all things creature creepy.
Geckos are quite prolific in Hawaii. They have the reputation of being good luck – the opposite POV being that to kill a gecko in one’s home may be bad luck….

I believe the reason geckos acquired the reputation of being good luck is that they eat insects. Which means if you allow a gecko or two to live in your home, you don’t have to kill too many ants or spiders.

We have a gecko living downstairs and we let her be. However, when new ones come inside or the grand lady has….what does she have babies? Eggs? I’m not interested enough to look it up. At any rate, occasionally we find a youngster gecko out in the open and I am always called to catch it and put it outside.

I think the thing that really creeps my husband out is the whole tail dropping thing. Or that geckos are so squishy and delicate, and one really has to be careful not to squash the poor thing when one catches it.

The geckos living outdoors pickup some color. But the ones I’ve seen are all translucent.

Nothing like the fellow selling insurance.

In case you are wondering where I am going with this, I am almost there.

Yesterday was the annual cleaning out of the garage. Every summer we take all the shit out and hose down the garage, reorganize, and put the stuff back. We have a lot of crap along the sides of the garage.

I bought shelves five years ago. The shelves are among the crap lying along the sides of the garage. Mr. Pseudo is not the tool belt handyman that my dad made me think all the male version of our species grew up to be. Ah, well. One of the reasons they make you take vows…

Can we all just say gecko poop??? Crap? Shit? Along one side, where the garage cement slab meets the wall, was a combination gecko freeway and gecko outhouse. So disgusting that I did not even grab my camera, I could not hose that shit out fast enough.

We did not find one single gecko though.

Maybe all the neighbors have trained their geckos to come do their business in our garage.

Wouldn't You Like to be a Panda Too, be a Panda...

I did a post last week showing off the cool stuff I won from a contest in the comment thread over at Oz Girl's. In my excitement, I posted as soon as I could after the box arrived. But Oz Girl had sent me TWO boxes. How generous is that? The second box arrived the other day and contained beautiful note cards made with Oz Girl's own design. She also included this gorgeous pitcher.

Thank-you again Oz Girl! Now, everyone please go pay her a visit. She just got her blog uplifted with a new layout and design.
Amy over at Keeping up with the Schultz Family has bestowed upon me some bloggee bling. This is a different kind of award as it is honoring commenting. Amy is a sweet and regular commenter on my blog, so I can see why she received the award herself.

The award features a Panda Bear. I love Pandas and am not quite sure how this fine animal came to be associated with comment love, but I love this image...

Thank-you Amy! Great timing on the award as several of the blogs I read have posted on commenting and commenting protocol lately. There's Smart Mouthed Broad, Braja, and IB. All great posts as well as comment threads to get an idea of what other bloggers like/don't like going on in their comment threads.

I would love to pass this on to everyone who reads my posts and leaves a comment. Amy's instructions were to pick five bloggers so I have tried to pick bloggers whose comments I enjoy regularly and to bloggers who I did not pass on the last award that came this way. But any and all commenters who love the Panda, go on and take it back to your place.

Braja at Lost and Found in India.

Casey at Half as Good as You

Blue Violet at A Nut in a Nutshell

Jane at Gaston Studios

Lori at My Life Interrupted

Thank-you to all who stop by and read the posts here at PseudoLand. I wish I could say I am able to keep a discussion going in my comment thread, but my timing on the computer is rarely conducive to that. I love reading your comments and appreciate each and every one of them. I especially like those who leave their email in the reply so I can get back to you personally.

If you are a reader and do not always, or even rarely/never comment, I'm OK with that too. I like to write and feel very grateful if people like to read what I write, even if they do not want to comment.

Happy 4th of July!

In Hawaii, fireworks are totally legal on the 4th of July and New Year's Eve...
Plus all the beaches and BBQ's...

Every military base has something cool going on....

From our remote outpost of America to where ever this may find you...

A very happy Independence Day!

What a Girl Wants

So. I’m looking into putting up ads on my blog. Taking it slooooow. Don’t want to compromise the integrity of the feeling creative purpose of the blog.

Wouldn’t mind being able to supplement my wonderful teaching salary.

In one year we will have two kids in college.

This summer my mom turned 82. I would love to take off and visit her in California, visit my sister, my niece and my nephew. Drive. Not in a circle.

But nothing in the budget for that. Unless we didn’t pay daughter’s college tuition this year. Hmm. Only kidding.

So. Besides making room for some ads, I thought about what I would like to have for fun and blogging. Why don’t I just put it out there. See what The Universe thinks. Or the product manufacturers.

One. I covet this camera and a couple lenses. Think of the Friday Fotos kicked up a notch by a real camera. I love my little digital pocket camera, but I am ready to put on my big girl camera panties.

Two. This surf camera. I realize I am a 51 year old body boarder who does not take on huge waves. But I figure most of my readers would still enjoy video of what I see when I am out and what it is like to fly down the wave.

Three. This waterproof camera for diving and snorkeling.

Think of the posts with photos and videos with that arsenal of camera equipment. WooooHooo!!! Giddy on up.

Four. As long as I am wishing out loud. A laptop computer. Our desktop is shared by three of the four members of our family. It would be nice to blog at will and not during my allotted time slots. I remember reading a post by Marinka where she showed off her free Vivienne Tam Laptop. And being totally jealous.

OK Universe. I’m waiting....

Happy Birthdays Nephews...

When it rains….

I am the middle daughter sandwiched between two sisters and the three of us have managed to produce five children. Four of the five cousins’ birthdays are between June 20th and July 1st. The straggler’s birthday is at the beginning of August. My mom’s birthday is June 11th, throw in Father’s Day and it’s pretty much like a mini Christmas spread out over the beginning of summer. I start saving months ahead of time for the birthday fests.

Weird trivia. My two sisters and my first born birthdays… My daughter’s birthday is June 29th. My nephew from my younger sister has a birthday on June 30th. My older sister’s first born’s birthday is today, July 1st. How likely is that? Apparently my mom gave birth to three daughters who turn into mini goddesses of fertility in the Fall.

In honor of the nephews’ birthdays, I am reposting a guest post I wrote for Mama Dawg last month while she took vacation at Disneyworld. BTW She has been posting stories, photos, and videos of that trip and she knows her House of Mouse. I’ve been vacationing vicariously over there.

For the nephews. Who’s cool now?

My first experience of being an auntie I was only 16 years old. My sister is four years older than me and she had my nephew when she was 20. I loved that kid (still do) like nobody’s business and wanted so much to be the “cool aunt.”

When he was six I took him to Disneyland. Just the two of us. He wanted to ride nothing but the Autopia. Being cool, I did what I thought no parent would do. I rode the Autopia 45 times in a row. The last 35 times were his “just one more time PLEASE times.”

Finally I said, “Enough. I need to show you what fun really is.”

But he screamed his bloody head off in all the storybook rides. During Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride I thought he would claw his way under my skin.

He refused to ride anything resembling a roller coaster. Absofuckinglutely refused. What kind of kid was this?

I distracted him in Frontier Land with the shooting galleries. He was all boy there. He wanted me to buy him one of those wooden rifles.

I bribed him. Told him I would buy him one if he would go on a ride of my choosing, meaning something fast and fun.

He agreed thinking I would not hold him to it.

In my defense I did not pick the Matterhorn or Space Mountain (my two favorite rides). I selected Rolling Thunder Mountain.

While we moved up in line he asked me 167 times, “You’re not REALLY going to make me get on this if I tell you I’m too scared? Right?”

Who did he think he was dealing with? Of course I did. In my roller coaster loving mind I just knew once he had a taste he would be crying MORE! MORE! MORE ROLLER COASTERS PLEASE AUNTIE!

I was so wrong.

But at least he did not throw up on me.

I also took the kid skiing one winter and paid for his lesson. I laughed so hard I peed my snow suit when he could not snow plow and slammed into the back of the knees of a huge, overweight man and sent that man smack into the First Aid Shack.

Another time I took him to the Miniature Golf Castle and let him play video games after golf and eat so much junk food that the next day my sister took him to urgent care with a stomach ache that turned out to be him being constipated.

There was the time I took him out for dinner and we ate in the bar because I had a crush on the drummer of the band that was playing there. For years the kid thought he went to a rock concert.

One of the coolest things I did was take him to a Friday night shooting of Happy Days. I had a slutty friend who was dating Ralph Mouth and we could get in any Friday we wanted. My nephew got to hang out on the stage afterwards and meet all the cast.

And the topper. When he was 12 I talked everyone in the family into pitching in for a plane ticket for him to come to Hawaii and visit me. I was 28 and cocktailing my way through college. Mr. Pseudo and I had recently moved in together and were living in sin. What a wonderful collision of worlds that was. We took him to Chinatown and let him buy all kinds of illegal martial arts crap. In my defense we called his parents and his dad said it was OK, only that the kid could not mess with (touch) the stuff until he got home and was with his dad. I thought I had packed the weapons away but when we took him sightseeing he magically had an illegal weapon of some kind… Let’s just say I momentarily lost my cool. And we all almost got arrested.

Fast forward 20 years and it is me and my family visiting him in LA. He’s a thirty something year old hipster and has a job where he works with a lot of rich and famous people and my kids think he is the coolest relative on the family food chain.

He takes us to a store where all the hipsters shop. The kind of store the paparazzi hang out in front of when celebrities are inside. The first thing I do is embarrass him by busting out my camera and taking a picture of my kids trying on shoes in the store. The security guard came up and told me no cameras or pictures or they would ask me to leave. My nephew pretended not to know me and ditched me for the opposite side of the store. But I followed him, because that is what irritating, visiting, embarrassing relatives do.

He headed into the half of the store that features jeans. Not the Old Navy curvy hips and thighs jeans his middle age auntie that used to be hot wears. Designer jeans. Hipster jeans. Jeans STARTING at $200.

So I browse. My first order of business was to see just how expensive these jeans could be. The answer, according to my perusing, is $598. Imagine that.

Next, I decide that for $200-$600 they must all be magic jeans. Therefore I must try some on.

But how to choose?

I’m trying to select a few pair when an adorable young sales girl that has the body of a 12 year old who has not started puberty comes up and asks if I need help. Indeed I do.

"I’d like to try on some of your jeans. Cost is no option."

(I do not mention that this is because I will not actually buy anything I try on).

"What brands and styles would best suit my body type?"

The sweet young thing furrows her brow and carefully picks out three pair.

"These would all be good choices. The waistband is a little higher than the really low ones, and the way the material doubles up it will hold you in and help camouflage your muffin top."

YES. She. Did.

My nephew was a couple aisles away. I don’t think he heard her. I wouldn’t want him to know his cool auntie is not so cool anymore. She is a muffin top laden middle age hunk of lump.

Happy Birthday nephew from younger sister.

Shown here with my daughter in 1995.
The scene of the crime.
Respecting older nephew's privacy and not posting a photo of him.

Happy Birthday Princess

Dearest Daughter,

How can it be that you turn 20 today? Our little fairy tale Princess has grown into a lovely young woman. It sounds cliché to say, but the time has flown by so fast. It seems like yesterday that you were a wee one, pushing your own stroller around and learning to walk. Saying “doogie, doogie, doogie” as you puttered around the house. Everyone thought we let you watch reruns of Doogie Houser MD, but no. That was just how you warmed up your vocabulary building.

If I am to follow suit with your brother’s birthday post, I would detail your birth story here. Instead, just the highlights. One, because your birth was 19 hours. Two, I had unwittingly hired a douche bag for an obstetrician, and, let’s just say we are both lucky to have survived him. A few years after he did everything to botch your birth and scar me physically and emotionally, he did far worse to someone else, was sued, and had his medical license taken away. So. We are both survivors.

You were in a hurry to get here. I was not due for another month and when my contractions started I thought they were stomach cramps. I had one day left of work before my maternity leave and was really looking forward to that last month off.

However, when we got to the hospital, my water broke and you seemed determined to make it into this world on that day. I should have realized your anxiousness was a wonderful sign, as you were and are someone who embraces life fully.

When you were born you were only five pounds six ounces. Then, you had the gall to lose two more ounces before we left the hospital. You were so tiny and fragile looking that your father and I thought ourselves completely inadequate to take care of you. But, the hospital sent us on our way.

We called you peanut and put you in the crease of a chiropractic pillow next to me in bed.

The first couple of months were a little dicey. You cried. A lot. It was summer in Hawaii, and I remember sweating bullets, bouncing you, walking you. The pediatrician said you were colicky, but didn’t seem to know what that meant. Let’s just say he did not explain it very well and certainly had not the greatest suggestions for getting rid of the colic. No one did. You let us know eventually what it was that was pissing you off.

At a little after two months of age, we figured out you did not like to be “swaddled.” It did not make you more secure, like I had been told. It did not make you sleep better. It made you hot. As soon as you were allowed to sleep in a diaper and a tiny, thin t-shirt, you slept straight through the night.

The world, and our family, was a better place for it.

From an early age you had a phenomenal imagination and a gift for seeing things that others could not. You and I had a lot of fun with this. The hedge around the house we lived in for the first four years of your life was the home to a lot of imaginary pets. Mostly Winnie the Pooh and his friends. I thought your imagination a wonderful thing and thoroughly enjoyed encouraging you.

I was a little surprised to learn that not everyone shared my view. There was that time in your “moms time out” program. I had enrolled you so you could socialize with other kids (since I was the first of my friends to embark on this parenting journey). It was a co-op program, where the moms rotated as teacher aides. Once, when I was helping, all ten of you two year olds had been taken out to the park by the school. The hedge around the park made the one at our house look like a Japanese dwarf garden. About eight feet tall and three feet wide, the hedge was like a jungle.

I followed you as you meandered. If Winnie the Pooh and friends lived in the dwarf version, what would you find here?

“Ohhh. Mommie look. This is where the hippopotamus sleeps.”

“I see. Are there giraffes too little miss?”

“Yes, there are. Come I’ll show you.”

Slowly the other children heard you and peered inside the hedge from where they were playing on the grass.

“Where’s the giraffe?” said one little girl as she peeked her head inside.

“N says it’s in here,” replied a tiny boy with glasses who was already following you around. “She says there are hippos and elephants and bears. Come.”

I thought I was the best mom’s helper ever, encouraging the other two year olds to take part in your fanciful world. Then I heard the teacher’s voice.

“Everyone come out from there right now. Out I say.”

A little one peeped his head out while I was waiting in the wings of the shrubbery, feeling a bit like a two year old myself.

“Miss J. N sees zoo animals in here. She is showing them to us. Can we please play in here?”

Once we emerged out of the hedge, it was explained to me that there could be glass or all kinds of unforeseen dangers in there, not to mention it made it difficult for the teacher to keep count of the ten two year olds. At the time the preschool teacher made me feel like I might not make it as a mom, but in retrospect, I’m glad we let you be your imaginative little self.

You have a lot more courage than people give you credit for. You are not a big risk taker in the same ways as your brother. About some things, you are downright cautious. But both your brother and I remember the time you read the Sunday paper at the age of six and noticed the open call for to Kill a Mockingbird. Then talked me into taking you down to the audition. I was the opposite of a stage mom and knew nothing about the theatre. The only preparation you had was me renting the movie for you.

The auditorium at the audition must have had 100 people in there. When they called you up to read, your brother (three at the time) and I shrank down in our seats with our stage fright for you. But you nailed it. Southern accent and all. You were also one of the only six year olds who could read fluently.

You didn’t get the part but you never quit. Here you are, 13 years later, majoring in music and working it out in community theatre.

You are an old soul. You have always been kind beyond your age group and pretty much the rest of the world. You are forgiving. You are loving and fun-loving.

You’re a little too nice. But your brother, your dad, and I are watching out for you. In case someone tries to take advantage of that niceness before you get your fierce game on.

Happy birthday to a beautiful young woman.

Look out world.

Love,

Mom

For more spins on kids, head on over to Sprite's Keeper.

Weekend Stuff

I won a contest over at Oz Girl’s blog. She sent me a box with cool stuff. Look how pretty.
And I learned something. Oz girl made these stamps from her own photography at zazzle! Now there is something else on the internet I want to go fiddle with. You can go to this site and use one of your own photgraphs and make your own postage stamp.

The juice book should really help with my healthy intentions too. If any of you readers haven’t visited, go and check her out. Her full blog title is City Gal Moves to Oz Land. Her blog is down to earth, a lot of fun, and Oz Girl also has a photo blog with beautiful pictures.

Thank-you Oz Girl!

On another note…

Jane at Gaston Studio’s has passed on an award to little ol’ me. Jane is one of the best story tellers out there, and my goodness she does she have some stories to tell. From Savannah to Bahrain to Egypt, Jane has led quite an interesting life.

Here’s what Jane had to say about the award:

The Renee Award, I’m told, is one of the most meaningful awards in blogland because it honors someone who is incredibly inspirational in his or her intelligent and witty writing.This award further celebrates a person’s smart, strong and inspirational spirit and it honors those who spread joy and love like an acorn, a small package growing into a tall and sturdy oak tree which spawns more acorns.

Thank-you Jane! This is such an honor coming from you with the stories that you tell.

I’d like to pass this award on to these blogs whose stories I come back for time and time again.

Irish Gumbo

Jan at Jan’s Sushi Bar

Mo “mad Dog” Stoneskin

Only a Movie

Sprite’s Keeper

Words of Wisdom From a Smart Mouthed Broad

All these bloggers are wonderful storytellers and inspirational as well. Grab yourself a weekend beverage and check them out. I think Mo Mad Dog is on vacation. He forgot to tell me where he was going. Despite this slight, I'm passing it to him, but he better pop up soon. I'm just saying.

Me? I need to go back to organizing the office and filing six months worth of crap. Apparently, it is a three day summer project. The computer being in the same room as a big chore can be a little distracting.