havocandmayhem.com

This is from May 2004. Havoc and his swimming puddle. He’d been wanting to play in water outside & I had been having him splashing in large plastic bins of water. But they are not built to withstand that sort of pressure, or they were actually needed to hold other stuff so as a solution it wasn’t working. DH came home from work one day and said “Look I found one of those blow up ring pools really cheap” It had no size on the bag but Havoc was only 19 months old so I figured it would be fine. We both thought probably it would be a foot deep. Yeah, no. It was about 2 feet across It was about 3 inches deep & that only because I dug out a bowl shaped area in the gravel for it to sit in. Havoc had a lot of fun with it though, using the hose to fill it up, adding bubble stuff, splashing around, scooping bubble water on his baby brother (then 4 months old) & then refilling the puddle. The following year we bought a 6 foot wide one, then in 2007 we got a 12 foot...

It was 1985, their thoughts were short & so was their hair. On the left, with the cigarette in his mouth is my husband’s best friend Max. I believe he was home from a 2 year stint in the Army & this was the summer before he started college. On the right, with the cheesy 70s porn star mustache, laughing his fool head off because they’d been smoking funny things, is, gods help me, my future husband. Who,  by the way, had gotten rid of the mustache by the time I met him 4 years after this photo. This pair of 20 year old stoners would eventually become responsible family men & contributing members of society, but at the time of this photo, you’d never guess it.

Historic peace accord signed this weekend Now I just hope the dinos can come to some sort of agreement with the bounty hunters & then the summer will be quiet. At least among the toys.

My latest manicure. Inspired by Pinterest. I have a board of different manicure photos. You Tube has a bunch of videos on how to do water manicures or water swirled manicures. I’d explain but seeing it written down is a detriment. It sounds so much more complicated than it is. Basically polish colors are dropped in water, swirled around & then you dip a nail in them.  There is more to it that that but with a bit of practice it really is fairly easy. Remember, I am basically lazy. I’m not going to make too much of an effort for anything. So if I can do it, you can do it.

Welcome to 1975! Christmas 1975 as evidenced by the nativity set on top of the tv. Note the dark wood paneling, the orange & brown carpet, the orange kiddie chairs, the brown curtains and of course the tv. We’d had this tv for about 4 years at this point. They would remodel this basement in 1988, just around the time 1970s décor was coming back into fashion. It like the rest of the house would end up all blue & white. You can, if you squint, see a mark in the middle of the tv screen. That is not dust on the negative. That mark is actually where the tv screen was cracked one Saturday morning when my brother took a swing at me with a glass soda bottle, missed, and hit the tv instead. We were regularly left alone in the basement family room for hours on Saturday mornings. My parents left out bowls and a box of cereal & put small Tupperware bottles of milk for us in the fridge so we could get our own breakfast & they could sleep in. I’m not sure what my brother ...

Havoc has been sick. Wednesday last week he complained of a headache & vague muscle pain so we gave him some Tylenol. Problem solved! Temporarily anyway. Thursday the school calls around 10:30a to report Havoc has a fever of 101.9 & a cough & needs to come home. DH was in the vicinity so he picked him up, which was good because I received neither of the two calls the school made to my phones nor the follow up call DH made informing me he was picking Havoc up. Have I mentioned technology, especially telecommunications, hates me? School policy is no one can come to school within 24 hours of having a fever & since they discovered the fever, they know he’s not supposed to be back Friday. I would have totally sent him as he had no fever the rest of the day, nor that night, nor in the morning Friday. Friday night he did spike an impressive 102.6 fever that the Tylenol totally took out. Saturday he was fine. He was his high energy self. We went to the Air ...

Look what finally arrived yesterday! And by finally I mean it was pre-ordered on July 20, 2010 with a late Nov release date. Which made it perfect for Mayhem’s Xmas present. Then I was sent notice that the release date would be late Dec. Ok, could still make it for Xmas and if not, well, it can be a birthday present. The nice thing about Mayhem’s January birthday is that delayed Xmas presents can easily become birthday presents. Then I was sent a notice of the release being moved to late Jan. Fine! So it might be a day or so late as a birthday present, still it’s fine. Then I was sent notice of a late March release date. Really LucasArts? Late March? Really?  For something expected out 5 months earlier? How poorly planned was this game release anyway? But at long last the Big Brown Truck of Joy arrived with the game & within minutes the little gamers we absorbed in it. They are actually playing together, which is unusual. Mayhem is the gamer & h...

From the bin of long forgotten projects. Project started April  3, 2002 Photo taken April 30, 2006. Progress made in nearly 5 years since then? 0%

This is one of the 6 photos I have so far managed to take for my project. But I have a system in place now & a spreadsheet. I feel much better now that I have a spreadsheet. This is Thor, who is HUGE in real life. Seriously huge. He fully takes up and actually overhangs the seat of a kitchen chair when he lays on it. Here, he is on my bed, reading my Kindle. I had set it aside to listen to Mayhem reading “The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog” in various funny voices and the screen saver kicked in after a couple minutes. It a random screen saver. This time it happened to be birds. Thor, who had been laying next to me, shifted his bulk so he could look at the birds. If you have cats you have probably seen them watching birds through a window. If so you have probably heard that strange semi-chirping noise cats sometimes make while watching birds through a window. I’ve always assumed it was a “Wish I could chase & eat those birds” sort of running commentary. Thor started making those...

What was the oldest thing in my pantry? Just how old was it? Make your guesses below & come by Friday to find out!

The problem with having Star Wars ornaments on the tree is that they very often are off the tree and part of whatever adventure the Clone Troopers are having.

please see last week’s disclaimer regarding the honesty of that title The holiday season has officially begun here the House of Demons. Elvin, our Christmas elf, arrived for his annual visit early this morning, much to the boys’ delight.

Ok it’s not wordless. It never is wordless. I always have something to say about any photo I post. But generally not enough to qualify as ‘wordy’ Wednesday and my thesaurus falls short on one word synonyms, beginning with W, for “just a few words or maybe a couple sentences” Wednesday. I suppose this lead in does make it ‘wordy’ this time but really, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the photo, so IMO it doesn’t count in the word total. Anyway, here is the photo. On the 20th of the month I take self portrait for my 365 project. About a week or so ago I noticed that the (proportionally) few grey hairs I had on mostly my neckline area, and therefor hidden unless I wore my hair up, had been joined by new, much more prominent, grey hairs on my brow line & felt this development should be documented for posterity. Because someday I will look at this photo and think “I looked so YOUNG then and had hardly any grey hair at all” and “Why did I always go so long between eyebrow...

Socks – malicious creatures that will not stay in the dirty clothes hamper no matter how often you put them there. Also very prolific at reproducing on the floor but easily lost  in the wash

A dreary rainy morning Back to school

Have I shared Havoc’s latest hair cut with you?  I don’t think I have. It was all his idea. My contribution was to drive him there & pay for it. And to put it off for as long as possible Obviously we couldn’t get it done until AFTER the family photos in Wheeling. And it had to wait until after we had been to the beach because we have so very few beach photos & the scrapper in me didn’t want the hair detracting from the beach setting. He wanted an Airbender type hair cut, or a mohawk if the arrow was too difficult. Obviously, given that it isn’t a straight arrow it was sort of a challenge. He’s never watched the Avatar Airbender cartoon series. Nor has he expressed any interest in seeing the movie. He just thought the hair was cool. And I thought “Its just hair. Its the most expendable & constantly renewing part of the body.” And I thought “He’s 7. It’ll be cute. Colored mohawks are sort of a right of passage for the 6-8 year old male set locally” A...

I’ve been in need of new workout shoes for longer than DH has been in need of a new phone. But like him I failed to take action because the shoes still worked mostly and would be expensive to replace. But eventually the foot cramps got to me and I made the hour long trek to the running shop to discuss new shoes and take their various foot assessment tests. I have weird feet. I have unnaturally narrow heels, my pinkie toes lay sideways to my foot, arch problems and I run on the outside of my feet and a couple other things that I am forgetting at the moment. I buy pricy athletic shoes to offset these things when I work out & run. And you should see what I spend on boots that fit. (or have spent, being that I could only ever afford one paid of custom made boots & they cost two weeks pay in 1996) My doc & the shoe specialists at the running store both thought barefoot running would be helpful. And I thought it certainly would be cheap! But my gym has policies a...

The other side of my college life.    This photo was taken in my freshman dorm room, probably in late 85. The overexposed patch of whiteness I am holding is my very first college paper. Proof that I did study! At least during the first semester of my freshman year. That paper was several pages long. It was typed on this typewriter/early model word processor thing my dad bought me when I asked for an electric typewriter. (Back in the day they had these things called typewriters. The keyboard made the letters appear on PAPER instead of a screen. It had 0MBs of RAM, but an endless battery life. Then they made them electric, which typed a little faster & you didn’t have to reset the paper roll yourself at the end of a line. It did it for you. Word processors, that could save your typing & even let you edit it ON SCREEN, were just coming out. I would own one in 1991) What I had looked like the keyboard half of a laptop. With a very narrow, one line wide, scre...

I found this photo from April 1986 while doing some scanning last week & my sons both asked me what I was doing in the photo & I thought I’d share the story with the world. In my little boys’ minds I am watering down my juice, just like I always water down theirs. And I must be on a picnic since I am sitting on the ground. Not quite. This photo was taken at about 8am on a Friday morning in front of the Sigma Chi fraternity house at West Virginia University. (please keep in mind for the rest of the story that WVU was Playboy’s #1 Party School in the nation for 1985-87. The drinking age at that time was 19.) . My sorority, Alpha Omicron Pi had had a ‘Wake Up’ for the Sigma Chis that morning. We arrived at the frat house about 6:30am bearing donuts and McD’s breakfast muffins, fruit, orange juice, tomato juice and vodka to make screwdrivers and bloody Mary’s. Once everything was set up, we ran screaming through the house, banging on doors and waking everyone in the hous...

  One of my favorite baby photos of Havoc. He was 6 weeks old. My mother was very insistent that he needed sunglasses in the Florida sun