Sundays with Stretchy Pants » feckless friday

Feckless Friday: Passive-Aggressive Paint Job Edition

Abby — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:01:03 +0000

Remember the other day when I said I might paint my entryway? Well, in a surprisingly not feckless move on my part, I painted the first coat that very day. It looks lovely, but I’m out of paint. I’ll get some for the second coat soon, I promise. Definitely by summer.

About that paint job…you know how I was born in Michigan and raised to be a UofM fan? And you know how The Ohio State University hates the Wolverines? And you know how I don’t really like to wear UofM garb this close to campus because dummies make snide comments? And you know how one time at Bryan’s old job his anti-UofM boss wrote him up for a safety violation for having a UofM pen sticking pointy side up in his pen thing? (Oh yes he did! Bryan had to petition to get it off his record and everything!) And you know how we bought a house right here in Columbus where everybody hates U o fM? Well, I subconsciously wrote Columbus a passive-aggressive note when I painted my living room and entryway:

*looks better in real life*

I think the note says, “Suck it, Buckeyes. GO BLUE!” Yeah, I pretty much painted my house maize and blue. By accident. Technically, it’s sweet maple and sweet sea or something like that, but still. I didn’t even realize it until I looked at it with Bryan and said, “I just really like how those colors look together,” and he very excitedly said, “Hell yes you do! Maize and blue, baby!” And I think he clapped.

Apparently, I’m a huge fan of college sports.

Feckless Friday: All Songs Make you Dirty Edition

Abby — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:35:18 +0000

It’s Feckless Friday!

Way back when I worked at the Christian bookstore, I read a book called Highway to Hell or something like that and it was all about breaking down the evils in pop music so you would know what doors to the underworld were being opened in your soul every time you belted out some Whitney Houston in the car. I’m not lying. The only thing that stuck with me out of that book (I think it was out of that book, but it could have been any other book I read during that time of zealotry) was that pretty much any song that talks about dancing is actually talking about m@sturbating and/or s3xing it up.* It’s true. Look at Madonna’s “Get into the Groove” for a minute:

Only when I’m dancing can I feel this free
At night I lock the doors, where no one else can see
I’m tired of dancing here all by myself
Tonight I wanna dance with someone else

She’s so happy! And, well, sad because she can’t feel free without, well, you know. Um…and this was clearly written before she decided it was ok to unlock the doors so everyone could see. I think I just proved that book’s point. *ahem*

Anyway, the feckless part of this is that I like to use my “knowledge” to ruin Bryan’s perceptions of songs. I can’t help it because it’s funny. When we’re in the car, it’s not uncommon for me to lean over and say, “You know, Ted Nugent’s “Fred Bear” is actually about touching yourself with a toilet brush. In the woods. With an old man watching. I read it in a book, so I know it’s true.” He’s not a hunter, though, so that info actually made him like that song more. So that was nice of me.

Do you ruin things for people you love all the time? Did this post ruin your breakfast? If so, post your own Friday fecklessness anywhere you can! You are not alone!

*The Divinyl’s “I Touch Myself,” on the other hand is really about dancing. She dances when she thinks of you. Isn’t that sweet? She honestly does.

Feckless Friday: iTunes Edition

Abby — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:48:58 +0000

I know you like to read about my own fecklessness (I can tell by my stats that Panic! at the Whole Foods Edition is your favorite post, Sadists), but I’m outing iTunes today. Because I’m mad and they won’t return my phone calls. And I’m outing you people because you can still participate in Feckless Friday by tweeting or facebooking or calling me and telling about your (or other people’s) fecklessness even if I skip a few Fridays as I am wont to do because of my fecklessness! Ok? So play along.

Anyway, iTunes? Why are you doing this to me? I like to make a playlist of podcasts, mixing “The Moth” in with “This American Life” and “School Sucks,” or what have you. I need to be able to push skip when I’m listening to “School Sucks” and they start talking about statists and how dumb it is that we all want states. I can’t do that now. Now, when they veer off the school subject on to the Paultard subjects, I have to stop running, take off my arm band, pause my workout, choose “change music,” find out that I can’t just choose “change music” and find another podcast, oh no, I have to choose “end workout” and then I have to look at my milage and subtract what I’ve already run from the total that I want to run and then start a whole new workout with a new podcast, which means you’ve committed the ultimate sin by forcing me to do maths! And then my Nike+ bar graph isn’t as pretty with long, tall slender bars. Instead, it has short, stubby bars with decimals. DECIMALS! Because that is the extent of maths I had to go to. It makes me want to write a letter in all caps with lots and lots of exclamation points. And maybe handwritten. But probably nobody would be able to read it through the tear stains. So fix it, iTunes. Everything was fine until you did your stupid 9.0.stupid update. Stupid.

And don’t tell me that I can still make a podcast playlist, because I know that. I can make all the podcast playlists that I want, but when the little menu of playlists comes up for me to choose which ones I want to sync? Well, there are no podcast playlists available for syncing. Not allowed! They should have a pop-up that says, “Did you enjoy making that totally useless podcast playlist? It was fun to watch you do that for absolutely no reason. We’re all laughing at you from inside your computer.” Because that’s how it feels. And I can hardly function.

Feckless Friday: I Shouldn’t be Allowed to Have a DVR Edition

Abby — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:25:55 +0000

This might cross the line from feckless to just, well, stupid.

I’m really embarrassed. I watch this show called Metalocalypse. There, I said it. I don’t just stumble across it and watch it when I happen to notice that it’s on. No, I willfully set my DVR up to record it and every time I look at the list of recorded shows, I get a little happy when I see it on there. A lot happy.

I keep trying to write up a defense of why I like it, but it might be indefensible. It’s violent and filthy. But it has really good subtle humor, too, and I swear that’s why I like it.

*sigh* Now you know. I have nothing to say on my behalf. I just spent way too long watching way too many clips in order to share some with you. And I enjoyed it. And I might watch some more.

“And here’s my guitar made from the wood from Christ’s cross.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5_BXQHb4fI

“An apple! God’s alcohol!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYqArjs_L4M

“I’ve got my mother’s nose. In my pocket.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgKE404A-kc

It’s Feckless Friday. Please play along so I have something to distract me from more Metalocalypse clips. Blog it, Tweet it, Facebook it, but don’t put it on Myspace because nobody goes there anymore. Not even me. See? I do have some standards.

Feckless Friday: Not Pepper Paints Edition

Abby — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:07:41 +0000

Pepper Paints is my friend Kristen in real life. It’s true. I know you can’t tell by our blogs, but we have a lot in common. I don’t want to sully her reputation by outing her poor choice in friends, but yeah, we’re friends. My kids go to her house and you’ll see them in some of her gorgeous pictures. And, you’ll notice, I ain’t no Pepper Paints.

In case you didn’t know, my kids run a product review website called Kids Know Stuff. We get pitches for stuff and sometimes we say yes and sometimes we say no and sometimes we get a pitch to review food and, because I’m hungry when I read it, I agree. That’s what happened when we got the pitch for some meatballs. I didn’t realize that the best thing about the product was that they would come packed in dry ice. It came early in the morning. Ten o’clock is early some days. It was still summer and we are homeschoolers. It was after Labor Day, but that is still technically summer. Anyway! The dry ice came and we played with it. And I took pictures:

Not good pictures, and you’ll notice that everybody is still in their pajamas, but still. Technically, Maya is wearing a real shirt, but she slept in it so it was pajamas. ANYWAY! I documented it. We talked about it. I hit them with a ruler every time they said, “Look how it’s melting!” instead of “Look how it’s sublimating!” I thought that was appropriate.

It was out of the ordinary for our homeschool and Liberty hit the nail on the head when she said, “It’s almost like we’re at Kristen’s house.”

She was so right. It’s just not like Pepper Paints over here. But, let’s get into the way-back machine for a minute so I can tell you about a time when it was like Pepper Paints around here. People who knew me in Chesaning before Lena and Liberty were 6 can vouch for me. We did art stuff. All the frickin’ time. Until Lena and Liberty developed their own interests. And even after that, I still made them take clay classes and other art classes. Until they cried and I decided to take a hard look at why I was placing value on those things instead of letting the kids do what they want and just valuing the process. It’s easy to value traditional art over digital art. It’s easy to value reading novels over reading graphic novels. It’s easy to value perfect spelling instead of bloggy brainstorming (Lena and Liberty both have blogs and I used to make them do spell check and grammar with it, but that’s what Kids Know Stuff is for now. Their own personal blogs need to be their own personal brain farts, so back OFF! Sheesh). But that’s not cool and that’s not what we’re about. We’re about teaching kids how to learn instead of forcing what to learn on them. Kristen’s house is the same way, but her kids’ interests are different. This is art for Liberty:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4FZVaywOyc

And Lena:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxrDKbLJ59A

Maya is a bit more traditional artsy, and she gets out the scissors, paint, glue, fancy paper, stickers, and whatever else and does stuff with them. She also does this:

It’s called “Warren and Ruth.” Warren and Ruth are Maya’s little friends.

This post is dumb. It started out being “I’m feckless because I suck at being like Kristen,” but then it turned into “I’m feckless because I used to try to force my digital kids to be more traditional,” and now it’s just “I’m feckless because this wasn’t really thought out all that well.” Sheesh.

Maybe you can do better. Be feckless (or point out the fecklessness of others) on your blog, on your Twitter, on your Facebook and leave a comment telling me where I can find your fecklessness so I can feel better about myself. You can link to me if you want to, but you don’t have to because I took my ads down and so I’m not a stat whore anymore. Good day.

Feckless Friday: Panic! At the Whole Foods Edition

Abby — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:27:51 +0000

There are two things that I buy at Whole Foods: Ecover dishwashing powder (because it’s the only brand that works) and Snowville Creamery 1/2 and 1/2 (because Weiland’s is always, always out of it and it’s soooo flippin’ good). But one time, I needed chia seeds and hemp powder and raw cocoa and goji berries in order to boost my post-run green smoothies, so I had to go there. If you’re not familiar, that store is huge and just way too hip for me and just too, too much. I had to call a friend no less than 3 times while looking for those 3 things. But that’s not the worst part.

After that, the kids and I got some pizza from their cafeteria-type thing. Holy crap, mine had pears, bacon, and gorgonzola on it and I almost converted to making the Whole Foods pizza counter a weekly thing. We ate, gathered up all of our garbage, er, “waste” and when I looked around to where we were supposed to either throw stuff away or recycle it (2 things I can handle), I saw that there were, like, 47 other choices besides garbage and recycling.

Each bin was labeled with words and pictures of acceptable stuff. So the garbage one looked like this:

The compost bin looked like this:

I shushed the kids while they screamed, “MOMMY! WHY DON’T YOU KNOW HOW TO USE WHOLE FOODS?” And then I stuffed our garbage into one of our recycled, reusable grocery bags (“I used to be a plastic bottle! Now I make poor people feel bad about themselves!”) and I took it all home with me.

I took my garbage home with me.

I don’t know how to use the Whole Foods. The end.

This is my Feckless Friday post. Please play along.

Feckless Friday: Beer Song Edition

Abby — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:11:06 +0000

You know that precious muscial called The Sound of Music? Well, it’s a real crowd pleaser (assuming I’m not in the crowd) and there’s this song in it called “Do-Re-Mi,” which my children were trying to sing a while ago. And then when they asked me how a certain part goes, I might have accidentally taught them the equally classic and crowd-pleasing song “Dos-Ray-Me.”

Dos, a beer, a Mexican beer

Ray, the guy who buys me beer

Me, the guy Ray buys beer for

Far, a long way to the bar

So, I think I’ll have a beer

La, A la-la-lots of beer

Tea, No thanks, I’ll have a beer

Or something like that. I’m not clear on the details, but it’s much more entertaining (and, frankly, it makes more sense) than that other song. Until you hear your 10 year old singing it. To be fair, I didn’t set out to teach them the song. When Maya asked about “Do-Re-Mi,” we were in the car and after singing that, I giggled. I said to Bryan, “Remember that beer song?” and then we both giggled and Lena (I think it was Lena, though it could have been Liberty. It’s hard to keep these things straight. It was a 10-year-old girl hollering from the backseat) asked, “How does the beer song go, Mummy?” And, at first, I said, “Well, Precious, beer songs are only for those 21 and older. I’ll not sully your soul by singing it. Merely hearing the song might make you want to drink a-la-la-lots of beer.”* To which Lena (or Liberty) replied, “Oh, thank you, Mummy. Thank you for always keeping me pure.”

But then I sang it anyway because it’s funny.

This is my Feckless Friday post. You know you want to play along.

*What do you mean “that doesn’t sound like something you’d say”? You don’t know me!**

**Fine, none of that ever happened. I just sang it right away. FINE!

Feckless Friday: Red Letter Edition

Abby — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:28:49 +0000

Let’s play a game! We’ll call it “Feckless Friday” and it will be just like “Wordless Wednesday” only not as popular and not as precious! I’ll go first. Then you go on your blog or Facebook or Twitter or whatever and just go like this. “Feckless Friday: I spilled my pumpkin spice latte on my lap and then I punched the barista in the face because she made it too hot.” You can include a picture if you want. Or, you can point out somebody else’s fecklessness. For instance, “There’s this stupid blog I just can’t stop reading because it’s like a frickin’ car crash. ‘Sundays with Stupid Pants’ or something like that. She loves the gays, she’s an Obamatard, she says she homeschools, but there’s never any evidence of that, and she makes fun of religion. I’d link to it, but then I’d have to punch my computer in the face.” And then leave a link to your Feckless Friday entry in the comments so we can all come see, ok? And I think you’re supposed to link back to me, too, but I don’t have ads anymore so I don’t care if you do that or not. I won’t get paid or anything and you’ll just invite more people to disown me. Either way, ok? GO!

Here’s my example of fecklessness:

I’m laughing at you because you think I’m white. Love, Jesus

All good Christians know that Jesus only speaks in red letters. (I put that link in so my regular readers would understand).

See? I call myself a Christian, but I insist on doing things like this. I am inept at Christianity. I am a feckless Christian. Now you try.