The whole reason for this worm pondering is that Lloyd doesn’t want me collecting scraps in a container on the counter until I get around to taking them on the long walk across the yard to the ‘compost pile‘. That’s a problem because I am NOT walking a single banana peel across the yard when it’s dark outside. There are jibblie things out there, like vampires. So, this morning I came up with a multi-tasker solution. I have a gravy separator that gets used once in a never, so now it lives in the trash can, like Oscar, and I can walk the scraps out to the pile at my leisure. In full, safe daylight.

Remember the purse fiasco a while back? Well, it was the perfect opportunity for me to justify a gadget purchase. I saw the Cash Can a few months ago, and now I have one! Yessir, even though I may forget my wallet, I’ll still have an origamied greenback dangling from my keys.

This guarantees that I will lose my keys.

That’s all I have to say about that.

“Buy cheap, regret later.”  Every. single. time.  I wanted to buy a small voice recorder so I could more easily do observations of the children at school.  Usually I jot stuff down and then re-write it later, but I really, really hate writing by hand.  Especially twice.  So I looked online for a cheap, small voice recorder.  Overstock.com had one for the sweet price of $20!  Yippee!!!   Yeah, no.

Sure, it’s small, but it’s not as small as I thought it would be.  I really wanted something that looked like a necklace pendant so it would always be close at hand neck. This thing is too big for that, plus it’s an MP3 player, which I absolutely don’t need, plus you have to push a long combination of buttons to actually record anything.  I need something tiny that can stay on all the time, has a rechargable battery, and one button for record/don’t record. Oh, and costs twenty bucks.

(I went looking on the spy sites, and they have awesome things for heaps of cash.  One of Lloyd’s classmates and his wife work for insurance companies to spy on people committing insurance fraud.  That should SO be my job!!  I have a very strong sense of vengence justice.)

Notice his lack of eye protection.  I guess he thinks that squint will save him.  Anyway, I tried to be helpful, but was less than useful.  I screwed up the only job he gave me.  (Sorry ’bout that.)  Also, sometime in the past few days he has misplaced his wallet.  The troublesome part is that he was up in the hot, hot, hot attics of the portable classrooms the past few days.  We He looked in two of the attics today and we’ll he’ll look in the other two tomorrow morning.  (Beth and Harold, we’re going to late church – we’re not ditching.)  Anyway, please pray for the recovery of his wallet.  I can’t bear to call Citibank again.

UPDATE:  Found!  Thank you, God!  Thank you, God!  It was in the second attic we looked through. I can say ‘we’ because I went up in one.  Let me just say, I have profound respect for Lloyd being able to move around in those tiny spaces.  It is CRAMPED up there!  We took some good photos with his iPhone, and when he’s done washing the fiberglass off his body I’ll download them.

Here he is putting his homemade shin guards on.  I laughed, but they turned out to be invaluable.   Yes, those are dish towels taped to boards, then taped to Lloyd.

Shin’ saving goodness.

Don’t whack your head!

When he fixed the sink earlier this week, I was very grateful that the dripping finally stopped. As we chuckled over his ‘heat vision’ repair, he said, “Be careful turning the faucet off or it will fall apart.” Ummm…. I’m not what you would call a ‘careful’ person, and promptly broke it. The gushing water wouldn’t shut off, so we had to head it off at the supply line. Since then, we’ve been living like pioneers and toting water from the bathroom sink in a pitcher. You know, it wasn’t as inconvenient as I thought it would be.

Anyway, the real part came in the mail today, and while I was sleeping, a little elf came along and made the water work again. Thanks, elf, you’re my hero.

Moen faucets are NOT cool. Do not buy one.

Being the rebellious type that I am, I decided to go ahead and have a listening center….. my way – the ‘re-inventing the wheel, gadgety, too complicated’ way. (Mind you, I should say that at no point did she actually say that I had to have a listening center. She was quite gracious and understanding in hearing my grievances.)

I have the recording program Garage Band on the iMac, and in addition to recording requiems, turns out I can read a story¿ add some background music, and put it on my Shuffle. A couple of cheap headphones from Wal-Mart, and we’re good to go. I think they could swallow the Shuffle and it would survive.

The best part is how the directions make it sound kind of dangerous: “Do not us on glass bottles. Do not over pump. Direct away from eyes/face when releasing pressure (opening bottle).” It’s like a bomb of soda goodness!

Anyway, I’ve been visiting a guy’s website, http://www.kk.org/cooltools/ , and if you click on the categories on the left side he’s got articles on all kinds of cool stuff.  I’m drawn to the backpacking things, because even though I’ll never hike in my life, I like all the stuff that goes along with it – the tiny pots, the tiny tents, it’s all good.  One of the things he wrote about was a set of foldable dishes.  They snap or fold together to make a cup, plate or bowl, then unsnap for easy packing.  I remembered that my sister had sent me one of those years ago!  I’d played around with it, but never used it for actual eating.  Well, I tested it can can vouch for it’s bowl-ness.  Behold:

Occasionally I have been known to convince myself to buy something that we really don’t need. (Occasionally – ha!)  About a year ago I really wanted a FoodSucker, so I waited the normal one-month period before I buy a major thing, all the while creating all these scenarios where I would be vacuum-sealing food left and right!  So I bought one, sealed up everything in sight in one evening….then put it in a closet, never to be seen again until last week.

Overall, I highly recommend them.  You can wrap and store a lot of things for a long time, but never, ever BUY one.  Find somebody who has one that will loan it, provide your own bags, and bake them a cake as payment.   (My favorite is yellow cake with chocolate frosting.)