All I Need Is A (MATH) Miracle!

A isn't just for Algebra. It also stands for Agonzing, Annoying, Apocalyptic, and Aggravating. It's doubtful that there will be any A for Awesome showing up on my transcript this semester.
Have mercy, 18 years has served to completely obliterate the miniscule amount of equation-solving knowledge left in my brain.
Mathmagician, Mathologist, Mathlete......these are all words that will never be used to describe me.

My Brother Is The Non-Caped Ketchup Cleaning Crusader!

I'm always in awe of the legendary innovativeness of my family.
It's as though we sprang from the sacred hoo-hoo of The Mother of Invention herself!
Anyway, my 22 year-old brother may have lost his job due to to a newer kind of sport I'll dub "EXTREME PROBLEM SOLVING."
See, he's afflicted with a chromosomal disorder similar to Down's Syndrome but he's high functioning enough to secure placement in a work skills program at school.
Alas, Amelia Bedelia Syndrome may also play a part in this sad, sad tale of well-meaningness gone horribly awry.
Anyway, the manager of the restaurant at my brother's latest job site instructed him to go out to the patio and clean all the ketchup bottles.
Always the dutiful employee, my brother did exactly as he was told.
The problem? Well, the problem is that he cleaned the ketchup bottles by meticulously licking each and every one until they shone brilliantly; something only a potent spit varnish will accomplish.
I'm the mother of picky pickers and a sister to a real live ketchup licker.
Awesome!
The teacher in charge called my mom to notify her of my brother's kitty kat-bath-meet-ketchup-bottle cleaning technique in what had to rank as the most awkward conversation ever.
Puzzled, my mom just kept repeating, "But he doesn't even like ketchup."
How many licks to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop? The world may never know.
How many licks to clean a ketchup bottle? Ask my brother who is now presumably the newest ketchup-licking champion of the world.
I can't wait for a fast and furious match-up between him and the CATSUP-licking champion of the world because that'll undoubtedly be a feat of condiment epicness that Pay Per View will add to their lineup.
Advice For Ketchup Bottle Cleaning Day:
A cleaning rag that's handy is dandy.......... but to licker is quicker!

I Should Be Crowned Queen Of The Dirty Santa Game

Dirty Santa=White Elephant

Got it? Good!
Anyway I wrapped up my awesome gift for the exchange in the most festive glittery silver Happy Chanukah paper before adding dangling blue balls ornaments to the ginormous bow.
Party patrons WANTED it. The gift got stolen and re-stolen and for a moment the gathering nearly turned into a Mormon Mosh Pit of Madness as frenzied fingers grappled for the present.
Not really, but it was highly sought after and now I'll show you photographic evidence of why:

This be the picture affixed to the top of the plain white box that obscured the hidden wonders tucked neatly within.
I'm sending this pic to my man Mitt so he can use it in his 2.0 Presidential Campaign Relaunch.
Big Pimpin' Mitt 2012.....ooohhhhh yeeeaaahhhh!

 

And here be the Big Pimpin' Booty!
The only parameters of the game stipulated that the gift must not exceed 10 bucks and it should be goofy but still practical.
Well, what MO wouldn't want to serve up their guests out of a set of authentic Tupac Shakur shooter glasses? The marijuana leaf motif is super classy!
Tupac was the victim of an unknown shooter and now he's immortalized on shooter glasses.
Dang, I love me some irony!

Stuff From 2010 I Hope Never Happens Again: Part 1

While gathered together with my family at the dinner table for our traditional Christmas Day dinner I glimpsed my mother gazing at me wonderingly.
I honestly thought she was going to uncharacteristically burst forth with a display of maternal emotion to gather me in her motherly arms while smothering me with love and exclamations of how profoundly grateful she is for me, her one and only daughter.
I smiled widely at her in anticipation.
And then,  my mother extended a single finger to tenderly touch the side of my face before recoiling in horror and blurting out "Holy crap what is that? Are those SIDEBURNS?!!!?? You really need to take care of that, Fifi* because you look absolutely ridiculous like you're trying to channel Elvis or something."
Everyone seated at the table laughed. I felt really self-conscious and put my turtleneck shirt up over my face so that only my eyes remained unobscured.......like a Ninja Elvis.
It's obvious this blog should be renamed The Smiling Sideburn.
I'll look into that today.

*Fifi is my mom's nickname for me since the horrible home perm experiment that went tragically awry in the mid 80's

BUSTED!

After a couple months of sparring with my somewhat pretentious English Professor my moment(s) of extreme vindication finally arrived.
He is and was the most conflicted liberal I've ever met.
Professor I-Know-More-Than-You continuously espoused his firm belief that President Obama would ascend to soaring Presidential heights in order to solve all of the world's ills. A Presidential Messiah, if you will.
This would be acceptable in a Government class. However, his breathy exaltations proved annoying when in the context of an English course.
Yet, he and his wife are also extreme Catholic pro-life activists who protested outside of Houston's new Planned Parenthood headquarters where Nancy Pelosi was on hand for the festivities.
He labeled my essay decrying the Obama administration repeal of the Mexico City Act which will funnel taxpayer money into the funding of abortion on an international scale as "bombastic" and "incendiary."
Conflicted, for sure.
Anyway, in a futile attempt to tug at our heartstrings and manipulate our emotions into compassion for struggling students on the campus he always tried to tell us the worst hard luck stories he could muster up.....he could have saved his breath.
Our class was comprised of students working several jobs, going to school and juggling family responsibilities.
We all know that attending college is a choice in which some sacrifices must be made. Therefore, his stories about his students in other classes teetering on the brink of starvation because of their tuition expense or working so hard they found themselves in near fatal car accidents just made most of us roll our eyes.
If those stories are true I think Professor Know-It-All was getting played for a fool by some calculating kids who knew they could milk him for vending machine money and/or an assignment extension.
So, one class period he fires up his propaganda machine and starts telling us the gut-wrenching story of one particularly unfortunate student of his who has been bounced around from foster home to foster home her entire life because her hippie mom abandoned her. She eventually goes to live with her grandma who arranges a much-anticipated reunion with the girl's mom who does show up but lets it slip within the girl's earshot that she only came because the grandma paid her to.
Sound familiar?
It should, because it's the main plot line of the classic book "The Great Gilly Hopkins."
Never one to restrain my thoughts I blurted out to Professor Know-It-All "Hey, by any chance is this girl named Gilly Hopkins?"
I won. I actually transformed a relatively shameless man into a state of embarrassed sheepishness as he strained to immediately change the subject to something else.
Awesome.
I'm positive Professor Know-It-All had previously enraptured countless classes with his harrowing tale of human misery that turned out to be completely fictional.
The moral of the story is to teach your kids not to be beholden to any one person and elevate them to an impossibly high status because for the most part people lie.
People do lie, but I hereby solemnly swear that this post is the honest truth. :)