The Pharmaceutical Museum (AKA my Mother-in-Law's House)

Every time we visit in in-laws, my hubby and I play a little game called "What's the oldest expiration date on any product in the house?"

It started several years ago when our entire family was struck with a nasty, debilitating stomach virus. As we were all moaning in bed, my MIL found a box of Immodium and presented it to us. The box felt a little, um, dirty, so I looked at the expiration date.

August 1999.

Never mind that it was 2007. My MIL doesn't believe in expiration dates.

The game has been loads of fun as we've discovered oodles of expired products over the years. Once she tried to feed us jarred salsa with a 2006 expiration date. (It was 2009.) Often she'll hand my kids yogurt that expired two months previous.

It's all a conspiracy, she says. Expiration dates are just to sell more products.

(Yes, well, I'll cover my bases and not eat those eggs that are dated January 2010, thank you.)

This morning, after a harrowing trip yesterday that involved an exploding tire along a busy stretch of Interstate 10, I woke up to discover that my finger was a little infected. I must have some tire shrapnel in it after helping Kevin remove the shredded Firestone yesterday.

It was a risky move, but I asked my MIL if she had any Neosporin. Sure, she said, and returned with this:


I know you can't see the fine print, but the expiration date on this tube of bacitracin?

April 91.

1991. Seriously. In 1991 I was a sophomore in college wearing pleated Gap jeans and oversized sorority jerseys.

The anti-biotic ointment expired 8 years before my first child was born. My child who now has braces and an iPod and is taller than my shoulder.

My MIL thinks a 19-year-old tube of non-namebrand Neosporin is going to help my infected finger? I'm not going to correct her. I'm just going to grab the car keys and take my new set of tires for a spin to the closest Walgreens where the expiration dates will be in the future, not the past.

Home Hair Color HELP!

So, I might have mentioned a time or twenty that I color my hair. At home. Out of a box.

I could pay $100 for highlights and lowlights and CFL lights, but really, I just want to cover the grays. Oh, and I'm cheap. So I used to stock up on L'Oreal Natural Match whenever Walgreens or CVS had a sale or a coupon. At one point I had amassed an entire shelf of hair color.

Then I started watching "Hoarders," and I realized that I was just one box away from an intervention. So I stopped stockpiling and decided to use up my supply before buying more.

In January I used my last box of hair color. I didn't panic about my dwindled supply; I just started looking in Sunday's newspaper for specials or coupons. A month later the grays were starting to creep in, but there were no bargains to be had.

Three weeks later and I look like a skunk. I decided to bite the bullet and just pay full-price for a box.

When I was at Target last week I remember to look in the hair color aisle. No go. I searched and couldn't find my brand.

Trying not to panic, I went to HEB and checked out that aisle. Negatory.

So I checked out the L'Oreal website and discovered that the company is giving Natural Match "a stylish send-off." Color me ticked.

So here's my question: What hair color do YOU like? What I loved about Natural Match was the smell and the fact that it offered different tones. My grays turned a light golden brown which actually looked like highlights, albeit coarse wiry highlights.

Help? Anyone? Bueller?

Curling as a Contact Sport

Remember yesterday's post about how to make curling more exciting?

Apparently curling is a contact sport after all.


To be clear, David didn't get this plum-sized bump on his noggin while playing curling. Rather, he was trying to climb the kitchen stool to get a better view of the tiny kitchen TV so he could watch curling.

He slipped. He fell. He clocked his head on the stool.

By the time I walked from the kitchen sink to him lying in a heap on the floor, which was 2.2 seconds and a distance of 3.5 feet, the bump on his head was half an inch thick and already turning purple.

After some ice and a few cartoons, David had recovered enough to eat dinner and go to bed. This morning the bump is flatter, broader, and purpler. Is that a word?

I've promised David that we will take a photo of his forehead every single day to document the color changes that this bruise will inevitably go through. Boys wear bruises like badges of honor, so it's the least I can do.

I may even make up a little gold medal for him. He deserves it more than the curlers on TV.

How to Make the Winter Olympics Even Better

I'm an Olympics junkie, but even I am getting a little bored of watching curling every afternoon while I make dinner.

Actually, I'm highly doubtful that curling qualifies as an actual sport. I consider it a hobby created by people who were deathly bored while trapped indoors during long arctic months, probably after drinking a pint or two. But to give a gold medal to someone whose job is brushing ice? Nope, not worthy.

Now ski jumping? Now that's a sport. Aerial skiing? A crazy sport, but a sport.

But tonight I was thinking about how to make the Olympics even better, and I think I've got the answer: Combination Sports.

I'm not talking about Sychronized Diving, where both participants need to perform identical dives. No, I'm thinking we should combine two conflicting sports and have the athletes do them simultaneously.

Take curling, for example. It's not very exciting, but what if there was curling WHILE the ice dancers were performing? I'd call it Dodge Curling. The curlers would get extra points if they hit a skater, and the ice dancers would get props for timing their footwork around the sliding stones.

Or ski jumping. Why can't the biathlon shooters use the ski jumpers as moving targets? Extra points if you hit their face masks. The laser guns would work if the ski jumpers had sensors all over their ski suits, but I'm thinking paint ball rifles would be way more fun. I'd call that one Skiit Shooting.

And how much fun would luge become if the sleds shot down the middle of a halfpipe while the snowboarders were doing their tricks? I'm still thinking of a name for this one.

Crazy? Yes. But it's the only way I'd be able to handle another week of curling.

Will It Blend?

This morning we needed to go to Costco to load up on strawberries and raspberries and other items that taste fabulous dipped in chocolate.

While I was freezing my patookie in the produce chiller, my husband and kids were watching a blender demonstration.

Not just any blender. A four-HUNDRED dollar blender. I didn't even know that $400 blenders existed.

Oh, it was a good blender. The demo guy made ice cream and tortilla soup and smoothies. He was quite the salesman and all three of my kids were trying to convince my husband that I needed a $400 blender for my birthday.

(I don't need a $400 blender. But if anybody really wanted to buy me a $400 blender, I wouldn't refuse. And I like the red one.)

At one point in the demonstration, the salesman mentioned all the crazy things that can be blended in the $400 blender. Like golfballs. And a camera. And an iPhone.

So in addition to wasting 30 minutes watching this guy demo a blender this morning, tonight I wasted another 30 minutes watching videos on www.willitblend.com.

All I can say is this: I am so jealous of this guy who gets to blend things for a living. Why can't I get THAT job?

You Capture: Faces

I love love love this week's You Capture theme.

This is an old photo that I actually had to scan, but this is Caelyn's sad face when she was a baby. She was rarely sad so I had to giggle every time she made the pouty face.



Next up is Carrol, one of my friends' kids. I call her Sassafras because she is a hoot and a half. Here's her cheesiest face. I'm not sure which is bigger: her bow or her cheeks. Either way, I just want to squeeze her.



And because cuteness runs in their family, here is Carrol's brother Calvin. He and David were doing this bit called "Boom, Bang, Fire Power!" during a baseball game, but it was Calvin's expression that cracked me up.



Speaking of David, I can't get enough of his smile.



But he's a goofball, too. This is the face he makes most when he's trying to be a silly cowboy. Thankfully, he no longer poses like that for every picture.



And lastly, this is one of my favorite pictures of Kendra. She was playing a board game with her grandparents, and something made her laugh. It's just such a pure moment of joy.



Thanks to Beth for hosting You Capture! You can see more photos by clicking this link.

My Son the Clown

For the last six years, I've hand-stamped photo calendars as Christmas gifts. They were labor-intensive yet lovely, but this Christmas I decided to simplify.

Actually, this Christmas I decided to forego making calendars at all.

But then January 2 rolled around and I realized that, as much as I love the iCal program on my computer and iPhone, I still needed an actual paper calendar to write stuff down on. Oh sure, I could have printed out the iCal pages, but what's the fun in that?

So I spent an entire week editing and uploading photos, and then I used Shutterfly to create a super-easy calendar.

Simplify. That would be the theme this year.

April turned out to be my favorite month, because I created a collage of these photos.

Behold, the power of a rainbow wig...





I think my son has a future in the circus.