Nebulous Mooch

Sometimes I just say exactly what I’m thinking. This isn’t always a good idea. Especially when what I’m thinking isn’t very smart. This is what happened last night at dinner.

“Where do chickens come from?” I asked.

“Eggs,” my husband laughed.

My stepson flipped through his world history book ignoring yet another ridiculous dinner conversation.

“I mean you don’t see them in the wild, so who invented them?”

This question was met with even more laughter. “You don’t invent an animal,” my husband said.

“They must’ve come from somewhere. Like maybe someone cross bred a turkey and a duck or something.” I have an excuse for this statement. You see, I’ve been very tired the past few days and my brain hasn’t been working right.

This got my stepson’s attention. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

“Where did chickens come from?” I asked him. He knows a lot about history. I thought he might give me a good answer.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged and resumed his reading.

After dinner I looked up the history of the chicken on the internet. No they are the result of a breeding experiment involving turkeys and ducks. Chickens were found in the wild in China and India and where first domesticated in 7000BC. That answers my question.

After five years of being home schooled my stepson started school today. He was nervous on the way there but seemed completely unaffected when he got home. He said he’s making a 1970′s style Ugandan military hat in his tech class. I’m not sure what tech class is but it obviously involves making hats. How techie!

Here he is in his uniform. This pictures was taken after school so that’s a look of releif on his face. Tomorrow is a special sex education day. That’s all the classes will be about for the whole day. Sex, sex, sex, that’s all they think about. What kind of school is this?!

Someone posted “Who Killed the Electric Car?” on Google Video. I tried to post it but the player wouldn’t work on my blog, so here’s the link where you can watch it.

The other day, I was sitting in the living room writing as usual while my husband cleaned up the kitchen after lunch. My husband and stepson were talking about dictators or something. I kept noticing a strange smell while I tried to write yet another ehow article about how to give a massage. But I didn’t pay attention to it because I was busy.

Finally the smell got so strong that I couldn’t stand it any longer. “Do you smell that?” I asked them as I went into the kitchen to investigate.

“Smell what?” my husband asked.

I looked around and notice that the knob to one of the burners was turned on. My stepson had been leaning against the stove and had accidental turned the knob. Our flat was filling with gas! We promptly turned it off and opened all the windows.

Can you believe it?! We could’ve died! What if the phone rang? I saw a movie once where the phone rang causing a tiny spark that caused a whole building to explode. That can’t really happen, can it?

This is my mother. She’s biracial. Her mother is white and her father is black. I don’t think she ever really struggled with her racial identity until now.

The other day I got a phone message from her that went something like this. “I’ve only got 31 more pounds to lose before I hit my goal weight.” She’s doing Weight Watchers. “You’re not even going to recognize me. The next time you see me I’ll be a skinny, wrinkled, white woman.”

My question is, since when does joining Weight Watchers make you white? I had no idea when she joined that she’d turn into a white woman. I wonder what my father thinks about that.

Just recently I told someone we’d just moved here from Florida and she said, “Why’d you want to do that? The weather is dreadful here. You probably haven’t seen the sun once since you’ve been here.”

“Actually we’ve had some nice weather,” I said. It was sunny and lovely that day. It had been lovely for the past couple of days.

“Oh no,” she politely disagreed. “It’s been raining nonstop. That’s the way it is here–dreadful.”

The English seem to take pride in having horrible weather. Either that or they forget too easily. I’m not sure which.

It’s summer here and the wildflowers are in full bloom. The trees are lush. The sky is blue. It’s perfect weather to be outside in. If we had a yard, I’d be out in it. I probably wouldn’t get much work done though.

Last week we noticed that my stepson seemed to be turning green. The front of his arms and his neck were a kind of greenish color. Since he has a habit of eating things he shouldn’t–once he chewed up a paintbrush handle–we were afraid he had some kind of poisoning. After freaking out about what kind of poisoning it might possibly be we sent him to bed. He said that he felt fine so it seemed like the natural thing to do. We thought we would take him to the doctor in the morning.

The next day he was still green. It hadn’t gotten any worse but he was definitely still green. After much consideration my husband told him to take a bath so that he could take him to see a doctor. When he was in the bath my husband said, “I have to find out what’s going on while he’s in the bath because it might be dirt.” Then my husband disappeared into the bathroom too.

I’m happy to report that it was dirt. We don’t have a shower in our place and my stepson seems to be more interested in splashing around in the tub than actually washing himself. I think he’s learned his lesson now, because he was quite worried about his greenness too.