My July Perfect Post Award goes to…..

My beloved CajunVegan at I Read Banned Books for “Jesus Tap Dancing Christ, What’s That Smell?” – her piss-your-pants play-by-play with her stepson, MonkeyBoy. She hit this one out of the ballpark. As soon as she clicked “publish” you could hear the crack of the scrub brush and watch the soap fly. The blogosphere jumped to their feet and wiped their eyes as they leaked tears of laughter.

I have the pleasure of being a RW friend, and yes folks, she is THAT funny in person.

Way to go, my friend. Can I be you when I grow up?

Thanks to Suburban Turmoil and Petroville for letting me in the perfect post sandbox. Check out the other July recipients here and here.

Thursday 13: Thirteen Weird Things at my House

Please don’t judge us by our crap. But then again, the stuff in our house says a lot about who we are. Check it out.

1. Okay, this is pretty tame. Homer loves the Simpsons (hence his nickname). One of his prized pieces of memorabilia is the remote control Bart who whizzes around by manipulating parts of Krusty’s face.

2. This was a house-warming gift from a friend who, when appropriately clothed and makeup-ed bears a striking resemblance to a postmortem Earnest Hemingway. Before you call the feds on us, Realized that said friend scraped this out of the rock himself with a nail because he was bored at work (sitting in the desert). Not too many folks have a custom pecker-glyph in their house. Weird, but cool.

3. Okay Alice, know what this is? Crawl up on the giant mushroom and check it out. While these have become pretty common in Vegas, I realize this may be weird to my peeps in middle America. Heck, who am I kidding. You kids have too much time on your hands, you’ve got homemade stuff that’s gotta blow this out of the water.

While I’d like to be cool and say the hookah in regular use, sorry Charlie, FandPinLV is a serious square. This was a gift from my big bro who lives in the middle east. It’s only been used for flavored tobacco (none of the wacky stuff – big bro is a bigger square than me) and never in my house.

4. This is another gift from big bro. I know there’s some cool Arabic name for it, but I can’t remember, pronounce, or spell it. It’s generally referred to as the…

“cool-curvy-horse-head-knife-that-isn’t-supposed-to-actually-cut-

anything-that-your-brother-gave-us”.

Wow. I feel the culture oozing from my pores.

5. Speaking of culture, this was another gift. It has it’s own really cool symbolism that’s way too serious for this post. It does mean a lot to us. However, we realize to our visitors it looks like some strange pygmy drum circle.

6. Face it. This is cute. A little weird, but cute. Really, who doesn’t need a belly-flopping frog on their bar shelf to lighten the mood of a tequila hangover? Seriously. How could you resist?

Allrighty… enough of the cute stuff. Let’s move this party to the garage.

7. This is a bear vault. This is a bear vault sitting inside of an aquarium. This is a bear vault sitting inside of an aquarium inside of a garage in LAS VEGAS. Yes, I know Homer and his friend camp in the mountains, but this whole setup makes me giggle.

8. The signs. I married Hector the Collector. One of his many obsessions is signs. He insists that all of these acquisitions are legal catches, but I’m pulling the George Bush I “Don’t ask, don’t tell” card.

It’s not just road signs he’s into. We have some political memorabilia as well. This guy was three governors ago. He was a pretty good guy, apparently his sign didn’t get as much respect as he did.

Homer is not a laborer, so I have no idea why he has this or has kept it. I just know I see it every time I take the recycling out.

Now, on to one of my faves. The objets d’art that inspired this list in the first place.

9. and 10. Barbie and Buzz Lightyear. These guys are two of Homer’s favorite finds. You see, he spends lots of time tracking critters in the Mojave and finds the craziest crap ever. We have no idea what happened to these two, They came to us this way. I’m guessing it was one hell of a party and fireworks were involved. Disembodied Buzz is missing a leg and those aren’t fishnets on Barbie. One of these days I’ll host a contest about these two. Stay tuned. They’ll be back.

It’s hot out here, let’s get back inside. While we’re on the subject of weird stuff found in the dessert…

11. Okay, I married an axe murderer a biologist. He brings his work home sometimes. Dead or alive. In this case, dead. Here’s a sampling of his collection including a dog’s leg bone with a stainless steel rod. Apparently Rover survived a broken leg, but probably made the wrong choice in chasing that mountain lion.

On the brighter side…

12. This little guy is alive and kicking. He’s a leopard gecko, but since he’s an albino, he’s weird even to his cage mates.

And last, but not least is this….

13. Oh, there are so many ways to go with this…where do I start?

The outfit was a bridal shower gift that I got from my big bro’s wife. It’s an authentic belly dancer outfit from the middle east.

I thought I was mortified when I opened it in front of my mother and future mother-in-law nine years ago. That was nothing until I pulled it out of the closet to take a picture of it for this post.

At first I was going to wear it and have Homer take the pic, but then Homer gave me a rough time about wearing it over my clothes (Uh, I know what my body looks like, I won’t show my readers my face. Why would I show them my muffin top in a belly dancer getup?) He grabbed it from me and stripped down. I made him keep his shorts on (feel free to thank me later).

As I said, I’m not sure what’s the most disturbing:

• the belly dancer getup (complete with red nipples and tassles hanging from them),
• Homer’s willingness to don the costume for the sake of my blog, or
• the white tube socks that he decided were necessary to preserve what was left of his dignity.

Weigh in, dear readers and feel free to share the weirdest thing under your roof. Extra points for photo links.

This video goes out to Homer and Boo for being such good sports about this (I got Boo out of bed to model #13 before resorting to Homer’s taller physique). It’s Homer’s favorite Cake song and Boo loves MLP. Maybe this blog will make money someday, enough at least to pay for the therapy.

WW: Forever Friends (or at least for the next 20-40 years)

Oh my Godded!

The Princess and the Pea meets couch cushions and an Elmo chair. Move over Martha, we’re stylin’.

*****

The day has come….well, sort of. Boo’s started cursing, kinda.

It just kind of popped out. We were playing the Goodnight Moon Game before bed. She was winning (it’s kind of set up that way), but she was somehow shocked by her impending victory.

“Oh my Godded!” She exclaimed, looking up at me expecting me to fly off the handle. I could tell she was working up to this.

My eyebrow arched – very Spock-like. Hmmm. Some correction seemed necessary (I think it’s in some sort of Catholic parenting handbook somewhere), but I didn’t want to overreact. I heard this NPR story awhile back and I knew this was coming sooner or later.

“Oh my gosh, Caroline,” I corrected. “We don’t use our creator’s name that way. It’s not nice.”

“Okay mom. Oh my gosh.”

Sigh. Did I win the battle? I know it’s going to get worse before it gets better. I just wasn’t quite expecting to start this when she was four.

*****

A half hour later in the shower, Boo decides she wants to be a big girl and rinse herself off with the sprayer. She dropped the hose and it shot up at her. Right in her nether regions.

She smiled and laughed. I blanched. Oh heavens.

“That feels funny Mommy. Give it back to me.”

Oh my Godded.

Review: NineBlue Travel Guide for Las Vegas

I was contacted last week by a PR Intern from NineBlue travel. She asked me to review her company’s recent guide to my fair city. After some clarification about my review policies, I’m happy to provide this feedback to my readers.

In a word…”meh.”

This Web-based publication is available to download from nineblue.com. Pay them through paypal and they’ll send you the PDF.

Since I was unable to open the full file that the intern sent me, I based my review on the preview copy they have available on their website.

Based on what I saw, there were some good tips for people who are traveling to Vegas with their families. Nothing earth-shattering (e.g., don’t leave your kids in a daycare room in one hotel and then traipse about the strip gambling their college funds away), but solid advice (e.g., pack a light sweater since the casinos are notoriously over-air conditioned).

In terms of the content, there wasn’t much there that you couldn’t find for free through the state or local tourism office or just a thorough search through the Web. I wasn’t impressed by the lack of professional layout that made navigating through the copy a little confusing. The piece also needed a thorough proofreading (e.g., “King Tut’s Tumb” and “piece-of-mind”).

The index indicates there is information to come regarding specific shows and attractions. This may be a great resource for now, but given the transient nature of my city’s entertainment culture, the show listings will likely be outdated in a matter of months.

Is it worth the $11.99 price tag? Hmmm, probably not in most cases. If you were looking for a basic launchpad to quickly plan some basics, it could be helpful. But you could probably do some basic online research and ask any good hotel concierge for specific recommendations when you get here and do just as well.