WaNNaDoooooooooooo?

Happy Thursday, Chickens!

As you know, last week Tribe Veasey migrated South to o my gawd it's flipping freezing sunny Florida. Our first stop was Ft. Lauderdale where we visited a little slice of Kid Heaven called Wannado City.


Wannado City is a child-sized metropolis inside a space that is the size of three football fields. It has every kind of business/shop you can imagine and kids (called kidizens) participate in different careers and other lifelike activities.

Wanna be a doctor? Wannado City's hospital has actual incubators ( the babies are realistic-looking dolls).


Its radio station has working broadcast equipment, and its dental clinic has a kid-sized dentist's chair that goes up and down. Other areas include an archeological dig site, a flight academy, a circus staffed with real Ringling Brothers performers, a cooking academy, a forensic science lab, and a courthouse. In all, the attraction offers children a choice of 100 professions.

As in the real world, kids have to earn their keep. They receive "Wongas," Wannado City's currency, in exchange for working. (note: Banana felt her stint at the Coca Cola Bottling Plant was wayyyyy underpaid). They can spend their dough at the city's fair, which includes a mini carousel and Ferris wheel, in the local beauty parlor or movie theater, or make jewelry at the local boutique. Or they can safely deposit their earnings in the local bank-removing what they need from kid sized ATMs stationed throughout town.

Some of the choices made by the spawn include working as a vet, where both Banana and CBoy successfully operated on a robotic dog who lay on a steel table, breathing shallowly, and removed a set of keys from it's stomach using some type of laproscopic equipment they had been briefly trained on.





They raced to a fire in a kid sized firetruck and put out the flames at the local fireworks factory using real hoses. They made candy bars at the Willy Wonka candy factory. They cut their first CD. They captured bank robbers and flew an airplane. Here, CBoy performs in a fashion show on the runway at the John Cassablanca modeling school.


While Banana ponders the evidence in the CSI crime lab.

(She pouts because I was outside on the street singing shlameel, schlamazzle, hasslebach incorporated.)

A highlight was when the kids got to perform surgery on a middle aged woman. Because apparently removing kidney stones is so easy...even a kid could do it!


And as fantastic as the whole day was.....I couldn't help thinking (and I know that this will age me Chickens, but that's why there is Wickipedia) about THIS MOVIE (which I saw as a wee child. Very wee.)

We HaVe SoMe WeiNeRS....

Hot Diggity Dawg Chickens, Blogger failed to publish my automatic picks of winners yesterday so here they are again:

If you were the SEVENTH comment in the post Far, Far Away
If you were the FIFTH or the TENTH comment in the post Tuesday
If you commented MORE THAN FIVE TIMES on Wednesday's word association post
If you were comment THREE or SIX on Friday's post

THEN YOU HAVE WON!! Email me at L V M ud at a ol to find out what you've won.

Thanks for playing! New post tomorrow!!

FRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRiiiiiiiiiiDaY

TGIF Chickens--in a few days I'll be home with the Mother Load of Laundry. And stories! I shall have stories!! Some of them might even be true.

Round about this time I will be thinking about H O M E W O R K, sadly. ComlicatedBoy has a teacher this year (if you are reading this Ms. J you are Amazing! Awesome! we love you!) who likes to give ridiculous amounts large quantities of homework on vacations. During Christmas, Cboy was charged to write a small novel--which we managed to do because we copied because we buckled down and got 'er done.

I loathe resent hate am not a huge fan of vacation homework. Seems to me, time off should be time off. Sure, if you have one of those easy schmeasy kids who's always got a nose in a book that you don't have to nag the pants off to do the work, it's probably not a big deal: but to those of us who have more Complicated Children--children who require NAGGING PLEADING YELLING CAJOLING, we like to actually enjoy our time off from school. So yes, damn it, it's not about my kid: IT'S ABOUT ME! I WANT A VACATION FROM HOMEWORK!!! PLEASE!!

But I can never say that in real life because then I'd be--you know--"That" Mom. The Not With The Program Mom. So I say nothing, but watch me slip Cboy the Cliff notes first chance I get.

Homework: Does it Suck or Not? Discuss. Win Prizes. Start a petition-become my hero.

WeD NeS DaY

Wasn't WEDNESDAY one of the hardest words to remember how to spell when you were little? Shouldn't it really be spelled WENSDAY?

It's hump day chickens and my vacation is almost over. I hope I am having fun.

Wednesday in the blogosphere is often refered to as Wordless Wednesday; but I say--let's make today WORD-FULL. Which means the game that almost made Blue have to seek emergency therapy the game that made Ruth's children stage an intervention everybody's FAVORITE game....one word responses!!

Remember you are playing for FABULOUS prizes.

I'll start, the next person gives a one word response to my word, and the person after responds to the word before them.

THE WORD IS.....

TOE.

HaPPy TueSDaY

Blogger is giving me alllllll sorts of trouble setting up these automated posts. And kicking the monitor does not seem to be helping. So there may be less posts while I am away than i originally thought. In which case-what the heck, let's play CAPTURE THE PHOTO.

Comment below with your caption, possibly win a fabulous prize.

FaR FaR AwAAAAAAAY

Happy Friday Chickens!

Today is the start of a fabulous family vacation for Troupe Veasey. We are off to the Florida Everglades to visit Indian Reservations and ride boats in alligator infested waters.

I have set up automatic postings for the next ten days. Each posting will have a scintillating topic of discussion, so comment away. RANDOM WINNERS for FABULOUS PRIZES will be automatically announced at the end of my time away--so pour a cuppa something and get typing. You people are far more entertaining than I could ever hope to be.

TODAY'S DISCUSSION TOPIC:

On the morning of the day before we were to leave for our trip (today), I came up behind Sexyhusbandomine unexpectedly. He turned, and caught the space between my baby toe and my second to last toe with his foot, rotating and kicking simultaneously while wrenching my baby toe in an unnatural way. This caused me to scream loud enough that The Spawn pulled themselves away from a riveting episode of SpongeBob and came running. Only when my toe turned black in places did Sexyhusbandomine finally agree that perhaps the digit was broken. I shoved the foot into a boot-because hey, what's a broken toe after you've had a bad lip waxing experience, and went to work.

Later in the day, poor Banana revealed a HUGE ABSCESS above the tooth she had hoped Santa would rid her of this Christmas. Except when Sexyhusbandomine told her the dentist would probably remove the tooth tomorrow, she was anything but happy. In fact, I believe she screamed louder than a mommy who has just had her baby toe broken by a 230 pound man in suede house slippers. But I digress.

Still later, I came home to follow a trail of bright red blood stains that lead across the carpet of my bedroom and into my bed, where The Cat Who Shall Never Die lay sleeping. The Cat Who Shall Never Die is officially 140 years old in human years. She lay curled in a ball with a bleeding abscess the size of a super ball on her tail.

I stepped on that abscess back when it was the size of a golf ball. By accident. One morning. In slippers. It exploded like an over ripe tomato and my room looked like a scene from CSI Miami for a week.

So what does it all mean, Chickens? It's as simple as this: WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND. And there's nothing like having to squeeze in trips to the doctor, dentist and vet before heading out. But gosh darn it, I WILL HAVE MY SPRAY TAN. NOTHING CAN KEEP ME FROM IT.

What is the worst thing that ever happened to you as you made plans to get out of Dodge?

Two Sentence Movie Review

Hola Chickens! For new peeps who are not familiar with my One Sentence Book Reviews of the past, here's the scoop: I give you a pithy summary of a movie that is at least one year old, and you promise not to read it if you haven't yet seen the flick and don't want the ending to be ruined.

We have a deal, right?

Today's Two Sentence Movie Review: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN






I loved 75% of this movie and spent it rooting for the character who I thought was the hero so imagine my surprise when three quarters of the way into the movie they kill him off and we don't even get to see it happen. I mean, my poor beloved main character dies alone without me, the viewer, there beside him andthe remaining 1/4 of the movie just sort of abruptly and weirdly ends as if

JaNuaRY 2010 LauNCH

Happy Thursday Chickens!

Today I'd like to show some of the New & Exciting Products that will be available at fine retailers near you in about six months. That's right: I am making my bosses proud by using this blog for marketing instead of writing about The Spawn's bodily functions (but boy do I have a story to share next week about Banana...)

A brief glimpse at what we launched this show cycle includes a section of Brand New BEACH items. Here is my favorite.


We also are offering a whole selection of funny football themed items for the football fanatic. Here's the chip and dip:


For Halloween, or perhaps to celebrate the next season of Trueblood or the next Twighlight movie premiere, we created several items with a vampire theme that are fangtastic. Here's my favorite:



And finally, some fun new candles also for Halloween--or for Zombie Festival, which I believe is tomorrow.


So if your favorite local shoppe is not carrying OUR NAME IS MUD products, please ask them to do so. But not in a Tony Soprano way. Well, unless you live on the East Coast.

Be a WHaLe

Nonnee sent me this little gem so I can share it with you all.

Recently, in a large city in France, a poster featuring a young, thin and tan woman appeared in the window of a gym. It said, "This summer,do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?"

A middle-aged woman, whose physical characteristics did not match those of the woman on the poster, responded publicly to the question posed by the gym.

To Whom It May Concern,
Whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, sea lions, curious humans.) They have an active sex life, get pregnant and have adorable baby whales. They have a wonderful time with dolphins stuffing themselves with shrimp. They play and swim in the seas, seeing wonderful places like Patagonia, the Bering Sea and the coral reefs of Polynesia.

Whales are wonderful singers and have even recorded CDs. They are incredible creatures and virtually have no predators other than humans. They are loved, protected and admired by almost everyone in the world.

Mermaids don't exist.

If they did exist, they would be lining up outside the offices of Argentinean psychoanalysts due to identity crisis. Fish or human?

They don't have a sex life because they kill men who get close to them, not to mention how could they have sex? Just look at them ... where is IT? Therefore, they don't have kids either. Not to mention, who wants to get close to a girl who smells like a fish store?

The choice is perfectly clear to me: I want to be a whale.

P.S. We are in an age when media puts into our heads the idea that only skinny people are beautiful, but I prefer to enjoy an ice cream with my kids, a good dinner with a man who makes me shiver, and a piece of chocolate with my friends.

With time, we gain weight because we accumulate so much information and wisdom in our heads that when there is no more room, it distributes out to the rest of our bodies.So we aren't heavy, we are enormously cultured, educated and happy.

Beginning today, when I look at my butt in the mirror I will think, ¨Good grief, look how smart I am!