LOL .. ya Bonnie he will show up .. he is that stupid :o) He isnt looking at a few months in custody he is looking at maybe 5 - 7 years + +. I have yet to hear for the fool .. but its only a matter of time cuz he doesnt even have any clean underwear .. yuck. I got my new kid on the 5th. So far he isnt any problem at all. But he isnt in school yet so the expectations are pretty minimal. Tomorrow I am going to start tightening the screws :o) We are going to go the Humane Society in the morning (7:30 am) to volunteer. He needs to be doing something so why not work on his 40 community hours that he will need to graduate. I would have to say that the other foster parents in our program are a bit jelouse as my kids are hand picked just for me :o) My old social worker deals with all of the kids in the group homes so she knows me well and what type of kid would do well here. It works out great for me as they are usually an excellent fit so we have little issues :o) This kid is pretty explosive (so they tell me) but I have yet to see any behaviours .. you have to love the honeymoon period :o) He really likes all of the animals in our home which is a plus as the pets tend to defuse alot of the emotions a kid feels. Laura

I was reading some of these stories to my hubby tonight and he reminded me of our neighbor Jen's story and I decided I needed to share it with the stupid garden tricks... Our neighbor across the street has been divorced for about three years or so..and let his lawn go to pot as a result..he is a really nice guy, but lost interest when his family moved out. About 6 months ago, he fell in love with a girl about ten years younger than him, she was just 19...and she moved in. He aplogized all over the place to everyone that would listen about his robbing the cradle and that she was so young, but begging everyone to give them a chance and accept it because he loved her. She is JUST 19 and niave....but quickly we learned to love her too..she is a big sweetheart, even if a bit naive sometimes. Late this spring, when my hubby and I pulled in the driveway she followed behind us on foot and asked what we thought of what she had done to the yard. She had pulled and piled his mountains of weeds. I am not kidding in the back yard, the weeds were taller than cars and unused lawn equipement had sat there for years and they had grown around them while he grieved his lost marriage. What was once a nice yard had become an eyesore. She had done a ton of work and we were amazed..she said her hands had blistered even with gloves because the weeds in the back were as thick as saplings. She then asked if we had any weed killer and a sprayer she could borrow. My husband impressed with her work so far said he sure did..it was even already mixed up and it was extra good stuff. He walked with her to our garage and got it for her, and I went in the house. In the meantime, my daughter called and we began idle chit chat, I heard my hubby come in and sit in front of the tube and never thought a thing of it. I talk on the phone and walk about the house and found myself near a window. I looked out, and there was that Jen out there spraying her yard away in the front. I never thought a thing about it, admiring her determination at such a young age with the lost yard. Then she happened to turn towards me and I gasped when I saw which sprayer she had. My husband had given her the roundup sprayer...assuming she was killing the big weeds around the fence and dead lawn equipment in the back that she had been complained about..but instead she was spraying her front yard randomly. I quick hung up the phone and hollared at him to go stop her. He felt terrible...she was mortified and felt young and stupid..she didn't know there was such a thing as roundup..she thought it would only kill weeds,not grass..so she was spraying every weed she saw in the front yard. My husband told her to water quickly and see what happened..he felt terrible that he had misunderstood what she wanted. He always uses granular on the lawn weeds, not liquid so he was not even thinking that way. About two weeks later, these HUGE brown smiley faces of grass began appearing in the lawn. We walked over to apolgize to them but they were laughing bout it. Being just 19 and silly..every weed she had seen, she said..GOTTCHA and after she spritzed it with "weed killer" she drew a smiley face around it... it wasn't bad enough she had sprayed weeds in the grass with roundup but she had drawn prety faces to announce she was in power now....there were dozens of dead grass smiley faces all over the front lawn for passerbys to see. My husband couldnt even look each time we left home. He felt partly responsible. I just chucked..what else can you do? :)

does burning up the four potholders count??? received them as a gift. they each had this lovely magnet in the corner that let you attach them to the appliances so you didn't lose them they stick just as well to the bottom of the cookie sheets you stick on the side to cool off between batches. you can hide one under each pan. I couldn't figure out what was burning until the magnets were pointed out after the pans cooled the second stupid thing was when i realized i had to make cookies in a hurry. while making ginger snaps i grabbed the small McCormick's jar of ginger to add to the recipe. put it in the batch, cooked them, and delivered them to the bake sale. only to get back home and when i began to put away the ingredients find i had put dried mustard in the cookies wouldn't have been so bad but i did the exact same thing two weeks later. I now buy the ground ginger in a glass bottle and the mustard in a can

The above device also bears a startling resemblance to Antec's computer case fans: What ever happened to imagination in industrial design? And now back to things that really can be found in a hardware store.... I always have liked answers to questions nobody asked, like, "why doesn't anyone make a combination hammer drill and vacuum cleaner"? Now somebody does! Meet the Bosch 11221DVS Rotary Hammer: It actually does serve a useful purpose - you know how when you drill a hole in a wall, dust usually falls onto the ground below? Now you don't need a separate Dustbuster to vacuum it up. It costs $356, but it's easily worth that much if only to scare the bejeezus out of people you don't like by aiming it at them while shouting something maniacal and threatening. And as the Gizmodo folks noted, it looks like a leftover prop from the '80s film "Ghostbusters". I gotta have one.