Ice Cream Lost

My little guy had his first ice cream cone this weekend.

I was really impressed with how well he did - he held it upright, didn't spill anything and seemed to know that he needed to start at the top and eat downwards. By the way, do you notice the brindle greyhound lurking in the background?


Look at the concentration - he is doing such a great job! Hmmmmmm, that greyhound sure is hovering...


Wow - look at him go!


Ohhh, now he's down to the very last part of the cone - this was always my favorite part, where the ice cream is all melty and settled into the "basket" part of the cone. You just pop it into your mouth in one bite - yum!

Sadly, my little guy never did get to complete this last step. Kiki (the greyhound) snatched it out of his sticky little hands; while I didn't see it actually happen I did hear him squeal and turned in time to see her running with her head down and ice cream cone in her mouth. He toddled after her, chasing her and crying. He even swiped at her - he was so mad. It was heartbreaking - so much so I was too distracted to get a picture. Just as well, it was very sad.



Here is my girl with HER ice cream. Notice the greyhound skulking around again. Cue the theme music from "Jaws" - that's what it's like when you have food around Kiki. She just keeps circling and circling, looking for her chance to grab it. She can be very bold and she is super quiet and very stealthy when she does it.


My girl, at the ripe old age of 3, is on to Kiki's little tricks so she decided to go into her little playhouse to enjoy the rest of her cone. I took this picture peeking through the little notch between the shutters.

She calls the house her "restaurant" but she pronounces it "restaurahnk". I have no idea why she calls it that but it's very adorable. Anyways, she loves to hang out in the restaurahnk and wait for customers - notice the little lawn chair she pulled in there so she can sit while she waits.

This weekend she begged me to come to her restauranhnk and knock on her shutters - she likes to keep them closed until she gets a customer, you know. So I dutifully went and knocked on the shutters and she ignored me. So I knocked again and she responded with "I'm closed!" Can you believe it?? She begs me to come play restaurahnk with her and then she tells me she's closed! I say "but I'm so hungry, can't you please make me something to eat?". She's a tough cookie and replies "no, you'll have to find another restaurant, I'm closed". I call her bluff and walk away. She bites and calls out "I'm open now!!" so it all begins again.

By the way, we got the playhouse from Freecycle :-)

Freecycle to the Rescue

It's been a rough month already - our digital camera broke, my little boy had back-to-back trips to the emergency room, property taxes are due next month, we spent $170 on my dog's arthritis medication (yes, my dog's arthritis medication which she needs to be on for the rest of her life). So, when the microwave went kaput this weekend I told my husband we'd just do without.

To me the microwave is a nice convenience, but not a necessity. I guess that comes from not having one myself until after I got out of college; however, my husband has had one since they first were on the market (and as big as chest freezers) so he was in a panic without it. The day after it broke he called me at work and told me "I don't think I can get around not having a microwave" - I could almost imagine his hands were sweaty and his stomach was in a knot - that's how concerned he sounded. Like a junkie looking for his next hit. It's a MICROWAVE for crying out loud!!! So I suggested we put a WANTED posting on Freecycle and see what happened. Within 24 hours we had a new (used) microwave in our kitchen. While it isn't as nice as our old one (or as powerful) it's a microwave and life can now go on. The lady that answered our post lived two blocks from us, can you believe it? I'll say it again: I LOVE Freecycle!

I love Freecycle!

Freecycle - have you heard of it? Until recently I hadn't but after reading a blurb in the Trib about it I absolutely fell in love with the idea. Now that I have used it (as a Freecycler and a Freecyclee) I love it even more.

Freecycle is a community of people (all volunteers) that have decided to try and keep good, useable "stuff" out of landfills and instead try to get them into the hands of people that can use them - it's like eBay but completely FREE!

I quickly went to the Freecycle website to sign up but found my own town didn't have a group. However, a few surrounding areas did, so I signed up on three boards in neighboring towns. Within hours the postings (via email) started flying in. People that are trying to get rid of stuff post "OFFERS", people looking for stuff post "WANTEDS". Then it's usually first come, first served, so if something is really a great freebie you had better be able to respond within minutes of the posting. For a few weeks I watched with curiousity at the various items that came across - someone looking for a cell phone because her toddler had thrown hers in a toilet, another offering books on various computer programs, someone else looking for a 2 man tent for his kids, another offering a gas dryer. Wha???? A gas dryer? OMG - I responded to that one as fast as I could and held my breath waiting for an answer. Our own gas dryer had been on the fritz for months and we were dragging our feet knowing we would rather buy a new one than try to repair this one, but not really wanting to part with the money. Now we had the opportunity to grab a FREE dryer? Wow, I was tingling with anticipation. Oh please, please, please let us win this dryer ("win" this dryer? Now the eBayer in me was showing it's face...)

We did "win" the dryer and it is working just fine. It came to Freecycle because that Freecycler had bought a new washer/dryer set when his washer broke down but since the dryer still worked fine he posted it. My husband picked it up that Saturday and things couldn't have gone more smoothly.

Other cool things we have snagged are a maple wood Shaker-style rocking chair (needs a little work but well worth the price - FREE!) a gently used pair of girl's pink snow boots (of course my daughter's FAVORITE pair of shoes are the FREE ones) an interactive Solar System thingy that will be nice when she is a little bit older and a fire escape ladder to keep upstairs "just in case", God forbid we ever need it.

I've since offered a few items myself - one was a queen sized feather bed that we no longer used. Since it is technically bedding I hesitated to donate it or put it in a garage sale thinking who would want something that other people had slept in? I wouldn't! But giving it away for free... that seemed like a good idea. I posted it and within 8 hours I had three people practically begging me for it. WOW! It was that easy? I wrapped it in a large bag, put it on my front porch and when I came home later that day it was gone. I LOVE IT!!

You can check it out at http://www.freecycle.org/. If you don't have a group in your area, maybe you can start one up yourself?