and we're back. [Walt, Wizards, and....Woolungasaurus?]

[kaoden39]

Thank you. He is something else. He calls Mickey Mouse Hot Doggy.

 

[bumbershoot]

That is too adorable. And look, he hasn't knocked out any teeth! Lucky kid.

 

[kaoden39]

That is too adorable. And look, he hasn't knocked out any teeth! Lucky kid.

Give him time. He isn't two until January.

 

[Brady's Mom]

Really all I can say about the teeth is be grateful it wasn't a permanent tooth! Both of my big boys broke off their front top teeth w/in a year of each other. Alex at 19 and Jeff at 11. They both have caps on them and will eventually want/need some sort of other option. Which means it's not covered by insurance and will cost me an arm and a leg! They have the most economical choice right now - but that will have to change soon.

E's pictures turned out really cute.

 

[kaoden39]

Really all I can say about the teeth is be grateful it wasn't a permanent tooth! Both of my big boys broke off their front top teeth w/in a year of each other. Alex at 19 and Jeff at 11. They both have caps on them and will eventually want/need some sort of other option. Which means it's not covered by insurance and will cost me an arm and a leg! They have the most economical choice right now - but that will have to change soon.

E's pictures turned out really cute.

When Kacy was 11 she broke one of her front teeth in half and cracked the other one. The only reason she didn't lose them all was because she had just got her braces. We just recently had to get $1000 dental work done, but it looks good.

 

[bumbershoot]

Oh you people and your made-up pretend tall-tales about adult teeth breaking. How silly, adult teeth can't break. ONLY baby teeth break. Ya hear me, adult teeth of Eamon's? Adult teeth can't break!


At least not until I'm not *as* connected, and especially not until I'm not financially responsible for it.


Yay yay yay! Disneyworld's dining reservation system is back for me! All my lovely reservations are back up on the My Reservations page! Woo!!!!!!!!!!!

What put me into a tiny panic was when I logged in earlier and it said "you have no dining reservations, would you like to make dining reservations?" I figured...patience, patience, patience...it'll be back up, this is probably the interim before it all comes back up.

And it was!

 

[kaoden39]

I am glad to hear that your reservations showed up finally. That had to be nerve wracking.

 

[Brady's Mom]

When Kacy was 11 she broke one of her front teeth in half and cracked the other one. The only reason she didn't lose them all was because she had just got her braces. We just recently had to get $1000 dental work done, but it looks good.

Yikes!

We are considering some sort of porcelain veneer - but haven't really decided on anything. I'll have to talk to the dentist and see what he recommends.

 

[kaoden39]

Yikes!

We are considering some sort of porcelain veneer - but haven't really decided on anything. I'll have to talk to the dentist and see what he recommends.

That's what hers is and it is a perfect match to her teeth. Her dentist sent one back because he didn't like the match.

 

[bumbershoot]

So...my mom and dad had a very interesting life together, living in San Francisco when they did, and knowing who they knew.

But my dad has now peeved me to the point of possibly no return, b/c he's telling tales that are so obviously lies, and he's dissing my mom. AND my cousin (second cousin) is believing his crud and is forgetting that he's talking about my mom... I know this b/c he has a semi-open FB page that I went wandering around today. I don't want to friend him there. But I wish that everyone knew what a liar he is.

YES he gave the keys to a roommate's car to Neal Cassady (who trashed the van) after the roommate gave him express instructions to NOT DO THAT.

YES my mom met Jimi Hendrix and shook his hand. (which means my dad met him too)

YES they were friends with friends who lived with the guys that later formed the Grateful Dead.

But omg David you did NOT take a famous woman with the initials JJ off for a motorcycle ride. And the rest of HIS story is that his "old lady" was so angry that he went to take some time off, and was resting in a tree, and here's the picture.

Except...my mom still had that picture, which meant that it was from a good time in her life (she destroyed all bad time pictures). And who TOOK that picture, while you were hiding out from your "old lady"? And why are there pictures from that SAME DAY with ME in it? Hmm?

Liar liar pants on fire. Same man who had half the kids in the family student housing at UCSC believing that we were making elephant foot for dinner. He's a darned good liar (no one wanted to call his bluff even though he invited kids in to see). And it's too bad that some of my cousins can't get that through their darned heads.

 

[kaoden39]

My FIL does the same thing.

 

[bumbershoot]

I had to call my aunt (mom's sister) to see if she'd heard some version of the story. She had NOT. It couldn't have happened. Augh! Why THIS, of all the lies he's told in his life, is the thing that's bugging me, is beyond me...


But it was great talking with my aunt.

 

[kaoden39]

I am glad that you had a good conversation with your aunt. Does your dad have dementia or Alzheimer's?

 

[bumbershoot]

He's always lied, always made stuff up. And he's GOOD at it. Kept my mom on the hook for 12 years of marriage he was such a good liar.

The thing that is bugging me with this one is that he has my cousin(s) believing it. Of course she WANTS to believe it, but she's not doing the math.

It's similar to when he told me and my brother that he took a bus charter (he was a Greyhound driver) to Woodstock. I finally talked to my mom about it, and after she cleared her usual frustration tears from her eyes, she made sure I knew that that was the summer she was pregnant with me, and the LAST place he was was taking a bus tour clear across the country to upstate New York. (I was so west coast centric that I thought Woodstock was in CA until that moment, by the way)

OK I just got a chance to really read the wiki page for Joplin, and...there's a possibility. But just like with the Dead, IF they met her, it was BEFORE she was famous. So IF it happened, then my dad was just macking on some woman, not on a legend. The wiki pages shows that she moved to SF the same year my mom and dad married and moved to SF, and she worked with one of the guys in Jefferson Airplane in '63 or '64, and my parents roomed with some of the people in JA around that time*. Dangit. But still, it was one of those situations where it became a good story LATER, IF it happened. At the time, it would have been him just hitting on some woman.

But I still doubt it. The man could sell fridges to polar bears.




*and the stories of when they had to live with tons of people are why she always made sure I had money for my OWN shampoo, soap, and peanut butter, LOL.

 

[bumbershoot]

And I know this likely sounds like BS to some...if so, ignore it. I'm just really frustrated with my dad, and with myself for snooping around on his FB page when I KNEW I would find BS like this on it. He has this "I'm a bad guy" pic on it, like he was some hoodlum...yeah, it's from some Z movie shoot in SF when they were extras. They were hanging out with actors and other extras who were dressed like a motorcycle gang...not an actual motorcycle gang. not that he says THAT in his pix.


Who knew that a parent's FB page could prompt such feelings? It's comical if I look at it that way.

 

[kaoden39]

I am sure that I embarrass my kids on fb. I would bet on it.

But, I understand your frustration. I cannot even begin to understand why people feel they need to embellish their pasts. I think that no matter how unexciting someones past may seem to them, it isn't. There is always something that sets them apart from others.

 

[Brady's Mom]

Actually the real, unembellished part, sounds pretty cool.

The other about how he lies and all that just breaks my heart. I have a couple of family members who feel a need to recreate reality to make themselves look good, or whatever, and it can be so aggravating! Reality is totally cool if you let it be.

I just saw your ticker and it says 3 weeks and 6 days - your trip is sooooo close. I wanted so badly to be at DLR this week since the first week of Nov. is my absolute favorite time to go. It didn't happen and I am feeling a little sad about it. Oh well, I did get to go to San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. That counts for something!

 

[bumbershoot]

Shannon, I'm sorry you can't get to DLR right now!


I've calmed down quite a bit, which is good. I'm still just disgusted with the whole thing. For YEARS he talked crud about my mom, talking up how much of a hippie SHE was, while pretending that he was this straight laced union-belonging bus driver who disapproved of the things he said she did. Just trying to start stupid stuff b/c he thought I would just believe him. Guess I've always been stronger than he thinks, because I almost always went and asked her for the truth.

But now, suddenly, now that he has an audience, he's telling something perhaps closer to the truth (he was indeed a union-belonging bus driver, but he was many other things as well), but has decided to embellish, it seems. At least my mom was always honest. It wasn't "oh yeah I was friends with the guys in Grateful Dead", it was "our roommates knew Pigpen, who was a man who became part of the GD a year or so after we knew him, and we met his future bandmates as well one time". The difference is important, and, like Shannon said, is still very cool! And it increases the credibility a thousand fold.



Poor little E, we were out way too long today with not quite enough food and not enough water (did we go into the Outback? the Adirondacks? no, we went to the Y then on a bunch of small errands then to Costco), and he wound up with one of his whoppers of a headache. So he's napping now.

And poor Robert, in his hotel room in the Southern hemisphere, he's gone from the 30s in the morning to the 70s with just an airplane ride...he called maintenance in to check the AC. The guy came in, put his hand in front of the vent, and, in Spanish, said that the AC was as cold as it would be, and that Robert's too warm b/c he's "muy grande". What on earth is wrong with people?

At first I was all annoyed b/c of these "different cultures (even like his own mom's) who think it's OK to say such things", but then I remembered SO many threads on the Universal boards as everyone wondered about Forbidden Journey, and threads on the Transportation forum about airline seats and people being kicked off, and people on the CB just being rude...and it's not just "other" cultures, it's everywhere.

I'm so glad he's at where he is now, he's started posting about his struggles on his FB page, so he's got a huge number of supporters who all know him and love him. It's not just me anymore (and E wants him to stay big, b/c he equates Robert's size with being STRONG!), and I'm glad for that. He posted about it there, and got lots of support, so that's good.

He can do an hour on the elliptical machine that have the arm things that you move back and forth, and he doesn't pass out. I WANT to pass out after a minute of using those arm things; I won't get on those particular elliptical machines. But he can do an HOUR on it. He's getting fitter every week, and while taking E out trickortreating, he realized that he feels a million times better this year b/c his back isn't freaking out anymore. But people still feel the right to get in his face, or talk behind his back, or talk in generalities, b/c they feel something negative about it.

It's rotten.



And all of this is taking my mind off of how sad I still am about Steve Irwin! We rented his movie (something falls off a space station? and the CIA etc are trying to find it, but it falls into Australia and a croc swallows it, and then Steve and Terri find the croc and are absolutely clueless the entire movie) and I can still *easily* cry about his death.

I know, random.

We also rented It's Complicated, and that was a weird little movie. Robert and I kept feeling SO bad for Steve Martin's character. And if you haven't seen it, it's not like what it seemed in the ads (I had the feeling that Steve was her current husband but he's not). There were really poignant parts, and there were talk-talk-talk parts that just had us yawning. And there were moments where I got to point to Alec Baldwin and say "THAT, that right there, THAT is how a man acts when he's gunning for a woman and he doesn't care who might be at home, THAT is how a normal, decent woman can get ensnared into the world of seeing a married man"...Alec plays that part VERY well. Frighteningly well.

But the best part of the movie was Merryl's character's house. It would be a dream for me to live there!

 

[bumbershoot]

Whew, finally getting caught up with E and his homeschool! We've been heavy in the PE and heavy in the self-directed learning, but a bit light on the book-work! That's OK for him, though, he tends to learn quite a bit on his own (if he didn't have the urge to be "taught" he'd be a great candidate for "unschooling"), but it's HARD for me to get back into the swing of things!

As much as I giggle at the curriculum's way of doing math, it's highly effective. In 40 years (realized it just before my last birthday) I never really totally 100% put it together that multiplication is like adding and division is like subtracting. Not once! And yet it makes so much sense to me when thinking about it like that. To E, too, it seems.

Hmm, his counting beans seem to be having a war with each other. Not sure Oak Meadow school would be too pleased with that!

 

[Brady's Mom]

Lol about the counting beans! That would surely happen at my house! With some heavy planning/coordinating/strategizing for a sneak attack and some of them being dropped out of airplanes, etc., etc.!