recent events have me going to wabash feed and seed to get some opringtons

My father in law came to town. Guess what that means? He and H spent the entire day (like until 11:30p.m.) finishing my chicken coop. To quote H "the only break I took all day was to go to the hardware store to buy more shit to finish the damn thing" Did I mention the feels like temp yesterday was in the 100s and the mosquitoes were in the thousands?

I had actually decided I didn't want chickens any more after I ran into this elderly lady who had given her daughter-in-law some eggs who in turn gave some to me. As I thanked her, she said "oh your welcome sugar, but we just don't keep chickens any more. They are filthy creatures and its so cheap to buy eggs." She kind of echoed the sentiment of my mom who said something like "you want chickens, are you stupid or is it just real hot in here?"

But that's cool. I'll get some chickens.


This is a happy man, building a chicken coop.



This is a man who is building a chicken coop instead of wathcing someone build one on the diy network.





Here they are together.

I wrote a poem today and I think it is almost as good as the LoveSong of J. Alfred Prufrock

And it goes like this:

I know a little girl named Tallulah
who hails from the south texas town of Cotulla
she's a finnicky eater
but if you want to please her
just bring her big bowls of tabbouluh

Notice, I did not say as good as The Wasteland.

Like I couldn't see this response from a mile away...

Me: I saw the most good looking Asian man I have ever seen in my life, at cosco, of all places

H: What? I wasn't there.

God, sometimes I just pitch him some real softballs, don't I???

Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraim's Daughter Longstocking

We've been reading Pippi Longstocking every night. And we love it so much (Annabelle sometimes screams with laughter at her antics) that we went on to the second book and are coming to the end of it and will probably start the third one on Friday.

I never read Pippi as a child, I just knew she had red hair, because I heard ( from people who think all red heads look alike--and there are lots of these hairist out there) that I looked like Pippi when I was a kid.

Pippi is wild. She has no parents (well, her dad is a cannibal king somewhere in the South Seas) and is completely unsupervised. She lives with a monkey named Mr. Nilsson and her pet horse and has two best friends named Tommy and Annika She is "as rich as a troll" and spanks herself when she is naughty. She is the strongest person in the world and can lift her horse with three men and six kids on top of it. She doesn't go to school because she doesn't see the need to learn "plufitication tables" and has already been to Lisbon and sees no reason to know that it is the capital of Portugal. She is also kind-hearted and makes sure her friends have a little bit of magic in their lives every day.

We love Pippi.

On another note, today, after a crazy playdate, I went outside to clean up sand that had been dumped out from the sandbox (the suspects are varied in this case and include the dog). I could hear that Tallulah was waking up from her nap, but I needed to get this done before I got her up because the mosquitoes were bad and it was thundering and once she wakes up, she generally likes a long cuddle and doesn't want to do things like clean up the backyard.

When I came back inside, though, she and Annabelle were downstairs. Tallulah was eating a lollipop and Annabelle was wearing her dress backwards, dancing and singing a song about how she could lift her baby sister out of the crib now. Her face was covered in chocolate.

We are Pippi.

In Case you are wondering what a small town parade looks like

O beautiful



for heroes proved



In liberating strife



who more than self, their country loved



and mercy more than life



America!

America!



May God Thy Gold define



Till all success be nobleness


And every gain divine





not on the parade route, but back by the river on a hammock Annabelle said, "i never want to leave here."

while the men of the greatest generation stormed the beaches of normandy, the men of today watch duck dynasty.

Briefly: my husband watches the most preposterous things possible on tv, which after discussing with my other girlfriends, I realize is just a sign of his masculinity, or lack thereof, depending on how you look at it.

He once watched a movie called grizzly, which was the grizzly version of jaws. Actually, he watched it twice.

But tonight we have hit a new low. He is watching some show called duck dynasty, about this family of hillbillies who made their fortunes by making duck calls. I am not sure how you could make a fortune off of this, since it seems like a small percentage of the population that duck hunts and out of that segment, I don't think you would need more than one duck caller per hunting family, but they have a tv show, so it must be true. They have big houses and long beards, but they don't have grass in their yards, just dirt patches and that is due, I believe, to their hillbilly nature.

I was watching this in disgust tonight and I told him it was stupider than deadliest catch, stupider even than "that show where they shoot the gators."

His response was to scratch himself.

Thankfully it has been raining and so we have grass and being Vietnamese, he can only be a hillbilly in his heart, and not it real life.

Monkey see, monkey puke

Annabelle has this really sensitive gag reflex, which she triggered yesterday when she was trying to get a grape skin off of her mouth appliance (due to severe underbite that asian kids sometimes have). I knew it was coming, despite my attempts to do what has worked in the past--a sip of water, deep breaths. She threw up near Tallulah, who was confused by the crying and projectile nature of the vomit, and she walked by it and gave it a dirty look. Then Annabelle spewed some more and as I was cleaning it up and comforting poor Annabelle, I looked up, and saw Tallulah, standing legs apart, trying to throw up, just like her big sister.

Monkey see, monkey puke.