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Happy Mother's Day open thread

Enjoy the day, everyone!

Here in Colorado, it’s sunny and 85, my son is running a low-grade fever, and my wife is on a plane, shuttling off on yet another business trip, because that’s what you do in this economy to keep your job. But at least I got to make her French toast on apple fritter bread before she left.

Share your happy Visigoth stories from Obama’s America here!

45 Replies to “Happy Mother's Day open thread”

  1. JD says:

    Mowed, grilled steaks on the grill, went shopping @ Tiffany’s. Better Half is happy, for the moment. Still plenty of time for me to do something stupid.

  2. Blitz says:

    well? My kids mom went AWOL so many years ago that I’m now the recipient of mothers and fathers day gifts…However? I made my mom (72 and can still kick my ass ) a nice Surf and Turf. Lobster and Sirloin. Least I can do for all she’s done for me.

  3. Jeff G. says:

    My neck has been hurting pretty badly so I went and ordered a Teeter inversion table. Anybody ever use one?

  4. Joe says:

    Grilled pork tenderloins (dry rubbed with medium hot pepper and corriander) with baby carrots and fennel in a reduced stock-wine sauce. She liked it.

  5. RTO Trainer says:

    Back at lovely Camp Shelby, MS today, but did get to spend a good piece of Friday out of a 4 day pass, with my mom in Texas, and more than that with Maggie.

  6. Swen says:

    I did up some salmon fillets in a dill and cracked peppercorn marinade for lunch and earned enough brownie points to escape to the rifle range for the afternoon.

    Just trying to live up to right wing Visigoth standards, although being considered a barbarian is quite a promotion for me as I’ve never progressed past Upper Savagery. (Be sure to catch the PC balderdash at the end. Of course anthropologists and archaeologists measure the relative advancement of past and present societies. We still talk about Paleolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, etc. stages of technological advancement — and technology does indeed “evolve” through these stages — we just don’t use such un-PC terms as “savage” and “barbarian” anymore.)

  7. serr8d says:

    Teeter inversion table

    That’s for back aches, or so the advertising says. If it works out for you, let me know. This video (@3:32 or so) isn’t very promotional after all.

  8. Bob Reed says:

    Mmmmmmmmm. Apple fritter bread…

  9. Jeff G. says:

    For neck pain as well, serr8d. Same principle: alignment.

  10. dicentra says:

    Yesterday I did some yardwork, then went to the laundromat, then grocery shopping. Got home around midnight.

    Got up to get ready for church and was so tired and sore I couldn’t move, so I went back to bed and have been there until just now.

    And called my mom in there somewhere. Was going to call my brother for his birthday, but every able-bodied person in the Church (Nashville area) has been sent to the tornado area this weekend for cleanup.

    It has rained all day and will rain all day tomorrow. Because I’m not in a flood zone, I find it lovely.

  11. Pablo says:

    My neck has been hurting pretty badly so I went and ordered a Teeter inversion table. Anybody ever use one?

    I haven’t used the table, but I’ve got a pair of their gravity boots. It’s a great stretch, and I’ve found it very helpful with lower back pain. Plus, head rush! The table seems a hell of a lot easier to use then the boots, though.

  12. Carin says:

    Yard time for me.

    Oh – Dicentra may appreciate this – I’ve got THREE Orioles here at my feeder this weekend.

    I did a table fist bump, just like Obama. It was my Gutsy move to remember to fill the feeder Saturday morning, I think.

    In other good news, our health insurance went up another $90 last month. Since Obamacare – $300 increases per month.

    THANKS OBAMA.

  13. Carin says:

    But, we did have a nice LOL on how it’s been all over the news that oil has PEAKED and will be going down. Perhaps by as much as 50 cents by July. I know they ignored the story as long as they could while it was going up and up and up, but now that they think/hope/pray it will be going down, they are on this bitch.

  14. Squid says:

    I made ebelskivers filled with Mom’s homemade apple butter from last fall’s harvest. Then I called Mom on the phone to tell her how awesome they were.

    I’m such a good son.

  15. Inversion’s like traction therapy, I tried it before my back surgery. It felt great while I was on the table, but I was too far gone. I’ve seen some neck traction things that you hook to a pull-up bar, but they always look to me like something your shovel-buddy will have to explain to the newspapers after the other guests start to complain about the smell.

  16. I flew home from Southern California Friday ready to gloat about how much gas costs out there. $4.29 when I left.

    It was $4.25 here. I’m blaming Derby if it’s cheaper today, if not, then my budget is royally fucked.

    Took my frustration out busting up a concrete pad with a 12 pound sledge. I had two days to take out a falling-over brick wall and patio and replace it with landscape timbers and pea gravel, looks so much better. Now the dogs have a beautiful Asian garden they can destroy instead of a good old American perennial garden. Mrs Cookies is happy that it’s over and she doesn’t have to listen to me, grunt, moan, bitch and complain anymore… except when I have to get up and walk somewhere this morning… or bend over and pick something up… or breathe…

  17. Slartibartfast says:

    I used gravity boots way back around 1984; worked wonders. I had one of those boots plus removable bar that mounts in your door frame. First time I tried it my back muscles hurt. When I consciously relaxed them all, my entire spine cracked in fast sequence, like a zipper.

    Best thing I ever did. I thought I wasn’t stressed back then, but I was wrong.

    Plus, the situps were pretty amazing.

    Hey – that fingerwalking-the-sledge thing…is that done with thumb up or thumb down? I can do it thumb down, but I can’t even move the sledge vertically at all, thumb up.

  18. Squid says:

    … except when I have to get up and walk somewhere this morning… or bend over and pick something up… or breathe…

    Laughter being the best medicine, should we be extra-funny today to help you get better? Or would a good belly laugh simply kill you dead?

  19. Slartibartfast says:

    Took my frustration out busting up a concrete pad with a 12 pound sledge

    Best home improvement workout/training program I ever had was as follows:

    Find a place where an old sidewalk has been ripped up to make room for something, like a wide driveway, and piled up in a heap ready for a big dump truck to take it off to the landfill.

    Pick the sidewalk segments up one at a time and throw them in the back of the pickup. It really, really helps to have an utter piece of shit ’68 F250 with the Dana rear axle and a transplanted 300 cid straight-six, that served its previous master as an appliance transportation vehicle. Said previous master was not a firm believer in any kind of cargo restraints, and somehoe managed to punch some holes in the bed of the truck using some means unknown to me. Anyway: pre-beat-to-hell.

    It’s necessary when doing this that you bring a sledgehammer to break up the concrete, because a 4′-square piece of 4″-thick concrete sidewalk weighs something like 500 lb per.

    Take all those nice, heavy, clumsy pieces of concrete home, put them in a wheelbarrow, wheel them around the yard to various places you want to put in homemade walkways, dig out dirt to make them level, set them in, find they’re not level, pull them back out, rearrange dirt, rinse, later, repeat a half-dozen times per chunk.

    Repeat for several truckloads until the wife is happy with how things look. This might take years.

  20. That was fast. My wife just asked what I was going to do with the pile of rubble I left in the corner of the yard, behind the bush, where nobody but the dogs, snakes and rabbits go and no one ever looks.

    “What rubble?” was not a good answer. Neither was, “No one ever looks over there.”, “You can hardly see it, even if you do.”, “It’s not a big deal.”, “That’s not true.”, “I do so.”, or “OK, fine, make this about my mother, like she ever did anything to you.”, “Well maybe not fat, but…”, “We all need to work on somethings, I for one, need to stop trying to be so damn accommodating.”, “That’s a fiiiine double standard, missy.”, or even, “Yeah, well, IIIIIII should have listened to MYYY sister!”, “DOES SO MAKE SENSE!”, but “FINE! I’LL MOVE IT!” was OK.

  21. JD says:

    I am rolling. LMC is hysterical.

  22. Slartibartfast says:

    Seriously, LMC, if you have a need for a walkway, somewhere, you can just fit the busted-up pad pieces (not ones that were actually broken from each other; they’re not supposed to fit exactly) together in a mosaic and make one.

    Not sure if that’s any easier than just carting the shit away, though.

  23. Slartibartfast says:

    LMC, “Yes, dear” works pretty well on the first go-round.

    Also, remember to pick up after yourself, or she’ll think you meant for her to do it.

  24. I used some of the bigger chunks as stepping stones in the Michelle Obama Magical Mystery Garden of Eden and Pest Control Chemical Experimentation Zone, but someone’s going to break an ankle. (I’m seriously not taking any shit this year, I want birds to fall from the sky if they accidentally fly over my tomatoes. I want scorched earth. I want the fucking EPA to come to my house and tell me I have fucked up the groundwater so bad that ragweed, crabgrass and dandelions are on the endangered species list and every child born south of Louisville has three heads.)

  25. Carin says:

    You don’t like weeding, I take it LMC?

  26. I like weeding fine. I hate weeds.

  27. dicentra says:

    Carin, I envy you your orioles. The ones out west don’t hang in the ‘burbs.

    Just hung my hummer feeder but may get no hits. Last time I hung it out, I got no hits either. Let’s hear it for futility!

  28. Carin says:

    I never got ’em until I moved out to the boonies.

    And hummingbirds? Oh, they’re a nuisance;)

    I used to put out feeders, but I get so many from the flowers I don’t bother anymore

  29. Slartibartfast says:

    So, you’re opting for overkill, I’m guessing.

    In Florida, pretty much everything is a weed. Lantana? Weed. Plumbago? Weed. Dwarf asiatic jasmine? Good luck pulling that out of your azaleas. Spiderwort? For God’s sake, don’t take the advice of some idiot back-to-native-shrubbery nursery owner and plant the stuff, because it flowers constantly. Which means it’s seeding itself like mad all over your yard, and your neighbors, and nothing short of pulling it all up by its roots whenever you even suspect it will pop up will eradicate it.

    Evergreen Giant mondo grass? Not a weed. But eventually your nice, evergreen clumps will get far too big, and you’ll have to dig them up, cut them in quarters with a sharpened spade, and replant one of those quarters in place of where the big plant was. IOW: weed. Even my lovely sweet viburnum hedge will grow a couple of dozen feet tall if I don’t hack it back to 6 or 7 feet every month or two.

    Why can’t plants just behave?

  30. Slartibartfast says:

    Even the fucking bumper crop of acorns we had last year are weeds. I’ve never seen so many acorns sprout into baby trees. Maybe I can look at two-finger pinch grip uprooting the ones stuck in my lawn as grip training.

  31. Slartibartfast says:

    And why aren’t the squirrels eating those acorns? Why, it’s the feral cats in the neighborhood keeping the squirrel count down, combined with the fact that the squirrels are chowing down the exotic seeds in the bird feeder.

  32. Blake says:

    My wife and I took mom, aunt and cousin to breakfast after church yesterday.

    I then took my wife to see a movie. We went to see Thor, if anyone’s interested. Stan Lee made his usual cameo appearance.

  33. Blake says:

    LMC,

    You could always install one of the following for bird control: http://www.suttonag.com/Zon.html

  34. JD says:

    Until this weekend, we had thistle and milkweeds so big they looked like small trees, and dandelion clumps so big that you had to halve them just to boil the greens for dandelion soup. Ran the aerator and slit seeder too. Better Half is temporarily pleased with me.

  35. Carin says:

    And you did what with the milkweeds?

    *cringes

    WHAT ABOUT THE BUTTERFLIES?

    I used to pull them too, but now that I live out in the boonies (lotsa land) I love them.

    I’ve got Joe Pie weed everywhere too. LOVE IT.

  36. Carin says:

    thistle can go to hell, though.

  37. Slartibartfast says:

    I’m a slit seeder; I seed slits.

  38. Carin says:

    My chickens love dandelions.

  39. Carin says:

    Blake … how was your wife *after* the movie. I hear Thor is … ahem … inspiring.

  40. Blake says:

    Carin. We’ve only been married 7 months.

    And there are not and will not be any more children.

    No Thor required.

  41. Carin says:

    wasn’t talking about no babies, Blake.

    Lemme just lay it straight. THOR IS HAWT.

  42. JD says:

    Carin – I pulled them, and then poured gasoline in the hole that they formerly resided in. The butterflies have at least 5 Butterfly Bushes to frolic in.

  43. Blake says:

    Carin, we’re still newlyweds.

    Perhaps Thor will be required in a couple of years.

  44. dicentra says:

    Joe Pye weed, actually.

    And unless you have bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis) in your yard, you have no reason to complain about weeds.

  45. Slartibartfast says:

    That’s morning glory. We used to have 5000 sq ft of garden that would be completely covered in the stuff if we didn’t pull it out a few times a week.

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