My legs had their first outing of the year this weekend. Although I guess I don’t really mean my legs because my legs have gone everywhere with me all year long. I mean my legs in shorts. And so I apologize to anyone who was blinded by their whiteness. I’m a little behind on my self-tanning game because it stayed cool so much longer this year than it usually does and so I was a little unprepared for the warm temps this weekend.
But now I’m aware that the time for self-tanner has come, mainly because I also have my first shorts tan of the year which matches nicely with the sunburn I have just on my forearms thanks to the three-quarter sleeve shirt I wore with my shorts to Caroline’s soccer game on Saturday. It’s going to take some dedication to even this whole thing out.
Anyway, we had ourselves a nice little weekend around here. It began on Friday when P’s long-awaited dream of having radiant barrier paint sprayed in our attic was realized. Yes, that’s right. Men came and sprayed our attic with some sort of paint that is allegedly used in the space shuttle even though I guess not anymore since we aren’t sending any more people to the moon. That just means more radiant barrier paint is available for attics everywhere. I know this comes as a huge relief to us all.
P and Caroline went to watch the high school girls in a playoff soccer game that evening and we were all so wiped out from the week that I’m not sure we even stayed up until ten. It’s a good thing Friday Night Videos doesn’t exist anymore or I would have totally missed out on the new Madonna video.
We had a lazy Saturday morning before we headed out to Caroline’s soccer game. Every game she’d had up to this point this spring required me to wear my puffy coat and a scarf, so I was thrilled to sit out in the sunshine even though I’m out of sunshine practice which is how I made the rookie mistake of getting a terrible shorts tan. But the game itself was awesome. Caroline played her heart out and even scored the first goal. I attempted to take several pictures, but the sun was so bright that I couldn’t really tell what I was taking pictures of and so I basically ended up with fifteen pictures of girls on the team who aren’t my child and just one decent one of Caroline if you use the word “decent” loosely.
After the game we all came home and showered and then Caroline went to dinner with Mimi and Bops while P and I went out on a date. We tried a new Cajun place we’d been hearing about called The Cookhouse and we give it a thumbs up in case you’re looking for Cajun food in San Antonio. We had to sit at the bar because we didn’t make reservations, but had a great time and thought the food was really good.
Then on Sunday afternoon Caroline was working on some homework for school and you cannot even imagine the amount of grievances she was airing as she declared she had searched for the median household income for Japan on the internet and didn’t find ANYTHING. I finally had enough of it and said, “Just type that exact phrase into Google and a million things will come up. You have NO IDEA how easy you have it. When Dad and I were in school we’d have to get out the “J” Encyclopedia to look up Japan!”
We also had to walk barefoot to school. In the snow. Uphill. Both ways.
So this led to a whole discussion about what an encyclopedia even was and I had to explain it was a large set of books that we kept on our bookshelves next to our record albums and 8-track tapes.
Gulley called me a little bit later because I had plans to go over to her house and look through her old photo albums (Y’all. I can’t not even deal with how hard we laughed over some of these pictures. I’ll be sharing some in the next few days and weeks and I just ask that you keep in mind those were dark times when we all wore jeans way above our belly-buttons.) and I told her what I said to Caroline about the encyclopedias and she said, “YES! And we didn’t even have a set at my house so I had to go to Nena and Grandaddy’s to use theirs and they were so out of date!”
And that made me remember that the set I used up until I was in high school was the same set my Me-Ma and Pa-Pa bought for my dad. I couldn’t use them to write a report about the Vietnam War because it hadn’t even happened yet. And I couldn’t research John F. Kennedy’s assassination because according the encyclopedia he was a U.S. Senator.
So you know what I don’t want to hear from my kid who has access to all the information in the ENTIRE WORLD at her fingertips in a matter of seconds? That she can’t find the median household income of Japan.
It happens to be $25,600 in case you’re wondering.
Hope you had a great weekend!
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This morning in Sunday School we came to a word we didn’t know the meaning of. Someone looked it up on their phone. Our teacher, who is young enough to be my son, if I had a son, said “What did we do before the internet? I might have muttered under my breath “dictionary”. You know, that big thick book with all the words in it. Of course, I would know all about that since I’m the gal, who when lookng for a certain scripture tonight pulled the big thick concordance off the shelf instead of going to the computer or phone. Old study habits die hard.
I KNOW, right? I remember being so jealous of my “rich” friends, whose parents bought the newest set of Encyclopedias every year! Whereas my set still said “Someday man even may land on the moon!” I’m. Not. Joking. And… the median household income in Japan is $25,000? I think I want to move to Japan now.
According to Wikipedia (a very reliable online resource) the median household income in the U.S. is $51,939.
Oh the Encyclopedia memories… I think for Fashion Friday you should tell us you self tanner preferences! (That sounded really bossy) ????
Melanie, what did you use for research once you went to college? Do you remember the time Mimi and I visited you during your freshman year at A&M and you didn’t know which building was the library? That was a real red flag and I was concerned that I may not be getting my money’s worth! Happily it all turned out well.
In the olden days we had to use microfiche (at the library) for research.
My dad would have worried with you about what he was getting for his money…I also didn’t know where my college library was my freshman year – had to look it up for my 2nd year though because I had to use it for something – can’t even remember what….
I love when you share memories of Melanie’s younger days! Too funny!
we had a set of OLD encyclopedias that my mom bought used from someone who obviously realized the validity of having current info in their home. it was really, really ancient.
and so,
i had to go to the library.
and i didn’t have a cell phone.
i got dropped off and was instructed that i would be picked up at a specific time so i’d better be done. if it got done early, i had to just sit there on the library steps and wait.
kids don’t ever wait anymore. have you noticed that??
oh, and i had better get all my research done cuz that one transport to the library was all i had so i’d better make it work.
(and i did, including a visit into the microfiche machine!)
Amen to google from this homeschooling mom 🙂 …. whats really got my interest piqued is, what kind of self tanner do you use?!
Yes, encyclopedias and that place called the library (you actually had to leave your home to get there!). I’ve often thought how nice it would have been to have the internet back when I was younger. It sure comes in handy!
But Caroline deserves a big congratulations on scoring the first goal in the soccer game! Good job, Caroline! No doubt that was much more enjoyable than finding out the median income of Japan.
I have to hand it to the Japanese though — they sure seem to do well on $25k per year!
Thanks for the laugh this morning! My sweet daddy bought me the World Book set and every year would add the Yearbook and Science Year. He used to say “go to the book of knowledge and look it up.” I got all my school report info from those books, so I was glad to have them. As for the Internet, he went to his reward not understanding how I could read email or get info on my phone! : ) Mother would just say “we aren’t supposed to get it honey!” and Yay for Caroline scoring. We froze at my grandson’s soccer game this weekend in FLORIDA!!!!!
Yes, please share your favorite self-tanners. Hooray for spring!
You do realize that now when kids Google “the median household income of Japan”, they will find this blog post, and, like the rest of us, will just be left with self tanner questions!
Also, Bops’ comment? LOL! Which reminds me, when I was in college, there was a bar/club called The Library. If your roommate answered the phone when your mom called, she could just say, “She’s at The Library.”
That bar owner is brilliant! Such a great marketing strategy
My friend has a sixth grader whose teacher is giving extra credit on a project if the kids go to an actual library and use real books to find information. This is where we all shake our heads and say, “What is this world coming to?”
I grew up in a weird time. We had library class in middle school & high school where we learned how to look up information in Encyclopedias…and then that was completely irrelevant by the time I went to college and I had to learn how to look up articles on the rabbit hole that was my college’s online index.
And professors were all persnickety about not using wikipedia as a source. Snobs.
At my house, we had a set of encyclopedias. Well, a PARTIAL set. You can just imagine how helpful that was. Not.
Oh, the memories of the trips to the library for perusal through the card catalog and the microfiche! And then coming home to type my report on a typewriter.
Okay, I’m feeling ancient, so I’m going to take the afghan off my lap and go get my teeth out of the jar!
You mean some families had entire SETS of encyclopedias? We only had a set through about ‘J’ I think because of some event that I’ve apparently blocked from my memory and my mom had to change grocery stores which meant she wasn’t able to buy the ‘Book of the Week’ anymore. And just today I read a lifehack that said to stop using Google to search for school essay information and to use scholar.google.com. Who knew? Do they even teach kids the Dewey Decimal System anymore? I remember spending days learning about that man and his organization system because how else would we look up anything we may need to know?
Thanks for the suggestion of that link! My beef with having kids look up information on the internet is they don’t really teach kids how to do it. There can be a skill to internet searching.
Okay, I just googled “octopus” and this is one of the first entries: Crystal structure of a functional unit from Octopus hemocyanin
I think middle schoolers might need and alternate search engine….
I had almost this exact same discussion with my daughter yesterday! She was having issues finding major geological events on the inter-webs. I regaled her with tales of the 1969 Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia I was fortunate enough to use for my research projects, and told her to keep trying She was unimpressed with the tales from my childhood or with my lack of assistance with her ongoing google searches.
We didn’t even have an old encyclopedia when I was growing up – though I do think we had a dictionary and a thesaurus ….lol….had to go to the library to look things up…maybe that’s why I always loved and still love libraries….the problem with Wikedpia to look things up is that people input the information into Wikipedia and it’s not always a reliable source – that’s why teachers don’t want kids to use it – teachers prefer kids learn to look things up in “original” sources …..lol
Okay, Bops wins for comment of the day!
Two things: First, does anyone remember the Friends episode when Joey buys the “V” volume from Penn (or is that Teller? I can never remember which one talks and which one doesn’t. I should Google it.) Hilarious! “Viet Nam? Vivisection? Vesuvius?”
B) When we moved my parents out of their house into a smaller apartment, we had to get rid of some stuff (by that I mean boatloads!). They still had the World Book Encyclopedias (circa 1965) that my brothers and I used to get through all our junior high and high school “research” papers. I searched everywhere (using the internet) to find a place that would take them. However, every thrift store/charity donate-your-stuff-here website had in big letters “WE DO NOT ACCEPT ENCYCLOPEDIAS”. We ended up taking them to the recycling bin. That was one loud clunk when those babies hit the bottom. I felt like a big part of my childhood went clunk too.
Well! After all that, tell us, what self tanner do you use?
Thank you God for Google and Spell-check! I was born in 1943 . . . way, way, way, way before a computer I can hold on my lap that allows me to find out everything and anything. I’m still amazed at cell phones.
I just finished “The Antelope in the Living Room” and am so thrilled to hear that P finally got his attic painted. 🙂
Just bought my self-tanner today—I’m rather fluorescent in the leg department without it! Also, I’m enjoying “Antelope” and thought it funny that P’s attic dreams are coming true as I just read about his first wish for them in the book! 🙂
oh so Spam!
whoops, looks like you deleted it just as I was typing. yay for delete.
We didn’t have a set of encyclopedias when I was growing up, but my grandparents did and I remember MANY nights when a question would come up around the dinner table and we’d call my Grampa. It’s kind of sad to me that we don’t ever have to do that anymore, thanks to the Google!