Now Playing at Hillbilly Mom's Breakfast Table
Posted by Hello

Pick of the Week: Honey Nut Cheerios.
Posted by Hello

How About Those Honey Nut Cheerios?

I am in the Big Blogger contest at Rants of a Rebecca, and the
challenge this week is to review a breakfast cereal.

My pick is Honey Nut Cheerios. I give it two thumbs up.
This cereal is rated G for general audiences, since it can be
enjoyed by all ages. Babies just starting on solid food will
love the sugary taste. This ain't no zwieback cracker, baby.
Oldsters can reap the benefits of lower cholesterol by eating
this cereal several times a week.

Supporting players milk and banana also deserve credit here.
They add to the overall nutritional value of Honey Nut Cheerios.

Honey Nut Cheerios has a lot of competition at the breakfast
table in my house. The younger crowd prefers sweeter fare.
They would eat cereal for every meal. Don't have milk? Don't
worry. My little redneck hillbillies will eat it dry. As long as
there is enough sugar, they will munch on it any time of day
or night.

Honey Nut Cheerios is not lacking in the action department.
Knock over the box, and watch those Os roll. They provide
much more excitement that the flat or marshmallowy cereals.
Their only weakness is in the soundtrack department. Oh,
they have a nice crunch, but in milk, they are outdone by
those snap-crackle-pop fellows.

So check out the Honey Nut Cheerios. You'll be "O" so glad.

You Can't Teach a New Kid Old Sayings

Today was our last day of school. Just for fun, I gave my students
a page of old sayings to see how many they could complete.
Here are some of the results:

An apple a day...
keeps the teacher away.

Don't count your chickens...
till they come home.
there's 20 missing. Sorry, I got hungry.

You can't judge a...
turkey by the way it flies.

Be careful not to throw the baby...
it has no wings.
cause you'll get locked up.
against the wall.

Early to bed and early to rise...
there's a big day ahead, don't be surprised.
go to sleep now, wake up to a prize.
you get the breakfast before everyone else digs in.

The early bird...
always wakes me up.

A bird in the hand...
is a dead bird if I get ahold of it.
keeps the worms away.

The love of money...
is my only love.

If you lie down with dogs...
you're going to smell really bad.

Don't cry over...
girls, they're stupid.

One bad apple...
one dead tree.
tastes really bad.

Don't put all your eggs...
in one bag.
in one spot.
in at one time.

The OUT OF-R-MINES Pizza Place
Posted by Hello

Out of-R-Mines Pizza

There is a business in town called Out of-R-Mines Pizza. I have
a problem with that. Several problems, in fact, and I don't mind
sounding like a Jerry Seinfeld stand-up routine as I complain
about them.

Why would someone choose this name for their pizza
shop? I understand that we used to be one of the world's
top lead-mining areas. Is this what they're getting at?
Out of-R-Mines Pizza? Are we supposed to believe that
ingredients for the pizza are really mined? Because you'd
better think again, mister. Lead is highly toxic. When I
worked for the state unemployment agency, we had people
come in that had lost their jobs because their blood lead
levels got too high. Just from not washing their hands between
working and lunch. They had to change clothes for lunch, too,
because of the lead dust. So this is not a very appetizing thought
for someone who wants to eat some pizza. Just try serving me
some lead, buddy, and I'll sue your behind until I own your little
pizza shop. And the first thing I'll do is change the name, then
I'll stop serving lead in my pizzas.

Maybe the owners wanted it to mean Out-of-Our-Minds Pizza.
This idea is not much better. Are they all raving lunatics? Do
the waiters run around like that cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs bird?
Nice ambience. Mental patients cooking and serving pizza. Do
they hire from the local asylum? Or, as we call it around here,
Number 4? Here's a little mental illness joke for you...A new
attendant at the mental hospital takes the patients out to work
in the garden. He tries to make small talk, and asks one of the
inmates, "Do you put manure, or fertilizer, on your strawberries?"
The patient looks at him with a frown. "Well, mister, I put sugar
on mine, but I'm crazy."

Look at their punctuation. I may be a redneck hillbilly, but I
think there should be a hyphen between the first two words,
also. Are they trying to say they are "out" of the kind of pizza
called "of-R-Mines," or is the whole phrase supposed to
describe the pizza?

I will try to get a picture of this establishment tomorrow so I
can put it at the beginning of this post.

Where are the food-givers? They went this way. I know it's time for the food-givers to return. We will sit here until they come back. We can't miss them if we stay here. We don't have anything else to do. WHERE ARE THE FOOD-GIVERS?
Posted by Hello

All Cats.....All the Time

I did not like cats until two years ago. One of my teacher friends
had two litters to get rid of. "Come on, your kids need a kitten."
So we went to her house to look at them. "Oh, you can't just take
one. They each need one of their own."

I picked out the prettiest one, a long-haired mostly-white calico.
My #1 son looked into the box of mewing kittens, and a yellow
striped male climbed out of the box and tried to climb up his leg.
Of course, that's the one he wanted. He petted the kitten and
put him back in the box, because they were still too young to take
home with us. That kitten crawled right back out of the box and
sat on my son's foot. Each time we put him back, he did the same
thing. So my son named him "Genius," because he was smart
enough to pick his new owner.

Last summer some redneckier person than us dumped five cats
at the end of our road. We took them some food, because four
were kittens, and the other was about half-grown, but not the
mother. #1 son begged his dad to bring one home, and Dad said
we could take one. It laid around all depressed, so he said we
could get one more to keep it company, since our other two cats
would have nothing to do with it. When we went back, only
two were left, and we couldn't leave one all alone. So that is
how we came to have five cats.

Oh, last fall we brought home another one, but my husband only
said OK because #1 son cried his eyes out at the thought of
leaving it--again it had been dumped at the end of the road.
The deal was that we could keep it until the weekend and then
we had to take it to the Humane Society. I told my teacher
friend that now I had a cat for her. It looked like a Himalayan,
kind of a long-haired Siamese with a dark face. When we
picked it up, it laid down on the car seat like it had ridden
before. It did not like the other cats, but acted like it was a
human and wanted in the house. My teacher friend took it,
and says "Fred" is a great cat.

We have now spent over $1000 on these five "free" cats,
with the spaying, neutering, shots, antibiotics, ear mite meds,
and food.

When I stop for the mail, my kids are required to keep their
windows rolled up. That is because I caught #1 son with his
head out the window, radio turned down.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Cat-listening."

If he can't hear them, we won't have to take any more.

What can we get into next?
Posted by Hello

Genius: male, our best cat. He's on the left.
Posted by Hello

Simba: male, ready to pounce.
Posted by Hello

Snuggles: female, Queen of Mean.
Posted by Hello

Stockings: male, calm & sophisticated.
Posted by Hello

Dusty: female, absolutely insane.
Posted by Hello

Our Christmas lights on a lovely May evening.
Posted by Hello

Spring De-cluttering

Springtime means spring cleaning. Well, for most people. Not
at my house. I am not a good housekeeper. There's that saying:
"Her house is so clean you could eat off the floor." Oh, you
could eat off my floor--there are enough crumbs for a 7-course
meal.

I live in this house with a husband and two boys. If (who am I
kidding?) when they drop food, it stays there until Mom picks
it up. They will walk around it, step over it, kick it out of the
way, or step on it. Sometimes, if it is really a mess, they will
even draw attention to it by stating (in mock disbelief), "Hey,
somebody dropped a (choose one: chicken wing / spaghetti
noodle / fried egg / bowl or pudding / popsicle) on the floor."
But they won't pick it up.

They clutter. My husband carried an end table from the basement
to the living room. "I don't want that here," I told him. "It's just
another junk collector." And there it sits, with a Gameboy, games,
a digital camera, battery charger, and two chocolate Easter
bunnies (still in the boxes--we are rednecks, not barbarians).
Forget the top of the bookcase. It holds assorted books that
they can't be bothered to actually put in the bookcase, a watch,
Gameboy games, magazines, Happy Meal toys, printouts, pencils,
and change.

I am not exactly the Queen of Clean myself. Laundry gets away
from me. The clothes are clean, but they don't quite make it back
home to the drawers. They vacation in the clean clothes basket,
or, folded, they bask on top of the dryer until called back to work.
Around Christmas time, I managed to put them all away in time
for #1 son to have his birthday sleepover. #2 son took his dirty
clothes to the laundry room, looked around, and said, "Wow! I
don't think I have ever seen it look like this." He was six.

Occasionally my husband gets fed up and "helps" the boys clean
their rooms. This consists of lining everything up around the
baseboards. He means well. He does not understand why I
can not monitor every single item in the house. When nagged,
he will say, "I'm going to put that up in the attic." The metal
bunny-shaped Easter egg holders, for example. Last week, I
finally had #1 son take them up. Five weeks after Easter.
Oh, that's nothing. We still have the artificial Christmas tree
all boxed up, sitting in the basement beside the pool table, instead
of in the top of the garage where it belongs. One more month,
and we might as well keep it there until next Christmas.

Now don't get me wrong. We are not walking through 8-foot-tall
stacks of newspapers, or climbing over old pizza boxes, or walking
around on dried cat vomit like on those shows Life of Grime and
How Clean is Your House. People watch those shows to say, "At
least I'm not that bad!" We are not dirty, white, trash-hoarders.
We are just organizationally-challenged rednecks.

And we leave our Christmas lights up year-round, too.

High Heels & Make-Up & Purses, Oh My!

My number one son carried a purse when he was 2-3 years old.
I know, that's not very redneck of him. I had gotten a new purse,
and he wanted the old blue one. He carried it around the house
with an old checkbook cover and a little flip notebook and a
couple of toys. My mom thought it was cute, I thought it was
harmless, and my husband thought it was disturbing.

One evening we went to the Family Center, which is like a
country Walmart with horse medicine and saddles and
hardware. We needed some plumbing parts and electrical
boxes. I pulled a cart up to the van to put him in, and he
dragged that confounded purse out with him.

"No, honey, the purse is for home or in the car. You can't take
it in the store." I tried to pry it out of his little fingers.

"My purse!"

My husband came around to give it a try. "You're not taking
that purse! Boys don't carry purses!" He tried to pull it away.

"Miiiiiiiiiiine!" Tears. He wouldn't let go.

I took my checkbook out of my purse and put it in his, leaving
my purse in the van. "Keep this for me." We went on with
our shopping, pretending it was my purse in the cart, not our
2-year-old son's.

My parents kept number one son for two years while I worked.
Some evenings he met me at the door wearing clip-on earrings,
fingernail polish, powder, lipstick, beads, and high heels. I
asked my mom not to let him do this. She said, "Honey, he's
just playing. He sees me do it, and he wants to try it."

She bought him a pink plastic pair of little kid high heels at
the Dollar Store. It is like Walmart, only cheaper. He loved
those shoes, and wore them all around the house. They were
not allowed outside.

By now he was almost three. We moved to our house in the
country. The 6-year-old girl across the road came to visit,
bringing her 10-year-old brother. My son took them into his
room to show off his stuff. He lifted the lid off a wooden
chest, took out the pink, plastic, jewel-encrusted high heels,
and placed them on his feet. "These are my high heels," he
said proudly. The little girl looked longingly at the shoes. Her
brother backed slowly out of the room. "Uh, I gotta be going."

The kid won't admit to the purse and high heels now. He
doesn't even like me to talk about them.

Tales In School

OK, I know the actual saying is "telling tales out of school," but
I won't be doing that today. Looking back at my Redneck Toilet
post, I was reminded of an embarrassing statement my #1 son
made at school.

It was his first-grade year, so he was 6 or 7 years old. He came
home one day and I asked if anything interesting had happened
at school that day.

"Well, in art, Cassie raised her hand and said, "My little brother
goes pee outside."

"Oh, what did the teacher say?"

"He didn't say anything. Then I raised my hand and said, "My
dad goes pee outside."

"Why did you have to announce that to the whole class?"

"Well, it's true."

"Sometimes it's better to keep some things to yourself."

"Well, then, Dad should stop peeing outside."

Now, #1 son would never be caught peeing outside. He is
not like the rest of us hillbilly rednecks. He would hold it for
a week before he would go outside. My husband says, "We
live in the country. Who cares?"

He has an attitude like one of the characters in that movie
The Big Chill. I don't remember if it was Jeff Goldblum or
Kevin Kline, but they were looking at some property and
peed in a field, and one said, "That's the great thing about
the outdoors. It's one big toilet."

Later that week I was getting into my car after school, and
the superintendent said, "Hey, I hear the police were out in
your neighborhood."

I said, "Really?" I wondered what had happened. It's a private
gravel road. The neighbors called the cops one time for some
type of domestic altercation--because hey, we're rednecks,
remember? But I hadn't seen any police recently.

He went on. "Yeah, I understand there was a case of indecent
exposure on your back porch."

Very funny. Let a teacher's kid tell something embarrassing,
and they might as well announce it over the intercom.

So I made a deal with the kid. If he doesn't go to school
telling embarrassing stuff about the family, I won't go to school
telling my classes embarrassing stuff about him. Like his purse,
and his high heels, and grandma putting earrings on him.

He agreed, but I never promised him I wouldn't blog about it.
Stay tuned.