Just one word: Ew.

My dad LOVED road trips. We’d all get loaded into the station wagon every year to go someplace. No matter how long the trip was, he drove the whole way. And he was obsessed with Getting On The Road Early. This means he’d wake us all up at 5:30am in some dreary motel room shouting such morning greetings as UP AND AT…

It wasn’t all bad. Best group of co-workers I ever had. Of course, we all had to laugh a lot to keep from going nuts.

I didn’t say it was rational.

We renew our Costco membership every year. We shop there every couple months, and yes, we do buy those big packages of tissues and toilet paper. But we have a place to store them. We also get things like razor blades, jars of mixed nuts, and clothing (the Kirkland jeans are surprisingly good).

I have been trying to talk my husband into this for a very long time. Our back yard is paved with concrete (not our doing, it was that way when we bought the house) and he’s absolutely convinced that that will poke holes in the pool. I suggested that we put a nice big drop cloth under the pool but that still doesn’t…

That living breathing hack Jesse James got a whole show (Monster Garage) out of doing stupid pointless unnecessary things with vehicles.

My son built a Chewbacca at Build A Bear for his niece (my granddaughter) for Christmas.

I found this fantastic recipe for roasted green beans with sesame oil. Made it several times successfully... until the day I picked up the bottle of fish sauce instead of the sesame oil. It took days to get the smell of burnt fish sauce out of the house. I’ve never even tried that recipe since.

I did that the very first time I tried to cook a turkey.

Try Readerware instead. Not free, but worth every penny. Take it from  someone who’s got bookshelves in every room in the house except the bathroom (but we do have a bookshelf right outside the bathroom door in the hall).

Not a chance. Nobody in this family including my 4yo granddaughter has any use whatsoever for Alexa.

Egomobile. And never taken farther “off road” than the parking garage at the mall.

My granddaughter has two happily married mommies. I don’t care what Chick-Fil-A serves, they’re not getting my money under any circumstances.

Open jar. Spread on bread. Enjoy. http://www.stonewallkitchen.com/roasted-garlic-bread-spread-150812.html#q=roasted%2Bgarlic%2Bspread&start=1

I will miss you. I hope all your wishes come true!

I have a cheap VW. Of course, it’s a 2001 Jetta.

You probably won’t miss not having seen Wichita, Kansas, or Fairfield, Iowa.  :)

My cousin had a fancy East Coast wedding. We lived in Minnesota. My mother wore a perfectly good “Midwest Fancy” dress and looked great in it, but for the rest of her life she moped about showing up in her “midwest dullsie” amongst all the rich East Coasters. I wasn’t there, but I would have showed up in whatever I…

It’s worth it!