Wednesday, August 22, 2012

HP90

Welcome to this week's edition of the Wednesday Hodgepodge, aka HP90. It's a lot like PX90 except this is a workout for your brain.

Sometimes.

Sometimes it's just fluff, but in mid August as summer winds down and the school year gears up fluff may be just what your brain needs. Add your link to the bottom of my post before you run off and see the neighbors.

Here are my answers~


1. Aloha! On August 21, 1959 Hawaii officially became a US State...have you ever been? Upon arrival would you prefer an orchid or a hibiscus to tuck behind your ear?

I've been.
You might say I got my start there.


Based on this picture taken with my older sister in sunny Honolulu I think I've gotta go with hibiscus. My mama thought it suited me once upon a time.

Fun family trivia-my parents were living in Honolulu when Hawaii became a state. She was already a state by the time I made my grand entrance.

2. Since we're talking tropical...what's your favorite food or beverage made with pineapple?

I make something we call pineapple stuffing which is always a hit. It's a simple recipe and the perfect accompaniment to a ham dinner. I'm happy to share the recipe...send me an email if you're interested.

3. Do you believe in soul mates? Explain.

As in there's only one person out there for you and you must search the world over to find him? No. But I do think once you marry your spouse can and should become your soul mate.

4. Share a memory about the house you grew up in.

My younger sister and I were afraid of the basement. It's unfinished and not a walk out so not an overly bright space, even with all the lights on. When I was a kid the laundry was down there along with a ping pong table, our dress ups, Christmas decorations, my dad's workbench and the extra frig and freezer. The stairs came down into the center and dead ahead was a black hole.

Actually dead ahead was a perfectly benign crawl space, but whoa! could our imaginations ever run wild.

My sister will not disagree when I tell you some of the most dreaded words my mother ever uttererd in our childhood were 'Can one of you girls go down in the basement and get me xyz?" We shared an unspoken pact to never go alone. It was sisterly bonding at its surest and finest.

True confessions...it's possible I still don't like my mom to send me down to the basement to fetch something.

5. Are you comfortable with silence?

Yes, as long as it's not angry silence.

I feel the need to fill angry silence with talking. This sometimes makes angry people even more angry but I can't help it. I was born with the talking gene.

6. You spot a giant spider on your bedroom wall...what's your next move? (all spiders are giant, right?)

If hubs is home I call him to deal with it. If he's not home my next move depends on the sound I anticipate the spider will make when squashed. If it's going to crunch I can't handle it. I'll throw a heavy book on top of it and leave it there til hubs returns. If it looks like the spider lacks the crunch factor I'll grab no less than 800 paper towels and scoop it up with my eyes closed.

Here's another fun family fact-one time hubs and I were out and came home after our girls were in bed. They were in high school at the time. As we climbed the stairs I noticed a Tupperware bowl turned upside down in the middle of the staircase. There was a post-it note placed strategically nearby that said 'SPIDER' and then had an arrow pointing to the bowl.

I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

7. My idea of fun does NOT include_____________.

braggarts, complainers, taxes, or the dentist

8. Insert your own random thought here.

We saw this in a yard near the kayak launch on Saturday -


The family who lives in this house has five Goldens! FIVE! So cute!
I love dogs as much as the next person but can you imagine all that hair?

I could see the wheels turning in my hubs head because he'd love a houseful of setters, but I put the kibosh on that thought before he could even formulate it into a sentence said aloud.



36 comments:

  1. sorry didnt now i had to just describe more my answers next time better...thanks for sharing...

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  2. The story about the tupperware bowl and the spider is priceless!! Ha, ha,ha!

    Love the picture of the pups. Your hubby might thank you one day about saying no to more dogs. We're up to four, and two of them (all strays, mind you) shed horrifically.

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  3. 1. So you were born in Hawaii?
    2. Do you use fresh pineapple?
    3. I agree that with a spouse you learn to become soul mates.
    4. Basements. Shudder. Did the stairs have backs to them? One house we lived in didn't have backs to the basement stairs and I always thought something would grab my legs from behind. Or maybe it was my older siblings that made me think that...
    5. Angry silence is the worst!
    6. We once came home to the kitchen smelling like bug spray and several dead cockroaches just outside the back door. Adventures in dish washing that night for the kids!
    7. I agree about braggers.
    8. I agree. Way too many dogs!

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  4. I hated the basement as a kid too, so it's sort of ironic that when we moved here, my husband finished two bedrooms down there and one of them is currently ours... I still won't go into the dark alcove where the bulkhead is... BUT I think my fear of the basement as a child had to do with spiders and earwigs... We spray for bugs now so it is far less creepy without the creepy crawly bugs!
    I too have a funny spider under a bowl story... It is too long to share here, but I should do a blog post about it.
    I love, love, love golden retrievers and we have had three over the years... One at a time. Their hair is like a death sentence for a vacuum cleaner... It didn't matter how little or much we spent that golden retriever hair would always kill it prematurely... I started buying less expensive vacuums so I wouldn't be frustrated when it died!

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  5. I'm not really a fan of spiders. I understand that they can be helpful, but still. The only thing that has made be bit a little stronger towards facing them is that my mother was absolutely terrified of them when I was a kid. All you'd have to say is, "There's a spi ..." And my mother would run screaming from the room. She has since become a gardener and become a little desensitized. She obviously loves to garden ... a lot! :)

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  6. I love the photo of you and your sister. How many years older is she from you? My older sister is 7 1/2 years older & brother is 5 1/2 years older. I felt like a spoiled only child growing up since the gap, they had both graduated from high school when i was in 6th grade.
    Oh i forgot to include taxes! No fun! :(

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  7. I went with a basement story, too! That is too funny!
    At first I thought the dogs were bears!
    See, I think you & hubs are "soulmates"...you knew exactly what he was thinking before he even opened his mouth! :)

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  8. What a happy baby! Cute picture.

    I love your memory of the black hole in the basement. And, I'm sorry I'm not still in Sparta or I'd come over and kill your spiders when your hubby is away! ha!

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  9. There was a big bug the other day crawling on the kitchen floor. I hit it with a shoe and left the shoe there till I got the vacuum out. If Kevin is home.....he uses a can of bug spray to kill them. Then the house smells terrible and sometimes if its on the wall - spray marks dripping down. I like my shoe idea better.

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  10. Love your answer for soul mate I so agree! I once did the tupperwear note thing for my hubby with a bee...hate bees! My thoughts seeing all those dogs...the hair! Yikes!
    Happy Wednesday!

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  11. Sometimes fluff is all my brain can handle. ha! I love the spider under the Tupperware bowl! And if I were going to have 5 dogs, it'd have to be golden retrievers - hair or not. ;-)

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  12. AMEN to #7!!! May I also add math, an overwhelming amount of re-landscaping and a pap smear to the list?

    I did the upside down bowl thing once when our kitty lovingly brought a mole into the house!

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  13. Ha! I don't think I've ever actually seen the word kibosh written before :) Your spider story is hilarious with the tupperware. One time our trap snagged a mouse and I did the typical squeal and got on the countertop - I had to call a best friend to dispose of it, as my husband wasn't coming home for a week. Eek!

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  14. Those dogs are so cute! It's like they are saying "we want to come and play with you!" I am the same way about squishing spiders! And I totally agree with you on #5 - angry silence is the worst! Thanks for such fun questions!

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  15. The spider under the tupperware bowl had me rolling! I LOVE it! I definitely want that pineapple stuffing recipe please! I really love pineapple. I can't imagine having to deal with all that hair from 5 goldens. We had one and that was tons of hair! Now that Birdie's dog is here I'm having to deal with shedding again. But we bought the Furmanator from Pet Smart and it really has made a huge difference. I'm only vacuuming once a day now which is down from at least 3 times/day.

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  16. We have 4 dogs... & when we dog sit, we have 6 dogs in the house... so yeah, my vacuum gets replaced like every 3 months :)

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  17. Oh my goodness - laughing so hard about the tupperware bowl story! That sounds like something I would do! And I love golden retrievers, but with moving around so much we haven't gotten a dog for our family... but we promised the kids once we settle in southern California we will get one... and I admit the thought of all the hair is a little daunting... sigh... but the kids really really really need a dog... ;-)

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  18. I love the spider under the bowl. Very resourceful. :) I am with you on the dentist. We have friends who named their fourth golden 'Bogey' because he is 'one over' their limit of three dogs. :) They recently visited us at the lake house.

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  19. People here don't have basements, so I have never seen one except on television or the movies--usually in a scary movie! I don't think I'd like entering the basement either!

    Every one of my kids are terrified of spiders! They didn't get it from me or Ed...go figure! Putting the bowl over the spider--with a note-- was a clever idea :)

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  20. I definitely remember our basement as the scariest place on earth! That is just too funny with the tupperware bowl. Cute picture of the dogs but OMG on that hair situation. Have a great day Joyce.

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  21. Those Goldens are too cute. Had to laugh about your hubby...mine is the voice of reason in this house. We were somewhere last week and a woman was holding a puppy as we walked by and before I could even think about it, Tim muttered "Don't even pet the dog." LOL

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  22. We lived in an old farmhouse for a year and it had such a creepy, dark, musty smell. Cobwebs and dirt floor but it was cold so a good storage spot for home canned goods. My sister and I always protected each other when one was sent down for green beans or applesauce. Oh and yeah those goldens are gorgeous but I couldn't deal with the hair or the poop .

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  23. Wow, you were born in Hawaii?! Nice. We should meet up there! :)

    Five dogs would also not be my idea of fun. :)

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  24. Well since I have 4 dogs, one being a white German Shepherd, I can imagine the hair. My dog sheds like crazy. Not so much the dachshunds!

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  25. Loved the photo of the dogs! I have a co worker that has 8 Goldens and a beagle! Bath day sure is fun at her house!
    Yup pretty much sums up my feeling about spiders as well.

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  26. Wow, your statement about the basement reminds me of our creepy basement when I was a kid. I may have been sent there by my mom to get the canned tomatoes or canned blackberries, but it was dark and scary and my 'helpful' older brothers always reminded me of the 'bloody rag' that lived down in that deep, dark, dank space. EEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKkk.

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  27. Loved reading that Tupperware-spider story. LOL. We have so many spiders here, they are almost house pets. hahaha

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  28. Good HP questions this week. Enjoyed answering them.

    Loved your basement story. Basements have come a long ways in recent years for sure.

    Oh, me, 5 Golden Retrievers, mercy me! As my Grandmother would say, "that's too much sugar for a dime." :o)

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  29. I'd like to compare your Pineapple Stuffing recipe with mine. Send me an email!

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  30. 5 Golden Retrievers! Don't tell my husband. He wants a golden so bad, but we already have two dogs and I put my foot down. This will just encourage him!!!!

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  31. Spiders scare me so much...no idea why...but the daddy long-legs...*shudder*

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  32. Ha ha ha your basement story made me think of my grandpa and our basement and dirty laundry. Thanks for reminding me of that story. :)

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  33. From pre-school on, my son has been the designated spider killer at our house. He's the knight in shining armor for his arachnophobe sister.

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  34. I never thought about a Tupperware bowl and a note when my hubby isn't home! It would save so much in bug spray and paper towel...

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  35. Great answers! Love how you responded to the soul mate questions. I couldn't agree more.

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