2011 Poetry Contest!

Well, it's just around the corner: April—National Poetry Month—which means that it's time for Loralee's Fancy Poetry Contest! Aren't you so excited?

This year's contest is to write a limerick. I love limericks—they are so silly!

For those who may not remember this from high school English class, a limerick is a poem with five lines: lines one, two and five rhyme with each other; and lines three and four rhyme with each other, but not with lines one, two and five. Here is a classic example:

There was an old man of Blackheath
Who sat on his set of false teeth.
Said he, with a start,
"Oh, Lord, bless my heart!
I've bitten myself underneath!"

The meter (the way it sounds) is usually something like this:

Ta-TUM ta-ta-TUM ta-ta-TUM
Ta-TUM ta-ta-TUM ta-ta-TUM
De-DAH dee-dee-DAH
De-DAH dee-dee-DAH
Ta-TUM ta-ta-TUM ta-ta-TUM

(If you read a limerick out loud, you'll hear how it should sound.) Here's another example:

There was an old man of Ibreem
Who suddenly threatened to scream.
But they said, "If you do
We will thump you quite blue,
You disgusting old man of Ibreem."

As you can see, limericks are also rather ridiculous.

So here's the contest: Write a clever limerick.

The contest will run for two weeks, from today, March 30 to Saturday, April 16.

• You can post your poetic entries as comments to any of my posts between now and April 16.
• Participants may enter as many poems as they want to write—BUT children do read and participate on my blog—please keep this in mind, as you create!
• Poems will be judged on rhyme, meter, and overall silliness.
• There will be one winner in each of two categories: Children (up to 12 years old), and Everyone Else (older than 12)
• The winners will be posted on Sunday, April 17.
• The winner of the Children's Division will receive a Loralee's Fancy Poetry Contest certificate, their poem will be posted in the sidebar as the poem of the week, and they will receive their choice of a large package of M&M's or a large package of Skittles! *
• The winner of the Everyone Else Division will receive a Loralee's Fancy Poetry Contest certificate, their poem will be posted in the sidebar as the poem of the week, and they will receive their choice of either Decadent Mint Brownies or a Strawberry Bouquet! *

*Winners who live more than 25 miles from Salt Lake City will receive a Loralee's Fancy Poetry Contest certificate and a package of M&M's or Skittles, plus the recipe for the mint brownies (and I don't just pass that around to anyone!). ;-)

So wax poetic; be clever; get silly! And good luck! ;-)

(To see past winners, click here (2009) and here (2010).

Strike Updates

MARCH 11

Broke the unexpected news: Mom is on strike!
Bruce divvies out the housework amongst the kids.

MARCH 12
The drains all backed up while I was out playing with my sister.

MARCH 14
A facebook friend asked how the strike was going. I hadn't intended to post it on facebook, but now the whole world knows about my tantrum. ;-)

MARCH 15
Aaaaahhhh! Nobody's done laundry since the basement flooded! What a smell! Tomorrow I will buy Oxy-Clean and Febreeze.

MARCH 16
I had a bad day—mostly at Walmart when I didn't want to be. While dinner was cooking this evening, I took pictures of the messy house. I intended to look at them with Bruce and ask him to make the kids do their stuff better. Bruce didn't know this. He told the kids I was taking pictures to post on my blog—it was very effective. The kitchen looked amazingly great last night!

MARCH 17
I'm making St. Patrick's Day cupcakes. Since the kitchen was fairly clean, a lot of the mess today was mine. This gave me an excuse to do some clean up (like washing the sink and countertop). What a relief to do it myself and know it's done well!
Shhhh. Don't tell my family!

MARCH 19
Oh, this makes me tired. Being in a messy house makes me tired.
The kids are cleaning up every day, but still only once a day. That would be OK if the mess didn't keep reappearing.
Very tired.

MARCH 25
The kids did a phenomenal job cleaning up while I was running errands today! But once I get home, they let things slide. Like I'm going to pick up the slack for the rest of the day . . . which I am not.

MARCH 27
The house is such a mess today. This morning I woke up before everyone else and thought I'd at least clean up the kitchen. But I didn't. Where is the line?
I felt humiliated when Bro. Epperson (a man with nine children, a wife who teaches school, and quite a clean house) came with his son to collect fast offerings. Dirty kitchen with stuff piled all over the table; the dishwasher hanging open and full of dirty dishes; the floor obviously not swept in days; toys and games all over the living room; overflowing laundry hampers all over the living room . . .
Am I the only one who sees and feels this?

Poem of the Moment . . .

Have you noticed? I have a different poem in the sidebar about every two to three days. The poetry contest is coming up soon! So be ready to play with me in April! :-)

It must be Spring-time!

The ninja-birds are at it again . . .

I saw some movement from the corner of my eye . . . Starlings landing in my maple tree.

They wait in the tree, checking things out, and then they fly down to the lawn. We have a tree branch on the lawn—the first heavy snow came before the trees lost their leaves, and the weight broke several branches around the valley. It's a fine place to search for nesting materials. But that blue thing didn't fall off of any tree.

While his friend sits in the tree with a piece of nesting material in her beak, this guy nonchalantly flutters down to the rail of the deck. He stays there for a minute, and then runs across the railing . . .

. . . to the other side of the grill. Soon his friend drops down underneath the grill. I can see a little movement under there. Then they are both back in the tree, and then they fly away.

Here's what I find in the grill when I go to check things out.

The starlings are at it again . . . Springtime is really here!

What a Week!

It is probably my just punishment for leaving my family in the lurch, so to speak. Not that I'm rescinding—the "strike" is still on, and probably will be permanently.

We've had a crazy week! First of all, Mom went on strike. Since I quit being the housekeeper, I discovered that the kids will actually do a fairly decent clean up; it's just that after they've done their job once for the day they think they are done. So if the kitchen's been cleaned and then five people each get out three dishes, two butter-knives and one cup . . . and the milk and bread and two jars of peanut butter and three flavors of jam . . . then those things all stay out until the next day. And somehow nobody ever sees the dirt on the stove-top. But I do have to say that Ryan did a superb job on the kitchen last night. I think we are getting it.

Well, on Saturday all our drains backed up and flooded the basement. This could have been sheer catastrophe—and expensive. But the kids discovered it early and used the wet/dry vac in the basement. And my marvelous husband rented a power snake and got the line clean and working again. Yaaaay!!

Monday evening I was thinking our house didn't smell so good. Did the cat or the dog poop somewhere? By Tuesday night I had it figured out. Nobody had done any laundry after the drain thing happened. And there was a LOT of laundry in the basement when it flooded. Ugh!

Yesterday (Wednesday) I drove my kids to school and then stopped at Wal-Mart for Oxy-Clean and Febreeze; when I got back out to the van it wouldn't start. It really wouldn't start. My parents came to get me and we left the van there. I came home to a rather disastrous house, with no time to work on schoolwork, and I had to figure out how to get the kids home from school. At least that last one wasn't too tough—just a phone call, since their cousins also go to Entheos.

School got out at 3:15; the kids called me at 4:30 to ask what was going on. By 5:00 Bruce was heading out to see what was going on, when the kids finally got home.

I fixed dinner in a really dirty kitchen, we ate, and then we were going to go back to Wal-Mart so Bruce could have a look at the van. With my nerves all a-jangle, I ignored all the cleanup that had to happen and tried to soothe myself by playing the piano instead. Pretty soon the little girls were shrieking and dancing behind me; older kids were getting ready to go to Mutual; Bruce was on facebook; Michael was on his computer. I felt like the saloon pianist in a cartoon—the guy who just sits there playing, hunched over the keys while bullets whistle around his head.

At last, in the rain, Bruce and I drove his car back to Wal-Mart so he could check out the van. It's not the battery. It's not the starter. It's probably the fuel pump. But he couldn't do anything in the Wal-Mart parking lot, in the rain, in the dark. So the van has to stay until he can get back to it. We went back to his car and guess what—it wouldn't start! One of the battery cable/clamps broke. So we called a friend to take us home; the car will stay there until Bruce can get to it after work today.

At least all this is happening over Spring Break, which is good. That is the silver lining. Because I don't really have to go anywhere this week. Hopefully the car stuff will be worked out by the weekend and life will be back to normal.

Or is this normal?