Monday, April 20, 2015

Random Thoughts Mostly From This Past Friday Apparently


Every Easter, my mom sends us Portuguese sweet bread
 that is baked with a boiled egg (in its shell) in it.
It's a (delicious) Easter tradition.

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I've figured out why I'm not enjoying Modern Family anymore.
The past two seasons have stunk, in my opinion.
All the characters are shallow and self-absorbed.
I *hate* shows where there's no depth of character in ANY of the characters
(like Seinfeld, King of Queens at times, etc.).
Phil has some depth, so they make him a stupid buffoon.
The show used to be touching. Now, it's terrible.

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I HATE contractors right now. HATE.
I'm so angry and frustrated and annoyed.
Our pipes froze over 2 months ago
 and they are DRAGGING their feet to repair it
and it's house buying season and we have an open house coming up,
and we're trying not to cry and rage
(unsuccessfully).

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My SIL just gave birth to a nearly 10-pound baby boy.
He came out looking like he's 3 months old!

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Why are phone camera pictures so fuzzy?
What can I do to make them clearer?
It's hard not to shake while holding the phone like that.

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Loved the show Parenthood. Sad it's over.
Even though a lot of the characters drive me crazy, their family is remarkable.
Are siblings really like that? There for each other like that?
Are you like that with your siblings? If so, why?
Did your parents do something to foster it?
That has not ever been my experience,
but I hope I'm fostering that in my own children.

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Easter is my least favorite holiday.
I don't know why, but I just haven't ever gotten into it -
not as a kid, not as an adult.

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I'm always jealous when I decide not to shave my legs
 and then get together with someone who has.

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We're (maybe) hosting foreign exchange students this summer!
We've been toying with the idea for years and we're going for it.
I'm pretty sure we're getting one from Spain and one from France.

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Max is so snuggly in the mornings especially.
Today (I wrote this on Friday),
I noticed something while we cuddled
and he stretched (he wakes up slowly).
He's at that age where I sometimes see a little boy
 and other times I see the young man he is becoming.
It's bittersweet.

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I love the feeling of being covered gently with a blanket.

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Our van acted up this past week and had to go into the shop.
That meant we couldn't do our 2-day family trip to Baltimore
 like we'd planned.
The van got "fixed" and today (this past Friday),
 while running errands,
did the exact same thing again.
And we have plans tonight and tomorrow that require the van.
This has happened a lot with our mechanic.
We went in and Mark raised hell.
Not happy.

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Why were we not happy, you ask?
Well, dear reader, that's because right before the van thing?
Mark drove by our farmhouse and saw workmen,
so he went in to see the progress.
You know, the progress that was supposed to be done a month ago,
but is DEFINITELY supposed to be done by today (this past Friday).
Except that there are new problems he didn't tell us about.
And it's all NOT going to be done by today (Friday).
We are beyond frustrated and the plumber got an earful.
Their feet dragging is holding us up in major ways
and it is totally stressing us out.

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Since I wrote this on Friday and then had an extremely full weekend,
including an awesome, all-day Dr. Who party for my 15-year-old daughter,
I better go ahead and post it.

5 comments:

Dr. Mark said...

So totally agree on Modern Family. When you said that the other night you nailed the feelings I've been having about it but couldn't articulate.

Contractors? No comment.

I think our children are developing the good Braverman traits. I see those moments fairly often.

I can't say that I ever have that problem with shaving my legs. :P

Max has definitely entered that between stage. It is so bittersweet to see the little boy slowly grow up. I'm glad there are still lots of those little boy moments we get to enjoy.

Great party at the end of a full weekend/week. No wonder we crashed so hard!

Jimmy said...

Contractors and mechanics--are they ever not frustrating? I'm pretty sure if there's any hope of me reaching the highest degrees of heaven, cars will be what stop me. Backed up traffic makes me hate all humankind and car problems makes me not trust anyone with the title of mechanic.

I hate that there's shows I''ll start off really liking and then they get into these racy phases and they're not as fun anymore. That's been my experience with Black-ish lately.

I never watched Parenthood, but overall I think yes, families are really there for each other, even from a distance and even the ones with obvious dysfunctions. I bet your children are growing up to be caring, generous, loving people. BTW, one of my favorite things in life is hearing my girls tell each other "I love you" before they go to bed.

Boquinha said...

Mark, no kidding! I was exhausted!!

Jimmy, hilarious! You and I are so on the same page with all of this.

We haven't watched "Black-ish" or "Fresh Off the Boat" - I've had a hard time getting past the titles!

Jimmy,I think you'd like Parenthood a lot. I love hearing about your girls - that is so sweet!

LMW said...

I haven't watched more than clips of Modern Family, but it's too bad that it's gone of the rails. Aside from House of Cards (apparently!), I can only watch shows with characters with redeeming characteristics. There needs to be good people in it for me to connect with the show. I think Seinfeld has its amusing bits, but the reason that I think the finale is brilliant is that they all get their comeuppance for being kind of awful people. Bill can't stand King of Queens because he feels that Carrie is a terrible person and Doug is supposed to be the nice one, but he's not all that nice himself a lot of the time.

I'm sure my parents did things to foster the good relationship that my siblings and I have to a point, but I do think that there's something beyond what parents can do as well. It's an interesting topic for sure.

The reason I could never build a house is that I'd be too uptight about contractors not following the time tables that they had agreed to. I think I would lose my mind with anxiety about it.

I completely understand what you mean about being frustrated by mechanics. We bring our car to the Toyota dealership from where we bought our car. We're probably wrong, but we figure that they'll want to maintain the car well so that we'll want to buy another one from them when it's time. This theory seems to be working well for us, because we haven't had any major problems with our car. Then again, it is a Toyota, which tends to be a reliable car anyway. On a different note, when Bill was rear ended pretty good a few years ago, a decent amount of damage was done to the back of our car. Because it wasn't our fault, the other person's insurance had to pay for the damages and a rental car for us. The autobody shop took one day longer than they said it would. So, when Bill went to pick up the car, the guy handed him his keys and an envelope with $100 in cash and said, "I told you that the car would be done yesterday and I'm a man of my word. So, since we didn't finish it yesterday, I want to give you this $100." Even after Bill said that it was fine and that we didn't even have to pay for our rental car, the guy insisted that we take the money. That autobody shop owner clearly went above and beyond, but you can bet that we'll go back to him if we need body work done on our car again and recommend him to everyone we know.

Boquinha said...

LMW, I totally agree with you and Bill. Shallow people . . . it's not for me.

The siblings topic is interesting to me. Well, family dynamics in general. Yeah, National Sibling Day pictures especially got me thinking about it all.

House building - yes! We almost did that. So glad we didn't. Plus, the cost inches up up up, and I don't like that.

Wow, that is an impressive story about the auto body place! No kidding. Wow.

We surprised all of our clients on Tax Day and gave them $15 off their services. We didn't announce that we were going to do it. We just did it when they came in as a surprise treat. I love doing stuff like that! It's fun when it's not just a business but also part of a community, you know?