An exercise in creativity

I haven't written much in the last few months.  Honestly, I don't feel like I have anything of any interest to say.

No guarantees on this either. :)

Several weeks ago I discovered a company that produces high quality audio productions.  I purchased my first story from them.  It's a great story, lots of fun, and has excellent voice acting.  If it didn't cost so much, I would have bought a lot more by now.

I've listened to the story a dozen times now.  The complete story runs about four hours.  Tonight, I had to drive the kids to scouts.  We listened to the audio story on the drive there and home.  We got through an hour of the story.

While it was going, the kids were totally silent.  They were listening as the story progressed.  It's not an audio book.  No one is reading a story to us, it is an audio play.  Like the old time radio productions.  You listen to the characters talk, hear the sound effects and your mind has to fill in all the visual pictures.  It's brilliant! 

I've asked my hubby for more of these audio productions for Christmas.  I think there needs to be more of this kind of stuff on the radio or made available to kids.  In a world that is filled with visual stimulation, this is an exercise in imagination.

Like I said, the story is good and the acting is first class, but you still have to use your imagination to make sense of the story.  My kids were completely spell-bound tonight.  We're going to have to run some long errands this week so they can finish hearing the story.

The room that is not a playroom

Between my five children, there are three bedrooms to play in.  So why is it they take all their toys, blankets, pillows and things out of their bedroom and put it into my laundry room?

The laundry room is also a bit of a storage room since we have no garage for those extra buckets of stuff.  The room is tight, dark, messy and a little stinky.  Why do they play in there?

When I go in to do the laundry and I can't even get to the door because of the tent city that has been placed in front of it. Once I have removed the tent city, I must carefully pick my way through into the room.  I bend down and start throwing blankets, pillows, stuffed animals, baby dolls, books, art supplies, and action figures out of the door and into the living room.  Finally I can reach the laundry.

It's not unusual for me to be rotating laundry and find toys, shoes and stuffed animals that accidentally got thrown into the wash.

I just want to shout: "You have your own room!  Leave me my space!"  And I do shout it.

On a similar rant, we have a trampoline and there are five beds for the kids in the house.  Why are they jumping on the couch?  Even after the 200 millionth time in the span of 14 years of motherhood that I have yelled at them to stop jumping on the couch, they still do it.  I just got a new slipcover for the couch.  It covers the seven years of abuse it has received at the hands of my children.  Every time they jump on the couch, the slipcover slips off and I re-tuck that thing in several times a day.

Just stay off the sofa!  Go to the trampoline!

This is a good humor rant, but a rant none-the-less.  :)

Old ladies and irony

A bit of irony to brighten our day:  In the mail we received a packet of papers telling us we should donate to their cause to save trees.  (See the picture below.)  Yes, that is seven sheets of paper to tell us to save the trees. 

 

This next picture is small, but I'll describe it.  My son brought this home from school.  It has pictures of scary things you might find on halloween: bat, cat, owl, ghost, goblin, bones, wizards, and trick or treating.  However, the scariest thing of all is the first picture: OLD LADY!

Forget ghosts and goblins!  Watch out for the old lady!!  AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!