My lovely Aunt Joan took an interest in the Alien Brains Monster Egg Sac and asked a friend of hers about them. Her friend directed us (her, then me) to this article written by a 10 year old.
If you are swimming and bump into what looks like a brain from Saturn don’t get freaked out because it is just a harmless bryozoan colony. However, if you pierce it, it might give off poison.
Many people think bryozoans are extinct but they still live in lakes and oceans. The bryozoans that live in salt water are a lot different from fresh water bryozoans. Fresh water bryozoans live in colonies which can get as big as a basketball. A new colony will start from larva or from statoblasts which are like seeds. Bryozoans are water animals so that means they eat and digest tiny animals like plankton by filtering them out of the water. Each bryozoan is about 1 mm long (see picture below).
Freshwater bryozoan colonies are usually found around branches that have fallen into still water. If you cut one of these colonies in two you would find gelatin type stuff inside.
When you see bryozoan fossils they look like moss. That is why in Greek bryozoan means moss animal. Bryozoans have been around for about 500,000,000 years!
So…cool! Not alien brains. But I’m not sure how less scary that makes them. Poison gelatin type stuff inside? They eat and digest tiny animals (like Shih Tzus?) I’m glad I didn’t actually smash it with an oar. Bossy would have been in trouble.
I was eating breakfast in front of the computer while I harvested my Farmville crops coordinated a food drive for the needy*, when Eirinn, who was eating her toast while watching morning cartoons, came up to me and quietly asked:
“Mommy, what does Santa look like?”
Valid question. At this age, it’s not unreasonable for a little person to forget what someone looks like who you haven’t seen in nearly a year. We haven’t watched any Christmas movies or tv specials yet and the old guy hasn’t appeared in a mall near us to date.
But I knew where this was headed.
“He’s an old man with a long white beard and he wears red clothes.”
Silent contemplation.
“Can I see a picture of him?”
Easily enough, I brought up a few on Google images. Thankfully, someone was kind enough to put this guy on the first page, while I had Eirinn sitting on my lap:
Holy hell, I can’t even look at that guy sideways without securing nightmares for a week.
So, I scrolled past Demon Santa and found a more suitable version:
That’s better. Nothing wrong with that guy. He doesn’t look like he wants to bite your face off in your sleep when he sneaks in to leave you wrapped boxes of cobras and boobie traps and set your house on fire. *shudder*
“That’s Santa. See? Old man, white beard, red clothes.”
“I don’t want to sit on Santa’s knee.”
I knew it.
“Why not? There’s nothing wrong with him. He looks very nice.”
“Well…I like his clothes…but I don’t like his face.”
Hrumph. Nothing I can say to that. You can’t make a girl like Santa’s face.
“That’s ok, you don’t have to sit on his knee.”
“Ok. Will he still bring me presents?”
Opportunity. It always knocks.
“Only if you stop peeing in your Pull Up at night.”**
***
* Which, by the way, I totally am. At work. I wrapped the giant box Donation Station(c) just this morning. I just maybe might not have probaby wasn’t at that moment. Shut up. My crops were whithering.
** Yeah. Epic Fail on the No Pee Pee In The Pull Up Campaign. Three year, 8.5 months and still peeing at night. Please tell me this is normal.
I totally meant to ask this months ago, but the photos got lost in amongst the millions of photos of the chitlins. And then, last night, when I was stumbling around the computer in a bored, desperate stooper, I remembered I had them at the exact same moment as I found them and opened them and thought “WTF is that? Oh, yeah, it’s…wait…WTF is that?”
So, please tell me, Internets, W. T. F is this?
We saw it from the boat on my parent’s lake. Well, my parents don’t own the lake, they just live there on weekends in the summer. I’m pretty sure if anyone owned it it would be Ed Robertson from The Barenaked Ladies because he has a cottage there and he’s sort of famous, right? Regardless, whoever owns this lake should know that aliens are leaving their brains in the water to breed with unsuspecting dead trees. It might not have been an alien brain, but I’m pretty sure it was. Whatever it is was stuck to a fallen tree. Or hanging on to a fallen tree. Or sucking the life blood out of a fallen tree. I don’t know what it was doing to that poor fallen tree, but I can tell you I was glad it was him and not me.
And you know? It got creepier and grosser and more…alien brain-like the closer we got.
It was probably some sort of egg sac from a giant freshwater squid or the Loch Baptiste Monster or whatever, but it should try looking less like scary alien brains and more like cute monster baby eggs if it doesn’t want me to smash it with an oar to rid the world of its horrendousness. Just a piece of advice, stupid alien brain monster baby egg sac. Smarten up and stop scaring the tourists.
When I was a teenager, I lived in the basement. Not like The People Under The Stairs; I had an actual bedroom located in the basement from which I was permitted to leave when I wanted to. I had a lock on the door that locked from the inside and I had the key. I was fed and watered regularly and there was a bucket I was permitted to use for bodily waste disposal as needed. There was even a small window to allow some light – not big enough to escape from, as I learned, but I could get a sliver of a ray of sunshine for a half an hour or so a day. NO ABUSE OR NEGLECT HERE, MOVE ALONG.
Anywho…back to reality. I lived in the basement in my parents’ house during my formative years. And, being a typical teenager, I would stumble out of bed no earlier than 10 a.m. Teenagers, apparently, require more sleep than adults. Twenty-three-year olds, however, are cool with 8 hours, Kevin. Teenagers should probably get closer to 9 hours so I obliged, resulting in a 10 a.m. or later start to the day. mIRC chat didn’t get good until after midnight, so going to bed at a reasonable hour was out of the question.
ANYWAY(s)…ADD is really kicking my butt today. I lived in the basement and would get up much later than the rest of my family. Without fail, I would crawl up the stairs, hair balled up into a sheep’s butt mess, eyes swollen and crusty, voice scratchy and croaky, and there would be my family, having been up for hours, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
I would not have to say one single syllable before one or all of them would start on me.
“The Alligator’s awake! Look at how grumpy she is! Let’s all laugh at how disgusting she looks in the morning! What a disgusting pig! Let’s poke her until she snaps our fingers off at the second knuckle!”
I was labelled The Alligator. Not because I was grouchy or rude or short-tempered, but because they thought I looked like I might be thinking about being grouchy or rude or short-tempered.
And do you know what the best cure for a bad mood, or perceived bad mood, is? Excessive kindness and sweet words, you say? Noooo… A smile and a hot breakfast? Nope, try again. A couple of minutes of quiet to wake up? Wrong.
The cure for a bad mood, apparently, is cruel and relentless chiding and badgering. If the subject in question is either crying or ready to scream, then point proven. Obviously they were in a bad mood from the beginning, and not just tired, and should be forever labelled The Alligator.
***
Do you know what this kind of reminds me of? Men’s reaction to PMS. In general (I’m not pointing fingers or naming names, however anonymous), men tend to blame any of their behavioural flaws on our periods. Just because at any other point during the month we are able to internalize our feelings about certain behaviours, but lose such ability during the pre- stage of the month.
It’s like my teenage mornings, in that whatever mood I am actually in is irrelevant. It’s that time of the month (or that time of the morning, as in examples from the past), therefore I must be irrationally choleric. Blame is shifted from the offender to the offended simply because it can be. You don’t like when I tease you relentlessly? PMS (or The Alligator). Obviously.
And you know what? Consider the attitude a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because there’s only one thing that makes me more angry than telling me I’m angry before I’m angry and that’s telling me I’m angry before I’m angry when I’m PMS-ing.
That, my dear friend, is a sure-fire way to get your fingers broken.
Christmas. The ultimate wallet-drainer. Fund-sapper. Broke-maker. You either have to save for months ahead of time or throw everything on credit and pay it off for the next year. It’s a difficult time, especially this year for a lot of people.
My side of the family is all pretty tight on funds this year, so for the first time ever, we exchanged names and are all only buying one gift. We increased the per-gift budget, but we’ll be saving about $300 in the end.
We also pared down our budget for the girls. Last year got out of hand with Eirinn (poor Avery was still at the stage where you could wrap an empty box and she wouldn’t have known the difference). She was two and got a portable DVD player, for Pete’s sake.
This year I think we’re spending about half on them, total. Between getting one bigger present for the two of them to share, instead of a big one each, and I haven’t spent full price on anything (BOGO’s and 50% off’s at Toys R Us and the standard Winners’ discount). Plus I’m putting larger sized things into the stockings, as opposed to a million little things.
Some of the stuff I’ve bought is stuff I had to get anyway, I’m just wrapping it up and pretending it’s a present (beach towels for a trip we’re taking, plate & bowl sets that we were running low on, etc.) I can almost not count those because I would have to buy them anyway, whether they were a gift or not.
Don’t get me wrong, they will still get their fair share of Barbie’s and Moxie Girls and baby dolls, but more like one each instead of one in every colour, which is usually my style (I did, however, have to get an entire collection of board books for Avery, but I got them at half price at Winners, so it was basically like I bought 2 books instead of 4, right?)
I think AH are forgoing large gifts for each other in lieu of saving for a tv that we’ll purchase at an enormous discount (fingers crossed) during the Boxing Day sales.
Another technique for spending less, or at least presenting the illusion of spending less, is that I’ve stretched my spending over a few months. Twenty dollars or so a week is a lot easier to stomach than $1000 dropped at once.
I’m still spending a ton overall, I’m a Christmas nut who likes to give even more than receive, but I’m slowly getting it under control and being more sensible with what I’m buying.
***
What are you doing, if anything, to make Christmas easier on the budget? Are you crafty and making gifts? Paring down your spending? Cutting people off of your gift-giving lists?
***
After I wrote all this, I did a mental inventory of the girls’ gifts.
They’re getting a wooden train set with a table to share, a movie each with a matching teddy bear (Snow White and Tinkerbell), a stack of books, two outfits, plate/bowl set, a Barbie car w/ two Barbie’s for Eirinn and a coordinating Barbie for Avery, a Moxie Girl for Eirinn and a present-yet-to-be-bought for Avery (the only thing I have left to get for them). And that’s not counting their stockings, which are about half full of beach towels, train conductor sets, two tree ornaments each, and more books.
Post re-titled “Do As I Say I Do, Not As I Actually Do, Because I’m A Dirty Lying Liar McLyington With Spoiled Kids And An Empty Bank Account.”
I guess I suck at self-restraint.
