Quite Possibly My Worst Nightmare

Did you hear about this?  Seems a man settling back for a quiet afternoon in his tiki bar (that’s a whole ‘nother story, I guess.  Us Midwestern folks can’t really identify…) when he opened his can of Diet Pepsi, took a big gulp and began to gag.  His wife came over, and to make a long story short, found a blob in his pop can that was tested and discovered to be a gutted frog or toad.  For more of the gory details, click the link above, and you can find out how (and this is a direct quote from the frog-drinker’s wife), “what started out as a normal afternoon in our tiki bar has blown up into this crazy thing.”

I titled this post appropriately because while I love all animals, I’m scared of frogs and toads.  It’s a weird thing and I won’t go into it (more scared of the “ugly” harmless ones than the pretty poisonous ones, go figure), but the only thing I can think of worse than finding a gutted amphibian in my pop is to find a live one or even a dead one that still resembles its living form.  That being said, in all seriousness, my true greatest fear is something bad happening to my family, but I thought this made for interesting reading anyway.  I smell  a lawsuit.




Spring is in the air

I’ve written before about my signs of spring, but since it is spring again, I thought I would take another look at it.

Yes, the frogs are croaking their little hearts out, and the buzzards are finally circling in the skies. I was saying to someone not too long ago, that I hadn’t seen any buzzards and the very next day there were 15 or so circling in the sky. The geese and ducks made it back and find pleasant rest stops in the flooded fields. Farm implements are back on the road again getting ready for spring planting.

I failed to mention a few things last year about spring in NW Ohio. One very popular attraction, that I actually used to take part in, was annual spring walleye run. Anglers from all over the place would line up side by side hoping to catch their limit of walleye during the spring spawning season. The Maumee river between Maumee/Perrysburg and Grand Rapids Ohio was alway the place to go to catch these fish. My brother and I went fishing many times together. I don’t remember catching too many fish during the spawn, but we had fun anyway. I do miss those days. 🙁

The other sure sign of spring is the start of road construction season. I experienced this first hand today on my way to a work meeting. Since I left early in the morning, I just saw the early morning setup. But on the way back the construction was in full swing. I was stopped so long, I was able to chat with the Road sign holder, they were waiting for a load of stone to fill in the big hole they dug (30 minute road closure). Any way, a sure sign of spring is a Rob in a red vest… Oh wait it was orange…. Oops 😉 Sorry, it was a bad pun, but Rob the construction guy gave it to me, so I had to repeat it. He did have a point, his old safety construction vest was about the same color as the Robin’s signature plumage. If they are known as Robin redbreasts, I guess we can let Rob, the construction guy be known as “Rob in a red vest”.

Happy spring….




A-Z’s of Me

I received another ‘getting to know you’ email forward, and this one promises to be ‘different’ so here goes…

Here’s a new one & it’s much better than previous versions. Cut and paste and fill in the answers. Then, send to all your friends!
*A – Age:              30
*B – Bed size:      Queen
*C – Chore you hate:   drying dishes
* D    Dessert you love:   depends upon my mood
*E – Essential start of your day item:    yogurt
*F – Favorite actor(s):      Steve Carell, Tom Hanks
*G – Gold or Silver:          Gold
*H – Height:         5 ft. 8 in.
*I – Instruments you play:   little bit of piano, various percussion instruments
*J – Job title:    Homemaker
*K – Kid(s):   3 girls and a boy
*L – Living arrangements:  Husband, 4 kids, 2 dogs, and a parrot
*M – Mom’s name:    Phyllis
*N – Nicknames:     Mom, Lis
*O – Overnight hospital stay other than birth:  other than MY birth or any birth?  Cuz I’ve had 4 kids…  Also some ear infections when I was a baby.
*P – Phobia or fear:   frogs
*Q – Favorite quote: Until I can think of a better one – “Abraham Lincoln said, if you are a racist, I will attack you with the North.”  – Michael Scott 
*R – Right or left handed:    Right
*S – Siblings:    1 older sister
*T-  Talent:  multi-tasking
*U – Unique skill:    I can hang a spoon off the end of my nose
*V – Vegetable you hate:    peas
 *W   Worst habit:   procrastination
*X – X ray:    dental
*Y – Yummy food you make:  I just made a California blend soup yesterday out of leftovers that everyone loved
*Z – Zodiac Sign:      Cancer, the crab!




Because my daughters are precious to me

I went to search for a bunch of sites about the current plight of frogs, after seeing one daughter write about Frogs.

So here they are for your attention:

Save The Frogs
Year of the Frog
Care to Make a Difference
Nerdy Science
NZ Frogs
😉 Coffee and Frogs
Amphibian Conservation
A thousand Friends of Frogs

Just Frog related:
Wiki Frogs
Frog Land
Expolratorium Frogs
Frog Sounds

Commercial store:
Frog Store

And a local radio station:
I Love Froggy 106.7




Help save the FROGS!

I have just finished watching a show on Animal Planet and it both disturbed me and gave me some hope. It was called The Vanishing Frog, and so many of our frogs are dying out because of a disease called chytrid fungus. This disease is spreading quickly throughout the entire world and so far, 33% of our frog population is in danger! As many of my friends and family know, frogs are my favorite animal and I want to be able to help them. There is a website, savethefrogs.com and I am going to find a way to help out as much as possible. Frogs are very important for our medicines as well. If that doesn’t help convince you the importance of frogs, I’m not sure what will. I would like to ask everyone that I know to help me with my quest to save my favorite animal from going extinct. Spread the news around to anyone you know. We cannot sit around and do nothing while these animals are dying! Things that affect frogs will eventually affect us as well. To save these frogs, we have to start now! We cannot wait, for there are frogs dying and without them, we are in danger! The show made me hide my face many times because of all the pictures of dead frogs and I refuse to sit around and let them continue to die! Please, help me!




Taylor, Teeth, and Toledo

Our poor little 8-year-old daughter, Taylor, was born on the short side of the genetic crapshoot when it comes to teeth.  The poor kid has cavities, teeth that are fused together, and other dental problems.  They wanted to do so much dental work on her that our small town dentist referred us to the big city of Toledo to get it taken care of.  So, yesterday saw an all day excursion to Toledo so the poor kid could undergo some major dental work.  It actually went quite well; she handled everything like a trooper.  I’m sure the laughing gas and novacaine somewhat helped the pain, but when it was all said and done, she did freak out a little about all the blood.  After that whole ordeal, we wanted to make the day special for her, so we made a quick stop at the zoo between dental appointments.  We only had about an hour, so we didn’t get to see our favorite animals, but we did have time to check out the reptile house, which, crazily enough after all of our visits to the Toledo Zoo, we had never been in.  It was a typical reptile house, full of snakes, lizards, and frogs (even though they’re not reptiles, zoos always put them in the reptile house I’ve noticed), but what I really enjoyed was the crocodile.  I can’t tell you the last time I saw one of those, especially indoors.  It was huge, and unlike their cousins the alligators, crocodiles are not friendly nor docile.  They are very agressive animals, and you can almost see it on their faces.  The Toledo Zoo also has a Chinese alligator, and I was wondering if Chinese alligators are similair to American alligators in temperment.  I know the Chinese alligator is smaller and much more rare, but I wonder if that is where the differences end…  I’ll have to do some research.

After the second dental appointment, we made a stop at Chuck E. Cheese, gauze packed mouth and all.  The kids had a blast, although it wasn’t very crowded, so Chuck E. didn’t venture off the stage for a visit, much to my 3-year-old’s disappointment.  But I came to a realization that it was our youngest-for-now’s first visit to a Chuck E. Cheese, at least her first one where she was old enough to enjoy it.  Since we live in the boondocks, we just don’t find ourselves at Chuck E. Cheese nearly as often as when we lived in the Chicago suburbs like when our oldest was a toddler.  But that’s quite alright, the place is expensive, and going infrequently really teaches the kids to appreciate the times we do make it there.  Over the years, not much has changed there…  when I was a kid, they called it Show Biz Pizza, and I was able to find pics of the old characters for others my age who like nostalgia.

showbiz1.jpg

The main character for the chain, a bear named Billy Bob (top right picture), really scared me as a kid…  for some reason, he had long claws, which can be really scary for a kid.  In Kindergarten, we got to go on a field trip to Show Biz; they took us behind the scenes and “undressed” one of the robots and took us back into the room where they have all the control panels for everything.  Why they wanted to show a bunch of 6-year-olds that the characters were actually robots is still beyond me, but it was a very cool field trip and something I still remember.




School humor

Today was kind of a blah day. I subbed for a primary ELL teacher and really only taught twice- the rest of the time I helped in classrooms. The lessons I taught weren’t even that interesting really- one was on mammals and the other was brainstorming facts about frogs and toads. Sooo…. I think I will start something new. I will periodically post some school humor (jokes, etc.). I claim none of them for myself but they will be pulled off of other sites. Well, here we go…

Terrible world history
The following is a “history” collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eighth grade through college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot of incorrect information.

The inhabitants of ancient Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.

The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. On of their children, Cain, once asked, “Am I my brother’s son?” God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Isaac, stole his brother’s birth mark. Jacob was a patriarch who brought up his twelve sons to be patriarchs, but they did not take it. One of Jacob’s sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.

Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in the Biblical times. Soloman, one of David’s sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.

Without the Greeks we wouldn’t have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns – Corinthian, Doric, and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intollerable. Achilles appears in The Iliad, by Homer. Homer also wrote The Oddity, in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.

Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.

In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, the threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athens was democratic because people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn’t climb over to see what their neighbors were doing. When they fought with the Persians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.

Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Greeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlic in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyranny who would turture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.

Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames. King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harold mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was canonized by Bernard Shaw, and victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally, Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense.

In medevil time most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and versus and also wrote literature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son’s head.

The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter Donatello’s interes in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper.

The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth was the “Virgin Queen.” As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed herself before her troops, they all shouted, “hurrah.” Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo.

The greatest write of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear never made much money and is only famous because of his plays. He lived at Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors. In one of Shakespear’s famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady Macbeth tried to convince Macbeth to kill the Kind by attack his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.

During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later, the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and this was known as Pilgrims Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by the Indians, who came down the hill rolling their war hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porpoises on their back. Many of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their cabooses, which proved very fatal for them. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.

One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. During the War, the Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis.

Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, “A horse devided against itself cannot stand.” Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

George Washington married Martha Curtis and in due time became the Father of Our Country. Then the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.

Abraham Lincoln became America’s greatest president. Lincoln’s mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, “In onion there is strength.” Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. He also freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth Amendment gave the ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan would torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. It claimed it represented law and odor. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth’s career.

Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy. Graity was invented by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the apples are falling off trees.

Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.

France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolution, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napoleonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes. The the Spanish gorillas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon’s flanks. Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. He wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn’t bear children.

The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. Her reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplary of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.

The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code of telepathy. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species.