Ethel's Writing's

http://ethelswritings.yolasite.com/

Catch Your Computer Mouse with a

Friendly Mousetrap

We have a mouse problem in our apartment. We allowed a friendly mouse to enter our home in 1995 and it has multiplied. Now the girls have their own personal mouse. A mouse has started to take over our lives. Not one day goes by with out this mouse affecting our life style. We sit for hours and hold our mouse in the palm of our hand while we work and play on our computers.

I am going to make a friendly mouse trap big enough to catch a computer mouse. We will put our mouse in the friendly mousetrap when work needs to be done around the house.

Instead of getting on my daughters backs about using the computer mouse to build virtual villages and gardens on Face Book we will actually, go for a walk in the park, swim in the swimming pool, play a game of cards, visit a friend, clean the house, and walk around a store.

How often do you walk by your computer and with good intentions reach out and grab the mouse and click on it to check your email. The next thing you know, two hours are wasted and you forget what it was you came in the room to do.

The mouse that built their home on the mouse pads beside our computers, have been given fair warning. This afternoon you will be put in your mousetrap, while my daughters and I go for a walk, swim in the swimming pool, go and weed our real garden, read a good book and if there is any time left after a busy exciting day, play a game of cards.

Now I need to build a remote control, trap.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

A Stinking Thanksgiving

I have 21 guest most of them strangers, coming tomorrow afternoon to celebrate our Canadian Thanksgiving and my dog had a run in with a skunk. I let her in the house, not knowing she got it full in the face. The first thing she did was to start rubbing her face all over the carpet and couch in the living room. That was at 10:00 PM. Now it is 1:00 AM. Thank goodness for V8 juice. I/2 gallon of V8 juice two shampoos and a sweet smelling rinse and Roxy is sparking clean. She is sulking in the bathroom.

Out comes the carpet cleaner and now we have a wet carpet and couch. I turn
on the furnace to dry out the living room and the pilot light is out. No way am I going down the basement at one in the morning and fool with a gas furnace.

I think I will light all the sweet smelling candles we have tomorrow. The whole back yard, smells of skunk. I will give praises to my Lord anyway.

Let's see, the living-room floor is all cleaned for the Christmas Holidays, and it could have been me, that got sprayed in the face by a skunk.
How did your weekend go?
Have a Happy Thanksgiving

Report on Skunk Situation.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Fourteen of us shared fellowship and a wonderful meal. My friends from Korea had never had a Thanksgiving dinner. She had never tasted turkey. The fresh baked pies and turkey covered the slightly skunk aroma. I have to admit, I did indulge in some of the food that I haven't had for a while. A new day starts now. It was fun while it lasted.

Roxy has a real shiny coat of fur. Jane said, “I wish my hair would shine like Roxy’s.” I will have to keep a close tab, pun, pun, on my caned V8 Juice. I might have started a new fad. Can you picture the commercials? Wash your hair with V8 juice to get that luscious shine. Let us see, do you think V8 hair shampoo would sell. You would have to take out the colour or you would end up with red head’s instead of blondes. It took several washings to get the red out of Roxy’s fur. I am exhausted so I had better turn off the computer and get to sleep.

Have a good day tomorrow.

PS. I have to figure on how to get the skunk family out from under the back yard shed tomorrow. That will be a whole new story. I will go to the store and replenish my stock of V8 Juice, just in case I get hit. I wonder if skunk smell will travel over the Internet. Here’s hoping I never have to find out.

Goodnight.

Next day Action

I went to the store and bought a box of mothballs. I filled the hose of the shop vacuum with mothballs and stuck the end under the shed. I ran a long extension cord, to the vacuum and plugged it in from a distance. I gave the skunks some of their own medicine. The only thing worse than the smell of skunk, is mothballs. I even put mothballs inside the shed. I noticed yesterday that the mice have fled the smell of mothballs. No mouse droppings in the shed to sweep up this year.

Written several years ago by

A True Fishing Tail

I went fishing last night. About nine o'clock, two men stopped their boat and asked, if anyone wanted some rainbow trout. I said I would like two. They said they had ten, and proceeded to throw ten large fish on shore.

I returned to my car to get a garbage bag. Not a garbage bag or pail in sight. All I had was a mesh bag full of holes that I use for my wet swimming suit and towels. It might not be able to use it for the YMCA any more, but it was the only thing I had, that was big enough to hold fish. I took it over to the dock and picked up three, slippery slimy fish.

Now I had a real problem. I do not usually keep the fish I catch. I had stopped procrastinating and decided to clean out the car and trunk today. I did not have a pail or garbage bag with me.

I asked the people fishing on shore if anyone had a garbage bag. The answer was no.

I returned to the car. How was I going to get my three trophy 24-inch fish home, without smelling up the car? Then I spotted it… my daughter’s black stuffed toy dog, was poking its head out of one of those new reusable blue store grocery sacks.

I had dropped the girls off at one o'clock so they could go camping. The girls had packed everything but the kitchen sink. The lady had no room left in her van so the bag with the stuffed dog was sent home with me.

I removed the dog from the sack, picked up the heavy mesh bag with the slimy fish and deposited it in the blue bag.

I stayed and fished for Crappy until 10:30 PM, but they were not biting, so I headed for home to deal with my newly acquired fish.

Two hours later, I am covered in scales, my arm is aching, and the fish are finally cleaned, scaled, gutted and cut in half and put in the freezer.

I now have a bigger problem. It is two o'clock in the morning, my freezer is full and I have two garbage pails filled with smelly fish heads, tails and guts. It isn't garbage day at the apartment for two days.

I could turn the air conditioner down to 22, or put the bags in the cooler with some ice packs. I think I will get out the cooler.

My shower and my bed look inviting.

2:30 PM, Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Couch Potatoes

It is 3:18 am and I can’t sleep. It must be the medication. I read an interesting article in a magazine tonight about helping COUCH POTATOES like me, get their housework done. It was a fun article so I will share it with you. I cut the article out and posted it on the TV for the girls to read when they get up in the morning. It might be fun to do with your family.

It had a whole list of things you could do during a three minute TV commercial.

JOB LIST: = Wash the top off your fridge, take the garbage out, let dog out, load washer, load dryer, dust living room, vacuum floor, cut up vegetables, make lunch, put kid’s clothes out for school, fold wash, clean a window, make a bed, wash bathtub, clean bathroom, tidy a room, pick up toys, etc…

Maybe you would all like to add job ideas to the list, and post them. Let me know if it works, for your family

You could make a game out of it, by putting the cut up list into a bowl. When the commercial starts, your family could reach into the bowl and pull out a job. They could see who did their job the quickest. Have several bowls if you have different age children. If the job was already done they get to sit and be a COUCH POTATO while the rest of the family works. The prize would be that they get to control the remote and sit in the best chair until the next commercial.

I will try it tomorrow and see how much more work I get done. Let’s see at 10, 3 min. commercials or more an hour. I will become more active. Now to go back to bed! Instead of counting sheep, I will work on my work list. Let’s see, wash the counters, empty a shelf in the dishwasher and put the silver away. Z.Z.Z.Z.Z.Z.Z.Z.

The list was gone from the TV when I awoke in the morning the girls were sitting in front of the TV. I asked them where the piece of paper from the TV was and they said and the tooth fairy must have come and taken it during the night. Someone is not telling the truth. We did have a good laugh for several days.

HOW TO CHANGE

I CAN’T

INTO I CAN

Start by moving the T in can’t to the right one space.

Then remove the apostrophe.

Add ry to the right of the T.

It will change I can’t

Into I can try.

It works every time.

Soon,

if you say I can try,

instead of

I can’t

you will be able to do it

because

you tried.

The words

I CAN’T

will

become

I CAN TRY

My First Job in Ten Years

I needed to earn some money so I told my friend that I was interested in dog sitting and house sitting.

She said she would be my first customer. She was going to the theater on Saturday so she asked me to come over to her house and let her two dogs out. How hard could that be? I was to say, “go pee, pee” and they would run out to the backyard. I was to give the dogs a treat and go home after they went Pee, Pee.

It was out of her way to drive the dogs to the kennel for the day, and because it was a holiday weekend, they likely would be full.

The last time she was out, one of the dogs decided that her CD’s would make an interesting lunch and chewed up a few hundred dollars worth. To discourage this bad behavior she put a small kennel in the kitchen.

I thought I had all the arrangement made. Just to be sure, I asked her to write out what dog went in the kennel. She handed me the paper, and I went home with the keys to her back door and the list of instructions in my purse.

Saturday came and I went over to her house at two o’clock like I was asked to do. I opened the door and a dog ran out into the back yard. I tried to open the small kennel, and the dog kept growling at me. Finally, I got it opened and let the dog outside. So far, so good! I played with the dogs for a while and let them back into the house. I took out the note with the instructions. My friend had written a new note and left off the most important thing. She didn’t write down what dog went into the kennel.

I had a sixtieth wedding anniversary to go to at three. I took a chance. I decided the gray dog was more aggressive so tried to coax her into the kennel. Every time I tried to get her to go in, the brown and white dog would jump in. Finally, I got brave and picked up the gray dog and put her in the kennel shutting the door behind her.

I asked my daughter when I got home, “what dog was I to put into the kennel?” She said, “The brown and white one.”

I asked her to come with me while I exchanged dogs. I envisioned hundreds of dollars worth of CD’s covering the living room floor. I went to the house and looked around. No chewed up CD’s on the floor.

We let both dogs out for another run. When we were through the brown and white dog ran into the kennel, and the gray dog went over to her bed and laid down looking dejected.

That night, I phoned my friend to tell her about the adventure I had with her dogs while she was away. She was wondering why the brown and white dog ate up all her doggy treats. The dog never ate while my friend was away. She said the gray dog looked out of sorts when she got home. She informed me that the gray dog had never been put in the kennel before.

She went out side to feed her gold fish in the pond when she got home and found all the fish food gone. The two dogs had knocked over the container and ate it.

I do not know if I will continue with the dog sitting. The dogs might turn into gold fish. I might get charged with unlawful confinement. My friend’s house might get chewed up and I might end up paying my clientele to look after their dogs.

We both had a good laugh. She promised not to tell my future clientele about this adventure.

Sandy’s Story

I went fishing at the river.

Elynore and Samantha went fishing with my mom, sister and me on Saturday. I caught a 21-inch pike and some perch. At the river, I swatted at a fly because it was bugging me. When I hit at the fly I missed and I hit my glasses off my face into the river.

My mom and I went back on Sunday afternoon with a fishing net and broom handle and some gray duck tape. She jointed the broom handle to the fishing net. She tried to get the glasses out of the water but it did not work. We went fishing. My sister Jane caught three fish. My friend, Jessica caught a big perch. My mother put a red and white Dare Devil fishing hook and three big sinkers on her fishing line. She caught my glasses the first time she tried. I can see now because my glasses were caught by my mother when we went fishing at the river.

Written by Sandy Hiday, with the help of her mother, who not only helps me catch fish but can catch glasses, when they fall into the river.

Monday May 3, 1999

There is more to this than meets the eye. Pun! Pun! Pun!

Hi! I thought you would get a laugh from this one. We have had a good weekend. I found a real special fishing spot. There was no junk fish. We spent most of the day Saturday there and came home with a bucket of fish. As you can read from Sandra's short story, we had an adventure. I did not know what to do. The fishing net would not reach the glasses.

We went home but came back today with grey duct tape and a broom handle. The sun was too bright. I could not see the bottom because of it. I tried several ideas and nothing worked. (We spent some time joking about the axe that fell into the water and floated to the top when someone prayed. Read 2 Kings 6:5 to learn this true story from the Bible. I guess our faith was not as strong as Elisha’s faith.

One of his worker's axe head, fell into the water when he was cutting wood. The worker was upset because the axe was borrowed. He asked Elisha to help him. Elisha cut off a branch and threw it into the water and the axe head floated to the top of the water.

God gave me a bright idea. Why not try to catch the glasses with a big fishing hook. I had three big sinkers on my rod, so I added a Dare Devil to where the sinkers were. It was a drop in a bucket, but I tried it. I had to look into the water for quite a while until I could make out the slight image of the glasses.

We all had been praying that I would be able to retrieve them somehow. You will not believe this. I let the fishing line into the water and was able to hook the glasses the first time I tried. God is so good. You know how much new glasses cost. It was not the cost so much, as Sandy cannot see without her glasses. It would have taken a few days to get her new ones. She already was starting to get a headache.

We prayed believing. God did not need to float the glasses to the top. He had other plans. He guided my Dare Devil right to the glasses and had me catch them instead. They fell off the hook when the line was over dry ground. God is so good. He can have a fisher woman glasses out of a river with a Dare Devil.

ethel_wicksey@live.ca

http://ethelswritings.yolasite.com/

Sunday May 02, 1999

About Hair and Money

If I Your God, know how many hair’s are on your head,

don’t you think, I know how many penny’s are in your bank account?