Snowed In and Bored...

We were snowed in today (Probably yesterday by the time I publish this), and got a bit bored, so I decided to document our adventures! These were taken with a computer's webcam, so they're not the best quality, but I thought you might enjoy them. =)

 I discovered some interesting camera settings:

 This next one is using the 'sharpen' setting. I was getting so bored that I was ready to clean and pack up! You know you're bored when...

 ...you voluntarily clean and watch the sheets dry!

I was amused by the dog, though.

Finally wore out my slippers, I think. I looked down and there were several more holes than usual. =/ I'll miss 'em.

Made a delicious pot-roast for supper! A bit dry in the end (hence the gravy), but tender as can be and not bad for a first try, even if I do say so myself! =)

Now we're watching Dick Van Dyke episodes (It may look like a walnut....) and chilling on the computers. =)



Boy, this day was exhausting! ;) Goodnight!

(here's where Kiwi would sign, but she's asleep right now.)

Untitled Poems

I haven't tried to chose names for these poems as of yet, although I have a few ideas. These are just the preliminary titles or, as they call it in the land of lyrics and songs, "Working titles." (had to say something professional-sounding there)

March Fourth:

"March Fourth!"

They told me

So I marched forth

While they laughed behind me.

I asked "Why?" 

They laughed still harder

Till I thought they'd die

And then laughed harder!

They never did say why...

Spring:

Snow keeps falling

Piling up around us

Rays of sun may melt it

In time, in good time, in distant time.

Nevertheless, I continue with my live

Grieving over the cold, and dreaming of

Spring.

That poem that I just wrote the other day:

Like a cat

I follow the sun's beams

Curling up to read

Despite its best schemes

To run away

And steal the light;

I'll follow the sunbeams

Until the night.

~Kiwi~

Skittles, This is for You!

Here, Miss Skittles, are the pictures of our Formidable Secret Weapon (FSW for short). The first are of the large version, and after that is the Mini-Formidable Secret Weapon (MFSW for short). The MFSW was developed first, but the official FSW is scarier. Beware, Charles, be very wary!

Please Note: The following pictures may be unsuitable for easily frightened children and those with Triceraphobia.

Our FSW shall make snowmen shake in their big rubber boots, small children and animals flee screaming, and constructors of snow forts will wish they had made them with an army-grade steel core! Behold: The FSW, a.k.a. the TRICERATOPS!!

Look at him!

He's HUGE!

With a big head and sharp horns, he could trample us at any moment, but instead (as we were his creators)...

posed for a picture with us. I'm not allowed to identify anyone in that picture except for me (in the red hat in back) and FSW (and if you can't tell which one he is, you're hopeless!). We built him on the day after Christmas with a bunch of friends.

And here is the MFSW:

Isn't he cute? He'll be scarier when he's bigger, but he's cute right now. :)

Once again, cute!

But still, be scared, all who oppose me or Skittles!
Mr. Charles, is your snow fort made of concrete? Does it have metal rebar in it? Will it survive??? Just wondering.

Have fun with this, Skittles!

~Kiwi da Prehistoric-two-ton-stomping-machine-loving Fruit

50TH POST!!!!

I wanted to say something before I forgot it, but am now beginning to think that it's too paltry a post for this honored position. Fifty posts. And since I've been on since Wednesday, June 11th, 2008. That makes fifty posts in 167 days. Averaging .2994 posts per day, about 2.08 per week. While Soul Skittles, for example, manages to churn out a lot more in the same amount of time.

Of course, all that was typed last Wednesday, so now my average has dropped even more. :'( I need to post more.

So, when was the last time I posted? Ah, yes, Saturday, the 22nd. What has happened since then?

Sunday (23): Nuthin. Church, as usual. I can't think of anything else.

Monday (24th): Instead of school, we cleaned some, then went to the library. I got a really stupid book that had a deceiving cover. It's called In the Shadow of the Ark, and it's about this girl, Re Jana, who travels to where Noah is building the ark. She falls in love with Ham (That sounds so funny. "Oh, I'm in love with Ham! *sigh*"), who loves her back, but he has to marry this other lady, Neeleta, because of her financial status. Re Jana's mother dies (actually, she knows she's dieing so she has her husband burn her alive to get it over with), so Re Jana's father builds her a reed gondola, as is their people's custom because they used to live by the sea and put the dead bodies in the gondola, then set fire to it and let it float out. But the mother refuses to be put in the gondola, so it just stays there. Then, after a whole lotta stuff happens, the flood starts, Re Jana's adopted brother, Put, is secreted onto the ark by Neeleta, and Ham sneaks Re Jana on, also. So long, complicated story short, Japheth's wife finds Re Jana and forces her to sacrifice some of the animals (including Noah's dove) to the old gods, hoping that then the waters will go down. No one notices that half the quail are missing, or some of the other birds. And then, it ends up that Re Jana, Put, and even their father (who floated in the gondola all that time) survive, even though they were not the Chosen People. It didn't make any sense to me, and I don't recommend it.

Tuesday (25th): Ummmmm... I made the scalloped corn for Thanksgiving dinner and stuck it in the freezer. I also discovered that I hate this kitchen. It's nice and large, yes, but the cabinets come down too low, and the counter isn't wide enough. And there's no counter next to the stove (that fact will play a role in my next adventure), so I had to keep scooting back and forth between the counter and the stove.

For supper, Mom made 'Cheesy Ham Potatoes'. The pan was sitting on the stove with a dish of corn beside it, and I was dishing up my food with my plate in one hand and the spoon in the other. Suddenly, the pan decided to scoot, and it burned my hand! Thankfully, Mom saw right away and was able to move it quickly. If there had been a counter by the stove, I could have set my plate down and avoided that mishap. >:-[

Wednesday (26th): I made a Cherry Pie for Thanksgiving. We went to our church's Thanksgiving Eve service. Oh, and I finished Grandma and Grandpa's Christmas card. Here's the front:

It's actually a bit brighter than it appears to be here. Inside, in the same font and color as the 'peace', is 'Peace on earth and goodwill to men.' That earned me $20, minus the $3.50 Mom and Dad charged me for paper and ink. $16.50. Sweet.

Thursday (Thanksgiving, the 27th): We drove three hours back to Grandma and Grandpa's house in Iowa for Thanksgiving. I LOVE the smell of turkey! And I love Thanksgiving meals. And we had PIE, four kinds of it. Cherry, Pumpkin, Apple, and Pecan. I'm sorely tempted to re-post my PIE post, but instead I'll just put that link up.

We watched about six and a half hours of Newhart. WGN was playing a marathon of it. I like Newhart! My sister said that afterwards, I was starting to sound like Stephanie! I think that's bad....

Friday (28th): We left Grandma and Grandpa's house after lunch, and stopped by Borders book store so Rapunzel could get a book. I had hoped to run into a friend or two there, but nope. Then, Dad drove until we crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois, and then he pulled over and (here's the good part) they let me drive!!! It went well. I had to pass a tractor *shiver* and only one person passed me. I need to work on my turns a bit more, because the other two drivers in the car who kept telling me what to do and distracting me, so I couldn't concentrate. I will name no names, but they're my parents. I like driving. :) I drove all the way from the Iowa/Illinois border to an unnamed little town near the Illinois/Cheeseland border--about two hours of driving. :) Driving is fun.

Saturday (29th): We carried, dragged, lugged, and hauled boxes into the basement from the garage. Big whoop. Quite entertaining.

After lunch, TOO (my new nickname for my twelve-year-old brother. The Odd One.) informed me that some friends had been walking by on the street behind the empty lot behind our house, and invited us to go explore the woods by the park with them. TOO left about five minutes before I could, and it was agreed that we'd meet at the park. I arrived, but no TOO, no friends, nobody. Long story short, they weren't at the friends' house, where I checked next, so I went back to the park and found them then. While we were back in the woods, we started construction on a 'fort' or 'hideout' or whatever you want to call it. I think I'll suggest calling it 'The Stronghold' or 'The Keep' (the safest part of a castle) instead of 'The Fort'. The Fort sounds more like some little hideout a kid would build, while The Stronghold sounds better to me. It's sort of a hexagonal structure. Starting at the west corner and going counter-clockwise, it's pine tree, tall-skinny-unknown tree, tall-skinny-unknown tree, pine tree again, another unknown forked tree, another unknown forked tree, then back to the first pine tree.

Sunday (30th): I woke up around seven-thirty and it was unnaturally dark. Looking out my window, I found the problem. Snow. Probably about an inch and a half? I don't know. Then while we were in church, it all melted. It was snowing hard most of the way through the service but not sticking. Then we came home, ate, cleaned, and a new friend (who just happens to live about five minutes away) came over and we watched Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in The Road to Morocco. We were going to watch The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, but that VHS tape wouldn't work. The library needs to start replacing VHSs with DVDs. We made hot chocolate (hint: add dried coffee creamer to the chocolate mix. Hazelnut is good. Or, if you put milk in it also, replace some of the milk with coffee creamer. It makes it even better.), and as we watched the movie about three inches of snow fell.

Monday (1st): I did my school work, which involved watching Amazing Grace for history. I really like that movie! We saw it in the theater either the day it came out, or soon after.

I finished a scarf I have been knitting since late October. It's taller than Monkey by quite a bit, and almost as tall as TOO, who's just over five feet. It's long enough for me to wrap around my neck twice and above my eyes 1 1/2 times! Sort of like the scarf Randy Parker's mom put on him in A Christmas Story. Then, we called up our friends and went out into the woods again. You would not believe (okay, maybe some of you would....Dagmar and Matt) how different the woods look when they're covered in snow! Two of the pine trees we had used as landmarks were unrecognizable, as they were bent over with snow--all the way over! We got more work done on the Stronghold. Saw deer tracks. Heard voices in the woods. Saw strange footprints in the snow. Heard something that sounded like a cross between yip-yap dogs, birds, and a group of wild indians. Picked up two trees. (they're about twelve-twenty feet in length, and they're the tall, skinny ones without many branches. The trees fall over, sit there on the ground for who knows how long, then we pick them up and prop them against things.) So far, all the walls have framework, now what we need to do is weave other sticks in with the big branches and logs.

Tuesday (today, 2nd): I finished my work quickly, except my STUPID LITERATURE where they ask me DUMB QUESTIONS that I don't have answers for. Dad gave us ice cream after lunch. I started serious work on our Christmas card for the year. No picture of that yet, not until it has already been sent out.

I'm planning on going tramping again today. There's not really much else to do. Read, computer, television, paint, wait impatiently for the Fourteenth of December. I need more exercise. Oh, that's something to do! I'll look up the My-ville ice skating arena and see when they let us mortals who are not prodigies at skating in. Perchance after Christmas we can go skating.

Now, I have a tag to do, but I'm going to save that until tomorrow. If I post it now, I won't have anything to post tomorrow, will I?

Goodbye. I'll try not to freeze.

~Kiwi da Fruit

P.S. I sat down and figured out that I have only recieved ummm.... three letters here at this address. I have about ten friends who promised they would write to me, and still have not. It makes me very unhappy, very unhappy indeed. Please write to me, Dagmar, Avalon, Catfreak, Miranda, Abbie, Rachel, Avalonandcatfreakssisters! I miss you! Write soon!!

By der way, Thanks for the comment, Rachel!

Joy!! Happy Day!!/New Poems

Rejoice and be merry, me fellow bloggers! Yours Truly is going to see Downhere. Live. In concert. In 26 days. Wooooohoooooo! I can't wait!! *does a little happy dance* After I get this posted, I'm going to try to find a countdown thingymajig that will actually work on here (for some weird reason, unknown to mankind, animalkind, and most likely alienkind also), set it for December 14th, and host a party every time it counts down one week. Big party on the 13th. Y'all'll have to party without me on the 14th. Why? Because I'll be at The Concert, of course!!
=^D =^D =^D =^D =^D =^D =^D =^D =^D =^D =^D =^D =^D
And Daniel Kirkley will be there, and he's got an amazing voice, too, and Jason Gray, and Jaime Jamgochian, and Lanae' Hale.

Like I said. Happy Day.

Now, here is a brand-new poem, written just this afternoon, never before seen by anyone outside of this family. I hope you enjoy the privilege. ;) Please ignore the dots. Those aren't supposed to be there, but it was the only way I could get the words to align correctly.

..........................I wish I could be
.............................................as happy
.........................................................as
...........................................................a
...........................................................CLAM
...................................For then,
..............................................when
.................................................people say
...................................................“you look
.......................................................as happy
...................................................................as
.....................................................................a
.....................................................................CLAM,”
...................................................I can say
...................................................................“I
.........................................................................AM!”

There is my masterpiece. D'you like it? I've always wanted to write a 'stair-step' poem--one where the lines sort of end up looking like stair-steps. And now I have. But now that I have fulfilled my "life's dream", what else is there to live for? I am no longer as happy as a clam. There's no reason to be. ;-(
Anywho; this was the third day in a row that I wrote a poem in. I think this is the best poem out of the three. Here's my second favorite. It was written on an envelope to some friends back in Iowa. (Catfreak and Avalon: if you have not yet received my letter, wait to read this.)

I say 'How're you?'

To my friends back in Iowa

And wonder what they do

Without me there.

I talk and talk

'Bout random things

Like how I want to walk

O'er to their house like I used to.

Sadly, then, I write 'Goodbye'

And wonder how long

Till I can say 'Hi'

And stand there right beside them.

And then here's my least favorite. It needs more work on it, like on the last line of the first stanza, but I can't find anything that'll work better.

Angus

Although you came into my life

Just a few short months ago,

I feel that I know you well,

As if you were my beau!

The reason for our meeting

Was not a happy one*

But we got past that quickly

And went on to weeks of fun.

Me, clicking happily away,

And you just sitting there

following my every whim

With complementary flair.

My every wish

Ends up as your command,

To get what I want from you,

I barely need raise my hand!

Occasionally, however,

for reasons unknown on earth

You provoke me nearly to tears

Making me wonder about your worth.

Is what I'm doing

Worth begging your co-operation?

Or would I be better off

Sending you on extended vacation?

Yet when all is said and done,

Instead of making a fuss,

I will love you (almost) forever,

My dear computer, Angus!

See what I mean about that last line of the first stanza? But there are no other words that rhyme with 'ago' and still make sense in the poem! Doe, foe, low, mow, moe, snow, bow, beau, go, hoe, joe, no, oh, poe, row, stow, sow, sew, toe, tow, woe, yo. None work! A large virtual high-five to someone who can give me a better line.
*The story behind this poem goes like this: I wrote a eulogy for Bob and Larry, and I fear that Angus has gotten a bit jealous of them. He won't work consistently for me because of this jealousy, so I wrote him this, hoping to appease him.

Oh, before I leave, I was tagged by Soul Skittles to tell 7 random things about meself. So here goes.

1: I hate being trapped inside by cold winter weather.
2: I discovered that chap stick works well to keep your nose from becoming raw when you have a stupid cold and have to blow your nose fifty times per hour. But it's best to use clear stuff, not blue or purple. :-)
3: I'm waiting (rather impatiently) for the day that LOST comes back on tv, 'cause I'm addicted to it.
4: For some reason, I keep waking up at some time in the middle of the night, but I don't know when because I don't have a clock in my room. (hey, you wanted random...)
5: I LOVE listening to Christian music. To name just a few: Newsboys, Downhere, Kutless, Stellar Kart, Paul Colman, Paul Colman Trio. I could continue my list for a few days, but I didn't think y'all'd appreciate that
6: I run out of random things very quickly, and dread finding more.
7: I'd like to visit Australia and New Zealand someday.

So, I tag:
Judi
Catfreak
Avalon
Zoe

So ends this insanely long post. Will this keep you all happy for a while longer?
~Kiwifruit

P.S. It snowed yesterday, but didn't accumulate. I don't like snow right now.