Busted...

Left to Right: Kim, Kelly, Keri and Pete

This picture was taken the day my four oldest siblings got rubber band punching balloons. The best day ever, they tell me (I wasn't born yet).

Later Keri's turned up popped. She accused Pete.

My mom took Pete aside.

"Pete: did you pop Keri's balloon?"

"NO. But there's a knife in the sink."

Disgus-Tea

The neighbor brought over a gallon jug of Lipton diet green tea citrus a while back because she knows my dad loves iced tea. 

He's been drinking it for several days. He's also been complaining about a funny taste, which I attributed to it being a different brand than he normally buys - also green tea tastes different than black tea. Whatever. I ignore most of what my dad says.

Today on his one millionth complaint about the taste, my mom suggested that maybe it's expired? I figured it was worth checking into, who knows how long neighbors keep their jugs of tea before realizing they're not going to drink them and then decide to generously give them away?

...And that is the story of the first time a Hexum wasted food by dumping perfectly good diet green tea citrus down the drain. 

Everybody REEL In

My mom has an old family fishing story starring my Auntie Cheryl.

My mom and Cheryl have five brothers and so anytime they went fishing with their dad there were boys around. And Grandpa Dick is a boy too. So one time Cheryl had to go pee and she refused to use the bucket to pee in and made her dad take her to shore.

"Everybody REEL IN, CHERYL has to go to the BATHROOM!!"

And that's our family quote for anytime you inconvenience others for your convenience.

But that's not the point of my story. 

The point of my story is that I went fishing with my dad and two of his friends the other night and I should have peed before we left the dock because I already had to go. But I didn't. So I suffered and fished for like three hours. Finally I realized I was going to have to pee in the boat and ask three men not to look.

But! We were in my dad's friend's boat! And I didn't even see it but there was a cabin under the deck! With a door that shuts! He let me go in there and pee into his little blue plastic fish rinsing bucket!

And you know how when you have to pee really really bad and so you pee for like 67 seconds and that 67 seconds feels like an eternity? It was one of those. I thought I was going to overflow the bucket - seriously. 

But I didn't. And then I took the walk of shame out of the cabin with my bucket of pee and very carefully and quickly dumped it over the edge and rinsed rinsed rinsed it a million times. I threw the bucket on the floor and resumed fishing.

...and nobody had to reel in.

But I had this to taunt me the rest of the night. The beating of the tell tale pee bucket.

It's lake water!!!! I swear!!!!

Hal-isms, Vol. 69 (hey! he's 69 years old!)

"I have to pee. It changes the octave of my oracle chords."

"Try to be paying attention to things that make sense instead of frog turds and butterflies."

"I can walk through a cow pasture but I don't have to step in brown."

"Shut that door. ...And your mouth."

"Your mother's got the cancer, not me. I survived it."

The House Across

Zach and I have another major remodel project underway, at the house across the street from us, forever forward referred to as "The House Across".

It's a team effort really. Zach definitely needs me to "loosen up" the trickier demo items...