My Most Favorite Post By My Sister-in-Law, Heather Line

I have to share this post that my Sister-in-Law wrote on her blog a few months ago. I find myself reading it over and over because I just love it.


The Bald Man
So the CU scans each member's ID to the computer system so the ID pops up when an employee accesses an account. Nice feature for a new person--I don't have to constantly ask members for their ID and have them say, "I've been banking here for a hundred and seventy eight years. Find Sheila! She knows me. Why can't this Credit Union keep their employees?"

The other day I pulled up a gentleman's account only to see that in his driver's license picture he was very bald. The man in front of me had hair. I did a double take and then noticed. Ah, plugs. And fairly noticeable ones too.

So how much do you think he paid for hair replacement? I thought he looked FINE in his DL photo. He was in his 50's. Why the plugs now? I don't get it.

I know some women love a thick head of hair. But, I will confess--I love the baldies. I always have. Freakish? Perhaps. But I know I'm not the only woman who fancies a smooth pate.

So what makes me love the hair impaired? I don't know. But here are some of my favorites:

Tennis anyone?

How about basketball?

Wicked!

007 has never looked better.

A classic baldy

Make it so!

OK, so does being a Trekkie and liking baldness make me the biggest possible nerd?

Speaking of which, nerdy and bald is OK with me. (I'm also highly attracted to nerds--but that is a topic for another post)

Chris, you were robbed! Robbed, I say!

I even like cartoon baldness...

. . . to a certain extent

And if I had to pick a Seinfeld character to date based solely on looks, you guessed it-I'd pick George.

Men, I can safely say that NO woman is attracted by this:

Or this:

Or this:
Please, if you are a man who is loosing his hair, embrace your baldness! If you attempt to hide it, sooner or later, people will find out the truth. How long can you keep this:

Under wraps? Yikes!


Unremarkable Haiku

Loosing follicles?

A comb-over is never

A good solution.

Headay,

This post always puts a smile on my face. Thanks for letting me post it here. I do have to add another one to my favorites list though and this one would be at the very top since he is the most handsome one in my book:

LOVE YOU DAD!

I'd love to add a picture of my Uncle, since he's a hottie baldy too but I don't have a picture of him...all of my pictures that aren't digital are in our household shipment! ARGH! If anyone has a good picture of Uncle Steve scan it and send it to me. Who has the picture of Dad and Uncle Steve in their Air Force uniforms standing on Grandma and Grandpa's porch?...that is a great picture! SEND IT and I'll add it to this post.

Update from September 4, 2008

Thank you Dave and Darci for sending the picture!



I know this isn't a recent one of Uncle Steve or Dad at all but it's one of my faves. I think I was still in high school when this one was taken, 16 years ago or so maybe? I think Kyra's wedding was when the most recent pictures of Uncle Steve were taken and with his goatee he really looks like Jaime from Mythbusters...if you feel like scanning one of those pics for me KB I'll add a more recent one of Uncle Steve.

Nothing Going On Other Than A Lot of Little Things

I don't even think I could sit down at a calendar and tell you what has happened each day since my last post. I am an avid journal keeper and I haven't even kept up with that this week and last. The boys started school on the 18th. That alone was pretty chaotic because the school we had originally planned for them to attend...well, here's the 'Garity short' version of the story:
Before getting to Mexico Kris and I looked at all of the schools available for the kids to attend. We decided on Westhill Institute which is both a grade school as well as a University. Sent in the application and other paperwork needed. Westhill didn't start classes until Aug 25th. On Aug 11th, Kris and I took the boys to Westhill to check it out. Willie Fernandez, one of the agents who works for Kris, was kind enough to show us around the campus since his kids had attended the school. Walking through the campus I did not have a good feeling about the place. It was a gorgeous campus, I mean out of control gorgeous...marble floors, the whole building made out of marble or granite...some stone, I don't know. Amazing landscape, well better to just show some pictures

but I couldn't quite put my finger on what was wrong or why I was feeling such dread about the place. At some point I turned to Kris and said "please don't think I'm crazy but I don't feel good about sending the boys here". He told me he was feeling the exact same thing. We decided to check out ASF instead. ASF just so happened to be having their new student orientation the next morning. The second we stepped onto the campus we were overwhelmed with the feeling that this was the right place for the kids. It's far from the perfect school, it's old, it has its conflicts between the administration and faculty as well as not having the best reputation for dealing with rich bullies who have tormented embassy kids for years (the majority of students at ASF are from the wealthy elite of Mexican society). Overall for the grades the boys are in we felt it was a much better match and we'd deal with any problems as they arise.

We were in a mad dash to get them enrolled, tested and supplies bought since classes started on August 18th. Kris and I have spent a lot of the week getting them situated and picking up supplies, food for lunches, etc which is a huge ordeal when you are living in a hotel.

So, what was the deal with Westhill? Come to find out as we start talking to people, Westhill has a side we weren't aware of. Besides possible money laundering activities which one of the agents in Kris's office mentioned (who deals with money laundering by the way) we also found out that there are no substitute teachers. If a teacher is absent the students are on their own. I spoke with Willie's wife who showed me some of what her sons had done during the 2007-08 school year. I was disturbed that there really wasn't a focus on math or science...in 1st and 3rd grade they focused more on other areas as if there were alternating years so in 2nd and 4th grade they'd have a math/science focus and be lax on language/social studies/etc. This is fine if you are spending many years there at Westhill but not for us since the boys will miss so much when we move if they don't have a balanced load each year. None of the grade requirements or curriculum outlines were available online which should have been a warning signal for Kris and I but now we know.

We found out that Willie and his wife (can't remember her name for the life of me but it starts with an 'L") actually pulled their kids out of Westhill and they are now attending ASF because of the strange curriculum and lack of supervision. I told them it would have been nice had they told us about everything before giving us a tour of the school and Willie said "well you needed to make your own decision without our experience muddying it". After hearing about their experience at Westhill we are REALLY glad we went with our gut feelings because we had doubts for a very good reason!

The boys love their new school at ASF. Braedon had a rough start though. The kids are divided up into native Spanish speakers and Spanish as a second language classes. (ASF is a bilingual education school) In Braedon's grade, they do this first thing in the morning. The teacher had heard Kris speaking Spanish and I guess assumed Braedon was a native speaker. Kris had left the classroom after dropping him off and had to run back to the car to get lunch money. When he returned there was Braedon in near tears sitting at a desk while the class going on around him was 100% in Spanish. Kris asked the teacher "what's going on? Braedon doesn't speak Spanish!" The teacher felt so bad and assured Braedon that he would be going into the beginning Spanish class! Poor guy!

Speaking of Spanish...the staff here at the hotel try to make the guests feel comfortable and really try to speak English if we need it. I keep telling them that I need to practice Spanish so they can speak to me in English if they want as long as they don't mind me butchering their language as I try to get better at it. This seems to work well. I called guest services for a crib mattress for Jamison, just a crib mattress, no crib. He's at that age where he likes to be in a big boy bed and he hasn't slept in a crib since April. So on the phone I can't think of how to say mattress (Kris was elsewhere so I couldn't ask him) so I apologize and tell the guy I'm sorry but I don't know the word in Spanish so he says "No problem Miss, I speak English, what can I do for you?" I tell him "Could we please have a crib mattress, no crib, just a mattress for the baby so he can sleep on the floor and not roll off a larger roll away bed". The guy says "OK, I will bring you mattress, no problem". Not even 5 minutes later there is a knock at the door and the guy hands me an ashtray...with matches. We both had a good laugh after I explained: mattress not matches. Kris told me how to say mattress in Spanish (colchón) and he happily left to bring one up. I did tip him well because of all the trouble.

~Laundry~ Loads of Fun!

After being in the hotel just 5 days you can imagine that with 5 people laundry adds up. Kris told me to just us the hotel’s laundry service; of course there is no laundry room for hotel guests. Take a look at the price sheet: (you will get a bigger image if you click on the picture if you didn't already know you could do that)



Dollars to Pesos is approximately 1 to 10 so estimating conversion is easy (and with my mathematical abilities I'm so grateful all I have to do is move the decimal point over!). So just to do one shirt it’s $6.30 USD x 5 x 5 days…yea you get picture and that's just one article of clothing type. I asked the laundry service manager if there was a lower cost for children's clothes but he said no. I was not about to spend that amount of money on laundry just on principle and because I don't get paid that much to do OUR laundry, not even close! I'll take that up with Kris later although I do get to keep any money he forgets in his pockets...that's the rule. I don't care if we could use part of our per diem on it (actually laundry at these prices would put us over our limit so we'd end up paying for it out of our own pockets anyway). I next asked the concierge about a laundromat that was close...none.

I felt a little adventurous at this point. Why couldn't I just hand wash it all? I could then hang it all up, it would dry in a day and we'd be good to go. I mean, how hard could it be? I've seen it done, I've hand washed stuff before. The mom on Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory did it while singing a song even! I just needed a large tub...bathtub would work, some detergent, liquid fabric softener and a large paddle to stir it all with, plus some elbow grease....easy peasy! The boys and I walked down the street and into 3 stores until we found one that had some laundry detergent and liquid fabric softener. They were really excited about hand washing the clothes and kept asking about how we were going to do it and if they could help. Why not? I'd happily put them to work.

The boy's bathtub got filled with hot water and all of the whites. Our bathtub was filled with warm water and the colored clothes. Our sink was filled with cold water and hand-wash only items. I divied up the laundry detergent and the boys took turns stirring the clothes with a curtain pull/push rod that had fallen off that morning...what luck! We had a 'paddle'...I call that being resourceful! Why do the boys have their shirts off? When I asked them they said it was because they were going to be hard workers...OK whatever, trying to figure out where they got that one from but it works for me ALSO FYI the water with the whites looks gross but it's because the laundry detergent has a greenish-blue color to it!



Weston was interested in fireproofing the clothes:



We let everything soak for a while and then I got in there and agitated the whole mess scrubbing each item in turn. This was a lot harder than I thought it would be! I could have considered it a very serious workout...which I did...so I wouldn't feel guilty about thinking I deserved dessert that night.

We drained the tubs and filled them with fresh water...oops, used way too much soap so we would have to swish those around, drain again and refill with clear water and some Downy fabric softener. The boys then asked if they could get into the tubs and stomp around to help rinse the clothes...why not?!







At this point I was thinking "HA! Take that Sheraton laundry service! This is working out just fine! The boys were having fun and so was I. So then we let all the water out of the tubs...and then it hit me...I forgot about wringing ALL of the water out...do you know that your hands can get blisters from wringing clothes?...A lot of clothes?

I finally got through all of it and then realized, where was I going to hang all of this up? So the kids and I got creative Jamison even got in on hanging things up...well he was doing a good job until I tried to catch it on camera.





I'm sparing you the sight of the whites being hung up...no need to share underwear shots right?) Most of the clothes would be dry in a few hours...the jeans maybe overnight at the most, right? WRONG! The clothes that were hanging on the bathroom laundry line and curtain rod didn't dry at all and those that were in the room did better because I had the air cranked but that next evening things were still damp so I ended up ironing every single item of clothing to fully dry them all...took me 4 hours. Unfortunately I learned that ironed t-shirts and underwear are REALLY nice! I've never worn ironed jeans either...I loved it!...but not enough to go through that again!

So what did we learn? 1. The kids are so bored that hand washing clothes is fun for them. 2. I have NEVER taken my washing machine and dryer for granted before this but now I realize that I really love them and the time they save me. 3. The kids can wear clothes more than once if they don't look or smell dirty...I can't believe I just wrote that, this is only temporary! 4. Laundry detergent is not kind to hands, neither is wringing clothing...on top of my gardening calluses I now have blisters and detergent induced dermatitis...wanna hold my hand Sirk? 5. I need to make some friends quick so I can use their washing machine until we get into a place that has one. 6. When a new family moves here I will personally seek them out to offer them use of my washing machine and dryer whenever they need it.