martinzoo

All day we’ve had cool trucks outside, in front of our house. The Virginia Department of Transportation decided that we were worthy enough to pave our street with nice new black asphalt.

GB and I watched them dilligently work all day, starting at the opposite end of the cul-de-sac, and slowly moving their way towards our house.

Guess what?

When they got to our house —- they stopped. Nice pavement meets yucky pavement.

When the guy saw me out there with my camera, I guess it made him nervous. Because he walked by the house and asked if I was taking ‘friendly’ pictures…. LOL! Isn’t that funny?

He told me they would be back NEXT week to finish up …. Guess I won’t hold my breath. You know how these things go.

In our neighborhood, Wednesday is Rubber Ducky night. Most of the kids in the neighborhood show up at the pool with all manner of floats. Some of them use standard donut-shaped tubes. And some come with the most glorified floats you have ever seen. Some of them are actually inflated boats, complete with paddles.

In fact, GB has a float that looks just like his Daddy’s jet ski, but much smaller. It even has a teeny tiny motor to barely propel it through the water. When we come in to the pool, we get half a dozen requests from kiddies, right off the bat, to ride on the jet ski.

But this guy is the Summer’s hit. It looks like a HUGE, red spider. The family that owns it has an adorable set of 12 year old quadruplets. And the aim of every kid in the pool is to either be on it when it gets flipped, or be one of the kids trying to flip it.

As parents, you worry about the safety aspects of this activity. Buuuutttt, stepping back a bit, it DOES look like fun. AND it is hilarious to watch. These are some earnest little flippers. And daggumit, that is some hard work….. LOL!

This mom gets my vote for funniest mom antic of the year. There must be an award for it somewhere.

Coming from a mom whose son was desperately INTO Pokemon cards for a while, I can totally sympathize.  AND I stand up and raise my hands in wildly abandoned applause!

Make sure you read all the way to the end…. It is SO worth it! This is the link to her blog, Because I Said So,  which is also hysterical!

Query ~ Can you make a hole in an index card that’s large enough to fit a body through?

Yes.

GB did not believe me, SOOOOooo, I made a wee wager…. One extra big hug for me if I can prove it. He’s at that stage where hugs and kisses are very hard to come by…. too girly, if you know what I mean. If I can’t prove it, then I will play any board game he chooses. Win, win, right?

It’s called topology, and this experiment has been around for a long time. Back in the late 1800’s people would sit around talking and doing parlor tricks, which were often science experiments. They used to do this experiment with playing cards.

Here’s how I did it.

Exhibit A ~ Ordinary index card and boring old scissors

Fold the index card in half

Cut the first slice about an 1/8 of an inch from the edge starting at the fold. Then make all your next cuts about a 1/4 inch apart. Don’t go all the way to the unfolded side. As you can see, I got a teensy bit close on that fourth cut.

Now flip it around and cut in between your previous cuts, going about a 1/4 from the fold.

Here is the IMPORTANT part…. On the folded edge, skip the first section, and last section, of the zig-zag, and cut off a really tiny amount of the fold. Can you see how I skipped that first section?

This is what it should look like before you unfold it.

Now, oh, so carefully, unfold.

It should look like this.

Now make the untrusting child put his body through the ‘hole.’

All the way down…. come on….. you can do it, you skeptical little boy…

For further proof, I offer up dh’s body…. just for the experiment, of course.

GB…. keep this in mind….. Mom is ALWAYS right. You owe me an extra big hug! Ha!