Kiss My Knits!

Holding on to a box while my daughter spray painted it wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done.

We got new windows in our home a couple of weeks ago. The new ones are double-paned, well-sealed, and generally much more weathertight than our previous wooden single-paned ones which came with the house forty years ago. Well, apparently the old ones had been providing an avenue for ladybugs to get in and lay their eggs. While looking out at the snow, I’ve found about 16 ladybugs on the south-facing windows of our house this weekend. They were on the inside, crawling up, trying to get out. Given the snow and ice, it’s probably just as well they couldn’t.

After looking on the internet (thank you, Ladybug lady!), I found out that they’d be just fine inside for a while with the right conditions. So now they’re in a plastic container with holes punched in the top, a moist paper towel (apparently they die inside of dehydration instead of starvation) and a few raisins, which they seem to enjoy greatly. Oh, and there’s some tufts of grass in there for good feng shui. At right is a pic for the curious.

We think we’ll take it to my daughter’s kindergarten class tomorrow, assuming school’s in. Quite the little science project!

Remember how my booksforsoldiers guy very kindly sent my daughter a box of candy and a stuffed camel? Well, he wrote to ask what the camel sounds like. He said, “I would assume it might sound like a camel but I rarely hear anything out of the camels when they pass us in the desert. Pretty quiet actually.” So I finally put batteries in.

Ho. Lee. Crap.

Unless real camels burst into song when you push on their shoulders, this does not sound like a real camel. And the eyes… the eyes were very unexpected.

Shall I share a link? Yes, I think I shall.

Small camel movie
Big camel movie

Does anyone out there have any clue what this song is? I’ve plumbed resources all the way to an online buddy of my husband’s in Israel, and no luck.

I’m pretty sure that this is some kind of demon camel meant to hypnotize my daughter into joining the Taliban or something. Excuse me… I feel the need to go put on a burqa.

…probably because I am.

There is a webcam that points to a part of our house, so that our relatives can peek in and maybe catch a glimpse of our daughter working on one of our computers. Okay, she’s not working, she’s playing the Sims. Oh, all right, she’s not playing the Sims, she’s sitting next to or on my husband or I and telling us to make them throw parties and go swimming all the time. It’s not all the Sims, she could be telling us to build more “swimming dinosaur” enclosures in Zoo Tycoon.

But something weird’s been going on with this webcam lately. Hits are way up. I mean, waaaaay up. Like, someone will keep the java live feed open for hours and hours, even when we’re not sitting at the computer. And the hits aren’t from our relatives, they’re from places like Norway and Japan and Peru.

WTF?

We figure we must have gotten listed somewhere, but we can’t figure out where. Nor can we figure out why some guy in Norway would want to look at us playing the Sims over and over and over again. I guess it’s kind of hypnotic, but still.

Strangers are staring at us. I’m officially creeped out.