You can call me Hellen Wheels.

A few weeks back, Husband & I were discussing the wardrobe choices of women who ride lawn mowers. I know this is a sweeping generalization, I'm sure there are many, many women who wear pressed linen capris and beautiful floral print blouses and large straw sun hats while mowing perfectly even lines in their lawns on their zero point turn radius 63 inch mowing decks, but lately, all I've seen are the 45 year old, slightly overweight women in sports bras, tube tops, or bikinis paired with flip flops & daisy dukes with their ponytails as high on their heads as humanly possible putting around on their 1983 Sears Craftsman mowers. It makes me wonder, do they think that the lawn tractors they're tulling about on are equipped with cloaking shields a la Star Trek? Are they some how invisible to the naked eye making it OK to mow in a hot pink tube top & curlers in the middle of the afternoon?

Teenage girls should not be doing this, much less women of a more advanced age & therefore knowledge. A tank top & shorts is perfectly acceptable attire. Booty shorts & a string bikini top, not so much.

I told Husband he needed to teach me to use his mower so I could buy a neon bikini & spend my days mowing our 2 acre yard while sunning myself to a crispy golden brown. His reply? "Woman, stay away from my mower."

I've only mowed twice in my life. Once when I was in high school because I felt like it and once when I was 19 or 20 because I had a crazy room mate (not Art) who spent 2 months in California (long story). But never once have I mowed since Husband & I married.

He spent the first year we were in the country push mowing our lawn. It was a grueling, miserable, sun burnt task & I hated that he had to do it....but not so much that I'd volunteer to take over his lawn duties. We also had a deal that once I quit work to stay home with the FarmHands, all indoor duties were mine & all out door chores were his. Who was I to infringe on his space? When he finally got a riding mower (yes, it's a Sears Craftsman), he insisted I ride around on it. He was so proud of it. I couldn't really say no....as much as I wanted to. I took a quick ride across the front yard, then abdicated. I was still recovering from B.B.'s birth (C-section) and was in no mood to be vibrated half to death. Since then, I've stuck with the 4 wheeler when I wanted some off road fun.

Last week, the mower battery died. I picked up a new one at Sears on Friday & Husband hooked it up to his baby mower. Then he headed off to put a new belt on our tiller so he could work up the garden, but he left the mower running to be sure the battery was properly charged. After a few minutes he says, "You can take Bitsy & drive around the yard on the mower." WHAT?! Me? Touch his mower?!

Before the afternoon came to a close, I had not only driven a few laps around our yard, but actually mowed 2 swipes around the garden & down the path to it so he could run the tiller without tromping through knee high weeds.

Bitsy was very impressed with my mowing prowess & Husband was very patient with my complete ineptitude with anything mechanical.

This may be the beginning of a new relationship between me & lawn equipment.

Then again, maybe not.

The weed eater & I despise each other.

We have poop (and a bit of produce)

In the potty, no less (the poop, not the produce)! Not to say the diapers have been retired, but we are making progress. Today we got a DVD in the mail about potty training from Pull-ups. I think you can still get a free DVD by signing up at http://www.pull-ups.com/ if anyone has a little one getting ready to potty train. We have big plans to watch it tonight. Bitsy's been proudly sporting big girl panties on & off for the past few weeks (but never out of the house). She's called Grammy/Ray-ray/Busha half a dozen times in the past few days to tell them about her potty triumphs.

I'm wondering what I'll do with myself when I don't have to buy diapers bi-monthly. I've been buying diapers for 8 years & 3 months. I'm not sure I can stop now. Maybe someone has meetings....D.A.

Our garden wasn't a complete waste this year...."complete" being the operative word here. Husband planted enough corn, greenbeans, and watermelon in the spring to feed the entire population of Somalia. After the exceptionally wet & cool summer we've had, I put up 7 quarts of corn & 13 quarts of greenbeans. Yeah for me. :P Luckily we still have corn left over from last summer, so the FarmHands won't starve. Oh, and for some odd reason I missed the fact that I still have 8 rabbits in the freezer! I've been buying chicken for 3 months because I thought I'd cooked all our rabbits. Guess I should have thawed the freezer out sooner.

Now if only my hens would start laying. Then we'd be practically self sufficient. Well, not really.

Adventures in weekending

Remember that Amazon gift card I got last summer? The one I had to share with the entire family (poor me)? The one we used to buy the tent that no one slept in (the link only leads to a picture of the tent hidden in vacation memories)? Well guess what we did last night. If you guessed "slept in the tent" you win a cookie. I'll put it in the mail the second Tuesday of next week.

Before we crashed for the night in the tent-of-no-sleeping-for-adults, we spent two days outside. Well, most of two days anyway. I remembered to sunblock the children, but forgot to slather it on myself. We planted the garden (which means my legs hurt like nobody's business today). We rode the four wheeler. We fished. We flew kites. We played with puppies. We washed off flip flops that got stuck in the mud. We washed off anything we could get under the water spigot. We got in trouble for running the water spigot nonstop for 30 minutes (and by "We" I mean the FarmHands). We put up the tent. We washed 8 loads of laundry. We hauled everything that resembles bedding out to the tent (by "We" I mean Husband & myself...most of the time. Sometimes I mean just me).

Bitsy kept telling us, "Side," while we were laying in the tent. I never figured out if she was telling us to go inside, or telling us she was sleeping outside. B.B. was worried that coyotes were going to eat us in our sleep until I told him they can't work zippers to get the door open. BabyGirl piped up with, "No, but they can use their claws to rip through the tent walls," while I shouted, "NO! NO! SHHHH!!! SHHHHH!!! This is a special tent!!!" so her brother couldn't hear her.

Good news: no one was eaten by coyotes in their sleep. My sunburned shoulders, shivering, and a bad dream combined forces to make me very nauseous at about 1:30 in the morning. Fearing I'd start heaving in the tent, I opted to take Bitsy & go back in the house. I am such a wimp. But my bed was warm & soft & not an air mattress, so I didn't feel bad for long.

By August we should have enough peas, green beans, and sweet corn to keep half the county fed for a few weeks. Today we planted lots & lots of sunflowers....so hopefully we'll also have doves to pick off with the b.b. gun from our front porch (kidding!!).

Today there was a trip to town for shorts & tank tops. We hit up the local consignment & ended up with 15 pieces for $30. Not a bad haul if I do say so myself. Now if only BabyGirl will wear the clothes she picked out....we'll see.

And finally, I saw my first humming bird of the season yesterday & today. Here's hoping she comes back & brings friends!

My Husband is not a vampire.

Yesterday I was tired & whiny. Ang commented that maybe Edward would leave Bella & sweep me away somewhere quiet (feeding into my Twilight obsession). At the time, I may have gone willingly.

But not today. Today I am happy to be just where I am. And because of that, I will give you a list of reasons I love my husband more than Edward Cullen.

1. My husband is not now & never has been a fictional character (seriously, the Twilight Flair on Facebook gets a tad creepy now & again...and don't get me started on the group "Twilight has given me unrealistic expectations in men").
2. I'm cold by nature. I need a warm body to snuggle up to at night. A marble bodied Adonis just won't cut it. Luckily Husband is a walking furnace & doesn't mind when my icy feet tuck under his leg in the night.
3. While In-Law relations aren't always easy, I've never had to worry that mine want to eat me.
4. Dating Husband (back when he was just FarmBoy) I was never in mortal danger. No rogue vampires trying to kill me, no worry about my date accidentally crushing my skull...it was all pretty safe.
5. Edward would never, ever buy Bella a truck load of mulch. He's just not that practical. He might buy her a Baby Grand Piano or a Porche, but never something really romantic like a Kitchen Aid Mixer on Black Friday. Husband surprised me today with enough mulch to cover all my flower beds, surround all the trees, roses, peonies, and other bushes, and still have some left over to put around the septic tank lids. I was a very happy FarmWife.
6. After our recent bout of cloudy days & too much rain, I'm really loving the 78 degree sunshine & breeze blowing through my windows. I don't think vampires would do so well in the mid-west...but my husband thrives here.
7. I like to laugh. A lot. Edward doesn't seem like the happy-go-lucky type. Husband makes me laugh on a daily basis. He's a goof, but he's my goof.

That's all I can give you for now. I'm sure there are many, many more reasons, but at the moment my brain feels like mush. I'm off to grab a quick nap before Bitsy wakes up from hers & the older kids get home from school. Ta-ta.

We're still here.

Good news! We did not blow away in the night. And I would have known because I was awake for entirely too much of it.

Bitsy starts off each night safely tucked in her toddler bed. Most nights, about half way through, she toddles in to our room & climbs in bed to share my pillow. I really don't have a problem co-sleeping, but I'm trying to get her to stay in her own bed longer. Recently she's decided the best way to lull herself back into dream land is to rub my hair or pat my face. This isn't the gentle rubbing & patting you would associate with a baby trying to sleep. It's more of the let-me-yank-all-the-hair-out-of-your-head-and-hit-you-in-the-eye kind of thing. Not so good for a sleeping Mama.

So for the last week or so I've been moving sun loving plants out of my North facing flower bed. I've also transferred some hostas into it. I love hostas. Hostas & lily of the valley. Both do well in the shade & I can attribute my love of them to my Grandma M&M. She had a bed of Hostas & Lily of the valley on the north side of the house they lived in for more than 40 years. A few years back I added 3 astibiles to the mix, but only 2 of them made it. I do not have the same affinity for the astibiles that I have for my hostas. I want to add more Lily of the valley to the mix (I'm making up for not being able to have them in my wedding bouquet...I so wanted Lily of the valley, but in November they're more than a little hard to come by). But I'm at a loss as to what else to add to the mix.

The bed gets little to no direct sunlight at all. I do not have a particularly green thumb, so what ever I plant must be easy to care for & fairly self sufficient. I also have a pink bathroom sink living in the bed that needs something to live in it. Something low growing & shade loving & possibly in a blue hue...to mimic water.

Anyone got any brilliant ideas for me?

Votes, Gardens, and Being a Grown-up

Wow, the voting is pretty close. If you haven't cast your vote yet on the header picture debate, see the post below & click away in the side bar. I can't promise that I'll go with the option that wins, but it is nice getting input from my loyal fans. :)

Tomorrow is Parent/Teacher Conferences at school. They always make me nervous. I end up feeling like I'm the second grader getting chewed out for not finishing my work on time instead of the mom hearing about her daughter's attention issues.

The FarmHands get out of school early today & are out all day tomorrow. Then they'll be late on Monday due to a trip to the dentist. We lead such an exciting life around here.

I spent the afternoon yesterday working in my front flower bed. All the sun loving bulb plants were moved to less shady spots & some hostas were transplanted into the main flower bed on the north side of the house. It felt really good to get my hands (and boots, and jeans) dirty. I may actually spend time in the garden this year before harvest. I may even invest in one of those nifty kneeling cushions for gardeners...oh, and a big hat. I need a big sun hat & new gloves &....OK, this gardening business could get pricey.

My afternoon in pictures.

Can you guess what I did today?











After bagging up the 14 quarts of corn I did today, I decided I needed to empty the freezers, reorganize, and take stock. Here's the freezer run down so far this summer:

• 12 rabbits (yes, you read that right. If I ever post a recipe for a chicken dish on wha'cha got cookin'? & I don't specify chicken breast, you can bet I make it with rabbit.)
• 4 qts. diced tomatoes
• 12 bags of frozen tomato sauce
• 2 qts. green beans
• 3 1/2 quarts peas
• 18 qts. shredded zucchini
• 1 qt. chopped zucchini
• 1 gallon corn on the cob
• 23 qts. Peaches & Cream sweet corn
• 14 qts. Illini Supersweet corn

And canned:

• 8 pints pear sauce
• 6 pints apple sauce
• 25 qts. green beans
• 5 pints tomato sauce

If nothing else, we can live on zucchini bread, corn, green beans, and rabbit this winter.

School shopping...or How I spent the day in the seventh level of Hell.

Take 3 children who just wanted to stay home & watch Spongebob, one dad who has a tendency to let them pick out what ever they like, one toddler feeling a bit puny, and one hungry, sleep deprived, VBS'ed out, PMS-ing mother and send them shopping for school supplies 6 days before school starts & what do you have? Something only Dante should write about.

But....we're home. Everyone has all the supplies they need. BabyGirl has shoes (but it's doubtful she'll wear them....I had to walk away from that battle & leave her to her dad. I did inform her that if this pair gets torn up or isn't worn that from here on out all her shoes will be purchased with money from her savings. I'm D.O.N.E.). #1 Son has pants & PJ's (he's passed almost all of his on to B.B.). We have underpants that have to go back because I got them a full size too big. We have a promise that next year they will not be taken school supply shopping. They will be allowed to pick their backpacks & lunch boxes at a specified date & that is all.

Tonight is closing ceremonies for VBS. It's really been a good week & I've had a great bunch of kids. I'm beat, but I wouldn't miss this week for the world. The music may be hokey (really, really hokey this year) and the evenings way too late, but the kids have such a wonderful time & learn so much. It's all worth it in the end.

School starts Thursday. BabyGirl goes half a day. #1 Son has visit day. Friday they start full swing. I like that they only have two days to deal with at first...they sort of ease into it. Part of me is ready to shoo them out the door right now. The other part of me remembers the early mornings & the battles that ensue & would rather wait for the truant officer to come a' knocking.

I'm praying that with BabyGirl's SPD a bit better in hand (or at least better understood) the battles will be fewer & farther between. I also know that with second grade comes more homework and that I am not looking forward to. BabyGirl isn't the kind of child you can send to her desk & tell her to do her home work. She has to be stood over & supervised or she won't do anything. It makes for a very long night.

I'm considering making up their rewards chart right now. Start the school year off with it. We'll see.

The pictures scattered throughout the post are from Wednesday when I put up corn & tomato sauce all day. I learned a new trick this summer for putting up corn. When you're cutting it off the cob, set the cob on the middle post in a Bundt pan. The post gives you a secure place for the corn cob & keeps it from slipping around & the pan catches all the corn keeping it off your counter & floors. But be warned, your electric knife will nick the pan on occasion, so don't use the one passed down to you from your great-grandmother, or your nice new silicon pan.

V.B.Sthhhhhhh................

I really should pay better attention to that truck. Next time it runs me over I'll be sure to the the license number so I can report him. ugh...........

Question: why is it that no matter when we plant, sweet corn is ALWAYS ready in the middle of Vacation Bible School week?

Yesterday I put up my second batch of tomato sauce & 3 quarts of corn thinking: I'll get this done early (started at 7:30 am), make lunch, have my WIC home visit (why did I schedule that this week?!), then I can crash until VBS & catch up on my reading.






OK, you can stop laughing now.

Yesterday's totals:
One big pot of tomato sauce made from Kork's recipe.
6- 15 oz bags of tomato sauce frozen (this is not a random amount. That's how much comes in a can at the grocery)
14- one quart bags of sweet corn, blanched, cut off the cob & frozen
8 whole ears of corn, blanched, bagged, and frozen
2 ears of corn per FarmHand fixed to eat randomly through out the day
5 lbs of hamburger browned
2 lbs of browned hamburger set aside for use at a later date
one Frito Pie made for lunch
One WIC home visit over.
six cobs of corn sent home with the WIC nurse for her dinner.
One hour total of time spent off my feet before we got to VBS last night....that includes time feeding Bitsy & myself.
two loads of laundry washed.
two loads of towels put away.
Lots of dishes washed
Finally hit the shower at 4 o'clock to get ready for Bible School.

VBS wears me out all by it's self. Add in a day spent putting up corn, breaking up fights, re-cleaning kids' rooms (I was NOT happy with them), and all the other little things I have to do every day and I'm beat. My wrist hurts from running the electric knife all day yesterday. My legs hurt from being on my feet all day.

I have learned a few things teaching 3rd & 4th graders. For example: third grade boys can be kind of gross. Like when they spend the entire lesson with their fingers up their noses. Ewwww. But they can also be funny/sweet. There's one boy in particular who is VERY animated about EVERYTHING! He starts jabbering as soon as he hits the door & doesn't stop until he leaves 2 hours later. He makes me seem quiet & withdrawn. Seriously. But it's OK, because he thinks I'm pretty. He told me so Monday night. :)

I started out with 2 girls & 4 boys. One boy is sick, so he's gone and a second was sporting a huge sty in his eye, so he was only there one night. I felt really bad for both of them. But in all I have a really good group of kids & we're having a really good week. I pray we make it through the next two days unscathed....then it's on to the great school supply hunt. yippee.

FarmWife Answers, episode nine & garden fun with the FarmHands

Very few questions were posed this week. I'll get to Zann's first.

Here's the situation:A co-worker's mother dies. You've never met the mother nor any of her family and don't feel particularly close to the co-worker other than your day to day dealings with her. You have donated to the memorial fund, and brought a dish for others to deliver to the family. You are also 9 mos. pregnant and had a rare date with your husband planned for the night of the visitation funeral. Should you feel guilty for not going?

My answer would have to be a resounding NO! You should not feel guilty for not going. This was not a close personal friend or the parent of a close personal friend. I've always felt horrible because I could not make it to Art's father's funeral, but this is a completely different situation. I will say that if it bothers you not going, and you can stop by long enough to pay your respects to your co-worker without staying for the entire funeral service, that would be completely sufficient. If you cannot, or choose not to, you are entirely in the clear. At this point, you need to spend the precious little time you have left enjoying your husband's undivided attention.

Kork's question is: why do refer to our kids as "growing like weeds" when weeds are the things that we cut back, yank out, spray with chemicals, all to kill them, and keep them from growing? Is it because kids, like weeds, seem to go from being teensy to huge overnight? Or, is it because we have some secret need to smash them down and do everything we can do put them through the emotional wringer before we thrust them into the real world?

Since she's not looking for the actual history of the phrase, I'm just going to have to go ahead & agree with her on this one. We're out to get them. We live to ruin their lives. We want to smash their little dreams like Corelle on concrete. Just ask my kids. They'll tell you.

Personally I've always thought weeds were simply misplaced flowers. Take tiger lilies for instance. Many people adore them. In our neck of the woods, they're referred to as Ditch Lilies because that's where they thrive & they're thought of as weeds. So are morning glories because they take over corn fields. And take a close look at milkweed. It's blooms are absolutely beautiful...yet it's a weed. So maybe it's not all bad after all.

Today I'm going to try my hand at canning green beans. Busha loaned me my Great-Great Aunt M's pressure canner & is going to come teach me how to use it. I'm a tad nervous about pressure cookers because one blew up on my Aunt Silverbelle when her oldest son was little. But I'm sure with Busha's directions we'll be OK.

I've discovered the FarmHands LOVE helping out with the produce coming out of our garden. They like nothing better than to tote veggies up to me after their dad's picked them. They spent 45 minutes shelling peas with us last weekend & yesterday the boys snapped a full half gallon of green beans by them selves. I may hire them out for the summer.

My husband is a gardening fool. We have 13 tomato plants. There's an entire row of watermellons plus six more watermellon plants in another single row all by it's self. There are pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, bush beans, tons of peas, zuchini, peppers, carrots, onions, and rows, and rows, and rows of sweet corn. And every time I turn around, he's tillling up another patch and planting more stuff. Right now we have 1,000 square feet of garden in one plot, and three more plots of various sizes. Yikes! Anyone want to come over for veggies in August?

Tomorrow is my guest blog at Ordinary Days. I still have no clue what I'm going to blog about. I kind of feel like I've been asked to house sit...I get to poke around Sarah's cabinets & see what she's hiding in her underware drawer. Or I could just go in and water the plants, check the mail, and lock up. Hmmm...what would you do?

Today was our first VBS meeting at church. We usually start planning in February or March...this year there have been problems, so we're starting MUCH later than usual. Since I was out last year because of Bitsy's birth, I decided not to go back to teaching pre-k. I wanted to move up a bit. Our 3rd & 4th grade teacher started attending a different church, so I'm going to take her place. When I said I'd take the position, every head at the table whipped around to look at me with total shock. "Really? You want to teach the middler class?" Yes. I do. "It's the biggest class we have. They can be a handful." I live with 4 handfulls. The Pre-K class is about 13 handfulls. I think I can handle 8 & 9 year olds. Besides, I have lots of folks to pray for me (yeah, that would be you all...you can start praying now if you like. VBS starts August 3rd. I should be well bolstered by prayer by then).

Uncle Little BIL came to visit yesterday. The kids are loving having him close enough to come visit on the weekends. And he's loving the laid back attitude of the stateside military as opposed to the by-the-book attitude of the folks stationed in Korea.

I've been playing with my Zune lately. It's tons of fun, I must say. At the moment I'm working on a play list of angry girl songs. RL gave me Miranda Lambert's CD....Gunpowder & Lead started the whole thing. Country music speaks to me (as much as I hate to admit that). I love the story telling. At anyrate, I need more angry girl music. It's good to work out to. Love songs just don't make me want to push myself...and boys don't get angry quite as creatively as say....Carrie Underwood carving her name into her man's truck seats.

Wanna' check out what I've been listening to? http://social.zune.net/member/FarmWife

33, here I come!

Yesterday was not what I would call a happy birthday....but thank you all for your warm wishes just the same. Woke up at 6:30 with Bitsy, went to bed a little after 11 pm. In that 16 1/2 hours of awake time, about 2 1/2 hours of it were really good. The rest of the time was spent arguing with kids, breaking up fights between kids, trying to get kids to clean their rooms, listening to kids yell at each other about who made the mess, having kids totally ignore any and all instructions given, shooing kids out of places they weren't allowed to be, telling kids they could not go outside because they STILL HAVEN'T CLEANED THEIR ROOMS!!!

I was hoarse last night from all the yelling (and yes, crying) I did. If this is what 32 is going to be like, I think I'll skip on ahead to 33.

We did go to a cookout at Husband's cousin's house. It was a late mother's day/welcome home Little BIL/May birthday/anniversary celebration. There are 7 May birthdays & 2 May anniversaries on Husband's side of the family. NM's girlfriend sent me a very cute birthday card. Everyone told me happy birthday many times. They had a big cake for all of us to share. I sat around & talked with all the cousins. The kids played far away from me (which was a good thing by that time) supervised by older cousins. That was my good 2 1/2 hours.

Today's been so so. Lunch at MIL's was pretty good & fairly drama free. Trip to Wal-Mart with the FarmHands has brought on premature greying of my hair & a near panic attack about vacation (how will we keep all of them from killing each other on the way down & keep from abandoning them once we're there?). BabyGirl has a new backless booster seat so B.B. can move up to her old one. We're going to rearrange the seating in the van to try to curb some of the drama. BabyGirl & #1 Son do not need to be near each other, but we couldn't fit B.B.'s big car seat in the back. B.B.'s not real excited, but at this point, I couldn't care less.

Also picked up new sneakers for #1 Son (which he kissed when he had to take them off to play outside this afternoon) and tomato plants, bell pepper's, watermelons, zucchinis, and some lavender for the garden. Now I have to dig myself out from under the mess no one made. I still haven't figured that one out.

Extreme Gardening

As I've stated before, we don't own a tiller. A 25' x 40' patch of dirt is a little tough to break down into planting material without some kind of mechanical help. So my husband, FarmBoy MacGyver that he is, took a 60 year old disk we were using as a lawn ornament & hitched it up to the back of his four wheeler (we live in the country, people...we can use old farming equipment & other junk as decor...I have a pink sink in my flowerbed).

When the kids & I got home from church he was nearly finished turning the garden over by hand & had made a few passes with the disk. It wasn't heavy enough to dig deep, so he had me drive the AVT while he stood on the disk. Extreme gardening? Disk Surfing? Death by Lawn Decor? Call it what you will. It worked. Thank God he's a country boy!

We also made a quick trip to Rural King to get fertilizer, a new garden hoe, seeds, & a garden weasel. While there we ran into Uncle Gick & Unkie Di. Husband & Uncle Gick talked tillers & gardening. Just after Husband came in for the evening, Uncle Gick pulled up the drive hauling Bucka's tiller. So Husband has now dug, disked, tilled, fertilized, & planted onions & carrots. We are officially gardening!

I'm going to have some serious canning & freezing to do this summer. Guess I should start figuring out what I want to do now so we can plant accordingly. BTW, Kork, can I have your tomato sauce recipe (I know your Italian self doesn't go for Ragu) so I can can fresh homemade marinara? That just sounds yummy!

We're putting the FarmHands to work too. What exactly are your thoughts on child labor? Don't worry, we're not paying them...so technically it's child slave labor. I'm all for it. But unfortunately, they only work about 3 1/2 minutes before demanding Popsicles. We won't get far that way.

Liar, liar, pants on fire

Hey Inkling,

Remember the other day when you asked me if we were putting in a garden this year & I said no? Well, apparently I lied.

Not only did I lie (unintentionally), but I see we're putting in a garden big enough to feed a small European Country.

Now if only I could convince my husband to borrow Bucka's tiller. He told me, "By the time I get this all turned over, I won't want to mess with a garden!" Gotta' love him, my man.

And for those of you who answered/will answer my question on the post below, I think we may look into a portable DVD player for our trip.