The JOY of Google.

I don't know if you know this but my Mother in Law has been visiting us here in Montreal for about a month. While this may seem like an unbearable punishment to some folks, I actually get along really well with my MIL. She's very special to me and we're close.

Anyways, the MIL is a self-confessed Luddite.

Although The Huz got her a nice laptop at her home in England Land, it never really clicked with her.

It's kinda hard to learn something so completely new like The Internet all by yourself, right?

And Google can be a confusing to a noob - there's so many shiny things to navigate around!

But since she's been here she's had us to help her along whenever she accidentally clicks on the wrong thing.

I think she's really starting to get the hang of it now.

My MIL has a curious nature; so Google is like a vast library full of answers to her many questions.

Questions like: What was the name of that song by that guitarist? What TV series did that actor play in when he was 17? And (this is my favorite) what ever happened to so-and-so that I used to know?

Google has the answers in there somewhere. I think she enjoyed herself.

When I showed her these drawings my MIL cracked up. She really liked seeing herself depicted as a toon, which was very gratifying for me. But at the end, she said, "You've forgotten the drawing where I'm drooling with satisfaction afterwards."

To which my response was, "Oh no, I didn't...!"

Hilarity ensued.

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Slug SLIME.

More stories about travelling around the UK this summer. At one point we headed for Wales. We spent a day romping around the lush, misty Welsh hills.... which are unbelievably gorgeous, especially in the rain. Atmospheric and... *magical*

Towards evening we went to hang out with our friend Brian (who used to play in my band back in the day - yeah, I'm a muso - and is an awesome guitarist who has even played with Marianne Faithful, how's that for name dropping). Anyways, we made our way back to his place.

Walking in, I took off my coat and boots, and suddenly found myself standing on something soft and squishy.

So I pull off my sock and there's this cute little slug curled up on it, hoping I won't notice.

Being basically kind-hearted, I gave the little guy a flying lesson into the neighbour's garden; stay tooned for a future animated post about that.

Days passed, and I forgot about El Sluggo. My laundry accumulated in my luggage and we eventually returned to Penzance, into the open arms of my MIL and her washing machine!

The sock got tossed into the wash with everything else and the machine did it's thing. Then the MIL pulled out my now soaking wet socks to hang dry, gave them a shake, and cheerfully proclaimed: "SLUG SLIME."

And guess what folks? It doesn't wash out. I even put the socks through the Extreme Cycle now we're back in Montreal. It dries up okay but as soon as the sock gets washed again, it reconstitutes into slime. This stuff is tough-tough-tough!
IT'S INDESTRUCTIBLE!!

So, of course I did what any person of slightly above average intelligence would do.
I tweeted for help. And got the following suggestions:

Salt.
Alcohol.
Burn them.
Throw socks in garbage.
Get new socks.

And the lovely @BloggerTalk sent some enlightening slug info.

But needless to say....

...the alcohol was the only thing that really helped.

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The BUCKET.

I was tweeting this story when one of my clever followers suggested I blog it. So once again, it's Twitter storytime with Little Animation. Drawings only; I know, I know, you wanna see it move. But I'm on vacation here in the UK people! Stop whining.

So there we are at this beach at Marazion, staring directly out at St. Michael's Mount.

And we're looking for a nice little spot, sheltered from the wind, to set up this little portable bbq that my MIL has. Everything is covered in stinkie seaweed as the tide has just started going out. Bleah.

Finally we find a spot right next to the high stone wall at the top of the beach. Nice right? Wrong! It's full of litter!!

So rather than just stare at all the litter and get more and more upset, I decide to start picking it up. So I'm picking up the litter on the beach and putting it in this tin bucket intended to carry home the hot bbq coals.

Meanwhile my husband is building the bbq and stuff. And the kids and my MIL all helped me pick up the litter on the beach. Anyways, you would not believe it, but we filled that bucket right up to OVERFLOWING with beach garbage.

The kind of garbage we picked up from the beach included a paintbrush (used), several plastic bottles, twine, glass, styrofoam, bottle tops. So the tin bucket is overflowing with beach garbage and I'm thinking, wow, good thing we brought this bucket, it's come in handy. Right? Right! I use it to carry all the rubbish to the bins up behind the beach.

So my husband finishes cooking the food on the portable bbq on the beach, and we all eat the food and have a lovely time. And then...it's time to go, and we realize the lid to the tin bucket has been forgotten at home so we can't stifle the hot coals in it.

In short, there's no way to save the coals. But even knowing this, my husband dumps the coals into the tin bucket. And this is where it starts to get weird.

(At this point during my tweets no one had really indicated they were following the story so I asked: Are you listening? Quite a few were listening attentively as it turns out  Guess they learned not to INTERRUPT after the DEAD Rat Story)

Well any ways, it starts to get weird cuz of the bucket now being full of extremely HOT coals from the beach bbq and no lid to put on it. And we can't take that home can we? I mean, you can't put a metal bucket of hot coals in a car with three children and a MIL..

So I'm thinking....I wonder if we could douse it with sea water...?

But my husband says the salt water isn't good for the bucket. And I'm like WTF???

My MIL takes out her water bottle and offers to douse the HOT coals with her meagre quantity of H20. Which would have evaporated immediately.

So the hot coals are in the tin bucket, how to deal with them? And then I can see this evil twinkle in my husband's eye. And I know that evil twinkle. I've seen it before.

I could tell that my husband just wanted to piss in the bucket on those hot coals.

He was determined, okay? And there's no dissuading him when he gets that evil twinkle.

So he's trying to balance the bucket on this ledge in the wall so he can piss in it ONTO the hot coals from the bbq on the beach. And I said "if you piss in that bucket on those hot coals, I will hafta tweet about it."

Of course he ignored my tweet threat and went ahead and pissed in the bucket full of hot coals as it perched precariously on the ledge. Oh dear, what happened next was truly FOUL.

(Here it emerges that several of my male followers admit, nay, boast, that they would have done the same thing. Which is kinda interesting, you gotta admit.)

So away he goes, pissing in the bucket and the steam that came off those hot coals was VILE. And also? Strangely greenish.

Luckily the kids were off rock pooling somewhere and didn't bear witness to their father's antics.

So then would he rinse the bucket out? No, because the salt water is bad for the tin bucket. Folks, I married him and I do love him.

When we all piled into the car to drive back home with the bucket of piss soaked coals now cooling in the back the kids said...  "It smells like ...fish...no - ashes. No wait.....DAD DID YOU PEE IN THE BUCKET?!?"

My husband said he didn't mind one bit if I blogged this. He's pleased cuz he said it makes a better story. And I guess he was right. As he pointed out, no one wants to hear the one about the man who didn't piss in the bucket. Plus he insisted I depict his piss as a manly stream.

His eyes are still kinda bloodshot though.

What's the moral of the story?

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