Hint, Hint

Crossword puzzles have a relatively short history and have been around since the 19th century. 

Named for the foul language used when working a puzzle in ink and trying to correct a mistake, they were originally called cussword puzzles. The name changed and with that came a surge in popularity. 

Crossword puzzles have clues or hints that allow the user to create word grids that sometimes are centered around a central theme. The size of the puzzle and difficulty vary and thus the time to complete a puzzle can range from the length of an average bowel movement to an entire football game - with or without an exciting half time display. 

Working crosswords and other types of letter or number puzzles has been shown to help stave off the early signs of Alzheimer's. Solving the code of puzzles of all types helps to exercise the brain. Actual physical exercise is a medically preferred way to maintain health in general, but that is hard to do while sitting on the porcelain throne or in a board room, two common puzzling seats. 

There are theories that Crossword puzzles, Daily Jumbles and word searches are all tests secretly designed by the government to make the average person become dyslexic.  The end result will be millions of Americans flooding the Health care system in need of services. Thus Obamacare will be to blame for not allowing us to all have access to vision and psychiatric care. 

Sudoku puzzles are a newer entry into the puzzling community. Sudoku, Japanese for " the last damn number won't fit", is yet another mindf*ck that could cause small strokes in people who strain too hard during their morning ablutions with or without their crossword puzzles.

Doctors urge caution as the jury is still out on the long-term effects of these pencil pushing addictions. In lieu of screwing with your brain for health, perhaps doing that with your partner will provide the needed health benefits.


--------------------
Laughingdaughter slyly sent me this:

Down:
1. Old milk
2. Mwahaha
3. Coocoo for Coco Puffs
4. Walmart
5. Coffee
Across:
1. Meat tenderizer
2. Addict
3. Beavers
4. Him
5. Brraaaiiiiiinnnssssssss

If you want to see what the others in this challenge are hinting that Nicky can do, go on over to We Work for Cheese.

scatterbrained

People who have known me for a long time are well versed in my attention to detail. I have in fact been called particular to a fault. I can't help that I am an incredibly logical thinker - not unlike Mr Spock. So it frustrates me to no end, when my brain takes a mini-vacation and forgets to pack the rest of my body. 

I thought that this was what was happening to me this morning as it seemed that my brain had skipped town. I had raced around the house, gathering items for a store, being short with both children as they texted me, and generally praying that the dog only had to pee as I ushered him out into the sub freezing temperatures. 

Keeping my car within the speed limits, I arrived at the dentist's office with 5 minutes to spare. I walked in from the cold street only to have the receptionist stare at me and say, "You aren't on my schedule today, are you?" Well, I wasn't and she informed me that my appointment was almost four weeks away. Trying to not look like a scatterbrained fool, I told her that it was no problem, and I most likely was just going a little crazy. But, since I was in the office, I could give her my new insurance information anyway. I left with an appointment card with the correct date on it, ran my errands and returned home.

Naturally as my OCD went into overdrive, I searched to find my original appointment card to see if I had recorded it incorrectly or been given one with an incorrect date. As I found the card and reveled in confirmation that it had today's date on it, I realized that I had in fact left my insurance card at the dental office.

So the score is now : Brain :1, Scatterbrain :1. I'll stick with the tie. I don't trust overtime in games like this.

-------------------------
Laughingdaughter/Her Royal Cuteness replies:

The dentist didn’t write the appointment card wrong. The zombies replaced it with a fake one. They snuck in the house in the middle of the night, placated the dog with cheese whiz, and took the real card and left a new one behind. They want your brain to be scattered. It makes your brain more tender.

The empty bottle

"My cup runneth over." What a phrase. Taken from the 23rd Psalm and spoken from generation to generation. Now it is popularized in rap lyrics, although I think a rapper's cup is most likely a bit more glamorous than that of a poor Shepard of biblical times.

It can be said that this phrase rarely describes my day. Generally I am the person left with the empty bottle after filling everyone else's cups to the maximum.

It comes from being a mom. That's my job, plain and simply described as taking care of those around me. While it leaves me sitting with the empty bottle at the end of the day, it fills my cups in the proverbial sense when my kids or spouse have a successful day.

----------------------------

Laughingdaughter adds:

And because of us, it often runneth over with coffee.

Now head on over to We Work for Cheese before the bottle is empty.

When Hell freezes Over

As a Jew, I was not raised with a concept of heaven and hell. That's one thing that good old Jewish guilt can't hold over your head. When we die, we hope to live on in the memories of others and hopefully be remembered as having done good while on this earth.

If I believed in Hell, I would certainly be afraid as I would be going there in my hand basket.  And If I thought clearly before I left, I would pack the following in my hand basket for the day that Hell finally froze over:

iPhone with 4g - Hell probably doesn't have wifi and I'll want to upload a video to YouTube

Ice skates - note to self, learn to skate

Hand warmers - my fingers get a bit arthritic in the cold

Lottery ticket - I'll no doubt have won

And lastly, toilet paper, bread, and milk - because everyone needs these when the streets are going to ice over

------------------------------

I wrote the above at the last minute, unable to clear a fog that has settled in on my brain. And then I get this emailed to me from the safety of her college dorm...

I’m very offended! Why would you think hell is like that?! You know I run hell. Why do you think I would run it like that? Of course we have wi-fi. What else would I do in my spare time? You don’t need to bring ice skates. We have our own that are extra sharp so you can skate over people and cut them in half. You will only be cold if you don’t go near the fires of the damned, which are all over. Your lottery ticket is not needed; we have our own version of the lottery. Toilet paper, bread, and milk are also not needed. We have a Walmart. It’s in the seventh circle. Just bring plenty of chocolate!

See you soon!

Laughingdaughter/Her Royal Cuteness/The Devil 

Be sure to skate on over to We Work for Cheese and see who else is in the devil's domain.

temporary insanity

Walmart at midnight. What were we thinking? They were predicting 3 to 6 inches of snow and the entire city had spent the day emptying the grocery store shelves of bread, milk and toilet paper. Snowmageddon was coming and we needed to prepare!

I headed for the essentials, two boxes of wine, some cheese whiz, and some day old doughnuts. While I grabbed the groceries, Jack headed towards the back of the store with his own shopping cart. I scooted through the aisles with my feet on the bottom rung of the cart. Pushing with one foot and singing loudly to the music, I felt like a kid on an escape from an angry parent soon to emerge and call my joy ride to an end.

Jack found me near the pop tarts. He had amassed a collection of nearly necessary items including a pup tent, a hello kitty sleeping bag, and three large playground bouncy balls. 

We turned together and raced our carts on a count of three towards the entertainment area of the store. And there we saw it...playing on the biggest screen in the department, our favorite movie blaring over the speakers and thriving in stereo surround sound. Pee-wee's Big Adventure was calling us into a glorified frenzy.

We popped up the pup tent right there in front of the screen, snuggled up in the hello kitty sleeping bag and tapped into one of our boxes of wine. 

An hour later as we watched the credits scroll by, we realized that the second box of wine was probably a mistake to have opened. Having the tent and sleeping bag made the tv department seem like a great place to sleep off a possible DUI. Too bad the store security didn't seem to agree.  They probably should have given us a medal for bravely deciding not to get behind the wheel. Unfortunately, temporary insanity may be the only hope that we have in avoiding whatever charges they decide to eventually press against us. In the mean time we paid in full for all of our goods. At least we could still get home in time to listen for school and work closings and enjoy our stale doughnuts. 

---------------------------------------------------
Laughingdaughter is feeling some temporary insanity and can't decide if she is laughingdaughter or Her Royal Cuteness. Here's her take:

And that is why you always fdjngiuek547.d;xhv8o7;b e4uytv 4;3qy hjrtkjkduhzjgbsen54;t74t.lgn/es’ 74tghsevbgmnfdgjrtjytfal.g;’4596u58eyzs te;rpt9uer8tywjagfh.d;’ckj74562qolhbsergdfnjhndgjkgh’er6957uwhbf;rgihjio64seyruygwfvngklhjdjje5655434;/jgrdghirjeragbjeto;i5.oagirhfdbvrtk.jy;4iwourigwehbrg/eb  ruwfhjkw4vtgfu3qi4yhjk56735/pielhjgiueygavblkejr g dfx when you go to Walmart.


Now hop on over to the real looney bin at We Work for Cheese and see who has flown the coop.

it was no accident

Have you ever thought about what made the first guy so incredibly hungry that he decided that it was a good idea to eat a lobster? It seems like a very far fetched idea to take a hard shelled creature with large crushing claws and create a meal from it. 

Same thing goes for crabs and crayfish. Who in the world developed a craving for the innards of such creatures!?! But somebody, a very long time ago, must have watched a bird crush the crap out of one of these poor sea critters and eat it. While the bird may have done his culinary chore by instinct, a human actually chose to dine on the same seafood. It was no accident of nature. It isn't as if the lobsters were hanging out in the open field waiting to be ensnared and eaten by the cave fire. 

Now, of course, lobsters are considered fine dining as opposed to sea bird chaff. They are put in tanks on display and people can choose the exact one that they want steamed and served to them with a side of melted butter and a baby bib. I'm sure that is just how the first one was eaten as well.


-------------------------------------
Yes, Laughingdaughter responded in kind:

You’re right. It wasn’t an accident. When human first ate me, it was in cold blood. They started eating us as soon as we got stranded here after our spaceship crashed. When you aliens eat me, it is in cold blood as well. It is also cannibalism. Aliens need to stick together! Don’t desert me for my tasty innards or eat me for dessert.

Be kind,

Lobster

Now, head on over to We Work for Cheese  and see what kind of accident they are mopping up today.

(Some number of days of dreaded writing) - something random or my mind = Gouda

Twice a day, every day, we give our aging dog his heart medicines. Generally the pills are disguised within a piece of cheese and eaten quite greedily. This got me to think about whether our sweet dog would know an expensive piece of cheese from the cheap brands that he normally is fed. He is currently on a string cheese jag, having bored of American cheese slices. Perhaps he might prefer a Stilton or Gouda. Who knows if he could taste the difference that would bring a cheese to cost 7 or 8 dollars a pound? Then again, I probably have no idea what makes a good cheese versus a bad one. I am not a cheese connoisseur and rarely search out a cheese to consume on its own. 

As a kid, we didn't get cheese except the individually wrapped kind that my mother used to make grilled cheese sandwiches. We considered it a good sandwich when she remembered to remove the plastic. I do not recall our small local grocery even having choices of cheese. 

In college there was an actual "cheese shop" in the "Historic Williamsburg" shopping area. I'm pretty certain that the only thing I ever could afford to purchase there were the bags of leftover bread ends from their sandwich shop. We would purchase the bag along with a tub of some kind of sandwich spread and dip and munch. I never bought any cheese.

After a lifetime of what foodies might dub boring cheese, it is not something that I tend to experiment with. I'm always afraid that I'll spend the money to buy a wedge of some artisanal cheese and find that I do not care for it. Then it will sit in the fridge and go bad. I mean isn't that what cheese is anyway : Milk that has gone bad? What is the big deal that people are willing to spend lots of money to eat curdled milk? If you come over, I will gladly give you some for free. It will give me a reason to clean out my fridge, and I really need to do that. 
----------------------

Above is my entry for today's challenge. Laughingdaughter decided that it needed a reply and that is her entry for today, as follows:

Sofa-Elevator Person! How could you? First, you send the Goldfish Lady, my best source of cheese, away! And now this! Of course I could taste the difference! What do you think I am, a cat? Even if you didn’t like it, I would gladly finish it for you. If you take me to the store with you, I will even tell you which ones will have a taste that compliments my pills. If you won’t take me, I can tell you about a really fancy cheese: cheese whiz. This will make your life so much easier. Instead of tearing off little chunks of cheese, balling them up, and holding them out for me, you could just squirt it in my mouth!

Why would you give away the yummy milk that the Loud Boys don’t drink? I would eat it! When it curdles, it smells so good! Let me have it! And I will clean out the fridge anytime you want! Just put me in there and when you come back it will be perfectly clean!

Grrr,

Frisbee 

P.S. Leftover bread end, plastic wrap, and cheese sandwich! Yum! How could you not love that?!

P.P.S. I don’t eat it greedily! I just don’t want your arm to get tired holding it out, so I eat it quickly!

P.P.P.S. I would disown you if you weren’t my ride everywhere.

----------------------------------
Now head over to We Work for Cheese and see who else gave up some brain cells today!