For those not familiar with Duluth Trading Post…. it’s a clothing store with rather humorous commercials.
I say rather, because men usually get a bigger kick out of them than women.
Seeing that the subject matter is somewhat….. gender exclusive.
I’ve never had reason or opportunity to shop at Duluth, but recently a store opened in South Portland and my girlfriend wanted to go see what all the fuss was about.
Aside from some overpriced ( $38 for a plain t shirt? I think not ) and under-styled clothes?
There were these:
An entire section of stupid products.
With a decided bent toward what you do in the bathroom.
Color me unimpressed.
Although I did chortle at these…
Because they reminded me of that horrible gynecologist I had who always asked me how things were “down there”.
For those of you who were looking for the perfect stocking stuffer for Xmas this year?
Next… no tie shoelaces.
Because yes, apparently we really are that lazy.
On first glance this looked promising….
Until I remembered the best thing about making S’mores on a campfire is that you don’t have to clean up anything.
Can you imagine the mess that contraption would make in your oven? Melted chocolate and gooey marshmallow crystallizing and baking onto the racks?
Finally, I admit this last stupid product has infinite potential.
Now call me crazy, but a gentle reminder to change the toilet paper is not the first thing that came to mind when I thought of recording a message.
No…
I want more bang for my buck and was thinking more along the lines of the Tidy Bowl Man yelling “Incoming!”….. or an upper class British accent begging you not to make a second trip to the buffet at Taco Loco.
Our old baby barn/shed has a dirt floor with heavy duty rubber mats on top. Due to numerous woodchuck holes and tunnels, we had to drag all the mats out. That sounded easy enough until I realized each one of them weighed the equivalent of an African elephant…
Seriously.
A pregnant, morbidly obese African elephant carrying a suitcase I packed for an overnight trip.
Did I mention they were all covered in pounds of dirt as well?
So as we’re moving the next to last mat…..
This.
A chipmunk burrow with tiny scraps of paper, plastic and leaves.
Upon further examination…
A maze of tunnels, which I thought was pretty cool, until… it moved.
Do you see the leg?
Yeah.
Not a tunnel.
A nursery…
Which means we had to find the other end of the tunnel and relocate them. Not an easy task.
Five minutes after we found them?
Momma found us.
And she wasn’t happy.
She ran around squawking and chirping and looking for her babies.
After a while I think she found them, because she stopped searching and started stuffing.
Stuffing her little cheek pouches full of all those little scraps of paper….
And scurrying back for more.
Within minutes she’d cleaned up the whole lot.
Watch her cram a dried leaf that’s almost bigger than she is below.
(And please pardon my husband’s cursing. Things were not going well with the rebuild at this point…)
After we wasted time relocating chipmunks, we realized we had to relocate a bird’s nest as well.
So many evictions.
I felt like an evil slumlord.
Back to work…. and things did not go well.
Which was completely the husband’s fault.
He had the crazy idea he could square the building properly (After 40 plus years of Maine frost heaves? Madness!) and changed the original footprint….. which in turn threw everything off kilter.
More good times.
Did I mention he uses tools from the 1950’s picked up at a yard sale or the dump?
This little jewel feels like it weighs 50 lbs.
But he has the original box… and vintage lube.
So it’s special.
P.S. For those of you who pay attention, this post is actually out of sequence. That back wall is gone now. Apparently my blog scheduling has run amok.
While I thoroughly applaud your tenacious natures, the madness must stop. Save us both some time and aggravation and cease your current cycle of repetitive following. If you haven’t figured it out by now, I don’t allow my reader list to be clogged with random businesses, and will continue to zap you on a thrice daily basis.
If you’re people who actually reads my blogs?
Great! Drop a comment so I know there’s a real live human being behind the clicks… and I’ll welcome you aboard.
But Pet, from the look of your page….
You’re a bot and I won’t tolerate those just to juice my numbers… or my ego.
I remove you both every single day. Multiple times…and still, you return.
It’s become a game. Morning Follow… Morning Zap. Afternoon Follow… Afternoon Zap. Evening follow… Evening Zap. Well, I’m getting a little tired of playing.
Let this serve as a warning, I have an infinite amount of patience and will outlast you.
Because sometimes I want to share, and they just don’t rate a blog of their own.
A few shots of my local area.
I’m blessed to live in such a beautiful state.
Top that for sunrise color. I dare ya!
As you’ve probably guessed by now, when we travel…. I take a lot of pictures. The husband is quite patient with me and usually pulls over when I point out the window, squeee! and yell pull over. He never wants to photograph anything, so I had to laugh a few weeks ago when he stopped along side something and asked me to take a picture of it for him.
I did….
And am seriously hoping it doesn’t end up in our barn in the near future.
This is not what you want to be following during a traffic jam on Route 1. I saw pink hippos in my dreams for many nights after that.
And finally…
Me.
No makeup, just a smile…. and the realization that laying out in the sun this past summer has bleached my hair to the point where I now have dark roots without ever having dyed it.
Work on the baby barn project graduated from glacially slow to slow as molasses last weekend…. and we managed to frame a wall in 3 days.
Though to be fair, ripping off that old rotted pressboard is like Chinese water torture.
It literally shreds in your hands.
But slowly… we saw daylight.
And by Saturday afternoon we had open space and a center post that was barely hanging on.
And by barely?
I mean barely.
The husband did the usual dirt shuffle in his ongoing attempt to level the building. A pipe dream at best as it was built in the mid 70’s… and it’s Maine.
Frost heave central.
Measuring is fun.
Ripping out posts that were nailed in with spikes?
Not so much.
Pardon the sun glare and bad manicure… but damn.
Talk about overkill.
Framing started Sunday, with a new window taking center stage.
And continued when the husband decided to dig out all the dirt underneath the structure…
And lay paving stones in yet another attempt to level it.
Then came the rain… and a mad dash to put everything away before it got soaked.
And then?
Then… the baby barn got a rainbow.
And I found my honey at the other end.
Can I get an awwww?
Where there's only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
River's world..... 