When I was in fourth or fifth grade, I have also lost a small, but visible chunk of my hair. It happened when I was focused on doing some project for arts & crafts and suddenly a classmate approached me from behind. He asked if I'd be interested in donating some of my hair so that he could start a "genetic disease", to which I agreed. Back then I consiedered it very funny, to the contrary of my mum and hairdresser.
I'm curious about those threatening signs your kids use while playing store, because with my brothers the only signs we wrote were either bans for either entering each other's rooms or talking to one another. Strange thing is that we rarely fought or competed against each other, as we rather cooperated in playing tank crew (long time ago we were very passionate about playing World of Tanks) or making races for all the car toys we owned. Also, most of our projects (joined and single) we did in Minecraft. The only things we drew were wars between fake countries, each represented by diffrently coloured crayon.
Similarly to Lola, My mum's greatest joy is to sew, knit and crochet, all of which she does in her free time. She mainly makes her own clothes and decorative table settings that receive admiration from whoever is visiting us. She tried to carry her hobbies to us, but we weren't interested in them more than how to sew a button. Luckily, my cousins and her nieces did some sewing, which left my mum more than happy to improve their techinques. They are also artistic souls - two of them sing, one makes beautiful drawings (mostly of people) and pursues acting in historical reenactions, while the third focuses on martial arts and exploring South Korea's culture and language. But my other cousins are also very skilled, yet mostly in games. One of them is a streamer on Twitch, where he's playing live World of Tanks or Counter-Strike and has several thousand followers. Another recently started uploading on YouTube clips from sessions on online Minecraft servers he's having with my youngest brother. I'm grateful for them being my family.
P. S. 100% true is this your sentence "The kids love nothing more than to create, even if the most common thing they create is a mess."
Your story suggests the possibility that Waffle's suspicious hair loss might have been a team effort. Highly plausible. As for the signs, they always ban someone from something. If I'm lucky, they only ban imaginary people. If I'm less lucky, it's each other.
One time when I was about Waffles’ age (maybe a little older even) I couldn’t sleep and I was very distracted by a bad tangle in the front of my hair. I decided to be able to sleep I had to cut it off. I thought I could cut it so short it would be invisible (and didn’t think about what would happen if it grew back out). I cut the hair and then immediately realized what a mistake it was. In my mind I was way too old to be cutting my own hair (glad to hear waffles is right there with me). I knew my family would make fun of me for it until I died. I had to destroy the evidence. I couldn’t just throw it out because there was a chance someone would see it in the garbage. I couldn’t flush it down the toilet because if it clogged the toilet someone would wonder why there was hair in the toilet. So I cut the clump up into tiny little pieces and put it down the shower drain. I then wore a hat for about 3 days until my parents asked me to take it off. When they asked what happened to my hair I ran to the mirror and acted so surprised that my hair was gone that my parents almost believed me when I accused my sister of cutting it. Honestly if I hadn’t worn the hat and just acted like I woke up and the hair was gone my sister might have taken the blame. Still, I wouldn’t confess. I kept silent until finally a classmates mom approached me on the playground and asked. I remember thinking “oh god they’re never going to give this up.” I finally gave in. I thought that was about 2 weeks later but I recently asked and found out it was 6 months to a year later. My parents were so shocked at how good I was at lying that they literally never believed another thing I said again. On the upside, my behavior was so psychotic that no one dared make fun of me, and now I have the wildest “I cut my own hair” story ever.
It's a tragedy they discovered your skill at lying over such a minor thing. If you had saved it up, you could have gotten away with something truly epic.
Diamond Dots, she laughs, as she looks at her latest project wondering where in the hell it will go on the wall; which is already covered in paintings, LOL. You got me with this one James. Maybe you remember me by the different comments I’ve made about crafts. Maybe not. Let’s just say I could cross stitch with Lola while teaching the girls just about any kid craft out there. I’ve done them all. Art is another thing. People get them confused. When I want to look all extra I tell people I have an art studio. What I really have is the smallest bedroom in the house that I’ve turned into a craft room. And the hallway just outside of it. And half the garage. I’m like Lola also that I don’t make things to sell, I make things to create and then I’m left over with a bunch of things I don’t want to throw out and there’s just so many people you can give things to. For years my kids have tried to set me up on Etsy, etc. but I just can’t do it. If THEY’D sell I could, I love to create, but I don’t have it in me to charge people what it really cost to make things. Not even in materials (which can cost a ton) but in hours of my life. I also bore really easy so I change crafts often. Some are hard (like stained glass, which I loved), some are easy (dots which just requires something to put the damn dots into, a light board, and anyone of the hundred canvases I have waiting to be worked on. I usually have two or three going on at the same time. While watching Netflix, dots. Crafting room is epoxy resin and dollhouses. Now that we have two puppies it’s trying to keep everything out of their mouths. LOL. Yep, you got me on this post. I’m all about the girls and Lola. My understanding goes deep. You, you poor sucker, are stuck with it for life. Maybe you should pick up a pattern and dot? I know lots of “manly male” paintings, lol.
You raise a good point about the true cost. If you charged what you put into these things in terms of hours, no one could afford them. People who get them as gifts don't appreciate the actual value of what you're giving away.
Crochet is with a blunt hook and one loop only. Knitting is with two sharpened sticks that hurt when you sit on them or "accidentally" poke someone with them and dozens of loops just waiting to slide off and be lost forever making you abandon your project because who wants to rip out hours of work. Guess which I do...... And I have to admit to buying those rainbow rubber band looms for all our nieces, LOL
knitting is evil. My friend had to take the sharp pointy sticks away from me once when I had to rip out the project for about the 12000th time. she quietly gave me my crochet hook back and hid the knitting needles.
My wife has a craft and sewing room, plus enough abandoned or forgotten craft kits to open a Hobby Lobby. I'm pressuring her to sell or give away a bunch of it that she'll never use. Even our kids don't want any more of it. 😉 If I succeed, we might just be able to fit into this house.
I had a scale aircraft model hobby for about 50 years, but had to give it up because of trembling hands. I have a trophy case full of completed projects to look at, though. I sold off my kit collection in a 'whole lot' auction to get the pain of doing so over with like ripping off the proverbial Band Aid. There was a time when I really thought I could build them all (400+) in retirement, but life had other plans.
I only auctioned the kits off in February. I'm sure he's going to sell most of them off. I had over 50 years to collect all those kits. There are folks out there who have thousands of kits. I don't feel too bad at hoarding them. 😆
I was Lola 25 years or so ago. Tried every crafty thing I knew of and created my own. Since I've retired, I've done nothing crafty. Funny how that is. When the busiest with kids and work, I found time to do my thing; when the day is my own, I do nothing.
Reading this makes me miss the days of seeing our late cat Wrigley with a foot or more of crossstitch thread trailing out of his mouth or worse, his butt. Don't know what it was that made him want to chew and swallow it other than scare me. He liked red the best.
I hated slime and that kinetic sand stuff the most, although those things are not crafts necessarily just awful "toys." My one kid never liked crafting, luckily, because I never did and didn't really want to deal with it. She did, however, begin drawing at some point and is darned good. No mess! She got that talent from neither her mother nor her father. We are stick figure folks, too. Stick figure drawers, unite!
Kinetic sand sticks together as advertised. It just sticks together in a thousand tiny balls that drift to every part of the house. Woe unto you if it ever gets onto carpet. As for slime, I wish there were a law against it.
You should offer Lola’s creations up for sale on here!
You could also use the never ending rubber band bracelets to allow the kids to make money off your coworkers. Just get the kids to identify a goal they’re trying to meet and then guilt trip your coworkers into helping them meet your goal. I’m the proud owner of a pink and purple rubber band bracelet even though I don’t have kids because an industrious coworker friend did exactly that. :D
Have your kids learned how to play the role of a "Karen" yet when they play store? I can see Waffle being a manager and shutting down one of her older sisters who is making unreasonable demands. :)
My little 7yo boy LOVES TAPE AND THE STAPLER... He will build and invent all sorts of things. It is truly fun and amazing... and dangerous... and chaotic! He has taken into drawing comics lately so that seems more in control. Hope it lasts!
One of my daughter's favorite things is to randomly get out her recorder and play it while on video calls with her friends. And of course the favorite is Hot Cross Buns. In junior high and high school, I played trombone and lived in the country. I practiced on the back porch on occasion. There's nothing like the peaceful country life, with the sound of the birds, the wind, and somebody's obnoxious kid blasting classical music or pep band staples like The Hey Song on a low brass instrument so that it echoes between the ridges.
Waffle’s missing hair reminds me of Fudge (Judy Blume’s classic book _Tales of a Fourth-Grade-Nothing_) and also of Calvin getting a haircut from Hobbes 😂
Luckily, I got to miss out on the diamond dots. We stepped on Legos, and there was somehow a way for boys to spread pistachio shells throughout my apartment one year. I found them everywhere when we moved, under ever piece of furniture, and even though my bed consisted of a mattress and box spring on the floor at the time, they were under it. That was several months after banning my husband (then boyfriend) from buying more of them to leave around for the kids to eat and already cleaning them up several times.
When I was in fourth or fifth grade, I have also lost a small, but visible chunk of my hair. It happened when I was focused on doing some project for arts & crafts and suddenly a classmate approached me from behind. He asked if I'd be interested in donating some of my hair so that he could start a "genetic disease", to which I agreed. Back then I consiedered it very funny, to the contrary of my mum and hairdresser.
I'm curious about those threatening signs your kids use while playing store, because with my brothers the only signs we wrote were either bans for either entering each other's rooms or talking to one another. Strange thing is that we rarely fought or competed against each other, as we rather cooperated in playing tank crew (long time ago we were very passionate about playing World of Tanks) or making races for all the car toys we owned. Also, most of our projects (joined and single) we did in Minecraft. The only things we drew were wars between fake countries, each represented by diffrently coloured crayon.
Similarly to Lola, My mum's greatest joy is to sew, knit and crochet, all of which she does in her free time. She mainly makes her own clothes and decorative table settings that receive admiration from whoever is visiting us. She tried to carry her hobbies to us, but we weren't interested in them more than how to sew a button. Luckily, my cousins and her nieces did some sewing, which left my mum more than happy to improve their techinques. They are also artistic souls - two of them sing, one makes beautiful drawings (mostly of people) and pursues acting in historical reenactions, while the third focuses on martial arts and exploring South Korea's culture and language. But my other cousins are also very skilled, yet mostly in games. One of them is a streamer on Twitch, where he's playing live World of Tanks or Counter-Strike and has several thousand followers. Another recently started uploading on YouTube clips from sessions on online Minecraft servers he's having with my youngest brother. I'm grateful for them being my family.
P. S. 100% true is this your sentence "The kids love nothing more than to create, even if the most common thing they create is a mess."
Your story suggests the possibility that Waffle's suspicious hair loss might have been a team effort. Highly plausible. As for the signs, they always ban someone from something. If I'm lucky, they only ban imaginary people. If I'm less lucky, it's each other.
One time when I was about Waffles’ age (maybe a little older even) I couldn’t sleep and I was very distracted by a bad tangle in the front of my hair. I decided to be able to sleep I had to cut it off. I thought I could cut it so short it would be invisible (and didn’t think about what would happen if it grew back out). I cut the hair and then immediately realized what a mistake it was. In my mind I was way too old to be cutting my own hair (glad to hear waffles is right there with me). I knew my family would make fun of me for it until I died. I had to destroy the evidence. I couldn’t just throw it out because there was a chance someone would see it in the garbage. I couldn’t flush it down the toilet because if it clogged the toilet someone would wonder why there was hair in the toilet. So I cut the clump up into tiny little pieces and put it down the shower drain. I then wore a hat for about 3 days until my parents asked me to take it off. When they asked what happened to my hair I ran to the mirror and acted so surprised that my hair was gone that my parents almost believed me when I accused my sister of cutting it. Honestly if I hadn’t worn the hat and just acted like I woke up and the hair was gone my sister might have taken the blame. Still, I wouldn’t confess. I kept silent until finally a classmates mom approached me on the playground and asked. I remember thinking “oh god they’re never going to give this up.” I finally gave in. I thought that was about 2 weeks later but I recently asked and found out it was 6 months to a year later. My parents were so shocked at how good I was at lying that they literally never believed another thing I said again. On the upside, my behavior was so psychotic that no one dared make fun of me, and now I have the wildest “I cut my own hair” story ever.
It's a tragedy they discovered your skill at lying over such a minor thing. If you had saved it up, you could have gotten away with something truly epic.
For real, I should have played the even longer game
Diamond Dots, she laughs, as she looks at her latest project wondering where in the hell it will go on the wall; which is already covered in paintings, LOL. You got me with this one James. Maybe you remember me by the different comments I’ve made about crafts. Maybe not. Let’s just say I could cross stitch with Lola while teaching the girls just about any kid craft out there. I’ve done them all. Art is another thing. People get them confused. When I want to look all extra I tell people I have an art studio. What I really have is the smallest bedroom in the house that I’ve turned into a craft room. And the hallway just outside of it. And half the garage. I’m like Lola also that I don’t make things to sell, I make things to create and then I’m left over with a bunch of things I don’t want to throw out and there’s just so many people you can give things to. For years my kids have tried to set me up on Etsy, etc. but I just can’t do it. If THEY’D sell I could, I love to create, but I don’t have it in me to charge people what it really cost to make things. Not even in materials (which can cost a ton) but in hours of my life. I also bore really easy so I change crafts often. Some are hard (like stained glass, which I loved), some are easy (dots which just requires something to put the damn dots into, a light board, and anyone of the hundred canvases I have waiting to be worked on. I usually have two or three going on at the same time. While watching Netflix, dots. Crafting room is epoxy resin and dollhouses. Now that we have two puppies it’s trying to keep everything out of their mouths. LOL. Yep, you got me on this post. I’m all about the girls and Lola. My understanding goes deep. You, you poor sucker, are stuck with it for life. Maybe you should pick up a pattern and dot? I know lots of “manly male” paintings, lol.
You raise a good point about the true cost. If you charged what you put into these things in terms of hours, no one could afford them. People who get them as gifts don't appreciate the actual value of what you're giving away.
Bingo!
Crochet is with a blunt hook and one loop only. Knitting is with two sharpened sticks that hurt when you sit on them or "accidentally" poke someone with them and dozens of loops just waiting to slide off and be lost forever making you abandon your project because who wants to rip out hours of work. Guess which I do...... And I have to admit to buying those rainbow rubber band looms for all our nieces, LOL
What did your siblings do to you to get you to curse their children with those rubber bands? I can only imagine what they'll do in revenge.
In-laws that live six hours away from us, LOL
knitting is evil. My friend had to take the sharp pointy sticks away from me once when I had to rip out the project for about the 12000th time. she quietly gave me my crochet hook back and hid the knitting needles.
My wife has a craft and sewing room, plus enough abandoned or forgotten craft kits to open a Hobby Lobby. I'm pressuring her to sell or give away a bunch of it that she'll never use. Even our kids don't want any more of it. 😉 If I succeed, we might just be able to fit into this house.
I had a scale aircraft model hobby for about 50 years, but had to give it up because of trembling hands. I have a trophy case full of completed projects to look at, though. I sold off my kit collection in a 'whole lot' auction to get the pain of doing so over with like ripping off the proverbial Band Aid. There was a time when I really thought I could build them all (400+) in retirement, but life had other plans.
That's an impressive collection. Did the person who bought it from you ever finish them?
I only auctioned the kits off in February. I'm sure he's going to sell most of them off. I had over 50 years to collect all those kits. There are folks out there who have thousands of kits. I don't feel too bad at hoarding them. 😆
but she MIGHT finish them.
We're in our 60s. Unless she lives to be 150... 😉
I was Lola 25 years or so ago. Tried every crafty thing I knew of and created my own. Since I've retired, I've done nothing crafty. Funny how that is. When the busiest with kids and work, I found time to do my thing; when the day is my own, I do nothing.
Reading this makes me miss the days of seeing our late cat Wrigley with a foot or more of crossstitch thread trailing out of his mouth or worse, his butt. Don't know what it was that made him want to chew and swallow it other than scare me. He liked red the best.
We haven't had any pets eat thread, but our dog and pigs eat crayons. All the colors get squished together on the way out. They poop the rainbow.
I did all the cross stitch, needlepoint and sewing back in the day, too. Now that I have time, I don’t have the eyesight.... alas.
I hated slime and that kinetic sand stuff the most, although those things are not crafts necessarily just awful "toys." My one kid never liked crafting, luckily, because I never did and didn't really want to deal with it. She did, however, begin drawing at some point and is darned good. No mess! She got that talent from neither her mother nor her father. We are stick figure folks, too. Stick figure drawers, unite!
Kinetic sand sticks together as advertised. It just sticks together in a thousand tiny balls that drift to every part of the house. Woe unto you if it ever gets onto carpet. As for slime, I wish there were a law against it.
Agreed!
the making of animals and other small things in crochet is called amigurumi. Also, I do the diamond painting instead of cross stitch now.
The diamonds seem to be catching on. Seems like a much quicker and more straight forward process, other than the part where they get everywhere.
You should offer Lola’s creations up for sale on here!
You could also use the never ending rubber band bracelets to allow the kids to make money off your coworkers. Just get the kids to identify a goal they’re trying to meet and then guilt trip your coworkers into helping them meet your goal. I’m the proud owner of a pink and purple rubber band bracelet even though I don’t have kids because an industrious coworker friend did exactly that. :D
I guilt trip my co-workers into buying my kids' stuff, they'll guilt me into buying their kids' stuff and we'll all lose money together.
Have your kids learned how to play the role of a "Karen" yet when they play store? I can see Waffle being a manager and shutting down one of her older sisters who is making unreasonable demands. :)
They have an entire game called "Karens." We had to shut that one down.
And the glitter! I finally had to ban glitter when my kids were young, I couldn’t take finding it everywhere, including their hair!
It never, ever goes away. I doubt I'll ever stop sparkling.
Glitter should be banned from everywhere! As my mother used to say, “It is the devil!”
It is known as the herpes of the craft world around my house. 😂
😂
glitter is the herpes of the arts and crafts world. It gets everywhere and you can't ever quite get rid of it.
My little 7yo boy LOVES TAPE AND THE STAPLER... He will build and invent all sorts of things. It is truly fun and amazing... and dangerous... and chaotic! He has taken into drawing comics lately so that seems more in control. Hope it lasts!
One of my daughter's favorite things is to randomly get out her recorder and play it while on video calls with her friends. And of course the favorite is Hot Cross Buns. In junior high and high school, I played trombone and lived in the country. I practiced on the back porch on occasion. There's nothing like the peaceful country life, with the sound of the birds, the wind, and somebody's obnoxious kid blasting classical music or pep band staples like The Hey Song on a low brass instrument so that it echoes between the ridges.
There had to be a few semi-distant neighbors who wondered what was going on. I hope they mistook you for a rogue moose.
Hilarity from start to finish 🤣
Waffle’s missing hair reminds me of Fudge (Judy Blume’s classic book _Tales of a Fourth-Grade-Nothing_) and also of Calvin getting a haircut from Hobbes 😂
Cutting off your own hair and lying about it is a right of passage. I just wish Waffle would complete that passage and get over it.
I am only creative when generating PowerPoint slides. I am a decidedly non-crafty engineer!
PowerPoint slides can be things of beauty if done right. It's an underappreciated art.
Luckily, I got to miss out on the diamond dots. We stepped on Legos, and there was somehow a way for boys to spread pistachio shells throughout my apartment one year. I found them everywhere when we moved, under ever piece of furniture, and even though my bed consisted of a mattress and box spring on the floor at the time, they were under it. That was several months after banning my husband (then boyfriend) from buying more of them to leave around for the kids to eat and already cleaning them up several times.