The Bert Conspiracy

Since having a daughter and starting to watch Sesame Street and own Sesame Street toys again, I have made a bizarre discovery.  At first it was only a sneaking suspicion, but now I am sure.  I know the truth, and now I share it with you.

In short, the Bert toys of the world, being as boring, stuffy, and generally un-fun as the Muppet in whose likeness they are made, are all abandoning their jobs as children's playthings and going AWOL.

EXHIBIT A:

Lucy received this set of bath toys new, as a Christmas gift.  The set came with a Bert.  I've seen him, held him, made him talk.  But sometime between 2 summers ago and the day we moved out of our last house, he made his escape.  We're not sure when, where, or how -- we only know that he is gone.

UPDATE: While Norman and I both agree that there was definitely a life-jacketed Bert included in this set, and that he is now missing, all listings of this toy on the internet show only Ernie and Elmo.  This conspiracy deepens...


EXHIBIT B:

I purchased this RV travel set at a thrift store a few months before we moved.  I saved it to give to Lucy on the road ("See? Your Sesame Street friends are moving across the country, too!").  After I bought it, I did some research to see how old the set was.  My discovery -- it originally came with a Bert, nowhere to be found at the thrift store.  A tiny lantern and picnic basket survive, in addition to the RV door that's not even attached, but Bert goes missing? Curious.


EXHIBIT C:

I found this tiny stuffed Ernie at a rummage sale.  Just the right size to fit in a Christmas stocking with his friend Bert.  But all of my searching through piles of grungy old rummage sale toys was in vain.  No tiny stuffed Bert in sight.


EXHIBIT D:

I found these pieces in a large bucket of free toys at a garage sale this weekend.  I found Cookie Monster, Big Bird, and Elmo.  I thought, "Bert missing again?"  But no -- I couldn't be sure.  Perhaps neither Bert nor Ernie made it into the design for this toy.  And then I spotted Ernie.  I've not been able to find a photo of this complete set online, and other characters are clearly missing (they are numbered), but Bert was most definitely gone.  My kid-grime-covered hands told the story.

Where are these Berts?  Where do they go?  What do they do after freeing themselves from a life of tea parties and inane preschool small talk?  We can only guess.  But as a fellow introvert, I can do nothing but wish them well on their journeys.

Today in Thrift Store Kitsch

I found this at the thrift store today.  (The same store I found the breastfeeding poster -- fabulous place.)

I paid a whole 35 cents for this beauty.  I still haven't decided whether to keep it, sell it on Etsy, or send it to my mom!   I think Norman's vote is to hang it in our kitchen.

I also found, in keeping with my ridiculous good luck and perfect timing where thrift stores are concerned, a broth separator for making Thanksgiving gravy.  (My old one was cracked, so I tossed it before we moved.)

Everyone needs to know about this

Just a quick post to tell you to go here when you have a spare afternoon. AWESOME.

Also check out the site's amazing gallery.

"Happy Hill? Sounds like a mental institution."

This weekend the husband and I went to the wedding of one of my extended family members at Happy Hill Pentecostal Church in Ramona, OK. It was a good excuse to see some immediate family members who live far away. I took pictures of all the really important stuff at the wedding and reception, as you'll soon discover.

There was a room in the church (the lobby, perhaps?) that contained an eagle and a cowboy, each carved out of a log, a stuffed buffalo head mounted on the wall, a bench, and several fake ficuses. Here's us with the cowboy (who kind of looks like McGruff the Crime Dog):

And us with the buffalo head:


Moving on, we discovered the church bulletin board. Here are the all-important American Family Association Voter Guides. Note the proliferation of "NO"s on the Democrats' sheet, and the large concentration of "NO"s in Mitt Romney's column.


Also, apparently Satan is having a revival in Branson:

The bulletin board also had this important announcement:

which wouldn't have been all that amusing had this not been the spread at the wedding reception:

Left-overs, anyone?

And here are my brothers looking like well-dressed dorks:



Like I said, I made sure to cover all the important things. If I happened to leave out anything vital, ask about it in the comments.

Non-Permanent Vandalism, Part II

Guess what? Yep, we were back at the Hobby Lobby the other night. I wanted to pick up some block printing starter stuff (which I did, and which I will blog once I get around to using them, whether it's a success or not). So we were wandering around, and I thought (and consequently said out loud), "Oh! I know what we need to do!" So we went to check on our last piece of subversive art. It had been replaced by some lovely summery words (not sure why -- last I checked, it's still January), like "DIVE", "CAKE", "ANA" (whoever she is), etc. One of these times, I've got to remember to take a before picture. Anyway, we did some letter-borrowing from farther down the aisle and came up with this:


Yep. "Get the Diva a Pint." How can you argue with that?

As I was taking this picture, I had to endure the mocking tones of some passing punk -- "Ooo! That's illegal! I'm gonna tell!" Did you know that rearranging wooden letters in a retail environment is illegal? Neither did I.

Cabled Goats?

Today's blog post has pretty much nothing to do with me or anything I do. Except laughing. Which is what I did when I saw this blog post by someone else. Typos are awesome.

Background info:
Cable-knit sweaters
"Ravelry"
Goats

Non-permanent Vandalism

Norman and I went to the Hobby Lobby today so I could take advantage of some sweet post-Christmas sale action. (Meh... I got some Advent tapers and a spool of ribbon.) At one point I lost Norman, called him, and subsequently found him staring at a wall of plain wooden letters. You know, they're about a foot tall, flat, for painting or decoupaging and hanging in a kid's room or something cheesy like that? They were arranged on this wall to say nice things like "NOEL" and "BABY" and "GIFT" and "TREE".

Norman was staring at the wall trying to figure out what else you could spell given those letters and the constraints of only four letters across. He told me so far he'd figured out "GO LIFT PINT O BEER". So I said, "Well, let's do it!" He was afraid we'd get caught, but really, I say, what could anyone do to us? This is the result:





It's probably still there. Check out the Norman Hobby Lobby if you're curious. I kind of want to go back every day until it's different, just to see how long it takes them to notice. Perhaps we will have started a revolution, and every day it will say something different! Oh the possibilities!