barbie is a tramp

Today was actually a fairly decent day. It got up to around 60 degrees. Grant raked the yard and bagged the leaves and put the garbage service in his name. He did a good job.

My yard is a disaster area though - having nothing to do with him.

At some point, the previous owner of this house felt it necessary to plant wild flowers. Wild flowers...are like the plague. When it got out of hand for her, she decided to dig up the 10'x8' patch of land and lay down black plastic to try to kill it all.

Didn't work out so well.
So, I have wild flowers in random spots all over the place.

I also have onion in random spots, also all over the place. The backyard smells like an Italian Restaurant when you mow it.

It's all unorganized.
There is no sun on one side of the house either.
It's all sort of a nightmare.

I've spent the last hour debating if I should just get it all cemented and paint it green.
...and no, I'm NOT above that either

I only own .25 of an acre. Pathetically, my lot is the second biggest on this entire street. The other guy has me beat by an 1/8th of an acre.

Fortunately, it seems that Grant is almost as interested as I am in turning the backyard into Eden.

I should take some pictures.
Before and after shots.

Is it wrong that every one of my favorite plants - is poisonous?
...not that I really care if it is or isn't, I'm just curious

I'm hoping the weather stays somewhat even from here on out. That will help my back. Because quite frankly, I'm already sick of this spine issue.

This is sort of a pointless post, isn't it.
I think I'm boring myself.

Grant's mother leaves tomorrow morning. I wish she could have stayed longer. I offered to call her in sick at work on Monday if she would stay, but she insists on being responsible.

I'm going to miss her.
She's a good woman.
She genuinely cares too.

I've got a web site to work on and once I'm done with that, I'm spending three full days on the couch like a real person. Like I should have done weeks ago. I need to stop moving so the stupid inflammation will finally go down in my back.

For the next week, it's just Grant and I in the house, so I'm not really needed for anything anyway.

Oh my God, this really is a dull post.
...I just yawned....AT MYSELF!
That's not right.

Let me end with some fun little fact at least, so you won't abandon me due to this poor excuse of a post.

Barbie is based on a German Sex Doll

The world's most famous doll - that twentieth century icon, Barbie - didn't just appear full-blown from the mind of her creator, Ruth Handler. Barbie's inspiration, her immediate predecessor, is an overtly sexual hottie named Lilli.

Lilli started out as a cartoon character dawn by Reinhard Beuthien for the Hamburg tabloid newspaper Bild-Zeitung. This blonde, curvy bombshell who pursued rich men first appeared in ink in 1952. Three years later, she became a plastic doll in Germany. The definitive history Forever Barbi reveals: "The doll, sold principally in tobacco shops, was marketed as a sort of three-dimensional pinup ... Lilli was never intended for children: She was a pornographic caricature, a gag gift for men..." Mattel engineer Jack Ryan once called Lilli a "hooker or an actress between performances."

Ruth Handler - she and her husband were co-founders of Mattel - wanted to create a three-dimensional, plastic, grown-up doll for girls, but the company's all-male board nixed the idea. While in Europe, she happened upon the vixenish Lilli and knew that she had discovered the literal prototype for her unrealized doll. The original Barbies were deliberately based on the German mantrap (Barb's head, in fact, was cast from Lille's with a few minor tweaks).

When the first Barbi appeared in 1959, it was as if Lilli had been cloned. They had the same puckered, fire-engine red lips, same arched eyebrows, same almond-shaped eyes glancing sidelong, same golden hair pulled into a ponytail, same height (11.5 inches), same pencil-thin legs, same wasp waist with pneumatic breasts above and child-bearing hips below.

Barbi's similarity to her slutty forerunner didn't go unnoticed. During pre-release market testing, mothers complained about Barbie's sex vibe, saying things like, "I don't like that influence on my little girl" and, "They could be a cute decoration for a man's bar," Sears - purveyors of the almighty Christmas "Wishbook" - refused to carry her at first. Nonetheless, Barbie instantly became a huge hit with girls, and Mattel spent the early years making her less of a tart. Now, every second of the day, two Barbies are sold. Lilli must be green with envy.

- taken from the book, "100 things you're not supposed to know" by Russ Kick