Nerdy Gnomes

Ok, I have to detour a bit today to tell you about our new gnomes. First of all, I have 'most-embarrassing-teenage-moment' memory of visiting my Grandma's house. The thing is that she had numerous gnomes, spinny flower thingies and a plethora of other assorted tacky plastic stuff in her yard. I would call it an Amusement Park of Gnomes. I even suspect all their neighbors secretly added more to their yard upon receiving them...a gnome re-gift, if you will. Here we would roll up in the car, and me, being self-consciously 14ish, would bolt for the door and hide my face lest some studly(albeit pimply) boy might see me here! Now that you have THAT background, you are up to par with me wondering why my sweetie and I bought 2 yard gnomes yesterday. In order to tell you WHY, I must first back-track and tell you this story:

The Story of the Plastic Goose

Well, my fiance's daughter having the usual impossible task of buying a present for dad on his birthday; had an inspiration! She thought to herself 'well, dad has a new house and he's been doing all kinds of work in the yard and loves his garden so much...Hence, the GARDEN GOOSE. I had never heard of such a thing, being a Californian. Marketers probably realized that Californians are just 'too cool' for gooses as I know NO people that have them in their yards. However, when he opened the box, I was quite delighted with the 20+ outfits she comes with. Don however, nervously chuckled (probably wondering where to put the goose so the other yard 'guys' in the neighborhood would not find out about it). This is not to say that Don didn't appreciate his daughter's thoughtfulness. It's just...he is a 6 foot 2, cop-built, booming voice, in other words 'macho' kind of a guy(marshmallow inside, but hush, only I know that!). Two weeks later: Don is weeding in the back yard, he lightly tosses the goose aside and yes...CRACK! Broke a leg off. Ok, I glued the leg back, no problem...put her back in the yard. 3 days later, my son, doing whatever teenage boys do to wreck things(read: live and breath) knocked her off the ledge. I'm afraid the poor goose lost her head. NO, I don't mean she came alive and was scandalized by her out of season outfit! I mean broke her head off at the neck. In 3 pieces. Of course, said daughter was coming to visit in 2 weeks. So, I put out an APB on the internet and finally found a replacement for $50 with the same 20+ outfits. Not quite. Ok, more searching found just the goose for $30(pictured here, naked). So, Don had to re-purchase something that he felt he could live without, so as not to disappoint.

BACK to the gnome story now:

So, we were in Joann's craft store yesterday and they had all their yard stuff 60% off; which for me would be 75% off since I get to use an educator discount also. That's when it happened: I saw the gnome holding the goose(above picture); as if stealing a goose from someone's yard! I CRACKED UP! Too funny! So, we both loved the joke and had to get it. Of course, you cannot have only one, so one turned into two. It gets worse! I then purchased three more today! I'm out of control people!!!! Tomorrow, I will show you a picture of our new circus side-show garden. Circus is correct, trust me! There are also Christmas lights all around the garden. This is because Don likes the way they look at night while he's in the spa. Not because he is lazy. He just likes them...the jury is out on this still. Ok, I'm off to sew.