What's a Popeye, and Other Things

Today’s Expanded Tweets post is actually a collection of four Tweets from the Burnsland Twitter account, in two groups of two related Tweets. Because I couldn’t decide on just one to use for this week. You also may have seen something similar on Facebook if you happen to follow me there.

The first two Tweets come to us courtesy of Jaylin, or rather of some of the things he has said lately. Here’s the first:

https://twitter.com/Burnsland/status/693102342045065216

I’m not really sure what brought that up, but that was one of the random conversations on our rides on the way to school in the mornings. That’s probably some sort of avoidance technique to keep me from asking him something about school, or if he has a test that day, or if he has done all his homework, or what he is studying in Geography so that I can bore him with stories of places I have been.

Anyway, I know Jaylin meant Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, which is at Disneyland and used to be in the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World before Mr. Toad got bumped off by that scoundrel Winnie the Pooh. He has also heard of the Disney movie The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. In fact, we have that one on Blu-Ray, although he apparently hasn’t watched it yet. So if you have just seen the title here and there, it isn’t that much of a stretch to see how one might think it is about Mr. Ichabod Toad. But it isn’t, because as you may know Mr. Toad’s full name is J. Thaddeus Toad. So I tried to correct him gently instead of laughing out loud. Wouldn’t want to crush his spirit, after all.

Moving along merrily on our way, here is the next Tweet:

https://twitter.com/Burnsland/status/693243154733080576

Jaylin strikes again. As we were eating supper in McDonald’s, Laura was talking of what she might cook for supper in the days ahead, and she mentioned Manicotti. The particular way she cooks it involves stuffing the shells with ground beef and spinach. Jaylin didn’t remember having it before, so he asked about it, and we told him what was in it. When we mentioned spinach, knowing he isn’t a big fan of that particular green vegetable, or most any other chlorophyll-colored goodness, I made the statement about Popeye, which prompted Jaylin to ask his question.

It was at that point that I realized one of my failings as a parent for not introducing Jaylin to the spinach-eating Popeye, who I used to watch all the time growing up. I even loved the live-action movie starring Robin Williams as the pipe-smoking hero, and I watched that countless times. So thanks to the free wi-fi in McDonald’s, we showed Jaylin a random Popeye cartoon off of YouTube. I’m not sure he really got it, but at least now he can say that he knows who Popeye is. How do these kids today ever make it through life?

Changing subjects, the next two Tweets are from working around our house on Saturday. Here’s the first:

https://twitter.com/Burnsland/status/693584354036047872

As you might guess, we were working with our manure pile, using some of it to fill in some places that the rain had washed out. Maybe not the best fill material because it will be somewhat soft, but it’s what we have. And we definitely have the ability to get more, as that Tweet states.

And the next:

https://twitter.com/Burnsland/status/693584678733815808

As we were moving it, the pile seemed to become a mountain of manure, and that brought to mind the words of Jesus in Matthew 17:20:

“Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Laura laughed out loud when I said that, so my job was complete. Except that our other job of moving the mountain manually continued for a while longer. But at least we had something to laugh about. And that makes the work a little lighter, after all.

The Expanded Tweets posts expand on a short post on Twitter (or, a Tweet), because 140 characters isn’t always enough to tell the whole story.