Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Sunday, July 31, 2005 Hey, you got a minute? Trash has a few questions. Please don't take this lightly. As a librarian, it's her calling to help people find stuff out. So for her to ask for help is roughly tantamount to me asking someone to help write a blog entry. This doesn't count; she volunteered. Over to you, Trash. Hi all – I don’t know how many of M. Giant’s readers are parents, or health care professionals, or people with young siblings/friends/wards of the state/cats, but I have a few questions I was hoping you might be able to answer. I swear I have looked for the answers for most of them, but I either a) find conflicting answers or b) find no answer at all. I could always send these to Sars, but somehow I think she might object to answering a dozen odd (in both senses of the word) questions from one person. Thus, my polling of the Internet, in hopes of getting better advice. And let’s be honest – who doesn’t love giving advice? So, if you wouldn’t mind, feel free to comment on/answer any of the following queries. No answer is too stupid – remember, I have to ask all of them in the first place. And if you have any books you would like to recommend, I would love to hear about them. I am a librarian, after all. M. Tiny 1) At what point can M. Tiny once again use a blanket at night? I understand that to prevent SIDS, we now have them sleep on their backs and avoid any blankets that might cause him to breath his own Carbon Monoxide, but he is BIG, people. I mean, he weighed 22 ½ lbs at his 9 month check up last week, and the sleep sacks I currently use at night are getting a little short and a little snug. I can’t seem to find any bigger ones than he already owns, so what do I do? Conversely, does anyone have any leads on larger footie pj’s or sleep sacks for 1 year olds? 2) How many bumps to his head can he sustain before I bring him to the doctor? I have thus far managed to maintain my rep as a non-hovering mother, but the boy has a head the size of a football, and it always seems to be the first thing to hit. He hasn’t broken skin as of yet (knock wood) but he has bumped it on the floor, his Intellitainer, the bookshelves, the CAT, and me, and many of these hits have resulted in a red spot, sometimes a bit raised/swollen. Tonight alone I think he hit his head 4 times, and since he seems to think he can walk it is only going to get worse. So what do I need to worry about? 3) Speaking of walking... How do I make him slow down already? Yes, I know, how wonderful – he is starting to walk at only 9 months, and considering that he was a preemie and so very small, it’s almost a miracle. OK, great, but I haven’t finished baby-proofing my house yet, and he simply needs to WAIT another month, at least. But he hates to crawl (although at least he does it now) and he wants to walk everywhere, all of the time. So how do I get him to slow the hell down? Or, should you decide that I don’t have a choice in the matter, do you have any tips on quick and easy baby-proofing? 4) I understand that teething is horrible, and painful, and bad bad bad, but at what point does he stop waking up at 5:30 and insist that his mother hold him for ½ hour until he falls back asleep. 5:30, you will note, is just early enough to be a major pain for those of us who would like to sleep in until 7, and just late enough so that one is not able to get solidly back to sleep. So I have 2 questions on this one: do you have any tips to make this stop happening, or do you have any idea when it will stop? 5) What regular foods are good to introduce at this point? I mean, he eats jars of baby foods just fine (except for carrots, but that’s because he is allergic) but I mean real food. He has 3 teeth (or at least 3 nubs) so he eats cheese, noodles (well, sort of), graham crackers, those baby puffs things, scrambled eggs, yogurt (which he loves), applesauce, and ripped up deli meat (that’s fun for a vegetarian like myself) but that’s it, and I don’t know what to introduce next. The books, by the way, suck at this subject. 6) At what age/point is it OK if he doesn’t burp during/after a bottle? M. Tiny is a reluctant burper before bed, so we end up spending 4-5 minutes trying to get him to burp. I understand that a lack of burping can cause him to spit up, but is there a point where we can say screw it? Say, after 5 minutes of unsuccessful attempts while M. Tiny wakes up more and more, ultimately refusing to both burp AND go to sleep? 7) Do I really have to wait until he is a full year old before his car seat can face the front of the car? I mean, considering that his weight is 22 ½ lbs. If I do need to wait until he is a full year old, does anyone have any ideas on how to affix a mirror facing the front, so we can see him while driving, on a 2000 Saturn wagon? Because we have had many ideas, and none of them have worked. Cats 1) Why oh WHY must Turtle wake me up EVERY NIGHT at around 4:30 by LICKING ME ON THE LIPS?!?!?! Did I do something to invite this? Did I, in some way, lead her on? Was I dressed too provocatively in my tee shirt and boxer shorts for bed and it caused her to believe that I would enjoy a little cat love in the middle of the night? And what must I do to stop it? Please don’t suggest that we remove her from the room – it’s just not an option. Oh sure, I would happily kick HER fuzzy ass out the door, but Strat has spent most of his life sleeping on M. Giant’s chest, and if M. Giant’s allergies weren’t important enough to boot him, Turtle’s amorous evenings certainly aren’t. 2) Will Phantom’s farts EVER stop smelling like something large and evil crawled into her ass and died? I have never in my life smelled anything like what she delivers to us on a daily basis. Sure, in the summer we can grab the kid and run outside until the storm has passed, but what do we do in the winter? Our vet friend seems to think she will grow out of it, but, for the love of God, WHEN? She’s over a year old – isn’t it time? That’s it. Thank you all in advance for sharing your vastly superior advice and experience – I completely understand why they say it takes a village to raise a child. posted by M. Giant 8:41 PM 46 comments 46 Comments:The only thing I feel reasonably able to answer is #5. Some stuff my boys loved at that age were kidney beans and butter beans(the canned kind, 'cause I'm lazy, and because they tend to be softer than the home soaked ones do); I gave them diced firm tofu to play with and eat; one of my sons turned out to love lima beans, which is a mystery to me; they also really seemed to dig eating cubes of stirfried butternut squash after it'd cooled. Plain baked fish is a great food for that age, and isn't terribly hard on their bellies like some meats can be. I'm vegetarian, too, so we worried quite a bit over proteins. But beans are pretty good for that age, since they're tasty enough and are easy to serve as fingerfood.
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I don't think I can answer any of the baby questions, since I don't have one, but I did some research, and I think I found a place you can buy larger sleep sacks. Is this what you are talking about?
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Baby Gap has footie pajamas.
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1. if he can pull things off of his face, then he can have a blanket. Just not, you know, a 2 ton king sized quilt. And no matter how nicely you tuck him in? It will get kicked off. As for the footie pjs....gymboree runs small on the feet, damn them.
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Re: M. Tiny
By Don't know any kind of official age, but my cat didn't stop trying to gas me to death until he was two :(
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For your question about turning the carseat around, check out this site, especially the videos: http://www.cpsafety.com/articles/StayRearFacing.aspx
By Cats #1: Not sure, but my Hendree has a similar routine. Between 5:30 and 6:30 every morning she will find something to knock off my desk. I wake up, yell at her, and groan as she comes over, tail held high, chirping in a way that sounds like she's saying, "yay, you're awake! It's time to pet the kitty now!" My solution was to sleep in a room without a desk. I doubt, however, that you can sleep in a room without your lips. Sorry.
By Cats#1: Try using a short burst of air blown in her face. You may have to do it a few times for her to get the hint, but it seemed to work on my cat when I did this. In her case, she had been trying to wake me so I would feed her earlier than her usual feeding time. She resorted to pawing at my face and pressing her cold, wet nose into my (shut) eye, to get me to wake up. The burst of air (and morning breath) made her sit back and rethink her approach. She found other ways to try and wake me, but at least she left my face alone.
By My cat kept waking me at about 4 a.m. for me to feed her. The cold nose in the face is not a good way to meet the morning. I eventually got an automatic feeder--you set the timer and the top springs open in time to keep the cat off your face. Now, she goes to eat and comes back to nap with me until my alarm goes off. Of course, if Turtle is just looking for attention, I don't know what to tell you...
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1) When he can pull it off he is fine.
By Forgot to add-just found 12 to 24 month sized feetie pjs at Carter's Outlet.
By Lands End also has wonderful fleece footie pajamas, both one piece and two piece. They wear like iron and dry so quickly after washing that they can be worn every night.
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4) Let me also endorse the Hyland Teething Tablets; they are teeny tiny and melt instantly. They worked miracles with my first (a large, football-headed one too), not so well with my second. They are available at Whole Foods and Walmart.
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onestepahead.com sells sleep sacks up to 24 months. They also have great baby proofing products that other stores don't have (including adhesive kitchen cabinet locks that don't require putting holes in your cabinet doors!).
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RE: Cat farts
By You guys are so smart - I love the internet. I don't have kids, so no help there, but I might be able to help with the licking thing. Have you tried a spray bottle? Just a small one, next to your bed. I can't imagine it would take more than a couple of nights of water to the face to get her to stop it.
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1) He can pretty much start using a blanket once he's mobile enough to be able to get out from under the blanket if necessary. It sounds like he's at that point, if he's trying to walk already. Also, Carter's still makes footy pajammas for the bigger babies/toddlers - my 2 year old still wants to wear those because she doesn't like having bare feet at night. Babies R Us and Target sell them.
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1) He can pretty much start using a blanket once he's mobile enough to be able to get out from under the blanket if necessary. It sounds like he's at that point, if he's trying to walk already. Also, Carter's still makes footy pajammas for the bigger babies/toddlers - my 2 year old still wants to wear those because she doesn't like having bare feet at night. Babies R Us and Target sell them.
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Let me echo onestepahead.com as a good source for safety products of all shapes and sizes. Use it for ideas, too. If you look at the product and get a general idea of how it works, you can most likely duplicate it yourself. I made a really spiffy fireplace guard by folding up quilted fabric from WalMart and attaching it with awesome carpet tape from the hardware store.
By You know, I'm not a parent, but these questions seem fairly basic. Maybe you should buy a Parenting for Dummies book or something.
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Brilliant. I like how someone who isn't a parent feels free to judge your skill level as a parent. They aren't stupid questions, Trash.
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Food-wise, we found that canned vegetables worked really well since they tend be soft already. Our daughter particularly loved canned asparagus, although she wouldn't put one in her mouth on a bet, a mere 7 years down the road.
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I don't have children yet, but I do have two cats : for the pawing, it actually means he's happy and sees you as his mother - he will mostly do this when you are lying down. Now, my 5 month old kitten does the same thing and it's not because he's hungry, it's just that he wants some love. you can either move him away from your face and pet him a little to get him to stop or simply move him off the bed - he should get the message in a few nights. Try not to spray him when he is simply trying to be affectionate as this will undermine the feelings of security and trust he has for you.
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1) At what point can M. Tiny once again use a blanket at night?
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Oh, one more thing, my very best parenting advice that I feel compelled to pass on to:
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I'd add for cat #1, your cat is probably bored, and your breath is probably the greatest source of information for her when you are asleep. Doing something she finds unpleasant, like kicking her off the bed, covering her in the blanket, or blowing her on the face might help.
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Cat Stank:
By My mom used to give me frozen peas in my highchair while she was cooking dinner. She said it numbed my gums so I would stop crying from teething. As I got older (and more teeth), she would progress to things like frozen green beans. I guess it worked so well, I used to chew open the bags of frozen vegetables while they were still in the cart at the grocery store!!
By Well, most of this stuff has been well covered, so I won't waste time repeating stuff. For food--boiled edamame (soybeans), marinated and/or baked tofu chunks, hard-boiled egg chunks and blueberries are all big hits at our house. As far as books go, my favorite for lots of excellent developmental info is the Dr. Sears "Baby Book". Highly recommended.
By recently i found a picture of my younger sister and i in footie pjs on christmas eve--Aged three and eight. I was small for an eight year old, but not THAT small. I think my mother probably got them at a KMart or Target or something: don't lose hope. You can have M. Tiny in footies until he gets out of grade school, if you so desire.
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Sweet zombie Jesus. 34 comments.
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I used to have a lot of trouble with my cats waking me early in the morning because, in their minds, the earlier I got up, the earlier they were going to get fed. It finally reached crisis stage when Oliver started using my head, specifically my eyes, as a springboard. Two nights of being woken up by a cat gouging at my eyes hard enough to leave a bleeding gash on my eyelid was enough to convince me that either that behaviour had to stop, or he would have to go. I love my cats, but not enough to let them blind me.
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1) After about 7 months you’re mostly out of the woods on SIDS. Still, I’m paranoid, so I’d consider footie pajamas or else just buy some flame-retardant fleece and whip up your own sleep sack. (It’s pretty much a sack with arm and neck holes. You could even skip on the zipper and use Velcro.)
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We just switched our baby to table food. (A little old, but she didn't want to chew stuff up until about a month ago) Basically, if I cut it up into little tiny pieces, she'll eat it. She's had chicken, hot dogs, cheese, and pasta, all cut to microscopic size. If you buy the tiny pasta, the work's pre-done for you. Same goes with bags of frozen veggies. You can get peas and diced carrots and mixed vegetables at a fraction of the cost the baby food people would have you pay for their little jars. Chicken and stars soup with saltine crackers crushed in to soak up a little of the broth works extraordinary well, but you still feed them for that one. Still counts as table food, though.
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I'm not a parent, but I have 15 first cousins and a little brother, and babies and kids whack themselves on things all the time. It's a little unnerving before you get accustomed to the idea that it's pretty hard to actually break a kid, and short of getting M. Tiny an enormous plastic hamster ball to roll around in, you can't do much about it. Ask your pediatrician about signs of concussion at M. Tiny's age if your concerned, but he'll probably be fine.
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1) Our son is two now. He has had a favorite blanket since the beginning, it is crochet and very "holey" - so there isn't much risk of suffocation. I agree with the others who said once he can move himself around, and pull the blanket off his face, he's pretty safe. In the winter, we tucked a heavy blanket around the matress at one end of the crib and slid him in at the open end, so the blanket was kept away from his face.
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The comments about the Maggie Simpson face-plant have been good so far. Kids are "made of rubber," to quote one friend and parent of a young daredevil; another told me that their doc's guideline was "any fall from more than TWICE the kid's height might be of concern."
By #2: Short of strapping a helmet on M. Tiny, you'll never be able to keep him from hitting his head more often than you'd like, but it's pretty amazing how resilient they are. Those foam tubes for wrapping pipe works well for padding sharp corners. They're not extremely stylish, but they're cheap, easy to find, come in 6 foot lengths that you can cut to any size and come in different colors.
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1) At what point can M. Tiny once again use a blanket at night?
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M. Tiny
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Cats #1: Yeah......... Cats are weird, all you can do really is shove her off hte bed, and keep shoving her off hte bed until she gets the message. My two cause trouble in our bedroom at night but now, when we move, they tear out of the room and hide. It takes some time and won't really cure the problem, but it's an option!!!!
By Re the cat love: I totally know about this, as my cat used to lick my eyelids every time I lay down for a nap, until they were raw. Then she would start on the corners of my mouth. My vet said cats adore salt, and lick the eyes for any around the tear ducts; similarly, if you like salty snacks, there may be traces around your mouth you're not aware of. The answer is clearly: before bed, stop crying and gobbling potato chips.
By Cats #1: If you use Chapstick or something like it before you go to bed, stop or switch flavors. If you don't, find a flavor Turtle does not like and use it every night.
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About the head-bonking... I got out of my crib, and fell a couple of feet to the floor, several nights a week for about a month. My parents started to get disconcerted stares as they walked down the street with me.
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You might want to skip feeding him strawberries, too. I think a lot of kids are allergic to them, too (including my nephew which my brother had to find out the hard way).
By Thursday, July 28, 2005 All Right, You Primitive Screwheads! I've been lucky enough to have met some of my favorite writers. But alas, I have yet to meet any of my favorite movie stars. It just doesn't happen in Minnesota as often as it does in New York or L.A. Here in Flyoverland, you'd have to have some pretty freakish luck to, say, trepan a Keanu Reeves with a door or something. Let alone encounter an actor one actually admires. That's why I was pretty amazed the other night when our friend Bitter called at 11:00 p.m. to tell us that Bruce Campbell was hanging out at The Local in Downtown Minneapolis. Trash answered the phone call, and she relayed the message. "My Bruce Campbell?" I repeated. I first saw The Evil Dead when I waaaay too young for it. No other movie had frightened me as much before or since, and now that I've watched it again as an adult and recognized it for the campfest it is, I'm reasonably sure that no other movie will ever scare me that much again. I lost track of him for a while, until he turned up on Xena and Hercules, which was about the time I first saw Army of Darkness on video, at which point I had a new hero. Never mind the fact that the man has been seen in more crap than corn has; Bruce Campbell is the finest actor of the modern era. YOU GOT THAT? I hated the first Spider-Man film; not just because of the laughable dialogue, not just because of the absurd "romance," not just because Willem Dafoe was playing to the back row of theaters not even showing the movie, but also because not enough Campbell. One of the signs that I'm officially a dad now is that I didn't immediately get into my car and head downtown to stalk the guy. We figured he was in town to promote his new book, Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way (which I haven't yet picked up; nor have I bought myself a copy of Bubba Ho-Tep, for that matter). And indeed, yesterday Bitter found out that he was going to be at the U of M signing copies of his novel. And then after that, he was going a few blocks down the street for a screening of The Man with the Screaming Brain, which he wrote and directed. The most obvious sign that I'm officially a dad is that after work yesterday, I went home instead of going to either of these events. Bitter was going to go and try to get me a picture of the man himself with her camera phone, but she called me an hour before the screening to let me know that the show was sold out. So really, I ended up getting the best of both worlds. Sure, I didn't get to meet my B-movie idol, but I wouldn't have anyway. And thanks to M. Tiny, I didn't even have to leave the house. Today's best search phrase: "Getting revenge on your best friend." Oh, and that's another thing I don't have to do, now that Bitter didn't get to see any more Bruce Campbell than I did. posted by M. Giant 10:01 PM 7 comments 7 Comments:Sadly, The Hudsucker Proxy also suffered from the problem of not enough Campbell. (Well, there was that, and it was saddled with the addition problem of too much Jennifer Jason Leigh.)
By What about his long-since cancelled TV show, Brisco County? Did no one else watch that but me?
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Oh, the world just doesn't have enough Bruce Campbell.
By Dude -- I can't believe Mr. Campbell was in town and you didn't stalk him in his trailer. You could have brought M. Tiny - he would be fine, and he would have helped you to get closer to Bruce. People love dads with babies.
By I got Bubba Ho-Tep off the 5 videos for $20 table at Hollywood Video and I adore it. To Half.com, M. Giant! Being a dad may keep you from standing-room-only fanjockeying, but you seriously need to prioritize that movie because it is the bomb.
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Bruce Campbell rocks so hard that we saw every episode of "Jack of all Trades" which was excellently terrible (and in which Vern - "Mini-me" Troyer played Napolean Bonaparte).
By went to the U to catch the signing and the movie... saw The Man pull up in a taxi (no limo baby!) and walked down the stairs to the bookstore with him... to in awe to speak to him... Bruce truly rulz.
By Friday, July 22, 2005 Random things I've seen around Minneapolis this summer: * A kid in our neighborhood manning a lemonade stand. What was unusual about it is that he was wearing a suit and tie. Sadly, the premium presentation wasn't reflected in the quality of the actual lemonade. Either he's the worst lemonade-maker in the world, or he owns a llama with diabetes. * TLC's While You Were Out truck parked outside the Hyatt Regency in Downtown Minneapolis, several days in a row. I didn't think they did hotel rooms. What amused me is that now every business traveler who saw it parked there thinks he or she is going to come home to a new game room or garden patio. "Hi, honey, I'm home! Oh, I see we still have the same kitchen cabinets." "Dude, you were in Minneapolis for a day and a half." "Yeah, I know, but still. Is this the same living room carpet?" * New signs notifying motorists that the traffic signal they're driving through is "photo monitored." Because if you're going to be sneaky about catching scofflaws, it's only fair to tell them you're being sneaky. Of course, so far the only people it's "caught" are people like cops, city council members, and other people that everyone knows already run lights anyway. What a relief the state government is up and running again. posted by M. Giant 9:55 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:I would totally buy lemonade from a kid in a suit, but I would also beat up a kid selling lemonade in a suit. You just know he wears a suit to school, as well.
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We have those signs on our streetlights, too. I always thought they might be a decoy, like those fake cameras in the corner deli to catch shoplifters.
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OK, yes, the lemonade was indeed crappo -- in both cases, as well as other cases with others on walks -- but seriously, could the rest of you walk by a little girl (or suited and old-before-his-time boy) selling lemonade and not buy any? I mean, it's almost 100 degrees outside, and there they are, roasting in the heat.
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I'm totally a sucker, too. If I see a kid selling lemonade, I will stop the car to buy it. I remember having a lemonade stand and not selling much of anything, so I feel bad.
By Wednesday, July 20, 2005 My Brain Hurts, Part Two: Electric Brainaloo Yesterday at about 3:30, I was in a meeting at work. I glanced across the table at my coworker. I noticed that when I focused on his right eye, his left eye seemed to disappear. Closer examination revealed that there was nothing wrong with his left eye; it’s just that when I looked at him a certain way, that feature of his face melted into a blank socket. Knowing from experience that when I’m getting a migraine, the first symptom is a blind spot, I excused myself to my desk and popped the Imitrex I keep stashed there. I returned to the meeting, smugly thinking I’d caught it in time. As anyone who’s ever had a migraine knows, it’s all about dealing with it before it gets too big and you find yourself being slotted into a CT scanner at two in the morning. I felt pretty confident that wasn’t going to happen this time. And I was right, but I wasn’t entirely unscathed, either. The blind spot grew and the headache arrived as the meeting wore on. And then I realized that just like last time, my brain’s language centers were under attack. Last time I couldn’t talk; this time I couldn’t read. No matter how hard I concentrated, I couldn’t make the printed paragraph on the page in front of me make a lick of sense. And I’d written it. I faked my way through the rest of the meeting, even managing to take a couple of notes that I was surprised to be able to read this morning. But when we got out a little after four, it became clear that I wasn’t going to make it through the rest of the day. Not as a writer, anyway, which is what I do. If I hadn’t already suspected that, I would have known for sure when it took me almost ten minutes to pinch out a one-line e-mail that I owed to a few vice presidents by the end of the day. What follows is that e-mail is in its entirety: The proposal first draft of for [PROSPECTIVE CLIENT] is attached. Please response or feedback as available. Thank god for spell-check. And then I tried to tell my boss that I was leaving early because I was sick, although I’m pretty sure that I opened the conversation by introducing myself. It wasn’t nearly as terrifying as last time, because now I knew it was only temporary. But as I walked to my car (reflexes, reaction time, motor control, and depth perception were all fine, thanks for asking, although my hands kept not being where I thought they were in relation to my head), I again found myself wondering what I was going to do with my life if my linguistic abilities had left me for good this time. I probably couldn’t go back to the call center I left two years ago. I’m too old to get into construction or some other kind of skilled labor. Really, I would have had no choices but to go on disability or become a rock star. And then I couldn’t remember if the song on the alternative station was playing on my drive home was by Possum Dixon or Harvey Danger or Foghorn Leghorn, and I decided that being a rock star is probably a lot of work anyway. I really kind of wanted to try and write an entry in that state for y’all’s entertainment (“This freak of nature has English words, but can’t use them! Step right up and witness the Human Babel Fish!”), but when Trash met me at the front door I could barely explain what was wrong, let alone try to convince her to let me do something that she would have thought was a horrible idea anyway. I was able to get out the word “migraine,” and tried to keep her from freaking out as best I could once I’d accomplished that. I spoke slowly, to make sure I was choosing the right words. Even do, I didn’t bat quite a thousand. “It’s okay, I took a poll in time.” “You took a poll?” “A pill. I took a pill.” “A migraine pill?” “Yeah, I keep one in my dick.” “What?” “My desk at work. I keep one in my desk.” “You’re going to lie down and go to sleep now.” “Okay.” I woke up a few hours later with the remains of a headache and the ability to recite most of the Pledge of Allegiance. I was even able to spend a little time on this week’s recap before bedtime (and if it sucks, please keep it to yourself), although I slept late this morning just to be safe. Try an experiment some time. Think of the one thing you do better than anything else. And then suddenly be unable to do it. Not well; not passably; not at all. Be scared shitless. Then get it back. Then do it again nine months later. The second time, I promise you’ll find it a lot funnier. Today’s best search phrase: “Pub quiz gossips.” Maybe some people need to find something else to gossip about. posted by M. Giant 6:30 PM 12 comments 12 Comments:
wow. I've had migraines since I was three years old, and I don't know how to react. On the one hand, it's so cool that you actually have visual warning signs; I've never been that fortunate. On the other hand, I can't imagine having a migraine attack my language centers in the way you describe.
By Beta blockers are wonderful! While I'm not quite migraine free, they help a lot. Although the first brand I tried gave me vocal dyslexia. I had to think about everything before saying it or all the syllables would be in the wrong place in the word. Also, I couldn't type, or read, or concentrate, basically. Try living with this, while being a literature major, during finals. The doc was finally convinced they weren't the right brand for me when I got into his office and he couldn't understand anything I said. (5 weeks later) You wouldn't believe how grateful I was to get the migraines back, if it meant me being able to actually live my life alongside my language brain components.
By I have seizures and when I feel one coming on, I can't understand what people are saying and I can't speak or read. It's so completely terrifying. Luckily I barely ever have them since I'm on medication, but still. I actually have learned to calm myself and not end up having a full seizure by counting or saying the alphabet--I can't really understand myself but the repetivity (is that a word?) is useful. I don't know if that would work for migraines, but they're definitely related--my medication (Depakote) is used for migraines as well. I hope it's a long while before you have to deal with it again!
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Damn - that's scary. I get blinding pain and I can't see straight and I thought I had it bad. I was wrong.
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Me again. I clicked through one of the ads on the right and found some of the symptoms and causes of magraines. Check this site out: http://www.relpax.com/relpax/relpax.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=sectionPage§ion=About+Migraine&menuid=Menu-About-migraines-switcher.xml
By That is really, really scary. I'm glad this time was better than the last.
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Dude, is that normal? You write about it as though it's no big deal, so I'm going to assume it's normal, and not dangerous.
By Yikes. I have migraines every now and then, but you're like in the Super Bowl of Migraines or something compared to my piddly-dunk high school versions. Mine are always behind my left eye, and I feel them coming on, especially under stress. Imitrex is The Drug of all drugs!! So say we all! Hopefully your med coverage didn't suddenly limit your prescription like mine did.
By Dude. That's so not cool. I have migraines and I get bits blanking out of my vision, but mostly just extreme intense pain. What you just described is scary and I'm really glad it's never happened to me, though now I've said that it'll probably happen tomorrow.
By I can't believe you drove home in that condition.
By Hey man, sorry you had to go through that, but thanks for posting it when you felt better. Glad to know I am not the only one who's brain turns into swiss cheese when the migraine hits. I can't talk, think, or even walk straight sometimes. Imitrex is a life-saver, but when that doesn't work, thank goodness for Vicodin!
By
Today I experience something that was so crazy I had to come to the net and find out if anyone else had.
By Sunday, July 17, 2005 Things Change I always promised myself that the last Velcrometer entry would be only that—the last one. No big announcement, no self-congratulatory retrospective, just an everyday entry that happened to be the last one because I’d quit or died. The other way just seemed kind of attention-grabby, like the rock band that sits backstage and makes the crowd keep screaming for twenty minutes when everybody knows damn well they’re coming back for another encore. Better, I thought, to post an entry and then just…stop. This isn’t either of those, by the way. Yeah, I’m going to keep going with this, even though I have a few reasons (excuses?) not to. It’s helped me accomplish a lot of what I set out to achieve forty months ago. I got into the habit of writing every day, which I still do, even if it doesn't end up here. I got invited to be a Damn Hell Ass King. I got some decent traffic, and more regular readers than I ever expected. I got hired as a comedy writer, largely due to my demonstrated ability to crank something out five days a week. That gig only lasted a year, but it’s on my resume forever, and now I can be a writer for the rest of my career. I met a whole slew of awesome, funny people that I never would have gotten to meet otherwise. I became a TWoP recapper. I sold a book, a play that's going to have a staged reading in New York this week and a run of performances at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival this fall. So now that I’ve reached all those goals, why continue? Especially now that I have way more demanding full-time job than I did when I started, more freelance opportunities than I can handle, and, oh yeah, A BABY? Sure, other people post better, oftener and longer than I do under the same constraints, but I have been saddened to discover that I’m not one of them. So why go on? Well, there’s you guys, of course. Y’all have kept reading, and obviously I appreciate that. But that’s nothing compared to the support you’ve given me and my family. And not just the kind comments and e-mails. I don’t know what we would have done in the weeks surrounding M. Tiny’s birth if it hadn’t been for all those packages that kept appearing on our back deck from people all over the world. Seriously, dude, Melbourne? I’d feel like a total ass if I walked away from y’all now. But on the other hand, is it any more fair of me to keep this thing limping along, sometimes going weeks between posts, and frequently crappy ones at that? I submit that it is not. But the reality is that I more and more rarely have time to sit down for an hour and crank out a thousand words that are up to the standard I'd hope for. So maybe it's time to just face facts and start getting in the habit of posting shorter entries, especially if that's what it's gong to take to get me to post more regularly. Starting with this one. Today's best search phrase: "My toddler can read blog." But just because he can doesn't necessarily mean he should. posted by M. Giant 2:53 PM 20 comments 20 Comments:
Whatever it takes, man. Just don't give me that heart attack 'last entry' opener EVER again ... I'm a healthy 34, but shock and mourning can kill ya at any age!
By
shorter and oftener: fine by me.
By
Well, the blogosphere is a strange and fascinating place. Someday someone will work out the laws that govern the relationships between post frequency, post length, and post value*, but for now you just gotta do what's best in the here and now.
By
Dude! You HAVE to stop scaring the crap out of us with those beginnings. Thank goodness you are hanging around, you make my week each time you update.
By Bigger is not always better, or so I have heard. Here's to shorter and more frequent.
By Doesn't everybody use RSS now anyway? Post as infrequently as you like. We'll still be able to follow you through whatever aggregator we use.
By I agree -- I look forward to reading you more often, even if the entries are shorter. Besides, if then entry is shorter, I have more time to go through the archives and remind myself of the entries I missed.
By Yeah, don't go. I love this blog!
By
I kind of like how M. Giant compared himself to a rock band waiting while then crowd screams.
By Heh -- I don't know, I've never thought of M. Giant as being anythong other than a rock star, so it makes perfect sense to me.
By
It's perfectly understandable that you don't have a lot of time to post anymore. Full-time job, married and baby? I'm impressed you write here at all with all you have going on.
By Um, that was me above, Robyn from PA, if it matters.
By
I would miss you, as well, but I want to talk about something more important.
By Glad to hear you're sticking around--count me among those who freaked out a bit when she read the first paragraph. Shorter and more often is good, longer and not as often is also good. Just don't disappear :-)
By i'm one of the randoms who reads your blog, and i love it ... glad to hear you're not abandoning ship
By
It's all good, man. You gotta do what you gotta do and, as much as I enjoy your writing, I think it's great that you put your family first.
By
Yo.. keep 'em coming whenever...
By Looking forward to seeing you over at the Damn Hell Ass Kings. I love your writing style.
By Had me going for a while there. But sometimes you have to throw down the gauntlet and publicly decry a goal in order to light a fire under your ass and follow through. Or is that just me? Anyways, no worries about the length between blog postings - your loyal readers are more than happy to wait.
By
Don't DO that! I thought I was going to have to deal with the end of Queen of Wands AND the end of Velcrometer, and then I would have had to cry.
By Wednesday, July 13, 2005 Blow, Winds, Blow! I’m kind of pissed that I’ve lived in the Midwest my whole life and have never seen a tornado except on TV. And in the theater, when I saw Twister, but that movie wasn’t exactly all about the realism. That became clear long before Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt chained themselves to a pipe to ride out an F5, and then their lower bodies rose gently and beatifically into the howling vortex instead of flapping madly like baseball cards stuck in the spokes of a bicycle traveling at 800 miles per hour. My dad had two tornado sightings in one summer once when I was a teenager, and ever since then I’ve been thinking that he got at least one that should have been rightfully mine. He was fishing at the time, though, so I don’t think it would have been worth it to me. And my uncle once told us about the time he was caught in one while out jogging. He found a low spot in the ground and holed up there while it passed directly over him. And according to him, from that perspective a tornado looks like neither a funnel nor a cloud. It really just looks like every kiddie pool, garden gnome, and piece of lawn furniture in the neighborhood circling in the air directly above you. I don’t need to get that close. Again, not worth it. I did have some hopes of seeing a tornado a couple of weeks ago . I was working away in my 24th floor office downtown when I became dimly aware that things outside were getting a little dim. I don’t have a direct view of a window from where I sit without turning around or standing up, but the fact that less ambient light than usual seemed to be coming from outside drew my attention. That and the fact that I was overhearing some of my coworkers talking about the weather maps they were looking at online. I turned around in my chair and looked at the slice of sky I could see from there, which was an overcast gray. Then I pulled up one of those weather maps on the Internet and had a look. And indeed, an angry red storm front was bearing down on us from the west. The map showed it just outside the outer-ring suburbs. I went beck to work. And then it got darker, so I walked to the window. When I did that, the sky directly above was still gray. But it was abundantly obvious that that storm front was no longer over the western suburbs. Looking out from the 24th floor, it was maybe a mile to my right. This was the biggest, blackest cloud I’ve ever seen in my life. It was like one of the spaceships in Independence Day closing in on us, except it was bigger, more substantial, and just about at eye level. A few minutes later it clamped down over the downtown area like the lid of a Weber grill. Street lights came on below us, and we could see the lights in neighboring buildings better than we could see the buildings themselves. And that was only if you got really close to the window, because the reflection of the inside of our office washed out the view otherwise. And on the west side of the building, that reflection was wobbling madly. The wind was hitting the glass so hard that it was bowing in and out like a sheet of aluminum. It reminded me of one day at my very first office job when I was right out of high school. I and everyone else who worked in our seventeenth-floor office gathered at the west-facing window and watched a storm approach. It was nowhere near as bad as the one a few weeks ago, but it was bad enough that people were saying, "I want to see a funnel cloud. I don't want anyone to get hurt, I just want to see a funnel cloud." Compared to the black mass that was hanging over us a couple of weeks ago, that day was perfect softball weather. We looked out from my current office, and we knew that when we got hit, we'd get hit hard. And we did. It was like our entire building had been dunked into a brackish green fish tank. All we could see was the rain. One of my coworkers asked if we should go home. "You want to try and drive in this?" I asked. The deluge didn't last all that long, and obviously the building didn't collapse, but just as it was ending, we felt the whole floor give a barely perceptible downward twitch. At least the windows had stopped bowing. Normally I dig storms. But what I didn't like about this one was that I was at my job, Trash was at hers, and M. Tiny was at day care. I didn't like the idea of my family being scattered all over the city in the event of some disaster. So I didn't like that aspect of the storm. I also didn't like the fact that I still didn't get to see a tornado. Today's best search phrase: "Skankwear catalogs." You have to respect a woman who knows what she's looking for, and keeps looking for it anyway. posted by M. Giant 8:43 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:I live and work in Minneapolis too, but I was in Northeast. I too noticed that storm when the sky pretty much turned black. It's always interesting too see all my cooworkers gather around the windows and comment on what a bad idea it is to stand near windows in gale force winds. I didn't get to watch for too long because water started to bubble in between the upper and lower part of the windows! I don't want that to happen again.
By I spent my first eight years in Wisconsin and I'll never forget playing outside when there was a tornado heading our way. I realized I could play catch with wind. I tossed the ball against the wind and it came right back to me. I was thrilled. My Virginia-born mother was considerably less enthralled and came shrieking out of the house to get my butt in the basement NOW as we both looked up to see a funnel about a half-mile from the house. Scared the hell outta me.
By Friday, July 08, 2005 Boom! As I was saying before, Trash and I decided to make the trip to Missouri, since once we were in Iowa we were halfway there. I suppose that once we were in Missouri we could have pushed on to Austin for the same reason. I hope my Texas peeps aren't too offended that we didn't. So anyway, the trip back had a few highlights. Our first feeding stop was in a town called Peculiar, where we pulled into the parking lot of a fireworks tent to change his diaper and spoon room-temperature sweet-potato puree and chicken protoplasm into his mouth. After we were done with that, we shopped for fireworks for a minute. Fireworks were illegal in Minnesota until a few years ago, and even now we're not supposed to have anything that makes more noise than a champagne cork. I haven't been in one of those fireworks tents since I was a kid on one of our many visits to the Missouri relatives. You know how when you grow up and you see something you haven't seen since you were a kid, and it looks so much smaller to you now? That's not the case with fireworks. They have kept up. Now, in states where they're legal, any bozo with a twenty-dollar bill can walk into a red-and-white striped tent and walk out carrying an incendiary device the size of a conga drum. I'm pretty sure that when I was little you couldn't get anything larger than a Big Gulp without a license. We bought a relatively dinky cone that shoots out colored sparks and makes noise. Or so I gather. We haven't actually lit it yet. Back on the road, there was that moment when M. Tiny woke up in his car seat and started wailing just as we were about to hit the busy freeways of Kansas City. Trash got up on her knees and turned around in the shotgun seat to comfort him, which always makes me nervous because if I have to swerve to avoid a moth or something she's really not going to like it. And then, when that didn't work, she actually wrestled herself over the top of the bucket seat to join him in the back. At seventy miles per hour. I was glad I didn't know what she was doing until she was finished doing it. The last Missouri rest area going north (or the first one, if you're going south) was the setting for any number of stops during the trips I took with the fam growing up. It was also the setting for M. Tiny's next diaper change and bottling. We'd lost track of the wipes at some point during the day, so Trash did the changing in the back of the car while I ran back and forth from the men's room carrying damp, wadded-up paper towels. The bottle went much better, sitting on the grass in the shade from a big highway department sign. Just being there brought back so many memories, and now here I was with my son. The circle of life, turning on and on. Although I don't remember ever having a poopy diaper changed there back in the day. Given our punishing schedule for the day, it didn't look like we were going to be up for going out and looking at fireworks. We've seen them there before anyway. We got back to Trash's mom's house in Lacona a little after eight, just in time for us to eat dinner. After dark, we went out on the deck and broke open the crate of sparklers she'd gotten at the Indianola Wal-Mart for M. Tiny's first experience with home pyrotechnics. I wanted to make a sparkler bomb, but a) we didn't have a hay bale and b) nobody ever lets me have any fun. The first sparkler made M. Tiny a little nervous, but we quickly learned that he was fine as long as the nearest sparkler was at least thirty feet away. And then he was more than fine. Then he was fascinated, and seriously pissed off if there wasn't at least one sizzling at any given moment during the entirety of the following ten minutes. The novelty wore off after a while, as did quite a bit of my retina, and we were just about to head inside when, from the back yard around the corner from my mother-in-law's house, an incendiary device the size of a conga drum suddenly streaked into the air and erupted into a blossom of sparks a hundred feet over the neighborhood. Looks like we were getting fireworks after all. Even though the variety we wee seeing are just as illegal in Iowa as they are in Minnesota. Thank heaven for scofflaws. One always wonders how a not-quite-nine-month-old baby is going to react when the night sky suddenly explodes above him. Every baby is different, probably. This one loved it. It probably helped that this was no municipal display with charges going off every couple of seconds and frequently simultaneously. That might have been too much. But since this was a bunch of people in a back yard who probably hadn't spent much more on pyro than they had on beer, the display took a leisurely pace, with one bomb shooting up every minute or two. And M. Tiny sat patiently in his mom's lap, waiting calmly for the next one. Which is amazing in itself, because sitting patiently really isn't M. Tiny's thing. Fireworks are kind of important to me, and it was really special to be able to share them with M. Tiny on his first Fourth of July. As we were getting him dressed for bed, I told him it made me happy that we got to see fireworks together. He babbled something that was of course a completely random collection of phonemes, but that sounded a lot like "Yeah, it did." "Yeah, it did!" I agreed, as if he'd meant to say that. "Yeah," he said again. I know it sounds like I'm putting his first words in his mouth, but I don't have to. He already has a word that he uses all the time. It's "Dad." Today's best search phrase: "Tips for pounding trash into your rear." Sorry, it was just getting a bit too treacly in here. posted by M. Giant 9:55 PM 6 comments 6 Comments:
Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, "Dad"? Yay! That's so awesome.
By "Dad"? *sniffle* Lovely!
By Dad - how cute. If Trash is upset that Mom wasn't the first word, just tell her that it is easier for a baby to say Dad. At least, that is what our pediatrician swears.
By Our daughter learned our dog's name before she learned mommy or daddy. Not that we are bitter or anything. - trish
By Speaking of Iowegian scofflaws, when I lived in the viewing area of an Iowa TV station around the 4th of July, they had an awesome interview with a state trooper about fireworks. What she said was, "As you know, fireworks are illegal in the state of Iowa. But if you're going to set them off, make sure to follow these safety tips . . ." Does it really count as scoffing the law when the law just goes "Meh" in return?
By To be fair, I think Trooper Jones was probably implying something like "I am NOT driving to the ER with some guy's fingers on ice in my lunchbox THIS year, dammit."
By Thursday, July 07, 2005 Come to My Show! The sales reports I get from my publisher indicate that maybe some of you haven't bought your copies of The Sisters' Tragedy yet (please see above right). Perhaps you're holding out for a movie version, in which case I fear that you may wait a long time. Or perhaps, more realistically, you're waiting for a production or even a staged reading to be mounted somewhere so you can have a chance to see it performed. Well, friends, that chance is at hand. On July 24 and 25, Annie Coburn directs a staged reading of The Sisters' Tragedy at The Tank in New York City. If you live in New York, plan to be in New York, or have just now decided to drop everything to get to New York, everything you need to know to go is in the following e-mail notice sent by Journeyman Productions. Please note that space and other restrictions mean that you need to make reservations to attend. So call! E-mail! Make reservations! Go! And then you can buy your copy. Since I'm not as comfortable with pimping myself as you might suspect, I'll let the kind folks at Journeyman Productions take it from here. Dear friends: Journeyman Productions is delighted to invite you to a benefit staged reading of its latest work, a new production of the revenge drama "The Sisters' Tragedy: An Anachronism in Five Acts" by Jeff Alexander, formerly of Prairie Home Companion and currently of the popular website televisionwithoutpity.com. Journeyman is delighted to return to the New York stage with this funny, suspenseful, intelligent new work. The staged reading is a benefit for Journeyman Productions and will be held at the Tank @ Chashama. They can be found at 208 West 37th Street, New York, NY 10018, or you can reach them at www.thetanknyc.org. The suggested donation is $10, but anything you can give is appreciated. If you wish to make a donation at the door beyond $10, it will be tax-deductible! As space is limited, please make a reservation by emailing journeymantickets@gmail.com or calling 212-928-0446 with the number of tickets you wish to reserve and the date on which you wish to come. The Sisters' Tragedy is a blank-verse takeoff of popular Restoration bloodbaths, with an homage to everything from Shakespeare to Laurel and Hardy: Four sisters are informed that their father, far from dying a hero's death in battle, was betrayed into ambush by the man who now leads the armed forces of Renaissance Siena. Three of them resolve to avenge their father's death and disguise themselves as nuns in order to gain entrance to the court, where several factions are scheming separately to gain the throne. From the lowest courtesan to the highest noble, not one character is immune from the struggle that follows. Alexander's deft touch with both comedy and blank verse ensures that the action pops along until the dramatic finale. The wordplay and swordplay will be handled by an exciting young cast including Tatiana Gomberg, Jo Williamson, and Morganne Davies as the sisters and Brian Hotaling as the heir to the throne of Siena. Veterans of the New York scene, this energetic cast are experts of the high-octane verse style that this farcical drama demands. Annie Coburn, a graduate of the William Esper Studios in New York and Oberlin College in Ohio, directs; her previous production, References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot, enjoyed a packed house at the Red Room last fall. Journeyman Productions' website can be found at www.keyfitz.org/journeyman. Please visit us there for more information. posted by M. Giant 9:28 PM 3 comments3 Comments:That's really cool, M. Giant. Congrats to everyone involved -- I wish I lived on the east coast so I could come see the show. Will there be other shows in the future?
By Congrats! I wish I could make this, and in general NYC is not out of the question, but the one fun thing I get to do for weeks on either side is already inked in... on the 23rd... in Boston. Then there's class on the morning of the 25th. I'll be rooting for you though.
By
And and and...in addition to the brave new world of New York City theater--Journeyman Productions is ALSO presenting Sisters' Tragedy at the Philly Fringe Festival at Christ Church, on the weekends of their September 2nd-17th run. At 2. SO EXCITING!
By Tuesday, July 05, 2005 Baby on Board Well, we finally put some serious miles on the baby this holiday weekend. As I've previously mentioned, we've been looking forward to taking the kid on the road, specifically to the Black Hills late this summer. So this weekend was good practice, just to see what it's like travelling with someone who has specific dietary and scatological needs that have to be met every couple of hours or so. Intervals that don't always correspond with the timing of our own needs and those of the car. We'd made the three-and-a-half hour drive to Iowa once before, back in February, but that was when he only needed a bottle every four hours or so and could sleep four hours at a stretch during the day. But those days are over, at least until his teens. So we were curious to see how he'd do on the four-hour drive to my mother-in-law's house in remotest Iowa. Put it this way: it ended up being a five-hour drive. Making things a little bit more exciting was the fact that since Minnesota's government is shut down over a budgetary pissing match, all of the state's highway rest areas are closed off as well. There are three of them between here and the Iowa state line, and at every one, there are two ranks of orange cones and barriers bearing different permutations of the message "closed." Our state tax dollars not at work. "They should make those signs clearer," I told Trash, as if they weren't visible from space. So it was a race to the Iowa line, made even more challenging by the fact that I was still seeing people getting pulled over for speeding along the way. People, if you're going to shut down the government, shut it down. If I can't get rid of my kid's poopy diaper in a publicly funded roadside facility, I should at least be allowed to get to the next state at 95 miles per hour unfettered. Is that so much to ask? So we made it to the Iowa Welcome Center without the baby waking up and wondering why he was still strapped into his car seat. When he was a few weeks old and he first started eating out of his bottle, nobody else could be in the room. He'd be too distracted by the company to concentrate on the task at hand. And then he and Trash and I found ourselves in the lobby of the first open rest area south of the Canadian border on a mid-morning of the first day of a holiday weekend, and I was thinking, thank God he got over that. And then there was another stop at a Flying J at the halfway point of our trip to gas up the car and stock up on our snacks, and a brief layover at the Wal-Mart in Indianola to pick up an item of some minor importance that I'd forgotten to pack (coughdiaperscough), and then we were pulling into my mother-in-law's driveway in time for a late lunch on Saturday afternoon. Of course, Trash was in the back seat with M. Tiny for the whole second half so as to discourage him from freaking the fuck out. Even though I have a station wagon, the back seat affords a passenger enough room to make one long for the wide-open spaces of a sealed FedEx envelope, so they weren't ideal traveling conditions for the wife. But aside from that, it was fairly uneventful. We'd survived. So why not travel another four hours the same weekend? My only surviving grandparent lives in Missouri, about three-and-a-half hours further along than Trash's mom's house. I figured, hey, we're more than halfway there, Grandma's never met him, and who knows whether she's going to make it up here any time soon? Never mind the fact that I have to be back at work on Wednesday. Pack up the kid. He's road-tested. We spent the rest of Saturday and Sunday with Trash's mom and those of her relatives who could join us for a cookout, and then we lit out for parts south the next morning, the Fourth of July, even before our hosts were up. We got to within forty-five minutes of Grandma's house (with Trash in the backseat for most of the way again) before it was time to pull over. We were on a four-lane state highway by then, which meant no rest areas. So we got off at the next exit and pulled over in front of a gas station. I don't know why Trash didn't want to pull into the gas station, but she didn't. Probably because we weren't buying anything. She's like that. So anyway, she's sitting in the open door of the car, I've got the folded baby stroller arranged into a makeshift changing table of sorts in the hatchback, with a couple of bags out on the shoulder to make room, and she says, "There's something so Grapes of Wrath about this. Feeding the baby by the side of the road, because we're not buying gas?" Then I pointed out that the laptop we had sitting on the shoulder would probably be worth enough in Depression dollars to by the Joads' farm back, and she felt better. So we made it to Grandma's house in just over four hours, and spent roughly that amount of time with her and my aunt before turning around and doing the drive again. More on that later. posted by M. Giant 7:44 PM 6 comments 6 Comments:Damn, sounds like M. Tiny is off to a way better start than me. I'm 23 and can only survive the 3 hour drive from Winnipeg to Brandon, MB by going right the hell to sleep. In my defence, however, the entire trip is straight, with the road only turning occasionally to adjust for the curvature of the god damn Earth.
By Okay, I've been reading and enjoying Velcrometer for a few years now, and what's the thing that prompts me to delurk and comment? Why, it's a mention of the Indianola Wal-Mart! See, my grandparents are from tiny Leon in southern Iowa, and when we'd go visit them when I was a kid, we'd beg to go to the Indianola Wal-Mart. It was a day trip, an overwhelming excitement, and an event worth celebrating, because the Indianola Wal-Mart was the only store within driving distance that was bigger than my bedroom at home. Oh, the memories!
By HeeHee!! Welcome to our hell!! At least he doesn't puke repeatedly at the mention of a 4 hour trip. Yet.
By I've driven from Dallas, TX to Des Moines and back when Bean was 3 months, 7 months, and now yearly over the 4th of July. She's three and we left at 8.30am yesterday morning and got back at 8pm last night with 4 short stops. Of course, I now have the entire script of Mary Poppins memorized but it's a small price to pay.
By Yet another brilliant and hysterical post - I am so going to buy one of those cool Velcrometer shirts.
By
I am so going to buy one of those cool Velcrometer shirts.
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