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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Monday, October 31, 2005 Grin and Bear It It is perfectly legitimate to dress your one-year-old son in corduroy pants. It is also a valid choice to feed him fried rice as part of his dinner. However, doing both at the same time is not a good idea. Unless you want to be prying those little grains out of the treads with your fingernails, of course. * * * As I may have mentioned before, Trash works at a company that helps people who have been laid off find new jobs. Part of what she does is teaching people how to do research and make the most out of the many resources for jobhunters and stuff like that. By the time they get to Trash, they've generally already met a consultant or two, as well as the company's psychologist, so many of them are over the worst of the shock of losing their jobs. But Trash still occasionally gets a crier in her office. Which is awkward. Although she's probably the most empathetic person I've ever met, she's not really going to work to give emotional support. Nobody ever trained her on what to do when she's in a little room with a near-stranger who starts crying. Sure, everyone knows you hug someone when they get weepy, but what if it's someone you just met? At work, no less? That's not in the manual. Which is why she came up with her own solution. Let me back up a bit. A few years ago, when she was having one of the worst months of her life, one of her coworkers gave her a little stuffed bear. The tag on the bear said, "My name is Cashew and I'm here to hug you!" Naturally, it made Trash feel better at once. Because, you know, despite everything else, she still hadn't lost her sense of humor. Cashew went immediately into Trash's office, until such time as he was again needed. Which was, of course, the very next time Trash found herself sitting across from a crying client. No awkward pause this time; she reached right into her desk drawer, pulled out Cashew, and handed him over. So now the client, who until the previous moment had been wracked with despair over the shocking turn his or her life had recently taken, was now holding a bear with the message, "My name is Cashew and I'm here to hug you!" I defy you to keep crying when you're holding something like that. You can't do it. You're too confused. So, once Cashew had done his work, Trash would gently take him back, pop him into his drawer, and continue the interview. The crying was over, of course. This worked fine for a while, until Trash's boss got wind of it. At first, she thought everyone was kidding, but once she realized this was actually going on, Cashew was quickly confiscated. Trash eventually got Cashew back, but she hasn't had to use him since. It might have to do with better screening procedures. Linda's Music Stylist had a suggestion for her, now that Cashew's been retired. He thought that maybe she should invest in a bear suit. You know, she's going over search techniques, the waterworks start, she excuses herself for a minute, and bops back in wearing a full-body bear costume, arms spread wide, booming, "My name is Cashew and I'm here to hug you!" One look at that and the client may forget how to cry for good. The only problems are: the fact that a new bear suit may be cost-prohibitive, Trash's fear of Furries, and the very real possibility that anything she orders on eBay may arrive with all sorts of weird hatches and smells. So she might just go with the bear-head. Trash's boss will be a much bigger fan of Cashew then, I'm thinking. Today's best search phrase: "Twin girls strat Nazi pop group video." You know, these days there are any number of free search engines that don't charge you by the search. If you want to look up more than one thing, you can use more than one search. posted by M. Giant 9:45 PM 10 comments 10 Comments:Maybe it's a nut allergy thing. "This bear was made in a factory containing peanuts and nuts. May contain traces of nuts. No. Seriously. Cashew is going to hug you? THAT'S nuts."
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oh god, i think that's a valid search... there are twin 13-year-olds (in florida i think) writing and singing nazi songs, it was in the sunday times over here this week. picture of the two in their hitler t-shirts and all.
By Yeah I don't get why Trash's boss thought the Cashew thing was a bad idea. How the hell else is she supposed to handle people crying in her office?! Sounds like a great solution to me...
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OK -- I was reading about Trash's worst month ever (sorry it sucked so bad, Trash) but I have to say that this is one of the most hilarious things I have ever read.
By You need to make sure Trash stays away from Vegas during the Plushie conventions then!
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I should probably explain why my boss felt it best to retire Cashew and his amazing calming powers. Most of my clients are business executives who expect a different consulting manner (read more professional) and are a little shocked and confused by the sudden appearance of a stuffed bear. Of course, the shock and confusion is what stopped the tears, so I would say it's a win-win, but perhaps that's why I am not in charge.
By Well, didn't M. Giant say that Trash's clients were just laid off? Maybe that's why they are crying. Of course, I think that Cashew is even more important if that's the case.
By Oh yes, of course there are furry conventions. The world is a wild place.
By Of course there are furries conventions (and where better than vegas, huh?). There are some photos floating around the web if you're really interested. The best part is they refer to themselves as fur-verts. How sweet is that?
By Recently my boss was being a little more obnoxious to me than usual. My co-workers empathized, since they've all gone through it. Then one of them told me, "Stop and take a deep breath," and that was the best balm in the world for me. We all need some kind of balm at some time, no matter if we're wearing business suits or casual attire. So that bear was a balm for these people. Your wife was there for them when they needed it the most.
By Wednesday, October 26, 2005 Games Parents Play M. Small and I have made up a few games. They're just temporary stopgaps, until he can reach a basketball hoop or I figure out how to hook up my computer with Trash's to play Half-Life 2 with him on a LAN (don't bet on which is going to happen first) and we can spend weekends blowing each other up. But right now, these little games we've made up are the acme of recreation for him while he lacks the understanding to know any better, and the gross and fine motor control to do anything about it. I'm not listing any of the names of these games, by the way, because I don't know what they're called. I like to let M. Small name them, but he can never seem to settle on whether a given game is called "Geegee Goodwah" or "Boowaowaowaowao." Actually, lots of things appear to be called "Boowaowaowaowao." But I digress. One of the first games we invented was before he could even crawl. I would set him on the couch or the loveseat and sit on the floor directly in front of him. Then I'd wait for him to inevitably tumble off the edge, whereupon I'd catch him in whatever rolling or somersaulting position he fell in. Which was hilarious to him, and often to me. I just wish I'd thought of it earlier, so we had a few more months before he got too good at it. Now he can just climb down by himself half the time, so I have to rig the game by putting him on the edge with his back to me so he has no choice but to topple backwards into my arms. Luckily he still thinks it's funny. He doesn't know yet that he's being cheated. Another game is one that he invented all by himself. He runs between our legs. The end. End of game. He wins. You can tell this one is his game. And then there's the game we invented tonight, totally serendipitously. He has in inflatable ball pit set up in our living room (The ball pit is a gift he got from Deniece's parents in retribution for the large, loud, cluttery gifts we shortsightedly bought for her the first couple of years of her life, with help from Trash's dad, stepmom, and sister in some kind of evil solidarity ). He also has a number of toys of more civilized size (although many are much noisier than the ball pit). Some of these smaller toys are stored in a plastic bin on one of our bookcases, which he can pull down (the bin, not the bookcase. Bookcase would be bad). Anyway, as is often the case when it's more than a few minutes into a living room play session, tonight the bin had been pulled down and spilled into the ball pit. Later he was sitting in there with the empty bin on his lap. So I began piling the little plastic balls into the bin right under his nose. Which to him was both hysterical and unacceptable, as he began laughing madly while trying to undo my efforts. Thus the game. The funny part is, we're actually kind of evenly matched. I limit myself to using one hand, putting only one ball into the bin at a time, never touching the bin itself. I have better motor skills, longer reach, and the ability to think strategically, which are my advantage. His advantage is that all he needs to do is tip the bin or shake it, and he'll easily rid himself of several balls. Not that he limits himself to that strategy. Occasionally he'll take one ball out of the bin and throw it clear out of the ball pit. That puts it out of play (his rule, not mine). The game ends when he starts laughing so hard he can't remember what he was doing, and we both win. It'll do until he's old enough for me to teach him Quidditch. posted by M. Giant 10:01 PM 8 comments 8 Comments:Baby games are great! I used to play 10 little Indians with my nephew. Yellow rubber gloves, with smiley faces on the fingers put on by a sharpie. Hold your closed fists up in front of his face and pop your fingers up one at a time while singing the song. Lots of emphasis on the numbers, while popping the finger up. He was mesmerized by it and would laugh wildly half way through or so. A favorite of my daughters was "Squish the Baby!" She was 3 when she came into our lives, so you might wait a bit on this one. I would kind of lay on her without really squishing her, and shake like the heebie-jeebies had me and yell "Squish the Baby! Squish the BABY!" She loved that. Then we switch, she jumps on me and yells "Squish the Momma, Squish the Momma!" All wiggly-giggly, giggling the whole time. Works best on a bed – great morning game.. That is a variation of a game we used to play with my little brothers called "Machine Gun Fire." It just occurred to me maybe my family is a little strange.
By Our son Clark is two, and he still plays Run Through The Legs. A favorite game like "Squish" above is when my husband and I play "Clark Sandwich!" One of us picks him up and then we hug, with Clark in between. INSANE giggles. Re: a previous post, Clark loves him some Baby Einstein too, and anybody who owns Baby Shakespeare knows what I'm talkin' about when I say "FARTING PURPLE BULL?!?" From Lisa
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My baby girl, who is only a month older than your baby boy, LOVES the build and destroy game. It's similar to the fill and empty game. She has duplo's (or mega-bloks, I'm not sure which - but giant lego's nonetheless) and a little dump truck in which they came. On top of the truck is a couple of pegs that the duplo's fit onto. So we build them up from there, just stacking away and she busts up laughing and then swipes at them, knocking them all over. If they stay together, she MUST take them apart. We have to hurry and start building them up again before she can finish un-attaching them. She cheats tho. If we get too ahead on the building, she'll leave the ones on the floor together and come back to destroy the tower. This is much fun for all.
By Two couch cushions + one baby = baby sandwich! My son loved this game, and would play it with or without us.
By My husband plays the "roll off the couch game" with our 11 month old daughter - she LOVES it. She also has a rule that no block can be stacked, anywhere. So we build hasty block towers as she crawls around knocking them down like Godzilla.
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And I thought I had the only toddler Godzilla obsessed with destroying my block buildings! My 2 year old loves Hide and Seek, too. After I hide, he'll hide, but in the exact same place I was while I'm still standing right there. And in about three seconds, before I've even finished saying, "Where is Anthony?" he's forgotten he's hiding and wanders off to do something else. But he seems to enjoy the game.
By So, where are the pictures of M. Small in his Halloween costume? He DOES have one, doesn't he? Dude, you have to show us - I bet he was so cute. Was he a chicken? We had like 20 chickens at our door this year.
By The running between the legs game made me think of what it's going to be like when he's old enough to tell jokes. Bean's joke is: "Once upon a time. THE END!!!" As a 3-year-old, she finds this hilarious.
By Monday, October 24, 2005 On my way home from work the other night, I was behind a car with a bumper sticker I couldn't read all of. All I knew for sure was that the last line consisted of these words in big red letters: "SIN CONDUCTOR." I was like, "Wow, a Sin Conductor? That guy's a Sin Conductor? That's so cool! I want to be a Sin Conductor!" I had to know more. But I couldn't make sense of it from a safe follwing distance. At the next red light, I pulled in close, looking for more clues, or at least a phone number. Alas, the sticker wasn't in English. Those of you who live and drive in cities with a larger Spanish-speaking populations than the one boasted by Minneapolis have already figured out that I was looking at the Spanish version of one of those bumper stickers that say, "In case of Rapture, this car will be without a driver." Which means that stickers with the Spanish version of "In case of Rapture, can I have your car?" can't be far behind. At first I was disappointed that there's no such thing as a Sin Conductor, at least not in English. But then I realized that that means I can invent my own meaning and become a self-styled Sin Conductor with a minimum of effort! Go me! Oh, wait. I'm married and have a kid. That won't work. Never mind. Anyone else, feel free. posted by M. Giant 4:50 PM 5 comments 5 Comments:
One of my husband's friends has personalized license plates that say "SINNER" which I've always felt was a pretty bold move for someone living in the Bible Belt.
By And would the sin conductor use a baton, or just his/her hands? Would he/she be made of metal? Would he/she take tickets on the train? So many possibilities for you...
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Chao beat me to it. I was going to say "I call out the stops on the Sin Train," but since TeslaGrrl reads this I should probably stick with "sin passes right through me, without affecting my own molecular composition in any way."
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Dudes. I'm working on it.
By Is spamming someones comments conducting a sin of some sort..?
By Thursday, October 20, 2005 Stuff It I don't consider myself a picky eater. I lost my parents right there in the first sentence. My dad's going to call me later and tell me, "I think someone hacked your blog." But it's true. I don't consider myself a picky eater. Any more. I'm the first to admit that I used to be. Food had to be just right or I wanted nothing to do with it. Maybe part of that is a child's love of routine and safety. "I don't like X" was synonymous with "I've never tried X," and there were any number of family meals that were interminably protracted by my refusal to try something new. But I don't consider myself a picky eater any more. If I go to a new restaurant, you know what I'm most likely to order? The thing with a sauce that I've never heard of. Unless there's another thing with a sauce named after the restaurant I'm at, in which case it's a foregone conclusion that that's what I'm having, and bring me some extra [name of restaurant] sauce on the side, please. Trash might say I'm still a picky eater. I disagree. Not because there are foods I don't like. Quite the contrary. There are entire wings of the food pyramid I don't like. Most fruits, most vegetables. And sushi. But that doesn't make me picky. A person with dislikes that broad can't be considered picky. "Prejudiced" might be more accurate. Never tried ugli fruit, never going to, because I know it's going to make me gag. It's the same way with you and liver cheese. You know you're not going to get along, so why let yourself in for the heartbreak? That said, I like food that most people hate. I like hospital cafeteria food. I like airplane food. I like movie-theater nachos. I like vending-machine sandwiches. A bar we used to go to had three-for-a-dollar taco night on Thursdays, which everyone loved. But I was the only one who also loved the three-for-a-dollar hamburgers you got on Mondays, and the three-for-a-dollar sloppy joes on Tuedays that had been three-for-a-dollar hamburgers the night before. (Nobody ever let me expound on my theories as to what happened to the meat between Tuesday and Thursday to complete the transformation to tacos. Everyone preferred to think the cycle began on Thursday and the hamburgers were what happened to the tacos after a long, dissolute weekend. Whatevs, Candide.) This has advantages, as you can imagine. For one, I never have to be hungry. For another, I never have to be poor, because the less I paid for what I'm shoving down my cakehole, the happier I am. So for years I've been bringing different varieties of Hot Pockets™ to work for lunch. They're ideal for my desk-dining purposes: easy, cheap, portable, microwaveable, reliable, perfectly tasty to my caveman palate, and completely untempting to would-be lunch thieves. Years I've been eating these, occasionally mixing things up with leftovers or a brace of frozen burritos or maybe a microwaveable pot pie (or a vanishingly rare lunch out). But Hot Pockets are the staple of my weekday lunch diet. And then last year, we discovered this off-brand grocery store called Aldi (another entry in itself, so remind me one day), where the Hot Pockets are called "stuffed sandwiches" and are even cheaper! Joy! Every time we go to Aldi we stack them in our quarter-deposit shopping cart and bring them home and stuff them into the upstairs and downstairs freezer, and then a few weeks later go back for more. Ideal! Except that now I can't stand the things. I know exactly what happened. I'm not blaming Aldi, because their stuffed sandwiches taste exactly as good as the name-brand product, if not better. It's because I've relied on one food item too heavily the past year, failing to include enough other things in the rotation. Trash and I don't cook for ourselves or eat out as much since M. Small was born, so there are fewer leftovers. And the Aldi stuffed sandwiches are cheaper than just about anything else, so I loaded up on those recklessly. Now I view them the way I viewed Subway sandwiches after six months of living directly above a Subway shop: gagworthy. The good news is after moving out of that place, I was quickly able to eat Subways again. So I gave myself a week and a half of from my stuffed sandwiches, but that didn't begin to dent the antipathy I feel towards them now. I tried to choke down a couple the other day, but I couldn't do it. You know how lunch is a break from work? I found myself constantly putting down my fork and turning back to work as a break from my lunch. So obviously the thing to do is start going down to the expensive restaurant in my office building for lunch every day. I'll work my way through every thirty-odd dollar item on the lunch menu until I can't stand it any more, then move on to the next. It'll be spendy in the short term, but in the long run I'll save money. Because after thirty or forty years of surf & turf, I'll be ready to greet those .89¢ stuffed sandwiches like old, really cheap friends. Today's best search phrase: "an essay for Britneys Spears' trash for fan treasure." I don't know what's more depressing: that kids can download their homework off the Internet, or that they get assignments like this. posted by M. Giant 5:40 PM 14 comments 14 Comments:Hee, Aldi! I've only ever been there once with my parents. Ours occasionally has computers and other bizarrely unexpected things for sale. And lots and lots of Amish patrons. The Amish people come to town in their horse-drawn buggies to visit Aldi and Wal-Mart. This alone makes Aldi both completely awesome and something to be avoided.
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You like airline food? That's it, I'll never come here again!
By Aldi is awesome. The Northern Irish version is called Lidl, and they're essentially the same, full of german biscuits and cheap alcohol and massive boxes of washing powder. I don't know if they do this in Aldi, but in Lidl every week they buy in a load of random crap from some wholesalers. One week it'll be hard drives, the next it'll be garden furniture, the week after that it'll be wellington boots. Anyway, they advertise it really intensively in the local papers and when the crap goes on sale people queue up to buy it, even though it's on sale in regular shops all year round. Their marketing dude must be some kind of crazy genius or something.
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I'm so with you on the big-cheap-food bandwagon.
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Oh, Aldi. I've got to go there this weekend for bananas and oatmeal and wheat bread. We love their produce and dry goods -- cheaper (and much more politically correct) than Mal-Wart and much better quality.
By Here in Germany, we have Aldi AND Lidl. woo hoo for us. But our cats like the Aldi brand cat food, so that right there is a major savings for us each month.
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We can one up you on the aldi (which is pretty sweet regardless) - we (up until a year ago) had a company called "Jaydon". No one knew what this place was, but occasionally, it would pop up on this list of "top employers" in our area. I can remember driving past it with my father since I was born and asking what it was. He always said, "I don't know".
By I once ran a bed and breakfast, and due to a contractual agreement I had to make 2 trays of lasagne twice a week for 13 weeks. That was 12 years ago and I have never made it, eaten it or wanted it again. Proof that even good food goes bad...
By I don't think we're addressing the really important issue here. You eat your Hot Pockets (or reasonable facsimile thereof) with a fork?
By Swanson $.99 Chicken Pot Pies. Delicious. I'm back on them after a 5 year hiatus.
By I heard from an anonymous source that Aldi's owns Trader Joe's. Which would explain many of the things I find odd, yet endearing, about Trader Joe's. Gosh, I guess the Aldi people really put one over on us yuppies.
By Dude! We have an Aldi in College Town, New England! I got some 'Wafferneusen' (which are awesome wafers with hazelnut and chocolate) for 79 cents. (What, does Germany have the world's supply of hazelnuts? Why do we merely toss them into old lady drinks?) Also a half-kilo of Gummi bears, for 99 cents. And they had an iPod Shuffle in a glass case for $79. If I had not read this entry, I would have been confuddled. Thanks, MG!
By I have always avoided Aldi because it looked like it would be fancy and expensive, just another Lunds - the store near my home in Richfield even shares a parking lot with Linds, I think. Now I know better, so thanks for the tip.
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Aldi's actually a fantastic German discount store, and yes, they do own Trader Joe's. Besides being a lovely market full of random inexpensive goods, they are also excellent employers, I've heard.
By Sunday, October 16, 2005 Along my commute home, there's a bar that advertises that you can come in and play something called "Bango" on Monday nights. I don't know what that is, but given the neighborhood I suspect it's Bingo with guns. * * * M. Small loves him some Baby Einstein videos. If you have a toddler or infant, you're probably already familiar with this brainchild of some bored country-club wife. M. Small has about a half-dozen or more of these. The reason he has that many is that watching the same two or three with him over and over began to make us all a little crazy. So we bought a few more to keep the rotation moving. I think that's an unspoken but vital part of the Baby Einstein business model. Once a household has one Baby Einstein video, it needs the whole set so as not to go completely yellow wallpaper on the poor kid. They're basically montages cut together from stock nature footage, crap puppetry, and what seems to be a video toy catalog, displayed over minimal narration and simplified renditions of classical music. There are also little kids frolicking through them. We're even starting to learn the names of some of these kids, because they appear over and over. We think one or more of the little ones is the daughter of the bored country-club wife in question. She's an adorable blonde moppet who's already starting to get that jaded look one gets after a certain amount of time in showbiz. Like JonBenet Ramsay might have developed had she lived to age seven. She smiles and plays and dances, but behind her eyes -- especially in the more recent ones -- there's this look like, Was that take good enough, MOM? She even has a drawing reproduced in at least one Baby Einstein board book. I hope these kids are getting a piece of the action, or will at least be sent to a really good college. Anyway, we always need more videos, because they wear so thin so fast. There's Baby Monet, all about the seasons; Baby Van Gogh, with segments about each primary and secondary color; Baby Noah, about animals, and so on. We just got Baby Neptune, whose subtitle is, appropriately enough, "Discovering Water." I've suggested to Trash that they should have a Baby Nietzche, introducing preverbal children to existential philosophy, or a Baby Machiavelli, teaching youngsters how to rule the sandbox with an iron fist; and Baby Dante, so that infants might enjoy a fun tour of Hell. I just hope that wouldn't be redundant for the daughter who has to be in all the videos. posted by M. Giant 5:34 PM 14 comments 14 Comments:You should try Classical Baby by HBO- the music is better and the folks I know with kids don't find it nearly as ...grating? commercial? no real babies, but also no real toys. It's pretty new...
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My mom just got my sister and I the first season of The Muppet Show on DVD, and while we were entertaining ourselves and reliving our childhoods watching it, my 18-month-old nephew was absolutely mesmerized by it. A nice change from Baby xxx and/or the Wiggles!
By We've got every Baby Einstein video ever created and I can honestly say that it's made our kid smarter than all of his peers. And you're right about the girl in the videos ... it's the creator's daughter. She's got two daughters in the early videos and they do look as if they're returned to their cages immediately after shooting ends. And now our boy's into Little Einstein, which is geared toward pre-schoolers. Believe me ... you've entered a marketing machine that won't stop anytime soon, pal.
By I believe it is BARgo.. at least that's what they play at the whole in the wall bar by my house. The announcers are even more annoying then regular bingo houses.
By I hear you. Our son just turned two a few weeks, and he's still way into the Baby Einstein. That and the DVD of "Stranger in the Woods," which pretty much runs on a continuous loop at our house. Wait until he starts putting the video in by himself -- then you'll get a real sense of his preferences.
By At least the Baby/Little Einstein videos use classical music - I'd rather listen to that all day than Barney's tunes, as catchy as they may be. Anyone ever watched The Big Comfy Couch? That show is actually pretty funny the first dozen times. My 2 yo niece can choose her own videos, but hasn't quite got down the concept of rewinding.
By We had a few of the Baby Einstein products - we missed Baby Machiavelli, but I think the toddler is already becoming adept at ruling on his own. Now, at age 2, he's got a huge celebrity crush on Dora the Explorer, or possible it's Boots the Monkey. I miss the cheerful little puppets and toys from Baby Einstein now, and the pretty music which grated on my ears much less than Dora's voice.
By The worst is Blue's Clues -- the original host looks like he is suicidal, and the newer host is tripping. Or do I have them flipped? In any case, just look what you have ahead of you, M. Giant. You will dream of the days of Baby Einstein.
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I agree with the commenter about moving on to Little Einstein. It just started on playhouse Disney, and I have never seen ANYTHING suck in a two year old that damn fast. One time she was just standing in front of the television all poltergeist style and I asked her to please sit in her chair. She was so zoned she just sorta squated down where she stood and remained in baseball catcher position for the next twenty minutes.
By Baby Old MacDonald is the favorite with our 14 month old. He starts waving his hands around like he's conducting. I find the later ones, like the MacDonald one, easier to sit through because they show more nature footage and the like, rather than the Spencer's Gifts advertisement the earlier ones like Baby Bach are. I believe in the credits of the early videos the girls are introduced as Aspen and Sierra. Poor things. You can see I know way more about this than I should.
By Rocky and Bullwinkle is now out on DVD. Perfect for both children and adults.
By If we've got the tv on in the house and it's before 5pm, 9 times out of 10 the digital box is tuned to Noggin. My son (1 yr) recognizes the little tune right before "And now it's time to move to the music, on Noggin" and then dances like a lunatic for the 1-2 minutes the music plays. Between that and "Jack's Big Music Show", the channel is worth it's weight in gold!
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Our three-year-old twins are hooked after one week. I decided to get them the Little Einstein video and as soon as it's finished they want more, (not that I let them). I appreciate the music though, just as an opportunity to get those Wiggles songs out of my head. It's kinda cool how they stand there and tell me the catepillar is going to change into a butterfly! They're so excited.
By If you want to watch a really great baby video series that you and your baby will love, then check out Baby Nick Jr.'s Curious Buddies. Produced by the same people who do Jack's Big Music Show on Noggin. Awesome music and very funny!
By Wednesday, October 12, 2005 I met this guy a year ago today. He wasn’t much to look at at the time, but I could see he had potential. He was so weak he couldn’t walk, stand, or sit. He had to lie around inside this plastic shell. He was all wrapped up in blankets so he couldn’t move, and the blankets had all of these wires and stuff coming out of them, and the wires were attached to all these machines that would go off if he somehow screwed up a simple task like breathing or maintaining a cardiac rhythm. At the top of his voice, he was capable of making a noise like dog’s chew toy. He slept all the time, weighed less than five pounds, and wore a dorky hat. What a difference a year makes. Now that helpless, squinty little blob of protoplasm is walking around our house, constantly trying to figure out how to get past the baby gates or into the heating vents or behind the sofa, trying to put everything in his mouth but food, laughing, babbling, pointing, and dancing. And needing a haircut. (He’s still kind of helpless, though. Ask him to open a home equity line of credit and he’ll just wander on by without looking at you.) A year ago yesterday, we were wondering how we were going to finish all the preparations that had to be done in the next seven weeks. A year ago today, prep time was over. Yes, it’s been a year, and that nearly weightless bundle of flesh is not only still alive after being in our care that long, but is many times bigger, stronger, smarter, and funnier than what we started out with. I always thought the first year of being a parent would be the hardest. So far, I’ve been right. But saying goodbye to that first year is hard too. There are things I’ll miss. Wrapping him up like a burrito with a head. Being amazed when he did something like roll over. Balancing him on one forearm. No toys lying around except the ones Trash and I took out. Knowing that what he just spit up on me is nothing but formula. Other things, I won’t miss. Driving to the hospital in St. Paul every day, sometimes twice. Not being able to drive to the hospital in St. Paul that one day. Setting the alarm for 2:30 a.m. Feedings every three hours. Going downstairs first thing in the morning and wondering if he’s still breathing. Waiting for him to raise his head, roll over, sit up, crawl, walk. Not having one earthly clue what I was doing. Last year, I met my newborn. Today, I met my one-year-old. Happy birthday, M. Small. Bring on year two!  
posted by M. Giant
9:06 PM
14 comments
14 Comments:
Aw, M. Giant. That was really sweet...it almost (almost!) makes me want to have a baby.
By Ok, the fact that the 2nd picture has a date stamp from the camera of 1/1/02 is just freaking me out. Did you take M. Small back in time and snap that picture or something? Glad he's doing so well, and you're still loving that whole parent thing. :)
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I don't have kids, but I have nephews, and M. Small is one of the cutest kids I have ever seen. Or does he just photograph well?
By Awww, so precious :)
By Happy Birthday to M. Small. I first started reading your blog right after he was born. I can't believe he's a year old already!
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i just wanted to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY M SMALL!!!!!!!!
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That was very touching. M. Small is a very lucky boy to have such a loving father... in fact, two very loving parents. I was honored to have met you all very recently (that's my daughter's hand in the 2nd photo), and I wanted to tell you that you have a very special family.
By I just read my comment again and noticed a very startling lack of distinct adverbs. So embarrassed...
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I love reading M. Giant's posts about M. Small. You can just tell that he is a great dad, and that Trash is a great mom.
By Happy BD, Little Tyke! Our guy just turned 3 in late August and is growing an average of 4" each year. Wardrobe changes happen fast.
By He's pretty darn cute. Happy Birthday M. Small!
By Happy Birthday, M. Small! What a handsome guy you have.
By You guys have so much to look forward to - year two is going to be even better and even funnier than year one, I swear. He really is a beautiful child.
By Happy Birthday M. Small! Here's to a fabulous second year!
By Tuesday, October 11, 2005 Grant This So I happened to catch a few minutes of this show called Three Wishes on Friday night. It’s a reality show where Amy Grant gets to go around granting people their greatest wish. Get it? Amy Grant? With the granting? I can only assume that they picked her because a) Cary Grant is dead, b) Eddy Grant scared the hell out of the show’s key suburbanite demographic, and c) popular Slovenian talk show host Emil Wizces (pronounced “wishes”) was unable to learn enough English in time. So Amy Grant gets to be Santa Claus. Basically, it’s Extreme Makeover: Life Edition. I hate these shows. They're just so nakedly manipulative, exploiting other people's misfortunes to get you to feel good about the network. No thanks. So anyway. Trash had this on as I happened to be passing through the room. I stopped to mock, but found myself almost immediately arrested by the drama that was unfolding on screen. It appeared that this thirteen-year-old girl was getting a big chance to sing the national anthem. At a car race. In front of 200,000 people. So when I happened by, Amy Grant – you know, sweet, harmless inoffensive (unless you used to be married to Vince Gill) Amy Grant – started “preparing” this chick, who up until then had seemed perfectly relaxed and confident. “The one think I’m slightly concerned about,” Amy Grant began, and then asked the girl if she'd ever sang with a PA that had a delay built in. Which she hadn't, so Amy Grant had to explain that there might be a really loud echo coming back at her of the note she'd been singing two seconds ago. The girl looked quite a bit less confident upon hearing that. Amy Grant then asked her what was the biggest crowd she'd ever sang in front of. She said about two hundred. Yeah, you generally don't need a delay with a crowd that size. That was the other thing Amy Grant was "slightly concerned" about. Oh, and also of "slight concern" was the fact that the girl was not going to get any chance whatsoever to make so much as a test-peep into the microphone before being expected to belt out the Anthem in full voice. Actually, what Amy Grant said was that "We won't have a chance to sing into the system until it's time to perform." When by "we" she really meant, "You, sucker!" She summed it up as follows: "Basically, we picked the worst possible venue for you to sing at." Okay, now I was on board. I was expecting some cynical tear-jerker of a show, but instead, here was a scenario as dark as any Fantasy Island episode. You know, one of those ones where Robert Reed's or Dennis Weaver's or Hugh O'Brian's fantasy was blowing up in their face in some impendingly fatal way, and Mr. Roarke would show up to rub in how completely fucked they were and then disappear when Claude Akins's or Barbi Benton's or Donny Most's back was turned. Except this was for real, and Amy Grant wasn't going anywhere, because she wasn't going to quit talking until she made this girl throw up. "I felt like I was going to throw up my breakfast," the girl said. By this point, I was sitting down. I wanted Amy Grant to keep going, though. "We're a little pressed for time, so you're going to have to sing after the race starts. Standing on the track. Go on." "We decided it's just not fair to send you out there alone, so we've hooked you up with a duet partner. I'd like you to meet Gilbert Gottfried." "Remind me to tell you some time what it's like to have your fan base turn on you." "The only thing I'm slightly concerned about is that NASCAR fans rarely leave the house unarmed." None of those things happened, though, and the girl took the stage. 200,000 race fans stood up in the bleachers as one. The girl opened her mouth, and not one sound came out. At first I thought Amy Grant had won by cursing her with some form of hysterical muteness, but then the girl waved her microphone in a way that indicated it wasn't working. "This is the BEST SHOW EVER!" I told Trash. Psyching out a thirteen-year-old girl moments before she performs in front of 200,000 people? Then sabotaging her equipment? And the backup mic too? Brilliant! I smell Emmy! They finally got her a microphone that worked -- probably from a nearby K-Mart -- and she announced to the crowd, "I think I'm ready now." The crowd cheered supportively. There was a little interview clip where the girl said she realized everyone was pulling for her, and it made her less nervous. And then she sang the National Anthem quite competently. I don't know what happened after that, because I got bored and left the minute the show got all inspirational again. You had me for a minute there, though, Three Wishes. Keep messing with the wishers like that and I just might be back. Today's best search phrase: "Make us laugh!" No. posted by M. Giant 8:28 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:Hilarious commentary. Didn't Amy Grant steal Neil away after promoting her Christian values?
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Brookings isn't really a hotbed of racial diversity.
By Thursday, October 06, 2005 I'm a pretty good cook. Or at least I used to be. I seem to remember being rather competent in the kitchen, somewhere in the swirling mists of my distant past (i.e., before fatherhood), knowing how to make things that didn't come out of a box, even throwing together full, balanced meals with every food group represented and perfectly timed. I can still do that last part, but only if at least one of the ingredients has the word "Gerber" on the label. The thing is, I don't want to spend a lot of time (i.e., two minutes) rustling up dinner for myself on nights when I'm working on a recap. And I'm not about to make Trash cook for me, what with her having her hands full with the kid because I'm, you guessed it, recapping. So this year, I've come up with a few ultra-high-speed meals. And I'd like to share them with you. They're fast, they're easy, and they're consistent in quality and nutritional value. In other words, they lack both. 1. I like my sandwiches a certain way. White or cottage bread, a few sheets of thin-sliced meat from a plastic envelope, a slab of Swiss-cheese-like extruded plasticine, mustard and mayo. The problem is, you're talking five ingredients there, and once I've made two (the number it takes to fill me up, unless I skipped lunch, in which case Pringles are called for) and done the de rigeur diagonal slice, five minutes of my life have gone down the rathole, never to return. Plus I've dirtied a plate and at least one knife. That's why I invented the rapida fajita. Lay a tortilla flat on a dinner plate, arrange a few sheets of thin-sliced meat from a plastic envelope on top of it, smear some Ranch dressing on it, and roll it up tight. Eat. Only three ingredients, and no dirty utensils. You generally need three or four of them, though, depending on how many sheets of thin-sliced meat from a plastic envelope you put on each one. You could add some cheese-like product too, I suppose, but that's starting down a rather slippery slope. 2. You've probably had fake crabmeat with cocktail sauce. Try it on Chicken in a Biscuit™ brand crackers sometime. Brings it to a whole new level, adding texture and flavor that the meat and sauce alone don't have. Plus, you're getting not one but two kinds of fake meat flavoring, which I think adds up to one whole serving of meat. Mmm, protein! I think it's about equal to the amount found in ten cat snacks. I'd list some more, but I don't have time. posted by M. Giant 9:42 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:
Wow, am I more surprised that they still make "Chicken in a Biscuit" crackers, that you mentioned them in your blog, or that my brother and I once made up a "Chicken in a Biscuit" TV commercial whilst in the back seat during one of our endless summer vacation drives. It pretty much went "Chicken in a Biscuit, Mom! Hooray!"
By Saturday, October 01, 2005 The built-in camera function indicates that I am an early adopter of cutting edge technology, if it's 2002. The fact that I've never actually used the camera function to send or download any photos indicates that I'm cheap. The internal phone directory contains numbers for people in four time zones, indicating that I am cosmopolitan and well-traveled, and also that I've spent a whole lot of time on the Internet. The fact that I know how to dial it using voice commands demonstrates that I'm quite technologically savvy, with the knowledge to make the most of the power at my fingertips. Or that my wife showed me how, one of the two. The fact that this function apparently also existed on my old phone but I never figured out how to use it shows that this one is much more user-friendly. At least I think that's what it shows. I have never used the web browser function, or downloaded any applications or custom ringtones, or anything like that. This is not because I don't know how, because I think I could figure it out. No, it's because--wait, we already covered the fact that I'm cheap, haven't we? I still can't hear a damn thing on it in my office, or in most parts of my house, which shows that I am a sucker. The fact that I got it from a wireless provider that has a store in the building where I work shows that I value convenience, that I'm a guy on the go whose every minute counts. That I don't have time to go very far out of my way on errands. It might also show that my wireless provider has a store every sixty yards in this town. I haven't actually done the surveying work on that. And the pureed squash encrusted on the antenna housing shows that I'm a dad. Well, that and the camera-phone picture of my wife and child snuggling that I use for the screen display. But you'd have to open it up to see that. I'm not going to upload it to the blog either. Why? Because I don't know how, and because I'm cheap. posted by M. Giant 9:57 PM 5 comments 5 Comments:I have a very old cell phone that doesn't even have a calculator, but I know how it works so I am keeping it.
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I had a very old one, financed by my employer. I had it for years, until it fell apart without dropping. You had to press the screen to see anything. It weighed 25 lbs. and had an antenna of half a meter. When I put it into the pocket of my jacket, it would sag to one side.
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The fact that I have a Razr means my boyfriend is a sucker.
By I have a phone that's about 6 years old. It has no extra features - none. But I've dropped it hundreds of times, left it sitting in a bag out in the rain, and even stepped on it, and it still works. I'm keeping it until they pry it from my fingers.
By Or until they tell you that the tech is out-moded and they no longer support your phone, Tanya. . . .
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