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 30, 2006 Examination Room M. Small's been fighting a cold ever since we landed in New Mexico two and a half weeks ago, so Trash and I finally decided to take him to the doctor yesterday. We were glad when they put us in an examination room that's bigger than they normally do. In our experience, the examination rooms are never quite big enough. As it turns out, that's because there is no such thing as big enough. This isn't just us being first time parents, either. When we brought him in for his fifteen-month physical last winter, we remarked to the NP that he was pretty active. She was like, "Okay, good, whatever." After fifteen minutes of her only being able to talk to Trash, because I had my hands full wrangling the toddler, she realized, "Wow, you're not kidding." More bouncy than normal, is what I'm saying. I think it might be a combination of the close quarters, the unfamiliar surroundings, and the fact that he has to spend most of his appointment wearing only his diaper. Near-nudity makes anyone feel a little crazier, as any frat-party attendee will recognize. Within five minutes, he's bouncing around the room like an untied balloon, and within ten, he's got his hands wrapped around the door handle, repeating, "Open it! Pleeeease!" so he can go wreak more havoc in the hallway. The first thing he did yesterday was crawl into the cabinet under the sink. It was completely empty, so it's not like he was going to ingest anything. We figured the worst thing that would happen would be that he'd bump his head on the pipes, which might at least slow him down for three or four seconds. After a minute though, he crawled back out and ran over to the examination table to play with the stirrups. I tell you, I've learned more about how those things work in the past two years than I had in my whole life. Have they always been there? Oh, and don't insult my intelligence by saying we just need to bring toys or books from home to keep him entertained. Doesn't work. He already knows that stuff, and like any toddler he's drawn to a) stuff he hasn't played with already, and b) stuff he isn't supposed to play with. So basically, the Holy Grail in these rooms is the otoscope. Thus it falls to us to distract him with the other crap in there. A tongue depressor is good. All fifty, he assures us, would be much better. Same deal with those really long q-tips. But the biggest item isn't always available. Generally, when we go to urgent care, we go to the one in Golden Valley instead of the one near our house. The wait there tends to be about a third as long. Even better, they have something that the one near us doesn't have: latex gloves in the examination rooms. Think back to the first time you saw Howie Mandel blow up a rubber glove, and how goddamn hysterical that was. Now imagine you were two at the time, and the height of sophisticated comedy was pretending to sneeze. This may give you some idea of how vital these things are to keeping M. Small happy in the examination room. Trash tied one off and let him bat it around, a balloon with fingers and a thumb. At least until he bit it and said, "What happened?" After we blew up a half-dozen or so, Trash told me to quit it so we didn't get in trouble. We threw away the gloves, and let M. Small crawl back under the sink. Where he began splashing merrily in the large puddle he found there. Yes, I don't know how he did it, but he somehow caused a leak under the sink. Trash pulled him out and entertained him with more glove-balloons for a couple of minutes while I turned off the drip and sopped up the mess with fifty or so paper towels. The advantage of this was that the wet paper covered up all the gloves we'd thrown in there. Surprisingly, I got finished before the doctor came in. He took a look, told us we'd caught it in time, and wrote a prescription, so M. Small is fine. Or at least he will as long as that sink doesn't start leaking again and they figure out it was him. posted by M. Giant 9:43 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:
Oh, for the love of all that is right and holy, WHY WHY WHY do they hang the damn otoscope from the wall directly above the exam table, WHERE THE SMALL CHILDREN MUST SIT FOR ENDLESS MINUTES WITH NOTHING TO ENTERTAIN THEM WHILST WAITING FOR THEIR ETERNALLY LATE DOCTORS???? The office we go to most often even has a sign above the stupid thing warning parents to not let their children play with the instruments. THEN MOVE THEM, YOU ALLEGED "PEDIATRIC PROFESSIONALS" WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER!!!!
By
My cat does the exact same thing at the vet's. When he was a kitten, it took two people just to hold him down for his shots. It got to the point where the assistants automatically come into the room when they see him on the schedule. When they aren't holding him down, he'll be crawling under the exam table, ripping apart boxes of supplies, and trying to tear down the door. It would be embarrassing but everyone thinks it's hysterical.
By My sister designated one of those bead/wire frame toys specifically for doctors' visits and never let her two kids see or play with them at home. It provided at least five or ten minutes of distraction, guaranteed.
By Saturday, October 28, 2006 Getting Warmer Thanks to all of you who made donations to our Donors Choose challenge. We couldn't have done it without you. Seriously, we couldn't. We've got this big home project going on, so we really couldn't have afforded to pick up the slack ourselves. Trash and I are grateful, and so are the kids and teachers for whom you helped get books. * * * We have this bad habit of sleeping a bit later than we're strictly supposed to. We're supposed to get up at 7:00 a.m. on weekdays. But whether we set the alarms (yes, that's a plural) for 7:00, 6:55, 6:30, or 5:15, it's a very good chance that we'll still be in bed at 7:20. This wasn't so bad when we only had to get ourselves ready, but now that there's a third person in the house who can't even dress himself, things go a little bit slower when we're trying to get out of here. Fortunately, the construction guys working on our home remodeling project aren't nearly the sluggards we are. They're not only up and ready to go before we are, they're here before we're even awake, more often than not. Nothing makes you feel guiltier about being white-collar than answering the door, bleary-eyed and in your bathrobe, for the skilled laborers who are here to make your house better today. Things have been going slow on the project for the past couple of weeks, but that's not the crew's fault. It's the inspection requirements. Minneapolis is notorious for making people wait on all the various inspections that had to be gotten out of the way before our guys could proceed with all the post-framing stuff. Wiring inspections, plumbing inspections, HVAC inspections, framing inspections, and I think an inspection of all the inspections. Things moved a little faster this week. How fast? We let the crew in when we got up on Monday morning, and twenty minutes later, the ceiling in M. Small's bedroom was already insulated. Interesting thing about insulation. While we were waiting for these visits by certain individuals whose salaries are paid by our taxes, we began to get a bit concerned. It's been getting colder outside, and not a lot of heat had been making its way up the stairs. Was the new ductwork going to cut it? Would it be warm enough for all of us to sleep up there, as is the current plan? Sure, the insulation wasn't in yet, but how much difference could it possibly make? We found out when we got home that evening. The first thing we did was go upstairs. I left my coat on, because it's been pretty chilly up there as of late. Not that day. The entire upper floor was swaddled in a layer of fiberglass and plastic, which functioned like a stack of warm blankets. Except blankets that would make you really itchy if you actually tried to sleep under them. It was so warm up there it was stifling. After we went downstairs, we discovered that the guys had somehow bumped the thermostat while schlepping sheets of drywall up the stairs. It was 84 degrees in our house. But clearly the insulation really works, because it stayed that temperature all evening. Not much else happened this week with the project. Except, of course for an unrelated, spur-of the moment thing we had them do, which was to punch a hole from the living room to M. Small's current room and install a pair of French doors. That's an entirely different thing, though. Anyway, pictures.  The aforementioned ceiling. Doesn't it look warm and cozy, in a totally toxic way?  M. Small's future playroom looks like a plastic-and-fiberglass womb. Which makes me glad they used yellow insulation instead of pink. That would have been too weird.  The only interior walls currently in place are the shower surround. You want privacy up there, that's where you go. By the way, this was taken through our bedroom wall.  And that's what our interior walls look like now. We're told the sheetrock going to be put up next week, which is good because our friends BuenaOnda and English are coming up for a short visit this coming week, and we don't have anywhere else to put them up for the night except the construction zone. Perhaps walls, even unpainted ones, will make things a little more homey for them as they sleep on an air mattress. At least they'll be warm now. posted by M. Giant 8:00 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:
M. Small's room looks like the inside of the ship from 2001: A Space Odyssey. If you leave it that way, maybe he'll grow up to be an astronaut :P
By Heidi - are you nuts? DOn't tempt him, or M. Giant will do just that, and then I will have this strange, plastic-bubble room in my house.
By Wednesday, October 25, 2006 First Flight When people heard we were going to be bringing M. Small on his first plane ride, we got any number of helpful suggestions. Coloring books. Stickers. Toys. Snacks. A portable DVD player. Preprinted letters of apology with enough copies for all of our fellow passengers. We admit that we haven't always been big fans of noisy babies and toddlers on airplanes; that's one of the perks of being childless. In the past two years, however, we've been a lot more understanding when we found ourselves on a flight with a little one who didn't care for the popping ears, or the close quarters, or the not being allowed to go outside for as long as two hours. We always think, that could just as easily be our kid. Except that we always leave him at home when we fly, either with the other parent or his grandparents. Until now. Once we were committed, the big discussion was whether to bring his car seat on board the plane, or just strap him directly to his seat and hope for the best. The ride to the airport settled that, when he found himself in a car seat designed for someone a little older, and used that as license to try to sit up and climb out. So that was a vote in favor of his regular car seat: not only is it cozy for long periods of time, it's also a very effective restraint system. On the plane, we had a row of three seats to ourselves. The second-to-last row, as it happens. Trash wanted to put him in the middle, so we could both reach him and talk to him and what not. I've never put a car seat in an airplane before, so it took me a couple of minutes, during which I took back every mean thing my formerly childless self ever said about people with small children being allowed to board planes first. Finally, the car seat was firmly strapped into the middle seat, with the toddler comfortably ensconced inside it, me on his left in the window seat, and Trash on his right on the aisle. Then the flight attendant, who had watched me struggle with it in the first place, came to tell us that the car seat was going to have to be in the window seat. Something about my not having to clamber over it should the aircraft crashing into something and becoming an infernal deathtrap from which escape will be a dicey proposition anyway. So M. Small got the window and I got the middle. I thought he'd be fascinated by the window, and I was right. Except it wasn't so much the view, as the ability to slide the plastic shade up and down from where he was sitting. "Open it!" he'd say, and open it. "Close it!" he'd say, and close it. He'd demand that I turn the reading lights on and off, as well as open and close the air nozzle pointing at him, which he assumed was a fan. Plus he gave quite a workout to the new question he had learned that week, which was, of course, "What's that?" I think I explained the purpose of the "No Smoking" sign a dozen times. He was glad to know that there would be "no fire." And this was before we even took off. We all know how tedious it is to sit on the tarmac, waiting for your flight's turn to take off. Try being a two-year-old who doesn't even understand why the car he's in always stops at red lights. "GO!" he kept yelling at the front of the cabin. Finally, when our turn came and we were hurtling along the runway and then the ground was dropping away from us, it was all worth it for his first look out the window. "Trucks!" he announced. He was fairly well behaved on the actual flight, although I had my hands full trying to physically prevent him from kicking the seat in front of him. I'm sorry to say I only succeeded about two-thirds of the time (sorry, 20A!) Trash wanted to keep him too busy to get into trouble, but I was more inclined to stretch out the entertainment options for as long as possible. One little Cars sticker was good for about ten minutes. Needless to say, the portable DVD player never even made it out of its carrying case, which made me glad we'd borrowed one instead of buying. Eventually he fell asleep. After a couple of hours he woke up and asked me to raise the windowshade. Now, I knew this kid must be used to waking up disoriented -- I can't tell you how many times he's woken up in his crib when his last conscious memory was riding in the car. But when he looked out the window and saw the arid mountains and scrub farms of the Southwest instead of the pastoral flatness of the Midwest, I could tell it threw him a bit. The final approach was quite turbulent, so we calmed him by calling it an "M-Quake," which has been our word for gently bouncing him up and down on the bed since he was three months old. I'm not sure it made a difference. I do know that as soon as the plane came to a stop at the gate, he was demanding to "get out!" That's my boy. By the time we boarded our return flight four days later, he was an old hand. He waited until we got above the first layer of clouds, then turned his head to the side and shut down until we were ten minutes out of Minneapolis-St. Paul. It was a quiet landing, the kind of quiet where everyone in the cabin can feel a wicked crosswind just when we're right over the Minnesota River. We touched ground, bounced, and slowed to taxiing speed. "Yaaay!" M. Small crowed, applauding. Twenty rows of passengers laughed. I don't know what we were so worried about. We have to get that kid a frequent flyer account. And a car seat with wheels, because that thing he flies in now is a bitch. posted by M. Giant 10:16 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:We found that the best way to deal with unwieldy car seats with out two kids was to by a couple $15 luggage carts and strap the car seats to it with a couple bungie cords. It also makes for a fun ride through the airport for the kids.
By I bought a great set of wheels that attach to our Britax carseat: it's called GoGoKidz (one link at http://www.elitecarseats.com/Gogo-Kidz-Universal-Travelmate.pro). I wheel the kid around like he's a piece of luggage! I've seen similar things for other seats.
By Saturday, October 21, 2006 Birthday Balloons Normally, I don't get up at five in the morning unless it's to catch a plane, or to go into the nursery and stick a pacifier into my son's wailing mouth. And either way, I strive to be asleep again as soon as possible. But M. Small's birthday isn't a normal day. When our friends invited us out to Albuquerque to stay with them and check out the Balloon Fiesta, they waited until we were safely on the ground in New Mexico to inform us that if you want to catch the good stuff, you have to get there at six in the morning. "What the hell kind of public spectacle is that?" I demanded. "If I wanted to get up that early to go to an event I'd be a fishing fan." But they knew what they were talking about. There's a road that runs between the eastern edge of Albuquerque and the Sandia Peak, a range of mountains several miles long. This was our route to Balloon Fiesta Park. As we were driving north along this road in stygian predawn, I happened to look over to our left, where something was lighting up down the hill. Something big. The first official event of the Balloon Fiesta (at least this morning), was the Dawn Patrol. I realize that the name makes it sound like somebody's going to get shot down, but all it means is that the first balloons of the day take off. And if you've never seen a hot air balloon going up in full darkness (which you probably haven't, since ballooning is generally considered a daytime pursuit), you don't realize until you see it how the envelope diffuses the light from the burners, like the world's largest soft white light bulb. By the time we reached the Fiesta grounds, several more had taken off, looking like slow-moving flashbulbs in zero gravity. We all got breakfast burritos at a stand (and a sweet roll for M. Small, who was being quite the culinary prima donna this trip) and waited for what came next. Which had something to do with this:  Unlike most balloon events, this one allows spectators to go right down onto the field and mill about among the balloons. Somehow they find room for thousands of civilians and acres of deflated nylon to spread out comfortably at the same time. M. Small wanted to explore, because that's what he does, and Trash and I took turns chasing him and carrying him around the area our group had staked out for ourselves. The sky got light. At some point, the sun came up over Sandia Peak, but I don't know exactly when because my view of it was blocked by this:  Did I mention we were there on "special shapes" day? When you're the biggest ballooning event in the world, you have to stand out. So the morning we were there was dedicated to what's called a "mass ascension" of balloons in any number of shapes and designs. We thought we'd be able to spot them one by one. We were wrong. One minute there was nothing but a sea of human heads as far as you could see, and the next the landscape was becoming tumescent with colorful mounds of fabric in every direction. "Isn't this exciting?" we asked M. Small. He was reserving judgment. But he seemed suspicious.  Then they started standing up. Trash and I were quickly at how fast these huge things just pop erect once they become inflated. It's such an amazing sight that at the time you don't even think of how dirty that is. Finally, the balloon next to us arose to tower over our heads, the biggest bunch of chili peppers in the world.  We checked M. Small's reaction. "Scary," he mumbled. I suppose it's a little overwhelming. You're small to begin with, and it's a big world, and the next thing you know you're surrounded by this ridiculous yet awe-inspiring edifices, all of which are belching propane flames at regular intervals. It's like Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade meets the Fire Swamp. But a few minutes after that, it was all better, because they weren't around us any more. They were up in the air. I'm going to shut up now, mostly, and show you some more pictures.    They say that the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta is the most photographed event in the world. Amazingly, this was true even before I went to it. On the way out, in the car, M. Small preferred the balloons at a safe distance. Except he was kind of giving mixed signals. "Touch the balloon," he kept saying, reaching one hand towards the window. So we decided to bring him back the next evening. More on that later. posted by M. Giant 8:11 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Thursday, October 19, 2006 Terminal Cuteness Want to be the one who closes out our Donors Choose challenge by pushing us that last little bit to the goal? Better hurry, or someone else is going to do it, and then nobody will realize how cool you are. * * * Whenever we’re outside and an airplane flies overhead (which is pretty frequently, as we’re directly under the approach vector to MSP’s Runway 1-2), M. Small always stops what he’s doing, points at the sky and announces, “Plane!” Sometimes he’ll change it up a bit and say, “Airplane!” It all depends on how garrulous he’s feeling at that particular moment. A couple of weeks ago, we started responding, “Would you like to ride in a plane?” “Yeah,” M. Small would say. “[I want to] Go in it!” Last week, he finally got his chance. We’d been putting off flying with him for a while. We always had excuses not to put him on a plane. “He’s so active and noisy.” Before that, it was, “He hates being in his car seat that long.” Before that, it was, “His feedings are too close together.” Before that, it was, “His immune system is still developing,” and before that, it was, “If we disconnect him from the machines, he might die.” Always something. When we finally accepted our friends’ invitation to come to Albuquerque for the Balloon Fiesta, we had a decision to make. Buy him a seat, or don’t buy him a seat? The rule is that children two years and under can ride in a parent’s lap. But his second birthday was going to fall on one of the days we were out of town. I know it’s not uncommon to buy a one-way return ticket for an adopted child, but that doesn’t usually happen two years after the adoption was final. Trash and I both gave some thought to what it would be like holding a squirming, bitching bundle of hyperactive claustrophobia in our laps for three hours inside a sealed metal tube. Best nine thousand dollars we ever spent, getting him his own seat. Wednesday morning was a smorgasbord of excitement. There was the ride to the airport in the back of Trash’s stepmom’s car. He’s been to the airport a few times to pick up one or both of us (leaving him the keys is so much cheaper than a cab or parking), but has never actually entered the terminal before. He got to ride on a luggage cart (which now costs $3.00 to rent, instead of the $1.50 it cost last time I looked, but the deposit? Still only a quarter), go through security, and have a heart second breakfast at the McDonald’s in the concourse while saying “Hi!” to the nine million people who walked past. Then he got to ride on the moving walkway, which of course we had to return to once he’d been liberated from the luggage cart. It was like an amusement park ride to him, until I let him run ahead of me and he reached the end and faceplanted onto the grate. Now those recorded “Caution: you are reaching the end of the moving walk” don’t seem so silly to me; just age-inappropriate. The should really say, "Slow down, little dude!" There was also the large replica airplane hanging from the ceiling near our gate for him to admire, and another thousand people to say "Hi!" to, and the giant floor-to-ceiling windows at the gate, through which he could gaze out and behold the glorious spectacle of… Luggage trucks. This is what fascinated him. They look like trucks, but some of them have three trailers behind them, so are they actually trains? What a conundrum. Oh, and then there was the jetway door. Somehow he was able to make the connection that the door behind the ticket podium leads into the jetway, which in turn leads to the plane. "[I want to] go in it!" he kept insisting. "Go in the plane!" Except a) we weren't boarding yet, and b) our plane hadn't actually arrived. But he didn't care; even a jetway with the end hanging out in space was better than nothing. Eventually, of course, our plane arrived, and after a few more moving walk rides, a diaper change, and a minor meltdown, we all got on the plane. Which is a whole other entry. posted by M. Giant 7:56 PM 5 comments 5 Comments:We took our daughter on a plane when she was 9 months old. We didn't buy her a seat. Huge mistake. On the way down she was OK but then entire flight home was one temper tantrum after another. It didn't help that it was after her bed time and she has a weird aversion to being held anyway.
By My niece's first plane ride was to visit grandma on the opposite coast. We all thought she had a pretty good grasp of the situation until she announced she was going to sit next to grandma on the plane.
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My first plane ride was when my parents took me, aged 18 months, and my sister, aged four, on an intercontinental flight to emigrate to a country none of us had ever seen.
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Flying with kids is fun. I know you and Trash will look back on these experiences with fondness.
By I understand the fascination with moving sidewalks. We recently had a 90-minute layover in Newark and I spent about two-thirds of it following my 18-month old son up and down the walkways... and every time I passed a woman going the other way with her son. They're definitely kid magnets.
By Monday, October 16, 2006 Unfrozen Assets Well, the good news was that I didn’t have to defrost the chest freezer. I don’t know if it’s the cats, or if it has something to do with the remodeling, but our freezer downstairs has come unplugged a couple of times in the past few weeks. The first time wasn’t so bad. While looking for stuff for Trash to make into the week’s lunches one Sunday I discovered that the items within weren’t so much in deep freeze as deep refrigeration. Sure enough, the plug had come out of the wall. It must have happened the day before, because everything was still pretty cold. The frozen pizzas had gotten soft, but we threw them all in the oven and I had them for lunch that week. Minimal harm done, plus not so much cooking needed. The situation was less positive when I went down for the same errand last night. I’m used to seeing a layer of frost and a wisp of fog when I open the freezer lid. Not shiny inner walls and a powerful whiff of what smelled like beer left open at room temperature for three weeks. So yes, not only had the plug come out of the wall again, it had actually broken in the process. Two of the prongs were twisted and the third, the ground prong, had snapped clean off and was still sticking out of the outlet. As before, I was at a loss as to how this had happened. But this time, wrestling with that conundrum was basically my way of putting off dealing with the problem at hand, specifically, how much of what was in the freezer was salvageable, and how I was going to deal with the rest of it. Trash was still working on that night’s dinner and the week’s lunches upstairs, and M. Small hadn’t gone to bed yet, so there wasn’t much I could do for now except close the freezer lid to prevent the smell of spoiling chicken, steak, hot dogs, and pizza from settling into everything in the basement (which, thanks to the current remodel, represents about 75% of everything we own – including all of our clothes and bedding). After M. Small went to bed, I went to work, double-bagging sickly-soft packages of food while the smell got stronger with each layer I excavated. Finally there was nothing left in there but an inch or so of pink water that smelled like a crime scene. Looking back, I now realize that I should have been grateful that it was a) still pink and b) still water. God knows what I would have found in another week or two. Even so, it was a gagworthy task extracting that noisome organic slurry into an empty kittly litter bucket with a mechanical sponge mop (which I threw away afterwards, because I don’t need it to continue stinking up the basement where we sleep). Then I wiped out the inside of the freezer with dish soap and bleach and plugged the remaining two surviving electrical prongs back into the wall, and took a shower. Even after which, I wasn’t able to attack my delayed dinner with as much gusto as Trash might have liked. She came downstairs after I was done, and commented on the fact that if the smell was still present now, it must have been unbearable before. She even suggested bringing Phantom down to freshen things up a bit. It wasn’t quite as bas as the smell we slept over that one night in Austin, but it still necessitated lighting some candles and incense. About sixty pounds of stinky food and an even stinkier sponge mop spent the night by our curb. Fortunately, garbage day was today. One more thing to be grateful for. See, I'm all about the bright side. posted by M. Giant 6:46 PM 6 comments 6 Comments:Okay now I am freaking out...guess what? Our freezer came unplugged too....we don't have cats so it must be the remodel. I applaud you for cleaning yours out....we just plugged it back in to refreeze everything and will empty it when we get back into our house. I know...gross!
By Oh, been there, done that. Talk about nasty! I can't blame a remodel or our 3 cats for this, but I can blame the electrician who came to do some re-wiring, unplugged the freezer to use the plug for some of his stuff and FORGOT to replug it in. We didn't discover it until 2 weeks later (good seal on my freezer I guess). I had to dive head first into it cause the better half threatened to barf and had to leave the house while I was working. I seriously considered looking for a crime scene clean-up company for the job. So much for the steaks, spareribs, turkey, etc. that died a nasty horrible death. I don't even want to think about how much money we lost in thrown away food.
By Sooooo... was it the cats?
By Bad luck! In NZ you can sometimes claim for this on your home and contents insurance. Can you do this in the US?
By I have a serious gag reflex, so when our freezer broke I had to ask my darling wife to clean it out. She lasted 10 minutes before we hauled the whole thing out to the trash and left it - food and all. Gross.
By Okay, so wait, am I being dense or do you still have a busted plug, with no working ground? Dude, speaking of ground, burning your new remodel to it would SUUUUCK.
By Tuesday, October 10, 2006 Get a Half-Life Thanks to all of you who have already donated to our Donors Choose challenge. We're at 60% as of now, which means 40% of the kids we're trying to get books for are doomed to a life of illiteracy and crime unless you step up. * * * Sometimes I help Trash get to sleep at night by talking to her about stuff she isn't remotely interested in. For example, I played a little Half-Life 2 the other night before going to bed, and I thought I'd let her know how it was going. "See, me and my guys are getting ready to storm the Citadel where the bad guys are holding the lead scientist of the Resistance. We're making our way up this collapsed highway tunnel, and the bad guys start dropping in all these--" "Are you about to give me nightmares?*" she asked. I paused. I had been about to tell her about the swarms of Manhacks that were attacking me. Manhacks are basically flying Skilsaws that swoop right at your face. They're especially effective in close quarters, where they bounce back at you off the walls and have this nasty tendency to make you and your allies shoot each other. "…Bunnies," I said. "Bunnies and butterflies." "Really." "And they're just so cute that we all have to stop and pet them and give them love. It's diabolical, really." "Why would they do that?" "To delay our approach to the Citadel, so they can be ready when we get there." "And that will involve?" I could have told her about the welcome that the bad guys probably have planned for me and my squad. Most likely platoons of heavily armed, trans-human guards, screaming headcrabs, flaming zombies, landmines, tripwires, chemical/electrical/nuclear/structural booby traps, and giant barnacles with Krazy-Glue tongues that haul you up to the ceiling and then vomit out your ribcage and pelvis a few seconds later. "A buffet," I explained. "With lots and lots of ice cream." "Those bastards." * Trash doesn't normally tell me about her nightmares. Except a few weeks ago, I was emerging from a bad dream about self-replicating killer robots, just in time to realize that Trash was having a night terror of her own. "Snakes," she said when she'd woken up enough. "Cylons," I responded. See? Even in my nightmares I'm a dork. posted by M. Giant 9:37 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:Wow - my hubby does the exact same thing for me... Sometimes when he's about to tell me about the latest Nintendo Wii news, I ask him to "save it for the bedroom." Ahh the romantic life we lead.
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My husband and I do that too! Except *he* talks about comic books.
By Friday, October 06, 2006 Doubting Pah-muss M. Small has a stuffed hippo that we thought he was calling Thomas. "Hi, Thomas. What's wrong, Thomas?" he'd say. "It's okay." And then he'd give it a kiss and a hug and say, "Luh veeyoo." Wonder where he picked that up. Actually, we were wondering why he was calling a hippo Thomas. He's already got one Thomas in his life -- a creepy, semi-animated tank engine. It's not that he can't keep things straight when they have the same name. For instance, he knows the difference between a turtle and our cat Turtle, and he knows the difference between at least three people with the same first name. But those things were all named by someone else, so that doesn't explain why he would recycle a familiar name on his own. We were failing to take into account the fact that he's still not completely on top of his T's, K's, and P's. It wasn't until this week that we realized he wasn't calling his hippo Thomas, but "Pah-muss," a contraction of the last three syllables of "hippopotamus." And then it all made sense. Wait, what? No, it didn't. What kind of child would rather undertake to pronounce "hippopotamus" than simply "hippo" before his second birthday? Well, probably the kind who's sat through several hundred readings of Not the Hippopotamus by Sandra Boynton. And he has sat through them, willingly. That and any number of readings of any number of other books that his mom and I memorized long ago. We never have to talk him into reading. He brings books to us. It's not like we have to read him Goodnight Moon with one knee on his chest at bedtime. The knee doesn't come into play until he's actually in his crib. So because his second birthday's coming up next week, Trash and I thought it would be a good time to set up a Donors Choose challenge in honor of his love of reading. Of course, he loves other things, but we had trouble finding any Donors Choose projects centered around ice cream and tickling. So click on the link at the right. We're shooting for a fairly modest $1000. I asked Trash how much we need to collect before I shave my head, but she shot that right down. posted by M. Giant 8:49 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Wednesday, October 04, 2006 Remodel Home It's been six weeks since our remodeling project started. The first week went pretty quickly. You've already seen pictures from day one. Here's day two:  Trash always said her closet was too small. It used to be behind this wall. And then the sky was. Unlimited space, but it was hard to hang things up.  A more comprehensive view. Half of our roof has been torn off and temporarily replaced with plastic sheeting. This was done on purpose.  The view from the back yard. No fancy barbecues this month, obviously.  By day three, we had a new east wall. The big windows were a nice surprise.  By day four, we had a new ceiling. Note the Tyvek in the gap between the old roof line and the new roof line (in case you're not well-versed in construction lingo, you can tell the Tyvek because it says "Tyvek" on it).  Day five, at which point the gap between the roof lines had been built in. Trash approves. She doesn't even know in this picture that in two days, we're going to have a giant rainstorm and it's still going to be bone-dry in there.  The view out what will be M. Small's window. I've since trimmed the branches nearest the windows so he doesn't get any funny ideas.  The framing of the inner walls happened early the next week. I didn't get any shots of that, so the recent one above will have to do. This shot is from M. Small's new room, looking through the bathroom and into our new bedroom. We've been assured that you won't always be able to do that.  There were several days where nothing visible happened, because we were waiting on stuff like plumbing and wiring. This is going to be the bathroom wall. I keep being disappointed that I can't step between the studs any more.  This used to be inaccessible attic space. It was going to be my new upstairs office, but then the guys opened it up and we all remembered, hey, I'm 6'2". There's room for me, my desk, my computer, and my recapping TV, but only one at a time. Not ideal. So now it's going to be M. Small's playroom instead. He loves it already. I don't know what we'll put in there when he's eleven. Maybe a drum kit. By the way, you can't tell because it's dark, but the view out the window is Keckler's old high school. Which is of course the main reason we bought this place.  Inside the playroom looking out into the hallway. Not a bad photo, considering I'm in a half-crouch. It's hard to judge these things, of course, but I think we're probably more than halfway done. The past few days, the only progress we see when we come home is a new inspector signature on the building permit taped to our front door. Our garage is full of things like light fixtures, ceiling fans, bathroom stuff, and bundles of insulation waiting to be installed. Can't wait for that stage. Wait, I just remembered -- Trash wants to clean the garage after all that stuff is out of there. Never mind, guys. Take your time. posted by M. Giant 9:18 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:I totally approve of the drum kit idea, but really you'd better put in three layers of flooring or carpet before you let anyone play drums above your head. Especially since you and Trash will be another 8 yrs older yourselves...
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I'm just sayin...
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