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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Tuesday, May 29, 2007 Wiped I have a confession to make. There was an occasion or two this past winter where I used the windshield wipers instead of a snow brush. I know I'm not supposed to, but some part of me figures, why do something outside the car and get snow all over myself when I could do from inside the car instead, where it's relatively warm and dry? As spring broke, I belatedly discovered why you're not supposed to do that. It's because straining against the weight of a foot and a half of snow can kind of throw off the alignment of your wipers. Or at least that's what I assumed, when the first spring rainstorm came and I drove along with the passenger-side wiper slapping hard against the bottom of the windshield and the driver-side wiper swinging out past the left edge of the car, where it was in danger of catching on an oncoming vehicle. I figured I could just hand-adjust them whenever I got to where I was going, because it's not like I was about to stop driving just because my wipers were acting goofy. It's worked plenty of times before. This time, however, it didn't work. The new, distorted arcs seemed to be permanent. It was really only bad when the wipers were on their highest setting, and I'd have to choose between driving into an opaque tsunami or putting up with that relentless hammering. Otherwise it's just an annoying thump. And then tonight, I happened to be in the car with Linda on the way home through a mild rain. Suddenly the wipers started getting all tangled up with each other. This was not ideal, because now I was trying to see the road through both a scattering of raindrops and a pair of immobile wiper blades. Then I tried to turn them off, and they disengaged from each other and started flailing around more wildly than ever. I rolled down the window and reached out to grab at something -- anything -- and eventually got a hold of a rubber wiper blade. While it was still wiggling in my hand, I pulled it inside the car and threw it in the back seat, without ever slowing down. My wipers eventually stopped at a 45-degree angle across my field of vision, the one on the passenger side now just a metal bracket resting against the glass. I felt bad because I was worried that Linda might think I wasn't interested in what she was saying as a result of this minor distraction, but she assured me that she didn't take it personally. I'm not thrilled about the timing, because next week is when I start my new job, driving by myself to work in my car instead of carpooling in Trash's like we have been for the last year. I guess I have a couple of options. The most obvious one is to get the wipers fixed, but I hate doing things that are obvious. The other is to only drive when it's not raining. That's what people who own motorcycles and convertibles with broken roofs do, right? posted by M. Giant 9:11 PM 5 comments 5 Comments:
No, people on motorcycles wear extra covering gear and sometimes take a change of clothing with them. You could do that, if you wanted to stick your head out the window to see instead.
By If you put Rain-X on your windshield every couple months you don't even really need wipers. It's great stuff. You only need wipers if it's "misting."
By I've found that Rain-X doesn't work in the Midwest, especially during the summer months. The bugs stick to it.
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M. Giant was nice enough to leave out the part where I laughed hysterically the whole time, which was pretty rude of me.
By So that's why my wipers got tangled up like spaghetti during that downpour last year? I always knew my laziness would bite me in the butt someday.
By Saturday, May 26, 2007 28 Amazing Weeks Later Caution: 28 Weeks Later spoilers below! I saw 28 Weeks Later last night. It was pretty good – I have yet to see a zombie movie I didn't like – but I thought this one was a little too…what's the word? Touristy. I had actually read something to this effect in a review somewhere beforehand, but I thought I would be able to ignore it. I was wrong. As soon as the prologue is over and the action moves into London, it's one loving aerial shot of the city after another. Look, kids! There's the Eye of London! The Millennium Dome! Tower Bridge! That giant plaid phallus! Zombie movies are almost by necessity a pastiche of past films, but National Lampoon's European Vacation shouldn't be one of them. Big Ben! Parliament! And it's not any different on the ground. It's like the director is so excited to be in London, and he wants to show us everything. Travelogue scenes like the sequence where Tammy and Andy steal a pizza delivery scooter and drive around looking at everything go on way too long. And I'm not sure that getting from the Isle of Dogs to Regents Park actually requires cutting through the West End Theatre District, but this movie would have you believe that it does. And that mournful close-up shot of Admiral Nelson's bronze face reflecting the firebombing as he watches from atop his Column in Trafalgar Square? Silly. It was when the ragtag band of survivors had to go to Regents Park and then to Wembley Stadium for no clear reason that I realized: 28 Weeks Later is a London-based leg of The Amazing Race with zombies. And if everything is better with zombies (and of course, everything is), imagine how much better something that already has zombies would be with elements of a game show. Starting with the theme song (with apologies to Miss Alli): "Jump! In! Bed! Dad left your mum! For! Dead! Though somehow she! Survived! You won't know she's! Alive! Photograph! Makes you do something daft! You'll find your mum! Immune…Dad's dumb…He will…kiss Mum…become…Mindless mass! But he'll still stalk! Your! Ass! Infected! [CHOMP.]" And then all of those city shots? If you were to fast-forward through them (and try to ignore the rooftop snipers), it would be like the beginning of a episode, lacking only Phil Keoghan's narration: "This is London. The epicenter of a horrific plague that awll but wiped out the entire population of mainland Britain, it is being gradually repopulated now that the Rage virus is foolishly believed to have died out. It's also the first pit stop in a raceforyourlives." It'll need a little re-editing, of course, because it has an excessive focus on certain teams. After the early elimination of Geoff & Sally (Married 50 years) and Jacob & Karen (Accidental housemates), Don & Alice (Married parents) are quickly disqualified when Don abandons Alice to a mob of Infected. Yet he continues to haunt the movie, even when the focus has clearly shifted to Tammy & Andy (Siblings|Possible key to a Rage cure). Doyle & Scarlet (Soldiers) get a fair amount of screen time thanks to their long-lasting alliance with Tammy & Andy. Phil could help explain what's going on in scenes like this one: "A Detour is a choice between two taahsks, each with its own pros and cons. In this Detour, teams must choose between 'Shot' and 'Smoked.' In 'Shot,' teams must sprint across an open street and out of Sector One while sharpshooters on an adjacent rooftop try to take them down. In 'Smoked,' teams will attempt to withstand the extreme heat of the concentrated firebombing that is scheduled to commence in four minutes. Remaining under cover is less physically demanding. But. Being subjected to two-thousand-degree temperatures that will incinerate them alive? May be uncomfortable." The fact that Doyle & Scarlet are eliminated well before reaching the Finish Line defuses some of the tension of the final moments of the race. Andy & Tammy should be sprinting to the mat. But instead of Phil, they have Michael from Lost pointing an assault rifle at them, and instead of a mat, they have a U.S. Army helicopter waiting to take them over the channel to France. They also don't have the other eliminated teams waiting for them at the Finish Line, but since this is a zombie movie, that would be bad. Conversely, maybe The Amazing Race could learn something from 28 Weeks Later. For instance, the idea of having eliminated racers pursuing teams and attempting to sabotage them is interesting. Why just sequester them for the duration? You could motivate their continued participation by offering them a share of the $1 million prize. Can you imagine the psychological effect on racers? The only thing scarier than having your steps dogged by a murderous, red-eyed, snarling, blood-spewing version of your own father would be getting pursued by Mirna or Jonathan. I'm not actually sure how the logistics of that would work, though, so I leave it up to the show's producers. Maybe it would be too hard to work out. In which case, I'd be satisfied with the simple addition of rooftop snipers. posted by M. Giant 7:29 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:I'm laughing too hard to breathe right now.
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Actually, going from the Isle of Dogs to Regent's Park can take you through the West End - it's not the only way to go, of course, but it's not entirely implausible.
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I've always felt that there are very few movies that couldn't stand the addition of ninjas to get things going. Imagine Ghost with ninjas! But Ghost with zombies? And zombie ghosts? Dude, *that's* a movie!
By That was so funny! I haven't seen it, though I loved 28 Days Later and pretty much feel the same way about zombies. I wish there were TWoP versions of movies, too.
By Tuesday, May 22, 2007 Sleep Study Guess who slept in a big-boy bed the other night? No, it wasn't me. M. Small's toddler bed is shaped like a race car with a mattress where most of the car would be. His birth mom scored it for us from someone she knew who was going to give it away. We understood that as soon as a kid starts climbing out of his crib, it's time to make the transition to a bed, that very night if possible. Given M. Small's more arboreal tendencies even way in 2006, we were expecting M. Small to start climbing out of his crib at will any night now. What we didn't anticipate was that with the strength and balance to go over the wall, he would also develop the wisdom to realize that there wasn't much to slow him down between there and the floor. Theoretically, he could keep sleeping in his crib indefinitely. And don't think the thought hasn't occurred to us. However, months have passed, and he still hasn't exited his crib without our help. He can climb in just fine, but once he's there he stays there. While we were cleaning out some stuff in the garage this weekend, we saw M. Small's toddler bed frame and Trash suggested hauling it upstairs to stick in the hallway outside M. Small's bedroom, just to get him used to the idea of it. It's a big transition, and you need to give a kid time to adjust. Saturday night, M. Small climbed all over it. Sunday night, while I was getting him into his pajamas after his bath, he asked, "Can I sleep in my race car bed?" He seemed adjusted. Trash was out that evening, so I explained the rules to M. Small: just because there are no walls doesn't mean you can be getting in and out of bed all willy-nilly-like. "Okay!" he said in that way he does when he's tired of listening to rules and is really excited to get started. He ran out to wait by his bed, while I pulled the mattress out of his crib. He saw me coming, jumped up and down, and said, "I'll get out of the way!" He did, and I was relieved to discover that the mattress from his crib is a perfect fit for his toddler bed. There might have been an awkward moment or two there otherwise. So I got him all set up with blankets and pillows, and sat on the floor next to him reading his stories to him while he soaked up the exciting novelty of it all, reveling in his own maturity end exercising the powers of an adult with repeated commands of "read it again!" After a while, I left him to fall asleep. But never for long, because he had taken the rules to heart and kept calling for me rather than coming to get me. He asked for a snuggle in the rocking chair -- a part of his old bedtime routine that we'd skipped that night in all the excitement -- and once that was done, he didn't stay awake much longer after I'd put him down. And then he slept there all night. We woke up the next morning to find him sitting up expectantly on his bed, waiting for us to get him up just like we do from his crib. Oh, and also for the fulsome praise for his remarkable accomplishment, which was of course more than forthcoming. He loved sleeping in his new bed so much that on Monday night, he asked to go to bed more than an hour before his usual bedtime. I had my doubts, but the 24 finale was about to start and getting him to sleep wasn't going to be my job that night anyway. He was asleep by the time the second hour was over, but judging from the sounds coming from the baby monitor, it was a near thing. Oh, and later on he'd asked to sleep in his crib instead, so Trash hauled the mattress back in there by herself instead of asking me for help. Or maybe M. Small helped too. She wasn't all that coherent by this point. I know where he's going to sleep tonight, though: at his Nana's house. He outgrew his guest crib there months ago, so now he sleeps on a mattress on the floor when he spends the night. That may have had something to do with how well he adapted to the bed. So now it's only a matter of time before we move the toddler bed from the upstairs hallway to his bedroom, and dismantle the crib to pass it along to whoever gets it next. And then it's only another matter of time before we get him a twin bed, and the next thing you know he'll be sleeping until noon on Saturdays. That'll be nice for me, because I miss getting to do that. posted by M. Giant 6:57 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Saturday, May 19, 2007 Big Change So yes, as I mentioned in my last entry, I am going to be changing jobs in a few weeks. It was time to move on. As it turns out, the thing I've been doing as a day job for the past two and a half years -- that I pretty much fell into just to nail down a steady paycheck at about the time we found out M. Small was coming -- is kind of a lucrative thing to be doing right now. Nobody's more surprised than me. Well, except my soon-to-be-ex-employer. They're kind of surprised too. I won't be working downtown any more, which means that Trash and I won't be carpooling. She mentioned to me that she seems to keep chasing me. When I'd been working in Bloomington for a while, she got a job in Edina, and we carpooled south until I got hired at the radio show in St. Paul. She never rode with me in the time I worked there, but then after I started working in downtown Minneapolis, she started doing the same about a year and a half later. Now we'll be driving separately again, at least until she follows me to Eden Prairie. On the one hand, it’ll be nice in terms of dropping off M. Small at day care and picking him up. Our day care center is one lady, which means there's no early drop-off or late pick-up. So if one of us ever has to stay late at work some evening, well, too bad. Catch a bus, sucker. That won't be the case any more. In fact, on many days, one of us can drop him off and the other one of us can pick him up, just like any number of normal couples with kids. That added flexibility will be an improvement. On the other hand, could we have picked a worse time in human history to start using twice as much gas? I'll also be giving up my lease in the downtown parking ramp. I've always kind of envied the people in ramps who could drive up to the gate, wave a card out their window at a little reader, and be on their way. For a couple of years, I was one of them. It was especially nice when we went downtown for some evening or weekend event and we knew exactly where we were going to park. But since we don't really do that all that often, it's not worth keeping the lease. Trash was going to continue parking there alone , but then she did some research and found out that only a block or two further away from her building, there's another ramp that costs less per day than the monthly lease does. Also she hates our current ramp very, very much. It's run down and deteriorating, and even though there's always a guy there working on scraping paint or patching concrete, he's only one guy. He can't possibly keep up with all the entropy going on inside an aging, seven-level parking garage. And on the not-infrequent days when the card dispenser is broken and he has to stand next to it all morning handing out cards to drivers as they pull in, there isn't even one guy. I was able to time things so that I'll have a few days between jobs. I was kind of hoping to synchronize the transition with the 24 season finale two-fer, but it ended up being a week later .Which is fine; this way I can concentrate on my book during that time, the manuscript of which is due in [gulp] three and a half months. Think I can finish it in a week? Well, at least I'll have some extra time due to the fact that I won't be recapping this summer. Oh, wait, yes, I totally will, because I took on a new show that I can't tell you about yet. In fact I've said too much already. There are things I'll miss about my current day job. I'm a creature of routine, naturally resistant to change, and this is the biggest one in my life since the Munchkin came along. I'll miss being a five-minute walk from literally scores of restaurants, even though I only ever ate at a few of them more than once. I'll miss the few minutes a day I spend in the downtown "scene," and not trapped in a cubicle 24 floors above it. I'll even kind of miss working on the 24th floor. I'll miss commuting with my wife. I'll miss people I work with. There are lots of things I won't miss, and I'm not going to go into them here for obvious reasons (it would be kind of humiliating to get Dooced on my last week). But there are things I'll like about my new job. Things I don't know about yet, and things I do. I hope to tell you about those soon. * * * Speaking of changing jobs, check out AB Chao's new gig. And speaking of arriving Munchkins, Omar's got news. Beyond awesome. posted by M. Giant 7:07 AM 3 comments 3 Comments:M. Unchkin? Is this bigger than M. Small but not yet M. Idsized?
By Tell us the truth: you're recapping the Geico Cavemen show, aren't you?
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Oooh, glad to hear Trash is switching to a different parking ramp. Based on your description here, the ramp y'all are currently using sounds an awful lot like the one downtown here that collapsed last year. During work hours. With cars on the ramp (one of those spiral go-round-and-round-'til-you're-dizzy ramps) at the time. Egads!
By Tuesday, May 15, 2007 Turning Turtle Part IV I may have been premature a few weeks ago when I said Turtle was "better." Strictly speaking, it was an accurate statement, in the sense that she was "better" than she had been before. However, she wasn't quite "better" in the sense of "all better and not sick any more." Maybe I should have made that more clear so as not to get her smacked by the karma gods. This is not to say that she's had a relapse or crashed again. All that happened is that after her red blood cell count got up to 27 and Dr. M. cut her Prednisolone dose to one per day, the next week her count was back down to 23, below the normal range. So now she's back on two Prednisolones per day, along with the quarter-tablet of Famotidine to prevent her from getting nauseated. So I'm back to giving her a total of three pills per day. Which is still better than forty-eight pills per day plus twelve squirts of liquid filth she was getting a few weeks ago, but it's still not quite as good as one pill per day. It's nowhere near as good as no pills per day. It's not even in the same universe as no pills per day plus no other cats that need two shots per day, but that way lies madness. It's hard to forget that the reason we brought Turtle to the vet in the first place is because she was losing so much weight. She's gotten it back and then some. She's at her highest weight ever, literally. When she sits on the floor with her back to you and her tail curved behind her, she's starting to look like the letter Q. Apparently the steroids do that to you -- make you balloon out like Jerry Lewis. Dr. M. said that we may need to keep Turtle on the drugs for the rest of her life. We should of course encourage her Turtle to exercise, but we can't exactly measure out food for her every day with two other cats in the house (one of whom is diabetic and so needs access to food at all times), so we may just have to resign ourselves to having a fat cat. Well, at least she'll be popular in France. What would really suck is if she gets so fat that she goes diabetic on us, and then I'm doing three pills and a total of four shots per day, but that way also lies madness. I'm on a madness tightrope here. It has occurred to me to discontinue the Famotidine on the grounds that while she's slowly turning into a furry basketball with legs (which seem to be getting shorter), maybe a little nausea and attendant puking on her part wouldn't be such a bad thing. Would that be callous of me? And how do I turn off comments for a single entry? As if this weren't enough, last week Strat had some kind of episode. He started getting all lethargic and his fur began turning spiky, a sign that he'd let his usually meticulous grooming slide. I tried to make an appointment for him with Dr. M. last week, but she was out until Monday. I suppose that we technically could have taken Strat to see the same vet who misdiagnosed Orca years ago instead, but we talked about it and decided that we preferred not to. The fact that we to this day affectionately refer to that vet as "the killer" should tell you all you need to know about those discussions. Over the weekend, Strat got better. We paid him a lot more attention, and he became himself again. We kept the appointment anyway, and Dr. M. thought maybe his glucose level had just dropped for some reason and then rebalanced. The blood work she had done all came back looking good, despite how totally enraged he was when they took it out of him. Dr. M. was also pretty clear that if this happens again, we should bring him in right away. I didn't point out that in his condition, we weren't about to let "the killer" put his hands on him. There was a time last week when I thought we might be about to say goodbye to Strat. He's almost 17, after all, and has been diabetic for three and a half years. The tiny glass bottle of insulin in the fridge -- which theoretically holds a thousand doses, enough for five hundred days -- is getting low. I'm guessing it'll last for about another five weeks. Last week I caught myself wondering if we might not have to buy another bottle before it runs out. But like I said, he's better now, and while we were at the vet, I had them get me another vial of liquid hormone. The shots for Strat are actually easier than the pills for Turtle; unlike his sister, Strat hasn't yet figured out how to spit the injection back out the way it went in if I do it wrong. The biggest pain is spending a hundred dollars on a 10-cc vial. You normally don't get amounts that small for prices like that unless you're buying something illegal. So between that and Turtle's repeat visits that are almost becoming part of a weekly routing, it makes me really glad I'm changing jobs next month. The extra cash will come in handy. posted by M. Giant 7:30 PM 7 comments 7 Comments:Im guessing Strat is on PZI Insulin? Just try telling your boss you broke a brand-new bottle of it...
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Seriously, pet insurance. I use VPI - petinsurance.com. They're really great, not too expensive, and you can charge either a spay/neuter or vaccines every year, so even if your pet is totally healthy you can get your vaccines taken care of.
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We refer to our fat cat as a meatloaf on legs. As he is white, my parents call him as a shmoo. We have two other cats, so when he snuggles with the smallest, I call them "Fat Man and Little Boy". Also, Mr. Chubbykins, Chub-Chub, Fatty McFatfat. Yet he is totally healthy and on the scale not excessively huge. The vet has no problem with his weight. Some cats are just big cats.
By Skipping the Pepcid wouldn't be callous, necessarily, but it definitely has the potential to cause more problems- the steroids can actually cause ulcers, because it alters the GI pH. So yes, Turtle would lose his appetite, but he'd also probably sprout a whole new problem to fix. Yuk.
By Holy guacamole! That's some expensive insulin!! I am diabetic, as was my late dog, and I have never paid that much for insulin for either of us. But I use ordinary R and NPH and the dog took U, which we just bought at Walmart and is so cheap that (for mine) it's not even covered by my insurance. Strat's must be a still-under-patent type. Call around to various pharmacies - you may be able to get it cheaper from a human pharmacy (Sam's or Costco are often dirt cheap).
By Too bad about the pill increase but at least Turtle is on the mend. One of my guys needs eye drops and I believe that's right up there with liquid filth.
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Speaking as a human who spent years on pred, do not get between the patient and the food. Only leads to bloodshed. There's not much you can do about the puffiness either, as my aunt's cat (aka The Fur Covered Beachball) can attest.
By Saturday, May 12, 2007 In the Bag M. Small is kind of a half-assed Thomas the Tank Engine fan. He digs the toys and the accessories, but he's not even a little bit interested in the TV show. I totally agree. I lost any interest I ever had when George Carlin stopped being Mr. Conductor. The toys are kind of fun, but those creepy immobile train-faces with the eyes rolling impotently around inside them give me the wig. In addition to a few Thomas train sets, he's also got a set of Thomas sheets, which he received for Christmas. He's not in a big-boy bed yet, so he isn't sleeping with them. That's not to say that he hasn't found a use for them nonetheless. Anyway, here's a picture of me, him, and his favorite pillowcase:  You'll never believe me, but this was totally his idea. Every time he spots this pillowcase he crawls inside, asking, "Could you bag me up?" He likes being carried from room to room this way, but what he likes even more is when I hold the top of the pillowcase and twist it around like a sack of bread. He's a little dizzy here, in the aftermath of one such episode:  And if he ever vomits in there, it would be an easy cleanup. I could just take him into the yard, dump him out, and hose him down. He'd want the to go on forever, but I'd rather stop before the stitching (read: my arms) gives out. I dangle him over the couch or the love seat whenever possible, but even if he were to drop through to a soft landing, I don't know what I'd tell him the next time he crawled inside saying "could you bag me up?" and wound up coming out the other end. Still, he doesn't like to stop.  Is he saying, "Do it again, daddy" or "The power of the Dark Side compels you"? Maybe it's time to promote him to the big-boy bed, if only so that I don't have to do this any more. posted by M. Giant 7:44 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:"Step One...you put your kid in a bag..."
By "Step Two... twist the top of that bag..."
By Tuesday, May 08, 2007 Seriously bummed about Greensburg, Kansas this week. When I first heard about the tornado that flattened the town, it was also the first I'd ever heard about Greensburg. Or so I thought. At first I thought they'd said "Greenbush, Kansas," which is where my mom grew up. There's not much left of Greenbush, either, but it died a less abrupt death. The next town over from Greenbush is Girard, a much bigger place. When my grandma moved from Greenbush to Girard, none of us went to Greenbush much any more. As far as I knew, it pretty much ceased to exist at that point. There's a story behind Greenbush. It seems that back in the 1800s, a traveling priest was caught out in a horrible storm. In Kansas. There's precious little cover there now, but in 1889, the only protection for miles around was a green bush (hence the name). While hiding under his saddle, the priest made a deal with God that if he survived the storm, he'd build a church on that spot. Apparently these terms were acceptable to God, at least initially, because the priest lived to build his church. And then God knocked it down again. It wasn't the ideal spot for a church to begin with. At the time, the land was part of the "Neutral Zone" that separated white settlers from Native Americans. Or the Romulans, I'm not sure which. Whatever the case, it wasn't a heavily populated spot. Pretty much the only thing that recommended the location was that a priest had failed to die there like he really should have. I don't know about you, but when the only thing I know about a place is that it was the site of the worst storm I've ever seen, I'm not inclined to stick around. Perhaps in later years the priest lamented the fact that he'd been too panic-addled when it mattered to promise to build a church in New York or Virginia instead. Over the next century, not one but two churches were built on the site as disaster followed disaster. The congregation shuttled back and forth between the two buildings, like a Jaguar owner who has two of them so he can drive one while the other's in the shop. I've been to masses inside both structures, and I never knew which one we were going to until we got there. In 1982, God's buyer's remorse finally got the better of Him and the stone church burned down after being struck by lightning. The stone church. Burned down.  Greenbush had a population of 150 in the 1990 census, and didn't even make the 2000 census. After the fire, the spare church was brought back into service, then shut down a decade later. There just wasn't enough of a congregation any more. Mind you, I’m not mocking. I've got relatives buried in that churchyard. If my mom's life had gone differently, I might be living in Greenbush now. Or at least Girard, or Pittsburg. If I existed at all, that is. I thought about Greenbush for the first time in a while this weekend, when I heard about an entirely different town named Greensburg that I don't even remember driving through one night in 1993, even though I did. This other place, not far from where Jericho would be if it existed, is now completely unrecognizable even to the people who live there. A lot of people say they'd never live in California for fear of wildfires and earthquakes, or on the East Coast for fear of hurricanes, or here for fear of a little snow. Me, I wouldn't live in a small Kansas town whose name starts with "Green" if you paid me. I suck at building churches. 
posted by M. Giant
8:07 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:My mom and grandma also grew up in the Girard/Pittsburg area. I haven't heard of Greenbush - I can't imagine a town being smaller than Girard.
By Saturday, May 05, 2007 Snap, Crackle, Pop Part of the reason for the new addition upstairs was that, in theory, we'd be able to leave M. Small up there for as long as ten minutes at a time. We'd close the doors to our bedroom and the upstairs bathroom, put a gate across the hallway to the top of the stairs, and let him shuttle back and forth freely between his bedroom and his playroom while we went about our business. That was the theory, anyway. This morning, I was in the kitchen cleaning the floor while Trash was outside digging dandelions out of the front yard. I could hear M. Small running around up there, occasionally giggling or hollering something at the cats, and I had no reason to think that anything wasn't fine. That is, until I heard M. Small trot near the top of the stapes and holler down: "Daddy? I made a mess!" My blood ran cold. Now, a two-and-a-half-year-old's definition of "mess" is at a much higher threshold that that of an adult. And if M. Small was making a special trip just to announce the creation of one, there was no way I would be dealing with just a few scattered toys here. When I got upstairs, I wasn't disappointed:  The funny thing was, when I had first come downstairs that morning to make M. Small's breakfast, I had quietly wondered to myself what had happened to the bag of knock-off Rice Krispies that had been up in the cabinet with the rest of the cereal. But I neither thought nor said anything of it, instead filling his bowl from a box that was also open. And then I saw this:  And remembered that Trash had said something about them having a "picnic" upstairs the previous afternoon, and, well, mystery solved. I opened the window in M. Small's playroom and yelled, "Trash? Get in here right now!" Thinking it was some kind of emergency, she took off her gardening gloves, ran in, kicked off her shoes, and hurried upstairs. "You should have told me this is all it was," she said when she saw. "I was outside with my gardening gloves, and I had my shoes on…" "You wouldn't have come," I said. "That's right," she agreed readily. "I'm hungry," M. Small said, scooping the tops off of the nearest drifts of cereal and popping them into his mouth. The three of us got it all cleaned up in a few minutes, although M. Small's part consisted mainly of emptying the dustpan into the trash can, with about a 65 percent accuracy rate. It wasn't really as bad as it could have been. I suppose instead of an open bag of dry cereal, it could have been strawberries or used motor oil or something. In addition to shaking out his playroom rugs, dumping out every toy he owns that's capable of holding a single grain of crisped rice inside it, then sweeping the playroom and the hallway, we had to sweep the bedroom floor as well. It seems we'd forgotten to close that room off this time. We didn't quite get around to that last task before we got bored, so it'll have to wait for later. Besides, all of the cereal on the floor in there is on her side of the bed. posted by M. Giant 11:14 AM 9 comments 9 Comments:Please! I got into the talcom powder when I was little. At my godparents' house, no less.
By "Talcum," that is.
By My 2-yr-old got ahold of peanut butter last week. I came downstairs to find her waving her arm with the jar on the end, like some sort of bizarre prosthetic. There was peanut butter on the TV screen, on the blanket that covers the sofa (for just this reason), on the toy chest, on the floor, on the entertainment armoire, etc. Cereal is no big.
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Heh - nothing compared to the time a couple months ago when my 2-year-old daughter had spread the contents of her pull-up on her bedding, clothes, and hair instead of napping. All of a sudden, I hear over the baby monitor, "There's poopy in my hair....there's poopy in my bed..."
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Ha, nothing compares to my feat of utter destruction when I was M. Small's age. My parents took me on a holiday to the sea. When they were busy unloading the car, I undressed, climbed into the bath tub and squeezed a WHOLE bottle of baby oil over my head. I was the incredible eel-man! Nothing would get a grip on me, not even after rincing with enough water to fill two swimming pools to the rim. Foam everywhere!
By I love this. M. Small is already so funny!
By My roommate's little gal topped herself last year when she woke up before both of us and proceeded to flush half a roll of toilet paper down the toilet AND cover the cat in Vaseline. That was a long day.
By My cousin and I once decided to make a blizzard on my dollhouse... with a giant-sized bottle of baby powder. I also once decided to "help" my mom clean house, by polishing every doorknob with Chapstick.
By Heh. It's amazing how much mess they can make without making a sound, isn't it. Mine was a 3-year-old I was babysitting and a brand new 1-pound jar of Vaseline. He even stood on the dresser to make sure he got maximum wall coverage.
By Tuesday, May 01, 2007 Burning Bush Three years ago, when we were working to get our house ready for the adoption home study, one of our projects was to do some front-yard landscaping to provide a little of what people on certain cable channels just can't stop calling "curb appeal." We went to the neighborhood nursery and picked out a variety of plants, knowing nothing whatsoever about horticulture or gardening aside from 1) what looked pretty, and 2) the word "perennial," because we didn't really want to have to do this again every year. So for the past three years, the area right below our living room window has boasted a variety of attractive plant life. In addition to a large, globular bush that's been there since we bought the place, we also have a green flowery stalky thing, a sort of whitish dealie, another plant I can't remember right now, and a strikingly lovely conflagration of bright red. This last is the one I want dead. I don't know what its Latin or even common name is. I personally have nicknamed it the "Razor Needle Hypodermic Kill You Bush." I'm hoping to get it into the books. At the time we bought it, we had no idea that it would mature from a cute little reddish shrub into a devil plant. Its branches are incredibly dense, branching off into narrower and narrower twigs that practically touch. And every one of those twigs has a stiff, narrow spike about an inch in length coming off of it in different directions at half-inch intervals. It has curb appeal, all right, because that's the best place from which to appreciate it. You've heard of impenetrable brambles? These are unapproachable. Trash can't even reach around to water the window boxes behind it without letting out a few irritated "ow"s each time. Normally we just leave it alone, and it does the same for us. Even M. Small somehow never goes over there. But at some point in the past couple weeks, when we've been ambitious and sun-starved enough to actually go out and do some yard work during the weekend, I actually trimmed the shrubbery in front. I love my electric hedge trimmer, which has roughly the same effect on narrow bush twigs as a lightsaber would. The only problem is that then you have to pick up all those little twigs. This is made even less fun when some of those twigs are made up entirely of miniature spears that go right through your gardening gloves as though you're not wearing any. How do like your hedge-saber now, fucker? After listening to me curse a lot while bagging these -- and then watching me slowly and carefully pick up individual twigs by their very ends -- Trash finally told me not to bother. "In 48 hours the thorns won't be as sharp and it'll be fine," she promised. She lied. Two weeks later, when I went back to clear out more of those supposedly desiccated thorn clusters, I nearly lost a finger. And an eye. And a kidney. "I'm burning it down," I announced. Trash objected. "I don't care," I said. "You can plant whatever you want in that spot, but I'm not dealing with that thing any more. I'm not letting it win." "You can't burn it down." "Au contraire. I have access to gasoline and matches. All it has 14.8 gazillion points of death, which won't be able to reach as far as the range of my spray bottle." "It's six inches from the front of our house." "Which has aluminum siding." "You're not burning a bush six inches from our house." "Well, how am I supposed to move it without it killing me? Or would you rather I move the house?" "No." "All, right, we'll compromise. I'll hose down the front of the house before I burn the bush." "No." Trash has an alternate plan that involves putting a big bag over the bush and then sawing it off at ground level. Like it's that simple. The bag will have to be made of Kevlar, the sawyer (and, by the way, you're soaking in him) will have to wear a shark-proof suit, and whoever picks up our yard waste that week is going to sue us from the Intensive Care Unit. I suppose we could stuff the severed beast into our chiminea and dispose of it that way, since flames dull those needles quite effectively indeed. But the bush is a lot bigger than the chiminea's front opening, and I doubt Trash will let me balance the intact bush atop the chimney opening and wait for the fire to reach it from below, which leaves us right back where we started. Maybe if the bush dies before we get around to removing it, the needles won't be as sharp or as numerous. It's just a theory, and I have no idea whether it'll prove sound or not. I'll just keep secretly watering its roots with gasoline, while daydreaming about a Zippo. posted by M. Giant 8:37 PM 6 comments 6 Comments:Get one of those mini oxy-acetilene torches, and sear it away in chunks, and then laugh like an evil mastermind?
By Oh my god, that sounds fun. Do that and take pictures.
By Wrap it in a black plastic bag and leave it for a few weeks. No sun=dead plant-prickly pieces fall off. Once it is good and dead you can chop it up and feed it to the fire.
By Sounds like pyrecantha, except that it has green leaves and red berries. I kid you not, 30 years ago when my Dad asked our new neighbors how to trim the bushes in our new backyard, the neighbor replied "with a flamethrower." If you don't already have one, get a tree lopper. Use the sharp saw and the 12+ ft pole to safely decapitate the bush at the ground level, then drag the carcass a safe distance from the house for its funeral pyre.
By It may be a barberry bush. They are reddish and have "spines" on the branches. Do a image search for "barberry bush" and see if that is what you have. If it is you need to make sure you get the whole root ball out as they tend to come back even when hacked down. I had a row of them in my back yard and hated them! Of course, I'll be putting them in under my daughters window when she gets old enough to try and sneak out!
By Here's what you need: http://www.gardeners.com/Flame-weeder/default/32-798.prd
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