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, August 28, 2007 What's Under That Yellow Hat, Anyway? When I first encountered the Curious George books at the age of five or six, the man in the yellow hat always struck me as the very embodiment of authority. His appearance late in the book always signaled the end of fun, that George's day of reckoning had arrived. The shit was about to hit the fan. He was both nameless and hulking, and the combination made him almost terrifyingly godlike. What an idiot I was. When I became a parent, I expected to identify more with the man in the yellow hat, just as I had identified with George's anarchic high spirits when I was a child. But now I see that in order to truly identify with the character, I would have to undergo some kind of brain damage that would be considerably more catastrophic than any literary experiment could possibly merit. I'm perfectly willing to concede that the character has changed over the years. We've been deliberately avoiding the original, old-school Curious George stories, which I'm given to understand are barely-veiled colonialist screeds in which the man in the yellow hat personifies not only authority, but manifest destiny and the white man's burden. But can he really have evolved into the character we see today? The newer books almost always follow the same formula. They start when the man in the yellow hat brings George to some public place or event. This is fine. I have no quarrel with this. Trash and I love bringing M. Small to new places and letting him have exciting new experiences, whether it's the neighborhood Fourth of July parade or a balloon fiesta in Albuquerque. But here's where our methods diverge: Trash and I do not set M. Small down in the middle of a crowd and tell him to behave himself while we wander off to go look at something shiny. Yet somehow the man in the yellow hat always seems so surprised when George trashes a library, or wrecks a bobsled, or hijacks a dump truck, or accidentally steals a hot air balloon. Dude -- it's a series. By definition, this isn't the first time this has happened. Do you honestly think that telling a chimpanzee to "stay here and don't be too curious" is going to avert disaster? George is a damn monkey. He doesn't know any better. WTF is your excuse? But if the man with the yellow hat in the modern books is merely a clueless and incompetent monkey-parent, the current PBS series narrated by William H. Macy takes things even further by making him a dork as well. Yes, I know what you're thinking; it's not like you can make a guy seem cool in the 21st century when he insists on walking around in an outfit that makes him look like an assembly of yellow drinking straws. I'm sure the 2006 movie, which I haven't seen (so talky that M. Small got bored after ten minutes, which was twice as long as I lasted), went in the same direction, what with Will Ferrell doing the voice. But the animated series frequently has the man in the yellow hat doing things like conducting a "moth census" and getting waaay too into the kid's displays at the local museum (and not just because he nurses a secret crush on the brainiac scientist who works there, either). And of course he's not any better than the book version when it comes to leaving George to his own devices. His farewell catchphrase is "Be a good little monkey," which at this point has become almost like a rain dance, but one that brings precipitation in the form of destruction and mayhem. The other weird thing about him? He's loaded. He and George live in the big city in a bright yellow high-rise apartment with a balcony outside and a doorman downstairs. It's obviously in a great neighborhood, because it's mere blocks from the park and George's human kid friends can run around unattended on the sidewalk without anybody worrying that they'll do a Without A Trace film-dissolve right off the screen. Plus they've got a house in the country, fully furnished, that they seem to own free and clear. And yet the man in the yellow hat never seems to go to work. At all. Sure, he'll step out for errands -- or to have some of the same kind of anonymous broom-closet sex that keeps drawing him away from George in public places, according to one alternate theory -- but he's never gone long enough to be at an actual day job. Probably nobody would hire him in that getup anyway, but the fact remains that they have no visible means of support, despite the fact that they probably have to keep dipping into a giant slush fund set aside to pay for all the stuff George keeps breaking (which included on one occasion, I shit you not, a building). So clearly he's living on some kind of trust fund that's not only large enough to keep them both in bananas, but also large enough that he never has to suffer any painful consequences as a result of his monkey's activities (I keep waiting for Bill Macy's avuncular narration to include the phrase "fuck-you money"). Could it have come from his family? We never seem to meet any of his relatives. Perhaps they were all killed in the same horrific accident that left the man in the yellow hat unable to grasp that unattended monkeys get into mischief, unable to dress himself like a non-spazz, unable to go out in public without a towering, sunny chapeau to camouflage his massive head wound, unable to even remember his own name. So no, I don't identify with the man in the yellow hat. I would have to be stupider than I have been since I was…oh, say, about five or six years old. posted by M. Giant 9:40 PM 14 comments 14 Comments:
I have often wondered about much of this, particularly TMITYH's apparent independent wealth. The house in the country is what gets me on that one. I'm thinking that he's just one of those rich people who's described as "eccentric," which earns him the right to dress and act stupidly. Plus it's the city: no one notices anyway.
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Since TMWTYH has referred to his childhood in the country, I assume he inherited the country house where he summered with his wealthy family, before they were killed in a tragic accident while he was off climbing Yellow Hat Mountain. He also inherited the NYC co-op AND got a hefty settlement from those responsible for his family's deaths.
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It is so funny you posted this today because we were watching the PBS cartoon yesterday morning, and I wondered aloud, "why does he keep leaving George alone?"
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Have you considered that TMITYH might be...the president and spokesman for a lumber company? http://www.greatsouthernwood.com/
By Yes, yes, you're right, of course. But the PBS show is really the only kids show we watch that I can actually stand to watch, and watch repeatedly. Of course, since we don't have cable, our only other choices are Dora (which folks gave us on DVD - THANKS) and Elmo's vignettes on Sesame Street (since the hour long show doesn't yet capture our 2.5 year old's attention). But I actually enjoy Curious George, even after repeated viewings!
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My husband and I have spent many hours discussing this very topic. TMWTYH leaves his monkey home alone with his new rug while he goes to buy batteries for his camera. WTF? Or what about Bill, who seems to think that George is a "city kid"?
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I always thought TMITYH did something shady in Africa, when he first "adopted" George. Like, maybe picked up some ancient artifact and then sold it on the black market? And maybe he makes trips like that once or twice year, while pretending to be an academic and writing papers as his cover.
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I'm sure no one is reading this comment thread anymore - but if you are - Is William H. Macy gone? I saw a new George ep this morning that I did not like. The narrator's voice was off. And Mrs. Renkins', too. And I caught the end of the new ep yesterday and thought the doorman's voice was off. I'm not happy! My daughter didn't seem to notice, but as I posted earlier, I actually liked watching this show. Today the new voices bothered me, as did the content.
By I have to say, the broom-closet theory explains A LOT.
By My theory...I do believe that the Man in the Yellow Hat works at a museum to cover up his illicit drug-running operation. When do we ever see the man working?? -Hardly ever. How does he afford two houses? -Who knows. What was he doing down in the rain forest when he found George anyway? -Probably checking on manufacturing. Ha. Just a thought...but seriously, if you are an author of a children's book you can slip in characters with unbeknown flaws, attributes, or schemes that no one will pick up on...pretty interesting stuff. :)
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I know this post is old. :) but my 2 year old is sick today. That means LOTS of Curious George. And after lots of discussions with my husband, I finally decided that I had to know what TMITYH did for a living. Yep. No clue. Apparently it's healthy to teach children that when they grow up there are adults out there who don't work at all and still live lavish lives with unsupervised monkeys. Haha!
By Folks it is a kids book not serious factual story telling, I bet you all have alot to say about Bugs Bunny
By After watching the show with my toddler for awhile, I was curious to find out TMITYH's name, and more about him. I am floored that so many others are so engrossed in the details, it's really entertaining! :) I agree with those who gave TMITYH the benefit of the doubt...I think he's a genius researcher who works from home a lot (at night, while George is sleeping). He probably inherited the house. He's just a laid-back "parent." George is not an ordinary monkey, so thus, TMITYH can give George more freedom.
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Give any idiot an ISP account, and a computer to access it with, and they think banging any garbage out, is akin to 'journalism.'
By Saturday, August 25, 2007 Turning Turtle Part IV Turtle's been maintaining fairly well, but only as a result of the prodigious amount of drugs I keep jamming down her throat on a daily basis. Every time we reduce something, her red blood cell count drops correspondingly and we have to try something else. M. Small and I have been at the vet so many times this summer that the front desk people know us by sight. Or at least him. Meanwhile, her weight just keeps increasing. She long ago passed Strat, and now whenever I pick her up it takes both arms, and bits of her still kind of spill out. Our goal is for her to keep ballooning out until she has diabetes in addition to the severe anemia she's already got, so that whenever Strat dies I never have to skip a day of giving a cat a shot. That would be just stellar.  We were supposed to have her on her current meds for a month before we brought her back in for a checkup. But last week, a few alarming puddles on the floor near the kitty boxes suggested that we might not want to wait that long. Our current vet, Dr. M., is out of town at the moment. For a year. The guy filling in for her, Dr. P., seems competent and caring, and he's all caught up on Turtle's history. After we got Turtle's blood checked (which has happened so many times that at this point we might as well have them install a spigot on her), he called me a couple of days later with a few options. Option number one was a referral to a specialist, like at the University of Minnesota where God knows how many people would do God knows what to her and put her on God knows how many medicines. Dr. P. was talking about shit like "marrow scoops," whatever that is, and we're really not out to make this worse for Turtle than it is. Option two was to try something we haven't really done before, which is to abruptly jack up her steroid intake in an effort to kickstart her red blood cell production. This, however, might have "side effects." In the sense of things to the "side" of her catbox that made my previous discovery seem minor. Plus she'd gain even more weight, probably so quickly that we'd be able to observe her visibly inflating. Not to mention kitty 'roid rage, which does not go well with an active toddler. So we went with option number three, a drug called Luparin that's used in chemotherapy. Now, before you freak out, it's only a small dose, not a chemo-sized dose. She won't go bald or anything. But it is a drug that we couldn't get at the vet; Dr. P. had to call it in for us at a human pharmacy. M. Small and I went to get it this morning. We never go to the closest Walgreens to our house for prescriptions, because the people at that pharmacy are idiots. When we got to the second-closest Walgreens to our house, they didn't have any and weren't getting any until Monday. But they called around, and dispatched us to the third-closest Walgreens to our house. We got there, and there was already a woman waiting at the counter. I gave our last name and said we were there to pick up a prescription. "First name?" the pharmacist asked. "Turtle," I said. The woman already waiting at the counter gave me a double-take. She didn't look like an Entourage fan, not that it probably would have made a difference. I thought about saying that Turtle was my cat's name, but why bother? Instead I just paid for the pills, scooped up M. Small, and said, "Come on, Turtle, let's go home." If she did another double-take, I didn't see it. posted by M. Giant 9:05 PM 5 comments 5 Comments:
Oddly enough I have a human friend with a very similar sounding problem.
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My dog was recently diagnosed with the very very rare diabetes insipidus. This means she drinks more water than she needs and has the resultant issues you'd expect. Treatment? A human drug. Witness the following conversation at Walgreens:
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Yes, we've had that experience at a pharmacy picking up some insulin for a diabetic cat.
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Similarly to Jennifer who commented above about her dog, I once had to pick up that same prescription at a human pharmacy for a horse I'd just bought. I believe the drug in question is actually used as an antidepressant in humans. My horse wasn't diabetic, but due to psychological issues (was starved, dehydrated and neglected as a baby) drank about 2 to 3 times more than an average horse, and I'm sure you can imagine the volume of the corresponding resultant issues.
By Apropos of nothing, the first-closest Walgreen's to me is less than a mile away, and the second-closest Walgreen's is less than a mile away in the other direction. Consequently, all the directions I give to my house include the warning: "If you pass a second Walgreen's, you've gone a little too far."
By Wednesday, August 22, 2007 Musty TV Part II Without the Internet, I was reduced to guessing what my internet/cable company's support line number was. Fortunately, since the number is 1-800-[name of company], I got it right on the first guess. I'd called the number when we'd installed the first DVR months before, because apparently you can't just plug it in and expect it to work; they have to send some kind of signal to activate it remotely. So I waited while the operator did that. The DVR didn't work. She did some other things. The DVR still didn't work. She said it looked like I had a "bad box," and I could either exchange it at the cable company's local office or wait for someone to come over and swap it out for us at their convenience. At this point, the functionality (or lack thereof) of the DVR was the least of my concerns, since the whole house was effectively Internet-disabled. We were stranded in meatspace. So I had her transfer me to the Internet support department, where they were no help at all. Pretty much all they could tell me to do was unplug my modem, shut down my computer, and then restart everything after a minute or so. Since I'd already tried that and it hadn't worked, I wasn't too impressed. And the frosting on the cake was that after I'd disconnected the input cable from the new (bad) DVR and reconnected it to the back of the TV, our reception was all staticky, like it was back when I had that TV hooked up to rabbit ears, except that this time I had a lot more staticky channels. This despite the fact that the picture on the downstairs TV was crystal clear. The guy on the phone figured that this had something to do with how our signal was entering our house. As he reminded me, the storms that weekend had caused a lot of outages (although not at our house), and there was a very good chance that someone was working on a relay component or something in our neighborhood. Trash and I didn't think that it was such a great chance that this work had begun at the exact same time I'd plugged in the new DVR to the cable, but there wasn't much I could do to prove it. So we were just going to have to wait until someone could come out on Wednesday. Again, this was on Sunday. When Trash was looking at a couple of days of working at home, doing research without the Internet. Might as well go to the damn library. So I'm afraid I threw a bit of a wobbler. "So your company gave us this box, which broke our Internet and our cable, and we're just out of luck until someone can get around to us?" Yes, that was pretty much it. He offered to "escalate" it, whatever that meant. I figured it meant someone would show up on Wednesday morning instead of Wednesday afternoon. In the meantime, I called the cable department back, because hell, I had time, since it wasn't like any of us was going to be doing any web surfing. She advised me to check all the cable connections in the basement, which, again, I had already done. The only thing she could think of was that maybe the signal splitter in our basement had failed, which apparently they sometimes do. I'd always thought those little boxes were nothing but three jacks and some wires inside, but I guess there's more to it than that. Maybe a little goblin that had gone on strike. So M. Small and I went to Target to get a new signal splitter that very evening, not very optimistic but out of other ideas and willing to give it a try. I brought it home and replaced the one that had been there before. No effect. It was going to be a long couple of days. But then, tracing the cables along the basement ceiling, I found another splitter, or something very like it. I swapped it out for the new one, and guess what? Success! We were back online, both Internet and cable, after four hours in near media darkness. It was like in the pioneer days, when the snows melted and the supply trains could finally get through and most of your family was still alive. Trash asked if I was going to cancel the service call from the cable company. I said I would, when they called me to tell me they were on their way. To their credit, that was the next morning, Monday. Having the satisfaction of telling the dispatcher, "Never mind, I fixed it myself" was almost as sweet as actually having fixed it myself. While I was at Target, Trash had suggested I also get just a cheap VCR to plug into the old TV/VCR combo, which was now less of a TV/VCR combo and more of a TV/garbage disposal combo. You know what else they don't make any more? Just plain VCRs. It's all VCR/DVD combos now. Well, that and TV/VCR/DVD flatscreen combos, but I wasn't about to drop three hundred dollars on something that wouldn't even fit on my TV table. But then on Tuesday during lunch, I went to the Target near my work to pick up a $60 VCR/DVD combo, even though the TV we were going to hook it up to will never display a DVD because it doesn't have the right kind of input jack. Alas, the $60 models were out of stock, and I wasn't in the mood to spend $70. So I went to Wal-Mart instead and got one for $50. It wasn't until I got it home and set it up that night that I discovered that my cheap new VCR/DVD was in fact a VCP/DVD, as in videocassette player, and not recorder. This was after I'd already taken it out of the box, which Trash put outside in the rain the next day. So now, my state-of-the-art recapping center consists of: • A 13" tube screen TV/VCR combo with a VCR that doesn't play back, although it may still record • A VCP/DVD player that will never record video, and will never play a DVD because of the TV it's hooked up to • Two remote controls, one for the TV and one for the VCR, which I constantly get confused with each other. In short, it's a far cry from the "beep-boop" recapping I'd envisioned. But I think I can still write it off on my taxes. posted by M. Giant 8:31 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:How weird. We too were having internet problems though no cable problems. I called on Saturday and they couldn't send a tech until yesterday. They said he would show between 8am and 5pm. Guess when he showed... 5:01pm. Anyway, we are all fixed and up and running now. And yes, I too used the free wifi at the library.
By I think it's kind of poetic that you recap shows which are put together with the latest TV-making technology... and take them apart with just about no technology at all.
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If you have the same cable/internet company that we used to have, beware: the unplugging the modem/restarting everything is something we had to do almost weekly in order to keep the internet working. Occasionally it wouldn't work. We stopped calling technical support, because they once told us to "restart it 4 or 5 times before 'giving up'".
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Ugh. 'Escalate' - yeah, my ISP has tried to fob me off with that before. It doesn't seem to mean that the problem will be fixed any more quickly.
By Saturday, August 18, 2007 Musty TV In April of 2004, I happily accepted an invitation to become a recapper, a job that requires me to not only watch television shows and write about them, but to write about them in great detail. This process generally involves watching an hour of TV about five to ten seconds at a time, typing up everything that happens as you go along. In April of 2007, we got a digital video recorder. Feel free to mock the time lag. Actually, the DVR hasn't changed my recapping habits as much as I thought it would. The DVR is downstairs with the big TV, and the desktop (actually desk-side) computer I write on is on the main floor, and that's where each is going to stay. And I don't like recapping on the couch and balancing the laptop and the remote at the same time anyway. I keep getting them mixed up. I will say that the DVR has been invaluable for weecaps, which I write in a "slightly slower than real-time" mode that makes the "pause live TV" function indispensable. And there was one occasion earlier in this season of Big Love when I realized about halfway through the episode that I'd forgotten to hit "record" on the VCR and was very glad that the show was at least going into the DVR's hard drive. That meant I could transfer it to tape immediately after it was over, as opposed to having to wait another hour for the first of that week's "encore" presentations on HBOs 2 through 37. My "recapping TV" (as those of us in the biz call it) is actually the cheap little TV/VCR combo I was so embarrassed to have bought more than four years ago. It sits on a table next to my computer desk. It's only got a thirteen-inch screen, but I sit so close to it when recapping that the "remote control" hardly merits the name. It's a system that's worked well for me the past three years. Recently, however, it has begin to rebel. Late in the most recent season of 24, I got about halfway through an episode before having to stop. The VCR component had taken it upon itself to start switching back and forth between "EP" and "SP" mode, the effect being that every third half-second of the show was sped up, making Kiefer Sutherland even more chipmunky than usual. It also made the dialogue really hard to understand, and the closed-captioning was even more unreadable than this blog is. Fortunately I was able to download that episode off the Interwebs, and the day was saved. Didn't happen again, either. Until it did. Apparently, having to spend so many years being forced to play back one-hour shows over a period of three to four hours has driven it batty, and it has decided that it needs to catch up. For some reason, it seems to be triggered by M. Small's videos more than anything else. Not just the mail-order ones either, but also the tapes of Curious George that we recorded off the local PBS station. His shows have become completely unintelligible on the machine, and if I stick my Big Love tape in after one of his tapes, I have to do this whole dance with the "power" and "tape speed" and "forward search" and "stop" and "play" buttons, not to mention my "fist," before I can understand whatever self-serving crap Bill Henrickson is spouting at any given time. So clearly it was time to get a new TV/VCR combo. Hey, you know what they don't make any more? TV/VCR combos. Trash had the idea of getting a new DVR box to hook into the upstairs TV, and then I could recap the way most people do it. So last week, M. Small and I went over to our local cable office to pick up a new box. I hoped that if I could get M. Small to spontaneously cry, "That's Comcastic!" in the office, we'd get a discount, but it didn't work. So we got the new DVR/cable box home, where it languished in the back bedroom for a couple of days. On Sunday evening, while M. Small was resting his injured ankle by watching Kipper at high speed, I went to set up the box. Honestly, all I did was unplug the cable input from the back of the TV and into the back of the box, and then hook a pair of coaxials from the box's output to the TV's input. When the new cable box didn't work, I asked Trash to get online and find me the number to the cable company so I could call them for help. Except she couldn't get online any more. Somehow I had broken the Internet. And just to give you some small sense of how that felt, I'm going to leave off this story right here. posted by M. Giant 1:31 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:Walmart still sells a 13" TV/VCR combo. Emerson. May well be the last in existence.
By Wednesday, August 15, 2007 Casting Special This morning was M. Small's appointment with the orthopedist, to learn whether or not he was going to need a cast or something for his leg. We got our answer.  As you can see, he's totally heartbroken over it. Just like his previous appointment on Sunday, he was a champ. He did spill a small cup of water on the tile floor at one point, but that was more my fault than his. Even when the doctor was prodding his ankle to figure out where it hurt, M. Small didn't even pause for breath in his monologue about all the road construction equipment we'd passed on the way to the clinic. And when the cast was actually applied, he sat still and quiet on my lap the whole time. This was probably more because he was fascinated by the whole process than due to any desire to be cooperative, but I'm taking it. They gave him a little ring holding some color swatches, so he could pick which hue he wanted to wear for the next two weeks. He vacillated between a couple of different shades of blue, as well as black and day-glo orange before finally settling on the hue above that makes his lower leg look like a giant highlighter. Trash approved because it matches absolutely nothing he owns. When the doctor told us that M. Small's cast would have a Gore-Tex lining and thus he would be allowed to wear it in the water, we were thrilled. He could still take baths and go to the pool. We would just need to tip it up and let it drain out afterwards. It wasn't until the plaster tape was drying that we learned that was about the only place he can go. For instance, he can't go in the sandbox, because the grit will work its way in and not get back out until the cast gets cut off. This will be a disappointment to him, as he's currently in a phase where he enjoys going out back and playing in the sandbox with his construction toys. But it's also worse than that, because he can't go to any playgrounds, either. Why? They're all carpeted in sand. I suppose I can still bring him to the one that's a little further away and has a bed of shredded tires, but that place kind of weirds me out. He also made sure that when we do go to the pool, don't let him run around too much on the pool deck, which is concrete. That will cause undue wear on the bottom of the cast, and the next thing you know his injured leg is barefoot. This also means that we can't take him for the walks around the block he enjoys so much, unless we carry him or stick him in a stroller. That's because the sidewalks in out neighborhood are also concrete. And if you're about to suggest an area where the sidewalks are made out of shredded tires, I don't want to hear about it. There's always the indoor park, which we have a yearlong pass to but usually don't bother with when the weather's nice. Except of the three things he likes best, two -- climbing in the giant Habitrail and bouncing around in the inflatable thrill ride he calls the "jumpy castle" -- are right out. And the third, the swingset, was removed several weeks ago. Also to be avoided? Hardwood floors. In addition to the extra weight he's now lugging around, the smooth bottom of the cast affords no traction at all. Kind of a bummer that the rooms in our house where he spends the most time in are the ones with no carpeting. An egg-shaped bummer on the left side of his forehead, to be precise. And of course the short camping trip we were considering for this weekend is probably not a good idea. The cast looks pretty tough, but I don't know if it's a good idea to spend an entire weekend grinding dirt into it. In fact, he's more upbeat about it than I am. He's still enjoying the novelty of going step-CLONK-step-CLONK-step-CLONK everywhere, and in fact he drew a small crowd after his appointment while waiting for me to come back with the car, telling everyone, "This is my green shoe!" My mom came over and stayed at our house with him today, to monitor his toes for purpleness, a sign of undue swelling, and she said he had a great time when she put him down for his nap, banging that hard thing noisily against his bedroom wall in a way that makes me glad we still have half a can of the paint we used in there. There was a sad moment in the bath tonight when he realized that he didn't like having it on in the water, and he asked me to take it off. Getting taken out of the bath instead seemed kind of unfair to him on top of everything else. One of the first things he noticed in the doctor's office was the little rotary saw on the wall that they use to cut casts off. I think it may have freaked him out a bit. But by the time he sees it again, I'm sure he'll be ready for it to do its thing. I know I will be too. posted by M. Giant 8:28 PM 8 comments 8 Comments:For traction you could always put a few dabs of hot glue on the bottom of his cast. That's what my mom did with my brothers cast. It basically acts like a little bits of rubber.
By Hie thee to the nearest thrift store and buy an ugly pair of beat-up sneakers a a size or so bigger then the cast, chop off the soles and glue them to the bottom of the cast (hot glue would work, superglue won't.) trim up the edges and voila; a cast he can walk around on concrete in. And if he actually wears throughthe first one, you've got the other one of the pair. 'T won't matter that it's for the other foot.
By Oh, and for the camping trip? Plastic bag and duct tape.
By Man, I could eat those cheeks with a spoon.
By Poor M. Small--I hope the novelty of his cast doesn't wear off too soon. My son broke his collarbone last year when he was two (in Mexico! On vacation!), and had to wear a sling for 6 weeks. Oh, and limit movement of the arm--yeah right!
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I am surprised they didn't give you a boot to wear around the cast, unless they don't make them for kids.
By It's sad and yet he is so very cute.
By Those slippers my mom wears that are basically socks with non-skid soles? Do they make them in kid sizes? Because they would come up over the bottom seams of the cast, making walking on concrete and playing in parts of the playground possible. The sandbox is still out though.
By Sunday, August 12, 2007 Not Walking So Good Yesterday morning, M. Small came into our bedroom to tell us, "I can't walk so good." Indeed, he seemed to be making his way along on his tiptoes, and did so on and off for most of the day. He blamed it on a "bug bite" on his ankle, a "bug bite" being any tiny injury whose origins he can't remember (i.e., both of them). He did have a pinkish welt on the outside of one ankle, but no matter how we prodded it, it didn't seem to be actually hurting him. We figured that maybe walking with his foot extended normally caused the bit to itch uncomfortably. Or possibly that he simply enjoyed being taller. This morning, when he started walking with a pronounced limp (but still no apparent pain), we decided it was time to take him to the urgent care center. We hadn't been there in months, so we figured, what the hell? Getting him in an out of a doctor visit is usually a trial. He has a certain amount of patience with sitting around and waiting, but that's usually more than exhausted by the time we're done. That's because doctors' offices -- even urgent care centers -- move at their own pace, and you can't force these things to go quickly. And also because M. Small's stores of patience are good for about five minutes, total. Today, however, went very well, thanks to a combination of four items. One was the abridged version of "Richard Scarry's Funniest Storybook Ever," which, while not all that funny, is also not all that abridged and can hold his attention almost indefinitely, especially when we've been keeping it hidden for several weeks because we're sick to death of the thing. The other item was his Tonka bulldozer, which we don't normally let him bring inside the house, let alone to public spaces. The third item was one we didn't even bring, but found there; he has come to expect that during all doctor visits, I will inflate at least one latex examination glove into a five-fingered balloon that he can bat around. The fourth was a single tongue depressor, which held more entertainment possibilities than you might anticipate. Including using it to make a flag with a facial tissue, which I guess means that I lied and actually used five items. After the doctor's examination, a technician took him and Trash back to the X-ray lab to get some films taken. A bit more waiting later, the doctor showed us what he'd found. Apparently M. Small had become one of the tens of thousands of toddlers per year who, during their growth process, had experienced a less-than-hairline fracture at the base of his ankle bone. It barely even showed up on the X-rays. It's not bad enough for him to need a splint, a cast, or even a boot, but he's going to need to stay off it, more or less, for the next week. The doctor had to explain this to Trash, because I was busy chasing after our crippled child, who was sprinting off down the hallway. "This is going to be the first of many," the doctor told Trash as I hollered at the little gimp to slow down so I could catch up. So, yes, if you've ever met our child, you may have some idea of what it's going to be like keeping him "off his feet" for a week. If you've never met our child, imagine trying to get a fly to take a nap. After we got home, we plunked him right down in front of a few Curious George episodes and then put him down for his nap. After that, I don't know what. Strap him into his stroller for a long walk? Let him sit in the bath for five hours until bedtime? And that's just today. I don't know what we're going to do the rest of the week. In the next couple of days, we're going to take him to see a doctor who specializes in children's bones -- an orthopediatrician, if you will -- to figure out where to go from here. He may end up in a cast after all. One that's tethered to his bed. posted by M. Giant 1:46 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:Aww, get well soon M. Small, and good luck trying to get him to stay off his feet. Libby
By I'ma be a nosey NICU nurse here for a sec - make sure little man is getting his vitamins. Ex-preemies can be more prone to fractures because of mineral absorption issues.
By Oh, poor little bug! Extra hugs to him from far away.
By Poor critter. Short of a chemically-induced coma, I don't know how you keep a toddler off his feet. Good luck.
By Wednesday, August 08, 2007 Now Hear This Warning: Cars spoilers I don't know at what age kids are supposed to start getting their hearing tested, but I do know this. A couple of weeks ago, when we were on our way to Trash's mom's house in Iowa, we had the radio tuned to National Public Radio. It happened to be the timeslot for Car Talk in the coverage area through which we were passing. Now, if you've seen the Disney Pixar movie Cars, you know that the Car Talk guys have a cameo as the sponsors of the protagonist, race car Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson). They own a company called Rusteeze, and are simply referred to in the film as the Rusteeze guys. Their characters are kind of goofy and boisterous, a lot like their on-air personas; they even say farewell to McQueen early in the movie by both saying, "Don't drive like my brother!" So then, we were somewhere in northern Iowa when M. Small started hearing these familiar voices coming out of the radio speakers. I don't think he made the connection until they were in the middle of one of their trademark paroxysms of laughter at how hilarious they are, but when the guffawing started, he figured it out right away. And I think it kind of freaked him out a little bit. Especially considering that they appear in the movie moments before McQueen gets unceremoniously dumped out on the freeway in the middle of nowhere, which is where we of course were at the time. "Nooo, I don't want Rusteeze guys talking to me from the radioooo!" Trash agreed, of course, because she was really just waiting for What Do You Know to start. So that was one thing. And then, early last week, an item that Trash had ordered online for M. Small arrived. It was the CD of the Cars soundtrack. While he sat in the kitchen eating his dinner, Trash put the CD on. The second M. Small heard the signature guitar chords that kick off Sheryl Crow's opening theme, he hopped out of his chair and ran into the living room, saying, "Where's my movie?" Trash explained to him that it was just the music from his movie, and I think the fact that he was able to trace the sound to the stereo speakers -- which don't have a picture -- sufficed to convince him that he wasn't actually missing a screening that was happening somewhere in the house. That and the fact that there weren't any sound effects or dialogue over it. But as the songs played, it was almost like getting to watch it in his head, because he correctly remembered the exact scene that each song was featured in. For instance, the John Mayer version of "Route 66" plays over the beginning of the closing credits, and even though it comes fairly early on the CD, M. Small asked, "Is it over?" when it came on. Recognizing the songs was one thing, with their distinctive lyrics and melody. But then when the songs were over, "side two" is all the orchestral pieces that make up the Randy Newman score. And he recognized those too. "Lightning McQueen is looking for Mack!" he shouted during the track titled "McQueen's Lost." "They're going tractor tipping!" he announced during "Tractor Tipping." "McQueen's looking at the waterfall!" he declared during the precise cymbal crash in "McQueen and Sally." Every track, this happened. It started to get eerie. During the final track, to which the film's climactic race is set, I finally just asked him, "Did Chick Hicks hit the King?" "Not yet," he said confidently. So, yeah, my kid can hear just fine. I don't think we're going to have one of those scenes like in Mr. Holland's Opus where a fire engine blasts its horn at a parade and he sleeps through it in his stroller (and please, that kid was old enough by then for them to have known anyway). On the other hand, maybe we've let him watch Cars a few too many times. posted by M. Giant 8:41 PM 7 comments 7 Comments:
Our 4 year old seems to suffer from a more common form of selective deafness, as evidenced by her utter lack of response whatsoever to statements like "time to clean up these toys" when spoken loudly and firmly from mere inches away, yet her postively instant response to a whispered "ice cream" from a different floor of the house, over the noise of her CD player, the cat meowing and the vacuum cleaner, dishwasher and washing machine running simultaneously.
By
Not that hearing and intelligence are linked, because they're not, but this whole entry is, of course, not just about his super-hearing.
By Or call him M. Einstein. SCARY SCARY SMART LITTLE BOY!!!!!!!!! That is just wildly impressive.
By Maybe it's his mutant superpower, like immunity to poison ivy or the ability to translate an Alabama drawl or fish whispering. Was he exposed to any sort of gamma radiation at the hospital as an infant?
By
Good for M. Small!! My kids love the Cars soundtrack, since they are Cars-obsessed too.
By
Kids freak me out. Seriously. They pick up EVERYTHING and every so often bust out with those prescient, ominous statements that make me want to crawl under the bed.
By My son is watching Cars right now. While playing with toy cars. I don't even want to guess how many times he's seen that thing, but Daddy don't play at 6:15 in the morning.
By Friday, August 03, 2007 Sprinkle Cars It's been a pain in the ass getting Trash's car fixed. She dropped it off at the dealership a week ago today, and they told her it would take a couple of hours. She went and had lunch with a former coworker at a nearby Indian restaurant (mmm, Indian). When she got back, they told her it was going to be more than a couple of hours, and they were going to be giving her a free loaner car for the weekend. And then she could come pick up her car on Monday. She called me and told me this before they actually set her up with the car, and I urged her, "Make them give you a Sky Roadster. That would be awesome." She ended up with an Aura, for the weekend, which is just about the dullest car Saturn makes. It's basically a plastic Bonneville. Trash didn't like it. She told me I wouldn't like it. I didn't like it. M. Small liked it plenty. "Are we buying this new car?" he asked Trash excitedly when she picked him up from day care in it that evening. I know we shouldn't complain. It was new. The radio worked. The air conditioner worked. It was clean. It was free. But if I refrained from complaining about stuff I shouldn't complain about, I would never post at all. Monday was a perfect day for Trash to go pick up her car, because she was working at home that day anyway. Too bad the car wasn't ready on Monday. On Tuesday afternoon, I called to see if it would be ready that evening. They said it would be another couple of hours. Trash called a couple of hours later. They said it would be ready tomorrow. Neither of us were going to be able to make it there until after work on Wednesday, but I called around noon that day anyway, just to check on the progress. "Should be a couple of hours," they told me. I called again at three. "Just another hour or forty-five minutes," they promised, "and then we have to get some paperwork ready." Before I left work at 4:30, I called again. "The car will be ready," they promised, "but the paperwork won't. We'll just have to mail it to you," they said. Whatever. Wednesday night after work, we got dinner into M. Small as soon as we could, and then I bundled him into the rental car. Except he didn't call it the rental car, because he doesn't know the word rental. He called it something else, based on a word that sounds like "rental" that he does know. So he took his last ride in the "sprinkle car," all the way to the "car store" in Bloomington, a southern suburb. We arrived around six, just as they were closing the parts department. I got the keys, paid for the repairs (which, since it was under warranty, cost me zero dollars and zero cents, and given the time frame, was worth every penny), got the keys, and transferred M. Small's car seat from the sprinkle car back into Trash's car. I started it up, turned on the radio with considerable satisfaction, went to put on my seat belt, and got pissed off. See, one of the other small things that we'd asked them to fix was the little button on the actual seatbelt strap. Now, sit back in your chair for a moment, and simulate the movement you make with your hand when you put on your seatbelt. You probably reach up with your left hand to your left shoulder, where the buckle is hanging there waiting for you. It's hanging there because a little plastic disk prevents it from slipping all the way down the belt, between your seat and the door. This seems like a minor thing, until you have to stop and dig that thing out every time you go anywhere, at which point it gradually becomes a more and more major annoyance. And by the way, if you're already wearing your seatbelt, close down this browser window right now and get your eyes back on the road before you kill somebody. So I was pretty irritated that this one small thing hadn't been fixed, after several weeks of calls, trips back and forth to the dealer, and nearly a week of the vehicle being in their custody. I brought M. Small back into the shop, and said as much. I wasn't loud, I wasn't foul-mouthed, I wasn't even particularly impolite. I confess to having been…short. Fortunately for them, they apologized and said they could take care of it on the spot, if I wouldn't mind just waiting in the lobby for five minutes or so. It's a nice lobby. There's a separate lounge, with comfortable furniture (which I didn't sit on). A coffee machine (which I didn't drink from), and a big TV screen which I didn't pay attention to. That is until 6:22, when the local CBS affiliate came back to its evening newscast with a big BREAKING NEWS graphic. I had that frisson you get when something's happening somewhere, then realized that since this was actually part of the newscast, it didn't have to necessarily be anything big. How big does something have to be to break into a newscast with, after all? I was wrong. News wasn't the only thing breaking. Trash called me from home on my cell phone a minute later, when the news station was still trying to make do with a 3-D weather map to just show where the bridge was supposed to be. Where I thought it still was, in fact. I was picturing some partial collapse of a single section, like in the Northridge earthquake. Trash's car was ready to go a minute later, and I went out to drive it off, a lot nicer to the people than I had been a few minutes ago. "Don't drive over any bridges," Trash told me on the phone. Well, I had to get across 494 somehow, but I did stay off the freeways. I called my mom to tell her I was fine. "Why, what's going on?" she asked. I told her, and she and Dad turned on the news. She was glad I called. They couldn't get a hold of my older sister for a little while, and I later heard that they were backing out of their driveway to go find her by the time she was able to get through to call them back. Listening to a local news station, I still couldn't get my head around the fact that the whole damn bridge was completely down and in the water, no matter how many times they told me it was, until I actually got home and saw it on the TV. Trash talked to her brother, who had been on the bridge five minutes before. She talked to M. Small's birth mother, who had been on it that earlier afternoon and swore she felt it shaking at the time. We got a lot of phone calls, text messages, and e-mails from out-of-town friends that night, which was nice. We heard from Linda, who had just left to move out of town the day before. We heard from Lawre, who had left our house to move to New York City on September 12, 2001. BuenaOnda even called from Mexico City. "It's great to hear from you," I said. "I'm glad you're down there where the infrastructure is better maintained." I don't actually remember the last time I was on the bridge. It was weeks ago, if not months. We don't have much call to go north of the cities these days. Today I'm glad, and not just because I'm not one of the tens of thousands of people who live and/or work in Minneapolis whose commute is directly affected. I keep trying to imagine what it would be like to drive your car onto a bridge, and then a few minutes later, leave that same bridge by boat. And it could have been worse in any number of ways. It could have happened in the winter. The river could have been higher. It could have been an overhead truss bridge dropping steel girders on top of everyone. It could have happened in the absence of people whose first instinct upon seeing they were alive was to help other people, to run to that school bus. It could have been worse. But it was bad enough that I'm glad my family and I weren't anywhere near it. And thank you for your comments on Wednesday night's short post. I appreciate you thinking of us. posted by M. Giant 9:02 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:
That's a lot like what it was like for me: I got home just as you were calling me to say you were fine. That was nice, but I had no idea why you wouldn't be.
By
I am glad you are OK... just a quick pointer. The Aura is not plastic... it is steel. Just as all Saturn's will be. It is cool they let you drive the Aura... the 2007 North American Car of the Year... beating out the Camry among others. :-)
By Wednesday, August 01, 2007 We're Fine.  Photo: New York Times I can't tell you how many times we've crossed this bridge. Looks like it was the last. posted by M. Giant 7:37 PM 21 comments 21 Comments:So glad to hear that you and the family are ok!
By
Thank goodness. I thought of all of you when I heard.
By I thought of you immediately upon hearing - and I don't even know you. I'm so glad to hear you are okay, and my thoughts are with the families of those who were not as fortunate.
By
As weird as it sounds, I immediately included you in my "concern list" of family & friends back in our native MN. So glad you updated and you are all OK.
By Thanks for posting. As soon as I saw the coverage on TV I was worried about you guys and Linda. She's okay too, right?
By You were the first site I went to today, I'm glad you guys are okay.
By I thought of you all as soon as I heard. Is M. Small's birth mom okay as well?
By For non-US viewers: what happened? Was there an earthquake? Did someone blow up the bridge? Did it fall apart because the contractors mixed too much sand in the concrete?
By I too thought of you guys when I heard this news. Glad to hear you are all okay. What a nightmare!
By
Amazing how many of us thought of you guys first. Almost like the first family of Minnesota!
By I also thought of you guys right away - I am happy to hear all is well.
By
I, too thought of you guys when I heard- couldn't wait to get to work so I could find out if you are ok. And I don't know you either, but I am a regular reader. I'm glad you're fine.
By Oh, thank goodness. Even without knowing any of you, all I could think about last night was the Giant family.
By Very glad to hear that you are all okay. Take care. Your community is in our prayers.
By Like everyone else here, I'm very glad to hear y'all are okay.
By Yes. M. Smalls birth Mom is okay!!!
By I don't know anyone that lives in Minneapolis or St. Paul, but I immediately thought of the people I "know" on the internet. I am truly glad you guys are ok.
By Glad y'all are okay! I worried about you guys when I read about the bridge.
By Glad to know your family is all still together. I forgot how many people I know of in Minneapolis that could have been there. One of our coworkers was gone and we were relieved to find out she had called in sick this morning. It's a weird thing to be relieved about something you didn't even know you were worried about.
By SO glad to hear you guys are okay; though right away of you, even though I only know you through this blog.
By I didn't hear the location at first, I just kept hearing Mississippi River and I thought, you know, Mississippi. So it didn't click right away that it happened where you are. I'm glad you're all okay.
By 
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