Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
|
|
|
M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
|
|
Friday, November 30, 2007 MGiTWRecWriMo Every November, I suffer a brief twinge of regret that I never get to do NaNoWriMo or NaBloPoMo because I'm too busy with the writing I do professionally. Which, upon a microsecond's reflection, is not unlike suffering a twinge of regret at being healthy, or feeling sorry for myself at being financially solvent, or going all "woe is me" over having an awesome family. Especially now. Just smack me. But even if I can't write a 50,000-word novel in a month (as required for NaNoWriMo) or post something on my blog for each of thirty days (as required by NaBloPoMo), there is something else I can do, and indeed have been doing. I call it MGiTWRecWriMo. Let me break that down for you, working our way in from the ends. The "WriMo," just as in "NaNoWriMo," stands for "Writing Month." The "MGi"? You're soaking in it, since my challenge by its very nature was more M. Giant-specific than national. "TW" stands for my part-time gig, "TWoP," or Television Without Pity as you well know. And the "Rec" stands for "Recap." Thus, M. Giant Television Without Pity Recap Writing Month, or the much catchier abbreviation, MGiTWRecWriMo. The other thing that MGiTWRecWriMo has in common with NaNoWriMo is that I had to write a total of 50,000 words. Not a single 50,000-word novel, but 50,000 words of recaps, weecaps, and recaplets. This didn't actually occur to me until late in the month, but a couple of days ago, I added up all the TWoP pieces I'd submitted between November 1 and the present. Not counting headers and other template-type stuff, I was under 42,000 words for the month. What kind of loser sets a completely imaginary, arbitrary goal like that which no one else even cares about and then can't make it? Especially when he doesn't even think about doing it until the last week of the month, after volunteering to sub in on an episode of Law & Order: Sex Police? I knew the last Kid Nation recap of the month wasn't going to come in at over 8,000 words. I don't know what my average word count is, but the last time I checked the number of words in a recap it had 7,500, and that was for Studio 60. No way was Kid Nation going to top that, unless I really started picking on those children in a whole lot more detail. What to do? Count the headers? Inflate the Kid Nation word count despite everything? And then I hit on the idea of weecapping an old The Office episode last night. So I cued up one of my tapes from Season Three and got to it. By the time you read this, I will have submitted that weecap and this week's full Kid Nation recap, bringing my total TWoP-published word count for the month to… 51,486. By the way, the count with all the extra template/header stuff was 51,070, so counting them before wouldn't have made a difference. Now, I'm sure plenty of other recappers have blown past that number within a month in the past, but I’m also pretty sure it was a first for me. Okay, maybe I've managed it during a 24 fourcap month, but those are always in January so it doesn't count. November is when this stuff counts. Obviously, I'd like to thank the editorial staff at TWoP (Wing, Sars, Miss Alli, and Joe R.) for giving me the gig and these assignments, without whom this would not have been possible. And also Trash, for not shooting me in the head while I did all this damn work. And now on to December, and a second round of edits for the book. I don't think I'm going to count those words. posted by M. Giant 6:48 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:
Wait, what? The count with the headers and whatnot is lower than without them? There's some freaky 12-dimensional space math going on there.
By I hope you continue to weecap The Office, even if you're not trying to reach an arbitrary goal! I really liked E-mail Surveillence, and I love reading the classic episodes.
By Tuesday, November 27, 2007 Ahead of Schedule The bar in my closet fell down…well, all right, it was about six months ago, okay? Get off my case already. While waiting to get around to fix it, I've just been storing my clothes on the same makeshift closet bar we used when we were living downstairs during the remodel last year. It's not as inconvenient as it sounds. Before I go to bed, I go downstairs and pick out my clothes for the next day, so they're waiting for me to stumble into the next morning, at a time when I've been known to make some questionable sartorial decisions. What this means for my upstairs closet is that it really doesn't get used. The door never gets opened or closed, which makes it the perfect place to stash M. Small's Christmas gifts. Never mind the fact that the closet is practically right across the hall from his bedroom. He's never shown the slightest interest in checking it out, so why would we do something paranoid like, say, lock it or even cover the pile of gifts on the closet floor with an old sweater or something? Why draw attention to it? We assumed all was well. In fact, I don't even know why it occurred to me that something was amiss on Sunday morning when I was on the stairs and I heard him just above me say, "I have toys!" Of course he has toys. He always has toys. But something about his tone alerted me that the impossible had occurred. Okay, not the impossible. Inevitable? Fine, if you say so. Just because you saw this coming doesn't mean we did. Sure enough, I came the rest of the way upstairs to find M. Small gazing raptly at a small, unwrapped trove of brand-new toys on the closet floor. "TRASH!" I hollered downstairs. "CRISIS!" She came upstairs, scooped him up, and dragged him back downstairs while I rushed to stuff the gifts in a kitchen garbage bag before he could return. The meltdown, needless to say, was already in progress. You can't let a three-year-old see a bunch of toys in his house and then not let him have any. I know, I've tried, as of this weekend. I attempted to throw him a bone with a moderate gift, a remote-control car, but he wasn't having it. "I want the crane I like best," he sobbed insistently. Since it was my own stupid fault, I had no alternative but to swap the car for the biggest gift in the stash, a truck that transforms into a crane tower with a noisemaking wrecking ball. Can't really blame him for holding out for that. Trash helped him remove it from its packaging, while I took the kitchen bag of gifts down to the basement storage room. I didn't really hide it any better than it was before, but at least now it's hanging by its drawstrings from a hook in the rafter, like a bag of food that some camper elevated to keep it away from the bears. Meanwhile, Trash was quizzing M. Small about what he had seen and remembered. He didn't retain everything, so it's not a total loss. Afterward, we explained that Santa had just dropped some stuff off early so that his sleigh's not too full on Christmas night. I think he bought it. But I think we'll need to do a better job of hiding the stuff next year. Not because he won't buy it next year, but because the year after that he'll start looking for Santa's advance stash around Halloween and we don't have that many good hiding places in this house. It's been hard enough keeping him out of the garage for the last three months. posted by M. Giant 9:34 PM 13 comments 13 Comments:
Yes, you've got to find better hiding places. My parents hid presents in various high and unstable places, forcing us 3 kids to work together physically and mentally, balancing on top of each other like contortionists. We earned those presents.
By Oh, ouch. You might be able to make a trade with your relatives, where they could hide M. Small's stuff in their attic and you could hide DeNieces? I think that's what my parents did.
By
yeah, you have to leave them at someone else's house.
By
Whatever you do, though, don't hide the presents so well that you forget where you put them. I'll never forget the day I found a trove I had squirreled away - chocolate two years old (crumbled into flakes and goo) and a small, pink, satin bunny covered in dust. A more woebegone sight was never to be seen.
By
Yeah, the young man (same age as M. Small) saw a package by the door when we got home yesterday. He told me they were his skates and to open the box right away, as it was HIS box.
By
2 words: master lock
By
My parents always hid wrapped presents in plain sight.
By My parents always wrapped the gifts and left them out saying they were the presents going to the various church groups and/or soup kitchens in the area. No one ever wondered why Santa and my mom had the same taste in wrapping paper. And truly, some of those gifts were going to their charitable destinations.
By At my house only the stocking stuffers were from Santa and all the big wrapped gifts were from the people in the "from" section of the gift tags. Guess my parents didn't want to share the credit and we were no less awed by the idea of Santa showing up to eat his cookies and stuff our stockings. I guess it helped that we enjoyed the suspense as much as the gift-receiving and wouldn't have wanted to see the gifts ahead of the big unwrapping fest of Christmas morning.
By
My folks wrapped presents as soon as they came home, generally, and stored them that way. I did become something of a criminal genius.
By Be careful about hiding stuff too well as he gets older. My mom is known for hiding presents and not remembering they exist, until I find them sometime around Easter.
By We have a gift-hiding exchange with the neighbors. The trick is to have neighbor kids/spouses with vastly different interests so if they do find them, they do not want them.
By Locked in the trunk of the car was our family favorite.
By Saturday, November 24, 2007 Music Fan Chao and his girlfriend are visiting this weekend, and we all went to Guitar Center yesterday afternoon. We needed to stop in yesterday anyway, since M. Small needed some new drumsticks, but I always like to bring Chao in for a look around when he's in town. Oddly enough, the first thing we saw inside the door was a big display of Guitar Hero III games. Seems like kind of a self-defeating move, like a sporting goods store making you walk past a wall of Wii before you can get o the tennis rackets. M. Small's young enough to want to bang on drums with abandon, but now just old enough to feel a little bit self-conscious about it. While Trash was waiting to buy him some new sticks (and get a little guidance from the counter guy on what the best sticks would be for a three-year-old), he found a single abandoned, chewed-up drumstick that he gently tested out on every available surface in the drum section of the store. Of which there are, I assure you, many. After that, he wanted to go check out the "Pro Audio" section of the store, but then got freaked out by a fog machine. It was actually running, periodically hissing and issuing clouds of vapor into the store. "Let's get out of here," he said. I think his fear can be traced to something that happened when he was trick-or-treating on Halloween night. One of the houses had a fog machine outside and it freaked him out. Sorry, that's pretty much the whole story about the origin of the fog-machine fear. Normally we avoid all retail establishments on the day after Thanksgiving, but we figured Guitar Center would be safe. Yes, we were sure they were having a sale, but then they're never not having a sale. We get more Guitar Center sales circulars than newspapers delivered to our house. But it's not like musicians would be doing any Christmas shopping there, as it is well known that musicians do all of their Christmas shopping at the gas station on the day of. Even so, one of the staff members told us that if we had arrived before noon that day, we would have had to wait outside for an hour before getting in. I didn't tell him, "Uh, no, we would have driven right by," but I thought it. Trash had gotten M. Small a couple of pairs of sticks by now, so I just wanted to take him along the big guitar wall to see if he had a favorite. He didn't. It was too crowded to see them all anyway. What he really wanted to do was check out the back room where the acoustic guitars lived. So we did that last. I love that room myself. There's such a variety of acoustics, acoustic-electrics, banjos, mandolins, dobros, twelve-strings, backpack guitars, and just about anything else made of strings and wood without electronics. But M. Small was enraptured, going from one item to the next cooing, "Look at this one!" I don't know which was his favorite; he seemed to love all the humidifiers equally. Yes, he pretty much spent all our time in there going from one to the other of the ten or so different models of humidifiers in there, admiring their colors, finishes, controls, water reservoirs, and fan assemblies, just as I do with the guitars (there was one deep-emerald Ibanez I found particularly eye-catching, with skulls on the knobs and a water tank that that attaches to the back of your guitar strap). It was one of those moments as a parent when you see your child's future, and can't wait for the day when he's old enough that you can take him to the store to help him pick out his very own humidifier. posted by M. Giant 10:30 AM 2 comments 2 Comments:
Your kid is... kind of weird. Awesome, but, you know.
By Could this be an upgrade of his previous fascination with fans? Added features! Water vapor!
By Friday, November 23, 2007 What's Not Happening I don't know what to write about tonight, because what can I say about what's been going on? I don't talk about my day job. M. Small is still cute, as yesterday at Thanksgiving dinner when he for some reason sternly ordered all of us and my sister's in-laws, "Stop joking around!" But that's not enough to hang an entry on. I don't really know about anything going on in pop culture right now, other than my support of the WGA in the writers strike and my useless observation that Timothy Olyphant, while awesome, is not nearly mean-looking enough for the lead in Hitman. I could talk about a current home improvement project, but I'm not working on one. Christmas shopping? Not doing any. The sinus infection I'm currently battling with antibiotics? Just had one six months ago. I shouldn't even be able to post at all right now, since our Internet is out and the only reason I can get online at all is by stealing wireless from the neighbors. Not ideal conditions for blogging on any level. This is all because I finally got my edits for the book done and sent off this week and I haven't been paying attention to anything else this whole time. So now I'm done writing for a while. I'm thinking for a good eighteen hours, at least. posted by M. Giant 9:49 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:
Congrats!
By Sunday, November 18, 2007 Lost Weekend Marvin's been adopted. I confess that I considered getting him as a birthday surprise for Trash, claws and all, but someone else has snapped him up. You may or may not be reading about that in another person's blog at some point. Whether you do or not isn't up to me, but he's got a good home. * * * Ever noticed how slow cat hair grows? Strat's ass-cancer surgery is almost two weeks behind him now, but that spot on his front leg and a large area of his bum are still quite bald. This is what I found myself thinking of very early the other morning, when I half-awoke to find something alive, warm, and only partially hairy pressed against my face (kids, it's not the monster in the dark you have to fear; it's the recently shorn, stitched-up cat asses). I can't describe my relief upon realizing that the hair/skin combo actually belonged to M. Small. I've never been so glad he climbed in bed with us before in my life. * * * I came to an upsetting realization about myself this weekend: I'm an involuntary slow bulimic. This thought came to me yesterday morning, during my tenth bathroom trip of the bathroom as the half-glass of white grape juice I'd dared to drink a half hour before was coming back up again. I remembered how a couple of years ago, I'd had a bout of stomach flu or food poisoning (or so I'd thought at the time) that scooped out my insides and left me feeling as exhausted as if I'd run a marathon. Except instead of a normal marathon that you run with your feet, I had run this one with my esophagus and my sphincter. And now here I was again, having spent most of Saturday morning in and out of the bathroom (mostly in) and ending up drained of energy to the point where I could barely maintain my bipedal form. Coincidence? I had been thinking I'd been gaining a little weight, what with the book crunch-time and the attendant lack of exercise over the past several weeks. And now here I was, forcibly ejecting a good thirty pounds of water weight. So is this a pattern for me? I binge for two years or so and then purge for a weekend? Granted, it's cheaper than a health club membership, but then how do you determine the monetary value of a lost weekend? So I think this qualifies as an eating disorder. Clearly I need to find an involuntary slow bulimic support group. On the plus side, now that I'm feeling better, I have a couple of years before I have to get around to it. It couldn't possibly have anything to do with the Mongolian barbecue I'd had the night before, right? posted by M. Giant 4:45 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:The problem with these involuntary slow bulimic episodes, or as they are known in my house: tummy flu, the problem as I say is you don't lose a pound. Three days of nothing going in and everything going out and I gain three pounds. This is contrary to the laws of physics, something about conservation of energy, and someone has a doctoral dissertation here. But not me.
By Oh, now I feel bad that I had my mom adopt Marvin! I took it seriously that you couldn't have a clawed cat! Truly, though, she and my dad and sister are totally in love with him now.
By Ugh, I had this recently. My condolences.
By Please don't feel bad, Stephanie. We were serious about not getting a clawed cat. I'm glad to have the temptation removed, and even gladder that Marvin has a good home.
By Wednesday, November 14, 2007 Do They Trouse? My wallet started falling apart. It was fine overall, but the clear plastic bit that holds pictures and driver's licenses and extra-small condoms was coming apart. It would fall out every time I opened it, which was kind of embarrassing because my driver's license picture isn't very flattering. Fortunately, I got a new wallet for Christmas several years ago. It's been waiting in the basement to be called into service, and last weekend Trash did exactly that. It's taking some getting used to. My old wallet was the trifold kind. The new one has one hinge, so when you open it up it's bigger than two credit cards laid end-to-end instead of three laid side-to-side. And it's far from broken in yet. Instead of conforming to the gentle curve of my ass, it sort of makes my pocket stick out like I'm carrying a small book around. Which, in a sense, I am. When I was transferring all my stuff from the old wallet to the new one (wondering what the hell I was gong to do with all these slots), Trash asked me if I hated having to carry around so much stuff. "It's not as bad now that I don't have such a rough chair at work," I said. For some reason she thought that was hilarious. I didn't see why, but I'm passing it along to you in case you're amused too. It's true that my pants used to wear out in a predictable, and distressingly quick, pattern. After only a few months, the spot where the bottom inside corner of my wallet rested would become threadbare. It got better after Trash made me quit wearing the same pants every day, but it was still annoying. But that was three jobs ago. Since then, I sit in chairs that don't have such scratchy fabric, and that little spot lasts a lot longer. Which has helped me to discover all the other annoying ways pants can fall apart. One of them is to have a baby, who is likely to know all sorts of ingenious ways to get food, formula, urine, vomit, and poo all over you. And some of it will be his. But after said baby gets older, the number one cause of is, without a doubt, the loss of the fly button. This wouldn't be so bad if I could sew buttons back on, but I can't. It also wouldn't be so bad if I could ever remember to have Trash sew them back on for me, but I can't even do that. Besides, I always lose the button within minutes and cannibalizing one of the back pocket buttons doesn't always work, since they often tend to be larger and I don't really want to be spotted in front of the urinal at work straining with the effort of getting my pants closed again. Sometimes I get some warning. I had a pair of pants when I just knew I was about two bathroom visits away from total button-thread failure. Uncharacteristically proactive, I asked Trash to reinforce the thread for me that very night. Which she did, splendidly. In fact, she did it so well that when the button itself broke the next time I wore those pants, the center of it was still firmly attached. "That's not my fault," Trash said. I had to agree. Very few things are, but this one was even less so than normal. So do you want to tell me how your clothes tend to fall apart? Too bad. It's Trash's birthday today, and if y'all had any idea how many times in this past year of book-writing and recapping and job-changing I wanted to just blow you off, and she leaned on me to post anyway, you'd be…well, you'd be either very grateful to her or very annoyed, depending on your opinion of the results. So no comments for this entry except good birthday wishes for my patient, supportive, and inspiring wife. She deserves it. posted by M. Giant 9:24 PM 13 comments 13 Comments:
Happy Birthday Trash!!! And best wishes for many, many, MANY more!!!
By Happy Birthday Trash. I hope you have a wonderful day.
By Happy birthday, love! Hope you have a wonderful one. Talk to you soon...
By
The happiest of birthdays to you!!!
By
Happy Birthday Trash from the East Coast of Canada!
By Happy Birthday Trash!!! And thank you for the reluctant posts; I do need my M. Small fixes!!!
By Happy Birthday, Trash!
By Happy Birthday Trash!
By
Happy Birthday, Trash!
By Happy Birthday Trash!!!
By Happy Birthday from "what's-his-name." I joined Facebook just for YOU!
By Happy Birthday Trash from a librarian in Baltimore!
By Hope you had a very happy birthday, Trash.
By Sunday, November 11, 2007 Lights Out M. Small thinks he's outgrowing naps. He's not. All he's outgrowing is the restraints we use to strap him to his bed on the afternoons when he's home. Trash stays home with him on Fridays, and until a couple of weeks ago she claimed that he would go down for an hour or two every one of those Friday afternoons. Three weeks ago he refused, until Trash told him, "Please, Mommy just needs a break, okay?" M. Small still refused to sleep, but at least he hung out in his room for a few minutes after that. Last week, he wouldn't even do that. This week, we've been enjoying how that first week of the time change allows us to actually get him to sleep before nine o'clock some evenings. But the nap situation hasn't changed. Trash was looking forward to having me get home from work Friday evening. I was looking forward to it to, because between writing about Kid Nation and Desperate Housewives for TWoP and writing about every other TV show ever for the manuscript revisions I've been working on, I haven't gotten to spend as much time with the boy lately as I used to. Trash, meanwhile, has all but become a single parent to cover for me. Well, not this last Friday night. That night I was going to go home, bundle him up, stick him in the car, and take him to the indoor park for several hours. Yes, I knew he'd just been there that morning. Didn't care. We hadn't gone together for weeks, and I missed it. When I got home, he wasn't hungry yet. Trash suggested packing him a sack dinner to bring with us so we wouldn't have to wait for him to feel like eating before we could go. So I did that. I changed his socks and put on his shoes. I put on his scarf and coat. I put up the hood of his sweatshirt. I brought him out back and strapped him into his car seat. We were all set for an evening of father-son fun. So here's where we get to the indoor park and I realize what I've forgotten. His sack meal? His diaper bag? His season pass to the park? M. Small himself? Well, not exactly. But he wasn't exactly all there, either. Skipping his nap had caught up with him, and he was dead asleep. But did that really mean anything? How many times have I driven him around the lake, trying to take advantage of the soporific effect of his car seat, only to finally have him wake up the minute I pulled into the driveway? How many times had I tried and failed to not wake him just walking down the hall outside his room? How different could this time be? I said his name. Nothing. I said all three of his names in a row, louder. Nothing. I clapped my hands. Nothing. I gave him several long, loud zerbits on each cheek. Nothing. At all. I strapped his car seat to the roof and drove around the parking lot. Still nothing. Okay, obviously I'm kidding about that last one. It's much safer to strap your child's car seat to the hood so you can keep and eye on him. I called Trash and told her what was up (not M. Small, namely) and she told me to bring him home. Only a small child can come out with you and still stand you up. Even when he falls asleep in the car seat, he usually wakes up during the transfer from the car to his bed. At some point, between unbuckling him, lifting him out, holding him one-handed long enough to unlock and open the back door, getting in the house, climbing the stairs, getting him onto his bed, and removing his coat, scarf, and shoes, you can pretty much count on him at least opening his eyes for most of the process. This was like transferring and undressing a sack of potatoes. No, he wasn't dead. But the next day, as soon as he got up from his nap, I piled him into the car and off we went. I think he knew I was more excited than he was. I know this by the way he messed with my head the whole way there. "I'm sleeping in the car, Daddy!" he taunted. Maybe he was just angling for another ride on the hood. posted by M. Giant 10:56 AM 4 comments 4 Comments:
I'm going to forward the FedEx tracking number to you of the box that contains my 2 year old. The one who refused his nap for the last two days. The one who came home early on Friday because he was running a fever and was supposed to be SICK.
By Used to be the "go sleepy drive" was the only way to get mine down for naps. Now that doesn't work either. Somewhere around 2.5, both mine decided naps suck and just refused to take them. But the little one still falls asleep in the car precisely when you do not want her to do so. How do they know?
By
Yeah, Sam initiated a random nap strike a few weeks ago, but we chucked him in his crib for a couple of hours every afternoon anyway (validating our decision not to get him a big boy bed until we absolutely need to).
By This makes me want to gloat so badly: when my son was in preschool, he used to fall asleep on the way home every night, bam, and sleep through until the next morning. All right, it wasn't actually awesome, because when he's unconscious nearly every second that he's home you start to miss him. And that's just weird. I attribute it at least partly to the fact that he was at preschool from about 8:30-6pm and had done everything he had the energy to do in a day, nap or not.
By Thursday, November 08, 2007 No More Ass Cancer On Monday, I left for work early so I could drop Strat off at the vet. He was having his ass tumor removed. He wasn't allowed to eat anything after eight o'clock the night before, since he was going to be under a general anesthetic for the operation. I gave him his evening snack and his insulin shot, then took away his and Phantom's food. When Trash and I went to bed that night, I told her I was locking the cats downstairs for the night. I was prepared for any protests, planning to remind her if needed that if his yowling wakes us up in the middle of the night when his dish is full of food, there was no way we were going to survive a night when it wasn't. If she said, "But what if this is our last night with him?" I was prepared to say that we could just count Saturday, then. But Trash didn't argue. She likes to sleep too, although not as much as I do. Monday morning, he was easy to find (actually, he found me -- he was waiting plastered against the door to the stairs when I came down), but he wasn't too thrilled about getting in the cat carrier. Not that he ever is. At the vet, they directed us to the basement. I always wondered what was down there. Now I know. It's the surgery department. Upstairs at our vet's office is warm and homey, all earth tones and such. Downstairs is like a secret underground government lab. Kind of awesome. Trash was home that day. With me at work, M. Small at day care, and Strat having an operation. She and Phantom had kind of an unusually quiet house. The kitty surgeon called me at work that afternoon to tell me that he'd finished up, and gotten the thing out of there. He was sending it off to the lab and they'd have the results back in a few days. In the meantime, I could pick him up that evening as scheduled. Strat, I mean, not the surgeon. When I picked him up, he was already in his carrier and ready to go home. He had bleary red eyes, a bandage around his front leg where the IV had been, antibiotics and painkillers for me to give him over the next couple of weeks, a large shaved area on his ass, and this:  He's never had to wear one of these before, and you know what? Turns out he doesn't care for it. Especially riding home in the cat carrier, when the top rim would brush against the carrier's ceiling, and he would react to a perceived threat by trying to stand up straighter, which would just press the whole rim against the ceiling all the way around its circumference. It would have been funny if it hadn't been…Oh, who am I kidding, it was funny. The checkout tech said that it would take him a couple of days to get used to it. He still doesn't like it much, but he's not in a constant state of irritation any more. All our fuzzy little Sir Walter Raleigh has to do is scratch loudly at the plastic every few minutes and that seems to keep him more or less content. I forgot to ask the tech how long it would take before we got used to it, because he woke us up with this several times last night. I think Trash would protest if I'd tried to evict him from our room at night while he's in this condition. I didn't try to, because I know how she felt. But I was tempted. The surgeon just called and said that the bad news is that the tumor seemed to be of medium aggressiveness, which means that it may have spread without us knowing. The good news is that they got it all. We're concentrating on the good news. posted by M. Giant 4:33 PM 6 comments 6 Comments:
Best of luck to Strat. She looks adorable in the collar. You should keep it for Sunday-wear once she's better. (She? He?)
By
Poor Strat! He most certainly does not look happy with his collar. That look says "Soon as this thing's off, I'm kicking someone's ass."
By I hope this surgery will fix Strat up. Even if he has a recurrence, he should have a longer and more comfortable life now that the primary tumor has been removed. Best of luck! Your cats are fortunate to have such loving owners.
By
Awwww. Poor li'l Astro!Strat. I will concentrate on the good news too, on your behalf. ~positive vibes~
By
I'm much relieved to know that they were able to get all the ass cancer out of Strat. And as always, he is handling things with much dignity.
By
This title is hilarious.
By Sunday, November 04, 2007 Random Crap Marvin still needs adopting! E-mail me and tell me how much you want him. You know you do. * * * It is a truth universally acknowledged among John Cusack fans that the movies he's in within his sister Joan are generally good. Say Anything, Grosse Pointe Blank, Sixteen Candles, Broadcast News (yes, seriously, he's in it for literally two seconds), and High Fidelity are all varying degrees of good to great. Whereas his Joan-free outings tend to be a bit more…disastrous. Must Love Dogs, Identity, Con Air, pretty much anything with Billy Bob Thornton (although I didn't hate Pushing Tin as much as most people, I will defer to the conventional wisdom in support of my point). Ultimately, I think it was the one-two suck of Serendipity and America's Sweethearts that prompted us to leap off of any Cusack love train that didn't have Joan as one of the co-conductors. So now the Cusacks have this new movie out called Martian Child, and not only is Joan also in it? She's getting pre-title billing in the TV commercials, including the little 30-second spots. I can't decide if that's a good sign for the quality of the movie, or a bad sign that the studios have just figured out how to cynically market a movie to us ex-Cusack fans. In either case, I'm pretty sure Joan Cusack wouldn't be getting pre-title billing if her costar were Brad Pitt. Or even Jack Black. Doesn't really matter to me, since I see about four movies a year in the theater and I've already seen three and a half so far in 2007. Someone get back to me after seeing this one, and tell me which half to skip. * * * M. Small isn't that great at putting together an outfit; typically, he just wants to keep wearing whatever he has on until he spills something on it, and getting him dressed for daycare/into a coat for outside/undressed for bath/into pajamas for bed is usually something of a struggle. I wonder if that might not be because he's having a little trouble with the terminology. Too many garment-related words make no sense to him. Or, if you think about it, to anyone else. To Trash, while running down the hall in only a shirt: "I'm shirting! I'm shirting!" Since he pronounces his R's like a three-year-old (which is to say almost not at all), Trash found this quite alarming until she realized what he was saying. To me, while I was putting his pants on: "Are these trousers? Do they trouse?" Every parent dreads the question they don't know how to answer. To me on a different occasion, as I was changing him and most of his clothes were off: "I'm only wearing one clo." Well, nobody ever told him that "clo" isn't the singular form of "clothes," and if they did, why should he believe them? * * * I think my blog is broken. It's acting weird for me whenever I load it without including "www" in the address. I'm trying to remember to include that in the links from the DHAK page and my notify list e-mails, but that doesn't help the people (okay, person) who have it in their favorites menu (specifically, Trash). Plus there's that weird, sawed-off text right below the title bar that's been bugging me for months and I don't know how to get rid of,, and the fact that "smart" quotes come out looking really dumb half the time. I'm considering just switching to a new template. But I'm still irrationally attached to the current one. How many people go five and a half years without a redesign, after all? It kind of makes me stand out. Plus my current template isn't even available for new blogs any more, which makes it like of a collectors' item. You see this look and you think, "Wow, this guy's been here for a while." Just like you would if you walked into someone's house and their kitchen counters were covered with avocado Formica. I'm sure I'm thinking about this all wrong. I do with most things, after all. posted by M. Giant 9:03 PM 7 comments 7 Comments:"Currency", from back in the day when blog*spot blogs had only a few templates. The look was the same whereever you surfed but the content was different - sort of like that Twilight Zone episode where coming of age meant being transformed into a model-perfect body, only with your own name stitched across the shirt. Don't change it.
By
I love the anecdotes of M. Small's language development. "Do they trouse?" is the question that will haunt me today.
By
I went to see Martian Child on Friday and it definitely hit the John/Joan movies are awesome mark. Very cute, I cried once and nearly did twice (I never cry at movies), but it's not like it's a barn burner or anything. Very much just a screw-up guy trying to raise and help a screwed up (but cute and not a bad actor) kid.
By 1408 was also excellent, and I HATE horror movies, psychological thrillers, what have you. I went only because I just saw G.P.B.
By
1) True, "1408" was decent, and that's coming from someone who's lukewarm on horror movies in general.
By
Trause! So cute!
By
Yours is the only blog address I always have to type, instead of IE recognizing it from the first or second letter.
By Thursday, November 01, 2007 Trick or Treat IV A lot of people mark their kids' childhoods with birthdays, or with Christmases. I think I'll probably always mark M. Small's with Halloweens. His first Halloween, in 2004, was also his first full day home from the hospital. They sent him home before he was ready, so he could barely even drink from a bottle back then. Needless to say, he was the worst trick-or-treater you ever saw in your life. While his costume, "Human Burrito," was quite convincing, I literally had to carry him from house to house. At least he was portable.  Or he would have been, if Trash had let me take him out of the house. I think she was secretly worried that at his size, he might somehow end up in some other kid's goodie basket. The following Halloween, 2005, is when he actually went trick-or-treating for the first time. I really did have to carry him everywhere. He wasn't that great at walking yet. Plus this was back when if you wanted him to say something, you had to practice for a couple of weeks, but thanks to a crash course on "trick or treat" that night he was able to say "tweee" by the time we got home.  I'm the one on the right. Note that his costume, "World War I Flying Ace," was selected purely for warmth, and for the ability to bundle him up underneath it. Only about 50% of the total contents of that flight suit are M. Small. Last year, 2006, was the first year he picked his own costume. Okay, he had two options; we were at Target and Trash held up a zebra suit and a Tigger suit and told him to pick th-- "That one!" A clear preference. He liked that costume so much that he still wears it around the house sometimes, as seen here.  For trick-or-treating that year, we actually ventured beyond our block. He went out with his cousin Deniece and her other cousin, and did pretty well for himself. I think he just liked ringing the doorbells and meeting people, and getting candy was just some weird formality that went along with it. This year he was old enough to tell us what he wanted to be. And that was? A turtle. We made sure he meant a turtle and not Turtle, and set out to find a turtle costume. There are plenty of them out there. But they're all made for kids who are the age he was at when he was a World War I Flying Ace. So my mom made one. She started out by making him a corduroy blanket sleeper (for extra warmth). She also made him a hood that velcros at his chin. The shell she fashioned as a kind of sandwich board, using an armature of chicken wire and cardboard upon which to apply the shell pattern. Behold:  Trust me, that's him.  In relative repose, with the hood down. I thought the boots would not only provide more visibility, but also be in keeping with the costume's amphibious theme. And he only fell over, like, eight times.  Demonstrating how much freedom of movement the costume affords him. Or maybe he's demonstrating that he just ate something sticky. Hard to tell. He didn't want to wear the shell when we first went out, so I followed him around, explaining to the neighbors (and Deniece, and Deniece's mom, and M. Small's birthparents, and his birthgrandfather, who all came out with us) what he was. When I got tired of that, I would just hold the shell up to his back to demonstrate the effect. And when I got tired of that, I just dropped it down over his head while he wasn't looking. By then it was cold enough that he didn't protest. Deniece kept running ahead and ringing the doorbells, but M. Small didn't mind. She did the waiting, and he did the collecting. He saw no problem with that system at all. It's both wonderful and sad to see your child grow up so fast. It gets easier to take care of him as he learns to do more and more things for himself, to not have to watch him every second as he learns right from wrong. But on the other hand, I'm pretty sure this is going to be the last year I get 90% of his Halloween candy. posted by M. Giant 8:25 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:Wow, I can't believe M. Small's been around for 4 Halloweens. I've been reading your blog since before that, by the way, I just never comment. PS he is incredibly cute.
By Awesome costume, Grandma!
By Wow! If that Tigger outfit came in my size I'd wear it all the time too!
By
my nephews (one a little older than, and one a tiny bit younger, M.Small) both love to wear their costumes around the house. Our family Christamas photos show the older one wearing a perfect Storm Trooper cosutme while unwrapping his gifts under the Christmas tree. My family is not always like other families (thank goodness)
By 
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
