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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Sunday, December 30, 2007 My Year in Movies (2007) Time now for my second annual rundown of all the movies I've seen so far this year. Again, I'm only counting movies I saw in the theater. Not that I watched many non-toddler movies at home either, mind you. It's just that after finally seeing the DVD of 2005's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy last week, I'm still coming to terms with the fact that Arthur Dent is now younger than I am. Children of Men A 2006 release, but I went into this on the first Sunday of 2007 having made up my mind to be blown away. And indeed, that is what happened. At one point I fully expected that I would just sit in my car and lose it in the parking lot afterward, but that didn't happen. The only distracting thing was that I hadn't seen Clive Owen in anything since Gosford Park, so I had forgotten how high his speaking voice is. I kept seeing photos of the guy in magazines the last few years and expected this Daniel Craig rumble to be coming out of him. Not so much. 28 Weeks Later I don't have it in for London, I swear to God. Not that you'd know it by my apparent penchant for semi-apocalyptic epics set there in the first half of my moviegoing year. I love London. It's one of my favorite cities in the world. I hope to go back one day, and stay a lot longer. Trash is the one who hates London. Ratatouille It took me about four months to watch this movie. You may suggest that in that case, I was probably doing it wrong. I freely admit this. It was the first movie I took M. Small to in the theater, and he had enough at what I thought was the halfway point. Then it came out on DVD and we watched it together, this time skipping the parts with all the shooting and gassing and near-drowning. It had your standard bittersweet Pixar ending, in which the unlikely hero manages to achieve his goal and/or some high level of self-actualization in some unexpected way despite obstacles like belonging to a demographic which typically can't even talk. I loved it, but I had some questions at the end: is it really possible to control a human's movements by tugging on his forelock? Does the fact that I like a Big Mac now and then really make me some kind of philistine? And finally, when did M. Small leave the room and what is he doing now? At least I got out of London and into Paris. But then, so did the rage zombies at the end of 28 Weeks Later. With that in mind, the end of Ratatouille really could have taken quite a different direction. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Hey, looky here, we're back to fucking shit up in London. I nearly missed this one in the first-run theaters because my manuscript was due at the end of August, but I squeezed it in. What else can I say about Harry Potter that hasn't already been said this year a hundred times, including by me? I have noticed that the actress playing Ginny Weasley is growing up to look a lot like Laura Linney, which makes me hope that one day a grown-up Harry will be played by Jim Carrey. And that's it for 2007. See you this time next year, when I hope to, among other things, give you a rundown of the first hour or so of Wall-E. posted by M. Giant 9:15 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:
...is it really possible to control a human's movements by tugging on his forelock?
By Thursday, December 27, 2007 Christmas Eve M. Small seemed to be asleep as we drove home from Trash's dad's house at 8:30 p.m. on Christmas eve, but she was discreet anyway. Just in case. "How long do you think it will take for us to…you know, wait for Santa?" she asked. "About an hour," I guessed. I thought that was being generous. How long could it take to drag a few wrapped toys out and stick them under the tree, after all? I have rarely been more wrong. He barely woke up when we got home and I transferred him from his car seat to his bed, removing his coat and other items in the process. I came right back down and started on one of his items, a small toy kitchen. "Oh, crap," I said, looking at the thirty sheets of molded plastic comprising approximately nine hundred different parts. Shortly thereafter, he rolled over a little stuffed lamb that recites a death-free version of the "Now I lay me down to sleep" prayer, and it kept chattering until he woke up and I had to go back and read him some stories. While I was doing that, Trash finished everything else and came up to relieve me. Not that having to return to a task equal in complexity to assembling a particle accelerator was such a "relief," per se, but that's the expression. While Trash was singing him to sleep, I was able to concentrate on the task long enough to realize that it wasn't as bad as it had at first seemed. There were many pages of detailed graphical instructions, and all of the parts were labeled right on them with lettering from A to YYYYYYY. Plus each step told me which parts sheet I needed to take the necessary parts from. The fact that each step required a part from nearly every parts sheet in no way diminished the thoughtfulness of this gesture. And it got even better when Trash came down to help me. At first she remarked, "I'm beginning to see why this was only twenty dollars," but she got right to work on things like locating the right parts and pre-assembling sections that would be added on later. It was actually kind of fun as we watched the pieces come together with cunning precision, not realizing how they were going to work until they snapped (and were then screwed) into place. The little microwave, the little dishwasher racks, the little knobs and switches, the little stove burners that light up, the refrigerator with its even littler ice dispenser on the front. At some point we realized that M. Small's kitchen is nicer than ours. One day, when we're much richer and it's time to remodel our entire kitchen, we're just going to show this toy kitchen to a contractor and say, "Do this, but bigger. And with granite counters." We were in a surprisingly good mood by the time we finished affixing parts XXXXXXXXXX-1 through XXXXXXXXXX-7 (the decals), and it was only 11:15. All that remained was to inflate the giant toy in the basement, which, since we'd gone to buy an electric pump that very day ("just in case we get visitors who want to sleep on the airbed," we told M. Small), went quickly as well. And then Trash went to wake up M. Small. I was vaguely aware that this was how Trash and her siblings had experienced Christmas when they were little, but I didn't know M. Small was going to. Christmases were always a little weird in my house, because we always left home a few days before the actual day to visit relatives. Yet somehow Santa was always able to juggle his schedule -- during crunch time, no less -- to visit our house at a time that was convenient for us, coinciding with a short drive around the neighborhood with our dad while mom stayed home for some reason. But apparently Trash and her siblings were awoken after midnight on Christmas Eve, sometimes even getting a sighting of Santa himself before opening their gifts and returning to bed around two-ish. So Trash went upstairs and I could hear her on the monitor, awakening him with the news that Santa had come. I heard her pointing out the tray of mostly-eaten cookies in the hallway. If M. Small made a groggy comment about Trash's cookie-breath, I didn't hear it. He always looks smaller somehow when he's sleeping, and when Trash carried him downstairs, he was looking considerably less than full size. Upon arriving in the living room, he took one look at the wrapped and unwrapped bounty spread out before him and said, "I don't like it." That wasn't what he meant, of course; he just wanted to go back to bed. So he did. But the next morning, as he was getting out of bed, he asked, "Is the kitchen still there? Is the plane still there?" They were, of course, and he played with it all. Even the stuff we were kind of hoping he'd forget about so we could put it away for a more boring day in the future. And of course the remote-control car was greeted like an old friend. So now I guess it's time to start shopping for next year. posted by M. Giant 9:52 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:By any chance at all was that kitchen a Step Two product? If so, my brother feels your pain as he was the one to assemble Jamie's on Christmas Eve.
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My father's family had a tradition that Santa brought the Christmas tree, too. He insisted on keeping that going when my sister and I were small- we'd wake up Christmas morning and there would be the tree and tons of presents. My mom put a stop to that in a few years, though- assembling gifts for two kids PLUS the tree was just too much on Christmas Eve.
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When he's through playing with that kitchen - if it survives well - you should sell it on eBay, preassembled, for like four times the price. Because I would pay a lot not to have to assemble something like that.
By The mister and I thankfully decided to put the toys together on the night of the 23rd, because our daughter's parking garage/racetrack took an hour and a half to assemble...plus there were decals. I think it was made by the same company as M. Small's kitchen. (And how awesome is it that your boy got a kitchen and my girl got a garage? :) )
By Saturday, December 22, 2007 A Christmas Downer Strat isn't going to make it to Christmas. The fur hadn't even grown back from his ass-tumor surgery when we started noticing that he was still losing weight. I brought him into the vet on Monday. Dr. P. groped Strat's belly, then brought him into the back for some x-rays. I waited in reception until Dr. P. came and got me, saying the scan showed "significant findings." Significant findings means "bad." In the same room in which Turtle died two months before, he showed my the x-ray picture of what looked to me like a huge tumor in Strat's belly. The pictures also showed a "loss of detail" on either side, which probably meant one thing: Cancer. All through him. Apparently this happens sometimes. You take out a big tumor, having done your best to make sure that there isn't any cancer anywhere else in the body first before you go to the trouble and trauma of surgery. It doesn't look like it's spread, at least not anywhere large enough to show up. But then the primary tumor is removed, and all the other cancer cells throughout the body see their big chance. Dr. P. said there was some possibility that it was an abscess instead of a tumor, but we'd need an ultrasound to be sure. The problem is that with the holidays, we couldn't get him in for one until the first week of January. They gave him some fluids subcutaneously because he was completely dehydrated, and told me to cut his insulin dosage in half because his blood sugar was in the sixties. That night, we started explaining to M. Small what was going to happen soon. "But we need him," M. Small protested. The vet said that if the ultrasound became more urgent, they could maybe refer us to the U next week. Yesterday, we realized we weren't going to be able to wait that long. He's going downhill fast. He's not eating or drinking or walking; he just hangs out near the kitchen doorway for as long as we let him, refusing to take soft food or tuna or cold cuts or even catnip. I brought Strat in again yesterday, and Dr. P. said the tumor seemed bigger than it had on Monday. It's what you call "aggressive." They injected him with some fluids to keep him from totally dehydrating, and promised to show me how to do it at home today, just so we could maybe keep him alive through the holidays. This morning, when Trash and I together couldn't get him to take more than a few sips of water, we realized it was going to be a long, sad week. After today, the vet is closed until Wednesday. In Strat's condition, a lot can happen between now and then. None of it good. Trash talked to her brother today, and he made an interesting point: do we really want to prolong Strat's suffering for four more days, just so we can say goodbye on Boxing Day? Talk about nuclear post-holiday letdown. So it's happening today, while we -- and especially M. Small -- still have something to look forward to. By the time you read this, he'll probably be gone already. We knew when we opted for the surgery that there was a chance he wouldn't last long, so this isn't a shock like with Orca. And we don't want to postpone the inevitable like we did with Turtle. Every cat is different, and every goodbye is different. Strat's seventeen. He's lived with us in three homes, longer than we've been married. Before he came, we were just a couple. He made us a family. It's going to be an emptier house this Christmas. 
posted by M. Giant
9:23 AM
33 comments
33 Comments:
My thoughts are with you guys - it's terrible that this happens at all, but especially this time of year.
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hey guys - this is tami. I'm so sorry to read about strat. Lora, I know you were hoping to make it thru the holidays. As hard as it was, you made the right decision though. Take care,
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You're doing the right thing for Strat. It's never easy, but it's the merciful thing to do. You're all in our thoughts.
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Aw, M. Family, I'm so sorry to hear this. However, as others have said, you are doing the right thing for Strat.
By You did the right thing. It's so hard to lose one of them, but he's not suffering any more.
By We'll be thinking of you. Hugs and love from another cat household to yours.
By This has been a rough year for you, and although you know you've done the right things, I know that doesn't make it any easier. I am SO sorry for your loss.
By M. Family, I am so sorry you had to do this, to make this decision for your longtime family member. Strat was loved, this is known. Our thought are with you, and I am again, so sorry for your loss.
By Oh, I am so sorry to hear this...it's hard to lose a pet. You gave Strat a long, happy and loving life, and like others have said, it's the right thing to do for someone you love.
By I'm so very sorry for your loss; the M. family will be in my thoughts.
By Oh dear, oh damn it. I am so sorry. My heart aches for you all. I know nothing will help, but you had him to love for a wonderful long time, even though it's never enough. Peace.
By Oh man, I am so, so, so sorry to hear this news. (((hugs))) to you all. Thoughts and prayers are with you. :(
By I'm delurking to offer my condolences to the family during such a nasty, awful time.
By I'm so sorry to hear this - it's been a rough year for you guys. However, I think you're doing the right thing. Strat's had a good long life with you guys - my thoughts and prayers are with you as he moves on.
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Oh, guys. This random stranger is very sorry for you and your kitty. I hope the rest of the holidays are better.
By I'm so sorry. I lost my Maine Coon cat in July -- he developed major liver problems and also stopped eating and drinking. I spent a lot of money and did a lot of home care (sub-Q fluids, enemas, force-feeding) trying to keep him alive, but it didn't work and finally the vet and I agreed that it was time to let him go. It's always such a hard thing to do, even when you know it's right. I'm sorry you have to go through this during the holidays.
By God, I'm so sorry. I know how much something like this hurts, having lost two of my own. But you did absolutely the right thing to bring Start in Saturday. It was the last, kindest thing you could do for him.
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I'm so very sorry for your loss. M.Small has had some hard life lessons this year, poor little guy.
By Oh dear. I am sooo sorry. But you're doing the right thing. It is a hard thing, but it is the right thing. My 18 yo cat passed away this summer under similar circumstances, so I know how difficult it is to say goodbye to a friend who's been with you that long. Take care of yourselves and remember the good times.
By I'm so sorry about Strat. 17 years is a long, full life for a cat, and given his medical condition, there are not many families that would have provided him what he needed. He was lucky to have you (and I'm sure you felt lucky to have him.). Take care.
By I feel your pain. I had to put my boy down 3 weeks ago, finding out that he wasn't constipated but actually had a giant tumor in his belly. It was the hardest thing to do. We bawled all day long and that night the bed felt HUGE and empty. You never realize how much space a cat takes up until he isn't there anymore. I am so sorry for your loss. I didn't get as long with my big (16 lbs!) white boy as you did, but those 11 years were wonderful and I will cherish them always.
By I'm so sorry about Strat, my heart goes out to you - horrible thing to lose a family member like that. Sounds like he lived a wonderful, long life being so lovingly taken care of.
By I'm so sorry, you guys. I've been off the grid for days, and didn't see this until now. Big hugs to the little guy, and I hope to see you all soon. Much love!
By I'm really sorry about Strat. That's terrible news.
By I'm sorry. I know he was a good kitty.
By I'm so sorry. We have two ailing older cats, and we're starting to have to think about endings, too. It's so hard. I'm so sorry for you all.
By so sorry for the loss. i feel the sadness too.
By {{{{{{HUGS}}}}}}} to all of you!!
By I'm so very, very sorry.
By I'm so sorry, M. Family. I would offer to lend you Little Joe, but then you'd have a sprained back on top of everything else. Take good care.
By I'm so sorry. That really sux.
By De-lurking to say how very sorry I am for all of your losses this year... your writing about them has helped me through the loss of my 22!yo childhood cat earlier this year, however... so, thank you so much for sharing. I firmly believe in cat heaven, with lots of treats and toys and catnip... and all our kids are there. Wishing M.Fam the best...
By I'm so sorry. You were lucky to have Strat for this long.
By Wednesday, December 19, 2007 Dress Up Something a bit weird happened the other day. We stopped by Trash's brother's house to drop off their Christmas cookies, and to hang out for a bit and give M. Small a chance to play with his cousin Deniece for a little bit. The kids ran around in the living room for a while, and then they went downstairs while we adults sat upstairs and discussed the WGA strike (by the way, the writers have one more supporter as of Sunday). It was just coming up on that time when you realize the kids have been quiet for a while. As any parent knows, loud noises and yelling and crashes coming from the place where the kids are generally do not constitute a major problem; it's the times when they've been quiet for too long that you know the real damage is being done. I was just about to go down and check on them when they came back upstairs. They hadn't destroyed anything at all, as it turned out, and were behaving quite innocently. Deniece was wearing a fringed flapper outfit from one of her dance classes. And M. Small was stunning in a full-length pink ball gown. Although not "stunning" in the usual sense. He presented himself before us, smiling proudly yet mischievously, his little-boy haircut suddenly looking oddly butch. Obviously this was Deniece's doing, but it was equally obvious that he had been a willing participant. Trash and I made the appropriate surprised/aren't you silly noises, and they ran off again. And Trash admitted, "You know, I'm not having the reaction I've always thought I'd have." We certainly haven't gone out of our way to socialize him with traditional gender roles. At Target, he always compares the vacuum cleaner displays with "Daddy's vacuum" and compares hardware store displays with "Mommy's table saw." Yet he's always been much more interested in tools and construction equipment than in dollies or dresses, through no conscious effort on our part. We've always agreed that we will support him no matter what when he gets older, but after he ran off again in that pink formal, Trash confessed, "Inside my head I'm like, get it off, get it off." And I was glad she said that, because I kind of felt the same way. If he wants to wear women's clothes one day, fine. But preferably when he's older. And definitely not with the dark-blue socks that have rockets and stars on them. No son of mine is going to leave the house in a pink dress unless he's got white stockings on as well. Obviously we didn't make a big deal of it, because the last thing we wanted was to turn it into a formative experience, either way. Hence no pictures for your enjoyment/alarm. Shortly afterward, it was time to go, and we explained that it was too cold to go back outside until he put his own clothes on. "Noooo!" he wailed in protest. "I want to be a princess!" "It's too cold for you to be a princess," I told him, and wrestled my child out of a dress, something I haven't thought I was ever going to have to do ever since we found out what gender he is. I don't want to make it seem like I'm reading too much into this; It's just something funny he did. But it made me realize that as enlightened as we tell ourselves we are, I'm sure there's some part of us that's glad we don't have to worry about preparing him for certain things, like the way the world sometimes reacts to boys who aren't as interested in backhoe loaders as they are in MGM musicals. Being willing to but not having to represents the best of both worlds; you get to be thoughtful and progressive without actually having to work at it. We've always told him he can be whatever he wants to be when he grows up. If that's a princess, we'll worry about it when the time comes. posted by M. Giant 9:24 PM 19 comments 19 Comments:At M's age, dressing up, playing with dolls, kitchen, etc. isn't a cause for alarm. He's just pretending. He probably doesn't even understand that princesses are girls. My preschoolers all love to play dress up, cars, whatever, no matter their gender. Letting boys play dress up or with dolls is shown to help them express their emotions! :)
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My daughter likes to wear her "pwincess dwesses" while playing with her trains and backhoes. You just never know with kids. Her almost 7 year old brother will wear a tiara while fighting her for the Thomas trains.
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My younger brother wore my pink ballet tutu all the time when he was about two. We have several pictures of him wearing it while on his big wheel. He liked it more than I did, it was pretty hilarious. My parents didn't make a big deal out of it either, and eventually he got tired of it and moved on.
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My son's favorite color was pink until he entered pre-school. I think the others kids quickly schooled him on what boys and girls are "supposed" to like and how they are "supposed" to act. Then he started talking (and it was all talk) like he was "all boy". For his 4th birthday, he insisted no girls would be invited to his party. But then when you asked him the names of kids to invite, it was "Amber, Sarah, Chloe, ..."
By Look at it this way: if he does grow up to be a cross-dresser, then statistically he has a greater than usual chance of becoming a US Senator or FBI Director. So that's pretty cool.
By
When I was a kid I wanted to be a cowboy. "Don't you mean a cowgirl?" people would ask. "No!" I'd insist scornfully, "A cowBOY!" No one ever told me that being anything I wanted to be when I grew up didn't include male.
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I'm a new reader of your blog and I've been enjoying the posts about your son. However, this post and the comments above from Bunny and Ali make me sad and angry. If so-called "progressive" parents hope not to have LGBT kids, I'd hate to hear what more conservative parents think about this topic. This is a very personal issue for me, but I'd like to think that any true progressive parent would work like hell to create a society that values all people, including the LGBT people their children might become.
By A couple that I am friends with have four children, two older boys and twin girls. The middle boy is the most stereotypically "boyish" in his behavior. Nonetheless, one of his favorite things to do when he was little was playing dress-up, and dressing up ALWAYS included Mommy's high-heeled shoes and some Mardi Gras beads. We all thought it was adorable; but then his parents used to cross-dress for their Halloween costumes in their pre-child-having era. Enjoy your son's imagination and sense of freedom; this lack of self-consciousness is precious, and usually doesn't last.
By I was wondering when a comment like the last one would appear. I'm not going to speak for Trash and M. Giant, but as someone who knows them in real life, I can promise you that they are not homophobic at all, and I think other friends would back me up on this point. They have very close friends and relations that are GLBT, and I think that's what M. Giant was trying to say here. While they wouldn't have any issues themselves with a GLBT child, it would sadden them that M. Small would live in a world that does discriminate. But again, I don't want to speak for them.
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Although we all know that M. Small isn't necessarily anything LGBT because he's wearing a pink dress, some interesting things have come up in this conversation.
By I'm gay and I'd have to say that if I had kids I wouldn't want them to be gay/transgendered/etc. It's not homophobia. Stop being so overly sensitive and PC! It's really ok!
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I love the Internet, but sometimes it seems like it's where people go to be annoyed by stuff. This discussion is asinine.
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@febrifuge Maybe when you consider how many people are murdered and beaten, or commit suicide every year because of homophobia, you'll think twice about how asinine this discussion is.
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My 6 year old nephew was dressed up like the lone Ranger playing guns and shooting things while singing look at me I'm sandra Dee.
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@anonymous 8:33pm -- look, this is asinine because it's not the time or place. If you believe that the comments section of my friend's blog is where I'm going to a) show my true colors as some kind of hateful bigot, b) experience a conversion to the "correct" way of thinking, or c) convince you that I'm actually a thoughtful, decent person, then you're just wrong. None of those things can really happen here. The difference between you and I, it seems to me, is I know it.
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Oh sure, Feb - we get a flame war for Christmas, you guys get cookies. Unfair!
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I'd like to have seen the pictures - especially the blue socks with rockets. It is giving me ideas on what to wear to our next faculty event.
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My 16-year-old son and I were at the Roseville Target earlier this week when I heard him say, "Oooh, mom, I want this for Christmas!" I turned around to see.... Hello Kitty Barbie. He's obsessed with all things even remotely Japanese.
By I don't really know what's so wrong with hoping your kid won't grow up with a giant metaphorical target painted on his ass. In decades past, would saying "I hope my kids all grow up right-handed so the nuns don't duct-tape their hands to the desk in handwriting class" have indicated a deep-seated loathing for left-handed people? Come on, for real. I am the B in LGBT (which is how I happen to know that Ls and Gs are more than fully capable of sexual-orientation bigotry all their own but that's a whooole other post) and I have no problem with loving parents who want to see their kids grow up suffering as little mockery, scorn, oppression, or repression as possible. Until we *do* live in that happy world where no gay kid has to deal with more of that stuff than straights, I have no problem with M's & Trash's attitude at. all. Acknowledging that the world is more-than-usually cruel to gay kids isn't the same as *condoning* that fact.
By Sunday, December 16, 2007 Monster Cookie Weeekend This is the weekend that Trash and Blaine do their Christmas cookie baking extravaganza. I'm sure M. Small's friend Squirrel Goodnut, the cat-sized rodent who lives in our backyard and has gotten fat stealing fudge and other treats out of locked coolers on our front step for the past several years, has been looking forward to it for weeks. Except that last week, Blaine called and suggested baking at her house instead (she lives in Apple Valley now and not Blaine, but I'm not going to change her pseudonym now). Trash jumped at the chance to skip destroying our kitchen for a year, but afterwards she had a brief moment of regret. How will Squirrel Goodnut react? I suggested trying to catch him and driving him down to Blaine's house when she went to do the baking, and then forgetting to bring him back, but I don't think Trash took me seriously. Every year, they learn something from the previous year. Like, I once suggested not making so many mint-flavored items, because they made everything else on the tray taste like mint too. This year they added coffee-flavored cookies. I really hope the same principle doesn't apply. If I wanted all the cookies to taste like burnt topsoil, I'd sprinkle some over the plate. What they learned last year is that they didn't make enough. The way it usually works is that they spend a week in advance separately making dough in their spare time. Then on Friday and Saturday, the baking happens. This includes not only the pre-mixed dough, but things like bars and reindeer antlers and multicolored chocolates that look like little wrapped presents. The last day is when the finished product gets distributed among all the trays and containers. Last year during this final stage, they were kind of embarrassed because they'd bought this new kind of Tupperware container that kept the cookies fresher, but were a little larger. Except when they went to fill them, they turned out to be a lot larger. Normally every tray gets a slice of bread thrown in to keep the cookies from going stale. Some of the containers that year got two slices of bread to keep the cookies from rattling around. They weren't about to make the same mistake this year. They cut down on the number of different varieties, and only made thirty. But they doubled or quadrupled most of the recipes to make sure they still had enough actual cookies. I wasn't in on any of this year' process until today, when M. Small and I joined Trash at Blaine's house to make the crack cookies and help with filling the bins. It turned out that in their eagerness to make sure they had enough cookies, they had failed to take something into account. And that's the number of people we know who've left the state this year. Just off the top of my head, this year saw the departure of Bitter, Linda, and Feb, and I don't even know how many people Blaine doesn't give cookies to any more. The result is that when it came time to fill the bins, they filled fast. But the containers of finished cookies did not empty nearly as quickly. Normally I get my hand slapped for sneaking cookies during this weekend. This year I got my hand slapped for not sneaking enough. By the time I was assigned to slip the slices of bread in there, we were beginning to wonder how we would do it. "It's just Wonder Bread," I said optimistically. "Air and sugar. I can roll the slices into little balls." They thought that would defeat the purpose, though. What ended up happening is that we left with a bunch of containers with bulging lids. We left a bunch of cookies over at Blaine's house, and took home several batches that we have no idea what to do with. So I guess the point of this entry is…does anybody know how to e-mail cookies? posted by M. Giant 7:48 PM 6 comments 6 Comments:DO NOT GIVE AWAY MY COOKIES. I will send you my sister's address, and Trash can mail them to me there, as she has already offered. AH WANT COOKIES!
By You also forgot that you did not give a batch to Squirrel Goodnut this year - I am sure he is waiting for his tray... ?
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They make 30 different types of cookies? Just thinking about it makes me tired.
By My crack cookies are still the world cookie champions! Haha - Suck that, chocolate chip! And Merry Christmas.
By I have a FedEx account. Does that rate a bin of cookies?
By Those crack cookies really are the best! I sense a recipe that is going to be a very good friend from now on...
By Thursday, December 13, 2007 My Two Babies I just realized something kind of alarming the other day. M. Small is now older than I was when my parents brought my little sister home from the hospital. That's not the alarming part. The alarming part is that I have memories from that time. Admittedly they are vague memories, mostly centered around wondering why we suddenly had so many jars in the house that had Debitch the Younger's face on them. But the point is clear: I'd figured out how to store stuff on my internal hard drive at that age. It's a safe bet that M. Small has, too. I shall have to adjust my behavior accordingly. * * * Every year around this time, we have an excellent photographer take pictures of M. Small and us for the family Christmas card. The first two years we went to a big store/garden center called Bachman's. This year we went instead to the indoor park M. Small likes to spend evenings at, but he was too distracted and most of the pictures didn't come out. So a week later, he and Trash went back to Bachman's after all. I'm sorry I missed it, but something about it freaks me out. There's a "Santa's Workshop" area that shows up cute in pictures, but I wish they'd quit it with the shrinking props. Check out this giant lollipop in 2005:  And then the obviously smaller lollipop in 2006:  Finally, last week:  Of course there's lots more where that came from. Check out the rest of the photos from the shoot at our Flickr page. If, that is, you can stand the cute. Which you probably can't. * * * Oh, and you know how every blogger who gets a book deal has the obligatory entry about how they got an ISBN number, and another entry about the cover, and another entry about how you can now pre-order on Amazon? I'm not doing that. I'm doing it all in one entry. This one. Pre-order! 0425221555! 13-digit remix: 9780425221556! Check out page 42, y'all (page 44 of the file -- which reminds me, it's a .pdf). Okay, glad we got that out of the way. Actually, now that I think about it, hold off on the pre-ordering for now. I'm thinking that if I can set up a time where all five of you pre-order at once, it might artificially inflate my Amazon ranking just long enough for me to get a screenshot of it. Worth a shot, right? posted by M. Giant 8:11 PM 6 comments 6 Comments:Woooooooo! Woooooooo!
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Ohhhhhh! The cuteness!!! *melting into a puddle of goo* We've noticed from our annual Christmas card pictures that not only do annual photo props shrink, but so does Santa. His lap used to be a vast expanse of red, now it's like "dang, we've got to wedge the kiddo onto a tiny patch of knee..." Weird, huh? Imagine what it will be like when she's thirty...
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WOW! Congrats M.Giant - I am so getting your book! Oh, and TWOP has a million hits a day?!?! I remember when "discovering" the site 4 years ago and thinking I was uncovering a treasure. *sniff, sniff* How time flies!
By The cute is at an almost unbearable level. Seriously, that kid is going to be a looker when he grows up. AND smart. AND with good parents. Some kids have all the luck. :-)
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LOL! I love the ever shrinking lollipop. You're going to have to go there for a few more years now, just to continue that theme you have going- that's awesome.
By Whoo! Make that Loyal Viewer! YEAH!
By Monday, December 10, 2007 Conservation One early Saturday morning in the winter of '97 or '98, I woke up and sensed a definite chill in the house. Sometimes I imagine these things, but since the thermostat told me the temperature in the house was in the forties -- Fahrenheit -- that didn't seem to be the case this time. I went right down to the basement to see what was wrong with the old gravity furnace, and I could see the problem immediately: there was no fire in there. What to do about it was a little beyond my purview, however. Fortunately we pay a few bucks a month on our gas bill to have the utility standing ready when problems like this occur, so the person on the phone was able to walk me through relighting the pilot light. Apparently the furnace's process of cycling on had blown it out. I went back to bed and would have slept until the house finished warming up, if there hadn't been someone already there who started screaming "COLD HANDS! COLD HANDS!" as soon as I arrived. Sadly, she now owns pajamas. This happened a few more times that winter, with increasing frequency. At least I knew how to relight the pilot now, and always kept a big box of fireplace matches nearby. But it was inconvenient, and kind of a gyp. I mean, one of the things we liked about this house was the fact that the primitive old furnace would last forever because it only had, like, two moving parts. And now both of them were failing. By spring, I was relighting the pilot light almost daily, and that summer we just had the old beast ripped out and replaced with a new model, along with central A/C. It was a good investment, but now, with the world about to run out of oil, we've been trying to be more energy-efficient. Now that it's gotten cold outside, I've shrinkwrapped most of the windows on the main floor, and installed weatherstripping around the back door, and we almost always keep the front door closed when we're not at home. We even invested in a new, programmable thermostat. I programmed it to let the house cool down a few degrees overnight and when we're at work, but I don't think it's working. I telecommuted last Wednesday, and the temperature never dropped more than half a degree. I need to look into that. But what has saved us more on our heating bill than that semi-programmable thermostat, at least so far, is two other features that work in concert to reduce our furnace activity. One of these is a light switch on the side of the furnace that's about two feet above the floor, and allows you to simply turn it off. The other is a three-year-old. As soon as I finished the first draft of my Desperate Housewives weecap in front of the basement TV on Sunday I had to get up out of the cold. Our basement gets chilly in the winter no matter what, but my laptop's liquid crystal display was rapidly becoming more crystal than liquid. But even the main floor had a distinct chill. Trash has been wanting to keep the house cooler this winter than I have, but when I checked the thermostat I asked her, "Don't you think 65 is a little chilly?" Trash disavowed any knowledge of having set it that low (although she admitted it was a good idea). Then I remembered that light switch, and that M. Small had been hanging out with us downstairs earlier that day while we organized Christmas presents. Sure enough, when I went down to check, I saw the switch in the down position. I turned the furnace back on, which at least doesn't require the use of a fireplace match these days, and informed Trash, "Your son turned off the furnace." And then Thursday night, M. Small and I were playing Cars on the PlayStation. He was with me the whole time, and never wandered over to the side of the basement where the furnace is. Which was why I was so confused when I woke up the next morning and discovered that the temperature in our house was 59. 59 degrees is a lovely spring or fall evening outside with a light jacket or sweater. 59 degrees is less lovely inside your house on an early December morning before the sun is up or you've remembered where you keep your socks. I hurried down to check the furnace, which I now assumed was broken since I knew M. Small hadn't turned it off. Fortunately he had turned it off. I guess I was more into that tractor-tipping game than I thought. But I was also pleased at this clear indication that the house is much better insulated than it was years ago, even with three times as many upstairs windows as we had back then. Trash, however, had a little more trouble looking on the bright side, even though it had warmed up to 63 by the time she got up. Something about a sinus infection, I don't know. Whiner. I know there's a simple way to fix this problem. There are childproof light switches you can buy, and I could easily pick one up and install it on the side of our furnace in place of the current one so this doesn't happen again. But then I'd have to figure out how to program the thermostat, too, and why would I take on two jobs when I can do none and conserve the same amount of energy? posted by M. Giant 3:57 PM 7 comments 7 Comments:
We set our thermostat to 60 at night and 65-68 during the day.
By
Well, 'tis the season for furnace issues, I suppose - ours did its semiannual "refusal to cycle on" thing which means the little flame sensor thingy needed to be cleaned. (Our furnace is only 8 years old, as we built our house 8 years ago and splurged on a brand-new furnace at the time.) The HVAC tech came out on Friday and when he was cleaning the sensor off, he mentioned how our furnace has an indicator light to tell us what is wrong. First time in 8 years we'd ever heard of such a thing! Turns out that there is this tiiiiiiiny, red light that blinks a sort of Morse Code type signal number in this tiiiiiiiny window on the lower part of the front of the furnace, and one merely has to pop off the front panel of the furnace to look up what the code means, assuming one has accurately counted and translated the blinks. (Was that two short, one long, five short or one short, two long, five short?) I guess this is why no one ever bothered to tell us about the light in the first place... :P
By My god I am decadent. It’s at 64 nights and during the day when we are not home, it brings itself up to 71 in the am so I am not freezing my cha cha’s before work, and then it is 71 when we come home, unless I am freezing and then I bump it to 73, and yes I am wearing sox and a sweater (and no I am not a size 2…) If the boy toy can get the log splitter up and running we will be good. We have 2 wood stoves and that brings the house up to 76-80, which really isn’t good, because then I want all the windows open. I just can’t win.
By I don't get the point of having the heating on at night. You're in bed, with a duvet and maybe a quilt as well and maybe if you're lucky, a hotwater bottle shaped like a dalek. It's warm. Having it timed to come on when you're out of bed, sure, but in the middle of the night?
By If I didn't have any heat in the middle of the night, I'd wake up shivering. No matter how many blankets, that much cold air on my face makes me wake up with my face and ears like ice. I don't always sleep with my arms completely under the blankets, and if I had a hand exposed to an unheated house in the winter, I'd wake up as a result of my hands being so cold. Everybody's got different tolerance levels, I think, but there's no way I could sleep without heat -- I would just keep waking up all night long, and when the heat doesn't work in my apartment, that's exactly what happens.
By
Certainly where I live (Canada) you'd be in danger of freezing your pipes if you turned the heat off at night during the coldest spells.
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We set our at 60 at night, 65 during the day.
By Thursday, December 06, 2007 The Worst Commute One of the things I liked most about changing jobs was how much easier the commute got. The new office isn't any closer in terms of distance, but it's in a much easier direction. That is to say, I'm heading away from downtown in the morning, and towards downtown in the evening. So twice a day, I get to enjoy the sight of all the poor suckers stuck on the freeway going the opposite direction from me as I cruise effortlessly by. Trash, still commuting to downtown, hates me for this. Tuesday night, when the snowstorm hit, I wasn't prepared. This was the first big snow we've gotten on a weekday since I started working here. Normally when I leave the office's parking lot, I can look right out onto the freeway I'm about to merge onto, with the generously-spaced cars zipping by at or above the speed limit. Not Tuesday. In the failing sunlight and the succeeding snow, I found myself looking out at a parking lot. "Screw this," I said to myself, and forsook the freeway entirely. I never get on a backed-up freeway if I can help it. You're stuck there, indefinitely, with no way to change routes in between the off-ramps that creep by every half hour or so. I'd much rather stick to surface streets, even if I'm unfamiliar with them and risk getting lost. So that's what I did. Get lost, I mean. This was not my plan. I've worked in Eden Prairie before, back in the nineties, and I knew some sneaky back ways in those days. All I needed to do now was find my way back to that area and rediscover one of my old alternate routes. Easier said than done. I forgot to mention that in returning home from my office without getting on any freeways, I have to cross not one, not two, but four of them. And it's funny that I forgot to mention that, for reasons that will become clear in a moment. I was feeling pretty good about things as I zipped over that first freeway on a road that loops around behind a small hive of big stores and crosses that same freeway again. Visibility was still such that I could tell which direction I was going, and which directions I didn't want to go in (namely the ones that led down onto the freeway and appeared as an unbroken red line of motionless taillights). Really, there are only three or four major roads in this town, and they twist around and intersect in several different places and permutations, so how lost could I get anyway? Following road #1 into a labyrinthine industrial area, I quickly had my answer. My strategy was to try and proceed in a north and/or east direction whenever possible, but still avoiding lines of motionless taillights. At one point I would have turned left to go north, but that would have put me right into a traffic jam whose end I couldn't see. So I turned right instead. Shortly thereafter, I realized that the sun was completely gone, so it was impossible to tell which way I was going. I thought I was headed east for a while, but then the signs on the cross streets told me I was somehow actually going south. I circled around for a while, until finally I realized why that one street going north was so backed up: it was the only way out of there. So I joined the crowd and settled in to wait, very glad that M. Small was at his nana's house and I didn't have to be at his day care to pick him up by five. While I waited, creeping forward at a rate of about a block every fifteen minutes, I got a few cell phone calls from Trash on her own commute home. First she was leaving her parking ramp. Then she was in slow traffic on the street she takes south from downtown. Then she was in slow traffic on the street she takes west into our neighborhood. Then she was stuck trying to get her car into our driveway. "Hurry up and get home," she urged me. "All righty," I agreed, fifty feet in front of where I'd been the first time she'd called. You know what's worse than being lost? Being lost when you can't move. It's one thing when you're in your car, and you're not sure where you are. It's like a little adventure, and it's kind of fun because any minute you'll come across a street sign or a landmark that tells you where you are and all of a sudden the Google Maps inside your head will snap back into alignment. That doesn't work when you're just sitting there, staring at the same office parks and apartment buildings for 45 minutes. I was just glad that my engine and heater and wipers were working, and that I had most of a tank of gas. Otherwise I would have been thinking about how long I would be able to last before having to eat myself. At some point, hope appeared off in the distance ahead of me. It was a freeway sign. I couldn't tell which freeway it was for, but I knew I was going to have to cross an east-west one before I got home, and since I was going north, I figured this was it. Except as I slowly crept closer, I realized that it wasn't the east-west freeway I had in mind, but the north-south one I'd completely forgotten about. And which I kind of thought I'd already crossed once. Now I didn't know which way I was going -- towards home, or away? Approaching the intersection at something like sixty miles a year, I had plenty of time to worry about the fact that the Google Maps inside my head had turned into a blue screen of death. After I got over the freeway and oriented myself by figuring out which lane was northbound, though, the worst was over. There wasn't time to change lanes, so I just picked a direction and went with it. There was some more meandering through some streets that would have been unfamiliar tome even if they hadn't been coated in snow, and there was a lot more traffic, but at least it was moving and I was now out of Eden Prairie and back in a universe where streets are laid out in a less Escherian fashion. I was home less than 45 minutes later. Total commute time: 90 minutes. But at least I got home before M. Small did. The next day I telecommuted. posted by M. Giant 8:14 PM 5 comments 5 Comments:All I want for Christmas is a GPS, a GPS, a GPS....
By I've also learned the hard way to never try to use backroads in EP. Yikes!
By It took my bus 1 hour to drive from 9th street to 4th street downtown mpls.
By I saw this on a friend's blog, and couldn't help thinking how apt it was - "Minnesotans have a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome." We'll curse winter every time it comes, but damned if we'll leave.
By I also work in EP and live in the city. When the weather is good, it's an easy 20 minutes. When the weather is bad.... That said, there is no way I'd get off the freeways and try and I find my way around. It's the most confusing city with roads planned by someone who was clearly drunk.
By Monday, December 03, 2007 Family Bed On Desperate Housewives (and this marks the first time I've ever started an entry with that sentence, though not, I fear, the last, now that I'm writing about it for TWoP and am starting to…hang on, let me start over) On Desperate Housewives, Bree (Marcia Cross) has adopted her newborn grandson and is pretending to be his birth parent along with her second husband, Orson. This gives the show an excuse to "explore" some current baby-parenting controversies. For instance, a couple of weeks ago, Bree wanted little Benjamin circumcised. Orson, still traumatized from his own circumcision at the age of FIVE, did not. This is the kind of thing parents should really agree on in advance. Otherwise the parent in favor will just sneak off and have it done anyway and there'll be a big fight. Fortunately, Trash and I agreed on this issue before we even agreed to adopt a child. We didn't poll M. Small on the issue at the time, because being six months old, we didn't consider him equipped to make an informed decision. Which is why he (NOTE TO SELF DELETE THIS SENTENCE BY 2019) no longer wears turtlenecks, if you know what I mean. And, by the way, if you're one of the militants in favor, don't bother posting a comment criticizing us for our decision, because it will simply get…snipped. The following week, Bree had decided -- again, without Orson's consent -- to explore the concept of "the family bed," the formal term for "letting the baby sleep with you and hoping you don't squish him." Trash and I were also in agreement on this, and did not solicit M. Small's opinion, as it would have no doubt differed from ours. Lately we've gotten some clear and increasingly frequent confirmation that this is in fact the case. In the past couple of weeks, I've woken up in the wee hours several times to discover that Trash and I (and the cats, obviously) are not alone. I don't miss having to go into M. Small's room at night to feed him or change his diaper or just soothe him back to sleep when he wakes up. These are things he seems to have figured out how to handle. But in the last case, handling it involves getting up, coming into our room, and climbing in bed with us. We don't have a particularly low bed, but when I told Trash today, "You have to quit letting him get in bed with us." Trash disavowed any involvement. I know that M. Small always approaches the bed from her side, since she sleeps closest to the door. I also assumed, after any number of weekend morning wake-up calls, that she was helping him up onto the bed when he arrived. Come to find out that he's been wriggling up in between us without any assistance, so neither of us is any the wiser until he shifts and mumbles enough to wake us up. And then I have to go back into his room after all, this time schlepping thirty-odd pounds of semi-conscious human and hoping I don't suffer a sudden relapse of Yellow Wiggle Disease as I get to my feet holding him. This is why it's important for parents to present a united front, because the kid -- no matter how young -- is likely to have a different opinion and try to implement it. If this is how determined he is when we agree, I hate to think of how fast he'll steamroller us both if Trash and I ever have widely divergent opinions on something relating to him. That said, if he grows his foreskin back, I'm giving up. posted by M. Giant 8:03 PM 10 comments 10 Comments:Hey, you mistyped the URL at DHAK; it sends people to blogpsot.com instead of blogspot. I clicked it and was sent to some crazy site that tried to open a bunch of popups and download something onto my computer. It crashed my computer; I had to restart.
By Blogsot: for the drunken blogger.
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Very interesting post Giant
By
Hee! Sorry, but the above comment from health watch center made me chuckle.
By Wow, guess my spouse and I really missed the boat on that sleep training thing. We didn't intend to have a "family bed" - it just sort of happened. My hub was gone 14 hours a day (10 hour work day plus 2 hrs each way commute) and I needed the baby to sleep quietly, so the baby ended up in our bed. Plus that was his bonding time with dad. Now the baby is almost 7 and still wants someone to lay down with him as he goes to sleep (once he's asleep we can leave). But his baby sister refuses to sleep on her own . . .
By Man...the family bed. That will get maternity nurses and midwives laughing (as they take your baby permenantly out of your custody).
By
"And, by the way, if you're one of the militants in favor, don't bother posting a comment criticizing us for our decision, because it will simply get…snipped."
By Our crafty son not only gets in without us knowing about it, but he has figured out that if he comes into our bed before 4am I will put his 31 lbs back in his race car bed, but 4:01 and we are waking up soon enough so I don't bother. Razza frazza smart ass.
By Hello Heather, I am not a spammer... Well is that wrong? in participating or commenting on other blogs??
By Pfft. Midwives are usually all for the family bed but even if they weren't, they wouldn't hassle you about it. Every family works it out for themselves. We actually tried to co-sleep (there are safe ways to do it) but our son refused--he hated sleeping next to us. So we bought a crib, pretty much at his request. He still doesn't like to be in bed with us. Maybe we stink or something...
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