Adventures in SAHMing

Smart mouthed by a deer butt

2012-01-14T08:03:00.001-08:00

I saw the white-tailed deer from the park path -- about 20 seconds before the dog did. It was a doe with her two (now almost fully grown) fawns. They've made frequent trips up the street to our house since Autumn so we sort of know each other now.

The dog goes completely nuts every time he sees them -- as he was this time. He pulled the leash so hard that I had to lean back to hold on. The deer, seeing that the dog wasn't going anywhere, walked calmly on. I watched while the dog yanked relentlessly on his leash, making whimpering "I-can't-breathe-but-I-don't-care-because-holy-crap-there's-deer-there's-deer-there's-deer" noises. The doe let her offspring go first, then she turned around and slowly lifted her tail, swinging her hips just a little bit more than deer usually do, before disappearing into the trees.

It couldn't have been clearer if she was talking: "Uh huh. That's right, dog. You can't get me. Y'all can just kiss my fuzzy white butt!"

Christmas Eve morning

2011-12-24T08:06:00.000-08:00

The child let me sleep an extra hour. It was glorious. I reveled in that lovely wake-up-slowly, it-the-weekend fuzz.

The child was patiently watching a movie in the next room.

It is Christmas Eve morning.

I am at my parent's house.

I am on vacation.

The child and I creep down into the quiet house. I beeline to the garage to get my morning "cold caffeine".

*beep* *beep* *beep*

"Mom,"The child asks quietly. "What's that?"

I stare at the soft, green, glowing box beside the door. "It's the alarm system, sweetie."

"Do you know how to turn it off?"

"Ummm....""Mom?"

I ignore her and rack my brain. Right! Dad gave me the code last time I visited.

*beep* *beep* *beep*

I get into my phone and the encrypted database where I keep passwords and codes. My thumb keeps slipping off the buttons.

*beep* *beep* *beep*

The beeps are coming faster now. Scrolling through the list. Why do I have so many passwords? Ah! Here it is!

*beep* *beep* *beep*

The beeps are coming fast and furious, then changed into something akin to an munchkin duck having its tailfeathers removed by a vacuum cleaner.

"Mom?"Punch in the code. The angry duck stops. I breathe a sigh of relief. Now I can get finally my soda.
I go into the garage, the child blathering happily beside me, and open the box of sodas up on the high shelf. The child asks me a question and I look away for just a moment -- a fraction of a moment, really.

*thump* *thump* *thump* *thump* *thump* *thump* *thump* *thump*

A shimmering, silver stream of soda cans start rolling out of the box, down around my shoulders, and then roll happily around the garage, rejoicing in their sudden, unexpected freedom. The child danced around cheering. I open my arms and embrace the chaos.

It is, after all, Christmas Eve morning.

Tough

2011-11-22T08:30:00.001-08:00

*sigh* So much for truth in advertising.

(New dog toy, about 4 hours after it was released to the dog. It was thoroughly “de-squeaked”.)

The Tick

2011-11-22T08:29:00.000-08:00

"Mom!" the child said, her face twisted up in an angry grimace and her finger rubbing the side of her face. "There's something wrong with my ear."

I glanced at her from three feet away as the grocery store cashier moved things brainlessly across the scanner. There was something dark on her skin, an inch or so in front of her right ear. "What the...." Then I remember that she whacked her head against a coupon dispenser that had been jutting out into the baking aisle.

"It's probably just a little dried blood," I said. "From when you hit that thing."

She nodded, but kept rubbing at the spot. When I finally got through the line, I pulled up her hair and got a better look.

It wasn't blood. It had legs. "Oh, god," I said, without thinking. "It's a tick."

"It's a what?" she shrieked.

"Don't freak out," I said quietly, pushing her between me and the grocery cart.

"What?!"

The child whimpered through clenched lips as we pushed out of the store. "What... what...," she sniffled. "What is on me?"

"It's a tick," I said, glancing at the nasty thing again and trying to be calm myself. The tick was also pretty freaked out from all of the rubbing and shrieking and was wiggling its little legs for all they were worth. "It's a bug. It won't hurt you -- at worst it will leave a little bump like a mosquito bite... but we need to get it off." I gave the bug a little tug and the child's skin moved with it.

"Don't!" she shrieked again. "It hurts!"

"Ok. Ok. We can do it when we get home."

"Mom!"

"What?"

"DON'T TAKE A PICTURE!"

"But.... Umm. OK. Sorry."

She spent the 20-minute ride home crying and I spent it trying to explain to her that lots of people get ticks, that she probably got it out in the woods where she had been exploring that morning, that it would come off, and that she wasn't going to die of Lyme Disease in the next half hour.

I was also thinking "yuck, yuck, yuck" and reviewing in my head the last time I -- with limited success -- removed a tick from my dog.

It got messy.

When we got home, I sat her on the couch where we have the best light. I got a pair of little tweezers and she looked at me like I was holding a gigantic flaming iron brand.

"MOM! NO!"

"Child, it has to come off."

She shook her head furiously. I could see the tick sticking straight out from her face and fluttering a bit in the breeze. My mind raced.

Popsicles.

Popsicles cured her bee sting, they'll fix this -- at least long enough for me yank the little bugger out of her face. I ran to the freezer and presented her with a grape popsicle. "We'll numb your face with the freezing cold and then it won't hurt to pull the tick out."

She didn't hear me quite right. "You'll freeze the tick?"

I shrugged: Close enough. "Yeah. Sure. We'll freeze the tick."

She sniffled. "OK."

I put the grape popsicle against her quivering, tear-stained cheek, grabbed the critter with the tweezers and pulled. Her skin pulled up into a tiny teepee beside her ear.

"Mom! That hurts!"

"Sorry. Sorry." I let go and put the popsicle back against her face. The tick gave a sad little kick. The child's tears were back and I sensed my window of opportunity was closing so I grabbed the tick with my tweezers, pulled while gently twisting and...

Pop!

It was out.

I couldn't believe my eyes.

There was a tiny red spot where it had attached, but otherwise I had managed to get the whole bug off without breaking it into little pieces.

"Can I see it?" asked the child, suddenly calm.

I showed it to her. It was still tightly held in the tweezers. I think I must of squished it at some point because the legs weren't moving anymore.

"It's kind of cute," she said.

I glared at her. I knew where this was going.

"It's a tick," I said. "It's getting flushed. You can't keep it as a pet."

"Awwwww, Mom..."

(Note: It took a couple of weeks for me to get permission from the child to publish this story. The little red spot disappeared quickly and there's been no sign of any weird rashes or tiredness.)

Chocolate milk

2011-11-04T14:06:00.001-07:00

"Mommy? Can I make some chocolate milk?"

"Yeah. Sure. Just don't make a mess -- and don't use all of the chocolate!"

"OK, Mommy. I won't."

(That's about two inches of chocolate on the bottom of that glass... in case you were wondering.)

2011-11-01T08:11:00.001-07:00

“Mom! When will the trick-or-treaters be out?”

“I don’t know. You have to be patient.”

“How can you expect me to be patient on HALLOWEEN!?”

Child in Stocks

2011-10-19T11:00:00.000-07:00

If you go to Colonial Williamsburg, it's like some kind of requirement that you put your child in the stocks and snap a picture of them, right?

...So you can fantasize about it later after she's screamed "what-ever" at you and stomped off without cleaning up any of 50 feet of gold elastic thread now attaching the dog's back left paw to his ear.

Leaf ghosts

2011-10-19T10:50:00.001-07:00

After an autumn rainstorm, mud-coated leaves flow over the asphalt and stick. After a couple of days, the leaves dry and fly away, but their image -- in mud -- remains.

Doggy In Repose

2011-10-10T08:28:00.001-07:00

Creature from the great beyond

2011-10-10T08:11:00.000-07:00

I stopped short at the edge of the sink as the autumn sky outside the window darkened to starry moonless black. The child had just left her bath and was cheerfully babbling about something... I wasn't really listening.

I was transfixed. There was something in the bathroom with me.

Something terrible.

A skull... cleverly carved into the wispy cellulose of my cheap toilet paper. Was it the dog? Was it the child? Was it a monster from... from... from the depths of the... the... t-t-t-toilet waiting there in its watery lair for the next victim?

For me?

My full bladder tweaked -- a reminder that I must move forward. My hand reached, quivering, toward the accursed bowl.

Then I heard the giggling from the doorway. "What's the matter, Mommy? Were you scared?"

I am still working on an appropriate revenge.

New Doo

2011-10-03T07:51:00.000-07:00

The child had a day off from school (Rosh Hashanah) so we decided to get haircuts. Being an adventurous person (who is also cheap and doesn't plan ahead for these things) we went to the Hair Cuttery. I always just go with whoever is free.

I usually get a decent cut there, but it does vary (in my personal experience) based on the cultural background of the stylist. The Latinas can't believe that I actually want shorter hair than I already have and try to take as little off as possible. The Asian ladies do their level best to make my hair as straight as theirs with much goop, combing, and prominent bangs. I've had good luck with the West Africans, but they are few and far between. The Caucasians I've run across are usually young, inexperienced, and tentative.

This time, we got Bibi.

Bibi was a big, bustling, take-charge woman with a vaguely Eastern European accent. Bibi was in a hurry. Old ladies kept coming in and she'd run after them, greeting them brusquely, and then telling them to "come back in 10 minutes! I'll be free then!" I had the distinct impression that Bibi never let an opportunity for making a buck get past her.

I put the child in the chair first.

"What do you want?" she asked me.

"Short," I said.

"You want it to cover the ears?"

"No," I said, thinking back to her last adorable haircut. "Short. Like a pixie cut."

She grunted and starting cutting.

...and kept cutting....

...cutting and cutting and cutting....

By the time I could see what she was doing, it was too late to stop her. The child kept a impassive face through the entire haircut and, when it was done, focused on her iPod while I got my hair cut.

Mine turned out OK... a bit more "retro 80's" than I would have liked, but nothing that won't grow out quickly.

Bibi stopped three times during my haircut to greet other potential customers. "Just 10 minutes!" she shouted...

...while cutting....

I was lucky I didn't lose an ear.

We paid and left. When we got outside, the child said, "It's too short."

Yeah. It was pretty short.

(I gooped it up with hair gel to try to make it spiky. It didn't come out quite as I had imagined.)
"I look like a boy," she said.

Yeah. She looked like a boy. "I'm sorry baby.... I wish I could do something. It'll grow out soon."

There were no tears, no shouting, no fits. Just a sad reporting of the facts.

"My friends will say I look like a boy."

I thought about her friends. Yeah. They would. I dreaded sending her to school the next day.

I gave her a pretty pink lace hairband and drove her to school instead of making her face the bus. A teacher was walking into the school at the same time she got out of the car. "Hi sweetie," she said. "What a cute haircut!"

My hopes went up for the day. "See you at the bus stop this afternoon!" I shouted to the child. She waved back at me, hunched up her book bag, and stalked into the school like St. George walking toward the dragon's cave.

At the end of the day, she bounced happily off the school bus as usual. "I had a great day, Mom!" she said and then went on to list a bunch of things that she had done that had nothing to do with her hair. Then it came....

"My friends said my new haircut made me look like a boy."

"Yeah," I said. "Kids are like that. It looks really cute, though."

"That's what all the grown-ups said," she went on. "All of the grown-ups liked my haircut and all the kids hated it.... Except my friend who said she didn't like it at first but then said she did like it." We walked in silence for minute, the dog snuffling in some low bushes for a chipmunk he had rousted earlier. "She's a good friend," Cici said at last.

That was the last I heard about the haircut.

Hoedown!

2011-09-27T12:59:00.000-07:00

I heard the thump from the kitchen where I was cleaning up from dinner.

"Sweetie? Everything OK?"

"MOOOOOOMMMMMMMYYYYYYYYYY!"

*groan* I dried my hands and took a look. The child was sitting on the floor crying and holding her foot.

"It hurts, Mom!"

I took a look. No bleeding, no bone fragments sticking out, not even any redness.

"Well," I asked, "what were you doing?"

"I..." *huff* *huff* *sniffle* "I...I... I wanted to do the thing that they did on 'Good Luck Charlie' [stupid Netflix TV show du jour] and so..." *sniffle* "...I jumped over the couch and hurt my fooooooooooot!"

"You jumped over the couch?"

I looked at the couch. It's a big couch.

"OK," I said. "Did you land on anything?"

"My fooooooot!!"

"Did you land on anything else, like the edge of the couch or the dog or something?"

She shook her head. "It hurts!"

*sigh* "Let's get you off the floor." I parked her on the couch with her iPod and an ice pack. The tears were gone in minutes.

"Will I have to go to school tomorrow?"

"I don't know. Let's see how you feel in the morning."

Come morning, she still wasn't walking well on the foot so I called the pediatrician. This, of course, started the Medical Professional Hoedown!

"Bow to your partner, start the dance!" (Call the school and tell them the child won't be in. Haul her crippled little butt to the doctor's office.)

"Allemande Left, Right Hand Turn! Right and Left Grand, Weave the Ring!" (It is at this point that we sit in a room full of sniffling, coughing, crying children until the child's bladder inevitably fills to bursting. Then, as we go into the bathroom, I hear the nurse call her name out to come back and the question becomes "to pee or not to pee....")

"Box the Gnat, Courtesy Turn! Right and Left Thru, Ladies Chain!" (The doctor looks at her for a total of 6.5 minutes and refers us to a nearby orthopedist.)

"Chow Down, Ladies, Do Sa Do!" (We stuff as much food from the fast-food Mexican restaurant down our throats as we can before the next appointment. We do this because we have no idea how long we'll be stuck waiting for the orthopedist.)

"Back Track Left, Back Track Right, Do Sa Do and Circle to a Line!" (I sit in the orthopedist office, quietly belching up Mexican food and praying that the actors on the soap operas playing on the two TVs in the waiting room don't do anything... ummm... awkward that I'll have to explain to the child.)

"Veer Left then Right, Wheel and Deal! Ladies and Gents now Promenade!" (A glum ortho assistant shambles in and asks us some questions. He then tells us to wait for someone else to take us down to x-ray.)

"Tag the Line! Couple Trade!" (The hall down to x-ray is like half the length of a football field. Child limps pitifully the whole way.)

"Half Sashay and Pull Away! Ladies now let's Allemande!" (The actual orthopedist comes in and tells us that there is nothing broken, just a tendon knocked out of whack. She'll be fine in a couple of days. No treatment necessary.)

"Bow to Your Partner, Promenade!" (We go home to enjoy the heartburn while arguing about why the child can't go to her friend's house to play.)

So, basically, there's no harm -- and we got a printout of that cool x-ray to take home. It only cost, like, $800! (To the insurance company, not me.) The child will take it into school tomorrow.

Awesome.

Beatles 4 Evah

2011-09-27T12:57:00.001-07:00

To those patrons of the Rockville Silver Diner: It is my kid who discovered that the little jukebox things at the tables don’t need quarters to play and who has been subjecting everyone to classic Beatles for the last 20 minutes. Yeah. Sorry about that.

Like father, like daughter

2011-09-13T08:21:00.001-07:00

“Whoa,” she says. “I really like this screen.”

Yeah, baby. I like $2000 screens, too. Moving on....

Happy Labor Day

2011-09-08T06:54:00.000-07:00

You know it was a good Labor Day when you get home and find you’ve left a trail of sand from the front door to the laundry hamper.

Pouting dog

2011-08-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

Nobody wants to play with me. *whimper*

A fish-eyed perspective of the Great Darke County Fair

2011-08-30T13:42:00.000-07:00

About a week before we went on vacation, the husband got a gadget that allows him to put a macro (ie., "fish eye") lens on an iPhone. "Hmmm," I thought, as he stashed the gadget into the bag he carries with him to work every day. "It might be fun to get a different perspective on the pictures I take with my camera."

When we got to Ohio and decided on a day to hit the fair, I asked him if I could use it. He shrugged. "Sure," he said. "I have another camera I can use. Why not?"

GLEEEEEEE!!

So we went to the fair and I covered from the perspective of a very, very tall fish.

There were lots of people.

...and fried things....

Even some things I would have sworn couldn't be fried.

(We found a description of fried Coca Cola. No offense to those fried Coca Cola lovers out there, but *gack*. Seriously... *gack*.)

It was a bright, beautiful day. It hasn't been raining much in that part of Ohio so everything was dry and dusty. The animal-allergy-prone husband decided to pass on going into the animal barns. I bribed the child to come with me by buying her a lemonade.

"What's that, Mom?" she asked as I pulled out the funky lens.

"It's a lens for my camera. It makes things look funny. Want to see?"

I attached the lens and turned my phone around so she could see. She cackled with delight.

"Can I take a picture?" she tittered.

"Sure," I said.

"That's cool!" she giggled

"I know," I said. "I'm going to take pictures of the animals with this."

"Can I do it, too?" she asked, her lemon-sticky fingers reaching toward my phone.

I popped off the lens and stuck in my pocket. "Nope."

"Aw, man."

"Yeah," I said, wiping off my own sticky fingers. "Life's tough. Want to see some chickens?"

"Not really."

"Oh, come on. It'll be fun!"

She trailed after me, whimpering quietly as we passed fried food booth after fried food booth toward the decidedly not fried chickens.

"Want to come in?" I asked.

She wrinkled up her nose. "They smell bad. I'll wait out here."

I sniffed the air. "Honey, you don't know bad chicken smells. This isn't bad at all. Are you sure?"

She nodded.

"OK. Well stay here at the entrance where we can see each other."

Then I went in to photograph some chickens and I learned some things about "fish eye" photography:

In order to get the photo you want, you have to put the lens right up against the chicken -- practically touching its beak.
Chickens really, really don't like weird shiny things getting pushed right up to their beaks.

I was, most often, presented with ruffled tail feathers...

...or wistful stares in the opposite direction...

...or suspicious, sideways glances...

...or just plain mother-hen-ish "get that weird thing away from my chicks" shrieking.

There was only one chicken with the cojones to stand his ground. I called this guy "Dirty Harry".

Harry scared me... just a little bit.

Anyway, with all of the shrieking and scurrying around cages and making the wood chips fly everywhere, people were starting to stare, so I collected the child and we went into the cow barn.

She wrinkled her nose up again. I didn't want to leave her outside. "Oh look," I said, pointing toward a so-dark-you-can't-really-see stall just inside the barn. "Babies!"

The child lit up. "Babies? Really?"

Sucker

"Yeah. Come in and let's look at the baby cows!"

Well, there were baby cows, but all we really could see were the butts so we moved over to the pretty Jerseys.

"Hey, child," I said, giggling like a teenager. "Do you know what a 'cow pie' is?"

The child rolled her eyes. "Yes, Mom. It's poop. Can we leave now?"

I shrugged. Next stop was the dogs. She brightened up a bit. We stood outside to see the last dog agility trial of the day.

Since the dog competitions were pretty much over, there weren't many dogs left. We petted a miniature poodle who had been dyed pink and was miserable beyond all reason.

I'm guessing he didn't like pink.

"Let's go check out the goats!" I said. "Goats are always fun!"

Goats are always fun. They overflow with livestock-ish personality.

"Hey, baby. You come here often?" he seemed to say. "Want to come up and check out my etchings?"

This goat just LOVED his curtains.

He loved them so much, he was trying to eat them.

This little fellow just wanted a new friend..
.

...because the guy in the back farted in his sleep and he just could not -- could NOT -- take another night in this pen with him.

"Hey," she seemed to say, "I like that shiny thing you are shoving in my face. May I eat it? Please? Pretty please?"

Onward to the bunnies.

The bunnies reacted to my fish-eye lens in much the same way that the chickens had.

The ones who were awake anyway.

Ouch. That's going to leave marks.

They had a couple of bunnies out to pet so the child got wrapped up in that until I dragged her out.

"We need to find a cash machine," I said. "I need some money for an apple dumpling."

"Whatever," she said. (I've been getting a lot of "whatevers" lately.)

We found the cash machine over by the grandstands. I immediately pulled out my camera (minus the crazy lens) and snapped a picture. The people in front were waiting for a parade and thought it was hysterically funny that I wanted to take their picture.

Actually, I thought it was hysterically funny that the ATM behind them was in a re-purposed port-a-john.

I got my cash and my apple dumpling, found the husband and (after a few nervous minutes searching for the car in the huge field that served as a parking lot), we got back to my parents' house to share what we had seen.

I proudly showed my mother the unusual photos I had taken, explaining that I had used a new lens on my phone. She nodded and patiently paged through several of the pictures.

"What do you think?" I asked.

"I think," she said, handing the phone back to me, "that you need to throw that lens away."

Hmph.

You learn something new every day...

2011-08-08T08:06:00.000-07:00

Even when you are a goofy, adolescent dog. Today, the dog learned what happens when you try to play with a live hornet in the same way that you play with dead cicadas.

The first place he goes for comfort? A pile of freshly laundered blankets I had set on the couch.

I suppose I could hardly blame him. He's got no idea why his foot hurts so bad.

He just licks and licks and licks and it won't get better.

I tried putting an ice pack on, but he won't sit still for it. I guess I'll wait until he gets tired of limping around the house and whining pitifully. There isn't any noticeable swelling yet...

...Just abject doggy misery.

UPDATE: Well, I'm starting to wonder about this dog.

The swelling was noticeable -- barely. I never did find where the actual sting was, despite much gentle prodding. He slept most of the day in some array of pillows and blankets and was barely limping by the end of the day.

Except, of course, at dinner time when he sat by my chair and held his paw up to me, whining quietly and glancing repeatedly at my pork chop.

*sigh*

Turtle talk

2011-08-08T08:04:00.001-07:00

“Don’t just stand there,” he seemed to say to me. “Get that stupid dog’s nose out of my butt!”

Finishing up this Minneapolis thing

2011-07-25T10:10:00.000-07:00

So, where did I leave off? Oh, yeah. The cool Japanese store.

I'm going to try to stick to the highlights (and quit complaining about wayfinding in Minneapolis) so I can wrap this puppy up and move on to more kid and dog cuteness.

We snuck the husband out of his conference for lunch the next day so that we could go to a restaurant that my Minneapolis-native friend told me about called Hell's Kitchen (not related to the Hell's Kitchen TV show, as far as I could tell).

It was in a basement. The walls were painted blood red. The chandelier was made of knives. While it wasn't Halloween-level kitch, it had a city-Goth-creepy feel to it.

The child didn't like the creepy feel at all... particularly when the pictures in the bathrooms changed from normal old photos to scary vampire/zombie pictures.

"Mommy, I'm afraid...."

"Oh, don't be silly child. They're just pictures. Ohhh! Look. The little girl has vampire teeth!"

Needless to say, there was only one potty break at Hell's Kitchen.

The food was every bit as good as everyone told me it would be. We had a long list of things we were supposed to try (particularly the Lemon Ricotta hotcakes) but we weren't in a brunchy sweet mood so we went for the ham-and-pear crisp. It was, basically, a grilled ham sandwich with poached pears in it. Yum. The child poked half-heartedly at her mac-and-cheese and asked if she could draw instead.

"Sure," I said, pulling a little notebook out of my bag. "Do you have something to draw with?"

She pulled out the glitter body paint pens we bought her at the Guthrie gift shop and waggled them in front of my eyes, an evil grin on her face.

"Oh," I said, putting the notebook away. I put my arm out to her and said a little prayer that the ink would wash off quickly. "OK. Don't go nuts."

She gave me a "bracelet" that actually wasn't half bad.

Full of ham and pears, we dropped the husband off and the child and I went exploring. We found a neighborhood that looked walkable and wound up at a random elementary school playground. The sun was out (warm, but not uncomfortable) and there was another child playing so we stopped. We ended up staying for over an hour.

I got sunburned. I took a picture of my feet.

The other child got "glitter tattooed" (with her mother's enthusiastic permission). It was a good afternoon.

The next day brought two big events: the Children's Museum in St. Paul and the play at the Guthrie. St. Paul was old and charming where Minneapolis was more modern and urban. The Minnesota Children's Museum was in the center of St. Paul. We parked and walked in.

I have to admit here that my cold was starting to rally against the medications I was taking. I'd be fine one minute and the next minute my sinuses were so clogged that I thought my left eye was going to get pushed out. Then a sneeze would try to dislodge my tonsils... or knock me through a nearby glass window.

Anyway, the museum. It wasn't as impressive as the Indianapolis museum, but it was very nice. It covered architecture, biology, fluid dynamics, and mechanics.

There was a "town square" exhibit that I guess teaches some level of sociology. The child honed in on the little restaurant.

Yep. That's my baby... the fry cook.

There was also a nice arts-and-crafts room.

The museum was full of kids so my child no longer needed me to entertain her... which was fine. I just sat in a corner and (discretely) tried to wrap the long, freakishly elastic strings of snot dribbling out of my nose into the half-dozen tissues I had thought to bring with me.

A few friendly women tried to talk to me. I'd smile (feeling my eyeball get pushed out of place by the stuff in my sinuses) and say "I'm-b sorry. I hab a cold." They'd nod understandingly and pull their hand sanitizer out of their Coach bags as they scooted to the other end of the bench.

Fine with me. I had a tissue emergency on my hands... literally. That meant putting an end to the museum visit.
"But Mooo-ooom. I'm not ready!"

"Sweetheart, we've been here for hours. I'm ready to go."

"We haven't been here for hours," she said.

"Yes we have."

"How many hours?" This is a new debating strategy for her. She gets me wrapped up in proving her wrong and wanders off while I'm gathering my facts.

"I don't know. Maybe 2 or 3."

"I think it was 10 minutes."

"No it wasn't. We got here at...." I looked up and she was across the room playing at a water table.

*groan*

I argued with her to leave. I argued with her to get out of the crappy gift shop without buying yet another pink stuffed animal with sparkles glued on it. I argued with her about buying a jumbo-sized bag of candy... and then got lost getting back to the hotel.

Not one of our better days.

She was very, very happy to see her father at the hotel. I looked longingly at the hotel bar as I remembered that we still had to get cleaned up and over to the Guthrie for a musical.

Yippee.

So, armed with more cold medicine, we walked over to the Guthrie. The musical (The HMS Pinafore) was a good one for a kid. There was a lot of silly action and minimal romantic crooning. She was up for it... unfortunately, her tiny bladder wasn't.

"Mom," she whispered, halfway through the first act. "I gotta go to the bathroom."

"Can you hold it?"

"I'll try."

She squirmed for a few minutes and leaned over again. "I really gotta go."

I sighed and looked around. We were, naturally, right in the middle of the row. I grabbed her hand and we pushed by about 10 unhappy people and pushed past the surprised ushers chatting outside the door. I've been told that I wear a very scary face when I'm in "find a frickin' bathroom" mode. Based on the looks we got from the ushers, I was pretty sure I was doing it again.

They looked at the child, who was clutching her crotch, and pointed wordlessly toward the escalators.

Mission accomplished, we stand in the back of the theater until intermission.

She is allowed nothing to drink during said intermission.

The trip home the next morning was uneventful, except for the extra time we spent on the airport tran system trying to find the right terminal until a kind person told us we needed be on the other airport tran system.

*grumble*

Overall, we'd do it again. Minneapolis was a fun town.

Interlude

2011-07-22T07:03:00.000-07:00

A paper towel flag,

child marker magicked,

fluttered in a breathless thermal and fell, again

resting.

Boo-boos

2011-07-22T07:02:00.000-07:00

Lately, I’ve been getting a little grouchy about a constant stream of whining about this or that minor bruise or wound that she had collected on the playground or summer camp. It’s a way for her to demand my attention when I don’t particularly want to give it. That led to tonight’s proclamation from the bathroom.

“Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“Ummm. Never mind… But it HURTS!”

Minneapolis, Part 3

2011-07-17T09:47:00.000-07:00

I woke up with a sore throat and a continuing case of denial. "It's just the dry air in the hotel," I told myself. "Buck up, lady. We aren't done yet."

Maybe some time in the moist water park would help. The child was still asleep so I decided to check it out.
The door was locked. I finally thought to check the hours. The bloody place was only open on weekends.
I stomped back to the hotel room full of now-I-have-to-apologize-to-a-self-righteous-kid-for-breaking-a-promise rage. I dropped myself into chair a little to hard, waking up the husband.

"What's wrong?"

"The stupid waterpark is stupid closed."

He blinked. "What?"

"I made a promise," I whined, ignoring his confusion.

"About what?"

That got the child up. "What's the matter Mommy?"

I took a breath and apologized. The child smiled and said "That's OK, Mommy. I know you didn't mean to."
Naturally I spent the rest of the day buying her all kinds of crap out of guilt.

The Guthrie Theater was as spectacular on the inside as it was on the outside. The husband noticed later that Guthrie makes extensive use of YouTube. Here's a link to a 25-minute "tour" of the place from 2008 if you are interested, but I'll summarize.

You go up a very tall, rather claustrophobic escalator since all of the action is on the 3rd and 4th floors. There are photos of actors projected on the walls all along. We learned later that the photos are actually embedded in walls all through the theater, by way of onionskin wallpaper. You can barely see them until the light catches them just so. The tour guide called them the "Guthrie Ghosts".

It was interesting to me from an interior design perspective. The child thought it was weird and eyed them suspiciously for the rest of the tour.

She was just not into the tour. She pouted and dragged her feet and wouldn't feign a bit of interest in it. I wasn't sure if it was leftover pouting from the water park or if the tour was just over her head. The average age of the people we were touring with was about 70 years old. That might have had something to do with it.
Naturally, we weren't allowed to take pictures. Between the child's quiet whining and the fact that my sinuses were filling with mucus the consistency of wet concrete, I didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to.

Everything was just too... clean.

I know, I know. What's wrong with clean? Nothing. I just wanted to be swept up in the excitement of live theater... which was probably a lot to ask of a Sunday morning backstage tour.

The husband (whose sinuses were perfectly, annoyingly clear) had a great time and discovered that there was a 2-for-1 ticket deal going on. He bought tickets for Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore for last night we were in town.

We bought the child some "temporary tattoo" glitter pens at the Guthrie gift store to placate the child, then I announced I needed to find a drug store.

"I found a mall that has an Apple Store," the husband announced brightly.

"Whatever," I groaned.

We braved the highway and ended up in an unremarkable mall outside the city. I went one way and got my sinus medicine and the husband went the other way to bask in the cool white glow of the Apple Store.
Tired of the Apple stores that we find ourselves in with alarming frequency, the child went with me.
We passed a Godiva chocolate store and I was hit with a sudden impulse for expensive chocolate truffle. The child and I finally agreed on a chocolate-covered strawberry for her.

The strawberry is healthy, right?

"Can I have a whole bag of them?" the child asked sweetly. (Godiva was selling bags of 5 or 6 smaller strawberries.)

"No, sweetheart. That's too much. Let's stick with one."

"But Mommy...."

I tried to ignore the sinus headache without much success.

"Let's just get these and find, Daddy. OK?"

"The bags are actually a much better deal," said the smiling lady behind the counter.

The child looked at me expectantly. My head throbbed.

"I mean really a much better deal," she said.

I stared at the case of chocolate so as not to burn the cheerful woman with my sinus-headache-powered-child-chocolate-restricting laser eyes of death. When the impulse to kill subsided, I smiled. "Fine. Get the bag... but you have to share with Daddy."

The child danced with glee. There was one, half-gnawed strawberry left when we met up with the husband.
"That's OK," he said, eying the thing suspiciously then handing it back to the child. "You can have it."

We headed up the escalator and the child was pouting again. "Aren't we going to go into any stores?"

"No," I said.

"But why not?"

"We'll go shopping but not in a suburban shopping mall," I said. "We'll go somewhere in the city where there's something different from what we can get at home."

She eyed the Apple Store bag in her father's hand and smirked at me.

"Yeah, well," I said. "Just remember those strawberries and stop whining." I pulled her toward the exit, but the Minnesota Gods of Serendipity weren't done with us yet.

"How about that place?" she asked, pulling me over to a small, simple, glass-walled store at the top of the escalator.

At that moment, the skies opened and the angels sang. "Oh, my..." I said, tugging at the husband's sleeve. "Is it the medication or do I see Kid Robot figurines?"

"It's not the medicine..." he said, his eyes getting wide.

We walked into Tomodachi.

"Would you like to make something?" a young Japanese lady asked the child. "We are making little models."

She made a tiny layer cake. While she made her tiny layer cake under the patient eye of the nice Japanese lady, the husband and I got to shop.

I love certain kinds of anime and, in particular, I love the stuff that brings that anime to 3-D life. There is a segment of anime toys that are high quality, and it seems largely to come directly out of Japan. The anime stuff we typically see at your average ToysRUs is such low quality that it often falls apart when you touch it.

The high quality stuff is very expensive so very few stores in the U.S. stock them. There's a place in Baltimore and, of course, a place in New York.

I was really not expecting to find a place like this in a suburban mall outside of Minneapolis.

Mystery solved

2011-07-17T09:24:00.001-07:00

You know, I thought there was some animal messing with my herb pots.

But to be completely honest...

...I really thought...

...it was the squirrels.

Minneapolis, Part 2

2011-07-16T13:26:00.000-07:00

The next day was better.

The sun came out and I was itching to get outside into the cool, dry air that was so unlike Washington's hot-and-humid-as-a-monkey's-armpit air. The husband wanted to sleep but the child was up. We decided to go see the river.

I didn't realize until we were were actually in Minneapolis and trying to decipher the map that it was the Mississippi running through the middle of the twin cities. That was cool. I've visited the Mississippi at St. Louis and at New Orleans. It was cool to see where it started.

There was what looked like a little park/jogging trail along the edge of the river, just a few blocks from the hotel. People had been babbling at us since we had arrived about some stone bridge. "Have you seen the Stone Arch Bridge?" "Be sure to see the Stone Arch Bridge." We had caught a glimpse of it the afternoon before and weren't that impressed.

It was a flat railroad bridge. It had arches. It was made of stone. Whatever.

Well, the bridge went through the park so I decided to see what freakin' magic was happening on the stupid bridge.

It was a pretty bridge. I'll give them that. The magic, it turned out, was that it was a pedestrian/bicycle bridge -- a well-used pedestrian/bicycle bridge. It went across the river right at the point of St. Anthony's Falls. St. Anthony's Falls, apparently, was one of the natural features of the area when Minneapolis was established. They got turbines of one sort or another attached to them early on and allowed for some serious free power.

Since it had been raining since... forever... every body of water in the upper Midwest was swollen. The Mississippi was angry and loud.

Rather impressive, I must say.

The day we went exploring, there was some kind of walk for charity going on so there was a real party atmosphere on the bridge.

I was starting to understand the bridge thing.

Under the bridge, there was something pretty magical, too.

Under the street, there was this delightfully serendipitous bit of urban archeology called the Mill Ruins Park. You can see, at the very top, the logo for Gold Medal flour. That's what this used to be -- a flour mill. There was a sign that gave the history of these ruins, but I'm afraid I don't remember the details. These were essentially buildings that had been built on top of instead of destroyed. For a long time, according to a local who stopped to talk to us, this was "hobo city". Eventually, the homeless were cleared out, some of the walls were reinforced, and this was turned into a park.

The child look for fossils. I took pictures. I've been collecting pictures of textures and this place was rich with them.

We walked down the path a little way. While the child tortured some geese by throwing grass at them and then screeching with glee when they changed course to investigate, I noticed something odd hanging in the sky.

It was... blue... and... *squint*... was it grinning at me?

The helpful local told me it was the Guthrie Theater. I made a mental note to check that place out.

We went back to the hotel and retrieved the husband. He told me he had found an interesting place to go to called "The Open Book". I rolled my eyes. I love book stores, but it gets tricky with a 7-year-old, no matter how well behaved she is.

"I don't know..." I started.

He grinned at me. "You'll like it. Besides, it's close enough to walk to." He showed me on a map. We'd be walking right by that crazy theater. I shrugged. "OK."

The Open Book is not a bookstore, at least not in the normal Barnes-and-Noble kind of way. It's a place for writers to gather or to work. It's a place for paper artists and offset printers.

The husband and I geeked out there until the child finally put her foot down. She had had enough of the weird paper stuff she wasn't allowed to touch and the creepy iron presses in the basement. It was lunchtime and doggone it, she wanted some friggin' pizza!

So we got some friggin' pizza. None of the fancy pizza that my Minnesota native friend told me about. We just walked to the condo building across the street and got the child some pizza.

I sat there and pouted while she ate. I didn't want the stupid pizza. I wanted real food... fancy food... foodie food. I felt inexplicably cranky and tired. I needed a nap.

But no! We were on vacation and doggone it, we were going to tour if it killed me!

The other thing everyone -- and I mean everyone -- told us to hit was the Art Museum's sculpture garden.
So we hooked up with a friend of mine who was attending the conference that we were there for and got the car out of the parking garage. Then we had to deal with directions again.

"OK," said the husband, "Take 3rd Street South to 7th Street South and turn right..."

"Wait," I said. "Take 3rd to 7th? What's the cross street?"

"7th."

"3rd Street crosses 7th?"

"Yeah... and they both say "south" even though we're mostly going west."

"OK..."

"Whoever laid out the streets in this city was demented," he mumbled, hunched over his iPhone and poking at it listlessly.

Eventually we learned to stop worrying about the street names in Minneapolis/St. Paul. The intersections were always there. I found that once I stopped trying to make sense of them (and as long as I stayed off those crazy freeways), the city was pretty easy to get around in.

Anyway... the Walker Center art museum.

I still wanted my foodie food. I didn't have high hopes for the art museum. I find that restaurants in cultural institutions are typically expensive and have lovely ambiance, but the food (generated for large numbers of tired tourists) is lacking.

I was delighted to have been proven wrong. The recipes at Gather were unique, the ingredients local, and the food was spectacularly well done. Even the service was notable and no one blinked an eye at the child (who behaved like an angel even though the three of us adults talked around her for most of an hour).

The gift shop was wonderful and we all enjoyed shopping there for a good long time. We didn't have time to go through the museum, of course... but maybe next time.

We walked out the front of the building and toward the sculpture garden across the street and I had this feeling that the Walker Center was watching me....

...And it wasn't happy.

The sculpture garden was a lot of fun. It was, basically, a park with a gigantic cherry-in-a-spoon fountain at its center.

We were allowed to climb on and interact with the art. There was a party atmosphere here, too. I got the feeling it was the first reasonably sunny day in a while so everyone was out and smiling.

This was my favorite shot of the whole trip.

It was at an art installation made of different kinds of reflective walls. The child enjoyed playing hide-and-seek in that one.

We got back to the hotel late and I collapsed on the bed. The child danced around me. "Can we go to the water park downstairs now?"

"Oh, honey. Not now. Let's wait until tomorrow [Monday] when the hotel empties out, OK? Daddy has to be at the conference anyway. We can stay there as long as you want."

She folded her arms across her chest and pouted. "That means we won't go."

"No it doesn't. It means we'll go tomorrow."

"We won't go."

I sat up and hugged her. "Yes we will. If I didn't plan to go, I wouldn't have brought swimsuits. I promise. Really."

"OK, mom."

I got online and found out that the Guthrie Theater offered backstage tours. I signed us up for the next day and went to bed.

[Note: My photos from the trip are here on Flickr.]

Minneapolis, Part 1

2011-07-16T08:32:00.000-07:00

We took a trip -- a real, honest-to-god, take-an-airplane, board-the-dog sort of vacation. We don't do that very often. As the family accountant, I prefer smaller, closer excursions and, honestly, it hasn't been that much of a trial. Where we live, we have ocean, mountains, rolling farmland, and some really wonderful cities all within a 4-5 hour drive of home.

Plus we can take the dog.

Lord Fuzzbutt gets very disappointed when we leave him behind at the boarding place that so ridiculously expensive that I refer to it as "The Spa".

"Don't leave me," he says with his eyes. "Ohhh, more dogs!" he says with perked up ears and tail.

Anyway, back to our trip.

I'd never been to Minneapolis. That seemed as good a reason as any to go when we got the opportunity for a few free days at a nice hotel (the husband was speaking at an event in downtown Minneapolis). If we are ever going to see the upper Midwest, I thought, the end of June is probably the best time to go.

I dropped off a teary-eyed Lord Fuzzbutt at The Spa and high-tailed it to Reagan National Airport. The airport was crowded, but we had (uncharacteristically) timed things pretty well. We had no trouble getting through security and the weather was cooperating. We got to Minneapolis (via Milwaukee because I'm cheap) right on time.

We rented a car (on the suggestion of a Minnesota native). It had been raining in Minneapolis for about... forever... and the sky was still grey. We hit the highway and the husband/navigator started trying to figure out the roads. We had time since we got stuck in Washington-like traffic jam trying to get into the city.

"OK," said my navigator, "we need to take 35 West... umm... north."

"Huh?"

"Yeah. It says '35 west' but it's a north-south road." He looked out the window, his eyebrows arched in confusion. "Why would anyone do that?" He messed with his phone again. "Oh," he said. "I see. There's another one on the east side of the city."

"That's crazy," I said.

"Yeah."

"OK," so I take 35W north. When do I get off?" I was being positive at this point since we were just sitting, stationary, in traffic.

"Ummm."

"What?"

"I'm not sure..."

The husband is usually a decisive navigator. "Can you show me?"

(The red map point with the A on it was basically where we were trying to get to.)

"Holy crap."

"Yeah," he said. "I think we'll be OK if you just follow the signs for 35W... north... then get off on South Washington Ave."

"You mean the South Washington Ave that mostly goes east and west?"

"Yeah. That one."

I took a deep breath, told the child who was whining about being tired and bored to watch another movie, and focused completely on staying in the correct lane.

I never saw the exit to South Washington Ave.

"Nuts," said the husband (the actual language was a bit "saltier"). "We aren't supposed to cross the river."

I looked out at the swollen Mississippi and growled a primal growl deep in my throat.

"Just get off at the next exit," he said. "There are other bridges. We can navigate back on the city roads."

I got off on University. It was, blessedly, a pretty straightforward detour back across the river and to the hotel. We checked into the hotel without incident and I looked out the window at the gray buildings and the gray streets and the gray-afternoon-turning-into-gray-evening sky. The child was using all of her pent-up energy to bounce from bed to bed, drag pillows out of a little storage area under the TV, and throw underpants at my head.

I was, apparently, not being "fun enough". She thought flying underpants would fix that.

I took a deep breath and unpacked, hoping that I would like Minneapolis better after a good night's sleep.

Pizza blobs

2011-07-16T08:30:00.000-07:00

It's just not homemade pizza night without big blobs of tomato sauce somewhere.

The Glitter Incident

2011-06-22T19:24:00.000-07:00

It had been a long week. I just want to throw that out there. It had been a long and fairly stressful week.

School ended the week before and summer camp was still a week away. I had a pile of freelance work to do before we headed off on vacation. The child had been spending the week largely on her own. I was in the house and available for deathly emergencies (and snack preparation), but she had to entertain herself.
I had been to Michaels Craft Store and picked up $40 worth of random crafty stuff. Among that stuff was a black tee shirt and some fabric glitter glue. The idea was that she could decorate the tee shirt.

Today -- after no fewer than 50 pipe cleaner "braids" had been constructed and used to decorate the house -- we got to the tee shirt.

"OK, honey," I said, laying down the tee shirt on the dining room table. "Just take this glue and draw like you would with a crayon." I opened the box with the glitter glue as she danced around the room singing "I'm going to make a Beatles tee shirt! How do you spell Beatles, Mommy?"

Hmmm. The stuff looked a little... well... loose. I turned the box over and read it. The tiny words on the back of the box said it was meant to be used with their fabric glue.

Oh crap.

I opened one of the bottles (there were 4, of different colors) and poured a little of the stuff out on to my hand. It was glitter. Just plain, loose glitter -- in a dust so incredibly fine that even the movement of air from my "oh crap" moved it around my hand.

Oh, crap, crap, crap.

I looked at the clock. I really, really needed to work this morning and we were definitely out of pipe cleaners to braid.

"What's the matter, Mom?"

I shook my head. "Nothing. I just need to get some of my fabric glue. It'll be fine."

I got the glue and, as fast as I could, I spelled out Beatles. "OK, honey. Just take the glitter and dump it out on the letters," I said, figuring the best thing was to use up all of the glitter at once. I could just dump the excess glitter on the back yard later. "OK? I have to get to work. Have fun, OK?"

"OK, Mommy."

I went to work. The quietness from the other room made me think that my plan had succeeded. I heard some maniacal giggling. Oh, good, I thought. She's finished with the glitter and is playing with the dog.

I bent back down. I just needed to finish this batch of images....

"Mommy! Look at me!" She skipped in and bent over so I could see the top of her head. Her scalp was orange -- fluorescent orange -- and her hair was covered in glitter.

"Oh, baby. What did you do?"

"I glittered myself!" she said proudly. Then she bent over again and shook her head, showering me with glitter. "Wait," she said, "until you see the dog!"

The dog trotted in right on cue. He was green. Green and glittering. "He's green," I said (somewhat redundantly). "We have obedience training tonight. I don't want to take a green sparkling dog to obedience training."

The child shrugged.

I went into the dining room, following the magical pixie glitter path all the way across the house. I could see the spots where the dog had stopped and shaken himself off.

The tee shirt we had been working on was an inch deep with multi-colored glitter.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to remind myself that this was all my idea. I told her to just "dump it all out" and -- in all fairness -- I did not specify that she should not dump it all out on the dog. This was a predictable outcome and, honestly could have been a lot worse.

The carpet could have been an inch deep in glitter.

I opened my eyes. The child was standing in front of me. "Am I in trouble?"

"It's OK, baby, but we need to get this cleaned up. Let's start with the dog."

We took the dog to the front porch and brushed and pushed the poor dog around until most of the glitter was gone. He still sparkled, but he was no longer green.

The child, however, was still orange.

"Sweetheart? You want to take a shower?"

She shook her head in horror. "NOOOOOO!!"

I closed my eyes and counted to ten. "OK. Let's dump the glitter from the tee shirt."

"Can I do it?" she asked brightly.

"NOOOOOOO!" I said, grabbing the tee shirt and folding it carefully. "You can open the door."

We left the hosta sparkling in the late June sun.

When we picked up my husband at Metro, he asked us if we did anything exciting today.

"We glittered!" the child tittered.

"We had a Glitter Incident," I groaned.

"On a scale of 1 to 5 and 5 being the worst," he asked, "what level Glitter Incident are we talking about?"

"A number 4 incident," I said, thinking back to the green dog. "Definitely level 4."

We figure the stuff has a household half-life of about 6 months.

A moment, not so beautiful

2011-05-29T18:13:00.000-07:00

"Moooommmmm. I'm bored. Can I have your phone?"

I dug into my pocket, trying not to drift off into the next lane on the highway. "Yeah, OK." I handed it to her. "Here you go."

She browsed through my apps. "Ah," she said. "I'm going to play Chalky!"

For those of you who don't know what Chalky is: It is basically a desk toy built into an iPhone app. It was originally done when iPhone was very young so it has limited features. It's cute -- basically a stick man who reacts to the phone's built-in accelerometers and microphone. It bounces off the walls and dances if it hears sound.

There's a fairly in-depth YouTube video on it here.

At some point, the developers stopped making him just bounce around and added the ability to "pin" the figure's hands, feet, head or whatever, making the figure dance around it's pinned appendage like a doomed insect struggling to break free.

The "pin" feature is, disturbingly, the child's favorite feature.

"Mom! I pinned the little man!"

I shuddered a little. "That's great sweetheart. Don't you want to play something else?"

"No," she giggled. "Look. I did another one."

The traffic was light so I peeked over.

"Oh, ummm... Jeeze. Ah-hem...." I glanced at it again to make sure I saw it right. "Well, are you sure that what you want to do? They don't look very happy...."

She ignored me and giggled maniacally.

I glanced in the back seat where my husband was napping. I thought about waking him up to see this, but decided he didn't need the image in his head.

"Look, Mommy! Look!"

"I'm going to get more menand pin them!"

Cripes. It just kept getting worse. "Hey, look! A hawk. Don't you want to see the hawk? It's a pretty hawk..."

"Nah." She just kept pounding at the phone with her stubby finger.

I took a deep breath. "Sweetheart, how would you feel if you were pinned in that part of your anatomy?"

"It's just a fake man, Mom."

"Well, I know... but..." I glanced over again. "Did you have to pin them there?"

She sighed a dramatic sigh. "Never mind. I was bored with it anyway. I'm going to play dress-up princess now."

"Heaven help the prince."

A moment of beauty

2011-05-29T18:10:00.000-07:00

From the Wings of Fancy exhibit at the nature center in the park behind our house. We go every year -- several times every year.

No. I didn't have a macro lens for that. The thing was as big as my hand.

Happy day!

Minor Crises For Everyone

2011-05-27T06:20:00.000-07:00

I was expecting a simple day. I had to run downtown for a piece of identification that I needed to get into a client’s network. I got an early start. I was going to waltz downtown, do my little dance of “yes, I’m really me and yes I really am authorized to get this” and waltz back out.

An hour tops.

Well, one thing led to another and by the time I was back on the Metro train, it was 40 minutes before I had to meet the child at her bus stop. If I’m not there, the child is not allowed to get off the bus and is dragged around the rest of the route to be eventually returned to school.

The child naturally assumes that if I’m not at the bus stop I’m dead and goes into hysterics that can only be cured by the magic of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia frozen yogurt.

I have chased the stupid bus more than once trying to retrieve her.

Anyway, I got hold of the school and somebody got her off the bus and sat her in the office. Apparently no one thought to tell her I was stuck on Metro (even though I went to some trouble to tell the school). The child was already tearing up when I got there.

“I’m glad you aren’t dead, Mommy.”

“Honestly, child, I am just too busy to be dead today.”

She looked at my curiously. “Does it really work that way?”

I shrugged. There was one more little disaster on the horizon. The dog (still a puppy) had been stuck inside for 7 hours. He was loose in the house and had probably chewed through the furniture by this time.
“We have bigger worries, sweetheart. The dog.”

She nodded knowingly, putting on a determined face, and pulled her backpack higher up on her shoulders.
“OK, Mommy. Let’s do this.”

We burst into the front door. “Ewww, Mommy! What’s that smell?”

“Dog poop, dear. Lots and lots of dog poop.”

“I’ll… Umm… Wait out here,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

“Chicken,” I mumbled under my breath.

“What, Mommy?”

“Nothing, dear.”

I checked the living room — all of the corners. Nothing. Kitchen? Dining room? Nope. Hallway? No. Bedroom? No. The smell was pervasive, but I just couldn’t find the spot.

Come to think of it, I couldn’t find the dog, either.

I called for him. Nothing. What’s going on? The doors were as I left them… I checked every room he had access to. I started checking the rooms he didn’t have access to. Still no dog. Still no poop. Our house is fairly small and just not that complicated. There is no reason for me to lose a whole dog. I called for him again and heard a distant jingling of dog tags.

I called again down the hallway and heard another tiny jingle. I turned. “I don’t remember closing the bathroom door.”

I opened the door and was hit with a wall of dog-poop stench and 50 pounds of deeply embarrassed dog. He slunk past me, his tail between his legs, and sat at the back door looking as pitiful as a creature can look.
I patted his head and said some kind words. Then I let him out, and wondered at what point during the day he locked himself in the bathroom. I gently folded up the almost-new fluffy bathmat with the mountain of poop on it, bagged it, and took it outside.

“Did you find the poop?” asked the child, sitting primly on the from steps and torturing ants.
I held up the bag.

She rolled her eyes. “Finally.” She went in the house and popped her head back out a minute later.

“It still stinks in here. Where’s the dog?”

“Well, open a window. He’s in the back yard.”

The house took about 20 minutes to air out. The dog didn’t come in for an hour hasn’t been in the bathroom since.

Good morning, Springtime

2011-04-26T11:20:00.001-07:00

Going down the hill on her scooter to meet the bus for her first day back to school after Spring Break. When Spring Break started, it was 45 degrees and raining. Today it is sunny and 85.

Self portrait, imperfect

2011-04-15T06:59:00.000-07:00

The child got off the bus, her eyes red and puffy.

"What's the matter, sweetheart?" I asked. "Is everything OK?"

She nodded tightly. "I don't want to talk about it," she said.

Well, OK. We walked up the street in silence. She kicked some rocks and bent down to study some flower petals that had fallen from a nearby tree. The dog peed on a bush. The sun shown. Somewhere in the distance a hawk screeched.

"OK. I'm ready to talk about it now," she said.

I silently steeled myself for anything.

"We were making self-portraits," she said, "and I couldn't make it look the way I wanted." She started sobbing again, kicking stones in the road. "I kept erasing and erasing and then my friends said that it looked really good and they wouldn't let me finish erasing."

I cringed. I do that to myself. She got that from me.

"Maybe," I said, "you should listen to your friends. Maybe it was better than you thought."

She shook her head furiously. "It wasn't right! I couldn't make it look the way I wanted!"

There were hugs when we got home and the sobs ended. I told her she could go into the back yard and chase the dog with the hose and suddenly all was right with her world again. The self-portrait was forgotten until yesterday (two days later) when I found this stuffed in her bag with some random other schoolwork.

All of her previous self-portraits were stick figures, their arms thrown up in the air in exuberant joy. This one is more melancholy... more thoughtful... more imperfect.

Bored doggy

2011-04-11T06:19:00.001-07:00

*sigh* “I’m bored. Bored, bored, bored, bored.” *sigh*

The Church of Music

2011-04-03T17:43:00.000-07:00

We had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe — The child’s first trip ever, my first trip in a couple of *ahem* decades. Naturally, the conversation turned immediately to The Beatles. When she and I excused ourselves to go to the bathroom, the child stood stock still at the top of the stairs. “It’s John,” she whispered reverently, her fists clutched under her chin in pop-music prayer. “It’s John Lennon.”

Food critic

2011-04-03T07:40:00.000-07:00

I tried making homemade pita bread today. How’d they turn out? I know you are dying to find out. Well, I thought they tasted pretty good but were a little chewy. The husband soldiered through two of them. The child turned up her nose at them but that’s OK. She turns up her nose at everything that isn’t pizza these days. I had a few left over so I gave one to the dog. He took it gratefully and did one circuit around the house, ending up at the back door. He scratched to get out.

Then he took the pita into the muddy back yard and promptly buried it in the middle of the yard.

I’m going to assume that meant he liked it.

Jammin'

2011-03-30T06:49:00.000-07:00

The last jar of summer 2010. The child and I are counting the days until the raspberries ripen again.

Insinkeration

2011-03-24T09:36:00.000-07:00

"Child, move out of the way."

I had my mop in hand and the child was crouched down in a puddle of water, peering in at the broken, dripping garbage disposal under the sink. She ignored me.

"What's wrong with it?" she asked.

"It's broken. It's leaking. Move. I need to clean this up."

"How do we fix it?"

"We don't. The plumber will be here tomorrow. We'll get a new one."

She stood up and turned to me, horror dawning in her eyes. "But I love this one!"

That stopped me. "A garbage disposal?"

Her blubberlip started to push forward and quiver.

"Oh, get over it, child. It's a garbage disposal. It sits under the sink. The new one will look just like it. You'll never know the difference."

She glanced back down at the dark cabinet under the sink. "Can it be pink?" she asked sadly.

"What? The garbage disposal?"

She nodded.

"I... ummm... I don't think they come in colors...."

"Then how about yellow?"

Angry Totoro

2011-03-22T08:03:00.000-07:00

Totoro says: “I’m sorry, but I am not that fat.”

Somewhere, deep inside that hole, a chipmunk is laughing his furry little butt off.

2011-03-22T08:02:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry...

2011-03-22T07:56:00.000-07:00

“Child, sit down and eat your dinner!”

“I can’t, Mommy. I haven’t got all my wiggles out!”

Chasing Chickens in Baltimore

2011-03-13T14:50:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine who is starting up a bit of an urban farm on the outskirts of Baltimore, posted a very cute picture of some ducklings on her Facebook page.

I put up a note saying how cute they were. She wrote me back and said "Bring the child up. They are even cuter in person. There are chicks, too."

So we went out the farm... in Baltimore.

Tucked in a corner of one of the buildings on the property, we found a about a dozen chicks and a half-dozen ducklings sleeping in a heat-lamp-orange-tinted pile of poultry.

They looked so peaceful... and fuzzy until the child shrieked her unnatural shriek of joy: "MOMMMYYYY! CHICKIES!!!"

The peaceful poultry pile exploded into a mass of panicked, confused fuzziness and cheeping.

My friend grabbed a fluffy handful of chicken as it tried to hurtle past her and handed it to the child. I said a silent prayer to myself: "Please don't squish it, please don't squish it, please don't squish it...."

I'm happy to say, she didn't squish it....

...much.

* gack *

After a few tries (and admonishment for at least one "duckling tossing" incident), she got better at grabbing and holding on to them.

They were very cute. My friend said that it was "Chick Month" at the local farming supply store (in Baltimore ) and they were selling chicks and ducklings for $1.99 each. "Since we already have some chickens," she said, "we decided to get some more."

The child's eyes lit up. "More chickens?"

My friend nodded. "That's right. We have two of them outside -- a big rooster named Braveheart and a hen named Cinnamon. Want to meet them?"

Cici nodded vigorously and I grabbed the chick in her hand before its eyes popped out of its head.

We were visiting toward the end of the day and chickens were looking to find their roost so they were pretty easy to find.

Braveheart strutted back and forth...

...much like his namesake....

We didn't chase Braveheart. Cinnamon, however, was a whole different story.

Cinnamon was tame -- more an egg-bearing pet than a barnyard chicken. Apparently, she likes pizza crust and watching "chick flicks", though she usually falls asleep half-way through.

"Don't you MESS with my chick flicks, lady!"

We left when the sun went down, the chicks were again piled beneath their heat lamps and Cinnamon was snoring on her perch.

It was a day of down-on-the-farm experiences... in Baltimore.

(We had chicken for dinner.)

Holy Cannoli!

2011-03-13T13:38:00.000-07:00

So you get pole dancing lessons during your ride to the airport? And it’s half off? Sign me up!!

A review of Rango

2011-03-05T06:23:00.001-08:00

The child had a half day at school yesterday. It was too cold for an outside entertainment, so I decided to take her to a movie. Rango had been getting some good buzz as reasonably intelligent for grown-ups and great for kids so I talked the child into that.

She wasn't excited: "But I don't like lizards, Mommy."

"Oh, it'll be cute. Come on! The Internets like it so it it must be good."

"OK... but only if you buy me chocolate-covered raisins."

So we found ourselves in our local multiplex, with about 100 other parents who thought this would be a great way to spend the afternoon with the kids. The child was half-heartedly eating Raisinettes beside me. "I'm not excited about this, Mommy."

"Well, give it a chance. I'll take you out for dinner afterward."

She humphed and slumped down into her coat.

About half-way through the movie, the youngest children in the crowd started getting up and wandering randomly through the theater, followed by their stooping, angry, whispering parents.

The child leaned over to me. "I'm not enjoying this, Mommy."

"Yeah. I get that. Eat your Raisinettes."

Ten minutes later: "Mommy, I'm bored."

"Well, I'm enjoying it so please just be patient. It'll be over soon."

Ten minutes later: "Is it going to be over soon?"

You get the picture.

Anyway, here's my take on the movie.

It's a fun movie -- for adults. The pace was all wrong for my kid and (apparently) most of the kids in the theater. It was paced like The Magnificent Seven -- a lovely departure from the usual frantic onslaught of joke-a-minute/slash-a-minute action in normal kids movies for me. No so much for the child.

The jokes were also quite adult -- not sexy, but most of them were homages or references to movies that were at least 40 years old. I was delighted to see a cameo by Hunter Thompson in a convertible on his way to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The child had no idea what I was laughing at.

...And I didn't particularly want to explain why Hunter Thompson was famous.

The other thing that struck me was the anthropomorphic talking animals that made up the cast. I'm accustomed to anthropomorphic talking animals. I like anthropomorphic talking animals. They are cute.

These anthropomorphic talking animals were not cute. Well, some of them were... the Mariachi owls were cute.

The townspeople, err, townsanimals, of the town of Dirt, not so much.

I'm pretty sure that the bar scene where Rango meets his new friends was, again, an homage to the old Western movie. The resolution on these characters is truly spectacular. You can see every hair, every feather, every broken, cavity-ridden, yellow tooth. It added a realism to the anthropomorphic talking animals that was just a little bit creepy.

The child, of course, didn't analyze the movie this way. She just didn't like it. She didn't like the the amorality of some of the characters, she didn't get the life-changing metaphysical journey that Rango was taking, she didn't didn't get the jokes.

If you are over the age of 12, go see the movie. It's wonderful. The jokes, if you get them, are delightful and smart. It's a treat to not be subjected to the saccharine sweetness of most of the kid movies. The anthropomorphic talking animals are interesting, instead of pointless video wallpaper to the movie. The plot is simple and predictable, but that doesn't dramatically take away from the experience.

If you are an adult and bring your child, have lots of bribes available. He or she will get bored. The action picks up at the end and they'll be more engaged with that, but kids in the theater were definitely struggling with the middle.

One other important tip to the adults among my gentle readers: Don't go to a matinee of this movie or you, too, will be subjected to the roaming young 'uns and their annoyed parents. Try to hit a late show if you can so you can enjoy the movie in peace.

"What's a CD"

2011-03-02T14:00:00.001-08:00

My husband and I used to joke that many of the people we worked with in web development firms wouldn't know what to do with an LP or record player if it was set in front of them.

Technology was moving fast.

It still is.

My husband came home from an outing with the child at Best Buy. The child ran up to me waving a plastic bag with the Sgt Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band CD in it. I told her to leave it by the computer so I could copy it to iTunes. She scurried off and my husband sat down heavily next to me.

"I had to explain to her what a CD was," he said sadly, aging a little bit more right before my eyes. "I told her it was like a DVD, but without video. She looked at me like I was crazy."

"No... Really?" I thought back. Yeah. She's been an iPod kid. I've kept my collection of CDs in deep storage since the last house move (when she was two). Lately, I've been buying music off the Web or iTunes.

Then I got to thinking that her idea of high fidelity is probably listening to the tiny iPhone speakers doing their best to blast out of the back pocket of my jeans while I cook or do the dishes. The stereo just never made it out of one of the boxes in the basement. We tend to fill our empty shelves with books. Our empty counter space is overflowing with gadgets, cables and power adapters.

I decided that if we are going to do this thing, we are going to do it right. We braved the attic, where I had left my last CD-driven boom box, today.

"This, my dear, is what you do with a CD."

I put in the Sgt Pepper's CD and turned the sound up full blast.

The child was delighted.

The dog ran for the back yard, his tail between his legs.

2011-03-01T09:21:00.000-08:00

We have an infestation of Beatles in the house.

It started innocently enough when I thought it would be a great idea to show my three-year-old child Yellow Submarine during a long car ride. The three-year-old was enchanted. She watched the DVD over and over again. While I love the movie and the music, enough is enough. I "misplaced" the DVD and, eventually, it was forgotten.

The child found the DVD, eventually, as any self-respecting child would do and Yellow Submarine went back into the Frequent Viewing Pack with Dora the Explorer, The Little Mermaid, Shark Boy and Lava Girl, and The Last Airbender.

Then I had an idea....

"Child, did you know that the Beatles made other movies?"

Her eyes turned as big as Ringo's bass drum. "Really?"

I was prepared. I whipped out a Netflix version of A Hard Day's Night and slammed it into the DVD player. We sat and watched it through together. The child was enthralled.

"Are there more?"

I checked Netflix. "Yup. There's Help... but we'll have to wait for the DVD."

"Get it, Mommy! Get it!"

I got it. While waiting for Help, the child viewed A Hard Day's Night at least 50 more times. I bought the DVD and then copied it to my iPad. That made it mobile. We got Help and I found I had to buy that one, too. All three movies moved to the iPad.

That probably wasn't the best move.

My iPad (on which I do most of my writing and where my e-book collection lives) disappeared shortly after she go home from school and didn't reappear until after she went to bed. The first question when we got in the car was "Mom, did you bring your iPad?"

*sniff* I missed my iPad.

We started hearing Beatles songs (which are set to play much louder than the dialog in these movies) everywhere. Don't get me wrong, it's great music... but wow. It's been weeks and she's showing no signs of slowing down.

We have sparkle glitter Beatle sneakers...

...Beatle windows...

...Beatle wall posters (still wrapped up in plastic because she doesn't want to risk anything happening to the.. umm.. plastic poster)...

...Beatle bookmarks...

...a six-year-old's Beatle fanfiction....

...and more. She swears that the ghosts of John Lennon and George Harrison have taken up residence in her bedroom. She assured me that they are very friendly lads who help her get to sleep when she wakes up in the middle of the night.

"Well, OK then, dear. Just... ummm... just make sure they turn around when you change your clothes. OK?"

She rolled her eyes. "Well of course Mommy."

"Good. I'm not sure I trust that John Lennon."

"Oh, Mommy!"

Excuse me?

2011-02-24T07:22:00.001-08:00

“What, precisely, did you mean when you said you ‘don’t want to play right now’?”

Weekend in Brooklyn

2011-02-14T11:10:00.001-08:00

We just got back and I'm sick as a dog with the child's chest cold so this will be a pretty straightforward story.

The husband had a photo shoot with some performer friends of ours. They are great people and the child loves hanging out with people who are as dramatic as she is. They needed some pictures for their show. They had a location in Brooklyn to shoot in. I'd never been to Brooklyn so we decided to make a family weekend of it.

The Marriott was very nice -- particularly for a room this close to New York for under $200/night on weekends. I'd recommend it. The rooms were spotless, the windows were large and the rooms were massive (by NYC standards, anyway). We were fairly easy walking distance from the Brooklyn Bridge and the area of Brooklyn we were in (Brooklyn Heights) felt very safe. We were actually right across the street from the Supreme Court of New York State.

The court building is the ugly building poking in at the bottom right of the picture. I'm not sure what the pretty building in the back is. There were a lot of SUNY (State University of New York) buildings around, as well.

The husband had to run off to do his shoot. He was going to a club in SoHo -- not a great place to bring a kid. We stayed behind. They said that we could help them with a project for their show later -- gluing googly eyes on nuts. The child nodded sadly (a dramatic little tear in her eye) and we waved good-bye from the front of the hotel. Then we set off to explore.

It was cold.

Windy and cold.

...But we made the best of it.

We navigated to a little thrift store (I like "treasure hunting") a few blocks on the other side of the court building. What struck me the most was the number of families walking around. The huge brownstone houses were gorgeous -- like Georgetown in DC. If was a very comfortable place to walk around with a kid.

We found the Housing Works thrift store. It had gotten some rave reviews on Google. The place was in the basement of a narrow old building. It was tiny and it was mobbed. We didn't stay long, but the child spotted an adorable felt hat. We got that and a William Wegman book: Cinderella.

Here's the hat.

She had a little trouble keeping it on in the wind, but it was worth it.

After our success at the thrift store, we decided to walk a few blocks to a street where there were supposed to be funky antique stores.

Maybe we were on the wrong part of Atlantic Ave, but we didn't find much. The child was whining about being cold and tired (she was still sick from the aforementioned cold). We popped into a warm Urban Outfitters store and found something to play with back at the hotel.

That perked her up long enough to get out of the store, but she crashed again when the wind hit her. We ran across the street to a little Italian bistro place to get an early dinner.

It was a little before 5 pm. We were the only people in the place. The guy running it was really nice. He gave her a NY-sized slice of pizza. I probably should have held out for something healthier but the whining was getting to me.

I got a chicken hero.

I thought I was getting a "gyro" because of the guy's accent, but this was good anyway. It had real marinara rather than Ragu, the bread was nicely toasted, and I just can't say anything bad about that much mozzarella cheese.

I took advantage of the pizza-fueled energy to get back to the hotel (about 6 blocks). When we got there, the child promptly announced that she was bored and started jumping from bed to bed (we had two double beds in the room).

Back and forth... back and forth... back and forth... "You done yet, child?"... "No, Mommy!"... back and forth.

I made her stop. I was getting dizzy.

Then she decided she wanted to strip the beds to make a house under the desk. I talked her down to the decorative strips of cloth that had been laid across the foot of each bed.

"I'm making a house and I'm calling it China!" she announced. Then she climbed in and invited me to join her in China.

I didn't think I would fit. I stuck my camera inside instead.

"See, child? Just as good. I can see everything."

She glared at me.

Then we got a note from my husband saying that he and and our friends were going straight back to their apartment for the last two photo set-ups. Our car was safely locked in a parking garage and the apartment was too far to walk to. The child and I weren't going to make it to the end of the photo shoot.

I could see a tantrum starting to play at the edges of the child's tired frown. It was going to be a very long evening for me. I decided to share with my husband by emailing him a rather frightening photo of the look on her face.

He texted me a few minutes later telling me that they would be by the front of the hotel to pick us up. I had already taken the child down to the hotel restaurant for ice cream bribe so they went back to their apartment to unload the three huge bags of photo and lighting gear. By the time they were done, we had finished the ice cream.

Their apartment was great.

It's a small loft apartment that our friends built out largely by themselves. The child and I got right to work gluing googly eyes to nuts. I glued, she placed. They turned out pretty well.

Then the child was called to help out with scene decoration. She ran off with a shriek of delight and came back with a handful of rose stems.

"Where are the rose petals, sweetheart?"

"We used them to decorate!"

Well, OK....

My husband was smiling when he came out so I guess it was OK. The rooms were very small so I just parked myself on the couch.

"You should check out our collection of shell... things," said one of our friends, pointing toward a set of small shelves on one wall.

They were at once, funny, kitchy, and a little scary... but an impressive collection nonetheless.

The sugar from the ice cream started wore off about an hour and a half into the shoot and the child joined me on the couch. We dragged the photo gear back to the hotel in our friends' tiny pickup truck.

We slept very well that night.

The next morning, the child did the Valentine's day cards that I brought with us so that she could give them out at school. She had to make up 36 cards. Her teacher said it was good handwriting practice.

She looked very grownup.

My husband wanted to show us the promenade that goes around the waterfront. We stopped at a diner for breakfast. I got my standard New York brunch of a bagel with creamed cheese and Nova Lox (smoked salmon). I can't tell you why, but the bagels are always softer and the salmon is always more sublime in New York.

That's fortunate because, between my husband and I, we got a half a fish on our bagels. It was a huge portion.

The child turned up her nose at the fish and had a plain bagel with cream cheese and jelly.

So full of bread and cheese, we went off in search of the promenade. It was still cold and windy. My expectations for what we were going to get to visit before going home evaporated with every whiny child step.

The promenade was lovely. The view of downtown Manhattan was spectacular. My husband did a great panoramic.

It was cold.

The child was getting tired so we started back toward the hotel. She was whining about not being able to buy anything (besides the hat and the book, of course). Like her mother, she is easily distracted by food. We went into a grocery store that have lovely fruit out front. It was called The Garden of Eden.

When we went inside, the foodie in me went all soft and squishy. The place was mindblowing. I've never seen such a well-stocked store, particularly in such a small physical space. It was like a carefully curated imported food art show.

I wasn't brave enough to broadcast my tourist status by pulling out my camera, but *sigh* it was a beautiful thing. The child got a huge chocolate-covered strawberry and walked out a smile. I was feeling the child's cold in my own chest by then, so we just cut our losses and headed home.

It was an easy ride home. The child went to school this morning. I got the dog back from the boarding place. He's still kind of mad at me for leaving him behind. He'll get over it by tonight, but for now he's hiding behind the Duraflame logs and pouting.

Satisfactory

2011-02-08T08:27:00.001-08:00

Lord Fuzzbutt finds the situation quite satisfactory.

Walking all over Daddy

2011-02-08T08:22:00.000-08:00

"Mom! It's icy. Come get me!"

"You can walk yourself. Just be careful."

My husband walked out the door behind her and saw an opportunity for cute father-daughter bonding.

"Come here, child. Stand on my shoes."

She looked at him doubtfully.

"Come on. Get on my shoes and then I'll walk you across the ice."

*delighted giggle*

"Honey," I said to my husband. "You are going to regret this."

"No, I won't."

"Daddy! Go faster!"

"All right. Just quit pulling."

"This is so cool!"

"OK. Time to get off."

"NOOOOO! I want to do more!"

"We're across the ice. It's time to get in the car."

The child bounced her 65 pounds on her father's feet, making him grimace with every bounce.

"Come on, Daddy! Let's go across the yard!"

"So?" I said, leaning on the car. "Do you regret it now?"

He just glared at me. Some people have no sense of humor.

Philosophy on a paper towel

2011-02-01T08:25:00.000-08:00

It says "help others in peace". I'm not sure where she got the thought, but I wholeheartedly agree!

In the back seat

2011-01-27T08:24:00.000-08:00

“Mom?”

“Yeah?” I was hunched over my steering wheel, navigating slush, bad drivers, and darkened traffic lights.

“I’m bored. Can I have your iPad?”

“No sweetheart. I don’t want to dig for it. Just look out the window or something. I need to watch the road.”

She sighed, annoyed.

Five minutes later: “Mom? Do you think I can stuff a whole blanket into my pink sock?”

“Ummm…”

“I didn’t even take my shoe off!”

Wondering

2011-01-22T08:23:00.000-08:00

I put a sweater vest on the dog just to see if it would fit. It did. As I giggled with the child, he glared at me and stumped off to sit in the window. He was, no doubt, wondering if the people inside the other houses were as weird as the ones inside this one.

Veiled Puppy

2011-01-22T08:22:00.000-08:00

"Child! What did you do to that poor dog?"

"Nothing."

"He's wrapped up like a burrito."

The dog looked at me sadly.

"Well he got on my bed and he's not allowed in my room and I couldn't get him to move so...."

"So you wrapped him up pink tulle?"

"Yeah."

The dog made himself as flat as possible and tried to slither off the bed like a snake.

It just made him more tangled.

"Well he can't stay like this. He'll hurt himself."

"No he won't," the child said confidently. "He likes it." Then she flounced out of the room.

It took me ten minutes to get him out.

He went straight to his crate.

Your positive reinforcement for today

2011-01-22T08:21:00.000-08:00

Freaky Antiquing

2011-01-22T08:20:00.000-08:00

The child and I enjoy going into musty, dusty antique stores as a way to kill a day. Some stores are more... well... frightening than others.

These photos were from Ellicott City, MD.

The child and I enjoy going into musty, dusty antique stores as a way to kill a day. Some stores are more... well... frightening than others.

These photos were from Ellicott City, MD.

"Electric blue eye shadow is out of style? What are you talking about?"

"You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Well, who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here. Who the f--k do you think you're talkin' to?" (borrowed from De Niro)

"Oh, Angry Clown... oh Blue Eye Shadow Girl... Look into my weird alien glowing blue eyes and all will be explained. The world will make sense and you will be at peace... AND MY TINY PLASTIC REIGN OF TERROR WILL BEGIN! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

"Oh... well, crap."

What's that?

2011-01-09T08:18:00.000-08:00

“Mom? What is this?”

“It’s an old rotary phone.”

She stares it querulously. “Does it still work?”

“Yeah. If you plug it in, you could make a phone call.”

Silence as she fingers the holes, making the rotary spin. “That’s really weird.”

The birth of a rolling pin

2011-01-06T06:50:00.001-08:00

We turned off the cable TV a couple of years ago and I am sort of fed up with the reality shows that seem to have taken over the big networks. That leaves me PBS.

In our area, PBS has a whole channel called "Create" that is dedicated to sewing shows, This Old House-like DIY shows, and (in the evenings) cooking. If I want the child to fall asleep, I turn on the cooking shows.

I watch a lot of cooking shows.

I have begun to covet the gear.

So when I was visiting my retired father's relatively new woodworking workshop over Christmas, I had visions of cooking equipment dancing in my head.

I looked around. A rolling pin. I need one of those simple rod rolling pins like what Julia Child's guest bakers use and swear by. Even Jacques Pepin confided his love for his French rolling pin.

If Jacques says it's good, it must be. Right? Such a little cutie pie with the squooshy cheeks, aren't you... awwwwww.

(OK, right now, Monsieur Pepin is in a very nice kitchen somewhere and shuddering. Let's move on, shall we?)

I asked Dad to make me a rolling pin.

He smiled and grabbed a big chunk of hard maple. "I have just the thing."

Step 1: Take the very hard square thing and make it round. For this, Dad pulled out the big lathe.

I'm not a real expert on woodworking. I know what everything is supposed to do but, never having done it, was a little sketchy on the details. When Dad put the wood on the lathe and turned it on, I was surprised.

All it did was spin.

When Norm Abram fires up a lathe, we start with a block of wood (or, you know, like a tree branch or something) and wind up, minutes later, with something like this.

Dad pulled out a metal chisel that looked pretty darned narrow to my uninitiated eyes, put on his goggles, and sat down in front of the spinning 18-inch piece of wood.

It.. umm... took a while. I looked out the window... drank a can of soda... hummed a little tune... inadvertently buffed clean the car door I was leaning against with my butt (the workshop is in a garage)... and, for a while, considered things that start with the letter M.

Marvelous! Maple! Merry! Mirthful! *sigh* Monotonous... mortality... meat... meal....

I was hungry.

"Hey, Dad!"

He backed away from the now roundish piece of wood and the pile of wood shavings at his feet and turned off the lathe so he could hear me.

"I'm going to go in the house and check on the child."

"OK."

The lathe fired back to life and I went inside the house. Mom was reading a book to the child. No need to interrupt that. I grabbed a handful of Mom's oatmeal cookies and checked my email in the kitchen.

Nom, nom, nom.

I meant to keep a couple of cookies for Dad. I'm not sure where they went. All I know is that when I was done, I had a pile of crumbs where the cookies used to be.

I hate when that happens.

Back to the workshop: I guiltily brushed the remaining cookie crumbs off my chest as I walked across the driveway. Dad had his breathing mask on and was sanding.

It was almost done. A bit longer, finding and rubbing out the rough spots, and we had a rolling pin.

...Custom designed to the size of my hands.

Eat your heart out Jacques.

Greenville’s little-known, Maid Rite, gum-encrusted fallout shelter.

2011-01-06T06:49:00.000-08:00

Behind Bear’s Mill, Greenville, OH

2011-01-06T06:48:00.000-08:00

Fuzzbutt respectfully requests

2011-01-06T06:47:00.002-08:00

Lord Fuzzbutt respectfully requests to re-enter the house because “It is bloody well FREEZING out here!”

“What do you mean, Mommy? I didn’t get dizzy at all!”

2011-01-06T06:47:00.001-08:00

Urrpp

I look at this and think of aliens….

2011-01-06T06:41:00.001-08:00

Lord Fuzzbutt's automotive lament

2010-12-11T12:29:00.001-08:00

Please, madam. Really. We don't need to actually move the beast. Isn't it bad enough that we have to get inside? Ahh. Yes. So, just how fast are we going then?

Merciful God in Heaven. Are we there yet? I don't...feel... entirely... well....

*heavy sigh* Stiff upper lip, firmly in place.

Are we there yet?

My grammarian strikes again

2010-12-09T13:24:00.000-08:00

Froke Out (v). Past tense of “freak out”. Example: Mom, when she hugged me out of nowhere, I totally froke out. Also can be used as “froked out” (ex., She froked out when I grabbed her pencil.)

My grammarian

2010-12-09T13:23:00.000-08:00

The child slams her video game shut in the back seat of the car with a loud sigh. “I’m stopping. The game is electrocuting me too much.”

“It’s electri…? Wait. Tell me what you mean by ‘electrocuting’.”

“It means that it’s attracting me.. Hypnotizing me. I need to turn it off for a while.”

I’m totally going to use that in a tech meeting.

The pumpkin

2010-11-13T13:02:00.000-08:00

"Do you want a pumpkin?" She pointed to two small pumpkins sitting on the kitchen table. They were greenish and one had a sticker on it with Asian writing on it. No. I didn't want the pumpkin. There is only so much one can do with a pumpkin and it is always a lot of work. Besides, this was an Asian variety. I knew from experience that Asian varieties of vegetables weren't always like what I was used to cooking with.

"No, thank you," I said, shaking my head in case my elderly going-deaf-but-refusing-get-a-hearing-aid host didn't hear me.

She nodded and opened the refrigerator, pulling out two tupperware containers of prepared food that I had agreed to take home. She peered at me over the refrigerator door. "Do you want a pumpkin?"

I smiled tightly and shook my head. "No. Really. I don't want it."

She nodded and sighed, then turned and put the two containers of food on the counter behind her. She turned back to the refrigerator and reached in again. She pulled out a small bowl with chunks of something that looked sort of slimy and greenish.

Pumpkin.

She grabbed a fork, speared one of the chunks and handed it to me. She set the bowl down and looked at me. There would be no escape. I mentally prepared my stomach and ate the proffered pumpkin.

Once I got past the texture (somewhere between half-frozen pond slime and the mucus off of a gigantic slug), it wasn't that bad. It tasted mostly bland, just a little hint of pumpkinish aftertaste. It was basically a winter squash.

I gave her back the fork.

"Do you want a pumpkin?"

"It was very good," I lied, "but I really don't...."

She was already packing the pumpkin in with the containers of other food. "Just cook it in some warm water with a little bit of salt...."

I took the stupid pumpkin.

I took it home and showed it off to the child. She shrugged and set it on the couch. I've no idea why she thought that was where a pumpkin should be, but there it was.

Lord Fuzzbutt was enchanted.

"Mine," he said.

2010-11-12T18:54:00.001-08:00

Ahhhhh. My eyes!!! The purple-ocity!! The horror!!!

Public service announcement

2010-11-09T18:45:00.000-08:00

This is your brain.

This is your brain on freshly laundered socks.

More and more, young dogs with bright futures are finding themselves drawn to dark basement corners and back-alley laundromats to get a quick sniff of...

... FRESHLY LAUNDERED SOCKS!

This has to end now. It is destroying a whole generation. How many more have to fall under the spell of...

... FRESHLY LAUNDERED SOCKS!

This is not the time to bury your sorrows in the...

... FRESHLY LAUNDERED SOCKS!

It is time to take a stand. It is time to change a life. Sure, they smell good. Sure they tickle your sinuses with a certain bleachy frivolity, but you must resist. You must step back from the Siren's song of terrycloth and chemical perfumes.

Be strong.

Respect yourself.

Stay out of the laundry basket.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Who, me?

2010-11-06T12:20:00.001-07:00

"Who, me? No way, man. It was totally the dog's fault."

Diarrhea soufflé

2010-11-01T14:35:00.000-07:00

We were home in bed. The child was exhausted and a bit carsick from a long bumpy ride from Baltimore and drive-through junk food for dinner.

I turned on a cooking show as she snuggled up to me in bed. Cooking shows and a snuggle are usually a sure-fire ways to send her to sleep quickly. This night was chocolate soufflé. Yum. My own empty tummy rumbled a bit.

The chef melted the chocolate. The camera zoomed in to get a good view of its melty, velvety sheen. "Eww," she said. "It looks like poop!"

I looked at her like she was crazy. "Get a grip, girl. It's chocolate. There's nothing poopy about chocolate."

They mixed egg yolks and a simple syrup of sugar and water. The color is the soft yellow of a spring morning. "Yuck!" she squealed. "That looks disgusting!"

They mixed the egg yolk and chocolate mixture together. "Yuuuuck."

"If it was in front of you and you were smelling it," I argued, "you'd want to lick the bowl." She curled up her lip and turned a bit green as the TV camera zoomed in on the chef mixing the egg yolk/chocolate mix with some whipped up egg whites.

Suddenly, I could sort of see where she was coming from. It did look like poop: Really wet, runny poop.

"Its a poop cake!" she tittered.

"Its a diarrhea soufflé," I sang, finally getting into the spirit of the thing.

That is totally going to be the title of a parenting book I write someday.

The beach (part 3)

2010-10-24T18:00:00.000-07:00

As told by His Right Honorable Lord Finneus Fuzzbutt (aka, The Dog).
Sooner than I would have liked, I again found myself facing THE BEAST. I was tired and just could not face the monster again. I moved into a bit of shady grass some distance from THE BEAST and laid down.

I would not be moved.

No amount of cajoling or pulling on my leash would move my weary bones from this place. Just looking at THE BEAST made my stomach roil with fear. Then, suddenly, her ladyship pulled out THE TREAT and put it beneath my quivering nostrils.

I was lost. I stood up and followed THE TREAT to the edge of the BEAST. Her ladyship gave me THE TREAT and thoughtfully allowed me to eat it before she grabbed me about the belly and tossed me in.

I sighed and looked at her with all of the disappointment and sadness I could muster. I asked her, with my eyes, to just leave me abandoned rather than force me to sit in this horrible place again. She ignored my silent pleas and buckled me back into the seat.

THE CHILD pulled out the flat noisy thing (THE IPAD) and it started singing. While I find the noise vaguely unpleasant, it was something to focus on that wasn't THE BEAST.

The light faded as THE BEAST rumbled on. We made another quick stop and I was allowed to stretch my legs for a moment before getting folded up and buckled again. Her ladyship called out to THE CHILD as we crossed THE BAY BRIDGE again.

I cannot begin to explain to you the fantastic shuddering relief I felt when my paws touched the familiar grass of THE DOMAIN. Suddenly all was right with the world again. We crossed through THE FRONT DOOR and the evil HARNESS was removed. I had some food, checked THE BACK YARD for errant squirrels, and then left her ladyship and THE CHILD on the couch.

I had had enough.

I found a soft spot on THE BED and buried myself under the wonderful soft, warm darkness of THE PILLOWS and her ladyship's fleecy robe.

There is, without question, no place like home.

The beach (part 2)

2010-10-24T14:00:00.000-07:00

As told by His Right Honorable Lord Finneus Fuzzbutt (aka, The Dog).

Right there, as the cheery bright sunshine beat down upon me, I faced off with the demon known as THE SURF.

It reached out for me, but I was too quick! I backed up, despite the impediment of the leash and her ladyship's cries of "don't move, dog, I want to get a picture". THE SURF retreated in fear, but then regathered its forces and attacked again. This went on and on.

THE CHILD seemed unperturbed by THE SURF and waded in without hesitation. I fear she may be in league with the demon itself.

Then I noticed that THE CHILD was pulling something out of THE SURF.

I had to investigate.

I ran into the trail of the retreating SURF and grabbed something. I bent to examine what kind of fiend works for THE SURF.

It tasted rather like a very salty rock.

It was just large enough that I couldn't easily hold it in my mouth and the strange dirt that was around (her ladyship called it SAND) was unpleasant. I kept losing the bloody fiend.

Then I heard one of her ladyship's magic words: LUNCH.

LUNCH is good. LUNCH means pleasant smells from THE KITCHEN and, often, a bit of extra attention as her ladyship is pulled away from the glowing monster known as THE COMPUTER. I looked around in some confusion, I confess, as THE KITCHEN was a rather long and uncomfortable ride from this place.

We packed up the fiends that THE CHILD had captured and went off to find a RESTAURANT that was DOG FRIENDLY. We passed many people walking on the SAND or on the wooden sidewalk but did not stop to sniff any of them. I found that disconcertingly rude and pulled ruthlessly on my leash as we passed each person to let her ladyship know my feelings on the matter. We wound up on a pleasant, shady street with normal dirt and on the crowded front porch of a house. There were many tables there -- too many for polite sniffing and roughhousing. Again, her ladyship insisted that we not socialize with the other people in close proximity and kept me tied to her leg. While I did enjoy the bits of grilled cheese sandwich that her ladyship shared with me, I spent most of the time just sitting and staring at the activity around me.

I don't understand the appeal of THE RESTAURANT. I suppose it's necessary when one is away from THE KITCHEN but it certainly does not excel it.

After LUNCH (and a few blissful moments of polite scampering with the yellow lab that ran THE BIKE SHOP near THE RESTAURANT), we returned to THE SURF.

The child took one of the captured fiends and scratched out some marks in the SAND. Perhaps it is a warning to THE SURF to keep to its lair.

I gave THE SURF one last, stern look to help the message sink in.

We trudged back up THE BEACH where I was again allowed a few moments of doggy play with a small pug who was there with his family. He assured me that THE SURF, while loud and dangerous, does not often leave its lair and that my pack would be most assuredly safe from it.
I thanked the pug and rejoined my pack.

To be continued....

The beach (part 1)

2010-10-24T08:29:00.001-07:00

I have a guest blogger today: His Right Honorable Lord Finneus Fuzzbutt (aka, The Dog).

Ah (*ahem*) right-o. I am Lord Fuzzbutt... but then I suppose you all know that already. Very good. Let's get on with it, shall we?

It all started the previous day. I have to say that I was feeling rather put out that day. I had been spending rather too much time in THE CRATE or in THE DOMAIN (aka, the back yard) by myself. I was trying to help the lady out by bring her things that I found around the house: plastic bricks, pens, toys from THE CHILD's lair, and a few decidedly fragrant leather shoes. Granted, all of these things were a bit chewed when I released them to her ladyship, but her reaction was really quite unnecessary.

When we had visitors that evening (THE AUNTIES), I did my very best to help entertain. I danced around frantically and brought them my finest toys so that they could entertain me. When that didn't engage their interest, I ran around attempted a more proactive approach...

...using my teeth.

I must say that these people take rather a dim view of the whole teeth thing. Pish posh. They are just teeth, people. Anyway, I found myself spending the night in THE CRATE again.

The following morning, I was quite determined to get the attention that I, Fuzzbutt -- Lord of the Realm -- quite deserved.

I was bringing another fragrant leather shoe out to THE KITCHEN when I heard THE CHILD talking to her ladyship. THE CHILD wanted to go to a place called THE BEACH and her ladyship was looking at me with a rather odd expression. She said "That's a good idea. We need to get Milo used to the car. A day trip would be good practice," Then her expression turned a bit frightening as she looked at the hardly chewed shoe in her hand. "It also might knock him down a peg or two. He needs that."

I didn't know what the peg thing meant, and I wasn't sure what THE CAR was or THE BEACH, but THE CHILD erupted with a cheer and her ladyship started bustling around packing a bag. I was quite sure that I was going to be left behind again... until I smelled THE TREAT go into the bag.

Needless to say, my curiosity was piqued. THE CHILD ran out THE FRONT DOOR with the bag and I was left alone with her ladyship. I sat, expected to have THE LEASH attached to my collar, but she reached for something else.

Something awful -- a thing of nightmares. She reached for...

...THE HARNESS! That could mean only one thing. We were going to ride in the belly of THE BEAST itself. The blue monster I usually watch, safe, behind the glass of my window as it attempts to hide behind a bush to ready it's attack on THE DOMAIN.

THE BEAST.

I dislike THE BEAST more than anything else. I've tried reasoning with her ladyship in the past, and it seemed to be working. She allowed me to stay in the relative comfort of THE CRATE rather than placing me into THE BEAST for the PICK UP DADDY FROM THE METRO trips.

I tucked my tail between my legs and sat down on the grass before THE BEAST, politely refusing to enter it. Her ladyship seemed sympathetic but then reached down and picked me up with rather less dignity than I should have had, and put me inside. She buckled THE HARNESS, making it quite impossible for me to find a comfortable spot to lay down. I did the best I could, putting my head on the soft fabric of THE CHILD's coat, and closed my eyes hoping it would all be over soon.

THE CHILD gave me some crackers in the shape of small goldfish. They were quite tasty and took my mind off my predicament... until THE BEAST started to rumple and move.

My stomach got upset almost immediately. I know her ladyship does not like disposing of THE CRAP so I did my very best to hold on for as long as I could. Alas, I couldn't. Just as we were approaching what her ladyship referred to as THE BAY BRIDGE, I quietly unloaded the contents of my stomach.

THE CHILD immediately released a shriek that ricocheted through my head and shook my bones. "EWWWW! Mommy! Milo just threw up on my coat! YUCK! Mom!! Oh, ick! There's some on me! AHHHHHH!!! MOMMY!!!!"

Her ladyship sounded rather tense. "Child, chill. It's just a little dog vomit. I'll stop at a gas station on the other side of the bridge and we can clean it up. Here..." She bent over and then handed back a little plastic envelope. "Here's a Wet One. Clean yourself up. We can get some more at the gas station."

THE CHILD just kept saying "Ewww, ewww, ewww." My stomach was still quite upset. I put my head down and waited for the sweetness of death to take me.

It didn't. It took an eternity to get across THE BAY BRIDGE, but finally, THE BEAST came to a stop and the door opened. Her ladyship released me from the buckle and handed my leash to THE CHILD. I saw an open field of glorious green grass. THE CHILD took me running from one end of the field to the other while her ladyship cleaned up my mess.

I haven't completely made up my mind on how I feel about THE CHILD but at that moment, I loved her more than life itself.

...Of course, then we had to get back into THE BEAST again.

My stomach was empty so there was nothing more to do but close my eyes again and wait for it to be over. We stopped again and, again, I was able to stretch my legs and smell some new smells, but it never lasted long enough.

Finally, we came to THE BEACH. I knew that because THE CHILD was cheering and her ladyship seemed rather relieved.

We got out and the air smelled different. I would have been more curious, but my stomach was still in knots and I was rather put out by being dragged all this way in THE BEAST. I must say, however, I let out a silent cheer of my own when THE HARNESS was removed and left behind in THE BEAST's evil belly.

THE BEACH was bright and the ground was odd -- soft and loose in places and rather hard and wet in others. My stomach started to settle and my natural curiosity got the best of me.

The air smelled slightly of salt and french fries and a dozen other things that I couldn't quiet identify. The noise was repetitive and wet, a crashing noise.

I went to investigate.

[To be continued....]

Mighty Monkey Dog

2010-10-16T10:06:00.000-07:00

*Thunk*

I went into the kitchen to see what fell down. Near as I could tell, there wasn't anything out of place. The fruit flies that rode in with some very ripe pears were swarming unhappily in the middle of the room. I impotently swatted at them.

OK. There's nothing wrong in the kitchen... The thump was distinct... The child was out, playing at a friend's house...

... Where's the dog?

I went into the living room and found him sitting in a lovely pool of sunlight.

He was gnawing on a banana. The fruit flies that managed to track him were buzzing about in a confused fury.

I've never met a dog that ate bananas before, much less would steal one off the counter risking high-pitched hollering and temporary banishment to the back yard. Yet, there he is -- right in front of me -- giving me the universal "don't-you-even-think-about-it" evil eye.

"Hmmm. Maybe this end taste's better."

"What? You again? Don't you have someplace to be?"

"BWAAHHAHAHA! I am the MIGHTY MONKEY DOG! Hear Me Roar!"

Chivalry is dead

2010-10-11T10:53:00.001-07:00

We are packing up after my husband's all-day photo shoot. I got up at the same early hour and have spent the day driving around and entertaining the child.

There are three large and heavy packs of photography equipment to haul back to the car. The child flatly refuses to carry anything and skips out the door before I can say anything. My husband picks up the case with wheels and starts to walk out the door.

"Can you get that one?"

I stare down at the bag, nearly five feet long and filled with metal tripods, extension cords, and assorted lighting gear. I pick it up and try not to fall over sideways. It's got to be at least 60 pounds.

"Thanks," he says, walking down the hallway. "It's kinda heavy."

Pumpkin party

2010-10-04T08:07:00.000-07:00

Every year, a former student of husband's hosts a party with her sisters at her father's farm in rural New Jersey. It's a beautiful place. Her father isn't doing much farming these days but it's got all of the charming earmarks of a working farm.

It's a three or more hour road trip (depending on how miserable the traffic is on I-95) so we don't go every year. Saturday was promising to be a beautiful day after days of rain. I really wanted out of the danged house. We packed up the child and the puppy and hit the road.

We got there just as the sun was starting to set.

It was a nice outside party. Of the 50 or so people who were there, most are about our age, and many have young (and blissfully well behaved) children. The vibe was mellow, relaxed, and on the artsy side.

It was, after all, a pumpkin carving party.

Notice the Pac Man there just above the 2010 pumpkin. *snicker* So cool.

This was "Punk Pumpkin". He was my favorite.

I wasn't sure what to make of this guy... it's kind of like an alien who exploded a pumpkin and then was trying (with limited success) to remake it in its own image.

The children did their best to make sense of it all.

Personally, I thought they (the pumpkins, not the children) looked creepier from the inside.

We were supposed to bring our own pumpkins to carve, but there are always extras, pulled out of the adjacent field, for those who forgot... or were inspired to more than one creation once they got started.

Ah: Gourds in love.

The dog was a big hit. He's very social and very sweet with both other dogs and with people. I didn't get a picture of him since he didn't stop moving for about four hours. He mostly hung out with a border collie mix named Dolly who obsessively brought tennis balls and dropped them at people's feet. My dog would run to fetch the balls as well. This clearly annoyed Dolly, but she seemed willing to ignore him.

Someone started a bonfire and brought out the marshmallows. I saw my child with a big stick and went over to investigate. With utter delight, she held up a charred lump to me and declared "Mom! I learned to roast my own marshmallow! Want a bite?"

I blamed my braces for not indulging in her burning lump of carbonized sugar. Seriously... it was still glowing like charcoal on the inside. I saw several parental types setting up folding chairs in front of the fire and getting comfortable. Confident that my child would be stopped if she tried to set herself or someone else on fire, I ran back to the car to grab the jackets we brought.

The sun was setting and it was getting chilly.

It was a glorious sunset.

Once the sun went down, they lit the pumpkins. I couldn't get any decent shots as I was trying to track both the dog and the child (the dog -- the black dog -- being the greater challenge). The following are my husband's shots.

During the judging of the pumpkins, we all heard several puppy-dog yelps. I saw my dog (visible via a glowing red LED collar) streaking across the yard. I heard several people "tsk, tsk-ing" Dolly... who was off with her ball begging for another throw. My dog seemed to be OK so we all turned back to the judging. A few minutes later, another yelp.

I saw a red streak head back toward the fenced in yard he had been playing in most of the afternoon. Well, I figured, if he can run, he's probably OK.

I waited about ten minutes for him to come back out. He didn't.

I went into the quiet yard. The parental types were still sitting around the campfire. My child was hiding behind some bushes whispering with her new best friend. I called for my dog. He came out to me and leaned heavily against my leg. I could feel him trembling. I sat down on the concrete slap and pulled him into my lap. I checked him for wounds -- nothing. His trembling came in bursts, almost like sobs.

I had a sudden image come to my mind: The child -- overstimulated and overtired -- sitting on my lap and sobbing "but I didn't do anything, Mommy. I was just playing and she yelled at me. She yelled at me, Mommy. I thought she was my friend. I don't like her anymore."

Yeah. I definitely had an overstimulated, overemotional dog sobbing about how he didn't do anything on my lap. The child wasn't doing much better. She wasn't fighting with her new friend (yet) so the sobbing was all about how unfair it was that we had to leave.

I had snot everywhere.

It was time to leave.

We got home around midnight. The dog went straight to his crate and wouldn't come out until morning.

Pooping in the Rain

2010-10-04T06:26:00.000-07:00

So during the 24-hour+ tropical enhanced rain/downpours, His Highness, the Honorable Lord Fuzzbutt here decides he doesn’t actually like pooping while being rained on. No… He would prefer to just discreetly dump a load in the corner of the living room. Then he gets to watch me walking around the house making that funny sniffing sound as the child tags along asking “Mommy, where’s the dead rat? Mom? Do you smell the dead rat?”

We Are Here!

2010-09-30T07:50:00.000-07:00

This is a Weather Underground map that shows me thunderstorms and where they are heading.

Yeah. It’s gonna be an interesting day.

Swimming lessons for girls

2010-09-24T10:25:00.000-07:00

The last set of swimming lessons for the child ended with limited success. She didn't really ever get to put her face in the water, but she did learn to stop yelling "I'm going to drown" whenever she got near the pool.

That sort of thing puts a bit of a damper on the fun of swimming.

She's still in the "prebeginner" class and my goal for this time around is to get her face in the water. She was excited about going to swimming lessons again (I completely credit the handsome José with this).

"Will José be there, Mommy?"

"Oh, I don't know, sweetie. He might have moved on by now. It's been a whole year."

"I hope José will be there," she said with a pout.

Well, José was there. She scurried right up to him and joined his class. He smiled his beautiful smile and off they went.

I watched from my skybox as José went through the basics again. The child was attentive and managed to get her chin under water.

It was a start.

She was also having a bit of trouble with the other kids in the class -- mostly boys who were younger than her. While she sat primly on the edge of the pool, they were rough-housing in the water. She got splashed repeatedly... in the face.

She doesn't like getting splashed getting splashed in the face. (Cue the Incredible Hulk music). "Please don't make me angry," she says quietly, moving a dripping curl out of her face. "You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

By the third class, I saw José catch the guy who manages the pool. The manager called out to my child and took her to another class run by young woman wearing a sparkly bikini top and normal tankini bottoms.

Why do I note what she was wearing? Because in my sick little mind, she instantly became "Little Miss Sparkle Boobies".

Don't worry. I haven't shared this with the child.

Anyway, the child finished the lesson. She actually seemed to do better. Miss Sparkles seemed to be a competent and confident teacher. The child got her face in the water. She even almost floated on her back.

After the class, the child came to me, dripping and smiling. I had to ask: "Why did you get switched to a different teacher? What did the man tell you?"

The child hesitated for a minute. "He said I needed to be in a 'girl class'."

The hairs on the back of my neck started to stand up as the feminist in me readied for a fight with The Man.

...But I held her back and asked an important question first.

"Do you like your new class?"

She nodded enthusiastically. "You want to know why?"

"Sure."

"Because it's just GIRLS!"

Not another kid's party at Chuck-E-Cheese's... Please...

2010-09-18T18:34:00.000-07:00

I sent the following "tweets" (via Twitter) out over the course of about 2 1/2 hours stuck in a screeching concrete box with several hundred children, a very loud stereo system, and about 25 depressed-looking servers. I "tweeted" to stay sane.

At chuck e cheese for b-day party. Birthday girl (not mine) is 1/2 hour late. Wondering if I've been punk'd.

I just sent the child out unsupervised into the melée with $10 in chuck-e-cheese tokens. Maybe that was a bad idea.

A 4-year-old boy just got up on a stage and kicked a giant animatronic rat in the groin. It was impressive considering the kid's stubby legs.

Praise the gods of tortured children's birthday parties: the birthday girl is here.

Frowning burka-clad woman* in a wheelchair is pushed in front of the Chk-E-Chz blue screen. Frantic, happy dancing animals behind her.

The noise, lights, and chaos adds a certain sublime metaphysicality to the "Yo Gabba Gabba" characters dancing on the corner tv screen.

Red Alert! Red Alert! We have intestinal gas brought on by crappy pizza and too much orange soda. I'm off to find some GasX.

Just had a story idea: Chk-E-Chz as a portal to Hell for really evil waiters/waitresses.

Back with the GasX from nearby CVS. Child grabbed tablets and a cup full of tokens and disappeared into the commotion.

...I hope she comes back.

...I'm *not* an evil waitress.

I'm watching a lot of adults shove tokens into these machines, elbowing kids out of the way. People: Prizes much better at a real casino.

Kid just walked over to my table and reached for tickets/tokens I'm holding 4 my child. Gave him scary mommy stare. Back off kid. Mine.

Was just given birthday goody bag to guard. No candy in there worth stealing. You could have sprung for *one* mini Snickers people! Jeeze.

I think my eardrums just leaked out of my ears and are dribbling dow my back....

Oh! Silly me! It was just the happy toddler behind me. Guess I'll see what was dribbled when I get home. Feels kinda warm and thick....

Ok. I'm done. Time to cash in the tickets for some toy worth about a dime and leave. Next stop: the wine store.

Like it or not, @curiouslee is babysitting for the rest of the evening.

I am going to bed now.

*Upon thinking about this, the woman wasn't in a true burka or I wouldn't have been able to see her face. She was in a traditional black dress and headscarf. Regardless, the woman was positively Zen... frowning, but Zen.

Oh, no

2010-09-16T08:19:00.001-07:00

Today, the puppy learned about the sublime joys of toilet paper.

As I sat down to clean up the mess of half-chewed toilet paper that was strewed about the hallway, the dog jumped into my lap and gave me this look.

I got a snuggle and a many lovey licks and he got a hug and forgiveness. When I went out to the living room, I found that he decided to help me out some more by opening a package we just got from Amazon.

Yeah... the dog is in the back yard now.

Domination

2010-09-13T17:56:00.001-07:00

Yes, the dog is humping a blanket. There's my bright boy!

A trip to St. Mary's

2010-09-13T09:23:00.000-07:00

The parents are visiting... what to do, what to do. I know! There's a seafood restaurant I love that is too far away to get to as often as I like. Maybe I could wrap a whole day around getting to this restaurant.

*evil snicker*

I started brainstorming. My neighbor has a daughter going to school in St. Mary's City. She said there's a "Williamsburg-like" thing going on down there. Mom is a history buff... the restaurants is just along the way....

I had a plan.

I sold the plan effectively to my family. Everyone is excited about making the two-hour drive. The weather report said perfect weather for Saturday.

Then I found out that my parents wouldn't be here on Saturday. The full day they had here would be on Sunday.

OK. That's fine. The weather was going to be a little dicier, but the report said the rain would clear up by noon. No problem. I'll still get my seafood lunch.

About an hour before getting on the road, I had an awful thought. I checked the restaurant's home page to be sure they would be open. Naturally, the web site didn't list the hours. I spent the next 15 minutes (which is a doggone long time on Google, people) trying to find a reliable source of information about whether or not the place was open on Sundays.

Yeah. I know. I should have just called... but after ten minutes it was the principle of the thing.

I finally found some hours. *sigh* It was closed on Sundays. Crap. I even held out a little hope that it would magically be open anyway. Dad slowed down a little as we cruised by. Nope. Definitely closed.

OK. On to Plan B.

I didn't really have a Plan B.

By this time, I was getting a little nervous about the weather. The rain changed from drizzle to large blobby raindrops as we drove south. Mom was keeping the child entertained (and vice versa) as best she could, but we were starting to get the dreaded "Mom? When are we going to get there?"

I started punching away at Yelp, looking for Plan B. OK... had a good one nearby... let's see where we are... Oh, goody. We just passed it. Moving on... Here's one near St. Mary's City... seafood, good... half-decent reviews.

Courtney's it is.

Luckily, there just aren't that many roads in that part of Maryland so despite the fact that my dad (who shares my utter lack of a sense of direction) and I were navigating, we found it pretty easily.

Yup. It's a building. Definitely not fancy. It had a pretty view of the river... through all of the rain.

The inside was... rustic, but the bathrooms were clean and the food was good. My crabcake wasn't as good as Jerry's was, but the onion rings tasted like hush puppies. Yum. The child found some smelly oyster shells outside. Life was good.

Stuffed with fish, we moved on to Historic St. Mary's City.

It was still raining.

St. Mary's City is not a complicated place. There's this sprawling historic site and there is a college. That's about it. I didn't see any bars, no hungover college students stumbling through the streets....

I didn't even see a Starbucks. What kind of place is this?

*sigh* Focus, Amy. We are here to see history -- very damp history.

We started at The Shop at Farthing's Ordinary. That's where we got tickets. The shop was really nice. Since we were all quite damp by this time, the fire in the fireplace felt really nice. There was no wall of sickly-sweet smell of overperfumed candles to walk into that you find in so many colonial-era museum shops.

We got our tickets, watched the prerequisite movie, and ventured out to find the Dove -- a ship.

A young woman in 17th century clothes (yes, this is a site from the mid 1600's -- well before Williamsburg) and bare feet waved at us from the dock. The child, sensing the opportunity to talk to someone who wasn't related to her, ran ahead.

There were very few other people at History St. Mary's City because... well... it was raining. We pretty much had the docents to ourselves. The child made the most of it.

"Want to see down below?" asked docent Abby.

I was already half-way down the ladder. I've seen the decks of ships before but I hardly ever get to go down below. My husband got the best photo of the small, dark space.

This was not a big boat, but it could (and did) cross the Atlantic. Abby said that colonists would have been on a bigger boat ("the sailors needed to have space to get them [the colonists] out of the way," said Abby), but this one would have been sailed by about eight professional sailors.

Naturally, we stuffed the child into one of the nooks that served as a bed for one of those sailors 400 years ago.

Her rhinestone-clad, designer-branded butt sparkled cheerfully in the darkness.

Moving on....

The captain's quarters weren't exactly what you see in the movies.

I wondered for a moment if those were authentic 16th century stains on the pillow but decided I didn't really want to know.

We went topside. The adults were ready to move on. The child was still busy touching... everything. Abby was happy to let her.

It took about ten minutes to disengage the child from her new friend.

As we were walking gingerly up the wet pier, Abby asked us where we going next. We all sort of stopped and looked at each other. Obviously, we had no idea.

"It's getting close to three," she said. I have no idea how she knew that. It's not like she was wearing a 17th century wristwatch. "You should head to the Godiah Spray plantation," she said. "They've got a demonstration happening there around three."

We looked at each other, eyebrows raised in that universal gesture of "sure... why not?"

We decided to drive to the plantation. It was about a mile down the road and, well, it was raining.... Still. Raining.

We caught up with another group of sopping tourists at the plantation. They were getting a talk by a nice man in a costume. He was explaining that as soon as we went through the tobacco barn that acted as the border of the plantation, he would become a 17th century indentured servant to the plantation and would only speak to things from that perspective.

"Any more 'modern' questions?"

We all shrugged.

In we went to the 17th century. Thanks heavens my husband was taking photos (most of these are his). I was way too distracted by chickens to actually take pictures of the place.

Here, chickie, chickie....

Such a pretty chickie....

Aww, man. Don't run away!

*sigh* Onward to the manor house.

Neither my husband or I got a picture of the outside of the house, but that's OK. It looked just like the barns.

...Not exactly Tara.

We stepped into "the buttery" which is where, apparently, everything gets stored.

I turned off the flash on my camera. The minimal light was really quite pretty.

The door led to a large kitchen where *ahem* everyone stood waiting.

"So we're all here now?" asked a lovely woman in a long dress with a vaguely English accent. "Great. This is cornmeal...."

The child had, naturally, stationed herself front and center and was now making corncakes.

It was a simple recipe: put a pile of cornmeal into a bowl, pour water on it, squish it around until you have a doughy sort of thing, add some rosemary, form patties, and dump the things into a hot frying pan until they dried out again. This was, apparently, the demonstration that we had hurried to get to.

Man, I'll bet those things tasted like dirt -- gritty, corn-flavored dirt. Think about it -- it's corn meal and water. I burped up some onion ring and said a silent little thanks to whatever bit of fate bore me into the 20th century with iPhones, high-fructose corn syrup, and cars with little heaters built into the seats.

Yeah, buddy. 20th century is seriously the way to go.

The garden out back was lovely.

We were learning about a fruit tree that none of us had ever heard of.

It was very informative... OH! More chickens!

Here, chickie, chickie, chickie...

"Mom!"

"Yeah?" I glanced up. There was no one around.

"Are you coming?"

Oops. Well, the chickens were gone anyway. Time to learn about tobacco. "Coming dear." I glanced at my watch. Nuts. The dog.

We left the dog in his crate at about 10am. It was pushing 4pm. I vaguely imagined him rolling happily around his crate (in our bedroom) covered in poop and dog toys. Then I pictured him standing up and doing one of those dog shakes....

We needed to move this along.

I tapped my foot through the whole tobacco thing. "Any more questions?" asked the nice man pretending to be another 17th century indentured servant. "Shall we go see the pigs?"

I glanced at my watch and groaned inwardly. "Oh, yes. Shall we?"

The pigs were scruffy, hairy, and (according to our guide) had a really nasty temper. That explained the decidedly 20th-century electric fence around the field they were in.

Charming.

Apparently, the pigs were also authentic 17th century pigs. The Spanish would just dump them off ships at any Caribbean island they ran across so that they'd have something to kill and eat on the way back. Some were forgotten, like snorting, squealing pirate treasure, on their islands. These pigs were bred from one of those herds.

I checked my watch again, nervously.

"Well, thank you for your attention," the nice man was saying. "Do come back soon." Dad came up next to me. "What now?"

"I'm starting to worry about the dog."

He nodded. "OK. We'll head back."

The sky finally cleared about ten minutes from home.

The dog was fine. I pounded through the front door and went straight to his crate where he had just lifted his head to blink blearily at me.

"Come on, dog. Time to go pee."

He stumbled out after me like... well... like someone who just got dragged out of bed from a lovely long nap and wasn't quite awake yet. I shoved him out the back door.

He turned to me, sat down, and blinked at me again. "Come on, dog," I said, cracking the door open. "Go pee."

He stood up and shook his perfectly clean body off. He sat back down and looked at me... expectantly.

"Dog. Go pee."

He cocked his head.

I opened the door to demonstrate and he darted back inside to welcome the child who had just exploded through the front door. Fine. I'll get him out later. The sun was shining as I peeled my wet tennis shoes and sopping socks off my squishy feet. I was tired and wet and ready to lounge on the couch for a while.

"Hey Mom! What's for dinner?"

2010-09-12T14:10:00.001-07:00

We've spent the day touring Historic St. Mary's City. Now we are heading back to see if the dog survived a day in the crate.

The child discovers the front facing camera on my new phone

2010-09-10T07:23:00.000-07:00

"Hey Mom! Can I use your phone? I want to take pictures."

We were in the car. I looked at the long line of traffic ahead of me. It'll keep her entertained for a while. "Here you go."

"Mom? What does this button do?"

"I don't know, dear. I'm driving. I can't look. Does it look like a little trash can?"

"No."

"Well tap it and see what happens."

There was a moment of silence and then much giggling. I focused on the traffic again. It turns out that she had discovered the front-facing camera on my new phone. I found the results of this impromptu photo shoot when I got home.

That's nice... kind of an Elvis snarl going on here.

Oh, good. The addition of the drool adds a lot of... dimension and... umm... texture....

Yes, yes. Let's not forget the teeth.

Priceless.

Training the child

2010-09-04T08:27:00.000-07:00

The child cackled with utter delight.

The dog was sitting next to me on the couch. I glanced over the top of my book to see what the child was getting into. She picked up an orange frisbee and handed it to the dog.

The dog held the Frisbee in his mouth for a moment and looked at her. Then he, ever so carefully, dropped the Frisbee on the floor in front of the couch.

The child giggled hysterically, bent over and gave the dog his Frisbee back.

The dog cocked his head his head for a minute and then took the Frisbee again. He dropped it, looking back at her expectantly.

The child giggled again and obediently returned the Frisbee to the dog who never once had to leave his spot on the couch.

"What's he saying, Mom? What's he saying?" The child likes to have me "translate" for the dog.

"He's saying 'good child -- that's my good girl. Now GO FETCH!'"

The toughest part about moving to a new place...

2010-08-26T13:33:00.000-07:00

The toughest part about moving into a new place is to find that perfect spot to just relax...

...A spot that is comfortable, but has a great view....

...Where you can kind of tuck yourself in and get comfy with friends....

Nope. This just isn't right. We'll just twist around this way and scrunch into here....

Perfect!

Num

2010-08-24T14:01:00.000-07:00

This morning, these ruby jars of jelly-ishis joy was a four-pound box of raspberries, just picked off the bush in northern Montgomery County. It was cloudy today and we had almost gone through the previous batch so we went back for more.

The child did very well facing down the bees that were buzzing around the plants. There were no ear-splitting screeches, no frantic batting at the bees who just wanted to be left alone anyway, and no clinging protestations of fear.

She didn’t pick a lot of raspberries, but nobody got hurt. What more could I ask?

The dog saga

2010-08-22T11:02:00.000-07:00

We lost our dog in March. Inevitably, the question came up.

"Mom? Can we get a new dog?"

It took me about a month to be able to answer her. "We'll get a new dog when you start school in the Fall." That left us the summer to do any little trips we might want. Once she's in school, we're pretty much grounded anyway.

We went out to visit animal shelters yesterday.

We started at the Montgomery County shelter in Rockville. It was packed with both people and animals. When we got into the kennel area, the child clapped her hands over her ears and crinkled up her nose.

"Ewww."

The sound and smell of the place hit us like a pair of brick walls. I couldn't tell you what was worse. The dogs (other than being completely spastic and loud) seemed to be in reasonably decent shape. We moved with about a dozen other people through the cacophony.

We found a likely candidate. I took out my phone and snapped a picture of the paperwork so I could ask to see the dog at the front desk. A small, angry woman in a STAFF shirt walked up to me.

"You can't take pictures in here!"

"I was just taking a picture of the number so I could ask...."

"No pictures! You can get a pencil and paper at the front desk."

I am posting my blurry picture for the simple reason that she was such a jerk.

Anyway, we found four dogs to "visit" with. Most were pretty distracted or just weren't right for us for one reason or another. The person who was supposed to be overseeing us and answering our questions was sprawled out on the bench next to the door texting someone on his cell phone and sneering slightly when we interrupted him to take a dog in.

There was this one dog, however.

Cherry Berry is an 8-year-old border collie mix. She was sweet and gentle. She paid attention to us and responded to her name. She licked our fingers and sat patiently while the child bounced around her. She snuggled up to our legs and gently invited us to scratch her chest.

Cherry Berry is a beauty -- in every way. She was given up because her owner had some kind of head injury and couldn't take care of her anymore. We almost put in an application for her, but I couldn't do it. I just put down a dog and it hurt... really hurt. I don't know how many more years Cherry Berry has in her, but I couldn't face putting another dog down anytime in the near future.

We took her back to her smelly hole and left her there. It still bothers me. If there is anyone anywhere in NOVA or Central Maryland who needs a good companion (and who isn't still dealing with lingering grief), go visit Cherry. She deserves better than what she has.

We moved on to the next shelter on the list: The DC Humane society on Georgia Ave.

It was an interesting place: stuck in a little 100-year-old row house/storefront in the middle of Latin food restaurants, hair salons, and thrift stores.

We got buzzed in by a lady surrounded by bunny cages.

"Mom! Bunnies!"

"Focus, child. We're here for a dog."

The woman smiled. I'm guessing she heard that a lot. "The dogs are downstairs -- to the right."

They were in the basement of a tiny little row house. I took a breath and braced myself for the smell.

It wasn't bad.

The room was definitely a basement, but it was clean and there was a recording of little birds running. A woman was in the back preparing food.

The child got wrapped up in looking at the toy breeds at the base of the stairs. The other dogs were mostly angry, barking pit bulls. I know pits are not necessarily bad dogs, but I'm really cautious of ones that were given up in to a shelter in a densely populated city.

Nothing there. We had one more shelter on our list.

I'd driven by the DC Humane Society on New York Avenue a lot. It's a squat, nondescript little building in an old industrial area that has not been gentrified yet. The weeds grow high outside the front of the place and the homeless who sleep under a nearby bridge are often staggering around outside.

I took a deep breath and went in. "Follow the arrows on the floor," said a smiling woman with a "volunteer" tee shirt. "The dogs are in a white building out back."

I grabbed the child who was moving quickly toward the kittens and we followed the arrows to an exit, across a tiny yard buzzing with flies, and into -- sure enough -- a white building. I grabbed the doorknob and braced myself for the smell and the noise again.

It wasn't there.

The place smelled fine -- like any office. It stopped me dead in my tracks. The dogs looked at us curiously as we walked past, only one or two psycho dogs breaking out in frantic barks.

It was actually rather pleasant.

We asked to see a cute little Lab mix puppy.

A woman brought us out to the "garden" (the little yard with the flies we walked through before). It was fenced so she could let the dog off the leash. There was water and toys and a nice shaded area where we could play with him.

The child found a tennis ball and started throwing it around. The puppy danced after it, delighted. The woman talked to us about this dog. She was at the shelter when he was brought in. She said that his owner had just moved from North Carolina and was living with his mother. His mother's landlord didn't allow pets, so he had to give the dog up. There were no problems, it was just bad luck. She said that of all the dogs in the shelter, this one was the best fit. "There aren't many people who can take puppies," she said when she learned I had dogs before and was stay-at-home. "You just can't leave them for a whole day."

We filled out the paperwork. Xylo (soon to be renamed) will be ours as soon as he gets neutered (a requirement for adoption from any shelter).

He's a goofball. Expect lots of pictures.

...Still, I wish I could do more for poor Cherry.

A rite of passage

2010-08-22T10:48:00.000-07:00

The day started with an argument.

"Mom, I don't want to go summer camp today."

I mentally ticked through the list of things I was planning to do without her... umm... help. "It's the last day, sweetie. You don't want to miss that."

"But Mo-om."

"Come on. It's just one more day. You'll get to say good-bye to your teachers and your friends. There will probably be a party."

"A party?"

That clinched the deal. She went to summer camp.

About noon, I got a phone call from the summer camp. The child had been stung by a bee.

The person in charge of the camp had her in the office. "It's on her lip. It doesn't look too bad. We gave her a popsicle. She said she wanted to talk to you."

"Mooooooommmmmyyyyyyy! I... I... I..." unintelligible snuffling sobs..." BEE!!!!"

"Do you want me to come get you, honey?"

More snuffling sobs. The person who runs the camp translated: "She says yes."

I went and got the child. I found her sitting on a bench, goo from a huge green popsicle dripping down her tee shirt. Between the swollen eyes and nose from crying and the swollen lip, she looked like a prizefighter having a bad day.

A prizefighter wearing a glittery yellow tee shirt and perky blue skirt.

[I'd like to note here that I do ask her permission before taking these teary photos. She knows they are for the blog and is OK with it.]

I gave her another popsicle and sat her on the couch with a box of tissues and a towel to watch Bakugan. I can't watch Bakugan without my head exploding (it is beyond wretched... the child says I just don't understand it), so I went back to work. She, naturally, got bored with just sitting and spent the next hour walking around the house and randomly screaming "OUCH" at the top of her lungs... giving me a minor heart attack every single time.

This is what the bee sting looked like after four popsicles.

It was completely gone and forgotten by morning.

Paint with me

2010-08-21T07:41:00.000-07:00

"Mom! Do you want to paint or draw with me?"

(She put a blank piece of paper over my iPad.)

No, I don't have a kitten...

2010-08-16T16:00:00.000-07:00

... I have a bored six-year-old.

Another storm

2010-08-12T11:08:00.000-07:00

This enormous tree branch -- as thick as my leg -- fell in our back yard during the storm this morning. It was a beautiful piece of tulip poplar.

As I was out there, I started wondering which of my trees had been ravished and I realized…

We only have oak trees in our back yard. Same with our immediate neighbors.

My heart pounding, I checked the poplar in our front yard… It was fine.

Lord amighty… How far did this thing fly this morning? I was suddenly very glad we went to the basement.

Coming home

2010-08-10T08:50:00.000-07:00

I got the phone call several weeks ago. My dog's ashes were finally ready for me to pick them up. It had taken so long (she died in March) that I had honestly thought I wasn't going to get them.

Once I got the phone call, I kept "forgetting" or coming up with reasons that I couldn't stop and get them.

Today, I finally stopped by the vet office that I drive by every day and got them.

It still hurts a little.

My new fashion statement

2010-08-10T08:38:00.000-07:00

"Mom? Why didn't you ever wear the necklace I made for you?"

The child holds out a red string with a plastic bread wrapper holder thingy attached to it. It had been hanging from a doorknob for months. I silently cursed myself for not "disappearing" it earlier.

"Don't you like it?"

What I said in my head is well, dear... I like that you made it -- and the colors are very nice -- but I don't really want to walk around town wearing what looks like a knotted shoelace with a plastic bread wrapper holder thingy on it.

Nothing actually came out of my mouth. I just held it thoughtfully and frantically tried to come up with a way out of the situation.

"Mom? Don't you like it?"

There was no way out. "Of course I like it." I popped the thing over my head and I've been wearing it ever since.

Let people wonder.

Thank heavens

2010-08-04T09:00:00.001-07:00

Well thank heavens I didn't buy my child at Pottery Barn!

A Sam Jackson thing

2010-07-29T14:27:00.000-07:00

One more lawn guy story....

I'm sitting in the dining room trying to get some writing done before I have to pick up the child. My husband is sitting in the air conditioned car out front gesturing wildly on his cell phone.

He's in a meeting, you know.

Anyway, the lawn guys have finished cutting the branch off the power lines and are now getting down to the business of picking up branches and actually cutting the grass. They start early and do several houses on our street. I'm pretty sure we're the last one. By they time they get to us, they are focused and efficient.

I see some movement out of the corner of my eye. A blond head is moving in through the breezeway between the house and the garage. My husband has moved the car seat back and is staring at his Blackberry. I guess the meeting is over.

A few minutes later, I notice two heads outside the breezeway. They are talking and messing around with a stick.

Whatever. I went back to my story.

My husband comes in a few minutes later and pushes his phone under my nose. "Look what they found."

"A snake?"

"Yeah. It's huge."

"What kind of snake?"

"Just a black snake. It must be about three feet long!"

"Well, that explains where all the chipmunks went."

"The lawn guys are going to try to kill it with a rock."

"OK." I wasn't very upset. I figured they'd either kill the snake or freak it out enough to make it slither elsewhere.

A few minutes later, the electrocution veteran takes off running across the yard. It was that belly-first, all out run you see when someone thinks a really big freaking snake is chasing them.

"I didn't get it."

The blonde looked up from his raking. The boss walks over.

"That MF'r is staying where he is! He's as big as this rake!"

"It's not that MF'ing big..."

"I'm telling you, that MF'r is huge!"

"Well, just leave the MF'r where it is. Let's finish this up."

"Yeah, OK. I'm ready for some MF'ing lunch."

I'm not sure why every man felt the need to use the "MF" phrase in every sentence after the first mention, but they did without fail. Maybe it was some kind of male bonding....

...Maybe it was just a Sam Jackson thing. Either way, the MF'ing snake is gone.

The branch

2010-07-29T14:26:00.000-07:00

"We can get that branch down."

"I don't know. It's hanging on power lines. The power company should probably do it."

"Nah. We got some equipment. We can do it."

I had been nervously picturing the branch bursting into flame because some sleep-deprived power company worker with a deadline hadn't checked the lines before hitting the "on" switch. I really wanted the tree branch gone.

"Well... I don't know. It would really ruin my day if one of you guys got electrocuted."

The big man shrugged. "It only hurts for a minute."

I laughed. "I love your attitude," I said, figuring that he meant it only hurt for a minute before it killed you.

He stared at me blankly.

It occurred to me only later that he was likely speaking from first-hand experience... of being electrocuted.

Appropo to Scissorhands

2010-07-29T14:25:00.000-07:00

We walked outside after the storm and I looked down the street. Four cars in four adjacent driveways pulled out at the same time as if they were choreographed.

I started looking around for Edward Scissorhands.