ode to boy

if you'll recall, i'm pretty into the boy. i'm thinking for father's day, me and quincy will write him a card that says something to the affect of,

"dear the boy, we are pretty into you. mushystuffmushystuffmushystuff, etc. love, us"

in the meantime, it feels like time to pay another tribute to this wonderfully random man in my life. here are some recent examples:

1. automatically opening doors.
have i mentioned before how right when we moved into our house, the boy set up half the lights to be sensored? so, when you walk into the room, the light automatically turns on... 50% freaky, 50% cool, 100% the boy.

i should have known it wouldn't stop there. the boy recently received a giant mystery box that turned out to be one of those handicap automatic door openers. you know the ones i'm talking about? like this

we have a balcony off our master bedroom and we love opening the doors on a nice sunny morning and also during nice nights hoping that a mountain lion might sneak in like this. just kidding, mom.

"wouldn't it be awesome if we didn't even have to get out of bed to open our doors by remote or something?" the boy said in quick passing a few days earlier. while most of us say such silliness and then forget about it, the boy actually acts on it.

so, lo and behold, he jerry-rigs this machine to the doors and before i know it, they're opening via remote control. so easy, even a baby can do it

isn't that awesome? needless to say, that first night, the door kept randomly opening and closing during the night. okay, it wasn't that random - i always knew when it was coming because i'd hear the boy click the remote control...


2. the muffin man -
we went out to dinner with the ever great katie and john the other night to what we've decided is now our favorite restaurant, the pinyon (shameless promotion).

imagine you're looking at this restaurant menu. my biggest regret in life right now is that i didn't actually get a picture of the menu and i can't find a picture of it anywhere... so, use that right brain of yours and get to imagining. very foreign looking stuff that's hard to pronounce mixed with small plates of pickled such and such that still cost a pretty penny. and then this:

"english muffin. $1"

(i'm so lame, i don't have any pictures of the night... just this random cartoon of an english muffin...)

while the rest of us skimmed right over that item, the boy couldn't get over it. "this is fantastic! a nice dinner menu with a $1 english muffin on it? i'm for sure getting one! or maybe $5 worth..." the banter grew until he stated,

"i can't believe what a great deal this is....english muffins for everybody! on me!" of course, we egged him on and did the math for him - it'd cost him about $10 to treat every table to an english muffin. so he asked. and our waitress, who at first thought it was a joke, agreed to give every table an english muffin, courtesy of the guy sitting at the table outside. (we were the only people sitting outside because it was kind-of a dreary night. so i'm sure we were already dubbed "the crazies.")

let me interject to ask, how much would you have loved to have been a customer at this restaurant that night and received a complimentary english muffin? you know it would have made your week.

so one by one, as the muffins were delivered around the restaurant, people started giving the boy the thumbs up and even coming outside to thank him. it was hilarious.

when we finally decided it was too cold to sit outside and moved our table inside, we were greeted by a round of applause and people patting the boy on the back saying, "thanks, muffin man!"

let it be recorded that i never want to be any more of a celebrity than "the muffin man's wife." it was the best night ever.

i love the boy

"elementary my dear watson" is really an overstatement

a couple of mysteries have recently presented themselves, so we've been doing some sleuthing lately.

case #1: the case of the tortured book
one of q's favorite books is "peekaboo kisses." you're hesitant i know, but trust me on this one - give it a chance and you won't be able to put it down. a true page turner.

anyway the gist is, you open little flaps to reveal furry puppies or fluffy kittens all dying to give you a kiss (goodbye epic novels, hello baby books) and the climax comes when you get to the mouse (spoiler alert ahead)

peekaboo i see...

squeaky mouse kisses!! (i can recite this thing in my sleep)

and, get this, when you hit his little belly, he squeaks! until one sad day - it was probably overcast and rainy out - when we got to the mouse and pressed the belly, it was completely silent. no noises to be heard. not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. (sorry, i couldn't resist.) 

i flipped the page over and to my utter horror saw THIS!

someone ripped the squeaker right out of the book! now, i know you're thinking "whoa - where do you even start to narrow down the list of suspects in a case like this?" but in truth, possibilities weren't as extensive as you might think. there were two potential culprits:

they both look innocent enough, but i've witnessed first-hand the destruction these guys can do to inanimate objects.

first, we'll look at teddy. sweet innocent teddy. the boy assures me on a regular basis that this pooch can do no wrong. but that's just because teddy conveniently waits for the boy to leave to start his mass destruction of helpless toys. take for example:

a poor little stuffed dog (that started off as quincy's to make the matter worse) ripped away from his own nose. all from the paws of sweet innocent teddy. 

and if a toy has a squeaker in it - like this baseball thingy - forget about it. teddy is like a squeaker-seeking missile when it comes to finding squeakers and getting to them in as violent way as possible... i never in a million years thought i'd use the word "squeaker" so much in one sentence.  

and then let's not forget about this little episode of toy devastation...

in other words, i wouldn't put it past teddy to rip the squeaker out of a defenseless children's book. 

on the other hand, while i've never once seen milo rip a squeaker out of a toy, i have seen him demolish paper bags, take toys away from quincy on a regular basis and just be plain annoying at whatever cost. plus, he always comes in to finish teddy's dirty work (conveniently usually right as the boy gets home so milo looks like the evil one all the time). teddy will take the squeaker out of a toy, but leave the stuffing unharmed. milo sniffs out toy stuffing like...well, a dog... on the hunt. 

look at that - he's even got stuffing on his chin as if we weren't completely convinced of his guilt.

so, it's a toss up. it's hard to take this case any further because neither suspects are wiling to stand trial to defend their innocence. which sadly means, justice may never be served for "peekaboo kisses."


case #2: the case of the traveling flamingo
as if losing sleep over that isn't enough, now we've got a mysterious pink plastic flamingo floating around our block!

it showed up one day out of the blue standing proudly in the field across the street from our house. a few days later, it suddenly moved to our next-door neighbor's front yard. so, when it landed itself in our yard a few days after that, i naturally assumed my neighbor had stuck it there.

(the boy pretending to not be worried at all about these shenanigans) 

she whole-heartedly denied it though and swore she had nothing to do with it being both in her yard and our yard. so, we have a savvy flamingo transporter on the loose

sigh, how will any of these mysteries every be solved?

i am happy to report however that one case can be closed. i finally found the easter egg that milo hid two weeks ago! ironically, he hid it in my neighbor's yard... which is why i wouldn't put it past her to plant a plastic flamingo in our yard... i bet if we look long enough, we'll find a lonely squeaker without a home buried somewhere over there too