Classic quotes, Vol. 17

To continue clearing out my Illinois-to-Maine backlog (a process significantly protracted, with my apologies, by my computer problems), here are several quotes from my wife J-, my 5-year-old son D-, and my 2-year-old daughter M-:

J- (while cruising happily through Indiana on the home stretch): Indiana's the best! Their speed limit is 70 and they sell real fireworks!

M- (first thing in the morning, inexplicably, since traffic was flowing just fine): GO, people! People! You're dwiving too swowww, just goooooo!!

D- (to me, while complaining at the store): You say "no" to everything.

M- (making a proud announcement to the entire park after I pushed her higher than most people would ever push a 2-year-old on a swing): Wook at me, kids!! I'm swinging wike a SOUP-oh-hewoe! Wike a diamond in da sky!

D- (while I was trying to drive): Remember a few days ago you said you were gonna give me some money? ...Then you forgot? So, can you give me some money right now?

Proof I didn't kill my children

[...or, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Screams"]

Well, my computer decided to break down Thursday, and in fact it's still out of commission until I can find my Windows CD, so here you get Friday's promised picture post on Monday.

Here's a short summary of the trip home in (representative) pictures.

We had a little drive across Maine and New Hampshire, stopped to see Nanna and Poppa in Rhode Island, got in jammies, and we'll surely be there in no time, right? Why not celebrate by doing our best Sean Connery impressions?

It's all laughs and smiles until someone gets cranky:

For those trapped in a five-point harness, this is a good stress-reducing position to assume for at least 40% of the time, to keep your circulation going so you can get maximum screaming power from what meager foodstuffs you're likely to be offered.

For those trapped in a relatively comfortable booster seat with a mere shoulder belt (who would never, ever, ever deliberately arm and then set off a Toddler Bomb), this would be the ideal posture-- furious concentration on something else almost as loud and annoying, piped directly into your ear holes:

If the option to get out of the car more than the doctor-recommended 14 times an hour is firmly withheld from you, you must be sure to stretch often and look as bored as possible while doing so:

In between reps, if no other activity is offered to you, just pretend to read until that ability spontaneously manifests itself:

Once you're again done with that, don't be surprised if your traveling companions/jailers playfully attempt to assuage their guilt by forging evidence that everyone has been having a really great time and no international anti-torture laws were being broken:

Console yourself that once the sun goes down, the toddler vampires have free reign, and they make pathetic wandering parents their playthings, biting their heads off like so many Winnie-the-Pooh animal crackers.

Also, only then is the portable DVD player allowed to return to its rightful throne on the front armrest, ruling as a benevolent Pixar-spewing overlord, appointed for life by acclamation.

And all will once again be right with the world, until those mutinous parents, who hate anything that makes children smile, pull the stupid car into the stupid garage and ruin all the fun.

IL to ME Odyssey: New York through Maine

Here is the final set of my observations on our car trip from Chicagoland to visit family in Northern Maine, part of the series of posts: Illinois, Indiana, Ohio & Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire & Maine.

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NEW YORK
Distance Traveled: 407 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 3

Since we took on New York in the early afternoon, everything was pretty well just dandy, so I have nothing memorable to report. This time.

The last time I went through New York was when we moved out here, and let me tell you: do NOT sleep in a hotel a few miles from the western border in Buffalo and then accidentally take the moving truck through the EZ-Pass lane on your way out of state the next morning if you don't have an EZ-Pass transponder. Those people will gladly spend $100 over the course of months making sure you satisfy the 42-cent debt you'll have incurred.*

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MASSACHUSETTS
Distance Traveled: 170 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 2

WARNING: If you live in Boston, or you love someone who lives there, you may want to skip this section altogether and mosey on down to good ol' New Hampshire.

• We had the good fortune to arrive in Boston** with perfect timing to take my wife's very good friend up on her longstanding offer to let us stay with her and her husband just outside Boston proper. We were so glad this worked out as well as it did, though despite numerous warnings against it, my 5-year-old son D- managed to quickly co-produce, direct, and edit --with his much-loved Corduroy bear-- the latest installment in the long-running reality show, "Where the F*** Did Corduroy Go??"

But just when he thought he was finally free, he got stuffed into an airless box and mailed on up to Maine. I'd love to see his happy-go-lucky spin on that chapter in the storybook.

• If you ask anyone who knows me, or who has walked past me on the street sometime within a few weeks after I've left Massachusetts, I hate the city of Boston with a passion that burns hotter than herpes in Hell. Don't get me wrong, I know good people who've lived in Boston, I was happy for the Red Sox when they finally won it all, but I dread and regret my every visit to their (generally) rude, horribly organized, urine-soaked burg.

Before you think I've judged Bostonians and their city too quickly, you must know that over the course of 9 years, I've passed through their airport dozens of times (and spent two nights in it, in fact...); I've made use of their bus station and both of their train stations, several hotels, and a hospital; I've walked along many streets of the city and surrounding towns, taken educational tours, and even spent nights in actual residents' houses on more than one occasion.

So, again, while some of the people (including my brother and brother-in-law) who live or have lived there may be very nice, competent, capable people, and while there may be a few good things there or from there, overall, I think this city represents some kind of horrific disease that must be contained. I pity the future of our country and its standing in the world if this is our city foreigners see first. Eight years of Bush/Cheney/Co. would have quite a battle on its hands in the contest for Worst Face to Show Potential Terrorists Still on the Fence.

If forced to say something pleasant about Boston at large, I suppose I could scrounge up the following items:

1. We have thus far been some of the lucky few not yet crushed to death under falling chunks of the shoddily constructed boondoggle that is the famed Big Dig tunnel.

2. I'd say I enjoy surprises, so having to guess 3 or 4 times, at 50mph, which split in the web of underground roadways we want to take --when the GPS navigator didn't indicate (before losing contact with the satellites, not unlike what would happen before "the good part" in a horror movie) any such choices for many miles-- provides potentially hours of spontaneous urban exploring fun. I'm pretty sure, though, that the Boston contacts at the GPS map companies just haven't told headquarters what really goes on in these tunnels, and no one has the guts to venture in to check on it.

3. If foreign armies were to choose Boston as their point of entry for an invasion, provided they were traveling only by road, we would have literally months to prepare the defense of our capital, with the front likely centered somewhere as close as Brookline. Actually, we could probably just build a 20-foot-thick, 50-foot-high wall around the entire metropolitan area. Using only union labor. Imported from New Jersey. On foot.

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NEW HAMPSHIRE
Distance Traveled: 18 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 0

Nothing much to say here, given the short distance, except I'm happy to report that crossing the New Hampshire-Maine border bridge is much less stressful when you're not totally delirious from driving compulsively the 1400 miles from Chicago to Presque Isle all at once, as I did when I moved out there almost 6 years ago.

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MAINE
Distance Traveled: 345 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 2

• I gotta say, under these circumstances, driving the normally pleasant state of Maine is an absolutely soul-crushing experience. Not anything to do with the state itself, per se, it's just that moving through so many states so quickly and then hitting the southern border of your destination state in the afternoon, only to spend another 6 hours in the car, can be a bit much to ask of us long-haul travelers trying to get past all the lobsters, rustic sweaters, and salty sea air up to the calm, comforting expanses of potato fields, black flies, and that only-slightly-ornery air of self-sufficiency.

• We arrived. With no major injuries for any of us, self-inflicted or otherwise. Family was happy to see us, we were happy to see them, and we were doubly happy to spend only about 1 hour total in the car over the next two weeks.

I'll post a few pictures from the trip tomorrow, rather than make this post any longer. Longer than the above plus these two footnotes, of course... enjoy!

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* Each stamp on the redundant notices they sent me exceeded the original debt, as did each minute of the time I spent on the phone trying to square away my options for avoiding the sizable penalties they automatically tacked on. What's best is I had to mail them a CHECK for 25 cents, and then mail them a SECOND check a couple weeks later for 17 cents when they realized they had quoted me the car toll instead of the truck toll.

** Note that I said "arrive in Boston" with perfect timing, not "make it across the city to our friend's house"... It was unfashionably late.

IL to ME Odyssey: Indiana, Ohio & Pennsylvania

Here are more of my observations on our car trip from Chicagoland to visit family in Northern Maine, part of the series of posts: Illinois, Indiana, Ohio & Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine.

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INDIANA
Distance Traveled: 154 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 2

• Indiana's most noteworthy form of welcome to weary travelers of I-90 is the stench of a sewage treatment plant for at least the first 20 miles. What could be more likely to invite us to get to better know our neighbors to the east? Perhaps a series of spike strips across all inbound lanes?

Or maybe a high-pitched noise broadcast across all channels and through the air, counteracted only for locals by special government-issued noise-canceling earbuds worn at all times? Seems like something those stinky old spiteful Indianans would do.

• The rest stop in Portage, Indiana amused me by having the Girls of Playboy pinball machine in the entry to their game room, right next to the children's claw game filled with Dora and Minnie Mouse dolls. I guess this just means Indiana is fun for the whole family!

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OHIO
Distance Traveled: 245 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 3

• As you can see, we got a lot better about bathroom breaks, thanks largely in part to threats and bribery. It figures, though, since the pricey Ohio Turnpike (more than half our journey through the state on I-80/I-90) is unbelievably clean, well-lit, and lavishly appointed. It makes me wish I could meet all my bodily needs for the entire trip during only those 2 of 22 hours.

• After stopping at a gas station for our final bathroom break (since I-90 splits off the Turnpike proper, it figures), we decided begrudgingly to give up for the day with less than a third of the trip covered after the first day, in about 9 hours. That's right-- only 9 hours, and only 430 miles or so.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Distance Traveled: 40 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 0

I can't tell you how happy I was to start out the day knocking down a whole state without a single bathroom break, or, at least, I won't tell you. Even though we were just clipping the corner of an otherwise large state, I'll still just quietly treasure it as my own secret little joy in this cold world.

By the way, in case you ever take a similar trip, please make sure you (like us this time) follow I-90 instead of I-80 when they split in Ohio, Especially if it's any time within a few hours before sundown. Otherwise, you'll just have to describe to us all how tender is the face of God, either from beyond the grave or having been blessed to narrowly escape it.

Let's all tell Congress it's okay to earmark a little something extra for PDOT (I've decided they must call it this if it's not already) to upgrade this road, perhaps at the very minimum by adding some reflectors on the lane lines, and maybe some new reflective paint. Or, they could issue everyone night vision goggles at the border. Which is cheaper?

IL to ME Odyssey: Illinois

I figured I'd break down my observations on our car trip from Chicagoland to visit family in Northern Maine into a series of short posts of thoughts on our time in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and almost all of Maine.

For a bonus, on our way home we also added Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey.

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ILLINOIS
Distance Traveled: 30 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 3

• We started out the trip only about an hour behind a schedule we never intended to keep, but then my 5-year-old son D-, who had recently fallen at my parents' house and hit his head, said he had a headache.

Coming from a kid who is as oblivious to such concepts as can be, we figured we had to get his doctor's opinion on how we should handle this. She, of course, said we should bring him in to the emergency room to confirm he was okay.

Thankfully, they said he was fine, but this meant we were now leaving several hours behind schedule, and just in time to catch the beginning of rush hour in Chicago.

• Before we left the ER, the very nice doctor helpfully offered the kids popsicles for their trouble, which might sound wonderful until you remember we were just getting into the car. My 2-year-old daughter M-, to say nothing of her older brother, is so proficient at making messes that she has been known to somehow create a permanent stain on furniture with a single piece of popcorn placed directly in her mouth, while you stare at her chewing it.

• A combination of slow rush hour traffic and my children's desire to see me repeatedly bash my skull into unconsciousness against a car window had us stopping for a bathroom break about 10 miles from our house. Now, if you've been in gas station bathrooms before, you pretty much know what you're getting into each time, so the one side benefit is you can only be pleasantly surprised.

But this particular gas station we picked, from a choice of about 63 within a two-mile radius, happened to possess the exception to this rule. When I scouted ahead and asked the attendant about the facilities, he responded cryptically that, "it's kind of out of order... but you can use it if you don't mind."

Without having even the slightest picture in my mind of what I was agreeing to, I said that was fine, since the kids had to go and we were here. I didn't add that I absolutely had to know what he could have meant by "kind of out of order," regardless of my kids' willingness to endure it.

When I came back with the kids, he pointed me over to what (oddly) was left of the entry to a short hallway mostly blocked by a refrigerated display case, but he said we'd have to wait since someone else had just gone in.

When the man walked out a few minutes later, I didn't think he was nearly broken-up enough about the fact that, in his succinct words, "it splashed me in the face."

Given this setup, I was actually disappointed, rather than pleasantly surprised, to find that this toilet merely had no tank lid, a broken flush chain, minor staining, and absolutely no toilet paper. A roll of paper borrowed from the store shelf allowed me to impenetrably protect the kids from germs, and a simple lack of flushing avoided any unwanted toilet-water showers.

And like that, plus a few hearty foot swipes on the rug at the exit, we had notched the lowest marker on our road-trip bathroom ladder, meaning it was all looking up from there. I waved a thank you to the attendant on our way out, not envying him for the puddles he'd be standing in later when opening the enormous safe in the corner of the bathroom, and we headed back into our place in the rush hour conga line slowly carrying us out towards the open road.

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Thankfully, not every state boasted anything as traumatic as this, so you won't be getting 10 individual posts after this one. I promise.

Classic quotes, Vol. 16

Here are a few choice quotes just from the past two weeks of our vacation alone, this time all from my 5-year-old son D- and 2-year-old daughter M-:

M- (slapping my legs while she sat on the toilet): I'm cwapping your pants!*

D- (after winking at our now-fawning waitress, while smiling coyly): What's your name?

M- (asked of Grandma absolutely out of the blue, then restated by D- after she understandably questioned what M- had asked): Why does Santa have helpers?

M- (a moment of clarity during a minor tantrum in a restaurant): I'm fwustwaited!!

M- (on another occasion, reaching up and pushing on my chin while I was telling her how naughty she was acting): I am cwosing your mouth, to stop your talking to me!**

And to close this very M--heavy quote list, a bonus from before we left for vacation:

M- (generously offering some of her "Mystery" flavored lollipop): You want a wick of my Mystery?

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* The next day she said she was, "Cwapping on [my] head," which honestly isn't as far-fetched as it should be, given some of the barely contained bodily-function mishaps we've come to know so well.

** Rest assured, she earned herself a good yellin'-to for this typically self-narrated mutinous behavior.

I've got your Father's Day right here...

A belated Happy Father's Day to the approximately 3% of my readership who is both male and a father, and same to the husbands of 92% of the rest of you.

I spent my day sleeping in, using the computer (for a welcome change of pace), and playing outside with the kids, who are trying to see if it is scientifically possible to melt the paint off the walls out here in Maine with the sheer quivering force of their pent-up energy.

While that may sound all quaint on the surface, I want to know what it says about my performance as a father thus far that the most attractive games to my son involved, in however convoluted a way necessary, punching me wherever he could reach?

His 2-year-old sister swung happily on the swings for more than an hour, using the wind she generated to keep always just out of reach of the blackflies, but this lanky 5-year-old was very soon discontent with boring old swings, soccer, and basketball.

Some of the alternative games we tried were:

1) "How Dare You Steal the Ball, I Will Now Punch You in the Butt While Roaring to Get it Back,"

2) "I'll Pretend to Be the Squirrel From Ice Age Attacking a Large, Ferocious Predator as Foolishly as I Make Him Do in the Ice Age Videogame I Was Just Playing,"

3) And finally the even more convoluted, though tragically aborted, "The Basketball Court is Water, the Picnic Table is Land, and I'm a Fighter-Guy Fighting Dragons to Save People in a Way That You Somehow Know Involves You Being a Series of Dragons Who Are Foolish Enough to Just Stand Next to the Picnic Table While a Knight Works Them Over With Both Fists Until His Hands Hurt Too Much to NOT Move on to Short, Efficient Kicks Instead."

Oh, and, should you ever be put in a similar situation, be advised that catching and teasingly holding one, then a second, fist carefully aimed at your back may result in a frustrated, em-boy-sculated cry of, "Don't ever do that again! I want you to leave me alone for the rest of your life! ...if you're going to do that again."

Notice that even at five, he's perceptive enough to say "your life" instead of "my life". Nothing like a special day of recognition to remind one's parents of their sizable lead in the race towards death. Happy Father's Day again!

May you all live long enough to feel the next volley of anniversarial punches, always stronger than the last.

Not goodbye, just see you later

I figure I should let you all know that tomorrow, I'll be checking out of this northwest-Chicago-suburban popsicle stand for a few weeks to drive all the way out to Northern Maine to visit my wife's family and some old friends from the mean streets of Caribou and Presque Isle.

During this time, I should have posts popping up on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays as usual, but my e-mail responses to comments will be spotty at best, or nonexistent at likeliest.

So while I'm off today desperately packing for our long, long, long 1400-mile drive in a Camry with a 5-year-old and 2-year-old, I'll give you something to discuss amongst yourselves.

As I began last night to assess the unbelievable volume of little bits of crap my wife has let pile up in the car over the past school year, I found a notable scrap of paper I'd dropped* a few weeks ago.

On it I'd recorded an amusing conversation opener from the lady herself while we were driving somewhere, after she'd had yet another in a chain of is-it-summer-yet long/violent days with the generally lovable 7th-8th grade Special Ed. students/gang members she teaches:

"I have a feeling quite a few of my students are going to get the s*** beat out of them [at home] tonight, and to be honest, I don't feel too sorry about it."

Negative-three days till summer break! Am I right?

When I get back, we'll all be more than two weeks closer to me pathetically hanging around downtown trying to meet random BlogHer attendees. If you'll be one of them, let me know!

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* To be fair to me, it is HER paper and I had picked it up off the floor of the car to start with. So, in essence, I was subconsciously putting it back where I found it, 'cause that's the kind of person I am. I put things away and take care of my immediate area so I never HAVE to formally Clean The House/Car.

So now thanks to this footnote, we'll have something fun to discuss in the car tomorrow. Wish me luck!!!

Takin' care of business

As I reluctantly sat there in the grimy bathroom of a greasy spoon liquefying my insides (resting comfortably on my nest of toilet paper lining), I prayed for the sweet release of death to come only after the immediate banishment of Papa John* and his minions to the deepest circle of hell.

Through my confused haze of rage, agony, and relief, I somehow managed to detect a poorly tuned radio station's attempt to bludgeon me with the melodious strains of Bachman-Turner Overdrive's landmark hit, Takin' Care of Business.

As my business took care of me itself, I couldn't help but realize that this song was made to be played in 30-second snippets at the absolute longest. It has a clear message to communicate, it's catchy, and it's said pretty much all it has to say in about half that time.

To sit and actually listen to the entire song in one sitting, so to speak, is torture enough, but to have it coming in and out --crystal clear one minute, fading quietly into mild static the next-- is like forcing someone to work next to an unshowered, incontinent, alcoholic hobo at the Customer Service station of Wal-Mart the entire week after Christmas.**

Just when it seems that 35 additional iterations of the refrain is all that those many commercials and movies have been sparing you these past few decades, the radio signal comes back clear as day so they can do a quick 10 more before it fades back to lie in wait ominously.

If I tried to work as many hours of overtime as these guys claim they have, I'd have been converted to a salaried position before the single was even released. But I guess, "Takin' care of business / And continuing to work until everything is done enough for my boss, regardless of the number of hours worked vs. dollars paid, and without concern for the long-term effects on employee morale or efficiency / Work out!" doesn't make for such catchy lyrics.

Anyway, you'll be happy to know I've survived my ordeal so far, although the song is still firmly stuck in my head.

Just be glad you caught that instead of the other thing.

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* It can't be a coincidence that "Papa" John's last name is Schnatter. As in, "Oh my God, where's your Schnatter?!? I just finished lunch at Papa John's!"

** Having logged thousands of unhappy hours shopping at Wal-Mart in my lifetime***, I feel qualified to offer the following skit starring Clem, my generic hillbilly voice:

"Yeah, I got this here shotgun fer Christmas, but ever' time I try to shoot it, it won't DO nothin', no matter WHAT I's pointin' it at. I'm pretty sure Santa bought it here, wink-wink, so y'all need to take it back an' gimme one thut works when I go like this. ... Whoa, thar she is!! Nevermine, I guess. ... I s'pose you gotta go call somebody to have that looked at, huh?"

*** There are extremely few alternatives in Presque Isle, Maine, but now that we moved back out to Chicago, my personal visit count has likely stopped forever.

Corporate Intelligence, Vol. 5

Though I was born and grew up out here in the Chicago suburbs, I lived in Northern Maine for over 3 years, until about a year and a half ago. Since that move, oblivious companies of all shapes and sizes who must hate the sight and smell of their own money took it upon themselves, with the assistance of the USPS and phone companies, to update their mailing and calling lists with my new information.

Now, this common practice makes sense for most nationally focused corporations, even if their message isn't always skewed appropriately for the drastically different region, time zone, accent, economic sphere, population density, worldview, pronunciation of various important words,* voting habits, or level of quaintness of my "new home".

What I'm really thrown by is the local businesses and organizations who seem to consider Reality Checks the province of "city slickers who don't have the sense to root for the Mighty Red Sox even when they live physically closer to Boston than we do."

Here are just two examples:

• Once we stopped getting the usual bits of local junk mail forwarded by the Post Office halfway across the country just to be immediately discarded, we started instead getting local junk mail formally addressed to our new house, trying to lure us back 1400 miles just to catch a mildly unbeatable deal on snow tires (This Weekend Only!) or The County's best interest rate on a snowmobile loan GUARANTEED!

• Lately, we've been getting automated calls from the Maine Democratic and Republican Parties, urging us to support their presidential candidate or vote against the opposing candidate, respectively. While you may say that a national campaign warrants a national calling list, you must agree that a long-distance call from Maine begging an Illinois voter to support his own Senator, elected with 70% of the vote just 4 years ago, is a senseless waste of money.

And lest you think that Democrats in Maine just don't have the time, money, or manpower to weed out useless numbers from their automatically updated phone lists, you should know that the strikingly low population of Maine allows it to have a single area code covering the entire state, and I'm pretty sure that even Thomas Edison's original autodialer** could be programmed in 10 seconds to ignore any numbers not beginning with 207.

But then where would AT&T and Verizon get the cash to buy both the ink for their Important Messages AND the souls of folks who'll speak out against Net Neutrality?

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* Moving back, almost exclusively, from Incorrect to Correct, including, but certainly not limited to, the words permit and aunt ("aaaaaaaant"... I say if you don't live in London or Cape Cod, just give the whole "ahnt" thing a rest, already).

** Used to plant seeds in the minds of the nation's 137 early telephone adopters that Nicola Tesla fathered a black baby out of wedlock with his secret Muslim terrorist mistress, and that Alternating Current was just typical Liberal flip-flopping.

A conversation with D-: Party every day

Here's a little conversation I had with my 4-year-old son D-, wherein he spontaneously recalled a summer picnic thrown two years ago by the company I used to work for:

D-: Remember at [old company's name] there was a party, and there was a stick, and a bag* of candy that you could hit with the stick, and all the candy would come out?

Me: Yeah.

D-: We should go back there and hit that bag of candy with the stick, so we can eat some more of that candy.

Me: I don't think it's still there, bud-- that was a long time ago. Plus, that's a long way away**, back in Maine. Remember how long it took us to drive out here to Illinois?

D-: Yeah. But we should go there.


* This word was apparently selected for lack of a better one-- though they certainly don't have many Mexicans in Northern Maine outside of broccoli harvesting season, it was indeed a genuine piñata.

** It's also a long way away in the sense that the company as we knew it no longer exists, thanks to the people put in charge by the corporation that bought it.

I'll take my baby puree Rare

Even though my oldest child is only 4, I already know that for all the events and characteristics that seem to be hints at the kind of person a baby will become, most are just false flags and turn out to be nothing.*

Hindsight makes clear to me, though, that heavily repeated habits and happenings can indeed serve as a reliable forecast method, as can certain distinct moments.

This is all a way of leading up to telling you of a clear indicator that my 18-month-old daughter M- will not follow in her Aunt** Katie's footsteps by becoming a vegetarian.

As we flipped through a Baby Animal book before bedtime last night, I asked M- what cows said, and after correctly responding, "Moooo," she paused for a moment with her finger on the picture. She then raised it and firmly pointed at the cute lil' fella a couple more times as she added, "Eeeeat-it!!"


* See the famous 10 reasons my 3-year-old son may be homosexual post for Exhibit A.
** Side note to my wife J-: that's pronounced "ant", not "ahhnt", you lousy Yankee. Nice try.

Fivespot meme

I was tagged by Mamaneena to answer these eight questions related to the number five (my favorite number, coincidentally). I'm not sure why there aren't five questions, for symmetry, but here goes nothing:

What were you doing five years ago?
I was in Ireland on a one-month trip during college that was just awesome. J- was and still is very jealous, so I feel bad for saying again that it was just awesome. I made some good friends, saw lots of cool stuff across the country, learned some things about myself and Irish history, and of course, to make the College Trip complete, I did the cliche thing and got a tattoo (along with several other people) to commemorate the experience.

What are/were five things on your to-do list for today?
• Go to the park
• Go to the Festival of Cultures in our town
• Go bowling with J- (she took the next two days off to have a long, fun weekend)
• Go to the store
• Do some more straightening up around the house

What five snacks do you enjoy?
• Fresh bakery bread
• Raisins
• Walnuts
• Goldfish crackers
• Steamed broccoli with cheddar cheese

What five things would you do if you were a billionaire?
• Consult a financial advisor
• Buy a house
• Set up a strategic series of savings/investment accounts
• Give a bunch of money/gifts to my family, if they'd accept them
• Start handing out cash (anonymously, if necessary) to those in need

What are five of your bad habits?
• I procrastinate... this encompasses probably five sub-bad-habits all in one
• I spend too much time on the computer
• I make plans for my/our life without ever actually putting them into action
• I'm pretty lazy
• I'm not confrontational enough when I need to be, and too much so sometimes when I shouldn't be

What are five places you have lived?
• Morton Grove, IL
• Champaign, IL
• Urbana, IL
• Presque Isle, ME
• Skokie, IL

What are five jobs you have had?
• Caddy (golf)
• Movie theater supervisor
• Newspaper copy editor
• Temp - HR clerk/MSDS Inventory Specialist/etc.
• Technical Writer/Editor

What five people do you want to tag?
• SherE1 - His. Mine. Ours.
• Mama Dawg - Two Dogs Running
• Cassey - Diapers Sold Separately
• TerriRainer - Terri Rainer Published Author
• Christy - Heavy on the Caffeine

I haven't done one of these before, but it was fun. Two more of you (SherE1 and Mama Dawg) are waiting on me to post for your tags from last week, and I haven't forgotten. In the meantime, I tagged you back with this one to tide you over.

I hope you are all fascinated with the many things you learned about me, and will use them to change your life, and the world, for the better. I'm certain you all shall.

May I have your attention, please?

Or, How do I let them know that because of the unfreezing process, I have no inner monologue?*

Just to forewarn those of you who haven't spent much time with children, you definitely need to be aware before you do so that anything you do or say can and will be used against you in the form of a public announcement.

To illustrate this with an inconsequential anecdote, yesterday evening J- and I were dividing and conquering at the store, and when we saw each other again we walked parallel for a few aisles until we got to a clear one we could meet in, which happened to be the "Wine and Spirits" aisle. I made some little joke about how J- must be there shopping from her own personal list for a perfect Mother's Day, and then D- all but shouted to us, two feet away, "What's ALcoHOL??"

Before I could even address this complicated question (for at least the fifth time so far), M- seconded him by shouting at the top of her lungs, which would be unbelievably powerful for a person thrice her size, "ALCOHOL!!!"

I have easily five thousand more examples, many of situations that were actually awkward, unlike this one, and that's factoring in that my kids are both pretty good in this respect, compared to other ones I've heard and J-'s reports from the various schools she's worked in. Little kids will ask, or repeat, absolutely anything that's on their mind, at any time, regardless of who can hear them. Volume control is developed pretty late in childhood.

I've tried to express to D- why it's not nice to talk about people when they are in your presence, even if you're saying something nice or (the best you can usually hope for) innocuous, but I haven't had too much luck so far, based on his behavior just this morning while the landlord and some "worker guys" were here fixing our windows. Beyond the nice and innocuous things, it seems pretty self-explanatory why you shouldn't ask or say something rude about somebody when they can hear you, but D- taught us long ago that the understanding of "rudeness" is developed some time after volume control.

Let me give you a quick rundown:
• "Why does that man have no hair?"
• "How come that lady's skin is all... crinkly??"
• (in a public bathroom) "What was that sound?"
• (re: more than one landlord) "Why is him in our house?"
• (re: our current landlord) "Why does him have no socks on?"
• (re: our former landlord, a Northern Maine potato farmer) "Why does him have dirt all over him?" and "Why doesn't he take his shoes off?"
• "I smell something baaaad."

And of course there's the ever-popular, "I don't like him."

Given time, I'm sure I'll remember at least a few dozen more quotes I've thus far almost completely repressed. How about you? Have you all got any good ones?


* A great quote from the original Austin Powers.

Household occurrences likely to revisit me in nightmares

Here are several events at our house, most from this morning alone, that I believe I'll be seeing replayed in some form in the coming nights whenever I manage some sleep:

1. M- firmly poking the bottom of an open box of cereal on the table and me lunging forward to catch it just before it turned upside down. I haven't always been so lucky. (In my nightmares, I'm sure the box will always be just out of my reach.)

2. D- standing on the rug between the dining room and kitchen saying, "I'm having an accident!"

3. M- streaking through the dining room with a Spider-Man fork stolen from the dishwasher.

4. M- climbing all over me like a boa constrictor, onto and off of the chair, moaning, "No, no, no, noooooo!" over and over again for no apparent reason other than sniffles and crankiness (it was before 8).

5. D- holding a ball and taking aim at my happy place while I demonstrate how to stand upon the parallel bars at the park. (Luckily it was only a Nerf ball so it didn't hurt, but still I saw the look in his eye-- it was a vicious one expectant of painful hilarity.)

6. M- taunting D- by walking across the family room with his Corduroy bear and, instead of giving it back as originally ordered, slapping him twice across the face with it (like Monty Python's Fish Slapping Dance) and running back away.

7. Driving off a giant mushroom and falling into a bottomless pit, like I did a couple times last night in MarioKart Wii. (In my nightmares, I'm sure the magic man on the cloud will never come to save me.)

8. M- splashing her hands in the toilet saying, "Pee-pee, pee-PEEEE!" (we've gotten thisclose to it several times now), before bidding it bye-bye while waving as she has been doing for the past few weeks.

9. Closing a fresh, clean diaper, standing up and turning around, and then detecting a dreadful hint of baby byproducts. Yes, M- tends to be picky where she defecates, but then so do some adults.

10. A massacre by a rampaging spoon-spork hybrid. Okay, I only read about it, but I have a very impressionable brain, and things like that tend to stick. At least it's better than a velociraptor attack.

Things that should revisit me in my dreams:

1. M- comforting a crying D- by saying, "eye-ing", offering a kiss and hug, and then sitting down to let him read her the book (Good Night, Maine) they had been fighting over earlier.

And so, as foretold in the prophecy, it begins

I'm familiar with women and their stereotypical quirks, as well as their less-recognized ones, such as a seemingly essential aversion to reporting potential car problems in an accurate and timely manner (no, J-, I'm not only talking about you, and I know you are getting way better... phew!). I've often wondered how many of these are legitimate and how many have just been willed into existence. I think as with most things, some basic tendencies may always be present inborn in a person, through genetics as well as sex, but one's environment steps in to help manifest some traits while suppressing others.

I've been waiting patiently to put this idea to the test with M-, but even before I thought we were getting started, some spontaneous early results have come my way in one important arena. Even with M- just a few months past a year old, it seems fate may have already doomed us to a lifetime of shoe shopping.


After she got bored with her perfect little white and pink sneakers (pictured on the left) last month, she decided to walk off with the left shoe at my parents' house, and it is absolutely nowhere to be found (even after we bought her new shoes, which means it must really be lost for good). The most plausible explanation we've come up with is that she snuck it into one of the bags of garbage during the cleaning for my brother's fiancee's wedding shower a month ago.

Anyway, she went through a couple weeks of wearing nothing but her hilariously cute knee-high fashion boots (see picture above), which were a gift from J-'s parents when we visited Maine, no matter what the outfit. Of course, I had to call upon my very meager fashion sense each day to try to keep her from being too oddly mismatched. However, it soon became clear that this situation was not sustainable, so I went hunting for the box with D-'s old shoes, and I had some success in finding a pair of size 5 navy blue and white sneakers.

Unfortunately, when combined with a few other hand-me-downs M- sometimes wears (jeans, khakis, her warmer spring jacket, etc.), these shoes often left her looking just like a boy, and while there's nothing inherently wrong with this, it annoyed J- enough that we knew something had to give. I don't blame her for this, because it does create some awkward situations, and I know how it would bother me the other way around. I know this specifically because D- has always been a very pretty boy, and even when we dressed him as boyishly as possible, some people would still refer to him as a girl, and give us a look that said, "Why would you dress a girl that way?!?"

So, after holding out a little longer in our vain attempt to locate her missing shoe, we gave up and headed to the store last week. At least it was close to time for her to move up a size, so it wasn't a total loss.

She was like a pet goldfish set loose in a lake, running down the aisles calling out, "Shoe! Shoe!", then grabbing some off the shelf and walking them over to us while saying, "On. On," before standing in front of one of us and expectantly sticking out her foot. Through this arduous but amusing process, we found a nice pair (pictured above on the right) that are easy to put on and should go with most things. Now she's even taken to crying whenever we are mean enough to take off her shoes.

To further her nose-thumbing at the progress made by the great feminists before her, M- has also recently taken to calling out "mo-nee! mo-neee!!" at seemingly random intervals while walking around the house. Whether this money is being requested for shoe purchases or chocolate, no one can yet be certain.

Beware the dentist in March!

On this day, the Ides of March, I believe we should all be as idle as possible, out of respect for the opportunity to have an excuse to be more idle than usual.

To this end, M- found a travel See'n'Say at the bottom of the toy box and she has since chosen to spend the entire day laying on her stomach on a blanket, pushing the button over and over again. Since M- is unavailable for anything as strenuous as playing, that leaves D- no choice but to race a Matchbox car back and forth across our coffee table as many times as he can before I go insane from the repetitive noises filling our house.

Meanwhile, J- is napping to get over her ordeal at the dentist's office, leaving me to suffer alone. Don't tell the kids, who think that going to the dentist is Very Fun, but even though J- is slavishly devoted to our very friendly dentist, her horrible childhood experiences with bitter old tooth-torturers in rural Maine still make it hard for her to smile and not clench the armrests while he pokes her mouthful of denial-related cavities. Poor J-.

Only one more filling to go!

Bites of spring

For any of you out there still confused on the point, the difference between a 3-year-old and an adult is that when the First Fly of Spring (much less celebrated than the boring old First Robin) is discovered in the house, the adult will begin hunting him with a cup and paper (or a flyswatter, if you're into big gross messes), while the 3-year-old will instantly decide that not only will this fly answer when called, but that his name must logically be Buzzy.

We were successful in sending lil Buzzy out into the world today, but I have a feeling he was just the first of many of his ilk who will grace our apartment this year, based on the fact that it's still March and it's only been mildly warm (40s-50s) for a few days already.

I thought I might be imagining it when I first heard that familiar buzzing against the window this morning, but alas, the sight of poor Buzzy mercilessly abusing his exoskeleton in sheer fury told me I was not. Oh well, at least he isn't a biting blackfly like back in Maine.

I think we'll just spend the next few months pretending the same fly is sneaking back into our apartment over and over again, since that seems like more fun.

And so it shall be. Welcome to our home, Buzzy.

Portrait of the dishwasher of a young man

I just wanted to share with you all one of the not-so-minor joys of my life: my dishwasher.
This is not just some ordinary dishwasher, though dishwashers in general are right below the washing machine and microwave for the greatest inventions of the 20th century. I guess the refrigerator would have to figure in there somewhere as well, but even the car takes a back seat to the ability for me to put all my faith into a machine that washes dishes for me.

I never feel like dishes that are hand-washed by me are really, actually clean. As I put those dishes back in the cabinet, I feel a secret shame that people will assume in looking at them later that they were cleaned, when in reality they were merely wiped with soap and water until I couldn't see any more specks on them. The dishwasher, my friend, absolutely neutralizes all dirt and contamination at extremely high temperatures. Nothing is cleaner. Don't disillusion me, please.

Anyway, my particular dishwasher (a White-Westinghouse) is more than just a dishwasher-- it is an apartment-sized, portable, four-wheeled wonder that only cost me $10 at a moving sale. Almost 4 years ago back in Maine, we were lucky to come upon someone desperate to sell it the day before they officially moved to a house that already had a full-sized dishwasher. Granted, it was probably about 10 years old at that point, and someone had inadvisably clipped the grounding prong off the plug, but after easily installing a $2 heavy-duty grounded appliance plug, we were in business with what would be a $400 appliance to buy new.

This dishwasher has already made it through one cross-town move and one cross-country move, and it's still going strong. Sure, a couple of years ago it went through a minor bout of incontinence, but that cleared up as quickly and mysteriously as it occurred. And one of the casters broke during our first move, but even that broken caster (possibly part of the source of the incontinence) held the thing up for about a year before I finally remembered to buy a new one. Now it's better than new and glides like a dream.

I think I just might even love it more than my children. In my defense, neither of my children has yet washed even one dish for me.

If you think I have an unhealthy obsession with this dishwasher, you may be right. But if this is wrong, then I want to be very, very wrong. Sigh...

Shovel 16 sidewalks and whaddya get?

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, so I've always been more than familiar with snow, and I even made a fair amount of money in those years shoveling driveways, but I wouldn't say I became obsessed until after I was married and living in Northern Maine. (Refer to the picture above for an idea of what Northern Maine looks like much of the year-- that's my good old Dodge Spirit [RIP] under there.)

Once, when she was very pregnant with D-, J- slipped on a chronically icy stair, injuring her tailbone and causing an odd muscle tightness in her abdomen (which is bad). After suggesting once again to our landlord that he should fix the leaky gutter over the stairs, I began religiously clearing every speck of snow and ice everywhere on the property, at all hours of the day and night. I just fell into a routine, which was aided by the fact that it snows 8 months of the year in Maine. It didn't hurt that this was pretty much my only regular exercise at the time, so I allowed my OCD demons to firmly take hold, and now I just about cannot stop myself whenever I have access to a shovel and uncleared snow.

Though there are worse obsessions, I still don't wish this one on D-, but I feel it may be inevitable, as he already can't even stop at shoveling the sidewalk and my parents' deck. He frequently takes to clearing as much of the yard as he can before being convinced to take a break, and even then you can catch him all but twitching to get ahold of the shovel once again.

Unfortunately, most of the shoveling at our house involves the three flights of stairs up to our back door, so I can't put him to work too much here. It really is a loss-- you'd be surprised by how effective he is at his age!