Karen's home!

It's been over a week, and i was by myself a LOT, and i missed my wife and my family! They're back, i'm happy, but i'm tired beyond words. The early mornings (i worked at 7:00AM yesterday and this morning) and long physical labor has conspired to smash me into mental and physical exhaustion. And the house isn't even that clean. Just nicer, with shiny floors which the pessimist in me wants to say will never look as good as they do right now. Nay -- the imperfections will get polished down with use. I'll keep telling myself that.

Yesterday i said i was a little bit bummed that i didn't sand them all smooth and flat before finishing. But then today at Meijer, i strolled casually (because i stroll casually everywhere i go) through the furniture area, and the floor looked almost exactly like ours -- shiny but with deeply textured grain and irregular spaces between boards. And it was an artificial floor. Vinyl or something. So if they're making fake floors which look like our real floors, that must mean that our floor is chic just the way it is, right?

Oh... and there's a weblog by a guy and his experiences with a brand new Kymco scooter. That's the brand i want to get. He's at week 2.5 so far.

Jumpcut remix

Hey everybody! Somebody did a remix of Karen's video she edited with Jumpcut -- the one with the kids falling down and being silly. It's totally awesome. Check it out!

Totally different subject: today i watched a guy who weighed probably four hundred pounds get into his van. Maybe more. I have never seen anyone that huge in real life. He had to squish his belly into the small gap between the driver's seat and the steering wheel. How do you get to that point? There is a continuum, you don't get morbidly obese all of a sudden. But the kinds of selfishness and disregard for those around you... i mean, when you have a handicapped license plate just because you're fat, you probably know that you need to lose weight. You're taking a parking spot from the very old or the injured. Because you have no self control, or perhaps you're into power and control, and your weight is your passive aggressive weapon.

Gah. Now i'm all bummed. So update: i fixed the spigot in the back yard so it works for the first time since it froze back in the winter of '01, (hee hee, the winter of ought one) and put a fancy schmancy timer dealie on it so we can sprinkle the yard on a schedule. Which means, sprinkling will actually happen. I can't even remember to water our cacti, so they have been on the verge of dead pretty much since we got them back in the spring of '94. Hee hee, the spring of ninety four. No, not as funny. Just checking.

Done! So now is the time to panic.

I was gonna post last night, but i got distracted by S.T.A.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. That's a computer game. Usually i really enjoy computer games, but i rarely get so caught up in them that i stay up too late... yeah, i stay up too late lots of times, but usually it's because of all the other things my computer can do, not just games. And i've never once wondered in my spare time what's going to happen with the various characters in the game, but i catch myself thinking "Who is Strelok???". Ohwa tageek iam.

But yesterday i sanded the floor and put the final coat of urethane on. You can see my floor sander... which is really a third-sheet orbital finish sander which i taped onto that upside down rake, and then taped a pop bottle filled with water to that for weight. Yes, it worked amazingly well. I actually bought an air powered "DA" sander yesterday (stands for Dual Action, which is random orbital -- the pad does a wobbly orbit motion, but can freely spin, that's where Dual comes in) but took it back immediately, thinking how i could totally do without. And i'm glad i did. I can't think of how i'd have taped a DA sander to a pole like that.

And the floor looks pretty good. Now that it's done, i wish i had sanded it first, which would have added hours of intense work, and dozens of dollars of cost, but would have resulted in a floor that is actually flat. And ever so slightly less stained, but the discolorations and stains are deeper than the 2 or 3 millimeters i'd be able to sand off. But it would have been flat. Oh well, regrets. And there's still specks and nubs in the finish from dust and bugs and dog hair. Again: oh well.

I can't move furniture onto the floor yet since it's only been 15 hours. The clock is ticking down though. My lovely Karen and children get home tomorrow evening. I'm scared i won't be done. But so happy that i'll see them soon! The only thing i can do,then, since the back yard is ready for things only truck hauled trailers can bring (sod and shredded bark), is, um... play STALKER, maybe??? :) Nah, i'll clean the kitchen and fix a pipe. Not that kind... the kind which hold water.

My dog got stung.

There's some of the wasps i killed today. I felt really bad for doing it, but that's one of tasks i was given for this week. They died. I felt sorry for them. One fell onto the concrete below the VW bus where they'd made their little complex of apartments and was thrashing around in death throes. I squished it. Of course, one of those wasps did this to Houston, and today i saw one sting Graham... but that's all in their nature. Both Graham and Houston had disturbed their little housing development there. It is a little creepy how if you get close enough, they'll watch you, with their little heads tracking your motion.

Okay, so update on the house: still totally messy, but now the wood floors are really shiny. Bumpy, but shiny. Tomorrow morning i'll spend a few hours sanding, and then i'll put the final coat one. The whole project is tedious and hard work (and expensive if $135 for top quality waterborne finish is expensive -- that's probably a total bargain compared to what a pro would cost) but not very hard. If i had read some stories from this site, i would have been a little worried, but far be it from a Moore to let not knowing how to do something keep him or her from doing it.

Floors clean, ready to finish.

In case Jumpcut goes under before you guys read this in 2020, or whatever, here's the "story" from that clip. It's our wood floors as i'm getting them clean.

The family is visiting grandparents, so i'm by myself in the house. What better time than now to finish the hardwood floors? Our house was built in the 1800s (1899, but still). The stuff which is usually on the floor is now in the rest of the house, which makes this the messiest our house has ever been, since the nineteenth century!

Floors almost clean...

Yes, it's been a LONG day. It's 2:15am, and i still have to clean the other floor. But it's smaller. In fact, lemme go do that right now. Wait, not RIGHT NOW -- it's only been ten minutes. But i need to get some Bjork on my mp3 player so i can vacuum. Empty rooms echo a lot. It's weird. I associate the echoey sound with houses for sale. Both the wood floor rooms in our house are now totally empty. Everything from the whole first floor is in our living room and the kids room. And the dining room table is on the front porch. I was completely convinced that there would be no way to get both floors done at the same time, which means that i would have run out of time. Fortunately, that's not the case, even though i have very little spatial organizing skill, at least compared to Karen. I'll shoot video tomorrow when it's light, to demonstrate the insanity. Graham acts all uncomfortable. Poor dog.

Speaking of Graham, today i got a handful of Cheez-Its, and said "lie down Graham" and "sit" and "jump" and "bark" and "go upstairs". Then i said "Where's Karen?" He was pretty tired, i guess, since he did his tricks with no enthusiasm, but when i asked where Karen was, his ears slid way back on his head and he started looking around, wagging his tail, and smiled about as much as a dog can smile. But then of course, Karen's not around, so he slowly went back into his lazy funk. I think he misses the rest of the family.

But he peed on the kids' carpet again. Grrrrrrrr. I did leave his cage up -- it's in the home-school room, piled high and well enclosed by our various possessions. And finally, i threw away my old dreadlocks today. They were long. And thin. My current crop are going to be thicker.

Oh yeah... finally finally, so far, i've used 4727 unique words in my weblog. That's pretty good. I probably added at least one this post: Grrrrrrrr. I could add more: swbiwoceeod. Nice. Now it's at least 4728 words.

I promise

I'm writing this down for the whole internet to see, which makes it more real. I expect you, Mister Internet, to hold me accountable.

Yesterday it was Sunday, so i did exactly nothing, besides go to church and play computer games. Day of rest, fer shurly! But now, after sleeping in and goofing off for just a little bit, i'm going to work non-stop until bedtime. Maybe... NO! Working non-stop until bedtime is what i'm going to do. And i'll take pictures.

No sleep 'til this post is done...

When i said in my last post "who needs sleep LOL?" i was really kidding. But i didn't sleep. There's too much to do! I've reinstalled Windows on two computers! I made homemade laundry detergent! I had two loads of laundry done by 8:00am and the kitchen looks pretty good. Then i took apart a laptop my friends gave me so i could fix the power connector. The laptop looks really rough, with a cracked lid and lots of other broken areas... so i'm gonna customize it. YES!!! It'll be a rat-laptop. Complete with visible JBWeld and plumbers tape repairs.

And then the day was so incredibly beautiful, i had to work on the yard. So i made the path of bricks, raked and leveled and dug out the dirt around the path and sidewalk, put sand from the sandbox into the path, and moved the sandbox. The bottom of the sandbox was OSF (Oriented Strand Fiberboard -- chunky wafer-like particle board... not very strong) and it kind of turned to topsoil. Like, i could shovel it. Weird that bacteria can turn wood into dirt. Then i put herbicide on the grass and weeds we're gonna put sod over.

And now, sleep deprived and back-sore, i'm going to go to bed. Very back-sore. Ow.

Oh, and Karen called today. She's safe and Houston and Katrina are having TONS of fun with the outside, and Zane didn't sleep well last night. I guess Iowa has cooler stuff outside than we do here.

I'm ALONE!!!!

WAAAAH!

Ahem ahem... Karen and the little ones are in Iowa, visiting Karen's grandparents. Karen is amazingly courageous to make this trip, and have the kids all to herself. Well, her mom and grandparents will be around, but still, she's gonna be the Sole Fully Responsible Party. They left this morning at 5:00am, which is obscene that anyone should be actually be starting the day that early. Like, i can imagine driving home at five in the morning, (which i did, i suppose) but waking up to start a trip at that time? I think i'd rather never eat sardines and listen to techno music ever again. (Attention: segue approaching.)

Which are two of the things i do which make me feel somehow guilty when Karen's around. Canned fish has this... fragrance... of which Karen's not a fan. And techno¹ makes her feel anxious. But right now, it's late, and i'm listening to techno music, and not eating anything because we don't have any sardines, but if we did have some, i'm sure an empty can would be sitting near me, letting the oily odor waft through the house. I'm planning on letting the music pump my brain up with electrodorphins and start cleaning the house. I plan (for the terminally bored's information) to start in the kitchen, get all the dishes clean so i don't need to do that again until Karen gets back², and then move all the stuff off the wood floor so i can wet mop and scrub it in preparation to finish it. We've had unfinished floors for the whole time we've lived in this house. That's, like, eight years. And then i'll go to bed! If i can make myself do that. Because if i don't have to be awake for anyone, why go to sleep? Ever? Until i collapse?

Today i took kids from work on a walk through the Blandford Nature Center. We went through the "back forty", starting out an hour before they closed the gate, which would lock our van into the parking area. Well, as seems to happen so often in my life, we walked and walked, it got later and later, and eventually we were frantically looking for the way back to the van. We found it with 30 seconds to go. The person who was going to lock up the gate was walking to her car when we staggered into view of the visitor center. Oh, and we saw a honeybee nest in the crutch of a tree.

Heh -- in England "crutch" is what we call "crotch", referring to human anatomy. So our address in England wasn't anything humorous to Brits. 12 Crotch Crescent. Giggle, giggle.

¹Techno is a certain sub-genre of electronic dance music, which i like okay. I prefer downtempo psychadelic, trance, deep house, goa, ambient, and maybe then techno. After techno, i like drum-n-bass, tek-house, house, and way on the end of electronic dance that i don't like very much is IDM, which stands for Intelligent Dance Music, which is about as elitist a name as one could imagine. Really? Your dance music is intelligent, huh? That makes mine.... UNintelligent??? Jerk.

²Bachelors don't use dishes, right? I'll have my cup and bowl on top of the fridge. I'll just drink water from the cup, and eat cereal from the bowl. The bowl and spoon will get cleaned after use, and everything else i plan on eating will be napkin-able or come in its own container, like sardines or tuna. Oh... i made up the word electrodorphins. I don't need to explain what they are, do i?

Houston's got a mind!

I think Houston's going through a little time of emotional crisis. Either that, or he's been really tired recently. Probably both.

Maybe he's developing a theory of mind. The thing where you recognize that other people have their own unique viewpoints which are different from yours.

I think it was Saturday. Houston asked if he could make the sprinkler go so high that it hits the window and washes it. I said no. He asked again. I said no again. The next time he asked, i had him sit on uh-oh time. Well, the little guy curled up into a weepy ball, or at least as much of a ball is possible while you're running inside. Similar things happened that day, and Karen asked me why i was being, in Houston's words, "so mean".

I went to talk to Houston about that specifically, and he said "Daddy, i didn't think you knew what I meant." So perhaps he wasn't asking over and over because he was hoping to get the jackpot of permission to do something he'd been told wasn't allowed, maybe he wanted to clarify exactly what he wanted to do.

Today Houston walked about ten yards behind us when we were going through the grocery store, all because he asked over and over if he could keep the money from a pop can we were going to return. Later he told me "I was angry that you wouldn't let me take the can back, so I didn't want to be near you for a little while." He's growing up so fast!

Wegwood and Iraq

I work at our agency's home for male sex-offender teenagers. It's much MUCH safer and saner than where i used to work, with violent teenage girls. But i've been spending some time on the girls' home and one of the out-of-control male homes recently. Sunday (Father's Day) i was upstairs with the out-of-control boys, and one of them glared at me and said "I'm gonna break your neck. I can do it too. I know how." I muttered "Yeah right, who's the one who knows illegal ninja moves from the government" but he didn't hear me. I think the extras from Napoleon Dynamite is an obscure enough source that he wouldn't have caught it anyway. But the pattern i saw played out takes me back to our agency's paradigm we rolled out a few years ago, under the guise of restraint and seclusion free treatment, and which i sum up: deescalation is more important than compliance.

I've talked about this before, but it bears repeating. If you make deescalation more of a priority than compliance, then kids -- particularly the kind of kids who are resourceful enough to survive in the horrific environments our kids have -- very quickly learn that the path of least resistance to getting whatever they want is escalation -- acting out. Wanna get a bag of popcorn? Threaten to "shank" everyone within the sound of your voice until staff gives you popcorn to get you to be stop.

That's exactly what happened on Sunday. Kids were being completely outrageous, and they got astonishing special treatment. What has happened on those units is that the three or four big, loud, tough kids run the place, the staff scrambles around to keep themselves from getting injured too bad, and the rest of the kids skulk around with terrified expressions on their faces.

This reminds me so much of what i think is happening on the ground in Baghdad. From what i understand, our military has dropped the "official optimism" which was the root of so much bad policy, and allowed much more tolerance of non-Western ideology, and now our troops are in the role of staff, saying "Please, guys, please stop fighting!" Iraqi non-militants should be terrified of random death, but it seems like they've broken beyond fear, and accept their situation with fatalistic resignation. I find that tragic beyond description.

Aww! Thirteen years!

Um, Karen's post for today is so sweet. She's really super nice. So i can't even attempt to make a post as heart warming (for me, at least) as hers. So... it won't be.

The big deal about today is that thirteen years ago, we were married! Yahoooo!! We thought for a while about how 13 could be a lucky number for us, and mostly we came up with "Katrina was born on the 13th." And, if Houston had been born on the day we were expecting him, the sixth, we could have claimed that six point five times two is thirteen. But that's about it. So instead of keeping talking about that, we worked really hard on our back yard, which is astonishingly pleasant looking, compared to before. The dog poop infested wasteland, littered with weathered kids toys and broken detritus of urban life is now shaping up to be a pleasant refuge from "inside". We're going to have a mostly free back yard now. I'm not sure what to do about the dog poop, though. I guess pick it up every time we go out there.

Then we went out to eat some cheap Fazoli's food and Dairy Queen pasteurized processed frozen dairy based dessert food, and then came home to put the kids to bed. I do think this anniversary sets a record for the hardest i've worked on one. Hmm, i should fix that syntax, but instead, i'll go to bed.

:)

Hmm, i've been sitting here for HOURS trying to think of what to write. Basically, i suppose, it's Father's day, and Karen wrote a post which warms my heart. She's so sweet. My feelings towards my own father, and Karen's, are similar. You know... i love my dad and stuff. And Karen's too. He's really nice. And i'm a true wordsmith, huh?

And, we're (i should probably say "I'm" because it's mostly me here) thinking about buying a scooter. Yeah, a little 50cc scooter, the 100mpg sort. Last night i dreamed that we'd bought one, and i took it out, did donuts with it, which wore out the back tire immediately, because it was the same foamy stuff they make cheap stroller tires out of. Then i strapped the scooter to my back with the included carrying strap (it must have been the cheesiest scooter ever) and descended the steepest stairs ever. It was a cliff, basically, with four or five "steps". And college kids were going up and down the stairs, nearly losing their grips and falling to their pulpy deaths below.

Seedless watermelon

Tonight i was eating watermelon at work, and the kids started talking about seedless watermelon. One of them said "There's too many seeds. I really like seedless watermelon." Another said "How do they get seedless watermelon? Do they poke the seeds out?"

So i replied...... (seriously, this happened)

"Most people think they're grown that way, but in reality, they have these big nuclear magnetic resonance imaging -- you know, the machines they use in hospitals to see what's inside you -- and they have the watermelons on a belt which goes through the MRI machine." At this point, the smile i had been struggling to keep below the surface of my face breached like a humpback whale, and i rubbed my face with my hands and said "Sorry, i was just thinking of a joke i was, um, thinking about earlier. Anyway, a computer stores the coordinates of all the seeds, and next on the conveyor belt is a big ring type thing which can focus microwave radiation, and it vaporizes the seeds." There were three kids listening to this story, and they all looked so interested. I snickered again. "Well, it's a little more complex than that... the radiation converts the seeds to a hydrocarbon matrix, which is absorbed by the flesh of the --" i took a moment to control my breathing "-- of the watermelon."

"Oh!" said one of the kids. Then he looked at me expectantly and said "So, tell us that joke you were thinking about."

Mmmmmm, strawberries.

We went strawberry picking today. I like strawberries, but the experience isn't my favorite. Really, i like all fresh fruit, especially when it's fresh, like, "i picked it seconds ago" versus Freshlike like canned green beans. How is canned "Freshlike"? So stupid.

Um, i got distracted. Oh yeah -- why strawberry picking isn't my favorite u-pick activity. I'll do bullets to make it easier for me to pay attention.

• You have to lean way down to pick strawberries.
  
• They're relatively expensive compared to other u-pick products, so i actually don't overindulge.
  
• Like, i could easily gobble up five bucks worth of strawberries. And there's not enough berries in the field that they'd go to waste otherwise, like apples or blueberries.
  
• Fresh strawberries, while awesome, are not as good as fresh blueberries or Honey Crisp apples.
  

Obviously, picking strawberries is logically inferior to blueberry or apple picking. Don't get me wrong, sun-warmed strawberries plucked from the, um, bush? are awesome. Oh man, sun warmed strawberries. I suppose it's an earnest, hardworking prelude for the u-pick season, which will climax in late summer with blueberry picking, and decrescendo with the comfortable pleasures of apple picking in early fall.

Story time with Juanito!

But first... last night i went upstairs to the girls' home where i used to work, and it was pretty much insane. I remember exactly what it was like, and i remember how i survived. See, i'm a good actor, so i can be "Mister Staff Juanito" and maintain calmness and quietude regardless of the hell of chaos whirling about me. Along with swear words, racial epithets, pieces of ceiling tile and plastic garbage cans. I came to understand last night why having my dreads pulled out what so horrible. I was pretty good at keeping my work persona fairly compartmentalized from my everyday persona. But the hair thing destroyed that. I remembered the violence and evil every time i saw my reflection or fiddled with my locks or noticed people's eyes flicking up to take in my ravaged hairline.

Okay, so on a lighter note: i tell stories for bedtime. I told "The Toy Chicken" story, where i am riding my motorcycle and need to go home. But it starts raining really hard and my motorcycle stalls in a water puddle. So stop at someone's house to use the phone, and the tall man says "Don't touch the toy chicken". There's a toy chicken next to the phone, and it looks so real that before i leave, i touch one feather. It comes alive and goes "Bah BAALK!" I run out of the house, but the chicken chases me and chases me until i run out of gas, and the chicken runs up and taps my leg and says "Tag, you're it." The kids loved it.

Houston and Katrina clamored for more Toy stories, and giraffe and elephant stories came and went with no remarkable merits. But The Toy Rhinoceros story is pretty good. Here it is:

One day, Houston and Katrina asked their momma if they could dig a hole. Momma said "Sure!" and took them into the back yard to show them where to dig. Houston and Katrina were so excited that they ran to get their shovels and started digging a hole as fast as they could.
Houston said "I think we should dig all the way down to the water table!" and Katrina agreed.
So they dug and dug, when all of a sudden Katrina's shovel made a bonk! sound. Houston leaned down and saw something shiny! He dug around it and saw a suitcase handle. Houston and Katrina dug and dug, and when they got the suitcase out and put it on the ground next to the hole, Houston and Katrina fiddled and fiddled with the latch and finally got it open. So they opened the suitcase, and you know what was inside?
A box!
So they opened the box, and you know what was in the box?
A bag!
So they opened the bag and inside was:
Another box!
Inside that box was another bag, and inside that bag was a little shoebox, and inside the shoebox was a wrinkled up piece of paper, wrapped around another bag, which was holding a littler box and in that was a little tiny Ziploc bag.
And you know what was in that Ziploc bag?
A little sticker of a rhinoceros.
Houston pulled out the sticker and said "Wow, look at this! Hey Katrina, since you're my sister and i love you very much, you can put that sticker on your hand." Just then, their momma called to them "Kids, time to brush teeth and go to bed!" so they went inside and went to bed.
The next morning, Katrina woke up and looked at the sticker on her hand. You know what? The rhinoceros was gone! The sticker was still there, but instead of a picture of a rhinoceros, there was just smooth, shiny white paper! It was as though the sticker had never had anything on it at all! Katrina showed Houston right away, so they started looking around in Katrina's blankets, and they found a little plastic toy rhinoceros that looked exactly like the one from the sticker. Katrina said "Wow, that is so weird. I wonder how that happened?" Then she said "Houston, since you're my brother, and i love you so much, i think you should hold this in your pocket today."
Houston said "Oh! Thank you!" and put the toy rhinoceros in his pocket.
At suppertime that day, Houston sat down to eat, and felt a big lump in his pocket. He thought, "Did i put a big rock in there? Is it all my money?" so he pulled the lump out of his pocket, and you know what it was? The toy rhinoceros! Except it was much much bigger!
Houston and Katrina thought that was so weird, so when they went to bed, Houston and Katrina put the toy rhinoceros on the shelf near their beds, and the last thing both of them saw before they closed their eyes to sleep was the toy rhinoceros.
When they woke up the next morning, they were so surprised to see that the shelf where they had put the rhinoceros was empty! Katrina said "Houston, do you think Momma took it?" but Houston didn't know!
They went downstairs and Momma said "Hey, do you guys know what? There's an animal in the house that wasn't here yesterday! What could it be?"
Houston and Katrina together said "Is it Graham?" but Momma said it wasn't. Then they heard a thump thump thump noise, and what should they see, but a little rhinoceros about the size of a dog!
The rhinoceros said "Hmm hmmmph hmmphph hmph" which means "Please may i have some mini-wheats?" so they gave it some mini-wheats. The rhinoceros ate them very fast, and then said "Hmph hmmm hmph hmph" which means "Please may i have some mini-wheats?" In a few minutes, they had run out of mini-wheats! And Houston and Katrina were big enough to go to school, so on this day, Momma said that they could take the rhinoceros to show their teachers and friends, especially since there was nothing at home for it to eat.
Well, at school, the rhinoceros got bigger and bigger until the end of the day, when it was time for Momma to come pick up Katrina and Houston. The rhinoceros was so big then, that Houston and Katrina could no longer pull him around by the ropes they had tied around his neck! Suddenly, as they were waiting for their momma, the rhinoceros gave a mighty lurch, and Houston flew up into the air and landed on the rhinoceros' back! Katrina flopped up behind him, and the rhinoceros started running away from the school very fast! Katrina and Houston were so scared, but they didn't even cry.
The rhinoceros got onto the sidewalk and started running even faster. Everyone who saw was so surprised to see a rhinoceros running with two kids on its back. Houston and Katrina held on for their lives, and Houston yelled, "Katrina! Look! There's Momma!"
Sure enough, Momma was driving down the street toward the school in her minivan with Zane strapped into the baby seat. Katrina yelled "Momma! Momma! Help help!" and Momma saw them! Momma yanked up on the parking brake and slid down the street sideways, tires squealing and smoking. Then she slammed on the gas and peeled out trying to catch up to Katrina and Houston on the rhinoceros.
Even though Momma was going fast, the rhinoceros was faster, and was running so crazily down the street and flying across intersections without even looking, that i'm sure God was keeping them safe, since no cars ran into them, and they didn't run over anybody. But just when Momma was nearly even with the rhinoceros, Katrina and Houston saw a big fence coming up, and the road ended! They felt the rhinoceros leap into the air!
Momma and her minivan came screeching to a stop, skidding sideways again! Zane was in the back laughing very loudly. He was having fun!
Houston and Katrina felt like they were floating through the air, as the rhinoceros sailed right over the fence with grace and ease, and landed with a crash in the field on the other side of the fence. The rhinoceros didn't start running again, Houston and Katrina fell off the rhinoceros' back and lay on the ground panting.
As they got up and looked around them, they saw Momma carrying Zane into the field through a door in the fence, but even more surprisingly, they saw many many rhinoceroses in the field! They had come to a rhinoceros park!
Their rhinoceros came over to Katrina and Houston, licked them each, and said "Hmph hmmmph hmm hmmph hmmphph hmm hmmmmph hmphmmmpm hmmph" which means "I love you guys so much! Thank you for taking care of me! You can come visit me any day you want here at the rhinoceros park!"
So that is what they did.


:)

Boy, i don't think i will ever misspell rhinoceros again! Geez.

Gotta Dance!

Some people like some musicals, but we prefer Singin in the Rain. Houston wants "tappy shoes". Katrina's already obsessed by her tappy shoes. In fact, "dancing" for her means "get all her shoes and arrange them paired, in an arc across the floor" and by then, the song's usually over (um, that's not the proper video for that song, by the way, but it's almost better. The original is here). Today we did jump around the house dancing for ten or fifteen minutes, and you know what? It's so much fun. I really wish i could do awesome Gene Kelly moves. Cause for a dude, he's kind of hot. Of course, Debbie Reynolds is totally smokin' too. Way hotter than Julie Andrews. Of course, Julie Andrews totally reminds me of my mom, so i don't think i could think she's hot. I mean, i'm no Oedipus.

Yesterday on our walk, we went to a random park. Katrina found a pink blanket with clouds and stars on it, and proceeded to wrap it around her head, which grossed me out just a little bit. She loved it, and desperately wanted to take it home, but we talked extensively about how if she lost her PinkBlanket, and somebody took it, she would be very sad. So we should leave this blanket somewhere where the people who lost it could find it again. We will come tomorrow, i said, and if it's still here, we can take it home. Well, it was gone, but right across the street is Newberry Place, a cohousing community which looks really interesting, but it looks about seven hundred times too expensive for our budget. The fact that the blanket was gone is very happy, Karen and i tried to frame it, because somebody found the blanket they lost! Katrina seemed a little bewildered by that complex thought.

Sunday

It was a good Sunday today. I made these weird things which were really good, i don't even know what to call them. Breakfast chimichanga works as well as anything. Recipe in thirty words or less: scramble eggs with broccoli, onions, chorizo, garlic, chili, spices, whatever. Roll up in flour tortilla, coat roll in beaten egg, fry in butter until golden brown on all sides.

On the way to church, Houston gave Katrina a massive bloody nose, which i didn't even photograph. How weird is that. Houston cowered from the blood, saying how scared. We talked later about that, and it seems to remind him of pain or death. I guess that's natural, and certainly aversion to blood isn't weird, but i don't have that at all. After church, and after a superb dinner at the in-laws, i flattened a fortune cookie into a circle. I also removed one of those tamper evident Tyvek bracelets from Zane's ankle and put it on my wrist, and there's no evidence of tampering. It's been a good day for doing things which shouldn't be able to be done, and slow.

Then we went for a walk to give Karen some time by herself, and Houston introduced himself to a kid on a playground like this: (loudly) "Hi! Oog oog oog! I'm silly!" The "oog" noises were accompanied by him whacking himself on the head. He's serious about his silliness. He's a connoisillyur. Houston found an amputee beetle, so we stared at it for a few minutes, and then i put it on a bench. It fell off, Zane heard, and he snatched it up, but thankfully put it back down, because it was wiggly and poky. There's a lesson we should remember from infancy: drop wiggly poky things.

Karen's home!

It's fun to be the only parent once in a while. Today we took a walk first thing to the Bagel Beanery. I asked Houston what "beanery" meant. He recently mentioned a "pizza beanery", beanery, for his five year old mind, evoking images of "bakery" or "factory". He said that: "Beanery means... where they make them?" I tried to explain, and he got that far away look that he gets when you explain stuff, and you don't think he's listening, but then five weeks later he asks a perceptive question about that exact topic. Come fall, Houston will pop the question "Do coffee beans come in a pod like green beans?" But anyway, we were seriously there at quarter past nine in the morning, walking. And the kids were dressed even! Good times. Early, but good.

Houston is turning into a really pleasant little boy. Dare i say angelic? While we were munching our nearly oven-warm bagels, Houston said "Oh! I need a straw!" so he leaped up and ran to get one and returned with three. One for his and Katrina's water each, and one for me and my coffee. Yech. And on the way home, he saw a person about to get out of his car, so he stood there waving to the closed car door, saying "Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!" until he got a friendly response. Karen and i make a big deal out of it when any of our kids shows extra friendliness. Sometimes i catch myself thinking "Wait... STRANGER DANGER!!!", but you know what? A friendly kid with a healthy self image and well developed physical boundaries is almost totally abuse proof. At least, from the kind of teenage sex offenders Karen and i have worked with for years.

Houston did the "Hi! Hi! Hi!" trick again after Karen got home (to much much rejoicing, especially from the dog) and we made the insane choice (insane for Karen -- she'd been out and about for the entire day since yesterday) to go to an Indian Pow-wow. It was cool. One of the old men dancers had nothing but tightie whities peeking out from under his leather chaps. I guess that's traditional. Although i might prefer to see traditional old-guy-side-butt than sagging white cotton underwear. It's too bad that most of the dancing and music is indistinguishable to my coarse sensibilities. And most of the stalls feature very similar wares, and absolutely nothing my style. I like to think i'm cool enough to be able to pull off unconventional fashion, but a fox face? A stick with a bird head glued to it? Fur? Perhaps my stylistic limit is very fuzzy dreads with Crocs style shoes.

We like veggies, yes we do.

Karen went to the yearly Her Family Girls Weekend, but not all the girls in the family, since i still got that little one here at home. Isn't she cute? And feverish.

Okay, so today i made zucchini and summer squash, and all three kids ate some. No, they ate lots. So lemme share my recipe: slice the things (i cooked 4 yellow squashes and three zucchini), squish and chop garlic (i used about four cloves). Preheat a pan over high heat, but before it starts smoking, pour plenty of olive oil into the pan and immediately add first the garlic, then the zucchini and summer squash. I couldn't find a spatula fast enough, so i wiggled the pan and made the food do the fancy fly-in-the-air thing, trying to catch most of the pieces. However you do it, keep the squash moving until they're nice and browned, and take the pieces out before they have a chance to get mushy and overcooked.

Add salt and pepper, and if you're five or three years old, ketchup. Yes, they LOVED it with ketchup. And they also snarfed down the Caesar salad (did you know that this, probably my favorite of salads, was invented in Tijuana, Mexico? Yeah! For real!) besides Katrina who declared, tears coursing from her eyes, that it made her mouth hot. And i didn't rip the leaves small enough, so she kept extracting the overwhelmingly large leaves, which she placed beslimed with saliva and dressing onto a napkin. This was gross, but grosser was the fact that i couldn't find the leaves as i cleaned up after dinner.

So then, with Houston asking for seconds and thirds and fourths (on zucchini!) and Zane munching happily, Katrina whined "My so cold!!!" and i told her to go lie down on the couch under a blanket. She sniveled her way to the couch, with a stop by Daddy for a hug, and whimpered and choked quietly until all was peace from that room. The poor little girl had fallen asleep! She almost never does that. Especially without her Accouterments of Sleep; her blankets and thumb. She did wake up to watch some of Singin' in the Rain, but when we turned that off, she begged just to go to straight to bed. She's got a fever. When Katrina is sick, she vacillates between being really cute and cuddly to being the most incredibly whiny person ever. It's not the usual brain grating whines of manipulation though, it's the genuine, flowing-tears-sorrowful whining which is slightly easier to forgive. And much more touching when you tell her to say it without whining, so she says it with a normal -- if emotion choked -- voice, with soaked lashes and brimming eyes. I wanna go hug her now.

I'm tired. That's frustrating, because i've been getting enough sleep mostly... hmm... and there's no good reason i should be tired besides, oh yeah, i've got tons of things and people i love to pour my energy into, so duh i'm tired. But what's more annoying than walking around needing compelling stimulus to get me out of my sleepy haze (thankfully, compelling stimuli is all those things i love to pour my energy into) is the fact that as i was driving home tonight, thinking about how tired i am, and wishing i could fall asleep at the wheel, yet when i get out of the car, i can feel myself waking up, looking forward to checking my email, maybe playing a round of UT2k4, talking to Karen... and now it's quarter to one, and i'm still awake. Because i played a chapter of Half Life 2.

Stupid.

So i'm going to bed now. Seriously.

But wait... i just gotta say that my kids are the cutest. Houston in his cowboy hat? Awesome. Zane when he grins and flaps his arms and legs when he sees me? And then flops his head down into my chest? Fantastic. Katrina when she laughs uproariously at me being funny? Excellent. And if anyone misses Parker Lewis, lemme know.

Overengineering

Our washer motor broke because one of bearings wore out. Which got me thinking: if they made washer motor bearings the same way they make car wheel bearings, they'd last in that application forever. Or as close to forever as makes no difference. I'd probably pay twice as much for a washing machine which would last for fifty years. And it is possible. Overengineer a device so that the parts which might possibly wear out are so insanely strong that they simply don't.

Mercedes-Benz, for example, builds nice cars. They also know how to make things tough. So how come they can't make cars which don't break? From what i understand, Mercs are as prone to electrical or mechanical malfunctions as most non-Japanese cars, and some models are notoriously bad. My brother JJ has a Benz, and i'm not sure why, besides maybe the fact that Mercedes-Benz uses hemp fiberboard for their upholstered interior panels.

Now that i think of it, some technology has achieved this. Look at the modern hammer -- they last until they get lost or catastrophically broken. The cathode ray tube doesn't break. Mostly. Okay, Karen's monitor is pretty dark, but still. Hermetically sealed vapor phase change cooling systems (the important bits of a refrigerator) are astonishingly reliable. Telephones! Even some cars might fit this idea. One was so good, it was banned from demolition derbies!

When it all comes down to it, i can relax and accept flimsy window cranks and unreliable motor bearings, comfortable in the assurance that things break because evil multinational corporations design them that way so that i will keep buying new stuff. Mmmm, my preconceptions are, yet again, proven correct.

I did it!

Today: I took a bent aluminum wheel and our old washer motor to a scrap metal place and they gave me $13.50. Also, Katrina is scared of getting run over by zooming forklifts. She told me "If i got hit by a car [i don't think she knows the world "forklift"] i would get dead. That would be so sad. You would cry." Heck yes, i would cry. So if you have a bent aluminum rim or other large chunks of aluminum or other metal, take it/them to a scrap yard. They will give you cash. It's not just for meth-heads anymore.

Also, i took apart the brakes on our van and they're fine. So why did they scrape, you may ask? I may answer with a noise like "Uhghuaaaahooo" which would mean "I say, you've got me stumped there!" And the ball joints are fine. I did manage to actually fix the right rear indicator, so now when we turn or merge right we can use the blinkers and they WORK. It's, like, amazing.

I replaced the spigot which goes to the front of our house, pulling out a 6 foot section of our plumging. It was funny. I mowed Beth's lawn. Houston and Katrina made really pretty flower arrangements with the wild flowers in Beth's lawn. There were mini-daisies, cute pink flowers, and cool purple flowers which would shed their petals with rough handling.

But best of all, i fixed our washing machine! It works now! The disappointing thing is that it doesn't work any better than it did before. I look forward to fixing things. For instance, with my computer, after it's fixed i get more speed or higher capacity or a cleaned out operating system. But the washer just works again. Yeah, i know, a working washing machine works a lot better than one which doesn't work, but i'd like it to, maybe fix holes in my clothes? Get out stubborn stains more thoroughly? Ooh, i know, sort and fold the dried laundry? That would be totally awesome.

A post about tomorrow.

I was going to do a nice post today, but i have to go to bed. I have a busy day tomorrow; i hope to fix our washer, fix our minivan's brakes and maybe ball joint, and mow Beth's lawn. It doesn't seem a daunting list, but here in Michigan, a simple job like replacing brake pads can become monumental, because of something mind crushingly frustrating like a rusty bolt whose head pops off like a dandelion's when you do "Momma had a baby and its HEAD POPPED OFF!!!" and you have to spend twenty dollars on an extracting tool and a tungsten drill bit and drill on your car for five hours, hunched over carcinogenic brake dust, dripping sweat, swearing that you can hear your lower back discs herniating from the stress...

I can accept difficult weather altruistically, and i like to at least have an illusion of control when i'm driving in winter, but i have a passionate hate for working on cars which have spent much time on salty roads. Oh the agony! Expect an update tomorrow. The washer will be a piece of cake (trans fat free cake!!!) except one spring clip thing which requires me to plumb the depths of my strength, and the lawn will be actually fun. :)

Feeling Better!

Today i felt SO MUCH BETTER -- like, i felt awesome! I usually overdo it when i feel better after being sick, but today i guess i didn't. So today at work i got a 20 minute massage. I've never had a professional massage before. I payed very close attention to the state of my body before and after. Before i felt "Normal, Well Rested". Immediately afterward, i felt "Taller, Relaxed, Well Rested". A few minutes later, i felt "Normal, Well Rested" again. Except i didn't sit down for about 90 minutes, and usually when i stand for that long sitting down feels really really good, but this time it was like "huh, i'm sitting down". And the massage itself was nice. One of the teachers was getting a massage at the same time, and she seemed pretty uncomfortable since she was all Chatty Kathy the whole time. Me, i just relaaaaxed. Professional Masseuse Lady said i have a rotated pelvis or something, and i was like, "yeah, my right femur is a fraction of an inch too short", and she was totally "yeah, that would do it."

So then after getting home, i rescued my embattled wife from the kids, cooked some fajitas on the grill using sort of Peruvian style grilling (lots of vinegar, oil and garlic brushed on with chili and cumin) and actual wood. It was yummy. But i didn't use enough garlic, chili or cumin. Or salt. But anyway, then we went on a walk and ended up down at Festival. Last year at Festival it hailed, and Houston thought he was going to die. But today nobody though anybody would die, besides maybe people watching me push three kids in two strollers up one of Grand Rapids' bigger hills. My heart, please meet Cardiovascular Workout. With luck you'll be doing a lot of work together this summer.

Since we were just strolling through the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts (GRFotA?) we stopped only once, at a pseudo-African drumming group. Houston got to pick up a fancy drum thing called a "block" and whacked it with a drumstick. He was on tempo, which makes me happy. I don't know how any of our kids could have bad rhythm, since Karen and i have little drummers or metronomes in our heads or something (and she's Dutch even!!!) but anything can happen. On the way home, Zane and Katrina fell asleep. I think Houston wanted to, but he kept getting distracted scouring the sidewalk for bottlecaps, or empty glass bottles from which he could retrieve bottlecaps.

And now, i've got a washing machine to fix.