Fun with Nature's Trash, Fat Faces, and The Albers Join the (Early) 21st Century Technologically

Over the past week, thanks to some pretty cold nights and about a week of 20-40 mph winds, our trees have puked forth most of their leaves. Not surprisingly, Gabe loves playing with them and in them. Several times, Libby has taken him out to rake paths and mazes through the leaves that he could walk through, then Wednesday, Finn came over and he and Gabe took some time to play in the leaves.

Finn and Gabe burying themselves.

Button, not being buried, but strangely enjoying the itchy nature she's been placed on top of.

The relationship these two are developing is actually starting to show some hints to what it will be like when they are older (provided, of course, they can still stand to be around each other by then). Gabe is pretty obviously the instigator, and Finn is a pretty dedicated follower. Frequently, Gabe will do something (usually none-too-bright, like tipping the little push-car he's riding over backwards while he's sitting in the seat), then, seeing the "fun" Gabe is having, Finn will repeat the move. Here, Finn is following Gabe in diving into the leaf pile--possibly an unwise move considering my proclivity for covering up fire hydrants and bale hooks with leaves, just for fun.

In other news, Libby took a picture of Gabe, Button, and I lying on the floor the other night. When she took it, I considered making it my new profile picture for this blog, just because I haven't really updated it recently. Then I looked at the picture and changed my mind.


There's no denying that it's a cute picture of the kids, both lying there with their plugs in their mouths. I, on the other hand, appear to have been building up my winter fat stores in my head. So this picture isn't going to pass muster, I'm afraid. My head is weird like that. I'm not sure if it's a time of the year thing, a diet thing, or a my head thing, but sometimes my head gets disproportionately fat compared to the rest of my body (which, I can't deny, doesn't look to svelte in this picture either--I blame my being fat). Probably it's a medical condition of some sort, or a symptom of one. Maybe from having a "brain cloud" (yeah, that's right, I made a "Joe vs. the Volcano" reference). Who knows.


In other, other news, our family has joined the early 21st Century of technological advances! Yesterday, Libby bought a GPS system so she could use it to help her find her way to Butthole, Texas or wherever it is that Sean Astin University (the school where she's getting her Master's degree) is.

Of course, she didn't clear it with me before she purchased it because she knew my response would be, "But you are the 'master of the map' and can find your way ANYWHERE. What do you need a GPS system for? And, besides, they're too expensive." Really, though, something along this line is my response to the purchasing of just about ANY new technology. For almost a decade now, I have purposefully let myself fall behind in technological trends--it's just too much of a money sink AND requires constant vigilance to keep up on the new trends and options that are available. We owned a cell phone way before they started to become cool (a first generation "flip phone"--the one where the little cover flipped over the mouthpiece, but the entire thing was still roughly the size of half brick), and we maintained regular cell phone service--and made the appropriate upgrades every couple years--right up to the point where they started putting cameras on the phones. Then, I put the brakes on. "Why do we need a camera in our cell phone? We HAVE a perfectly serviceable camera, and it doesn't take shitty, grainy pictures, to boot."

From there it's been a slippery downhill slide for us technologically. I still own a cell phone, technically, but it's almost five years old and is a Virgin prepaid (which means the phone was actually about four years old when I got it--so, in all likelihood, the phone actually predates the point where I stopped caring about cell phone technology). I have no interest in owning a blackberry, iphone, or any other internet-capable device. Admittedly, I don't NEED anything like that--and I BARELY need a cell phone at all--because I have near constant access to the internet at home. And god knows I hardly ever get to leave the house.

Anyway, for quite some time, I've classified all technology of the non-housebound variety as "a waste of money," and GPS is just another one of them. Had it not been for her rather extensive travel schedule over the next week, we STILL wouldn't have much cause for a GPS device. I mean, it's not like we're exploring parts unknown on a regular basis. But, for the sake of this trip, I do have to grudgingly admit that it will be a handy tool to get Libby where she needs to go. Grudgingly.

All the same, I guarantee, after this trip, the GPS will end up in our Worthless Technology Drawer with the scores of other pointless gadgetry we've collected over the years but not thrown out because we felt too guilty after wasting all the money we had. Such is life, I suppose.

The Best Dirty Joke Ever

So, I told someone I would post a funny dirty joke on here because I didn't have enough space to post it in their Facebook wall. So, if you don't like to laugh, you might want to skip this post.

Originally, I read this joke (and, really, I think it has to be read--I've tried to tell it a few times and it just doesn't seem to have the same punch as it did the first time I read it) in one of Kurt Vonnegut's autobiographies. I can't remember which one, unfortunately. If I did, I would have scanned through it to copy it verbatim, because I know he did a better job of telling it than I will. Anyway, here goes:

Deep in the heart of World War II, during some of the darkest days of carpet bombings and strict rationing, Winston Churchill struck upon an idea to help boost morale in England. He solicited the assistance of the BBC and, during one of his weekly broadcasts, announced an official, nation-wide search for the funniest, dirtiest limerick anyone could think of.

The first prize winner would receive a year's worth of sugar rations, a crate of chocolate bars, and their winning limerick would be read on the air, live, by Churchill himself one month from that day. This being a time of extraordinary hardship, he figured nobody would object to the idea of having a dirty limerick read on the radio--and, in fact, he was correct.

There was a huge outpouring of support for the upcoming broadcast. Tens of thousands of people submitted limericks ranging from the traditional Nantucket variety to some really creative, choice, and above all raunchy originals. The nation was abuzz with talk of the contest and everyone's creative juices were flowing. Large "listening parties" were planned and communities were setting up festivities to lead up to the reading of the limerick.

The winner of the event had been released the night before the radio address. An elderly housewife from Brentford had won the contest, but she had been sequestered to keep her from leaking the winning limerick to anyone she hadn't already shared it with. This, obviously, only added to the buzz and anticipation.

Finally, the day came and Churchill's radio address began.

In a somber tone that seemed entirely inappropriate for the occasion, Churchill began his address. "I'm afraid," he began, "that I have some bad news." Instantly, all across the nation, hearts sank. Something truly terrible must have happened to preempt something generally regarded as an important event.

But the gravity of Churchill's voice had nothing to do with any national emergency that was non-limerick related. "I'm afraid," he continued, "that the winning limerick is simply too lewd, too explicit, and too offensive to be read on the air. The language and imagery is simply too unacceptable, even though we have all mentally prepared for this moment for a month now. This must tell you something about the limerick's content."

He couldn't hear it from where he was, of course, but Churchill could FEEL the boos of the communal citizenry of England at this point. But he trudged on, nonetheless, "After much debate, however, we have decided that it would be possible for us to read the parts that are socially acceptable and replace all of the truly offensive bits with 'da's' and 'dum's'. We will leave it to your imaginations to fill in the blanks. And here it is:

Da dum da da dum da da dum
Da dum da da dum da da dum
Da dum da da dum
Da dum da da dum
Da dum da da dum fucking cunt."

Ha!

Bit of a lead in for those last two words, but I've always felt it was worth the wait.

Oh Daddy, Focus.

As if Gabe was reading my blogs last week about my brother Ben's youthful speech impediment (Fucker Go!), he acquired a fuck impediment of his own this evening.

It all started, shortly after Libby was telling me the story of a co-student of hers who will be defending her thesis at the same time Libby is (Libby will be gone pretty much ALL of the first week of November--I'm thinking about doing a daily blog so that I can document my not-so-gradual descent into madness, but since I'm also figuring I won't get more than three hours of sleep on any given night, I might not have the energy). While telling this rather colorfully explicit story, Libby dropped a few eff bombs. Oh, and I forgot to mention that she was coloring with Gabe on the floor at the time.

As Libby finished her story and got up to get something from another room, Gabe said, "Ferk it!" Then he further elaborated, " Ferk it! Ferk it! Ferk it!" and he started coloring on his coloring book like he had something against it.

This isn't the story, though, this is just the warm up. As when he learned how to say "bitch" and "jerkass," I don't think "ferk it" will stick around too long, but I'll be sure to try and get it on video the next time if I can.

The story happened a few minutes later. While I was doing some laundry, Libby tried to coax Gabe into putting his colors and coloring books away. He kept purposefully not paying attention to her. "Focus, please, Gabe!" she said. To which he repeated, "Fuck ass, please."

He said it a number of times. As he was pushing his cars around on the dining room floor a few minutes later, from in the laundry room I could hear "Fuck ass, fuck ass, fuck ass." It made me laugh myself.

Sadly (or perhaps fortunately, depending on how much you like to laugh at the things your kid says vs. how well you hope they can blend into society when they get to school), the more he said it, the more it started to transform into something more like "ferkus." We tried to get it on video, but it was moving slightly more towards the "ferkus" version by the time we did. Oh well.

The "Oh Daddy," thing he was doing is new. I'm not sure where he picked it up. I'm sure it was something Libby said in exasperation when I'd done something or other. He never gets this out of sorts about me turning off the TV during the day. I think he does a lot of the stuff he does in the evening just to show off for Libby.

Happy 100 Posts!

Hurray! If you've been reading these since the beginning, I've wasted 100 postings worth of your time, now!

Well, 101, now.

Hurray for your time wasted!

The Butterfly of Exercise Flapped Its Wings and Now There's Poop on Gabe's Blankie

I'm sure everyone is familiar with the notion that a butterfly could flap its wings in Asia and across the world a hurricane might form from this one tiny action (at least anyone who's seen Jurassic Park should be). This is, of course, an absurd concept. If butterflies could wreak such havoc on international weather patterns, imagine what something like an African swallow carrying a coconut might inflict. Our world would be completely uninhabitable.

But the idea that seemingly inconsequential happenstances might affect outcomes yet to develop is sound, and I have an indisputable example to back this up.

Around the middle of July, I started having terrible pain in my left shoulder. The pain was radiating down to my elbow and up through my neck, and at times I couldn't lift anything heavier than an unladen swallow without fear of dropping it soundly to the earth (though, if it had been one of the kids, it would have been more screamingly than just soundly--so there's no doubt that it made life a little more challenging since I lift and carry the kids with my left arm). I treated the pain for three months with massive doses of ibuprofen, which almost dulled the pain but did little else.

Finally, about two weeks ago, I made it into the doctor to get it looked at. After spending a bit of time moving my arm this way and that, he asked me if I had ever injured the shoulder.

"Yes," I said, thinking back some years. "I have."

WAY back, in 1993--the spring semester of my freshman year of college--I decided to do a little weight lifting with my roommate to pass the time and keep me sexy for all the coeds. Prior to college, I had actually been a rather avid weight lifter. At my peak, I could squat nearly 600 pounds. I mention this now only because I wish to brag. I wish to brag about it only because it is the ONLY thing I can brag about in the realm of sporting activities ever. I have always been abysmal at sports--truly ponderous in the sense that people who saw me attempting anything would think to themselves, "What the hell is that kid thinking?"

Because I was a bit successful at it, I went about it with wild abandon, and with not even a hint of training. Basically, if I saw a massive stack of weights attached to a bar, I would say, "Let's wrap a towel around that bar (so I wouldn't impact my neck vertebrae and smash my shoulders, though I seriously doubt one towel could live up to such Herculean expectations), and I'll see if I can lift it."

Thanks to this cavalier attitude, I now have terrible joint problems, but that's a complaint for another time.

Where I somewhat excelled at lower body lifting, I was proportionately terrible at upper body work. For whatever reason, I could never really improve my upper body's maximum weight capacity. I could lift smaller amounts of weight for extended periods of time, but I could never get up to the big numbers that some of the others in my small group could achieve. My arms would tend to give up under the pressure and I would end up with my rib cage under the crushing weight of my own failure.

But, if I couldn't be successful, at least I could be persistent, and so, when my roommate suggested we start a weight lifting program, I decided it was high time that I figured out a way to fix my wimpy arms.

On our very first excursion to the weight room, we loaded up a barbell on the bench press with a weight that I figured I could easily handle--140 pounds, I think, but my memory might be inflating that a bit to save some of college me's dignity (adult me has none left). I positioned myself under the bar and my roommate spotted me. I pushed the weight up easily then lowered it to my chest. I began to extend my arms and "Pop!" My roommate heard it too, but he was far too busy removing the weights before my collapsed left arm left me stranded under the barbell.

And that was the last time that I have ever lifted weights. I saw it as a sign that I shouldn't be wasting my time in the weight room. After all, I reasoned, unless I was going to keep it up FOREVER, the effects would only be temporary--and who needs that kind of hassle for the rest of their lives? Not this guy, not when the regimen required to maintain a soft and lazy body is so much less trouble to keep up with on a day to day basis.

I never did anything about the shoulder. It hurt like a bugger for about a month, as I recall, but then it more or less went away. Sure, every once in awhile it would act up and I would have to dose it with some ibuprofen, but that was as bad as it ever got.

Turns out, even though I never managed any legitimate performances on any sports field, I DID manage to give myself a legitimate sports injury that day. I tore my rotator cuff.

At least that's what the doctor surmised two weeks ago. "Why," I asked, "is it just now acting up, sixteen years later?" To which he gave me a typical doctor response: "Sometimes bodies just do unexpected things" (which I translated as, "Hell if I know, but I'm not going to SAY I don't know"). He prescribed me an anti-inflammatory to see if that would help the swelling go down.

The downside of taking an anti-inflammatory is that all non-Tylenol style pain killers are out of the question (and Tylenol has never done much more for me than, say, a spoonful of sugar would). This isn't a problem as far as the every day bits of my life go--the prescription he gave me actually seems to be helping my shoulder, so I don't have much cause for a fistful of ibuprofens right now--but it IS a problem in regards to the every night bits of my life.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before (several times, actually), I'm a terrible sleeper. I just don't have the knack for it. I have a tough time getting to sleep at night, and once I'm asleep, if I wake up after about four hours, I can't go back to sleep. Unless I'm taking a PM of some sort (specifically, Advil PM--the generic versions and the Tylenol versions just don't work for me). The PM don't help me get to sleep at all, but they let me go back to sleep if I should wake up in the middle of the night, which is better than nothing.

Now I don't have that working for me, and last night, a little before 4:00, Button woke up for a feeding, and I woke up with her (I also had two Nick Jr. songs playing back to back, over and over again, in my head, which further exacerbated matters). I got almost exactly four hours of sleep.

Typically, I can survive on that much sleep in a night if it only happens once every few days, but my level of functionality is somewhere right above zombie and right below unmedicated celebrity.

First thing this morning, I decided to do some laundry. I opted for the whites because all of the baby's clothes get tossed in there regardless of color (because cold water just doesn't seem to get rid of her stinky cheese drool smell like one would hope it would) and she was needing some clean sleepers. I didn't have QUITE enough for a full load, so I cast about looking for some things to add. Because I wasn't thinking straight, I decided to throw in two small area rugs we have in our back rooms because they had some muddy footprints on them.

Of course, I forgot that the older of the two rugs was on its last legs. The rubber non-slip surface on the bottom of the rug had started to fall apart the last time I washed it. So, of course, this time the rubber backing completely disintegrated--but not in the "doesn't exist anymore sense," in the "this load of laundry is now covered in clingy rubber crumbs that will need to mostly be shaken out and removed by hand before the entire load is rewashed sense." So that was what I spent a fair bit of the morning working on.

But then I had another, even worse, lapse in judgment shortly thereafter. Gabe had not had a poop in at least two days (currently, I'm only capable of remembering "yesterday" and "before that"--at least until late evening, then we're down to "earlier today" or "some other time"). He'd already had one earlier this morning that was a gut buster, so I sort of turned my nose off for the morning. At some point, however, he decided to go ahead and have a second, more powerful dump, which was, strangely, almost odorless. It took me about twenty minutes to notice, I think (it couldn't have been much more because I'd just changed his diaper not thirty minutes earlier).

As I was changing his diaper, again, in a state of lax brainedness, I failed to notice that he had, thanks to all of his jumping around and sliding off the couch onto some pillows, managed to smear his poop nearly up to the middle of his back. I also didn't notice that he had slung his blankie underneath himself when I laid him down. So, after taking off the old diaper, I'd let his legs down to the point where he USUALLY doesn't smear poop on the floor or whatever is beneath him, only this time there was something to smear there. And he smeared it onto his blankie.

A terrible, terrible meltdown followed wherein he refused to let me put blankie in the wash and I had to hand wash the befowled section and return it to him, still very wet.

And then he lost the only binky he will use and we had to go to the store to buy more, but I'm suddenly far too weary of discussing this day to go into any details about this.

So, for those of you who have skipped to the end because you couldn't stand to read this entire post, here's a sum up: Because I injured my shoulder when I was 18 years old, I couldn't get any sleep last night, and because I was tired, I did stupid things, including letting Gabe smear his own poop on his blankie.

From the Ashes: The Triumphant Return of MEASURE MAN!

When he was young--maybe three or four years old--my brother Ben created a persona for himself named Measure Man. He was a superhero with the power to measure things with the trusty tape measure that he carried with him everywhere. Honestly, I thought it was brilliant then and I still look back on those memories fondly.

Actually, I was a little jealous of the character and Ben's imagination for coming up with it. Several times, I tried--but failed--to come up with suitable alternate hero characters to team up with Measure Man: Hammer Man, Crescent Wrench Man, and Screw Driver Man are all ones that I can remember, but I'm sure there were about as many others as I had common tools readily available to me.

But all of my heroes were dim shadows of the power of Measure Man. For one, none of the other tools had ready applications to the world around me. I COULD hit everything with a hammer (or could until Mom caught me, at least), or pretend to screw or wrench things (as I often still do--you figure it out), but the heroic activity always seemed forced and inappropriate for the situation. Measuring, however, was something that could ALWAYS be done. Thus, it seemed to me, even at that young age, that my characters were hackneyed and trite, poor knock-offs of a quality product--like . . . (here I was going to make a reference to a bad TV spin-off or movie remake that didn't live up to the original's standards, but, honestly, the options are just too numerously distracting for me to focus on just one, so feel free to pick your least favorite and plug it in here).

Really, even though I was the older brother, my characters were, at best, poor sidekicks, as if Measure Man had taken on a trial sidekick temp from the agency, only to throw him back after a trial or two. Of course, I never ACTED like the sidekick, but I think we both knew that I was.

And because that still leaves a slightly bitter taste in my mouth, I'm going to share another story about my brother Ben. Spiteful and petty, you say? Almost certainly, but it's a pretty funny story, so I'd eventually share it even if I wasn't trying to knock the memory of Ben during our childhood down a notch or two.

About that same time, Ben also created a truck driving persona--possibly based on the popularity of such movies as "Smokie and the Bandit" and shows like "BJ and the Bear." Mom owned a treadle sewing machine (only ours didn't have the sewing machine on top. Mom almost never sewed, so we must have owned the thing strictly as a piece of curious, near-antique furniture), and Ben used to sit on the big pedal on the bottom, grab hold of the metal wheel, and pretend like he was driving a big rig. This, in and of itself, is only mildly interesting, as I'm guessing that just about any young boy would have done something similar with an apparatus that sported such an obvious steering wheel surrogate (I didn't, but that's not necessarily suggestive of a deficiency on my part. My guess is, I was too busy doing farm work and other chores to have time for such fun. Or we didn't own the furniture until I was too old for such things. Or some other exonerating excuse.).

What was funny was the name of the operation: Trucker Go! Every time, as he was crawling behind the wheel, and several times while he was playing, he would yell, at the top of his lungs, "Trucker Go!" Except, Ben couldn't quite pronounce the "tr" sound of "truck." Instead, he said it with an "f" sound. So, periodically in our house rang the slightly unsettling sound of a toddler shouting "Fucker Go!" It was hilarious and I have many vivid memories of me trying to convince Ben to say "Trucker Go!" for the amusement of myself and those around me. Ah, good times.

Anyway, the other day, Measure Man was reborn. Yes, yes, I know. The phoenix metaphor is SO tired and overused these days. Simple EVERYONE is a phoenix anymore. If someone or something has fallen even mildly out of fashion and regains popularity, suddenly it's a mythical bird that has to go through the obviously painful process of being set on fire only to return to life again. Frankly, I'm not sure that the option of another lifetime is worth the torture of being burned alive, but that's just me. So, yeah, I know I SHOULDN'T use the phoenix metaphor, but I did, so what can you do?

After discovering a small fabric tape measure, Gabe was given the superhuman ability to MEASURE!

Yes. That was A LOT of build up just for one picture of a small boy holding a tape measure. Deal.

So far, he hasn't been doing much actual measuring with the tape, what with him not really caring that much about the numbers that are clearly all over the side of it. Mostly, he asks me to lock it with about eighteen inches of tape extended so he can carry it around and use it like a whip. I tried to get some video of him doing it this morning, but before I could get the camera, he started swinging it around the baby, and I had to put a stop to it. Perhaps I'll be able to add some video later, provided he ever comprehends the idea of "too dangerous to do within spitting distance of the baby--and also not spitting on the baby."

At the very least, we might have a Halloween costume idea if we combine the tape with his superhero jammies.

Bunk Beds and Fall Activities

We had a busy weekend.

Some time ago (I actually can't remember exactly how long. It feels like it was just last weekend, but I THINK it might have been the last weekend of September already), we began transitioning Gabe into a "big boy bed." The baby bed we had been using, which we had borrowed from a friend (who is pregnant herself now and trying to get her ducks in a row before the arrival date, thus necessitating us to put a bit of a wiggle on getting Gabe something new to sleep in), was capable of transforming from a crib into a toddler bed with the gradual removal of several pieces.

I began this transition slowly. Knowing how independent Gabe is, and how he likes to climb, we put off working him into his big boy bed for as long as possible. Visions of him refusing to go to bed and then, once there, getting out at just about any time during the night haunted us (and still do haunt me, since I'm the one that has to get him down for his naps every day). But we were faced with a deadline, so we had no choice but to take the plunge. I started by lowering part of the crib, er, cage (what are the bars on a crib called? They sure LOOK like a cage to me, but I can't imagine many parents would jump at the opportunity to refer to the place they put their children as a cage. Personally, I've always called it "baby jail," but, then, I'm not a very typical person), just to see if he would try to scale it when it looked less daunting.

He didn't, so I took the next step by removing the cage wall entirely and replacing it with one of those sleep guard baby-no-falling-outy things that people usually use on actual beds (again, no idea what it's called, but I think my name for it is kind of catchy). The no-falling-outy thing is only about 10 inches tall and didn't quite reach to the end of the bed, so I fully expected Gabe to start climbing over that as soon as it was his only obstacle to freedom.

But, again, he didn't. So, yesterday, we bought his bunk beds and I spent the better part of the day fighting vague, probably translated from Vietnamese (because that was its place of origin) instructions that, on at least one occasion, completely failed to account for some pretty important pre-drilled holes needed to install the ladder (and then they had me cover those same holes with the slats well before installing the ladder). As is usually the case with constructing ANY pre-made furniture, it was not much fun.

Gabe's big boy bed

I also noticed something rather troubling about his room in relation to how the bed fit into it. All of the original rooms on our second floor have ridiculously short ceilings--just over seven feet tall, in fact. WHY this is, I don't even have a guess. There is a sizeable attic above and the original construction folks could easily have put the ceilings up another two or three feet if they wanted (we did with the room we added on). But they didn't, and Gabe's room, in addition to having a short ceiling also has a ceiling fan.

I found out to the tune of a mildly contused shoulder and then, five minutes later, a slight graze to my left ear that the path of the ladder on the back of our bunk bed travels directly through the whirling blades of the ceiling fan. That's going to need a little rethinking.

And there we were, with his new bed installed. We duded it all up and added the fally-outy thing and noticed that there was still a sizeable gap between it and the ladder, which Gabe actually found while he was exploring his new furniture.

Oh, yeah, funny story about that. He was STOKED about the bed. I've rarely seen him so excited about anything before. He was jumping on it and climbing it and couldn't even piece two words together he was so excited. And then he shit himself from excitement. Actually shit himself. We'll have to keep an eye on that in the future. I'd hate for the kid to crap his drawers whenever he's going out for his first date.

What do you call an excitement induced crap? Excretement? A Fump (a fun-dump)?

So now we're debating on whether or not we like this setup for him. It's tough to get him into bed to tuck him in because of the minimal clearance between the beds, plus we really don't like him having an escape route that's TOO obvious. We might end up separating the bunks for awhile and seeing what that does for us.

In other news, we had a little family adventure to a pumpkin patch yesterday. Because this post is already pretty long, I won't go into the gritty details, but Gabe had a great time. It was a cute place and they had quite a number of activities for children to enjoy while they passed the time (and it was free unless you wanted to do a few of the special activities or buy pumpkins, which was also nice). We spent two hours there, but Gabe could have easily spent an entire afternoon.

An old timey water pump. He had some fun with this. They had a few other old pieces of farm equipment there to play with as well. Fun AND educational (I'm sure they told themselves as they installed it)!

Libby and Gabe climbing up a round bale. All the fun of itchy wheat straw but with slight elevation!

Gabe's favorite activity: a sandbox made of corn. Inside a horse tank. It was actually a rather nifty idea, and I'm sure the squirrels and raccoons LOVE it when it gets dark.

Halloween Costumes

So, I'm looking for a little inspiration for costumes for Gabe this year. Thanks to busy schedules and a tight budget, we've sort of written Halloween dress-up as an option for Libby and I off (which makes me sad because playing dress up is still one of my favorite things to do, and Halloween is the only time I can do it without getting weird looks from everyone), but we're planning on trick-or-treating this year with the kids, and the time for delaying is gone.

Button is taken care of.


She's going as a chubby little pumpkin.

But Gabe is a bit tougher. He's not really into costumes yet, unfortunately. He refuses to keep accessories on. Last week, because I was bored, I started to make him a costume out of pipe cleaners.


I'm not sure what the costume would have been, mind you--possibly a Renn Faire jester--but it didn't matter because, not only would he not keep the costume on, he smashed it back into its component parts within two days.

The other option is pajamas. He currently has two sets of pjs that are costumes in and of themselves.


His "racing" pjs, that make him look like he's part of a pit crew. This one I'm not particularly interested in. He's already more of a fan of cars than I'm comfortable with. I'd hate to inadvertently encourage him to pursue a life in NASCAR (I mean, I'll support whatever life decisions he makes, I suppose, but I'd sure rather he didn't make THAT life decision. Frankly, I'd rather he was a flaming stage diva performing in carabert bars in San Francisco. I wouldn't really encourage that, either, but not on the basis of a conflict of values. I would just prefer he looked into a career that will earn him enough money to afford me a luxurious lifestyle in some swank retirement community staffed with ex-Hooters waitresses when I'm something like 55, and I somehow doubt that dressing up like Whitney Houston and belting out Abba classics in front of small crowds will net that much return).

The other option--and the one that I'm leaning towards--is his superhero jammies.



I'm actually a little jealous of these pjs. As far as I'm concerned, they are the most awesome piece of clothing ever conceived--though not the most awesome thing made from cloth ever conceived, I reserve that ranking for this.

But are they sufficient to act as a costume? We'd obviously have to put normal shoes on--which will entirely ruin the built in footie/boots look--but, otherwise, this isn't such a bad costume.

Any thoughts? I'm looking for cheap, easy, and something Gabe will keep on.

Some New Characters

The other day, I realized that I have an abundance of new toys to deal with in my storyline (and several more that SEEM new because it's been so long since I've seen them that I've completely forgotten what their names and stories might have once been--and lord knows I'm too lazy to go back to my earlier posts to find out), so I thought I would get a few of those out of the way today.

Lulu/Loren

Lulu/Loren is a pink hippo that plays music. Our friends the Hamiltons gave her to Button when we first got her back in June. At first, the toy's name was Loren, because their daughter, Loren, picked the toy out (and we named the horse that their son, Sam, picked out for Gabe after him). But, over the course of the summer, Gabe decided that this hippo looked a lot like the character from "Ni Hao, Kai Lan" named Lulu and started calling her that, instead. The cartoon Lulu is a rhino, though, so I was resistant to naming the toy that just for the sake of my fussy accuracy.

Today, however, I decided that it worked into her backstory pretty well. See, Lulu/Loren has a split personality and two completely different characters to go along with it. Loren is sweet, cuddly, and likes to play folk music to crowds of small children in parks. She is earthy and pleasant and if you met her at a party, you would entirely forget that you had ever seen her before the next time you met her.

Lulu, however, you would be hard pressed to forget because it is impossible to forget the face of the woman who broke your will to live. Lulu is a FREAK. She's a latex dominatrix (the cartoon character has a thing for balloons, so I figured this was the next step in that obsession) with a penchant for pain and a bias for ball stomping (or a commitment to cramming, if you're a woman--note: this would have been a slightly more palatable ____ for nipple electrifying, but I couldn't think of any word that means "something you love to do" that begins with an "n" and I'm too lazy to look something like that up, too). And she does her work pro bono. And often even if you're not into that kind of thing. She'll pick you up at a bar, take you home, get you liquored up, then do things to you that your therapist will wish he/she could forget. Don't EVER trust a pink hippo if she asks you back to her place for a night cap. She's up to no good.

Obviously, this character might have some problems integrating into the bedroom story arcs. She certainly has some interest and appeal to me, as a storyteller, but I'm thinking her "thing" might be a little age inappropriate. I mean, I don't KNOW. From what I hear, these kids today know about all kinds of crap I didn't find out about until I was in college, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see what Gabe's been picking up on PBS Sprout.

Stan Johnson


Stan is the biggest of the pigs that we picked up for Mom's 60th birthday surprise.

I'm not a fan of pigs. Frankly, I'm a little put out by the fact that two of Nick Jr's new shows (Olivia and Toot and Puddle) revolve around pig characters. Pigs should not be characters. It's as simple as that. Only clowns beat out anthropomorphized pigs for creepiness, if you ask me. Don't get me wrong. I like bacon and pork products just fine, but I prefer to never, ever think about where those foods come from. I grew up around pigs. There is NOTHING that smells as bad as a pig. Well, that might be a bit severe. The smell of burning blood is worse. Stetson cologne is worse. But that, for the life of me, is all I can think of that beats pig smell.

So, not surprisingly, I gave this pig a back story that I'm almost certain I'll never incorporate into anything--unless he's the butt of some sort of terrible act, as in the swine flu story.

Stan Johnson is a pencil pusher working--perhaps ironically, I haven't decided yet--in the air quality division of the E.P.A. He is a low-level employee. The most important thing he ever does is process paperwork that might, if it makes it all the way through the red tape, clear a business to receive a small portion of government aid to help them make upgrades to their facilities to meet air quality standards. He has an average wife and two average children, all of whom are so boring and average that people routinely avoid them for fear of catching their ennui. He lives in a suburb filled with other average, boring employees who do similarly unimportant things. He drives a hatchback. His biggest ambition in life is to play on an office softball team, but, so far, nobody who organizes such events has asked him to play, and he's too shy to ask himself.

Ah, dammit. Now I feel sorry for Stan. Frick! Hopefully it passes before I feel it's necessary to spice up his life a little bit so he doesn't commit suicide after a brief, but frantic, office shooting spree.

Moving on.

Soupie


Soupie is the "Build-a-Dinosaur" that Gabe got to pick out during our vacation this year. Remarkably, he is still Gabe's favorite stuffed animal. Soupie has actually become a pretty important part of our everyday lives. Gabe is getting to the point where he protests when we put him down for bed at night or for naps. Up to this point, he's always been quite good at both, but now he's learning that, while he's sleeping, there COULD be fun and important things going on in the house (there aren't, of course, because I'm living in it), and it's taking us longer and longer to get him prepped for bed every day. So far, the only thing that we can say that persuades Gabe enough to sort of want to go upstairs to bed is "But Soupie really misses you. He wants to cuddle and hear you read him a story." So we give Gabe a book when we tuck him in next to Soupie. To date, we've never heard him actually "read" any stories to his toys, but I'm looking forward to that day. It will be nice to hear something over his monitor that isn't "Daddy! Downstairs!" followed by crying, screaming, or shrieking.

Soupie is the mild-mannered alter-ego of . . .

Dinomime

The superhero costume is the only one we bought for the dinosaur--and it is, obviously, where his alter-ego name comes from. We were calling him Super Dino! when we first got him, and Gabe was only saying the Soupie part, so the name stuck.

Soupie has a moderately successful career during the day holding the position of batting coach for a Double A minor league baseball team (suck it, Marvel and D.C., no journalists or multi-millionaire day-jobs here!) called the Clubbing Insulting Nickname for Underprivileged Indigenous Tribes (this was the actual name. The owner figured he'd save himself some trouble down the line and skip over the names like the Redskins or Chiefs or Braves or Indians and call a spade a spade--in the strictest non-racist sense of that phrase, of course. The "clubbing" part he added because they were a baseball team, obviously, and "the fighting" was such a tired descriptive word when referencing sports teams. Unfortunately, he hadn't given possible acronyms much thought, so he's currently involved in at least two well-documented legal battles with groups that find the t-shirt logo of an Eskimo beating a seal pup with the phrase "Clubbing I.N.U.I.T.s!" entirely insulting. And rightly so!).

And Dinomime is a superhero! But not just ANY superhero, he's the world's only dinosaur superhero, which makes him pretty special.

Interestingly, the concept of Dinomime is one that was created something like 15 years ago by a friend of mine. For one reason or another, my little group of close friends decided that we were going to make up a team of comical comic book heroes and villains (Why? "The Tick" was popular then. That's about as close to an excuse as I can come up with, except that we were bored and we weren't really the type of group to spend our down time chasing women or getting stoned or doing any of the normal things that groups of college aged boys of the "normal" persuasion usually do).

Most of them were a bit lame and unmemorable. There was Muzak, with the ability to always find a good song on the radio (provided there WAS a good song on the radio, of course, there were limits to his power). Or Olfactory Man, with the power to hear!

Some of them were a bit more memorable, though still strange or silly enough to only be memorable to people with brains like mine. There was The Chubby Coy--the old leader of the good guys, think something like Yoda or Splinter from the Ninja turtles, except he was a talking carp. Or Terrible Unger (he'll fill your belly with hate!) who was the leader of the bad guys and was a talking ham sandwich. And then there was the character whose name I shortened to make the screen name of my first internet account on aol (Parkcow) and whose name I have continued to use on email addresses and screen names ever since. I won't, however, discuss this character in open dialogue. If you REALLY want to know what it stands for, email me and I might share. It's a little embarrassing and more than a little rude.

There were more, of course. LOTS more. I think we had something like 25-30 of them at one time. I'd have to try and find one of our lists (if one still exists) to even remember 1/3 of them. But the only one that I think bordered on genius character creation was one my friend Brian came up with, Dinomime.

Dinomime had the ability to make the things he mimed come to life (obviously, his battle cry was a play on Jimmie Walker's catch phrase--he'd yell "Di-no-MIME!" when entering battle). Invisible box, you're invisible no longer! Need a rope to pull something closer? It's there! Something else that mimes do? It's real! The only problem is that the T-rex had tiny, miserable, mostly unuseable arms and hands, and so did Dinomime. So he'd end up ham-fistedly creating all sorts of weird crap whenever he tried to mime it.

The mental image still, to this day, slays me. I'm not ashamed to say that. Tiny, useless dinosaur arms mis-performing mime is hilarious to me. If you disagree with me, you are wrong. And possibly have no imagination. I'm sorry.

Anyway, because the only two friends in our group who could draw comic book style art had no interest in drawing our comic book, it never got past the brainstorming phase.

But Dinomime lives on in Gabe's bedroom! Hurrah!

The Sublime Beauty of Putting Things on Other Things

So, this afternoon, I decided to take a few minutes out of my otherwise hectic schedule of watching as much of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVD as Gabe's interest would allow at a time (for the record, Gabe will allow me to watch almost exactly fifteen minutes before he starts mercilessly shrieking "Max and Bee! Max and Bee!" or "Dor! Dor! Dor and Boots!" and I have to give in and put something on that I'd rather have forced under my fingernails than into my eyeholes) and teach Gabe an important lesson about the potential awesomeness of hybridization.

Now, I know that hybrids are USUALLY boring--hardy strains of wheat or a dog whose breed name ends comically in "poo"--but that is just because they are bogged down in "science" and "facts" and "breeding compatibility," things I'm not the least bit concerned with (especially the last one, I think--the more incompatible something is, probably the more curious I would be to see it try to breed. I'm just jaded that way.). Or you're talking about a vogue combustion engine type. No, I wasn't teaching him about that. Not at all. That might prove useful and practical. I took the time to teach him about the wonders of stacking one thing on top of another thing to create a new thing that is boundless in its imaginative possibilities. Specifically, because we were playing with his cars, I taught him how to create cartrosities.

It all started with the "hotdog tractor" that we created a few weeks back.

The future of farming. One of them, anyway, if you hold with that whole infinite universes theory.

Hotdog tractor happened rather by accident. The tractor used to have a little wooden man that drove it. Several months back, we had to take the little man away because Gabe was putting him in his mouth and trying to swallow him. When Gabe stopped trying to swallow everything, we gave the little man back, but now he's gone again. I can only assume that Gabe went ahead and swallowed him because that is the direction the evidence points ("evidence" being that he used to try and swallow him, and now he's gone, there's no NEW evidence, obviously, like a choking boy on my floor or a rather long, very hard poop in his diaper). Poor little man. But, without its driver, the tractor looked incomplete. So, when Libby bought Gabe a set of Melissa and Doug foods that included a hotdog that fit perfectly, I improvised. Since then, Gabe has called this his hotdog tractor, even when the hotdog isn't in there.

Today, Gabe added the hotdog to the tractor again, and it gave me the idea to see what else we could come up with. Here are the awesome results.

The Trainbine. Imagine all the sorghum (or whatever your crop of preference is) something like this could harvest! As long as the crop was planted in and along railroad tracks, that is. So, yeah, probably not the most practical invention. But here we were still in our "brainstorming" phase, where there are no bad ideas (just stupid ones).

The Bikedozer. All the earth moving properties of a bulldozer coupled with the speed and agility of a four wheeler (Gabe calls it a bike, for some reason, even though I correct him regularly--not that I care about the integrity of four wheelers or anything, I'm just a prig for correctly calling things what they are--but I had to admit that working "bike" into a new name was much easier than "four wheeler."

The Helicarptor (Gabe removed the blades from the helicopter less than twenty-four hours after receiving it as a gift, but it IS a helicoptor on top of that car). All the leg room of a car that's been converted into a monster truck (and all the requisite chompings from Carzilla and line-of-buses jumping that goes along with that title), but it can fly! Almost too awesome to conceive.

Unfortunately, though, because it's me we're talking about here, things started dipping into the surreal from this point.

The Duckrete Mixer. What practical purpose this could serve to justify its existence, I'm not sure. Ducks are mean, stupid animals bent on the destruction of all humanity (read this, this, and this if you don't believe me), and they certainly would never help to build anything worthwhile. So, probably, this is something they conceived to build their own terrible weapon or evil base of operations. Beware!

The, er, Garbage Collection Horse Truck. Yeah. This one was Gabe's contribution (I say that because he put the horse on top, but, really, I can't BLAME him for creating something that I couldn't hybridize the name of because I handed him the horse and told him to put it on top of the truck). It has all the majesty of a horse and the stinkiness of a garbage truck. Rejoice or tremble in fear, your choice.

And, last of all, our most horrifying abomination:

The Tractorbaby! Or Bactor? Babtor? Tractby? Whatever. It's terrifying. This one I didn't actually name in front of Gabe because, you know, it's probably not good to encourage him to start putting things on top of the baby for the sake of naming it. As it was, she was unimpressed enough with the entire process.

Which reminds me of another picture that I thought I would share. It's unrelated to the rest of the post, but it boggles my mind, so I'm sharing.

Look at those spit bubbles! This is what Butts does with her days right now. If she spends the majority of the day fairly upright, she can completely saturate FIVE bibs in a single day. It's a bit ridiculous, frankly. I'm not sure how she's not dehydrated. I know she gets all of her nourishment in liquid form, but still. I could squeeze her bibs out and probably fill one 8 oz. bottle every day (eww). I'm hoping this phase doesn't last long. I have to do a load of bibs in the laudry every day just to keep up.

Solid Food Is for Suckers

Button had her four month checkup today, and the doctor stressed that we should start trying to feed her solids. We had planned to do this anyway because, well, god it's nice when kids switch to solids and feedings can be thought of in terms of times of the day instead of times of the hour . . . (yeah, I know, that doesn't really make sense. Kids don't eat several times an hour, no matter how old they are, so their feedings are pretty much never thought of in those terms, but my poor, stupid brain couldn't think of any not-quite-clever way of putting it that paralleled the "times of the day" statement, and I'll be damned if I will erase something just because I couldn't think of something to follow it up).

We bought some baby bananas and applesauce the other day, and tonight she got to try the bananas. She was unexpectedly disinterested, and even a little disgusted by them.

This surprises me somewhat. See, Gabe started eating almost as soon as we got him. Within the first two weeks, we realized that he was getting constipated on his soy formula, so we had to start sneaking him fruit to keep him regular (you're welcome, Future Gabe, when you read this, for sharing this bit of information with the world). He got a shot of juice at first, but that didn't work, so we decided to skip all of the in-between steps and went straight for the mushed up prunes. And he ate them! Not a lot at first, but eating solids was something that he loved to do. Often, I thought he resented the bottles and really wanted to only eat solids, starting probably around the four to five month old range. That wasn't possible, of course, but he sure liked to eat his solids.

And there wasn't much he wouldn't eat. After conducting weeks' worth of experiments on whether or not he was allergic to this food or that, I started conducting numerous experiments on whether or not he would even EAT this food or that (because I was making just about all of his food myself, I could put just about whatever I wanted to in it--and, believe me, he got a taste of just about everything that seemed vaguely appropriate for a small child to try). He tried a little bit of everything, and he ate pretty much all of it without any troubles.

The only thing he took a dislike to was roast beef, for some reason (he's still not very big on meat, except hot dogs--so, technically, he's still not very big on meat). Possibly it had something to do with the time, he was probably nine months old or so by this point, when I fed him some ground up roast beef. Three hours after the meal, while we were out walking, I noticed that he was chewing on something. I stuck my finger in and dug around for a bit, only to find a quite small piece of roast beef, completely sapped of its color by his saliva, that he had been cheeking that entire time. It was disgusting, and should probably have turned ME off to roast beef, so I can only imagine the effect it's had on his subconscious.

Anyway, it would appear that Norah will not be following down the same path. She decidedly did not take to the bananas. And if you don't like bananas, then what hope is there for pretty much any other food? We'll try the applesauce tomorrow night, probably, and see if we have any better luck.

Butts not eating bananas.

And in other news, over the weekend, Finn came over for some baby wrestling (which we will probably continue to call it even when they're hanging out in their teens), and Gabe decided to show him the trick with the cabinet. Finn, unfortunately for Finn, is a bit of a follower. If he sees Gabe doing something fun (and usually mildly dangerous), Finn will almost certainly try it too. So he had to join Gabe in the cabinet.

Mere moments after this picture was taken, the top shelf went ahead and collapsed, as we sort of feared it would (actually, I think someone was saying something to that effect while I was snapping this picture). No children were harmed, but both of them were pretty much scared shitless. Nonetheless, minutes after I fixed the shelf, they both wanted to get back in there.

The Mermaid, the Bearded Lady, and the Cabinet

Yesterday, Gabe nearly discovered a magical new world that he could access via his toy cabinet in our dining room. At least I assume that's what must have been motivating him.

However, since we're not British, and we don't have a wardrobe, I can only guess at the quality of the other world that this piece of common furniture would take Gabe away to. There wouldn't be any Jesus lions or Ice Queens or talking animals or ancient mythological creatures as there would have been if he'd traveled via impressive antique furnishings. Instead, I imagine he would be sent to a not-quite-magical land filled with 19th century American balderdashical creatures that made appearances in P.T. Barnum's circuses: the Fiji Mermaid, the Bearded Lady, very small military "generals" and the like (If you're bored, you really should read up on Barnum. The guy was some kind of genius. Or possibly a sociopath. I'd start with wikipedia--because it's convenient for quickly surfing around to various tangential topics--but I found a few other fun sites, too: one at squidoo and another with some interesting quotes pulled from various interviews and letters. Actually, this imaginary world might not be THAT disappointing, now that I think about it. It would certainly be entertaining, if only on a train wreck level.).



Anyway, I'm not entirely sure what motivated Gabe to crawl into the cabinet (twice, once on each level, as shown in the pictures), but because I didn't think he was old enough to be voyaging off to foreign worlds, I didn't take the chance on closing the doors behind him. Maybe when he's older.

Breaking News! I'm an Idiot!

Yeah, so, Fingerpainting Fail: Revenge of the Failin (yes, that's a Transformers reference, though I haven't seen the movie and almost certainly won't because I don't like to be sad) just happened.

My method for typing out these posts is a bit varied. Sometimes I sit down while Gabe is napping and pound one out, sometimes I start on them in the evenings then come back and do a bit of touch up work before posting it the next morning (which is what I did with this one. Thus, when I said "yesterday," at the beginning, I actually meant Wednesday, but I didn't figure the timeline mattered THAT much to anyone who reads this). Then, I'll bop in here for a few minutes every once in awhile if Gabe is distracted enough with something else and Button isn't fussy.

This morning, Gabe decided that it was time, again, for some more fingerpainting. I should have said "No." I'm actually not too wishy washy when it comes to Gabe. Usually, if he wants something that isn't feasible, I'll put my foot down, listen to him cry for a minute, then find him something else to distract him. For some reason, though, when he started crying for fingerpaints, I caved.

But, I decided, this time would be different. First, I wouldn't set him loose with as much paint as his hands could hold. I found some bottles of paint (not the same stuff we used last time, since it's mostly gone now) and squeezed out three little dollops (red, blue, yellow) about the size of a reasonable serving of ketchup onto a plate--just enough to do some painting with but not enough to make a huge mess with, I thought. Then I put him in his painting shirt, set him in his high chair at the table so he couldn't wander around getting paint everywhere, and gave him a sheet of paper.

At first he gave me a curious look that said, "What the frick am I supposed to do with this puny amount of paint?" So I stuck a finger in and smeared it on the paper for him. "See," I said, "a little goes a long way." So he set to work.

And I came into the office, pulled up the blog, and worked on the post I started yesterday. Really, there wasn't much to work on. Last night, after I'd read over what I did, I saved instead of publishing because, well, it's a pretty short and kind of boring post. The IDEA of a land of Barnum misfits entered through our dining room toy cabinet sounded like a swell idea, but I hadn't really lived up to its potential, I didn't think (partly because I spent most of my time reading about Barnum and hardly any actually writing the blog--sorry!). So I saved it in the hopes that inspiration would hit overnight. I started reading over it again, looking for the inspiration that hadn't come in my sleep.

Two minutes passed and Gabe shouted, "More! Paint!" I looked into the dining room and saw him in there, his hands, the table in front of him, and his sheet of paper smeared with paint. I went in for a closer look (remember, I'm only about fifteen feet away from him this whole time, so I might not have been the most attentive, but I wouldn't say I was negligent, exactly). There was still plenty of paint smeared around the edges of the plate, so I said, "I think you need to work on the 'art' of your paintings a little more. Don't just smear the paint, work with it to create something special."

Was that a bit of a lofty concept for a two year old? I'm not sure.

Anyway, I turned around and came back into my office. I started reading again. I looked up after the first minute and saw him holding the plate up to his face.

"No tasting the paint," I said. "You learned last time that it's yucky." He put the plate down on the table.

Less than five minutes passed (so, yeah, this "project" of his only took less than ten minutes total, so it was a Fail even in terms of time killing). I looked up again, and this is what I saw:


Disaster. Even with just a few little spurts of paint, he'd managed to make the type of mess of himself that Pigpen would have been envious of.

As I undressed him for a bath, I said, "I think we're done fingerpainting until you're in kindergarten." Now let's just see if I have the fortitude to follow up on that threat.