December 2002 Archives

Snow Days

Hey, we got snow the past couple days. Not tons. But around 2-3" each night--enough to coat everything thoroughly. I'll take it.

I went to lunch yesterday with a friend visiting from Seattle, John Rodgers. He said he woke up to the snow and recollected all the reasons he hates this place. Heh. Yeah shovelling the driveway and braving the roads is a pain, but man as far as I'm concerned, that jet stream could just park right over us for the next 3 months and bring it on. Replenish the reservoirs, green up the woods, and kill the pine beetles. I think the high deserts of the Atacama are spectacular and all, but I don't want to live there thank you very much.

Giselle's had two days off school (yeah, it's pretty wimpy calling school because of 3" of snow, but it's so rare these days, I guess they're getting jumpy). So yesterday, she and about a hundred other kids converged on the field down the street and went sledding. Amanda said if those kids had just a touch more organization, they would've been a mob. She's been anxious to get out and play in the snow for a while now, so I'm happy for her.

There was a serious downside this morning when our hot water heater's pilot light blew out. That thing is impossible to predict. We can have 50 mph winds and it stays lit, but then we'll get just the right kind of wimpy storm, and pfft it goes out. So I forewent the shower and just washed my hair in the bathtub this morning. Amanda apparently heard my muffled screams as I sprayed my head with the frigid arctic waters and came rushing in. She helped me expedite the rinse. Oh man did that hurt. Leonardo DeCaprio did *not* come across as a man who's just been dunked in freezing water off the stern of the busted Titanic. I was commenting this morning at work that if you set one man on fire and dunk another in freezing water, I challenge you to tell the difference in their screams.

I'm exaggerating¹, people. Don't get all offended.

1. Not by much.

Driving on the Shoulder

Well I had a dreadful old time at the grocery store yesterday. It's the next to last weekend before Christmas, and of course everybody is out and about in full panic mode. I hate shopping when there's more people in the store than there are aisles, and so my public anxiety meter was already twittering in the yellow zone the second I walked in the store. Trudging around with a huge shopping cart is the last thing you need when the place is packed like Hooters on wet-teeshirt-wednesday¹. I think you should be able to rent out a little scanner, run through the store and bip bip bip, scan all the crap you want to buy, then hit the checkout stand where a big chute opens up in the ceiling and all your junk drops right into a waiting cart.

But no, psychotic goobers like myself have to play out a scaled-down version of Mad Max Road Warrior no-holds-barred shelf-looting with noisy chrome carts, droning Xmas music, skittering unsupervised children, leaky ground beef packages, and banged-up shins. I do not play well. I try to execute a plan where I park my cart every third aisle, next to something that people aren't likely to be picking at every 15 seconds while I make unencumbered attack runs on the stuff I need. So I park my cart next to the bottled water, because surely in the next 45 seconds, nobody is going to need bottled water right? Wrong. I'm not 2/3 of the way down the aisle when Helga and Slagathor waddle up and start peering around my cart for water. Gah! I lurched back and yanked the cart out of their way and scratched that whole plan and went back to my old standby of hitting the least populated aisles and backtracking to pick up the ones I missed and basically tracing an overlapping lemniscate pattern through the whole store.

One of the people I work with said they saw me at Safeway yesterday, but didn't think I saw them. And I said, "no I'm sure I didn't. I was very focused. Sorry I missed you." To which she said "Yeah, I told my husband it looked like you were on a mission." Right.

In fact, somebody in our congregation told me recently that he saw me in the checkout line last week and related how he tried to get my attention but I didn't even bother to say "hi". And then I recalled the incident where, yes I was in line, and yes, some weirdo got in line behind me, and said something like "You look like you could use carryout service" to which I think I played back my pre-recorded "no no no--don't need carryout" and then fled before he could try to enlist me into Amway or something. So I apologized to him, telling him how I hate shopping, and put on my blinders and blah blah blah.

I've decided not to tell people I have social anxiety anymore, because it just confuses them. It's like I'm telling them I've been abducted by aliens X number of times over the past ten years. Go ahead, imagine seriously telling somebody you're an alien abductee. Now imagine their expression. That's what I'm talking about.

Christmastime and Kindergarten has been an interesting challenge. Giselle's teacher is very accommodating of our beliefs and I know that's a big part of why things have gone so well. The kids were going through a little story about decorating the Christmas Tree so they could talk about colors and textures and things and color their little books. Mrs. Fix gave us an advance copy so we could decide what to do. So I did up a little non-Christmas version about making a Snowgirl that follows the same story pattern. Giselle has been using that while the class was doing their book. Mrs. Fix said she wanted to keep a copy of the book around for other kids that don't celebrate Christmas. Hey I made a contribution :D. Last night, we put together the little snow girl out of styrofoam balls, buttons, felt, and other things from Michael's (oy, there's another shopping tale of anguish and suffering...) and we talked about the textures and colors to try and accomplish the same things as the other kids. So she brought that in to school today and apparently gets to tell her class about it.

I'm still waiting on word from the City as to whether they've approved the garage plans. Man I hope they don't stick me with a huge fee...

1. No, I wouldn't have the slightest idea.

Honeycomb Commentaries

It's been 3 months since the last incident, and as by some wretched cosmic timetable, the kids have been ralphing again. Accursed Kindergarten booger-bears.

Giselle was hurking Wednesday night. And then about 1 am Sunday morning, Harrison started blowing chunks. Oy what a volcano. This time was different though...because by 4 am, I realized I hadn't escaped the plague either. As you may know, I am very neurotic about barfing. My longest barfless stint was 12 years long (cut short by chemo, which shouldn't count, if you ask me). My new dry streak is 3 years, and I wasn't going to go down without a fight. So I started downing Maalox and Tylenol and begging Amanda to deal with Harrison's lovely odors over the course of the next day so I could retain maximum control over my upper GI.

Well Giselle eventually wakes up, and she's in deathly need of some cereal, so I staggered into the kitchen and poured a bowl for her. And just as I'm putting things away, Harrison waddles in and just starts yakking everywhere. Oh man...the-flame-and-the-void...the-flame-and-the-void...I was summoning all my powers to maintain control, and in the meantime, Giselle was giving a running commentary as she munched on her cereal:

G: "Ewwww Harrison is BARFING!"
D: "I know Giselle, hush please," as I grab Harrison to keep him from doing the back-up-&-barf into the living room routine.
G: "Ewwww Dad, he's doing it AGAIN!"
D: "I know Giselle. mmmphhhh. Please stop talking about it because it's going to make me barf too..." as I try to make Harrison stand still while I hopscotch to grab paper towels::
G: "But Dad, you're the biggest one of us all. If YOU barfed, it would go EVERYWHERE!"
D: "Noooooooo"
G: "Because there would be SO MUCH...."
D: ::gurgle::

They had me on the ropes, but mercy shone upon me as Amanda rounded the corner to relieve me from further exposure.

Thank you Amanda.

A toast: To four years.

Kentucky Fried Pratfalls

Well I went to KFC for lunch with Amanda & the kids today. And of course, the first thing that happens is Harrison takes a header into the edge of the table. Once the crying dwindled down and the red in his face drained away, we could see the nice red stripe running across his cheek and up his eyebrow. Oy. The poor little guy is so top heavy. Sometimes Giselle comes running into the living room, crying to Amanda about how Harrison bonked her nose "with his great big head." I know I shouldn't laugh...

Well after the table "incident", he came over and sat with me, and one thing led to another, and soon he was spoon feeding me my mashed potatoes...each bite bigger than the one before until scalding hot gravy came close to spooging out my nose as he laughed himself silly. He is very enthusiastic :)

Maverick

I've started playing cinchy little card games with Giselle lately, because goodness knows I'm a real loser when it comes to playing Barbies. This weekend, we played War, Go Fish, and Concentration. And I was thinking, okay, I gotta remember to go easy so she doesn't get discouraged, and then I'd have to come up with excuses why I don't want to help Ariel and Skipper swap outfits (which doesn't really work because Ariel has actually got some calf muscles and Skipper's pants won't pull up all the way)...um, so anyway, there's really not much you can do about who wins War unless you cheat, which I didn't, and as chance would have it, she won, so I thought, awww, that's nice. Go Fish isn't much better than War when it comes to skill level, but I didn't have to help her out at all, and she won that too. Well, I was feeling pretty good for her, so we moved on to Concentration, which is all about memory skills. I thought, okay now I'm going to need to give her a chance here. Except that I didn't need to play stupid and give her an edge. I was actually putting some effort into it, and ended up getting my butt kicked! I mean it was pretty cute watching her eyes light up each time I picked up my second card and she recognized it and then moved in for the kill...but she's not supposed to start wailing on me until she gets at least a few years older, right? Dang.

So I tortured her this morning as we drove her to school and I started messing with a little chant from Monster's Inc. You know, the one that goes:

Put that thing back where it came from
Or so help me!

Saying stuff like

Take Giselle back to the Circus
Where she came from!

Which is more fun than it sounds because it really gets under her skin when I start ruining lines from her favorite shows. "No Dad it doesn't go like that! Mom! Dad is saying it wrong!"

heheheh