Of Water Heaters and Swollen Gums

In which your humble narrator smacks his head literally and figuratively.

We got a larger than expected tax refund this year due to the birth of Child #2 and some withholding irregularities on the part of Wife-a-roo's employer. The general plan was 1/3 to savings, 1/3 to home improvement and 1/3 to debt reduction. The water heater was high on the list. In fact I was going to call our plumber on tomorrow to schedule a replacement. But that would have been too easy. The bottom fell out of the old water heater Friday morning, flooding the basement with hot water, a half of an hour after Wife-a-roo left for work. Sister-of-Me came over to watch the children while I mopped up and got ready for the plumber to come in the afternoon. (Mercifully they squeezed us in on the same day.)

I managed to crack my head pretty hard under the stairs while cleaning up the soaked boxes that I had foolishly left in the path of the river from water heater to the floor drain. We've now spent half of the tax refund on a new water heater, a new kitchen drain, and super clean sewer lines. Every time I go into the basement the furnace creaks and wheezes as if to say, "I'm the last mechanical system standing, buddy. I'm going to wait for the inevitable cold snap in March and then die! Haw-haw!"

Also the children have given me another cold. And I think Child #2 is teething (a process that she likes to ensure takes at least 2 weeks). And my permanent retainer on my lower teeth broke, and the orthodontist doesn't have any available appointments for a month.

On the plus side, it's getting brighter, the garage door lock is unfrozen and my children are beautiful, even if they do spend a lot of time trying to improvise new ways to make me pay for unknown sins in a previous life.*

Maybe I'll spend the rest of the day reading the book of Job and try to be grateful that I'm not covered in boils surrounded by my dead livestock.

*I don't really believe in reincarnation. If I did I would be forced to conclude that in order to merit the constant annoyances of my life that I was was some sort of nun-beating Jerry Lewis type person in my last incarnation.

Nickel and Dimed

In which your humble narrator spews invective in the direction of his telecommunications company.

I hate you, Qwest. I hate you so much. You are a very bad telecommunications company. Your left hand does not know what your right hand is doing. I have suffered your incompetence for years, but your avaricious "convenience" fee has gone too far.

I have paperless statements with Qwest for DSL and phone service. Once a month I log on, and pay my bill. Until this month. A new check box appeared at the bottom of the payment screen requiring me to authorize a $1.00 "convenience" fee to process my payment.

When companies start charging you for the privilege of paying for the services you purchase from them, I think we can agree that we're officially living in Bizarro World.

I, of course, wrote an angry letter. I always write letters. I wrote:

The "convenience" fee you've imposed on online payments is the last straw. I will not sign up for auto pay because then I won't be able to review my bill before paying. I sent a check for payment today. Please enjoy processing it manually.

I wish to un-enroll from online billing. We'll go back to expensive paper statements since you've decided to soak your customers for online transactions. I'm so sick of companies trying to nickel and dime me. I'll be looking seriously for a new telecom service in the next month.

I later received a form response from Qwest thanking me for contacting them and informing me that:

The fee is new and was a difficult decision for Qwest.

Oh, golly. Well I feel better knowing that you agonized over it. They continue:

Convenience fees are a common business practice that Qwest is adopting in order to operate more efficiently. Qwest approaches business from two directions: not only providing customers with world-class products and services, but also by operating in the most efficient possible way.

Allow me to translate. "Everyone else is doing it. Qwest approaches being a douche bag from two directions; not only providing outsourced, useless customer service and crappy products but also by nickel and diming your sorry butt for whatever we can get away with. Get bent, Qwest."

I wonder if Tamera McCurry of Qwest Customer Care had to go to school to learn how to do corporate double speak of if it's some sort of natural ability.

Insufficiently Absorbent

In which your humble narrator recounts some lunacy from his childhood.

So my parents, being good hippies harbored an illegal alien when I was a kid. Maria was a Salvadoran migrant worker. We lived in northern Indiana at the time and she had come up with a crew to pick produce. But she was pregnant and they wouldn't take her back to the winter camp in Florida. So Maria and her two-year-old son Jose moved in with us. Soon there after she had another little boy, Victor (pronounced Beek-tor).

One time we ran out of Pampers and she diapered the baby with a tortilla. True story.

It's Tuesday, so I hate stuff

In which your humble narrator lists five things that get his Capra aegagrus hircus.

1. The five ancient Buick drivers in front of me in line at the car wash WHO ALL HAVE CLEAN CARS.
2. Encountering unexpectedly damp objects. (Child #2, I am looking in your direction.)
3. Diaper rash.
4. Students that email you the night before an assignment is due and then expect you to answer their questions within an hour or so. Sorry, kids, I don't actually spend the 24 hours before your deadline hunched over the Gmail waiting to answer questions you could have asked last week.
5. NBC Winter Olympics Commentators. Let's put them all on a bobsled, set it on fire, and push it off a mountain.

Funny Kid

In which your humble narrator relates some of the nascent humor of Child #1.

I think my son told his first joke today. It wasn't a retold joke, either. It was original material. Maybe he has a pencil and paper in his crib and works on his act at night.

This evening he starts telling his mother, "It goes in a diaper! It goes in a diaper! to which Wife-a-roo, a born straight-man person asks, "What goes in a diaper?" At this point, Child #1 grins and says, "Ummm, maybe... a butt?" followed by uproarious giggling.

The joke was on top of another incident during an attempt to get him to be interested in the potty. I present to you a short play in one act:

Scene: The bathroom. Child #1 is preparing for his evening ablutions. He is sans pants. His mother, Wife-a-roo  is drawing his bath.

Wife-a-roo: Child #1, would you like to use the potty?
Child #1: I will use it.
Wife-a-roo: How about we take your diaper off and you sit on the potty?
Child #1: Yes. (Wife-a-roo removes diaper and Child #1 plants his butt on the little potty.
Wife-a-roo: Now you can pee in the potty. (Child #1 starts to get up) No wait, stay there for a minute... (Child #1 furrows his brow)... now think about peeing.
Child #1: (in what is best described as a sarcastic sing-song voice) Think about NOT peeing. (Child #1 leaps up and makes for the tub.)

Faith-based Refrigeration

In which a dark shade from your humble narrator's past emerges on Facebook and causes reflection.

When I was a callow and sallow youth I attended a preparatory high school in southwest Ohio run by the Jesuits. Like about a quarter of my fellow students, I was not a Catholic. There were a fair number of Protestants, and a goodly smattering of Jews, Buddhists and Hindus at this school. We still had to attend the long, lugubrious all-school Masses, but there wasn't any formal Inquisition-like establishment aimed at converting us. Did I mention that this was a boys' school yet? It was. I received a decent education and despite having no nostalgia for my alma mater whatsoever, I don't harbor any particular hard feelings... well, except for the broken nose thing, and the two concussions.

We only had one nun at this school. She was a native Kentuckian of thick, German stock, a member of an order I have never heard of aside from her membership, and a habitual teller of tall tales. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the current students of my high school have a Facebook page devoted to quotations from my former  history teacher, the most erratic, Germanic instructor I have ever had, bar-nun.* Let's call Her "Sister Helga." While I was in school we often referred to her as "Attila."

What was surprising to me was the consistency of her craziness, even after 14 years. One of the quotes was, "Indians have to pay $7 a gallon for gas, just because they're Indians." This teacher was way into the Indians. We spent the first quarter of junior year American History talking about the Indians, wherein we learned that the "Iroquois" were composed of five tribes, hence the name, since "quois" means "five" in French.** When we were in school she used the same line, but she's obviously been adjusting for inflationary injustice since it was only $3 per gallon back then.

Sister Helga told us she was 80 years old.*** She told us that she was one of fourteen children.**** She told us that she went to Pine Ridge in South Dakota every summer to visit her sister (also a nun) and minister to the Indians.*****

There was one particularly memorable story about a time when she was teaching Bible School to the little Indian children on the Pine Ridge reservation. According to Sister Helga, one day, while telling the children about Jesus, a Schwan's Freezer truck pulled up outside the church. The Schwan's man told her that his refrigerator unit had broken down and could the children please eat some ice cream before it melted? According to the story it was 130 degrees in the shade that day, and there was only one air conditioner in the entire state of South Dakota and that was at the Governor's mansion and they never let the Indians near it. So Sister Helga and the children gorged themselves on ice cream. One little girl asked Sister Helga to drive her home after Bible School so that she could take an ice cream bar to her aged grandmother. "But little Indian girl," said Sister Helga, "you live 2 hours away and it's 130 degrees and I don't have air conditioning in my pickup truck."

"Please, Sister Helga! I know it will be fine!" said the little girl, and Sister's heart melted and she and the little girl got in the truck and drove for two hours on a dirt road in the 130 degree heat with the ice cream bar sitting on the dashboard of the truck. When they reached Granny's house the little girl kissed Sister Helga on the cheek, grabbed the ice cream bar and ran into the house.

The next day, Sister Helga asked the little girl about her Grandmother and the (presumptively) melted ice cream. The little girl told Sister Helga that her Grandmother (who hadn't had any ice cream since 1931) loved it. "But wasn't it melted?" asked Sister Helga. "No it was still frozen," replied the little girl.

Sister Helga realized that the little girl's faith had kept it cold.

And that's how refrigerators work, boys and girls.


*Oooh! A delicious pun!
**No it doesn't.
***Nope.
****Who knows? Who cares?
*****Hadn't they suffered enough?

Smurf Impression

In which your humble narrator recounts his latest health care adventure.

Child #2 abruptly turned blue on Thursday. She got fussy, started panting, demanded to be held and turned blue in the arms, legs and around her mouth. Needless to say this put a damper on my morning. After several frantic calls to our clinic and some discussions with spectacularly unhelpful people, I packed her up and took her to the emergency room at Children's Hospital in St. Paul. Sister-of-me came over to watch Child #1 and to call Wife-a-roo.

By the time we had been through triage, Child #2 had slowed her breathing and turned a nice, healthy looking pink color again. The doctor checked her out and ordered a couple of chest x-rays to rule out any lung problems. In case you don't know, babies do not like being tied down to tables for x-rays.

She seems to be fine now. The doctor suspects that she has some vascular weirdness which is unsurprising since I have something called Raynaud's Syndrome which makes my blood vessels act all crazy in response to temperature fluctuations or stress. So I'm used to seeing my hands turn blue, but it's a little different when it's your infant daughter. 

I think I hate children's hospitals even more than the regular variety. The attempt to decorate in kicky, fun ways to lighten up the place always manages to sink me into a greater and greater depression. It's like hiring a clown to be a funeral director.

Inconsequential Truth

In which your humble narrator shares a fundamental truism of relatively little import.

It is an incontrovertible truth that it is impossible to look dignified while drinking through a straw.

Think about it. This is why you never see the Queen of England sippin' on a Big Gulp.

The Great Escape

In which your humble narrator throws off the shackles of viral-based confinement and high-tails it out of the house.

Having been infected with yet another virus this week, Child #1 spent 5 entire days home-bound. Being confined to the house makes Child #1 transform from a pleasant, agreeable Dr. Jekyll-type character into the 2.4 year-old version of Edward Hyde. Despite the hellish nature of his first 6 months on earth (colic), which were then followed by "The Great Unpleasantness" (6-12 months) he's been a rather amiable little chap ever since then. That is, unless you make him stay home for more than 2 days in a row. Then the evil begins.

It starts innocuously enough with fussing, whining and an overuse of the word "no." It then progresses to throwing things, slamming doors and tantrums. This continues to build until he reaches the stage of "Purposive Badness" wherein he starts doing weird stuff that he knows is completely forbidden, i.e., getting into the refrigerator by himself, pulling books off of shelves, and making a mess with whatever (usually liquid) substance that his fatigued, ill and stupid parents have left within his reach. Once he starts drawing pentagrams on the floor and trying to summon the demon Lord of Hell he gets put into a time-out.

Today, all of us having mostly recovered, I asked Child #1 if he wanted to go to Costco. Despite being in the midst of one of his weird little projects, he looked up and seemed to have a spasm of joy while he shrieked "YES!"

So Child #1, Child #2 and I embarked to Costco to buy toilet paper, baby formula and cheese. There was a space next to the cart corral when we got there, so I plunked both children into the cart (Costco has double seated carts) and we went inside where we walked virtually every aisle, just looking at stuff. After purchasing our items we had a delightful snack at the snack bar and spent 5 minutes looking at the demo Nissan Altima parked by the exit.

On the freeway on the way home, a small voice from the back seat inquired, "Can we go to another store?"

So we did. And after a stop at the Co-op, our arms full of Hippie Groceries, we returned home again, safe for at least five more days from the infernal one.

Virus Revisited

In which your humble narrator purchases stock in Kimberly-Clark, makers of Kleenex.

The third hideous virus of the winter has laid the entire family low. In one of last night's fever-dreams, I dreamt  that I died from this particularly nasty cold and went to the underworld where Charon waited in his boat to carry me across a river of snot to the far shore. I had no coin under my tongue and he wouldn't take the only thing in my pocket as payment, a booger-encrusted pacifier. Bastard.

 All I'm saying is this, my (expletive) kids better shell out for a pretty (obscene gerund) nice nursing home when I'm old and feeble.