100th Post Spectacular

In which your humble narrator celebrates one hundred instances of bloggy goodness with a list of lessons learned.

Here is a list of lessons recently learned that don't promise much applicability in the future.

• Terry cloth seems to be an acceptable fabric for clothing worn (in public!) by women under the age of 22.
• Presbyterians all look the same.
• Summer gives me a headache.
• People fear couscous. 
• Babies love banjos.
• There's not a noticeable difference between reading the Pioneer Press and then recycling it, and just recycling it immediately.
• The French brew beer. (Sacre brew!)
• Ohio is like, the place to be this summer, at least judging by the airfares.
• Twitter is still stupid.

The White Menace is Coming! Surely We Shall Perish Anon!

In which your humble narrator procures medication for his daughter gets his media criticism on and discusses the cultural differences between the frigid tundra of Minnesota where he lives and the smoggy, semi-southern hills of Cincinnati from whence he came. 

Child #2 has an ear infection. We were supposed to get round 2 flu shots for both children yesterday but the on-again-off-again fever of Child #2 spiked once more yesterday morning so we took her in to see the doctor. The regular baby-doctor is off on Mondays so we saw a tall, laconic family practice doctor of Scandinavian descent, named "Olav Olson" or "Hjalmar Carlson" or "Lindstrom P. Nordic" or "Sven McSwedish" or something. He seemed delighted that we spoke in low, measured tones and communicated primarily by subtle eye-brow movements. Prescription for antibiotics in hand, we repaired, as a family, to the fancy-people's grocery to get some drugs at the pharmacy and donuts at the bakery.

Child #2 seems in better spirits already, just in time for the much ballyhooed snowstorm of the season which is supposed to begin later today. After attending to my personal grooming this morning, I flipped on the teevee to watch the weather while I got dressed. The local news boys and girls were nearly wetting themselves with anticipation of the (potential) 5-7 inches of white snow which will (maybe) fall on the metropolitan area (or somewhere else) over the next 36 hours. The sparkle of weather-related insanity gleaming in their glassy teevee eyes, they prattled on and on about the coming snowstorm as if it was the long-awaited messiah of frozen precipitation set to come to earth.

I don't remember this kind of frenetic weather mania from my childhood in Cincinnati. We had a couple of good snows, the occasional tornado and a lot of thunderstorms, but not the single-minded obsession with the weather that occupies a large portion of the real estate in the heart of any true Minnesotan. For example, the pre-first-snow paroxysm is not unique. There is also the annual "first thunderstorm rumpus," and the "first 80 degree day madness." The local newsies are an excitable bunch.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I like winter. I don't even mind the shoveling since it's an activity that, even Wife-a-roo will admit, cannot be pursued with small, stroppy children in tow. The only things I don't like are scraping snow off the roof, and the media frenzy that precedes each potential life-threatening snow fall. For God's sake, people. It's Minnesota. It's not like winter should come as a surprise.

A Head-on Collision on Memory Lane

 In which your humble narrator recounts one of the horrors of high school gym class.

Last night, I went over to a friend's house to deliver some cookies of thanks and some cookies of remorse. This particular friend, (Let's call him Chris, because that's his name) fixed my sister's computer many months ago in return for some cookies. Then she didn't make good on her cookie promise for a long time, so yesterday she came over and entertained the children while I made some snickerdoodles and chocolate chip cookies to repay her confectionery debt (after levying a heavy baker's tax on the finished products).Sister labeled them "cookies of thanks" for the original computer fix and "cookies of remorse" for taking seven months to get them to Chris.

So after delivering the cookies and seeing Chris' (and the affianced bride of Chris') new home we ended up talking about traumatic brain injuries which, of course, led to a discussion of high school gym class. At the Jesuitical boys' high school that I attended we had two required semesters of pain and humiliation gym. In my first year I got a concussion when someone stepped on my head while playing flag football. In my second year I had my nose broken by a volleyball. I should stress that the offending volleyball was not the one from the game in which I was playing. It was some other game's volleyball. I was engaging in my usual, half-assed participatory way in the game. I wasn't awful at volleyball like I was awful at running for a long time or swimming. But there's this sudden whoop from the other side of the gym and I stupidly looked toward the noise only to have a wildly served volleyball slam right into my nose. Here is a helpful graphic representation:

So I went to the nurse and she said of my blood streaked face and shirt, "Wow, that's gross," and gave me an ice pack. What was it with school nurses and ice packs? They're not actually a panacea for every illness and injury known to human kind. I skipped eighth period and laid around the nurse's office until it was time to go home. So I rode home all bloody on the bus and walked from my stop to my house and went in to clean up. This was the first time I'd seen myself in the mirror. And, boy, that was not right. El Schnoz now had a sort of twisty, ski-jump to the right thing going on. This was going to need to be set straight since I could see where the cartilage and bone were misaligned at the bridge.  No one was going to be home for several hours. Since these were the days before cell phones, calling the parents was a giant pain in the butt.

So I grabbed the tip of my nose and stared at my watery eyes in the mirror and pulled down... hard. The feeling of jagged cartilage sliding back into place over bone is something I cannot adequately describe. I don't think I've ever screamed aside from that afternoon.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I don't look like Owen Wilson.