More Woes at The U

In which your humble narrator wonders what embarrassment to expect next.

It continues to be a lousy week at the University of Minnesota. I mean on top of previous issues.

Big budget cuts are coming, preceded by the corporatist weasel words we've all come to expect.

We're number four! We're number four! We're the fourth most corrupt athletic program in the country!

Oh, and a math professor from a lesser local University punched Goldy in the head.

At least next week is spring break. So we've probably got a week's reprieve from embarrassing scandal. I'm going to spend my time grading some papers in a modest, professional manner without embezzling, assaulting or humiliating anyone. You're welcome, University.

A Teensy Misunderstanding

In which your humble narrator freaks out Wife-a-roo.

Thursday night, while preparing dinner after a long day of finding a leak in the new roof and discovering that it turns out we're going to need to replace our 33-year-old furnace or face the consequences of freezing to death, I was hunting for the can opener. Actually we have two can openers, the good one and the crappy one. To make it more interesting, they look exactly the same. One of them (Ol' Reliable) is a little heavier and actually opens cans. The other one (Seamus McPieceofcrap) lurches around the edge of the can like a drunken Irishman frequently popping off (see drunken Irishmen) and then bursting into a tuneless version of 'Danny Boy."

I couldn't find Ol' Reliable and was using Seamus to open up a can of crushed tomatoes and he did his usual terrible job, leaving two connections between lid and sides preventing me from accessing the delicious tomatoes contained within the can. Using the special 'moron center' of my brain, I resolved to just push down on one side to free the lid. And so I did, resulting in me neatly producing a little deli slice off the side of my left index finger. Being an incompetent clotter (I'm not a hemophiliac or anything, it just takes a long time) I clamped my thumb over the cut and raised my hand over my head.

"Shit," said I, "I cut myself." Wife-a-roo was at the kitchen sink. She whirled around and did her frightened muppet noise and started sputtering, "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," which seemed a bit melodramatic.

It was then that I realized my left hand was covered in a tiny, tiny amount of blood and a copious amount of crushed tomatoes.

Double Indumbnity

In which your humble narrator reminds you that the children are our future and as such we are hopelessly screwed.

I spent a few minutes this morning trying to track down a quote I'm pretty sure I read in a Joe Queenan book. I can't remember if it was Mr. Queenan or if he was quoting someone else. Without further nattering it was something along these lines:

If children are so smart, why isn't one of them in charge of the Federal Reserve?

While a spectacularly bright boy over all, Child #1 does manage some truly epic failures of smartness in his brain thing. On Tuesday night, Child #1 was looking a little queasy at dinner and not eating much. His mother got him some frozen yogurt (bad idea) and he ate a little. After dinner he decided he was going to help give Child #2 a bath and ran from the kitchen into the bathroom. Upon entering the bathroom, he began to vomit (while running toward his mother), slipped on his own puke, slid across the floor on his ass, leaving a trail of pink yogurty barf. Much wailing and distress ensued.


The next day he got pink eye, which he's handled with all the stoicism you would expect from a two-year-old, by trying to gouge his eyes out, intermittently wailing, and smearing yellow-green eye pus over all my modestly appointed home.

The baby pooped through two sets of clothes yesterday, and her nose is still running, leaving her with a ring of gray (frequently linty) boogers around her nostrils.

I'm leaving the little darlings in the care of our baby sitter today while I go to teach some undergraduates about curriculum analysis. Undergrads may be nearly as gross as children, but at least none of them will touch me.

For this, I am truly grateful.

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.

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.

The High Tide of Stupid

In which your humble narrator rambles incoherently about babies and fantasy phone calls and sink drains and then compares himself to a popular television program from late in the previous century.


Child #2 was sleeping through the night three weeks ago. I'm pretty sure she was. I vaguely remember being able to engage in logical processing. For a week now she's been completely weird at night. She wakes up every two hours. She thinks it's time to get up for the day at 4:00 a.m. She cries in her sleep without waking up.

All of these charming idiosyncrasies of slumber have led to me not having more than three hours of uninterrupted sleep in about a week. And the stupid is taking over my brain. I've become clumsy. I cut my finger on a vegetable peeler. I keep spending the day worrying about returning phone calls that I received in my dreams. Also, I keep starting weird projects with a feverish urgency. Today, I unstopped the slow-draining upstairs bathroom sink with a bent bobby pin, a coat hanger and a baby bath tub. Child #1 watched from outside the door, looking at me like I was completely nuts. Maybe. Or maybe I'm MacGyver. Or maybe I need a nap.

Sofa Bites Man

In which your humble narrator gets a cold, fords a river of snot and is victimized by an overstuffed sofa.

Everyone has a cold. Wife brought home some hideous virus from her workplace where (she says) many people do not wash their hands after using the restroom. And this is a department in the medical school at a giant mid-western university. (I'll give you a hint: Its first initial is "U" and its last name is "of Minnesota.") Anyway, the department where Wife works is also a clinic so there are all sorts of members of "the public" who probably sneak down to Wife's office and lick her doorknob on their way to the bathroom.

Both children briefly turned their attentions from poop-making to snot making. We're talking rivers here. In case you do not have experience with small children, I will tell you something else. Small children hate having their noses wiped. Child #1 has become so good at avoiding the Kleenex that I have resorted to lying in wait behind pieces of furniture until he walks by at which point I leap out, tackle him and then wipe his nose. This is mostly so I don't have to watch him lick the snot from his upper lip, a charming little habit that makes me want to throw up. Children are revolting.

To add insult to an already crappy weekend I cut my finger on our living room sofa. What the hell? I was doing a real vacuuming job in the living room, moving furniture and the whole shebang when I noticed that the back of the leather sofa by the window was pretty filthy since our main cat and our emergency back-up cat (also known as Retardo Montalban) sleep up there and drool and shed. So I got a dust rag to wipe off the cat detritus and managed to catch the very edge of a strip of velcro that holds the cushion to the back of the sofa in between my fingertip and the nail of my right middle finger, slicing deeply under the nail. It hurts out of all proportion to the severity of the injury. Plus there's not a big scabby wound or anything to elicit the sympathy that I so richly deserve.

Bastard sofa. From now on only our least-liked, most-flatulent guests will be sitting on you, friend.