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.