Frenzied Daddy

Are yummy delicious blueberries still considered healthful when baked with …brown sugar, oats and butter and served with vanilla ice cream?

My sister-in-law, who writes poetry here, was in a horrible accident in Idaho, and I’m currently in Idaho Falls near the ICU.

She wasn’t wearing her seatbelt, and her mother believes that’s what saved her life; the truck was totally crushed; it rolled at least 3 times and the driver side area is a mess. It may have landed on her after she was thrown from the truck.

She has multiple injuries, “many” broken bones, possible brain damage, possible circulation damage (there are some problems with an artery in her brain, an artery to her arm and an artery to one leg). She is in a coma, and she shows minor signs of returning consciousness but, ultimately, is not out of danger.

I’m sort of on the sidelines, watching Ms B and her family organize what to do. MontanaLady won’t be out of the hospital for a long time. We may need to help clean out her apartment and place her belongings into storage. Her dog needs to be adopted. Her creditors need to be paid. Her work - I hope she has lots of sick time available. What else would someone have to do if your life was suddenly disrupted for an unknown length of time?

MontanaLady’s mother’s opinion aside, I’m still very much a seatbelt proponent. I believe she should have been wearing her belt. Just like someone can smoke for 90 years and not get lung cancer, one person who survives a tremendous wreck and a coma that will be approaching a week very soon does not invalidate the safety that a seatbelt provides.

Locust Eyes

Originally uploaded by PeterEdin

Marianne would be so proud of how karma’s such a bitch.

I wasn’t one, as a kid, to have many friends. When I was with mom, “we kids” were the children of the lesbians, thrown together. When I was with Dad, I never brought school “friends” over and I rarely went to their houses. So something I never got used to was eating food at my friends’ houses, or what they expected when they came to my house.

I tried to bring in the groceries today. I carried five bags of groceries (alone), eighty or so dollars worth of food, past two ten year olds and a thirteen year old. By the time I had unpacked the groceries, the kids had eaten three nectarines, two apples, a box of otter pops (liquid form!), two bottles of water and a goat.

I’m kidding about the goat.

Then Miss B comes into the kitchen, just as I’m starting dinner, and asks what there is to snack on. I offer her a couple of baby carrots out of the bag, and she takes the bag. (Like George Jetson’s wife and his wallet). And tells me that they need chocolate (often there are Hershey Kisses in the freezer). And wants to know what’s for dinner.

The neighbor kids frequently come over to play, and sometimes they actually tell me they want a snack. We’re 50 feet from their own damn kitchen, and they want to eat my cookies.

Some of this is normal; I expect Miss B to eat a lot. But I don’t know where to draw the line with regards to the other people’s kids; how much am I “expected” to feed them? What are your thoughts?

ps. Marianne always gave me grief about karma and how your behaviour as a kid came back as an adult, and how much food I ate.

like buying a little fixer-upper.

Something like this might be fun to play with; we could learn how to install a new roof, plumbing, electricity; and the view would be terrific. Of course we’d live a lot closer to Ms B’s parents; they are good inspirations for doing this sort of work ourselves.

But then I look around here and think of all I could learn here; new floors, plumbing, electricity; and I’d have the advantage of already owning this house.

I spent part of this morning looking for an image of the Family Circus’s “not me” schmoo. Because he and his brethren (”I dunno” and “Not My Fault”) have moved in. I would love to evict them; which means I need to teach my kids to take responsibility for their actions and to help find solutions rather than placing blame.

Not that I don’t do that now, but somewhere I’ve gone wrong with it.

But in searching for that image, I stumbled upon the Nietzche Family Circus, a parody of that damnably tepid comic. This quote made me pause; “Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.” I can totally see where Nietzche is coming from with that, and in some of my more angsty days, I could actually think that.

Hope provides a barrier, a resistance to acceptance. If you hope for an outcome, you’re not accepting some other outcome. I wonder what our Bhuddist friends make of this. “Life is suffering” is not that too far removed from “hope is the worst of all evils” — or is it? Both seem to lead one to an acceptance of “the bad situations we find ourselves in,” from which we can work our way out of them.

One of my minor quirks is that it really offends me when something in the bathroom goes “missing;” usually it’s the waterglass. I shout from the middle room (the bathroom is in the middle of our house) “Where the hell is the water glass!” I’m sure I over react about it.

I’m finally getting it acknowledged and under control, I just mutter and stalk over to the kitchen and get a new cup. After I check in the bathtub; after having kids for ten years, I’ve sadly come to the realization that the water cup gets moved to the bathtub.

However, I’m not sure why the dog leash winds up there, wrapped around a doorknob.

Not a big fan of the LiveJournal scene. There’s a span of reason why not, but a friend asked me to sign up and log in so that I could read their friends-only posts. So if you’re a LJ user, feel free to add Rustifer as a friend, and I’ll make sure to comment on your blogs as my LJ user.

Every year at about this time I annoy my wife and children with the same answer to that pesky question “What do you want for Father’s Day.” All I really want is the love and respect of my family. This is such an annoying answer that a Fred Meyers commercial makes fun of it.

I took an idea from the Simple Dollar’s site and posted a few inexpensive ideas that would generally work for me or should provide some seeds and mulch for ideas for any other dad ( or mom for Mother’s Day). I posted it over at the Portland Parents site.

We took the girls to the Starlight Parade this past weekend. Learned that “Louie Louie” is Portland’s Official Song. So we tried to get the One More Time Around marching band to play it by holding up two fingers. Which is how their leader is supposed to call for the next song. No, they didn’t play it.

We also learned (again) that Miss K is not the sort of child who will wait patiently for the parade to start. She wanted to go find it. It’s a good thing there were two of us; she could have vanished without a splash into that sea of people. I think chasing after her wore me out more than the hour long wait in the parking garage after the parade.

Yeah, when I took this shot, Miss B’s hand was up in the air. It’s totally flashed out and white on the original, with blurry edges. So I went a little art-deco with it.