Frenzied Daddy

Miss B, playing Kingdom Hearts with Miss K watching on.

Miss K: “What’s his name?”
Miss B: “Bambi”
Miss K: “Why?”
Me: “Because his mother wanted him to have gender confusion issues.”
Miss K: “Why?”
Ms B: *glares at me daring me to come up with something the three year old will understand*

In my rolodex, well, ok, in a text file on my computer, is the address for an accountant. And now a financial advisor. I’m starting an IRA. Kind of worried about “someday” not wanting to work any more and just coast. Maybe coast at the coast. And now, I’m considering adding a lawyer to that as well. We (Ms B and I) need to set up a will. Of course we’ve made it clear to everyone who asks what we want to happen with the kids. They’re our best toys, and we want to share them.

When I went to college it was $500 for a semester. And now it’s two grand. For residents in a state college, per semester. So I’m also thinking about the girls and their college. And after reading Smart Couples Finish Rich, I’ve given a lot of thought to their futures as well.

If I could get $10000 into IRAs for each of the girls before they’re eighteen, and they could leave that there until they retired, they’d have a million dollars in the bank. Hooray for the miracle of compound interest! If I could do that and also get my own crap together, I’d be a lot happier. Because of the horrible choices I’ve made with credit over the last (sigh) twenty years, it’d be a real struggle to get all that together.

Most of the time I’ve been talking about my choices and my “coasting.” Ms B has been putting her money into her 401K as well as doing some stock options with her work and she’s in a lot better situation. We’re partners but I want to meet her there.

Daddy!! HELP!! Daddy!!

Miss K was bathing; I was reading in the hallway, keeping an eye on her and one on my book. She had been sloshing back and forth in half a tubful of water and bubble bath, and her shampoo for nigh thirty minutes, and was rapidly approaching “done.”

Besides, Miss B wanted, needed a bath as well. We had to get this one out. But please, a few more pages, please. I’d lift my eyes from this engrossing book, make sure she wasn’t face down in the water and just flailing for the fun of it, and go back to reading.

That’s when her cries split the air — “Daddy! Help! Daddy!”

I threw the book down and stormed closer into the bathroom; no, there was no water on the floor, she was breathing… what could the matter—

“Daddy, my toes are wrong. I want my own toes back!”
She was disraught. She couldn’t believe that those horribly wrinkly toes were her own.

Oh.

I guess it was time to get out of the tub.

I didn’t talk about our weekend vacation at the end of July. We went to Pacific City, over on the beach, with the Momz. Miss K hated the ocean. It was wet and damp; so we went to the Newport Aquarium. And the Tillamook Cheese Factory.

We took two cars, me with the dogs in mine and Ms B with the girls in her car. The trip home was uneventful.

However, I went out the next day and tried to start my car. It wouldn’t go- it’d turn over but not “fire up.” It sat in our driveway from the last weekend of July until this past friday (Yeah, over a month ). Ms B’s parents got their AAA folks to move it to a mechanic.

He says it’s the fuel pump.

This is an excellent example of why we need a bigger reserve fund; the $400 to replace the fuel pump is about twice what I could uncomfortably swing out of our budget. Which is why it sat so long, but now that Miss B is back in school, it’s important again.

Sigh.

Jaden’s Steamy Kitchen’s post on how to improve the quality of your meat with a handful, no, two handfuls, of salt has hunger inducing photos of delicious looking steak.

The secret is salt. And like Alton Brown, she recommends Kosher (or sea) salt. Because when you put this much salt onto a piece of meat, you don’t want to taste the iodine. Basically, take your hunk of cow (or buffalo, or pig, or chicken) flesh, and cover it in enough un-iodized salt that you cannot see the color of the meat. Turn it over, and do it again. Let the salt sit on the meat for one hour for each inch that the meat is thick. One and a half inches thick? Let the meat rest for ninety minutes.

Rinse the meat extraordinarily well and pat very dry. Then cook.

Jaden also includes some diagrams of what she believes is happening; basically, the salt sucks the water out of the meat, creating “wet salt” on the surface of the meat. Then, because some of the salt has dissolved into the water that was sucked out of the meat, and there is no salt in the meat, osmosis takes the salt back into the meat. Her explanation of how the salt turns the proteins in the meat from “tight-assed stuck up” to “totally relaxed, fun loving” is priceless.

She even encourages you to mix some spices in with the salt, so they get pulled back into the meat like Christina Aguilera’s entourage.

It sounds absolutely nummy, but because of weight watchers, I may have to avoid her tip of topping freshly cooked beef with garlic butter.

I was reading about Ian McKellen playing King Lear (one of my favorites of Shakespeare’s plays), and found myself flabbergasted. No, it wasn’t about him ( Sir McKellen ) dropping his trousers during the storm in Act 4. No, it wasn’t about the fan letter he got from the seven year old. No, it wasn’t reading that he only was offered Gandalf after Sean Connery, Peter O’Toole and Anthony Hopkins turned it down. No, it wasn’t that he “enjoys being a star” because he’s very shy and hates going into rooms with a bunch of strangers, so his stardom is a blessing because everyone knows who he is ( thus there are no more rooms with many strangers ).

What surprised me was that he’s gay. It’s funny; my moms are gay, I’ve got gay friends, I’ve been around gays and lesbians for as long as I remember — they’re part of my landscape like rivers, plants and republicans. So it’s kind of surprising to me to be … so surprised … about Sir Ian.

Not only is he gay, but he also was one of the founding members of Stonewall, named after the Stonewall Riots. And he regrets the years he spent lying to his parents and friends about himself. Reading some of the other interviews with him, he said that staying in the closet is itself a homophobic act and demonstrates self-hatred (I’m paraphrasing). But he likes himself, and so he’s out.

This year’s trip to the Oregon State Fair was probably our best ever. As Miss B matures, she can celebrate the creations that show up in the Jackson Long building as well as the photography display. We heard a few less “can we go now, this is boring” this year. Miss K, on the other hand, was all about the rides; she wanted to go back to the rides over and over.

Until we saw the Emperor’s New Clothes put on by the Enchanted Forest folks. Even Miss K thought it was hilarious; I don’t know how much she was reacting to the story and how much she was laughing at the slapstick, but she went from writhing and screaming that she wanted to go on more rides and back to the bounce house to squealing with laughter with her hands held over her mouth in a matter of moments.

The weather was terrific and I worked hard to put my normal daily stressors on hold. I spent extra money on renting a stroller (from the girl scouts, for $2/hour) and buying a disposable camera. The only thing that could have been better was if I had thought to charge the damn camera battery.