Frenzied Daddy

Miss B was suggesting that as she’s getting older, perhaps a name more appropriate for her personality would be in order. She actually recommended DQ, short for Drama Queen. What do you folks think? In turn, Miss K could be “TT” or “Tiny Tyrant.”

Miss B, or DQ, came home from the Scholastic Book Fair Wish List with these books she wanted. We haven’t bought them yet, but you can see sort of what she’s enjoying reading. Her reading really took off in fourth grade ( last year, for those of you who don’t know her.) The list is not in any particular order.

You can see her list here:DQ’s Wish List

I don’t like to write about my life in Anchorage. I always feel that y’all are gonna judge me based on it. But it was a long time ago, and things have changed a lot for me. However, somethings have stuck with me. First, most of my “formative” years were spent in a trailer park that was built on, what to all intents and purposes used to be a swamp. I hated it. Well, I didn’t really know different, so I can’t say I hated it, but looking back, it was pretty bleak.

The toilet pipes ran under the trailer, and would freeze once or twice a winter, and our toilets wouldn’t flush and the shower wouldn’t run. We had a small bathroom next to my room, and in the middle of it was the washing machine. It was almost always pulled out of where it was “supposed” to be, sitting in the middle of the bathroom connected to the bathroom sink. It was difficult to get past, my clothes didn’t get cleaned, and I rarely got a shower. So I was greasy and smelled funny.

I was embarrassed by our trailer. One time in Junior High school my Science Teacher (Sandra Dexter) took several of us to a science fair. I asked to be dropped off last, basically because I didn’t want any of the kids to see the trailer. I still can’t believe that my father brought up two boys in that single wide. “At least,” he would say, “it’s paid for. We couldn’t afford the rent on a house, and we have this.”

It’s funny; I never really thought of my dad, who would crawl under the trailer with a space heater or a hair dryer to unfreeze the pipes. It was “something he did,” and so I didn’t think too deeply about it. But it would be hard to get myself to crawl under there. Dark, closed in, smelly, muddy. I can’t even crawl under my car to change the oil.

Anyway.

I routinely violate the main tenet of working from home; I stumble out of bed, pull my pants on (usually the ones from yesterday), get a cup of water, and stumble downstairs to the computer, where I stare at the Internet until my brain works enough to start working. A shower isn’t really in that plan. If I don’t have anywhere to go, taking a shower doesn’t enter the picture. For that matter, I’m frequently in the same shirt I wore to bed. In this way, I’m repeating my childhood; I’m sitting in smelly wrinkled clothes and haven’t showered in days.

Some days I’ve turned around to see Miss B “ready to go to school.”

In the same shirt she wore yesterday.

I’m hoping it’s only a role-model thing and not a “totally uncaring” thing. At any rate, I have even more reason now to shower every morning, and change my shirt.

Remember Miss K’s stay in the hospital because of a cat scratch? She had a Cat Scratch Fever?

Well, he got her again last night. Not infected, thank the gods. But once again she was expressing how much she loves him and he got tired of it, warned her, and attacked her. He nearly got her eye. And by “nearly got her eye” I mean there’s an inch long gash on her bottom eyelid, with one end about a quarter inch from the cornea.

Ms B was all over it- she was hugging Miss K within seconds. She was worried that the cornea had been damaged, but there was no actual blood in the eye, so we decided it was just a flesh… I mean just a surface wound.

By the way, Blueniner had a great recipe suggestion on the previous pomegranate entry.

Once, just once, my father bought a pomegranate. I remember him looking at it in the store, and weighing it in his hand, and looking at me and saying “everyone needs to see a pomegranate at least once.” We took it to the house of some friends ( it was pinochle night ) and I remember him cutting it open and out poured handfuls of the red gems inside. I remember thinking that it was tasty, but seemed like too much work for so little fruit; each little gem was mostly seed. It is one of those memories I have that are relatively clear.

Pomegranates are two for one at Safeway this week, and I looked at them and at Miss B the same way my dad did. So I bought a pair and brought them home. I cut one open and was surprised that the little glossy red seeds weren’t just pouring out. They were attached to a rind inside the pomegranate. I pulled it apart under some water and got the little gems out. Miss K came in while I was doing it and announced that she thought the other one was an apple and wanted a slice. I told her that it was something else, and showed her the colander with the pomegranate pieces all atumble within it like wet garnets I’ve just rescued from the sea.

As far a “weird” fruits go, I like kumquats. I like the word and I like the utility and the economy of popping one into your mouth. I was surprised that Miss K liked the pomegranates so much; she sat there and ate pretty much all of them, putting one garnet into her mouth, popping it and swallowing the juice and spitting out the seed. Miss B liked it too, she thought it was “weird” but tasty– but the real lover was miss K.

They certainly feel like an ancient fruit; it may have been the way I cut it open but there was no real pattern of rind to set of seeds. I know that they’re old, they’ve been around as long as artichokes, and that they were probably the apple in the garden of eden story.

It was neat, watching the girls and the pomegranate. I’m glad they enjoyed it. Them. Whatever.

Or a trip back into the dark ages. There’s gasp no cd player!! Ohhh the horror! And there are no cup holders!AIEE!!

But it’s great. It probably gets 20-25 mph on the highway, we’ll see about around town. It’s clean, it drives well, and it does have a fm radio. So those are all strong points. But there is one thing that makes me ignore the lack of cd player and cup holders; those can be replaced, after all. But I can control the windows in the back seat from the front, and I can lock the kids out of them.

What’s that? Your hands are out the window? Guess you lose it. What’s that? You’re falling asleep on the way home from school? MUAHAHAHAHA how about a blast of cold air! Hurray!

So, aah yeah, we have the 93 explorer, and it’s pretty cool. There’s some minor damage but overall it will last us a year and then some.

And after driving it? I may just name it “Sherman.”

On second thought, no… eeew. Not miller time.

I put a door up this weekend.

You might think that with a growing ten year old girl in the house that I might have considered a door before now. Well, we’ve been arguing with her over keeping her room clean versus getting a door. You know, treating the door like a carrot to get her to clean her damn room.

Naw, a door’s not a carrot.

It’s also a symbol of growing up. We’re going to have to trust her, there behind her door. I’m sure we now live in a house where there’s a door-slamming nigh-teenager. But if I put a door on her room, then I guess it’s her door and she can slam it if she wants.

We’ve been stressed (as always; when aren’t we stressed?) over money. Well, I got the door out of the garage. It turns out it was this door and it was in baaaaaaad sheep. I sanded it down ( yeah, I actually ran a power tool ) and put wood putty in the holes and the gouge that the washing machine left ( yeah, I know what wood putty is ) and then I sanded down the wood putty ( yes, mom, I can even remember to do that ). I painted it with some primer we had in the garage, and then found a gallon bucket of ten year old paint that we used on our white walls. When I opened it up, it was totally separated; I thought that it was mold, but it turned out to be fine. Fred Meyers’ was nice enough to shake it up for me. I painted it, then … get this– I’ve been watching too much DIY tv! — I sanded down where I ran the paint into drips and repainted those spots!!

We picked up some hardware from the Rebuilding Center. Ms B was totally awesome at picking out the hardware. I expected to be there for at least an hour but she walked in and knew exactly what we needed and where to get it. I hung the door tonight and swung it back and forth- it’s a door!

Well, it doesn’t latch yet. But that’s ok; it means that she can’t lock us out. But that’ll be done “real soon” too.

And then I put this pink hibiscus on the corner of the inset of the door.

Miss K is working hard at getting potty trained. Yeah, it’s a lot later than Miss B did, but she’s been in disposables, so I expect her to be training late. That and I’m a slacker. So right now, she’s in a pullup overnight and she’s in regular big girl panties during the day.

Thursday, I was getting her ready to take to the sitter’s to play while I worked and I had to change her panties. I wrestled her out of the pullup and tossed her the big girl panties to put on while I walked the pullup to the garbage. ( Dogs. Don’t ask. ) I came back and, while she’s had lots of practice putting on her panties, she had both legs in one leg hole and they were stuck coming up her knees. I helped her out of them and explained them to her, and put them on and pulled them up to her knees ( so she had experience pulling them to her knees and past her knees, sort of an overall whole-experience thing ). I turned around to get her pants, and she started hollering at me —

“Daddy ! My bottom’s up here!”

Uh, ok, honey.

We meditate on the transcendental Glory of the Deity Supreme, who is inside the heart of the earth, inside the life of the sky and inside the soul of the Heaven. May He stimulate and illuminate our minds. Lead me from the unreal to the Real. Lead me from darkness to Light. Lead me from death to immortality.

This was the nondenominational prayer being spoken by Reverend Rajan Zed before first the US House, and then the California Senate. He was interrupted several times during his prayer at the US House, but his prayer in Sacramento was uninterrupted.

However, Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, told the San Francisco Chronicle that it remains a mystery to whom Zed was praying.

“I don’t know if he even knows who he’s praying to. We’re not opposed to the ability of people to worship their own gods or god, but when it comes to our civil government … it’s always been the recognition of the God of the Bible. Every religion is not equal. That’s my belief. That’s logic.”

Nice. I refuted the whole “that’s my belief, that’s logic” argument in sophomore philosophy; it can’t be both logic and belief. I have a somewhat more generous view now, some twenty years later. But the “our civil government only recognizes the Judeo-Christian god” turn of phrase turns my stomach.

Source

Generally, spiders don’t bug me. Sure, black, bulbous bodies with spindly legs that have sharply bent joints … they get squished. I don’t mind the little brown garden spiders though. Yeah, I practice racial profiling and prejudice against spiders. Sue me.

I’m not going out like this poor guy: German Man. Note to Chris: do not click. Note to others: the story is not believable for many reasons.

When I was younger, even when Ms B and I first got married (well, ok, up until about six years ago) I had a terrible phobia about flying bugs… I would run and jump around like a monkey if I thought a bee was in my hair. I was more in danger of scaring the poor thing than anything else. Miss B has been following in my footsteps, which has caused me to consciously “worry less” when there’s flying insects nearby. She claims she likes some common bugs but other ones disturb her. And flying ones, well, just give up.

I’m on call this week which means I go to bed early and I’m up early. This morning I came down to find a note on the basement door that read “there is a moth inside. please remove.” in Miss B’s best handwriting.