I wish I was more surprised by this

As many of you know, my husband and I lived and worked in Japan in the late 1990s. Our role was to act as liaisons between the Japanese and American groups in the company as they worked toward passing a new quality audit Toyota was requiring. This involved a lot of paperwork and flow charts, and not much actual science, so we were pretty good at it.

While our job there only involved documenting the methods and testing, we heard a lot of stories from our colleagues about what went on behind the scenes with the product development. It turns out that Toyota's policy of continuous improvement is great ... to a point. And after that, it can actually get in the way of producing a useful product.

Let's say, for example, that you make some kind of paint or sealant. Obviously, the stuff doesn't stay good forever, so you need to know how long it can sit before it turns into unusable jello. This takes a different length of time depending on the environment it's subjected to, so in order to develop a useful test, you have to decide what the worst-case scenario is that you want the product to survive.

So, do you want it to be able to be usable after one day at 110F to mimic what might happen if the air conditioning went out in the storage room? Or maybe a few days at 90F to mimic what the stuff might experience in a really hot spell during the summer?

These are reasonable scenarios, but the problem with "continuous improvement" is that the test requirements keep getting more and more stringent, even when the existing requirements are more than sufficient for the job. So instead of passing three days at 90, next year you've got to pass six days at 90. Then 10 days. Then a week at 110. Then even worse conditions, with even smaller tolerances for change in the product. At some point you reach a situation where the test is so far beyond what the product could actually experience, it fails to tell you anything useful at all. Eventually, no one can follow the test method correctly and pass it, no matter how good the product actually is.

And according to our colleagues, this was the case with some of the tests that were required by Toyota - they had gotten so stringent that nobody - not us, not our competitors, not God Himself - could make a product that would pass those tests. Our contacts at Toyota, my colleagues said, agreed that the test was virtually meaningless and that passing it did not do anything to insure that the product was fit for use ... but they were unable to change or modify the requirement because that wouldn't fit with the company's quality philosophy.

This, along with many, many other situations we ran into with the whole quality auditing process (ask me some time about the auditor who refused to acknowledge my presence during meetings because I was a woman), totally enraged me. The product we were making was good and met all of the reasonable specifications, and I was confident it was a good product. But according to our colleagues, we had been virtually forced to change the product (or lie about the test results) in order to pass some tests that had evolved over time into completely irrelevant behemoths that even the Toyota guys said were pretty much useless.

Every time I fumed about this (which was often), my standard line was, "You know, the fact that we have to change the product or lie about our results is bad enough. But it's not like people will die if the product is a little worse for it. But if they do this to us, there's no reason to think that they do anything different for the brake manufacturers or any of the other suppliers. Do you really want the brake supplier lying about test results, or making an inferior product that happens to meet Toyota's asinine quality requirements? I will never, ever buy a Toyota!"

We've been back in the states for a decade now, and the passion behind the statement has dimmed somewhat. The last time we were looking for a new car, Jason cautiously admitted that he would consider a Toyota, if he found one that appealed to him and was in his price range. I was still dead set against buying one, but I now do a lot less foaming around the mouth when I discuss the topic.

Or I did ... until Toyota started having some quality issues ... with things like, I don't know, the accelerator pedals on a bunch of models. You know, the ones that sometimes randomly accelerate and have killed people? Yeah, those. Wonder how their quality audit results looked ...

And as if that wasn't bad enough, now they're reporting problems with - you guessed it - the brakes on some Prius models.

Now, if I weren't such a caring, empathetic person, I'd be chortling with glee while jumping up and down shouting "Hah! I told you so! I told you so! Pthththththtbth!" in the general direction of Toyota-shi. But dude, people have died, so I'll skip the gloating and finger pointing. I do, however, allow myself an irritated snort of scorn and disbelief when I'm watching a television show we recorded a few weeks ago and see one of the Toyota commercials touting the quality of their vehicles.

Guess we won't be seeing those too often anymore.

Oh, dear, I really am very shallow sometimes

Upon finding out that Michael Jackson had died, my first thoughts (in order) were:

"Oh, no!"

and

"Maybe I should relist that record on ebay."

And then I felt bad for thinking of capitalizing on the death of a celebrity.

And then I looked at the bids for the other Off the Wall albums listed right now, and I relisted mine anyway, because I'm shallow and opportunistic.

Really, I'm not kidding about the "gallons of blood" part

My plantar warts - now, with even more vascularity!
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This was taken a day and a half after the last excision, hours after the bandage was soaked and carefully removed so that none of the gauze strings that were stuck in the scab pulled the whole mess off (like, ahem, last time).  The whole thing is a little bigger than a quarter, with the worst mess there in the middle smaller than a dime.  Yes, it hurts like hell when my podiatrist is doing the excision.  And yes, it still feels better today than it did yesterday before he started cutting.  Yesterday afternoon it was a bit on the tender side, but that didn't stop me from turning over a bunch of the back garden soil, so it must not have hurt too badly.

The one on my other foot is alllllllmost gone.  Might need one more shot on that foot, and I probably have a couple more visits with Dr. HappySlashAndScrape to solve the foot pictured above.  But at least I feel like we're making progress!

Jackpots and satellites

Or, TMI about my feet. [ETA: Now with 100% more gruesome post-operative photos at the end of the post!]

Public service announcement: If you think you have a wart on your foot, do not let it fester for seven months before going to the podiatrist. You'll regret it.

Now would be a good time for the squeamish people to do an about-face and go look at cute kid pictures or something.










******

So the thing showed up on my foot in October. I know this because I assumed it was a callous or a plantar wart and used OTC callous/wart remover on it, which resulted in my wading around at the water park on my birthday in early November with a bandaid covering the hole in my foot. I was pissed, because I had planned to get a pedicure at the spa as a birthday present for myself, but I wasn't going to risk it with that on my foot. I burned the living crud out of that hard little nubbin on the bottom of my foot just where the back of the foot joins on to the instep, burned it until so much skin was gone that it hurt to touch it.

Meanwhile, another one showed up in the exact same place on my other foot. I decided that maybe it wasn't a wart, because really, what are the chances of them showing up in identical locations at virtually the same time if it's a viral infection instead of some physical issue? I had just stopped wearing my sandals and started wearing winter shoes, which irritated the spots and made them hurt even when I wasn't wearing shoes at all. I researched other possible culprits, including bursitis, and heel spurs, and plantar fasciitis (I love words with two i's in a row), and corns. Didn't look like any of them, or like warts for that matter, so I went to see my doctor.

Corns, he said, grinning as he used a scalpel to cut the center out of each of them. Probably developed to protect something wrong with the architecture of my foot, or aggravated by switching to unsupportive shoes. Wear supportive shoes and pumice away the hard skin around it, and it should go away once the annoyance has been removed. They felt better for a few days after his impromptu surgery, until the centers started to grow back.

And the pain got worse. Instead of feeling like I was walking with a nickel in my shoe all the time, it felt like I had a pointy rock digging into my foot whenever I went barefoot for more than a few minutes or wore any shoes other than Birkenstocks. A dull ache most of the time, unless I stepped on something in that area ... which I inevitably did, several times a day, sending pain so bad it brought tears to my eyes shooting up the nerves in my foot. Worse, the concave shape of the areas after my doctor's little craft project was done made it act like a suction cup on wet surfaces, so when I was in the shower my feet would literally stick to the inside of the tub, and boy, did that hurt when I picked up my feet and the skin stretched a little before the suction let go.

Just a corn. Wear supportive shoes. Give it some time to heal. Eventually I decided that the fact I was avoiding going for walks meant it was bad enough to go see a podiatrist, but every time I called the one my doctor had recommended, his office was closed and I got the Surly Answering Service Lady. Then the thyroid stuff came up, and I decided that seeing one specialist at a time was all I could handle.

Thyroid situation on hold, I called this week for an appointment. Got to have another chat with Surly Answering Service Lady, but the following day I booked an appointment for today. Huzzah, more fun stuff to look forward to! More expensive tests and x-rays and stuff! Orthotics! Surgery! Debilitating longterm condition that requires amputation!

Or, not. I walk in, he takes on look at my foot, and says, "Warts." More specifically, "Wow, those are some big ones you've got there." Dude, I sooo did not want to hear that. Anytime my doctor seems impressed with my particular affliction, it's a sign that bad things are about to happen. "Yeah, you hit the jackpot on these. They're in a sensitive area, so we can't go in with novocaine and the laser (!) and cut them out, unless you want to be off your feet for a long time. So we'll just use this 70% acid solution and burn them off every couple of weeks until they're gone." He grabs a bottle of liquid and a scalpel and goes to work without even giving me a chance to get a word in edgewise. I am a total pussy when it comes to pain - ask my parents about my childhood band-aid removal tantrums - so I keep talking to try to keep my mind off of what's going on down there.

**********************

===="So, my regular doctor said these weren't warts, just corns. Are you sure we need to be digging them out like that?" erghhhhh oh, not pleasant at all
-----"Honestly, family doctors are not the people to see about feet issues. See how this one is bleeding? Warts are vascular like that. Boy, this one is a lot deeper than it looks!" I hazard a look toward my feet and see him wielding the scalpel like he's coring a tomato. Blargh. Look at ceiling. Look at kid. Do not look at feet. Dig dig scrape dab wipe dig dig
===="And the fact that they're in an unusual location, and showed up on both feet at the same time?"
-----"Lucky coincidence."
"Mommy, can I ride in the chair when you're done?"
===="We'll ask the doctor once he's done digging all the way up to my knee with no anesthesia and ooooh boy, dammit, that's gone from uncomfortable to painful, could we let that one have a break for a while?"
"Mommy, we don't say dammit."
-----"Dude, have you seen what he's doing to my foot? I think it's okay for a grownup to say it in this situation gaaaaaahhhhh."
-----"Okay, taking a break. Now this one, wow, that's a big one." He's tackling the one on my other foot now, the calloused white crater that's the size of a dime and actually made Jason recoil in horror when he saw it last night. Dab dab dig dig wipe off blood dab dab dig dig
===="Yeah, that's the one I didn't treat with the OTC stuff. Hey, I guess the dozen little craters that showed up on my heel a week ago aren't just my winter callouses wearing off from pumicing the sore spot, huh?"
-----"Nope, those are satellites. They're still tiny, so we'll get rid of those pretty easily."
===="So, what are you coloring down there, Liza? Wow, nice letters. It was nice of the nurse to lend you those highlighters, wasn't it?" Please try not to notice that I'm gripping the arms of the chair so hard that I've lost feeling in my fingers. Boy, I should have brought my knitting in for this one. I couldn't have knit, but at least I could have stabbed the dude back with something pointy in retribution.
===="Arrrrrrgh. So, you're sure this is the less painful way?"
-----"Oh, yeah. Trust me, you don't want to dig these out all at once when they're in this part of your foot." He's finished now, wiping the debris off and getting bandages on my feet. Liza is fascinated, watching over his shoulder like a residency student. She's a little miffed that I didn't get Hello Kitty bandages like she does when she gets a boo-boo.
-----"So, are you going to be a doctor when you grow up?"
No, I'm going to be a ballerina astronaut.
-----"Okaaaaay. Now these shouldn't hurt much. We'll just keep digging them out a little at a time. Another four or six visits and they should be gone, okay? See you in two weeks!"

*****************

I got to my feet gingerly, convinced that the warts are going to bleed through the bandages and ruin my good Birkenstocks right before the summer starts. But the only thing that hurts is where the self-stick ace bandage thing that's wrapped around my instep bends and pinches the top of my foot. All that unpleasant digging and scraping that led me to believe that I have a gaping wound the size of Pluto (with satellites!) on the bottom of my foot ... is miraculously pain-free, even though I'm standing with a lump of gauze and bandage and stuff strapped directly over the previously painful spot. You know, the exact spot that had me howling in agony if I stepped on a wrinkle in the bath mat with it.

Holy shit.

Damn right I'll be back in two weeks ... I might have a three-bourbon lunch before I come so I can sit in that chair without digging holes in my palms to match the ones in my feet, and I'll probably avoid bringing the kiddo with me, but I'll be back. Now, if I can just get up the nerve to rip off the bandages tomorrow morning, I'll be fine. shudder

************

ETA: Time for the squeamish people to REALLY leave.

You know how in Great Non-Fiction Literature Like This the author sometimes exaggerates things for comedic purposes? Like, for example, comparing the size of a wound to Pluto? Hah! How funny that was! Do you have any idea how distressing it is when the author finds out she hasn't actually exaggerated things, it really is that bad? I thought I was joking about how big the wounds on my feet were, but .... here's the bandage from my right "wow, that's a big one" foot, which was loose so I foolishly decided to change it tonight (stupid, stupid me):

And here's what was underneath:

For comparison, here's the foot that was treated with the OTC stuff and this morning had a small lump that was only slightly annoying:

Those tiny red dots are the "vascular" thing the podiatrist mentioned, which you couldn't see before he carved up this foot. Similar dots were clearly visible in the other foot this morning, but you can't see them in the middle picture because they're obscured by the remarkably quick upwelling of blood that showed up any time I took pressure off of the wound.

As I hopped around trying to wrangle a camera in bad light with a dripping foot, I joked with Jason that I hoped I didn't bleed out while I sleep tonight. Hah! See, there's that comedic exaggeration again!

I slapped some antibiotic ointment on an extra-large band-aid and covered that with a sock to keep the whole mess in place overnight. Then I got ready for bed, marveling at how the actual giant gaping wound on my foot still hurt less than the wart did this morning.

Then I noticed that I was leaving bloody footprints on the floor. Through the bandaid. And the sock (which luckily was a store-bought one, not a hand-knit one, or I'd have been really pissed).

Now I've got an extra-thick jogging sock (thank you, orphaned sock pile!) over it, and I'm going to go think good coagulating thoughts for my poor wounded appendage. Wish me luck tonight! Because if things go badly, I'll have Jason post pictures of my exsanguinated*** corpse tomorrow before he calls EMS. And nobody wants to see that.

***thanks to my college drama teacher, I actually knew that word without having to look it up online. That, and "defenistrate" are two of the least useful bonus point vocabulary questions in the world. But now I finally used one in a legitimate context! Hurrah! See, there IS a bright side to this whole bloody mess.

Friday fun

Friday was the observation class for Liza's dance school, and boy, was that a whole bunch of bad dancing to watch. Four-year-olds are cute, but most of them can't dance worth anything ... and mine was the worst of the bunch. Check out her patented "ignore the beat, and the choreography, and the direction I'm supposed to face" approach to dance ... the recital is going to be painful.

After class we took a friend to the paint-your-own-pottery place to celebrate Liza completing the green level in her Hooked on Phonics set. It cost about the same as having a mess of kids over for pizza, and we get a (really ugly) lasting reminder of how smart the kid is!


Remind me to post a picture of the little Rembrandt with her masterpiece once it's back from the kiln. I sat on my hands and let her do the whole thing by herself (except the final tracing of the crown so you could tell what that lumpy brown thing on the front is), and boy, is it going to make a fashion statement in our kitchen. That thing is going to look like a cat threw up on it. Oh, well - as long as she's happy with it, blah blah blah.

I'm going to be away from the computer for the next few days, so don't start calling mental institutions if you don't hear from me, okay?

Unexpected result

While searching to see whether our library system carries DVDs of the television series "Chuck," I scrolled down far enough to see that one of the search results was "Bass fishing: the basics ; with Chuck Woolery" .

Great. Now I'm going to have twisted visions of some bass fishing/Love Connection hybrid show in my dreams tonight. Thanks, Chuck, that was just what I needed.

eerily similar

What I wrote October 14, 2005:
I got the results from the ultrasound today - I have a nodule on my left thyroid lobe. AKA see, I'm not crazy, I'm actually sick.
The nurse said the hospital usually recommends waiting six months and doing another thyroid ultrasound then to see whether it's still there or has grown, but my doctor usually wants to go ahead and do the nuclear scan to get a better picture of where we stand now. I asked whether they can do the nuclear scan if I'm breastfeeding, and they said no. So what they recommend is that I wait to do that until I'm closer to wanting to wean Liza, and in the meantime I should come in again in a month or so and get the blood test done again so they can monitor my hormone levels.

I found that e-mail to Jason a couple months ago as I was searching my archives for something completely unrelated.

I had completely forgotten about this whole thing, about the freaky easy post-partum weight loss (breastfeeding helps, but it doesn't explain losing 30 pounds while sucking down Sonic milkshakes every day) and the hair loss, the blood tests and the ultrasound and the freaking out because they sort of wanted me to stop breastfeeding Liza so I could have the nuclear scan (which would have made me and my breastmilk radioactive for several days, and I wouldn't have been able to go near her - or probably be in the same house as her - for that time). And the possibility that I'd have to nuke my thyroid and take synthetic thyroid hormones for the rest of my life. Realistically, I knew it wasn't the end of the world - some of my friends have had the same thing, and they're doing fine, feeling much healthier than they ever did when their thyroids were actually "working," but it still freaked me out.

I remember now that my follow-up bloodwork showed my TSH levels were back in the range considered normal, and I never went back for the second ultrasound to see if the nodule got any larger. Completely forgot to, what with the depression and the moving and all that.

Then I found the e-mail, and I happened to be going to the doctor soon to get my prescriptions refilled anyway, so I brought up with him the fact that I might have some sort of hideous thyroid malady that's been festering for the past three years. Well, actually I said, um, do I need to get the ultrasound still if the symptoms are gone? Because my days of losing weight while drinking milkshakes are sadly past.

Last week I finally got around to having the test run - yay, I love the feel of lubricating gel on my throat - and I wasn't thrilled when I asked the technician, "So, I don't have any aliens living in there or anything, right?" and she said, "Your doctor will have the results in a few days," without even cracking a smile.

What I found out October 15, 2008:
I got the results from the ultrasound today - I have nodules on my left thyroid lobe. Since I don't have the actual results from 2005, they want me to wait a few months and get the test done again to see whether they grow.

Ah, well, at least nobody has mentioned irradiating vital parts of my body (yet).

Oh, and for anyone who's interested in what this is all about, there's tons of info here:
thyroid nodules: http://www.endocrineweb.com/nodule.html

Dear Hurricane Ike: Fuck you.

Howling wind all afternoon from the remnants of Hurricane Ike.

Splinter. Bang. Thwump. Crash. What the fuck was that?

Oh.


Good thing that didn't hit the house - it's the diameter of a dinner plate at the splintered end. So what made the crash?

Oh.



Good thing it didn't damage the roof.

Oh.

(that's after it was patched with a piece of metal ductwork we borrowed from our new neighbors and a wooden yard sale sign - thanks again for those, Dad!)

Well, it's just the one hole, right?

Oh.

Thanks for the present, Ike. It's been a while since we've had to deal with insurance companies and roof problems. And lord knows, there's nothing I enjoy more than dealing with shingle patching that will leak right on my head in bed if it isn't done right. Thought I was done with that when we sold the house in Avon back in 2004. Guess not.

At least there aren't any other branches left on that tree to fall on our house. Now, if I can just ignore the neighbor's 15 other trees that overhang our property, I'll be fine.

Thanks to a dream that Jason had last year in which a branch from one of these trees crashed through the roof and killed both of us in our sleep, leaving Liza to starve to death alone in her room (nice), we're all sleeping in the (below ground level) guest room tonight.

And no, this was not an oversight on the part of our tree trimming company. This is the entire fucking top half of a tree that (was) entirely on our neighbor's property. And it's healthy, as far as I can tell, it was just overbalanced. Shucks, no lawsuit there, I guess.

Alien invasion

You spot one giant fuzzy yellow caterpillar in your backyard, it's kind of fun. You spot a second one, and all of the sudden you start wondering if they're eating your roses or leaving poisonous spines in your daughter's play castle. So you do some googling, and you come up with this:

Apparently we have American Dagger Moth, Acronicta americana, caterpillars in our yard. They feed on maple and other hardwood tree leaves, so I guess the Oak Forest around our backyard is like a giant salad bar.


info above from http://www.whatsthatbug.com/caterpillar.html, which is one of the coolest and most sensible names for a web site that I've seen in a long, long time. There are better photos here: http://davesgarden.com/guides/bf/showimage/4281/. The neon yellow ones are closest to our residents - they might as well have a huge "Birds - eat me! Toddlers - torment me!" sign hanging on their backs, they blend in so well with the foliage.

And they're harmless ... or so they say. Still, if you find me dead in the backyard and covered in furry yellow things, grab the Raid, okay?

It's possible we read to her too much

It's pretty much a daily occurrence that Liza will narrate what she's doing as if she is reading it out of a book. I'm not talking about a normal 3-year-old talking to herself, like "Now I need to find a piece to make a door." She's talking as if she were reading dialogue, complete with descriptions and speaker identifications. For example, I'll ask her if she wants milk or water with her snack, and she'll reply," 'Water, please,' Liza said, smiling at her mother."

Most of the time she just does this with her own conversations. It's a little bit disconcerting, but it hasn't crossed the line from "cute" to "disturbing and/or annoying" ... yet.

Then today she started doing the same with the toys she was playing with. When the princess fell into the dungeon of the Little People castle we found at a yard sale this morning, Liza had the other princess** say, "'Oh, are you okay?' Flower Girl asked." This went on for 5 or 10 minutes, each character providing the entire written dialogue from some script in Liza's head. It was a little freaky.




**Also freaky? After the princesses rescued each other from the dungeon half a dozen times (while the prince sat outside in the carriage), 'Her Highness' told 'Flower Girl' that it was time to go because they needed to get married because they were in love. So they booted the prince out of the carriage and rode off into the sunset, holding hands. It took every bit of my liberal Democratic willpower to not suggest that it might be better to have the prince and the princess fall in love and get married. I draw the line if the kid starts involving livestock, though ... although I did think it was pretty funny when she had the Little People baby Jesus repeatedly falling down into the dungeon and being rescued by the Wise Men and the camel from the toy nativity scene we found at the same sale.

I don't know what it is about baby Jesus figures ... Liza kept making off with the one that goes with our "official" nativity set last Christmas, and we'd find Him in the bathroom or on her chair in the dining room. The manger scene looks pretty strange without a baby ... sort of like a really bad party where everyone is just sort of standing around awkwardly. I seem to remember that my cousins used to do the same thing with their (much more expensive) baby Jesus figurine when we were kids. And some of Liza's friends have a Playmobil nativity set mixed in with all of their other Playmobil stuff ... and apparently the baby Jesus is a regular purchase at the Playmobil grocery store. Not a customer - a purchase. That totally cracks me up.

A couple things that suck about parenting

1. When you try to be a good parent, and you save some of your kid's art that you especially like, and after leaving it sit on the kitchen counter for weeks you finally put it on your desk so you can hang it on the wall in your office later that day, and then your kid chooses that night to spit water all over your desk, so not only do you have to spend 10 minutes sucking water out of your keyboard, but the painting titled "a kid and her mommy holding hands and walking in the river" is completely ruined. Damn you, watercolors!

2. Listening to your kid talking to herself and realizing that her imaginary friends don't want to play with her because she's wearing the wrong kind of dress. And that's before she even finds the Cinderella book, mind you.

3. When your kid discovers the "big kid" Disney books on the high shelf and wants to hear them over and over and over again, and you have to spend an hour explaining "Why are there mean sisters who rip up Cinderella's dress? Why is Cinderella crying? Why can't she go to the ball in that dress?" Bonus parenting points if you manage to read parts of Bambi SO FAST and with so little inflection that the separation-anxiety-plagued kid doesn't understand that Bambi's mom ends up D-E-A-D as a doornail, shot by someone who looks suspiciously like her grandfather.

4. "Why did they put the chain on Dumbo's mom's leg?" "Because she got angry, and they didn't want her to hurt anyone." "She got angry? Like you do sometimes?" "(sigh) Yes, like I do sometimes, only usually I don't pick people up and shake them and incite stampedes." (pause) "Why did they put the chain on Dumbo's mom's leg?"

5. "Why is the mother being not nice, mommy?" Twenty-minute-long discussion with a 3-year-old about how people aren't always nice = why Jason owes me a mom's night out sometime very soon. And alcohol. And chocolate. And very, very nice yarn.

Shall we take bets?

Before we went on vacation I noticed that one of the two inflatable rings on Liza's kiddie pool had deflated. Given how often it has been moved, that wasn't surprising, and I figured the next time I used it I'd just patch it up with one of the 146 patch kits we have floating around in the garage.

I hauled the pool out yesterday, cleaned it off, and inflated both of the rings so that I could locate the source of the problem. I never did find the leak, although I did determine that it's large enough that a fully inflated ring loses half its air in less than an hour. The remaining ring was enough to keep the sides of the pool (mostly) upright, though, so I filled the pool and let Liza splash around for an hour yesterday evening.

This morning I was surprised to see that not only were both of the pool rings deflated, the pool was completely empty and the innertube was flat as a pancake, too. Whaaaa?

Half a dozen holes, some the size of my hand, in the bottom of the pool. The drain plug pulled out and ripped off of its tether. A (never found) hole in the bottom ring so large that part of the pool water drained into the ring and is stuck inside.

I'm guessing that the recent lack of rain has something desperate for water, and maybe it got stuck inside once it jumped in to have a drink. Now, the only question is: Woodchuck? Skunk? Cat? Falcon? Owl? Deer? Raccoon? Nocturnal squirrel? Evil redneck neighbor? Wolverine*?

Whatever the answer, it looks like we'll be hauling out Liza's baby pool from last year (and draining it and putting it away every time we use it), at least until I find enough change in the couch to buy a new one on sale at Target.


* Ohio State's main sports rival is University of Michigan, whose mascot is the wolverine

Liza of the Dance

The freakiest thing about this video is that the only thing that could have inspired it is the penguin dance scene from Mary Poppins, which features Dick Van Dyke doing some softshoe. How she got from that (and my mother doing The Twist at the wedding reception earlier this month) to Irish step dancing, I will never know.

Needless to say, the Lord of the Dance videos I dug up on YouTube tonight were well received. Gotta go request the full video of that and Stomp from the library.

Disturbing on so many levels

I've been wanting a new vacuum for months now, and after I saw how much lint was building up on Jason's side of the bedroom carpet (via the Urine Gone! blacklight, remember?), I decided we might actually need one. After all, the old one is close to 15 years old, the bags are impossible to find, and, um, I really wanted a Dyson. And the red ones were on sale at Target.

Were on sale ... now gone, so I spent 10 minutes in the vacuum aisle attempting to compare vacuums that were at eye level on the display. Note to self: When lifting vacuums overhead, make sure all the attachments are firmly attached. Ended up buying a bagless HEPA double cyclonic whatever-it-is that was on sale and about half the price of the Dyson sale price.

I just finished vacuuming the whole house with it. I have heard horror stories along the line of "I had just vacuumed with my old machine, and I ran the Dyson, and my god, the stuff that came out of my 'clean' carpet!" Well, I hadn't vacuumed since last Friday, but still, I wasn't really expecting this:

Um, yeah, ewwwww ... and that's just from the 5'x7' wool throw rug in the living room. I mean, it's a cathair magnet and the place where the cats usually wrestle, but still. Eww. Want a better idea of the scope of the situation? Here's a different angle on the same canister:

The stuff I got off the sofa slipcover was a little disappointing:

I'm used to using a vacuum with a bag, which I pack so full of stuff I end up pulling a 5-pound bag of cat hair out every six months or so, so I honestly have no idea what volume of stuff I usually get with the old machine. But I can pretty much guarantee you, even with a fresh bag, it was less than this:

That's a layer about 8" deep across the entire top of my trashcan. All hyperbole aside, the clot of hair, dust, carpet fiber, dust, skin flakes, dust, and miscellaneous stuff was at least as large as either of our cats. The amount hair didn't surprise me - I know we're going to be covered in the stuff for years after the death of the cats - but the amount of dust/skin/grime/whatever that brownish grey stuff is was shocking. And I didn't even do the basement, where litter dust is about 1/4" thick on every horizontal surface. I'd like to officially apologize to all of our lungs for what we've been putting them through for the past year.

It will be interesting to see what sort of volume we get next week ... and I might turn the carpet height adjustment down a notch to make sure we don't end up with bald spots. Set this thing on "hard surface," and I think you could suck plywood splinters out from underneath the carpet padding. Whee! This makes vacuuming fun again!

Which is worse?

The fact that the "Scientific Black Light" that comes with the "urine gone!" kit is so badly made, it comes with instructions on how to fix it when it doesn't work ... or the fact that I've reached the point where I have to buy a product called "urine gone!" to clean up after both the kid and the cats?

Ominous silence

Note to self: When you hear the crash of the craft supply box hitting the floor in the kitchen, followed by an ominous silence that is several minutes long, brace yourself. Your home may have been invaded by creatures with googly eyes on their toes.

Or am I the only one this happens to?

I now have the least depressed bath mat in Ohio

While I was getting ready for bed tonight I realized too late that the lid on one bottle of antidepressants wasn't actually closed. As I took it down from the shelf, tiny white pills flew everywhere, including on the floor, on the throw rug, underneath our bathroom reading (child-care handbooks), and onto the wet bath mat, where they immediately began to melt into the fibers.

I scrambled to save as many as I could, pitching the half-bathmat-digested ones and any that landed in the cesspool behind the toilet. The rest, however, I carefully picked up and dusted off, placing them back in the bottle and closing the lid tightly. I'm going to be inspecting my pills each night for pubes, cat hair, and that ubiquitous bathroom dust made from toilet paper lint. Gonna be a looong two months until the new (hopefully unsoiled by bathroom skeeze) bottle of Prozac gets here.

Guess I'd better go do another sweep to make sure I'm not going to have a drugged-out kid tomorrow ... then again .... hmmm ...



Nah. Better not chance it, especially with my mother-in-law due for a visit later this week. That would be a fun conversation ... "What fun things would you like to do in Cleveland? I know! Let's go visit Liza in the hospital! I think they should be done pumping her stomach by now!"

I saw this in a Bath and Body Works ad, and I said to myself,

"Surely this information would be of benefit to my readers."

http://www.mangroomer.com/

o. m. g.

I think the Romans also developed these, right before their decadent culture imploded and all their plumbing poisoned them into stupidity - right?

Tip for all those potential mangroomer owners out there - most ladies (and gay men, I would imagine) are willing to overlook Wookie Back if the rest of you is non-repugnant. Or you have lots of money - either one, really.

Ye gods, how depressing

We were away from home over Thanksgiving, and when we came back we noticed there wasn't a whole lot of activity going on at the house next door, which was usually chock full of parents rushing back and forth to two jobs and ferrying two kids around. A week or so later we saw a small moving truck in the driveway, and we assumed that their skeezy-looking brother/brother-in-law was moving in. And then there was no activity at the house for weeks.

After a package had sat on their doorstep at Christmastime for more than a week and their garage door had been ajar for a few days, I finally went over and peeked in the window. The place was empty, save for some empty beer cans and miscellaneous stuff in the garage. A week later there was a guy from the bank changing the locks on their front door.

We don't live in a fancy development full of McMansions and BMWs bought on credit. We don't live in a downtrodden neighborhood full of people who can barely scrape by. We live in what for most people would be one step up from a starter house, and our neighbors had been here for three years. I guess they had an ARM that came due, or one of the balloon payment mortgages where you don't have to pay much until you have to pay the whole mess off at once. I mean, they were both working, they were sending their kids to public school, they only had one car (the husband drove a delivery truck), and they didn't have any overtly expensive habits like fancy vacations or a boat or anything. So how does this family end up getting kicked out of their house right before Christmas?

That was bad enough, but today the bank truck is back with an empty trailer that they're slowly filling with all the stuff the neighbors left behind. You know, little unimportant stuff, like a whole lot extra co-ax cables and stuff that we keep moving from house to house in hopes that someday we'll need it again, and some kid toys, and all their family room furniture. Like I said, it was a small moving truck out there back in November, and I guess if you're moving in with your parents you don't have room to take the sofa and loveseat. But it just tears me up to see the little guy - who is two months older than Liza - get his toys thrown in the junk truck.

The foreclosure crisis is a big, abstract problem ... until it happens to the kid you were planning being your kid's best friend in preschool next year. Then it gets personal.

******
Jason: "Look on the bright side. Maybe they're not in foreclosure, maybe they're in witness protection. That guy always struck me as the kind who might be informing on the mob."

Me: "Yeah, because I'd rather they were on the run for their lives instead of just destitute."

Jason: "At least then the kid would be getting some new toys when they got their new identities."

Me: "Good point. 'Mafia informers' it is."

******
Oh, god, they just loaded his sandbox.

Oh fu....dge

This is the third time in four days that Her Royal Highness won't take a nap.

Crap crap crappity crap. I do NOT want her to give up her nap now, even if it means we can push bedtime an hour earlier. I need that sanity-saving toddler-free hour every afternoon. NEED. IT. BADLY.