I am so very, very tired

Because:

• Yesterday I finished the first round of taping and mudding on the drywall above my new bathtub ... at 10:15pm.
  
  
  
  
• And then I sat up for a while trying to make sure the sump pump was working.
• And then when I tried to go to sleep, The Storm of Massive Rain and Eternal Lightning-ness started up, making it impossible to get to sleep
• So I checked on the sump pump - still working.
• And then when I tried to go to sleep, I listened to the worsening storm and worried about the sump pump.
• So I checked on the sump pump - still working.
• The last time I checked the clock, it was 3:30am.
• At 6am Jason got up, went downstairs, came back upstairs, and announced that our whole basement was several inches underwater.
• So then Jason, Liza and I carted everything from the basement upstairs, sorting it into "dry," "wet," and "why the hell did we have that anyway?" piles in different rooms in the house.
  
  
  
  
• I also wet vacuumed all the puddles up out of the basement.
• Then I took Liza to school, only an hour late.
• Then I went to Home Depot, where I joined half of the residents of Cuyahoga County in the aisles for mops, shelving units, wet vacs, and garbage bags.  I wish Home Depot also sold alcohol.
• Then I did the second round of mudding on the bathroom walls.
  
  
  
  
• Then I carried the "why the hell did we have that anyway?" pile out to the garbage.
• Then I started mopping the floor in the basement, first with Clorox, then with water.  Now instead of mildew, it smells like bleach and mildew and wet cat hair.
• Then I started moving things back into the basement, sorting out a bunch of stuff for Goodwill and the consignment store.  Goodwill candidates = anything I don't feel like we use enough to justify carrying it back downstairs and placing in an elevated storage spot.  That's a lot of stuff, at this point.
• Then I dug a path through the debris in my office to the computer, where I started typing this post.
• And now I'm going to go find some Tylenol and play Angry Birds until I stop wanting to cry or throw something through a wall.  Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue ...

So, how's your day been going?

Whooooooooosh

That sound you heard yesterday was my 5-year blogiversary flying by, unnoticed by anyone but me.  We've come a long way, baby.

And maybe I'll have more to say about it after I shower off the drywall dust, drive across town, help a bunch of 5-year-olds play with Legos, drive back across town, and meet with the contractor who's supposed to help me remove the cast-iron tub from my tiny bathroom.  That gives me plenty of time to think up something pithy and momentous to say.  Because otherwise, all I've got is BOO-YAH, BABY!!!!

Upgrading your bathroom in 75,212 easy steps

1. Purchase a house thoughtfully designed with the plumbing for the main bathroom running through an unheated, uninsulated little architectural vomit of an overhang at the back of the house, then wait for a particularly cold couple of nights.
2. Attempt to take a shower the next morning and realize that your cold water line has frozen solid.  Rig a heat lamp in the access panel behind the bathtub and thaw out the pipes, leaving the lamp on until the cold weather ends.  This means, of course, that for fire safety reasons you won't be able to put anything in the closet housing the access panel, and you'll have to go to sleep with light streaming from your bedroom closet like something from a horror movie.
3. Realize that the frozen pipes now have a slight leak in them, just a few drips here an there.  Realize that nothing good can come from this, and you wanted to switch from a two-handle shower to a one-handle shower, anyway, so now's a good time to take care of that.
4. Have George the Plumber come give an estimate for doing the actual plumbing work to fix the leaks and move the handles.  Confirm which area of the tiles will need to be removed to make room for the new controller.  Arrange to have him come do the work the following Tuesday.
5. Decide that since the tile near the current handles will need to be replaced, anyway, and the grout in that area is all moldy and gross, it will be easiest to just remove the bottom two rows of tile from around the whole bathtub and replace them with something pretty.
6. Purchase a grout saw, repair grout (for the moldy gross sections above the sections being removed), extra grout saw blades.  Start shopping for tile.
7. Use grout saw to remove the grossest grout above the area to be removed.  This is fun - look how pretty the white grout looks! Now start removing all of the grout around the four tiles that need to be removed so the new controller can be installed.  This is less fun - feel how much your hand aches!  Remove tiles, taking care to keep them as whole as possible so you can use them to patch around the new controller.
8. Shop for tile, deciding that even if you only plan to replace 8 square feet of tile, you can't justify spending $60 a sq. ft. for awesome tile (below) when there's acceptable tile for less than $10.
   
   
9. Purchase tile, thinset mortar, notched trowel, smooth trowel, more grout saw blades, a more ergonomic grout saw, a Dremel rotary tool, a grout-removal kit for the Dremel, tile spacers, grout, float, sponge, and probably a few other things you don't realize you need yet and that they won't stock at just one store so you'll have to drive for 30 minutes to get to the other home improvement store to buy the rest.  Find your heaviest hammer, crappy chisel you don't mind ruining, safety glasses, ear protection, dust mask, and trusty Purdy 6-in-1 painter's tool.  The 6-in-1 is going to be your best friend for the rest of the project, so go ahead and give it a catchy name now.
10. Begin removing grout along the top of the tiles to be removed, using the grout saw followed by the Dremel.  Tell your spouse that using the Dremel is the most fun you've had with a power tool in a long, long time. 
11. Let your child help with the grout removal.  No, she doesn't get to use the Dremel, that's my toy.
    
     
12. Begin removing tile, trying to keep as much of it in good condition as you can because who knows, you might need it some day there's such a market for used 1970s tile that can be best described as "inoffensive."  Get annoyed when you chip the edges of a few pieces of tile that aren't supposed to be removed, then realize that's why you need the good condition tiles, to replace the ones you mess up along the edge.
   
13. Step back and look at what you're doing.  Seriously.  Take a look at the wallboard and the tile.  I'm fairly certain the paper front of the drywall isn't supposed to come off with the tile, and the inside of the drywall isn't supposed to be gray and spongy, is it? And all that fleecy stuff with little black shiny egg-looking balls in it is just insulation, right?  Not anything to worry about, just JESUS LORD HELP ME JESUS A GIANT MAN-EATING SILVERFISH JUST RAN OVER MY HAND AND MY WALL IS INFESTED WITH (MOSTLY DEAD) BUGS AND I THINK I'M GOING TO HURL ALL OVER THE TILE DEBRIS IN MY BATHTUB 

14. Okay, fine.  You're an adult, you can handle these things.  Sweep up bug debris, bag all funky/moldy/buggy tile and get it out of the house, sweep again, vacuum, etc.  Realize that "I'll just tile an 8" strip around the tub" has turned into "I'll just replace the drywall and then tile an 8" strip around the tub."  Call the plumber to reschedule because god only knows how long this is going to take.
15. Continue chipping off the tile, one row at a time, to determine where the water damage stops.  Maybe it's just a few more rows and then everything will be dry and happy and mercifully bug-free!
16. Or not.
17. Give up when you realize that all of the walls are moving when you lean on them, and you're going to have to take all the tile down to replace all of the drywall around the shower.  Have fun removing tile with no thought to keeping any of it - heavy hammer to the rescue!  The walls move so much that you can whack at a row of tiles halfway up the wall and tiles below it just fall off the wall!  It's so much fun, let the kid help! And make sure you can't see that she's wearing safety glasses so her grandmothers will call up and be all irate about it!
    
    
    
18. The drywall probably stopped the moisture from ruining the insulation, right?  So we'll just pull down the drywall and zip - zop - put some back up and we're done, right?
19. Or not.
    
    
20. Door closed, vent fan on high, all debris double-bagged, no one allowed in the room but the worker, work shoes left in room, respirator upgraded to Darth Vader model, all work clothes washed separately from rest of laundry, worker showers immediately after finishing for the day.  Learn new phrase for what we're doing from episode of Glee watched that night - the Full Silkwood.
21. Realize that you don't really feel like doing THAT much tile work.  Maybe one of those plastic tub surrounds would be a good alternative?  Wait, they attach directly to studs, so I don't even have to drywall under them?  Sign me up!
22. Drywall removal - fun when all you need is your hands and a 6-in-1 tool!
23. Insulation removal - fun when all you need is your hands and a 6-in-1 tool!
24. Mold removal - fun when ... oh, fuck it, scrubbing mildew off of the guts of your house isn't fun, no matter what tools you get to use.
    
    
    
25. Call George the Plumber and leave a message.
26. Call Jerry the Contractor and leave a message, because you are pretty sure that getting a giant cast-iron bathtub out of a tiny room is beyond your capabilities, no matter how much you'd like to take a sledgehammer to that ugly P.O.S.
27. Return tile, thinset mortar, notched trowel, smooth trowel, more grout saw blades, a more ergonomic grout saw, tile spacers, grout, float, sponge, and probably a few other things you don't need anymore since you're not doing the tile, realizing that they came from stores on opposite sides of town so it's going to take all day. 
28. Look for new tubs and surrounds at the local home improvement store, and then, dissatisfied with their selection, drive for half an hour to the other major store.  Talk with George the Guy in Plumbing (no relation to George the Plumber) and get the lowdown on how to install one of these babies.  Arrange for spouse to meet you at the store after work, rent the store truck, and haul the new tub and walls home.
29. Realize that you don't have anyplace to store a tub and plastic walls near the bathroom, so the boxes will just have to go wherever you can find a place for them, no matter how inconvenient.
    
    
30. Haul bags, boxes, and trash cans full of waste to the curb, along with the giant part of a tree that fell out of your neighbor's yard during the last ice storm.  The trash guys are going to love you.
31. Wait for George and Jerry to return your calls.
32. Blog.

Organization of my thoughts is a problem when I don't post for weeks at a time

So we'll just go with the tried-and-true (and dreaded) bullet points:

• February is long, calendar be damned.  But for $7 and a trip to the grocery store, I forced spring to come early, at least in my dining room.

• Last week the radio host gleefully announced that it was -5F, the coldest he's ever gotten to say on air.  I dealt with a snow (actually ice) day by throwing my old Calvin and Hobbes books in Liza's direction and taking pictures of her reading them while doing yoga.

• Helping prepare the kindergarten teams for the Lego Olympiad this spring sounded like such a good idea at the time, but after seeing the chaos of 10 kids and one pile of Legos, I may need some sort of pharmaceutical help to get through this.

• But seriously, how can you resist a face like this?  Who's a cute widdle engineer-in-training? 

• Lego Olympiad preparation = perfect excuse for me to play with all the cool working parts that came in the giant box of Lego-y goodness my mother found at a yard sale years ago.  See the working crane I put together in 5 minutes?  It tilts and swivels and has a rachety-winch thing.  

• Too much time indoors = time for a change.  Bye, bye, hair!

• Last week was ugly.  Jason was gone for part of the time, so Liza got to attend the 3-hour PTO meeting with me, where she had to work on the first math homework she's had in months and practice for her spelling test.  Did I mention we also had to decorate a Valentine's day mailbox, go to her science club at the LENSC, and finish her poster for the 100th day of school? And Friday she had a math test, a spelling test, a 100th day poster presentation, and a Valentine's Day party?  I thought her little head was going to explode, but she made it through in one piece.

• This weekend it warmed up enough to actually let the child go outside without risking any of her extremities.  So she threw snowballs at the house and attempted to stomp through the 2" thick layer of ice on top of the snow in our yard. 

• And then we went to see them band birds at the Rocky River Nature Center.  Liza got to release a downy woodpecker - she was much more enthusiastic before she realized that even small birds have talons.

• Also, we went tobogganing, but I think that deserves its own post.

38 don't get you nothin', buddy

It's not prime, it's not a multiple of 5 or 10, it's not a milestone - you get the DQ mini ice cream cake and some dudes to paint.  Next year I'll dust off the cheesecake recipe for you, okay?

Happy birthday, Jason!

True/False

1.  I let my kid go out in public looking like this:

2. I took 200 pictures at a kid's birthday party, and this was the least blurry one of them all:

3. My daughter has a great future ahead of her as a hairdresser.

4. Saturday nights at my house are a total party!

5. Prisms are just for making rainbows.

6. She hates waterslides.

7. I will never allow myself to appear in a swimsuit on this blog.

8. Fifty-four days from now, Jason and I will be sitting right here while some Jamaican nanny is in charge of our kid:

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9. My cat has no interest in wiping the smug expression off of this guy's face:

10. Sometimes I suck at keeping the blog updated.

Blergh

Again.

At least I had a day in between to feel halfway decent, right?

Saved that one.

     "Cummins leaned forward over his paper-strewn desk and told me about a poet who had been walking along the beach one morning at low tide.  The poet saw thousands and thousands of starfish that had been stranded on the shore, baking in the sun.  If they were left on the beach surely they would die.  In the distance, he saw a boy sifting through the sand on the beach.  The boy would stoop down, pick up a starfish, and throw it back into the sea.  When the poet reached the boy, he said, 'What are you doing? You can't save them all!' The boy knelt down, picked up another starfish, threw it into the ocean, and said, 'I saved that one.'  And he did it again.  'Saved that one.'  And again.  One by one, until soon the poet joined the boy, and together they saved as many starfish as they could.

     "That's how people who make a difference think and live."

I found this today as I was reading a parenting book, and it struck me as a good explanation for why I'm still trying to eat as locally and sustainably as I can.  No, I can't singlehandedly change the food system in this country - or even in this town.  But by choosing to buy local/organic/sustainable products whenever I can, at least I'm doing something.  It's not as obvious as throwing a starfish back into the ocean, but when I drive past the vegetable lady's house or the farm market where we shop in the summer, I think to myself, "Helped that one."

That's a big Twinkie.

The other night I watched Ghost Busters for the first time in years, and I was really surprised by a couple of things.


1. Aside from some occasional crap-tastic special effects, you can't tell this movie was made more than 25 years ago. Okay, okay, the actors look really young (especially since I just saw the modern-day Bill Murray in Zombieland a couple of weeks ago), and Dana's wardrobe and interior decorating style scream 1985, but other than that, it's a solid movie.

vs.

2. Does anyone else find it creepy that Dr. Venkman happened to be carrying 300 cc. of Thorazine with him to his date with Dana?
3. Even after all these years, Jason and I each remember startlingly large portions of the movie, word-for-word. I guess it wasn't just me and my friends who spent our formative years quoting it at each other.  Some of my favorites:


Dr. Peter Venkman: [to librarian Alice] Are you currently menstruating? 
Library Administrator: What has that got to do with anything? 
Dr. Peter Venkman: Back off man, I'm a scientist. 


Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm studying the effect on negative reinforcement on ESP ability.
Male Student: [Aggravated] Effect? I'll tell you the effect is, it's pissing me off! 


Dr. Peter Venkman: [after capturing Slimer] We came, we saw, we've kick its ass. 


Dr. Peter Venkman: oh, wait, wait, i've always wanted to do this! and...
[he yanks the tablecloth off of one of the tables, upsetting and breaking everything except a vase of flowers on the center of the table]
Dr. Peter Venkman: [shouting while offscreen] the flowers are still standing! 


Gozer: [after Ray orders her to re-locate] Are you a God?
[Ray looks at Peter, who nods]
Dr Ray Stantz: No.
Gozer: Then... DIE!
[Lightning flies from her fingers, driving the Ghostbusters to the edge of the roof and almost off; people below scream]
Winston Zeddemore: Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say "YES"!
Dr. Peter Venkman: All right! This chick is TOAST! 


Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.
Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
Mayor: All right, all right! I get the point! 


Dr. Peter Venkman: Someone blows their nose and you want to keep it? 


Dr. Peter Venkman: Hee hee hee! "Get her!" That was your whole plan, huh, "get her." Very scientific. 


Dr. Peter Venkman: Mother pus bucket! 


Dr Ray Stantz: Symmetrical book stacking. Just like the Philadelphia mass turbulence of 1947.
Dr. Peter Venkman: You're right, no human being would stack books like this. 


Dr Ray Stantz: Listen... do you smell something? 


Dr. Peter Venkman: No, no. Just asking. Are you, Alice, menstruating right now?
Library Administrator: What's has that got to do with it?
Dr. Peter Venkman: Back off, man. I'm a scientist. 




Janine Melnitz: I've quit better jobs than this.
[answers phone]
Janine Melnitz: Ghostbusters, what do you want? 

[a giant marshmallow man crashes through the streets of New York]
Dr. Peter Venkman: Well, there's something you don't see every day. 

[in front of the library ghost, their first ghost sighting]
Dr. Peter Venkman: So... what do we do?
[Egon and Ray stare at each other in silence. Peter grabs Ray's ear]
Dr. Peter Venkman: Would you come over here, please? That's it, c'mere Francine. What do we do?
[Egon pulls out a calculator and starts punching in numbers. Peter slaps the machine out of Egon's hand]
Dr. Peter Venkman: STOP THAT! 

Dr. Egon Spengler: [about the storage facility] Wow, its getting crowded in there and these readings point to something big on the horizon.
Winston Zeddemore: What do you mean big?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Well,
[shows a twinkie]
Dr. Egon Spengler: let's say this twinkie represents all of the psycho kenetic energy in the New York area. According to this morning's sample it will be a twinkie, 35 feet long and weighing approximately 600 pounds.
[Ray coughs, in disbelief]
Winston Zeddemore: That's a big twinkie. 

And my personal favorite, the quote that will live on forever in the minds of junior high school kids who can only get away with cursing by quoting a movie...

Dr. Peter Venkman: Yes it's true.
[pause]
Dr. Peter Venkman: This man has no dick. 

Blergh - or, I need to be more specific about methods and timing when making weight loss goals

I had all these intentions of starting the year off right, making substantive, thoughtful posts for a whole year.

Then I spent the whole day alternately crapping or puking my guts up (or moaning and clutching my stomach and wishing I would hurry up and complete one of the former actions so I could feel better for 10 minutes).  I'm the third person in my house to come down with The Great Intestinal Discomfort of 2010/2011, and hopefully I'll be the last, because I wouldn't wish this on anyone, not even my husband who decided it was a good idea to fill the house with a cloud of bacon grease this morning while I was hiding in my bedroom trying not to puke.  Sorry, dude, but that ranks right up there with the Burrito Incident of 2007 in terms of thoughtlessness.

So, I get to start off my year with ... intestinal discomfort.  Not very life-affirming, or substantive, or thoughtful.  It's very hard to find inspiration while drowsing in a sour-smelling bed, dry-heaving in a trashcan, or sitting on the toilet.  Well, okay, the toilet can be very inspiring***, but it's hard to work up a good blog entry when every minute or two your thought pattern is interrupted by "ohmygodjustkillmenoooooooow."  I got a few rounds of knitting done in between rounds of illness, so I guess I get to Lysol the heck out of my new sweater once I'm better.  And I have no idea how to disinfect my iPod, which has been propped on my pillow playing hour after hour of old This American Life and RadioLab podcasts to keep me from sleeping all day.

The annoying part of the situation is that ever since my mother came down with something similar right around Christmas, we've been vigilant about cleaning up and washing hands and flushing with the seat down and all the other stuff you're supposed to do to prevent transmission of a stomach bug.  Only it turns out that Norovirus isn't killed by standard soap and water, so unless we'd completely Chloroxed everything she touched or breathed on, we were still at risk of transmission.  Me sitting there with the kid on my lap while she puked probably wasn't the best idea to slow transmission, either - but in my defense I almost ALWAYS get whatever she comes down with,  no matter how far away I stay or how much I wash, so I figured the proximity wasn't going to do anything other than speed up the show.  I'm just hoping that by staying in my room (and the bathroom) until after my mother-in-law changed her flight and left to go home a day early, I've kept the germs away from her.  She visits her mother a couple times a week, and I'd rather not have some offspring of my illness infect anyone in Mom-mom's nursing home.

What's really ironic is that, after Liza had been puke-free for more than 24 hours and was back to actually eating something other than Pedialyte and crackers, we went to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and spent a lot of time exploring the Disease Detectives exhibit.  You know, the one with all the hands-on exhibits where you can try to figure out what got various mannequins sick by checking their temperature, listening to their heart, or exploring other the very touchy-feely-movey-aroundy exhibits of the data the doctors used to diagnose the real-life cases.  It's a really cool exhibit, and Liza loved it, but about 1/3 of the way through you learn how long bacteria and viruses can live on dry room-temperature surfaces, and all of the adults in our group started looking for hand sanitizer stations and making up excuses to go to the bathroom so we could wash our hands.  I'm willing to bet that the museum's water bill has skyrocketed since they installed the thing that demonstrates exactly how long you have to wash your hands to get them fairly clean.  Twenty seconds seems like forever ...

I feel bad that I didn't find out until about 10 minutes ago that Liza was probably still contagious when we went to the museum, and she may be able to spread the love for another week or so.  Me?  I'm potentially on the hook for another day of two of active symptoms (whimper), followed by up to two weeks of being contagious.  Guess I'm not helping with Pizza Day at school on Thursday, huh?

At least I've managed to keep down the 1/4 cup of flat ginger ale I've been sipping for the past couple of hours.  Maybe by tomorrow morning I'll be able to nibble on a cracker!  Yay!  In the meantime, I'm off to see if I can locate a copy of Fever Dream by Ray Bradbury, a short story I read as a child (while suffering from stomach flu at my grandparents' house, as I recall) that I just now finally found confirmation actually exists and wasn't just a dream of my own.  Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to know the name and author of a story and STILL not be able to find a copy of it?  I'm just happy that, at least according to Wikipedia, I remember the story pretty accurately.  It would have been even more annoying to finally locate it and have it be nothing like what I remembered.  At any rate, I'm off to request the book from the library so I can lick all the page corners and spread my infection to EVERYONE!  BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

(5 minutes later) Well,  I'd have to special order one of the short story compilations in to my local library, but there's also ... HOLY SHIT WHAT KIND OF SICK FUCK MADE THAT STORY INTO A PICTURE BOOK FOR KIDS?!?!

(5 minutes later) Anyone other than me notice that my sentences get even longer and my punctuation gets even more creative when I'm sick?  Another day or two and I'll be at one with good old e.e. himself.  And is it just me, or is that poem totally about sex, not cars?  Wait, not just me.  And why did they let us read it in high school, if that's the case?  Ms. Leonard-Peace, you dog, you!


***Ari, remember Pete in high school and his legendary bathroom trips to get "inspired" for Stage Crew?  Good times, good times.

Happy New Year!

from me, Jason, Liza, my mother-in-law, and Pete, the shirtless redneck neighbor (TM):

I guess he decided tonight was the night to unload some of the excess inventory he's been storing since the cops busted his July 4th extravaganza before he was even halfway done. Here's to freeing up lots of space in the garage to stockpile next year's display!

Solstice

Last night we visited the nature center for their Solstice celebration.  Things were appropriately festive ...

... and the candlelit hike was fun, even if it was really cold and we didn't see any animals.

The fire looked great until it died down five minutes later ...

... but there were crafts and snacks to keep us occupied.

A few animals dropped by to celebrate with us ...

(whooooo's a little cutie?  the screech owl, that's who)

... and we even got to make our own Yule Log.  While Jason kept an eye on the glitteration of said log, I poked around the center looking for friendly animals to photograph.  My major coup of the evening?  I SAW THE MUDPUPPY FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!!!!! (and we've been coming here for four years now)

The mudpuppy may be a bit shy, but a bunch of the other animals were out and about, and some even seemed to welcome the camera.  A couple of the snakes even came over to the lens and sniffed all around it (through the glass) as though it was extremely interesting (or smelled like dead mice).  A couple of the residents even smiled for me.

Let us all celebrate the true meaning of the holidays

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/12/21/an-interview-with-the-nativity-innkeeper/

"Let me ask you. So your baby is born, and the first thing you do is put him in an open container filled with grain and covered in oxen drool? Does this seem reasonable to you?" 


This is why I should not be allowed to sort through my blogroll while eating cereal.  Anyone know how to get granola out of a laptop keyboard?

They are losing their freaking minds

The cats are, that is.

The birds have finally found the feeder that I put in the yard back in November (way to be observant, guys!), and they're hitting it hard.  I put it in the front yard this year, partly to give the birds some cover in the bushes nearby, and partly because this way I can watch them while sitting on the couch blogging (ahem).

I also put the feeder there because it's right near the window where the cats normally hang out anyway - I figured it would be like Kitty TV.  When the first birds appeared, I called Zach over to the arm of the couch and pointed out the window.  Zach normally isn't Mr. Observant, either, and I don't know if I've ever actually gotten him to look at something I was pointing to ... until today.  Dude started barking his head off (yes, cats can bark) at the birds, and I thought he was going to launch himself through the window (which would have been problematic, since it's got a Christmas tree in front of it).  The initial flood of birds - maybe half a dozen female cardinals and a couple of house sparrows or house finches, plus a black-capped chickadee - went down eventually, and Zach regained his sanity.

Just now Bella finally noticed the birds, and SHE started barking at them, and she never barks at anything.  She pretty much ignores the squirrels and chipmunks (which Zach happily stalks and yells at through the sliding door) and hardly ever meows unless there's something wrong (like her food bowl being less than half full).  But she stood on the arm of the chair and yelled at those birds for a couple of minutes straight.  She's quieted down now and trying to pretend that she's resting, but I'm not fooled.  She's trying to figure out how to open the window so she can go get those suckers.

Good luck growing some opposable thumbs and bulking up enough to turn the crank on the windows, babe!

Now that I know the birds will actually come in this close to the house, I'll have to see if I can manage to get another kind of feeder out there.  Just having hulled sunflower seeds won't do it for long, not if we want to have more than two or three kinds of birds around.  I'm thinking of getting a feeder for nyjer seed to see if I can get a few more finches.  And maybe if I'm feeling really kind I'll get one of those suet/peanut butter feeders for the squirrels in the back.  At any rate, it looks like the Ohio Birds guide is out to stay, at least until we can recognize all of the usual suspects at the feeder.

How to tick off your sci-fi nerd friends

Show them this with an absolutely straight face:

Or perhaps this is more your style:

First person to show these to someone and have them patiently explain to them why these pics are "wrong" gets a present!

2010 Christmas Concert, or, "The Cute! It Burns!"

Friday night Liza's school had its annual winter concert, complete with performances from grades K-7.  I had expected to have to drag Little Miss Stage Fright there kicking and screaming, but apparently she's gotten over that, at least temporarily.  We actually had problems getting through dinner fast enough to make it to the school on time, because she insisted on telling everyone at the restaurant who spoke to her at all every little detail about why she was dressed up and what they were singing and how she felt about it and on and on and on.  I thought our meal would be cold by the time she shut up long enough for the waitress to serve the food :)

The rest of her class were pumped up, as well.  I have a dozen shots from before the show, and every single one of them looks like this:

Her class was pretty much populated by 40 small taffeta-wearing-or-sweater-vested rubber jackhammers on crack.  I'm not sure what the teachers did between when we left Liza in the band room and when she came on stage - it possibly involved large doses of pharmaceuticals or some sort of mind control - but she and the other kids were all well-behaved at showtime.

(that's the legendary Lewis to the right of Liza in the picture)

Their performance was as cute and earshatteringly awful as you can imagine.

Based on data we collected at the show, I'm pretty sure the ability to carry a tune develops sometime early in second grade - the K's and first graders preferred to just shout theirs at the tops of their little lungs.  And by the time the kids hit second grade, the music teacher is sick of having them shout at her, so she hands them all recorders and they honk in dissonant unison for a couple minutes.

I think my favorite moment of the whole evening was when one of the readers from the second grade announced that her "favorite things" (the theme of the show, and what selected kids from each class wrote and read to the audience) included her dog, her teacher, and her school "because I like to blow things up."

Ah, school concerts.  Next time: earplugs and a fully-charged iPod with a new ebook loaded and ready to go.  Doesn't Jason look like he could have used one or both of those to help him weather the evening?

If Liza looks less than thrilled there, it's probably because it was getting close to 9pm at that point, and we were moments away from bundling the limp-as-a-ragdoll performer into the car and heading home.  Well, actually heading to DQ for a celebratory Blizzard, but who's counting?

Dear Posie,

It's official, I want to sell everything I own and recreate your decorating in my wonky little split-level in Cleveland.

http://rosylittlethings.typepad.com/posie_gets_cozy/2010/12/paint-and-switch.html

And I want to borrow your dog every few weeks for a couple days, too.  That's okay, right?

Sincerely, 

Gretchen

Post #1441, in which we are all festive and stuff

Snow!  Real snow!

Seriously!  Snow!  Okay, so it's not much, but it's enough to play around with.

Time to get the trees up, I guess.  Okay, chief, you're in charge of your tree this year.  Get to it.

Meanwhile, I'll deal with the rest of the decorations ... after I have a stiff drink.

Aren't you supposed to be decorating so we don't still have ornaments on your floor in February?  Schnell!

Okay, now help me fluff out the branches on the big tree.

And go outside and hang up all these ornaments on the trees outside.  What do you mean, it's not fun?  This is the holidays, darn it!  Decorate!

Ah, how I've waited for the time when she would actually be able to be useful around the house.  Now, if I could just teach her to make me some brownies and unload the dishwasher, I'd be happy.