I Can't Complain

All Hail the Mighty Huntress

So there we were, sitting on the couch watching Season 1 of "How I Met Your Mother" when we heard a high pitched squeaking noise.  I muted the TV for a moment, but the noise stopped, so we assumed it was in the show. (We were watching the episode where they got to a really loud club, so that wasn't a completely unreasonable assumption.)  Thirty seconds later we heard it again, and this time when I muted, we could still hear it. Being masters of logical reasoning, we quickly surmised that this meant it was *not* coming from the background noise on the TV.

Larry, being the designated Killer of Ugly Bugs and Investigator of Strange Noises, cautiously crept up the stairs, where he discovered our cat, Boo, sitting on the stairs playing enthusiastically with one of her catnip mice.  The furry brown one... that makes high pitched squeaking noises when she bats it... AND HAS WINGS!!    Yeah, the cat caught a bat. In our house.  And it somehow got to the landing on the stairs, away from any possible place it could have come in. Yikes.

If the squeaking was any indication, the poor little thing was completely traumatized by having become a cat toy, so Larry scooped it up and took it outside.  I guess it wasn't physically injured, because it flew away immediately, and we could see it wheeling above the rooftops as it retreated to a less cat-infested spot.  The cat was incredibly disgruntled to have been deprived of a fun new toy, and she wandered around the landing mrowring her displeasure and sniffing hopefully for quite some time. 

I have no idea how it got in. My best guess is through one of the chimneys, which are blocked off with plywood, but not sealed or capped.  It was a little bitty thing, no bigger than the palm of Larry's hand, so based on that, I'm thinking it was an evening bat or an eastern pipistrelle. (It was pretty dark in the stairwell so I didn't get a good look at the coloring.)  Whatever it was, it was a cute little thing, and I hope it's recovered from its encounter with the Mighty Huntress. 

Well Pass the Fried Twinkies, Then!

I recently had a bunch of blood work done for a life insurance application, and I have to admit I was a teensy bit worried about my cholesterol levels.  I mean, I work out semi-regularly and I generally eat pretty healthy stuff, but I have been know to have a couple scoops of Haagen-Dazs Dulce de Leche now and again.  And the occasional meal of chicken strips and french fries.  And we can't forget (as much as I'd like to) my recent real (as opposed to baked) potato chip thing. (By the way, Wonder Twin, I blame you for that one.). And maybe some other stuff I shouldn't be eating *might* have found its way into my mouth...

Apparently I was worried for nothing.  My serum cholesterol came back as 149, my HDL level (that's the good stuff) was 78, my LDL level was 69 and my triglyceride level was 98.  It must the French Paradox - I knew we were drinking all that red wine for a good reason. Vive la France!

When It Rains, It Pours

I'm not having a good week.  We've had contractors at our house for four days, and the ceiling fan we bought for them to install turned out to be broken.  The Money Eating House is living up to its name, and the Slightly Psychotic Cat has voiced her displeasure over the contractors being at the house for four days by peeing in places she's not supposed to.  Harrison is sick, slept horribly last night and has been seriously cranky since Friday.  A good friend's wife waited until he'd went out of town to file for divorce and has told him he's not allowed back in their house.  And I have so much work on my desk that I literally feel ill when I think about it. If one more thing happens, I may just give up and have a nervous breakdown.  At least I'd get a chance to rest in the psych ward.

A Toddler's Mind is Mysterious, Indeed

This morning while H was bounding around in his jammies, waiting to go downstairs for breakfast, he brought me his infamous Crocs and asked me to put them on. Since up until now, he would only wear them with socks, I pointed out that he didn't have any socks on, and asked if he wanted to go get some socks. Instead, he asked again for me to put them on, so I put them on, expecting to hear the shrieking of one who has been burned by acid or accidentally touched his bare feet to the inside of a Croc.  Nope. He just said thank you and went back to happily bounding around.  He wore them barefooted the whole rest of the morning, and complained when I took them off to put his Tredz on for school.  I hereby officially give up trying to figure what's going on in the mind of a not-quite-two year old.

Completely unrelated to this, and as something of a PSA... if you want something other than slightly brown, hot water to come out of your coffee maker, it's best if you actually put coffee in it.

Aaaaaahhhh....

I just got back from four days in the Dominican Republic.  It was heavenly.  Sun, sand, palm trees, fruity drinks, and three of the best friends a person could have.  Of course, two hours at work has almost entirely undone four days worth of relaxation, but I guess that was unavoidable.

Whoops...

This morning I was driving down the street that leads to my office when I got to a "Road Closed" sign with a detour pointing right.  It's illegal to make a left turn from where I was, but if I'd gone right, I'd have to make a left across two lanes of heavy traffic, and then another left back across three lanes to get where I was going.  The person in front of me decided that since the road was closed, that made it okay to make a left, so I figured that was good enough for me, and made a left, too.  Without signaling (yes, I know I'm constantly griping about that, but I hadn't decided which way to go until I actually started into the intersection).  As I did it, I glanced in my rear-view mirror to see a cop directly behind me.  Which reminded me that I still haven't replaced my burned-out brake light.   Whoops. 

I guess it wasn't my day to get a ticket though - the cop ended up making a (legal) right turn and heading the other way.

A Sunny Sunday Digging in the Dirt

On Sunday I finally got to plant my vegetable garden.  A wicked storm blew through early in the day, and it was looking like I wasn't going to get to plant (or was going to have to plant in the rain), but it cleared up by lunchtime and ended up being sunny and lovely.  I planted completely random stuff this year - the result of only having time to make it to Lowe's and having a not-quite-two-year old and his impatient father in tow.  I ended up with six tomato plants - two grape tomatoes, one cherry tomato, two Big Boys and one Mr. Stripey, which I chose because I liked the name.  I also have four cukes, three straightneck squash, three green peppers and a red pepper. I think I intended to do two green, one red and one yellow or orange, but I got distracted somewhere along the way. 

And for my annual exercise in frustration, I did two watermelon plants again this year, despite swearing I wasn't going to.  These are Sugar Baby icebox watermelons, which are those little round ones. I'm hoping this means they will have a chance to get going before the summer sun completely fries them, which is what has happened to every single watermelon plant I've planted in years past.

I'm really more of a process gardener than a product gardener, anyway. I really enjoyed my time puttering on Sunday.  Just me and the dirt and the seedlings, with a nice amount of sun and a good breeze to keep it from being too hot.   Oh, and plenty of mosquitoes to keep me company.

You Want Fries With That?

On Monday the first of H's daycare buddies turned two. To celebrate, her mother treated the class to Happy Meals from McDonald's.  Now, I could go on endlessly about the appropriateness of giving fast food to a group of under-two-year-olds and I could probably rant at least as long about putting me in a difficult position of making my kid the outcast who's not allowed to join the party, or letting him have something I really really didn't want him to have this early in his life*, but I'm not going to.

This is about the toy.  When I was a kid, I remember Happy Meals coming with toy cars, Transformers, Peanuts characters, stuff like that.  The Happy Meals they had on Monday?  Came with American Idol toys. AMERICAN IDOL.  And they were CREE-PEE.  This is the one H got:

You move the microphone up to its mouth and it "sings" this really annoying, loud song.  I guess I'm a mean mommy, but I dumped the thing directly into the trash.  Since H hadn't seen it, he didn't care, and we didn't have to look at it or hear it.  And by the way, this was NOT the under three toy.  Why would you get Happy Meals for a group of two and unders and not ask for the under three toys?

* I decided to let H have the Happy Meal.  Apparently they gave all the kids half the meal (two nuggets and some fries) and then if they wanted more, they doled out the rest. My kid ate his four nuggets, and then got up and started trolling his classmates' plates for more.  He ended up eating six.  Fabulous.

Whoo hooo!

Larry got his letter from the dean today, informing him that he has been recommended for tenure and promotion to Associate Professor!   I am SO happy for him!  He *said* he wasn't worried, but I know he was, and I know the waiting was starting to get to him.  And it's a relief to be able to stop qualifying our future plans with "if Larry gets tenure."  Oh, and it comes with an increase in salary, which is always nice.

Crocodile Tears

About a month ago, I bought Harrison a pair of Crocs.  I've heard they're great for toddlers - easy to get on and off, indestructible, fun looking, and supposedly quite comfortable. I even ordered them in his favorite color - blue.*   When they came in, I took off the shoes he was wearing and put the Crocs on.  You'd think those suckers were lined with razor blades and acid.  He wailed, he screamed "noooooo" at the top of his lungs, he refused to put his feet on the floor, and when I finally got him to stand up in them, he just leaned pathetically against the side of the bed, as if trying to minimize foot-to-evil-shoe contact, and sobbed "No shoes! No shoes!" until I took them off.

Knowing that he is his father's son, and therefore slow to adapt to changes of any kind, I did not immediately send the Crocs back.  Instead, I put them on the shelf where all his other shoes live.  Last Saturday morning, he was wearing jammies without feet, so I offered the Crocs, instead of socks to wear downstairs at breakfast.  He wasn't too happy with that idea, but since the evil shoes were standing between him and food, he consented.  Sunday he wanted to go outside, so I offered the Crocs again. He wore them without complaint, though he wasn't completely excited about it.  Two mornings ago, we were all upstairs getting ready for the day, and he brought me the Crocs. I put him them on and he happily stomped around in them until it was time to get dressed. Yesterday, we were getting ready to walk up to the park, and he *brought* me the Crocs, pulled off his Treadz and sat down so I could put the Crocs on him.  When we got to the park, I asked if I could put his Treadz back on him, since I worried about how well he'd manage the uneven sand in the Crocs.  "Nooooooooo!  My shoes! My shoes!"  From "no shoes" to "my shoes" in four weeks... wacky child.

Of course, now that he loves his Crocs, I need to work on him with overalls, which, I discovered this morning, are apparently also lined with razor blades and acid.

* I actually have no idea what his favorite color is, but at the time I ordered the shoes, if you asked him what color something was, he would answer "blue" regardless of what color it actually was.  Since then he's moved on to everything being red.