Archives for October 2006

Careful driving and pagan holidays — brought to you by children with no parents.

Laylee: Why are you driving so slow?
Me: I’m being careful because there are so many kids out on the streets.
Laylee: You have to drive really slow because some kids have no moms and no dads. Halloween is good for kids with no moms and no dads because they can have something to EAT!

Praise Buddha for Halloween! I was kind of sort of kidding about sending candy to orphans for a tax write-off. I guess some people do it and according to Laylee, that’s the only way they get to eat… so hand out protein bars or fruit snacks next year people.

At each door, Laylee would yell “Trick or Treat,” and knock on the door gently. Magoo would throw his body against the door, bang with his fists and yell “TREAT!” He wasn’t taking the chance that they’d choose the flaming bag of excrement over giving him a pixie stick (thanks to Falwyn for the link).

I fear my children are being ostracized for their Canadian ancestry. In my hood growing up, doorbells were for wimps and losers. If you couldn’t yell “TRICK OR TREAT” loud enough to be heard, you didn’t deserve any candy. Laylee was repeatedly put in her place for not waiting until the candy givers came to the door to say it. She also frequently walked right into stranger’s homes exploring. I think that urge must come from Dan’s side of the family. If she doesn’t curb that tendency, she’s bound to be shunned for the Utah in her too.

To be fair, I often blame my odd quirks on my Canadianism when really, it’s very possible that I’m just incredibly strange.

Laylee: Oooo…It’s pretty,

Laylee: pretty.

Laylee: It’s pretty SCARY.

Every single one of our trick-or-treaters were dressed like a pirate. We only had one — total… but still. Show some originality!

Speaking of no trick-or-treaters coming to my block, I fear I may be falling in love with my next door neighbors and I hardly know them. They spent around 80 hours decorating their house as an enchanted palace of horror, the floating ghosts, the strobe light, the amazing cobwebs, the wreath of bones, the animatronic hand in the candy bowl, the screen projecting NOS FERATU OUT THEIR FRONT WINDOW! They have been in this area 3 years and average 5 kids per year coming by their house so they just try harder and harder. In the Ziploc bags they gave away were multiple candies, plastic jewelry, VAMPIRE TEETH, play-doh and I don’t know what else. They just plain rock.

Laylee ooed and awed over every beautiful dress. “Oh! Isn’t she such a lovely princess?” She made more than one insecure tween girl blush with pride. They should have been proud to be among the few and the bold ones actually wearing clothing tonight.

It seems that most tween boys went as hockey masks and the majority of the tween girls went as mental patients. It was FREEZING out there and I saw way too much black fishnet for my taste.

Me: One more house or go home?
Laylee: One more house.
Me: We can’t go trick-or-treating forever.
Laylee: I promise I won’t make you go trick-or-treating forever.

Honestly, I wouldn’t mind. I love trick-or-treating more than she’ll ever know. I’m so glad I can finally do it again without people rolling their eyes or asking my age.

The Cars movie has influenced the way Laylee sees vehicles. They all have emotions. All Civics are “pretty sad.” Explorers are “more happier.” By the end of trick-or-treating tonight, they were all “pretty tired”, Laylee noticed. I think they were also frozen solid.

And now, a highly accurate scientifically aged photo:

the reasons: fairies and Charlie Brown

Honestly, I am more than willing to go buy a few Snickers bars for the neighborhood kids to avoid finding a flaming bag of poo on my front porch. It’s just common sense and although the bag contents are the same color as chocolate, I prefer giving treats to getting tricks.

Now whether you have kids or not, are a kid or not, have ever seen a kid or not, or have even heard of Halloween, you will probably end up with an indecent amount of candy at your house by tomorrow morning. I’m not sure how it always happens. Halloween is rather magical that way.

The important thing is not what kind of candy you get or even how much. What really matters is how you dispose of it. Are you a hoarder? Do you eat it all as quickly as possible? Donate it to an orphanage in Romania for the tax deduction? Or do you simply eat one piece of candy per day until next year?

Guru lady told me this morning that a friend of hers makes a paper chain with different colored rings. Each color means a different amount of candy from 0-whatever you’re comfortable with. The kids take down a ring each day to see how much candy they’re allowed to eat from their treat bag. I’m liking this idea.

How do you eat it? One of my earliest blog posts was a treatise on the one true way to eat Kit-Kat bars. I still eat them like that and I hope by now a few of you do too.

With Rolos, I nibble out a small hole and then suck out all the caramel, finally consuming the chocolate shell. It’s quite satisfying and prolongs the enjoyment.

Tell your candy tips. What is the one true way to eat a peanut butter cup? How many Smarties should be eaten at once?

Photo courtesy of morguefile.com

Reasons: Magoo lifting every pumpkin he sees over his head and smashing it to the ground and laughing

(This happened a month ago. I am just now calm enough to blog the carnage.)

So I was sitting in a soggy tent in my back yard for three hours with 2 children under 4, no socks and a mother lode of nut-based products during the worst rainstorm of the year. So what? At least I learned something.

We’re big on emergency preparedness and food storage in my church and I’ve been kind of sort of a little bit working on it for as long as I can remember.

A few months ago, the leaders of a large group of congregations in the Seattle area announced that we were going to have a disaster drill, a “mock” disaster. Just about every Sunday from that time until now someone has mentioned emergency preparedness or disaster plans. I now realize they meant for us to plan what we would do IN a disaster, not plan how to create one.

Dan and I did the basic stuff. We picked an out of state contact we’d both call if we were separated and could only call out of state. From what I hear, this is common. During a major disaster, it’s often impossible to make local calls, but more likely that you can call your grandma in Wichita.

We built up our food storage. We bought a giant tent. We made 72-hour kits… sort of. We bought batteries, water storage containers, hand crank radios and flashlights. The day before the drill, one of the preparedness gurus in our women’s group got up and made everyone close their eyes. “No, I’m serious. Everyone close them now. If anyone still hasn’t put together their emergency kits, put up your hands. Keep them up. I’m still writing down names. Okay, keep them up. Okay, you can open your eyes now.”

I laughed my good natured, hair tussling laugh. Silly people. Like, helloo-ooo, we’ve been planning for this mock disaster for months. If you’re not ready yet, you are like, so totally LAY-AME.

Monday morning, I decided to “double-check” my supplies. My food seemed to be in order but I had no clothing, rope, radios, waterproof matches…um any kind of matches or pretty much anything but food in the kits. I bought the food. I bought the backpacks. I bought some pretty stuff to go in them. Where was the pretty stuff? I started to freak out. We were supposed to open a letter at 5:00pm telling us our fate and giving us specific tasks to carry out. I WAS NOT READY!!

So I called Guru lady. I don’t remember exactly what I said but it had something to do with not being prepared enough to tell her I was unprepared the day before and me being one of the 5 foolish virgins except I had 2 kids, but no oil and no baby wipes in my backpack.

She talked me down off the forget-this-stupid-drill ledge and told me I could get a “complete” kit at the fire station. She explained that “complete” did not include full-body waterproof suits with coated seams for all of my children. I’d have to buy those separately if I wanted them. “HA! Um, yeah. I think we can get by without those. Thanks.”

4:30: I pull into my driveway with the small red backpack, pack changes of clothes for the kids, 3 diapers for 3 days (I was thinking numbers), matches, camp stove (oh, for the LOVE! I should probably have thought of buying camp dishes. For the drill, I would just have to pretend I kept my regular pots and dishes in the disaster kit.), soup for dinner, sleeping bags, blankets, small flashlights in the backpacks.

4:45: I fill our giant water barrels and realize I have no way to get the water out of the barrels. Guru lady informs me that there is a store in downtown Seattle where I can procure a siphon sometime. Good thing I won’t be needing it today.

5:00: I call Dan to ask him what the letter says because I can’t find mine. We have had a major earthquake (something we look forward to any day now in Seattle), our homes are unstable so we need to find alternate shelter. All phone lines are down and power is out. If we can find a way to call out of state, we are supposed to call our out-of-state contact. Bridges are out.

5:05: We both call Dan’s parents to tell them we’re okay. Dan begins the long drive home, trying to get to me without using any highways or overpasses. I take the kids outside in their warm fleece jackets and place our emergency luggage in the doorway of the house so it won’t get sprinkled on. It’s beginning to rain.

5:10: The deluge continues at a rate I have never before witnessed in the state of Washington. Clearly, God is smiting me. I hate getting smit. It seriously seriously bites. The kids are soaked. I am soaked and the bottom of our gigantic 4-room mesh-ceilinged tent is filling with water. Magoo falls in the water face-first and begins to choke and sputter. Then he laughs. Ha ha. This is hilarious. I’m laughing on the inside. I hope DCFS is laughing when our neighbors call to tell them that I’ve taken my kids outside in the worst storm of the century to conduct an experiment in hypothermic insanity.

5:15: The tent instructions are destroyed except for the part that says it requires at least two adults to construct, preferably one with a masters degree in architectural engineering. I begin to think I should have gotten it out of the box some time before the drill.

5:30: I beg Noah to open the door and let me on the fetching ark. “I’m sorry I laughed at you, dude. I’ll sleep with the rhinos. We’re drowning. ACK! HELP!”

5:45: I abandon the canvas palace of watery doom and watch it sink to Davy Jones’ locker. Risking my life, I re-enter the unstable house to retrieve our small 4-man tent. I set this up in 5 minutes, sop the water out of it with half our emergency blankets, strip my children nude and throw them into the tent with a pile of damp sleeping bags and our 72-hour kit backpacks. Magoo verbally informs me of his mounting displeasure.

6:00: I dress everyone in fresh clothes in the soggy little tent and realize that I have forgotten socks. I again risk my life to go into the unstable building and retrieve footwear.

6:15: Upon opening our emergency rations I realize that nearly every item in my carefully packed food pouches is nut based — trail mix, protein bars, crackers with peanut butter in them. Magoo is not supposed to eat nuts until he’s two or I think his head will detonate. That’s what my sources tell me. I let the kids slurp down some canned mandarins and call it dinner. Laylee spreads nuts throughout the tent at approximately the rate I can fish them out of Magoo’s mouth. It works out nicely.

6:30: By this time I have realized that the single most important thing to pack in an emergency kit is something to occupy the children. I have bupkus. They are bored out of their minds and are driving me out of mine. If I had to go three days with them like this, I would have to be committed to the non-existent mental hospitals that had most likely been toppled by the earthquake.

By the time Dan got home around 7, it was dark, we were freezing and I had learned several valuable lessons, including but not limited to:

1. Don’t put off procrastinating till the last possible second. Procrastinate right away so you can get down to business before it’s too late.
2. Pack age appropriate food in your emergency kits. If you have a nursing baby, you may want to pack formula, rather than steak in her backpack.
3. Children wear socks. Think of the whole body when you’re packing extra clothes. If it’s winter where you live, pack gloves, hats, etc.
4. Seattle is a very wet place. I have not yet purchased full body rubber-wear for my kids but I’ve gotten a lead on where I can buy it from Guru lady, who I now spend as much time with as possible.
5. An emergency is all fun and games till you realize you didn’t pack any fun or games. For the love of CHEESE, save yourselves and pack a deck of cards or at the very least a roll of scotch tape.
6. Learn how to use all of your emergency equipment in advance.
7. Do not store all of your flashlights in the only room in your house with no windows.
8. Leave Noah alone. Maybe even hand him a mallet or something. You may need his help someday.

Walk yourself through a fake disaster sometime. See what would happen if you had to rely on your emergency supplies to get you through. I think you’ll be surprised at how much work you have to do. Prescription meds? Feminine hygiene products? Toilet paper? Not a nut? Cash in small bills? Know how to shut off your gas and water? Hand crank NOAA radio to listen for broadcasts about why the sky is suddenly green? An ounce of sanity?

[Daring Young Dad here. I’m a Guest Blogger Schmoop today. Hi! *waves wildly*]

Once upon a time, I did not know how to make chocolate-chip cookies. Shocking, I know. This is the story of how I learned.

My mom is a good cook. At least she has been for as long as I’ve known her. When I was small and trying to spend as much time as possible underfoot, I spent a lot of time with her in the kitchen. I loved to cook with her. I was fascinated with how you could put a bunch of stark, homogenous ingredients together in a bowl, mix them into some kind of batter or dough, and cook it, and then end up with ACTUAL REAL FOOD, like bread, or rolls, or cookies, or pies.

Hmmm… I don’t think I knew the word “homogenous” at the time. If I did, though, it was because my Mom taught me. she was well educated in the ways of organic chemistry, and explained lots of fascinating stuff to me about how yeast worked, and gluten chains, and how soap works (cleaning is too part of cooking! to my great chagrin).

Unfortunately, we kids were a lot of work. Also shocking, I know. I remember at one point that my Mom seemed to be extra tired all the time. In my defense, I think she may have been pregnant with her third or fourth kid at the time. She just didn’t seem to have as much time or energy to fritter the day away making cookies with me in the kitchen. But that certainly didn’t stop me from asking.

One day, she was lying on her bed with one arm draped over her head trying to shade her eyes, but I wanted to make cookies. Alas, I was not the caring and sensitive man I am … still trying to become. I’m sure I used all my little-kid wiles to coax her into some kitchen fun, but she just couldn’t muster the energy. So she finally said, “How about YOU make some chocolate-chip cookies?”

“But I don’t know how!”

“That’s okay, I’ll tell you what to do.”

“But I don’t know how!”

“It’s okay. Just go get the big mixing bowl out of the closet and put it on the counter,” [editorial note: yes, she really did have to be that specific] “and then come back.”

So I did. And then she told me to get two cubes of margarine out of the refrigerator and put them into the bowl. I did, and then came back. Then she told me to get the white sugar out, and to find the one-cup measure, and to measure a cup out, and put it in the bowl. I did, and then came back. Then for the brown sugar.

This went on for some time, with some confusion at some points, but generally making it through. For some hard mixing parts, I actually brought the bowl to her in her bedroom and she helped do the hard stirring. (My mom was STRONG; she could totally cream cold butter out of the fridge! With nothing but a spoon! Wow!)

And that’s how I learned to make chocolate-chip cookies.I don’t know the recipe by heart anymore. And I think perhaps in my mind I may have coalesced several experiences and maybe forgotten some unpleasant parts involving gross mistakes on my part, but I didn’t have a journal back then and that’s how I remember it now, so that might as well be how it was, to me anyway.

What were your special times when you were small? What did your parents do with you that you loved? That made you feel special? That was fun?

How many hard plastic balls are in my house? Magoo, who is obviously practicing to be a professional pitcher someday, spends much of his time screeching like a nazgul and laying waste to the princesses in his path.

Hopefully Laylee can find a job as the town crier, weeping and hiding from an infant. She is completely obsessed with gum. What did you do today?  Chewed gum and played dodge-ball involuntarily while squealing like a pig.

Ouch. Dude. He just whipped me in the head with a rolled up knee-high. Yes. Our house contains knee-highs. It also contains a couple of pairs of pants with elastic waistbands, whole-wheat pasta and 2-6 framed pictures of me and Dan kissing madly. See why I’ve never invited you over? You probably wouldn’t like it here.

I bought the DVD Emma again and season 4 of Monk. Since we already own Emma, some lucky family member will probably get it for Christmas or Mother’s Day. It’s a good one. I promise. I bought it, like twice.

I passed on the age old myth of the gum in the tum never being digested.

I thought about Jim and Pam. Will they end up like Angela and Tony, dragging it out for 8 seasons? Because really, I cannot take 8 seasons. They must be together.

I erased a “?” and a “>” and suddenly my blog was no more. I put them back and my blog reappeared…like magic. I decided that PHP is dark magic and must be stopped.

I reported a guy driving well. He had one of those stickers that said “How’s My Driving? — Call this number.” I am obedient so I called the number. From the silence on the other end when I told her that there was no “incident” except safe courteous drivemanship, I’m guessing not many people call to report good driving. I hope he got a raise.

That is all.