K has had three time-outs today because she keeps bolting for the hills now that she can unlock and open the patio door by herself. On the last timeout, she whipped off her diaper and “scrubbed” the wood floor in her room with it. She also ripped the foam bumpers off the futon, and threw her books in the air like she just didn’t care. I was so mad, I couldn’t speak. I put her in the kitchen, sans diaper, while I cleaned up her room. She piddled on the linoleum. Yesterday, she dumped a box of crackers on the living room carpet and ground them in.

Tonight, when S gets home, I am pouring me a pint glass of white zin and affixing my butt to the glider swing on the deck while he wrangles kids herds cats inside.

On top of today, we’re also getting the Crud S has had for two weeks. Fun fun fun!

Is it too early for the Zin now?

Addendum:

We went shopping at Menards (home improvement center) last night to get another foam bumper for K’s bed. While there, I discovered that the locksets I replaced two of our exterior doors’ old sets with were all on clearance, since they would not be carried any longer. I picked out two and had them re-keyed to our key. At this point, K threw up. All over herself, all over the cart, all over the floor. First time she has ever thrown up in public. I felt so bad for her. I cleaned it up with their towels and windex (hello, could you maybe spring for some disinfectant, for cri-yi?) and we still had to wait for the locks to be re-keyed. I offered to take S and the Squids home during the re-key but it would have been close to a 20 mile round-trip, so we waited. I bought a bottle of water for K. She seemed so small and miserable and kept whimpering “I want to go home”. Finally we were done. I got everything out to the car after I checked out and discovered that one of the 4 pieces of pipe insulation was missing from the package I bought, but it was the only one they had in that size, my kid was miserable, it was raining, and I just couldn’t bring myself to drag it in there and start that whole hullabaloo. So we ate a dollar on the insulation. K threw up in the car on the way home, and twice in the house. I went out grocery shopping to get bland foods for her. She threw up several times after I got home, I felt so powerless to help. And so guilty for having given her the timeouts. But we need consistency, or else she’ll run out in the street willy-nilly.

She is better this morning, but there’s nothing that tears at your heart more than seeing your kid lying listless and weak, frightened of what is happening to her beyond her (and your) control.

It’s been with him for nearly 15 years, only two weeks less than I have. And now it’s in the hands of another young man. But he still has me! And that’s not going to change.

Two weeks after our first date, S bought the Ford Probe. It was lipstick red (”Rio Red), sleek, aerodynamic. Dave Peplinski said of the car, “It looks fast even when it’s standing still.”

Two weeks before we got married, S dented the hell out of the driver’s side door because he was preoccupied with the wedding and backed into the barn-style door of his parents’ garage. There’s history in that dent, something I remembered with a smile every time I saw it. The new owner plans to pull it out. That’s not his history, after all.

I will likely add to this post, but the kids are screaming and it’s hard to get appropriately maudlin while dealing with screaming kids.

So I finally replaced the bathroom vanity light which has been slowly eating itself since we moved in nearly nine years ago. The center two lights in a four light fixture were out, and the shadows were consuming the room like some sort of damp Lovecraftian villain. As with many things in this house (see the Faucet post for reference points, I dare you), the wiring for the fixture was nonstandard and the ironic thing is that it was screwed into the wall with this bolt that seriously would have held up a rock climbing wall. Did these people hang bowling balls off their light fixtures? Getting it out of the wall was half the battle, and then I realized that the lovely cheap little replacement interim fixture I got at IKEA was not going to cut the mustard because of where the wiring was situated in the wall. So I grabbed K and went to Lowe’s, ’cause we got a “spend your free money from the government that’s really not free and we’re taking out of your parents’ social security so you’ll have to put them in a crappier home in ten years” $10 off a $50 purchase project incentive card thingy in the mail that day (the 29th), and also because, y’know, I had the power for three rooms off at the circuit breaker and wires sticking out of the wall and stuff. I narrowed it down to three fixtures. Yes, I know it would be vaguely interesting with photos of the fixtures and that you are just narrowly avoiding terminating this read and searching for Tapir pictures but come on now. Lowe’s has no photos whatsoever of the three fixtures I looked at. I searched through all 756 potential suspects to no avail. It was narrowed among a 5 light fixture in brushed nickel with frosted glass shades and no curves, a 3 light fixture in dark bronze with alabaster shades and curvy and Craftsman-style details (halogen lights, which was the ixnay), and the brushed nickel 3 light fixture with frosted white “chipped away at” looking shades with brushed nickel rings holding them in place that I bought. Which was on clearance. Which should have been my first clue.

I noted the dimensions on the box, which would give a generous coverage of the other color of paint discovered beneath the old fixture, so I wouldn’t need to dig out the Vanilla Frost paint can from 9 years ago to touch up. I got the thing out of the box and affixed the baseplate to the wall. Only to find that the dimensions are a good TWO INCHES shorter than the stated length on the box. Nice going, Lowe’s! I am deciding whether to bitch about it or not. I sure as hell am not taking it back off the wall at this point. (S checked it out last night and figured out that the dimensions on the box are the length from the end of one shade to the end of the other shade. Which doesn’t help me at all on the wall. Irritating.) I got the rest of it put up and added the compact fluorescent bulbs from IKEA and I must say, it looks darn swanky. Bigger and more involved a fixture than I was planning at this point, but I think it will work out. And the room seems waaaaaay brighter now.

Next up, either the kitchen or main bathroom faucet. The bathroom one is now spraying water all over when I turn it on, I will try the white vinegar descaling trick and if that doesn’t work, perhaps my parents’ Lowe’s “spend dat money here!” card might come in handy, if they don’t plan to use it.

Oh, and can I just say how inane it is to have carpeting in the dining room? It bugged me when we moved in, but we didn’t have kids (read: professional crumbdroppers) at that point. Now, it’s just icky. I could vacuum every hour and still feel like it was dirty.

On Thursday, April 24, we made our first trip with both Squids, to Minneapolis. We didn’t leave the house until about 5, I kept second-guessing what I had packed. Fun how that works. If it were just me and S, we could wash our clothes if they got ucky, and deal with a smaller bag. But with the Squids, you never know who is going to get poopy or wet through their clothes, or throw up, or what have you. And this weather!! 70 degrees when we left. Snowed the second day we were there. Got warm. Now it is blizzarding here. What the hell.

On the drive over, it went from windy to spitting rain to full on sheets of rain where I could barely see to drive. On a side road, during the rain sheeting, we saw three emergency vehicles. It was so hard to see because of the rain, we’re not even sure what kind of emergency. It was craziness.

We followed the directions to get to the hotel that we got from the hotel website. They were wrong. When we finally figured out where the hotel was, we were irritated. And had to park in the far end of a ghettolicious parking lot with no streetlights where you got the feeling someone was going to jump out at you momentarily and demand something. I carried the luggage up to the room and S went up with the Squids while I parked in the eerie gloom of deepest darkest Roseville parking lot. I armed the alarm, just ’cause. I rarely do. Two minutes after I got to the hotel room after wondering if I’d be mugged on the way there or not, a car alarm went off. Looking out the window, I could see that it was approximately where our car was. At this point, I was pissed off. I grabbed my keys and stormed back to the car. I think I must have been insane but whatever. I got to our car, it was a car two away from us, which shut off shortly after I got there. I think someone hit the panic button, in their hotel room, and managed to shut it off from the same place. I am amazed the signal reached that far.

I managed to get back to the room without getting jumped and then E proceeded to fuss and yell until 4:30 am. Yep, we got pretty much no sleep. Add to this S’s horrible allergies making him cough and sneeze all night. K slept like a log though, good on her.

Cousin Karen and their adorable daughter Sam came to whisk us off to breakfast at The Good Earth in the morning, she tried to call, but the clip was broken off the phone cable and therefore our phone was not plugged in. It was possible to hold the cable in place manually to make a call. Nice. We had some delicious organicalicious breakfasty food and I thought I lost my purse but then realized I left it back at the hotel. Then we went to David and Karen’s to hang out. En route, Karen realized our headlight was out. Thus begins the Headlight Saga.

Karen and I went to Target to get a replacement bulb. Their auto products book only included the Subaru Outback back to 2004, ours is a 2003. But I went with the light it recommended anyway. Got a bunch of other stuff, including pseudoephedrine for my poor sneezy hubby. Got back to the parking lot at their apartment. I opened ‘er up and realized the headlight was wrong. Went back to Target with S and the Squids to exchange. Got what I thought was the correct bulb, S remembered that the placement of the headlights is nonintuitive and therefore I had pulled out the high beam instead of the low beam light. So that was correct, but the original was not burned out. Target didn’t have the proper light, when I pulled it out and went back in. Home Depot does not even carry Automotive parts (just a gajillion kinds of car wax and shammies, how useful of them). We went back to the Caribou Coffee place where I had gotten a cup when I was at Target with Karen, they gave me a free refill because I had been there just 20 minutes previously (awesome!) and gave me directions to an auto parts place. O’Reilly auto parts had the light I needed, and an employee with an incredible sense of humor and a way about him that immediately put me at ease, even though I was kinda stressed. Someone ahead of me checked out with something that cost $7.56, he said “That will be seven hundred fifty-six pennies, please!”. He found the part, gave some good advice, and I went into the parking lot and inserted the bulb and closed up the headlight assembly. Then we headed back to David and Karen’s.

Scott and the Squidlets hung out with David when he got home after work, and Karen and I went out to get dinner and groceries for breakfast the following morning. We went to Surdyk’s for beer and wine, Whole Foods for snacks and breakfast food, and Chipotle for dinner.

By the time we got back to the hotel, the parking lot was full (it was only 10:30PM.) and we had to park at a Mexican Restaurant across the street. When we got back in the room, I almost tripped in the hole in the floor covered with carpet (seriously), and the toilet clog, which had been fixed while we were out, reappeared after one use of the potty. (was not us who clogged it. Might have been a toupee in there). The sink clog was fixed but there was still no strainer in the sink, so I had to keep the Squids away so as to not lose them or a toothbrush down that deep dank hole. The couple in the room above us once again used the hotel stay as an excuse to have intimate relations, loudly, at about 1am. (this happened the night previously also). K decided this was a “monster” above her and was not too keen on sleep. E only stayed up til about 2:30AM.

In the morning, we got up early ( and I started getting stuff together to schlep to the mexican restaurant parking lot so that we wouldn’t have so much to drag out when it was closer to check-out time. When I got outside, it was snowing! Hard. I couldn’t believe it. Blowing icy blasts and snowing. At the end of April. So not fair.

We got everything packed up, and I brought the car up to the loading area so S could get the Squids in there without freezing their little hineys off. While I was checking out at the front desk, another resident at the hotel came up and said her car had been hit in the parking lot. Her husband was disabled and they had to park waaaay back in the lot like we did the night before, and someone hit their car. And they were there for a nephew’s funeral and it just seemed like an awful lot of extra stuff she didn’t need to deal with. I gave her a hug before I left.

We had an amazing breakfast at David and Karen’s, cooked by Karen and with Coffee a la David. I got a call from my sister telling me that dad wasn’t feeling well, but as the weekend wore on he was doing better. I still worried about him though. Karen and S, the Squidlets, and I went off to Ikea after breakfast, with the plan to go to the Children’s Museum later in the afternoon. S, the Squidlets, and I went to the Children’s Museum and Karen, Sam, and David hung out at home for a bit. K enjoyed the Sesame Street exhibit and the Earthworks exhibit, as well as HabiTot. E enjoyed HabiTot immensely. Then we went back to David and Karen’s and got everything packed up to go to the Hotel Grand Rios in Brooklyn Park, MN.

It was like a Labyrinth, all that was lacking was David Bowie and Muppets. We brought some stuff and the kids up to the rooms, and I had S take the Squidlets along with D,K, and S to the indoor play area while I brought the rest of our stuff up and moved the car. S was still miserable with allergies, so I asked at the front desk if there was a pharmacy or something nearby. Target, three blocks away. Along with Chipotle! So I went to Target, got the stuff, had a chocolate mint mocha latte from Starbucks (yeah, I know. So sue me), and got Fajita Burritos from Chipotle for dinner. I got back to the hotel and packed pretty much everything else we needed out of the car into two big huge bags and packhorsed it up to the room. Except I turned the wrong way in the massive Labyrinth and wound up wandering the halls for 20+ minutes trying to find the room. Gah. Got my exercise. And almost had a coronary.

We hung out and chatted til it was late, and in the morning we tried the pool. Neither of the older kids was into it. So we all showered and checked out and picked up Chipotle for lunch (see a theme here?) After lunch and hanging out for a while at David and Karen’s, we went to brunch at Keys cafe in downtown Mpls with friends of mine from Ravelry, the awesome knitting/crocheting site I belong to. CrochetCompulsiv Dawn and her daughter, TeaJoyGreye Joy and her Will, and Bubbo Heather and her David were there with bells on. We had a fantastic brunch and I was really sad when it was time to go.

Then we drove home, with only a couple stops, and K wet through her diapers twice, which was not a lot of fun. It was a great trip, I wish S had felt better but it is what it is. I am glad we went.

[Points of interest to mention:]

parking lot at super 8

emmie up til 4:30am

headlight burnout

room phone not plugged in

Good Earth brunch with Karen

Chipotle

Mexican Restaurant parking lot

snowstorm Sat. AM

breakfast @ KPs

Ikea w/Karen

Children’s Museum

drive to Grand Rios

Mucinex/Chipotle/Starbucks run

Sunday morning chipotle @ KPs

Brunch at Keys Cafe MPLS

Drive home

K wet thru diaper 2x

So the Squidlets and I celebrated Earth Day by going to the Birding Festival at the Boston School Forest. It was sort of a tricky caper, as S was in a meeting and I had to wrangle both slippery Squidlets as we went on a birding hike with local Birding expert Kent Hall. On the hike, we saw a blue jay, flicker, hairy woodpecker, pair of cowbirds (poo!), cardinals, robins, hermit thrush, and a few we weren’t quite able to identify due to shyness or distance. K also saw MANY piles of deer droppings, which fascinated and thrilled her to no end. I am so proud. K drew some scribbles on a piece of paper and E attempted to eat some crayons. Neither endeavor was particularly successful, but it was fun nonetheless. After munching on a couple of snacks, we went downstairs and K built two birdfeeders, one for Black Oil Sunflower seeds and one for suet! She used a hammer with great enthusiasm, and did quite well with it.

It was rainy and cold this morning, but by the time the event started at 4, it was a gorgeous, sunny day and the bark trails had dried out enough as not to be soggy, but weren’t so dry as to be dusty. It was perfect! I hurt in all the right ways, from exercise and fresh air and getting out with my girls.

We were one of the first 25 families to arrive (the first, actually. How often does THAT happen in my life?! Not too damn often. It helped that I knew it was going to be an extra big pain to wrangle the kids - like herding cats - and started getting them ready two hours ahead of time), so we received one of the awesome gift bags. It’s a great canvas tote with the Boston School Forest logo on it, an excellent book on Wisconsin birds by Stan Tekiela, an equally fantastic book called Teaching Kids to Love the Earth by Marina Lachecki, Joseph Pasineau, Ann Linnea, and Paul Treuer, a mini size compact fluorescent bulb which will fit one of our lamps PERFECTLY, a white pine sapling for Arbor Day, and various brochures and pamphlets on Earth Day appropriate subjects. I was pretty much floored by how cool the contents of the bag (and indeed the bag itself) were. I also bought T-shirts for myself and K, the reason I found out about this event in the first place is because I saw one of the event organizers at Cafe Veranda (formerly Stonecrop Organics) wearing a BSF shirt and asked her about it, about a month ago. On the back, it said “May the Forest be With You”, and was a lovely loden green long sleeved shirt. I looked for one today, but they’re gone, along with the hooded sweatshirts, which seem to have all gone to volunteers and employees. I did get two shirts, they are a sort of tan color, and mine says “May the Forest be With You” on the back and K’s says “Grow UP!” on the back. Awesome awesome. I am excited to have gotten out there again, I snowshoed for the first time there in 5th grade and loved it, and attended many an environmentalist program there throughout my public education here. I think I might wind up volunteering there and also at CWES, another place I attended many environmentalist programs in my youth and beyond. (Oddly enough, I can’t seem to find a link for the Izaak Walton Conservation Camp I attended in Kettle Moraine, WI, for several wonderful years. That’s another cause I’d happily volunteer for. )

In all, a really lovely day. And as a bonus, we got Raspberry/Vanilla Dole Whip twists on the way home! Woohoo!

For the record, if you wash a pot which had spaghetti sauce in it in the dishwasher without pre-rinsing the tomatoey stuff off, it will dye the plastic insides of your dishwasher a pinky orange. Kind of like Tang.

So the pieces of my art I installed for ArtsWalk 2008 were up and viewed by all the spectators, even though it was cold and spitting rain. We walked up and down Main Street looking at art and listening to wonderful music, including drummers and Sloppy Joe, who featured my friend Matthew Watkins, visiting from the UK. He will be playing his Saz in a recording session with local musicians and I look forward to hearing the result!

I enjoyed seeing folks I hadn’t seen in a while and checking out the art of my peers in the area. I also spent a while hanging out by my own stuff, talking to people who wandered by.

Mrs. Schoenecker and Mrs. Telfer came by together, Mrs. S was my 4th grade math teacher and I had her husband for Statistics in college, and Mrs. Telfer was my grade school librarian and one of the people who molded my love of books as a child. It was as if some of my heroes had come out to tell me I’d chosen the right path, and it felt lovely to be able to talk to them and reconnect. It was a long and narrow space, and I still don’t feel I used it to the best effect I could have, but I did manage to stick three items in. One comment which I heard more than once was that people found it hard to believe that the same artist sculpted the bronze AND the knitting, as though the organic soft sculpture did not belong in the same portfolio as the hard, heavy bronze. Me, I tend to disagree. But I am biased. Good thing I didn’t have the glass version of Angel up, that really would have unwrapped their tamales! Ha ha.

We saw Jen, Doug and Holden, who were actually shopping at the pet supplies store whose gracious owner allowed myself and the other artist (Deb Wolf, who was in the Art program at the university at the same time I was, waaaaaaay back before the Squidlets were even a glimmer) window space. S went inside with K and E to chat with Jen and Doug and let K chase after Holden. They graciously allowed K to help pick out doggie chews, and K and Holden pretended to play football with some of the dogball toys. There was a large, throw-covered chair near the checkout counter where Holden and K sat and held court for a little while, they were pretty darned adorable together.

K and Holden are about 3.5 months apart, this is what kids at the opposite ends of the size spectrum look like together - bookends! She’s very gentle with him, though, which is good. It will be interesting to see if E follows the same size path as she grows. K definitely takes after her gentle giant of a dad.

I darted out from the car where S, K and E crashed at the end of the walk, and went to talk to Matthew for a little bit before heading home. As I walked back to the car, I saw Doctor Gifford, my CIS professor (who is also degreed in English) with whom I enjoyed talking about Lewis Carroll, the Pre-Raphaelites, and William Morris much more than anything computer related. I developed a bad habit of interjecting bits of odd poetry or Jabberwocky into the code I wrote for him, which at least had the side effect of making the programming more interesting.

In all, a wonderful evening, and a great experience to boost my ego a little and help me realize where I can go with Art in this community. I will be taking down the installation this afternoon, it was a short one, but enjoyable.

Definition: Fearless.

(The doggie is part St. Bernard and is named Dozer, appropriately enough.)

Totally ganked from Haldechick, who totally ganked it from Data Angel -

Don’t ask me to translate, but a friend in Iceland posted this on her blog:

Vestanpósturinn

Austan við sól og sunnan við mána

miðvikudagur, apríl 09, 2008

Taska

Þetta er taska - sú sem prjónaði hana heitir Elizabeth þið getið lesið um hana og tilurð töskunnar hér og hér er upphaflegi hönnuðurinn og fleiri töskur í svipuðum dúr.

# Skráð af Harpa J kl. 09:44

I can say that it was entirely unexpected and quite flattering.

Even moreso because the person who blogged it is an INCREDIBLE knitter and photographer.

It never ceases to amaze me how the online community makes the world seem like one’s neighborhood. Kittenhead and I have become truly excellent friends over the years but have never met face to face, which will have to be remedied one of these years. Likewise with Laputain. And currently I am enjoying the worldshrinking capabilities of Ravelry. If I were to attempt shout-outs for my fellow Pantsters, this post would be like ten pages long.

To come full circle with the original point of this post: if you happen to read Icelandic, or are willing to try, you can check out Harpa’s blog.