Tag Archives: pops

Aug27

Cradle Crap, part deux

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Cradle Crap, part deux

We were sitting outside, eating BLTs for lunch and enjoying the sunshine, when Pops leaned over and looked at Analie’s head.

“What’s wrong with your kid’s head?” he asked, “It has that cradle crap stuff.”

He paused.

And his eyes got big because he thought maybe he had said something wrong, but he couldn’t quite identify what it had been.  Mom’s eyes had gotten big by this point too.  Because Dad had inadvertently said “crap”, which is not on his list of Words Commonly Used.  Then he started snickering (so did Mom) when he realized what it had been.

Joey and I had a good laugh at Dad’s expense too.

And I ‘fessed that yes, Analie has Cradle CAP again. Because last week I forgot to bathe her a few times.

…cough*goodparenting*cough…

 

Jul30

Parents = troublemakers

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Parents = troublemakers

My parents are visiting.

Perhaps some of you old timers around this blog will remember that whenever my Pops comes to visit, we find Breathe Rights around the house for days and days.  (Please note that there are FOUR SEPARATE LINKS there.  That is how much I blog about Breathe Rights.)

Anyway, they’re here.

So far the most surprising part of the visit is that Analie has not experienced any of her normal Extreme Stranger/Separation Anxiety (which is so epic it is worthy of All Caps) with my pops.  I figured she would, since really the only guy she’s happy to be held by for any length of time is Joey. SIGH.  But so far, so good.

Maybe I shouldn’t have blogged that.  I could have jinxed myself.

This morning after Ana woke up from her beauty sleep she got to eat mango, fed to her by Nana and photographed by Papa.

Then I turned around for TWO SECONDS, internet.  Two seconds.

Please remind me to never turn around when my father is in the house.  Gotta watch that guy at all times.

The next thing I hear is my mom saying, “Oh…DOUG” and Pops snickering his Pops-style giggle.  So it seemed like it was time for me to turn around and get eyes on my parents since it seemed like they were misbehaving.

They were.  Obviously.

That thing on my child’s forehead?  A Breathe Right.  I guess Pops didn’t need it anymore.

It didn’t seem to bother her too much, though.  She polished off 1 ounce of mango and 3 bites of carrots in fairly record time.

Jun5

The Last Word

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The Last Word

As we were sitting in the den last night after launching those rockets, Joey’s Lemur Approach method of rocket retrieval came back up as a topic of conversation.

“If we hadn’t done that,” Pops said, “I was just going to go get the chainsaw and cut the tree down.”

Silence.

“‘Cause we’re not losing that rocket.  It’s been a great machine, we’ve done the more launches with it than any other rocket.”

You may think that my pops was merely joking about the chainsaw method.  Internet, I assure you that he was not.  Our neighbor ought to be very glad that the Lemur Approach worked, otherwise he’d have one less tree today.

Jun4

Why can’t we just launch rockets like normal people???

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Why can’t we just launch rockets like normal people???

We’ve been in the Iowa for something like a week now.  Last night and tonight, we launched rockets.

Last night, I wore my bermuda khakis, a shirt from LOFT and some of the barn boots (a pair which was only slightly too big) to haul about a half mile out into the recently planted soybean field (uh, sorry Randy) with The Kid and The Brother on Launch Recovery Team.

They’d have been a lot more efficient if I didn’t go along.  But I insisted.

At the point where we retrieved the rocket, I realized the barn boots had rubbed my ankles and heels raw, and I now had to walk all the way back up to the house with bleeding feet in boots that’s sanitary qualities were more than questionable.

I was even slower going back up to the house.

(Incidentally, I just looked at my heels and noticed they’re oozing and about to drip on the carpet.  That is just a delightful sight, I tell you.  Appetizing, even.  Somebody pass the cupcakes.)

So tonight, I wasn’t going to repeat the same horrible experience.  I dug up Joey’s athletic shorts, a t-shirt with a hole in it, some of Pops’ socks calf-length socks, and Mom’s gardening shoes.

Y’all.  I looked smokin’.

But I was much more comfortable and that’s what counts.

When The Kid saw me, he said something to the effect of “Lady, you look like a complete idiot”.  And he took a picture.

We loaded the rocket with bigger engines today than we used yesterday.  There seemed to be barely any wind, so we thought we were golden; the Launch Recovery Team (LRT) expected an easy recovery in the middle of the soybean field.  Unfortunately, when the rocket went up (WAAAAAAY UP) we realized immediately that we were way off.  The rocket blew south, right into our old neighborhood and a bunch of trees.

The LRT burst forth with shouts of “I THINK I’VE GOT IT!” and “IT’S IN THE TREES!” and suchlike.  The Kid, The Brother, Jess and I took off running down the front yard and across the street (which is further than it sounds to you city people) and were puzzling our next steps when we noticed Pops whizzing up the street in the van, packed with Laura and Joey.  Pops was all, GET IN!  GET IN! and we drove down the street we thought it had landed on, yelling out the windows to people in their yards, asking if they’d seen our rocket.

Everyone just looked at us super weird.

I’ll fast forward to the part where we did find the rocket, about 8 inches from our neighbor’s house.  The same neighbor who made us get rid of our dog growing up.  (Not that it was any skin off our nose, we didn’t like the dog.  But the point is: they don’t like things messing with their house.)  Joey’s hypothesis was that the rocket had hit their roof and bounced off into the grass.

Good thing we were in and out like assassins, our neighbors never saw us (actually it was Joey) coming or going.  Unless if they randomly read this blog.  Then, hi unnamed neighbors: I just ‘fessed.

After our first launch, and its questionable success, we re-aimed the launch pad and tried again.

There was a serious delay between the pushing of the button and the ignition of the engines, because just as Pops was about to go inspect the problem, the rocket went WOOOOOOSH! and took off into the sky.  It scared us all half to death because it had been so long since the launch button was pushed that we all thought this attempt was a scrub.

We were wrong.  The thing went up in the sky and pretty much everyone screamed and/or jumped a mile.  Good thing Pops didn’t get his face blown off.  That’s why it’s important to practice launch safety techniques.

The rocket went up, up, up and was looking PERFECT…until the wind stopped blowing.  Pops, Joey, The Brother and I all ran pell-mell across our side yard down to the barn (which, again, is further away than it sounds to you city folk), across the street, and into Pops’ uncut alfalfa field.  Joey was a few dozen yards ahead of us and suddenly we heard, “I GOT IT!”

Normally we yell I GOT IT if we actually hold the rocket in our hands.  Joey yelled that because he saw the rocket.  In the tree.  ”Four feet” off the ground.

May I just say it was many more than four feet off the ground.

I saw that rocket in the tree and I immediately flashed back to the events of the last month: a tennis ball to Joey’s eye, a volleyball to his left cheek, a water bottle to his mouth.  The rocket in the tree is immediately flashing DANGER! DANGER! in my wife brain.

The next thing I know, Joey has climbed up into the tree as Pops, The Brother and I look on.  The tree looked like a mulberry tree, so it has spindly, thin branches that sprawl out over a large area.  The rocket was at the edge of the tree’s plumage, so Joey had quite a ways to go before he could actually reach it.  Within no time at all he was as high as the rocket, and inching out on the tiny little tree branch.

“PLEASE think carefully about what you are going to do!” I yelled.  What I meant was: please, please don’t do anything stupid.

The tree branches rustled.  Dollar signs flashed before my eyes.  They rustled some more.

“Uhhhhhh, I think this branch isn’t sturdy enough to support my weight,” Joey said.  ”So I’m going to try the Lemur Approach.”

I wasn’t sure what the Lemur Approach was, but I was positive I wouldn’t like it.  Suddenly, Joey swung down from the branch and hung from it by his hands.  The leaves rustled and bent toward the ground, Pops and The Brother scrambled to get the rocket as Joey bounced gently on the branch.

Then, I heard wood splitting.

“HONEY!” I screamed.  The dollar signs in front of my eyes grew much, much larger.

“I’m OK,” he yelled.  ”Another tree branch caught me.”

As if that was reassuring.

Fortunately I couldn’t see what was going on, but I did hear a few more smaller branches break and then Joey emerged from the woods, sticks stuck to his hair and leaves on his shirt.  But he was alive, intact, and it didn’t even look like he’d torn or stained any clothes.

The dollar signs I had been seeing disappeared.

All’s well that ends well, because as soon as we got to the house Pops and The Brother started stuffing toilet paper in the rocket again so they could relaunch it.  (What.  Don’t you stuff toilet paper in your rockets before you launch them?)

And now I realize I should go work on my feet.  They’re still oozing.

 

Jun2

Pass the remote, she says. And the popcorn.

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Pass the remote, she says. And the popcorn.

Analie’s getting to be a professional sitter-upper.  Whilst sitting up, she blew out the ADORABLE Panda outfit that my cousin Christie gave her.  I was so excited that it was cold enough that she could wear it, and then KAPOW.  Blown out three hours later.  But at least she wore it for a little while.

All this to say, that’s why my kid is only wearing a onesie in the video.

And her Papa had better watch out – she may have laid claim to his lazy chair.  It’s SO! EXCITING!

Apr23

Like Mama, like Mama

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Like Mama, like Mama

You know how parents have Things They Say?  For instance:

  • If you keep staring at the computer screen your eyes will turn to marbles
  • Just wait until your father comes home
  • Clean your plate, there are people starving in Africa
  • Don’t run with scissors
  • When you cut your legs off with a lawnmower, don’t come running to me
  • I’ll give you something to cry about
  • If you keep making that face it’ll stick that way
  • Don’t use my tools unless you’re going to put them away when you’re done
  • You aren’t bleeding, so you’ll be fine
  • Leave that kitchen cleaner than when you found it
  • I brought you into this world and I can take you out
  • Turn the TV down
  • Save your money

My mama really only had two things she said often.  Before we got spanked, she always told us that “this hurts me a lot more than it hurts you” (which I can totally believe is true now that I have a baby), and that “books are our friends” (every time I was about to destroy one).  Actually she used to have to tell me to be gentle a lot.  I know this because we used to have a cassette tape of me as a baby, which we wore out listening to so often when we were all growing up.  The tape got lost (or destroyed) somewhere, which is unfortunate.  It was hi-larious.

The two best parts on that tape were of Dad trying to get me to say my ABCs when I was eating peanut butter bread, but I was too interested in my peanut butter.  So about every three letters he’d pipe in with a “don’t eat your peanut butter, say your ABCs”.  I finally made it through to the end, but I did get Q mixed up, I thought it was for Umbrella.  And another time I was abusing a laundry basket somehow, and poor Pops could be heard from the background telling me to “be gentle with the laundry basket”.

Anyway, when I was a little girl, my mama loved to read books to me.  And I loved to have books read to me. One of my earliest memories is of me deliberately throwing a book on the floor just to see if Mom would say “Be gentle, books are our friends”.  Because I had started noticing that she said it when I was being mean to books, and I was testing to see if she would say that every time.

She definitely did.

Dude.  Now I feel like I was a really wild, difficult child.

No wonder my child screams at the top of her lungs when she’s happy instead of making the soft, gentle noises that other babies seem to make.

The other morning, we were all cozied up in bed reading books.  I read Analie Hop On Pop, and Joey was reading his latest sci-fi weirdness.  I glanced over to look at Joey’s book, and when I looked back at Hop On Pop, it had somehow gotten in Analie’s mouth in the 0.2 seconds I hadn’t been watching and she was gnawing on its pages.

And then, out of my mouth came, “Be gentle, books are our friends.”

Poor quality cell phone picture? Yes please.

Feb1

A Federal Offense

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A Federal Offense

It is a federal offense to tamper with someone’s mailbox.

At least twice a winter, if not more than three times, my parent’s mailbox gets hit by a car, or snowplow, or a cyclist.  (And I’m not kidding about the cyclist either, we saw it happen.  It looked really painful.)  Sometimes the idiot driver misses the mailbox and winds up going through the electric fence and into the pasture, but nine times out of ten it’s the mailbox.  I think the official number of times the mailbox has has experienced some kind of destruction is around 10, but I will have to call my Pops and fact-check that.

There’s nothing out of the ordinary about dad’s mailbox, either. It’s black, nondescript and, most importantly, it’s plenty far enough back from the road so as to not be hit every time one turns around.

My personal favorite was a mailbox near-miss. Some stupid teenager (ahem, NOT THAT TEENAGERS ARE STUPID AS A RULE) was driving around the corner too fast and lost control of her car.  She wound up driving in our ditch for awhile, which wouldn’t have ended badly for her if she’d have had the forethought to apply the brakes instead of the gas.  This ditch-driving culminated in her ramping up over our driveway and ripping the undercarriage of her car out on the culvert (which, naturally, is in the ditch and goes under the driveway) and somehow managed to wind up in the middle of our front yard.

The best part is that a bunch of us were mowing the lawn at the time and got to see it.  I’m pretty sure The Kid was mowing the section of yard that her car landed in, too.  Lucky guy.

Anyway, all this to say, she barely missed the mailbox when she went up and over the driveway, but since she did destroy her car in the process I’d say it’s still a story that’s worth telling.

But I digress, as this is not a blog post about bad drivers.  Well, actually it is.  Just not that kind of bad drivers.

Every time there is an ice storm, or a snow storm, or if maybe the gravitational pull of the moon is a little bit stronger in the East, my dad’s mailbox gets taken out.  I’m not sure if Pops has gone to such lengths as to anchor it on a 16 foot steel post set in concrete but, frankly, it would probably still get hit.  Poor dad.  I’m pretty sure he has spent more money on replacing mailboxes than the average American annually transfers to their savings account.  (It bears noting that Americans stink at saving money, but the point is that Pops has to buy a lot of mailboxes.)

I’m going somewhere with all this, I promise.

When Joey braved the elements to run to church and pick up some books for studying over the next day or two (in case the Snowpocalypse has us housebound for ages and ages), he noticed something black and shiny in our ditch.

Someone had hit our mailbox.

Apparently this is a condition that is hereditary.

Dec23

10 1/2 years later…

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10 1/2 years later…

In the fall of 2000, I was a freshman at Iowa State University.  I had just turned 18 and decided that DAGNABBIT, I was cool and I wanted to get my nose pierced.

I had recently gotten a cell phone also.  This is noteable, because literally as I was walking out the door to go pierce said nostril, my father called.

He was all, what’s going on college freshman?

And I was all, I’m off to get my nose pierced, Pops!!

There was a bit of silence before he said, You do that, young lady, and that’s the last you’ll see of your college money.

So, while I was a young and immature college freshman, I knew enough to realize that money talks.  As my high school history teacher used to say, I “followed the money trail” and as I did so I saw that it led to massive student loans and the poorhouse.  I didn’t think that a $60.00 statement of my independence was worth a life sentence to the poorhouse, so I wisely opted to skip the nose piercing.

I believe my Pops was pleased with my decision.  (Actually he would have been more pleased if I’d never considered piercing my nose in the first place.  But details.)

When I was finally financially independent from my parentals, married, and graduated from college…I was also a Baptist.  A member of a very conservative church, too. And how many Baptists do you see running around with pierced noses?

I didn’t think so.

Once we quit being Baptists, we moved to Texas and I got a job working for a hedge fund.  Nobody working for a hedge fund (at least not mine) had a pierced nose.  I don’t think it was considered The Thing To Do, as it were.

Now I am living in Indiana.  Joey’s a youth pastor, and youth pastor’s wives generally are hip and cool.  I am not exactly hip or cool, but I figured if I had a sparkly bit of bling in my nose I might be edging towards hip.  Maybe even cool.  Unfortunately, I have been pregnant since we moved here, and pregos can’t get themselves pierced.

Today, at 4:30, Joey suggested we go pierce my nose.  Because I am no longer pregnant, you see.  I can do it now.

I was like, SERIOUSLY?!

So we got all three of us in the car.

We drove down to Broad Ripple.

We crossed the street and tried not to get hit by a car.  (Success!)

We walked into Metamorphosis and I got all nervous.

The tattoed and pierced woman behind the counter told me that HECK YES I should pierce my nose!!!

So I handed over my driver’s license, selected a stud, and waited nervously for my turn to get stabbed.  It took her for-FREAKING-ever to get back to the front of the store.  By that time, I had myself worked into such a state of nerves that I wasn’t sure I could go through with it anymore.

“You just had a baby,” Joey said.  ”You can do anything.”

Yes, yes, I can.

I laid down on the soft, kooshy table as the lady swabbed my nose off with a strange-smelling solution, marked a big black dot where she was going to stab me, and inserted a long, metal tube on the inside of my nose.  I have no idea what the tube was for, but as soon as she did that I started flipping out all over the inside of my head.

“Breathe deeply,” she told me.  ”I’m going to talk you through this.”

And just about the time she said she was going to talk me through it, she’d slammed the post through my nose and – whamo! – the whole thing was done.

It hurts about 5 bajillion times less than a Progesterone injection, or spinal block for that matter.

PIECE OF DAIRY-FREE CAKE!

“Is it over?” I asked her.

“Yep,” she said, putting a long pair of wire-cutters up to my nose and clamping off the remainder of the post that was longer than my nostril, poking out and looking weird.

“Wow…not bad,” I said.  ”I’m pierced!”

My nose was a numb and throbbing at the same time.  It was a weird feeling, Internet.  Truly weird.  I sat up and looked in the mirror at my blingy nose.  The stud sparkled a bit in the dim lights of the room and I thought it was cool.  (I may not be cool, but my nose certainly is.)

Joey, Analie and I walked back to the front of the store where the cleaning instructions were explained to me.  Maybe they should have done that first, because I have to soak my entire nose in salt water for 10 minutes a day, every day, for SIX WEEKS.

I have to SOAK MY NOSE.

That is so weird.

Some (perhaps even my Pops among them!) would say it’s poetic justice for me stabbing something metal and sparkly into my nose.

I say it’s just weird.

(This picture makes me think of some sage wisdom I learned in college: You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose.)

Nov16

Another Baby Name Poll

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Another Baby Name Poll

This week, we decided to reveal The Middle Name.  Actually, The Middle Name has never been a secret, which was part of our master plan to annoy the heck out of my brother, whom we refer to as The Brother.  I believe it has been working.

Well.

Our daughter’s middle name will be…..

Alexa!!!

I’m going to get in about 3 different kinds of trouble with The Kid, because explaining the baby’s middle name involves revealing HIS name, which is Alex.

Alex…Alexa…very similar names, yes?

Well, she’s middle-named after The Kid.  (And we didn’t think The Kid made a very nice middle name.)  Whycomes she is named after The Kid?  Uh, because…I was super mean to him for most of his formative years.  Yep, true confessions right here.

I don’t even know why I was so mean to him.  I just was.  He was kind of an easy target because he was young and small and I was old and larger than him.  Also meaner.  I remember really being nasty to him on two separate Boundary Waters trips (the first much more so than the second) and feeling super guilty the whole time because he wasn’t doing anything wrong, just being younger and smaller.

I do maintain that I do not feel guilty for referring to The Kid as “Pukeface”, “Puker”, “Barfbucket” and a bunch of other vomit-related nicknames on the BW trip where he got dehydrated and threw up all the time for a couple of days straight.  (Sorry, man.  I just can’t feel bad about that.  You were throwing up everywhere.)

Poor Dad kept getting real mad at me for calling him all that stuff, too.

Now that The Kid is all grown up and engaged (YOU HEARD IT HERE!) and almost graduated from college, it’s uncanny how similar we are in personality and brains. (Although, not in anything having to do with computers, math, or science.)(  Maybe that’s why I picked on him growing up.  I knew he was going to grow up and take over the family with his coolness.

Anyway, we’ve buried the hatchet and now I’m much nicer to him.  But I still feel real bad about it if I think about it for too long.  Poor little The Kid.  He probably would have had a better childhood if not for me.

Therefore, this week’s poll involves which name(s) that are left on the list that you think go best with Alexa!  Vote well.