Wednesday Afternoon Random Questions

• We've been watching Wallace and Gromit a lot and I'm wondering: why won't my dog let herself be used as a sawhorse? Why can't she use powertools? Why can't she weld? Maybe if I sent her to class....
  

• My husband has caught three mice (humanely) in the garage. Are they really three mice, or does he keep catching the same mouse? (I think he's dumping them in the woods behind our house). How many more do we need to catch before we can safely store things there while the floors are re-done?

• Why do I feel such amusement when I hear BigSister say "Use your words [LittleSister]" and such shame when I hear her say "Sh...." when she drops something? Let's face it, both times she is imitating Mommy!

• My husband has been on vacation all week. Why have we only completed one item on the to-do list so far?
  

Life Without Water

The first time I went to Thailand I thought it was wonderful. I also thought it would be a wonderful place to take kids, once they were old enough to remember to brush their teeth with that bottle of water next to the sink, and old enough to remember to keep their mouth shut in the shower. Third-world water systems presented challenges I hadn't anticipated.

But guess what! I'm getting to have the experience of a third-world water system without travel! My city is on "boil water restrictions" because e-coli was found in the water system. My stove is covered with pans of boiled water and my counter is consumed with a case of bottled water. Empty plastic bottles are everywhere. Last night we had to carefully hose down the kids with the hand-held shower rather than letting them play "swimming" in the big tub as they usually do. I have to keep reminding myself to brush my teeth using the bottle.

Last week we lost power one night for almost nine hours for no discernable reason. There wasn't a storm; something just blew up. The USDA says that 4 hours is the max your fridge can go without power, so I had a festival of trash with the groceries I'd just bought.

My town routinely shows up on lists of the 10 best places to live in the U.S. Apparently infrastructure isn't actually a requirement to be on these lists. And if I'm going to have to deal with dodgy water and no ice, I want to be someplace fun with exotic things to see.

Oh Frabjous Day

I finally made a decision on a new camera after dragging it out for several weeks. It will be a Canon SD700. I'm so tired of waiting for my Olympus to charge up; by the time it is ready the kids have moved on, especially if I'm trying to take a picture of them together. So in 8-10 days, look forward to some new pictures.

I'm feeling frabjous about making my decision, because I've loved Jabberwocky ever since I memorized it in ninth grade and sometimes Lewis Carroll's words just seem like the best ones. Why does frabjous only have one entry in Urban Dictionary? It needs more use.

Do you think Lewis Carroll stole "frabjous" from some kid of his aquaintance? Today I was putting on mascara and BigSister said "Mommy, you are scaring your eyes." That seems very accurate to me, just as frabjous is the correct word for my feelings about a new camera.

Feel frabjous today!

These Are The People In Your Neighborhood

BigSister was coloring and I decided to take LittleSister and step out to the mailbox quickly. The first thing I saw was a police car. When I got to the mailbox I looked to my right and saw a second police car. "This can't be good," I thought. One of the policemen was returning to his car and waved to me. "There was a burglary at [the house three down from me]," he said. "Were you home this morning? Did you see anything?"

I wasn't home this morning, because we were having the most miserable trip to the pool ever, with kids running in opposite directions. I'd come home around 12:15 and I noticed a van by the next-door-neighbor's. I told him about that, but later I talked to the next-door-neighbor and she'd had some air-conditioning work today.

I went back in and picked up BigSister and walked over to the neighbor's to offer to take her kids, but the crime scene team had just arrived. "They told me not to touch anything, so I didn't touch anything," she kept saying, over and over. She was clearly in shock.

Like me, she's a stay-at-home mom. I know we keep a similar schedule because I've run into her around town several times recently. We meet at random places, like the museum and the consignment sale. I can tell she also takes the kids someplace in the morning and then comes home for naps.

How unnerving to come home with a car full of kids and find your house has been robbed in broad daylight. I'm shaken by it, and it isn't even my house. And how brazen to risk discovery with a daytime burglary in a neighborhood with a lot of stay-at-home moms.

She'd just had some interior painting done, so it may be that will be the source of the thief. However, on thinking about it I also remember seeing a strange car in the neighborhood last week; one that struck me as strange because it was moving so slowly and the occupants were staring so intently. "People get lost around here a lot," my husband said. Maybe that's it, but I hate the feeling that perhaps someone has been keeping track of all of us.

Just One Book

I saw this over at Sex Ed In Higher Ed, a wonderful blog that makes me feel better about my brief foray into teaching at an unnamed online U. I thought just those students had issues; apparently many students do. Teacher Lady has a great way of conveying the bizarre situations.

Anyway, as I try to read every day (and I succeeded before I had kids), I thought I'd give this a go.

1. One Book That Changed Your Life:The Long Quiet Highway, by Natalie Goldberg. I read this book when I was living in Minnesota, and she described studying Zen Buddhism in Minnesota. Her descriptions made it sound ... normal. And accessible. And like something I needed. She inspired me to seek out classes, and I took a class in mindfulness on the model of Jon Kabat-Zinn. While I am not good about continuing to practice, the lessons I learned from it continue to help me every day. I think they are particularly helpful as a parent. I know I should focus on the present moment, which conveniently enough is the same thing my children are doing.

2. One Book That You've Read More Than Once: I've read John Steinbeck's East of Eden at least twenty times. I first read it when I was about 10, and now I think "it is nice that I could read at that level, but maybe there were a few ideas there I shouldn't have covered." In particular, after I read it I asked my mom what a "wh-hore" (I pronounced it with two syllables) was. My mom told me it was a "woman who sold her body." Existential little kid that I was, for ages I thought "she sells her body. So does her soul drift around the universe until she finds a cut rate body?" I spent quite some time trying to puzzle it out. I'm not sure when I realized what "wh-hore" actually meant, but I've always wondered why my mom didn't give me a more direct answer since I was familiar with the facts of life.

Anyway, even on multiple readings I love Steinbeck's writing and his characters. I've only spent a little time in Northern California, but I'd love to go and see more of the landscape he describes ... though I suspect that Silicon Valley has changed it radically.

I just went to get the link for this book, and I find that Oprah has discovered it too. I'm not sure if that is positive or negative. I read a lot of books multiple times, so I could pick another. But this is definitely the one I've read the most.

3. One Book You'd Want on a Desert Island: I'd hate to limit myself to one. I've been wanting to re-read Possession, and that does have a book-within-a-book, so I think for today I'd go with that. It brings back memories of long hours in dark libraries, and of a time when studying could be exotic.

4. One Book That Made You Laugh: Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady. Florence King's description of her first post-coital douche still makes me laugh out loud. She grew up in Northern Virginia when it was Virginia, not a suburb of D.C., and if you've ever lived in the south some of her images will be familiar.

5. One Book That Made You Cry: I have to think about this. I don't cry over books much. I did have a hard time with the crime description that opens Jon Krakauer's Under The Banner Of Heaven since one of the victims was the age of my girls. Nevertheless I think it is an important book.

6. One Book That You Wish Had Been Written: "Stories of Successful Sequencing." As an alternative to "stay-at-home mom" vs. "working mom" "wars" this book would tell stories of women who had done both, particularly left and re-entered the workforce, and how they managed it. It would be a little like Po Bronson's What Should I Do With My Life? but would focus on moms and will have a bigger socio-economic cross section of the population than that book did.

7. One Book That You Wish Had Never Been Written: I can't say I've actually read a book that I think shouldn't have been written; the act of writing is important to people. Now if the phrase was "One Book That You Wish Had Never Been Published" or "One Book That You Wish Hadn't Been Promoted So Much" I could come up with more. I was going to say "anything by Ann Coulter" but to be fair, I've only read her essays not her books. So a book I have read and hated is: "What To Expect When You're Expecting." No link, because I don't think you should read it.

8. The Book That You Are Currently Reading: I just finished Sandra Tsing Loh's A Year In Van Nuys. It was fun and it made me laugh and I particularly liked her sketches of your brain in "dream marriage" and "actual marriage." I probably missed half the LA-area jokes, but I got the NPR ones.

9. One Book That You've Been Meaning to Read: Toni Morrison's Beloved. I've carried it with me on several trips; my copy has a sticker on it that I know is from the security clearance in Bangkok. Somehow the sticker moved from my shirt onto the book. And yet I've never found the block of time I need to really focus on it, and I think it is a book that requires focus.

10. Five People To Tag. I haven't really met a lot of people inside the computer yet, so I won't do this. But if you want to do this meme tell me. I'd love to read your list!

In The Category of "Strange Scenes At McDonald's"

We're at the outdoor play area at McDonald's, where we rarely go but we needed to get some "food" into BigSister fast after a family event that went on too long. I'm waving the bees off the food and suddenly we hear:

"Get your legs together! You don't want to show everybody your stuff. You're starting kindegarten soon and you'll learn to put your legs together. All those nice dresses I bought you."

"Actually," I say to my husband "She only needs to learn to put her legs together before high school."

But it keeps going. "PUT YOUR LEGS TOGETHER. You are showing everybody your nasty stuff." The volume increases. Is there anyone not looking at the mother at this point? Because, really, no one cares if a five-year-old shows her underwear on a playground. It happens. I wouldn't have noticed at all if it weren't for the yelling. The daughter I can see out of the corner of my eye, and she's rolling around in the middle of the play area avoiding putting on her shoes. The mother looked like someone who might have looked normal before got so worked up, but in her frenzy she needs some kind of sedation. And "nasty stuff"? Positive body-image, please.

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That's all I know today. Hi to all the people who clicked over from Blogging Baby! I'm honored by your interest in my brown stained carpet (and if you haven't read it yet, it is the next post).

Visions of Hardwood Dancing In My Head

About two weeks ago I made some wonderful chocolate gelato from Baking Sheet. My husband was enjoying it, and sharing it with LittleSister. Suddenly I noticed something by her feet. "Uhh, honey," I said. "Is that chocolate on the carpet?" And it was. Big spots of chocolate, ground into the carpet under one-year-old feet.

The next day I plopped the kids in front of the TV and started calling for floor bids. While I was at it I called for house painting bids, but that's a different issue.

The day after that BigSister tried to eat some bubble solution. Since she didn't like the taste, she then proceeded to start gagging herself. "Don't gag," I cried, even though she probably doesn't undertstand what gag means. "Here, take a sip of water and spit it out. I'll show you." She gagged up some soap solution on the kitchen floor. Thinking she was done, I cleaned it up and let her go in the living room. She then proceeded to vomit, while spinning around, like some kind of whirling sprinkler system of puke. It was peach YoBaby yogurt; she'd just finished a whole cup. It formed nice round concentric circles on the carpet.

Several people came to give bids on the floors. We have hardwood in the dining room; what I want is hardwood everywhere. No more carpet. Make it disappear. And while the price was a little more than I expected, the true shock is that we'll have to live essentially upstairs while the new floors are curing. I realize there are simpler ways to do it, but we want site-finished floors.

I took a day or two to think about it, and while I was thinking about it LittleSister had a diaper blowout that blew ... you guessed it ... onto the carpet.

Today I sent the deposit.

Tonight we came downstairs from bath, and I found the nastiest patch of brown I'd ever seen. It was about 8 inches in diameter, and there were what appeared to be turds. "Honey," I called. "I need some help with identification here." I was down on my knees and trying to sniff, yet not get to close. "I think it is poop." My husband came down and said "The dog must have thrown it up. She eats shit sometimes you know." So what I was looking at was regurgitated defacation. UUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHH.

Half a roll of paper towels later I cannot get new floors fast enough. A woman I know tried to talk me out of it today. "Hardwoods are loud," she said. "You can't sit down on the floor with the kids." Like I can sit down on the floor with the kids now? I don't even want to let them near this carpet!

Cultural Differences

My mother-in-law's dog was shot yesterday. He's still alive, as far as I know, but the outcome is far from clear.

My mother-in-law is understandably upset. This dog is the one she kept when all the others went to other homes after her divorce. She trains him for agility. He's a good natured lab. She's been traveling around the country with him, spending nights in a pop-up camper.

She went to Canada, and left him with a friend in Idaho who lives on 10+ acres. It seems her friend didn't mention his presence to her neighbors, though she had been out walking him so she thought her neighbors had seen him. They had him off-leash, and he went running over to the neighbor's house to see what was going on. There were small children outside. The children were frightened; the dog was excited. They ran inside, and dad came out with a gun. There were two shots. One hit his head, but did not penetrate his skull. The other went through his hips.

My mother-in-law has pronounced the neighbor "psycho." Who knows, maybe he is. And I understand her anger and grief. But I grew up in the country, and even as a pro-gun-control type it is hard for me to assume his response is crazy. Over-the-top, but not unusual in that environment.

Urban people don't realize how common it is, and how frightening it is, to encounter strange animals in the country. When I was a kid we must have taken at least half-a-dozen dogs to the pound, and we took in more cats than that. All had been dumped in the country by owners who couldn't do the right thing and turn them into the SPCA themselves, and instead said "take them to the country, where they can fend for themselves." Being domesticated animals, the first place they went was the nearest house. Some of them were friendly. Some of them we kept. Some of them tried to bite us and were very very frightening. One in particular could not be caught by anyone, spent several days chasing us children, and appeared to be possibly rabid. In the end, I'm pretty sure my dad got out the 22 rifle and dispatched him. He didn't tell us that, but the dog disappeared one day.

We also had a dog that liked to escape and run with the pack. The local dogs would harass local livestock. One day our dog came home with a bullet wound in his side. I remember it clearly; it was quite a sight for a seven-year-old. But the general feeling was: if a dog runs with a pack and harasses livestock, he will get shot. There wasn't moral judgement. One day that dog didn't come home. We always figured somebody shot him.

My mother-in-law has always lived in the big city or in a small town. She's never lived in the country. In most cities, it is misdemeanor animal cruelty to shoot a dog. In the country, though, dogs can be scary. They can harass livestock. They can bite children. I wonder how long my mother-in-law's friend has lived in the country, as I'm assuming she came from a more urban area. Was she naive? Did she not realize how common a reaction this is to a strange dog? I think the neighbor was trigger-happy. He should have checked to see that the dog was wearing a collar; he should have verified it was dangerous before shooting. But the dog's host should have realized that people have stronger responses to strange dogs in the country. In my neighborhood now, a loose dog is a loose pet. When I grew up in the country, a loose dog was a dangerous stray. A loose dog on someone else's property may get shot, especially if someone thinks they are protecting children or other animals.

It is tragic for the dog. Think healing thoughts for him.

Update: Sadly, the dog died Friday night.