Aislinn Turns Seven

Since the time Aislinn’s teeth finally came in (at 15 months old), I haven’t really spent much time wondering about her them. I was hoping for her sake that some would fall out, so she could have a big gap in her smile like all the other kids in her class. So I have waited with her for some loosening of her teeth, figuring (wrongly) that her teeth were not falling out because it took them so long to come in. This week Aislinn had two teeth pulled to make room for a permanent tooth that has already surfaced. The dentist put Aislinn’s pulled teeth in a little plastic box shaped like a tooth. I took them out and couldn’t believe what I found. I know it should not have been shocking to me, but they were so small and looked just like the teeth she got when she was a baby (because they are the teeth she got when she was a baby, dummy). I know that teeth don’t grow, but it seems ludicrous that a for almost six years she has been eating using only these teeny teeth that fit inside her mouth when she was only a baby.

Everyday I watch my kids grow and achieve, and every day I am glad that they have become a little more self sufficient and a little more confident in confronting the world without me. I have never really felt that they have “grown up so quickly” because time doesn’t really pass quickly for me. Today we were looking at pictures from two years ago, and all of the kiddies seemed tiny. Could that only be two years ago? It seems like a decade. From time to time I consciously tell myself “Stop a minute and remember this. This is something that you shouldn’t forget,” but I do have a strong ability to enjoy the present. I don’t overlook it because I am too busy planning for the future or miss it because I am wistfully remembering the past. I suppose it helps that I am home with the kiddies all the time, so I have many many many hours of time with them to remember. If I only saw them for a few hours each day, time probably would seem to speed up, and maybe when they are all in school full time, I will start to feel like they are growing up quickly.

When I look back through Aislinn’s baby pictures, I can see how her curly hair has straightened out, her chubby face has thinned out, and her round little arms and legs have become the impossibly long skinny limbs she has now. I have watched her from the time she learned her ABCs to the day she started reading on her own. I have seen her as she learned to crawl, then walk, run, jump, hop, and climb. And still those tiny little teeth startled me. They are a tangible part of her babyhood, like the stroller or the high chair, that she doesn’t need any more.

I suppose all first time parents are unprepared for what’s coming along in nine months, and I was no exception. I had no idea how I would relate to this little stranger, how I would figure out what he/she was like. The day Aislinn was born, as the nurse wrapped her up in a blanket and put her in my arms, I looked down at her sweet little face and my heart…blah, blah, blah, I’m not really that kind of girl. What happened was she looked me straight in the face and screamed, and the HP and I laughed, because there she was. She was not mysterious, she was minutes old and telling us exactly what she felt. That was a huge relief to me, and for the past seven years, she has continued to make us laugh and make us proud and make us wonder how any other kid (other than her siblings) could possibly be as wonderful as she is. So Happy Birthday Ais Crais! You were a great baby, a stupendous toddler, a charming preschooler, a fantastic kindergartener, an award-winning first-grader, and I’m sure you’ll be the best second grader on record.

Hey Immigrants! Come Here and Share Our Values!

Want to hear something really, really funny? Are you sitting down? I’m sorry, I keep chuckling to myself which makes it hard to type. Are you sure you’re ready? Guess what? I have avoided writing about politics in this blog because I don’t have enough time to get my facts straight! I know! Can you believe it! What in the world was I thinking? Politics and facts don’t go together!!! So even though I haven't had time to provide citations for all of the examples I put here (unlike yesterday's fascinating and informative porcupine post), I still feel compelled to provide this public service to prospective Americans:

Dear Immigrants (Illegal and Otherwise),

Today our president made a speech indicating that if you would like to join our country, first you must learn our values. Before I go on any further, I would say to all of you who came here to have your gay marriage recognized, please return to your country of origin. Gay marriage is not one of our values. Similarly, if you have left your home and family to come here and burn flags, once again I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Flag burning is not one of our values.

What’s that? You came here in search of a better life for you and your children? To work any job you can to make money to send home to your families? That is rather quaint, but I’m sorry, you are too late. Those are no longer American values either. Since I am not philosophically opposed to immigration (and as such am bordering on the un-American myself), I have decided to provide you with a primer on what constitute American values these days, so that you can adopt them and maybe win a chance to spend money and stand in line for a chance to get a chance to take a test and possibly become an American citizen. Ready?

1) Here in America, we value our rich people, so please bring as much money as you can. Since many of you (who do not have a lot of money) have indicated your willingness to work at unpleasant jobs for unpleasantly low pay in order to increase the wealth of your employers, I think we can consider you well on your way to adopting this value. If you do somehow end up with a lot of money, we will cut your taxes so that you can have more money. If any pesky environmental laws are keeping you from making even more money, you can help us rewrite them. After all, we’re not going to live forever, and who really cares what happens when we’re gone. I mean, we care that the wealthiest people can give their money untaxed to their heirs, but besides that, who really gives a crap what goes on when we’re down for our dirt nap?

2) Here in America, we value our institutions, exactly the way they are. If you would like to become an American, then you must view all evidence of ineptitude and incompetence by our government agencies as one big misunderstanding. Do not call for investigations or changes or expect anyone to accept responsibility. Instead agree to continue funding these agencies even when they refuse to change as suggested by independent commissions. For instance, if you live in a town that was destroyed by a crappy Corps of Engineers project, the American way is to throw more money at them to do another project while providing no additional oversight. If you decide live in Washington, DC or New York City, you can peruse reams of data about why you are a likely terrorist target, but we like to spread our homeland security money around the country, and the facts are not going to change the way we do things.

3) Here in America, we value our Christians. I know most of you from coming up from the south are probably Catholic, and while that is okay, we’d really prefer some sort of protestant affiliation, preferably one where the women submit to the men and let the men make all of the decisions. If you are from one of those newfangled religions that doesn’t revolve around the ten commandments, I’m sorry, but you’re not going to find many friends here. While you may be concerned about the poor, or sick, or disenfranchised, I’m afraid they are going to have to wait until we have rid the earth of gay marriage.

4) Here in America, we value big mouths (as long as they are speaking English). You may have expertise in one aspect of business or science and you may be well educated. However, that doesn’t mean we will listen to you. What you need to succeed here is an extremely loud voice and your own TV show. If you do not have your own TV or radio show, your opinion really doesn’t need to be expressed or acknowledged. So please either be an opinionated intolerant blowhard or keep your mouth shut.

5) Here in America, we value our freedom of speech, as long as you are saying things that we want to hear. Please don’t think that freedom of speech means you are free to say anything you would like. You cannot shout “Fire!” in a movie theater and you cannot criticize the current administration. If you choose to object to anything that is going on in Washington, that is your right, but it is also a clear indication that you are not ready for citizenship or even guest worker status. We have recently upped the indecency fines for television, because everyone knows that getting flashed during a Super Bowl halftime show is much worse than say, the Vice President calling a U.S. Senator a f?#$%?@ a&%*@#$.

6) Here in America, we value our soldiers, kind of. We have decided that treating detainees humanely and observing the Geneva Convention isn’t one of our values anymore, and this may adversely affect how our soldiers are treated. However, as they are having their fingernails pulled out, they can rest assured that all of us will have a yellow ribbon magnet on the back of our cars saying we support them. As long as they are not killed in action, we will support their families on the homefront, but if they are killed, I’m afraid we’re going to need that house back pronto. And the kiddies, I’m sure someone out there will give them some counseling, but that is really outside of our area of responsibility. Oh, that little mixup where the identities and personal information of millions of soldiers was lost/stolen? Please refer to value #2.

Here are a few other things we value, so please do not complain about them: domestic spying; secret CIA prisons or airplanes; the idea that when the National Guard gets home from the Iraqi desert they should deploy to our desert; the destruction of our worldwide reputation as the land of the free and the home of the brave.

So good luck to you all. I hope these little pointers will help you in your quest to adopt American values which are so different from the values of your home countries. Sorry folks, no more eating your young, no more 60-day cocaine-fueled benders, no more neighborhood wife-swapping night. This is America, and it’s time to do things our way.

Love, Shannon

A Post So Informative It Should Be Narrated by Marlin Perkins and Sponsored by Mutual of Omaha

Among the menagerie that Marty likes to keep in his bed while he sleeps is a beanie baby hedgehog that all of our children insist is a porcupine. I could understand this when we lived in Kentucky, because our zoo did not have a porcupine. However, now the kids have seen one in person several times, and still they will not admit that the hedgehog is not a porcupine. I know that I once saw a porcupine in person, during a trip to Maine – our great family vacation (which my sister Erin simultaneously missed and ruined as we like to frequently remind her). I guess it must have been a rather fleeting glimpse, because while I can picture the area where the porcupine was, I can’t for the life of me picture the porcupine. When I finally saw a porcupine this year at the Richmond zoo, I was quite shocked by its appearance, probably because I have spent the past 25 years looking at cartoon versions of porcupines, not photographs. I imagine that if the beanie baby was not equipped with a tag identifying it as a hedgehog, I would have agreed with the kids that it could be a porcupine.

Anyway, here is a porcupine. I decided that if I was going to cover porcupines in this post, I should find out a little more about them. Like many people, I can picture a cartoon porcupine rearing up and then snapping its backside in the air to send a shower of quills down on Yosemite Sam, but I wasn’t really sure if that was an accurate picture of reality. According to the Nature Works website, “The porcupine cannot shoot its quills. When a predator approaches, the porcupine will turn its back, raise the quills and lash out at the threat with its tail. If the porcupine hits an animal with its quills, the quills become embedded in the animal. Body heat makes the barbs expand and they become even more deeply embedded in the animal's skin.” Ouch. So now we all know. What I had no idea about was: “The common porcupine is a good swimmer, its hollow quills help keep it afloat. It is also an excellent tree-climber and spends much of its time in trees.” In the past when I have been in porcupine country, I assumed that they were hiding out in hollow logs with the other rodents and creepy crawlers. Little did I know they were looking down on me from above.

My porcupine investigation prompted me to try to remember all of the other wildlife encounters I’ve had. Since I am a girl who was raised in the city and who dislikes camping, I don’t have a huge array of stories to choose from (unless you count dead squirrels as wildlife). Of course I have seen squirrels and bunnies and chipmunks, but when it comes to animals that don’t regularly enter the garden/trash looking for food, I may as well have been raised in a concrete jungle. However, I can’t say that I wish I’d had more encounters. I like my animals caged up (I mean cared for by zoologists in a specially designed habitat that closely resembles the one the animals would enjoy in the wild).

In Kentucky I saw my first fox, and at first I couldn’t even identify it as a fox because I was so confused by how tall it was. I always figured that anything that was “as sly as a fox” would be close to the ground for better sneakiness. The fox I saw looked like a cat on stilts, and it was hanging around an empty warehouse area, which in cartoons is more of a cat haunt. The only fox I’ve seen on a regular basis lately is Swiper the Fox on Dora, and he is always on hind legs (and wearing a mask and gloves, so he is probably not a prime depiction of the species, although he is rather tall). According to Nature Works, “The red fox … is an omnivore and its diet includes fruits, berries and grasses … birds and small mammals like squirrels, rabbits and mice …invertebrates like crickets, caterpillars, grasshoppers, beetles and crayfish.” I guess one or more of those were probably in the abandoned warehouses, and I guess I should allow myself to stop worrying about foxes, because clearly I am too big for them to eat. Another interesting tidbit is that “The red fox will continue to hunt even when it is full. It stores extra food under leaves, snow or dirt.” Maybe this is why the Dora people made Swiper a fox, grabbing stuff that isn’t his and that he doesn’t need. (If foxes had a lobby, I’m sure they would have had Congress force Dora to make Swiper a more sympathetic animal. After all, it’s in his nature to hoard and they may be damaging his self esteem by depicting him as a bad guy.)

Several times when I was up late at night or early in the morning in Kentucky, I saw a skunk. Fortunately, I did not irritate the skunk, however, one weekend in New Jersey my in-law’s dog did while we were watching him. The skunk stink that you smell on the highway is an absolute delight compared to the skunk stink on a freshly sprayed dog. However, according to Nature Works (and Pepe Le Pew) skunks are really rather understanding: “When a skunk is threatened, it first tries to run away from the predator. If that doesn't work, it tries to frighten the predator by arching its back, raising its tail and turning its back on the predator. It may also stomp its feet. If this doesn't work, as a last resort, the skunk will spray the animal with a strong-smelling fluid.” I find it reassuring that a skunk will only spray you if you give it no other choice (and I suppose dogs really do give it no other choice), because since I am always willing to do what I can to get along maybe they won’t ever spray me.

Another animal I saw for the first time in Kentucky was a coyote. When my whole family was in town for Lauren’s baptism, my sisters’ and I were driving back on post through an open area when my sister Carroll said that she thought she saw a wolf standing on a hill near one of the gates to the post. We turned around and went back, and sure enough there was a mangy doglike beast standing up there. When we got home we were roundly mocked for mistaking a dog for a wolf, until my dad finally conceded that it was probably a coyote, and that the one he had encountered in person was also mangy and doglike. The second time I saw one was not quite so amusing, since I was alone on a deserted part of post on a Saturday. I had gone out for a walk and as I rounded a corner in the most remote part of my route, I looked to the side and saw a coyote at the bottom of a short hill, staring up at me. The worst part of this story is that as I approached the spot where I saw the coyote, an older Army man (probably a colonel of some sort since I was in their neighborhood) made a strange turn and started running in my direction. He ran right by me and said nothing, letting me find the coyote for myself. What an officer and a gentleman.

So did I have anything to fear from the coyote? Let’s ask Nature Works. The coyote is carnivorous and “Most of its diet is made up of mammals, but it also will eat birds and snakes. It prefers to eat fresh kill, but it will eat carrion. In the fall and winter, the coyote often eats fruits, vegetables and berries.” That is somewhat reassuring since I think it was still technically winter when I walked by it. However, then I read that “When hunting larger prey like deer, coyotes hunt in packs. One or more coyote will chase the deer while the others wait, then the next group will pick up the chase. Working in teams like this, the coyote can tire the deer out, making it easier to kill,” which makes me even more uneasy, since it’s possible I was in the presence of many coyotes ready to have me for lunch. Another bad sign is that “The coyote does most of its hunting alone and at night.” Why would a night time hunter hunt during the day? Because it has rabies. My goodness, I am lucky I made it out of there alive.

During one of my childhood outings to Gettysburg, we drove around hoping to catch sight of a deer. I am so old that this was back when deer were hard to spot, not grazing in everyone’s yard like some sort of urban cows. Just as we were about to give up and head home, I managed to spot one in the woods and we stopped the car so we could all get a look at nature. I don’t know if it sticks in my mind because I was so proud of myself for spotting it, or because it would be so ludicrous to try to find one now. Plant a flower and stand around for an hour or two, and you’ll soon be able to observe all the deer you want. Although Army posts are full of hunters, somehow the deer manage to outnumber them by greater margins every year. Whole families graze on people’s yards at dusk (and spread tics.

My favorite type of nature watching is from my chair while relaxing on the beach. One afternoon my sister and I saw what looked like a dog swimming along parallel to shore. It turned out to be a seal. According to the Coastal Research and Education Society of Long Island web page, the scientific name of a harbor seal “loosely means ‘sea calf’ or ‘sea dog.’ This latter nickname is well suited as these seals closely resemble a dog when their head is viewed at the surface of the water.” So see everybody, it wasn’t the Bud Light, it was a seal and it did look like a dog. We’ve also seen dolphins and/or porpoises swimming and pelicans flying, and hopefully one day we’ll spot a whale.

I know whales are not really commonly seen along the coast of Delaware, although apparently they once were: “Right whales are no longer seen in certain inshore areas (where they once were common) such as Delaware Bay, Long Island, and in the Strait of Belle Isle between Newfoundland and Labrador.” When we were on our trip to Maine (the one that Erin missed and ruined) my dad took my brother and sister and I on a hike across a rocky beach to see the lighthouse on Campobello Island. My little brother was very upset that he had to stay behind, but while they were waiting for us to come back, he and my mom saw a whale. I believe their story, but when the HP and I were on Campobello on our honeymoon, every time we walked near the shoreline, all over the island, we were informed by people that we had just missed a whale. We began to think it was some sort of tourist racket, where they station people all over the island and pay them to say that the whale was just there so that tourists will stick around a little longer and spend a little more money.

And that’s it. I’ve never seen anything as big as a bear, I’ve never come across a raccoon or possum that wasn’t splattered on a roadway. Every so often I read a story about one wild animal or another making their way into a neighborhood, but those stories never end well for the animal, so I can’t wish for that sort of situation. I suppose if global warming was not a left wing tree hugger conspiracy, I could expect more reports of strange animal behavior in my lifetime, which would increase the likelihood that I would encounter one. After all, most wild animals are covered with fur, and when it gets hot enough, one or two of them will likely be smart enough to seek out some air conditioning.

Going Postal

Today as I was standing outside watching Lauren learn the stops and starts of riding a bicycle with brakes, our mailman pulled up with a package for us (a package from daddy for Aislinn’s birthday). I guess it was insured or certified, because I needed to sign something, and as the mailman organized whatever papers he needed to give me, we had a little chat about Lauren riding the bike. When I told him that I had run over her tricycle, he said “Oh, so you had to go buy that one today I bet.” I told him that it was her sister’s bike that she was trying out to see if she was ready for a big bike. He then said “Well, my grandson is eight years old and he can’t ride a bike yet.” I wasn’t really sure what to make of that, but then he said “I found a brand new Huffy bike out at the curb on trash day because someone didn’t know how to put the chain back on.” I said “Wow, that’s strange,” and the mailman said, “Do you want it?”

Our mailman is very, very peculiar. He recently cut off his scraggily long grey ponytail, but still I get the impression that he may have smoked a little too much wacky tobbacky in his day. Whenever I meet him outside, he says odd things that I have to think about before I can answer, but before I am done thinking he has scurried off down the block. One day when I was in the kitchen concentrating on a recipe or something from one of the kids’ schools, the mailman rang the doorbell and startled me. When I looked through the storm door at him, he was pointing and laughing at me, “Hee Hee, I saw you jump! HEE HEE HEE!!” I was more puzzled than annoyed by that, but it strengthened my belief that he was a few cards short of a deck. We live on a corner of a t-intersection, and our house is at the end of our mailman’s route. The street that runs perpendicular to ours has a different mailman, who is the sort of mailman that the postal service would like you to imagine when you think of postal workers. He always waves and shouts hello to me, even though I’m not on his route. When we pass on the street he asks things like “How are you today?” or “Beautiful weather isn’t it?” not things like “Do you think that squirrel could outrun a bunny rabbit?”

Somehow, the fact that my mailman is nutty and the mailman right across the street is normal is pretty much an ideal metaphor for my life. The crazy people always end up on my block, on my airplane, at my officer’s wives coffees. Where are all the normal people and why am I never in a place where I would meet them? All over my neighborhood I see regular looking women pushing strollers and walking dogs. But somehow none of these regular looking people live near me. The woman next door has a mullet and fashions straight out of 1984, and she walks back and forth to the bus stop jabbering away on a hands free cell phone, like she is conducting important business (although not a single snippet of conversation I have heard sounds important or even coherent). The woman behind me has red hair that has been dyed two different colors (not because she’s edgy but because she probably didn’t realize they were different until she came out in the sunlight) and a huge tiger tattoo on her back. When I attempted to make small talk, she demanded to know if I worked, and when I said that I hadn’t for a while she asked “Were you a professional?” What sort of question is that? Why don’t I meet the women who say, “I love those shoes!” not “I’m going to stop working at the hospital so I can throw ‘passion parties.’?”

I know my sisters both think they can one-up me when it comes to stories of the crazy people we meet at bars or sporting events or just walking through parking lots, and I concede that the trophy for strangest encounter passes back and forth between us with some regularity. Shortly after my sister Erin posted this encounter, my sister Carroll forwarded me an e-mail she received inviting her to a meeting of NINO (“Nine In, Nine Out: a group of babywearing fans of all different types that have a common interest---wearing our children"). Whenever we go out together the combined force of our nutjob magnetism usually conjures up some drunk doofus who wants to sit down at our table and attempt to charm us, when all we want to do is have a drink and a little quiet.

Anyway, when the mailman offered me the bike he found in the trash, I didn’t know how to react, because if I said no, he might expect a reason why not, and I didn’t have one, so I said “Sure, if you don’t want it.” Now this awkward situation is out there, waiting for a resolution. In a perfect world, the mailman will drop off the bike tomorrow and I can thank him, and that will be the end of it. But what if he doesn't? What if he keeps telling me about it but never brings (similar to the way my boss kept telling me he was buying me a wedding present and never did, what a jackass, but I digress...) and the situation is never resolved? What if the bike is too big for my kids, and then they can't use it, and then wonders why I accepted it if we weren't going to use it? Hopefully he won't ask why we're not using it, but what will I say if he does?

And that right there is probably why the odd birds will always think they’ve found a friend in me. I don’t want to hurt their feelings or make them feel uncomfortable, so I make myself uncomfortable instead. Presumably while I am accommodating the nutty faction, the members of the regular stroller pushing and dog walking faction are meeting and making plans and moving on without me. I guess there are other explanations to my situation which I haven’t really considered. Obviously, the problem could be that I am such a weirdo that the normal people on the block are avoiding me. The problem could be that the normal looking people that stroll by with their kiddies and dogs are actually raving lunatics that manage to pull off the “normal look,” and if I met them I'd find them as crazy as the mullet-headed tattooed types I normally attract. The problem could be that the people I consider odd are actually considered normal by the rest of the general population. The problem could be that I have no idea what normal is since I spend my days surrounded by my kids who are definitely looking at the world from a different angle.

However, probably the most likely reason I attract the wacky element of society is that if they are nice, I will be friendly to them. I spent nine years (counting kindergarten) in a toxic, clique-infested grade school, and it scarred me to the point that I am absolutely opposed to leaving anyone out. One day (back when I was a professional) a coworker invited me to go out for drinks after work, which I thought was nice, until she added “We are asking all of the cool people to go.” That was a dealbreaker for me. Since college my new rule of thumb has been that if cool people need someone to exclude, I’ll always volunteer to be excluded. I don’t want to be on the inside looking at the “losers” outside (to a degree that it is almost my life philosophy). After wasting so much of my childhood worrying about whether I was ever going to be in the cool crowd, I can’t even stand the thought of being a part of it now. I'm definitely not some sort of saintly person, I'm really not even what people would consider very nice, but at least I can claim that I am inclusive and that I don't rule out friendship without a reason(except of course with Jason Kennedy, the producers of ER and Grey's Anatomy, terrorists, and the guy who came to remove the dead squirrel last Friday).

Updates #2

Yes, I know 1500 words is a lot to expend on any one topic, and I know that I have covered most of these topics in excruciating detail from every possible angle, but every one loves a little update don't they? Don't you love that part of the movie Miracle when they tell what all the hockey players are doing now?

A Disgusting Post About Dead Squirrels

On Friday afternoon (day 2 of squirrel episode #2), after I had completed all of my errands and picked up the kids and when I knew that I would be home for at least the next three hours, I placed my call to the MP desk again to find out what more I needed to do to bring about removal of the squirrel. “Hello,” I began in a most polite manner, “I called yesterday about a dead squirrel near my house…”

“Yes,” said the same dispatcher I spoke to the day before.

“Well, no one came out to get the squirrel, so I was just wondering….”

“WHAT? No one came out there? Don’t worry, I’ll send someone out right now.”

“Oh, okay, thanks a lot.”

So, it turns out I did not need to prepare myself for battle to get the squirrel removed, but I did have to call a second time. The seargeant that took the call made it pretty clear to me that dead squirrel removal was within their area of responsibility, so I felt better, thinking it was just an oversight and not a sign that the squirrel removers thought my request was stupid. At least I thought that until the squirrel remover arrived.

He pulled up in an unmarked pick up truck and began wandering around the front yard, apparently hoping he could spot the squirrel and take it without ever having to deal with me. I found my shoes and went outside to meet him, just as he was coming to the door.

“You called about a squirrel?” he asked in a rather condescending manner, as if he could barely stand speaking to me.

“Yes, it’s in the back, I’ll show you.”

We went to the back of the house, where another squirrel darted out and startled me, I’m sure removing whatever miniscule amount of respect I could have expected from this guy. I pointed out the squirrel and stepped back so he could go to work.

The first thing he did was squat down and poke the corpse with his bare hand.

“I don’t know if he electrocuted himself or what,” I said, attempting to make conversation.

“I don’t know either, but he is dead.” Apparently he had poked the squirrel on the off chance that it was Squirrel Van Winkle, just taking a little two-day siesta draped over my cable wires. Or maybe he thought that I was confused and it had only been there for two minutes rather than two days. Then, to my disgusted astonishment, he picked it up with two bare fingers and held it up, turning it this way and that, looking for evidence of I don’t know what. He stood up, and started walking back to his truck with the squirrel in hand.

“Thanks a lot,” I called after him.

“Yeah,” he said without even turning back in my direction. He tossed the remains in the back of his pickup and got in the front seat where he took off his hat and drove away. I guess he is so rugged that he doesn’t mind that he was spreading squirrel cooties all over himself and his hat and his truck. Whatever.

Thinking back, the guy did not have a uniform shirt on, just some sort of t-shirt that had some sort of hunting thing on it. I suppose that it is possible that he works for the hunting office on post, but given his manner, I suppose it is also possible that he is some random weirdo who listens to the police scanner in hopes of hearing a report of a still warm animal corpse (deer, possum, raccoon, skunk) that he can fry up with some onions. Although he could barely stand the fact that I was too girly to pick up a two-day old squirrel corpse, something tells me the little lady waiting at home to fry that thing up was not a roadkill retriever when he met her.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor and The Housing’s Mighty Fine

For about five hours today, the little girl who lived next door was in my house, playing with the girls, messing up basically every room, and eating lunch and several snacks. I like when another kid comes over to play, because although the house is usually a mess when she leaves, at least the kids leave me alone for a while. Plus, this little neighbor is the one with the trampoline that we use on a regular basis while she is holed up at after school care. I don’t mind entertaining her every now and then since she has been so generous with her trampoline. Once the girls had played with every toy on the inside, they went outside to throw and chase a Frisbee (I suppose one day it may morph into a game of catch, but none of them have the aim for such a sport right now). After about five minutes the girls came running inside to inform me that the Frisbee was on the roof.

We have a ranch house, so I thought I might be able to reach the Frisbee with a broom, but it was too far back on the roof. I went in and got the step stool to give it another try, but I still didn’t have any luck. As I was contemplating what to do next, a high school kid out riding his bike stopped and asked if we needed any help. He wasn’t much bigger than me, but I figured I should encourage his impulse to stop and help people. He climbed up on the stool and managed to reach the Frisbee with the broom, but since our roof is tar covered with pebbles (I have no idea why - none), he couldn’t get it to slide down the roof. Undaunted he climbed up onto our air-conditioning unit so he could get a little more leverage and managed to get the Frisbee down. The kids and I thanked him profusely, and he gave us a wave as he got back on his bike and rode off down the street. Thinking back on it now, I remember he was wearing a clean white (baseball) hat, like the good guys always do.

So Much for Being Nice

Since it aired, I have discovered that the most upsetting part of the Grey’s Anatomy finale was not that it was horrible and ridiculous and ludicrous and insulting to a degree that it took points off of my IQ. The most upsetting part was that when I did a Google search of other blogs so that I could read some other peoples’ trashing of the episode, all I could find were rave reviews from people who loved it. Everyone had a tale of the tears in their eyes when the heart guy kicked the bucket and how beautiful everyone looked in their prom dresses. Ew. I guess that is further proof that I will never be a TV programming executive.

Stumped

Somehow I have failed to finish in the money in the great spring cleanup contest on post. The first and third place yards are cattycorner to each other right when you enter our housing area. I have seen these people at work on their yards constantly, and both yards look very nice. However, both of them have riding mowers that can also suck up leaves, so I think they are somehow overly qualified for the yard competition. If prizes were awarded based upon impact per dollar spent, I think my three bags of mulch, 8 petunias, 3 grass plants, and I would be sitting pretty.

However, the third place yard was always the first place yard, until the people in the new first place yard moved in and spent even more time edging and planting and pruning. I happened to be walking by for the first face off after the signs had been awarded (and maybe it’s just me, but the first place sign seemed to be angled for maximum impact when the third place people came out of their front door). “Congratulations,” the winner called to the third placer just a little too sweetly. “Congratulations to you, too,” the third placer called back just a little too generously. Oh the intrigue, something tells me the winners may have riding mower donuts on their lawn in the morning.

Flockin’ Robins

My parents’ new house is a wonderland of nice TVs and couches, two of the HPs favorite inanimate objects. If there were a few additional refrigerators, I imagine he might chain himself to the banister and go AWOL in July. However, as I was sitting with my dad enjoying the new porch, I noticed a little something perched on the roof above my parents’ bedroom. Soon I was being treated to a nonstop “Coo Coo Coo,” from the HP’s nemesis, the mourning dove.

“That thing sits up there all day,” my dad said, “I think you’d better tell Rob to bring his weapon with him.”