Year: 2014

In which I earn the badge of parenting bravery

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Sometimes Ollie is just a 3 year old from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. By which I mean that, for no good reason at all, he can be so ornery and obstinate that he can make a mule look like a helpful angel.

It was just such an occasion. I don’t even remember what set him off; it was probably nothing. One minute we’re fine, the next minute he’s melting down. I was doing some project around the house, crawling around and cleaning. I was covered with dust, but I was the closest to him, so managing him fell to me. We’re talking full out rage. His face was red and he was punching and kicking me. I was trying to talk to him, to calm him down, but he was just screaming at the top of his lungs.

I was sitting on his legs so he couldn’t kick me and holding his hands so he couldn’t hit me, when an enormous piece of dust fell off my shoulder and floated oh-so-gently down at him. Unfortunately, since he was full out, vein-popping, rage shrieking, his mouth was wide open when the dust fluttered straight in.

This thing was big. Like, dime sized. Somehow he didn’t notice it. Ugh, it was gross. It settled onto one of his teeth, darkening with the moisture. I couldn’t take it.

“Ollie buddy, you have something in your mouth. Let me get it out.”

No dice. As soon as I mentioned it, he clamped his mouth shut as tight as he could, locking the dust inside. I tried not to gag.

“Ollie, buddy, please. Open up, you have something yucky in your mouth.”

Defiantly, he shook his head back and forth, with murder in his eyes.

I had to get that dust out. I had to. He was probably swallowing it as I watched, just to spite me. However, he was too mad to keep that mouth shut, and he soon commenced screaming again. The dust was still in there, taunting me. I needed to reach in and get it. If I moved fast it could be over and done with before he even knew what was going on. On the other hand, if I moved slow, I knew he would not hesitate to bite my finger off. I could see it in his eyes. He wanted me to put my fingers in his mouth. He wanted it bad.

There was no reasoning with him. There was no leaving it in there.

One. Two. Three.

I dropped my fingers between his teeth, snatched the dust ball, and pulled back, before he could even react.

That’s parenting in a nutshell: you just can’t let your raging, maniac son swallow the dust bunny, even if it costs you a finger.

Quote Monday learns the proper way to parent

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Ollie: “Sugar helps you not cry.”
Sara: “Who told you that?”
Ollie: “Grandma and Grandpa.”

Ollie: “I got a dime today.”
Me: “Oh yeah, where did you get that?”
Ollie: “Aunt Anna said she’d give me a dime if I let her take a nap.”

::Listening to Golden Slumbers by the Beatles::
Ollie: “Why don’t they sing it quieter, so the baby could fall asleep?”

Sara: “Don’t trim your nose hairs over the toothbrushes!”

Me: “I only had time for a White Russian or to work out for 7 minutes, but not both.”

The Secret Tricks of Knitters

/ Shane / 1 Comment

One of the appeals of knitting is that there are thousands upon thousands of readily available knitting patterns. Once you master a few simple things, all you need to do is find a suitable pattern and follow the instructions. It’s almost exactly like finding guitar tab. Sure, some patterns are harder than others, but you start with the basics and build up.

However, as I delve further into the mysterious inner circles of knitting, I have discovered that there are a lot of unspoken little bits of arcane lore here and there. “Well sure it doesn’t say that in the pattern, you’re just supposed to know,” says Sara.

The pattern doesn’t tell you how to make your stripes joggless, otherwise how would the true knitters mark the posers? “Make one right” is different than “make one left” but the pattern just says M1 because who’s got the time to type out that extra ‘L’ or ‘R’? Oh, and you slipped a stitch around on your circular needles every few rows, right? I mean, what kind of idiot doesn’t know about rotating the stitch??

I’m a computer programmer. When you give the computer a set of instructions, it doesn’t care what your intentions were when you wrote the code. It’s a set of instructions and everything has to be there on the page. If it’s not there, it doesn’t get done. If you leave out a critical instruction, THAT IS CONSIDERED AN ERROR.

It really is similar to playing guitar. I watch youtube videos on how to play songs. The person in the video very calmly and clearly explains what you need to do to play the song. However, when the time comes to play a little bit, all of that goes out the window. If you watch carefully, what they actually play is practically nothing like what they told you to play; theirs is full of little extra hammers and pulls and “I just think it sounds nice if I leave the pinky off”. I don’t know if they do it without realizing it or what, but the net result is that what you’re playing, what they TOLD you to play, sounds nothing like what they’re playing.

My only conclusion is that, whatever the activity, the initiates to the higher orders like to keep all the arcane knowledge to themselves. Which means, now that I’m an initiate, you can pry my knitting secrets off my cold, dead needles.

A smelly weekend

/ Shane / Leave a comment

1) I remember someone telling me once that “new car smell” is actually all the rubber, plastic, and chemicals in your car airing out for the first time. So while it’s a strangely intoxicating smell, it will probably give you cancer. Which is why I didn’t really mind that our car never really had that oh-so-special new car smell.

However, it’s basically been 50 degrees below freezing since we bought that car, and apparently that was keeping all that scent in. The second the temperature crept up above 35 or so, the new car smell kicked in. I guess all that rubber, plastic, and chemicals was just waiting for a little sun to warm it up.

That smell is so recognizable, and it’s really strange to suddenly be smelling it in our 3 month old car. I have to admit, it does seem like it’s new all over again. (And getting better fuel economy now that it is warmer too! Can’t wait to see what we get in the summer.)

2) Have you ever smelled tea tree oil? Because I sure have.

Tea tree oil is an essential oil, which I think basically translates as “smelly oil”. We had a bottle of this stuff sitting in the laundry room and, by a Rube Goldberg-esque series of luck and coincidences, I managed to topple something, which toppled something, which broke the bottle on the floor. Whooo boy. Wikipedia describes the scent as “camphorous“, which means it basically smells like a combination of powerful cleaning solvents and 1940’s era purging medicine.

What could be worse than breaking a bottle of concentrated stink in the laundry room? If it’s winter and your furnace is housed in said laundry room. About a minute or so after the bottle broke, the furnace kicked on and spread the smell throughout the house.

It really wasn’t so bad. Cleaning / medicinal is really very far from the worst smell you could have circulating through your air ducts. However, any sufficiently strong smell can be pretty overpowering when you’re unable to escape it.

Between the two, it was a pretty smelly weekend.

Quote Monday appreciates animals

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Me, pointing to a picture of a tiger cub: “Ollie, do you know what kind of animal this is?”
Ollie: “A cub!”
Me: “Well, yeah, but do you know what kind of animal it will be when it grows up?”
Ollie: “A reindeer?”

Me: “Did you know that alligators hatch from eggs?”
Ollie: “Awwwww! And then when they grow up they can eat you.”

Evie: “We talked about superstitions at school. Like how if a black cat crosses your path it’s bad luck.”
Me: “There are other ones too, like opening an umbrella inside or walking under a ladder or breaking a mirror.”
Ollie: “Or, if a brick falls on your head and you’re not wearing a helmet!”

Ollie: “There’s two boys and two girls.”
Me: “Actually, they’re all boys, but two have long hair.”
Ollie: “Well…two have mom shoes on.”