Author: Shane

Quote Monday is why we can’t have nice things

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Sara: “If you spilled your wine on the [new] rug…I would…have a sob fest.”
Sara: “I toned it down when I remembered I scraped the [new] car on the fence the other day.”

Evie: “Ollie, I have $4.27 and even *I* don’t have enough money to buy a car.”

Evie: “Daddy, it looks like someone drew a pencil drawing on the ceiling.”
Me: “You’re right, it looks like someone did a naughty thing.”
Evie: “Well, it wasn’t me, I would have done a better job.”

Ollie: “His mama must be a doctor, because he lives in a wooden house.”

That’s Chicago living for you. (And by the way, his mama is a doctor).

So what’s going to be our “look”?

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I was talking with my sister the other day about how seeing a picture from the ’70’s or ’80’s just immediately tells you the time period based on the hairstyles or the clothing. This is not really news, but it’s just interesting to me that every single guy in the ’70’s simultaneously decided, “You know what looks good? A moustache.” In the ’80’s, not a single person looked around and went, “You guys, we’re all dressed like buffoons.” How did the flannel industry keep up with demand in the ’90s?

It stands to reason that 20 years from now, people will look back on our pictures with the same mixture of hilarity and revulsion as I do when I look back on old pictures. I assume there will be certain hairstyles or clothing that will just scream “2000”, and schools will have “aught” day where everybody will dress appropriately. But what will that look like?

I think I’m probably too close to it to see what the patterns are.  I mean, I mostly wear jeans and a tee shirt. Will the people of the future look back and go, “Ha ha, jeans and a tee shirt, they didn’t even wear shiny metallic clothes back then! Losers!” People just dress…regular, you know? On the other hand, just like the people with teased hair and leotards in the ’80’s, I’m probably not the one who gets to decide what is going to look ridiculous. It’s like how everybody locks in on whatever music was popular when they were in high school, and then just continues to think all the music that comes after for the next 60 years is crap.

So what is the “look” of the aughts? Rachael and I came up with a few ideas:

The Barbwire Bicep Tattoo

I feel like the barbwire tattoo was the immediate successor to the famed “tramp stamp” period in the late ’90s. There are probably millions of these things out there, which certainly makes for a trend.

Nouveau Goth

I think this is the closest we come to a hairstyle of the aughts, but remember when suddenly every band was like a glittery hair band throwback?

Skinny Jeans

Is there any question that these are the modern day equivalent of bell bottoms?

Sagging

I don’t know exactly when this started, but I know it still continues today, so it’s outlasted quite a few other trends. How this continues to be a thing is beyond me, but so are all the rest of these.

Hipsters

I’m talking about the evolution of grunge combined with old timey moustaches. The big, thick nerd glasses, and the hair like you just woke up. And maybe a scarf (you know, for irony).

My sister pointed out that you know this is an epidemic when school teachers are using “I moustache you a question” on bulletin boards at school.

The Guido

Or “dudebro” if you prefer. That special combination of hair, tan, and muscle shirts brought to the forefront by the Jersey Shore. Sad but true, we may be judged by those idiots. I suspect there is strong overlap between this group and the bicep tattoo group.

Duckface

Really a subset of the above group, but referring more to the actual pose of picture taking. There are so many “duckface” pictures floating around on the Internet, that it’s a virtual certainty that future generations are going to think this is just what people looked like back then.

So, what did I miss? Hairstyles? Shoes? Anything else?

In which I earn the badge of parenting bravery

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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

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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.