My So Called Life

Another day, another nursemaid’s elbow

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Evie was having a fit about something or other and she flopped boneless to the floor while Sara was holding her hands. Suddenly, she cried out, clutched her arm to her stomach and yelled, “Noooo! Not again!” Later I found it funny that she remembered clearly enough the sensation of the first one, that she recognized it as the same. It seemed such an adult thing to say. Then she immediately called for a blanket and her teddy bear, for comfort.

Anyway, it was very clear that it was the same thing as before. They told us at the time that once it happened the first time, it was likely to happen again. It was a lot less scary this time having gone through it once. The doctor had showed us how to fix it ourselves, but our memory was not perfect. Sara tried it and it didn’t seem to fix it. We weren’t sure what to do about it, but I was a little suspicious that perhaps Sara had indeed fixed it, even though Sara didn’t think so. Evie had been crying and after Sara tried she stopped crying, even if she was still holding her arm close to her chest.

She said her arm still hurt, but I was still suspicious. I mean, this is the girl who’s still milking her skinned knee from a week ago, and still tells me about her “brave fingers” that got pinched in the closet door months ago. Also, the doctor told us that sometimes it took a little while for it to stop hurting, even after it was fixed. Sure enough, maybe 10 minutes later, Evie was giving us high fives with her bad arm.

So, once again, all’s well that ends well. At least this time it didn’t involve a trip to the emergency room.

In completely unrelated news, I saw the movie Once last night. I had never heard of this movie until the Oscars, when Falling Slowly, the song from the movie, absolutely haunted me and I had to listen to it over and over again.

There are tons and tons of good songs in there, some possibly even better than Falling Slowly, such as If You Want Me and The Hill. I think I’ll be needing this soundtrack for Christmas…

Myth Busted

/ Shane / 3 Comments

I have it on good authority that if you ever lock your keys in your car, but you have one of those remote entry key fob things, you can actually have someone unlock your car through a cell phone. Basically you hold your phone up to the car and they push the key fob button on their end. The signal is transmitted through the phones and to the car, unlocking your doors. This was told to me by someone who claimed they had personally tried it and it works.

Well folks, I tried it and I’m here to say that you can’t unlock your car through your cell phone.

Sara’s keys were locked in my car so she called me at work and we tried it. With speaker phone, without speaker phone, holding it by the door, holding it by the dashboard. We even tried popping the trunk. I guess I should have just looked it up on Snopes first. According to them, if people tried it and it worked, the caller was probably just standing close enough to the car that the fob unlocked it normally, not through the phone.

Quite frankly, I’m disappointed. It seemed like it was just crazy enough to work. I always thought this was my secret ace in the hole in case my keys got locked in my car. My universe just got a little dimmer.

Now that’s what I call a vacation

/ Shane / 2 Comments

We were visiting the family all last week and it was great! Plenty of relaxation, and plenty of good food. We were grilling out for practically every meal. Evie met some new doggies and kitties, we got some swimming in, played some card and board games, and even saw some fireworks. Everybody helped us watch Evie and did most of the food preparation, etc. so we didn’t have a whole lot to do.

There were some extra special highlights of the trips though:

We took Evie to see some buffalo on a farm by my dad’s house. It was pretty cool, there were lots of babies. Our fun was cut short, however, when someone drove by and threw firecrackers out the window at us. When they went off, they scared us (and the buffalo) half to death. I felt bad for poor Evie who doesn’t even really know what firecrackers are! The buffalo wouldn’t come back over by us after that.

We got a ton of fresh blackberries (mulberries? There seems to be some debate) picked off the vast expanse of pricker bushes lining my dad’s estate. I’m eating some now actually!

We did some more garage sale-ing and found some good buys on Evie clothes, puzzles and toys. This taught me a new fun game, which is checking the rummage sale listings in a small town newspaper to see what you can find. My all time favorite was one that listed “guns” for sale, but I appreciated many more items such as, “Plus size ladies clothes, Harley Davidson and Nascar.” After you’re done laughing at those you can flip over to the real estate section and cry at the ridiculously low prices.

Sara and I snuck out to see a movie to celebrate our anniversary. We saw Public Enemies staring Johnny Depp, which was good and entertaining but didn’t change my life or anything. This was only the second time we’ve seen a movie in the theater since Evie was born, upping our average to one a year.

On the way home we stopped at the Albanese Candy Factory. We have always wondered about it when we passed it on the highway, so we decided to go in and see what it was about. We didn’t do a tour or anything, but we still had a very enjoyable little stop! There is a huge chocolate fountain inside and an absolutely ridiculous selection of bulk candy, which I assume is made on the premises. We bought some truffles, chocolate toffee pecans and something else that Sara picked out which I can’t remember but was just as good as the other two. They also have free samples! Evie screamed about wanting more chocolate the rest of the way home. All in all, it basically reminds me of the Chocolate Castle, with more of a candy selection, but less classy.

Despite being able to relax, it was still somewhat exhausting to be away from home and everything. Exhausting enough that I literally fell asleep waiting for a traffic light to turn green when we were on the way home. Good thing I woke up Sara to keep me company shortly before that!

Finally, for all you haters out there (and those on facebook), I give you a goat on a trampoline:

Happy 4th

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Enjoy the weekend with the American tradition this country was founded on…blowing things up.

2 Stories

/ Shane / 6 Comments

Last night I fell asleep on the couch at about 8:30, so by the time I got up and went to bed at around midnight, Sara had been sleeping for quite some time. As I crept in to the bedroom and slowly and quietly closed the door behind me, Sara sat bolt upright in bed and yelled, “Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!” I threw the door open and leapt to the side like some sort of action hero. “What?” I asked in a panic. “Evie was peeing in the night,” Sara said and went back to sleep.

As we were driving through the middle of nowhere today, Evie was getting a little restless. In order to keep her occupied, we were pointing out things on the side of the road for her to see. “Look Evie, there are some horses out Mommy’s window!” “Look, here’s a barn!” Suddenly, I saw, I kid you not, a goat on a trampoline. Nobody will believe me about this, but it was for real. It’s not like he was jumping or anything, someone just had a pet goat and one of those huge backyard trampolines, and the goat was sitting on it. I was extremely tempted to go back and take a picture, but I didn’t, so you’ll just have to belive me on this.