My So Called Life

How to spook out your daughter

/ Shane / Leave a comment

After I tucked Evie in bed, I started some laundry and then went upstairs. Some time later, Sara was doing something downstairs.

“Mom?” called Evie in a quavery voice. “The laundry light keeps flickering on and off by itself.”
“I think daddy was doing some laundry, honey.”
“Yeah, but I heard him go upstairs a long time ago, and it keeps doing it.”

Sara looked around.

“I don’t think so, it’s not on now. Just go to bed.”

Apparently when CFL bulbs start to go, they can do that creepy, flickery thing that we’ve grown so used to in horror movies. I’ve had other CFLs just stop working, but the one in the laundry room was blinking like a strobe light. “Thats…really creepy,” Evie had said earlier in the day.

Now, of course I couldn’t be bothered to actually change the lightbulb. We don’t really use it all that often, and you can usually get by with the light from the hallway. Apparently it had gone out while I was doing the laundry, and somehow I didn’t notice that? So I neglected to turn off the switch when I went upstairs.

We didn’t realize it until the next morning, but apparently all night long it would just come on and start flickering for awhile before going off again.

Talk about CREEPY. I can’t blame her for being creeped out on that one!

 

How I defeated the oven and saved the day

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Last week, Ollie came down with a nasty stomach bug. The universe, just to prove how snuggly and warm it is, decided that would be wonderful time for the oven to stop working.

I mean, it was working fine one minute, and then the second Evie finished up a batch of granola, it just wouldn’t light. Nada.

I had to stay home with Ollie the next day anyway, so we decided to take it apart to see what makes it tick. As soon as I took off the oven door, Ollie exclaimed, “Oh! Now THAT’S interesting!”

There is nothing that captures Ollie’s imagination more than taking things apart, or seeing how they work. I know he’s too young to really understand much, but he really is just fascinated by it. So I knew he’d be a good helper, even if it was just fetching tools.

Now, I’m not going to lie; being a handyman is not my strong suit. And that’s what made this next part so absolutely awesome.

We completely took apart the oven, diagnosed the problem, found an appliance parts store in Chicago, got the part we needed, put it all back together, and it worked! I mean, this was some serious repair work: there were multiple screw drivers, a socket set, wires that had to be spliced together, part numbers to be looked up…believe me, I’m more shocked than anybody.

After we replaced the ignitor, I told Ollie, “Okay, if we did this right, that part should start to glow.” It takes 30 seconds or so for it to kick in, but when it started glowing you would have thought we had just won the Superbowl. “OH!” Ollie cried, pointing. “IT’S GLOWING! IT’S DOING IT! IT’S GLOWING!”

Many high-fives were given.

I don’t know if it scratches some heretofore undiscovered man-itch buried deep inside me (heh, heh, he said ‘man-itch’), or if it’s just the satisfaction anyone would feel accomplishing something that is completely outside their wheelhouse, but I was strutting like a peacock for that one.

1) Correctly diagnosing the problem, 2) actually successfully completing the project, and 3) doing it all in under a day are usually the unholy trifecta of failure for me. Top that off with only spending $65 total and, I assure you, I was completely insufferable for the rest of the day.

(You know, even more than usual.)

Dream Warriors

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Oliver just called out in his sleep, “I need help!” (which, by the way, is a pretty creepy thing to say in your sleep)

I went in his room, but he seemed to be neither awake, nor embattled in a Freddy Krueger dream-battle.

I would like to state publicly, and for the record, that if I shout “I need help!” in my sleep, I expect some Dream Warriors to form up and tag team whatever we need to defeat. I don’t ask for help lightly.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a job to do.

Boy said he need’s help.

To My Valentine…

/ Shane / Leave a comment

In advance of the holiday, I wanted to send a few valentine’s to my love.

knitting_Valentine

foam_coffee

Uh oh, things are getting a little racy…

2012_04_14_7293

2014_11_05_0379

Aww! So sweet!

Seriously, though, all of these things are literally true (except that heart-knitting one…ouch!), and I thank you very much for them.

Here’s to 60 more years of love, mutual coffee foaming, dishes, and laundry (but not 60 more years of kid watching).

 

Missing: One Snowman

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Anybody seen this guy running around?

2015_02_02_0817

A couple of years ago, my mom gave us a “snowman kit” for Christmas. She combined a homemade scarf with a hat, a corncob pipe, a button nose, and two pieces of coal for eyes. She decorated the box with a picture of me at about age 4 in front of our house with a snowman we had built, as well as lines from Frosty the Snowman.

Not only was that a creative, awesome present, but it was *very* convenient! Whenever we wanted to build a snowman, we just had to grab the box. Everything was there. (Except the eyes, because I would never let my kids touch the ziplock bag containing the dirty, dirty coal.)

As you may have noticed, we’ve gotten a lot of snow recently, and the first thing the kids wanted to do was build a snowman. So we did, and it was tremendous fun. Unfortunately, this will be the last snowman with the “snowman kit”, because somebody stole it.

That’s right, some @$$#ole teenager stomped down my kids’ snowman and stole my mom’s homemade scarf.

For what? I’m guessing they’re not using it to build themselves a snowman. How soulless do you have to be to see that beautiful snowman and just destroy it? It’s clearly built by kids, and clearly built with a lot of love, and you just had to ruin it.

I could go on about the @$$#ole drivers recklessly cutting people off in 2 feet of snow so they can drop their kids off at the elementary school 5 seconds faster, but what’s the point? Chicago, I am very disappointed in you today.

I told the kids that the snowman must have come to life and walked away. “Well, he left pieces of himself and his arms behind,” said Sara. “Momma thinks teenagers did it!” said Evie. A slur if there ever was one in this house. “Maybe a homeless person needed the scarf and hat because he didn’t have one and he was really, really cold,” I said.” “Yeah,” said Sara. “Maybe.”

Can’t we have anything nice in this world?