Pumpkin is gliding through the house with a fringed throw over his head, following the rectangular pass-throughs of the house – dining room, hall, living room, kitchen, back to dining room, around the island in the kitchen, around the perimeter of the living room, over and over.
Playing Pac-Man.
And speaking of the past…
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Foul Ball!
Baseball is over for the year here, although Tigger would probably play until October if the opportunity presented itself. We have finally (FINALLY!) found something that Tigger is actually interested in obsessed with. He walks around with his mitt at all times, tossing a ball up and down until someone realizes that he's playing with a ball in the house and chases him out of doors. He badgers Piper to play catch with him, and Piper has found it a useful bribe: "Let's get this done and then we can play."
Tigger knows when the Red Sox games start and what channel they are usually on. He is starting to ask intelligent questions about the action on the field. He still comes up with some really off the wall questions, but that's just a part of being Tigger.
He is obsessed enough with baseball to wake up in the middle of the night and yell "Foul ball" before going back to sleep.
Off the Wall
I was a senior in high school when Thriller was released. Some of the people I was becoming friends with around that time are still my best friends today. I am a little weirded out by Michael Jackson's death, but probably no more so than I am by what he became in the intervening years. If I gave it much thought, I would have said he had one more spectacular comeback in him - different moves, different music, different appearance, for sure. Something that allowed us to remember his talent more than his weirdness. In news articles that have shown the progression of his physical transformation, I'm always stuck on the photos from either the Billy Jean or the Beat it videos, wishing that he had stopped there. I've managed to avoid most of the commercial radio stations' Jackson blasts, because the whole thing is oddly like losing a Beatle. What keeps getting me is the State Farm commercial released several weeks before his death that uses "I'll be there." Ironic, I think.
"Sometimes you just have to bow to the absurd."*
I have never, ever watched a single episode of American Idol, and probably never will, but every summer America's Got Talent gets us rushing to the couch. This is, of course, the U.S. counterpart to the show that gave us the collective introspection exercise known as Susan Boyle.
Year after year, I find that my favorite acts are not the straight out singers, but the ones with a great story and something unusal to offer, most often the acrobatic/street dancers or people who make music out of something different. Last year, I was rooting for a pair of guys calling themselves Nuttin but Stringz who came in with a unique mix of violins and rap. They lost in favor of a forgettable opera singer, but I was pleased to see an advertisement for a performance of theirs at Mohegan Sun earlier this year. Sometimes I wish the show would do a "where are they now" segment for those who were good enough to become finalists, but didn't get the grand prize. No doubt many of them went on to pursue their crafts lucratively in spite of the loss.
And can I just say that I LOVE Sharon Osbourne, in spite of her strange taste in men.
But most of the fun of this show is the utterly ridiculous, like this act (embed disabled), who kept making it back last season in spite of Piers Morgan's obvious distate for them.
*Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation
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Politics
Go read this. I doubt she'll either step down or be pushed out, but that there is another example of why the Sarah Palin pick was a disaster for women, win or lose. I will be watching the VP debate tonight, armed and ready, but I'm starting to wonder what the point of these things is.
The truth is, I'm starting to feel the way I did at the end of the 2000 election - exhausted, and ready for a break.
Stuff
But maybe the exhaution is a result of the 5 projects I have on my plate and the fact that I've been woken at 5 AM at least twice this week. I need my sleep.
We have a wedding to go to on Saturday. I love these people, but if I never go to another wedding it will be too soon. I'm in my 40s, my best friends have all married, some are divorced, and a few have married again. I just can't get excited about it, anymore. The wedding is 3 hours away. We were going to stay overnight and use it as an excuse to stay in a hotel, but all the hotels in the area are over $200 a night, some of them have 2 night minimums, and most have really crappy reviews. We may just drive home.
I lost my cushy parking space in the garage right under my cube this summer when the senior person I shared it with gave it up. She's only in the office 2 days a week, travels a lot anyway, so she had little use for it, and I went back to the end of the line. I did get a space at the end of the street - a 10 block walk from the office. I'm sure that it will suck in the winter time, but for now, I'm hapy to have the reason to walk twice a day.
Blogging
I've been working on a series of stories that have nothing to do with politics, adoption, or day to day events. I've also been thinking a lot about a blog more related to what I do for a living. I'm spread a little too thin these days and need to adjust my focus. I might just get to Blogher Boston. Woohoo!
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I guess it's a boy:
So I thought perhaps the funniest automotive-related thing I would ever see was that Jaguar (that's Jahg -U- are). Up on blocks.
Not so. A couple of weeks ago I spotted something so odd that I had to start tailgating the van in front of me to be sure of what I was seeing. Sure enough, hanging from beneath the rear bumper was a set of chrome-plated cojones. Part of its, er, towing package.
Update:
Pour Some Sugar on Me
I think one of the boys has been eating plain old sugar. I buy the REALLY BIG SUGAR POUCH from BJ's Wholesale Club when I go, and this morning I went to grab it from the pantry shelf to refill the regular sugar bowl. It has one those zipper closures that turned out to be wide open. And the whole bag spilled right on my head. It's like having sand in your hair. Bleah.
I WANT MY TWO DOLLARS!
We never had the full debate about allowance vs. giving kids money for doing chores. I think Piper made the decision for us. He offered Tigger $1 to straighten out the mudroom. He did it, and I wound up giving him another dollar for all the work he did last weekend while we were preparing for the arrival of his grandparents. Tigger was thrilled. He spent the rest of the night murmuring "I love my two dollars, I love my two dollars." After he went to bed, I spent a half an hour watching Better Off Dead clips on You Tube. That Japanese Howard Cosell guy...Bwahahaha. I'd forgotten about that. It's so hard to believe that John Cusack is a grown-up now. Wait, he's my age.
Sigh.
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Living in a small town has made me less of the stereotypical "Massachusetts Driver" than I used to be, but there are some days...
Merge!
So you know how a right lane ends and you find yourself trying to merge into what used to be the center lane? Yesterday some #)&%head in a teal #)&%box station wagon, wouldn't let me into traffic in front of him. I was frustrated, but as luck would have it, there was an opening right behind him and in the passing lane. Waving as I blew by him on the other side felt soooo good.
Hey You...
in the bright yellow Hummer with the W04 sticker on the back. You look ridiculous. You know that, don't you?
And You...
with the Hummer parked in the driveway because your car is bigger than the garage and as tall as your stupid little house. For the 45K you must have spent for that vehicle and the cost of gas for a year, you could have put a nice addition on your home. What a waste!
Lic. Plate on a Japanese-model sports car
POORSH
Auto-mobile
So there's a guy on the highway with one of those "Hang up and Drive" stickers on his bumper. I'm not big on the cell phone when I'm driving (or anywhere else for that matter), but I find that particular bumpersticker obnoxious. Here's the thing though, I go to pass the guy on the way down to work, and he's, wait for it, talking on his cell phone.
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This Cold
This cold is kicking my butt. I'm not used to being sick. Scratch that. I was not used to being sick until I had kids. This is my second cold this winter. I've been through the gamut of symptoms except for a fever (shh!). Now I have no voice. That's usually my sign that the cold is over. I do wonder why this happens to me so frequently, I don't remember other relatives losing their voices. I need some Vitamin C, and I need to go to bed. The days of me running myself into the ground have got to come to an end. I can't afford to be sick anymore.
Vocabulary
Tigger, grade 1: "Today in school, we learned about antibodies." I don't get it. I have one child who can barely make himself understood and one who consumes $14 words with abandon.
Politics Partisanship 101
Tigger, watching a clip from Peresopolis on BBC America: Why do they have guns?
Me (grasping): They are fighting to see who is going to be in charge of the country.
Tigger: Who gets to be in charge?
Me: Whoever wins. But we don't do it that way in this country. You don't need a gun to have a say. At the end of the year, we, all the adults, get to say who is going to be in charge after this country after the guy who is President now is done with his turn.
Tigger: His turn?
Me: Yeah, the person who wins gets a turn for either 4 years or 8 years. This guy has been president for almost 8 years.
Tigger: 8 years? That was quick.
Me: Not quick enough.
Piper: Oh well, you tried.
Say What?
Have you ever heard of "booty dancing?" Yikes.
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We finally got a car! Picked it up last night and went out to dinner. The kids were pretty good.
We wound up buying a Toyota Highlander. Not a Hybrid or a Limited, because I could find either one within a reasonable driving distance. It doesn't have all the lovely gadgets that I had with the Subaru, and in a few short weeks I know I will miss those heated seats, but it's a Toyota. It has a rumble third row seat.
So far, the kids have managed to take turns with that third row seat pretty well. And I cannnot believe how much it has cut down on the fighting.
Now the trick is to keep it clean.
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