Ham Balls!

First, to those of you with a deep attachment, this post is not intended to ridicule, but to educate.

Anyway, you might think that, "Ham balls!" is a tame way to express your frustration in front of a youngster. Drop the car keys in the snow and blow of steam with a hearty, "Ham Balls!" And, there is no reason you couldn't go ahead and use it that way, but you would only know a part of the story.

I grew up without ham balls. This, depending on perspective, is a failing or a limited success of my parents. Tonight, I had them for only the second time and, reversing course from the direction of my parents (generally a good policy), Ellis had them for the first time and he looooovvvvveeed them.

So for those of you who don't know, a ham ball is basically a muffin sized meatloaf made of equal parts ground ham and ground pork bound with eggs and graham crackers then baked twice, the second time in a brown sugar and mustard glaze. Ellis thought they were sausage and under a loose definition I suppose they are. He bolted down his first meat cupcake, had a little bit of potatoes, and then ate another half of a ham ball. (He also had two monster servings of five cup salad, another distinctive dish.) While I don't share his love of HBs, I do support his decision to forgo green beans until his craving for meat was satisfied or the meat ran out, which it didn't, so he didn't eat any beans. Something, it seems, is sinking in.

Now, I may get accused of snootiness here since my objection can't have anything to do with being kosher (thank Yahweh). My suspicion is that only those who chewed their first ham ball with their milk teeth experience cravings for them later in life and that is why I am luke warm about them, having had my first at 26, and I have been told it was a bad example at that. For similar nostalgic reasons I like pasties(a dry meat pie favored in Cornwall and the areas of the upper Midwest where Cornish miners came to work). There is little to recommend these to the taste buds, but I had them when I was young and I can't smell Lake Superior without a craving for one. At times I snarf a spam sandwich (with mustard, only hillbillies put mayo on a perfectly good spam sandwich). And, I have been known to enjoy a three-pack of vanilla zingers in less than six bites. So, I think I have some cred when it comes to enjoying the unsnooty and most of my list is considerably worse, the pastie being the exception, than a ham ball.

I do need to remember to get the boy to a pasty region soon, because I would simply be a negligent parent if I didn't foster important nostalgic links to odd food, particularly, rutebega, carrots, beef and potatoes in pie crust, with ketchup if that is what it takes to get him to eat it. If the ham balls didn't put hair on his chest, a pastie surely will.

Let it snow

Too bad there wasn't an Eskimo around to teach me those supposed 27 names for snow, since Mother Nature has provided visual aids for most of the varieties of frozen precipitation in the last 15 hours. And, it is still coming down. We probably have over 9 inches now. I know some of you love being snowed-in as much as I do...and I hate to rub it in...but, na-na-na-boo-boo.

Time to wield the shovel.



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Urgent update after a trip to the store:
I now have statistically significant evidence that one must not be more intelligent than an eggplant to get a job driving a snow plow truck in this town. It is good that all of the snow off of the main streets has been plowed into the little side streets creating two foot dams, otherwise, people might actually be able to get out and use the main streets. Likewise, wasn't a full street width with 8 inches of snow better than a single lane down the middle bounded by giant plow dams? Not to mention all of the cars parked on the street that could easily have been moved at 9:30, but at 10 required two hours of digging to free them.

Future work will use genetic testing to verify that the drivers are not indeed eggplants.

Where is da mama?

Rachel is on a shortish business trip. (I keep telling myself that it is short anyway, but neither of us feel that way.) Ellis and I are bachin' it and so far, so ok.

Ellis seems to understand better this time what it means to be on a trip and when I say, "mommy is on a trip," he fires back with, "she back on fieday."

Ellis is definitely bossier when his mother is gone. Maybe he feels unfettered when the real boss isn't here.

Looking at his Mother Goose book, I pointed to an egg-shaped guy on a wall and asked him, "Who's that?" He responded enthusiastically, "Humpy Dump!" I said, "I think that was a Digital Underground song." He didn't get it.

They say Montessori kids want to do it themselves and here I offer you some evidence in the next two vignettes.

After work while I was getting dinner going, Ellis was unusually quiet so I went to investigate. When I got downstairs he had pushed an ice chest over to the kegerator, climbed up and poured himself a giant 40 oz. root beer. Unfortunately, he only had a 6 oz. cup in his hand. Since there was no sign of drowning, I am pretty sure he didn't try to put his head right under the tap.

During getting into jammies, I had to run down and let the barking dog into the house. Ellis met me at the bottom of the stairs like this:
Note that he didn't achieve the trifecta of upside down, backwards and inside out. It is right side out. Bonus points to him for keeping a couple buttons buttoned.

We negotiated down to this:


Which is better than the last time Rachel was gone.

By the way, I did wash his face before bed.

Pie Hole Puts One in His Journal

Ate here tonight. This is Ann Arbor's newest brewery and is owned by the company that runs one of the other breweries in Ann Arbor's brewery district. The beers were good, but not as good as one would expect from brewers this experienced. One cool little twist is they are offering some old school cheap beer as well: Stroh's, Pabst, Schlitz and High Life.

They call themselves a BBQ joint. I detected from the menu and decor that the BBQ would not be authentic enough. They didn't even specify if it was east Carolina or west Carolina style Q. Someone at the table did get the Carolina pulled pork and it wasn't either one. Bah!

I ordered carefully and had one of the top five cheese burgers of my life: Medium with blue cheese, bacon (good bacon) and sweet onion marmalade and no green stuff.

They had one dessert that left me puzzled but I was simply too full to investigate. Read these words carefully: Fried Doughnut Bread Pudding with Butter Rum Sauce. Oh confusing adjectives. Is this a bread pudding made of doughnuts that is then fried in individual servings to create a pleasing crispy crust? Or, is it bread pudding made from fried doughnuts? Less likely, but still possible considering the major miss with the BBQ, it could be regular bread pudding topped with crumbled fried doughnuts or molded to look like a fried doughnut. I am pretty sure it isn't bread pudding made from fried doughnuts that is then fried again prior to get the crispy crust. That would be refried doughnut bread pudding.

Happenings about town

Bentos all around
Last night, Rachel was having a bad day, so I took us all out for Japanese, the only food that can comfort her. Since the food poisoning I can't do sushi, so I got a bento box that contained tiny portions of a lot of different things. To my surprise, Ellis tried almost everything and ate 1/3 of my meal. He ate the pickled potatoes, the potato cakes and even refused the excellent beef dish for more of the odd ball stuff like sweet pickled soy beans. He liked the smelt roe and even had a bite of his mother's raw tuna. And, of course, he helped himself to my fruit course.

We pack our lunches in little bentos everyday and Ellis sometimes has 6 different portions in his, so we know he appreciates variety. It seems though that last night's meal made Ellis aware that this variety is available at times other than lunch: Today at breakfast we had yoghurt on the table and he asked for bread with PB&J. Once that was in front of him he demanded a muffin. Only once all three were in place did he set to eating. This could be a really bad trend.

Rachel is a smart ass
Me: Do we have any baked beans?
Rachel: Yes, we have a whole case downstairs.
Me: But those are for the emergency pantry, don't we have others.
Rachel: No, just those and besides I can't imagine any emergency getting better by you downing a case of baked beans.

Ellis doesn't seem to have much pressing to worry about
Rachel: You just don't worry about it, do you?
Me: No, I don't worry about it.
Ellis: I don't worry about it!
Me [turning to Ellis]: Do you worry about anything?
Ellis: No. Oh! Kakadiles. Dey seeping now.

What makes her a mammal?
The scene: 5:45 am, in the dark, in bed. I am wishing I could sleep just a bit longer. Ellis is kneeling on me and mauling the dog, while the dog inadvertantly mauls me. Scout flips over on her back:

Ellis: Daddy what dose?
Me: Nothing honey, just be gentle with Scout.
Ellis: Dem's Nipples! Dout's Nipples! Woah she has awot. How many she got?

More with the dog
After a small toilet learning mishap, I had to take some soiled clothing to the washer. When I returned, Ellis, nekkid, was waving his new pair of undies at Scout, whilst they circled each other, Ellis screaming, "No Dout! Dat's ma bum."

For Aunt Bridget
When asked what song he would like to sing in the car, nine times out of ten Ellis demands the classic, Found A Peanut. He wants you to take the lead and he jumps in such that the song becomes a free form round of sorts. One longs for Old MacDonald. E-I-E-I-OOOOOOOOOO.

Breaking the cycle

Here we are at left arriving at the Christmas tree sale all optimistic with a car free of pine needles. Rachel took the time to smile for a photo, but Ellis was all business, staring down the sales guy before we ever got out of the car.


While not quite as romantic as going and cutting the tree down ourselves. The impromptu setup at the charity sale had its own appeal with the temporary lighting. We had the usual discussion about how nice all the soft needled Balsams and White Pines were but couldn't be had because of their propensity for early needle loss.
Ellis got fed up with our slow shopping pretty quickly and decided that we would be having the blue spruce. Apparently he was getting cold and decided some work with the saw would warm him back up.

It took us all week to finally get it decorated. I am proud to say that we got it straight in the stand without getting angry and heaving it back into the front yard in anger and we managed to get the lights on the tree without a fight, with the lights or each other. There were dangerous moments, such as when I brought home a new string of lights to find they had been opened and didn't work! But I fixed them calmly. Ellis, not yet three, was even allowed to help with putting on the lights, something I wasn't allowed to do until I had a driver's license.






Our desire to make all of the ornaments definitely contributed to the week long decorating time. Last evening we had our friends Jim and Torrie over for dinner and to pitch in. I strung popcorn and cranberries while Rachel, Jim and Torrie piped royal icing on these aromatic but unchewable gingerbread ornaments.

Torrie and Rachel were much better than Jim or me at the cookie decorating. After making one Santa with a club foot, I retired to hold their baby Sophie and string popcorn which is tedious, but requires very little skill.

Between me a pig and a fence post

We have had quite a week here. A few highlights:

Ellis went to have his cavity filled and it turned out to just be a consultation. Apparently he was an angel, other than filling his undies which his mother has admitted she just threw away rather than toting the dirty things home. I will admit that I considered throwing away some of Ellis's dirtiest clothes at times after an excretory disaster, but I have never actually done it. For shame.

Despite the accident mentioned above, toilet learning is going pretty well and most of the mishaps come with a good story. After using the toilet when we are helping him get his trousers up, he makes a proclamation that sounds to us like, "Don't ruin my penis." It's really more like, "Do-unt ooon ma pena." Does the boy think you can get the herp from having your pants pulled up badly? I hope not.

His shenanigans have been pretty much non-stop. After preparing a nice pair of toasts with Nutella for myself this week I was called away by Rachel. Upon my return I ate the toast and then noticed there was a blob of Nutella on the floor. I turned to the boy to interrogate:

Me: Did you drop my toast on the floor?
Ellis: Wah, afer I bite it.
Me: Then did you pick it up and put it back on my plate?
Ellis: Wep.
Me: So the toast I just ate was all dirty?
Ellis: With floor dirt daddy, an hair.

Then I took him outside and put him behind the wheel of the Blazer while I scraped off the windows. When I opened the door he was climbing from the backseat back into the front over the console. In his left hand he had a stack of four Chips-A-Hoy cookies dating from our last trip to the farm and the cookies were all missing one bite, as though he were eating them like a sandwich.

Ellis: I found cookies daddy.
Me: Ellis, those are old you can't eat them. Give them to me.
Ellis: No, deeze cookies are MINE.
Me: Ellis, you can't eat those old cookies.
Ellis [Handing me two of the four cookies and nodding]: Here you go daddy.

Were those two cookies a bribe, hush-cookies to keep me from telling his mother what was going down? This may have been our first "this-will-just-stay-between-us-pigs" moment. How sweet.

House Devil

A few updates. First, the Christmas tree post will have wait.

Second, Ellis got a flu shot today and was quite a trooper. The nurse was an excellent shot giver. I am not even sure he knew what was going on.

For those of you who were confused about the shower, it is being repaired, very slowly, by the landlord. They were supposed to just take out the bottom, replumb the drain and then rebuild it. But, when they demoed it last Friday, they discovered moisture and rot in the walls and decided that if the tile guy was coming anyway they would just take it all out. The flooring has been repaired and now we wait for them to finish it.

For those you who think Ellis is all snuggles and cuteness, I share the following. Tonight, I was making lunches and Ellis was in his learning tower "helping". He put down his crinkle cutter and grabbed the salt and upended it over the floor, watching it run out. I grabbed it from him and he grabbed the pepper, with a nasty little grin. I snagged the pepper and put them down out of reach. Then, I went to the fridge and while I was in there he climbed up on the butcher block, fetched both salt and pepper and returned to sprinkling the kitchen floor with them. I grabbed them both and told him, "You know that you aren't supposed to do that. It makes me very angry." While I was saying this, his hands were on his hips, an exasperated look on his face, and his eyes settled on the half pound block of yellow cheddar on the butcher block which he pounced on, raised to his mouth and gnawed off a gigantic chaw and then smacked his lips at me while he chewed it up. Eating as a form of in your face civil disobedience it is, I tell you.

Will the police let me keep my tin foil hat?

We beat the snow storm home from our lovely up-north holiday. When we got home we were startled to discover that something very important had been taken from our home--our shower had gone missing!

We are currently working on several hypotheses. Perhaps economic times are so tough that people are stealing parts of homes now. This seems unlikely because they didn't nab the copper wire or our computers. The tidiness of the job leads me to believe that this was a botched alien abduction. Our interstellar buddies probably figured the easiest way to get me was by beaming up the whole shower with me in it. Luckily, I was somewhere in a shower up-north. A third possibility is that GM's CEO wanted to down grade his private jet and wanted to replace his nine-person jacuzzi with a three-tone, blue-tiled, 1960s shower (can't get one of those at Home Depot) so he can show congress just how hard the economic downturn is hitting the auto industry. As I was just adjusting my tinfoil hat, I realized that the aliens might have beamed the shower directly into GM's private jet to protect their interests in the bailout plan. I always thought that GM must have been using alien consultants when they designed Chevy SSR.

A dog and a pony go into a cabin

Even though we had seen pictures online, we weren't quite prepared for the degree to which this place has been decorated in a rather rustic fashion. In addition to the mounts you see here, there are couple of deer, a weasel, a red-breasted woodpecker and a duck. Everything is wood and stone and there isn't a towel rack that isn't an antler or a stick that was left on a log that is part of the construction. In one bathroom, the toilet paper holder is such a stick, poking out of a log by the toilet. Many of the antlers are real, but the chandelier of Elk antlers I suspect is imitation. All and all it is a perfectly lovely place to stay, but I couldn't see myself living in a place like this. It is almost a theme park.

The bear lounging on the carefully positioned, built-in log is a bit much, but in many ways, this fella in this lethargic pose has been the mascot of the weekend. The weather has been cold and many of the attractions other than shopping are closed, so most of us have been content to primarily eat and make like this bear. We launched the weekend with a pretty typical Thanksgiving meal that left us in lounge mode and other than the energy necessary to cook the next meal, we have mostly relaxed. Bread pudding and sausages, pancakes and bacon, shredded pork tacos, and of course some beers and a nip or two as well.

This scene is probably the most typical with someone in the kitchen and a bunch of the rest of us around the table doing jigsaw puzzles or playing games which have included Monopoly, Euchre, Pinochle, and Hand and Foot. I expect that today The Settler's of Catan will make an appearance. All of the game playing has fostered some colorful language and difficult to understand metaphors, typified by, "couldn't do nuttin', I had a dog for every pony." Now, every hand of cards ends with some comment about livestock or man's best friend. Some of them make sense, most do not.
Even if we haven't had the energy or motivation to head into the outdoors, we can sit by the fire and enjoy this view of the back property behind the cabin. We have watched deer cross back and forth on the land bridge between the two ponds and we have had some nice gentle snow in addition to what's on the ground.

I have to go and have a nap now, to muster the energy to fry sauerkraut balls (breaded, deep-fried balls of sausage, cream cheese and a little bit of sauerkraut.) These things are a family tradition from a gas station cookbook. The name isn't really fair since the kraut is the least important ingredient. About the time we get that cleaned up, I will winch a giant lasagna into the oven for dinner and hope someone else has the energy to winch it back out.

we won't stay fresh for very long...so eat us before we finish this song

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Trey, Ellis, Scout and I are "up north" (near Traverse City) celebrating Thanksgiving with some of Trey's family. We rented a large cabin, er, more like a lodge I guess. It's extremely cabin-y themed- mounts on the walls, hardwood everywhere, and every hook, drawer pull, and towel rod has been replaced with antlers and sticks. It looks like a Cabela's threw up in here. Fun enough for a visit- definitely not someplace I'd want to live. Though, there is a great view, a gorgeous stone fireplace, and two extremely luxurious bathrooms. We've already had a delicious turkey feast, made more fun by everyone helping out in getting it on the table. And are having a nice time relaxing with the fam. Of course, we're still in the throes of potty training Ellis and only the most liberal definition of "vacation" includes rinsing poopy underwear in the toilet.

Pictures and stories tomorrow, with any luck.

no-one's frightened of playing it; everyone's saying it

Ellis is really into "mine" these days. It's not full on obnoxious -- yet. It does get a little grating when he has, say, 10 toy trucks but no one else can touch one without hearing "No, mine, no no mine!" But at least it has replaced his shouting "Hey, heeeey!" at increasing volume in a similar situation. He is kind of cute when he uses it to mean something along the lines of "Am I permitted to eat/ use/ play with this item?" For instance, the other night he spied a bowl of fruit left over from Trey's lunch. He placed his hand on it, looked up at me, and inquired "Mine?" We've also had one tiny glimmer of empathy in the following exchange over, also involving fruit:

Ellis: Dese my apples?
Rachel: Yes, honey, those apples are all yours.
Ells: Dat my apples. Where mommy apples?
Rachel: I don't have any apples.
Ellis: No apples? (holding out a slice) Here go mommy.

So sweet. Then right back to his usual devil self.

In an unrelated note, I am starting to freak out about Christmas. Gift giving specifically and how much to spend, rather people don't like homemade gifts or gifts of charitable contributions. The saving grace this year is that my siblings have switched over to drawing names.

So it begins

Old man winter blew into town today, well yesterday actually, with a nasty blast of "wintery mix". Opening day of deer season was pretty hard from what I hear and the number of deer taken was down, perhaps because many, such as my father, decided it was just too nasty to stay out more than a few hours. It must have been pretty bad, because my dad ice fishes without a shanty and once advised me to, "roll up your g*d-d*** sleeve and reach down the hole and grab the g*d-d*** fish." I was eight. Just kidding. I was about 15.

Today was much better with nice big flakes floating down all day. A couple of heavier moments here and there left us with some accumulation, but the streets were too warm to hold snow. We had quite a day at the bird feeders. If you care to, you can count six finches on there. We have had as many as nine between two feeders and the surrounding brush. The blue jays, cardinals and nut hatches were thick as well. So thick in fact that I have to wonder if no one else around us is feeding. We have also had a plethora of woodpeckers. I think we have identified two species for sure and perhaps a third. Two of them can often be spotted back there at the same time.
Ellis had the right idea on a day like this. I love this pose because he looks so studious like he is thinking, "even on the 43rd viewing I notice something new in Caillou." We dont' really let him watch much TV, but Caillou is 90% of what he does watch. If we have a bad storm and lose internt for a few days, Rachel and I will be able to act out most of the episodes. The weather today does have me looking forward to being snowed in once or twice this winter.

knock me over with a feather

At Ellis's daycare, the kids in each classroom are broken into groups of 4 or 5. One staff member is responsible for dressing, changing, eating lunch with that groups of kids. Usually, the woman who looks after Ellis's group is gone by the time he's picked up, but yesterday I happened to see her and went to chat about how Ellis's day was, how potty training is progressing, and so on. She mentioned that the day was kind of hectic and Ellis had spent quite a bit of time choosing his own activities and playing independently. Apparently, he does well with this and is one of the better behaved children in the class!

What?! The child who pulls the door seals off while riding in his car seat, systematically gets out bowl/scooper/spoon to help himself to ice cream at breakfast time, and pulls out the dresser drawers to climb up to the keys and loose change we've left on top? The one who strips himself naked before finally collapsing to sleep at night and gleefully tells me "I'mmma debil doggie."
That Montessori "prepared environment" must be some kind of kid-calming voodoo after all.

Toilet Learning

Ellis earned good marks this week at school with his potty training. Being a fancy pants school and all, of course, they call it "toilet learning". Bourgeois pigs we are. What was it called in the olden days I wonder. Maybe it was just called "learnin' him to go outside before he does that". And then when modesty was an issue moving it into the old back house was the natural thing to do.

Ellis still wears a diaper to sleep, just to be on the safe side. Our usual ritual is a change to a diaper and jammies, brush teeth, read a book and then leave him in his room until he falls asleep. Sometimes he looks at more books or gets up and gets some toys to play with. Then when he is asleep we go in and tuck him in proper and turn out the lights. But tonight, when we went in to tuck him in, we found him under the covers sound asleep, the jammies on the chair and his diaper on the floor. Apparently, nudifying himself was more fun than his toys tonight. Being able to remove his own diaper could be a good or bad sign. Perhaps he is really interested in getting rid of the diapers entirely and he is ready to go to the next level with the toilet learning, or maybe he has just found a new form of civil disobedience with which to register his displeasure with things like going to bed. I wonder if the civil rights movement would have been quicker or we would have pulled out of Vietnam sooner if people had been having nekkid sleep-ins instead of clothed sit-ins. The possibilities are mind boggling.

Tick-or-Teat

I decided to put up the pics from trick-or-treating here and put all pics from the Halloween weekend at Picassa here.Ellis was pretty much this serious throughout the whole process. His mane was itchy but he seemed pretty comfortable all around.

We went to about 30 houses and I am proud to say that Ellis walked most of it.
After I straightened him out at the second house, where he thought he had to trade his first piece of candy for his second, his stride became more confident as he understood the value proposition in this endeavor. No matter how heavy his basket got, he would not allow me to carry it. He also took each piece of candy in his hand and placed it in his basket himself. "Your hand doesn't get near the basket. I want to see the candy myself and I will do all basket touching myself!"
I was in a partial giraffe outfit. My spots fell off in the car but we got them on better the next night for the party. Ellis struggled with "trick-or-treat" but was very good about saying "thank you".

Quote of the night

If I ever become a professional pumpkin carver, it means something has gone unbelievably right or unbelievably wrong.
-Trey

It's the economy stupid

Rachel has been suggesting that I should no longer listen to the news on the radio with Ellis present. I had thought until today that he wasn't really paying a whole lot of attention. But, mere moments after the NPR update discussing the further fall of the stock market, Ellis called out, "conomy, conomy, conomy." Guess I have to listen to Dan Zanes in the car now.

Should I just get back in bed?...Oh yeah, I can't

By 7:30 this morning, Ellis had kneed me in the nether regions, puked on me, screamed one inch from my ear, and pooped on me. Right now he is coming toward me with a fireplace tool...gotta go.

Preparations Begin

Tonight, we made Mexican sugar skulls for our Halloween party. The plan is to decorate them with our guests. Ellis particularly enjoyed pressing the mixture of sugar and meringue powder into the molds:



He enjoyed "tidying up" the left over mix even more:

Could he be any sweeter, literally:

Clean what? How?

Today I dragged my dad to the home improvement store with me to help me make some decisions about adding an outlet in the basement to supply the kegerator with power. I felt a little bad about it because I didn't call or anything, I just showed up at his house and pulled him out the door, and I had a list with many eclectic items from far reaching ends of the big box.

After about half an hour in the store, I really did start to feel bad. But then I looked at my dad walking around the store, really searching for something whose location I had already determined by asking someone, and my mind flipped back to an earlier time. Suddenly, I realized this was revenge. When I was 13 or so, the worst question you could hear on a Saturday morning was, "Hey, either of you kids wanna make a run with me to Home Depot."

Generally, the impetus for such a trip was either a languishing project or a sale on something my dad might have been wanting for nearly 25 years. If a project was in the offing, getting in the car signed you up for the duration. If he instead conisdered purchasing a tool without an immediate use, things were far worse as he agonized over the mid to high-end one on sale or just waiting and getting the cheap one when he needed it. This often took 3 hours. It wasn't like he walked in holding the issue of Consumer Reports that had covered random orbit finish sanders and wanted to compare them in detail in person. Instead it was just agonizing over the money and usually going home without whatever he came for.

The reason he may have been wanting that tool for 25 years was because of a system he used when younger to avoid spending. You may be familiar with the tattoo rule: save up the money, pick what you want and then wait one year. If you still want the tattoo, get it. When my dad was single, he didn't allow himself to have a checkbook, which resulted in a version of the tattoo rule. For any purchase over and above the cost of lunch, he didn't have the cash and would have to go to the bank. There were no ATMs or credit cards in those days, so he could hardly buy a damn thing on the weekend. When he did find something he wanted, he usually could talk himself out of it by the time he sprang some cash from his bank account to buy it. The result was a lot of time thinking about buying stuff and very little of it getting bought.

If a project was in the offing, the rest of the day was a crap shoot. Here are a few examples, each deserving an entire chapter:

• One time, we painted the underside of the roof deck in the attic with bleach, to kill mildew. We did this on a Saturday in July and both of us nearly died up there. The attic had no floor boards, just rafters with exposed fiberglass insulation. We each had a little scrap of plywood that we scooted around to stand/lie down on as necessary. A pre-Upton Sinclair meat packing facility was probably a better working environment.
  
• After my freshman year of highschool we redid the upstairs of our house, elminating some knotty pine paneling and ancient wall paper. Since I didn't have a job, I had a list every day of what to do. It was never fun like, "Peel off remaining wall paper" or "go ahead and try putting the trim on the new window by yourself." Instead, every item was to clean something that he would immediately dirty on his next day off. There was a small crack behind the removed baseboards where the plaster didn't reach the floor boards. All manner of crap got trapped in that space that we would eventually cover back up with the baseboard. Yet, each day, my list included "scrape out crack with vacuum and screwdriver." Just leaving this week's dirt in there would have kept next week's from getting in, completely elminating the need for the screwdriver.
  
• Regularly he would get the cleaning bug and enlist one of us. Upon enlistment we were issued a toothbrush. While he attacked the big surfaces with reasonable sized sponges, we were given a small patch of filth appropriate only for a toothbrush and told to turn it into paradise.
• During the remodel, removing the three layers of 75 year old wall paper below the paneling was an especially harrowing time. We rented a steam box and therefore were on a clock, working late into the night on several occasions to avoid having to rent it for even one extra day. Once the wallpaper was off there was 75 year old glue, which my dad attempted to dissolve with triple-the-recommended-strength TSP. As with many of his cleaning endeavors, he attacked a section of wall by "laying down a good thick layer" with some giant brush or sponge and letting it soak for a couple of minutes. Then he scraped the glue off in one foot sections with a big putty knife. Amazingly, he was able to do all of this while micromanaging me, in the corner, with my trusty toothbrush.

Tomorrow, he is coming over to help me add that outlet. It has been sometime since we have done something like this together and I don't know what to expect. It really is a one man job, and my dad, an electrician, is the one for it. Plus, I am not a skulking teenager anymore. I might end up helping in some capacity but I can't imagine how to work in a toothbrush. If I do I'll let you know.

In real-time

This was taken just moments before Rachel got home from her trip. If you can't tell we got bored with play-doh and other mom-approved activities, so we carved a pumpkin lantern with the drill, after having a couple of beers.

After the carving, Ellis returned to his artwork, enjoying the soft yellow light cast by his new lantern and your reading what I did. Now I better get dinner on the table.

The new title is a prophesy

With Rachel away it does seem that we are having an especially high level of entropy around here. All in all though, we are keepin' on keepin' on.

Ellis asks where mommy is morning and night but is relatively satisfied with the answer, "she is on a trip to Toronto. She will be back Friday." Tonight at bed he even said on his own, "Mama go ona tip, coma, come a back home to house, back home Fieday, yep!." Note that this also marks a first with the use of "yep". Normally yeah and yep are waah and wep. Rachel will be sad to have missed this milestone. I take his ability to deal with mommy being away so well as a sign that he feels quite secure in life and that makes my month.

When I got to his school today, he was in what they call the "large motor area" and a couple of the biggest infants were in with the toddlers. One infant had crawled up onto this little climber designed for stair practice and Ellis was hiding around the edge of the thing and popping up to make her laugh. Well ok, he was making himself laugh pretty hard too. Then we had dinner with my buddies Eric and Dan and Ellis was a perfect gentleman, only asking to sit on my lap for the last 10 or so minutes of a boring one hour visit. When we arrived he even told me what he wanted, "I nee a dip daddy." and then sat down next to Eric and waited for me to bring his food.

For those of you thinking, "yeah well Ellis probably looks like dirty kid this week", you would be wrong. In Ellis' own words, "no skub me daddy, no mo' skub ma face."

the great white north

Back in the early days of graduate school, I always thought that traveling for work sounded exciting and grown-up. What an idiot I was.

I'm in Toronto now for a work-related medical conference and hating being away from Trey, Ellis, and home in general. Also, apparently, I have to dress like a respectable person-- ironing? eye make-up? jewelry? Ack! I'm drawing the line at blow-drying my hair.

After living in Germany, Canada seems like a strange mix between Europe and the US. They have the metric system and colored money but also giant vehicles and a roughly Midwestern landscape. The mix of stores also contributes to this impression: Mobilia and Linens and Things, what the heck? Toronto also has the most strident recycling system I've seen since we left Germany. Unfortunately, Americans, even highly educated ones (well, MDs, anyway) don't seem to be grasping the system too quickly. I observed one throwing a piece of gum in "plastics" even though the list of things to be thown in "biodegradable" was printed right on the can : food scraps, used napkins, GUM!

At least this trip has finally forced me to gain a rough idea of the relative locations of the Great Lakes. I was clear on Lakes Michigan and Superior, but had to, embarrassingly, repeatedly consult the map on the drive up here to ascertain what body of water we were crossing or driving alongside. Pathetic, people.

Photographed

Today Ellis passed through another gate on his way to adulthood: his first school picture day. In practical terms this meant that he ate breakfast in his coat so as to protect his shirt and we combed his hair before sending him off to school. I have no idea how it turned out, but my guess is that it made him hungry and tired because his lunch was totally gone and he took a long nap.

This got me thinking about school pics and how stressful that day seemed. Trying to keep myself looking decent until the picture was taken left me exhausted. I always felt bad for the kid whose parents hadn't remembered that it was school picture day. This kid was a kid who often came to school terribly dirty or in the same shirt all week. But, the neglect on picture day seemed to say to me that the kid's parents couldn't even manage a special occasion. It was even worse when dirty-kid was a girl because there are no nastier beasts than a herd of 11 year old girls.

The day the pictures came was always a surprise. We would come in from afternoon recess and the teacher would have an arm load of picture envelopes. There were always a couple of kids whose envelopes were missing. Dirty-kid of course had no envelope because his parents and forgotten. And then there was always one envelope for a kid who was no longer in the class. This was usually a kid that hadn't been in the class the previous year and most of us had forgotten him by the day the pictures showed up.

The orphaned pictures upset me because in my 7 year old brain it meant that this kid's parents didn't care to preserve the memory. Now I know that an envelope of pictures wasn't even a remote concern of those families. Either that family was transferring so one of the parents could take a promotion and a new portrait of Johnny was no problem or they had been chased because a divorce was final or they were foreclosed or the kid had to go and live with Grandma.

Anniversary Sunday

Today was our anniversary and to celebrate, Rachel got the afternoon to herself as Ellis and I headed to an apple orchard with friends. We both enjoyed a spic-and-span car courtesy of Rachel's hard work. Ellis picked and ate his fill at the orchard and fell into a deep sleep on the way back home and then slept for another 2 hours.

Finally, we woke him up and all three of us went out to dinner for our anniversary. I had suggested that we leave him with my dad, but in the end he was pretty much an angel excepting the last two minutes. We had the Korean barbecue for two (thin beef, beef cubes, chicken, shrimp, mushroom, sweet potato, corn and onion) where they bring you the raw meat and you cook it yourself on a special grill at the table. This meal is typically delicious and is also a food safety freak's worst nightmare. Not only do the flesh of three animals all come to you on one plate, their juices mingling, but that juice is on the veggies and you only get one pair of tongs, which you can't help but accidentally use to touch raw meat and then cooked meat that you are about to eat.

Good Korean restaurants make a big show of a bunch of little side dishes and Rachel really likes this. Our meal came with eight: kimchi (fire cabbage), smooshed potato stuff, jicama salad, scallion salad, pickles, broccoli in peanut sauce, unidentifiable #1 and unidentifiable #2. Plus we got a shrimp tempura appetizer and some sushi. After the first round of grilling, Ellis was pointing to and telling me what to cook next from the raw plate. He really like the thin beef and absolutely loved the white rice. He also hogged down the corn. The most fun though was watching him try to use the chopsticks. After a quick failure the grown up way, he converted to a non-traditional salad tong grip, which he used successfully to serve food to his plate which he pretty much just ate with his hands.

We did end the evening with Ellis spilling his drink and putting the paper sushi menus and chopstick wrappers in it. But we had already paid and left a good tip. Rachel and I used to prefer cooking at home to eating out in almost every case, but now, not having to clean that crusty grill or wipe up the kid mess is well worth it, especially considering that I ate so much I am having trouble breathing.

guests, expected and not

One of Trey's former labmates, his wife, two year old son, and father-in-law all came over for dinner tonight. We used to have people over for dinner often, but it seems like more work since Ellis has been around. In reality, it's less work since we've lowered our dinner party standards. We often used to do appetizer, fancy roasted meat, multiple side dishes, and elaborate pastry dessert. Tonight we had pizza made on the grill and pineapple upside-down-cake and our guests brought a salad. Perhaps we've just accepted that a low key, homey supper is nicer and less stressful. More likely, we are on a down-hill slide of laziness and by next July, an appropriate "dinner for company" will be a bowl of cold cereal and a can of mandarin oranges.

We managed to get a few other things done today, including some preliminary work on getting the garage to the point where we could, you know, park a car in it. Shortly before our guests arrived, Trey looked out the window to check on Scout and found she had morphed into a Bischon-Frise, complete with two gauzy purple bows above her ears. Okay, no, turns out what really happened is that I left the garage doors open and a dog wandering around the neighborhood found her way into our yard. Trey reported to me that he thought it would be best to "capture" the dog (i.e., shut the garage door and keep her in the yard) and just call her owner's number from the tag, since she was clearly not a stray and very likely lived nearby. Unfortunately, nothing is as simple as it should be and he continued relaying the story to me.

Trey: Well, I called the number, but it turns out it's a rescue dog. The number on her tag belongs to the rescue agency coordinator. She was in her car and couldn't tell me who the local foster-owner is. She didn't even know which dog this might be. She told me to get out a pen and check to see whether the dog was male or female.

Rachel: That is NOT how you check whether a dog is male or female.

Turns out the pen was really to write down another person's phone number. Fine. Ellis was quite happy to have a second dog to chase around, but the dog was too terrified to be much fun. "Holly" refused to be calmed by even Ellis's most gentle pets and soothing "hi, poochy, hi, poochy, hi, doggie." She even rebuffed his Beggin' Strips advances. Well, he had to learn eventually that not all dogs are as robust as his beloved Dout.

Space Shuttles

So here it is at long last...a few more pictures from last weekend. Ellis at first thought the freshly extracted honey was actually just "be-ah". Once he realized that there were tens of pounds of liquid gold sitting around, he went into full pooh-bear mode.

It is somewhat miraculous that it never dawned on him to just put is whole head under the trickle shown above.

Ellis also participated in making apple rings to make up for his father eating a couple too many of the ones already made. To be fair, Ellis likes these too and they have sort of replaced his fruit leather habit. He recently studied transportation vehicles of various types at school. All space vehicles he calls "pace shuddoes" and he loves to stick a nice dried apple ring over his finger so it looks like a 1950s sci-fi depiction of a satellite and then delcare, "I make a pace shuddoe." After making the space shuttle he gets to do his most favorite thing and eat it.

And, before anyone goes all CPS on us, we admit that Ellis looks tired in these pictures as if they were taking in the last hours of a 15 hour day of hard labor. That is complete nonsense, they were taken in the ninth hour.

Why he loves gamma and gampa's house

Double-fisted with pockles. Oh yeah, you know what I am talking about:

"Ahh, chocolate and blueberry, quick grandma, I need a palate cleanser. STAT!"

Still to come: making apple rings and playing pooh bear.

Just the beginning

We have quite a lot of Ellis photos to put up from our visit to the farm. I will start though with this one from last week. Ellis, again, was sent home with some intestinal trouble that made itself evident in his diaper. As a result, he got a 48 hour ban from school. So, on Thursday I got up early and worked for a few hours while Rachel took care of him, then we switched and when he just wouldn't let me alone, I took him down to the Hands-On Museum where we are members and let him run wild. Here he is playing with two plastic sharks in the water table. This kept him so happy that I was wishing for my laptop and wireless. After lunch Rachel took him back and I went into work while she stayed home. All in all, it worked out pretty well.

I gotta cure for whatever ails ya'

I cured a ham a couple of weeks ago and forgot to post about it. This was our practice ham, technically a picnic ham, in the style that honey-baked makes. The process included a week in a brine in the fridge and then 8 hours of heavy maple and apple smoke. I didn't quite get to the internal temperature necessary, so I had to put it in the over for another 2 hours to hit 155 F.

I had figured that the real improvement or cost savings would come from getting into the European dried hams or the Smithfield/country hams that are so hard to come by. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that home curing did produce a superior product to honey baked. First, the ham was never injected, before or after curing, avoiding the squiginess that I think of with American baked hams. Rather the meat was very dense and slightly drier than what I am used to on Easter. Since it was a picnic, there was only a limited portion for slicing which we sampled and set aside for taking to the farm. The bone made excellent pea soup.

Pictures and stories of fall

We went through all of Ellis's clothes today to prep for fall and weed out the too-smalls. In the process we made many discoveries including that his yellow, red and blue sweater from Katherine fits better than ever. I didn't quite get a picture of Ellis in it and matching hat, but he loves it so that will be no problem over the next months.

Following a brief escapade in the above mentioned sweater, Ellis went on an outerwear binge of sorts, piling on a pair of camouflage bib overalls and two vests over his long sleeve shirt. (The under layer vest is on backwards.)

Apparently, the outerwear fetish is hereditary. Rachel would happily tell you that outerwear is my shopping weakness. Right now I can't tell if Ellis has inherited my weakness for nice outerwear (the over vest is Timberland) or his grandfather's weakness which is of an altogether different order.

My father's style might be described as hobo-chic. This style is only noticeable as he prepares to go hunting or ice fishing and it generally involves up to a dozen layers beginning with long underwear (sometimes two sets), up to two pairs of jeans, turtle necks (a three pack, all at once if possible) a couple of sweatshirts, more sweatpants on the bottom, finally coveralls and an XXXX-large rain suit. At the end of all of this, my dad can barely bend his joints and, although an inch taller and 25 lbs lighter than me, looks morbidly obese. He has to take three bottles of water to the field and that pours back out as sweat which is then trapped below the rain suit. Detergent bills alone would cover Everest-quality, lightweight, moisture-wicking gear, but he will have nothing of it. When I show up in Gortex he is skeptical from the start and begs me to borrow a couple of layers from one of his two trash bags full of clothing that ride around in the back seat of his car for the portion of fall when deer killin' is legal. I politely decline, he bitches at me about it until we part ways to head to our stands and then we try to kill deer.

You would be right to posit that this overdressing might make a successful hunt much more difficult to achieve. Many years ago my dad should have learned his lesson when he overdressed in October for bow hunting. Walking in to the woods after work he saw a large buck hundreds of yards away walking toward his stand from the opposite direction. He knew the buck wanted into the swampy marsh that stood between them and which his stand overlooked. He also knew that if he could get there before the deer, he would have the wind to his advantage so he dropped down to a lower trail where the deer would not see him and ran the last 100 yards to his own stand. It was 55 degrees out and my dad was dressed to overnight in freezing rain. By the time he got to his stand he was pouring sweat. Afraid to take the time to situate himself fully, he remained kneeling on the foot platform and waited. He heard the deer walking in behind the stand and sure enough it walked directly below him. The deer looked down, my dad drew his bow and waited for the deer to walk a few yards out. The deer was stubborn and stayed put. Finally my dad decided to lean out and shoot him through the spine, straight down, and as he leaned over to take aim a small shower of sweat drops rained down, plunked on the deer's gray coat and he bolted into the marsh.

While not a tragic story, still disappointing. Of course, deer season does come with a few tragedies every year. A couple people get shot, some because of drunkeness, but more commonly they have heart-attacks and nobody knows what to do or even about the heart attack until they don't come home. I don't really worry about my dad having a heart attack out there, but I do fear that he may be the first man ever to die of heat stroke on Nov. 15th in Michigan: Father of two, grandfather of one, found dead, mummified in camo, holding very clean and unloaded shotgun. Time of death was not determined because body temperature was not reliable given the circumstances. Numerous coyote prints were found about the body, but dogs and buzzards were not patient enough to work through man's clothing to get to flesh. Numerous plastic bags were found shredded. Experts believe the spam sandwiches formerly contained therein probably kept coyotes from being more persistent in removing the clothing.

9 months later

Wait, look to your right, yup, yup that is Ellis and this is still our blog, with a new title reflecting our new lifestyle with the two of us working outside the home. In addition to the title and template changes, Rachel redid the sidebar to reflect more of our favorite internet spots. Well, mostly her favorites, but I will fix that shortly. Other changes will be coming as we have time. I would like to point out that our friends Ben and Elissa at Pieholden Suite have returned to our blogroll now that they post more than once per pregnancy, thanks to their cute, not-quite-new baby boy Ansel.

The new title comes from an Anton Chekhov quote I ran across. Mostly we were thinking about how we felt like every waking hour was a to-do list. Many of those to-dos are just what it takes to keep a household from falling into a state of total chaos. Admittedly, our definition of chaos, or what we will call our chaos-bar is pretty high. That said, the rate at which a two year old can contribute to the coming heat death of the universe is truly astounding. I am attempting to capture this in a single theory, but currently I am having some trouble. I cannot seem to nail down whether or not the dirtying of the toddler himself is path dependent and whether or not it is entropically driven. Does dirt cemented in snot on a toddler's face have more or less entropy than free dirt? It seems likely that free dirt actually has more entropy, but the entropy of the dirt-snot-child system may go up upon the binding of the dirt to the mucus. One possibility is that the presence of the dirt might disorder the molecular structure of the snot. But that doesn't explain....I guess the only solution is to forget about the kegerator and the new and improved Ann Arbor-based meat smoker and build a calorimeter that can accommodate a hankiless child and some nice fine dirt. I will let you know what happens.

Daddy in grey

Many have heard the stories of music stars (Johnny Cash comes to mind) who famously fall into upper-downer cycles. Take pills to get up to perform, take more pills to sleep. Yesterday, I inadvertently identified the tired daddy version of this: I drank coffee all morning and took a benadryl induced nap from 2:30-5:30 pm. It is a little unsettling to have this strike you, but then again, I slept well last night and got up at 6 this morning feeling good enough to take the dog for a run, brush out her extra hair and write a bunch of long overdue emails...on just a single cup of joe and before Rachel or Ellis got up.

Checking my trapline

Caught our first mouse. I only need 23 more to make Ellis half of a pair of mittens. I think the people I borrowed the live trap from had hoped they were sparing some mice my blood lust. But, the live trap leaves the hides exquisitely intact. My only worry is that the mouse's brain* may be too small to properly tan the hide.**

*Scroll down a ways in this link. Put your sandwich down first.
**(no I am not seriously tanning mouse hides)

ok, so not so triumphant

After months of silence, I make my triumphant return to blogging in the form of a bulleted list

• A mouse (or maybe several) chewed into a bag raisins and also a bag of dog food in our basement. I had not one, but two, dreams about it last night. Both involved complete mouse infestation and the presence of multiple cats living in the basement unbeknownst to us, mostly under the washing machine.
  
• Because of those dreams, I woke up hoping I'd dreamt up the whole scenario including the lost raisins and dog food. But no. And now I have to figure out whether traps or poison are less likely to harm a toddler and a dog. And less likely to cause an undiscovered carcass and a "so that's the smell" incident in 2 weeks.
• This really warrants a whole post, but Ellis's daycare is part of a Montessori school which is now back in session. The parents, well, who am I kidding, the moms, are super! involved! in the school activities. They also have mandatory "family service hours." Occasionally I get the goofy idea that I should try to meet new people and so I volunteered to be a room parent. Actual quote from the orientation meeting:"You'll definitely earn all your service hours as a room parent, but please submit your signed slips to document the hours just so we have a paper trail." I almost starting laughing right in the meeting. Later Trey joked he could earn his hours by performing an audit of the family service hours accounting, 'cause, you know, that's how important it is.
  
• Since we failed to produce a house warming party or a birthday party for Ellis, we're been thinking about doing a Halloween party. But I have to think of costumes. Ugh.
  
• Speaking of plans doomed to failure-- must stop thinking about it and actually do some work on changing the blog lay out.
  

Who are you calling an elitest?

The Republican Convention seems to have had a profound effect on us. Between bouts of venomous spitting over the hypocrisy of the right embracing teen pregnancy and apoplexy over the Republican's ability to make anyone who is educated into an elitist we have been wringing our hands wondering whether or not we are indeed elitist snobs from snooty town. Tonight we found the perfect salve for such worries in the Saline Community Fair supplemented with a heavy dose of the State Championship Demolition Derby.

We began with a stroll through the animal barns. Highlights for Ellis included the bunnies and weird exotic birds. They had a substantial petting zoo brought in which included all manner of sheep and goats in addition to llamas/alpacas (I am not sure how to tell the difference), camels, an ostrich and a tortoise. Ellis performed very well in animal identification. The sheered sheep confused him a little but he was sure that it was either a sheep or goat. He made up for it in the final bonus round when I said, "Hey Ellis, is that a pony?" and he said, "No daddy, dat a donkeee."

After much waiting around to get into the derby and then more waiting holding down our good seats, the derby finally got underway and on the first crash Ellis hollered, "Oh dear." After that he settled down a little bit and enjoyed all four heats that we watched, but became progressively more interested in the moon and paid less attention as time went on. Moments like this make me think we are raising the Archduke of Nerdistan.

Prior to the derby Ellis partook liberally of the fair's culinary offerings, sharing with us a kielbasa, barbecue sandwich, chips, my Poke (his new word for "coke"), Rachel's Diet Poke and then splitting an elephant ear with me. He then pigged down the elephant ear his cousin didn't want. Feeling bloated and perhaps like he could indeed float away, Ellis tried to crowd surf. Fortunately, the guy two rows down was padded and didn't mind a toddler landing on him. Ellis, of course, was fine.

I came home from the derby feeling more like an elitist than ever, having realized that we didn't attend a single other derby all summer and waited for the championship which required that a driver have at least one victory for the season. Oh what irony that the only derby I had attended all summer was the derby reserved for elite drivers. But at least when I am overcome imagining the butchering that would have occurred had Chelsea Clinton turned up pregnant in 1996, I can think of my son crowd surfing at a demolition derby.

Bidness Trip

It sure has been a wasteland around here lately. We have been quite busy and Rachel is having a lot of rage at people who don't seem to understand how to use the new round-abouts that have been added near our house. Of course, being experienced ex-pats, we never make a round-about phaux pas. Rachel claimed just this evening that she may kill someone in those round-abouts, and not with the car, with her bare hands.

I will try to write a post or two from the road as I take my first business trip this week. Maybe I will finally defend dove hunting on the internet. Maybe not.

What I had hoped to never become

I must now accept that this is indeed a fatherhood blog, at least 70% of the time. To cover the other 30% you can all look forward to my well-reasoned, not-at-all-blood-thirsty defense of dove hunting in the next few days.

In the meantime, Ellis continues to entertain. Rachel pointed a dove out to him on the wire while we sat on the patio eating supper tonight. I promptly mentioned that with a little luck, he might get to eat one in a couple of weeks and that he would most likely like it since his first one would be wrapped in bacon. Immediately Ellis told us, "I eeta dub. I wanna eeeeta dub."

Often we leave him in his bedroom, still awake with a couple of books, a sippy cup and a banana at the end of our bedtime ritual. Most nights, we find him asleep in some odd configuration. Tonight he was snuggling a faceless, but footed, Mr. Potato head and clutching a cardboard screwdriver and his sippy cup.

Incidentally, whenever he puts the baseball hat on the Mr. Potato head, regardless of other configuration, he declares, "Dat gampa Mike!"

It is something I vomited, isn't it?

Bella: It is good to see you again Ellis.
Ellis: Ah, yes, May in Dexter was a lovely time. Good ol' days I dare say.
Bella: S'pose so Ellis.
Ellis: Sure would like to see you a little more often. Try to recapture May.






Bella: Ellis, I don't know how to tell you. Those times will never come again.
Ellis: Oh, don't be so sure.
Bella: No, um....
Ellis: Is there someone else? Someone closer to your house so your mom doesn't have to drive you?
Bella: No, that's not it.
Ellis: Is it something I vomited? You know that almost never happens. I was just so, so taken with seeing you.






Bella: Ellis, it is over and this conversation is over.
Ellis: But..
Bella: I am leaving now.
Ellis: You have forsaken me. Forsaken, after I gave you the best 4% of my life. I know a month doesn't mean much when you are two and a half, but I don't remember a day before May1st.

A dull moment might be nice

Ellis continues to enjoy wearing clothes and other things too big for him. I have no idea where this face came from:

"I will put my foot in your ass."

Another example here. I find the combination of the hair and upside-down, over-sized glasses to be truly hilarious.

"Dad, can you show me how to take a derivative? Oh, and tonight, how 'bout Green's theorem?"

We took Ellis over for family swim at the pool near our house. From 5 pm till 6:30 they throw out all of the teenagers and only families are allowed. Ellis had a fabulous time. Here he is telling another kid off:

"I dare you to say that again twerp! C'mon then. I don't even need my dad to beat up your dad. I'll take ya both. Bring it!"

And we had a pizza picnic with Jodie, Jeff and cousins Holden and Bella. A fine time was had by all, except Ellis did throw up a lot of fruit. It all happened so fast that even Ellis was a bit stunned. He ended up in a too-big shirt of Holden's and his emergency shorts. We did some fishing among other things. Rachel managed some great picture taking, including the action pic of me doing my best to look like a serious fly-fisherman. Other pictures of the kids are being saved for the next photo essay in the series. Both boys seemed to think that fly-fishing was trying to catch flies.

Next up, toddler drama at the park.

A Saturday in Haiku*

*See if you can spot the one that isn't a Haiku. Note that many may be defective as I wasn't terribly conscientious about the rules. Like any multiple choice question, however, there is one answer that is better than the rest.

Inspired by the dog park:

Owner of fat dog,
do you think it fair for him
to bite her like that?

Your dog's boulder head,
will receive my foot's hot rage.
I hope he whimpers.

You are old and fat
and will never catch my ass,
even with the kid.

Do not get closer,
lest your balls desire treatment
like big boulder heads.

Life around the house:

"Are your undies wet?
Remember where the pee goes?"
"Da potty, o-kaayy."

Scientific explanation from Ellis:

Enn, my mouth eats it;
an it goes down da belly;
an comes out a poop!

From fishing:

Fishing has picked up on the Huron River. Last night the flies were thick and I caught many good fish, although I forgot how hard it is to fly fish after dark when you can't see where the line is.

Thoughts that go through my head:

If omnipotent,
a thought like, "Little bastard,"
ends my existence.

My control is weak,
and powerlessness saves me
from such a quick end.

Therefore, I conclude:
Job's God and Jesus's dad
were different guys.

And I often think,
"Why didn't I accomplish more?"
The answer is here.

"What were you doing
when he peed in his undies?
Haikus about what?"

Date Night

Thanks to Aunt Lindsey's undying patience for Ellis, Rachel and I had date night tonight. I had planned to go for Cuban food, but, big surprise, Rachel wanted sushi. I tried to dip my toe back in the sushi pond following my intense food poisoning of last Christmas, and I failed. I just can't eat the seaweed wrappers anymore. Rachel is very sad about this.

Following dinner, we went to the Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tearoom to see the Gypsy Nomads. You can hear many of their songs on YouTube, such as this one. They really seemed to have three types of songs: new age, French Folkie, Celtic Instrumental Romp. Most of it was really good.

Before heading upstairs, Rachel browsed the book section long enough to find a book that totally dismissed all complimentary medicine as snake oil and it really pissed her off. Then we went upstairs for the music and Rachel got an ice coffee and I opted for a piece of baklava the size of a sandwich. Since we got their pretty early, we had ample time to people watch. Our eyes fell on a thin 40ish woman with an advertising handbag for a place that apparently sells custom made, one-of-a-kind Faerie dolls that bear a striking resemblance to the Olsen sisters. Rachel didn't believe me that the handbag was an advert for the woman's business making Faerie dolls, "How do you know that she is the owner?" To which I responded, "Look at her shirt covered in faux leaves, she is like a tree Faerie in a protection program." (Not to mention Celtic knot rings!)

Anyway, we came home and looked it up on the old internets and sure enough....or....well judge for yourself: www-dot-gossamerglen-dot-com. (I am not linking because I don't want her to track back here.) Anyway, the image on the handbag is the image you hopefully have open in another tab right now. If I woke up with that thing flying around the room, I would probably crap my pants and throw it at the ugly thing.