Who Let the Dogs Out?

Why little boys are like dogs.
If you tell them it's okay to pee in the backyard, they will go five times or more in an hour. Why don't they just go once and get it over with?

song: who let the dogs out? • artist: Baha Men

The Candy Man

I see that the ever opportunistic M&M Company is releasing its new M&M's White Chocolate Pirate Pearls to coincide with the release of the upcoming movie: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. I'm sure you don't need me to point it out - but I'm going to anyway - eating White Chocolate Pirate Pearl M&M's will not make you a pirate. Nor will it up your chances of meeting Johnny Depp; who would just think you a sucker for buying them, because that's the kind of cool anti-establishment type of guy his publicists want you to think he is.
Eating a bag of White Chocolate Pirate Pearls will merely fatten you personally, along with the pockets of those smart folks over at M&M's who are no doubt busy right now trying to work out their next product tie in.

song: The Candy Man • artist: Sammy Davis, Jr.

Goody Two Shoes

Yesterday I met Adam Lazarus. Adam is an ant expert. That his name is Adam, as in Adam Ant for all you lovers of bad 80s music, must not go unnoticed though I somehow forgot to point it out during our meeting. Adam has studied ants all over the United States and in South America. Adam has an ant tattooed on his shoulder and a degree in film that he pursued merely as an excuse to spend more time watching ants. His senior thesis? A film about ants of course.
I am envious of people like Adam. People who have known, seemingly from day one, what that one thing is that they were meant to do in life. Most of us are more like me, dabbling in a lot of different things which we're pretty good at but not outstanding. Over the course of a day I'm a caretaker and teacher, a housekeeper, and cook, and a writer-slash-supplement coordinator. I do all of these things adequately, but not spectacularly. Over the course of a few weeks, in the few minutes that pass for my spare time, I may dabble in painting, drawing, guitar playing, gardening, knitting, quilting, and belly dancing. Again, adequately, but not spectacularly.
Driving home from the interview I thought about other people who are like Adam. I thought of our senior class president, Craig, who read the news on our school's morning TV program, Perspectives. Twenty years later, Craig co-anchors the news for a Miami TV station.
I'm only in touch with two high school classmates, which seems odd given that I still live in my hometown but it stands to reason as I never was much of a joiner.
At home I got the run down on the day's events from my parents: who ate what for lunch, who napped, and why my older son has a big red mark on his cheek. Then I checked my e-mail. In the middle of the myriad of Freecycle listings was a message from one of those two classmates passing along the specifics of our 20th high school reunion.
The message directed me to a Yahoo group specifically set up for the class of 86 and the most recent message on the post was from Craig!
And it's odd because although you may reminisce about high school constantly, I don't, much. Though knowing that this reunion is only two months away will probably have me thinking about it more. I may not have one grand passion that's been my life's work, but at least I've got a bunch of interesting facts about ants I can use as conversation starters if I do end up going to the reunion.

song: Goody Two Shoes • artist: Adam Ant

rainy day haiku

Rainy Saturday.
Slugs and mushrooms rule the yard.
We stay in the house.

Say You, Say Me

I've gotten an exciting two comments since the paper's included this blog on its website. It may not seem impressive to you, but that's twice as many as I'd received up till then. There's nothing a mostly-stay-at-home-mom craves more than contact with the outside world. So, thank you, I say, even though one of my two responders was someone I know and the other someone I went to school with! It's all good! And yes, the library is yet another place where, ironically, books are being read but signs which request that we refrain from eating, sadly, go unnoticed. Someday there will be a letter to the editor in the paper from some angry taxpaper stating that they'll never frequent the library again because, (gasp!) they have ants! Go figure.

song: Say You, Say Me • artist: Lionel Richie

Can't You Read the Sign?

Yesterday I was at the Children's Museum in Mashpee with the kids. The building has several signs posted about not eating or drinking in the museum - but I look around me and everyone is feeding their kids! There was this puppet show and we're all sitting on the floor watching it and this baby who is with his mom and older brother is sitting next to me eating PB&J or maybe it was just PB because I didn't actually see any J. Anyway, the baby crawls over and smears peanut butter all over my dress, which wasn't the worst because it's a print pattern and besides I'm used to being smeared with gross stuff, remember the white shirt incident? But the mom didn't seem to see it or to acknowledge that her kid was smearing me with mushed sandwich and I didn't have any Kleenex on me because I am "unprepared mom." I'm sure all the other mom's had Kleenex in their pockets probably those little travel tissues or better yet, travel diaper wipes. I didn't want to ask the mom if she had a napkin because I didn't want it to look like I was trying to point out that her kid had smeared me - kind of like the Seinfeld Big Salad episode. So I sort of casually wiped it off and wiped it on the rug, which I know was gross, but I didn't feel like I had any other options. I could have gotten up, hoisted up my baby, and gone all the way across the museum to the bathroom but I don't know if my older son would have gotten upset, plus I would have had to maneuver through all the other seated moms and tots and it would have made kind of a scene.
Then at the end of the puppet show when we finally did get up to leave there were all these cracker crumbs in the corner where we were sitting and the snack wielding mom had already cleared out so now it looks like I'm the guilty party. There were even some half eaten crackers on the floor that of course my baby tried to finish off. Not to mention that I don't think PB&J or just PB is a very appropriate snack to sneak into the museum. First, it's messy. Second, for Pete's sake, there are kids who are deathly allergic to PB! But, since I learned my lesson from the M&M women, I didn't say anything. What I could have said was, "Hey! What do you mean bringing PB into the museum! Are you trying to kill someone?" That would have been effective.

Song: Signs • Artist: Five Man Electrical Band

Blowin' in the Wind

My one-year-old's newest trick is blowing his nose. Well, pretending to blow his nose. On napkins, tissue, scraps of paper, diaper wipes. Goes to show you how often he was sick this winter and spring. So the repetoire is: waving bye bye, clapping, and nose blowing. What a clever baby! My older son never got into waving bye bye, too gimmicky I guess.
Forgot one. Turning the lights on and off, he can also do that. Unfortunately it's not a trick that travels well, you can't really show it off in a restaruant or the library.

song: Blowin' in the Wind • artist: Bob Dylan

NHL couplet

Hockey playoffs in summer?
What could be dumber?

summer haiku

Summer brings fruit flies.
They drown in my glass of wine.
Someone bring a spoon.

How Can I Tell You?

Here's how it started. I got one of those often-forwarded e-mails from a friend about the pink and white M&Ms and how for every 8-ounce bag you buy, Masterfoods will donate 50¢ to a breast cancer research foundation. Have you seen this e-mail? It's fairly popular. It implored me to "pick up a bag" and to tell "all my family and friends." The kicker was the quote at the bottom from Robert Kennedy about how each of us can work in a small way to change history. Like Bobby Kennedy is referring to M&Ms!
This whole thing was irritating. I'm suppose to eat junk food, and encourage my friends to eat junk food, in order to cure breast cancer? What's Masterfoods going to do to cure the heart disease we are all going to get from downing bags of M&Ms? If I want to give money to support breast cancer research I can just write a check myself, which I did to my cousin who recently completed the Avon Breast Cancer Walk. And if Masterfoods wants to give money to breast cancer research, they should just do it and not sucker consumers into buying candy. Well, my kids must have been out of the house that day and I had nothing else to do because I finally Googled a section of the e-mail and it brought me to a site called "Fact or Fiction" which said that this promotion had expired a while ago.
So, I wrote a message in response to the e-mail, something along the lines of, "not only is it inane to think that eating candy is going to help cure breast cancer, this offer is expired." I put in a link to the Fact or Fiction website. It wasn't worded exactly that way, but it was along those lines. Yes, I could have put it more gently, but I was irritated, remember? These people want consumers to believe that going out and buying a bag of candy is a good thing. And people do believe it. So I hit "reply all." In retrospect I should have just informed my friend who sent the original message and let her decide whether on not to tell the other people on her list but easy access is one of the caveat's of e-mail isn't it?
So, I get an e-mail from my friend saying a benign, "leave it to you to look into this;" then I get e-mails from her friends telling me among other things that: a) I'm a bad person, b) I better hope I never get cancer, and c) it's a wonder anyone tries to do anything good in this world with jerks like me around?
I was going to bring up the fact that I'd recently donated $25 for breast cancer research and I didn't even have to eat 50 bags of M&Ms to do it, and, the only people benefitting from this promotion was the M&M company, not to mention the promotion is expired so the whole thing's a moot point, but I let it rest.
But I ask you, though maybe I shouldn't, was I wrong?

song: How Can I Tell You? • artist: Cat Stevens

Who's Crying Now?

It says in the paper, our paper, that Shane Holt cried when he found out he wouldn't be able to attend his high school graduation. "I'm not afraid to admit it. I cried." Good for you Shane! Lots of people would have been afraid to admit it. Kids learn quickly. Observations from my son include: papa says only girls have pocketbooks/only girls can have their rooms painted pink/girls wear light colors, boys wear dark colors/only girls wear skirts/girls don't drive trucks. Okay, I was able to convince him that girls do drive trucks and I tried to spin the others to be inclusive even to the point of telling a three-year-old about Scottish men and kilts, but it won't take long before he bunps a knee and someone tells him not to cry because "only girls cry." And then when that happens, at least I can tell him that Shane Holt cries, and he's not afraid to admit it.

song: Who's Crying Now? • artist: Journey

Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog

My older son caught this toad in our friend's driveway Saturday night and insisted on bringing it home. He kept it in the terrarium we recently recreated out of an old aquarium we acquired through freecycle. Now the toad is gone (deposited under a hosta in the backyard) but I can only find 3 of the 6 land snails that were in the terrarium before Mr. Toad's visit!

song: Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog • artist: Three Dog Night

Ordinary Average Day

So today I spent the morning sitting at the Subaru dealership getting a duplicate of my key and remote key entry system, which cost me $88 and seemed to take an awful long time. The must have sensed it was taking too long, in addition to being overprices because they ran the car through the car wash as an added bonus. That's right, throw the mom a bone. The little waiting room had a giant flat screen TV broadcasting endless Fox news so I got to hear about the woman who was strangled with a bikini top about 50 times until the guy with the earbuds half in and half out finally got up and walked out and I turned off the TV. Then he came back when I thought he had left for good so then I felt kinda guilty for turning off the TV except that there weren't really any new developments in the murder investigation. They weren't even saying if it was her bikini, it was just "a bikini." Which I know isn't funny and those humorless M&M-loving woman would really come down on me for pointing out a detail like that but don't you just hate it when they belabor something when they don't really have anything new to say? They just wanted to keep flashing photos of the girl and her college friends. So anyway, earbud guy came back but didn't turn the TV back on. I think that if you turn off the TV other people are too embarassed to turn it back on, they don't want to be singled out as the low brow who wants to watch FOX news at 10 in the morning. So then the baby and I went to the bank and I opened a passbook savings account for him and deposited his life savings which amounts to $50. Then we went to the water store as toddler #1 calls it, where you can fill up your own gallon containers with "spring" water for a quarter. I'm probably paying a quarter for town water but anyway... I made a Seinfeld "big salad" for lunch, using Laird's recipe for hard boiled eggs, which might have been the high point of the day. Baby #1 had left overs and pooped in his high chair. Husband #1 took the baby to town with him after lunch (he's on vacation this week). He fell asleep in the car (the baby, not the husband) so I got to go to the vet with just the cat. The cat has been shut in the bathroom for three days because she hasn't been using the litter box and she's been spot peeing all over the house, which is nasty. So she got a shot of penicillin and a rabies shot which cost me $75 plus we have to give her antibiotics twice a day for the next week. Gads. I have the most boring life! After the vets I returned books to the library and dropped off some stuff at the the office, requests for story contacts that the sales reps will just ignore because I'm not assertive enough so no one takes me seriously! Back at home I took down the slimy shower curtain, cleaned it and hung it back up, plus started bleaching mold off upstairs bathroom walls, for some reason when they added on to our house and put in a second bathroom no one had the foresight to put in a fan which just goes to show that the people who lived here before us weren't the brightest bulbs when it came to home improvements. It's like our house is a magnet for the home improvement-challenged.
Oh and to wrap things up? I had to tear myself away from a rerun of the Simpsons just to finish this e-mail to you!

song: Ordinary Averyage Day • artist: Joe Walsh

You're my best friend

Earlier this month my 3-year old found a caterpillar in our garden. He decided to keep it and deposited it in a old cottage cheese container that he loaded up with moss, acorns, leaves, dirt, rocks and other assorted goodies that he figured caterpillars liked to eat.
He displayed him proudly to daddy when he got home and announced he was going to keep the caterpillar until Friday so Nana and Papa could see it.
At bedtime he brought the contained upstairs and put it under his bed so the caterpillar could "sleep with me." Then he declared that the caterpillar was "my best friend." A caterpillar is his best friend? That's so pathetic! I've got to get the kid more playdates or a puppy.
Since the caterpillar we've had an earthworm, and slug, and today it's one of those woolly caterpillars although I haven't actually seen this one move - ever. Of course if it's dead that will only make it easier for us to care for, and if it was dead when he picked it up I don't have to feel guilty that I'm letting my son kill wildlife in order to develop an appreciation for nature.

song: You're My Best Friend • artist: Queen

We Need a Little Christmas

So my three-year-old keeps asking me "when is it going to be Christmas?" Enough already! It's January 24th! I can't decide if this is better or worse than last year, when we had to listen to the recording of "doggies bark jingle bells" until well into March.

song: We Need A Little Christmas • artist: Mame Soundtrack

In Your Eyes

I thought toddler #1 had conjunctivitis but it turned out he only had an ear infection. He woke up in the middle of the night on Monday and his eyes were all goopy and he's yelling "I can't see!" Like he'd been struck blind. So I carried him in the bathroom and propped him on the toilet and went to get the basket of washcloths and then he slid off the toilet and fell on his head! So then he's crying even more and it took forever to wipe all the goopies out of his eyes. That was Monday and he's woken up every night since then unable to see as well and crying "I can't open my eyes, don't drop me off the toilet!" As if the two are somehow related and perhaps the cure for eye goopies is a swift blow to the head.

Song: In Your Eyes • artist: Peter Gabriel

Give me just a little more time

I just read an article in the paper about the lack of tinsel being put on live Christmas trees and I quote "people don't decorate the way they used to, they don't have the time." THEY DON'T HAVE THE TIME? Whoa. I've heard about people who don't have time to clean their houses or bake cakes from scratch or write letters, work in the yard, knit, join committees, vote, etc., etc. But not having the time to hang tinsel off a Christmas tree? What they heck are people doing with their time anyway? I drive home an night and see a TV screen glowing from just about every house I pass - do you really mean to tell me that during commercials people can't hoist themselves up from their Lazy-boys and throw a little tinsel on a Christmas tree? Wait? Isn't this a job for the kids to do anyway? Are they too busy as well? That's just pathetic!

song: Give me just a little more time • artist: The Chairman of the Board

bad, bad, leroy brown

Toddler #1 has been going to a home daycare two mornings a week for almost two months. Everytime I pick him up I get to hear the "Zac report". Zac is one of the other boys at day care, more specifically he's the bad seed of day care. One day it was "why did Zac pull the hermit crab out of it's shell?" Then it was "Zac ran into the street" and "Zac threw a toy at the photographs." Last week Zac stepped in dog poop and when I picked my son up, Zac was being reprimanded for trying to break the plastic pinwheels outside Becky's house. In all honesty Zac's not a bad kid, he just doesn't know his own strength and hasn't got a lot of self-control. What? A toddler with little self control? Who ever heard of such a thing? Anyway, he'll probably turn out to be my son's best friend so I'd better get used to the Zac report.

song: Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown • artist: Jim Croce

who's your daddy?

My 3-year old has started calling me momma instead of mommy. And though you wouldn't think it would be noticeable, it is and frankly I find it completely annoying.

you put a spell on me, baby

Here it is, the beginning of a bad speller's worst nightmare. My 3-year old has started asking me how to spell things. And yes, I realize I should spell out the word three, I said I was a lousy speller - I'm okay with grammar. Anyway, it started innocently enough: cat, dog, truck. The other day he asked about elephant, and though it was tricky, I think I got it right. I didn't bother explaining about that 'ph' making an 'f' sound though, it didn't seem pertinant. The first thing I got wrong was the spelling of Erskine, a friend's dog. I was thinking Urskin - you know - like Ursela. When actually he was named for Erskine Bowles, a senator from North Carolina. How was I to know? It would have been okay, he would have believed Urskin, except daddy was there to contradict me. Damn him. I guess by the time he starts asking me to spell things I really can't spell, he'll already be well into the stage where mommy knows nothing anyway so I should be ready and able to reinforce that urban legend.