the tamarisk tree

We went to bed last night like we do pretty much every night, only last night we let Gideon stay up a little later so that he could see the firetruck roll through our neighborhood.  It’s a tradition around here on the Sunday after Thanksgiving to dress up a fat little bearded man in a red suit and put him on a firetruck for all the kids to see.  They run the sirens and turn on the lights and it is in general a giant spectacle.

Last night was no exception, although they did change it up a bit. Instead of being on the fire truck they hitched up a float-like sleigh to a white pick up truck decorated with Christmas lights that drove behind the fire truck. For some reason there were also about four or five cars following the sleigh.  I don’t know why…reindeer getting uppity? some kind of poorly orchestrated tailing by the police? angry home owners who are tired of the sirens?  Hard to say.

It was cold last night and as usual, Gideon was sockless, so when the truck was headed down our street, I wrapped him up in the warmest blanket we own and stood on the cold pavement in my bare feet.  He loved it.  So did a gaggle of children at the end of the block who rushed the sleigh, causing the truck to stop for fear of running over the children.  Disaster was avoided and the little parade rolled on behind our house.  We watched from our deck until we couldn’t see them anymore. It’s a good way to end a holiday weekend.

So he got to bed a little later (and you know what happens then, right? They get up EARLIER.  It’s some kind of horrible  inverse reasoning that make me want to yank out handfuls of my own hair).  I was anticipating six or maybe five thirty, but 4:45 saw a little boy walking out of his room, ready for the day, who could not be coaxed back to sleep.  He is now, at 10:00 am nearing the hazy daze of exhaustion but I will keep this song and dance going until one in order to keep their naps synchronized (how else will I get some minutes to sweat off all that cream, butter and starchy goodness from Thursday and the resulting leftovers?).  Act II begins in 5, 4, 3….

I set up the Christmas tree on Saturday and thought so much about the first time I set it up when we were in Dallas. Seems like an eternity has passed since Jud was up in his office working on some paper and I was downstairs listening to our neighbors and watching super cheap cable tv. After dinner, there were too many dishes to put in the dishwasher so I did the last of them by hand and was again reminded of all those days in our tiny Dallas kitchen with my hands getting pruney and dry.  Appropriate, I suppose, since we are going down for a visit later this week.

The Huskers beat Colorado so we can all focus on Texas now and that’s what we’re doing here too. Jud is planning to score some tickets for the game with Brandon and Jeremy.  I am planning to watch it in Zanna’s living room while the kids sleep through the yelling.  High hopes indeed.

Also in the hope category is the hope for well children this week and on the trip.  Gid sees the ENT on Wednesday to plan for another round of tubes? to close the gaping hole in his ear drum? to attempt a miracle of healing? All of the above.

Jud and Gideon are playing in the family room. Gideon has two of his three footballs.  One of them is the hard one that is man sized.  The other looks the same but is much smaller and made of fabric.  It’s the inside football. The other inside football is the one that Jeremy & Rachel gave him with his name on it. It is upstairs in his bedroom.  Although he knows he is only allowed to play football inside with the soft ones, he picks up the man sized football and gets ready to throw it.

Jud intervenes.  He tells him not to throw the outside football inside.

Gideon asks, “Why?”

When we lived in Germany in the mid 1990s, my family greatly enjoyed the info-mercials on Armed Forces Network television.  Mostly we enjoyed making fun of them.  In particular we always seemed to be able to easily poke fun at the ones about Operations Security.  There would be some kind of ridiculous person walking around a German market with white sneakers, light blue jeans, a Dallas Cowboys t-shirt and an American flag hat, sticking out like a sore thumb while a cheesy voice-over man reminded us to always be aware of our surrounding and try to blend in. The caricature was just too often proven real.  There were many times while we were in public that we played ’spot the American’ and loved to try to make ourselves appear as European as possible (the license plates that were the wrong size and shape with the letters USA on it, were no help then, but I digress). The commercials reminded us to vary our route home, not to become too predictable and to keep ourselves alert to our surroundings. Mostly I just wished I could be watching a real commercial, but was still glad that it wasn’t one about fraud, waste and abuse.  Those were officially the worst.  Regardless, I don’t think we learned the lesson.  Or at least it didn’t stick…

OpSec from JudandKim on Vimeo.

This week we learned…

- Gwen Stefani knows how best to a call a baby and teaching Gideon to say it too is awesome.

- Your mouth makes the shape of the letter O when you say the letter O.

- Dressing up like a fireman is something we will be doing every day until we outgrow those boots. So that’s like next week.

- Babies who think they can walk love to scream when they actually cannot walk.

- Piper is so much like her Mama.  She loves cheerios. And club crackers (and I am surmising, all carbohydrates, way too much).

- If you want to get a lollipop, simply suggest going to the bank.

- Mom-mom will put money in your mother’s hand if you tilt your head down, ever so slightly and then declare that you ‘need chick nuggs, french fries and chamburgers.’  Sucka!

- Hiding all evidence of late night milkshake runs is necessary if you do not want to attempt to explain what is in the trash can to a two year old.  His first words about it will always be “uh-oh”. Playing dumb will not get you out of interrogation.

- When you put drops in your ear sometimes it sounds like bubbles.

- Mama wouldn’t trade these days learning together for any amount of money in the world.

Tonight is our church’s annual non-halloween-(but totally halloween)-night. We lovingly call it the Fall Festival and it has been a staple in my life nearly every year I’ve lived in Omaha.

Somehow, I only distinctly remember a few of the costumes I’ve worn to the event.  There was the year I was a punk rocker (technically, this was the year before the Fall Festival entered my life.  It was highly reminiscent of my kindergarten career day outfit when I went to school as Cyndi Lauper (I did not want to be just any punk rocker.  I wanted to be HER.  Genius). And then everything gets foggy until sixth or seventh grade when I was an old lady.  There were about five girls who came as babies.  We had our picture taken together and it is somewhere in the bowels of the church building now.  And then it’s all fuzzy again. And then I stopped wearing costumes.  I’m not entirely sure why, but I’m guessing it had something to do with time and effort.

Last year we threw a costume party (also non-halloween-[but totally halloween]) and I went as Angelina Jolie.  I was pregnant with Piper, had a black dress I could still fit into and a bunch of baby dolls of various ethnicities shoved into the baby sling on my back. If I’d taken a picture of it, I’d show you now, but I was only behind the camera that night.

(Oh, look! Pictures of other people from that night!)

Mac & PC

Gift Card Winners - Mail Lady and Penguin

He was closing a deal. It's what salesmen do. The best salesmen.

The Fall Festival is tonight.  We’ll be hauling the kiddos up for some games and fun.

Gideon will be re-inacting this (but hopefully with more enthusiasm):

Piper will be re-inacting this (but hopefully with less vomiting):

I haven’t even asked Jud if he was planning on dressing up.  He likes to be really different and typically something that nobody else is.  Maybe he’ll be a Husker Fan with hope.  I haven’t seen any of them around lately.

I was hoping to go as a younger, leaner, more sanctified version of myself, but when I woke up this morning, my costume had not yet arrived.  Maybe next year!

Our master bathroom sink asked for it.  I am bringing it.

I noticed a few months ago that it wasn’t draining as fast as it should (you know, like super fast, as in there is nothing blocking this sink’s only purpose, which is to allow water to flow through it and leave my presence immediately). I pulled out the little stopper thing and noticed some calcification from our hard water.  I cleaned it off and, ever so naively, put it back.  I was both pleased with myself, as if I was a plumber, and apprehensive that anything had been solved.

Obviously, it didn’t work. A few weeks later, I was letting the water heat up before I washed my face when I looked down and noticed that the water was backing up pretty quickly. It was hot enough so I got my job done before there was a real problem.  I tossed some kind of statement over to Jud like “we should do something about this sink.” He agreed.  I agreed.  We both promptly left the sink issue right where it had been, which is to say no where.

On cleaning day two weeks ago I decided to pour a bunch of this down the drain:

Once again with the pride and the apprehension.

And once again it did not work.  Not at all.  And it was the GEL kind. Shouldn’t that count for something? It’s fancy!  But, no.  The water was still slowly filling in the sink while I brushed my teeth, while I let it get hot at night, while I washed my face.  Fill. Fill. Fill.

And then, a couple of days ago, it started to stink. It smells funky.  Kind of sulphury.  Kind of stale.  Just the way you’d imagine a clogged drain might smell.  And ever since I got pregnant that very first time, I have had over active olfactory sensors. I can smell all sorts of things that you wish you couldn’t smell.  I can smell people’s breath in crowds.  I can smell when Piper has a dirty diaper before I go into her room when the door is closed.  I can smell you right now.  It’s that crazy.  So now that drain is taunting me.  It’s like it knows that I can smell it while I’m in bed at night.  In fact, I blame it for the nightmare I had last night where the nurse at the pediatricians office was trying to kill me with a sharpened one of these by shoving it up my nose:

Today I poured some bleach and boiling water down the hole and was greeted with a skunky scent. I’m not sure that’s better than the sulphur.  I am positive that the problem is not solved.  But it will be.

Soon.

Right after you tell me what to do.

While sitting in the doctor’s office this morning a really lovely mother walked over to where I was sitting with the two munchkins and started talking to me.  It was crazy.  Crazy nice.  Crazy awesome.  She was just so friendly. Her two little boys were being as pleasant as my two (one of those rare times when Piper was completely content to sit in her car seat and Gideon wanted to read the same book over and over again.  Much MUCH different than the night before behavior that primarily involved each of them screaming at all hours so that I would walk directly from one child’s room to the next without ever getting back into my much loved, heavily blanketed bed). We were mostly chatting about our two babies.

Hers was seven months, born just one week before Pipes. She asked about teeth.  Piper has two…those shiny little jagged bottom ones right in the front.  Her Desmond (you know I wanted to ask if she was a Lost fan but didn’t risk the offense) has none yet, just puddles of drool and anger.  I asked about crawling and he isn’t there yet, just rocking back and forth. Piper readily joined the ranks of the mobile a few weeks back and has recently jumped into the ‘cruiser’ field as well (pulls herself up and walks along furniture as long as she can keep one hand firmly on something stable, she can get anywhere).  The very nice woman was reveling in her sons lack of mobility and me? I was torn.  I love watching my kids hit milestones but the crawling, walking, scaling all things with ledges and slightly available hand holds?  I vacillate.  I’ll get back to you as soon as she figures out how to sit down after pulling herself up.  In the meantime, I’ll be somewhere just behind her waiting for the blood curdling screams for help.

This is trouble.

Hi kids. I’ve been out of commission for a while now doing all sorts of things that involve all sorts of interesting but mostly mundane things.  And if you are even bothering to still come over here to find nothing posted, I assume you are some kind of stalker because the rest of the world gave up on me quite some time ago.  Now that it’s just me and the crazies, we can all finally get down to biznas.

First up is the project management triangle.  You know this one already, right?  Good. Fast. Cheap.  Pick any two but it’s all you get.  It’s easily understood in housing projects (not THE projects of course, just projects around your home…think Renovation Realities). Let’s say you want to redo your bathroom.

Option 1 – Good and Fast: You will pay through your teeth for the best contractor who will send all his men over to get this done pronto.  You’ll be happy.  All your drawers will close properly. The subway tile will just what you ordered. Also, you’ll be poor.

Option 2 – Good and Cheap: You will not pay much, the job will be done with proper measurements and all but it will take approximately elevnty months of heartache and exactly three visits from out of town guests filled with excuses and explanations about why that toilet isn’t level before it’s complete.

Option 3- Fast and Cheap: This is where that TLC show comes and films you while playing pop-up-video for the nation to snark on you as you fumble through a job that you wanted to complete in a weekend for a grand. In the end, it looks worse than when you started.

We were trying to figure out which route to take all summer every time we hung out in our backyard and noted the distinct peeling paint and scars from the old deck.  What to do? What to do?

And then?  Then?  THEN?

Then we broke the triangle.

But how?  Tis a law! Tis time tested!  Mother and father approved even!

I won’t say.  It’s not the point.  And perhaps I’m working on bottling it up and selling it on the open market one of these days and you’ll already have patented it.  Then what?  Yeah, no good. But let me just tell you that our house is painted a nice shade of yellow with white trim.  Lovely. And the triangle, while still very much in play in offices ’round the globe, shattered in our driveway last weekend.  Hope renewed.