Vacation

I'm back! Did you miss me? Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?? Oh, good! Hi, Helen! Oh, great, there's Janelle and Lauren and Pam, too! Sweet! You guys want to see my vacation pictures? Hey! Where are you going?? Come back here right now! And you have to listen to my boring story, too.

So! We went to Sun Lakes Resort in eastern Washington. The weather was fantastic, after a brutally cold and wet spring here in western Washington. We went at almost the exact same time last year, which you can read about here. There is excellent geology there- channeled scablands from the Glacial Lake Missoula Flood, and miles and miles of Columbia River Basalt. There are marmots galore, and plenty of fish.

Also, there was a redneck wedding in the cabin next to us- I swear, there was a pregnant bride, loud nasally country music way into the night, a bunch of buck-toothed kids in overalls AND a fat guy on a Harley. Oh, and there was THE most monstrous child ever in the swimming pool. And not mine this time! You know how super fair-skinned red-haired people are either attractive (Damian Lewis) or hideous (Carrot Top)? This kid was of the ugly variety, and here is why I hate him:

1. He came up to us the second we got in the pool and demanded we give him our noodles RIGHT NOW;

2. He spit a mouthful of water on me and announced that he didn't like me; and

3. He screamed loudly that his mother wasn't there and no one was watching him.

Is it wrong to call a little kid an asshole? I think I might know why his mother left him alone in the swimming pool. Unless of course he is a lying little asshole and she was just pretending not to know him.

And, on a final note, you can thank Lloyd for the pictures- the camera battery went dead so he went all MacGyver and hooked up the camera batteries to the car battery with a wire coat hanger and charged them up good. You can see instructions for a similar effort here, just in case you're stuck in the wilderness with a dead iphone and need to get on Facebook.

The Government is Not Your Mother

I try to be a nice person, really I do.When people appear to be doing super moronic things, I try to remind myself that it is remotely possible that I don't completely understand all the circumstances surrounding what looks like sheer idiocy and that if I did, perhaps the idiocy would make perfect sense. Just the other day, for an example, I was at the thrift store when a woman went into a dressing room with a baby strapped into a car seat and a giant pile of clothes.

About thirty seconds later, the baby started screaming, then howling. Ceaselessly. The aisles outside the dressing room were full of judgypants talking about her mothering skills and what she should be doing instead. I thought to myself, perhaps that woman isn't as stupid as it sounds like she is. Maybe she hasn't been able to get to the thrift store for MONTHS and today is the only day she can go and maybe all her other clothes besides the ones she walked in here in are in tatters! Or maybe she is deaf and can't hear that baby bellowing at 500 decibels. Also, I tried to imagine what might make those people outside the dressing room act like such nasty, superior know-it-alls. Perhaps they don't like the way their own kids turned out. I think that's pretty likely, because they were all old ladies, as is so often the case in situations like this. Maybe they just don't remember how endlessly trying small babies can be when you are trying to do just one single simple thing. Compassion is my middle name!

So, I don't think I'm being overly harsh when I need to vent about how dumb some people are. As you know, there are some serious problems right now with flooding in the midwest and the aftermath of some extremely brutal tornadoes in the south. Now, everyone knows that if they live in a place where there is a potential for floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, blizzards, widescale power outage, drought, disruption of rail, roads, ports or water supply, they should have an emergency kit, right? And that is EVERYONE, that lives ANYWHERE ON THE ENTIRE EARTH. EVERYBODY, DO YOU HEAR ME? Everybody needs an emergency kit. There are many, many places where you can look to get ideas about what you need. But here are some things that should be total no-brainers: food, water, first aid items, any prescription medicines or other needed medical supplies, and cash.

Seriously, how misguided would someone have to be to NOT have these things? Oh, and how about INSURANCE? Everybody with any kind of functioning brain should know that they need to be prepared for emergency situations, because guess what? THEY ACTUALLY HAPPEN. Do people thing the government is going to help them? That is pretty hilarious, because my office doesn't even have money for printer paper, and it gets worse every day. No one wants to pay taxes to fund anything and then they whine like babies when the government is not there to bail them out. Well, plus DC wasted all its money bailing out Wall Street and Detroit, because it loves corporations and hates people, but that is immaterial at the present time and also it makes me VERY ANGRY and I am already having the worst Mother's Day ever, so I'll just go on with my point, shall I?

My point is that we must take responsibility for ourselves, which appears to be a novel concept to some folks. Below are some actual published comments from people affected by flooding and tornadoes. Certainly, these people are facing some problems, but if they'd done a little preparation, they would have much better things to do than annoy me on the computer, and we would all be MUCH happier. So please, I am BEGGING you, do not become one of these people. For the love of God, if you are diabetic and need blood test strips, HAVE SOME IN YOUR KIT! Have your own damn water, canned food and snacks. Is it that hard? If you do not have an emergency kit and plan, get one. RIGHT NOW. The end.

1. (facebook comment responding to a post with information about availability of medical supplies) now its posted after my wife almost went into a coma from her sugar because I could,nt find any test strips

2. (facebook comment) What is being done for Northern Alabama? My family is is a warzone like area on Sand Mtn and they have no communication. How are they being helped? Where is their relief aid?

3. (facebook post and reply)

From Tide: There has been a slight change in the location for Loads of Hope. We will begin washing TOMORROW MORNING @8am at University Mall 1701 McFarland Blvd East Tuscaloosa, AL 35404. Our plan is to be here until at least May 12, 2011 – loads are limited to two per family per day. Please share this post and help spread the word.

Thanks

(comment from the biggest moron on the face of the planet) WHAT?!!! limit 2 per family!! The Government needs to do better then that to help the people and community and Volunteers their should be a unlimited supplies!!! This is why I hate the government they say the are prepared now when a disaster strikes LMFAO their are not so prepared Step to it!!!

4. (newspaper article) Michalle Treadaway, who has been staying in her home even though part of the roof was torn off and the foundation was damaged, said she hasn't gotten much help from FEMA yet. When she called to report her damage because she had no insurance, she said the person she spoke to couldn't give her an idea of what to do next.

In the meantime, she has relied on the volunteers in town, who come by in cars, golf carts, ATVs and on foot several times an hour to offer her cold water, canned food and snacks.

"I'm worried when they go away, there will be nothing," Treadaway said.

On coats

Look at my living room! Doesn’t it totally look like the brown coat section at Goodwill exploded in here? But no, those are all Lloyd’s coats. For real. He took the boys to visit his parents for a few days, and you know me! I took full advantage of the opportunity clean and organize. Well, okay, FINE, really I laid on the couch in my underwear and drank beer. Of course, I went to Goodwill, too, but they kicked me out. Something about no beer allowed, blah blah blah blah. WHATEVER. So when I got home I decided to clean out the ‘walk-in’ closet in our bedroom. I say ‘walk-in’ instead of walk-in, because I suppose it’s theoretically possible to walk in there, if you were a midget. Or a Pomeranian. Or maybe a medium-sized goat, if it's skinny, but not one of those freaky jumping ones because it would hit its head on the shelf right off, and I definitely don't want another dead goat in my closet.

It has never been easy to get in there but it’s been getting progressively more difficult, what with the three feet of crap on the floor and junk piled willy-nilly on the shelves and draped over the hanger rods. But I was determined, because I deeply love a tidy closet. Also, I thought I might have stashed some extra beers in there, but unfortunately that turned out not to be the case.

I figured out the problem right away- it was the overly ample supply of brown coats. You might think I have something against brown coats, but you would be mistaken. I LOVE brown coats. My brown coats, that is. Lloyd’s, not so much. It would be okay if they were all different; I could understand that. But the brown coats in question fall into two categories: leather and hunting/outdoorsy. Boring, am I right? I’m really tired of boring, so I took them all out, along with approximately 43 helmet bags and 217 backpacks (tan, olive, and camouflage in varying sizes and configurations) and heaped them into a pile that the entire population of Cairo, Illinois could stand on to keep dry no matter how high the Mighty Mississippi gets. If you don't believe me, look at the picture again and this time, note the tiger for scale. It's not a full grown tiger, of course. I wouldn't want to exaggerate or anything.

At the present time, a smallish golden retriever could walk in and maybe even turn around, so that’s a big improvement, but I am not quite sure what to do with the enormous mound of coats in the middle of the living room. Let me know if you have any ideas! I’ll be on the couch in my underwear, drinking beer.

A Piece of Cake

What do you do when you want to lay on the couch and read a book and the kids will not JUST HUSH FOR ONE FREAKING SECOND? No, really, I want to know. I'm not talking to you, Heidi, because I already tried your duct tape method and it took me three weeks and a whole bottle of turpentine to get the sticky off when I was done. But all the rest of you need to send me your techniques because I am not doing so hot on my own.

Here, see for yourself. Yesterday I let them make a cake out of a mix, which worked out pretty well, except for the eggs and oil mixture spilled on the floor. Actually that wasn't too bad, anyway, because the sticky eggs sort of offset the slippery oil and it didn't look much different than the kitchen floor always looks. And, I made them wash their hands, so I can cross that off the list for the next few days. Plus, need I even mention, now we have cake! WIN-WIN, my friends!

But, still, one does eventually have to wash the batter-spattered bowl, mixer, cups, spoons, floor, counter, and hair, which really cuts into my couch-laying time. So, as always, I am looking for your brilliant comments to help me out. The couch beckons. Seriously, I'm dying here. I already let them watch 'Free to Be You and Me' on youtube 4 million times, and now they are marching around all the time chanting, 'A doll, a doll, William wants a doll!' until I want to yank my hair out by the roots and shove it down my throat. OH, THE HUMANITY!!!!

I'm waiting, people.

Rats

If you are my friend on Facebook, you probably already know all about the rat wars at my house. If you're not my Facebook friend, you totally should be, because I have a lot of really important stuff to say on there, as you can well imagine.

Now that the weather has warmed up a smidge and the compost is getting good and rotty, we have had a rat invasion in the back yard. They come through the fence from the sheep farm and burrow under the compost to plan their assault. Then they swarm over the back porch to eat the copious seeds that have fallen from the bird feeder. When Henry was alive, he probably kept them at bay, but now, sadly, we have to battle them without his assistance. Lloyd started sniping them with his pellet gun, but it was a little slow for his liking, and they don't make an automatic assault version. I told him I thought I could convert it with directions from the internet but he didn't like that idea for some reason and went with traps and poison. It's like he fancies himself some big gun expert or something and thinks I have no idea what I'm talking about. You can see one of his ginormous traps in the picture; this particular one set right in the path where their trail from the farm comes under our fence. I could get some stunning dead rat pictures, but I'll spare you. I'm tenderhearted that way, plus I'm getting a little afraid of those crazy PETA people after the whole hamster thing.

Naturally, success in rat-killing leads to a quandary: what to do with the carcasses? They are big, fat, glossy, generously-whiskered creatures and surely would be useful for many things. Seriously, they are the picture of robust, glowing health, except for being dead. One certainly doesn't want to just toss them in the trash; that would be VERY wasteful. But we have to get to them quickly, or the other rats will carry them away. I'm not even kidding. They disappear if you leave them out there; I bet there is a cadre of mortuary rats that pack the dead soldiers away on their shoulders to some kind of ghoulish body shop where they hack their bodies up to make paleolithic body armor and weapons out of bone, skin, sinew and tails.

They're smart, you know, and they learn from their mistakes. If Lloyd had any sense at all, he would let me do the conversion on that pellet gun so he can just mow them down and be done with it. This slow attrition method is risky, like tying Batman to a slowly submerging platform into a shark tank, then walking away, totally sure you've vanquished your enemy. We all know how that ends up, don't we?

In fact, now that I think about it, I'm getting a little concerned. Ever since I read 'Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh', I have been suspicious that rats are more than they appear to be. I bet they could climb right up on this keyboard and start blogging away. You'll know it's them when they start raising money for PETA and pushing for a revolution.

Bad Pennies

I despise the neighbor kid; is that bad? He is a creepy little know-it-all and I loathed him on sight. He is one of the kids that is always riding bikes around the neighborhood and he often comes over to see if the boys can come out. They usually don't want to play with him but he is constantly out there. He ALWAYS has a lot to say and knows everything about everything. Today he told me how to fix Shane's training wheels and was very put out when I did not follow instructions.

It's a gorgeous day here- the sun is shining, there's a little breeze and it's about 68 degrees. The sheep next door are getting their spring haircuts, to their loud sheeply dismay. It's so beautiful, in fact, that one of the kids told me he wanted to come in, because "it's too hot". This is the damage wrought by seventeen straight months of rain, wind, sleet, hail and snow, Seattle. See that you don't do it again and we'll call it even this time. But before they started suffering from heat exhaustion, they were out riding bikes in front of our house and he-who-shall-not-be-named turned up around the time Weston found a penny in the street. Apparently, he then asked to see it, and then took off without giving it back, saying Weston had given it to him.

Naturally, this was VERY distressing, and Weston came in the house seeking advice about how to deal with this travesty. I think he was sincerely shocked that someone could do something like that, and this kid is older, so Weston finds him intimidating. But guess what? I had absolutely NO IDEA what one should do in a situation like this. Seriously, I was completely befuddled, so I just gave him a new penny and told him that we were lucky to see what kind of a person this little jerk was at the cost of just one cent and maybe he's not the kind of guy we want to be hanging around with. After puzzling over that for a few minutes, Weston went out looking thoughtful, and then yelled at him until he gave the penny back.

All's well that ends well, I always say, and now I'm thinking of asking Weston how he thinks I should deal with that crazy guy in my office.

Hamster Ball

A hamster ball could be any one of a legion of things: a hairy little testicle, a party where rodents go dancing, a party where people dressed up as rodents go dancing, or a game where you kick hamsters into a goal or whack them over a net. The possibilities are endless, and I now have about a zillion new ideas just awaiting further development; feel free to borrow them! Look away now if you are a PETA member- it's just going to get worse and I'm not at all squeamish about inventing other, more bloody, ways to entertain myself. Judgmentalfreakball, anyone? BYOBAPOB (Bring your own bat and plenty of beer)!

But I've been thinking about a different kind of hamster ball lately- the clear plastic kind that the little critters can cruise around the house in without getting stepped on or peeing on the carpet. Not that we have any hamsters, of course. The boys simply refuse to try them, even when I fry them up like nuggets and serve them with ranch and a nice side of fava beans. I swear, kids today, they're so SPOILED. The truth is, the hamster ball is for me.

Remember that John Travolta movie where he played the boy in the plastic bubble? I got to thinking about that the other day because I am very, very sick of dead soldiers, earthquakes, tsunamis, radiation, psycho politicians, the Supreme Court, corporate greed, the economy, the dreary weather, and all the rest, making a plastic isolation bubble extremely appealing. I need to move around, though, and I'm pretty sure a giant hamster ball would be an outstanding solution. It will have a number of attractive design features, including my friend Lisa's idea for a wine-filled drinking bottle. It will have curtains that I can draw when I can't look at the worms in my living room or the pee in the boys' tub anymore, an artificial source of sunlight for all those super rainy days, and some high-grade soundproofing. For work.

I even have the perfect name for it: The Nut Ball. Interested? Call me!