Slugs

***post-bath update: just a little tip, should the need arise- soap, water and a washcloth will not remove slug slime. A nice, thick, baking soda paste, however, is quite effective.

Oh, you guys are seriously not going to believe this one. I will just shoot you straight, right from the beginning. Every word that follows is completely, 100% true.

This afternoon, we made a short trip to a trail system near the house so I could run (I know, I know, but it's true, I swear). Lloyd got on the phone, the boys started poking around, like they do, and I took off as fast as I could go. Not very fast, sure, but I was around the corner and out of sight in a matter of seconds. Fine, five minutes. OKAY? The path is kind of a funky little system with levee trails on both sides of a slough, and some crossovers. I got a little turned around and as a result, didn't see them again for about a half hour. When I finally made my way all the way around and spotted them again, there was something not quite right. Lloyd was still on the phone, natch, and Weston had a shoelace tied around his hips.

Me: Weston, why is that shoelace tied around your pants?

Weston: So the slugs can't get out of my pockets!

Clever, true, I have to give him that one. Not sure that would have occurred to me. I looked a little closer, and saw that both the boys had their hands full of brown, medium sized slugs, and a couple were sliming their way out of Shane's shirt.

When we got back to the car, we made them strip down and put their bounty into a cup. Turns out, Shane even had his transformer underwear packed full of the vile little creatures. We threw his shirt away and made him stick his hands in his pockets for the ride home, and then we force-marched them straight into the tub. But not before taking a picture of them with the disgusting mucous-ridden fruits of their labor, so enjoy! Note Shane's belly; it has remnants of paper on it because we stuck a coloring book over the glistening trails on his abdomen to avoid mucking up his seatbelt.

Have a happy Sunday! I'll be laying on the couch, sucking down beers and trying to quell the nausea.

Outrage of the Day: Kid Version

I don't know about you guys, but I find PLENTY of things to be outraged about. EVERY SINGLE DAY. Today, for example, if I was going to make a list, it would have Iowa, Rupert Murdoch and Andy Scott on it. Just for starters. But that is all very dreary and would probably give me bad dreams. I had a creepy dream last night about some sort of nasty Cujo-like creature, and I don't relish waking up in a cold sweat two nights in a row. So I thought I'd do a junior version of the outrage of the day. Behold, my entries for today:

1. Approximately five bucks worth of organic gluten free oatmeal, generously furnishing a lavish home for potato bugs.

2. A vast array of flashlights in formerly perfect condition. Not one of them will switch on, and two are missing parts. It's like a flashlight boneyard in my kitchen, and the sad fact is, that is every single one of our emergency lights. If the earthquake comes before I can get some new ones I'll have to light my fingers on fire so I can find my wine. Outrageous!

Day of fishing, in pictures

BPA PSA: plastics, cans and receipts

Everyone knows about BPA, right? You can read about it here. It is used in many hard, clear plastics, among other things, and is known or suspected to have multiple deleterious effects on human health. Manufacturers have stopped using it in many things, including baby bottles, pacifiers and toys, though it is still a good idea to check. Not out of the goodness of their hearts, or because they care about public health, but because of the public uproar, led by activist groups like Environmental Working Group. Labels or packaging will usually say 'BPA free', if the item is, in fact, BPA free. Possibly even if it's not, but that's a rant about profit hungry corporate America and our corporation loving government for another day.

BPA is also used in the liners of many canned foods, and leaches into your food. Some brands of canned food have switched to other liners, and others are working on it, but many will continue to blatantly ignore the health risks of this practice until change is forced upon them by consumers. You can read this report to see which brands use BPA in their cans.

Another place you might not expect to be exposed to BPA is at the checkout counter. But guess what, many stores use BPA to print receipts. Huge, huge volumes of it. Much more than might leach into your food or drink from a can or plastic bottle, and much more likely to get into your body because it's loose, instead of bound up in a compound. You can read about it here and here. How many times have you grabbed a receipt, given it to your kid to occupy them for a minute while you get out of the store, and then put them in their carseat with a handul of goldfish? Or taken a receipt, crumpled it up in your pocket at the coffee shop, then eaten your muffin? Horrifying. Unfortunately there is no way to tell by looking which receipts have it and which don't. This article lists some stores that had clean tests in some locations, as well as some that had super high levels. Again, nothing will change until consumers rise up and demand it. So ask your retailers if they use BPA to print their receipts. If they don't know, ask them to find out. And ask them to change, and shop at the stores that don't use it. Google up the retailers you frequent and use their online forms to tell them you want to shop where receipts are BPA free. Handle receipts as little as possible and wash your hands after you touch one. Don't let your kids touch them at all. Don't expect any help from the government- the FDA has already declined to regulate BPA, so you're on your own, baby.

Camera

My camera has been acting up lately. The battery will only hold a charge for a couple of milliseconds, and every time I turn it on, the settings visible on the screen have gone crazy. There are all kinds of symbols and menus showing, and it's set on 8M. I can't figure out how to change it, and the manual was lost three bases ago. Must be something wrong with it.

Well, I thought to myself, it IS getting kind of old. I've had it for quite a while. I started trying to figure out just how old, so I went back through my pictures and dug out the oldest ones I could find. These two of Lloyd are from the summer of 2004 and were taken in our yard in Pensacola. These aren't the EARLIEST ones; I was pregnant with Weston then and I have some belly shots from the spring but I look hideous in all of them, and I'm very vain and didn't want to post them. I did notice, though, that I should probably go shopping, because in one of them I was wearing the same sandals I wore to work today. I also see that Lloyd still has those same boots. And shorts. And I'm a little suspicious about the shirt. He, however, does NOT need to go shopping. So, double standards aside, the camera is pretty old, for a camera and sandals. Not for boots and clothes. Lloyd's boots and clothes, I mean. Anyway, maybe it's time for a new one. Camera, that is.

But then, I squeezed off a quick video of Shane vacuuming the other day, right before he sucked up a sock in the hose. On purpose. When I downloaded it, I expected it to come up really quick; I just had the one little movie. But no. It took forever, and all of a sudden a whole passel of pictures I'd never seen before showed up in my iphoto. Fifty seven of them, including the four you see below. They were all pretty similar in composition and subject matter, and they gave me an idea about what might be wrong with the camera. Now that I think about it, I've had similar problems with the printer, the phone, the coffee maker and the alarm clock. Not that a solid diagnosis is going to help me since the manual is still missing. Also, it just took me about fifteen tries to type 'diagnosis'. There's probably something wrong with my keyboard.

Well, I guess I have some important business to attend to. See you at the thrift store! I'll be the one in the shoe department that can't make her phone work.

I spent all day cleaning and all I got was this lousy living room

I'm not even exaggerating, not even a tiny bit. Really, I worked ALL DAY and ended up with what you see with your own two eyes. I am starting to think that my time would be better spent drinking beer in my underwear. I guess I'll have to do it in the front yard, though, because the couch is taken. Seriously, I worked ALL DAY, and this is what I ended up with. How is that even possible? It's like there's a black hole of work in my house. And yard. And now that I think about it, in my office too. Look at the picture again! There is crap EVERYWHERE. Well, whatever, crap. Move over, because I need some space in which to throw my empties.

Independence Day

Happy Fourth of July! I don’t know about you guys, but for me, this year is DEFINITELY going to be better than last year. Independence Day 2010 started out fine. For the most part. Sure, we were living out of duffel bags in a tiny garage apartment that was far away from a thrift store, we had no jobs, and we were having Air Force withdrawal trauma. On that last one, by ‘we’, I mean Lloyd. OBVIOUSLY. I WAS having thrift store withdrawal trauma, though. Which is WAY worse.

But the early light of the glorious fourth last year dawned bright and clear; we probably could have seen the broad stripes and bright stars flying over Fort McHenry from our ramshackle abode if we’d squinted just a little. We had relatives in town and a cookout on tap. My dad had picked up a discarded self-propelled airplane from the park where he goes to walk the dog. At least, he SAYS it was discarded. I hope some poor little kid isn’t waking up this Independence Day all sad about the airplane some mean guy with a big dog stole from him last year. Either way, the kids were having a blast flying that thing around the yard when destiny guided it to a gentle landing on the roof. Lloyd bounded upstairs to go out onto the roof through a second story window to retrieve it, and all hell broke loose, along with skin, muscle, multiple blood vessels and most importantly, a tendon. You can read what I wrote about it then, and look at the gory picture.

Thus began the worst six months of my entire life, including the six months between April and October of 2007 when I was enormously pregnant and Lloyd had to go to the sandbox and I had to travel around the country with a toddler and then be on bedrest for my high blood pressure and then have a baby by myself in a Louisiana hospital and then move to Korea. No, that was a walk in the park compared to the descent into the ninth circle of hell of 2010. Hmmmm, now I can’t decide if I should bore you with all the dreary specifics or not. There’s something very satisfying about describing all my travails in painful detail, right up until everyone starts to call me Crybaby McWhinypants and throw rotten tomatoes at me. Now, THAT would suck, because only spoiled potatoes and dead rats are worse that rotten tomatoes.

Maybe just the tiniest little smidge of a description, for a speck of holiday self-indulgence: Starting July 4, 2010, Lloyd was unable to move his left hand and had to have reconstructive surgery followed by intensive physical therapy multiple times a week. We were living in a garage apartment with one car. He could not drive, carry groceries or children, cook, clean or write blog entries about how miserable was. He could, however, verbalize his dismay at his sudden predicament. Which he did. Also at this time, my mother was having chemo and requiring daily trips to the cancer center, followed by five weeks in the hospital. During this period, I had a job interview. Then she came home on hospice. I got a job offer, and we had to find a new house near my new job, and take delivery of our household goods. This consisted of two semi-truckloads and houses full, one from storage in Louisiana and one from Korea. These things, all 17,000 pounds of them, had to be placed into our small house or otherwise disposed of. Remember Lloyd’s hand? ME, TOO. We had promised Weston as soon as we had a house, he could have a cat, so we got Henry. Perhaps you recall him. Then my mother died. This was followed by a giant steaming pile of necessary planning, and none of it the fun kind. As soon as Lloyd could drive, he had to fly to the east coast to bring his truck, boat, bee hives, pine beams and other assorted items back. These things, too, had to be somehow incorporated into our tiny new home. On the way back, the truck and boat both required expensive repairs and an extended stay in some podunk town in Montana. THEN, I started my new job. You can read about the very first day here, when I had my pants come undone and spilled tea all over my brand new cube. After a while, miracle of miracles, things started looking up. Lloyd could move his hand, the boxes started to disappear, and I was settling into my job. My mother was still dead, but maybe I was getting a little more used to it. And then Henry died.

Wow, that sounds really bad, now that I look at it in black and white. See what I mean? There’s no place to go but up from there, right? Happy Fourth of July and God Bless America. Pass the beer and the roman candles, and make it snappy! I have a lot of life improvements to make and if there's something that can’t be made better with alcohol and fireworks, I don't know what it is. At least that's how it works in Auburn, where I come from.