Sam-Quick Morning Blog

This one’s about having “one of those mornings”.

It starts at 4:00am as I am shaving in the shower and feel that all too familiar razor slice on the neck.  Instant shock and burning and droplets of red on the shower floor.  Luckily I’ve seen 3 episodes of Grey’s Anatomy so I was able to stem the bleeding.  Seriously, my “go to” trick is an ice cube on the small nicks.  Works every time.

A few minutes later on the way out the door with my laptop bag in one hand, lunch in the other and 16oz plastic cup full of Diet Coke clenched in my teeth…well the inevitable happened and the cup slipped from my teeth.  

Now I’ve been doing this for years and have never, ever dropped the cup…until today.

Diet Coke and ice went everywhere including on the laptop bag and my jeans.  Having numerous children I know how to quickly jump into action to mop up a spill.  Two soggy towels and three minutes later I’ve refilled the cup and I’m ready to head out the door.  I’m OCD about my morning routine so the 3 minute delay has me in a tizzy…not to mention the wet spot on my jeans (left thigh).

The ride to work was uneventful (though I was waiting for something). 

Within the first five minutes at work the optical mouse appeared to die on one of the control room computers.  I couldn’t get it to move at all…even after beating it repeatedly on the desktop (hey, sometimes that does work).  Since I don’t know where they keep the spare mouses or mice or whatever, my go to remedy is the ever popular reboot.  Surprisingly that seems to have fixed the mouse problem…who knew.

 My fingers are crossed that the rest of the day doesn’t spiral out of control with more mishaps.

Sam-Killer Backgammon

Five year old Jack has been bugging me lately to play poker.  He saw the game board and chips in the game closet a couple weeks back and he said he wanted to play.  I tried explaining how hard it was, but he fired back that he’s already played at paw paw’s and he’d beat paw paw with a “big house”.  Right.

He was pushing again Sunday to play and I think I finally convinced him that now is not the time.  So, he shifted to wanting to play any game in the closet.  I figured why not, we’ve got Sorry and Trouble and other kid’s games…can’t be that bad.

Well he emerged from the closet with backgammon.  I asked if he know what it was and he said he didn’t.  He also couldn’t be persuaded to get something easier to play, so I figured I’d give it a shot.

Like a nerd I showed him how to set up the board properly, explained that he got to roll a pair of dice and he could roll doubles and how he could move pieces off the board to win…blah, blah, blah.  This all seemed to be going in one ear and out the other until I mentioned that he could also land on a space that had one of my pieces and “bar” my piece.

Now in backgammon, barring means you put the other person’s piece out and they have to roll the proper number to get that piece back on the board.  It wasn’t necessarily me using the term “bar” that got Jack’s attention, but when I broke it down into Jack terms and said it was “killing”…well then it got exciting.  All of a sudden he was happy to know that he could “kill” my  pieces…kinda like he could “kill” my pieces in Trouble and Sorry.

Ah…violence was the key.  The killing also became his strategy.  It didn’t matter that I tried explaining about getting his pieces around the board safely until he could move them off and WIN!  No, that no longer concerned him.  The whole point of the game now was KILLING!  Sadly for me it proved to be an effective strategy: he’d see a piece unguarded and go for the kill.  I spent the whole game (two games actually) being unable to advance any pieces.  And, my attempts to explain how this was not a good strategy…well those were useless because he was happy “killing” my pieces.

I did finally run out of pieces in his path that could be killed, and he eventually refocused on getting his pieces off the board and winning both games.  I admit I did take it easy on him while trying to explain the proper way to play…so he didn’t really “beat me”. I’m just thinking maybe Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers need to look at possibly repackaging and reengineering the classic games to draw more interest from the kids: get rid of “checkmate” and “king me” and “bingo” and start using terms like “death grip” and “kill” and “slay”.  Just an idea.

Sam-I tried to pay it back and wound up paying it forward instead

I’ve been selling some things on Craigslist lately just to make some spare cash…my old 35mm camera, outgown kids’ toys, etc. 

Thursday I received an email from  lady who wanted to buy Jack’s old bike.  It’s a 12″ boys bike, Wal Mart special, $40 new and I was it selling for $20.

The lady emailed me that she wanted to get it for a little boy in her neighborhood because all the other kids had bikes and he was always left out since he didn’t have one.  Then after the sympathy hook was set she asked if $20 was as low as I could go. Since I am a softy I told her she could have it for $15.  She said she’d be over in the afternoon to get it.

Sure enough she showed up.  I showed her the bike and then she called for the little boy, who was in her van, to come see.  He came flying out the van, barefoot and happily screaming about his new bike.  He hopped on and pedaled down the driveaway.  It was a nice sight.  She slipped me the $15 and we went to get the bike and load it into the back of the van.  As I loaded it into the van the little boy tried to crawl in too saying that he wanted to ride with his new bike. 

I’ll admit I had a brief spasm of compassion and almost told her to just keep the money.  And after they left I couldn’t stop thinking about what I should have done.  I convinced myself that it was okay to take the money because it was a business deal, she went on Craigslist with the intention of buying, etc.  Then my conscience or guilt or whatever got the best of me and I emailed her. 

I told her that I wanted her address so that I could mail the money back.  It made me happy to see the little boy beside himself when he got the bike, and I just didn’t feel right keeping the cash.

Her reply made me all the more certain I was doing the right thing.  Here it is:

“OMG! are you serious ? It’s strange that you do this because I am on disability and  I was praying for this kid a bike.  I cashed in change to buy it.  Since we are home he has put a lot of miles on this Little Blessing , He loves it.  I wish there  was more people like you on this earth!”

Lady, you have no idea.

So I told her I was sticking the money in an envelope and I was glad the boy was happy.  End of story.

An hour or so later I get another email from the lady.  She tells me she appreciated the fact that I was going to send the money back, repeated the “more people like me in the world” line and then the shocker.  She said she didn’t want me to send the money back.  She suggested that instead I should put it in the offering at church on Sunday.  That way, she said, it would be a blessing all around.

Okay…this was supposed to be a simple Craigslist “for sale” transaction and now it was going waaaaay beyond that.  Her idea sounded great to me, so tomorrow morning the blessing will go to church and then who knows who will get it next.

Sam-The Day I Let Parker Live

It may sound a bit harsh to say something like that about one’s son, but he did the unspeakable today. It was only because it was a typical Parker act that I overlooked it and allowed him to keep breathing.

Before going any further and to avoid the use of stomach churning words I want to begin by using the word “IT” from here on out to describe what he did. The word IT will replace what we all know as #2 and coincidentally IT rhymes with the word it replaces.

Our story begins earlier this afternoon. I put the twins down for their naps and retreated to my cave for a nap. As I was to find out, while I slept peaceful Parker was doing something so vile that it was impossible to believe…a quick jolt awake for me as I groggily went to his room after my nap.

My first clue and I can’t believe I missed it, was that Parker was dressed in a different outfit than he went to bed in.

I walked in his room and to my horror most of a full pack of baby wipes was spread all over his floor. However, making it worse was that each pile of wipes was covered in IT (remember the word we’re using to avoid problems). I immediately knew what had happened. He’d obviously done IT as he slept and was attempting to clean IT up.

Had this been all I probably would have been proud that he tried. However, upon further inspection I found IT on the carpet and IT on the steps to Jack’s bed and IT on his sheets and IT on his pillow and even IT on his wall up near the shelf on which I keep the wipes.

Time for a 10 second breather and to regroup my thoughts before proceeding. Since Parker had obviously changed clothes I asked him where his other clothes were. In the bathroom was the answer. I walked to the bathroom to find an equally bad scene.

The clothes and underwear full of IT were on the floor. IT was even on the floor in spots. IT was on the toilet seat. IT was on the bathroom rug and IT was even on a towel…the perfect place to wipe IT off I guess. Then I peered into the toilet and once again a sight to behold.

There was no water in the toilet; it was just crammed with a huge pile of wipes covered in IT. My first reaction was to flush. Not a good choice as the toilet was clogged with IT covered wipes and the water backed up to the rim.

Now it was time to double my regrouping efforts and just laugh. I mean he did try to take care of IT himself even if it made matters unbelievably worse.

I got a plastic bag and started loading in the wipes in the bedroom and the undies in the bathroom. Then it was time to plunge the toilet. All the dirty wipes were now gone. The brand new pack of wipes had about 10 left in it and I used those to clean IT off the bedroom wall, Jack’s steps, toilet and the bathroom floor. I sprayed the bedroom floor and got those spots up and then stripped the bed to wash everything. I also washed the bathroom rugs and towels.

A little Lysol, a little Febreze and everything was back to normal except a faint lingering smell of IT.

I jokingly started this blog by saying that I let Parker live, but honestly he had nothing to worry about. I guess more of a surprise to me was that my overall reaction wasn’t anger (like in the past) but rather admiration that he tried to fix things and laughter about the whole thing.

Gotta wrap this up. I just found another smear of IT on the bedroom door…gotta clean.

Sam – Bugs n Ducks

My entomological world was turned upside down last weekend and I have to share.

Being from New Orleans we have words and phrases for many things that are different from the rest of the world.  We have brake tags, the world has motor vehicle inspection stickers.  We have neutral grounds, the world has medians.  We have street cars, the world has trolleys.

I grew up with a bug that all yats know as the mosquito hawk.  The rest of the world knows it as the dragonfly.  Since I currently don’t live in New Orleans my kids know these bugs as dragonflies.  When I say something about a mosquito hawk the kids look at me and ask what I’m talking about and I have to explain that when daddy was a boy he called them something different.  Then that of course leads to a bunch of “why is it a hawk”, “how come it doesn’t look like a dragon” questions.  Yadda yadda yadda…you know the drill.

Now to bring up the second bug in this story.  In most of the world it’s know as a crane fly.  Right now they are all over my patio and stuck to my back door.  When the door opens a dozen or so float in on the breeze.  These are those giant looking mosquito like things that have the legs that easily break off.  They just bounce around the walls in the house until they die or the kids see them and freak out because they are huge. (explaining that these bugs don’t bite means nothing because the size of the bug is enough to make the kids lose all sense of reasoning)

Anyway, I’ve always known these crane flies as “mosquito eaters” because they feast on mosquitos.  They don’t bite people, they just annoy people…they bite mosquitos.

The shakeup in my bug world came when a friend saw the crane flies and called them mosquito hawks.  I corrected her and told her that was not a mosquito hawk…a mosquito hawk is a dragonfly…these bugs are called mosquito eaters.  So we went round and round a bit like Abbott and Costello until we were able to figure out that what she and her “people” called mosquito hawks is not what my “people” and I call mosquito hawks.

The next step of course was whipping out the Google and settling this score.  Thanks to Google I figured out that the real name of the annoying bug is the Crane Fly and that the first nickname listed was the Mosquito Hawk.  Waaaaaay down the list after Montana Fly, Daddy Long Legs, Leather Jackets, Tipula simplex, Chickenflies and such was the Mosquito Eater. 

I did some more Googling and checking and these nasty pests are in fact mainly known as mosquito hawks, but the dragonfly is also known as the mosquito hawk.  So, I guess we were both right, but the fact that something else is more commonly know as a mosquito hawk is just a total shock. 

I also discovered that the crane fly’s #1 nemesis are birds…so finally these stupid ducks in my backyard can start earning their keep.