Amusing searches, Vol. 12

Here are more of the most amusing searches that brought people here recently, this time all dealing with parenting concerns.

(All search strings are reprinted exactly as they were entered, and the search text links to the post at which the visitor arrived.)

• 10 yr old daughter likes to be naked (Toledo, OH) - You're in for a long couple of years, my friend. Good luck.

• I keep losing my patience with my 3 year old (Milton, Ontario) - That's because they're infuriating little bastards, just like you were when you were three. It's a charming part of our core to which we all return whenever we're feeling cranky, even in our golden years. You'll have your revenge!

• baby onesies that say my daddy is an obsessive bastard (Bradford, PA) - Hey... that hurts.

• help for the stay at home dad with the ungrateful wife (Palm Desert, CA) - I only wish I had some way of helping you, sir, but I've never been able to solve this particular problem for myself. Don't worry, though (face held dramatically in hand) I'll get along, somehow...

• I am at home and not busy (Kerava, Finland) - I am quite jealous and borderline homicidal.

• personal hygiene for kids (New Delhi, India) - I think it says it all that when you searched this term, it took you to a post about orangutans.

12 steps over to the CPR table, 1 step back in shock...

Sorry folks, I can't talk long, I've got a lot of numbers to juggle in my head, along with quite a bit of comically misspent grief.

You see, due to the unfortunate fact that I'm an idiot, I jumped into a swimming pool yesterday while still wearing my ever-present pedometer, which I found floating across the water a few minutes later, not unlike the tragically bloated corpse of my secret, much-more-loved child.

This means I had to spend the rest of the day trying to figure out about how much I had walked before my wife J- handed me her own identical (though only sporadically used) device, to preemptively shut me up and to stop that nervous twitch in my eye.

You know the twitch-- it's the one that scary guy on the subway platform always has before he shuffles over and asks you if you're sure you need both your kidneys, or if you know what pants taste like.

After baking it with a hair dryer almost to the point of melting yesterday, and then leaving it out in the sun all afternoon, I was able to bring the display back after it had finally disappeared (an impressively long holdout, I thought, considering the fact that I could see water inside the screen after I pulled it ashore), but it refused, possibly out of bitterness, to count any steps up until I removed the battery to let it dry more thoroughly.

My sister recommended leaving it covered in dry rice for awhile, to fully suck out any remaining moisture*, but since I don't have any on hand at the moment, I figured I might as well solicit ideas from you, proud members of The Internet. I'm coming to you first because I'd rather not get lost hunting down every possible solution in the universe, including those dreamed up as a joke by 15-year-old kids, Death Row prisoners, and shut-ins.

You see, I may or may not have a tendency to be easily distracted by flashing lights, useless trivia, nostalgic references, and bits of string, so if I was, in fact, this way, it might take me hours to find my way back out to actually resuscitate my little comatose loved one.

Wait a minute, is that a list of factual errors and continuity mistakes in the 1988 treasure Short Circuit 2 on the IMDb? I'll be right back...

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* She did this, to great effect, for the laptop on which she spilled a drink, after finding the suggestion online. She's not just some strange person whose solution to every problem involves wasting odd foods, as some kind of vegetarian sacrifice.

IL to ME Odyssey: New York through Maine

Here is the final set of my observations on our car trip from Chicagoland to visit family in Northern Maine, part of the series of posts: Illinois, Indiana, Ohio & Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire & Maine.

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NEW YORK
Distance Traveled: 407 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 3

Since we took on New York in the early afternoon, everything was pretty well just dandy, so I have nothing memorable to report. This time.

The last time I went through New York was when we moved out here, and let me tell you: do NOT sleep in a hotel a few miles from the western border in Buffalo and then accidentally take the moving truck through the EZ-Pass lane on your way out of state the next morning if you don't have an EZ-Pass transponder. Those people will gladly spend $100 over the course of months making sure you satisfy the 42-cent debt you'll have incurred.*

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MASSACHUSETTS
Distance Traveled: 170 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 2

WARNING: If you live in Boston, or you love someone who lives there, you may want to skip this section altogether and mosey on down to good ol' New Hampshire.

• We had the good fortune to arrive in Boston** with perfect timing to take my wife's very good friend up on her longstanding offer to let us stay with her and her husband just outside Boston proper. We were so glad this worked out as well as it did, though despite numerous warnings against it, my 5-year-old son D- managed to quickly co-produce, direct, and edit --with his much-loved Corduroy bear-- the latest installment in the long-running reality show, "Where the F*** Did Corduroy Go??"

But just when he thought he was finally free, he got stuffed into an airless box and mailed on up to Maine. I'd love to see his happy-go-lucky spin on that chapter in the storybook.

• If you ask anyone who knows me, or who has walked past me on the street sometime within a few weeks after I've left Massachusetts, I hate the city of Boston with a passion that burns hotter than herpes in Hell. Don't get me wrong, I know good people who've lived in Boston, I was happy for the Red Sox when they finally won it all, but I dread and regret my every visit to their (generally) rude, horribly organized, urine-soaked burg.

Before you think I've judged Bostonians and their city too quickly, you must know that over the course of 9 years, I've passed through their airport dozens of times (and spent two nights in it, in fact...); I've made use of their bus station and both of their train stations, several hotels, and a hospital; I've walked along many streets of the city and surrounding towns, taken educational tours, and even spent nights in actual residents' houses on more than one occasion.

So, again, while some of the people (including my brother and brother-in-law) who live or have lived there may be very nice, competent, capable people, and while there may be a few good things there or from there, overall, I think this city represents some kind of horrific disease that must be contained. I pity the future of our country and its standing in the world if this is our city foreigners see first. Eight years of Bush/Cheney/Co. would have quite a battle on its hands in the contest for Worst Face to Show Potential Terrorists Still on the Fence.

If forced to say something pleasant about Boston at large, I suppose I could scrounge up the following items:

1. We have thus far been some of the lucky few not yet crushed to death under falling chunks of the shoddily constructed boondoggle that is the famed Big Dig tunnel.

2. I'd say I enjoy surprises, so having to guess 3 or 4 times, at 50mph, which split in the web of underground roadways we want to take --when the GPS navigator didn't indicate (before losing contact with the satellites, not unlike what would happen before "the good part" in a horror movie) any such choices for many miles-- provides potentially hours of spontaneous urban exploring fun. I'm pretty sure, though, that the Boston contacts at the GPS map companies just haven't told headquarters what really goes on in these tunnels, and no one has the guts to venture in to check on it.

3. If foreign armies were to choose Boston as their point of entry for an invasion, provided they were traveling only by road, we would have literally months to prepare the defense of our capital, with the front likely centered somewhere as close as Brookline. Actually, we could probably just build a 20-foot-thick, 50-foot-high wall around the entire metropolitan area. Using only union labor. Imported from New Jersey. On foot.

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NEW HAMPSHIRE
Distance Traveled: 18 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 0

Nothing much to say here, given the short distance, except I'm happy to report that crossing the New Hampshire-Maine border bridge is much less stressful when you're not totally delirious from driving compulsively the 1400 miles from Chicago to Presque Isle all at once, as I did when I moved out there almost 6 years ago.

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MAINE
Distance Traveled: 345 miles
Bathroom Breaks: 2

• I gotta say, under these circumstances, driving the normally pleasant state of Maine is an absolutely soul-crushing experience. Not anything to do with the state itself, per se, it's just that moving through so many states so quickly and then hitting the southern border of your destination state in the afternoon, only to spend another 6 hours in the car, can be a bit much to ask of us long-haul travelers trying to get past all the lobsters, rustic sweaters, and salty sea air up to the calm, comforting expanses of potato fields, black flies, and that only-slightly-ornery air of self-sufficiency.

• We arrived. With no major injuries for any of us, self-inflicted or otherwise. Family was happy to see us, we were happy to see them, and we were doubly happy to spend only about 1 hour total in the car over the next two weeks.

I'll post a few pictures from the trip tomorrow, rather than make this post any longer. Longer than the above plus these two footnotes, of course... enjoy!

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* Each stamp on the redundant notices they sent me exceeded the original debt, as did each minute of the time I spent on the phone trying to square away my options for avoiding the sizable penalties they automatically tacked on. What's best is I had to mail them a CHECK for 25 cents, and then mail them a SECOND check a couple weeks later for 17 cents when they realized they had quoted me the car toll instead of the truck toll.

** Note that I said "arrive in Boston" with perfect timing, not "make it across the city to our friend's house"... It was unfashionably late.

Developments at our house, Vol. 14

Here are some of the latest developments around these parts:

1. According to a repeated bulletin my 2-year-old daughter M- broadcast through the car recently, if I liked it, then I should have put a ring on it. Oh-oh-ohhh, oh-oh-oh. Oh-oh-ohhh, oh-oh-oh.

I liked it better when she just sat back there spontaneously singing, "Far away, far away," over and over again.

2. I found a piece of note paper on the floor of the library with the word FART written on it in giant block letters, carefully filled in over the course of what must have been several very industrious minutes. I wonder what it means that I just might have found this more amusing than its presumably prepubescent author intended. You gotta admire dedication to a bit.

3. According to Google Analytics, Ft. Worth, Texas was the first city willing to send one of its favorite sons to my "robot ladies" post, after he accurately invoked the password, "i want to screw a robot".

4. When the lady at the library was checking out my (free!) movies the other day, she saw I was getting Hot Fuzz and enthusiastically told me that it was "a really funny movie". She then preceded to scan my other selection, Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, and ominously passed on the chance to continue our conversation.

5. I'd like to note that this is yet another list post that does not have 5 or 10 items in it. That's progress, my friends.

Mano a womano, eggo a eggo

I should have learned after all these years not to enter into any kind of atypical, nonathletic competition with my wife, but I think by this point it's clear that nature just won't allow me to pass up the chance.

Of course, among the most imposing barriers to my abstaining from such competitions is the fact that I often don't know I'm in one until it's over.

Take, for example, our evening of egg-dyeing yesterday. Possibly because she knows me too well, the moment my first egg touched the dye, my wife excused herself from the room with an egg she'd already dyed earlier.

After quite a few curious moments during which I had to explain to both the kids, repeatedly, why they could not drink the delicious-looking colored liquids from the whimsical bunny mugs (D- eventually retreated to just loudly announcing how thirsty he was every two minutes), and only after the kids had used up all 18 of the eggs, J- returned to check on my finished product, which had the surprise* message, "DADDY RULES!" written in wax across its face.

She offered some patronizing encouragement before dropping this bomb on me:
Sure, you're probably thinking, his right hand is upside down, and he's somehow managing to harness magical egg powers to hold a beer stein with his wrist**, but you have to admit, this is pretty much like bringing a gun --and not a quaint foam scrapbooking one-- to a rock-paper-scissors match.

Here's the side-by-side comparison:

Tell me which YOU think is better, keeping in mind that I, myself, am better, and that if you don't pick me, considering all the mitigating factors I've revealed above, I just may epically pout and stop posting my ridiculously overwrought anecdotes here forever.***

(A bonus mitigating factor: in case you've never tried, I assure you it is very difficult to write on an egg with a generic orange crayon not expressly made for that purpose.)

Lastly, please do note that one of the contenders is clearly labeled as the unquestioned master of all, humans and ovums.

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* The surprise, of course, was not the message itself, but rather that it happened to appear on that particular egg.

** J- would no doubt whine that it's not her fault the Chinese Scrapbook Sweatshop managers found it irresistibly cheaper to sell twice as many left hands and feet in a package while cutting production of rights altogether.

*** And if all you ladies stab me in the back on this vote out of some kind of twisted "ho's before bro's"**** nonsense, I'll instead resort to posting only about sports and painful jock itch. Or better yet, everything you never wanted to know about me, me, me, like a bad first date, three times a week. You want that on your conscience? Or in your feed reader?

**** I feel honor-bound to point out, for those who were taken aback, that those apostrophes above were included to replace the many missing letters# in the words, not out of disgraceful confusion over possessives versus plurals. Who thinks of impossibly rigid grammatical rules when creating the music of the streets? Not enough people, I think.

# Yes, I'm aware that this then means there should be an apostrophe before "ho's", but it just seemed a bit much. Much like this beast of a footnotes section.

Developments at our house, Vol. 12

Here are more of the latest developments around here:

1. I've discovered that no matter how tasty a mangled Fannie May Buttercream found at the bottom of a box of Christmas toys looks, it should not be eaten a month after Christmas. Hint: It's no longer at all "creamy".

2. Recently, someone arrived here at the blog via the search "top reason to wash my hands". The top reason to wash your hands? How about so I can feel confident that you're paying enough attention to the many undesirable things your hands do and touch in a given day that I don't have to start retreating entirely from handshakes like Howie Mandel. I'd look as ridiculous giving everyone a Terrorist Fist Jab as I would having my head completely shaved.*

3. I found that if you're going to walk away from your two-year-old on the toilet, for the sake of your heart's health, it's best to remember upon returning that you had given her a down payment on her chocolate chip reward.

4. After gazing upon my bare chest at the breakfast table one morning, my daughter M- pointed and asked, "What's that nipple for?" Like the rest of humanity throughout history, I had to admit that I have no idea.

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* This is apparently the chosen method of my subconscious to let me know that I think Howie Mandel is ridiculous inside and out. Who knew? I don't even watch his show.

Let's call this an adverb-filled do-over

I've had a taste of life not posting religiously, and I must admit I liked it.

But that doesn't mean I don't like blogging anymore-- I'm just a lazy, procrastinating shell of a man who can only function within the framework of compulsive habits.

So, not unlike a car --say, my stupid car-- stuck in a little rut of slush and ice, I got complacent and couldn't get back over that hump since the Pinko-Commie calendar insisted I acknowledge its existence in some way.

I briefly thought about not noting the, shall we say, recent collapse of my Previous Posts drop-down menu, but every time I sat down to write, I found myself either blathering about things more boring than usual or writing amusing bits that weren't worthy of being the Last/First Post of the Year.

So instead, I'll sum up: 2008 was a crazy year, but a great one overall, and 2009 will likely be more of the same, though under the guise of more unsettling numerals. Life's like that.

Lastly, though I've never been one for resolutions on an arbitrary timeline, I'm a big fan of arbitrariness in general (I think of it as an homage to my pagan god, Nature), so I'll allow the following statement:

During the next year, I may perhaps be more than gently urging my life into a more stable and at least slightly more conventional form, so I will most definitely be posting somewhat less often as a side effect of that effort.

Not less often than the past week, mind you, but just not five days a week on average, I'm sure. Furthermore, while my newly mobile and freshly independent wife weans herself back into the world (starting with going to work today for the first time in six weeks*), I will likely be back visiting many of your blogs more frequently than I have been recently, though I'm sure I won't be commenting nearly as much as I used to.**

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* Where, by the time she's reading this, she'll likely be praying already that they had just cut the leg off and replaced it with a shapely peg, with which she can create the Greatest Legend of All Legends of Scary Teacher Biographies Passed by Fearful Whispers at Recess.

** I'm almost as sad as you are, I'll bet.

I would be embarrassed to host a yard sale

I recognize that for all my yammering away this past year, you all still don't know me as well as you should. So please allow me to continue chipping away at that barrier.

Have I ever shown you my widespread, impromptu collections of ancient, now-illegible receipts for transactions under $3? How about my utility bills from college? My many broken pieces of childhood toys? Never seen my "perfectly good" clothes that in my darkest moments I secretly acknowledge I'll never even want to wear again?

Perhaps that was a little extreme.

In all fairness to my compulsions, what if someday soon, I get: 1) called up to participate in a 4th-grade non-competitive soccer or basketball league; 2) re-hired as a store inventory auditor or movie theater supervisor; or 3) transported back to the early '90s on some kind of compelling mission that requires me to blend in with other toolbags?

I don't want to look like an incompetent moron that day, scrambling to dig through the musty back room of the thrift store where a full half of my clothes rightly belong. Paying for something I already owned at some point in my life? I refuse!

The Boy Scout motto is Be Prepared, after all, and I can assure you that I am prepared not only to suit up for a return to domination of smaller children on the soccer field, but also to be buried under a mountain of useless shit.

The only question is, which mountain will be the one that gets me?

Confessions, Vol. 1

1. If only they made giant diapers that still fit snugly on a toddler, I would gladly slap one of those on M- each night and sleep like a med student through the morning, while she fed and entertained herself with the many things I'd generously leave in her crib.

2. I referred to a cartoon chipmunk in a children's television show as "kind of an a**hole" with as much forethought and seriousness as I would the friend of a friend.

3. It's hard to write amusing "confessions" after somberly reading through PostSecret for more than an hour.

4. I find it oddly freeing to stop this list at four items on a day such as this, the fifth day of the week and month.*

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* And yet, look at the time stamp.

Who hsa time too prufread?

Let me start by saying you can't imagine how difficult it was to type out that title, and how painful it is for me to let it sit there as it is.

Now that I have your sympathies, I'll continue.

When I mentioned J-'s seemingly disastrous t-shirt purchase at the Obama rally in Grant Park, there was at least one request to see the offending shirt, and I'm nothing if not accommodating. 

Here is the front image, which as I said is interesting and unique enough, and actually impressive given the price:

I should jump in here to note that to compound my coming complaints, the salesman apparently misheard J-'s request and gave her an extra large shirt, so it's wide enough for the whole family to proudly wear at once.

And now, I forewarn you to choke back your vomit before continuing, because if you're like me, you may not be able to handle seeing the reason why it was only $5 without exerting tremendous self-control:


You know what my "New Hope" is? That sometime before the end of the Reign of Man, we will finally finish evolving enough that before even an everyday-schmo-just-trying-to-make-some-extra-money-capitalizing-on-his-fellows'-exultant-willingness-to-collect-memorabilia places an order for a few thousand t-shirts, he can manage to at least ask someone with a fresh eye to look over the design just once.*

And if we could keep things going enough to not make such errors on this tiny selection of text in the first place, that would just be icing. Right now, the only icing on this s***cake is the inexplicable use of a comma after the abbreviation of the month.

You may think I'm overreacting, but I don't know any other way to be. Life's too short to underreact to things like this. Plus, I've spent years of my life being paid to mercilessly deride people for boneheaded mistakes like this, so it's a hard habit to break.

Full Disclosure: That wasn't necessarily spelled out in my job descriptions, but it was always clearly encouraged. Or tolerated. Or quietly marveled at, in fear. Either way, it definitely seems called for here, because there's no red pen in the world that can wash this tragedy away.

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* Barring that, maybe in this hypothetical nearly perfect world, the printer would notice the error and, since it's not his job to alter the design of his clients' orders, he would just print up a single shirt that says YOU ARE AN IDIOT - TRY AGAIN (SOMEWHERE ELSE).

At long last, Pt. 3

This, Part 3 of my requested account of our experience at the election day Obama rally in Grant Park, ended up being so long that I've mercifully split off a part 4 to run tomorrow (here are part 1 and part 2). Sorry to those who've had no interest in reading such a thing-- I'll be back to my usual antics on Monday.

...

After trying out a few promising spots --leaning against a precious tree, sitting on a curb, sitting in dirt, standing in the street, etc.-- near some of the other Jumbotrons, we ended up settling on a good spot right in front of one not too far from The Cool People's Rally.

This spot provided us more than enough personal space, including the ability to sit down in the grass(!), and an excellent view* of a cameraman's view of history in action. And take note that when I think of the importance of this election, it's not much to do with Obama's race, but rather the involvement of young voters (and even those not yet old enough to vote) and the generally constructive passion involved on both sides.

A lot has been said about the racial makeup of Obama supporters, at least among under-30 supporters, so I don't have much to add in noting the diversity of the people around me, and how reassuring it was to see everyone united.

One older (70s?) couple was so excited early in the evening that not only did the man offer their guest bedroom to a young male German tourist he hadn't met, but he also happily took hold of J-'s waist and moved her over bodily after insisting she could stand in front of him to get a better sightline of the distant Jumbotron (this was shortly before she was mysteriously overcome and had to retreat). As creepy as this might be normally, it somehow wasn't so much so that night, especially since she really did have a way better view from there.

Several of you have made comments expressing terror at the idea of being surrounded by this (likely underestimated) 240,000-person crowd, and while I can understand that when I remember trying to force ourselves closer and closer to the front when we first got there, the rest of the time we spent moving from point to point, having plenty of space to breathe. This is a very large park, and the borders of the unofficial rally were quite porous, so there was plenty of room for even more people, had they not been dissuaded by the mayor's bold projections of a million people showing up.

...

The screams when CNN projected Obama the winner were beyond deafening, driving me almost to the point of reaching for my cane to wave at the hoodlums on my lawn, but I had been prepared by this after nearly drowning in the tsunamis of sound as they projected him to win states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida.

Call me a curmudgeon, or more accurately, someone who remembers very distinctly the last two elections, but Wolf Blitzer telling me on election night that he thinks something will happen carries only slightly more weight than when he said the same kind of thing 6 months ago. With all the (clearly predictable) troubles with democracy-threatening electronic voting machines, I was ready to believe anything could happen, and I didn't want to jinx my outcome of choice by feeling too relaxed or confident until I at least saw a concession speech.

So as a result, I was one stone face surrounded by many thousands of people starting the party without me. But then, I'm not sure what I would have done if I had been on the same wavelength, because I've never been particularly demonstrative in public, so the world probably would have seen the same impassive face drifting through the background that CNN chose not to air, for some reason (I taped 9 hours of their coverage and didn't see myself in any of it).

...

I was glad to not be the only one listening carefully and respectfully to Sen. McCain's concession speech, and while I understood the initial smattering of boos at the sight of him, given how ugly and personal the race got by the end, I was reassured that they didn't catch on, and subsided as quickly as they had arose.

I know I'm not the only person to express the idea that if THAT John McCain had been out there on the campaign trail (and in the meeting where they picked his running mate), this race might have been much closer, a marked "downside" almost nonexistent, and the resulting presidency (whoever had won) less potentially violent and poisonous. We don't need to continue the zero-sum game that politics, and thus everyday life, has become in this century-- I hope those disappointed in the outcome can focus on the language and sentiments of the John McCain who spoke on that final night rather than the John McCain (and certainly the Sarah Palin), who spoke out on the campaign trail since the convention.

...

One more part to come tomorrow, despite my plan to do it in three parts. In case you were thinking it, no, my compulsions are not strong enough to overcome my laziness in this case, so I won't be stretching this into a part 5 for cosmic balance.

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* This view was definitely hard-won, after I led a generally polite rebellion of our section against two unrepentantly selfish ladies standing up a few feet in front of the TV at the expense of at least a hundred or so people seated in the grass directly behind them. Democracy in action!

Pantsed in Candyland

For those of you not down with the C-Land lingo, you may as well stop reading, because you don't understand my people.

In the spirit of a great blues musician, I've come here to proclaim my troubles to the world in hopes of gaining some relief:

Like golf*, Candyland is a game of sheer chance and luck designed to illustrate the futility of continuing to live. I'm a relative newcomer to this game, having come from a house full of boys and a wannabe-boy, but we bought it for my daughter at Christmas because J- is a lifetime fan, and D- has since wanted to play it at least once a week.**

So without toughened skin from years of experience, I was distinctly unprepared for the feeling of the potent one-two punch in the gut that is your opponent drawing a single orange block card and then the pink Lolly card. I got Rainbow railroaded. Even with him getting stuck in some licorice and losing a turn, I was toe-tagged after only 20 cards.

Twenty cards! That's ten turns. There are over 60 cards in the deck, and we've been known to go through all of them before finishing.

This site, which is my kind of site, states that the average two-person Candyland game takes, mathematically speaking, 52 cards.*** So this was clearly an aberration existing only to balance out the 200-card games out there, and my son was given the plum role of The Hand of Fate.

Care to guess what I heard from this little upstart, who regularly has to be reminded (incredibly unselfishly, I might add) which direction he's supposed to be heading on the board, and whose backside I've so graciously returned to him 95% of the time we've gone head to head? "Oh wow Dad, what luck I'm having! That's the way the cards were cut, I guess," or some such zen platitude?

How about instead you guess, "Ha, ha" as he cruised towards the finish? You'd be warmer than Gloppy on fondue night.

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* For instance, I once spent a week going by the nickname "Tiger" and during that time I did not win any sweet green jackets or get paid millions of dollars to wear one hat versus another. Go ahead and try to explain that one away.

** Once equals one session of at least three games...

*** Am I revealing too much about myself in having sought out this guy's painstaking Candyland analysis?

Indisputable facts, Vol. 1

The following is a list of indisputable facts, according to the ultimate authority:

1. If you have to wonder whether the water you're wringing out of a ruined basement carpet is composed even partially of sewage, you may as well just stop wondering. It will only make the carrying of the giant, dripping rolls to the garbage less pleasant.

2. It is inadvisable to allow a four-year-old to put his finger in your mouth, especially if you have not personally washed his hands thoroughly within the last 13 seconds.

3. In the entire history of their existence, car alarms have never served any purpose other than to go off at inopportune times and irritate the s*** out of everyone, a group which most importantly includes myself.

4. Vin Diesel's best movie is still The Iron Giant.

5. I have a problematic compulsion to shave the world down to multiples of five.

North Dakota on my mind

In a footnote yesterday, I suggested that I might compare* the U.S. state of North Dakota to a state of near-death.

You must understand that I say this based on the fact that it's the only U.S. state from which I haven't yet recorded a visit to this blog. Every other state has sent me anywhere from a handful to well over a thousand hits, and in fact half the states have visited at least a hundred times, along with 53 foreign countries, but between the two Dakotas, I'm holding steady at 1 visit in almost 8 months.

What gives, Dakotas?!? We must have some common interests or interpersonal connection that might trick you into coming here. Given that you have the highest percentage of churchgoing citizens in the U.S. (according to Wikipedia**) and your highest point is something called White Butte, I feel sure it's a temptation when I suggest you can stop by once in awhile to yell at me for being a "filthy, godless, America-hating, city-slicking, Obama-loving, liberal hippie!" Sound good? You know it does.

Actually, the most cutting of criticisms would be that this whole post is just a ploy to attract an unsuspecting hitchhiker or two wandering the Google turnpike from up Dakota way. This, however, is not remotely accurate, and furthermore: "Gov. John Hoeven", "Mt. Rushmore sucks", Sioux, departing, "Western Meadowlark", "flights out", Minot, "how much longer till I can leave", and "Who needs Mt. Rushmore, anyway... we're just not that showy".

Whatever you wanna say to me now, funny-talking folks, fire at will-- my comment board is open as always!

In closing, it is a distinct honor to disappoint you, my likely-incensed casual North Dakotan drop-ins. I'd love you to stay, but if you simply can't, I ask only that you leave a tiny piece of your Very Upper Midwest souls with my friends at Google Analytics on your way back out the door, so I can finally finish coloring in my cool map of the U.S. various shades of green***.

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* In case you were born/raised in North Dakota, or you have family there, or you'd just like to defend a physically large state containing only almost exactly 10 times the number of people as the minor Chicago suburb in which I live, please note the supremely artful and undeniably endearing hedging of my phrasing^ here. I'd appreciate it if instead of cursing at me, you just chuckled lovingly and suggested I go into politics. ...Okay, go ahead now.

** This is a disclaimer that must always accompany any fact taken from Wikipedia-- new rule.

*** They don't call it "Anal-ytics" for nothing!

^ Or alternatively, you could just admire my extensive and arguably excessive use of adverbs and gerunds.

Ay, there's the rub

I haven't been sleeping much lately, due to the many balls (work, the kids, writing, blogging*, relaxing) I've put in the air for myself to juggle, so I figure I'm about at the end of some kind of cycle wherein I'll have to crash for hours upon hours for a few days. The signs of this are numerous, such as falling asleep sitting up, feeling like I have cotton behind my eyes, and wishing my wife a good day at work before heading off to bed.

But a pretty definitive sign came just yesterday, which was a day I got to sleep in after getting to bed by 3, making a nice one-two punch in my favor. I woke up a little bit at 8 when J- got up with M-, then I immediately returned to a state somewhere just above death** for the next few hours.

Around 11:30, J- burst into the room in a rush to grab some clothes while getting the kids ready. Given that 1) she'd been up for several hours, 2) it was pretty bright in our room, and 3) she had a lot of things going on all at once, I think tip-toeing did not rate much consideration at the time. So naturally my brain cast off on its reluctant ascent to the surface, but just before it could get there, my body must have jumped the gun by moving in some significant way. I suspect this because J- began pelting me with a lot of information-laden slings and arrows all at once... something about my parents being on their way over to take the kids down to my aunt and uncle's house for the afternoon, and her needing to look more presentable in order to hand them off, along with various other tangential details.

I feel a need to jump in here to state that because the kids are so effective at waking everyone up when their days begin, and because J- and I take turns at getting up with them, neither of us is usually technically asleep, or at least not very deeply, in the late morning when we get to "sleep in". I think she was expecting to find me lounging there in denial, or even reading a book. But of course I wasn't even capable of dreaming of reading a book. I was probably dreaming of sleeping and dreaming some more, in an infinite chain of simple pleasure.

So since as you know, my body was in no state to let go of sleep lightly, and since I knew nothing of these impromptu plans and was still struggling to emerge from my typically-millisecond-long trip through that zone in which I forget that I even have kids, I think it's understandable that I was a touch overwhelmed even after a full minute of coming-to, much like a character in one of those many body-switching movies Hollywood has churned out.***

Like any practical person, as I tried to make sense of this unfamiliar data stream, I began at the beginning. I did my best to open my eyes and, before gaining focus on what would be her incredulous face, I asked for the basic piece of information I lacked for gaining a foothold on everything else:

"What day is it?"

---

* The blogging ball is shining nicely, though, as usual-- this post marks my 200th.

** That state somewhere just above death? Possibly North Dakota. Stay tuned tomorrow for an elaboration of this theory.

*** E.g. The Family Man, Freaky Friday, Mr. Destiny... the list goes on and on.

Clutteropolis

You know you need to start shaping up in the housecleaning department when a 4-year-old who's as oblivious and messy as any other comes into the kitchen, where you've just loaded the dishwasher before clearing and wiping the counter (and everything!), and he suspiciously asks, "Why's it so clean in here??!"

Let me clarify that his threatened tone seemed to indicate this was somehow a well-established sign that we would be dropping him off at the orphanage later that afternoon.

You might be thinking, "But Dan, I thought you rode the OCD dragon, and thus would have a spotlessly clean house for us to be jealous of?" Well, I assure you that my current roommates douse themselves in dragon repellent daily, so I am easily outmatched versus the controlled amount of the Demon Power I allow to seep through the pressure valve. This is not a force to be easily unleashed and recaged, before you suggest that I let it out to play for a week or so and then go back onto a strict maintenance system.

When living alone or otherwise having complete control over a space, I just keep things in balance by reminding myself frequently that perfection is not possible-- my ideal living area would look pretty unremarkably normal to the untrained eye. I don't like to Clean with a capital C because things can get out of hand for me easily, so I prefer to just live neatly so I don't really ever have to clean.

Moving is not helpful for this, and neither is living with people who just aren't wired this way. Not only do we have stacks of junk and half-filled boxes distributed throughout our house, dating back to just over a year ago when we moved here, but we've actually moved backwards by adding to the collection.

When school ended in June, we were blessed with the arrival of everything that would normally fill a classroom serving 15 special-needs pre-teenagers and the two adults teaching them, plus all the many assorted things that had been disappearing from our house over the course of 9 months.

And the blindsiding left hook to go along with that uppercut is the puppy that followed the other stuff home-- crap from retiring teachers desperate to lighten their own loads* at the expense of anyone naive** enough to do it for them.

A minor sample of the kind of thing we're left with, in addition to the usual boxes of unnecessary toys, old magazines, and if-I-knew-what-was-in-them-I'd-be-obligated-to-put-it-all-away, is as follows:

• Boxes with 20 copies of the same questionably-useful books.
• An assortment of 30-year-old Tupperware bowls with no lids.
• Bags of old coffee mugs/potted plants (mold is a plant, right?).
• Milk crates filled with three-hole punches and other desk junk, inexplicably including four (yes, four) staplers of various shapes and sizes (always advisable with a toddler in the house).
• Half a box of "ladies" shaving cream samples, for the hairier children in school.
• A bunch of stupid signs and posters with cartoon characters trying to teach me things I already know.

All I can say is at least as far as this goes, I'm glad school has started again, because I've finally gotten most of this stuff out of the house now. However, the resulting empty boxes combined with our usual piles still blew the phone repairman's mind yesterday when I insisted to him that we had been living in this very same apartment with a working phone for over a year, give or take a couple of his company's screwups.

All I can say, upon reflection, is that somebody really needs to straighten things up around here. Whatever happened to my live-in maid service?


* Don't think for a second that I blame them for this, nor that J- won't be doing the same thing someday.

** Whenever the universe calls for naivete, you must know that we will be there. You can sleep soundly tonight and all nights hence, knowing that we will always answer this call and stumble foolishly into harm's way.

Developments at our house, Vol. 10

Here is the 10th nearly-monthly set of Developments at our house:

1. Due to the recent removal of a bothersome mole, I can no longer in good conscience equate my intimate knowledge of something to that of the back of my hand. At least, not for a couple of years, 'cause I mean, what the hell is going on over there? Up is down, down is up... I could swear I used to have more knuckles. I feel absolutely adrift whenever I look over towards that hand, like someone else must be reaching around from behind me, or something. And I can't help but thinking their hideous hand would be almost tolerable to look at with the addition of some kind of beauty mark.

2. My 4-year-old son D- has made official his creation of a new word --poinking-- by using it in conversation for the 500th time. I was more than a little disappointed when balloons didn't fall from the ceiling. I'd peg his definition of the word, based on context, as something like, "To poke with extreme prejudice."

3. I have made a bold new resolution to begin to really decide what specifically I will start improving about things around here.

4. I've found that a 4-year-old inexplicably whispering in your ear the very detailed and suddenly secret story of how he went to the bathroom, and then washed his hands all by himself, comes off much like an obscene phone call appealing to an impossibly small niche audience. Hence it is an extremely disturbing experience.

5. As an update on one of my previous resolutions, I am making great progress towards not dividing everything possible in my life into multiples of five.

The DTs are now the LDs*

I have a potentially tragic announcement. Are you ready? Have you braced yourselves?

I'll be camping in the wilds of Minnesota** all next week. Starting today, in fact. That's right, folks-- I'll be going without The Internet for a whole week for the first time in a very long time. Needless to say, in using this blog as my primary writing practice tool, I have amped up my time spent online to an unhealthy degree, so this crash will likely hit me hard.

But I'm sure it's for the best-- it must be for the best, because otherwise I will have been tortured for nothing. Then I'd have to rival Mr. Charlton Heston (R.I.P.) in my tantrum-ry by falling to the ground, cursing the cruel world, and telling whoever is kind enough to help to get their filthy hands off me. Then I'd likely sail right over the top by demanding they let my kbps go and screaming something unintelligible about Soylent Green.

Anyway, what you have to look forward to in my absence are a few short posts set to appear on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and possibly two post-free days after that, while I try to get my act back together. I'll probably have to skip replying to your comments for this coming week, unfortunately, but I did finally post replies to the past few posts yesterday-- check them out if you're so inclined (or bored waiting for a new post to appear).

I fear opening my blog feed reader after a week away. My deepest apologies if I seem to have forgotten any of you for awhile-- I'll be catching up as best I can whenever I can!


* In case this title makes no sense, because it's late right now, LD of course equals LiteralDan, and DT equals Oscar gold!

** Also known as "Minnestoa" to typing fingers everywhere.

Six more weeks of posting

Hello? Is anybody there? Can I open my eyes? Is it safe?

No, your tenuous grip on sanity is not slipping-- I didn't post yesterday. And, might I add, I'm happy to see that the world as we know it still seems to exist. That means I can hold off sending out those tote bags for the foreseeable future.

I know that my daily posting is a subject probably only worthy of comment in my own mind, but I've let myself become obsessed because I'm trying to use it to help build my writing habits, and I'm wary of slippery slopes and the power of temptation and all that. That being said, I'm going to try not posting this weekend, to recharge my batteries after a long week (possibly helped by a free Slurpee today).

Hopefully then I'll be back with daily posts of some sort, at least, as I try to work out some kind of schedule that allows me to focus and produce higher-quality material interspersed with conversation posts and other such amusing trifles.

I just know that if I was to start regularly holding off posting each "good" post for a day, and spend more time editing and crafting it, I'd be likely to start deciding that each one needed another day* to be really good, and I would then either take an extra day (or two) to make each one better or, more likely, put off doing anything with it in favor of whatever else in the world came up that was not what I had planned to do. You know how many mostly-written posts I have cropped up in my Drafts folder that I can't stand the sight of because they feel like a chore? A lot.** But I need to overcome my reluctance and weak stomach to get to rereading and revising things more, or I'll never get any better.

So in the meantime, I ask you all to read my posts with a grain of salt, however that works physically, and see through the extra crud and tangents for what the end product would be if I took more time and if I read through them more than once. You'll find the quality of this blog rocketing up immediately with that filter applied, I hope (depends on how vivid your imagination is).

While you're at it, add a liberal dose of deliciously snobby literary allusions and deep metaphysical insight, leaving me something just short of a typical Black Hockey Jesus post at The Wind In Your Vagina. Yes, I suppose that is what I now aspire to-- silver medals are just as nice.

Or at least that's what my mom always told me.


* Read: the portion of the day I get to spend doing such things.
** See, I'm so drained I don't even have a trademark witty*** exaggeration.
*** Witty as defined by me, while in the Love zone of my love-hate relationship with my self.

Editor's Note: Until I actually receive a silver medal, I'll have to console myself with this very latest surprising recognition.

Just a little sleight of heel

I have reason to believe my daughter is a computer prodigy at the tender age of 1.

As this blog and my job history (as well as, among others, my wife, my family, casual acquaintances, and anyone sitting in my house throughout a typical day who's capable of understanding how a clock works) can attest, I've put in the time to become much more than familiar with the ways of a computer.

I live for shortcuts and for new ways to make my life easier and therefore less meaningful. I have spreadsheets of useful Alt codes and other keyboard/mouse combinations that can work miracles and wow the uninitiated, but I generally don't need them, because my inexplicable feeling of need leaves my brain wide open and receptive to these new tidbits and tricks, which are immediately written to permanent file storage.

That being said, my daughter has the ability to, while I am staring right at her, press buttons and make things happen on my computer that I didn't even know could happen, much less how to bring them about via shortcut. She conjures new effects, windows, and even programs right out of thin air without me being able to tell how she did it.

If this sounds like an exaggeration, know that even if you doubt my claim that I have never, ever exaggerated at all in my entire life, I am absolutely telling nothing but the straight truth right now.

And, just so you know, I'm not talking about old-school peanuts like holding down SHIFT for 8 seconds until FilterKeys comes on, I'm talking about stuff like this:

Now, users of the Opera browser might be familiar with this option, but I'm a relative newbie to it, and I'm only mostly sure that this dialog box came from that program. She summoned it, or possibly called it into existence entirely, this morning when climbing up on my lap for comfort while dealing with her fever, using only her heel! Her heel!!

Oh, how she mocks my confused desire to play apprentice to her wizened master.