Wordjanitor Strikes Again

First, there was a question of the location of the spare toilet paper. @ couldn’t find it. He looked in the right places. I told him to check the shelf at eye level. Oops, wrong eyes. TG had put it at eye level, except it was his eye level. (Remember, the T stands for Tall… ) Even better, it was at the back of the shelf. TG's choice of TP placement brought on a discussion of whether he was opposed to @ actually using toilet paper. TG claimed he was trying to get @ to think about Star Trek. @ had to think a second… Wait, Klingons? Yep. “Stop… that’s not funny.” Somehow that brought up a question of pronunciation. Specifically, is the name of the planet pronounced yur-ay-niss or yurin-us ? Where’s the syllable emphasis? Is it a long a or a short a ? Because yur-ay-niss just sounds gross and yurin-us doesn’t sound much better and it doesn’t even make sense anyway. I mean, why would pee come out of something labeled with a word that actually has the word has anus in it? ...

First, let's be clear. I am not one of those people who has all of the holiday decorations staged and ready to put up immediately after the T-day turkey carcass has been turned to soup. Yet, there's a somewhat crazed looking eight-foot inflatable T-Rex on my lawn, complete with Santa hat, sweater, and a nifty little tree. Why? Because I wanted the Saint Bernard. As soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted it. Really, really wanted it. A nine-foot tall inflatable lawn puppy. Nine feet of awesome. Nine feet of cute. But I didn't want it because it's cute. Within minutes, maybe a few dozen seconds, I had a plan. I had it all figured out. I had a three-step plan.

Sometimes I just have to go back in time to laugh out loud. Enjoy.

@ had an art project at school for which he created a pot of gold. The pot was titled "I wish everyone in the world had..." and he had labeled each coin with a different thing. His choices a bed peace books a dog a tent to play in a giant excavator Practical, altruistic, while at the same time uniquely @. Sometimes he just makes me laugh out loud.

How to Explain Instinct to a Six-Year-Old Me: If you saw a doughnut running across the yard, you would try to catch it and eat it, right? @: Doughnuts don't run, mommy. Me: But if doughnuts could run and you saw one in Barbara's yard? @: I'd catch it and eat it! But mommy, you're still goofy. Why to Explain Instinct to a Six-Year-Old This morning, Luke followed his oh-so-doggy instinct and caught a squirrel. It was a baby squirrel. Probably a preteen in the world of squirrel years. Luke had chased the mama squirrel and lost. He turned around to find himself staring at the baby squirrel. The chase was short and fruitful. See squirrel. See squirrel run. Chase squirrel. Catch squirrel. Wait! What? I caught it? I've never caught anything. What do I doooooo? Uh oh, they're coming toward me. They look concerned. She's yelling "house!" Drop the squirrel! OK, I'm going into the house. You don't have to ask me twice! What just happened? I actually c...

I gave my camera to @ at the dog park today. He took 142 pictures. We who were raised with film, have a hard time just clicking that button so freely. He has no fear of "wasting film" and takes some really cool pix. Today he was a man on a mission -- he took a picture of every tennis ball in the big dog area. Sometimes there are only a few around, today they'd multiplied like so many mushrooms after a rainstorm. (Hmm... Kind of makes me wonder, given the recent rain, where tennis balls really come from...) Herewith, a bit less than three minutes for your amusement. @ is especially fond of the way I did the end... Canned music from Microsoft...

@ and I took Lucas to the "bark park" today. I know of few better places to take a six-year-old kidlet and an 80-pound dog who have been surrounded by various sets of four walls during a week of downpour. We spent nearly two hours among the other sun-seeking dogs and their drivers. When we first started going to the dog park, both @ and Luke would stay close to me, with Luke eventually giving in to curiosity and dogness to venture forth and join the ranks of random pooches enjoying the park. Today, Luke never stopped moving. He wandered, sniffed, wrassled, chased, mounted, marked, marked, marked, sniffed, lather, rinse, repeat. He gently stopped by when another dog approached @, just to be nearby. He's fun to watch with his big slobbery dog grin as he jogs to and fro. But watching @ today was even better. He followed Luke here and there, saw dogs he wanted to meet and talked to their people, and introduced Luke to potential pals. His favorite dogs of the day were tw...

Ah, New Year's Eve. A night fit for profound thought. Or not... @ and I were talking about cookies. He decided I should make dog cookies for blue doggie (his constant snooze companion). Me: Do I make them out of real dogs? @: Dog cookies aren't made from dogs, they're made from things dogs like. Me: But apple pies are made from apples, not things apples like.   @: Just make them out of cat poo. Dogs like cat poo, especially Butchie. Me: Eeeeew, that sounds pretty gross.   @: But it's funny too, right? Me: Yep, it's gross and funny. @: Oh, and it has to be really fresh so the dogs are attracted by the smell.  It's official. I've been verbally one-upped by a six-year-old.

Things are well-fastened at my house. An elaborate system of bungee cords connects doors to one another so that "you need to know the unlocking secret" to enter a room. Fear of being tangled like a helpless fly prompted me to remove the ones strung between doors in the hallway. Forgetting the web in the middle of the night could leave me as bait for the dreaded bungee spider. Various arrangements of electrical- and duct-tape striping code the orange cones I once used to coach soccer practices. The coding has something to do with guiding guests through the house vs. women in cleats around a soccer field. I've received the explanation a few times. Next time I should probably take notes. And we just had a long series of one-page bedtime stories from The Jumbo Duct Tape Book , immediately preceded by a conversation along the lines of "No, we don't really duct tape dogs and horses." (A conversation to which Luke paid rapt attention in the hopes that the m...

I have fun with Facebook update posts--those odd little things that have taught so many of us to refer to ourselves in the third person. Being a wordgeek, I'm entertained by finding ways to express myself in a sentence--hopefully with some humor attached. Reading them gives me a quick read on my friends--laughing, standing in line somewhere, stressed, vacationing, hospitalized. Heck, Friday I learned DaveBro was (briefly) 40 miles away at SFO instead of the usual several hundred in Texas. (Brat) I sometimes look back at my recent posts for some sort of accounting of the week. Apparently, animals are really causing me stress lately. Wordjanitor... is chillin' in the sunny backyard and checking e-mail for flaming chick ens. would be getting this stuff done if not for the flying monkeys throwing poo. is just having a fine ol' time juggling rabid wolverines and herding tired cats. laughs: "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinn...

Luke brought me a holiday gift this year... I had to wait to mention it, but I think it's finally safe. I figured I should be cautious. I spent the last few weeks scouring the headlines, google news searching, and otherwise verifying that come next winter, my dog won't be responsible for going way beyond Seuss's Grinch. When we're up in G'town visiting LD , Luke has the run of the woods. No fences, no leash. He patrols the property using the house as his base. A bird -- or for that matter, a moth -- flutters on the other side of the pond and he's off to the races to check it out. He sleeps quite well at night because he spends the days in nearly constant motion -- generally at high speed crashing through the woods, circling the pond, or traversing the driveway. A couple of days after Christmas, while my dad and I were moving random slash piles to burn piles, Luke emerged triumphant from the woods carrying a branch. As my proud pooch approached, I noticed the br...

@ has been talking about snow for weeks, ever since I told him we'd be coming up to LD's for the holiday. We drove up in the rain Christmas Eve-- he sat with a blue bucket next to him and explained how he'd use it to collect snow. Although it rained all night, temperatures didn't dive low enough to produce snow. I considered attempting to come up with words to a new song -- I'm Dreaming of a Muddy Christmas -- but the initial disappointment of missing snow was quickly replaced with the desire to rip into presents. Like most kids promised the arrival of Santa overnight, he woke up with the energy of a guy on his fifth can of Red Bull. After breakfast and opening presents, the rain turned to sleet. Shortly thereafter, on cue, it turned to snow. Both @ and Lucas thoroughly enjoyed it.

I shall defeat you, evil bubble wrap. I am the hound. You will feel my wrath.

I hereby declare my couch once again to be a couch. I will sit on it. I will read. I will watch movies. I will use those fabulously soft blankets I bought for cozying up rather than serving as a helicopter deck. My couch has, at various times during this week, been: a helicopter a really big rescue helicopter a barge a fireboat a scuba dive boat And, even more randomly today: a chicken coop. @'s imagination is amazing and amusing at the same time. The detail he puts into his creations -- that he will at length explain -- is always very carefully considered. These pillows are the seats, but those pillows are the parachutes. The smaller animals are afraid, so they stay away from the doors and windows in the middle of the cabin. We were rescuing animals yesterday. The burping cat (aka a stuffed Garfield for which he does not know the actual name but saw on television at some point) had fallen overboard and the dogs were lowering the rescuer to save him. The gray dog was to do first ai...

Four years ago, @ had been home from the hospital for less than a month. He was 4.5 months old and maybe weighed 7 pounds. He was attached to an oxygen tank and sat monitor 24x7. (It beeped. We jumped. ) We gave him breathing treatments 3x a day. He saw at least three doctors a week. He took more meds than the average octogenarian. We had to track his feeding, meds, and diapers on a spreadsheet to ensure he got enough calories each day, that the input & output matched, etc. When he threw up, we had to estimate how many calories came back at us. The kid could puke for distance. That was then. On Sunday @ and I took a two-mile hike in the hills. He walked the entire way. He found deer tracks and we saw deer. He met a horse. We talked to the chickens in the 4H coop at the park. Later, I worked in the yard and he practiced running. After the hike. Keep in mind, he's not yet three feet tall. Those little legs took a lot of steps. We had gone to a track meet to see a friend's dau...

Because he's four and one curious little guy... the most-asked question in my son's universe is "why?" He and I often twirl into circular logic when the questions get silly or I bring out the heavy poultry artillery -- chickens. Why did you change the lightbulbs? Because these are fluorescent and last longer but use less power. Why do they use less power? Because it's a different technology. Why is it different? Because the chicken crossed the road. Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side. Why are you laughing?

OK, it's New Year's Eve and I'm attached to a keyboard. I have a four-year-old and the stomach flu, so I'm all for uneventful evenings. I had high aspirations of writing meaningful things, but it's just not in the cards, stars, or in the air tonight. And, well, things could be worse! Love me, love my dog? Did they have to send in a police dog? Nude Couple Grapple Over Dog Near Shower Monday, December 31, 2007 (12-31) 19:27 PST Bremerton, Wash. (AP) -- A 25-year-old woman was arrested for investigation of second-degree assault for getting into an argument with her boyfriend over whether his dog should be in the bathroom while the couple were taking a shower together. A police report said the man, 26, wanted his dog to join them in the bathroom, but the woman objected on Thursday night. The woman told her boyfriend that if the dog doesn't stay out, s...

Sometimes you're faced with situations that, well, it's likely no one you know will ever have to face themselves. And sometimes those things are life-changing. And other times they're just freakin' weird. Case in point: Walked into my back yard Saturday afternoon and found a four-foot lizard. An iguana named Iggy, to be more precise. Unfortunately, Iggy was deceased. And unfortunately, I had to figure out what to do with Iggy before @ also discovered this little bit of Wild Kingdom (brought to you by Mutual of Omaha) in the back yard. Where's that safari jacket when I need it? After the WTF moment passed, I removed said reptile from the lawn and fairly nicely packaged it for the neighbor so that, when she returned from her latest experimentation with mind-altering chemicals, she could bond with her green friend before disposing of it. I considered a few alternatives, including leaving it on the hood of her car, but realized that the car has actually been missing f...

@ and I have a running commentary about chickens. When I don't know how to answer him, I bring in the chickens. He likes me to incorporate chickens into his bedtime stories. Sometimes he makes it very clear that I am, indeed, a "big mean chicken." When he barks, I cluck back at him and he generally replies with, "Quit bok-bokking mama!" (So then I meow and wind up going through a litany of other animal noises until I give up and return to the rusted trusted barnyard fowl.) With @'s brother, it's hawks. The relationship is different. I don't get to play the verbal games. But I see hawks in odd places. Or, it's possible the hawks were always there and I didn't see them. Shortly after the boys were born, a young hawk moved into in our neighborhood -- in the mix of Silicon Valley's freeways, expressways, and Starbucks. At first he seemed to spend a lot of time going from tree to tree as if trying to find other hawks or get his bearings. Event...

Luke is having a slumber party. His bestest buddy Butch is here. Butch belongs to Jeff and Katie down the street. He and Luke can chase each other, wrassle, and otherwise convince the uninitiated that there's about to be bloodshed. If I open my front door, Luke tries to bolt to Butch's house. If Jeff and Katie open theirs, Butch bolts over here. I swear they have cell phones; it's as if they can hear the respective doors open three houses away. I'm trying to decide whether the two knuckleheads can both sleep in the house tonight. They're alternately chilling and then remembering that they're nuts. Luke is nosing a chair across the dining room and Butch is trying to figure out why. It's like watching a cartoon, at least until one attempts to mount the other. Then it's more like Animal Planet. It's good to get insight into your friends' lives. Unfortunately, I now have insight into Jeff's knee. Butch is here because Jeff and Katie are at the...