count along with A

Here are a few funny things that A has said lately. There are so many more, but of course I can't remember them unless I write them down immediately.

Counting: One, two, free, four, five, six, eleven, teven!

The real names for creatures with spiky quills: pokey-pines

The substance Tinkerbell uses to fly: pissy-dust.


Yup, it sure is.

free from the smell of poo

Well this weekend gets the rating of "Suck" on the big Suckometer. We had plans, plans were changed--but how they were changed involved some icy snow, a basement sink full of raw sewage, a cold for me, and a defiant streak from A that drove D temporarily insane. Want the juicy, smelly details? Read on. If not, I don't blame you.

Snow, first of all. I'm over it. Done. I liked it before, it was fun, but enough already. I want some dang hoot global warming. We were supposed to go to a nice Mexican restaurant with new friends on Friday, but that got cancelled by the inch of ice pellets.

Saturday, I was all ready to head out with my best friend, came back in the house from dropping off something at a neighbor's, and smelled poo. Not a new thing--I thought it would be the third day in a row that A dropped the bomb in the potty, so the smell would be a cause for celebration. How wrong I was.

There was raw sewage in the basement sink, and more came out every time we turned on water, flushed the toilets, or ran the bath. It was on the floor, soaking into things that were lying there (thankfully, D did laundry already so it wasn't a total loss of clothing), and reeking in a big way. D was cleaning off the floor, putting junk in the garbage, and getting the place ready for a plumber to do the deal. We've gone through this before. Our house is older than some, and clay pipes were used for sewage. Clay pipes get invaded by tree roots, which catch all sorts of lovely things, and then regurgitate them into one's basement. Last time, the plumber pulled out roots and objects he called "Sewer Rats." Let's just say that wads of cotton with string attached should not be flushed. You don't ever want to see them again.

This time, I thought it would be my fault again: we started using so-called Flushable Wipes with A (Kan-doo, which is probably going to be sued for false advertising. Everyone I talked to says, Don't flush them! Well I flushed a few.). I thought they looked cool, and would be one more thing to encourage A to enjoy the experience of wiping his own butt. What was I thinking anyway, I don't really know. He's not supposed to enjoy all this, he's just supposed to quit crapping his pants so I don't gag every day. Simple.

We called a lot of people for plumber recommendations, no one answered, or had anyone who worked weekends. Meanwhile, A had had 2 accidents in his pants, D was frustrated and so was I, and I sent A to the naughty zone for being defiant. As he sat there, pantsless, he peed all over the carpeting on the steps, with no remorse. D, tired of dealing with crap he can't fix, decided then and there to pull up all the carpeting on the stairs. I was fried, annoyed and etc, wiped A off and took him to eat lunch at Einsteins. Then I dropped him off at nana and pop-pop's, and they took him for the night, bless them. D and I patched things up, turned the heat off in the house so that the stink would stay in the basement, turned it back on when we were too cold to care any more about stink or anything else, waited til 1:30 AM for the plumber to come, and then went to bed (after I totally kicked his ass in Yahtzee. It was quite satisfying).

The plumber finally came this afternoon, it was roots and not wipes that gummed up the works, but we're still out 300 bucks. The smell is much better, I took an amazing shower, sprayed perfume on myself and felt like I lived in a palace. Now for the cold to go away.

more pics from maine

My sister sent me some more action shots from our trip. I am very much my father's daughter--I take closeups of flowers, landscapes with no people in them, and candid shots when people don't know I am taking pictures. It's a "bothering-people" phobia I think. Much in the way that being a telemarketer or a paparazzo would be my private version of hell. --oh, add dirty public restrooms with no doors on them, and that's about it. Anyway, I was forbidden to use the camera (well, not really) for trips, when we got back from our honeymoon and there was a total of one picture with D and me in it. We had to paste two pictures together for another shot. Lame, I know. I guess I was just more interested in the mountains and rainbows and wee chipmunks than taking a shot of our faces in front of them all. Ah well!

So here we are...Uncle C is doing the wind-up for WWF SMACKDOWN!!
Hi, were FREEZING! Poor A's hat was rakishly skewed by our trips down the hill. It was probably better that way, as more of his face was protected!
I had on about half a closet's worth of clothing. 5 shirts/sweaters, a coat, 3 pairs of pants and 2 pairs of socks. Almost ditto for the little man. He loves his snowpants, and calls them his "Big Boddum pants!"
mk and Auntie S. The nice Peruvian guy who knitted my hat would have been proud!Auntie M in the Tube. She can't feel her feet for an hour afterwards.
mk and A hurtling down the hill. So it doesn't look high from the picture, but trust me. If this picture had sound, it would be shrieking and laughing at the same time. Poor A probably had no hearing left in one ear.
Cousin M lined his cars so straight, and A created an Italian traffic jam...

Hopefully C gets workman's comp for DSB--Daddy see-saw Back.

the bunny's back

In a literal and figurative sense. A, my sister and I went to Maine to visit my other sister and her family last week, and now we have returned. So has the bunny in our back yard--or at least, not the bunny we had last fall, but the Replacement Bunny sent from headquarters I suppose. It's more chubby on the chin, which smooshes up his eyes in a saccharine-Japanese-cartoon, Hulihee beard sort of way, and it's a marmalade color that I like very much. It showed up a couple days before we left, and spends its days hiding in the shadow next to the shed. There's a lot of clover back there, and probably some homelike bunny scents from our last boarder.

Our trip was long, fun, and exhausting. We visited some friends in a stopover in Boston, drove the next day to Camden, ME, and spent a few days hanging out with cousins, sisters, 2 dogs, and the Cold. I had never seen a frozen-over lake before, with trucks parked on the ice and guys fishing there. I saw "Snowmobile Crossing" signs, complete with Live People on snowmobiles--get this--crossing. We also spent the coldest afternoon tubing down an enormous hill, which was both terrifying and exhilirating. A, inheriting the thrill-seeking gene from D, shakily said after our first time hurtling down the frozen hill,"caaaaaan...we.....doit....again??" Of course we can. Just let me pluck out the five new grey hairs that just shot out of my scalp.

One day we visited my nephew's preschool, a sunny, engaging place that had really clever centers for kids to play in. My favorite idea was a sort of digging center, a trough full of colored macaronis that the kids could scoop into jars, push with little bulldozers and just plunge their little fingers in, a la Amelie. Better than sand, more colorful than wood chips...

Most days A and the boys occupied themselves with running up and down the hallways of my sister's house, shrieking with glee, and taking comfy naps while I sat and worked on my ripple stitch blankie. (scroll down there for my pikachu spectators)

Rubadubdub, three bubs in the tub. It was a bit cramped in there, but the boys didn't seem to care!

And of course, since Maine is a little slice of Yarn Heaven on Earth, I visited 3 yarn shops and had a chance to drool, veg my mind a bit, and pet some lovely stuff. One shop had a newly-restocked sale bin, I got two skeins of Maine-grown alpaca (the grey and teal hanks below), some gorgeous tweedy wool at a shop right over the border that my CGOA friend told me about, and some fun fuschia/orange/green tweed cotton at a Camden shop that sells lots of needlepoint and knitting supplies as well. Twas lovely.
We drove 13 hours on Saturday to get back home, lost an extra hour (oh, wait--we were "saving" daylight, not losing, right?), and collapsed into bed. I am quite tie-tie still.