I'm Like An Onion

You know, all layered up.

I love the layering tees you can buy so your shirts don't expose your "lower back"/underwear, allowing you to modestly wear most blouses. There's a problem, though, when all your summer shirts in your closet require a layering tee because in the summer it's too freaking hot to layer!

For some reason when I buy summer shirts I always forget that I only want to wear ONE shirt in the summer, and I end up buying shirts I need to wear something under.

Lay-z

Parking further away from the store is a good idea for many reasons. It decreases the chance your car will get hit by a cart or someone's door. It also gives you the chance to walk an extra 60 feet or so in and another extra few feet back to your car, burning precious calories. Do that every time you park, take the stairs...you could be burning off a few extra pounds a year. Or just getting extra exercise. Whatever. The point is when I park at the gym and see a young girl parking in the closest space--which is a handicapped space--and walk into the building (no limping or anything) I automatically think she's the laziest person on the planet. Then, when I check out her car and it doesn't have a handicapped plate or tag hanging from her mirror, I think she's the most inconsiderate AND the laziest person on the planet. Lots of elderly handicapped people work out there. And I'm pretty sure she didn't have some condition and was pretty much impaired but not quite enough to get a sticker, because in this area those stickers get handed out like candy.

I mean, when I was hugely pregnant and toting Ian around, sure, I parked as close as I could get--without taking handicapped parking, of course. And when Kathy would drive us to church and we would park in the handicapped parking, at least we had a tag. It wasn't Kathy's, or mine, but it was someone's, and the point is nobody else ever had to park in those handicapped spaces. It's different! I'm sure of it.

Fastest Hands This Side of the Mississippi

While we were getting ready for church I happened to walk into the living room just in time to see Kellan shooting a pee stream into the air. This surprised me for many reasons, the least being, how on earth can little babies shoot pee that high into the air? That will always mystify me.

I was most surprised by this event because when I had left the living room a few minutes earlier Kellan was asleep in the pack'n play, fully dressed and diapered, and had his blankets on him. Ian had been pushing the laundry basket around the living room when I left it, and the only explanation is that he turned the laundry basket over, climbed on top, pulled Kellan's covers off, unsnapped the sleeper up to Kellan's armpits, and took off the baby's diaper. And then ran away. Why he decided to do this I don't know. Last week he figured out that if he upeneded the salad spinner he could stand on top of it and climb into the pack'n play's bassinet. He built on that skill by using a pan that's only three inches deep to climb in there. Now he's figured out he can do the same things without having to get inside the play pen.

And so it begins.

Here's some pictures of the kids:

To the Best of My Recollection, No

Today I was eating Batman fruit snacks while I was mentally steeling myself to pour a bowl of generic Froot Loops. I accidentally dropped the fruit snack package and Ian picked it up, pointed to the picture of Batman, and said, "Dad!"

No, Ian, sorry. I know we all want large inheritances and the ability to top anyone's "coolest dad" story, but you'll have to go about it a different way.

For Lack Of A Better Idea...

I don't really have anything to post, but I'm sick of seeing "Toad Spawn" at the top of my page. Sick. So I thought I'd share this great poem by Tennyson I read the other day. Enjoy!

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,
   And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
   When I put out to sea.

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
   Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
   Turns again home!

Twilight and evening bell,
   And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
   When I embark;

For though from out our bourn of Time and Place
   The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
   When I have crost the bar.

Toad Spawn

It turns out that the disgustingly long "worm" was just toad eggs. While frogs lay eggs in clusters, it seems that many toads lay eggs in two really long squiggly strands. We all can sleep peacefully at night now knowing that there aren't 30 foot worms wriggling around out there...just lots of toad spawn.

Don't Puke

Since Allison posted about a lion dog, I thought I'd put up a picture of another freak of nature: one of the gross worms we saw yesterday.

We were walking along a National Park dirt road and we saw this in the puddle:


It's hard to tell what's going on there. Jesse had to stand back a bit to get the whole thing in the picture. Some kind of worm was in the puddle, but it's hard to see because it had been there for a while--it had turned all translucent. The black stuff must have been stuff it was digesting. If you click on the picture you can see footprints to the right of the worm in the dirt, and that will give you some kind of scale. It was at least fifteen feet long (it's doubled up on itself), but it was also all coiled up, too, so it was probably nearer twenty feet. When we walked back down the road we passed maybe five or six more of these nasties, all in puddles.

I found a site talking about earth worms that can grow up to 15 feet long in Australia, but this is much longer than that. I'm going to go back and collect one in a bottle (or make Jesse do it) and bring it to the university and have them tell me what it is. Has anyone seen anything like this? Thinking about it is starting to make me nauseous....

Times ARE Hard

I got an email from a friend telling me about a makeup company, Eyes-Lips-Face, that is being bought by Nordstrom. They are selling all their old product really cheap to replace with Nordstrom-labeled product. I thought I should pick up some things since they were so cheap, but couldn't find good pictures of colors from their website. Jesse suggested I go to Norstrom's website and see if they had better descriptions and pictures, and this is what I found:

Customer Alert - eyeslipsface.com
We have learned that some of our customers received e-mails from an unauthorized and unknown source regarding the website eyeslipsface.com. We want you to know that Nordstrom and Nordstrom.com are not affiliated with eyeslipsface.com or the e.l.f. product line, nor with any e-mail regarding that website or product line. Nordstrom does not sell e.l.f. products.

Yes, Nordstrom doesn't sell E-L-F products, but Target does, and you can find it in their trial-size bins. The date at the top of the customer alert on Nordstrom's website was June 2008.

Jesse also found this thread on epinions.

The posts on epinions start from 2005 and are as recent as March 20th.

I guess the joke is that you buy stuff from them, and they never send it to you, but still keep your money? Has anyone else heard of this? Are times so hard that they can't figure out a better scam than what they've been doing for the past three years?

That Boy Ain't Right

Ian sleeps way worse than Kellan does. Yesterday he got up at 4:30 and never went back to sleep. Then, last night he woke up for an hour in the middle of the night. Kellan, on the other hand, slept for six hours straight last night.