The Big Bang

This morning on the way to school, India asked a question about The Big Bang - how it happened, when it happened, etc.

Anya piped in and said, "I don't think they should call it The Big Bang. I think they should call it The Humongous Space Kablooie."

It's Happy Birthday Time Again!

There's a wonderful 8-year-old girl I know!

(No, not this one, though she's got quite a story.)

Happy Birthday to Wifey

"Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday dear Mari-Rooooose!
Happy Birthday to you!

Magic Mirror

Wondering something:

All three of our girls have the habit of talking into mirrors. I don't mean they go off by themselves and do goofy stuff in front of the mirror - everybody does that.

I mean, you're having a conversation with one of them, and instead of looking at you when she's talking, she's looking at herself in a mirror (e.g., a dresser mirror in the bedroom or the door mirror in the bathroom).

I can't count how many times I've said to them, "Talk to me, not the mirror." India seems to be growing out of it, but Anya and Quinn do it all the time.

What I'm wondering is, is this normal? Do other kids do this, or is this just another data point for the weirdness of our family?

Now We Are Six

It's somebody's birthday today!

When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five, I was just alive.
But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever,
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

- A. A. Milne

Look What the Girls Caught

The girls went down to the creek yesterday afternoon with a babysitter, and look what they found.

Pretty impressive. It was about 2-3 inches long. Not huge, but bigger than any crawdad I'd ever caught as a kid.

This is a picture of it crawling back into the water after we let it go.

For Sale: My Car in Flames

From the "no good deed goes unpunished" file:

We're trying to sell our car, a '96 Mitsubishi Galant. It's a great car - we've had it 5 years and it has run like a top. We're selling it only because the girls don't fit in the backseat anymore.

Anyway, our next door neighbor says he wants to buy it. Great. That's easy.

As I'm putting the paperwork together for him, I realize that the car is due for an oil change. I think to myself, "It would sure be a neighborly gesture if I change the oil for him before we make the deal." So last night after work I take the car to one of those speedy-lube places and they change the oil.

Except there's one problem: They take off the old filter but forget to put on a new one.

I get in the car, start it up and tell them, "That clicking noise wasn't there before." We shut off the car and they quickly spot the problem. Oil has gushed out where the filter is supposed to be - almost all of it. The car is clicking because it's running without oil.

They apologize profusely, put on a filter, refill the car with oil and send me on my way.

A few blocks later I ask myself, "What's that smell?" After another block or so I can see smoke curling out from under the hood.

I zip back to the speedy-lube and when we re-open the hood, smoke pours out as if Cheech and Chong had been in there instead of the engine.

They apologize profusely again, telling me that the smoke is coming from the burning oil that has splattered all over the engine and exhaust. They rinse it off as well as they can and tell me that, while they couldn't get it all off, there's only a small amount left and it'll just burn off as I drive the car. "It'll be gone by tomorrow," the guy assures me.

Okay, fine.

I decide I'll just take the car out on the highway and burn it off. I figure that at highway speeds the oil will burn off fast and the smoke will dissipate quickly.

But before I can get to the highway the car is smoking badly. As I'm sitting anxiously at a stoplight, two women pull up next to me and one of them yells, "Sir, there are flames under your car."

Okay that's it.

I say "Thanks," pull over, call a tow truck and have them tow the car to my regular mechanic. He assures me he can wash off the oil.

So here I am, trying to sell the car - a great, reliable car - and the damn thing is smoking and flaming because the guys at speedy-lube forgot to install a bloody oil filter.

I don't know what to tell my neighbor: "Oh, those flames and smoke? Ignore them - that'll burn off."

Sheesh.

Does Whatever A Spider Can

The new Spider Man movie is out, and the associated advertising and promotional stuff is everywhere.

Tonight Quinn was playing with the Spider Man that came with her kids meal from Burger King.

She called him "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider Man."

Quinn and Sushi

Mari-Rose got take-out sushi for our anniversary dinner a few nights ago - that's because my anniversary gift was a set of sushi dishes (pottery and bronze being the gifts for the 8-year anniversary).

Quinn called the sushi "swooshy."

Anniversary

Today is the 10th anniversary of the day Mari-Rose and I met. What else was going on that day?

• Comet Hale-Bopp was in the sky.
• Blogging was very, very new.
• Tobacco lawsuit blah, blah, blah.
• A prothonary warbler and two caspian terns were spotted at Lake Sangchris (near Springfield)
• The thought du jour was about pornography.
• Cartoonist Ed Barker died at 46.
• It was decided that Jim Jorstad would continue development of the webpage for the University of Wisconsin Educational Media Technology Council.
• Harvard researchers discovered that "mere contact between proteins turns on genes" (ooh la la!)
• Priests with AIDS were eager to talk.
• D. Mark Catlett, Chief Financial Officer of the Veterans Administration, testified before Congress that the VA has "made significant progress toward automating the billing and payment processing of first-party medical receivables..."
• A car dealer provided the site for grandma's bone-marrow drive
• The top grossing movie in theaters was Anaconda. But the best movie was Sling Blade.
• A technology writer bemoaned "the lack of active conversation areas on the Web"
• Not all girls liked Barbie.
• You could consider "going to a friend and asking for a 'Gingrich,' that is, a loan of money from a friend at attractive terms."
• Leah Gotcsik presumably slept better after having bought a futon for $135.
• The St. Louis Cardinals were flying from Miami to Hawaii, to play a series against the San Diego Padres there. (Funny coincidence: Mike Shannon was talking about that very looooong flight during the game broadcast just a couple of days ago.)
• The Internet Public Library debuted Culture Quest!, where children could "join Olivia Owl and Parsifal Penguin as they tour the Web..."
• Massachusetts masons sent supplies to flood victims in Kentucky.

There was more, of course. That's just the first page of Google results!

Anya's Rock

School called this morning. Anya told her music teacher that she had a rock up her nose.

They told her to try to blow it, and sure enough, out came a rock. They're not really sure how it got up there, and Anya wasn't saying.

It's good to be 5.

We Are Now a Family of 19

Yesterday evening I was coming up the stairs when India shouted to me excitedly, "Dad! Come look in Anna's cage!"

I replied, "What, did she have babies or something?"

India squealed, "Yes!"

I went over to look, and sure enough, Anna had 9 pink, wriggling babies stuffed into a corner. So there are now 19 of us:

• 10 hamsters
• 5 humans
• 4 fish

It's like Noah's Ark in here.

PS: In a few weeks we'll have some baby hamsters to give away.

Anna

Ladies and gentlemen, we have an accidental hamster.

Yesterday evening, Quinn and I went to the park, where we discovered three hamsters that someone had dumped in the playground.

Rather than leave the poor things there, we made a quick trip to Petco and bought a hamster cage and supplies.

By the time we got back, we could only manage to rustle up one of them. Quinn named her Anna, after one of the stepsisters in the Cinderella story - you know, Anna, Lana, and Banana.

So ... we have a hamster. Anna.

Quinn's Writing, India's Teeth

Quinn can write a Q - Mari-Rose was working on it with her.

India has lost one lower tooth and the one next to it is quite loose. The first one is already starting to come in.

Hum.

Anya's Morning Quip

This morning as I was getting ready for work, I had Little Feat's "Tripe-Faced Boogie" going through my head. I turned to Anya, who was in the bedroom with me, and quoting the song lyrics, said,

"I'm going to boogie my scruples away!"

Without missing a beat, Anya quipped,

"Spray deodorant all over yourself."

Anya's Language

Anya is developing a language, called "Erconinas." These spellings are mine, phonetic only:

Kop = Statue of Liberty
Moskegranz = mouse
Elbrunans = elephant

My recall may be imperfect, but I'm sure Anya can correct me.

Update: Anya's language has changed. It is now a singing language. Every word is sung rather than spoken. Last night she told me the word for "angel." It took her about 1 minute to sing it. I imagine that if you wrote it out, the word would be about 100 syllables long.

Cookie Boys, Scarves and Carpenters

The girls have been cute this week.

A couple of days ago, Quinn approached me while I was sitting at the dinner table and loudly declared, "You are my cookie boy!"

Then Saturday night, while I was watching Game 1 of the World Series with both India and Anya on my lap, Anya turns to India and says (pertinent to nothing, as far as I could tell): "You're Chris Carpenter!" Whereupon India replies, "YOU'RE Chris Carpenter!" This went on for about 5 minutes, each of them telling the other, in increasingly insistent tones, that they were Chris Carpenter. I didn't even know they knew who Chris Carpenter was. He wasn't pitching, he wasn't on the TV. They just picked it up, I guess. It was pretty funny.

Then yesterday India decided to create a coat out of scarves. She brought out every scarf in the house and tied them around herself. She looked like some kind of odd muppet. It looked warm, too.

Musky

A few days ago Mari-Rose and the girls were down by Sugar Creek, and at the edge of the water they found a tiny baby muskrat which had apparently been abandoned. It was only about two inches long and couldn't have weighed more than an ounce. It was still alive, so they brought it home, wrapped it in a washrag and kept it alive for a day by feeding it milk from the pet store.

Of course, we couldn't keep a muskrat forever, so Mari-Rose found out that the University of Illinois Veterinary School will take in lost little animals like "Musky." She took Musky over there, and he lived for a while, but ultimately didn't make it.

Rest in peace, Musky.

New Member of Our Household

We celebrated a new birth yesterday.

A couple of weeks ago, India brought home a monarch butterfly caterpillar, which she and a friend had found at school. We got to keep it because these caterpillars love milkweed, and we have a lot of that growing on our backyard fence.

We put it in India's bugcatcher, and few days afterwards, it made a chrysalis. Then, yesterday, voila! We had a brand new butterfly. It hung from the top of the bugcatcher a while and dried its wings. When it started flapping around, we released the lid and applauded when it flew away.

So if you see a monarch butterfly, it may have been ours. (They travel widely, y'know.)

Perspective

Today I made a trip to the WGLT Recycled Music Sale with India. When we went, I was in a bad mood.

But at the sale, India was attracted to a cassette single in the "World Music" box. The cassette case had a colorful sleeve which looked like a lot of fun. She asked if we could buy it. I took a look at it, gave it about 3 seconds of thought, realized that "what the hell" was the best response, and bought it. It was only 50 cents. What the hell, indeed.

And I must say that we had a boatload of fun listening to it in the truck on the way home. I think that this was the first time in the 16-year history of the truck that this song has been heard within its doors. It was worth the wait.

You might be asking - what work of sonic genius were we listening to?

Why, naturally..."Macarena."

Which just goes to show that a little perspective goes a long way.