Jam-master Jeffrey

My son, Jeffrey is 9 months and has several toys that play music, or count to ten, or otherwise try to educate him. (An aside--thank you to the toymakers who have included volume settings on noise-toys). Jeffrey's at a stage where he's thrilled with trying to pull himself up on things, and uses whatever he can as a prop to get himself more vertical. One of his favorite toys is his "KiddieTrain," an educational toy with letters, numbers, and animal sounds, that turns on automatically when any of the buttons are touched. His favorite thing to do with this toy is to lean on it and spin the train's wheels. The result is that once he places his hand on it to lean, the nice train lady starts talking, except since his entire wobbly weight rests on the same buttons, she keeps trying to tell him that "Thi..Thi...Thi...This is the letter...this is the letter...this is the letter JAY." Sounds like a bad '80's rap.

A Fly-by shatting

This morning I took my 8-month old for a walk. As I was pushing his stroller through the parking lot, I took a direct hit from above of digested...whatever it is that birds eat. A big clump of it, right on my clean white shirt. It reminded me of several things, in no certain order:

1. that this would provide perfect fodder for a long-overdue post
2. the time when my dad took a similar hit, while in a convertible and proudly wearing his expensive cashmere blazer
3. at some point, as parents my husband and I will have to come to consensus on the terminology to use with our son to refer to what landed on me. It's amazing how many options there are. And our usually trusty "What to Expect" book doesn't offer any suggestions. My mom used to say, when I complained of a stomach ache, "Did you have a 'B.M.' today?" I'm not sure how long it took me to understand what she meant, but that one seems pretty obscure. I've never liked the "#2" way of differentiating. Like Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs, who comes into contact with quite a bit of the stuff on his show, we'll probably just call it "poo" and hope it won't affect the boy's opinion of Winnie.

On Fumes

Driving home on the highway today, the gas light came on with about 15 miles to go. Instinctively, I sped up. It always raises my blood pressure to see that light. I start doing computations about how much farther I can go, then I doubt and rethink my computations, all the while pushing the pedal to the floor to make sure I get there before the gas runs out. Ha! It made me wish our car had a nifty indicator that would display the actual amount gas and how far I could go with current speed maintained, etc. Gas seems not only to be more expensive now but seems to run out faster!

I've been annoyed recently that some gas stations try to fool those of us who always reach for the "regular," by disguising the premium pump in the typical regular black and white, or put the pumps out of the expected order, regular in the middle and premium on the end where I'm likely to grab by habit. Very tricky. But I'm wise to them now and doublecheck the price display.

One of the best perks I've ever had at a job was about 5 years ago, when I worked for an internet company that was trying to launch a "name your own price" for gas site. The idea was that buyers would have a special card to pay with at the pump; these cards needed to be tested at as many pumps as possible and one was issued to me. I was able to get free gas for a few months. Unfortunately the launch never quite got off the ground, and I had to give back the card, but it was a nice ride while it lasted!

Colossally gross

I remember reading this story when they made the discovery a few years back--a colossal squid caught in New Zealand. What I find extremely disturbing about this creature is not only the description of "eyes the size of dinner plates," but the fact that this monster, along with all its smaller cousin squids in fact, has...a beak. It just doesn't seem to fit--a beak, in an otherwise gooey gelatinous body. And a pretty large beak, I imagine...these things can grow to a length of 46 feet . Just seems wrong. Blecch.

Misunderstood

I think I need to enunciate more...it's happened to me twice in the past few days, where someone mishears me and mistakes my meaning...in one case I was trying to describe a visit to Best Buy, when the hearer asked me, "oh, are you going to buy a scooter?" It wasn't obvious how the person got to scooter from best buy, but turns out what he heard was I'd been shopping at "Vespa." (Before then I couldn't have told you what a Vespa is). And today, a friend who had come over thought I was about to feed my infant son his salad ("solid" foods). I guess I have a fairly quiet voice, except of course during a cell phone call. I hear things wrong all the time too though. It was a long time before I realized that the line from John Mellencamp's "Jack & Diane" is not "Let the Papa Bear come and save your soul."

And the winner is....me

Some people say I'm a competitive person. It's true...some people don't even realize that I'm competing with them. Like when I used to commute by metro, I would drive to within walking distance of the station and hoof it to catch the train. On my evening return to the car, I would walk as fast as I could past all the other walkers, silently exultant about having "won". But one guy who must have gotten off of the same train I did for several days, seemed impossible to beat without breaking into a full run. At about 6'3'', his legs were a lot longer, and even when it seemed I was about to get out in front of him, he would speed up too. He became the one to beat, unbeknownst to him, because I never gave any indication that I was silently racing. Or so I thought. One day I had beaten all the others and was chasing him down at a full-out pace, and as I'm getting to within passing range, he turns his head to the side and says "You're gaining on me!" I was pretty embarrassed at being called out and had to give up the race. Didn't see him again after that.

It's not so much that I love winning as much as I hate losing. Not so much in team sports, but on the individual level. Winning anything is fun, even random things. Yesterday there was an unexpected contest at the grocery store. As I was studying the bread selections, a voice came over the loudspeaker saying that shoppers should look for a painted number on the floor and go stand on it, and if the number you're standing on is called, you'd be the Grand Prize Winner. I quickly scanned down the aisle and spotted a circled 5 in front of the bottled water section. The loudspeaker counted down "10..9..8.." but I was standing on my 5 already. When they called the number, a woman a few aisles over who had stood on #7 was the winner. Not sure that the grand prize was going to be all that, but sure would have liked to win anyway. Hope they keep that contest going...cause I'll keep trying.

Mesmerizing

A friend sent me this yesterday. If "interpretive juggling" became an Olympic sport, this guy would be the gold medal contender.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4776181634656145640

Hold it right there missy

I'm usually a confrontation-avoider, but today I rose to the occasion. I did laundry this morning. I have a great cart for ... carting all the clothes down to our building's basement. I bought it years back for my grandmother to use to carry her groceries home from the store. After she passed I inherited it. It holds alot and has been extremely handy. I even get comments on it on the elevator, people wanting to know where I bought it, etc.

As I do every laundry day, after starting the washers I left the cart in the laundry room, stowed next to our machines. When I returned a half hour later to switch from washer to dryer, I spied a young girl, maybe 13, at one of the dryers, standing over the cart about to drop a newly-dried handful of clothes into it...she was looking up and questioning her mother whether she should use it. The mom signaled the go-ahead and the clothes went into the cart. I went into action.

"That's my cart."

She apologized and left the cart, confrontation over. At least it didn't come to fisticuffs.