You run, you slide...

God bless whoever at the Slip 'n Slide plant came up with the idea of a slide with three lanes.  No "Mom, Ben won't move" and no pterodactyl yell Ben makes when he doesn't get his way.  It's genius, I tell you, genius. 

Brian Regan

I stumbled upon this guy and he cracks me up.  This is just a short clip, but checking out his Comedy Central videos is well worth it.

Back to School

As of two weeks ago, I started class at OCU. I have two summer classes, Business Statistics and Abnormal Psychology. It is funny taking statistics after having worked in finance nearly 10 years. I was working through the problems and it asked for the weighted mean and I thought "Oh, this is the class that teaches that". Having never taken any business classes, the concepts I know through experience are fun to divide up in my head by which "subject" they are technically in. I forgot how much fun math problems were. Putting in an answer and getting the green check mark of correctness. Selecting pie chart and it telling you "wrong, pie chart would be a better answer". Dang you online glitches. The hardest part of psychology is the reading. A large page with small type times 50 for one week. Some of it is exciting and some of it you read between a head nod waking you up and everything going dark again. Reading the subject matter, I am again reminded of how fortunate I am to be living in the time that I am. Before medicine or outpatient therapy, people were locked in asylums or dunked in rivers until the demons inside were exorcised.

A study I found truly interesting was conducted by Rosenhan. It is part of what paved the way for the detailed definitions of mental disorders that psychologists now adhere to.

Where a Kid Can Be a Kid

Tonight John and I took the boys to Chuck E Cheese or as I like to call it, purgatory for adults. Big kids cutting in line for drinks, two small children at the ticket redemption machine putting in 200 tickets one ticket at a time, taking 15 minutes for a child to choose between a plastic spider and a glitter tattoo. It is where good parents go to be punished. That said, nothing beats the smile on the face of a little boy who just successfully made a basket for 2 tickets or found a balloon bicycle to ride.

John was on Ben duty and I was with Joshy. We played skeet ball, shot mummies, shot baskets, jumped rope and watched John play a game where you hold on until physically in enough pain to let go. I walked away when it started smoking. My personal favorite was playing this game with Joshy where you hit the screen with hammers trying to kill all the spiders, cars or any other "bad" thing in that particular stage. Not to toot any horns but someone (i.e. me) managed to get in the top 20 high scores of all time. In your face, 7-year-olds!

We walked away with 4 sticker sheets for Ben and a plastic popper thing for Joshy. By the time we got home, Ben had taken all the stickers off the sheets and stuck them together in one big wad, which he wore on his shirt while him and his brother ran around in our yard with the neighbor boys. It was nice to see them so happy. And nice to not be the parents standing underneath the ceiling play tubes begging for Jackson to come down.

Anybody ask for ice?

This afternoon I was busying myself taming my hair and readying the boys for dinner with my family. My parents and Tina were the first to arrive and no longer than five minutes after they walked in the door, the day which had been clear, became an onslaught of rain and hail. Hail larger than I have seen in person before. The ones Joshy and I are holding were picked up after 15 minutes of melting in the 75 degree weather.

When the storm hit, Jess and Ross were on the road and pulled into a gas station to avoid the ice. A good move when considering the divots scattering the hoods and roofs of my parent's car and my own. When it first began to hit, I twinged at the sound of the hard ice stones pelting the windows. It was not the usual click of pebbles tossed at a window for attention but golf balls driven at the windows with full force. We all just waited for the inevitable crack...

that inevitably came...

Across our northern facing windows are panes that are broken and cracked. Holes that appear as if victim to an unruly child with baseball and bat. Still, there are worse things than a brisk spring breeze wafting through the house. And our siding is steel, so while dented thoroughly, it fared much better than the neighbor's vinyl, pockmarked with cracks and holes where the ice went through. Our Hyundai is worthless on a good day and so I find myself far less forlorn than my neighbors with Hummers and Mercedes. No, I mourn my picture window and the dented steel for the annoyance it will be to replace. But with the storm season we are having, at least I can choose not to worry about it until after spring, as any repair would seemingly prove in vain. Check tornadoes and hail off for the week. Give us a good Godzilla rampage and we will have the golden trifecta.

Tornado Clean Up

The tornadoes that came through this past week hit the land that belongs to my manager's parents.  Fortunately, it didn't hit the house directly, but did knock down most of their 30 and 40 foot trees.  Somehow, they fell within inches on either side of the house but left the house proper unscathed but for a hole in the roof.  A trailer across the fence didn't fare as well and pieces of wood paneling, shingles and insulation were scattered amidst the broken limbs and brush.  For me, gathering those pieces is the hardest part.  With a couple on chainsaw duty and the rest with pick-up trucks and wheelbarrows, the broken limbs and trunks made their way to three piles smoldering in the pasture.  At first the pace was quick but soon you notice how much heavier the trees seem and how steeper the hills feel as time begins to pass.  A truth I am certain is etched into the muscles of all who pitched in.  Moving the big trunks felt a little accomplished.  A sign of my toughness.  Moving the limbs seemed like a better idea.  Having killed my back with my toughness.  The ground was soppy but luckily John's extended size tube socks had me covered with a double layer up past my knees.  They would throw diesel onto the brush piles to encourage the burn.  At one point the the flames shot up so violently and high that I could feel it warm on my face.  You learn what burns well and to throw the bigger logs to the middle of the pile.  No small feat after carrying them all morning.  By the end you are using your whole body to blindly chuck each piece as high as you can.  All three piles were far taller than we were and there was still much more to do when I left.  It is crazy what a little bit of wind can do in a matter of minutes.  The swing set had been thrown into a tree, the wooden play house swept away.  Some logs being chopped, some being burnt, one full grown monster being slowly cut into movable pieces.  But for all the sweat dropped moving trees, how preferable it is than having to search through debris for belongings.  Tornadoes are random yet specific.  They do not simultaneously take on an entire city like a hurricane or quake but from those that they hit, they take all.  A house does not survive a direct hit.  I grew up  learning to stand in doorways while the earth rolled and shook and became an adult who learned to take shelter in closets with mattresses and pillows.  The waiting is the worst part of a tornado.  An earthquake was always sudden but with a tornado, you sit, you listen and you wait.  In those moments the quiet is not your friend, it is the barrier you strain through to find the faintest clue if the storm will pass.  No more thunder.  Slower winds.  The sound like a train that tells you it's near.  Weather is a strange thing and no matter what method it takes up arms against you, it is a force against which we cannot contend.  We can run, we can hide and we can wait. 

Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all  the worlds Thy hands have made.  I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed.  Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to thee, how great Thou art.  How great Thou art.  - Carl Boberg

Dinner tonight

We took the boys to Olive Garden tonight because I was too tired to grocery shop and we are running on bare bones at home.  When they brought the salad and bread sticks, I fully expected the boys to turn up their noses (as Ben did) at the salad but Joshy bee-lined straight for it.  He ate salad, the red onions and the banana pepper, which makes it official.  He is not my child.  I am an incredibly plain eater.  I like lettuce and dressing.  Nothing fancy, nothing that looks like it could be a leaf on a tree and definitely no peppers half the size of my hand.  But Joshy, he loved it all.  He just kept trying everything and liking more than he did not.  Eating vegetables I only eat when forced.  Or fruit.  I forget which way tomatoes swing.  I can't believe how much it still surprises me when I see how old he has really become.  The waitress was taking drink orders and first John ordered, then me and then I ordered for Ben and then as I am about to open my mouth I hear "and I will have a Dr. Pepper".  It was this little man sitting across the table from me, ordering his drink just like the rest of us.  He isn't the baby boy I have to force feed green beans anymore.  He is a kid and eats roughage all on his own.

Coins for Charity

Joshy's school is collecting coins in the classes to give to a charity and Joshy made a point to remind us that he needed to take some change to contribute:

"There is a box for sick kids and I have to put in pennies, quarters, nickles and diamonds." 

John then asks him what he did with the change that we sent him with this morning.

"I bought a snack"

These are the true lessons of life.  Sick kids trump diamonds but afternoon Pepsi trumps all.

Vegedorkianism

Vegetarianism.  I get it.  Whether health or animal rights or the whistle of boiling lobsters, people all find their way there for different reasons.  I was one for two years to avoid eating pot roast.  So, I am totally with the reason not making sense.  That said, there is one subset of vegetarian I don't not care for and she was sitting to the left of me at dinner.  If you want to steer clear of the cow, fine, but it is not some definition of self for others to admire, it is you eating broccoli and leaving more steak for me.  We all make decisions but when you go out of your way to trumpet that decision, talk about that decision through half the meal that it becomes apparent you think this decision is your hall pass to the next echelon of society.  The chef put shrimp on her plate, not having been privy to the chatter prior, and not only did she have him scoop it away, she made the person next to her, her sister, switch plates with her.  Chef says "Oh...are you allergic?"  "No.  I am a vegetarian."  Of course you are.  Her sister says, as she hands her the plate, "Sure, as long as you don't mind sugar" making me realize that she was eating steamed rice with sugar.  She had six open packets she was shaking the last granules out of into her bowl.  What is with this family?  And all the while, Ms. Vegetarian who can't have her eating surface come in contact with meat was diving into the fried rice that had not only been on the same grill as the meat and handled with the same utensils as the meat, had eggs in it.  Eggs that came out of a chicken's butt and you can't get closer to brushing up against meat than that.  The chef asks, "How long have you been a vegetarian?".  Calculating in her head she says, "Since before Thanksgiving.  It makes it hard with no turkey but you get by."  Yes, you are a true martyr indeed.