Tetris

This week the boys went for their physicals and vaccines.  ‘Cept I didn’t realize there would be vaccines, so when they asked beforehand, I said “No, no shots today.”

So you can imagine the razor-broken-glass daggers shot my way by Grant when the nurse casually threw this into the conversation, “Ok, Grant you are here today for your check-up and tetanus booster.”

He was wise to this tetanus thing.  Gary had spent at least 38 hours going on and on earlier this summer after he had to get his booster, saying how bad his arm was hurting and how it was the worst shot he’d had and, yes, he’d had some doozies in the military with big honking needles you couldn’t even believe existed, and yes, this tetanus one was even worse.   Or at least that’s the way Grant remembered it. 

So, suffice it to say Grant didn’t take it well knowing he was going to be getting one of these worst-pain-on-Earth shots.  Without going into too much detail, I will say that I am fairly confident it is a day that goes down in that nurse’s history as the day “that kid totally freaked out.”

She, an experienced nurse, wisely decided it would be better just to get it over with rather than have him in that hysterical state as the doctor tried to do the physical, so she left the room to get the shot.  And Grant and I had this tense conversation:

Grant, I know I told you you wouldn’t have a shot today, but I didn’t realize about this booster.

But you said!!

Yes, I am sorry I wasn’t aware. But you know, as bad as you think getting this little shot will be, it is no way as bad as being in the hospital for weeks or months with lockjaw.  Do you know what that is?!  (followed by very embellished description of a slow and agonizing death—it was supposed to make the shot seem like nothing.)

Well, Dad said the tetanus shot was the worst shot he ever got and it’s gonna hurt so bad!!  I am NOT going to get it!! 

I AM NOT GOING TO GET IT!! 

Grant, I don’t know if you know this, but sometimes Dad makes a bigger deal out of things than they really are. 

He said…!!!

Yes, I know “he said” but really, your dad over reacts A LOT and makes a big deal out of things when it’s really not anything.

(Grant yelling at the top of his lungs, punctuating each and every syllable)

THEN WHY DID YOU

EVEN MARRY HIM?!!

I burst out laughing. 

Ohmygosh, I couldn’t not laugh.  And that really didn’t help the situation.  At all.  Nope, not one bit.

Long story shorter, he got the shot.  It wasn’t pretty.  It was very memorable for all parties involved but hey, he got it. 

Let me tell you:  Parenting is not for wimps. 

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The irony of this whole scenario was that just weeks earlier, Grant had teased Caroline that she was going to get a shot.  In reality, I just had to swing by the pediatrician’s office to pick up a form that was required for Jack to go to Boy Scout Camp (No, Ross, I am not going to let you forget it.  Evil Boy Scout Camp. There, said it again!)

As we pulled into the parking lot, Grant was really letting her have it, telling Caroline that she had to go in to get the worst shot ever, the one with the most pain on Earth, the one like Dad had just had,

a Tetris shot. 

Ok, that cracked me up, too, and I laughed out loud at him.  Who wouldn’t?

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Really, it brought to mind the Talia and Johnny story.  I hope I tell it right, but since I am almost 100% sure I will butcher it in some way, here’s the basic jist of it:

Johnny had been or maybe was going to the dentist and said something about the nicotine (meaning Novocain) and Talia jumped right on it to correct him,

“Gah, it’s Nicotrol, you dope!”

Tetris/Tetanus-- whatever.

 

Boy Scout Camp

BEFORE

Sunday morning

Six days later

AFTER

Saturday afternoon

 

 

Notice there are no AFTER hugging shots. 

The light patches you see on Gary’s shirt are those few parts not sweat-saturated.  Yep, that would be the pocket top layer and the tip of the collar.

Jack’s shirt looks miraculously white and clean.  I think he saved back at least one to wear fresh for the ride home. 

They had a great time!  Jack built a shelter and slept out in it in the wilderness.

No tools allowed. 

He made two rank advancements by working so hard on all his merits.  Way to go, Jack!

For his Survival Training, he learned to make fire, send signals, get water, and make shelter.

He said he learned that you don’t worry about food. 

That wouldn’t really fly with me. 

Gary met with some automotive challenges on the three hour drive up to Camp Drake near Danville, IL.  He said the roof of this place looked like it was about to cave in.  Is it just me or does it look like there might be 2 inches of clearance above his truck?  Nevertheless, some locals got the job done and from his description, I think GitRDun is in their vocabulary.  He, Jack, and the scout equipment trailer made it home safely.

And can I just say, I honestly have never faced such a laundry challenge as the one presented to me, and doesn’t that just sound like I was handed a present, when these boys got home.  Gas mask, please.  It’s a deadly formula. 

 

Clothes X extreme heat/humidity X dirt and other organic matter  X XY chromosomes X hourly perspiration-related activities X stuffing into a bag to sit for days = wicked fermentation.

You should be thanking me I haven’t added Smellavision to this blog. 

Mr. Speed Limit

 

Recently, Grant informed me of the speed limit of every street I covered.

“Mom, the speed limit is 45.”

Ok, Grant. 

“Mom, the speed limit is 35.”

Ok, Grant.

“I like to know the speed limit.  I don’t know, Mom, if you really ever look at it.” 

Well, not as much as you do, I can tell you that.

“Mom, the speed limit is 45.  You need to go up 5 more.”

Actually, Grant, that is the upper limit of what you are supposed to drive.  You can be below it as long as you are still being safe. 

“Oh.”  

“Mom, the speed limit is 45.”

Yes, and I am on it, Grant, right on the dot.

Viewing from the passenger seat at that angle:  “No, you’re not.”

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGG!

For rent, cheap:  Mini-cop. 

Cute as a button

but annoying as you-know. 

Funnies

Caroline and I were playing the game Taboo recently.  She gave these clues: 

Annie

Parent

Mother

Father

I didn’t come up with the right word.

So she told me the answer:

“Orp-a-han”

What??

“Orp-a-han!”

What’s that?

Grant, looking at the card, “Caroline, it’s orphan.”

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Which makes me think of the story of Oprah’s name:  It was supposed to be the biblical Orpah, but either got misspelled on her birth certificate or was mispronounced, so that she ended up being Oprah, probably the most well-known made-up name on the planet. 

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Two half-conversations overheard this morning that leave me wondering “Just what were they talking about??”:

Scene 1

(kids playing something in the basement)

Caroline to Sam:  Jesus can!

Sam: ?? (I can’t hear his reply)

Caroline:  Because he’s Magical Boy!  He’s God’s SON!!

[I really don’t know where the religious stuff comes from since we really don’t talk it—ever. 

Other than OMG!

And an occasional, What the H---?!!]

Scene 2

(kids riding in the van)

Grant to Caroline:  I am older.  I am bigger.  I have more anger.

Music & Movie Monday—Purple Rain

Now isn’t that clever?

It just occurred to me as I sat down to type this that I could have a double Monday post. 

Gary and Jack are gone for Boy Scout Summer Camp and while it still remains that I have a million things to be working on, I decided to take it easy and sit and watch some TV. 

My new favorite channel is Palladia.  Prior to our getting Dish Network when we moved in here, I had no idea it even existed.  I love it!  It’s kinda a modern version of the original MTV and less hokey-tv than the current VH1.  It’s all videos, concerts, interviews with musical artists, and apparently music-related movies as I caught Prince’s Purple Rain this morning. 

Boy, does that zoom you right back to 1984!

Both the album and movie came out the summer between my junior and senior year in high school, and if that’s not one of your heyday periods, I don’t know what is.  The music holds many, many memories for me during that time.  And it’s especially cool that Gary was into Prince, too, so he gets it.  I remember….

• a group of us friends sitting around at Andy Powless’ house listening intently, trying to make out the “racy” lyrics on the Purple Rain album.  These are reportedly the very ones that led to the use of Parental Advisory stickers on album covers.  I just have to say: Thanks, Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center, for helping us spot the albums we knew we wanted to listen to the most.

• Steve Gragert doing a super cool Michael Jackson moon walk to When Doves Cry across the auditorium stage for a Student Body President speech/skit.  So very Napoleon Dynamite now that I think about it!  Of the memorable events in our high school days, I bet that one ranks up there as number 1 for many. 

Steve + Prince + moonwalk = very cool!

 

• going on a date with the boyfriend at that time to see Purple Rain at the Flora Theatre.  I think that was the very night I excitedly stood up as the theatre owner announced my name as the door prize winner.  Turned out he called someone else’s name. Diane Ha-well?! How many could there be?  The speech impediment amplified through the bullhorn didn’t help one bit. 

 

• walking out after the show was over and seeing my “old maid” Great-Aunt Rea sitting at the back of the theatre with her boyfriend.  I am not sure who was more embarrassed but I have to think it could have been her, in her 70’s, witness to all this steamy, sweaty, skimpy, slithery, slick move of a movie. 

We never breathed a word.

 

• dancing at the wildly fun sock hops we had following home basketball games in the little gym at FHS.  Yep, Gary was there and we had such good times together!  I have to say Jungle Love as done by Morris Day and The Time in the movie, was one of my most accomplished dances, personally speaking, and no, really, I had no professional training whatsoever.  Something about those 80’s moves and I just meshed.  I will have to add in a video snippet of that just so you can appreciate.  I also did The Bird, but as a dance, it borders on too corny and contrived in my book, so let’s just let that one rest. 

 

• the white scarf Prince wore in the movie is identical to the one Gary wore our senior year and draped around my neck after he topped my head with his fedora and, yes, I still keep the scarf in my top-center dresser drawer.  

 

• Dez Dickerson made a lasting imprint on me, probably from the time I first heard his voice on Prince’s song 1999.  Turns out he left Prince’s band, The Revolution, after going holy in about 1980, no longer feeling ok performing Prince’s raunchier material.  But Dez was briefly seen in the Purple Rain movie with his group The Modernaires. 

 

How many shrimpy shrimps built like Prince could have pulled off the lace and puffy shirts, the button crotch skintights, the dancing and jumping in the high heels, and that mop of shellacked hair that Prince did, all the while seeming like God’s gift to all women on Earth? 

Gotta give the purple dude some credit.  He is good. 

  The closing line in the movie credits:

May u live 2 see the dawn.

Did you know that Prince only composed the songs for the movie?  I guess I mistakenly assumed he wrote the screenplay or had some other role in making the movie, but turns out, no. 

I will say Purple Rain, the movie, these days, seemed to move slow and the female actors were so bad, but the club performance scenes were still enjoyable and reminded me how great a performer Prince is/was.  

Purple Rain, the music, will rock forever, from 1984 on.

Correction/Confession

I can’t believe I haven’t had to post one of these before-- you know, a heading including the word Correction.  I probably have needed to many times, but lacked the awareness  every single one of those times. 

This one just hit me, big palm thud to the forehead, this morning. 

What was I thinking?!? And sadly, I am not even making this up to be funny.  I’m serious.

You know a few days ago when I was talking baby names and mentioned the presidential connection we had with the three boys’ names? 

[Now that I think about it, I guess you could even say that for Caroline, since that was the name of a First Lady (Harrison) and the name of a President’s child (Kennedy), but anywho….]

The thing that just hit me was that when I was typing that about the boys having Presidential names, I was thinking that there was a President named Samuel. 

There wasn’t.

There was John Adams.

 

There was John Quincy Adams.

 

 

That guy Samuel Adams was someone else. 

Head Spinning Days

Life can turn on a dime.  Sometimes it’s for the worse, sometimes for the best, and sometimes you don’t yet know.

On Friday, we were homeowners still trying to sell house #2 ourselves.

On Saturday, we signed with an unlikely but sharp surfer-dude realtor to help us sell.

On Sunday, we became landlords, first-timers, deciding instead to keep the house and rent it out.  That day we had a family look at the place and say they want to rent it for the next nine months to a year, starting August 1. The realtor let us out of our deal without penalty.

Well, ok.

Whew. 

Music Monday—Sweet Caroline

Gary and I had gone through all the thousands of possible boy names printed in the Baby Name Bible, each picked our top 10-20, and then he ran the numbers.  Well, no, actually he produced pages and pages of these charts with multiple columns.  We literally had spreadsheets compiled of hundreds of boy names in different combinations to help us decide the name of the boys.

James Marshall Gill

Marshall James Gill

Alexander James Gill

James Alexander Gill

Walter Geek Gill

Geek Walter Gill 

It was a big production, as it can be when you are married to an engineer.  There was even a column with just the initials to make sure they didn’t spell out anything questionable. 

There went Franklin Andrew Gill. 

With each pregnancy, our own top 10-20 would change so we had new pages of new results to ponder all those months until the newest baby came.  And ponder we did.  It’s hard to make that decision, picking what you think will be a great fit and respectable name, not too open to instant playground making-fun-of, not too trendy and not too stiff and not too cutesy, and on top of it, make both the mom and dad feel like they love it   like it  can live with it. 

One of our guidelines was “Can you imagine a President of the United States having this name?”  Guess that one guideline weighed pretty heavily since we have a Jackson, a Grant, and a Samuel. 

I really fought the Walter hard.

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All those years of us having babies, the girl spreadsheet wasn’t even a spreadsheet. 

We had one girl name.

Caroline Grace.  It never changed. 

We never doubted it. 

We both loved it, and that would be her name. 

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Right after she was born, we taught the boys to sing Sweet Caroline.  Jack was just turning five years old, Grant was turning three. 

They made up their own version they would sing to Baby Girl.   It was so incredibly sweet.  It went:

Sweet Caroline, bum, bum, bum….

Um, …something…

{OMG, I CANNOT BELIEVE I CAN’T REMEMBER IT!}

I can still hear Jack’s little voice and it had the words something like “We are your brother. There is no other—Sweet Caroline” but I cannot for the life of me pull it up in the brain right now!  Good thing we have all those family home movies, if I could ever locate them in my Gulf of Box-ico.

So anywho, Caroline has always loved the song and has seen it on YouTube so many times.  She does not care one bit for the Jonas Brothers’ version and I admit, she is right.  It totally, totally stinks.  Last summer while we stayed at a Best Western hotel in Dearborn, Michigan, they had some  promotion going.  There was a life-sized cutout of the three Jonas Brothers in the lobby and they gave out Jonas Brothers backpacks for the kids.  The boys refused theirs because, well, they’re boys.  Caroline refused hers because they stinkered up her song. 

Yes, Neil Diamond is/was forever the original, but here’s the Elvis in 1970 version that we have loved for years.  My favorite part is the karate arm moves for the bum, bum, bum part.

[Video link instead of video imbed brought to you courtesy of CSI-Rosewood—what I like to call my Country Slow Internet.]

 http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=Y00vd5HM_08&feature=related

Camera Clean Out

Yes, I really should be using my time wisely (i.e. cleaning up the breakfast dishes, tidying the Walton house in case we have a showing tomorrow—its first day on the market with a realtor!), but since I just found my cord to my camera, I can finally download some shots.  That makes my day and trumps all other things to do.

Apparently, the kids have been playing with the camera.  Here’s some of the interesting shots I discovered.   Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

 

Sam’s mouth shot, straight-out-of-camera.  No cropping involved.  Deductive reasoning would lead one to say that Grant was the photog here.  

And I think it’s evident what little girl took this one.  What did she do, feed him lemons?

Here’re the kids with my Dad and Mom, on one of our many trips to the Xenia Knapp’s so far this summer.  We do our part to help keep them in business. 

I think it means you are pretty tired if you fall asleep like this. 

Julia and Neil came to the new house for a quick look.

Caroline somberly waving bye as they soon after had to take off for the airport...

Just so you know, the kitty cat formerly known as Bob is now Bruce, 

or as Caroline just corrected my spelling over my shoulder….  “Browse.”

Oh, and did you notice he was dressed up as a super hero, cape around his neck and all?

Bob/Bruce pretty much puts up with anything and everything from her.  Yesterday he got a bath, unbeknownst to us, with water out of the hose, that cold, cold water coming directly from the well, along with about a 1/4 bottle of liquid soap.  Once I saw him, poor thing was shivering like you can’t believe, so I rinsed him in the kitchen sink with warm water enough to get all that soap out of his fur.  Then we wrapped Browse pronounced Bruce in a beach towel and Caroline held him out in the warm sun and then on the black trampoline until he thawed out.

Caroline has since learned that kitties will give themselves their own baths, and thankfully Brob has fully recovered and is back to being his passive, tolerant self today.

All this kitty bath stuff happened as Jack’s water war birthday party was wrapping up. 

Gary worked so hard during the party.

Caroline was taken hostage.  It was serious battle time.  You should have heard all the talk about Recon D and “taking the forest.”

The boys loved it.   

So now my Baby Jack is twelve years old!

Another year, another birthday, another party.  I tell ya, I am just going to enjoy these kid celebrations as long as they last. 

A Few Announcements: I Have….

 

the world’s slowest Internet ev---er.

no working oven.

dirty windows and no Windex, ammonia, or anything on the place to clean them up right now.

a sea of boxes for a basement floor.

a great house to sell that no one has even asked to see.

a million ant friends hanging out in my kitchen, even inside my nonfunctioning oven. 

no pictures from the weekend and no located cord to download pictures if I did take any.

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So there.  I’ve got my morning frustrations all off my chest and now maybe can move on and feel better.

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On the up side, I have…

no high speed connection, but wide open space and views of nature that are ours, all ours, and that’s been a long-lived dream. 

an ugly but totally functioning toaster oven capable of some mini-baking, and a laundry area that’s up and going. Who knew that would bring such happiness?

all the cleaning supplies I might need at the other house and yes, I will be able to pick them up later today.  No biggie, just relax, D.

free time to eventually get through the Gulf of Box-ico. 

a meeting tonight with an enthusiastic realtor.

no thoughts of any possible up side to the demon ants, but I do have four wacky and  wonderful children getting along and having fun this morning, and that helps the mood immensely.

no pictures but many, many memories in my head of a super fun and family-filled weekend. 

What do I have to complain about, right?! 

Karen and Joe, thanks so much for hosting another fabulous reunion, and to everyone there: you know you’ve scored a real bonus in life when you have a family that wants to be together, that seeks out the chance to see each other, and is willing to travel from very far places just to share some food, games, hugs, smiles, and laughs.