Saturday, January 20, 2007

Late but Long

When John’s back was giving him fits over a week ago (he’s much better now!), he had the wattle bottle on his person at all times. When he started feeling better, he left it at home during work hours, which is when my story takes place. I had retreated upstairs to the “facilities”, and I heard Hannah coming up the stairs. Wanting to head off an invasion, I shouted, “I’ll be out in a minute!” Then I heard something hit the floor, accompanied by a sloshing sound.

Hannah: “Oops! My liver!”
Me: “Take your liver back downstairs and I’ll be there in a minute!”
Hannah: “It won’t go back in! I’ll have to cook it up and feed it to the cats.”
Me: “Whatever.”

I am taking a teaching course this semester, and we each have to teach one 45-minute session to foreign students in the language program. I was observing during one of my classmates’ attempts this last week, and she was doing really well right up until the point that one of the students pointed out that they had just recently gone over the *exact same text* with a different student teacher (from the other teaching class, led by a different instructor). Ouch. A student teacher’s worst nightmare.

Hannah woke us up at 4:30 one night/morning last week with “I’m bleeding to death!” At first I thought maybe puberty had struck at an unseemly time, but then she showed up in our room with a copious nosebleed. She had bled all over her sheets (which are red, so that shows some foresight on my part *g*) and her white t-shirt, but I managed to get her cleaned up and back to bed without any more theatrics. She had another nosebleed the next night, but she was better prepared and didn’t even bother to wake us up. Thanks, Babe!

I am currently engaged in a fight to the death with these cute little moths that live in our pantry closet. I don’t have a problem with the moths themselves, just with their hideous, disgusting larvae. I thought I had managed to track them all down and destroy them before we left for Texas, but I guess it just wasn’t enough to throw out half our dry goods, seal the rest with packing tape, and scrub them entire pantry with bleach (shelves, walls, and the little holes for the adjustable shelves included). I am usually friendly to nature; I even take the time to shoo wasps and spiders outside instead of smashing them, but I cannot stand those creepy crawly caterpillar things. Flesh...crawling... I hope I will have had better luck with round 2.

I ran out of toothpaste while in Texas, so I bought some good ol’ Crest gel. Man, this stuff is *weak*. I had been using an herbal paste that tastes strongly of licorice (mmm...licorice, aka anise), and I could feel the germs dying when I used it. This Crest had better be death on wheels toward cavities, because I am too tight to toss a full stupid giant tube.

We’ve been steadily making our way through the stack of DVDs we brought back with us from Texas. Now Hannah’s indoctrination in Futurama and Greg the Bunny is complete. She’s been well-versed in Spinal Tap since a young age, so that was just a refresher course for her. [True story: When Hannah was 4, Sluggo and the lovely Peaches came to dinner, and Hannah asked them if they wanted to watch Spinal Tap. I think she had a very high rating on the “cool child” meter that night.]

I’ve also been listening to Pink every minute I’ve been in the kitchen (home of the CD player) since we got back. I’m Not Dead is a rockin’ album, although I was a bit taken aback by the amount of crack showing on the back cover. Less is more, Pink! But excessive crack aside, I like every song on the album, in large part because they cover such a wide variety of styles, including a folksy anthem-like song written by her Vietnam-vet dad and performed as a duo by the 2 of them. The tunes are so catchy that John and I found ourselves mentally humming them when we had the occasional bout of sleeplessness after getting back from Texas. I’d have to give this gift (from John) an A+.

Mr. Jooge also gave us a Forever Sharp (TM) knife that I am slightly scared to death of. I have a bad track record with sharp objects (like knives, cheese graters, paper, cardboard, and razors), and I thought I might faint when he told us about the demonstration where the guy dropped a tomato on the blade and it cut itself. Eeek! It works great on meat, though, so I guess we’ll keep it.

The weather has been all screwed up since ... uh ... forever. The overnight low has reached freezing only twice in all of January, so the plants think it is spring. Bushes and some of the smaller trees are putting out leaves; the viney-type bushes have yellow or dark pink flowers on them; bulb plants are pushing up leaves; and what I think is a cherry tree is covered in pale pink blossoms. I go by the last one twice every day on the bus, and every time I think, “Man, that shit is *bananas*!” Even I would agree that 17C (~63F) in January is wrong (although I enjoyed it anyway).

All of Europe was affected by a huge wind storm that hit Thursday. More than 2 dozen people were killed, and trees are down all over Germany on the roads and rail lines. We were very lucky in this area to have only minimal damage.

OMG. I see that I just wrote an entry on a bug infestation, toothpaste, cutlery, and the weather. Where’s my Geritol? It’s obvious I have the sensibility of a septuagenarian.

Except... How cool is this? This guy and friends/family built a scale model of Helm’s Deep OUT OF CANDY. Why can’t I ever do something that awesome?!