Month: May 2006

Favorite quote

There are many great turns of phrase in quotedom and I have many favorites so calling this one my “favorite” is a bit of a misnomer, but it holds a special place. It is one that I have always remembered. It had a profundity that I hadn’t encountered in other quotes at the time and I have been casually looking for it again for 20 years.
The internet is great for this type of thing.

If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.

-Emerson M Pugh

Weasly golfer

Earlier this morning I went golfing with Tony and it was about the third time in two years I have golfed. Maybe more than that but it sure didn’t feel like it. I did well. I shot a 99. Breaking 100 for me is a big deal.

Now, those of you (Heidi) that don’t think golf is worth a hoot, peep this. While golfing I saw the following:

  1. Eight Red-Tailed Hawks circling in a thermal directly overhead. One of them called out right as I was putting for birdie (one under par) and I came up short. I blame the hawk but I didn’t mind or hold it against him.
  2. A rabbit.
  3. The telltale wake of a muskrat swimming through a small pond bringing fresh cut grasses back to it’s lair.
  4. A Kildeer protecting it’s nest (from me) by coming in close and feigning injury. I was careful not to hit an egg with my 8-iron or worse squash one with my size 10’s.
  5. Four HUGE frogs/toads (I can’t tell the difference). They were the size of softballs and they leaped out of my way whilst searching for a stray Maxfli.
  6. And lastly, and for me the most confounding, Two Long Tailed Weasels one of which scurried between Tony and I at a distance of about 15…inches. I had seen one flash by from about 30 yards a couple holes earlier but wrote it off as a chipmunk. I had to look them up because I hadn’t a clue at the time. Here is a good picture of one.(external link)

So if anyone cares to go for a four hour nature walk through the lowlands of Redmond don’t forget your clubs.

Today I had my cake and ate it too!

Classic Abigail

And I don’t mean her name…
I mean, as many of you know, she is about as detail oriented as they come and she notices everything and lets you know when it is different.

Consistency is huge with children, as everyone knows, and children are entirely too observant and when you are a child like Abigail whose very life seems to depend on honoring the tradition of say…something that happened once…in a movie…during the credits! you tend to make it clear to The Variable (that is me) when any one thing is out of place.

Exhibit A:
About two weeks ago the smoke detector in Abby’s room needed a new battery at 7AM. Boy that chirping was obnoxious. So I got out of bed and removed the offensive little critter…to the KITCHEN.

About 2 hours later when Abby stirred I was anxious to consider the possibility that she may sleep right through till noon. I can dream. Instead she stirred a bit, rolled over slightly and then BOLTED upright in bed. Presently she turned and in a barely quiet “whisper” said

DADDY!
What?
There is something missing!
What?!
There is something missing!
What are you talking about?
Something is always on my ceiling, it is round, and it is right over there. But it’s gone!

This thing is not the only thing on her ceiling and it is at the other end of the room.
She got her smoke detector back that night and I will take the Pepsi challenge with Abby, 10 mattresses, and a pea ANYTIME.

THIS one is sleeping

So the post from a couple of days ago was “awake” and this one is sleeping. No really, honestly.

If you have ever observed someone sleeping you can usually hear or see some relatively unusual eccentricities or cute things they do with their lips. You know.

So Amelia has a script, of sorts, that she follows when she hits REM and starts dreaming. It usually includes the head twitch, a half smile, a full smile, open eyes, eyebrow raising, a sucking motion and occaisionally a sad face thrown in for flavor.

The 30 second video here has all but the sad face. I removed the “sound” to make a smaller file but there was no sound anyway so it doesn’t matter. Don’t smack your speakers around thinking something is wrong.

Here you can see perfect execution of a SleepingHalfSmile-DoubleEyeRoll-MiniSuck-SingleMondoEyeRoll-CheesySmile completed with a nice ReverseHalfSmile-MiniHeadTwitchCombo.

EmmaSleeping_Lo.mov (128KB)
EmmaSleeping_Hi.mov (800KB)

Got Milk?

Abby knows the difference between boys and girls, theoretically. She knows Mommy’s have babies, she knows Daddy’s don’t. She knows Mommy is a girl and Abby is a girl and Daddy is a boy. She also knows Mommy nurses the baby.

Let’s follow the logic here.
Mommy is a girl and Mommy nurses The Peep
Abby is a girl
Therefore
Abby nurses her Baby.

Today, one of the (million) times that Emma was nursing, Abby appeared from her bedroom with her “baby Emma”, a washcloth to catch the burps, and her nightgown hiked to her chin.

She just needs a little milk

Abby then sat patiently, staring vacantly out the window, “nursing” her little cotton doll, held firmly to her little chest. A few short minutes later she switched sides and this, then, is the REALLY funny part. You may or may not realize how detail oriented Abby is but consider this, between switching sides she reached beneath her nightgown from above and fumbled around a little bit with her fingers at her chest obviously adjusting something in preparation.
If you are watching her do this you can easily see that she is imitating The Mommy hooking and unhooking her nursing bra. When questioned although, Abby doesn’t quite understand the point.
An unconfirmed possibility is that she thinks she is somehow turning the milk on or off.

Here you can observe her burping her “baby Emma”, (complete with spit-up cloth) because

You have to get the burps out.

Abby Burping her baby

Cat Quote

Love em or hate em cats have a special place in the world. I heard this tonight on NPR, and it got me to laugh out loud.

Cats are the instrument for children to learn benevolence upon

I didn’t hear the poem name or poet but a quick google search revealed this possible source. For my Cat Jeoffrey by Christopher Smart (1722-1771). The line there is:

For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.

I also know from family experience that cats are indeed the instrument for children to learn electrical capacitance on.

M-O-O-N That spells moon.

Weeks ago Abby talked about jumping so high she would jump to the moon.
I told her that it takes a lot of people to get to the moon and jump on it and I just spouted off a few including engineers, ground control etc.

Tonight she revisited the subject.

I jump so high up to the sky!
Yeah, that is pretty high.

It takes a lot of people to jump up to the moon though.
That’s right honey, it does.
Like Mary…and…
Like Mary?
Uh huh. (as if that is obvious)
Yeah it takes a lot of people like ground control, and maybe even some lawyers (first job I could think of…probably because of the Mary connection.) in case there are problems and…

Yeah you need somebody to catch you too! Like Maryyy and Andyyy.