Category: Family & Home

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The Smell of Cat Food

Miles, throwing himself an “eight-est” birthday party in the living room, blocked off the area with green masking tape strung between sofa and stereo as if it were a crime scene. After much crumbling of chocolate bunny crackers, unexpectedly announced: “No one is allowed at my birthday party who doesn’t like the smell of cat food.” With that, he led me by the hand into the kitchen, where I obliged by getting down on my hands and knees and taking a deep whiff from Plato’s bowl.

“Too rich-smelling for me,” I reported. “But I do like the smell of skunk, if it’s not too close.”

“Well, then you’re not allowed at my party. Only people who like the smell of cat food are.”

Five minutes later he relented when he needed help re-assembling a Playmobil outboard motor. Thankfully I still serve some purpose around here.

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Stop Making Sense

Miles quite taken recently with calling things (and sometimes people) “dumb” or “stupid.” Trying to wean him off this verbiage, Amy told him a better way to express himself would be to say “xxx doesn’t make any sense.” Which, by evening, turned into “I don’t want to eat this soup. It doesn’t make any sense.”

He’s been running around the house lately, inexplicably pleading “The taxes are going to get me! Save me from the taxes!” This morphed from last week’s variant on the same theme: “Save me from the ticklers!,” which he started saying after holding a live starfish and being tickled by its thousand sucker feet. You know how it goes – starfish, 1040EZ, all on the same continuum.

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Sweat Solder

Sweat Joint A minor first for me today – rather than call a plumber, read up on sweat joints, went out and bought a torch and a flux/solder kit, and installed my own fittings on 1/2″ copper. Not beautiful, but amazingly, all three joints (two sink + one toilet) came out watertight on the first try. Once brief elation had passed, discovered that the sink we picked out for this already very small area was 1″ too wide, so we have to take it back and get a tiny one – a wee hand-washing basin. S’okay – we’ll do something less frowsy looking this time, so it’ll work out for the best.

Music: Pinpeat Orchestra :: Sathouka
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Fly On, Little Wing

M Trapeze 1     M Trapeze 2    M Trapeze 3

Miles and I trekked up to the Physics of the Circus exhibit at the Lawrence Hall of Science recently — he was just big enough to be allowed on the trapeze. Talk about one of those days when I wished I had a proper camera on me. This cell phone business doesn’t cut it. He wasn’t heavy enough to bounce it himself, so they had to “fly” him manually by tugging rhythmically on the elastic stays. Then I got a turn to get harnessed up and try some flip-dee-doos (which was exhausting). In mid-twist, I heard a small voice calling to me from the ground: “You’re doing great, Daddy!” Wanted to jump down and hug him.

Yesterday, zookeepers from the East Bay Vivarium came to Miles’ preschool. When they asked if anyone wanted to volunteer to let a tarantula walk on their head, M’s hand shot up. No shots of that, but he apparently wasn’t scared a bit.

Fly on, little wing.

Music: Toots & The Maytals, Bootsy Collins & The Roots :: Funky Kingston
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Poop for the Circus

At a playground under the BART tracks, Amy and Miles came across dozens of pieces of honeycomb and hundreds of dead bees, a beehive fallen from high above (apparently after having been sprayed). Amy was marveling at how perfect the hexagons were, such a feat of nature.

Miles: “These bees are so talented, they could make honeycomb for the circus. [Pause]. If they weren’t so dead.”

…

Lately Miles has been announcing that his poop looks like various letters of the alphabet. Last night he yelled from the bathroom “I made the letter T!” Amy asked him if he thought he could poop his way through the whole alphabet.

Miles bragged: “I’m such a talented pooper, I could poop for the circus!”

Music: Mission of Burma :: The Mute Speaks Out
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Rocket to Mars

Miles and I made a rocketship a few weekends ago. It was all his idea – he saw a pile of cardboard on the curb and said “Daddy let’s make a rocket!” Outta nowhere. Lots of cutting and taping and gluing and painting (yes, much of the paint ended up on his legs and on the deck). Had to go online to remind myself how to make a cone (just cut out 1/4 pie from a disc and it’ll curve up nicely). A brave knight’s helmet will service in a pinch as a space helmet. Great weekend project. Of course it’s been sitting in the garage since that day…. but it’s the fun of making that matters.

Miles Rocket1   Miles Rocket2   Miles Rocket3

Yesterday was his “four and a half-est birthday,” which called for the making of a cake covered in green frosting grass. Make make make. That’s all we do around here lately. And I love that. He still talks about last year’s Maker Faire, and we’re pumped to go again this May.

Music: Sweet Honey In The Rock :: Woke Up This Morning With My Mind Stayed On Freedom
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Our New Dryer and The Patriot Act

Our clothers dryer crapped out last week, and the washer’s not doing so well either. Repairs expensive, time to replace them both. Home Depot offering a honkin’ pile of rebates, and has the unit Consumer Reports likes. Once there, learned that if we open a Home Depot credit card, we could get an additional 10% off. No penalties, what’s not to like?

Read recently that financial institutions cannot legally require you to provide a social security number, so decided to see what would happen if I entered all zeroes in that field. The application was spit back in seconds. Explained my position to the employee, who rang up credit central at HD. The guy I talked to wasted no time in invoking … wait for it … The Patriot Act in defense of the requirement. He didn’t have specifics, but claimed that the act required them to store this information, and that a separate taxpayer ID would not suffice.

I was incredulous. Either Home Depot is hiding behind the war on terror for capitalistic reasons, or the Patriotic Act is more frightening than I thought. I suspected the latter, but realized I wasn’t going to get anywhere in this round, so, with a four-year-old growing quickly impatient, forked over my SS# and took the discount. Tonight did a bit of research and found this at askquestions.org:

If you’d just like to open a bank account or engage in another banking transaction, can a bank force you to provide your social security number? How about fingerprinting you? Are either of these strictly required by law? Not exactly – although if you do not wish to provide your social security number you will have to obtain an alternate taxpayer identification number.

So if their reading of the act is correct, Home Depot was not within their rights to require this information. A little late now, but am curious just how hard a person would have to fight to get Home Depot credit approval without a valid social.

Music: Nino Rota :: L’Harem
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Daddy’s Flu Bug

Miles-Germ It’s been a light week on Birdhouse – very stressful work week, which by Thursday afternoon had combined itself with sleep deprivation and morphed into some killer mutant flu/sinus hybrid strain of je ne c’est pas, but whatever it was, I was laid out flat until Sunday afternoon, sweating, starving, hallucinerating, and watching a lot of bad TV (and also Genesis and Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus – both excellent in their own rights and “excellent-when-you’re-sick,” if you know what I mean). Just sort of checked out and was grateful to let Amy run the show. Slept almost 24 hours at one stretch, then started to emerge from the cocoon this morning. Still a bit woozy. Just enough personal horsepower remaining to digest some pre-masticated Oscars proceedings tonight.

Miles apparently digested my illness in his own way by reproducing the many types of viruses and germs in his bookshelf with ZOOBs and foam letters. Amy: “There’s the throw-up bug, the cold bug, the flu bug, the ear hurts bug, the sore throat bug, the sneezing bug, etc. No doubt he got the idea after his preschool teacher read them all a story about various germs and how to keep them away from you by eating healthy food and washing your hands.” The tall one in the middle is “Daddy’s flu bug.”

Music: Hassell & Eno :: Ba-Benzele
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Nose Flute

Rolandkirk Showing Miles images last night of Rahsaan Roland Kirk playing two and three saxophones at once, and the nose flute to boot. Miles was quite taken with this, and started explaining that he add extra, invisible nostrils placed at strategic locations around his head (specifically, three on his head, one in his chin, and two in his nose – an arrangement which provided opportunity for some interesting mathematical word problems: “And if you had five nostrils in your head and three in your chin, then how many nose flutes could you play?”).

Noseflute1     Noseflute2

Noseflute3     Noseflute4

This morning he started rummaging through spare parts left over from a recent bathroom remodel and pulled out some plumbing. Stuck one piece in his mouth and another in his nose, claimed he was Roland Kirk, and performed a full half-hour set.

Was Kirk the Hendrix of the police whistle? (see last 60 seconds of Volunteered Slavery)

Quote: “I didn’t ask my mother to buy me a trumpet or violin. I started right on the water hose.”

Music: Nino Rota :: Valzer – La Dolce Vita