Category: Family & Home

Talking with Miles this evening about colors. I ask him what colors of clothes go well together.

“A gray shirt.”

Hmmmm, I think. Conservative tendencies. Maybe the makings of a GAP kid. Sigh. I press on: “And what color pants go with a gray shirt?”

“Pink and orange and green and blue.”

“All of those colors together in one pair of pants?”

“Mmmm hmmm.”

“Polka dots or stripes?”

“Polka dots AND stripes!”

“With a gray shirt?”

“Mmmm hmmm daddy, with a gray shirt.”

Keep in mind this is coming from a kid who has never expressed one iota of interest in his clothes, other than to favor boots shaped like alligators.

Wondered why I was suddenly getting comments on the old Miles Stuck in the Cat Door and e-i-e-i hop hop videos. Then discovered that Miles has been linked to from Milk and Cookies, with the caption “Crawling baby gets stuck in the cat door and sadistic mommie makes him clean up his puke while videotaping it.”

Funny, we were mildly concerned when we originally posted that video that someone would not get the joke (the deck-cleaning clip was shot days before the throw-up clip; I temporally transposed them in Final Cut to make a funny). No one ever did comment on it, so I assumed everyone got it. Now, two years later, we’re waiting for a knock on the door from Child Protective Services.

Drywall job is complete (had a contractor do that – there were some tricky bits expected and we wanted to get on with it). He also found a crack running across the floor where two backer boards met and worried that it could cause tile popping or cracking in the future. Hasn’t been a problem in the past, but decided to go ahead and have him install double-thick 2×4 supports between the joists and drive long screws through the backer board, sub-floor, and into the supports.

Put about 12 hours this weekend into sanding, spackling, digging out bubbles of tired old paint (four layers!), removing messy old caulk job where it will meet the new paint, etc… Funnest part: Sanding new mud from ceiling. Must wear goggles and filter, but breath from filter fogs goggles from inside while falling dust obscures from the outside. So had to remove goggles every few strokes just to be able to see.

The closer one stares at an old wall, the worse it looks. Like word processing, a process of infinite revision. Gotta know when to quit and get on with it.

Finally decided on paint color. Found two separate vendors to supply the chicken-wire floor tile and the coving that will serve as a baseboard; coving color and texture identical to existing shower tile, which we’ll be keeping. Finally found the perfect light (i.e. one we can agree upon) to replace the 1970s Hollywood-style vanity light. I so look forward to ripping that monstrosity out of the wall.

Decided to make a fairly major change to the cabinet, which is too deep to be fully usable – we’ll install three drawers on sliding rollers, which will require knocking out its frame and molding and building a replacement door. Unanticipated work and might cause delay, but will be worth it.

Next up: Final spackle pass, final floor prep, lay tile.

Returned home from vacation to discover the cat food supply compromised by raccoons. Used to be, they’d come through the cat door, move a large garbage can aside, open the cabinet door, pull out a 25-lb. bag of cat food and claw it open. We “solved” that one last year by regularly transferring cat food bags into a large sealable plastic container. Now, it seems, they’ve realized that if they pull the whole container out onto the kitchen floor and start gnawing, they can eventually break the plastic and hit paydirt. No one went hungry, but cats are furious about the smell. We hear that placing a transistor radio set to a talk station near the cat door works – will try that next time.

Cleaning out the office today, moving an old and buggy Cambridge SoundWorks sat-sub computer speaker system to the garage, heard a mysterious rattle from within. Shining a light down through it’s vent and tilting it side-to-side, spied a little race car and a few other unidentified objects. Uh-oh. Tried to shake them out, but the vent was shaped like a lobster trap — no way were these things coming out easily. Removed nine screws from backing plate, lifted out the crossover, uncovered following items:

– 2 Gerber pacifiers, extra small
– One blue/yellow Cheerios-branded race car
– One Canon lithium-ion digital camera battery

There was a period of about six months when Miles was half his current age when he loved to crawl around under my desk among the wires and cables — hasn’t done that for a long time. The size of the pacifier suck-plugs pegged the time of insertion at around 1.5 years ago (his mouth was smaller then). We had forgotten all about the Cheerios car. The missing camera battery had driven us crazy for months. “I know we couldn’t have lost it… it’s got to be around here somewhere…” Finally bought a new one. Now we have two, which is fine.

Somehow we found the discovery heartwarming. Love/hate his growing up, that he doesn’t do this kind of stuff anymore. It’s all about Tinkertoys and Bob the Builder now.

The hallucinogenic dream sequence from Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day has recently become one of Miles’ favorite bits. Amazing to see how the images and icons foremost in his mind become interleaved so fluidly with real life. Heard recently that children can’t distinguish between fantasy and reality until age seven. At two, it’s all one big plastic fantastic reality sandwich.

“Miles, what are you and Mommy going to do today?”

“Daddy, we’re going to go down in a gopher hole with Winnie the Pooh and some Heffalumps and Woozles and we’re going to take a train table and trains in there too and grandma will come with us down in the gopher hole and look for honey that’s what we’re going to do, Daddy.”

The Festival of Mulch began on September 10, 2004, when I came home to find a mammoth mulch pile in the driveway, and ended May 22, 2005, when the last scrap of shredded bark and other tree waste was applied to the yard and we scrubbed the driveway clean. We can park the car again! It’s been a wonderful, mulch-ful 8 months and 12 days, but all things must pass.