Brace Yourselves

Football season is upon us. This coming week is the days I've been waiting for. This coming Thursday kicks off football season. I know, I know, we have been suffering through NFL preseason scrimmages and other junk for a month now, but this Thursday kicks off College Football!!!!! YAY!!!!!

I decided that for those of you who don't know me personally, I owe you some fair warnings. First, there will be football in this blog. I can't help it, football is in my blood. Second, there will be disparaging remarks made about Ohio State, Michigan, and Bobby Bowden. Third, and most important, this household contains rabid Penn State fans. We own lots of blue and white, and we do think Joe Paterno is as good as it gets. He may be 80 something, but he can whip your butt, and that takes grit. Last, we like the Aflac duck, and we do not pretend to be balanced in our commentary on various teams. Nope. Very biased here.

Okay, now that we've got that straight, I hope there will be no huge shocks for anyone. For those of you that are not football fans, I have to say it isn't really all that hard to learn. Kids are not born with this in their blood. They are taught, and with the proper amount of motivation, anyone can become an avid watcher and love it.

Let's take my sisters and me, for example. Two of us love football. One of us tolerates it. All three of us know an awful lot about it. Two of us have been told over the years that we know more football than "any other woman I have ever met." One of us knows almost as much, but chooses to say nothing. Trust me, she knows.

So how is it that all three of us came to know so much about the sport? I'll admit, a lot of our analysis came from our mom -- she knew her stuff in her day, before Ohio State got an inflated ego and she began to mistakenly think they would win every game all the time. Isn't it funny how fan loyalty can screw up your sense of perspective? (Not that I know anything at all about that ... no ... not at all.) The real truth is that Dad made us this way. I don't imagine he set out to do this. In fact, I'm pretty sure that our growth in the land of football-fandom was a complete accident -- an added benefit that came from Dad satisfying his own Saturday football lust.

He had a pretty iron clad plan, though. Pay attention fathers. You, too, can make football gurus out of your daughters. Here is how my dad did it. First, you need to understand that my dad was a little bit (read: a whole lot) of a workaholic. Every Saturday while the weather was good enough to survive, there was work to be done outside. There was car washing, lawn mowing, leaf raking, bush trimming, picking up those nasty bush trimmings, edging the sidewalk, the garden, and the driveway, putting on new blacktop (yes, we did that ourselves), shoveling snow, chopping wood, picking berries ... oh, you'd think we lived on 5 acres of rural woodland instead of half an acre in suburbia.

But, even workaholic Dad had a weakness -- Ohio State football. Not even the ever pressing "yard work" could take precedence over Ohio State football. Dad was fair, though. Strict, but fair. He gave us a choice. We could stay outside and keep working, or we could come inside and watch the game with him. Those were our only choices. Just imagine for one second how fast three girls become football watchers when those are your choices. Manual labor, or watching football with Dad. Seriously, what would you do? After my oldest sister moved out, things got even sweeter. We could watch OSU AND PSU, even when they weren't playing each other. Now, if you are stuck in a room where the only things to do are watch football or die of boredom, you become a fan in self defense. After all, fall is a long, long season if third and long isn't exhilarating to you.

I'll admit I can't often see a pass interference penalty unless the wide receiver is flat on the ground and the corner is on top of him while the ball is dropping next to them, but I can groan with the best of fans, and I can see a sack coming a mile away. My abilities may be due, in part, to all the years watching Penn State (aka, Linebacker U) and the Eagles (Offense wins games, but Defense wins championships). This means that when we are on defense, the ball was definitely uncatchable, and there is no such thing as interference. It isn't that I didn't see it, it's that it didn't happen.

But, more on this later. Our good boys in Blue and White are ranked 8th in the preseason, so things could be interesting. Wait. What am I saying? PSU football is ALWAYS interesting. Trust me. I even watch the draft.

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The Secret to Improved Productivity

Ever since we got a special August membership to a local swimming pool, I have discovered how to be productive. No wonder I couldn't manage it before. I was going about it all backwards. Productivity is really counterintuitive, but I've got the hang of it now. See, if I had nothing specific I had to do in a general day, I had no deadline to do it, so I got around to it when I got around to it. Laundry would take all day, and I'd get distracted with a million other things I thought needed my attention. Once it took me about 4 hours to finish cleaning an entire floor because I kept interrupting myself.

Oddly enough, lots changed when we got the pool membership. First of all, I'm cheap. I'm not paying for any membership if we aren't going to USE it. I have the cost of the membership broken out into how much it costs for every day in the month of August, and darn it we WILL GET OUR MONEY'S WORTH if I have anything to do about it. So long as we are in town, it isn't raining, and the temperature is above 84, we will go to the pool.

Of course, going to the pool smacks of relaxation and vacation, and all things lazy. But, anyone who goes to the pool with a 2 year old knows there is nothing relaxing and lazy about it, but still, it feels like decadence. Instead of being inside an office, freezing under an air conditoning vent, I'm outside in the sun. Even better, I'm not worried the phone will ring or there will be an important email I'm missing. In fact, these pool trips are more like a vacation than any vacation I've had since my honeymoon. (Of course, I am glossing over all the nasty parts, like trying to figure out how to change one of those swim diapers, fishing the food out of Toddler's mouth before he jumps into the pool, trying not to think about what all might be in the baby pool, wading through the water at the end of the trip trying to find all the toys we brought with us ... etc. Despite all this, the sunshine and the only goal being to have fun is pure heaven.)

The problem is, I know this is decadence. You can tell me it is good for me, and good for Toddler, and all that, but I KNOW this is a guilty pleasure. After all, I spent 10 years missing the privilege. So, since a good pool trip doesn't end until right before supper, we have to get all the day's work done BEFORE we go or the trip is tainted. That means I have only the morning to get done what I used to do in an entire day. Take this morning for example -- I descaled the coffee pot (yes, again), we went to the post office, the library, and the grocery store, and got Toddler a nap, all before arriving at the pool at 1-ish. Of course, we had to take time out at the pool to feed Toddler, but he didn't care, and so long as we were out in the sunshine with the nice pool water just waiting for us, neither did I. Tomorrow I will finish the laundry, weed the flower bed, and do something else I haven't figured out yet, all before going to the pool. I know I will because I do it every day now, I love the pool so much.

(I love it so much usually Toddler is the one putting on his own shoes and saying, "Home, Mommy," long before I am even close to wanting to leave. If I'm not careful, my thin disguise as a responsible adult will be undone with this pool venture.)

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Descale, Descale, Descale

Before I start today's story, I need to say that I have found it difficult to write today's post. Don't get me wrong, it isn't that I don't have anything to say, but rather this: When Toddler says, "Oh, no," I would be wise to look up faster from my blogging. I would save a lot of time cleaning up that way.

My newest battle with the forces of Entropy and Chaos is being fought over the coffeepot. Yep. The coffeepot. With the persistence that my combatants are fighting, you'd think the world ran on coffee. Well, maybe it does, but I, thankfully, have a "it tastes good, but I don't need the calories" addiction -- meaning I can restrain myself without too much effort. (Don't TOUCH that Diet Pepsi, though. Don't even touch it. Mine.)

I have one of those wonderful one cup machines that serves any flavor I happen to have bought. I have to admit, the different flavors are a ton of fun. Being able to smell the Pumpkin Spice in November, or all of the different ones with caramel in them ... I almost enjoy that smell more than the coffee. On the day before my colonoscopy, I drank black flavored coffee. On the morning of my colonoscopy, I just smelled it, and smelled it ... the sensation almost (almost) made me forget why I wasn't able to drink the coffee. (Of course, after the test, we had a Big Mac, some fries ....)

My coffee pot (which I love), has little lights on the top telling me what is going on and what the machine needs from me. There is a little blue light when the machine needs more water, and a little red light to tell me to be patient because the water is heating. Near the very top, though, there was a silent little button that never glowed. It read, "Descale." Now this little button/light didn't pester me, and I didn't think anything about it. I figured it would go ahead and light up or something to let me know if or when I was needed.

One day, after about 3 years or more, the light came on. The light was an ominous red color. Hmm. "Descale." I don't even know what that means. I decided to make a cup of coffee anyway, and the machine worked, so I figured I had time to think about this. I probably didn't have time to find the manual because I don't know that I ever even HAD a manual, much less read one. If we had it, only God himself could tell me where it was. So, I casually mention it to one or two of my friends and fam. This is what they said:

"Descale -- isn't that where you soak the parts in vinegar?" "Descale? Well, do you have vinegar?" "Descale ... I think that is what you do when you clean things with vinegar to get all the yucky crusties off." So ... you all know this? Where have I been that I don't know you can clean with vinegar, much less that doing so is called "descaling?" Here I am thinking that vinegar is good for making easter eggs and taking pet odors out of rugs. (Well, I guess that is a form of cleaning, isn't it? Good point.)

Just a day or so later, my sister calls. "Guess what! My coffee pot's 'descale' light went off. I found out I wasn't supposed to be waiting for the light, and I was supposed to be descaling it periodically every so often. My coffeepot is ruined, and I need to go buy another." Umm ... really? So I said, "Yeah, my light just turned on, too. How do you descale?" She replied, "You run vinegar through it. There is this whole little process, and it takes a few hours. You can Google it. I'll try to send you the link sometime. By the way, your pot is probably ruined too."

Really? It seems to be working just fine .... Remember when I told you that coffee was a take-it-or-leave-it thing in this house? Well, in her house coffee is a major event and a broken pot is a real crisis. She just told me that, in her world, she thought my house was shortly going to be falling apart. I'm thinking, "That's a stinky way to make a coffee pot! Do what it tells you to do, when it tells you to do it, and you BREAK it?"

So, I Google the process, and there it is. Pour vinegar in the water trap, run it through, let it sit for four hours (4 hours???), run water through, and go on with your life. Of course, I have next to no vinegar in the house. I wasn't planning on making Easter eggs for another 7 or so months. I had a little, though -- about a coffee cup's worth. I made it work. Instead of filling the water trap with vinegar, I poured in what I had, ran it through the machine, poured it back, ran it through ... over and over and over. Oddly enough, when the first bit of vinegar ran through the machine, the menacing red light went out. Was that all it took? Was the crisis averted? I followed through with the process, rinsed, rinsed, rinsed, and all seemed to be well.

About a month later, the light comes back on. "Descale." Again? Ok, I will. This time, though, I didn't rinse well enough, and when I finally made a cup of coffee, the cream curdled. Oh, yuck. What a waste of a good cup of coffee. Actually, no matter what I do, the first cup after descaling is a bit rough, but some are worse than others.

Then, about 3 weeks later, the light comes on again. Really? Again? So soon? Is this pattern what was supposed to happen all along, or is this what Darling Sister meant by "broken?" Am I really not getting it clean, and eventually the thing will freeze up? I guess we'll have to see, but I'm not giving in until the coffee actually stops flowing. A mere threat is not enough for me. I can descale with the best of them. In fact, when I was wiping the countertops this morning, I found a lot of crud on the can opener. I was looking at it and said to myself, "Should I have been 'descaling' this all along, too?" We'll see. I bought the vinegar in the gallon size this time. I'm prepared.

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Old Fashioned and Apparently Cursed

Many times upon a time, a long, long time ago, I used to sit and watch my mother scrub our kitchen floor on her hands and knees. Well, let's be truthful ... she was on her posterior because my mom has bad knees, and she was never on her knees for more than the time it took to say "Ouch." But, scrubbing a floor on your hands and knees sounds a bit more noble (and likely) then saying, "scrubbing the floor while sitting on it indian style and sliding across it on your bum." (Oh, and this was the 70's so we were still allowed to say "indian style." "Criss-cross applesauce" wasn't invented yet.) Not only did she wipe it up with soap and water, she scratched off all the tar stains and other gunk with her fingernails. (Dedication, I tell ya, dedication.)

Then, as a present, the family got together and bought mom a few visits from a cleaning service. She enjoyed the freedom and kept the service up herself for awhile. Cleaning services never, ever, ever scrub floors with anything but a broom, mop, or one of those floor cleaning sponge mops they advertise on TV. Then one day, someone spilled something, and mom bent over to clean it up. One spill led to a revelation that there was some dirt or dust or something, so she cleaned a little further. Before very many minutes had passed, Mom decided that the cleaning service's method stunk, and the floor wasn't clean at all, and she sat down and did the whole thing herself.

Before I go any further, I think I should probably mention that the linoleum on our kitchen floor in that house probably took up a space about 8 feet by 8 feet.

So, that was the end of the cleaning service. When I grew up and got a kitchen of my own, I was never so determined, or patient enough, to scrub a floor on my hands and knees. Heck, I was lucky to actually bother to "scrub" a floor. I owned a squeegie mop and that was it. Sometimes I used it ... most of the time I was too busy to remember where the kitchen was.

Then, the world changed. I decided to have a baby, so we needed to start using the kitchen. Feeding any child on carpet is a dangerous activity. Then someone had to clean up under Toddler's high chair, and no squeegie mop is going to get all those crumbs, no sir, no how. So, it all started with me, a paper towel, some water, and some post-meal high chair cleaning. At that moment I realized how much fuzziness and cat hair becomes visible from the view of 6 inches when it is decidedly invisible at the view of 5+ feet. Still, the floor relied on brooms and mops -- none of this hand cleaning stuff. Then Toddler learned to eat table foods, and cleaning under the high chair became a daily activity. I was annoyed by this because I felt like no one else was cleaning up the floor -- just me, every morning, as part of my routine. Then DH mentioned that he was wiping the floor ... on occasion ... after meals. I didn't believe him, so I decided to test the theory. I wiped the floor under the high chair after every meal, three times a day, just to prove a point.

Well, I proved a point all right. I proved that dirt, dust, and cat hair grow under high chairs at an alarming rate. They seem to follow the food particles. Then the blinders came off, and I looked at the entire floor from the 6 inch level, and I cringed. Mom was right. Nothing beats a good hands and knees scrubbing. So, one day (the day I posted about wanting to be rescued by a fairy godmother), I scrubbed the entire floor and the walls on my hands and knees, using paper towels and clorox scrubbing wipes. The amount of dirt was scary, scary, scary. Even scarier, though, was that two days later every bit of it was back.

Sad to say, I became fixated, and I wipe up that floor from one end to the other at least every other day, sometimes more often. It has become a new kind of sick addiction, and when I don't do it I can imagine I feel particles under my feet while I type these blogs. Now, I don't do the kind of scrubbing I did that first day, but I feel like if I keep up with the wiping, then every so often a good squeegy-ing will do the trick to help keep it nice and fresh.

So here I am, feeling a sense of accomplishment. I've given up my life on the dark side, at least as far as the kitchen floor is concerned, and I've returned to my mother's tried and true method of cleaning. Mom was right all along, and her way is the only and best way to keep a house clean. I thought briefly that maybe this was a little bit much given that I seem to have one and a half times as much floor as she did, maybe twice as much, but all to a good end, right?

Last week I visited with her and mentioned that I'd started wiping (not scrubbing, wiping) the kitchen floor every day on my hands and knees.

You know what she said?

"Oh, isn't that awful? Why do you do that?"

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Bugs that Bug and the Tale of the Lost Sunglasses

As it turns out, Houdini's fight with himself yesterday morning was a small omen about the day. He was warning me that some things are really too bothersome to ignore. I'm not sure what good the warning did me, even if I had understood him, but it was true. As it turns out, a cloud of gnats in Toddler's face is about as bothersome to him as a super-itchy ear is to Houdini.

We went to story and music time in the town square yesterday, like we have done often enough before. Toddler is bored with the stories, but he sure looooovvvveeess the music. Yesterday, though, he couldn't even be patient through the stories because these little nasty gnats just kept flying around our faces, and they were driving him crazy! He was swatting at his face and crying into my clothing and begging me to let him go back to the car. I knew as soon as the music came on, things would be fine, so I spent the next 15 minutes trying to find a place with few enough gnats to give him a chance to wait it out. The best help was letting Toddler walk around with my sunglasses on so the nasty little things couldn't get too close to his eyes.

This whole "gnat" thing would have been so much easier if we had Toddler's sunglasses with us, but alas, those lovely things have been lost. Yep. Lost. We took them to Hersheypark last weekend, and I, in my infinite wisdom, took them from Toddler and put them in my pocket so that he wouldn't lose them on the Scrambler ride. Well, guess who lost them. We reported them to the Lost and Found, and we received wonderful news! They were found, and the park mailed them back to us. Whew!!!!! There was rejoicing in the house. But ... the rejoicing was premature. The sunglasses they found were not ours, and we learned that as soon as we opened the package from the park. If anything, these sunglasses are even less attractive than the ones Toddler found for himself in Nevada. Well, for one thing, they are for a girl. Yep -- white sunglasses with little flowers on them.

On our errands today, we will be stopping at CVS to see if the Mickey Mouse sunglasses have more appeal than they used to for Toddler. I sure hope so. I have a funny feeling those Nevada glasses are gone for good. They didn't like me making fun of them, I suppose, and that is unfortunate because they really did fit unusually well.

Oh, well. Maybe as soon as we buy some new ones, these will show up caught in the folds of the stroller or something. That would be my luck for sure, even though it hasn't worked yet for my GPS.

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One of "Those" Days

Before the alarm clock even sounded this morning, Darling Husband and I had already looked at each other and said, “I hope this morning isn’t an omen of how the day will go.” Man, oh man, I hope not.

The day actually started at 5:30, when Toddler decided to get up. This early wake up usually means he is about to fill his diapers, and since we have no other advance notice from him, early morning means potty training. Sheesh. Thank you, Universe, for giving a woman who hates mornings a child with a very early morning constitution. Love you too, man (or woman) (or non-gender-specific entity).

Shortly after we got Toddler all changed and back to bed, the cats started fussing. I swear, I have the weirdest cats on the planet. First, Girl Cat chased Houdini onto the bed. There is nothing quite like having the cats race around in the morning staging the Kittyopolous 500. At least with racing, the trips on the bed are short and too the point. With arguments, though, comes the combined weight of 22 pounds thundering on the bed … Girl Cat on the attack, with Houdini running to mom and dad for HELP! HELP! HELLLLPPPPP!!!!!

Don’t worry, cats, we were already awake.

But then, just to keep the drama going, Houdini picked a fight with himself.

Yes, you read that right. The cat picked a fight with himself. No, I’m not talking about that trick where they chase their tails and get upset when they actually catch it. Nope. This is something altogether funnier. Lots of cats find it very irritating to have anything touch the inside of their ears. They’ll scratch the ears with their back paws or at least think about starting to. (You’ll see the paw go up and the head go down, but they sometimes restrain themselves.)

Well, Houdini can never do anything quite like a typical cat, as we have well learned. His compulsion to scratch his ears when something touches his ears is quite acute, and it includes when HE touches his own ear. Yes, when Houdini has a super-itchy ear, he starts a feedback loop where he scratches his ear because it itches, then he scratches his ear because something is touching his ear. Well apparently this morning that left ear was so darn itchy that he couldn’t control himself. He kept scratching, then getting “stuck” to the point where he couldn’t stop scratching, scratched even more frantically, and finally ended up growling at himself. This happened at least 3 times – mostly with Houdini flipping around at the foot of the bed trying to get away from himself so he could scratch his ear.

Well after 3 tries at this, DH and I decided there was no help for it. Toddler got us up first, and now we were going to get up again to clean out a cat’s ear for him. Yeesh, the things I do to catch a little shut eye!

Thankfully, after a lot of kicking on Houdini’s part (I was touching his ear, you know), he started to feel better and got a hold of himself. We all went back to bed for 5 minutes and then started the day on time.

Like DH and I said to each other this morning, I hope this isn’t an omen for the day.

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Smart Technology Breeds Dumb People (or People Who Do Dumb Things)

So, in my last post I lamented the trials and tribulations of my dependency on a fickle and unreliable internet. As of this writing, the problem is not yet fixed. Nonetheless, today we return to our regularly scheduled programming, where I will continue my lamentations about our society’s growing dependency on portable technology in the car.

As you may recall, two postings ago, I described to you the odd behavior of my new GPS, particularly the part where it suddenly demanded that I make a legal u-turn after I had been driving for several blocks on the road it told me to drive on. I described my utter confusion at the verbal instructions and reprimands the machine was giving me. What I did not tell you was that I broke the rules of good driving and took a few glances at the GPS as I was getting these conflicting messages -- just a few quick sneaks at traffic lights. I do think if I had been able to look at the screen in detail, I might have seen that the machine failed to inform me of a turn that would have made the route a little shorter and straighter. But, the truth is, I almost never look at the screen of a GPS unless I'm being a backstreet driver. I figure if the thing can't tell me in words where to turn, it isn't worth the money someone paid for it. (Thank you, Aunt Marcy.) Driving in the middle of downtown Washington, DC is sometimes enough like playing a game of dodge-the-cars-and-pedestrians as it is without trying to do it while staring at a screen. After all, DC has a law against using cell phones in a car without also using a handsfree interface, and this GPS thing is way worse than my cell phone. (Don’t even get me started on how hard it is sometimes to make the hands free part work and how many buttons you have to push sometimes to start it – it might be faster to just dial the silly number….. but I digress. That is a rant for another day.)

Honestly, I just don’t understand drivers that spend time looking at GPS screens when they drive. I imagine those who do are the same ones that look at their Blackberry or I-Phone while they drive, too. To me, it seems like common sense that if you wouldn’t read a book while driving, you shouldn’t be typing with your thumbs or reading your email either, but obviously not everyone agrees. Hey, it wouldn’t be the first time that someone didn’t agree with something I thought was obvious.

My first clue that there were otherwise very bright and highly educated people checking their email on the freeway came several years ago at a company meeting. The head of our company mentioned, among other announcements, that it was company policy to refrain from checking your Blackberry while driving. Ummm … duh? Honestly, I could hardly believe that the man had said such a thing. Seriously, there was a meeting among higher ups where they actually sat down and had an agreement to add “don’t read your Blackberry while driving” to the formal company policy? Wow, what a colossal waste of time.

Alas, I was naïve. I never truly imagined that anyone with the education and intelligence enough to be hired by that company to a position that required a Blackberry would actually try to use it while driving. Boy, was I wrong. I don’t know how widespread the problem was, but the woman down the hall was a prime offender. I knew her reasonably well – she was small, tough, and afraid of nothing in the world I knew of but getting lost while driving. I don’t know if she is still typing on her smart phone while driving, but if she has a GPS, I’m willing to bet she’s looking at that while driving.

I guess to each his own … just don’t be heading my way with your eyes in your hands.

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