For about a year now, I've been getting Imprimis delivered at my home for free. The April 2009 edition features remarks by columnist Mark Steyn that I found very interesting. You can read the text of his speech here. If it happens to come up with another speech, you can check the Imprimis archive at this site and search for "Steyn."
If you like what you see, go ahead and request a free subscription to Imprimis!
Your thoughts?
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Better two-plus months late than never...
My children, for some reason, do not like to lose their baby teeth. That's at least what an examination of the track record would seem to indicate. Alpha lost the last of his teeth when he was 14. For over a year before that, he had shark-like double rows of molars (okay, imperfect analogy--sharks don't have grinding molars--but it was really odd seeing teeth jutting outward from his gums). Bravo still has a bunch of baby teeth left to lose, none of them are loose, and he turns 14 this fall. Charlie has a long way to go. Delta has now lost five or six teeth, but it's been slow going. She lost one of the front teeth shortly after Christmas. In the intervening two months, the other front tooth has gradually gotten looser and looser, but she really didn't want to have it pulled until it was basically hanging by a thread.
Well, this week, I convinced her that it was loose enough to come out. To tell the absolute truth, it had been gradually moving toward the center of her mouth. It was quite strange-looking. Anyway, she agreed to have it pulled out, which I took care of. (Turns out it was still connected pretty well to the root on the back side of the tooth, but the connection to the gum/flesh was minimal, so the bleeding stopped pretty quickly. Echo was in the bathroom with us when Delta shrieked, and the two of them had a fine freak-out together--my ears are still ringing two nights later.)
Well, with both teeth out, Delta is just as cute as any six-year-old with two missing front teeth can be. I keep wondering why that is. I mean, think of a hockey player missing the same two teeth--not exactly attractive. What is it about little kids and missing teeth (as opposed to adults with missing teeth) that is cute? As with just about everything, I have a theory on this--it's empathy. "All I want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth" is not exactly a musical masterpiece, but it continues to endure and we all know the lyrics because we can all easily imagine a little kid with that wide expanse of toothlessness asking Santa to deliver some relief from the inability to eat solid foods without cutting them up.
To be precise, just about every one of us has been there, unless of course, you were even more reluctant to lose those baby teeth than my kids. The summer I lost my front teeth happened to be a summer in which Gramsey cooked up a bunch of corn (that is to say, we had corn on the cob pretty frequently). Consequently, I missed out on pretty much an entire summer of getting butter all over my cheeks and chin, because Pop handled the processing of my corn every time we had it--he'd butter it up, salt it, then cut the kernels off in long strips onto my plate. It was just as tasty and nutritious, I'm sure, but not nearly as fun to eat. Anyway, it remains a vivid memory for me--I did try a couple of times to eat the corn off the cob, with dismal results. And with that vivid memory flashing through my mind, I see Delta trying to eat apples, and I completely understand her frustration and wish there were some way to fix the problem for her.
Without belaboring the point, I'd love to hear from others what memories they have of their own, or their children's, toothlessness.
Well, this week, I convinced her that it was loose enough to come out. To tell the absolute truth, it had been gradually moving toward the center of her mouth. It was quite strange-looking. Anyway, she agreed to have it pulled out, which I took care of. (Turns out it was still connected pretty well to the root on the back side of the tooth, but the connection to the gum/flesh was minimal, so the bleeding stopped pretty quickly. Echo was in the bathroom with us when Delta shrieked, and the two of them had a fine freak-out together--my ears are still ringing two nights later.)
Well, with both teeth out, Delta is just as cute as any six-year-old with two missing front teeth can be. I keep wondering why that is. I mean, think of a hockey player missing the same two teeth--not exactly attractive. What is it about little kids and missing teeth (as opposed to adults with missing teeth) that is cute? As with just about everything, I have a theory on this--it's empathy. "All I want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth" is not exactly a musical masterpiece, but it continues to endure and we all know the lyrics because we can all easily imagine a little kid with that wide expanse of toothlessness asking Santa to deliver some relief from the inability to eat solid foods without cutting them up.
To be precise, just about every one of us has been there, unless of course, you were even more reluctant to lose those baby teeth than my kids. The summer I lost my front teeth happened to be a summer in which Gramsey cooked up a bunch of corn (that is to say, we had corn on the cob pretty frequently). Consequently, I missed out on pretty much an entire summer of getting butter all over my cheeks and chin, because Pop handled the processing of my corn every time we had it--he'd butter it up, salt it, then cut the kernels off in long strips onto my plate. It was just as tasty and nutritious, I'm sure, but not nearly as fun to eat. Anyway, it remains a vivid memory for me--I did try a couple of times to eat the corn off the cob, with dismal results. And with that vivid memory flashing through my mind, I see Delta trying to eat apples, and I completely understand her frustration and wish there were some way to fix the problem for her.
Without belaboring the point, I'd love to hear from others what memories they have of their own, or their children's, toothlessness.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Update on my Mortal Combat
Well, the victory over the wheat bugs was not complete. We have discovered that a few little worms have been setting up shop in the upper creases and corners of the pantry, and that they eventually become our aggravating quarry. I have dispatched with as many of the worms as I have found over the last several weeks, but at least two of them have escaped destruction. Also, one evening last week, I discovered a full-grown flier, and promptly wiped him out. But still, compared to the previous two years, one fully developed bug and 15 or so pupal worms in the last six weeks is tremendously preferable.
Also, the powder room remains as unfinished as before. Well, I think I had previously said a couple of minor things remained. At this point, the ceiling needs a new coat of Behr ultra pure white paint, and I need to install the quarter-round along the baseboards. Also, Bravo, not knowing his own strength, tore the towel ring next to the sink out of the wall, so I know need to repair that damage and reinstall the ring. But I haven't done anything with it in 2008. My Saturdays have been disrupted by the local youth recreational basketball leagues. Those end on the 23rd, and then I am free to spend my Saturday mornings on my home improvement projects. Woo-hoo!
Also, the powder room remains as unfinished as before. Well, I think I had previously said a couple of minor things remained. At this point, the ceiling needs a new coat of Behr ultra pure white paint, and I need to install the quarter-round along the baseboards. Also, Bravo, not knowing his own strength, tore the towel ring next to the sink out of the wall, so I know need to repair that damage and reinstall the ring. But I haven't done anything with it in 2008. My Saturdays have been disrupted by the local youth recreational basketball leagues. Those end on the 23rd, and then I am free to spend my Saturday mornings on my home improvement projects. Woo-hoo!
Monday, December 31, 2007
Small victories are sometimes the sweetest
I have great news to report. Not just that the blog is active again (I know many of you must have been waiting with great anxiety for the latest thrilling update on the Wheelheads), but because I have not one, but two items of great news. The first, and by far less significant, is that the great powder room renovation in nearly complete! I successfully installed a new floor, replaced the cabinet, reseated the toilet not once, but twice, and have pretty much finished the painting--walls, door, and window and door frames. I still need to install the toilet paper thing (where you put the new roll on) and touch up the ceiling...oh, and put in quarter round peg along the baseboards. But other than that, the project is done! With tomorrow being a holiday for me, I will probably be knocking out all the rest of it, with the possible exception of the quarter round. It may not be much to most, but for me and my track record with big projects, this is something to celebrate.
The second bit of great news, and one that will rank much lower in the estimation of some, is our apparent victory over the wheat bugs. Miss Saccharine is way into whole foods and eating good stuff, and consequently chooses to make bulk purchases of some of our staples from organic farms. One in particular (but which shall remain anonymous) offered their locally grown wheat (we have normally purchased Montana wheat from them) at a great price two years ago. We got a couple of 50 pound bags, but discovered that the wheat was not only really dirty, but that it had gone wormy. We didn't think that much about the worms, figuring that they would die once we vacuum packed the wheat in buckets. Wrong. Either the vacuum packing didn't work or the worms turned out to anaerobic. Either way, when we opened the first bucket a few weeks later, a number of small moth-like bugs flew out of the bucket and sevreted themselves all over our basement. We have spent the last two years locked in mortal combat with these insidious pests.
They are actually relatively innocuous insects. They don't make any noise, generally leave you alone, don't bite, and genearlly leave you in peace. However, they reproduce fairly rapidly, utilizing any and every available grain source as their breeding grounds. Having lots of little kids in the house with our whole foods and grains means that we have lots of such breeding grounds available in our pantry, which is where they eventually established their home base and have for the last two years done nothing but crawl around our walls, copulate prodigiously, and provide us numerous opportunities to stalk them.
On the plus side, they are very slow-moving and relatively fragile, thus easy to kill. On the down side, they are a brownish-gray color, which means they are adept at hiding themselves on our kitchen cabinets. We initially had great success as they began their assault on the ground floor of the house, because they stood out like gangbusters against the white walls of the stairway. However, once they established their pantry beachhead, it was pretty much game over. They had too many places to lay their eggs that we seldom got around to discovering until every bit of grain in the bag had been eaten through by larval worms. On a normal day, I killed between five and 10 bugs, thinking that surely with that kind of slaughter, they couldn't last much longer. However, the occasional upstairs trespasser let me know that the problem wasn't going away.
I was particularly disturbed starting last spring when Delta started calling me into her room right after bedtime to tell me that a "wheatfly" was bothering her. I assured her it couldn't be so, but she insisted. I'd go in, turn on the light, and wouldn't you know it, there was one of them, as brazen as anything sitting on the wall. They being pretty stupid and slow once they were stationary, I would dispatch of the offender and put Delta back to bed. However, I started getting enormous bugs flying up from the basement that looked like the third Pokemon evolution of my wheat bugs--veritable Charizards to the Charmanders I'd been dealing with for months. This new beastie nearly drove me to sending Miss Saccharine and the kids to her parents' place so I could buy a bunch of bug bombs and unleash chemical warfare on my flying adversaries.
Well might you ask yourself what turned the tide and led to my "Mission Accomplished" moment. Well, early this last fall, Miss Saccharine and I decided that the many skid marks on the upper walls and ceiling of the pantry had gotten out of control, and it was time to "drain the swamp" where these terrorists had their breeding ground. We spent the better part of a Saturday morning clearing out the pantry shelf by shelf, wiping up every bit of grain and flour, and throwing out literally dozens of bags that had either been left open or which these pests had forced their way into and set up shop. We didn't complete all the shelves that day, but the number of daily kills dropped to about one or two per day. However, it wasn't until I discovered that they also were using cardboard locales for their illicit activities that we shut off the final tap. Several boxes of crackers (mostly just crumbs) and single-serving oatmeal packets (suspiciously torn open and left half-eaten by certain boys who will remain nameless) also went into the trash. I killed a few more bugs over the next couple of weeks.
We are now going on six weeks without a single kill. I check the pantry every day for signs of their return, but so far nothing. Lest you think this latest success is merely the result of the onset of winter, you should know that the bugs did not take either of the last two winters off--the kill rate for both years was essentially the same as it was in spring and summer.
Having now conquered (pretty much) both a significant (to me) home improvement project and my winged nemeses, I feel pretty good about declaring victory, at least for today, the last day of a pretty good year for the Wheelheads.
Thanks for reading. I look forward to posting more regularly in the future, and hope that you will return and enjoy my musings. Wishing you the best for 2008.
Wheelhead
The second bit of great news, and one that will rank much lower in the estimation of some, is our apparent victory over the wheat bugs. Miss Saccharine is way into whole foods and eating good stuff, and consequently chooses to make bulk purchases of some of our staples from organic farms. One in particular (but which shall remain anonymous) offered their locally grown wheat (we have normally purchased Montana wheat from them) at a great price two years ago. We got a couple of 50 pound bags, but discovered that the wheat was not only really dirty, but that it had gone wormy. We didn't think that much about the worms, figuring that they would die once we vacuum packed the wheat in buckets. Wrong. Either the vacuum packing didn't work or the worms turned out to anaerobic. Either way, when we opened the first bucket a few weeks later, a number of small moth-like bugs flew out of the bucket and sevreted themselves all over our basement. We have spent the last two years locked in mortal combat with these insidious pests.
They are actually relatively innocuous insects. They don't make any noise, generally leave you alone, don't bite, and genearlly leave you in peace. However, they reproduce fairly rapidly, utilizing any and every available grain source as their breeding grounds. Having lots of little kids in the house with our whole foods and grains means that we have lots of such breeding grounds available in our pantry, which is where they eventually established their home base and have for the last two years done nothing but crawl around our walls, copulate prodigiously, and provide us numerous opportunities to stalk them.
On the plus side, they are very slow-moving and relatively fragile, thus easy to kill. On the down side, they are a brownish-gray color, which means they are adept at hiding themselves on our kitchen cabinets. We initially had great success as they began their assault on the ground floor of the house, because they stood out like gangbusters against the white walls of the stairway. However, once they established their pantry beachhead, it was pretty much game over. They had too many places to lay their eggs that we seldom got around to discovering until every bit of grain in the bag had been eaten through by larval worms. On a normal day, I killed between five and 10 bugs, thinking that surely with that kind of slaughter, they couldn't last much longer. However, the occasional upstairs trespasser let me know that the problem wasn't going away.
I was particularly disturbed starting last spring when Delta started calling me into her room right after bedtime to tell me that a "wheatfly" was bothering her. I assured her it couldn't be so, but she insisted. I'd go in, turn on the light, and wouldn't you know it, there was one of them, as brazen as anything sitting on the wall. They being pretty stupid and slow once they were stationary, I would dispatch of the offender and put Delta back to bed. However, I started getting enormous bugs flying up from the basement that looked like the third Pokemon evolution of my wheat bugs--veritable Charizards to the Charmanders I'd been dealing with for months. This new beastie nearly drove me to sending Miss Saccharine and the kids to her parents' place so I could buy a bunch of bug bombs and unleash chemical warfare on my flying adversaries.
Well might you ask yourself what turned the tide and led to my "Mission Accomplished" moment. Well, early this last fall, Miss Saccharine and I decided that the many skid marks on the upper walls and ceiling of the pantry had gotten out of control, and it was time to "drain the swamp" where these terrorists had their breeding ground. We spent the better part of a Saturday morning clearing out the pantry shelf by shelf, wiping up every bit of grain and flour, and throwing out literally dozens of bags that had either been left open or which these pests had forced their way into and set up shop. We didn't complete all the shelves that day, but the number of daily kills dropped to about one or two per day. However, it wasn't until I discovered that they also were using cardboard locales for their illicit activities that we shut off the final tap. Several boxes of crackers (mostly just crumbs) and single-serving oatmeal packets (suspiciously torn open and left half-eaten by certain boys who will remain nameless) also went into the trash. I killed a few more bugs over the next couple of weeks.
We are now going on six weeks without a single kill. I check the pantry every day for signs of their return, but so far nothing. Lest you think this latest success is merely the result of the onset of winter, you should know that the bugs did not take either of the last two winters off--the kill rate for both years was essentially the same as it was in spring and summer.
Having now conquered (pretty much) both a significant (to me) home improvement project and my winged nemeses, I feel pretty good about declaring victory, at least for today, the last day of a pretty good year for the Wheelheads.
Thanks for reading. I look forward to posting more regularly in the future, and hope that you will return and enjoy my musings. Wishing you the best for 2008.
Wheelhead
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Worst...blogger...ever!
I haven't made note this morning of the date on my last post. I only know it's been a very long time. As you might well imagine, there's been a lot going on at the wheelhead household in that time, so there's a lot to talk about. Before I get to any of that, however, I need to mention that in response to a higher authority (Miss Saccharine), I will be minimizing the role of the family members in my posts. That may just wind up spelling the end of the entertaining part of my blog, but it will actually point me back in the direction of my original intent (see the "What is Wheelhead" post that started the insanity).
Just to give you a taste of what is to come, here are some potential post titles yet to arrive.
1) Beltway Breakdown
2) Emergency Room Adventures
3) The Lapping Tide of My Mid-life Crisis
4) Small Flooring Project Goes Big Time
5) The Interesting Link Between "Critical Thinking" and an Adventurous Sex Life
6) The Bull Running of the Boys
Oh, the things you have to look forward to, if only I can manage to scrape together a few hours!
Just to give you a taste of what is to come, here are some potential post titles yet to arrive.
1) Beltway Breakdown
2) Emergency Room Adventures
3) The Lapping Tide of My Mid-life Crisis
4) Small Flooring Project Goes Big Time
5) The Interesting Link Between "Critical Thinking" and an Adventurous Sex Life
6) The Bull Running of the Boys
Oh, the things you have to look forward to, if only I can manage to scrape together a few hours!
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Those memories of childhood...
Many years ago, when Miss Saccharine and I were dating, she occasionally would sing a line or two of song that stirred vague memories in me.
Gloom, despair and agony on me (whoa!)
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery (whoa!)
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all (whoa!)
Gloom, despair, and agony on me.
I generally got this treatment whenever I told her of how hard it was to deal with school, my roommates, and the lengthy practices the water polo team had every night--how was I going to get everything done?!? Turns out her father and mine were both fans of Hee Haw, which is why I vaguely remembered the song, having spent many a Saturday afternoon watching the show with Pop.
Well, she has continued to sing those bits of song to me and to all of our children over the years. The other day, she pulled up some old Mr. Magoo cartoons on YouTube for Charlie, and for some reason, it struck both of us at the same time that we could probably find that one song from Hee Haw. YouTube didn't have it, but JibJab did, so I present it here for your pleasure: Gloom, Despair, and Agony on Me. Enjoy! (If the pause button remains visible in the middle of the picture, my apologies.)
Incidentally, the kids loved it.
Gloom, despair and agony on me (whoa!)
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery (whoa!)
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all (whoa!)
Gloom, despair, and agony on me.
I generally got this treatment whenever I told her of how hard it was to deal with school, my roommates, and the lengthy practices the water polo team had every night--how was I going to get everything done?!? Turns out her father and mine were both fans of Hee Haw, which is why I vaguely remembered the song, having spent many a Saturday afternoon watching the show with Pop.
Well, she has continued to sing those bits of song to me and to all of our children over the years. The other day, she pulled up some old Mr. Magoo cartoons on YouTube for Charlie, and for some reason, it struck both of us at the same time that we could probably find that one song from Hee Haw. YouTube didn't have it, but JibJab did, so I present it here for your pleasure: Gloom, Despair, and Agony on Me. Enjoy! (If the pause button remains visible in the middle of the picture, my apologies.)
Incidentally, the kids loved it.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Honey-do
Give Miss Saccharine credit: she is an optimist at heart. We've been married just over 17 years, and she continues to believe I possess actual home repair skills. It's been quipped that second marriages are the triumph of optimism over experience; the Wheelhead Correlary to that maxim states that Miss Saccharine will still insist on a new honey-do list every weekend, irrespective of how many previous projects remain unfinished.
Here's the running list of unfinished projects going on right now, along with some of the 20-odd projects waiting in the wings to get started and not completed. These are in no particular order.
1. Family room ceiling. Within a few months of moving into the house, an upstairs toilet overflowed and about 8 ounces of water got through the floor and into the space above the family room ceiling. One of the seams started to bulge, so I lanced it and drained the water. We have a short stretch of the ceiling that needs to be re-taped and painted.
2. Painting the kitchen. MS loves colors and hates bare white walls. She decided the kitchen had to be a beautiful country blue/periwinkle, which is has been for about five years...well, all except the top edge all the way around...and around the door out to the garage...and that spot between the stove and the microwave. Edges are not my thing--no patience.
3. The kitchen floor. MS hated the old linoleum in the kitchen and wanted a wood floor. We didn't have the money for hardwood, so we got laminate. At the advice of her uncle, I attempted to fill all the seams with waterproof stuff, which only made the job of snapping all the pieces together that much more difficult. It took about four months from the time I tore up the two old layers of linoleum until the main part of the floor was done. Still need to do something about the edges and the baseboards. It's only been 18 months--don't rush me!
4. The powder room floor, cabinet, and sink. The powder room is part of the "kitchen wing" of the house, so it's flooring came up when the kitchen's did. It's been two years of exposed plywood. In the meantime, I fixed the corroded flapper in the toilet tank, which gave me just enough exposure to the problems associated with toilet work to make me wary of the next phase of the project: cutting the linoleum to the right size and fitting it around the pipe for the toilet. One of the kids broke one of the doors on the cabinet in that bathroom years ago, so that needs to be replaced (it looks terrible, in addition to the broken door), and while we're at it, we might as well replace the original sink, which is showing its age. In short, it's essentially a makeover for the powder room. Can't it wait until the kitchen floor is done?
5. The family room floor. When we moved in, there were a couple of floor boards that appeared to be cracked. They are now full-on broken, and the only reason no one has fallen through is the sturdy carpet over the breaks, and the fact that the breaks are in extremely low-traffic areas. All I have to do is pull up the carpet, take out an entire 4'x8' plywood sheet that has been professionally installed, and replace it myself... We're planning on replacing the carpet in that room anyway--it's filthy. I'm figuring that at some point between now and the time I purchase the replacement plywood, Miss Saccharine is going to decide that laying carpet looks easy enough, and that I ought to to the job in the family room.
6. The slider from the family room to the back yard. Okay, this is one that Miss Saccharine has pretty much admitted would be better done by a professional. The wheels on which the slider rolls are broken, so the door slides, rather than rolls open. It's a pain. For several months, Miss Saccharine was sure I could take care of installing it myself. I just needed Home Depot to deliver it, and we had to find a door the right size.
7. The Sunray play structure. We bought one from Costco this year. We need to level a good-sized spot in the back yard (which has a nice gentle, uneven slope in the only part of the yard large enough for the structure) so that we can move the half-constructed beast to it's place of final disposition and attach all the junk that will make it fun to play on. Considering how much fun I had leveling an even bigger place for the 10'x14' shed three years ago, I'm not exactly rarin' to go on that sub-project. Charlie helped me get through the first 11 steps of construction back in July...and we haven't touched it since his birthday party.
8. The garage facade. When we had a home inspection done a few months ago for insurance purposes, the inspector informed us that we needed to take care of a couple of small rotted areas around the garage door. Miss Saccharine decided that as long as I was going to fix that (which I mostly have), then I should scrape, sand, and paint the entire front of the garage.
Waiting in the wings: 1) attack the crabgrass that is overtaking the entire front lawn (and making gains in the back); 2) paint the fence and gates that enclose the back yard; 3) repairing the fence with the neighbors to the south; 4) plant trees on the west side of the house; 5) expand the garden; 6) replace some of the original windows that are contributing to our crazy high electrical bills; 7) empty the basement so I can 8) finish the basement; 9) eradicate the thistles on the south side of the house and in the back yard; and 10) put in a hardwood floor in Bravo's bedroom so his allergies aren't so bad (which I think is going to lead to 11) repaint all the bedrooms).
Mind you, most of these are actually fairly simple jobs and would take the average reader of this post about 30 minutes to complete. But you, dear reader, are not a slow-witted, easily intimidated, see-all-the-problems-that-could-arise wheelhead. And I am
My few successes: repairing not one but two leaking toilets due to corroded tank flappers last summer, installing a new dishwasher about three years ago, installing a new faucet in the kitchen sink (same time as the dishwasher), and putting up the shed in the back yard (with a lot of help from very experienced people). Toss in a smattering of easy successes (installing new knobs on two of the bathroom sinks, a new toilet flusher handle, installing a couple of dimmer switches), and somehow I have become Bob Vila in Miss Saccharine's eyes. I suppose that compared to her life experience before we were married, that constitutes extreme competence in the home improvement arts. For my part, I wish she would take a page from Gramsey's book and learn to say, "Just write the check, wheelhead." At least then I would just feel bad about the trips we don't take because of the new slider.
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