Monday

Today was an odd day. There were intense thunderstorms all day and a big scheduling conflict. LuLu was due at dance class in the boonies at 5:15, while YaYa had an audition workshop for Fiddler on the Roof at just about the same time.

I dropped Lis and YaYa off in the midst of a severe hailstorm then headed out through the occasional flooded street to dance class.

While Lu was dancing Smiley, Lauren and I hung out in the van, listening to a kids tape and whiling away the hour.

The only problem - when dance class ended, the car wouldn't start. I'd left the key in 'on' and wore out the battery. Dumb.

Of course the kids started to wig out and no one in the parking lot had jumper cables. You'd have thougth I was asking for a handout with the way people avoided eye contact. Yikes. Finally one woman, the previously unknown Betsy, offered a jump.

Slight comedic moment: for some reason her hood didn't have a pole to prop it up, and she was very worried the jump would prove disasterous because of this.

 So here I am with the hood propped by hand, screaming kids in the van, the only light my 'low battery' phone, and a drizzle coming down.

And the phone WOULD NOT STOP RINGING. It rang 3 or 4 times as I was hooking up the cables.

"Just don't answer it!," she said annoyed.

"I can't," I said, "I have another kid waiting on X Street" I said, with X being the not so great area where the theater was located.

So the jump works and she says "God Bless You Dan!"

"Bless me? You're the Good Samaritan, you're the one who stopped to help me, not the other way around," I said.

Seems like she was so concerned about the jump going haywire that the sucess was as much a victory for her as for me.

* * *

Lu, btw, performed admirably in her class. Smiley and I caught a glimpse of her. When her class was dismissed he gave her a sincere round of applause.

Oh, he also said 'van' today - clear as day and more than once.

YaYa came back with a dance routine to get down and some lyrics to learn. The audition is later this week. Wish her luck!

* * *

P*** on Ohio State for losing another championship game. Suck it up and don't make a fool of yourself on national TV. You represent the Big Ten, you &%^(*.

 

The House on Nostalgic Ave - How we spent New Years Day 2007

As 2007 dawned our new house was a mess. The contractors had begun demolishing the only existing (and water damaged) bedroom on the second floor after Christmas, but much of the work throughout the house was on hold until we removed the accumulation of personal effects and furnishings left behind by the previous owner.

In this, the last few months before the discovery of Craigslist, I had no outlet to get rid of the  hundreds of 1980's era Sports Illustrated, National Geographic, Time, and other mags that were boxed throughout the house.

I ignored Lisa's pleas to throw them out and instead spent New Years Day 2007 hauling them to Half Price Books to sell. The price quoted me? Nada. Not one slim dime. So I loaded them all back up, took 'em to the house . . and then out to the garbage.

Meanwhile Lisa and I had switched off spending evenings at the house, trying to sort through the mess. I'd been so gung ho for the junk before the sale, as if it was an elaborately expensive rummage sale. I had my eyes on a few Time Life WWII books, a few art books, an old push mower in the basement, etc. etc.

Then I bought the place and every item was just one more thing to move and dispose of, and Time Life be damned. Oh, and the lawn mower? It disintegrated in my hands when I tried to move it, just plain rusted through and through.

Sometimes my Dad helped, sometimes my sister Katie, and once my friend Tre. You never spent the evening there/here alone at the time. It was just too dang creepy to do that - dim light from spastic light fixtures, whistling wind through the windows stuck that were stuck inches open, the all-encompassing smell of decay and neglect and abandonment.

[True story: with my sister Katie with me at the house we  heard a door slam shut upstairs. Remember, we both heard it, and it was a clear and distinct sound, not something that could be mistaken for any other. The problem? The only two doors still hanging in the house were the front door a few feet away and the back door, visible to me from where I stood. My sister shrieked and I myself was in no hurry to stay]

I think it was Lisa who eventually got most of the kitchen lineoleum up.

That exposed some heavy water damage from where the ice box - no,not a fridge - had once stood.

My Dad and I removed the threadbare wall-to-wall carpeting in the dining room. I mean 'threadbare' literally - the first time in my life I saw a carpet so thin it was sheer. And the dust from the decayed padding . .

Anhow, to continue with New Years Day 2007. The whole family bucked up and attacked the mess. What follows are some of the most famous photos in the Slapinions arsenal.

Here's YaYa prepping for the cleanup:

And little LuLu bravely carrying chunk after chunk of linoleum to the garbage pile.

Note the huge size of the pile, which was only to grow. On the 16th of Jan, despite having a standing order for a special pickup that the city never bothered filling, we were cited by Milwaukee and had the contractors spend a day hauling it to the dump. By then it included many more items and some mattresses some jerk had randomly dumped on the pile.

Smiley couldn't do much, but he was Smiley :)

At some point I'd picked up our friend Chris and her kids (Faith accompanied me to the bookstore) and together we shared our first meal in our new home.

True, Little Ceasars (or as the family calls it, 'Pizza Pizza!') is nothing special, but I didn't touch a slice.

Confession: I was still grossed out by the house and couldn't fathom eating there/here.

Man, it seemed like it could never be our home . .

The Language of Dude

I love these Bud Light commercials. The word 'dude' stands as a worthy substitute for dozens of words and phrases, and Lord knows I use them all.

You know what sucks? My sound isn't working on the computer, so I can't listen to these. Grrr.

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My Gals

Here's two pictures of the girls as they appeared for the Christmas concert at their school. Maybe I mentioned it before, but I saw the rehearsal, whereas Lis attended the concert itself.

Lis, if you remember what songs they each sang, please leave the info in the comments section (I know Lu did the Russian dance).

You might notice the flood of entries this evening; I have forgone my big screen TV and BCS title game (gasp!) to give Lisa a little time of her own in front of the TV. Don't worry - I'll have her make it up to me :)

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A silly little memory

Here's two blurry pics (taken in the ever-useless 'night' mode of my Kodak) and one computer lightened photo. All of them are mementos of a very neat day I spent with the kids in the week before Christmas.

You see, I never thought of taking down the trampoline for the winter. Then YaYa mentioned to me that the trampoline canvas was sinking and about to touch the ground.

Three feet of snow will do that.

So we piled out there and spent a good hour clearing it off, with the girls taking deep pride in removing blocks of ice, the bigger the better their boast.

A silly little memory, but I enjoyed it.

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A brief Word

Greetings folks - hope your 2008 is proceeding as planned.

Here at the Slapinions household we're nearly done with the two and a half-week cold/flu - I only lose one meal in ten now! - and all the kids save the baby are over it ..

[But as I wrote the above paragraph this past morning YaYa came up to me and announced she was going upstairs for a nap - She For Whom Naps Must Be Force Fed Down Her Throat - because she felt ill] 

Still, it seems like the flu/cold caused the ruin of many of our Christmas traditions. We've missed Candy Cane Lane, and due to my in-law's fragile immune systems we've yet to see my father-in-law's side of the family (and on Christmas proper we were forced to cancel all engagements).

We've still got presents to hand out (yo, Tre! it's past the epiphany already!) but it feels like much of Christmas bypassed us in 2007.

Oh bleeping well. It was still a pretty good holiday.

* * *

As usual there is much to catch up on here on the site - the Chuck E Cheese party for one, and all that summer schtuff, but that will have to wait for later/ever?

I've promised Lisa I'll do some old-school 600 word columns on what she calls one of the "The Four Statements Guaranteed to Make My Friends Hate You and Change Their View of You Forever". [paraphrased, but close to verbatim]

No, I'm not a Nazi and I don't believe in UFO's. Rest easy ladies, rest easy.

One of the four statements is politicalin nature (actually, I think two are) so I reckon I'll work on one involving my choices for the 2008 primaries.

Meanwhile, I should get some sleep. That ole one-meal-lost-in-ten has kept me up past my bedtime tonight :)

BTW - anyone else notice the political spam slapped onto the comments of the kids NY Eve post? WTF is that?

New Years Eve 2007 Lisa and the kids

While I was at work Lisa held a New Years Eve celebration for the kids, with the 'New Year' falling at 9 pm.

[excuse the red eye folks]

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Smiley's Ears - Update

One bad thing about running a blog for three years is that you're never quite sure what you've mentioned in print and what you haven't, because you're ALWAYS composing posts in your head.

On the 5th of December Smiley had tubes put in his ears. You may fill in the blanks with any cliche you like - what a brave boy, etc - because they all ring true. Frankly, I'm not even sure he realized anything happened. As far as he knows he got to mess around with a stethoscope, fell asleep, and woke up to watch Elmo. Period.

[At a slightly older age YaYa had a minor procedure. She didn't enjoy the 'drunkenness' of the anesthesia and asked the doc "Why you have three heads?" then vomited on the way home. Smiley enjoyed the heck out of the intoxicant and had no ill-effects from the drugs]

Since then its been a parade of hearing tests. There's no magic bullet and he hasn't blossomed into a Kennedy-esque speaker, or even mastered more than one additional word [blue = 'bool"].

At the last appointment on Thursday they gave his right ear a clean bill of health but noted problems with the left. They want the doc to look at it again and have us signing him up for speech, hearing, and development assessments. That's crap - the boy can't speak, but he's a thousand ways from dumb or mentally slow. If only politicians were granted half his brains and all of his speech.

Today we noticed a thick, milkish fluid pooled in his left ear - think the android blood from Alien - which was both alarming and disgusting. There's another medical appointment this week, so we're keeping our fingers crossed.

BigFoot

Here's some shots of Smiley gamely trying to fill his Daddy's size 13 steel toes. Someday buddy, someday.

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NFL WildCard Weekend

I watched both games yesterday. I'm a Seattle fan so that was a pretty easy game to pick sides. Washington was over-rated, and that whole Sean Taylor thing . . a tragedy yes, but it wasn't like losing Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, or for that matter even Thurman Munson. How long can you stretch out a family's pain for your own PR?

I'm glad the Seahawks won, and sad that I now have to root for them to lose - they'll face Green Bay next week.

The AFC game rocked. I didn't have a clear favorite going in but Jacksonville certainly won me over. The 4th and 2 turned 30 yard run - priceless. I thought they played it a little too safe at the end, but they pulled it out. Good for them, and for their quarterback.

Now today's games . . I say the Giants over TB, SD over Tennessee. We'll see.

UPDATE: I was right about both, but the games were abysmally boring.