Baseball and Boogers

Marlo thinks it’s funny to take a tissue and put it up to her nose and blow. I think it’s funny, too, most of the time. It’s funny because she’s so little and she’s not blowing her nose—she’s blowing through her lips. Whenever she thinks to do it we always get a good laugh.

This morning at church, a few folks more were let in on the joke.

We go to the family room at church because, as I’ve explained before, Marlo is not 100% in agreement with the whole you-have-to-be-quiet-at-church thing. In fact, she thinks that the quieter it is, the more she should fill in with noise—LOTS of noise.

To add to the challenge of church going with a toddler, Hubs is now playing in a baseball league that was supposed to play on Saturday or Sunday afternoons. They changed the schedule after he joined and so for the next umpteen months I have to fend for myself on Sundays.

So, today we got to church really early. We decided to get a cup of hot chocolate. Marlo had her sippy and Joy and I were going to share the hot chocolate while we waited for the service to start. It took a while for the chocolate to cool. Once it did, Joy picked it up—and dropped it. I’m not sure how a gallon of H.C. fit into that cup, but that’s how much came out. Thankfully, it was cool by then because the only person it got on was Marlo. I did my best cleaning job with half a dozen wipes and then decided it was time to drop Joy off at Sunday School.

Marlo and I then made our way to the family room. We found a nice spot in the front where I could keep an eye on her while she played with the other kids and I could still listen. After the service got started and everyone started to quiet down, Marlo decided she needed to examine the contents of my purse and my diaper bag. The item that got her attention was the package of wipes. After a few minutes of semi-quiet struggle, we negotiated a one-wipe compromise. She decided that the best use for a wipe at that time was to blow her nose.

Much to our surprise, she actually did blow her nose. And, lo and behold, a booger came out! Right on the wipe! Marlo took that wipe and looked at it, and looked at it again—and then, in her loudest, clearest voice, started pointing and asking, “What’s that? What’s that? What’s that?” And if it hadn’t been in the middle of church it would have been very amusing. (The 40 or 50 people around us thought it was funny anyway.) I just wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, but Marlo, then decided she needed to show everyone—and stayed just two steps ahead of me. When I finally caught her she laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world. I’m hoping that God was thinking it was the funniest thing in heaven, too.

When is baseball season over?


Posted by The Editor for Busy Body.

Miss Spider's Sunny Patch

Spiders are spinning away in the trees
Buggies are bouncing and riding the breeze
Gliding through the sky we’re riding high
The fun we hatch in Sunny Patch
To the Hollow Tree
A family on wings and strings and floaty things
Coming home for hugs
Be good to bugs.

This, my friends, is the theme song to the cute little cartoon, Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Friends. And, yes, I know the words. All of them. Hubs was surprised the other day when he heard me singing along. It’s a catchy little tune, I have to admit, but the only reason I know it is because it is the favorite TV show of the moment. We have to watch each episode as it comes on TV, record each one to play back later, then re-play our favorite parts over and over and over and over and over. If you lived here you would know it, too.

It’s not all bad. It is a cute, wholesome cartoon that teaches good things. There’s no bad language and Miss Spider’s voice is Kristin Davis. Kristin Davis as in Charlotte of Sex and the City Kristin Davis. The sound of her voice takes me back to the BK* days when I could watch Sex and the City, whenever I wanted to (*BK=Before Kids). I used to be into fashion and fun and cool things…now I am into matching hair bows and kids’ fun and Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Friends. Fashion these days means wearing a shirt that is NOT decorated with dried drool, food and snot. Fun these days is getting an extra 15 minutes of sleep, even if it means falling asleep on the couch before my favorite TV show has ended. And cool things are getting to hear Kristin Davis’ voice and reminiscing about Sex and the City episodes from yesteryear…until I am brought back to reality by the sound of laughter at something funny going on in Sunny Patch.

Yes, I know the theme song to Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Friends. That makes me cool with my kids, and for now, that makes me the coolest of the cool—that’s how I roll.


Posted by The Editor for Busy Body.

Asphalt Dudes

There is a man-hole cover in front of my house. Usually we don’t even notice. Usually it’s a non-issue. But for some reason, last week, the county decided that they needed to dig a circular trench around the cover. Then they needed to make the trench about a foot deep. The trench then sat for a few days, exposed, with the only safety precaution being an orange cone to mark the location.

Yesterday, they came back out after their 2 day hiatus to finish the job. First they made the circle a little wider. Then they shoveled some asphalt into the trench. Then they brushed off the very top of the man-hole cover. Then they smoothed the asphalt in the trench with a shovel. Then they swept the street and pushed the extra asphalt into the filled-in trench. Then they used a thing that looked like a small lawn mower, but apparently it’s a steam iron to iron the asphalt flat into the hole.

And how many men do you suppose it takes to do a job like this? Well, I’ll tell you. It takes one to drive the truck and then he hops out to widen the circle. (Impressive multi-talented dude.) It takes one to stand in the bed of the truck and shovel the asphalt into the trench. (We’ll call him asphalt thrower guy…as. thrower for short.) One is in charge of the brushing (as. brusher), one is in charge of the smoothing (as. smoother), one is in charge of the sweeping (as. sweeper), and one is in charge of the ironing (iron as.). Then two more pull up in another truck. One was the as. foreman, maybe? The other one was just there to talk, apparently. So, the answer is, it takes 8 men to do this job. Each one some sort of as. generalist. (Not one of those jobs looked very specialized.)

I suspect there was one more worker who did not show himself yesterday. And his job is to spy on the home that the man-hole cover is in front of. He watches and observes and studies until he knows just when it would be the most obnoxious time for them to do their slow, noisy work. And he makes a detailed report for the rest of the as-es, and that’s when they work in front of our house. In our case, they came every morning at nap time (and of course, Marlo’s room is at the front of the house…no amount of white noise loud enough to drown out their racket) and they stayed the length of her sleep “window”. When she was beyond tired and could no longer go to sleep, then they would move on.

Bitter? Yes, I am because now I have a cranky, teething 18 month old who is off her nap schedule. If they come back because they didn’t do the job right, guess what? One of those as-es is going down the man-hole—and before he can get back up I will then show them how ONE person can do the job in 10 minutes…all courtesy of the lady of the house.

(8 men, 6 days, 1 man-hole—my a$$!)

Posted by The Editor for Busy Body.