Large Marge

My finest hour...back in 2002 I won a day off work with pay for this Marge Simpson costume:







Happy Halloween!

End of Summer

Sure, it's already snowed a few times and it's been grey, rainy, and cold for (what seems like) weeks, still, I haven't allowed the notion that summer is over to sink past the initial layers of my cerebellum. Yesterday, though, we said goodbye to The Birdus' parents as they leave for their winter nest down in Texas. We most likely won't see them again until May. And as the dark mornings get darker and Daylight Savings Time creeps to an end this weekend I look at the photo below and suddenly and fully apprehend that summer is gone.



This picture (taken by The Birdus) embodies our summer: a cabbage and cucumber from our graden grace the foreground, a tart and icy cocktail with fresh mint and raspberries in the center, African violets in bloom on the right, and in the background, a container with our geocaching medallions and a mug full of bottle caps from our favorite beers.

Bye summer. See you next summer.

Performance Gene?

Preserve me, I've sired an actress.

I guess it goes to figure.

Immediately upon waking, sometimes before her eyes are open, The Boombah will hand The Birdus or me one of her stuffed animals and say, "Can you make him talk?" Or she will get under the covers and announce, "I'm an egg!" Then, while stroking the egg we have to say, "Oh egg. I love you egg. I'm going to take care of you and keep you warm and protect you until the day that you finally hatch." Often, she'll miss her cue and we'll have to repeat, "...ahem...until the day that you finally hatch." She then starts pipping and dramatically "hatches" from her egg blanket.

She loves putting on voices, especially little baby voices. The best is when she puts on a deep, gruff voice like when she makes our Halloween decorations talk. Sometimes, when she's pretending to be an animal, she'll intersperse her English with bursts of animals sounds. For instance, if she's being a duck while singing "Jingle Bells" it will sound like this:

"Jingle bells *quack*
Jingle bells *quack*
Jingle *quack* all the way *quack*"

It becomes quite a production when a lamb and a duck sing a duet.

Many of The Booms' games start this way:

How about you be...

(choose one)
a) Daddy Warbucks
b) the monster
c) the daddy
d) Miss Clavell
e) the children
f) the teacher
g) the audience
h) the dragon that only talks to ladybugs
i) the cat
j) the doggie


...and I'll be...

(choose one)
a) the baby that doesn't talk
b) the witch
c) Madeline
d) Annie
e) the teacher
f) the mommy
g) the children
h) the dancer
i) the baby dressed as a ladybug
j) the doggie

Right now, I'd say that pretending is defintiely her favorite play activity.

So Meta

A snapshot of an actual ladybug crawling on the wall next to The Boombah's drawing of a lady bug.


"Look," The Birdus said when she noticed it, "So meta."

Halloween Humor

Too Early

The storm windows aren't on yet, in fact, the air conditioners are still in but this past Saturday, October 10, I awoke to...

SNOW


The first snow of the season.


According to this website, this ties the 2nd place earliest snow on record for the Twin Cities set back in 1977. It snowed almost all day on Monday, October 12, leaving quite a bit of accumulation and apparently kicking the behind of the previous record for earliest recorded 1 inch snow depth set on October 13, 1959.

Snow on our red tomatoes.


These trees dropped all of their still-green leaves at once, leaving a carpet of slick leaves over a bed of snow.

Apples, Pumpkins, a Wagon Ride and a Corn Maze

The Boombah has a little friend at preschool named Hannah and The Birdus and I have always been friendly with Hannah's parents whenever we cross paths so we finally decided to get together and take the girls out to Pine Tree Apple Orchard in White Bear Lake. This was the autumn apple orchard experience I've been looking for. It was cold and rainy when we went but the girls were undaunted and it kept the crowds at bay. We almost had the wagon ride all to ourselves.

The entire place is cut right from a Hudson River School landscape. The wagon ride took us through thousands of trees loaded with a dozen different varieties of apple.



The ride also took us to the highest point in Washington County. The fall colors were nowhere near peak but stunning all the same.



The Boombah had her own ideas about who was going to drive the tractor.


She also got to rustle around in the apple trees a bit.


After the wagon ride we entered the corn maze. There were 7 letters hidden in the maze which, when collected and unscrambled, formed a password that could be exchanged for an apple at the end. Hannah and her dad acted as guides and led us to almost every letter hidden in the maze and we figured out the last two. They also, and perhaps most importantly, led us out of the maze.



Next stop was the pumpkin patch where we all selected pumpkins to grace our mantles and front porches as jack-o-lanterns later this month. They mercifully cart the pumpkins down to the parking lot for you and you can pick them up on your way out. We saw someone buy a 70 pound pumpkin while we were there.



The girls had such a fun time running around together and Hannah's parents are super cool. It started to get crowded as we were leaving but I thought Pine Tree was great - friendly and helpful staff, beautiful grounds, and GREAT food. We left with a pecan-apple pie, a dozen apple donuts, and a jar of apple butter. I think I feel a tradition coming on.

Tastes Like Mystery

Okay. Maybe I'm not parent of the year but some time ago I started giving The Boombah a Dum-Dum Pop lollipop after preschool if she goes the whole day without an accident. I save the wrappers and the idea is that when she has enough she can trade them in for a big reward like a stuffed animal or a visit to Dora the Explorer-land at the Mall of America. Some may see this as bribing their child. I just know that she hasn't had an accident in weeks and asks to go potty when she has to go. Thirty years from now she'll wonder why she craves mango candy every time she goes to the can.

The other day, I fanned out a selection of Dum-Dum Pops in my hand and told The Booms to choose one. She usually goes for coconut, her favorite, or some reliable fruit-flavored stand-by, but this time she chose the mystery pop with a big question mark on the wrapper.

On the way into the house I realized that I forgot to ask The Booms what flavor the mystery pop turned out to be.

"Hey, what flavor is that lollipop by the way?" I asked.

From beneath her umbrella she said, "I don't know.

I pressed her. "Well, what does it taste like?"

She moved the umbrella aside, looked up at me and said, "It tastes like mystery."



After a few additional slurps she added to her original answer, "Mystery lemon."

A Couple of Days at The Dome

The Minnesota Twins, in the 163rd game of the regular season, just beat the Detroit Tigers in 12 innings to win the AL Central division and clinch the league's final playoff spot. A light cheer even went up from the hipsters around the too-cool-for-school coffee shop I'm currently in.

This win is hot on the heels of the Minnesota Viking's defeat of their hated division rival the Green Bay Packers on Monday Night Football at the hands of Green Bay's former quarterback - Brett Favre.

Quite a couple of days for the Metrodome!

The Dome doesn't have a good reputation in these parts. Both the Minnesota Gophers and the Minnesota Twins have vacated The Dome for their own outdoor stadiums. Most people I know think it is ugly and a substandard venue for viewing professional sports. I have a co-worker that won't even go there.

These past two days it seems as though The Dome is saying to the entire state of Minnesota, "Look at me guys! I can still bring the magic!" And while I think the writing is on the wall for the Metrodome, we'll always have these two days,

In Praise of the Canine

A few weeks ago, a black dog with a white spot on its chest and no tags appeared in our front yard, sporting only a choke chain with a rope tied to it. I instantly thought, "I know that dog!" and proceeded to walk it down to what I thought was its home. Turns out I was wrong, their dog was safe and sound inside. At least I got some closure on that incident.

I walked Dog X home and put him in our fenced backyard with The Retreagle, asking everyone I passed on the way if they recognized the dog and telling them where I lived if they came across anyone looking for him. I fed The Retreagle and Dog X and we sat outside watching them play. As the hour grew late and darkness set in, The Birdus turned to me and said with a smile, "I think we might have acquired another dog." To my surprise, I was a little open to the idea, maybe even- happy -at the thought.

A little while later I heard someone whistling in the distance and noticed that Dog X's ears perked when he heard it. I raced around the neighborhood in the twilight, trying to locate the source and finally found a guy on a bike looking for his dog. We said goodbye to Dog X (actually named Lucky) and the Birdus and I shared an "Oh well" look.

A little while later, we watched the movie Marley and Me which we've wanted to see since our next door neighbor read the book it's based on and told us it reminded him of The Retreagle. It set off an era of Retreagle re-appreciation in our house.

We recently fulfilled our lifelong dream of putting The Retreagle in a tight-fitting shirt:


True enough, The Retreagle is a handful. Like the time he got away from me and ran into a stranger's house and I cornered him in their kitchen. Or the time he swam almost halfway into the Mississippi River and was swept very quickly downriver. I ran along the bank for three quarters of a mile until he washed up on a rock pile. When he acts nuts people always say, "Oh it's alright! He's just a puppy!" I don't tell them that he is actually five years old and the only reason he looks like a yellow lab puppy is because he's part lab and part beagle. In addition, he eats things off the counter if we turn our backs and also, right in front of our eyes. I'm sure there's a German word for the sound The Birdus makes in the morning we she returns to the kitchen to find her perfectly toasted bagel - gone. We live on a corner lot with a lot of foot traffic and he barks at everything that moves. It's the barking that gets to me the most. The vocal quality of his bark is all beagle but with the force and volume of a larger dog. He regularly worked his way past a fence and into our lilac bushes, carving a deep rut down their center with his obsessive back and forth running.

Yet, there are so many things I love about him. People I don't know say hello to him by name when we go for walks. He daintily wiggles his dog lips when I tell him to take treats "gentle." He snores and grunts when he sleeps. He growls ferociously when we kick him off our bed. He lays on our belly's when we have stomach aches. He's insanely protective of us and our home and has twice (we are certain from the evidence) prevented break-ins at our home.

Most of all, though, I love his relationship with The Boombah.


When The Boombah lists the members of her family, she always remembers The Retreagle. When we go somewhere as a family, she always asks if he can come with. She knows the pet store is one of the few stores that allows him entrance. I get the feeling she thinks it's discriminatory that he isn't allowed certain places. She knows he can't talk, so she sticks up for him when she feels it's necessary. "Don't shout at him!" she'll say if I'm being particularly stern about a missing bagel.

Before she was born, we were genuinely concerned for our little girl on account of The Retreagle's high spirits but it has never been an issue. The Retreagle has been gentle, patient, tolerant, caring, and careful around her since the day they met.


He's a good boy, no matter what else I tell you.