High Plains Panhandler

The Creature in the Sink

We have a small TV in the kitchen ostensibly for Important Things, such as weather warnings about tornadoes or breaking news about hockey-masked insane killers who are on the loose. Usually we have it on when we're cleaning up after dinner, and usually the Important Thing it's tuned to has a laugh track. That's okay. At least it drowns out the kids in the family room where the conversation is mostly composed of: "Stop it!", "Stop pushing me!", and "Ooooowwwwww!"

The other night I was cleaning up the dishes after dinner. Some stupid TV show was nattering at me. Suzanne was off giving the kids a bath, and outside a thin, light rain had started coming down. I was scrubbing out a pan when I heard this strange little growling sound coming from the other side of the kitchen. I stopped cleaning, cocked my head, and listened closer. Then I turned off the TV and listened even harder.

"Raa raa raa." It sounded like a little gremlin in the laundry room. I called the dog, thinking that maybe she had caught some kind of bug in her mouth, but she was knocked out in a sleeping fit in the other room.

The sound stopped, so I thought nothing more of it and went back to my washing and TV listening. A few seconds later I heard it again. "Raa raa raa." Although this time it was a little louder, and it sounded very close, as if it were coming from the sink.

The garbage disposal! That's what it was. Something weird must have happened with the engine. I was no stranger to garbage disposal problems, seeing as though I had witlessly poured Plaster of Paris down the sink one day, which had given the disposal terrible coughing fits. It ended up sounding like a Civil War veteran wheezing on a ventilator.

Once again, I turned off the TV and turned off the faucet so I could listen carefully to the garbage disposal. I leaned my head in, and I concentrated, waiting for the noise to start again.

Just as I was leaning down to investigate the disposal, I happened to look out the window over the sink. This window looks over our backyard, but by this time of night it was pitch black outside so I didn't expect to see anything. But when I looked up, I saw a face staring back at me through the window, a demon face on a floating head. I screamed like a teenager in a horror movie and jumped backward, high in the air, and landed bottom first on the kitchen floor.

And there, on the other side of the window, was Suzanne, laughing and laughing and laughing. That, of course, made me start laughing and laughing, which made the kids run into the kitchen and pepper me with these questions: Why are you on the floor? Why are you laughing? Did you fall? Was if funny when you fell? Did you break your leg? Is that funny too?

Well, she got me good (she had been making the gremlin noises, although on the other side of the window they sounded much louder and more insidious than they had sounded to me), and now I'm forced to keep an eye on the windows at all times. When I try to scare Suzanne, my usual tactic is to crawl ever so quietly into the room, make my way around the furniture, and then, at the very last second when I'm just a few inches away, start giggling because I keep thinking how funny it's going to be when I scare her. This is an important lesson to any would-be scarers out there: giggling gives you away, and it ruins the entire scare feel you're probably going for. That's why Suzanne's outside, dark yard, reverse-window gremlin-noise scare was brilliant. Even if she had starting giggling, I wouldn't have heard her. Until she pressed her face to the window, I had no idea she was out there.

Later that night, when the house was still and quiet and I was half-asleep in bed, I thought about it and laughed again. It's not often when you get a good, cardiac arrest scare anymore, especially ones where you land rear-first on the kitchen floor.

After this past political season, that's really saying something.

The Magical Fruit

One of the magic tricks I do with the kids is ye olde Curtain Vanish. It usually works like this: I hold up a blanket in front of Megan, say some magical incantation, and then drop the blanket and, magically, she’s vanished (secretly running out down the hallway behind her and hiding behind a heavy piece of furniture). I then bring the blanket back up to my chin, say magical incantations that are often similar to: “Okay, NOW MEGAN WILL REAPPEAR . . . ANY TIME NOW . . . SHE’LL REAPPEAR . . . ANY TIME NOW . . . SHE’LL REAPPEAR . . . JUST YOU WAIT.” Then I have to wait a few minutes until we can all hear her run back down the hallway, thump, thump, thump, crawl through my legs, bump her head against the blanket (looking like I just kicked it with a bowling ball), then I drop the blanket and, ta da, there she is, out of breath and laughing.

The other day I was goofing around with Alex and said to him, “Let’s make you disappear.” So I grabbed a blanket, lifted it up, and said to Suzanne, who was folding clothes, “Now Alex will disappear!” Then I had to look down and whisper, “Go over there and hide.”

He ran wide out from the side of the blanket, curved around, and hid behind the bed, laughing and laughing.

Obviously we needed help on our misdirection.

He reappeared with no problems, and then he asked if he could make me disappear. He held up the blanket as high as his three-year-old arms could reach. I crouched down behind the blanket, and he said, “Now Daddy will disappear!” Then he immediately dropped the blanket, which didn’t give me much time to hide, so I dashed behind him, trying to curl up into a hulking ball hidden by his little legs.

“Daddy is gone!” he exclaimed. And then, in a fit of Hollywood-style theatrics, he added a little flair to the trick. He ripped one, right in my face.

What I mean by this is, he cut the cheese, passed the gas, and broke the wind, and I, my head at the perfect height to receive his unpleasant gift, fell backward, as if the force of the explosion knocked me down.

“I made Daddy disappear, and then I tooted in his face!” Then he ran out of the room, laughing and laughing.

And I, sprawled on the floor, pondered whether Carter the Great had ever had such an ignominious end to one of his tricks.

Playtime Wisdom

Today's words of wisdom come from Colleen, who will turn turn nine in about three weeks. She was playing with Megan and Alex when I overheard her say this:

"Football used to be my idol until Elvis came along."

To quote Megan, I don't know what it means, but I like it.

A Joke or Two

A change of pace today. Here are a couple of jokes I thought were pretty funny (courtesy of William Gibson):

How many Bush administration officials does it take to change a light bulb?

None. There’s nothing wrong with that light bulb. There is no need to change anything. We made the right decision and nothing has happened to change our minds. People who criticize this light bulb now, just because it doesn’t work anymore, supported us when we first screwed it in, and when these flip-floppers insist on saying that it is burned out, they are merely giving aid and encouragement to the Forces of Darkness.

-- John Cleese

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President Bush goes to an elementary school to talk about the war.

After his talk, he offers to answer questions. One little boy puts up his hand and the president asks him his name.

"I'm Billy, sir."

"And what's your question, Billy?"

"I have three questions, sir. Why did the US invade Iraq without the support of the UN? Why are you President when Al Gore got more votes? And whatever happened to Osama Bin Laden?"

Just then the bell rings for recess. Bush announces that they'll continue after recess.

When they return, Bush asks, "OK, where were we? Question time! Who has a question?"

Another little boy raises his hand. The president asks his name.

"I'm Steve, sir."

"And what's your question, Steve?"

"I have five questions, sir. Why did the US invade Iraq without the support of the UN? Why are you President when Al Gore got more votes? Whatever happened to Osama Bin Laden? Why did the recess bell go off twenty minutes early? And what the heck happened to Billy?"

Elusive Lyrics

I was taking the girls to school yesterday when we started talking about Colleen's friend who was going to have a birthday party later that night. I started singing:

It's Franchesca's birthday,
It's Franchesca's birthday,
It's Franchesca's birthday,
Don't pull up your socks. Boing!

Megan was silent for a second or two and then said, "I don' t know what that means, but I like it."

She unwittingly just described the story of my life.

Balloons!

At the last minute this past week we decided to head over to New Mexico for the last weekend of the big Albuquerque Balloon Festival. The festival, which is a yearly event, brings in balloonists from all over the country (we know this because we saw plenty of balloon trailers, trucks, and vans with exotic license plates and names such as "www.balloonsovermichigan.com" and "I fly over Kentucky" painted on their front hoods, written backward as if they were ambulances).

It's a four-hour drive from Amarillo to Albuquerque and in between is a lot of space alien-infested emptiness. Fortunately, a few months ago we installed one of those swanky DVD players in van's ceiling. That, and the wireless headphones, make for a wonderfully quiet trip, although at times punctuated by a tourettes-like "Bwhahahahaha!" from one of the kids. We used to have a cheapie little TV/VCR combo that I bought from a place called survivethedrive.com. It looked like a small gray coffin. We'd lodge in in the space between the driver's seat and from passenger seat so that its one speaker would be strategically placed half an inch from my ear (assuming I'd be in the passenger seat, which on long car trips is a good assumption).

Our TV, though, began blowing out fuses in the van last year and the power adaptor starting getting so hot you could cook chicken on it. This didn't seem to be a good combination to us, so we retired survivethedrive to the closet. If anyone would like a portable TV/VCR that has questionable wiring, and your not afraid of burning down your house, let me know.

The balloon festival was fantastic. One tough thing was that the Smokey the Bear balloon ran into one of those 700 foot tall transmission towers, stranding the balloonist and the kids who were with him in the basket. No one was hurt, but the balloon, now ripped and deflated, was stuck there, sadly billowing in the wind like a flag planted by titans.

If you'd like, click here for pictures of our balloon adventure (as always, to avoid the Google cache, please use Vacation as the password).

You squeezin' me!

Alex is a little sneak. Sometimes, usually at three in the morning, he sneaks into our room, jumps into bed, and crams his little three-year-old body right next to me. I can hear him coming because the eyes on his Elmo slippers clink together like pool balls. That gives me some time to prepare for the foot on my leg, the elbow in my eye, and the amazingly heavy head on my shoulder.

The other night I didn’t hear him (he was slipperless), but it didn’t take long for me to notice him right next to me. He squeezed himself right next to me, forcing me to the edge of the bed, and then he expanded, taking over more of the mattress than is physically possible. It’s as if he grew to nine feet long in the middle of the night and then demanded diagonal sleeping.

One this crowded night, after he had finally settled himself, he whispered in my ear, “Daddy! You squeezin’ me!”

That’s when I started to think the kitchen floor would be a wee more comfortable.

The next day he didn’t sneak into the room, and at breakfast the morning after that he announced: “I stayed in my own bed last night.”

Me: “Well thanks for not waking me up.”

Alex (as if in deep thought, brow furrowed and frowning): “Well, I thought about it. I really did!”

Me: “Are you going to think about it tonight?”

Alex (with a sly grin): “You never know!”

He's right. I don't know until I hear those clinking Elmo eyes. Or maybe, like a ninja, he'll come in silently, and suddenly I'll be pushed over to the edge of the bed, searching for my own small place of squeezeless and kid-free comfort.