Updating can be hard to do

Teeth! We have teeth!

Also, we've had requests for pictures documenting our renovations. I've got those pictures up now.

Hungry Hippo

First, I'd like to rant about my laptop. It's cool, fast and up to spec, but the touch pad is so sensitive that I inadvertently touch it and move the cursor away from the txt box or somewhere else in the txt box and start typing into the middle of something else. I have a touchpad disable button but it also disables the keyboard. It's obnoxious, and keeping me from reaching spiritual nirvana at the least.


Elinor's great, she's got her top teeth well and truly popped out. She looks like a hungry hungry hippo. Which is hilarious.

She also likes games; peak a boo, hide and seek, treasure hunt, fill-a-box-then-dump-a-box. She's got a few words she uses for some things. Ba for "bath", ba for "abba", ba for "turn on my they might be giants podcasts for kids" and ma which i think is a corruption of ba. She's walking, with assistance from the couches, but no assistance from us. If we try and hold her standing up she arches her back and cries. Weirdo.

We've been investing our spare time into our garden.

We've made up 8 different planting beds for vege, removed a tree and large overgrown ivy, got some great compost bins, still more seedlings coming, I think we've planted lettuce in every spare square of dirt plus the hydroponics setup and today I'm clearing out the chicken run. Still need to tidy up a lot of stuff, the bath house looks incredible sad, I'd like to modify the outdoor bath so it ran on gas instead of a wood fire. But I can't take on too many new projects. The bathroom renos are only 95% done, I haven't even started on the kitchen reno/demo.

The weather is kinda improving, I guess. If we looked at the weather in terms of a critical care patient in hospital, good weather being fit and healthy and poor weather being an excellent host for a variety of maggot species, I would say the recovery period looked promising but we have to consider the possibility of him becoming a vegetable until November or middle of next week.

I have been learning more about car maintenance. I don't think that people like me stop learning about car maintenance. No matter how much I learn about industrial motors, engines, cooling systems etcetera, I always look at my car engine as this bizarre collection of metal and rubber that somehow goes vroom vroom and quite happily lays a patch on the tar until I'm in the middle of nowhere rapidly travelling towards somewhere and the thermostat shoots up while the radiator reservoir starts spitting in my face.

The cow doll huggy-thing is a hit, I was trying to show Elinor how cow mind control works. She was unimpressed.

I'd like to say a big KUDOS and congratulations to my big sister Libby. She's defending her masters thesis in November and has accomplished her higher education while living with her two young children and her older, less mature husband, renovating their house and property and knitting a silver lining into not a few woolen clouds. And all this while holding down a full time job as 'Protector of the Plains,' and single-handedly making Wichita water a cleaner clearer place to pee. Or be, if you're a fish. If you are a fish, you're probably some kind of missing link mutation. You should know, science has been looking for you and creationists want you dead.

I'm proud of my sister and not a little impressed.

1 1/4 Year Old

'Princess Elinor' got a package yesterday from her auntie Ami and uncle Jamie, hereafter referred to as aunclet jAMIe.

They sent Eli presents for her 1.25 year birthday, which I thought was original. So to say thanks I whipped up a slideshow of that 1.25 years (give or take a week, can't find the camera and I'm scared of the space under the couch).

Reflections or Refracted Evenescent Waves

I've been criticized as a "wolf-crier" humorist. A pathological liar of mundane, banal and completely unnecessary things. I try to convince Sara that she's hiding an affair from me and that every time she laughs at my accusations she's driving another nail into her smooth lacquered coffin of deceit. I tell her that her lover is a Brazillian midget who's immigrated to rural Southland New Zealand, to a town called Winton. He's a grocer at the New World there. His name is Sao Paolo (pronounce 'Sow Powlo') and he has a cousin named Argentina. His family has a thing for naming their children place names.

I just came from the laudry room--this is unremarkable-- and I was washing the poop out the liner of Eli's diaper. While not unremarkable-- I could remark on the poop-- it is terribly ordinary. But so utterly fantawesomistic. That I'm a daddy, not that I have to wash shit out of diapers... I know that kinda blows.

These blog entries have been terribly useful to keep masses of family abreast of the current situations. Especially when that situation was the early delivery of our first child, Elinor, at 26 weeks. In all honesty, it was scary for about 5 minutes. At a time... in succession... First: at every dip of the monitors... Then: at hearing that her bilirubin was low (okay, it was scary to hear her *whatever* was low, the first time they said 'bilirubin,' I said 'Who?') and then: less and less. But paradoxically more and more. We're no longer scared that she'll break if we touch her or that her feeding tube (or worse, intravenous nutrient supplement) will need re-installing , but we worry about her falling down stairs and normal worrying stuff.

I spent a good half hour with Eli just waving my head side to side with my tongue out going 'blahyayayayayah,' then she does this thing where if I pretend to sneeze, sometimes she'll pretend to sneeze right after. I'd love to show you. It's lost in transference to text but everytime I put the camera on, it's like I turned the cute button off. And you all have seen how cute she is on camera. If I caught her unawares... shit, your eyes would melt out of your eye sockets from exposure to over-cuteness.

So I live this existence right now that I secretly (but not for long) fear is making me hard. I'm not experiencing anything very unsightly or living a terrible life but I look at the attitudes and platitudes and altitudes and latitudes of others I know and think, "Damn, this cold town with nothing to do. This heavy industrial job at a metal smelter. This work all day, got to get the lawns mowed, get the bills paid, trash out on Thursdays. What's the lasting effect going to be on me?"

I'm going to name you three things I never would have thought would be useful, really practically repeatably useful:

1. Robot Claw

Function: pull the trigger to pull closed a ratchety claw, reminiscent of the claw on the Lost in Space robot

Modified function: pushes pishy pooey diapers into the diaper soak solution, and pulls them back out again for depositing in the washing machine.

2. Black Plastic Storage Container

Function: is black, so pretty cool as containers go. Can store stuff.

Modified function: self contained hydroponics unit, currently growing me some awesome lettuces.

3. Spice

Function: adds flavor to bland meals

Modified function: bends space for super speedy travel. Eco friendly.