Category: Life

In addition to all the various fauna that comes around Nogglestead, including but not limited to armadillos, skunks, raccoons, opossums, and whatnot, we have some reptilian friends about, too, mostly skinks and snakes, who sometimes find their way through holes in the foundation to roam our family room. Briefly. Until our elderly cat gets them.

Well, he doesn’t always get them. One night recently, I was watching a Steven Seagal movie when I heard some hissing from behind me. My two cats were facing off on a very agitated snake on my family room floor. You know, the one we routinely cross barefooted. I called my wife, not so much to handle the snake but to keep the cats back while I…. what? Lopped its head off on the carpeting? That’s SOP, but it would have involved a lot of mess, so I sought an alternative form of treatment, and my poor wife couldn’t see the spectacle, since she was on the phone working at 8pm on a Friday night (!).

So I grabbed an empty clear bin and its lid and managed to snatch the agitated snake half in the bin. This did not calm the snake, but I did get a chance to look closely for fangs. Nothing. So we got that going for us. I opened the back door and threw the snake into the night.

Yeah, I know, I could have been more manly by grabbing the snake by its tail all Steve Irwin-like or even by watching a more appropriate Escape from New York when the incident occurred. However.

At any rate, the other day, my beautiful wife spotted the fellow or its ilk on the deck in the sun:

So it gave me a chance to try to identify the snake. It looks to be a hatchling black rat snake, according to the Missouri Department of Conservation Web site:

Well, all right, this guy goes on the list with all the garter snakes and striped snakes I’ve seen around here. But copperheads are native to the region, too:

The Missouri DoC even offers a pamphlet entitled Missouri Copperheads: They’re Your Friend. They Love You. Please, Put Down The Hoe (PDF). All right, I might have funnin’ed on that subtitle, but not by much. The real subtitle is “They Are Vital To The Natural Scene. They Rarely Bite. They Never Kill”.

It has a nice section about living with the little pit viper, like it’s an episode of Friends and you and this poisonous creature are going to share repartee about personal relationships in the coffee shop. Well, no, it’s tips about leaving them alone.

You know what the Nogglestead policy on deadly creatures is? Hoe, hut! I’ve got children wandering around here, and I can’t chance letting that little rascal slither out of my sight to pop up later with its feline-shaped pupils staring at one of them. Particularly if it’s near the house.

Does that make me a bad, bad man? Copperheads have a lot of acreage out there to roam about happily having a collective negative impact on wildlife in many areas, killing ground-nesting birds, fledgling songbirds and small mammals. I don’t want them on mine.

The MO DoC explains that they rarely bite. Be that as it may, I know someone who has been bitten by a copperhead in the last year (while camping). Just for fun, find out how much antivenom costs and whether your insurance company fully covers it. I’d recommend you do it just for fun and not based on need, or you might walk into an antivenom shortage.

A question for newspaper vet Dr. Fox begins with an attack on the pet owner:

Dear Dr. Fox • My cat has developed a worrying habit. She is 12 years old and is very fit — she catches at least two animals a week. But recently, she has been panting heavily after any small amount of exercise. A friend suggested she might have diabetes. — R.E.O., Winston-Salem, N.C.

Dear R.E.O. • It disturbs me that you allow your cat outdoors to kill wild creatures on a regular basis. Cats like yours have a collective negative impact on wildlife in many areas, killing ground-nesting birds, fledgling songbirds and small mammals.

Forget your peace of mind and the health of your cat. Who will speak for the vermin?

Memo to Dr. Fox: Cats don’t have to go outside to catch prey. Our oldest cat, 15, lived for a year outside, but since he’s come back into the house, he’s caught lizards that somehow sneak in and even had a confrontation with a snake in the middle of our family room one evening.

Still, I like animals, but I seem to be the last animal liker who realizes that animals are just, you know, animals. They shouldn’t have the right to vote, and their potential liberators do not have the right to harangue. Jeez.

Here I am, stepping all over Charles’ schtick by blogging about shoes, but here is one of my current, relatively new, and very soon to be former shoes:

I bought these shoes for $20 recently at Target. Or Walmart. Wherever, I don’t pay more than $25 a pair for daily walking around shoes because I have a tendency to step in or drop things that are not white. Of course, I have always worn white shoes (except for my two year hitch as a printer, where I wore a lot of black and reflect blue) because, as a child, I liked running and looking down at the blurring white streaks that were my feet (I was that fast, but no more).

Notice the text on the bottom of my left shoe. It says “Air Comfort System.” For the purpose of separating this particular Starter shoe from other $20 offerings, the company has put air bladders in the bottom of the shoes. They make it out like it’s a comfort thing, but I think it’s probably just cheaper than solid rubber or synthetics.

In my basement recently, I heard a little tweeting like a bird was in the basement, but I couldn’t find the source. It didn’t make me question my sanity immediately, as we’ve had a bird nest at the top of our chimney this year, and you could hear the birds pretty clearly at the end of either flue. But I heard this particular tweeting in the hall downstairs and later in the hall upstairs, far from the chimney. Maybe it’s the hallucinations, I thought to comfort myself.

Oh, but no.

Apparently, the air bladder on the bottom of my left shoe developed a small hole. Randomly, when I lifted my left shoe, the air sneaking back into the bladder made the tweet sound. I finally isolated the source of the sound, which is why I can recount the story (the other strange sounds and voices I’m keeping to myself).

Oh, but that was a couple days ago, and this is now. Now, the hole has opened wider so every step has the effect to a greater degree. I sound like I’m walking in a room full of dog toys constantly. Heavens to betsy lou, but I’m going to have to double my annual shoe expenditures in the very near term and will have learned enough to avoid anything with air in the bottom.

(Other cheap shoe blogging here.)

So I got two texts to my cellular phone, which still bears the St. Louis area code. The texts were in Spanish, and the content was essentially If someone calls for me, don’t give them this number. I assume that “this number” was the cellular phone from which the texts originated.

Friends, I’m no D.C. Collins, but I have on occasion fancied myself the potential plotter of thrillers, and often those suspense novels begin by drawing a normal person into a dangerous shadow world through some seemingly innocuous event.

So I’d be lying if I said I didn’t briefly consider whether an errant text message from a terrorist cell based in St. Louis set a van full of Gunwalker guns on its way southwest to rub out the recipient before the convoluted scheme unraveled.

You might call it insanity; I prefer to think of it as a rich interior life.

You know, I’m sure it seems like a good idea to some people to make automotive fuel out of corn, a food source not only for people but also for food animals that people will then eat.

But we start them young on the using food for things other than feeding:

I look at those and I see wasted calories, brother. I don’t think potato stamps are a good idea, either.

Monday night, I’m reading the auld laddie a book when the telephone rings. I’m uplifted a bit, since my wife was traveling on business, and both the boy and I thought it was her calling to wish him good night. But it’s not.

Me: This is Brian.
Woman’s slightly garbled voice: Mommy?
Me: This is not your mommy.
Woman: Mommy, where are you? We can’t find you.
Me: She’s not here.
Woman: We can’t find her.
Me: She’s not here.
Woman: Can you help me?
Me: No.

I hung up. At first, I didn’t know if the woman (not a girl) was on drugs or what, but I think she was distraught. The boy was agitated; he heard the whole exchange because I answered the phone on speaker as is my wont. When I didn’t hear the my wife’s voice, I immediately became curt and guarded. I didn’t know if this was some sort of prank or what. Maybe it was some distraught daughter calling her mother’s cell phone and distraughtedly reaching my home phone at 7:10. I dunno.

So I was an ass, I suppose. I don’t know how I could have helped her over the phone except to tell her to call the police. And maybe have been a little more polite. But I’m the suspicious sort and guarded, so my default setting is “ass.”

The whole thing confounded me. I feel like Clarence Day’s father, but with a fouler mouth.

There are two kinds of men in this world: Men who own drain augers, and men who do not have drain augers but sometimes really wish they did. Males who do not know what drain augers are are not men. Men who call them drain snakes or cables are men, too. People who think drain augurs tell the future from the way plumbing parts fall to the ground after being cast into the air are interesting, but they are not men. Masculinity has a very complex set of rules, as you can see.

So this morning, while I was preparing to shave, my basin’s drain fell closed and became unresponsive to the manipulations of the opening and closing mechanism. I had to use my wife’s basin, and it drained very slowly indeed, as she wears her hair long these days. I knew I could call a plumber to come clean it, but no. I am of the first type of man (being one who owns two augers: a small drill-mounted one and a smaller one designed exclusively to scratch up your toilet bowl while you clear a clog).

So I disassembled two drains, cleaned the p-traps, and used the auger to push any blockage deeper into the pipes where my auger cannot reach it. I have found that my drain stop became stuck in the closed position because its horizontal rod (where the stop rests) had actually rusted through and broke off so that the spot that should have held the drain plug open was actually in the p-trap. Do you know what I mean? Score yourself two Man Points.

So I will pick that up this afternoon and replace it (a five minute repair), and after I reassembled the p-traps, water is again flowing from the sink basins (and not into the cabinets under the sink, bonus). I’ve done nothing else this afternoon, but when one does a home repair this complex, one can coast on it for a while.

Of course, I do know what this ultimately means: people will know I have an auger of some sort and will want to borrow it.

After someone dies, you know if someone close to you has died or you attend estate sales, the families are left with a pile of the effluvia of daily living in addition to the fine china, the antique buffet, and the savings bond worth $25 that is not worth putting through probate. In my family’s case, I have inherited a number of office supplies. Yesterday, I used a number of those heirlooms.

My mother saved every notepad ever given to her as a fundraising come-on or as a piece of swag from someone who performed a service for her. Because I could see the utility of such notepads, I carried out a file box full of them with her name at the top and, sometimes, handwritten notes to herself on them. I have a drawer full of them:

I hate to get rid of the little scribbles in her handwriting, because her handwriting is now a fixed, limited resource, and every sample lost will go unreplaced. Although I’m melancholic and maudlin, I do let those go.

My mother’s only been gone for two and a half years now; my Aunt Dale has been gone for five or six, and I still have a pile of her office supplies. Report covers? Got ’em! A metal stand for a reference-style book or catalog? I don’t know what I’ll use it for, ever, but I still have it. Come to think of it, I don’t know what she would have thought she would use it for.

But the box of 500 number 10 envelopes? I’m still working on it, mostly because one uses so few envelopes of one’s own these days:

And as I prepared to send out a number of review copies of my novel, I needed a mid-sized sheet of paper to handwrite notes to the recipients on. Preferably one without my mother’s name at the top and the name of a questionable charity at the bottom. Fortunately, I have some sheets left in the steno pad I also got from Dale:

Just simple little things, little office supplies, but reminders of my ancestors. Well, my mother and my aunt, anyway. Both of them would be pleased that I was frugal and thrifty enough to save these things and to use them. And, probably, to remember the sources.

James Rummel is afraid that some people might confuse him with the Scottish monster Big Gray Man:

But there’s far more than that to Ben Macdhui. The mountain is the reputed home of a vile and terrifying man-beast: the Big Gray Man, as it has become infamously known. Indeed, while on Ben Macdhui, witnesses to the phenomenon known as the Big Gray Man describe how they have variously encountered footsteps, a sensation of a “presence,” occasional sightings of a large humanoid creature, and an overpowering sense of panic.

I should add that Big Gray Man should not be confused, either, with the "Little Grey Man".

So, some months ago, apparently I put a Power Paw vacuum cleaner attachment on my desk because it needed to be cleaned out so that the little spinner gizmo in it would spin.

Apparently, some months ago, same Power Paw fell between a disorganized organizer and the side of the hutch attachment on my desk, which means it lie hidden there between desk cleanings until such time as my wife really, really wanted to use it and actually ordered another one, waited for it to arrive, and then used the replacement for whatever she wanted pawed powerfully.

At which time I found it. And moved the organizer so it’s touching the hutch so nothing can fall in between the two.

Weeks pass, but this morning, I had a couple of moments to kill, so I picked it up, unscrewed the two Philips screws holding it together using a small screwdriver that also happened to be lying on my desk, and knocked out a bit of dust to unlock the little gearwheel.

The complete fix time: about 5 minutes. The turnaround time: Probably 4 months.

As my sainted mother liked to say, “I don’t like to rush into anything.”

I feed my children McDonald’s Happy Meals on occasion. I hesitate to confess on the Internet because in England, this might be grounds for forcible removal of the children from the family. But there it is.

I also pride myself on being a knowledgeable sort of father, one who can answer most any question in a greater detail than a kindergartner or preschooler can actually retain. It’s important to do so to keep up the illusion of omniscience as long as possible.

Happy Meal toys, the little trinkets that come in with the chicken nuggets and apple dippers with white milk to drink (thereby mitigating, somewhat, the dietary destruction of McDonald’s), have been pretty good to me in this regard. Most of them recently have been rehashings of things from my own youth, so I can give great detail.

Transformers? I can explain some elements of the originals (except for why Megatron transformed into a gun and Soundwave transformed into a boombox with full-sized other transformers somehow shrunken to cassette size). I can even speak to the film series a bit, engaging in the modern controversies. (Bumblebee was a Volkswagen, dammit. What, do you think Greedo shot first, too?)

Marvel superheroes? I can speak at length about Captain America, Spiderman, Iron Man, and Avengers story lines. D.C. Superheroes? Go ask your mother.

Smurfs? Yeah, I can talk about the origins of the mythos from records to cartoons to the creation of Smurfette. I’ve known this stuff longer than I’ve had a college degree.

Some of the toys were pleasantly non-specific and non-mythos-centric. (Yes, when discussing varied story lines and toy universes, I do use the term mythos with my children. These are traditional stories passed down between generations now, ainna?)

Some of the toys are archetypal. If it’s a little animal, I know it’s from the latest environmental propopanda piece du juor, and the plucky animals are the heroes and the men or the animals in favor of civilization are the villains. They never make the toys out of villains for these sorts of films, as they want children to identify with the cute animals.

Oh, and Star Wars. Every couple of months, something new from Star Wars, trying to get the children hyped up on the new going concern, the Clone Wars, a series so ethically muddled that the storm troopers are the good guys, Anakin Skywalker is a hero, and at the end of the series, Anakin Skywalker is going to kill all his allies. Seriously, how can you not root for the freakin’ Hutts to rub him out at some point? Regardless, I know a lot about the overarching stories if not the specific Clone Wars adventures. I’m less clear why they built ships with the cockpit on the top, set way on the back. Because in space, too much visibility of the enemy might drive you mad or something. Or George Lucas is a tool.

But now, out of nowhere, we have a toy from some mythos of which I have no knowledge: Ben 10 Ultimate Alien.

I can’t suss it out. The name doesn’t tip anything of its story. The toy is some child embedded in a larger translucent monster or alien. Did the boy turn into that? Did the monster eat the child? Is this particular translucent alien/monster a good guy? I just don’t know.

Way to make me feel forty, McDonald’s. Now that you’ve reminded me I have to watch my diet, I’ll have to cut out the fast food for my children and me. How does that suit you?

And now, to distract my children, I will once again how them the introduction to Scooby Doo from 1970:

• This Lysol 4-in-1 Foaming Bathroom Cleaner should be tagged with With Real Police Shooting Action! Jeez, every time I pulled the trigger on the pump, it shot out a stream of foam that ricocheted and splattered so that for every spot of foam I got on target on the surface to clean, I got a half dozen spots of foam on the surrounding surfaces, including the ceiling and floor. No matter how I tried to angle the bottle or the distance from the surface, and I was a couple sound effects out of a Western where the mildew is the hero and I’m the outlaw. I searched the Lysol Web site so I could show you the exact product I’m talking about, but it’s gone. Apparently, I’m not the only one concerned about scattering caustic chemicals willy-nilly to save the world from some evil modern equivalents of chlorofluorocarbons (just as evil as CFCs! Ban them next!).
• Wait a minute, you mean that shower door isn’t frosted glass? I have thought since we lived here that the door was frosted glass. An incomplete splatter-pattern of cleaning chemicals later, and I’m looking out of my shower. Did the previous owner sell us a house with a dirty shower door? Well, in all honesty, I’d do it to someone else. Especially as dirty as this proved to be.
• Dammit, woman, I’m a man! How am I supposed to know the difference between a bath loofah and a toilet brush?

When we first moved into Nogglestead, I placed a child lock on the fireplace in our family room:

That’s kind of funny, now that I think about it. I’ve only opened the fireplace once myself. The home inspector opened it when the chimney guy was evaluating it, and I peeked in at that time. Then I popped the child lock on it when we moved in.

The only time I opened it was last winter when we were under the threat of the Great Blizzard of 2010, which threatened the Ozarks with any combination of ice, snow, winds, and calamity that would turn off our heater and would make us rely on the fireplace.

To open it, you don’t pull it; you have to actually turn one of the handles ninety degrees, something that’s a little easier when the metal hasn’t mostly frozen in years of little use. That is, it wasn’t easy.

That being said, it took me almost a year from the time I opened the fireplace and put in the Duraflame log that I expected to keep my family warm for 10 days of subzero temperatures to actually remove the pointless child lock.

As my mother used to say, “I don’t like to rush into anything.”

The latest mailer from Ducks Unlimited, of which I’m an off and on member, tested me. And I failed.

There’s a dotted line and a perforation, but the instruction is Do not detach. Apparently, in addition to a renewal form, there’s a letter to my Congressman telling him not to cut federal funding for wetlands.

Come to think of it, that’s a test Ducks Unlimited failed. I’m all about sending my money of my own volition to them to pool money with like-minded people to conserve wetlands. Meanwhile, I guess its professionals have decided that the proper way to spend my membership dues is to lobby Congress to extract money from non-like-minded citizens to do the work Ducks Unlimited should do.

Come to think of it, this membership form is going in the trash.

See, I post about my messy desktop, and I set to work cleaning it. You’re an inspiration to me, gentle reader.

The Blip, mounted:

The Blip and the Parker Brothers Merlin join the previous wallhangings. All, of course, are mounted on Velcro so I can pull them down and play a quick game any time I want to, natch.

The cat thing, though, that’s still on my desk until I figure out what to do with it.

Dustbury and Jennifer muse on the Gun question that appears on pediatrician forms. You know the one: Are there guns in the home?

Remember, if you refuse to answer that, you actually answer “Yes, and furthermore, I’m a politically sensitive gun owner, which means TERRORIST!”

However, there are some better answers:

• No, they’re not in the home; we all have CCLs, and Junior has his .22 in his diaper.
• No, they’re all buried in the backyard with the canned goods.
• Of course not. When we need a gun, we steal one, and then we leave it at the scene.
• Not today; Lil Rico needed it for something.
• No, it’s locked in Robb’s car at the YMCA.

See, in all of those scenarios, Junior is safer.