June 28, 2007

Testosterone Central

I feel as if I’m living in a frat house, not the suburbs. I picked Finn and Drew up from camp Tuesday and although they spent the next two days washing the foul-smelling contents of their trunks, that hasn’t been enough to domesticate them.

They’re chanting at the table:

Porter: “I’m still hungry.”

Finn: “Mora mora!”

Drew: “Bora bora!”

In unison, fists pounding on table: “Mora mora, bora bora hey!”

I had them start the grill as usual tonight, then stumbled upon them tossing flaming charcoal briquets onto the patio and throwing leaves and berries on top to savor the sizzle.

I’ve concluded that chanting and playing with fire are ancient rituals that link my boys to the cave men.

I wasn’t planning on living with frat boys or cave men at age forty, so I’m hiding in the basement, waiting for them to fall asleep.

June 27, 2007

The Simple Squalid Water Pumper

The extreme drought conditions are making things tough on everyone.  The grass is brown and crispy.  Carwashes are closed.  Our city has received 16 inches less than normal rainfall for the year if I’m reading the local weather station correctly.

Don’t take my word for it:

French blue hydrangeas my mother gave me dying of dehydration

Patch of fried grass by mailbox

Under the mandatory watering (or non-watering) guidelines in place now, odd-numbered addresses can handwater lawns and gardens before 10 am and after 10 pm on Tuesdays and Fridays.  I’ve gotten Porter to water in the morning a couple of times, but none of us has been enthused about going outside in the dark to hose down perennials.

We’ve been saving water from baths and showers and taking it outside in buckets, but that has quickly grown tiresome.

Thus, this weekend I encouraged Porter’s resourcefulness (Dear Lord, I truly will die if he becomes a mama’s boy as he has threatened) and we came up with a  fantastic invention to recycle water for the plants I want to save.

THE SIMPLE SQUALID WATER PUMPER

Here are the items you will need for your Simple Squalid Water Pumper:

1. Small submersible pump with garden hose attachment
2. Surge protector or extension cord
3. Garden hose
4. Walkie-talkies
5. Hammer and nails
6. Stakes
7. Foam board, sharpies and stakes
Also, tub of post-shower water:

(obviously my shower due to clarity of water)
INSTRUCTIONS
A. Screw the hose onto the pump and place the pump into the bathtub.


B. If a child is involved, get a surge protector and turn it into the off position.  Plug the pump into the surge protector and the protector plug into the wall.  At this point the pump will not start pumping until the switch on the surge protector is turned on.

C. Snake the hose from the tub

out the door and to the area to be watered.

D. Use the walkie-talkie to tell the pumper to hit the switch.

E. We have water!

F. We had enough to water four of the five hydrangeas I care about.  That was the most water they’d seen in weeks.

The man at the hardware store thinks we can hook the pump to the drain on the washing machine, but that project is for another day.  I’m excited about it though, because we use Tide with Febreze and pumping that water is bound to be a beautifully scented experience.

G. Once you’ve established that your system works, you must make a sign to alert passersby that when you are watering outside approved times you are using recycled water and should not be turned in to the water police. This is the most crucial part of the project.  People in suburbia are pissed off when they cannot water their lawns.  Zoysia fanatics wake in the middle of the night to lovingly douse their sod, while jealous neighbors lurk in bushes trying to catch them.  It’s no laughing matter.  Fines and jail time are possible for those violating the watering rules.

Do people actually risk surcharges, fines, jail and humiliation by watering on unapproved days?

I’m not accusing anyone, but let me show you the difference in some lawns in MY neighborhood:

A. Poor Horticulturists or Avid Water Conservationists?

    
B. Lucky Lawn Owners or Blatant Cheaters?

Cast your votes and share your water-saving tips!

June 24, 2007

Twin Tales Proved True: A Look Back

Sure, I’m prone to exaggeration but most of what I say is fairly accurate, no matter what the Voice of Reason and Bill believe.

I have long been telling the boys stories about things they did when they were little, and Bill has doubted my veracity each time.  This weekend I was working on a project that required me to go through some (millions) of photos, and I found photographic proof of the following anecdotes circa 1999 or 2000:

1. It is no use sending one twin to time-out.

You can try.

But because twins travel in teams, the other will wander over and the punishment will morph into a giggle-session, and all hopes of teaching a lesson will be lost.

On the up side, the pictures will be worth it.

2. Once the twins were mobile, it was hard to keep up with both them and Finn, who was four at the time of the next picture.  One day in the midst of the cacophony, I lost Porter.   We were all inside and the doors were locked, so I knew he had to be in the house.  Still, it took Finn and me thirty minutes to find Porter

sitting in the bathroom drawer.

3. Okay, so I lost him more than once.  The next time I looked in the bathroom drawer first.  No sign of Porter.  We looked in closets, under cribs, and in the pantry, another favorite hiding place.  Nope.  He’d been snotty (in his nose, not his attitude) and I thought I might find a slimy trail to follow but I was not so lucky.

I got panicky and thought about calling Bill.   Just before I did, Finn located the devious one.  Porter had put his favorite stuffed animals under the sink in the boys’ bathroom, climbed on top, closed the cabinet doors, and settled in for a nap.

I’ve never been so happy to kiss a nasty nose in my life.

June 21, 2007

Our House Is A Killing Field

A crawfish and two goldfish joined our household this week.  Bill won $30 and the goldfish in Bingo, and while Porter was pleased, it’s my belief that an animal should be considered a punishment, not a prize, no matter how innocuous it may be.  I was peeved.  However, I put on a happy face and I dutifully bought some goldfish flakes and a net.

Saturday the firm had a party and Porter chowed on crawfish, sausage, and artichokes, and then he saw a stray crawfish wandering the yard.  He stuck it in a Solo cup, declared it a pet and brought it home.  Bill and I were too worn out by the festivities to google the crawfish habitat, which in retrospect should probably have been a brackish or swampy environment.

That was beside the point, as Porter immediately rummaged in the attic and located another fishbowl and dumped the crawfish in a bowl of water next to the goldfish.  The crawfish perished before being named, and it appears the cause of death was drowning.

We have a large pet cemetery in the front yard, but the Unnamed Crawfish didn’t inspire any feelings that needed to be memorialized, so Bill waited until Porter went on a bike ride, then tossed the corpse in the trash.

Meanwhile, Porter had named the fish Speedy and Bingo.  He wanted to feed them every time he ate, which is to say every hour or so, and we changed their murky water twice the first day before Porter fully absorbed the once a day feeding rule.  By then the damage was done.  Speedy was lurking near the bottom of the bowl, barely flapping a fin, while Bingo swam as cheerfully as Mark Spitz.  (Do I date myself by being able to recall only a mustachioed swimmer from the 70’s?)

Only the most avid readers will recognize the deja vu I felt at this point– this echoed the piscine tragedy we suffered years ago, which is duly recounted here.  Even the names are somewhat similar. (Though I published the story in 2005 to start off the blog, it probably occurred around 2000, if you are keeping a strict Glamore timeline.)

This time, however, the boys are older, (and two are off at camp) and no one has inserted a straw into the fishbowl to slurp up the delicious fishwater therein.  Nor has Porter worried that the goldfish aren’t getting enough calcium and poured in a glass of milk and a piece of syrupy waffle for an extra-special breakfast.

But in the end, the result is the same.

June 19, 2007

Old Bathwater

Looks like I can quit forcing Porter to haul buckets of dirty bathwater outside to pour on my perennials, for the moment at least, because it’s raining. 

Unfortunately, the paper says it’s not going to rain much, and we’re still under Stage Three drought watering restrictions.  We can water by hand every Tuesday and Friday before 10 am and after 10 pm.  I can never seem to get to the hose at those hours, which is why we have two bathtubs full of nasty water, which can be used at any time.

At this point all I’m interested in saving are the French blue hydrangeas and rose campion my mother gave me.  The grass is brown and crispy and I just don’t give a damn.

Will the Pantene Pro-V Shampoo and Conditioner in the water kill my plants, or give them shiny, voluminous foliage?

Shouldn’t Porter, the inventor/mama’s boy, be able to come up with an easier way to get the water from the tub to the plants?

Suggestions are welcome!