I have a new hobby: tormenting my oldest child with joke messages about everything we’re changing now that said kid has suddenly flown the coop.
In my last post I mentioned that I wasted no time, sending a text ten minutes after they left the house, saying “We rented your room.” Start as you mean to go on, is my motto. I waited a few hours to message them with “I sold the rest of your stuff on ebay.”
Hubs and I now find ourselves in charge of the pets that got left behind — a cat, a rat and a hedgehog. After a couple of days, my typing fingers got busy again. I told the offspring, “Since you left us with all of these pets, Dad and I have joined a support group for custodial grandparents.”
The next message I sent included a picture, with a caption:
We did some work on the basement. The living room is next.
Following that, I sent one saying, “Even with all the ‘grandkids’, we were lonely, so we got a dog.”
“He’s really gentle with people he knows. His name is Sweetums.”
Then this: “Check out my new wheels! I traded in the minivan.”
I think I’ll get around to the living room redesign this weekend. I have something like this in mind:
I have a thousand ideas. I could keep this up for a loooong time. I love how the age of the Internet makes it easy to keep in touch.
Fruit flies have a gestation period of ten minutes and give birth to eighty babies at a time. I didn’t look this up anywhere; it’s my own inference based strictly on observations made in my own kitchen. We try keeping a lid on our compost container, but it appears the little creatures not only possess incredible breeding capacity, but also are able to pass through impermeable Tupperware.
I’ve found a couple of strategies to put a dent in the fruit fly population. One is performing a magic ritual in which you clap your hands twenty times. Then you purify yourself with soap and water. The other is one weird trick from the Internet that actually seems to work, more or less. I left a shallow bowl out on the counter, filled with apple cider vinegar mixed with a drop of honey and a drop of dish soap. Several hours later, more than a dozen tiny corpses floated in the liquid. I was so excited, I called my husband in to take a look.
image courtesy of ronhudson.blogspot.com
He couldn’t help noting the fruit flies gathered on the rim of the bowl, safely out of harm’s way, gazing upon their fallen comrades. Then it struck me. “We’re just winnowing out the slowest and weakest, aren’t we?” I asked him. “The ones left to reproduce are too smart and strong to get caught. We’re not eradicating the population. We’re breeding superfiles!” He couldn’t even respond, merely left the room, shaking his head.
Careful with that book discussion. You might hurt someone.
Funny and somewhat mortifying story from yesterday. It has to do with a book, sort of.
Due to colds and rescheduling, my son ended up with back-to-back dental appointments yesterday. He had a 2:00 appointment with his regular dentist to have some impressions made in the hopes of getting a bridge for his missing tooth. Then he had a 3:10 appointment with the orthodontist’s office for a retainer check. (Currently, he wears a retainer that has a false tooth built-in.) Fortunately, the two offices are within five minutes of each other by car.
We arrived at the dentist’s office a few minutes early. While we were waiting, the dentist was at the reception window having a discussion with someone about fluoride and the politics thereof – a discussion I don’t want to have here, by the way. She’s an information-giver and will always come up with studies and numbers for any question you ask. The woman with whom she was talking seemed pretty persistent and their conversation went on for five or six minutes past my son’s scheduled appointment.
Meanwhile, my son and I were having our own conversation in the waiting room. He’s in the middle of reading “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking. He was telling me about the book, and we got onto the subject of time travel. We talked about whether it’s really possible, and how freaky it is to try to wrap your mind around it. How would it appear to you? If you were heading toward two converging black holes, and another spaceship was behind you, then you went back in time, would you then be behind the person you had just been ahead of?
In the midst of this head-spinning ponderation, the dentist’s other conversation ended, and she told us to come on back. She apologized for running late. I said it was okay, and trying to be conversational, did mention we were going right over to the orthodontist afterword, but it appeared we had plenty of time. Then she apologized again. And a while later, again. I kept thinking, “Why is she being so overly apologetic. She wasn’t that late.” I’ve been under a lot of stress lately. Maybe I just looked stressed?
So, the kid had his impressions made. We talked about what happens next. We said goodbye and she apologized again. Geez! I’d told her it was okay.
Then my son and I went to the van and resumed our discussion of…oh, it all became clear. She’d overheard snatches of our waiting room conversation, with our repeated references to time, and who was ahead and who was behind. She probably thought we were spending the whole time complaining about not being on time. I was a little slow there.
I emailed her today with my epiphany and let her know the real deal. No word back yet.
Gen BLT 