For Sale

Anybody want to buy my house?

Hypothetically Speaking

In case you ever have a baby with three holes in his heart, and you have to watch him scream his 4-day-old head off while doctors do all kinds of tests on him, you should know that it gets better. By the time he’s 2 ½ he’ll probably kind of enjoy watching the doctor experiment on him, and he’ll really only care about whether he gets a sucker after it's over.

Alert!

We’re moving! And we haven’t finished our taxes! And I have skin cancer!

Don’t worry, it’s just a little piece of basal cell carcinoma on my back. Tons of people get those, right? I think it just means I’ll turn into one of those people who says, “Did you remember sunscreen?” every time we go outside.

Apparently we filed for an extension on our taxes, and apparently it’s totally legal.

And we’re moving! The house is not very far from where we live now, but it has a dishwasher! And a master bathroom! And big closets!

I can’t wait to see what other news we get on Tax Day 2008. Anybody have anything?

Dungeons and Dragons, Anyone?

My brother, Toby, just returned from nine months in Afghanistan, where he was serving in the Navy. I e-mailed him when he got back and asked if his time in Afghanistan made him a real live veteran. Here is his response:

Yes, I'm a veteran. Now to avoid further confusion, I will list the warrior levels.

1. Veteran
2. Mongrel
3. Dark Knight
4. Wizard Apprentice
5. Master Wizard
6. Beast Master
7. Warlord

How lucky that going to war didn't take the dorkiness out of him.

Signing Trickster

Liam took a break from Signing Time for a few months, but now he’s back with a vengeance. We have five or six episodes saved on the DVR, and he would probably watch all of them in a row every day if he could.

Since I don’t sit down and watch it with him, Liam knows all kinds of signs now that I don’t know. Sometimes he asks me, “How do you sign blue?” And I say, “I don’t know, how do you sign blue?” And he shows me, while saying, “You make a B for blue, and then twist it.” And for a second I think he knows that blue starts with B, before I realize that he’s just repeating what the Signing Time lady says.

Yesterday we were going through one of these signing lessons when I got the feeling Liam was making up his own signs. It all became very clear when he asked me, “How do you sign Lisa?” Instead of spelling out L-I-S-A, I said, “I don’t know. How do you sign Lisa?” And Liam stuck his fist up by his nose and wiggled it all around.

I know I haven’t seen all of the episodes, but come on. This kid is totally taking me for a ride.

Got a Light?

A couple weeks ago, my neighbor brought over some junk he was getting rid of from a house he remodeled. He said if I sold the junk on Craigslist, we could split the money 50/50. One of the things he brought was this chandelier:


I secretly hoped that everything else would be snatched up, but that no one would want the chandelier. Guess what. My secret hope came true! So I painted the chandelier in hopes of putting it in my next house, and now it looks like this:

April Fools

How much do you want to bet that my brother is going to call today and say something like, “Can you believe Dad had an allergic reaction to his insulin and now he has to get his left leg amputated?”

Runs In the Family

Apparently my brother, Jeff, could carry a tune at age 18 months. My parents have a recording of him singing You Are My Sunshine, perfectly in tune with all of the words memorized, at Liam's age.

Liam? Not so much. Here is his rendition of the ABC Song:



Luckily, his monotone voice serves as a bit of a distraction from the fact that he has the lyrics totally wrong.
A B C F G
H L N M O P
L N M O
Q R S 2 and V
W X Y and Z
Now ABCs
Next time won’t sing with me?

On Becoming a Trace Adkins Fan

Am I the only one who watches The Celebrity Apprentice? I just watched Trace Adkins talk trash about the Backstreet Boys and I think that 20-second clip made the entire season worth watching.

Blue's Clues

I found some pants in my drawer yesterday that I don’t remember buying or owning. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but I can’t tell if these pants are black or blue so I don’t know which shoes I can wear with them.

I did some detective work today, and I think my clues are telling me that the pants are blue. First of all, I found them in this drawer:


And not this drawer:


Apparently when I was deciding which pants should go in which drawer (back before I lost my memory), only black, gray, and denim were allowed in the dark pants drawer. Blue non-jeans were sent to the brown, green, and white drawer.

Next I did an Internet search to see if I could find my pants online. I don’t think Dickies makes this exact style anymore, but these are very similar:


You’ll notice that while the blue pants (left) are confusingly dark (dare I say almost black?), the black pants (right) are obviously not blue.

Now that I’m convinced that the pants are blue, a tiny shred of a memory is forming in my mind. I think I can actually remember buying them. I think I’ve even worn them before. Or maybe I’m just making up memories to compensate for the fact that I’m losing my mind at age 28.