Alice's Adventures Underground: March 2007

Perhaps I Just Watched Too Much CSI Last Night

Posted on 3/30/2007 03:18:00 PM - by NG

In the continuing saga of weird pregnancy dreams, I submit the following.

Last night, I dreamed that an armed gunman broke into our house while my husband was out of town and held The Dormouse and I hostage for two days. We spent the entire time cowering in the corner of her room until, inexplicably, he decided to take a nap on our bed. While he was sleeping, I managed to sneak in, take one of the two handguns he was sleeping with, and shoot him while he was sleeping.

In the head.

Three times.

Because that's all the bullets there were in the gun.

Why can't I just have sex dreams about Danny Bonaduce like other bloggers?

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At Least This Bodes Well for My Retirement Years

Posted on 3/29/2007 08:24:00 AM - by NG

After watching a Life Alert commercial on television.

"Momma, you need one of those."

"One of what, honey?" (I seldom pay attention to tv commercials)

"One of those buttons."

"Huh?"

"You know, you wear it around your neck and if you fall down you push the button and someone comes to help. You need one of those buttons. Let's go get one for you."

Suddenly, I realize what she's talking about: "Oooooh.... well... honey what makes you think I need one of those buttons?"

"Because when you fall down, you can call me and I can come help you."

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Can You Hear Me Now?

Posted on 3/28/2007 12:51:00 PM - by NG

Transcript of an actual phone call / conversation my husband recently had on his mobile phone:

Ring ring ring.

KoH: Hello?

Person on Other Side: *garbled, incomprehensible*

KoH: Hello?

POS: Can I please speak to... *garbled, incomprehensible*

KoH: To whom? I didn't get that.

POS: *garbled, incomprehensible*

KoH: What?

POS: *raises voice, speaks into receiver more directly* Now can you hear me?

KoH: Yes, that's a little better.

POS: Can I please speak to Mrs. Alice?

KoH: Oh, that's my wife, she's not at this number.

POS: Well, my name is *garbled, incomprehensible*

KoH: *yelling* WHAT?

POS: *much louder* I'm calling from Sprint and I'm calling to *garbled, incomprehensible*

KoH: Didn't get that last part. Why are you calling?

POS: I'm calling from Spring to see if you're happy with your service.

KoH: What???

POS: *yelling* I'M CALLING FROM SPRINT TO FIND OUT IF YOU'RE HAPPY WITH YOUR SERVICE.

KoH: Ooooh!! Yeah, It's okay, I guess.

POS: OK then, have a nice day.

KoH: What?

click

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Contact

Posted on 3/23/2007 07:53:00 PM - by NG

Please send email to ngundergroundATgmailDOTcom.

I have never been very good at returning phone calls but I'm much better at email. Just ask my family, many of whom I would not have a relationship with if not for twittfacing on the blogoweb. My husband prefers to email me to tell me he's leaving for work in the morning; he's more likely to get a response. So if you have a question, comment, or need for human contact that doesn't seem appropriate for the comments section, feel free to email and I promise to read it. I cannot however, promise a timely response due to the fact that there are days when I don't even look at my personal email because I'm so sick of looking at a computer all day at work.... that and the fact that I am a bad person.

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Duh, Mom

Posted on 3/22/2007 02:34:00 PM - by NG

points out car window "Mom, Mom! Look at that grass over there! It looks like a Nordrott!"

"I don't know what you mean, hon."

"A Nordrott. NORDROTT. Nooor...droootttt."

"Sweetie, if you're going to describe something by comparing it to something else, it's very helpful to use something that people would know."

"Oh. It looks like Gorilla Grass."

"I don't know what Gorilla Grass is either. What does that look like?"

points to same spot out car window "It looks like that grass out there."

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Not Really What The Celts Had in Mind

Posted on 3/21/2007 10:10:00 AM - by NG

Last week, we met up with Monica and baby Marielle for a children's concert/Celtic diversity lesson/storytelling experience in Baltimore. I'm finally getting around to taking the pictures off my camera from that.

Oh and by the way, since when does an infant need to buy a ticket??? Even to a children's concert? C'mon! We stifled the urge to protest with the ticket taker - me with: "It's not like she's taking up a seat.", and Monica with: "She can't hear it anyway!" - and shelled out $12 for Mari to pretty much ignore the whole thing.

This was also the concert where they put microphones in the aisles and encouraged the children in attendance to ask questions, which was hilarious. One kid asked the drummer where he could get a drum like this:

and how he could learn to play it. The drummer explained to the audience that the drum comes from a land in the Far East and you could get one too if you went to a place called "Google" (I'm thinking some of the parents may be trying to purchase plane tickets to Google even as we speak) and if he wanted lessons to "see me after the show".

One kid asked the harpist if the harp was easy or hard to play. She said that it was one of the easiest instruments to play at first because all you had to do was strum the strings and you got a sound. Then another kid challenged her: "You said it was easy to play... but I see like HUNDREDS OF STRINGS!!!" She ate crow and admitted, yes, it was rather difficult to play well.

The Dormouse desperately wanted to ask a question, but I knew better. I made her tell me what the question was that she wanted to ask first. She said, "I wanted to ask about my tights and my skirt."

"What about them?"

".....

Aren't they pretty?"

She was incensed that I wouldn't let her go to the microphone for that. Go figure. Instead, I let her talk to the musicians who were in the lobby after the show, where this exchange took place:

Me whispering: "Tell her what you liked about the music."

Dormouse: "I liked the music!"

Storyteller lady: "Why thank you! Do you want to learn to play an instrument someday?"

D: "I already do."

SL: "Really? What instrument do you play?"

D: "I play the piano. I go to piano class.... it's called... 'Piano Class'."

SL: "Well, that seems like a good name for it."

Hey, it's as intelligent a conversation as some of the ones my husband has had with fellow musicians.

This photo was taken when The Dormouse desperately wanted to hold baby Mari. About three seconds after the camera clicked, baby Mari was headed for a face to face meeting with the carpet. I am amused by the look on her face, which seems to say, "I am not your toddler toy substitute! Now give me back to the source of my food, please."

At least she didn't put her in the cat carrier.

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Don't Let Her Babysit Your Kid Anytime Soon

Posted on 3/21/2007 10:00:00 AM - by NG

We took the cat to the vet for vaccinations yesterday. I hadn't quite gotten around to putting the cat carrier back up in the attic afterwards and it was commandeered by The Dormouse for the following purpose.

Apparently her baby was "sick", had to go "see Dr. Mom for a shot and a band aid". This was how Baby arrived at Dr. Mom's office.

When I asked why Baby had to ride in the cat carrier, I was told she was "too much trouble to carry".

Look closely between the slats and you'll see Baby's sad, sad eyes. Would that it were this easy to care for a child. But I hear you get arrested for that.

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The Apple Falls Exactly Where It's Told to Fall

Posted on 3/20/2007 07:00:00 AM - by NG

Here's the new thing the KingofHearts is trying to teach The Dormouse. When someone says something like "Oh... aren't you adorable!" or "How'd you get to be so cute?" he's told her to say:

"I take after my daddy."

Yuk yuk, isn't that funny? (insert eye-rolling emoticon here)

So anyway in the car this weekend, she was being pesty and annoying. I flippantly said, "You know, you used to be fun... when did you turn into such a pain?"

"I take after my daddy."

Let that be a lesson; sometimes stuff backfires on you.

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Why Her Morning Coffee Will Now Be Replaced With Ritalin

Posted on 3/16/2007 03:40:00 PM - by NG

Scene: people are visiting at the house, all sitting on the living room trying to have a conversation. The Dormouse is filtting around the room, climbing on people's laps then off them, on the chair, off the chair, on the back of the couch, up to the catpost, hangs upside down off the edge of the catpost, falls, then climbs back up, jumps to the couch, falls off the couch, cries, repeats from beginning. Finally, KoH has had it and becomes impatient.

"Sit down on that chair correctly and sit still now!"

angrily flinging arms up and down by her sides: "But Daaaaaaddy... I've. Got. To. SHOW. OFF!"

At least we know how to call a spade a spade.

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Underage Drinking

Posted on 3/15/2007 11:22:00 AM - by NG

For about the last year (actually, I can trace this back to almost the exact same time she started preschool at what we now refer to as the Germ Factory), The Dormouse has been extremely susceptible to every virus that comes our way. But she doesn't just get a runny nose like most kids... oh no, she had to go and take after her father with fevers that could burn the bedclothes off - thereby scaring the bageezes out of her parents and sending us running on several late night trips to incredibly unhelpful emergency rooms.

As she's grown, I've gotten a better handle on dealing with this - as opposed to the Oh crap, I've broken my daughter stance I used to take when she was younger. These days, we are much better at seeing the whole thing coming anyway and get that ounce of prevention into her much earlier in the process.

After a two month fit of coughing with no other symptoms whatsoever a while back, we discovered the wonder of Vitamin C crystals. We'd tried every over-the-counter and prescription cough medication possible and nothing helped. Just when I was debating putting her to bed with an open bottle of Jack Daniels next to her and telling her it probably wasn't so bad to take a swig every time she coughed, Dr. Google suggested that sometimes ginormous doses of Vitamin C would boost the immune system enough for the body to take care of itself in cases like that. A parent on a message board said they used Vitamin C in crystal form. Out of desperation, I bought a bottle at a local vitamin shop and added it to the list of meds we were giving her. It did the trick (or perhaps it was all just a coincidence - timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance). Now when we see a crazy virus swooping in from the left, we almost always start dealing with it by trying to get her immune system up first. And usually it helps. She may still get sick, but it's been awhile since we've seen the thermometer climb up to 106 and that's a good thing.

The one problem with that is this: that stuff is N-A-S-T-E-E. Just a teaspoonful in a normal-sized glass of juice makes it so tart, it's like eating an entire bag of those Sour Patch Kids candies with a glass of concentrated lemon juice as a chaser. The Dormouse took one sip of it dissolved into an entire glass of orange juice and refused to drink OJ for the next week, so bad was her experience. So after much trial and error, we've hit upon the perfect preparation method. It involves putting a teaspoon of Vitamin C crystals in a shot glass, filling it with orange juice and almost equal amounts of sugar, then stirring like mad and having her gulp it down in one fell swoop.

She thinks it's cool to drink from a tiny glass, so it's a novelty which almost makes her forget how much the whole thing makes her mouth invert. The one drawback to this, I discovered last night as dinner, when the KingofHearts handed her an OJ/Vitamin C cocktail to drink before she started eating and she said:

"First I will have my shot. Then if I eat all my green beans, I get to have another shot. Then if I clean my whole plate and I'm a good girl, I get another shot for dessert."

Yeah... that's gonna come back to bite us in the butt later.

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Dream a Little Dream for Me

Posted on 3/14/2007 01:44:00 PM - by NG

I don't dream. Oh, I know from Psych 101 class that we all need to dream, so maybe I should rephrase that by saying I don't remember my dreams. Never have.

When I was doing my internship, I had a roommate who was way into the Freudian Analysis of dreams and had me do that thing where you leave a notepad by your bedside and then at the moment you wake up, write down everything you remember from your dreams so you don't forget them as you conscious mind starts taking over. This is what my notebook looked like:

May 21st

May 22nd

May 23rd

etc., etc.

After a week or so, it got so boring that I gave up and resigned myself to being the kind of person who doesn't dream. And that's remained pretty consistent throughout my life, other than a few instances where I remember a hint of something I dreamed in the morning (which usually comes true a few days later) or where I wake up in the middle of the night with that elusive line of code I was trying to write for work or the solution to some other problem in my head, but those are issues for another post.

During my first two pregnancies, that held true as well. No dreams. But with this one, all bets are off and I've had some of the most wildly inconceivable, yet incredibly plausible dreams where I wake up and have to do a mental check to decide if it really happened or not.

Last night this was the scene:

My mother, who waited nearly 40 years to break it to me, had decided now was the time that I should know that I'd entered the Witness Protection Program when I was a child. I was too young to remember and since then all my friends, family, ethnicity and background had just been the figment of some government employee's imagination who made it all up back in the 70s. My name was not my name, my parents were not my parents, and she'd thought now it was time for me to know. Through the whole dream, she kept trying to tell me why it all had happened in the first place, (I was a member of the mafia? I'd turned state's evidence on John Gotti? Gotten into a fight with Carlo Gambino's three year old and called him a poopyhead? I don't know.) but we were at some sort of party and every time someone walked into the room, we had to find another private place to talk. The anticipation was killing me as I woke up. Apparently, never to know what my brain would have dreamed up for an answer if I'd just managed to stay asleep ten minutes longer.

Wonder what Freud would say about that? Actually, it might explain a few things.

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Apparently, We Now Have a Reputation in the Neighborhood

Posted on 3/11/2007 08:06:00 AM - by NG

About 8:00 last night, the familiar woooo-oooooo of a fire engine horn went by on the street outside our house. I watched through the window as it made a right at the end of our block, then turned left and headed up the street parallel to us. A couple of minutes later, the fire chief SUV went by after it, also with sirens blaring.

The Dormouse had already gone to bed so we were spared the screams of "Santa, Santa!!" that normally accompany any siren that is heard near our house.

A few minutes later, another fire engine passed by... and then another and another. After the fifth fire truck went by the house and turned the corner, the phone rang.

It was our neighbor a couple of blocks down the street, wanting to know if we were all OK. She'd seen all the emergency vehicles go by and wanted to know if they were headed to our house because we'd tried to burn the house down again. I wanted to tell her that yes, the house was, indeed on fire, but we'd had to go back in to the burning house to answer the phone when it rang. My less-evil counterpart of a husband would not let me.

Killjoy.

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This Pregnancy is Destroying my Brain!

Posted on 3/10/2007 08:22:00 PM - by NG

After almost a week of not posting here, I suppose I owe my handful of readers (most of whom, I'm sure haven't noticed) some sort of explanation for my lack of ability to put two words together into any coherent form. I think that is best served by the following story that just happened in my house.

All day long, we've been talking about Daylight Savings Time starting three weeks early this year and changing the computer clocks and how some IT providers are actually billing hours of time to their clients to "deal with the problem" and joking about how I could probably work that into my job somehow - you know, tell my boss I needed to take the whole of Monday to "fix it" on all the workstations in our office and have an excuse for getting no real work done then. I could sit, brow furrowed for a couple of hours at one successive desk after another and surf the web unbeknownst to all the computer illiterate in the office who would be concerned for how hard I was working and then possibly buy me lunch. Oh... and then take another whole day in April when all the computers will WANT to reset themselves and do it all again.

We just got back from our weekly excursion to Chick-Fil-A and while The KingofHearts was bathing The Dormouse, I went around the house to change all the clocks so when I got up my usual four times between midnight and four am, I would know what time it actually was and not be an hour off in my sleepless stupor.

I had to think really hard about what action to take and had the following internal argument with myself:

Wait... is it an hour forward or back?

What's that saying? 'Spring forward, fall back'... yeah... that's it.

Wait... is it Spring or Fall?

It's still pretty cold outside, so it must be Fall.

And then I set every clock in the house back an hour.

A little while later, I had an argument with KoH, who insisted that The Dormouse would want to sleep later in the morning because of the time change. I insisted that she'd get up an hour early because it would really feel like six o'clock, when it was actually five o'clock. He looked at me like I had gone daft. "It's 'Spring forward, Fall back', honey."

I know, says I, "It's FALL, so we go BACK."

"No dear, it's SPRING, so we go FORWARD."

"Oh...

yeah...

I guess you're right."

So now, once I hit 'publish' here, I will be going back around to all the clocks in my house and setting them forward two hours.

Or is it three hours to cover the time difference?

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What is It?

Posted on 3/05/2007 12:30:00 PM - by NG

It never fails to amaze me how they get information from an ultrasound image. Sono techs must either have the most vivid imaginations in the world or they're really good at lying to your face and making it sound like they know what they're talking about.

We're scheduling all the genetic testing nonsense we have to do now so this is all we get for the time being.

So that speck in the dark circle is a baby. Either that or:

A turtle on its back
A cancerous polyp
A slug wearing a hat
Mouse with a fat tail
A fossilized trilobyte
A snail crawling on the ceiling
A sideways gnome
A fig

You can all play along in the comment section. We are currently debating what to call this little thing. When the Dormouse was still in utero and we didn't want to discuss the names we were thinking about with people who would immediately say, "Oooo.... I HATE that", we just called her Spot. Maybe this one should be Speck? Rover?

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Inappropriate Songs (volume 11)

Posted on 3/04/2007 07:27:00 PM - by NG In: Inappropriate songs

This is a song from Church... or at least it begins that way:

"I'm trying to be like Jesus,

And Miss Chantal,

And CarolAaaaaanne."

I guess we know where she places the people in her life on the piety scale. It's interesting to note that her parents didn't show up in that version of the song; maybe we should try harder.

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Something Rotten On the Planet Kronos

Posted on 3/03/2007 07:38:00 AM - by NG

Last night while the collection of friends was over, I overheard this conversation from the basement:

"Klingon is not a 'real language'."

"Yes it is, it follows conventional language structure and there's a big enough vocabulary..."

"Yes, but you're forgetting one minor thing: KLINGONS DON'T EXIST."

To my husband's credit, he was the one with the Klingons Don't Exist argument, but that means someone down there had taken the counterpoint... And that just makes me sad.

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Makin' a List

Posted on 3/01/2007 10:33:00 AM - by NG

"Momma, here write these things down, I need to make a shopping list," she says as she hands me a pen and a piece of the paper we use to write out grocery items we need to remember. I imagine what the shopping list of a three year old would look like as she begins ticking off the fingers of one hand with another and her eyes dart wildly up to the right and back as the neurons in the imagination portion of her brain begin to fire.

"We neeeeed....

Pepper
Salt
Vitamins
Bacon
Eggs
Chips
Bacon Soda....

that's all Momma. Now... let's go to the store."

So my question is this. Why is this list more healthy and reasonable that the actual list that's stuck to my refrigerator right now?

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Alice's Adventures Underground

Perhaps I Just Watched Too Much CSI Last Night

At Least This Bodes Well for My Retirement Years

Can You Hear Me Now?

Contact

Duh, Mom

Not Really What The Celts Had in Mind

Don't Let Her Babysit Your Kid Anytime Soon

The Apple Falls Exactly Where It's Told to Fall

Why Her Morning Coffee Will Now Be Replaced With Ritalin

Underage Drinking

Dream a Little Dream for Me

Apparently, We Now Have a Reputation in the Neighborhood

This Pregnancy is Destroying my Brain!

What is It?

Inappropriate Songs (volume 11)

Something Rotten On the Planet Kronos

Makin' a List

Me in 3 Seconds

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