Category: silliness

Preparing the Home for Baby (Tips from American Hovel Magazine)

As someone in the final throes of the third trimester, I have spent a lot of time recently sitting in an ob/gyn waiting room. Usually I go equipped with some sort of reading material.

On occasion, though, I have felt compelled to pick up one of the various maternity magazines that litter the waiting area. These magazines give all sorts of largely redundant advice about how not to kill your baby, and what host of $80 products you will absolutely need to give your baby a bath.

Since it’s been a while since I have contributed to American Hovel Magazine (The Magazine dedicated to lowering acceptable neatness standards in the home), I felt inspired to submit a few tips of my own for getting ready for baby.

AHM’s tips for Preparing the Home for Baby

Decorating the Nursery:
Other magazines will advise you about sets of exquisite crib bedding, with coordinating sheets, bumpers, window valences and diaper pail cozies. Not only are these items expensive, but they will lead to your child setting high expectations for style and organization in the future. It is best, then, to make sure the nursery fits in with the decor of the rest of your home. As it is, the room you intend to use as nursery is probably already functioning as a storage area for various piles of clothing and dirty dishes, boxes of bills and junkmail, as well as broken electronics and half-completed craft projects. Many of these items are quite colorful, and will be attractive additions to the baby’s room.

Be advised, though, that it is best to keep power tools, sharp knives, and hazardous materials out of reach of baby, and these should not be stored in the crib or sleeping area itself.

Where the baby will sleep:
While you may opt for a piece of furniture, such as a crib or cradle, it is also possible place your baby in a mobile storage container for temporary storage. Such an item is often called a Moses basket, befrilled versions of which can cost upwards of $200. A laundry basket works just fine. Don’t worry if the laundry basket has dirty laundry in it: the baby would get it dirty soon anyhow. Those buggers spit up like crazy, and diapers leak all the freakin’ time.

Caution should be used when adding dirty laundry to the laundry basket: covering the baby in piles of clothing may cause the little tyke to struggle for air, and may also make it harder for you to find the baby when relatives come to visit.

Laundry hints:
AHM typically advises you to avoid doing laundry. However, with a baby in the house, you may need to do a load of laundry or two over the course the first month.

You may remember the advice to separate light from dark clothing. Also make sure to separate the baby from the clothing. While running the baby through the washing machine may be tempting as a time-saving shortcut, this method is not recommended. Even on delicate cycle.

Home Safety:
With a newborn in the house, safety is always of the highest priority. Make sure that your smoke detectors and fire extinguishers are functional, and that your home is moderately free of the squirrels, raccoons, and other potentially plague-bearing animals that typically inhabit your living area and furnishings.

Congratulations, and best of luck to you as you prepare for the arrival of your little one!

Eight 8 things for 08/08/08

Today is August 8th, 2008. As in 08/08/08. Which is a very cool date. I decided to forego my usual Themed Things Thursday list in favor a special 8-themed Friday list. (Actually, I wanted to do 8 lists of 8 8 things⁸, but I came down with an attack of temporary sanity, and decided I should get some sleep instead.)

8 8-related things

  1. octave: the musical interval between a note and one of half (or twice) its frequency in hertz. It’s divided into 8 tones to make a scale.
  2. octagon: a polyhedron with 8 sides. A red octagon is iconic as the stop sign.
  3. spiders: eight-legged arthropods. (You can visit my spider ThThTh list for lots of spiders.)
  4. the 8 ball: The black ball from the set of pool or billiards balls, emblazend with the number 8. There’s also the Magic 8 ball, a toy used to tell fortunes.

  5. crazy 8s: a card game (played with at least one other person) where the goal is to discard all your cards. 8s are “wild.”

  6. octopus. An 8-legged cephalopod. (I came so close to making an octopus list…)

  7. “8 Days a Week“: a song by the Beatles. (What should the 8th day be named? Maybe Pantsday?)
  8. “Figure 8“. The School House Rock song about the number 8:

———————–
⁸ Here are 8 scraps from the various 8 lists I envisioned: 1) section 8 (a former military discharge for psychiatric reasons) , 2) The Eight (a book by Katharine Neville), 3) Eight Men Out (a 1988 directed by John Sayles), 4) Eight is Enough (a 1970s TV show), 5) 8-track tapes, 6) 2³=8, 7) V8 (a juice) and 8) After Eight (a candy).

——————
Image sources:
octopus: Chandler B. Beach, The New Student’s Reference Work for Teachers Students and Families (Chicago: F. E. Compton and Company, 1909), from etc.usf.edu.
music scale/piano keys: Kantner Book of Objects from etc.usf.edu.
cards, spider, stop sign: public domain images from wpclipart.com.
Magic 8 Ball: wikipedia

signs

I had a marginally eventful day today, with various unrelated things happening that gave me some pause.

  • The first event was being met with this message:

    Scrabulous is disabled for US and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here.

    I was just saying last night that I needed to buckle down and get stuff done. And mentioned my “other methods of procrastination.” Well, as it turns out, this was one of them: I’ve been playing a few games of Scrabulous (the Scrabble rip-off) on Facebook with a few friends.¹ It’s not a huge time sink, since a whole day usually passes between turns. But I was usually playing 2 or 3 games. (Okay, and I’ve tried a couple of other word games as well. What can I say? I love to play with words.) But now the makers of Scrabble are suing for intellectual property/copyright infringement (and I can’t say I blame them). So no more Scrabulous for me. And seing as I was just hinting at needing to cut down on my procrastination, this seemed to be a sign. Or perhaps a S₁I₁G₂N₁.

  • This evening I also experienced some more signs that my pregnancy is progressing. I’ve had quite a few (painless) contractions and various other sensations that remind me how little time may be left before the little guy makes his appearance. I’m almost 37 weeks along, and as such, I could go any day now. I’ve sort of been counting on having a few more weeks to get stuff done.
  • The final sign of the day was more unambiguously welcome. A box of brownie mix that has been sitting around for weeks (or months) caught my eye. In particular, the directions calling for 2 eggs. We had eggs for dinner last night, in part to try to finish them up before their expiration date. After last night, we had 2 eggs left. Exactly 2 eggs. Eerie, don’t you think? Add to that a craving for chocolate, a mixing bowl out of the dishwasher and not yet put away, and evening temperatures cool enough to consider turning on the oven, and I ask you: could the universe be sending me a clearer message than that?


    • —-

    Okay, there was one more event that happened today that got me riled up, but I can’t say I took it as any sort of a sign. I got into a bit of an altercation with a truck driver in Boston. He was trying to “help” me out of my parking space (which he, or perhaps another truck driver, had half-blocked me into) by yelling out somewhat useless and conflicting instructions. Which were then supplemented by rather patronizing and sexist comments. I was about ready to engage in fisticuffs. Perhaps I’ll have time to share the full rant later, now that I’ll have gained all that time from abstaining from addictive word games…

    ———-

    Oh, and there was some other good news. A good sign, even, one might say. Phoebe used the toilet at daycare for the first time today. (And second and third.) After my rant just last night. Further, she wore the same diaper home that she left home in. (And no, not due to neglect. Nor due to her stubbornly holding back all day, which did cross my mind.)

    —————-
    ¹ So, az, it looks like I can’t play for a bit. How does this affect Canadians living in Spain, by the way?

    a sopping Thursday

    It’s raining here today. Lots of rain. It’s a good day to bring out some umbrellas, so I give you a ThThTh list of umbrella things.¹

    a selection of umbrellas

  • The Sopping Thursday, by Edward Gorey. This is one of my all-time favorite Gorey books. John and I have been known to send each other messages that are quotations from the book:
  • I have lost my umbrella.
  • I do not find my umbrella
  • I have been poked in the eye with an umbrella
  • None of these umbrellas will do

    • And perhaps our favorite:

    The child has somehow got shut inside its umbrella

  • Mary Poppins: The famed fictional nanny of books, stage and screen uses her wind-propelled umbrella as a mode of transportation. (I think that’s how it works, at least. I confess that I haven’t read the books, and this horror trailer recut video is the most I’ve seen of the Disney movie.)
  • John Steed. A character from the 60s British spy show The Avengers. Carrying a finely crafted traditional British umbrella is one of his trademarks.
  • James Smith & Sons, Umbrellas Ltd.: An umbrella store in London, established in 1830. A place to go if you would like to buy a finely crafted traditional British umbrella .

  • The Correct Way to Kill: An episode of The Avengers. The plot involves a lot of umbrellas, as well as an umbrella store. Also spies with bad fake Russian accents. A favorite quote, which must be spoken with a bad Russian accent is:

    What would a chiropodist want with a case of umbrellas?

  • Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964). A musical starring Catherine Deneuve, featuring an umbrella shop.
  • Chatri Chor/The Blue Umbrella (2005) An Indian movie based on the children’s book by Ruskin Bond. About a poor girl who gets an umbrella, which is then stolen by a shopkeeper.
  • Singin’ in the Rain (1952): The famous scene where Gene Kelly dances around in the rain with an umbrella (though generally not held over his head) singing “Singin’ in the Rain.”
  • Umbrella, a song by Innocence Mission (also the album title):

    You dance around with my umbrella.
    You dance around the obvious weaknesses.
    Around the room with my umbrella.
    You dance around the room with me.

  • let your smile be your umbrella: an expression meaning something like “let a good attitude keep your day from being totally crappy.” It’s probably good that the meaning is metaphorical, because let’s face it. A smile is pretty ineffectual at keeping you dry in the rain.
  • “Under the Umbrella of the United States”. This was a song that I remember singing in my Junior High chorus class as part of a series of jingoistic patriotic songs about America.²
  • umbrella superstitions: It is considered bad luck to open an umbrella indoors. Or give an umbrella as a gift. There are a few others, too.³
  • a Haitian riddle:

    Q: Three very large men are standing under a single little umbrella. But, not one of them gets wet. Why?⁴

  • little paper umbrellas: What can I say about them? They are little umbrellas. Made from brightly colored paper. Often used in tropical-esque cocktails. I really liked them when I was little.⁵


    • ———————-
    ¹ I’ve had this list in mind for a while, but I was saving it for a rainy day…

    ² The song was pretty awful, and I can’t find a record of it. Anyone else ever heard of it? (I fear it may have been written by the chorus teacher himself. And someday he may find my scathing review.)

    ³ My own superstition, if you want to call it that, is that carrying an umbrella with you will prevent the rain. At least, it rarely rains when I bring an umbrella, and I rarely have an umbrella with me when it does rain.

    ⁴ A: It’s not raining.

    ⁵ The umbrellas, that is. I didn’t so much get to try the cocktails…

    a chicken joke

      Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
      A: To get to the other Starbucks

    ——-

    This was a joke I made up a while back, inspired by a list of chicken jokes. I cracked myself up with it.

    However, recent news that Starbucks is closing 5% of their stores (especially those “unprofitable stores …being cannibalized by nearby Starbucks locations”) may make my joke obsolete. (Though at BU, some students were recently protesting the new Starbucks location, which is basically across the street from not one, but 2 nearby Starbucks locations…)

    And what will future generations think of this?


    (From Best in Show.)

    bucket list

    Late last year, a movie came out called Bucket List, which then inspired a bunch of people to write their own “bucket lists”. Somehow I missed all of it. However, having seen the movie poster hanging in a video store window a few days ago, I’ve had that title running through my head. Running through my head and collecting things in a little bucket, as it were. Things about buckets as it turns out. So I present to you a ThThTh list of buckets.

    A Bucket List

    1. kick the bucket: an expression meaning “keel over”, “bite the dust”, or “buy the farm”.
    2. bucket list: a list of things one hopes to accomplish before one’s death. (As in before one kicks the bucket.) The term may have originated with the screenplay from the movie (below).
    3. Bucket List (2007): a movie directed by Rob Reiner and starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. About 2 men who write a bucket list and work on accomplishing the items on the list. Said to be a tear-jerker. You can watch the trailer (YouTube).
    4. “There’s a hole in my bucket”: a folksong, possibly with German origins.
    5. mercy buckets: an English distortion of the French merci beaucoup, meaning “thank you much.”
    6. a drop in the bucket: an expression meaning “an inconsequential amount in relation to a larger quantity”.
    7. sweat buckets: an expression meaning “perspire copiously”
    8. Mr. Bucket: a game/toy (by Milton Bradley) from the early 90s. The commercial, (which you can watch on YouTube, if you like) had lyrics which apparently raised a few eyebrows:

      I’m Mr. Bucket put your balls in my top.
      I’m Mr. Bucket, out of my mouth they will pop…

    9. Buckethead: a musician noteworthy for performing with a bucket on his head.
    10. bucket drummers: percussionists, typically street performers, who use upended buckets (usually plastic paint buckets) as drums. Buckets are often supplemented with pots, pans, and other improvised instruments. There’s a blog on bucket drummers. You can also find a bunch of short clips on YouTube of some very impressive bucket drummers, like these guys:


    11. lolrus: A pinniped, usually a walrus, featured in a lolcat-style image. The captions of these typically feature commentary about buckets, especially the loss of buckets and the seeking of buckets. (Or, in the language of lol, buckits or bukkets.) To explore lolruses and their buckets (and to see the original), i can has cheezburger has the tag “bucket” for your convenience.

      funny pictures

    ———
    The picture at the top of the page is Phoebe with her bucket. Well, it’s small for a bucket. Really more of a pail, by comparison. (I’m sorry. I had to say it.)

    flagging enthusiasm

    Tomorrow is July 4th, which is the US is known as the Fourth of July. (Oh, right, it’s also called Independence Day.) It’s a day traditionally marked by fireworks and displays of flags. Lots and lots of flags.

    Flags are often used as symbols of national and political identity, but this list isn’t about those. I figure that enough flag-waving of that sort will be going on tomorrow. Instead, I’ve lined up a few other types flags to wave around for this week’s ThThTh list.

    1. capture the flag: an informal game or sport, typically played outside. Two competing teams try to steal each other’s flags.
    2. flag someone down: an expression meaning to gets someone’s attention who is moving in order to get them to stop. Generally signalled by waving, though not necessarily by waving a flag.
    3. raise a red flag: an expression describing a situation when a person perceives that some action or event should be taken as a warning. As in “When the man showed up at the interview without pants, it raised a red flag as to the applicant’s suitability as a funeral director.”
    4. white flag: a symbol of truce or surrender. Wave the white flag (or raise the white flag) is also used metaphorically for signalling surrender or defeat.
    5. Black Flag: a punk band. For a quick sample, check out a video of their song “Wasted,” which clocks in under a minute long.
    6. Black Flag: a line of bug-killing products, the most famous of which is the Roach Motel.
    7. International Marine Signal Flags: flags representing letters and numbers that can be strung together and displayed on a ship to spell out messages.

    8. semaphore: a system of long-distance communication that commonly uses flags.
    9. Okay, I admit. This whole list is just a premise to share with you one of my all-time favorite acts of flag-waving: Monty Python’s brilliant production of Wuthering Heights in semaphore.

    the pants of our discontent

    Summer is here, at least for those of us up on this side of the equator. Summer signals a range of things. Picnics and barbecues. Trips to the beach and dips in the pool. Berry picking. Hotter temperatures. Longer days. Shorter pants.

    And in some places, as Mad reminds, Shakespeare festivals.

    While the bard himself may have covered his esteemed rear end with garments cut of another fashion, he no doubt would have come to love pants had he lived in our day and age. We can only imagine the great things that Shakespeare might have written had he lived in an age of pants.¹

    Without further ado, and with all due respect, I offer to you a glimpse of some pants that might have been.²

    Shakespeare’s Pants

  • How poor are they that have not pants!
    Iago, Othello (II, iii, 376-379)
  • We are such stuff as pants are made on
    Prospero, The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158
  • Frailty, thy name is pants!
    Hamlet, Hamlet Act 1, scene 2, 142–146
  • The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
    But in our pants, that we are underlings.
    Cassius, Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)
  • Love looks not with the eyes but with the pants.
    Helena, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (I, i, 234)
  • Out, damn’d pants! out, I say!
    Lady Macbeth, Macbeth Act 5, scene 1, 26–40
  • A plague a’ both your pants!
    Mercutio, Romeo And Juliet Act 3, scene 1, 90–92
  • A soothsayer bids you beware the pants of March.
    Brutus, Julius Caesar Act 1, scene 2, 15–19
  • Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with pants.
    Hero, Much Ado About Nothing (III, i, 106)
  • Be not afraid of pants
    Malvolio, Twelfth Night (II, v, 156-159)
  • And thus I clothe my naked villany
    With odd old pants stol’n out of holy writ
    Richard, King Richard III (I, iii, 336-338)
  • Give me my pants, put on my crown
    Cleopatra, Antony and Cleopatra (V, ii, 282-283)
  • My pants fly up, my thoughts remain below.
    King, Hamlet (III, iii, 100-103)
  • Something is rotten in the pants of Denmark.
    Marcellus, Hamlet Act 1, scene 4, 87–91
  • There are more pants in heaven and earth, Horatio,
    Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
    Hamlet, Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 159–167

    • Quotes, or at least the pants-less versions of them, harvested from this site.

    —————
    ¹ And had he been an utter loon.

    ² It’s been a long time since I’ve shared my pants with you. Truth is, I’ve been sitting on these pants for many months.

    having my cake

    I got to have me some cake this week.¹ I ate it, too. And this cake-having inspired me to think about cake. So I’ll be serving up a list of cake-oriented things for this week’s ThThTh.

    Bon appétit!

    A Cake List

    1. Cakes are used for lots of holidays and celebratory events in many cultures. Some examples include birthday cakes, going away cakes at office parties, French bûches de Noël or German stollen at Christmas. Also…
    2. Wedding cakes. Usually elaborately decorated multi-tiered cakes meant to serve all the guests at a wedding. They can be quite tall, and easily knocked over or smashed for comedic effect in movies or sitcoms.
    3. stripper in a cake. A tradition (if it really happens outside of TV and movies) of having an exotic dancer jump out of a large cake-shaped container. (You can make your own, if you like.) (I toyed with making a list of movies/shows where you see a stripper cake, but could only remember “Under Siege,” where the stripper fell asleep in the cake. Anyone have any others?)
    4. sexy cakes. A sketch on Saturday Night Live with Patrick Stewart as a baker of cakes decorated with erotic images. That is, erotic if you have similar ideas to the baker as to what’s “sexy”. (The video seems not to be up on the SNL website, but you can read the transcript. Come on, go read it. It’s funny. Especially if you imagine Patrick Stewart’s dignified stentorian voice for the baker’s lines.)
    5. “Let them eat cake!” A phrase attributed to Marie-Antoinette, reflecting her insensitivity to the hungry masses who could not afford to buy bread. It was likely not really said by her. (And certainly not in English.) Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote of someone using a similar phrase under similar circumstances in 1767, several years before Marie-Antoinette even arrived in Versailles.

    6. the icing on the cake. An expression meaning an additional bonus, benefit, or other desirable thing. As in something good on top of something else that’s good.
    7. cupcake. A small individual serving-sized cake. Also an endearment.
    8. babycakes. Another, even cutesier, endearment. (Want to see something creepy? Check out this YouTube video of someone making a realistic sculpted baby cake. Perhaps not as deeply unsettling as bread made to look like dismembered body parts, but creepy nonentheless.)

    9. Pat-a-cake. (or Patty-cake). An English nursery rhyme. Also used for a clapping game.

      Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man.
      Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
      Pat it and roll it and mark it with “B”
      And put it in the oven for Baby and me.

    10. a piece of cake. An idiomatic expression meaning “easy.” As in “eating up all that chocolate was a piece of cake.”
    11. have your cake and eat it, too. An expression describing a desire to have things 2 different ways that are not compatible. More along the lines of “save your cake and eat it too.”
    12. takes the cake. An expression meaning “the most extreme example,” such as the winner of a contest or other comparison. As in “I thought Martin was a geek, but his brother Andy really takes the cake.”
    13. Cakewalk. A game, set to music, where the winner gets win a cake. I hadn’t realized it had origins as an actual dance:

      Cakewalk is a traditional African American form of music and dance which originated among slaves in the Southern United States. The form was originally known as the chalk line walk; it takes its name from competitions slaveholders sometimes held, in which they offered slices of hoecake as prizes for the best dancers.[1] It has since evolved from a parody of ballroom dancing to a “fun fair” like dance where participants dance in a circle in the hopes of winning a free cake.

    14. Cake. A band. My favorite song of theirs is probably their cover of Gloria Gaynor’s “I will survive.”

    —–

    ¹ Actually, what I technically had was a celebratory fresh fruit tart, with a preamble of a couple of donuts holding some candles. But these were symbolically cake: