Deviant Dispatches

Parenting so far has been an adventure in ups and downs. Strength and Weakness of Body My daughter's birth went well. I was healthy throughout pregnancy and she was born with no complications. I'm still amazed at the fact that after she was born - after birthing a freaking child - they gave me ibuprofen, and it was enough to manage the pain. My body makes food for my daughter while I'm busy doing things like taking pictures or cleaning poop off the floor. I was able to function week after week without REM sleep. That said, the first week was a trip. I don't deal well with lack of sleep, even now that I have a three-month-old. In the first week, I got so dizzy from lack of sleep and weird hours that I nearly fell over several times. It was enough to make me feel nervous about carrying her from room to room; thankfully, Spousal Unit was home during that time as well. I also got a painful infection, and later that month, I was sick enough that I had to get two l...

Our can opener has recently decided it's only going to work when it suits its purposes, and it will stop and throw a moody tantrum for no reason halfway through a task. I can't decide if it's acting like a hormonal teenager or a temperamental two-year old. Truth is, it's closer to being a teenager. I don't remember how long we've had that thing. It was with us in New Mexico--might have been purchased there. Or it might be the same can opener I've had since the beginning of college, which would make it older than my relationship with Spousal Unit. A decidedly weird thought. One way or another, we could use a new one. But I'm at that phase right now where a tiny, necessary purchase like that feels like over-the-top spending. (Never mind that we just went out for a fancy dinner on Saturday; that's from a separate vault in my mind, which has been drained.) I get like this over the weirdest stuff. I sometimes suddenly reach a point at which any spen...

  lolcats go fishing I dreamt last night that I had decided to run from Chicago to Madison (which is a really bad idea for me), and I encountered a car that had a fishing pole sticking out into the "running lane" on the highway. It was complete with a dead fish hanging from the end of it. I was upset, so naturally I grabbed the pole off the back of the car, intending to give it to the owners to put elsewhere. But I seem to have forgotten that I can't run as fast as cars can drive on the highway. So the car drove off, and I turned back to Chicago, pole and fish in hand. I came near Spousal Unit's parents' house, and stopped at a second-hand boutique. By this point, the fishing pole was collapsed to about one foot long, with it and the fish in a ziploc baggie. I set it down in the boutique while I tried on some clothes - the owner didn't turn me away, despite my sweatiness. Turned out that the boutique had a whole bunch of my old toys that Mom had d...

I accidentally turned off my alarm in the morning, resulting in more sleep than I meant to get and a dream about Steve Buscemi in my former college dorm. It was significantly creepy, but the really weird thing is that's the second time I've had a dream with him in it in the last week. (I won't say it was a dream about  him; it was more like he picked the lock to my subconscious and hijacked my imagination. Not okay, Steve Buscemi. So to get my mind off of that before work, here are a couple of random items. First is a leaf from one of my basil plants. It's ginormous. Second, a sunset. Sunsets are a good balm for bad dreams.

Friday has needed to be here since Monday. Here is your reward for making it this far. 1. Bunny. 2. Last night's sunset, from the old hunting grounds. 3. An odd personification of a caterpillar. Early Stages: "This leaf tastes great! So does this one! And this one!" Middle Stages: "I'm so hungry. It's like I can't get full enough. Do I eat because I'm fat or am I fat because I eat?" Later Days: "WTF? Where is this weird stringy stuff coming from?" Shortly After: "AUGH! I have a compulsive desire to encase my body in it! I don't want to!" In the Cocoon: "Must ... control ... claustrophobia ..."

MADISON, Wisc.--In true hippie spirit, the black pot and the brown pot have been blowing in the wind on a second story porch for several weeks now, content to roam wherever the wind takes them. At one point, in a show of individualistic thinking highly frowned upon by the brown pot, which has been wedged in a corner for two days, it almost appeared that the black pot would ignore the call of the wild and stay put. But in a last second gesture of bravery, it rolled across the patio once again, revisiting the same knot and splinters it rolled over five seconds ago. Pot owner Allison says she's considered picking them up and stacking them between other pots on the patio, which are full of dirt and serving a greater purpose in life. "I hate to take away their freedom, though. Look at those guys. They're free to do whatever they want. Who am I to put them in their place?" Her sentiment is representative of that throughout the Madison area, where many tree-hugging ...

Jim Benton When I was little, I played a game in the car that, had my mother known about it, would have gotten me in possibly the biggest trouble ever. Mom would be in the front seat, driving to the grocery store, the mall, wherever. I'd be hanging out in the backseat, like you do when you're that young. Keep in mind, my imagination is nuts now; it was even more nuts back then. When I played this game, I was dead serious about it. As I entered the realm of make-believe, I left reality behind entirely; the game became my one and only reality. I would lean over to the window, my hands flat against the glass (Mom was always wondering what required me doing that, I'm sure). My mouth would follow suit - or at least be very close to the glass, right between my hands - and I would mouth two words at passing vehicles, in the hopes that they would see. Help me. That's right, I used to make-believe that I had been kidnapped and was sitting in the backseat of this t...

Today, we're heading out to see my little sister graduate. I will likely be so smothered by family that you won't hear from me again. This week, anyway. I don't think  they'd go so far as to kill me. Wasn't expecting this post to go there. It's always the short ones...

Yesterday morning, my mom texted, "Do you remember what happened 24 years ago today?" "No, you don't," Spousal Unit insisted. "You were four." But I do. It was the day of my preschool Valentine's party. I was probably bursting out of my skin with excitement, as Mom had made a cake for the party. She's an amazing decorator of all things, cakes included. She made them for everyone's birthdays, for anniversaries, for weddings, and they looked like a professional (who actually gave a damn) had made them. This wee round Valentine's cake was the same. If I remember right, it was two tiers, placed on a silver cake board with scalloped edges. The cake itself was on the small side (because preschoolers don't need much sugar to be rendered gibbering masses of energy), but the decorations were stunning: handmade roses and lots of those silver leaf decorations so popular in the '80s. In short, it was gorgeous, and four-year-old me...

At work yesterday, I had to deal with lots of future perfect tense. For those of you who are unaware, the future perfect tense goes something like this: At this time tomorrow, I will have been  attacked by velociraptors. Future perfect tense is used when talking about the future, but in a historical sense. I know - it makes my head hurt, too. Which is why, when I ran across a sentence with an extra verb in it, my head almost exploded. I couldn't figure out what to do with it for quite a while, and then I subverted the issue entirely by just removing the second verb. I was so pleased with myself for it that I came up with an excellent slogan. Copy Editors Will have been subverting future perfect since tomorrow Awesome, right? ...Okay, fine. It's excellent to linguists and writers. Everyone else is taking a step back to avoid having geek spilled on them.

Last night, I tried to make falafel. I had a new recipe I wanted to try, one that eagerly proclaimed, "Falafel didn't have binding agents back in the day, so you don't need any now! Follow our directions and you will be amazed at how utterly disappointed you can get!" I'd really been hoping to have a nice dinner ready for Spousal Unit and I - it's fun to take full advantage of my days off and make something a bit more involved than usual. Along with the falafel, I had lots of CSA beets waiting to be nommed, so I decided on creamy mashed beets. Yes, beets and falafel don't really make a full dinner, but I started later than I wanted to, it was the only idea I had, and I was counting on Spousal Unit being full-ish from the work pizza party. So it was okay to make such an odd combo. As you might guess, after processing the falafel ingredients and heating a pan full of oil, four falafel balls fell to disgusting, chunky pieces before my eyes. Now I had a ...

Conversation between Spousal Unit and I last night, as we awaited our food in a restaurant (people are singing and clapping in the background): Me: Remind me of this blog idea later: why people shouldn't sing happy birthday in restaurants. SU: Why not? Me: Because it annoys me. And it does. Oh my sweet LORD it does. When all you want is to not cook for an evening, and you go to some innocuous place with bad art on the walls and good burgers in baskets, the last thing you want is to hear ridiculously perky waitstaff repeatedly singing off-key. It's like a terrible Hindenburg explosion in repeat: every five minutes, I want to throw my hands in the air and run from the building, shrieking, "Oh, the humanity !" The waitstaff hates doing it, I'm sure. Oh, the ones who downright refuse to sing probably manage to sneak out of it, but if you have to sing a special version of torment ten times in an eight-hour shift (and you're only paid $2.13 an hour for it,...

Yesterday, Spousal Unit and I visited Olbrich Botanical Gardens . They have a year-round tropical greenhouse (a.k.a. the conservatory), full of gorgeous birds and flowers. When we first arrived,  my camera fogged up from all the warmth and moisture. The birds, a volunteer explained to us, were particularly friendly yesterday, allowing people to come much closer than usual. Look carefully in this one for the quail's beak and eye. When Spousal Unit and I first saw them, they were darting through the undergrowth, and we thought they were kiwi birds. But no, they were quails. And I don't understand how someone could eat something that adorable. The coolest birds were definitely the waxbills, who were working on a nest near the orchids, high up in a corner. We sat while they flew around, building their nest, and they didn't mind our presence at all. They were so cool to watch that I had trouble getting a picture with Spousal Unit. Obviously, there wer...

Dear Knitting Abilities, Please stop freaking out on me, or Cthulhu will have us both for dinner. I don't think you realize the time table I'm on, so let me explain this to you. We have approximately two weeks, just two , until Christmas. This means creating and finishing four gifts in only fifteen days, start to finish, conception to wrapping. So let me make this abundantly clear. When a concept comes to mind, it has  to work. There is no room for this wishy-washy demolition and recreation of every project in sight. There is no time anymore to take things apart simply because something's a little off, but you're not sure what. You, my dear Knitting Abilities, are under pressure to perform perfectly. No freak-outs or temporary schizophrenia allowed. I understand, this is a lot of pressure to put on one little sense of crafting. You have colors and textures and notions running rampant on a daily basis. I'm basically asking you to make all the tetris piec...

On occasion, old science fiction can easily take the Terrible Book Cover cake. For example, I present the excellent book John Grimes: Tramp Captain by A. Bertram Chandler. What an intelligent, well thought-out title for a great work of futuristic fiction. I'm sure the illustrator was only helping to promote the book's already stand-out intellectual ideas. Why, I'm surprised this one didn't win the National Book Award. HA! Oh, man. I just couldn't get through that whole thing with a straight face. He's the captain of what now? Alright, let me try again. Phule's Paradise by Robert Asprin clearly seeks to change the way sandy-haired surfer dudes and scantily clad young women are portrayed. After all, everyone knows that when faced with a giant green boar-man, the surfer dude will not just turn around and hit the waves. No, he will stand up for what is right by punching the monstrous creature in the tusks with a ridiculous expression on his face. And then the...

Back in the day, when I was about ten and in fourth grade, we took a field trip to a roller skating rink. It was one of the coolest places in town to us, in part because it had been recently renovated to be more awesome than anything else could be to the ten-year-old mind. There was the skating rink, with hills to skate up and down, a working train in the middle that you could ride, and occasional disco lights. There was an arcade off to the side where you could win tickets for prizes like those sticky hands that get stuck on the ceiling and leave their goop everywhere. There were above-rink tubes to crawl through. There was a party area with a White House, a Wild West jail cell, and many other cool backdrops. There was also the Root Cellar. To get to the Root Cellar, we headed down a staircase to this dank, dirty underground labyrinth, full of random extra rooms and strobe lights to make every motion more unusual. The place was named after all of the disgusting roots hanging from the ...

I'm going to do something rather grown-up today: I'm going to look at, and possibly purchase, an apartment. (By purchase I of course mean rent, because it would be silly of me to buy an apartment.) I'm a bit nervous. I've made a list of the questions I need to ask, but I wonder about all the things I'm going to miss, too. What if it turns out there's a HUGE roach infestation, like the place we were at in New Mexico? What if the water pipes suck and instead of any water pressure in the shower we just get a gentle rain? What if our new neighbors turn out to be Turkeyneck and Chickenfoot ? What if the guy showing the place turns out to be a jerk and a vampire? Double-whammy of bad luck, that would be. A friend of ours arranged the last place Spousal Unit and I had. There was no looking at the place; we were suddenly living there and everything was hunky dory. We have a bit more of a hand in choosing this place (by that I mean it's entirely up to us). Spousal U...

Lately, I've been sleeping well again at last. It was nice to finally rely on not being tired when I woke up in the morning. But last night, that good sleep failed me. Not only did I have trouble falling asleep, but I kept waking up, too. It may have been the constant rain, but I think it was mostly the weird dream I had over and over again. I don't remember anything about it except the song Johnny Angel . Over. And over. And over. I kept waking up to it like someone had turned up a terrible radio of cheesy doom in my head. I haven't even heard that song in years - why did it have to be that song in my dream? And then, after the third time I woke up to it, I started wondering why the hell the couple in it will "see how lovely heaven will be." It's most likely because when they're together, it's heaven on earth. But with a name like Angel, it could be that he's a real angel and he's come to take her to heaven. Possibly it means they're goin...

Last night, Spousal Unit, Kaelin, and I were watching a movie, and I heard a very loud... thing outside. I was fairly certain it was a bird. After its first few calls, I tuned it out, and we watched another twenty minutes of the movie. But during a quiet segment, I realized it had been making noise the entire time. I paused the movie. "Do you guys hear that?" They most certainly did. It sounded kind of like a tiny horse - the noise was very akin to a whinny, and very loud. Being the Adventure Squad that we are, we went outside to investigate. Lately, there have been many cars parked on our street because of nearby construction. For some reason, I thought maybe one of them had a trailer and had left a foal in it overnight. But this is Madison. Even though we saw a guy use the bike lane for his horse one day, I'm pretty sure there aren't people with horses in the nearby area. (But there are cows who contribute to Babcock Hall ice cream .) I went outside expecting to fin...