Do the Yak

Recently I bought several new summer shirts from Kohls.com (best prices anywhere!). One of them was sitting in our bedroom for several days and the kids kept begging me to wear it, so today I did. You have to use the zoom feature on that link to get the full effect, but it's worth it. I think. This shirt, it has a name: Spotty Dot. Its subtle yet eye-straining pointillist pattern evokes responses such as Becky's "Wow! Your shirt is so... obstacle course-y!" I reckon this is the closest I will come to evoking raw emotional reactions (swoons of desire AS IF, choked laughter, etc.) with just my clothing, which for me aims to provide camoflage and protection from the elements, nothing more. Why embarrass yourself with your own clothes when quasi-celebrities do such a good job of it themselves, and blow through a lot more money doing so? I'm thinking specifically of Caprice and Hofit Golan . I've never heard of either of them, but I do so love their outfits.

Because those damn soldiers are drinkin' up all our tax dollahs and consortin' wiv loose wimmin!

First I have to apologize in advance (mostly to myself) for what may be some infrequent posting in the next month, since as is often the case with us, several time-consuming events are converging: (a) the school year ending for two kids, meaning tons of family-teacher picnics and concerts and whatnot; (b) enrolling both kids in a new school; (c) packing up a house we've lived in for two years; and (d) moving into a swell new house on -- yes, it's official -- June 19, 2007. Plus coping with Ben's mother, although this has actually gotten a lot less time-consuming since moved into assisted living. We spend more time visiting her than when she lived in New Jersey, but less time worrying about her and (in Ben's case) spending hours on the phone with caregivers. On that front, everything is going quite well. Everyone who has called or visited G. has commented on how much happier and engaged she seems than when she was home alone. They have lots of activities and her being a ...

Splendid, thanks. I missed the kids terribly at first, but oddly the feeling diminished day by day until when I was on my way home. I sent them an e-mail from Heathrow , which has computers with video arcade-style coin slots under the table where you drop in a one-pound coin for 10 minutes of access to the Internets. As for the business in England, it went very smoothly, mainly because despite all our tortured history, my brother and I get along quite well now, and both of us fervently wanted to avoid the childish conflict we saw displayed two men in their 60s some years ago as they fought over their mother's valuable possessions (even though neither remotely needed the money ) while ignoring most of the stuff with purely sentimental value. It's a surprisingly common phenomenon , having fights over objects from the past when you're really fighting over issues from the past, such as your basic sibling rivalry, who did better in school, who was daddy's favorite, etc. An...

I found this on some random blog I can't recall and I just had to paste it here – my apologies to the original writer. We had this great 10-year-old cat named Jack who just recently died. Jack was a great cat and the kids would carry him around and sit on him and nothing ever bothered him. He used to hang out and nap all day long on this mat in our bathroom. Well, we have three kids and at the time of this story they were 4, 3 and 1. The middle one is Eli. Eli really loves chapstick. LOVES it. He kept asking to use my chapstick and then losing it. So finally one day I showed him where in the bathroom I keep my chapstick and how he could use it whenever he wanted to but he needed to put it right back in the drawer when he was done. Last year on Mother's Day, we were having the typical rush around and try to get ready for church with everyone crying and carrying on. My two boys are fighting over the toy in the cereal box. I am trying to nurse my little one at the same time I am ...

We are all inundated by spam, even with the most sensitive filters, which is why I still get a lot of junk but not so much in the Viagra and penis enlargement line as few years ago. What I do get are occasional bursts of spam with random subject lines. Nothing dirty, or even indicating what the message is about -- the only giveaway is the randomosity . So I decided to assemble some of these subject lines into a poem. The only words I added are those NOT in boldface, and I left each subject line intact (i.e., I didn't cut up the words in one subject line and intermingle them with words from another, and I didn't put any line breaks within individual subject lines). This may make it a little hard to read, but try to ignore the changing font faces as you are swept into the poetic flow. As a class, the Lordships dearly loved their steam-chariots. A pig heads for trough everyone midshipmen, in basal itself sailor. The maple military feels tendril altercation in marquette between s...

Jerry Falwell just died, and I'm glad. So there. I know I'm slipping into his own gutter of insufficient compassion by saying this, but too bad. That man was just pure evil. Remember this comment right after 9/11? "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'" If that doesn't make you mad enough, there are more of his timeless pronouncements here and here . Off to Old Blighty tomorrow evening. Part of me (the minority part) is sort of looking forward to hours of uninterrupted reading, sleeping and listening to my iPod, but most of me is sad and anxious about (a) not seeing the girls for four days (and Ben too, though he has an adult grasp of elapsed time and separations), and (b)...

Daisuke Matsuzaka pitched a complete game last night, giving up just one run. Which is a good thing because we're apparently losing Beckett for a while due to his finger problem (too much Boston driving, perhaps?). For those who just can't get enough, there's a blog linked to the Boston Globe web site all about Dice-K in his mother tongue . * * * How to infuriate me and a lot of other people: calculate what the U.S. has spent on this idiotic war in Iraq and what we could have gotten for the money if spent more wisely. Oh yeah, and a lot fewer people killed, too. * * * Always good for a laugh in this American Idol culture: Go Fug Yourself, specifically the discussions of how to dress for success in a car sunshade and how to tell when your boobs are simply Too Big . * * * Amusing lines from the little ones recently... Becky: "I love you as much as the earth! And you love me and the moon the same gallon!" Sarah to Ben at the dinner table: "Are you getting gas ...

And why are you reading my blog if you live in South America? Or did that hit come from a primate lab where the monkeys got loose at night and started hitting random keys on the lab tech's computer? (P.S. – Thanks to Google Analytics.) U.S. Government Nomenclature Department Directive 2007-ZT678X – Do not refer to them as "Poor Bastards Who Joined Up and Ran Over an IED" (click for larger image):

Why is it that the most memorable moments of life are often the most painful, as opposed to the most joyous? I guess pain leaves a more indelible mark and for some quixotic reason makes a person want to record it for posterity. I once briefly kept a journal in my teens, lots it, rediscovered it years later, opened to the first page and went "Oh my GOD, I had forgotten that horrible episode, I wish I'd never found this stupid thing." Not that I am in any pain at the moment, thank you. But I did experience one of those moment of Deep Poignancy Verging on Pain this morning. We were getting dressed in our usual "this-is-the-third-time-I've-asked-you-to-put-on-your-socks" fashion. Ben was just about ready to leave early to talk to the builders before going to work to attend the 973 meetings that were scheduled for him while he was putting his mother in assisted living last week. Sarah was on our bed not getting dressed. Becky was in her bedroom getting something,...

In our last episode, we were barreling at full speed down the Road to Assisted Living, hoping a Jersey barrier wouldn't suddenly pop into view. So I swung by Target Thursday evening, bagged some undies for G. and arranged to take Friday off to help Ben and his mom make The Transition. On Friday morning, G. kept muttering that she was sure she would hate the place, but we kept reassuring her it was just a trial visit and she could leave if she didn't like it, all the while of course hoping that she WOULD like it, or else simply forget about the "trial" part and accept her new living situation at some point. And so we arrived in the rain and sat down to lunch with the co-directors, both of whom were incredibly competent, understanding and just plain nice. The tricky part started when the directors took Ben to the office to fill out several reams of paperwork, leaving me and G. to hang out in the small private dining room where we'd eaten. The room was adjacent to t...