Dinosaur Train has to be one of my favorite kid shows ever. Two reasons, really. Ok, three. First, the kids love it. Second, it's educational and accurately so--and the kids still love it. Third, the good Dr.'s enthusiasm for paleontology has flat out converted Squib to paleontologism (if there is such a thing). And kids need heroes with skin on. He isn't just into dino's like kids his age get. He's committed. He's even asked how long it takes to become a paleontologist. Which gets him way past a parent's first hope of just a four year degree. And he's six.
I've explained the Ph. D. track to him and even gone over the issue of hours in the dirt in places like the Badlands and South America. Graduate work. Theses. Yes plural, possibly. So far, his only response is to request maps. They are over my bed. Writing is of no consequence to him because that's what he's been doing with his iPod since he had access to it. Weird. Definite paleontological makings.
So we blissfully watch Dinosaur Train as the Conductor says, "We're gonna take a trip through the Cretaceous, Triassic, and Jurassic periods!!"
...where every living thing you now see will one day become OIL!!
I can't help it. My mind adds that every stinkin' time.
He's watching baby dinosaurs hatch from eggs and I'm thinking "light sweet crude."
In all fairness to my point, I am sorting through some 2D seismic mere feet from where he's watching right now, so I am a bit distracted by the irony. Eventually, he's going to put all this together.
And it won't be pretty.
Scat.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Monday, June 25, 2012
Who Needs Mensa?
Thank you, Shaun the Sheep, for being a sheep in the midst of sheep. Not sheeps.
Squib: You're sure there's not a "s" at the end of sheep? (s) He adds the 's' sound. He does not yet believe me.
Moi: I'm certain of it. There are several English words that do not require an 's' to make them plural.
Squib: Like?
Crap. Dog-dogs. Chicken-chickens. Cow-cattle or cows. Bull-bulls. Why all the animals? Lizard-Lizards?
Moi: Trust me, there are some.
Squib: So how do you know if you're talking about sheep or sheeps?
Moi: Just sheep.
Squib: Right
Silence.
He tilts his head at me expectantly.
Moi: Uh, from context.
Squib: Blank stare. I have said something new enough so as to not register at all. He probably didn't even hear the sound of my voice.
Moi: When you look at how a word is used in a sentence and the sentences around it, you are defining the word from context...from it's surroundings. For example: I have one sheep. Squib has two sheep. Each time I used sheep in the sentence, there were words in the sentence that told you if I was talking about one sheep or more than one sheep.
Squib: The fog is starting to roll out. One sheep is a sheep. Four hundred million zillion sheeps are my sheep.
Moi: Something like that.
WARNING: Oncoming commission of critical parental tactical error!!! Dive! Dive! Dive!
Moi: You could just say "my herd of sheep, too."
Squib: That thing in his eyes perked up. I saw it. Sheep come in herds?
Moi: I don't know that they come that way but every group of similar animal has a name for it like 'herd of sheep,' or 'drive of dragons,' or 'gaggle or geese.' Be advised he's on your six and bearing down hard.
Squib: What about giraffes? And anteaters? Meerkats!!! And rhinoceroses. Is it rhino or rhinos?
We're going down!!!!!!!! May-day, may-day, we are at zero limit! Pull the yellow-and-black striped handle!!
Squib: I almost forgot dino's? What are a group of dino's? His brow finally furrows.
Mom, what's the matter you don't look so good.
Squib: You're sure there's not a "s" at the end of sheep? (s) He adds the 's' sound. He does not yet believe me.
Moi: I'm certain of it. There are several English words that do not require an 's' to make them plural.
Squib: Like?
Crap. Dog-dogs. Chicken-chickens. Cow-cattle or cows. Bull-bulls. Why all the animals? Lizard-Lizards?
Moi: Trust me, there are some.
Squib: So how do you know if you're talking about sheep or sheeps?
Moi: Just sheep.
Squib: Right
Silence.
He tilts his head at me expectantly.
Moi: Uh, from context.
Squib: Blank stare. I have said something new enough so as to not register at all. He probably didn't even hear the sound of my voice.
Moi: When you look at how a word is used in a sentence and the sentences around it, you are defining the word from context...from it's surroundings. For example: I have one sheep. Squib has two sheep. Each time I used sheep in the sentence, there were words in the sentence that told you if I was talking about one sheep or more than one sheep.
Squib: The fog is starting to roll out. One sheep is a sheep. Four hundred million zillion sheeps are my sheep.
Moi: Something like that.
WARNING: Oncoming commission of critical parental tactical error!!! Dive! Dive! Dive!
Moi: You could just say "my herd of sheep, too."
Squib: That thing in his eyes perked up. I saw it. Sheep come in herds?
Moi: I don't know that they come that way but every group of similar animal has a name for it like 'herd of sheep,' or 'drive of dragons,' or 'gaggle or geese.' Be advised he's on your six and bearing down hard.
Squib: What about giraffes? And anteaters? Meerkats!!! And rhinoceroses. Is it rhino or rhinos?
We're going down!!!!!!!! May-day, may-day, we are at zero limit! Pull the yellow-and-black striped handle!!
Squib: I almost forgot dino's? What are a group of dino's? His brow finally furrows.
Mom, what's the matter you don't look so good.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Attention Sick People!
Enough is enough.
Really.
Since 1665 we've more-or-less understood that live things are made of cells. Please forgive my sacrifice of accuracy to the overall point. Since 1673 we've known about microbes...roughly...those are the bad guys. In general, you don't want any microbes you are not already born with. We're not going to argue vaccination since, really, everyone more or less gets vaccinated to the important things somehow. And we aren't going to trample on my argument because we think probiotics saved the planet...they weren't born yesterday, either. I'll say it again. Microbes are bad.
Time passes.
1840's come around and we start to notice that hand-washing prevents more deaths in birth mothers and their babies. It only takes twenty more years to determine that it helps all those other patients, too. (You've just gotta wonder about that one because it took 20 years??!?). In 1865, Pasteur says, "Microbes are bad!" Officially. Two years later, Dr. Lister makes Listerine famous by observing that chemicals kill microbes and we are down the garden path...
Somewhere in there someone said that it was also healthier to be clean. So we all started doing that, too.
Unfortunately, the pre-emptive garden path ends before 1900 with the idea that gloves in surgery would be cool. And except for refinements on a theme we can't do much else before you get sick. We do know, though, that there are essentially two ways to get microbes from another individual. That's right, they generally require donors to carry them around. The first is contact. There are several *methods* of contact, so really there are more than two methods of transmission, but this is a blog and some of them are really gross. If said microbe requires that you contact another person using a specific *method* the simple thing to do is...?
Don't contact them. Ta da! The chemicals/cleanliness/hand washing part helps, of course, but essentially you are preventing contact by doing all that wonderful stuff. A few things have turned a healthy glare in the direction of both our chemicals and our hand-washing and "Harrumph" 'd that whole idea into oblivion somewhat, but you really have to go grovel in a hospital to find those. The second transmission category, though, is the one that kicks my tail most often. I think. Airborne. Someone exhales them. You inhale them. Solution?
Simple. Don't breathe.
No seriously. Enough already. Don't breathe. This is my air too. It's probably enough that I have to inhale your cigarette smoke every time I exit a building, but to add insult to injury, you insist the world will not rotate if you give it a rest while heaving up lung-fulls of crap? The real kicker is that more often than not I'm leaving my domicile (my friendly world of microbes) to be amidst volunteers or cancer patients and that's where I pick it up. And for crying out loud, while I do agree on the over-prescription of antibiotics leading to resistance (Faster. I think we still would have trained them just not as fast.), if you are seriously febrile...you qualify.
Pass It On?
Give The Gift Off Life?
If You Share You Care?
At least I feel like blogging,
Scat
Really.
Since 1665 we've more-or-less understood that live things are made of cells. Please forgive my sacrifice of accuracy to the overall point. Since 1673 we've known about microbes...roughly...those are the bad guys. In general, you don't want any microbes you are not already born with. We're not going to argue vaccination since, really, everyone more or less gets vaccinated to the important things somehow. And we aren't going to trample on my argument because we think probiotics saved the planet...they weren't born yesterday, either. I'll say it again. Microbes are bad.
Time passes.
1840's come around and we start to notice that hand-washing prevents more deaths in birth mothers and their babies. It only takes twenty more years to determine that it helps all those other patients, too. (You've just gotta wonder about that one because it took 20 years??!?). In 1865, Pasteur says, "Microbes are bad!" Officially. Two years later, Dr. Lister makes Listerine famous by observing that chemicals kill microbes and we are down the garden path...
Somewhere in there someone said that it was also healthier to be clean. So we all started doing that, too.
Unfortunately, the pre-emptive garden path ends before 1900 with the idea that gloves in surgery would be cool. And except for refinements on a theme we can't do much else before you get sick. We do know, though, that there are essentially two ways to get microbes from another individual. That's right, they generally require donors to carry them around. The first is contact. There are several *methods* of contact, so really there are more than two methods of transmission, but this is a blog and some of them are really gross. If said microbe requires that you contact another person using a specific *method* the simple thing to do is...?
Don't contact them. Ta da! The chemicals/cleanliness/hand washing part helps, of course, but essentially you are preventing contact by doing all that wonderful stuff. A few things have turned a healthy glare in the direction of both our chemicals and our hand-washing and "Harrumph" 'd that whole idea into oblivion somewhat, but you really have to go grovel in a hospital to find those. The second transmission category, though, is the one that kicks my tail most often. I think. Airborne. Someone exhales them. You inhale them. Solution?
Simple. Don't breathe.
No seriously. Enough already. Don't breathe. This is my air too. It's probably enough that I have to inhale your cigarette smoke every time I exit a building, but to add insult to injury, you insist the world will not rotate if you give it a rest while heaving up lung-fulls of crap? The real kicker is that more often than not I'm leaving my domicile (my friendly world of microbes) to be amidst volunteers or cancer patients and that's where I pick it up. And for crying out loud, while I do agree on the over-prescription of antibiotics leading to resistance (Faster. I think we still would have trained them just not as fast.), if you are seriously febrile...you qualify.
Pass It On?
Give The Gift Off Life?
If You Share You Care?
At least I feel like blogging,
Scat
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Things That Never Would Have Occurred To Me
1. My running shoes make a great storage unit for Lego's.
2. Someone other than me--and male--in my house might consider it perfectly acceptable to wear my underwear.
3. Peeing on the playground is just like marching off to pee in the solitude and seclusion of the dense piney woods.
4. Brothers will do anything and everything to each other, but also for each other. Just because they can.
5. Kato is the best f****** ninja alive (or not alive--I don't know) and still apparently to be greatly feared. I'm terrified, I tell you. He'll be the death of me.
6. Safety scissors. Ha. Hahaha. Hahahahahaha. Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.
7. Only your children know what your most prized possession is. You don't. They do. Then they use it to reproduce those ill-fated Ginsu knife commercials on iPod video.
8. That in the interest of dealing with more important disasters I'd reach the point I'd rather vomit and get it over with. Screw this Mickey Mouse nausea crap. That is saying something for me.
9. Living under a bridge has the very appealing side effect of being technology free and no longer living the illusion that you have no money. Nothing beeps, dings, whistles, piles up, and no one any longer insists that you use your $2 to pay them $2, 546.78. I kid you not when I see things around and think, "I'll keep that. It'll fit in my pack when I'm under the bridge." Surreal idiotic happiness....along with the other depressing stuff which is already here.
10. In lieu of Kleenex, there are adjacent family members and an established hierarchy for who receives the intended load. After a while, when a certain "snotface" is recognized all family members will run. Loser gets the loogey. This is how we have fun in the country.
11. The disposal. Kid tested-grandfather replaced.
12. That Cheez-itz could get under the fitted sheet on the bed. They are possibly being stored there? *speechless*
15. If you dye your hair blonde and your kid paints it you could end up looking like modern art. For...a while. Or Sinead O'Connor. Your choice.
16. Once you have a boychild your boobs will never be your own. Even if you never breastfeed them. They are either laying on them, mangling them, testing their viscosity, or using them for a punching bag. Beware the approaching index finger.
17. The earliest time your most unmanageable child bursts forth from the bed in the a.m. crying to the hills with joyful abandon that he is ready to take on the world --or-- that the world has affronted him greatly and he shall attack it with his own head is inversely proportional to the number of hours of sleep you need and pretty much equal to the hours of sleep you got. The rule # hrs of sleep = never enough is always true. Then you die. If he asks, "Mommy can I be awake now?" the answer is NO! Duh. His verbiage is his problem on that one.
18. "I'm sorry, what?" "Could you say that again?" "I'm not entirely sure I understand the situation." and "Run that by me one more time." Can save you approximately 2-20 minutes before dissolving into total lunacy.
19. Normal people (and by that I mean the shiny happy people who's live aren't a carnival of multiple daily disasters) are, for the most part, boring. I guarantee if you are interesting at all your life either is or was once a disaster or catastrophically awful once for one reason or another. You've got at least a bit of the crazy.
20.Thank you, Netflix for teaching my son what a lesbian was. Sort of. As in, "Mommy how do you say l-e-s-b-i-a-n?" I fudged a little on the explanation. Until later. Why you think our choices indicate any of us enjoy gay or lesbian selections is beyond me...but...yeah. It's been real.
The crazy will get you.
Scat
21. Oh oh oh...and when I watched the Private Practice episode about the parents who locked their kid inside a hockey mask b/c he had pica and was eating dangerous things and everyone was down on the parents. I was, like, SO? I mean, I've never considered the facemask part, but I don't watch hockey (and no, I don't know who Jason is other than a horror movie reference). It WOULD protect the nose. Just sayin'...we've been there....for other reasons...
Yeah...it's like that...
2. Someone other than me--and male--in my house might consider it perfectly acceptable to wear my underwear.
3. Peeing on the playground is just like marching off to pee in the solitude and seclusion of the dense piney woods.
4. Brothers will do anything and everything to each other, but also for each other. Just because they can.
5. Kato is the best f****** ninja alive (or not alive--I don't know) and still apparently to be greatly feared. I'm terrified, I tell you. He'll be the death of me.
6. Safety scissors. Ha. Hahaha. Hahahahahaha. Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.
7. Only your children know what your most prized possession is. You don't. They do. Then they use it to reproduce those ill-fated Ginsu knife commercials on iPod video.
8. That in the interest of dealing with more important disasters I'd reach the point I'd rather vomit and get it over with. Screw this Mickey Mouse nausea crap. That is saying something for me.
9. Living under a bridge has the very appealing side effect of being technology free and no longer living the illusion that you have no money. Nothing beeps, dings, whistles, piles up, and no one any longer insists that you use your $2 to pay them $2, 546.78. I kid you not when I see things around and think, "I'll keep that. It'll fit in my pack when I'm under the bridge." Surreal idiotic happiness....along with the other depressing stuff which is already here.
10. In lieu of Kleenex, there are adjacent family members and an established hierarchy for who receives the intended load. After a while, when a certain "snotface" is recognized all family members will run. Loser gets the loogey. This is how we have fun in the country.
11. The disposal. Kid tested-grandfather replaced.
12. That Cheez-itz could get under the fitted sheet on the bed. They are possibly being stored there? *speechless*
15. If you dye your hair blonde and your kid paints it you could end up looking like modern art. For...a while. Or Sinead O'Connor. Your choice.
16. Once you have a boychild your boobs will never be your own. Even if you never breastfeed them. They are either laying on them, mangling them, testing their viscosity, or using them for a punching bag. Beware the approaching index finger.
17. The earliest time your most unmanageable child bursts forth from the bed in the a.m. crying to the hills with joyful abandon that he is ready to take on the world --or-- that the world has affronted him greatly and he shall attack it with his own head is inversely proportional to the number of hours of sleep you need and pretty much equal to the hours of sleep you got. The rule # hrs of sleep = never enough is always true. Then you die. If he asks, "Mommy can I be awake now?" the answer is NO! Duh. His verbiage is his problem on that one.
18. "I'm sorry, what?" "Could you say that again?" "I'm not entirely sure I understand the situation." and "Run that by me one more time." Can save you approximately 2-20 minutes before dissolving into total lunacy.
19. Normal people (and by that I mean the shiny happy people who's live aren't a carnival of multiple daily disasters) are, for the most part, boring. I guarantee if you are interesting at all your life either is or was once a disaster or catastrophically awful once for one reason or another. You've got at least a bit of the crazy.
20.Thank you, Netflix for teaching my son what a lesbian was. Sort of. As in, "Mommy how do you say l-e-s-b-i-a-n?" I fudged a little on the explanation. Until later. Why you think our choices indicate any of us enjoy gay or lesbian selections is beyond me...but...yeah. It's been real.
The crazy will get you.
Scat
21. Oh oh oh...and when I watched the Private Practice episode about the parents who locked their kid inside a hockey mask b/c he had pica and was eating dangerous things and everyone was down on the parents. I was, like, SO? I mean, I've never considered the facemask part, but I don't watch hockey (and no, I don't know who Jason is other than a horror movie reference). It WOULD protect the nose. Just sayin'...we've been there....for other reasons...
Yeah...it's like that...
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