nags of a similar ilk

I borrowed Andy's jigsaw from him about three weeks ago. I had intended to have it exactly one day, but, for reasons I really can't explain, I continue to have his jigsaw. Determined to return it today at practice, I pulled out the shelves I was intending to jig, and started cutting away, expecting each shelve to take about 5 minutes, realizing quickly that the 25 minutes I had alloted myself before practice was about ten minutes too short. I'd have to hurry.

I was half way through my first fig when I paused and went into the kitchen to get something. As I entered the kitchen from the garage, I realized that someone was rattling on the front door, following our open door policy: just walk in. If the front door is unlocked, we're not having sex on the living room floor, and all friends are welcome to walk straight into the house, no doorbell or knocking needed. Andy has a similar policy, and honestly, even when he's expecting us, it's still hard to just walk in without knocking. However, it keeps the dog barking to a dull roar when visitors don't knock. Sometimes said visitors can actually manage to enter the house without a dog noticing. Said visitors are rare and usually named "Megan" or "Mike."

My visitor was having little luck with the front door, however, as I hadn't unlocked it after the morning tryst on the living room rug. I looked to see it was Mark, and hurried to unlock the door for him.

A few hours earlier, Megan had called our home phone, the one I rarely answer since the only people who call the number these days are telemarketers, political auto-dialers and people with whom I have a professional relationship but who mistakenly believe calling my home number is okay. Well, and people I really like to talk with, like Megan, Jessica, Mike and Andy. Which, honestly, is why I keep answering that phone in the first place.

So, Megan called, asking if the new medical facility over by our house had emergency care. I told her it wasn't emergency, but rather walk-in, urgent care, open from like 9 to 9, but yeah, it had walk-in health care, what was up?

Turned out, Mark had possibly broken his hand and needed it x-rayed, could I recommend the new facility? Except for the devastating environmental impact of the facility and the overwhelming inconvenient traffic patterns the infrastructure created, yeah, I could recommend the facility. So off Mark went.

After his xrays and cast and paperwork adventure, Mark stopped by to visit with us. He had, indeed, broken his hand, his fourth metacarpal bone with both a break and spiral fracture, caused by the power tool that had caught when Mark was doing electrical work on his house, spun his hand around and slammed it against the nearest wall. He might need surgery, but was out of commission for at least two weeks.

Oh, and he hadn't eaten today, could I feed him?

Uh...

Minor panic, sure.

We don't exactly have "snack" food in our house. I haven't been eating many wheat products as of late, having neither the particular desire for large amounts of bread or posta, much less bought any wheat products, as loaves of bread will go stale or moldy before we finish it. Kris has his own crackers, but I haven't bought any in over a year or so. Uh... what could I feed him?

Apple and peanut butter? That's been my snack for a while now, more so now that I can walk outside and pull an apple off the tree to eat.

How about yogurt? Plain or vanilla?

A glass of juice! Yes, that will get sugar into your blood stream quickly.

I then remembered that Mark likes avocado, so I pulled out the second half of the one I had started for breakfast that morning, sliced it up and poured balsamic vinegar over it.

After about 10 minutes of eating and chatting (only brieftly with Kris, who hadn't gotten up from his WarHammer game, WarHammer, the new World of Warcraft), Mark turned to me and declared, "Ahhhhhh... I feel human again."

Except the broken hand thing, I think.

Yeah, so, that tightrope of nylon webbing/straps... some of Mischief were more brave than others. In particular, Doyle and Mark.

And maybe Andy.

I know Shirley tried, too, but I don't have any pictures of her attempts. Being the lightest of those who attempted to walk the tightrope, Shirley appeared the most graceful of the bunch.

I'm just glad that no one fell off and hit the 2' rock that was only a meter from the rope/webbing/strap.

Megan and I went with the girls to the Maker Faire today. Only, we didn't quite make it. And Mark came along.

Our original plan was to head up around 10:30, head into the faire around 11, and leave around 1:30 or 2. The cost was $25 a person, but, well, two crafty women tooling around with two small kids in tow? Yeah, we'd see what we needed to see in those three hours, and boy, would it be worth the $25 a head, kids free!

Only, we didn't figure on the lines. The lines, the lines, the lines.

The first line was on 101 N to get onto 92 W. Megan pretty much said "screw this!" in a much nicer way, and went north on 101 to 3rd St. Megan's navigational abilities are impressive, as she turned left on Delaware after crossing 101, and voila! we were on our way to the fairgrounds, which were ON Delaware, about a mile south. We managed to bypass about a hour of sitting in traffic with the detour, and find a great parking space on the parking shuttle bus route, so we didn't have to walk to the fairgrounds.

We arrived, to discover two lines: the 45 minute credit card line, and the 30 minute cash line. Mirabelle and I jumped in one line, as Mark and Meter jumped in the other, and Megan went off to figure out which line we wanted to be in, and how long we would be in the line.

After looking at the line, seeing the next line inside, realizing it would be 12:30 before we managed to actually get into the fair, we gave up, and went off for a different adventure.

We ended up at Central Park in San Mateo, mostly because the park has a train for kids to ride around on, but also because it was close, and we were hungry and ready for lunch.

The great thing about parks is that they enable you to learn, without really trying. Take, for example, the cork tree that I learned about. I thought it was just a weird tree. Turns out, it's actually a weird, FUNCTIONAL tree. How's that for learning?

I also learned that, hey, you know what, people do go to the park for lunch and resting by a tree in the shade.

Who knew?

After lunch, the only appropriate thing for a two year old to do at a park is, well, you know, break the law.

So, with a little encouragement, Mirabelle did just that.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't "a little." It was, however, certainly appropriate. Civil disobedience at a young age! Ah, it warms the heart!

What? What did Mirabelle do?

Well, the sign behind her reads:

"It is unlawful to enter or use the elevated stage area at CENTRAL PARK without a CITY permit."

The sign is actually quoted like that, too.

Of course, Mirabelle was by far NOT the only person up on the stage, sharing it with a runner, an old dude and a dog, but she was the cutest. And! She was up for a continuing adventure. Like, battling the bathroom wind monsters. I tell you, Mirabelle's wind kung fu knows no limit!

Neither does how much she's able to impress me. Without hesitation, when we arrived at the playground, she wanted to go up! So, up she went to the top of the playground equipment. "Ladders? They're for climbing. Even if the rungs are slippery, and I have to hang on with one pinky while I manage to get my footing." That's what she was telling me.

Clearly she's done this before, as neither Mark nor Megan worried about her zooming up to the top. Me? I was a wreck during her climb.

One of the best parts of climbing up, is coming back down.

After the junglegym, we had to leave for other afternoon plans. We buzzed through the Japanese gardens, seeing the small japanese maple trees, the pagoda, a couple bridges and, of course, the fish.

All in all, a pretty wonderful day with the Smiths. Who needs a faire when you have a Mirabelle to keep you company?

When Mark and Megan were over last night, Megan realized she was going into labor. She had had contractions yesterday morning, but they subsided. She wasn't getting a repeat tonight.

Around 8:30, after an hour of contractions spaced by five minutes, she called her parents to let them know they should head down to take care of Mirabelle when Mark and Megan went to the hospital. Around 9:30, Mark, Megan, Mirabelle and I drove back to their place for Megan to shower before heading to the hospital. The plan was I'd watch Mirabelle until Megan's parents arrived, Mark and Megan would head to the hospital.

Megan's parents arrived around 10:30, before Megan had left for the hospital, so my work there was light.

This morning at 7:30, Megan left me a message on my cell phone. Mayanna Kathleen Smith was born at 6:31 AM, 10 fingers, 10 toes and a shock of blonde hair.

I'm never sure when hospital visits are okay. I know when Kris is in the hospital, he doesn't want visitors. When I'm with him, I don't want visitors, because I don't like having to explain what's going on with him. We try to skip that whole thing by just not telling anyone he's gone into the hospital unless we really need to tell them.

Kris' hospital stays aren't the joyous occassions births are. So, I called Mark to explain my hesitation in visiting, that I didn't want to add to the cacophany of visitors. He laughed, said he understood, and hung up. He called back a couple hours later to tell me visiting would be good now, so I left a delicious dinner at Andy's and dashed over.

Megan and I talked for a while. She told me about her day, which made me happy I hadn't come over earlier - lots of people, not so much sleep. But I'm very glad they invited me over when they did.

For future reference: when a hospital says visiting hours are over, visiting hours are over. Waiting two hours to leave means the hospital is locked down, and you'll have to walk 3/4 of a mile through and around the hospital, looking for the approved (and un-alarmed) exit back to your car.

Beth hosted today's multi-family garage/estate sale at her grandmother's house today. Martha, Chookie, Brynne, Megan, Mark, Steffi and I all contributed stuff (gah, I so want to write "crap") to the furniture, knick-knacks, memories and crap piles of Beth's grandmother. I arrived at 8:30 in the morning to find Beth coordinating the sale with a half dozen early buyers rushing in to get the best selection on the garage sale deals. Little did they know that all the good stuff was buried in the bottom of the boxes scattered around the house, garage and driveway, to be pulled out at various times during the day to refill the stashes. We're sneaky like that.

Steffi had by far the best crap. She managed to sell 80% of her stuff by noon, including still-fashionable clothes and many useful household times. Martha had the best sell today with the sale of a bridesmaid dress with matching shoes. Mark and Megan freed themselves from various pieces of garage-sale-bought furniture, some of the items selling for as much as they bought them for. Brynne and her mother brought stuff over for the sale, but didn't stay to watch the items disappear.

When I arrived in the morning, there was a woman who had started piling items to buy. For the next hour, she would walk to the back of driveway, pick through a pile or two, walk back to her pile near the front, and repeat the process, her pile growing by the minute. After buying all of her piled stuff, she left, only to return a half hour later to begin the piling process again. She wouldn't move more than about 10 feet without finding something else to buy.

One woman I tried to help in the morning had just bought a partial set of dishes. They were cute dishes, 4 plates, 4 saucers and a couple cups, but nothing spectacular. I brought her newsprint to wrap her new dishes in, handing her a sheet before pulling another out of the pile and reaching for a plate to wrap.

You would have thought I was stealing the woman's child. She grabbed the dishes and made to slap my hand away, as she snatched the paper from my hand to wrap the dishes herself. Uh, okay, I thought, backing away slowly. I hadn't realized you were so attached to your new $5 set of dishes. Uh, enjoy!

Other people were also of note in an odd sort of way: the guy who sat staring at a box of 100 manilla folders, debating if they were were worth the 50¢ asking price; the old lady who sat in the back corner for hours looking through four giant sewing boxes for that one particular button; the man with his eight year old son buying a pile of items hand selected by the child; the young girl letting me know the items on the table marked "GOOD OLD STUFF: MAKE OFFER" were not for sale; the guy who refused to buy the trash can I had for sale because I said it was $3 instead of $1 (because $3 was sure to break the bank, you know).

I did find a number of interesting maps that might make fun buttons. I'll try them out and see.

Part of the excitement of the day was the indoor cat which had escaped the confines of its house, only to spend the next six hours stuck between the exhaust manifold and the engine compartment firewall. Neither car owner, nor the cat owner, nor animal control could extract the cat from the hole he had wedged itself into. After hearing the cat howl for hours, Mark went to save the day, pushing the cat forward through the engine compartment instead of pulling it backwards from its wedged spot.

Shame no one told him to CATCH the cat once it was released. Cheers went up after Mark extracted the cat, and disappointment followed when the cat ran off. Again.

I spent much of the day with Mirabelle. We opened and closed doors. We opened and closed water sprinklers. We opened and closed more doors. We went up stairs, and down stairs. We went inside and outside. Mirabelle went up and down, depending on her placement relative to my head. We had a good time.

In the end, I made about $5. Mark and Megan made a couple hundred dollars. Beth maybe three times that. More importantly, all of us have less crap than we did before.

And that's a good thing.