Nag, Nag, Nag

Yes, I know it's been fully a month since my last post. My apologies, loyal readers, but I've been busy. It is summer and my rugrats hardly give me a moment to pee, much less do anything requiring coherent thought. Here are the highlights of August...

1. I have adopted two more children. Their names are Ben & Jerry. They are not the two-legged kind, and in fact they have no legs at all right now. They are tadpoles. Kirk and his buddy Cameron came home with Ziplocs filled with creek water and itty bitty swimmy things. I kind of thought it was just gunky creek water until I noticed the little eyes on something that looked like a piece of bark. I left them in the baggies on the patio table overnight, and when I went to throw their dead carcasses out the next morning, I discovered that 2 were still amongst the living. I'm not totally heartless, so I pitched them in the sandbox, which was partially filled with rainwater, and forgot about them for another day. The next day, the kitties found them swimming merrily in their new environment and I figured if they could live through kitties whacking at them, they deserved a little better treatment. I did a little research, put more water in the sandbox, and every day or so I toss bits of lettuce and a few kitty kibbles in there. They are getting bigger all the time and have learned to hide amongst the rocks (I'm decorating their environment now...) when Oscar and Emmy loom over the side of the box. Hopefully in another few weeks I'll have frogs. Kirk has told me we will take them back to the creek to "release into the wilderness." His words, not mine.

2. We went to the Clark County Fair. My lovely niece, Hilary, decided that week to become a vegan (she's rather impulsive). This only lasted until she found the hand-dipped corn dogs and elephant ears. After a rousing bout of indigestion, she decided that going from no fat to high fat was a mistake and that perhaps she should have slid into her new lifestyle a little more gradually seeing as how it was fair week. I offered to get her a deep fried Twinkie so her fair food experience would be complete, but for some reason she wasn't interested. BTW, a few days later she decided that being a vegan was not really for her and that perhaps she'd just go with eating a low fat/low carb diet instead. This seems to be working out better.

3. Kirk went to baseball camp. This is a camp put on by the Portland Beavers, a farm team for the San Diego Padres. I took him during rush hour to downtown Portland (PGE Park). After we checked him in and saw that he was having a good time, Suzanne and I hopped on the train to go shopping. We went to Saks and Tiffany's, looked in the windows, then got serious and went to Baby Gap and Gymboree to look for a birthday present for cousin Landon who turned 1 on August 29th. We found an adorable outfit with wiener dogs on it (shout out if you remember Bitsy and Mandy!) and then hopped the train back to the park. Turns out I'm a fare thief. I thought the ballpark was in Fareless Square, but I guess it stops at 12th avenue. The park is on 18th Avenue. I wonder what the fare is for 6 blocks?

Did I mention that Suzanne does not like jackhammers? There was a lot of work being done when we were shopping and Suzanne liked none of it. She vastly preferred being at the ballpark and getting to run around the beer yard (unfortunately at 11 a.m. there was no beer to be had anywhere...). No I'm not corrupting my daughter, that is just where they had the parents wait on the field. There is a Widmer beer garden by the first base line. It is a fine place to watch a game and you can catch a lot of balls there.

My next blogs will probably be devoted to preschool countdown. She starts school on the 13th. She's going to ride the bus. Kirk starts 2nd grade tomorrow, but big whoop--he's an old hand at it. When we took him to the open house last week to meet his teacher, he was sauntering down the hall like he owned the place. "Hey dude, how's yer summer?" "Peace out, dude!" That kind of thing. This "dude" thing is really starting to annoy me.

Gotta go check on Ben & Jerry--the cats are out...