Jon’s Corner of the Whirled

It has been said that music is a means of broadening perspective. I believe this to be true. It isn’t always a good thing, though. On the way to school this morning, we were listening to Weird Al’s “Running With Scissors” album, and came across the “Jerry Springer” track. He has listened to it many times before and never asked questions about things in the song he didn’t understand. Today was an exception. He posed the question “What is a she-male?” a block from school.

Morgan is nine. This isn’t the sort of question I would expect to come out of a nine-year-old’s mouth. I encourage him to ask when he doesn’t understand something, and this is a good example. I’ve yet to come up with an answer he will understand, though. I managed to avoid the question temporarily because he was moments from school, but it still deserves an answer. I want him to keep asking questions. Any ideas?

Our cat, Benson, has this less than charming behavior he adopted this summer. Usually at three or four in the morning, he begins howling outside the hallway door. I’m convinced his howling could wake the dead. It usually means he wants to go outside. Lisa says it is a trait of Siamese to howl like that. He is more of a mutt than anything. In any regard, he woke my up yesterday at 3 AM, but I’m glad he did.

He wanted to go out as usual. When I was heading back to bed after letting him out, I heard an odd dripping sound coming from the bathroom. I thought maybe the shower had been left on, so I looked around. I realized the sound was coming from the basement. Our basement is finished, with a second bathroom. After poking around downstairs for about an hour, I finally isolated the problem to a section of one wall — there was a leak somewhere in there, and it had made the floor wet. I turned off the water to the house (something I need to add to our “going out of town” to do list) and started looking for a plumber. I came up with a list of five, and set up the list for Lisa to call when she was up and about.

We settled on Bruner Plumbing, and I’m glad we did. They had the leak fixed in a little over an hour. The charges were reasonable.

The odd thing about the leak was that it was in a copper pipe. Dean, the guy from Bruner who came out, had a theory that the pipe was under some stress that eventually lead to the failure. Some of the plumbing done by a previous owner was less than ideal, and this particular pipe seems to have been forced to pass through some holes in studs that weren’t on the level, and maybe a little tight. Looks like we will have to plan to redo the plumbing downstairs eventually.

Last night, a scraggly couple of people were sitting on the corner in front of my house. It seemed a bit odd, to just be sitting there talking, but I dismissed it as a couple of people taking a break from the heat. I went outside to water the yard, in an attempt to keep some of our plants alive. I have been fairly successful thus far. The hosta, which is normally a dry mass of leaves by the beginning of August is still very green and healthy looking. All the fuchsias are happy and have blooms on them. I haven’t been watering very much, just a few minutes in the evening. Usually this is a pretty quiet time in our neighborhood. Yesterday, though, there were some events that distracted me from my task. As I was spreading out the hose, I heard music which sounded like a mariachi band. This isn’t the normal music one hears on our street. A minivan was driving by, with both front windows open, playing music pretty loudly. When the van passed, one of the two people sitting on the corner rushed to his feet and started walking down the middle of the road toward the van. I knew immediately what this was: the people waiting on the corner were waiting to buy drugs from the guy in the van. This had happed occasionally in the past. I took out my cell phone and snapped a quick picture of the girl standing there, and the guy rushing off to see the van. Leaving common sense behind, I marched down the street to see if I could get the license plate of the van. The girl was taken aback by my behavior and tried to distract me from what I was doing. I saw the plate, the driver saw me, and he headed further down the road. The guy in the street followed. Once I had the plate, I came back and had a discussion with the girl. She had ratty clothes, but was relatively clean. I told her that I lived there, and I didn’t want them buying drugs around my neighborhood, house or family. She had lots of silly stupid things to say: “I don’t do drugs”, “Porland is the Herion capital of the world, that’s why I don’t live here”, “Why do you care?”.

I was irritated, but it really is sad to see young people like that. She didn’t look older than 17. The guy seemed to have abandoned her, so eventually she went off in the opposite direction. Hopefully they won’t do that again there. The last thing anyone in our neighborhood wants is to have dealers using our neighborhood as a meeting point. If there is a next time, I’ll have my high-res camera handy so I can give better information to the police.

We took Georgia in on Wednesday for her 8 week doctor visit. As I expected, she is exceeding her peers in every measurement. She is 14 lbs 2 oz, 24 inches long, and has a 16 inch head. According to the nurse, this is all off the chart for her age. The doctor doesn’t have a cuteness scale, but I think she is off the chart there too (of course I am biased).

She wasn’t too happy about the four injections, although the nurse was super speedy. Yesterday, she seemed a bit under the weather, but that is to be expected. Amazing how quickly she grows and changes.

I know I’m lame.  On May 10th, Georgia entered this world:  9 lbs, and 20 inches long and a full head of black hair.  Needless to say Georgia is the most important person in our lives right now and I have found little time to sit in front of a keyboard.  Lisa is doing well, and Georgia is growing like a weed.  She had her two week baby doctor visit, and she was up to 10 lbs 2 oz, and 22 inches long (Lisa thinks they didn’t measure correctly at the hospital).  This puts her in > 95 percentile for weight and height — this is good.  She is very healthy, and Lisa is having a great time putting on all her cute outfits while she still fits into them.  More later…