the eric update - day 756: heat wave + summer colds = no fun. but it is a good excuse to by an air conditioner.

odin ( and then kris ) caught a summer cold late last week; we're not sure, but he likely picked something up at the rock and roll library show while sharing a lemonade with some new toddler friends and then passed it on to kris.

so, even though i ranted about painted windows and how it's possible to live without air conditioning, sometimes you have to give in, you know, for the children. and the wife :-)

i still stand by a majority of what i wrote - namely that you can keep an older home substantially cooler that it otherwise might be and not have to use air conditioning most of the time by using a little common sense. but when it's still 90+ F ( 32 C ) at 10 p.m. and there are sick people in the house, it's time to compromise. and you think it's easy to get an air conditioning unit on a sunday in a small town after 5 p.m. days into a heat wave, i'm here to tell you it's not. it takes initiative. and an 80 mile drive.

and besides, i can always fall back on one of my favorite walt whitman quotes:

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

Invasion of The Big Brown Bats! or could we be any more stupider?

you might think after our experience with Mr. Big Brown Bat that we might think twice about leaving a window lacking a screen open all night. yes, you might think that.

and you might think that after we left the window open and came downstairs in the morning to find little poop droppings all over the place that we might be a quick to suspect flying mammals. yes, you might think that.

instead, kris wondered how we could have suddenly fell victim to an invasion of mice that liked to poop a lot. i added helpfully, "yeah, jeez. it's not like there's enough food laying around to attract a marauding army of poopy mice," as kris turned the fan off and moved it out of the window.

after cleaning up the excrement, we noticed not one but two bats inside the fan! one was dead, but the other was alive. how and when they got there is a bit of a mystery, as we're fairly certain they weren't in the fan when kris moved it out of the window. my guess is that the dead one tried to leave just after she switched off the fan?

of course, the looming question is how many other bats are sleeping soundly in little nooks and crannies all around the house, just waiting for night to come.

the secret of the sash - revealed!

some may recall the The Great Heatwave and The Unopenable Windows. well, it's still hovering around 100 degrees F ( 38 degrees C ) and only expected to get hotter in over the next week and as of this morning most of the sash windows in the house were still painted shut ( score one for procrastination! ).

we've lived in quite a few homes with lots of character. and more often than not part of that "character" comes from most of all of the windows being painted shut. i've never really been able to fully understand the phenomenon ( is it just a peculiarity of the u.s. or maybe just the upper midwest )? there's no central air and there probably never will be since there were never any ducts put in the walls for heating, as the house uses radiant hot water for heat and it's cost prohibitive to retrofit duct work. if i had to guess, i think people might close up the entire house, save a window or two, and put in a few window air conditioning units. a practice that, i must admit, DRIVES ME NUTS!

i think there's a whole generation of so of people who have no idea that people did actually live in the upper midwest without air conditioning! for a long time! we're not in the deep south here people. jeez. and the funniest part is that houses built prior to 1950 were built without anyone ever dreaming that air conditioning would be available for the unwashed masses, so - get this - they're designed to get air moving through the house! and from all appearances we must be one of the last holders of the arcane knowledge that allows you to keep an entire house 10-15 degrees cooler than the outside temperature, even when it soars above 100 F. without ever resorting to the "keep one room cool with a window unit and let the rest of the house roast" method that is apparently all the rage. ask any grandmother. she'll tell you how to do it. the abridged version is, close the windows in the morning and open them in the mid-afternoon and keep them open through the night. close the windows again in the early morning to keep the cool night air. it's also mighty handy to vent hot air out the upper floors and simultaneously pull cooler air into the first floor by using a fan to blow out of the window in the afternoon. and if you're a bit on the ambitious side you can install an attic or whole house fan.

can you tell it bugs me? gets right under my skin, it does. it is possible to live without air conditioning. comfortably even.

but as much as we know, we don't know everything and it was only relatively recently that we learned the real secret of the sash. - that the upper window doesn't just slide down for to enable easy cleaning without going outside. no, you're actually suppose to have both open at the same time to allow warm air to vent out the upper sash and cool air to enter through the lower one ( this and a whole lot more can be learned in "working windows" )! it makes a whole lot of sense if you think about it and i can't believe it never dawned on me before. i never usually bothered to unstick the top window before because it usually has been painted over more times than the bottom window making it hard to work open and i never thought it was worth the effort just to make cleaning the window a little easier. i had no idea i was only using half of a clever ventilation system!

and in an upcoming show, we'll go over how to replace that window pane that you'll inevitably break with a hammer when trying to open windows that some other idiot painted shut.

the prettiest mudroom?

you thought the stairwell was pink? well you could be charitable and call it salmon. but the mud room ( it's also the laundry room, but since it's close to the garden doubles as a mudroom )?

it's not just a little pink, either. it's not just on an "accent wall". it's all pink. i've said it before and i'll say it again, i have against the color pink and i think that both i and the mudroom would be secure with our masculinity if it did remain pink, but still, it is a bit much pink, no?

the eric update - day 754: money - it's a gas!

whenever odin hears spare change jangling around he excitedly proclaims, "bank! bank!" as in, your coins are my coins and lets put them in my bank ( said bank obviously isn't really a piggy bank and it's not even made out pygg, but there's nothing wrong with a loon bank, right? ). i guess it's a fairly common way to teach kids about money and who knows maybe he'll save enough money to pay for his first textbook in his first semester of college.

he'll repeat all the names for the various u.s. coins, but he has a hard time keeping them straight and that's o.k., since we've obviously already taught him the most important lesson of all - to grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.

the eric update - day 754: Earth Mover.

imagine, if you will, that odin is exclaiming over and over "dirt!" and "beep! beep! beep!" and "dumper!" ( his word for dump truck ) and "loader!" and oh so occasionally handing me a toy while saying in a much quieter voice, "share. poppi, drive."

the eric update - day 752 : odin and evelyn "above the fold" probably not at a newsstand near you!

first parents magazine, then mothering and now the.....vernon county broadcaster?

yup, odin and evelyn made it above the fold for the article on rock and roll library show!

unfortunately the photographer was a little confused and wrote that odin was from grand rapids, michigan which - while technically correct, doesn't really convey the truth that he now lives in viroqua. hi. ho. you know what they say, there's no such thing as bad publicity. and really, we're not publicity hounds! the photographer just knows two cute kids when she sees them :-)

the eric update - day 749: The Improbable Occurs.

it is true that laws of probability and randomness state that given enough time two toddlers will, in fact, sit still for a few moments. but it's still pretty amazing to see it happen "in the wild", even if it's just random chance doing its thing. i mean, if you sit around flipping coins long enough you're bound to get a string of 10 "tails" in a row. two toddlers and sitting still is like that. but if you add one or more toddlers then the system goes all chaotic and unstable, the normal laws of probability do not apply, and i've hear that you can go for years without any stillness. you might think of it as a emergent toddler perpetual motion machine, but really it siphons off energy from any nearby adults of sorts, but really it siphons off energy from any nearby adults, so it's not, properly speaking, a perpetual motion machine per se. but it's an honest mistake.

kicking out the jams with the high strung at the public library!

odin and his cousins had the extra-special treat of getting to see the high strung at their only stop in wisconsin on their first-ever national rock & roll Library tour! i suppose it's fitting in a way that the band whose debut record was named the top 10 rock records of 2003 by npr's ken tucker should be touring libraries. and you know they are public radio rock stars because they have their very own segment about the tour on this american life.

a good time was had by all and we got to meet a bunch of new people from our new town with toddlers which made it all the more fun. on a side note, very few people in viroqua know my secret identity as the chronicler of odin's adventures and i haven't figured out a way to nonchalantly ask if it's o.k. to post pictures of people we meet. even i think i sounds a bit creepy. just imagine that there are lots and lots and lots of happy kids and parents standing and dancing behind me :-)

the eric update - day 747: odin and his cousins contribute a little to solving the world's problems.

odin and his cousins might think they're simply enjoying some tasty ice cream cones from the local dairy queen after a long day of playing, but really they're contributing to a wholly-owned subsidiary of berkshire hathaway which itself is owned in part by the second richest man in the world, warren buffer, who happens to have promised to give the majority of his wealth to the foundation owned by the richest man in the world who happens to have promised to spend the money on things that quite possibly could save tens of millions of lives saved over the next decade.

the eric update - day 747: odin demonstrates his mad harmonica skills.

odin loves, loves, loves to play harmonica and while he might not quite keep a beat you can dance to, it's certainly the perfect accompaniment for stomping on the couch!

the eric update - day 746: woohooo! cousins! and they're staying for 6 days!

has it really only been three weeks since he saw his cousins? and already a few of them have come to town! at this rate we'll see them more than we saw then we all lived in the same city.

odin has been looking forward to seeing evelyn and ruby; when we asked him who was coming to visit he'd exclaim "evie! evie! evie!" before pausing and saying, "mine! mine! mine!"

the eric update - day 745: here comes franklin! ( and tortilla chips and peanut butter ).

odin enjoys all the franklin the turtle books that his cousin gave him for his birthday. and the perfect compliment to the compelling narrative and colorful illustrations? why, tortilla chips slathered in peanut butter which, perhaps not coincidentally, also happens to be someone else's favorite snack.

the eric update - day 741: The Great Heatwave and The Unopenable Windows.

someone didn't get the memo that you're supposed to have 100 degree F temperatures for days on end in wisconsin. and to add insult to injury 98 percent of the windows in our house that's brimming with "character" have been rendered unopenable by being painted shut ( for the life of me, i will never understand why otherwise rational people paint windows shut ). we had vague plans of opening all the windows someday but it wasn't really a priority because, well, wisconsin never gets this hot. except when it does. for nearly a week.

The Wedding and The Legend of The Lady of the Lake.

"where are you headed," asked the woman with a thick long island accent shortly after she and her family hopped into the shared shuttle servicing the island from laguardia airport. "a wedding in rokonokonokoma," i said, intentionally mispronouncing ronkonkoma in such a way as to simultaneously indicate to that her know that i wasn't from around "here", that i was amenable to "small talk" and that i had probably watched the movie fletch one too many times. her husband happily chimed in that the town was right next to lake ronkonkoma which was the setting for a new movie by m. night shyamalan. he mumbled soemthing about a local legend that has been passed on about a native american woman who died by falling through the ice on the frozen lake while grieving for for her husband who was killed on the night before they were to wed. and now, every year a ghostly apparatition of a woman lures young men to their death by getting them to swim to the middle of lake where they presumably drown from exhaustion. supposedly the lake, which was cut out from the land by an ancient glacier, is so deep that it is effectively bottomless and the bodies of the poor victims are never recovered. as we passed the exit for amityville ( yes, amityville ), i started to slip into my own sleep-deprived version of an the m. night shyamalan's visa commercial; listening to the nice couple get into a terse discussion about whose fault it was her father's phone number never got loaded into the cell phone, suddenly becoming very aware that the shuttle van driver had no qualms about changing lanes before the other drivers had time to move over, while recalling the woman had said with a tight smile, "you really should put your seatbelt on," just as the side door to the van slammed shut, eavesdropping on the college boy sitting next to me with his well-to-do mother as he said, "are they drinkers? i hope they are, because drinkers are much easier to talk with." all the while, i was silently composing in my head the backstory for how a historic and popular wedding venue ( later, according to my sister the new bride, the wedding chambers were even a bit musty and old smelling! fabulous! ) could be set against a backdrop associated with such a morbid tale, complete with an opening sequence that involves a hapless midwesterner hopping into a airport shuttle and an underlying theme that plays on the legend by exploring whether or not all marriages could involve unsuspecting men being lured out of their comfort zones until they metaphorically drown never to be heard from by their single friends again. or something like that. as it turns out m. night shyamalan's new movie, lady in the water doesn't have anything to do with the legend of the lady of the lake and, of course, odin's aunt and new uncle had a perfectly perfect wedding with not a single drowning. but still, i think there's still a good movie in there somewhere, even if i will have to add a few harrowing details and macguffins before we finally get to The Kiss right just as the closing credits roll.

someone is getting fired for this.

who voluntarily books a 7 a.m. flight out of la crosse municipal airport virtually guaranteeing a wakeup time of 4 a.m.?

and it gets even better! on the return trip, in order to get back to la guardia for a 7.am. flight from ronkonkoma ( on long island, new york ), the shuttle is going to pick me up - get this - at 3:15! IN THE MORNING!

and even more wonderfully that'd be 3:15 in the morning after a wedding.

oh, i am going to be in a world of hurt by sunday. a world of hurt.

the eric update - day 737: odin learns there's more than one way to rock.

for odin's second birthday we decided to give him a simple rocking chair with the hope that maybe someday soon he himself would choose on some lazy afternoon to while away the time rocking himself gently while reading a good book. because what toddler doesn't enjoy uninterrupted periods of rocking while reading while his parent's get a little free time to accomplish the long list of chores. uh. huh. well, we'll see about that. he does like sitting in it, but there's not a whole lot of self directed reading going on yet. but maybe soon.

although the rocking chair is often considered a uniquely american invention with benjamin franklin occasionally being erroneously cited as its inventor, it likely originated in england the early to mid 1700's before being introduced to the rowdy colonists around 1750. and while we'll probably never know for certain how much of the american revolutionary war was plotted while sitting in rockers, we do know that british major general william tryon sat on a rocking chair on a hill in norwalk, connecticut while watching the city burn to the ground. and the north dakota daughters of the american revolution had the foresight to preserve general george custer's personal rocking chair which perhaps he sat in while pondering his strategy for the battle of little big horn.

so, rocking chairs aren't just for little old ladies sipping lemonade on the front porch and i guess someday we might be surprised, for better or for worse, with what Grand Plans odin concocts while rocking away the time.

where in the world was odin?

the city should be easy to guess. and metropolis natives should have no problem identifying the tri-section tri-section/neighborhood that's rapidly entering the final stages of gentrification.

even though odin's odin's mystery fever had subsided it was still a lot to ask of a toddler to spend 9 hours in a car for a short visit with friends who happened to be in the city. but as always he was a trooper even though he refused to sleep a wink in the car ( for some reason, even though odin is a fantastically cooperative traveler, he refuses to sleep in his car seat no matter how long the journey ).

the eric update - day 733: The Case of the Mysterious Fever.

although odin has had the occasional sniffle and sneeze that indicates a mild cold, we've been extraordinarily lucky in the past 637 days or so since we been home from the nicu to never really have to deal with the flu or fevers.

but yesterday, seemingly out of nowhere, he developed a 103.5 F ( 39.7 C ) fever. other than feeling hot, he doesn't seem to have any other obvious signs of the flu. no crankiness that one might expect from feeling achy. no diarrhea. he's not eating much, but when he does eat he doesn't have a problem keeping it down. had he not asked to go to bed yesterday at 4 p.m., he was by all accounts acting fairly normally for a toddler. today he was perhaps a little bit more "spacier" than usual and maybe he had just a bit less energy, but anyone other than us probably wouldn't have even noticed anything was wrong until they tried to pick him up and discovered he was scorching hot.

i thought maybe he was getting his two year molars and that was making him fevery, but if teething is ever even associated with a fever ( some say it's a myth ) it's apparently does not cause high fevers.

we're not super amped up about it yet and he hasn't even required so much as infant tylenol but i might change my mind if it lasts much longer than 36 hours. a neighbor who also happens to be a nurse told us that a kid's temperature can be all over the place and is less a reliable indicator of overall health than it is when he gets older. in other words, i guess we shouldn't start filling the bath tub with ice just yet.

the worst part for odin? he hates, hates, hates getting his temperature taken with a thermometer and getting him to do so involves long negotiations usually resulting in a concession of ice cream on our part . maybe some part of him remembers that a thermometer under the arm was part of The Not So Much Fun Routine.

the downside of cruising with a malamute who has recently gone swimming.

note to self: the next time you think it's a good idea to jump in the galaxie for a 320 mile trip without brushing a malamute who has recently been swimming, remember that you'll spend the next 6 hours or so defensively the swatting at great gobs of undercoat swirling around the interior of the car in a vain attempt to keep them out of your hair, nose, eyes, mouth and ears.

and no, you, the smarty pants in the peanut gallery, i can't just roll up the windows because that is againt the rules. it's clearly spelled out in The Handbook that all windows absolutely, positively must be rolled down when cruising with a malamute on a beautiful summer day through the backroads of wisconsin.

the eric update - day 730: odin turns two!

odin thinks a parade and having lots of strangers say happy birthday is the perfect way to start a second birthday!

so, wish odin a happy birthday! and i'm sure there'll be a few more photos to be uploaded later :-)

of course, odin's shirt is the result of kris' crafty, hard work.

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the eric update - day 728: catching up with the cousins at the beach.

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scenes from the galaxie: going to gladstone the long way.

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