In this very stressful end-of-the-school year rush, where business, parental, and PTA responsibilities collide, where you’re are trying to do everything at once and make everyone happy, I have one big pet peeve:  People who don’t get back to you.  You e-mail, you call…no response.  None.  Nada.  Not a “Sorry, a little busy now, but I will get back to you” or “Sorry, I can’t babysit this weekend because my parents are going out of town”, just…nothing.  Radio silence.

If and when these people do get back to you, weeks later, they will inevitably say something like “Apparently i was supposed to get back to you.”  Apparently?  What was the first clue?  The polite e-mail?  The polite phone call?  The e-mail to your co-worker or boss asking if you were out of town and didn’t leave a forwarding mesage?  Or better yet “I’ve been busy?”  Oh really?  I wonder what that must be like, being busy, trying to juggle a hundred things at once and still get everthing done.  That must  be exhausting for you!  What a stressful life you must lead!

How hard can it be to write a quick note?  Make a quick call?  Do you think we have nothing better to do than spend our valuable time trying to get in touch with you, that your opinion or participation is so tremendously valuable that we cannot take one more breath without your precious contribution?   Look–we just need to get the list together.  We just need to get a sitter.  It won’t hurt us if you say No, or beg off.  We just want this incident closed so we can move onto to the next hundred million pointless things that make up a life.  Help us attain closure!  Is it really that tough?

All together: YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

So I’m getting the car ready this morning, and my Son is watching TV and eating mini-donuts.  Lately his allegiance has changed from cinnamon donuts to powdered donuts.  So Coop looks at me and goes:  “Dad!  I’ve got donuts!” 

Me:  “Great!”

Coop:  “White donuts!”

Me (without thinking): “White power!”

Coop (standing up, thrusting fist in air): “White Power!”

I was actually making a reference to this very funny record by Michael Ian Black, but I wonder if the other Moms in the grocery store will understand this…

So I had this crazy idea, now that I’m Johnny Appleseed, to build a home composter. So I found the instructions at the Lowe’s website, and away I went.   You’ll notice the instructions say this is a 5-hour project.  It took me 4 weeks on and off due to kids, PTA, weather, and did I mention we have kids?

Good tools to have: 

• A sliding miter saw with a laser line.  I only had a miter saw, so I actually had to cut boards as far as I could, then flip them over.  The circular saw worked OK sometimes, but a more expense and cool sliding laser line miter saw would have been much faster (and more expensive!)
• Clamps:  Clamps really came in handy for holding boards together while attaching with screws
• A combination square really makes it easy to cut square and to scribe a line when you are always losing your pencil like me.
• A mini cordless circular saw really helps when making notches for stuff.  I even cut some planks with this when i was too lazy to take out the miter saw from the shed again.
• Screws:  These instructions called for lots of nails.  Maybe it’s because I was an English major, but I really cannot drive nails very well–they always bend, go in sideways, etc.  So I ended up using screws for everything.  The more macho-inclined people at my work told me they always use screws as well, because A) it’s easier, and B) if you make a mistake, you can just unscrew it.  I confirmed this when it took me about 15 minutes to remove the first nail I put in.
• An air compressor is a very handy thing to have, especially when you are driving in tons of staples to hold down hardware cloth.  I tried a regular heavy-duty hardware stapler, and it barely worked at all.  I’m glad I dragged this outside–it took about 10 minutes per screen.  It was also a good way to threaten the kids.  (And please don’t mention it took me about 15 minutes to figure out how to get the staples in…)

Mistakes I Made:

I am but an rank amateur woodworker, and I always make mistakes that haunt my every waking hour, whereas professionals would just shrug and move on.  Among my mistakes with this project were:

• Cut the wrong wood:  My kids were distracting, I was just trying to make some cuts, and i ended up cutting the wrong wood — 12 pieces of it!  Luckily, I cut it longer than it needed to be, so I didnt actually waste any of it.
• Tried to use nails when I am not macho enough
• Got two different kinds of hardware cloth — you’ll see one side is 1/2″ and the other side is 1/4″.  Once again, distracted by children.  Damn their hides!
• Not exactly square:  I having a framing square, but was too busy to use it, and the right side of the composter ended up being slightly higher, due to a floor board that was slightly higher, due to the instuctions not being clear about the space between the floorboards.  When you are working with wood like this, it really breally helps to check and double check, because one mistake begats another down the line.  But , like my neighor would say, it still works, so what am I worrying about?

Total cost, in case you’re interested, was about $150.

Next up:  An arbor and sitting area.  Or a picnic table.  Pray for me.

Maddy won 2nd place at the Science Fair yesterday.  Her topic was “The boiling and freezing points of salt vs. sugar”.  First prize went to something like “Sucking venom from poisonous snake bites virtual reality seminar”.  There were a lot of very interesting presentations, and some stuff I would never have thought of.  Who knew it takes the same number of breaths to blow up a balloon before or after running a mile?  Kids these days!

More Science Fair pix are here.

So for reasons unknown, it is almost a given that, whenever I am out in public with my 3 1/2 year old son, he will begin playing with his Iron Man action figures and, inevitably, yell out, in a voice that can be heard across the entire store, “I KILL YO ASS!”

Now I must confess, Dear Reader, that I am not, as you have hoped, an Angel.  I have been known, on ocassion, to blurt out an expletive that I would, in retrospect, rather have not.  (“Son of a b*tch” immediately comes to mind).  However, that being said, I rarely if ever use the expression “Yo”, especially when followed by the perjorative of the word posterior.  Nor, to my mind, have my wife or daughter.  Nor does CURIOUS GEORGE or BOB THE BUILDER, some of son’s favorite programs.

I guess I blame MTV.  Now if only he watched it…

More stuff right…here.  Original page here.