My Google Search of the Day

Things you have to worry about when it's been too long since you vacuumed the far corner of the bedroom

Hey, I had to make sure it wasn't going to crawl out with its 100000000000 tiny babies and smother me in my sleep.

I'm Not in Vietnam

Just to clarify, Chris is the one in Vietnam. Not me. I'm having far too much fun enjoying the steamy jungles of East Greenwich to get on a plane for 16 hours. Actually, we had some sweeeet thunderstorms yesterday, which lowered the temperature nicely, so I think our weather might be nicer than Vietnam's now.

Mom and Kelly Ann left on Tuesday -- Soren and I miss them! We had a great time just hanging out and playing lots of Scrabble and Wii bowling. Mom did start feeling slightly insane really productive at a couple points during her stay -- she built some shelves for our kitchen cabinets and cut down a couple ugly bushes in our front yard. Thanks, Mom! And thanks, Kelly Ann, for making a really freaky-looking Mii that now shows up in crowd scenes and other random parts of our Wii games! He gives me nightmares! OK, not really.

Anyway, there's not much going on now... Soren and I are just going through our usual day-to-day routine and looking forward to Monday, when Chris comes back!

Four Days in Diplomatic Limbo

It seems I had a "professor moment" (like a senior moment or a blonde moment, but I was unable to carry out basic tasks in your world because I was distracted thinking about deep truths of the universe) when I was filling out my visa application to Vietnam. (Vietnam is a send-your-passport-to-the-embassy-in-DC visa process.) You see, my travels brought me to Hong Kong on the 15th, Ho Chi Minh City on on the 17th, and Nha Trang on the 21st. I simply must have read the wrong line from my itinerary, and my visa was for 30 days, starting the 21st.

I learned this at the ticket counter as I was checking in for my flight to Vietnam, on the 17th.

The ticket agent was understanding, but said she couldn't let me on the flight. (If Vietnam didn't let me, United would be responsible for my overnight quarantine and flying me back to someplace else; their liable for my presence.) I asked her what could be done, and she picked up the phone for me to talk to the Vietnamese consulate in Hong Kong (I was early, so there was no line). The conversation went something like this (I actually was feeling too stupid to be at all indignant or argumentative here):

Me: "Hi. I think I made a stupid mistake on my visa application, and put down the date for the wrong flight. Could you please let me know how I can amend it?"
...
Consulate official: "Since it was your own mistake, it would be very difficult for me to let you into Vietnam before the 21st, the date on your visa..."
Me: "Yes, I think it must have been my mistake, seeing the date. I don't want to blame anyone else for my mistake, but my scheduled flight is in a few hours, and I'd very much like to get to Hi Chi Minh City. Could you please help me with that?"

And then, somehow, he changed his mind. I think it was important that I just asked nicely for a favor. The United agent faxed my passport to him, he filled out some paperwork, and half an hour later I had a faxed letter that assured United (and me) that Vietnam immigration had been notified of my problem and that I would be allowed to amend my visa upon arrival, for a fee. (There actually is a procedure to get a visa on arrival, but....)

With my letter in hand, I got on the plane and flew to Ho Chi Minh City. On arrival, I went to the foreign visitor passport control line, where they told me to go to the arrival visa window. I went up to the glass window with one guy working, and four other guys in the back not doing much. People were coming up around me throwing their passports and visa applications through the hole in the window (there is no queuing norm in much of Asia). There was a posted amendment price of 10USD. They guy looked at my letter and my visa, and said I was OK; no fee, no editing the visa. I went back to passport control (a different officer), showed my passport and letter again, and was told to go back to the arrival visa window. I explained I'd been there and they said it was OK. The passport control officer rolled her eyes, shrugged, and stamped me through.

I'm thrilled...I made it through this ordeal, and just as my luggage is arriving on the belt. Then it hits me: all I have is a visa for four days hence, and a letter saying I would be allowed to amend it. No amendment.

Well, I avoided run-ins with the authorities for four days, and the hotel desks that needed to collect that information dutifully wrote down my visa expiration date more than 30 days out. But it was conceptually interesting to be an illegal immigrant for a few days.

Why Kirsten's going to Kill Me...

Since I was flying all the way to Vietnam anyhow, I figured I might as well take an interesting side trip to see what I could see; a friend and I took a two day trip out of Ho Chi Minh City to Cat Tien National Park. This morning, we hiked two and a half miles in (and out) to visit the Crocodile Swamp (alas, no large reptiles).

If you were to flip through the pages of a bird field guide, you'd notice a few standouts, a few you thought would be great to see. Like the black and red broadbill...


And Kirsten might even like to see a Lesser Adjutant




I think she's probably most envious of this, the Greater Flameback Woodpecker...


However, as jealous as she may be, she may not want to be here. As my friend said yesterday, "I haven't been this hot in a long time." The air is hot. And it is humid. And it is dead still. You need to walk at a good pace to generate enough breeze to dry the sweat off your shirt faster than you generate it; standing still just makes you wetter.

And, there was a big, hair five-inch spider in our bathroom at the park yesterday afternoon.

Everyone Enjoys our Yard

What's cooler than an owl in the backyard?

THREE owls in the backyard. All sitting on a branch fifteen feet away, glaring at me.

This sighting was followed (the same night and over the next few days) by glimpses of a skunk, a baby bunny, and this fine fellow:





We've decided that the owls aren't hunting mice in the grass -- they're hunting voles. For some reason, this makes me feel better. Maybe because voles won't try to come into my house and eat my cereal.

Until our yard is declared a wildlife refuge and becomes off-limits to recreational activities, we're having as much fun out there as we can. Gramma and Kelly Ann are here for a visit, and we've all been having a blast together! Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of Gramma teaching Soren how to do somersaults, but here are some other nice shots:






Finally, a moment of triumph: my BEST SCRABBLE WORD EVER.



The glory is tarnished very slightly by the fact that I had to tell Mom to pick another play when she wrecked my spot. But when "QUIXOTI" shows up on your tray, and there's a shining C sitting out there, waiting to be used, you do what you have to do.

Whoooo Likes Bagpipes?

(Post title by Chris)

I was sitting on the back patio last night, reading Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City (thanks for the recommendation, Sam!) when I noticed some movement on the lawn. It looked like a squirrel or some other small mammal, but when it suddenly flew into a tree, I realized it was an owl! In my yard! An red-phase eastern screech owl, to be exact. Much like this one (image lifted from jpmatth on Flickr):



I called Chris out, and we spent a good half-hour watching the owl swoop around the yard to the haunting strains of the bagpipes, until the fireflies started blinking and it got too dark for even our Totally Sweet Mack Daddy Binoculars to follow the owl's progress.

Also, when I went out this morning to check on the garden, there was fox poo by the tomatoes.

Cool: wildlife in the yard.
Not as cool: realizing that the owl caught at least five mice in the lawn in half an hour, and there were still enough left over for a fox. On the other hand, the mice attract some pretty cool predators, and I can live with that.

Innocent

Once again, breakfast conversation is my inspiration. Another morning, another newspaper, this one with a picture of fighting, bloodied men on the front page. I try to skip it, but Soren catches sight of it and says, "What are those people doing?"

It's way too early in the morning, and in life, to tell him what's really going on, so I tell him they're talking.

"That man saying hi. How you doing, mans? They saying, 'I'm pretty good.' Right, Mama?"

Maybe it's just the hormones, but this makes me want to cry.

I don't want him to know about violence and meanness. I even have trouble with that song about the baby bumblebee, you know, the one that goes "I'm picking up the baby bumblebee, won't my mommy be so proud of me.... ouch, he stung me!"? Well, the second verse goes, "I'm smushing up the baby bumblebee..." and I'm too wimpy to sing to my little boy about smushing baby insects. So I change the words to things like, "I'm dressing up the baby bumblebee.... he likes to wear sweaters!" Or "I'm cooking for the baby bumblebee... he likes mashed potatoes!" Pathetic. And yet... the thought of putting that idea into his head, where one can go around smushing baby bumblebees... it's so sad.

It's just a song, and it's not like I don't go around smushing disgusting creepy spiders, infant and adult, that defile my home, and eventually Soren will learn that people smush bugs, and hurt other people on purpose, and the men on the front page aren't asking each other how they're doing. It'll just be so hard to watch my little boy learn these things. In the end, though, there's no avoiding it, and I can only hope that knowledge and awareness will make him a better person, one who will take action to help mankind and generally be more philanthropic than I am, or at least one who will be able to keep it together enough to pick the spiders up and put them outside.

Quotable

Soren has developed a slight fondness for Cars (the Pixar movie), maybe because it's the only movie we own, but also probably because it has cars in it. He asks to see it more than once a day, generally, but I'm trying to oblige him only every other day. Or else I will go insane.

At this point, he's seen the movie enough to be able to quote parts of it, which scares me a little. The thing I love, though, is that he picks the most mundane lines to quote, at completely random times during the day. At the breakfast table last week, he busted out with, "The Jeep says, 'WHAT travelers?!?!'" Well... yes, the Jeep does say that. I never thought of it as particularly memorable, but the Jeep does say it pretty loudly, so maybe toddlers are like parrots and mostly like to repeat things that have been said emphatically. This explains both toddlers' and parrots' fondness for dropping f-bombs. Which Soren has never done, thank you very much, in case you were wondering.

Yesterday, in the car, Soren started repeating, "The red car says, 'IS IT GETTING DARK OUT?'" Another accurate quote. Actually, he'd been talking about the weather right before he said that, and he'd asked me if it was sunny outside, so I guess he jumped from that thought to the movie quote. Kind of like when a bunch of our friends get together, and one of us happens to say, "That's bad," and then we have to jump into the whole Cursed Squishy routine from the Simpsons. Yep. That's my boy.

Where's my Mac and Cheese?

Alternate title: Get Back in the Kitchen Where You Belong, Mama

The other night, Soren was hungry and I was lazy (Sleepy, Dopey, Grumpy and Doc were out clubbing), so I told him I'd make him some macaroni and cheese. The Annie's kind, not the neon orange (and super tasty) kind. Don't judge me. Anyway, I apparently haven't learned my lesson yet, said lesson being: don't tell Soren you're going to give him something until it's on a plate and being carried toward him. Or else he will spend the next fifteen minutes repeating some variation of "Where's my mac and cheese? I want my mac and cheese. Where's my mac and cheese, Mama? Can I have mac and cheese?" Etc.

He asked mac-and-cheese-related questions for a few minutes while I was waiting for the water to boil, and then went off to play. After I put the noodles in, I went out to see how he was doing. As soon as he noticed me watching him, he got up and started saying "Go away, Mama! Go away!" And then he started PUSHING me. Which made me laugh, actually, because whatever. I'm huge. Anyway, I asked him where he wanted me to go, exactly, and he pointed toward the stove. "Go over there, Mama! Make my mac and cheese!"

OhohoHO.

I tried to explain that there was cooking going on without me, but he was pretty sure I was shirking, so I eventually gave up and stirred the pot a couple times to get His Highness off my back. We'll have a heart to heart about bossiness some other time. When I'm feeling less lazy, perhaps.

The Deuce's Internet Premiere

I had my 18-week ultrasound today, so Chris and I got our first good look at The Deuce! It's funny -- two days ago, I still hadn't felt any kicks and was starting (well, continuing, if you want the truth) to feel anxious, but I started feeling little thumps yesterday, and the scan today looked great, so now I feel much better. So, to celebrate, here's one of those slightly incomprehensible ultrasound pics! Hint: that grey baby-shaped blob is the baby.



High five!



Come on -- don't leave the Deuce hangin'!

Soren Knows Just What to Say...

...to butter Mama up.

We were, once again, reading the newspaper at the breakfast table this morning, and Soren saw a full-page color ad for a Turner exhibit at the Met. He pointed to the painting and said, "What's that?" So I told him it was a painting. Then he asked, "Mama painted that? Did Mama do that one?" Aw, shucks, well... no. But it's really nice of him to think I'm capable of such things. Not that he's ever seen me draw anything except hearts (at his request) and trucks (yeah, you guessed it).