Saturday, October 25, 2003

TO THE LAB, IGOR
Our usual Saturday routine (as usual as it gets) begins with breakfast at a local eatery. The head grill dog (Larry) calls TinyTuna "Pickles" (because she would always ask for a side of pickles), and his faithful assistant, secondary grill dog (Wayne) calls her "Trouble" (for obvious reasons). We sit in the far corner booth so we don't freeze. Unless they are new, we can order by saying "the usual" and everybody knows exactly what it is. I love local businesses in a big way for just this reason. We know them, they know us, we've established a nice relationship, and they bring us our Diet Pepsi without asking.

After breakfast, we often head out to the mall for some power walking with some of the "Aunts" (Gram's friends) from church. Sometimes there are upwards of seven of us doing mall laps and dishing the business. None of the aunts are real aunts of TinyTuna, but she calls them all "Aunt Whoever" and they have a really cool relationship. TinyTuna loves to go walking -- not for the exercise, but for the company of these sixty-plus year old women. TinyTuna and I generally cut out halfway through the three mile trek and dash into the bookstore to read kids books. Today we read the new Edmund Fitzgerald book (wooHOO), and that was fun. We also bought two additional copies of "Old Turtle and the Broken Truth" for friends. Because it's just that good.

Today we dashed home post-walk in time to intercept TinyTuna's cousin. GramTuna and I were taking them to "Chemistry Days" at a local science museum. Woah! The place was jam-packed. It was a pretty cool event overall, geared towards kids and scout troops. First of all, it was free (ALWAYS a bonus), and there were probably around 20 different stations where you could watch, learn or participate in different experiments. If you completed 8 (on a punch card) you got a free patch. Of course we did. We watched them suck air out of marshmallows and Halloween Pumpkin Peeps, we tried to catch soap bubbles that had dry ice gas inside, we guessed acids and bases, we watched the effects of liquid nitrogen as it froze a bouncy ball, a flower and a rubber band, we made Cartesian well-divers to take home, and we got a prism to see a rainbow wherever we looked. I'm sure we did more things too, but you get the idea. I especially loved the table that was "Chemistry Women of Tunaville University." I tried to make a big deal out of the fact that this was a girl-power table, but I don't think the two boy scouts in front of us were buying it. All in all, it was a lot of fun. At the very least , it was a large improvement over sitting in front of the TV all morning (which we wouldn't have done anyway).

Post-chemistry, it was off to Johnny Rockets for hot dogs, burgers, and doing the Love Shack dance once again with the staff. Even though "JRs" as I call it is a chain, we've been there enough that we know or at least recognize alot of the staff. The head waiter -- who must never get a day off -- always whispers to TinyTuna and asks if she's ready. Cousin Tuna opted to watch the dance, which I'm sure made TinyTuna secretly very happy. Nothing like having two competitive, Type-A, first-born personalities to deal with. Yeesh said the laid back Type-B Tuna. Lunch? Yummy as always.

We're home now (obviously). I finally pulled out the Halloween decorations, and yes, I consider that a victory. If they make it out of the basement before Halloween, it's close enough for me. I put one of my pumpkin candles right next to my uh, well...My stained glass nativity scene. Ok. I admit it. I never put it away last year. Hee! I try, you know? I'd like to see a Martha Stuart show that wasn't about decorating, but instead was about moving 10 piles of junk in the basement to get to the area where you think you MAY have put the decorations from last year. I know, I know. Martha would never be so disorganized. Hers would be individually wrapped in tissue paper, rolled in bubble wrap, packed in decorative orange and black containers and clearly marked for the following year. But in my house, the tissue paper gets stuffed into last-minute birthday bags, the bubble wrap gets stomped on by TinyTuna (GreenTuna believes that method to be tres gauche and prefers the individually hand-popped method), and I never think of buying an enormo-halloween themed tupperware bin until oh, say January. This year, the decorations were found crammed carefully in several plastic trick-or-treat pumpkins that were stashed in a box. Hey, at least I found them. And they'll most likely stay up until oh, mid December. I am not a slave to the calendar.

TinyTuna and Cousin are in the other room watching TV. They have to agree on whatever they watch -- it's just another one of my many rules. I don't do the "let's take turns" deal, because then you have one happy, gloating child, and a room full of pissed off kids ready to spit in their chocolate milk. So they stand in front of the tapes and DVDs and discuss each option with all the seriousness of an international summit roll call. "Lion King?" "I agree." "I disagree." "Peter Pan?" I disagree. I disagree. On and on it goes until they hit an "I agree" all the way around. Sometimes we have to take a couple spins through the list before they reach consensus. Now, I have nothing against kids making deals, because hey, compromise is part of life. Overall though, the "agreeing" policy works pretty well, because mean mom says they don't watch anything until they've reached a resolution. The TV-off rule moves things along nicely.

Other than that, the two are coloring like crazy. They are drawing pumpkins on paper plates, cutting them out with TinyTuna's "special" (ragged edged or decorative) scissors, gluing them to plain white paper and then decorating the paper. I'll have a fully decorated house soon. Meanwhile, I'm off to do battle with a chemistry experiment of my own -- my fridge.

More later.
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