No Joy in Mudville

There are bad ideas. Then there are REALLY Bad Ideas. And then are REALLY, REALLY, BAD IDEAS.

And then there's "Cooking with Dr. Pepper"...

As the commentator notes: "Any man comes home and finds his bride pouring a bottle of Dr. P in the sauce pan, he's going to snatch from her hand, grab her wrist with one hand, clasp the back of her neck with the other and bring her face to his, just to reaffirm his horrible suspicions: she's been drinking again.

He would be wrong. He would be a brute. She was only doing what the book suggested."

But to give you an idea of where I'm at right now, I'd have to tell you that I would personally gnaw my way through steel bars and low-crawl naked over a kilometer of broken glass to devour a thick slab of Dr. Pepper-marinated meatloaf with Dr. Pepper slaw and a Dr. Pepper on the side.I'm freaking famished. My internal flora has gone completely, dramatically wrong and has been for almost a week now. I've been subsisting on crackers and bread for three days without result. Today is a complete fast - water only. And of course, my unruly brain has been tormenting me with images of charcoal broiled New York strip...fresh tomatoes direct from the garden with sea salt, brie and basil...buttery prawns in garlic sauce...clean, briny hamachi with the sweet ginger and hot, hot tang of the wasabi...

Sweetbabyjesus, just kill me now...arrrgh.

Anyway, yesterday was a long, rough day in the field, working a steep site in Portland's West Hills. Hard drilling in the drizzly cold, and me just wanting to lay down and sleep all freaking day.This is the worst kind of internal disorder; it just feels like someone has stuck a tap in me and left it wide open. I can feel my energy draining away like...mmmm, let's not talk about water running, eh?

At one point I just lay on my back in the ivy and didn't move for five minutes. I could have gone to sleep there. Seriously.

The one interesting thing about yesterday was that the part of the West Hills I was working in was the site of the famous West Hills Martini Glass, a Christmas light icon that has loured over our Xmas drinkers since some time in the 1970's. During the MADD '90s the glass got one of those "no" red-circle-and-slash things that the homeowner would turn on at 10pm to signify Last Call.

So one of the few high points of the day was a long moment in the late afternoon when I could stop and just look over the railing across the Portland basin and enjoy the whole wierd Portland goofiness of this gigantic cocktail glass.

The story I've heard is that the homeowner actually inherited the martini along with the house and the damn thing is now a multi-generational project. It's funny to see the actual hooks and wires behind the big martini I've seen for years while zipping along I-405...

I'll try and get back soonest; it's just hard to find the energy to blog when you don't have the energy to, say, cook, clean or work.

Ugh.

(h/t to Jim Lileks for the Dr. Pepper cookbook)

Disease

So I'm wondering why I'm feeling so headache-y, sore and generally less than sparking tpday when I get a phone call from my Beloved Wife reporting

that our little Peeper has been dragged retching down to the school nurse's office having spewed all over his classroom (there's a D-minus waiting to happen, kiddo) and is now home with some generic loathesome kid disease.

What IS it with kids and illness? I swear, I never got colds until we had kids. Never. Now? Two or three a winter, at least. It's like they're adorable little vermin swarming up the hawsers to bring their plague fleas onboard my immune system; sweet, loving and loveable vectors for germs and disease, the Anopheles mosquito of the Fire Direction Center.

I love you, Peep, but you gotta start slamming some B-vitamin or something. Or I gotta. Or we BOTH gotta. These colds...ugh. I'm so done with them.

Caesura

Sorry for the hiatus but it's not a good week: everyone at the Fire Direction Center is ill (and I think I broke my pinky toe stomping on a bundle of 2x2's - don't ask...), work is mad, my back's bad and my leg's queer and then the Indians attacked...

At least little Missy is still the happiest toddler in the contiguous United States.

I'll try to post more in a bit.

Arrgh! Yuh got me, yuh dirty rat..!

Well...I've got it now.
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The Stomach Flu. Dehli Belly, the Galloping Major, Montezuma's Revenge, the Hershey Squirts...ugh. I'll spare you the mental image of me racing around the woods yesterday above I-5 looking for a dry, level spot to...ugh. Let's not go there.
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So, anyway, the blogging hiatus continues. For fun while you wait for the end of the Check Fire, why don't you go visit Chris, Hazel and Ruby? They're totally cool, and those two girls could charm the hiss out of a snake. They're Totally Adorable. And they have a pretty Great Mom, too. Even though she, like me, enjoys these quiet pre-kid waking hours. To sit, think, write and just be one with your gastrointestinal tract.
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Ohhhhhhhsweetmarymotherofgod!

Unwell

I have tried to keep blogging, but it didn't happen last week and it's just not going to happy this week, either.
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Things started to fall apart Wednesday when The Peeper was dropped by The Stomach Flu. For those of you fortunate enough to have missed this marked-down breed of cholera, or those who don't have children, you missed a reeeeeal treat. Deb caught the full, um, "blast" of a four-year-old who has no memory of the LAST time he had Delhi Belly and had no clue what to do when the inside of his tummy struggled to get out. So he spewed endlessly anywhere and everywhere in between shrieking "What's wrong?!" "What's going on?!" "What's happening?!". Poor tad - he was ill and terrified and Wednesday was Hell with the Lid Off for Peep and Mojo both.
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Thursday was better for him; we stayed home together, watched TV, played and had a gently fun time (Mojo was sick with jealousy about it, sadly). But he was vilely ill that night, and again at daycare on Friday. So we've been having to keep a specially close eye on our little guy. Missy has been her usual sweet, incredibly energetic but often clingy-and-whiny self...hopefully once she gets used to daycare the "clingy-and-whiny" will diminish...but for now it means extra Missy-carrying and Missy-entertaining for us.
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My work has been crazy, and it gets crazier tomorrow when I start in on the ODOT work for the Iowa St. viaduct drilling, on the hillside above what we call the "Terwilliger Curves" of I-5. I've been scrambling to finish all the OTHER work I have in order to clear my desk for four weeks or more of field work. Meaning that after the kids are in bed, the house cleaned, the lunches made and the laundry done I sit up working. Gets old fast, just sayin'.
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Plus the holidays...we made the major mistake of following our son's beloved nanny's cunning plan to do Zoolghts Saturday night and, despite the lights being just as lovely as always, got home after ten having had to fight the mob the whole evening. NOT a good idea to do the ZL on the weekend, I knew it and let myself be persuaded. Stupid, Chief, what the fuck were you thinking? Both kids woke up too early this morning and were tired and a bit crank as a result.
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AND today Mojo caught the bullet she'd been dodging since Wednesday and went down ass over tip with the stomach flu. She's been like a Deadite all day and will probably miss work tomorrow - hopefully she'll have enough energy to get the sprouts to daycare 'cause it's Just Another Four A.M. Morning for the guy with the Fire Direction hat.
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Funny thing - Peep , Missy and I actually had a pretty nice day: we rode the "Holiday Express". a.k.a. the "Christmas Train", a major Peeper Christmas punchlist item. Peep and I went on a site visit to a construction site I needed to look in on, which he loves, and we sneaked a Burgerville chocolate milkshake on the way home (shhhh...don't tell the Sick Mommy). We three all played happily this evening and everyone is in bed or soon will be. Pretty good, considering the alternatives.
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But blogging..mmmm...not so much. I'll try to get in a post this week - lots goig on; personally, politically and otherwise. But it's late and I've got to get some sleep.
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G'nght...