Lloyd’s dad had a heart attack. He’s doing okay right now, but Lloyd is pretty close to being written out of the will anyway at this point, so we figured that we should go down and sing Soft Kitty to him.

So you’ll have to put up with this theme for the time being. Pray for Lloyd’s dad and have a happy Thanksgiving.

Matt Haden also posted a facebook photo.

Lloyd’s asleep as I write this. He doesn’t even know yet, and I can’t bear to wake him with such sad news, so I got his clothes ready for tomorrow.

Thanks for all the cool gadgets, Steve. I confess that I got a little teary tonight.

Not all was sunshine and manholes, though. A little girl threw up on my comfy chair so much that her stomach needs to write me a check for a new chair. *jibblie*

No photo. You are welcome.

Things got really bad on the playground, though. Some boys were running around and screaming:

Lead boy: Run! There’s a T-Rex after us!
Other boys: Ahhhhh!!!!
Lead boy: Run! A girl wants to marry us!!
Other boys: AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!

This was indeed a tragedy, not for the loss of function since it’s the backside that cracked; but for the loss of beauty. When he first got it he bought a case for it but didn’t like how bulky it was, so he took it off and would positively rave about the phone’s coolness:

Lloyd: “Isn’t it cool? Isn’t it soooo much cooler without a case? Seriously – look at it. It’s so cool.”

Lauren (groggily): “What the?? What time is it? Is it midnight?!? I have to work in the morning, mister!”

Well, Lloyd, looks like you’ll be wrapping it in bubble wrap now.

Decidedly uncool.

So, those dumb robins that I fell in love with? They’re all gone, dangit. I only blame myself for three of their deaths, though.

If you remember the hailstorm, which I stupidly went out to protect them from rocks falling from the sky, well – the next day there was only one baby bird. Maybe the other three drowned in the ten seconds it took me to leave the nest and mama to come back, or maybe they got too cold, or maybe it was bird flu. (It could happen.) Whatever it was, I beat myself up for it a couple of days and then thought how much better it was for the one survivor to get more of mama’s attention. He was getting fat and happy.

Then today he was gone.

I came home to peek and there was an empty nest! I looked all around, stepping carefully to avoid crushing anyone, then gave up. On the way back into the house I saw him. He was a good five feet from the nest with little bleedy marks on him, so something got him.

Dang.

Dang. Dang. Dang.

Dang. If you want to see him, he’s here.

I buried him next to the cats. His ghost can torment their ghosts for a while.

Sorry, robins. Now stay away from my house!

You may have noticed that for the past few weeks the posts have been lamer than usual. That’s because when something horrible happens it’s sometimes too horrible to talk about.

We had bat bugs.

It all began the morning that the Peperkorns came. Lloyd got up before me and when I went downstairs he said, “Something bit me – it was this”. He held out a glass bowl with the offending insect. Time stood still.

“I think that’s a bed bug,” I whispered. I ran to the computer to do a search and the horrifying truth was confirmed.

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

We had company arriving in less than twelve hours, and panic reigned supreme. There was internet searching, vacuuming, washing, drying, and general frantic running about. Oh, and in the middle of this – Lloyd had to go to Lincoln for graduation. He came back, more frantic cleaning, etc.

The Peperkorns arrived with their camper (thank you, Lord), and took the news well. I, feeling like a complete leper, was super-duper freaked out.

The next weeks were filled with more cleaning and exterminator consulting, and within days we had our first house-dousing of sweet, sweet poison. I know I’m an earth-hugger most of the time, but now I was all about the pesticides, hot water washing and hot, hot dryer-drying.

We’ve searched a vast majority of sites regarding bed bugs, and came across the mention of bat bugs. They look exactly like bed bugs except that 1) they feed on bats and 2) the microscopic hairs on their head are longer than their eyeballs, as opposed to bed bugs – who have hairs shorter than their eyeballs. Lloyd looked at one with a microscope from school, so we were able to identify them.

Having bat bugs is psychologically better than having bed bugs. We only found about a dozen bugs altogether, and now it made sense – they’re living in the attic with the bats. The few that we found must have straggled down when the bats went away to mate. “Mmmmm….. we’re hungry. Let’s go snack on that guy downstairs.” We never found the horrible, horrible infestations that are shown on the internet, but we treated the whole house as if we did. My paranoia is serving me well at this time.

So, that’s that. In the past three weeks we have moved all our upstairs belongings into plastic bags or sealed boxes; are living with 6 shirts and 5 pants/shorts each; have replaced the upstairs carpet; re-painted the upstairs; and are living like we’re camping. (That part is cool.) This summer we will work on evicting the bats and stopping the problem at the core.

I plan on writing the definitive ‘So, you’re living with bat bugs?’ page, and the gory details will be on that, but now we (Brad included) can make realistic posts that include the details of this lovely chapter in our lives. We’re ok now, by the way. We haven’t seen a bug since the first round of three douses of poison. (Standard procedure)

By the way, if I had a time machine, it’s only purpose would be to go back to young Lloyd and Lauren and say, “Um, get rid of the bats.”

Christina and Paul have lived in Texas for the better part of a decade. They had never seen Jerky World before. I had been in Texas for about 22 minutes when I saw it. Standing out in an overlooked strip mall like a beam of pure sunshine piercing a cloud.

As if to taunt me, we drove by Jerky World at least half a half dozen times. We could never stop. We had places to go, people to see, planes to catch. Really, it’s probably all for the best. If I’d gone into Jerky World, I would have had to leave Jerky World. I can’t imagine a worse fate.

I love you Jerky World.

Lauren: “You o.k.?”

Lloyd (quietly): “I…… am no longer a little teapot.”

Lauren: “*gasp!*”

It’s been such a part of his identity for so long. What now? What now?

The present I am giving myself is not bothering to come up with a good post. Instead, I’ll share with you some of the jokes that the spammers have been trying to sneak onto our website. Gotta hand it to the spammers – they’re a funny crew.

• I have a nice fresh joke for you people) How you get down from an elephant? You don’t, you get down from ducks.
• I have a nice joke for you) What did the worm say to the caterpillar? What did you do to get that fur coat?
• I have a fresh joke for you) Why do Vampire have to brush their teeth? Because they have Bat-Breath.
• A JOKE! ) What did God say when Joan of Arc showed up at the Pearly Gates? Well done.
• Sorry, for off top, i wanna tell one joke) Why do hurricanes travel so fast? If they traveled slowly, we would have to call them slow-i-canes
• A joke for you! What do you get when a cat walks along a beach? Sandy Claws!!
• A JOKE! ) Why are there so many Smiths in the phone book? They all have phones.
• I have a good fresh joke for you! What do you call a rabbit with fleas? Bugs Bunny.
• A JOKE! ) Why did Willie Nelson get hit by a car? He was playing on the road again.
• Do you want a joke? Who is Dracula’s favorite person on the baseball team? The BAT boy!

We couldn’t make our turn onto the highway, but Super Lloyd just corrected and breezed past while I chewed on my coat. We saw five cars in the ditch once we actually got on the road further down, and just crawled all the way home at 35/40 miles an hour.

I ate my gloves.

Hate, hate, hate winter driving. Hate it.

“It will be relaxing,” Lloyd said.

“We’ll take pictures of the snow for a post,” Lloyd said.

So, we did. Bundled up in the super-insulated Eddie Bauer coats of yore (they’re so warm, they must be made of penguins), we took the camera outside. It’s blizzard-y, but we were up for adventure.

Yeah.

Two blocks away from our house some poor kid was stuck at a stop sign. A delivery guy was trying to push him out, so we went over to help.

Bam! On my first push I slipped and hit my mouth on the trunk. Now I have a fat lip.

Delivery Guy had to go, um, make deliveries, but fortunately Drunk Guy arrived to give some assistance – well-peppered with wise old swears. “Turn to the right, d*mmit! Think you’d never driven in snow before.” He was great fun.

Poor Kid decided, after his verbal beating, to just back down the three-block hill and try another street. We bid him well, walked home, and shoveled the driveway. (4th time today)

After shoveling, we noticed that Poor Kid and Other Dude were both stranded. We walked down to help, and met Nice Guy. Nice Guy, Poor Kid and Lloyd pushed Other Dude safely on his way, then went to Poor Kid’s car. Luckily, Drunk Guy showed up. (Turns out he’s Nice Guys’ father-in-law.)

Blah, blah, blah – pushed Poor Kid to safety, helped Drunk Guy shovel his driveway so he could park, and came home….

to a half-inch of snow on the driveway we just shoveled.

Gotta love winter.

All was well until 1:18.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Stumbling to the kitchen, I had one of those ‘thousand-thoughts-running-through-your-mind-in-two-seconds’ moments. Do we have a fire alarm? Am I cooking something? Is Lloyd cooking something? Did this happen when Kristi was visiting and she was too polite to tell me? I hit ‘cancel’ on the stove panel and went back to the couch.

3:00.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

What the what? Stumble, stumble, cancel, cancel. I thought about going up to bed, but I was in my jeans and didn’t want to change into pj’s. Lazily, I went back to the couch.

3:43

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Grrrr. Cancel.

3:48

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

I am going to kill someone. By this time I have noticed that ‘F-2′ is flashing on the screen, and now I was WIDE AWAKE enough to google it. It’s a sensor issue. I unplugged the stove and went back to sleep in the blessed beep-free quiet.

I wound up cooking our little turkey in the roaster, but couldn’t rely on my cool digital thermometer to tell me when it was done, because it was in cahoots with the stove and showed wildly fluctuating temperatures – all wrong.

Did I mention that I’m sick? Using a roaster and the microwave, I had turkey, stuffing and potatoes ready to eat by lunchtime then shoved it all (uneaten) in the fridge and went back to sleep until 4.

If I feel better tomorrow we’re going stove and thermometer shopping.

A couple of days ago I got one that most definitely wasn’t me. Two thousand dollars at Verizon Wireless??!!?? Who is this moron? Shouldn’t he be easy to catch? Seriously – a guy with a trunkful of phones???

They never got our actual cards, just the number. Again. Grrrrrrrrrrrr. We don’t have to pay for the charges, but the vengeful, vengeful part of me hopes that terrible things happen to the thieves.

Cards cancelled. New ones on the way. Hateful thoughts in my heart. Gratitude towards CitiBank – blah blah blah, but mostly the hateful thoughts.

Grrrrrrr.

Lloyd: “Come read my new rubric for web design class.” (That’s right, we use words like ‘rubric’ around here. We’re Smarty-Smartersons.)

Me: “Mm-hmmm. Yes… looks good….” (Counting in my head to seventy-five while staring at the screen and pretending to know what it means. What the heck is a rubric, anyway?)

Lloyd: “You’re not really reading, are you?”

Me: “Ummmmm…..”

Luckily, at this point his giant monitor starts to flicker in a mad, seizure-inducing way.

Lloyd gets very, very quiet.

I start laughing.

Lloyd glares.

I stop laughing.

I take pictures.

Lloyd messes with the controls and continues to be very, very quiet.

I go to my trusty, non-broken computer, look up “Gateway monitor flicker” and find many, many angry people in the world who hate Gateway with a fiery passion because their monitors have also betrayed them.

Lloyd is also doing research, watching (through the flicker) a video of someone who is speaking in a calm, comforting voice – like a person highly trained in comforting the bereaved.

I get bored and start watching YouTube videos.

Lloyd quietly hisses, “Stop watching videos. You’re using all my bandwidths.”

I go to bed and leave him alone in his sorrow.

End scene

Please leave your condolences below.

Oh, and just so you know, though in this story I seem like a really awful, heartless person – I know what a rubric is.

The NE Technology Coordinator’s Fall meeting (or as I like to call it,
“The day all the computers in Nebraska schools stop working.”) Is
happening in Grand Island today. If you need me, that’s where I’ll
be.
–Lloyd

About an hour later I received a flurry of text messages, phone calls and e-mails, including this one:

So – as long as it doesn’t end up being a super headache for you, I am amused that the server crashed the day you were at a tech conference. I think the server read your email.
–Jared

Well, it turned out to be a very good conference. Really, “conference” is probably too strong a word for it. It was a bunch of technology coordinators from across Nebraska getting together. Some were from schools smaller than Lincoln Lutheran and some were from districts with 48,000 students. Someone would complain about something and a dozen other people would commiserate that the same thing happened to them and then 3 or 4 people would offer some really good ways to deal with that problem. (lather, rinse, repeat)

It was free, and I even bummed a ride with a group of people coming from Omaha. But I’m not really looking forward to going back to school tomorrow. To keep my mind off of it, I bought this game:

It’s called World of Goo, and it’s a sort of puzzle/physics simulation type game. It’s the 1st anniversary of the game, and they are currently selling it for “Whatever you want to pay for it.” If you decide to buy it (and at that price, why wouldn’t you?) I would be interested in knowing what you paid for it. There are versions for Windows, Macs, Linux and Wii. The music is cool, and I played about 5 levels tonight before watching the movie Rounders.

Please don’t try and cheer me up. Tell me what color your shirt is.

Ok, I’ll tell you the Shadowlands troubles. Aside from the crazy long days at work, on Wednesday we had 4 inches of rain come down in a couple of hours. It flooded one of the window wells at school and the basement carpet got wet. That was dealt with (it involved bailing with a bucket), but I was beat before the school day actually began.

Later, I had a meeting at church that night but forgot my folder of notes. After the long meeting, I came home to look for the notebook and found it on one of the guest beds, and noticed a horrible stench. Someone had peed on the bed. So, after this very long day in a series of long days – now I had to rip all the bedding off and go to Wal-Mart to get stench remover. Unfortunately, we hastily moved all the stuff off the bed and didn’t do a thorough check of everything.

I went to work the next day with the folder so I could make some phone calls, and found out that there was old dried pee on the folder and papers. So, ruined notebook and ruined bag. As it turns out, she had been peeing all over that bed and the other one. (I thought it smelled weird in here, but again – I’ve been beat when I get home, and didn’t bother to investigate. I chalked it up to ‘old house smell’.)

Which brings us to the looming doom of the rest of the week. We had the cats put to sleep on Saturday. Dr. Wallman was very kind and understanding, and I am so grateful. Pfennig went quick and quietly, like a balloon letting out its air all at once, but Cricket was awful to the bitter end. She scratched Dr. Wallman and bit Lloyd through the muzzle. She needed a sedative to get the final injection, and that made her barfy and woozy.

It was sad, and I’m still sad, but honestly, since I’ve been mourning their imminent deaths since Cricket had that terrible diarrhea, it’s a bit of a relief to finally be at an end. We’ve ripped up a lot of carpet and thrown out a lot of ruined things.

I loved them very much, though, and will miss them terribly.

Which brings me to how I deal with grief. You guys are awesome, but if you’re local, please don’t call or come to commiserate. I absolutely hate to cry, so I need a heap of alone time, please. Please don’t be offended, it’s just the way it is.

By the way, I just want to say that Lloyd is an awesome husband. In all this awfulness, he has been nothing short of stellar. Perfect score, Lloyd. Perfect score.

A variety.

of reasons.

The subject of ‘first cousins once removed’ seemed to have come up a while ago. I have taken it upon myself to make a diagram for clarification. (Brad has fact-checked this, and pronounces it correct.)

Is it clear enough to see the letters, ? If so, then you can see that E would be C’s son/daughter and also B’s niece/nephew. D and E are first cousins, and G is D’s first cousin once removed. It’s not on the diagram, but we would say that – sit up straight, Curt – H is E’s first cousin twice removed.

Lloyd and his parents found this diagram useful when talking about their gigantic family.

Ok, class, here’s how this is going to go. You can comment as you like, but please end your comment with a quiz question for the next commenter. I’ll start. How are H and G related?

(Oh, the title refers to marrying your first cousin.)