Mental note...

Bath after dinner

Imagine...

Ok, okayyy! I promise to be better at posting this week. Never mind that it's Thursday...

Now recently we were hearing about Laura's sump pump adventures and her childhood baggage - conquering her fears and replacing household appliances in one fell swoop. But really, the whole sump pump thing was a means to an end...an end to living in KY. It's all part of our Grand Plan (as you will recall) to return to the Motherland.

We are still goin' wit tha plan, and I guess it's been a while since I've updated everyone on only the one thing that occupies 117% of our free time. So here's a quick lengthy update on where we are at.

Well, where we are at is still in Lexington. But seriously, I can happily say that progress has been made. So let's take a creative approach to all of this and tie in a few things.

Imagine, if you will, that this is our life...

A nice, neat set of bricks - a foundation if you will - from which to stand on. This is our life in Kentucky. We've lived here a while, birthed a few kids, built a strong family that, just like these bricks, works together and depends on each other to look neat and square and reddish, even when you pull all the damn ivy away that you can find but it just keeps growing back dammit!

But seriously, if you look a little closer, you see the bricks are damaged. The damage is not severe, but it is there. The damage of being away from family, from support, for many years. Damage from that damn ivy that we pulled away, just to mock us as if saying "HA! You pull me away? I ruin your steps! Mwaaaahhaaahhaaa!"

Now imagine this is our life...

The bricks continue to crumble, just as the kids get older and miss their grandparents and aunts and uncles every day more and more. They crumble with the longing of being close to the ones who they love and who love them back. They crumble because the damn ivy ruined them and once the brick crumbles it's down hill from there.

Actually it looks like this because Damon had been chipping away the ruined brick, hoping to fix it, just like we are hoping to move back home to family and become one solid front landing that doesn't have any more damn ivy growing up into it. Seriously, who plants ivy on houses anyway?

What are you talking about?

So now imagine this is our life...

Ok, this really has nothing to do with our life, but I took this picture downstairs in the library I work in because I thought it looked cool. Such colorful books going on and on seemingly forever.

So really now, imagine this is our life now...

A little mortar, a few replacement bricks, just like adding a little family, brings it all back together. This is how we imagine life to be when we move back closer to family. And hopefully, no more damn ivy that will tear up the bricks like the devil's little plaything. I swear, I will never buy a house with ivy again!

So, now, imagine our life is like this...

I've gotten a new job, the house is on the market, we are plowing through Philadelphia listings, and there's no more ivy. There are no bricks in this picture because you already saw that Damon fixed it. I'm not sure what the bricks have to do with anything anyway.

A Litmus Test of Writing Appreciation

I remember years ago here at UK a professor in Forestry wrote a little letter to the editor on the school’s crappy student newspaper talking about how the campus spends all this time and energy to make it beautiful, but they are using gas powered leaf blowers, lots of lawn mowers, and a whole lot of other practices which ironically make it much more ugly in terms of sound, air quality, and general resource usage. It was well written (unlike that last sentence of mine), witty, and just a little bit grumpily bitter (and I cannot find it online, so you’ll just have to take my word on this).

There was a response from someone who took exception to the fact that while using, for example, brooms and rakes to clear the leaves would be quieter and wouldn’t pollute, it would take more physical work. Now, I could easily make the counter argument (again, though, the article is not online and is like 8 years old, so whatever), but that is not what stood out to me when I read it. What I noticed first and foremost is that it was written in a way that many people would read it and think “this is well written” when, in fact, it was horribly written. It was the kind of writing where they use too many flowery flourishes (redundancy rocks!) and added things to make it sound ‘smart’ when all it did was sound unnatural.

This comes up a lot in sports writing, where some writers on well known websites are gushed about, but when I read them I think “if this is what it is like after being edited, I never want to see the before.” I’ve read stuff that was just voluminous literary masturbation that gets heaped with praises and it boggles my mind.

I don’t want to sound elitist (though I totally am, I voted for Obama after all), but do most people think good writing is any writing that 1) uses lots of non-conversation standard words, 2) uses lots of references that can be overly obscure, and 3) is long? This was one of the reasons that I did not like Stephen Jay Gould when he was alive and wrote (also he was a jerk who would deliberately miscast certain areas of science that didn’t jibe with his beliefs). I swear though, people fawned all over Gould, but his shtick (and it was totally one) wore out really quickly and I found him to be unreadable.

I like The Onion (who doesn’t?) and will also read their AV Club section, which is a non satirical pop-culture section. They have different running series of articles, and recently started one where they write about records that were at the top of the charts. I started to read the first one when it came out last week and….well, I got a couple of paragraphs in and hated it and stopped. The same thing happened to the one published this week.

So, you guys now have an assignment! Go read either (or both!) articles (I’ll link to them below) and think about them. Try not to let my opinions bias you, but when I read them I though “this is the perfect example of writing that people think is good but is actually really really horrible.” Don’t be afraid to say if you actually like them, but do know I will make fun of you (just insult be back (nothing personal though) and we’ll both laugh and move on).

AV Club Discusses Def Lepperd Hysteria

AV Club Discusses Huey Lewis and the News Sports

I should probably put a note here saying if you like someone’s writing, it is an opinion that is highly subjective and blah blah blah. Something like how I really like H.P. Lovecraft’s writing, but could totally understand if someone does not, (though I think they would admit it was well written). I also want to point out that I think Tolkein falls perfectly in the “people think he is a good writer but he was actually a bad writer” category.

(NOTE: Feel free to mock my writing; I promise that I won’t take it personally. Do note, however, that this is for fun on my family blog and not my profession that I get paid for and should try to actually be good at. I also don’t have an editor.)

Nothing to sneeze at

Well I totally have tons to write about, but I totally don't have tons of time to write it. So bear with me everyone...

Today's topic: Allergies

Kentucky is known for several things: bluegrass, bourbon, horses, tobacco, basketball, corvettes, and meth. But something it may not be well-known for is its high pollen counts. Unless you suffer from allergies, you'd never know it. But Damon, who is allergic to most seasonal and environmental allergens, certainly knows it, which is why its #4 on the Reasons Why We Don't Want to Live in KY Anymore.

While Damon can muddle through the Spring and Fall (mostly by staying indoors and not breathing), we've noticed that Kestian seems to also suffer from some allergies. And so now that they are older, we decided to have the kids tested for allergies.

So yesterday, we took the kids - both of them to also test Adelaide to see if she had any we didn't know about - for their test. We talked at great length with the doctor about who seems to suffer from what and then the kids endured several dozen wonderful pricks that go along with the test. There were tears, there were "ow!"s, but they really did a good job holding still and getting through it.

We had the kids tested for a whole slew of things including:

• trees
• grasses
• dogs
• cats
• feathers
• dust mites
• peanuts
• tree nuts
• milk
• whatever else

We tested for these based on Damon's and my background with our own allergies (trees, grasses, dogs, cats, feathers, and dust mites). And since Kestian has trouble with milk, we added that, and threw in peanuts and nuts for good measure. Well, not just for good measure. Kestian refuses to eat peanut butter, and the one time we did get him to try it he threw up immediately. The doc didn't like that reaction so put it on the list.

Some things we didn't test for were bee stings, latex, and antibiotics. Antibiotics have to be done separately, so we'll go back later to test for that since he's had a reaction to sulfa, penicillin, and omnicef. However, he did say that the reaction he had to penicillin and omnicef (small-bump rash) may not be an allergic reaction after all, so we'd like to test him and see if he has a reaction or not. As for the sulfa, his reaction to that did seem to be an allergic reaction, so we will continue to avoid it. As for the latex, the doc said that if the kids already have blown up balloons with no problems then they probably don't have a latex allergy. And since the kids haven't been stung by a bee before, doing the test would not really work since they have no exposure yet to it to develop a sensitivity to.

So how did the kids do? Well, Adelaide is allergic to absolutely nothing. Not a one darn thing. Each of her "reactions" were benign, so that's pretty cool, albeit a bit odd if she wants to consider herself a true Orsetti.

Kestian - well, that's another story. He's allergic to trees (I forget which but I have them written down), cats, dust mites, peanuts, and tree nuts. Wait, wha?

Oh yes, I said peanuts and tree nuts. Holy crap! We had NO idea! Yeah, he had that peanut-butter-barf that one time, but Kestian is very texture-sensitive and has a quick gag reflex. We totally thought that his upchuck-from-the-peanuts was a texture thing. He has avoided peanut butter ever since - which is a damn good thing because his test showed that he is very sensitive to it. In fact, as of this morning, he still had a welt on his back from the site where they pricked him.

So, wow! Our son is allergic to peanuts. His reaction to tree nuts was somewhat less severe, but enough warrant avoidance. The good news is that the doc said that if he hasn't had any problems with the food he's been eating at home, then he can continue eating what he eats (obviously avoiding anything we know that has peanut butter in it). No need to throw out all the food that "May contain peanuts" or "Processed in a plant that also process peanuts." The bad news is that we need to get epi-pens in case he does accidentally eat something with peanuts/tree nuts and has a reaction.

Oh, I am sooo not looking forward to the day that I have to give him an epi-shot.

So all this has left us a tiny bit shocked. We knew that Kestian suffered from some allergies, but never once did we suspect a food allergy. No one on either side of our family has a food allergy. I feel like we've been playing a bit of Russian-roulette - always trying to get him to eat a peanut butter sandwich or offering him Reese' cups. Had he done so and had a bad reaction - well, let's just not go there.

I suppose this is probably karma coming back around, since one time a colleague of mine went to the hospital after eating my peanut butter brownies. I had no idea she had a peanut allergy, but felt so terrible that my brownies almost killed her.

So anyway, I guess we'll arm ourselves with epi-pens and stay on the lookout for peanuts and tree nuts. We ended the day giving Kestian instructions on what to do if he eats something and feels weird, and how to ask what's in something before he eats it. He said that he would tell people that he's "allergic to peanuts, tree nuts, and cats - but that he doesn't eat cats, so that's ok." That's my boy.

Although some people do like to eat cats

The other news is that he may have some asthma and we need to do a few things to see what can get his airways less obstructed. He definitely has some obstruction, but we're not sure if controlling his allergies better will solve it or if he needs other treatments. Other appointments to follow.

The Name Kestian

Hi everyone! I know, I know, I don’t post much anymore, and when I do I write stuff that is depressing or serious or something like that, so today I am going to change it up a bit and mock someone!

Hi person who is searching for middle names that go with the first name Kestian, and welcome to our blog! Kestian, I must say, is a great name, but I must strenuously object to you using it.

Look, anyone can name their kid anything they want, but the simple fact that you are from Lexington means that you MUST be naming your kid Kestian because you are stealing it from our child, and that ain’t cool. Listen, Lexington may seem big to people in Kentucky, but at less than 300,000 people it is small compared to real cities or even to one of the four Pennsylvania counties that surround Philadelphia. There is no freaking way you didn’t get wind of the name Kestian while in Lexington without it being a directed reference to our oldest son.

But let’s say you DO name your kid Kestian, what does that say about you? That you are unoriginal? That you are a copycat? That you want a neat name, but are too dull to think of one yourself? I know our kids are only six, but everyone that meets them remembers them, especially their names, so if you name your kid Kestian you will run into quite a few people who will scoff and think “you totally took that from the Orsettis, you wannabe poser.” Seriously. You are like those idiots who name their daughter Miley; yeah you may like the name, but everyone knows who you are naming the kid after. You see, that is the point: You will be naming the kid after our kid.

Should we be honored that you are naming your child after ours? No way, go get your own name, loser.

But there are some things you should know about the name. First, there are other people who have that name out there, though they are rare. It is a last name too, but that is also really rare. An odd thing is that if you search the name, you will find someone named Josephine Kestian who was strangled by her son sometime recently. Gee, I’m glad that my sister already named her daughter Josephine so we couldn’t use it, because that would be just weird.

You will also find a couple references to it in some geek ass shit roleplaying game crap. But people who make up names for fantasy games/books/etc are almost always stupid in the way they do it.

Anyway, you were searching for a middle name that goes with it? Why no just use Kestian’s middle name and copy it all whole hog! Go with Kestian Apollos, even though it only makes sense in reference to his sister’s middle name (Artemia), but you don’t care because you are a dim-witted dullard. But here are some that we were considering before we realized they were twins:

• Kestian Eth Orsetti (‘eth’ was an old letter in the alphabet that, along with ‘thorn’, represented the ‘th’ sound in English. I really liked this a lot and would have pushed hard for it if he was a singleton, but Laura did not appreciate it like I did. I am serious, I was wedded to this name until we found out we had twins, and if they were boys I so desperately wanted the other boy to have “Thorn” as a matching middle name. That was a battle I was not going to win.)
• Kestian Thrace Orsetti (named after the region on the north of the Aegean Sea. Laura would not have gone for this because it is a place name, and I don’t like how it is a last name on Battlestar Gallactica, and it is not pronounced like that at all in Greek, but I liked it. I think I would have had an easier time with Eth though.)
• Kestian George Orsetti (Laura’s dad’s middle name and her grandfather’s first name. We never really discussed this much, but I was thinking the other day how it was possible that we could have used this if he was a singleton. Negatives are it is also the name of Laura’s beloved stuffed bear, and I would not want anyone to think he was named after the sitting president during his birth (who was a horrible man).)
• Kestian Goss Orsetti (oh, wait, that’s his brother)
• Kestian Damon Orsetti (ha, I would NEVER be so arrogant to name a child after me)
• Kestian Thinkofyourownfuckingnameassholes Orsetti (I think this is the most appropriate for you!)

Technical difficulties...

If you are one of our loyal (and awesome!) readers to the TWINBEARZ blog, and you have had trouble accessing the blog or some of the posts, fear not! Blogger had some technical difficulties last week, and some posts seem to have been eaten by the blogger-monster. (Apparently last Wednesday Blogger was doing some updates and lost a bunch of posts.) They say that they will be restoring them "soon," but no word on just when "soon" is. I went ahead and restored the Mother's Day post, but my awesome Critter Control post is still lost in the ether. (If you, perhaps, still have it in your cache, or you already printed it for your scrapbook, please send it along. I don't think I can re-write that.)

Meanwhile - stay tuned...lots more posts coming!
Thanks - and happy TWINBEARZing!

UPDATE: Thanks to one of our AWESOME viewers, who awesomely had a copy of the Critter Control post, I have been able to restore it to its awesome grandeur. Have I mentioned that this is AWESOME?

Happy Mother's Day

This year we celebrated my 7th Mother's Day. It's hard to believe that I have been a mother that long, but it seems to be true. And while Mother's Day is often a low key affair, this year it was pretty decent I have to say.

It started off by sleeping in...until 10:20! Often on Sundays I get to sleep in, but usually the rousing of the children often leaves me awake soon after they get up. But not this Sunday. Oh, no! I slept in baby!

This was followed by greetings from those children of mine who are capable of speech, and squeals of delight by the one that doesn't. I was quickly handed hand-made cards to mark the occasion, which were gratefully accepted...

At least they didn't say "Happy Mother's Day. I hope you are not sick. Love Kestian" like this one that Kestian made earlier...

Soon we were on our way to our annual trek to Mayfest. An artsy-fartsy low-key affair to be sure, but always on Mother's Day weekend and always a joy.

The kids fed the animals...

And danced around the May Pole...

While others observed...

And watched some performers dance (dancers perform?)...

And found fun things to sit on (until we knocked it over... sorry!)...

But soon the kids were grumpy, saying "I want to DO some thing!" This most certainly was payback from when I complained to my parents, so really it just enhanced my Mother's Day experience.

Soon we retreated to the car, only to head back after we spotted the (free!) horse-drawn carriage rides. We had a brief wait, during which the kids each picked a tree to sit under...

But soon it was our turn...
Our day out was followed by a late lunch at Culver's, where we stumbled upon a rare spotting of the ever-elusive Scoopie...

And then a stop at the park...

(There was bird poop on this slide, but I Photoshopped it out!)

Soon we got back to laundry, dishes, and whatnot, but I'd say it was a pretty good Mother's Day. So happy to be a mother!

Critter control

Yeah, yeah, I know. Many of my posts lately have been more about the pictures and less about the stories. But pics are good. I love pics of my kids. But today will be a story. A story about conquering fears, overcoming obstacles, and mostly about a sump pump.

You see, our house has a crawl space. A god-damned, hell-inspired crawl space. And it's not just a crawl space. It's a crawl space that houses our heating/AC unit. Who the heck put this thing in a crawl space under the house? Or more pointedly, how the hell did they put this thing in our crawl space? I mean the crawl space is only about 3 feet high at best, and the opening to the crawl space can't be more than 2x2 feet.

Lucifer Lives Here

I have no idea how they put it in, but I know they did it somehow, as the unit is newer than the house. Perhaps they followed some old Mayan-inspired approach, dragging the pieces one by one to the site and slowly, methodically putting them together, drums beating in the distance.

But this is about more than the just the crawl space. This is about going in to the crawl space. You see, as a homeowner, Damon and I have the responsibility to maintain the home. One we gladly accept. One we did not think included frequent descents in Hades. And recently, both Damon and I have had the pleasure of going into the crawl space on more than just the rare occasion.

Now with the recent possum-raccoon-cat-possum debacle, we got a bit more familiar with the crawl space. Damon handled that one (thank god!), but during all that we discovered that the sump pump that lives down there was not working. It is very likely that it had not been working for months, as neither of us can recall the last time we heard it run.

The demise of the sump pump presents a rather interesting set of circumstances. Mostly: having to fix the sump pump. But even more mostly: having to go in to the crawl space.

But before I go on much more about this, let's take a short walk down memory lane. Back to the year 1986. This was the year our family moved from California to Maryland. It was also the year I saw this movie (probably only days before our move):


Yes. Critters. Probably not exactly the scariest movie on the planet, but no one told me back then. Now this was the era of Gremlins, Goonies, and Ghostbusters. Seen them all. No bother. And really I wasn't all that scared of this movie until the last scene, where after they had killed all these human-eating balls of evil, they flashed to a scene of some sitting in a chicken coop, waiting to "hatch." Oh no! That did it for me. Not so much at the moment, but more of a delayed effect. I remember being in the hotel rooms on our drive out East, freaked out at night that these things (notice I can't even refer to them by their name) might eat my foot on the way to the bathroom.

This soon festered to an irrational fear of our basement, and the underside of beds, in our new house. But only at night. I was fine going into dark spaces, or walking by a bed during the day. But come night, I was absolutely beside myself at the thought of going near the basement or letting my toes go under the bed.* (It probably didn't help that I also had a playful cat who liked to swat at my feet - from under the bed - as I walked by.) My parents tried all kinds of tricks to help me get over it, including posting signs on my bedroom door saying things like "Critters - Go Away!" I know they tried to help, and it got better over time, but still to this day I carry a bit of it around. If I get up at night to use the bathroom, I am very quick to get back to bed with as little feet-near-the-edge-of-the-bed time as possible, and I'm still skittish around cellars.

So, this brings us back to the crawl space. For me, going into creepy places is a massive mental undertaking. When Damon was less than willing to go down there after all the animal adventures, I volunteered for the job. Only the actuality of going down presented quite a challenge.

With the sump pump seemingly not working, the first step was to assess the situation. I mustered as much anti-fear as one could, opened the crawl space door, and looked in.

See! It doesn't get much creepier than this!
(And there you can see the AC/heating unit thing lying on its side, just as its Mayan Masters left it.)

I sat there for a good five minutes, peering in, scanning with my crappy little flashlight (not much brighter than a lighter) to see if I could see any little pairs of eyes flashing back at me. (Are you chuckling? Because I'm serious here, people!) When nothing came charging in my direction, or moved when I suddenly clapped my hands (see - that's how you scare alien monsters...), I went in, traveling the 10 feet over to the pump. Indeed, the pump was not working.

Now our first approach at dealing with this was what most people would do: ask someone else to do it. With no takers, we asked a company to come out for a "Free Inspection" hoping that they would sense our fear, take pity on us, and just go ahead and fix it for us for no other reason than to be our heros. Alas, they are not our heros. In fact, they wanted $2100 to fix it. (Ha! Yeah, I laughed at that, too!)

So Plan B. Fix it ourselves. Now since Damon dealt with all the vermin earlier, and was also immersed in a brick reconstruction project (more on that later), I took it upon myself. But this meant going back down there to get the sump pump out in order to asses what replacement to buy.

Did I do it? Was I successful? Oh, yeah! I went down there, unscrewed the pump, went to Lowe's, got a new pump, and installed the new one. Now, make no mistake: this was no 15-minute project. This required multiple trips into The Hole, followed by measuring, cutting, and reattaching the appropriate length drain pipe, testing the new pump, and checking on it. But yes. One new sump pump, fully installed and working thankyouverymuch!

And by the time I was about done, I was going down there without a flashlight. I have to say, that while I still don't ever want to spend any quality time down there, I feel awesome that I was able to go down there and successfully conquer (manage?) my fear - oh, and also fix the sump pump. Arrrrgh! Bring. It. On!


(*I'm sure one day my kids will read this and laugh at me, and then wait for me hiding under the bed.)

On Recent Events in the World

Despite what is probably an overall positive event of bin Laden's death, I think I will turn to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to help express the feelings of an anti-war pacifist like myself:

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that"
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Instead of celebrating, go out and do good for your fellow man. Please, the way to make a better world is to live like you want the world to be.

Pajama-jammie-jam

I never got around to blogging about what we did to celebrate Fenton's birthday, so here's a quick update. We were pretty low key about it all, since he really didn't know what was going on, but we celebrated some, more for Kestian and Adelaide than any other reason. They wanted to know if he was going to have a party, or at least if he was going to take cupcakes in to his class at daycare. Since most of the other kids in his class at daycare have little-to-no hand-eye coordination (let alone eat solids), we skipped the school party, and since there's not many people here (in KY) who'd be interested in a one-year-old's party, we passed on that too.

But there were a few presents...

Which he sorta opened...

But his brother and sister were happy to help...

And he was happy to play with...

The kids helped to make a cake...

Which he was unsure of...

But upon closer inspection...

Didn't mind at all!
Yum!