"In every job that must be done..."

... there is an element of fun. You find that fun and, snap! The job's a game!"
-- Mary Poppins, "Spoonful of Sugar"

It's also creepy sometimes.  I was folding the laundry today, which was the last of my three daily goals (element of fun part 2: make a list). As I tried and failed to fit five more white socks into Chris' white sock drawer*, I decided to take all of them out to reclaim all the socks he steals from me organize them into pairs.  Before I started, I guessed I would end up with the laughably large number of 27 pairs of socks.

So, I sorted and matched, and piled up the pairs without counting, savoring the moment I would find out how close I was. Have I mentioned I've got very little going for me in the way of excitement these days? I ended up with two pairs in the garbage due to holes, five unmated socks, and... exactly 27 pairs of matched socks.

I am hoping that analytical sock pairing precognition is only the first of many superpowers I can hope to attain as a mother.



*Who says I never let my two readers hear the sordid details of my personal life?  Yes, Chris has two sock drawers: "white" and "other."  Fun fact: socks can be, and in fact are, manufactured in at least 7 shades of tan.

Happy sixth birthday, Funundrum.

I'm celebrating by dragging this blog, kicking and screaming, into the era of "Share" buttons and updated posting gadgets.  Yaaay!!

My mind moves in mysterious ways

Last night, we watched a couple shows on Netflix about the making of various seminal rock albums.  One was Queen's "A Night at the Opera," and the other was U2's "The Joshua Tree." I then proceeded to have the following dream, set in the present day:  someone affiliated with U2 thought it would be hilarious to fill the studio with band member lookalikes representing their various fashions through the decades.

This quickly got out of hand, because when the band walked in the door, the room was filled with risers creaking under the weight of at least 300 men, all grouped into individual U2lets and dressed and coiffed appropriately.  All the albums were represented, as well as costumes from major tours and even videos for most of the singles.  Everyone was singing "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." The people organizing the stunt quickly realized that there aren't that many true lookalikes out there, so they had resorted to tactics like stuffing a purple stocking cap on a dude who looked like Larry the Cable Guy, and calling it "Zoo TV Edge."

Listen, for a superfan like me, it was a hilarious dream.

On the Royal Wedding

...because as per Blogging Law (or Blaws, if you will, and I certainly encourage you not to), I'm required to make a statement. I certainly didn't intend to wake up specifically to watch the thing, but I figured, correctly so, that feeding the child would coincide with a good deal of the main action. When I got up at 3:30, I was saddened to find that my DVR had not begun to record, so I lost about a half hour of ridiculous hat coverage. Admittedly, that's 60% of why I watch formal British events, but still, I chalked it up as a loss and moved on.

Our neighbors across the street have such a large TV, we can always see when it's on and often tell what they're watching. I got a small, warm feeling of solidarity seeing their living room also ablaze with the glory of Westminster Abbey... until I realized that they're losing sleep ON PURPOSE to watch this bullshit, and I'm up whether or not I want to be (hint: I don't).

Kate's dress: lovely -- lace on top, pleats on the bottom, a vintage dream. Why on earth couldn't they have gotten married and done this dress more than three years ago? Think of the knockoffs I would have been able to get!

Hats: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Looking at you, Princess Beatrice. The best part is that I reckon it cost a small fortune.

QE2: Also lovely. I'm no hardcore royalist or anything, but can you imagine a nicer lady to be your ceremonial head of state? That is, I assume she's nice. I guess it would be even better for her to have a hidden mean streak.

This has been my shoddy Royal Wedding recap. I can now safely go back to ignoring British government until the coronation of ol' Jug Ears.

Important Update:

Update update:

Bad Copy of the Day Award: Submitter's Choice

Item 1

My brother-in-law Kenny sent this along, and I'm sorry to say I didn't read it close enough at first because I was so tickled by the ridiculous premise. He was at his local Baja Fresh, callously enjoying delicious California-style Mexican foodstuffs with little, if any, sympathy for those of us who have moved outside the Western Pico de Gallo Zone. The item in question was a "did you know" style sign, as follows:

"HEALTHY HEAT -- Chile peppers contain capsaicin, the compound that gives chile peppers their heat has been found to inhibit the growth of cancer cells."

Mmmm, round and round we go, and it never makes any more sense. It's like a factoid Mobius strip.

Item 2

I told you that story so I could tell you this story. My mom read about the Native Verbers in a previous post and shared with me:

"It reminded me of a sign (marquee) that drove us crazy. It was in front of a restaurant in Chula Vista, when we lived there. It invited people to 'Mother's Day with us' or 'Father's day with us,' etc. Never did use the word 'spend'. Maybe they didn't have a capital S."

Thanks for the Bad Copy of the Day Time Warp, Mom.

Chicago hot dog humor

We dropped into a new (to us) hot dog place this last weekend. The dogs were okay, and it's in a convenient location to some of our regular chores, so we may be back. Please do not take this to mean that you, upon visiting Chicago, should eat a Chicago dog at any place but Flub a Dub Chub's Hot Dog Emporium ("Come in hungry, leave with a chubby"). That would be an incorrect assumption. Man, I love that place.

At any rate, this other place had the usual list of hot dog variations with funny names -- but my favorite description, the one that earned this place a blog post, was the Blagojevich Dog: "Chicago style with ketchup (guilty on one count)." It had us giggling for a while. Of all the things that go on a Chicago dog, ketchup ain't one of them, and of all the crap Blago was accused of, he was only convicted on one lousy count. It's hot dog synergy at its finest.

As you can see by the last few posts, I've been cleaning out the ol' CrapCam. I actually quite like this picture for its negligible-but-present aesthetic value. I took this while waiting for Chris to use the ATM in the lobby of the bank near our house. That spot on the floor is caused by thousands of pairs of shoes shedding a bit of salted slush from outside.

The call is coming from inside the bathtub.

We love watching the news on WGN. It's oh-so-Chicagoey, and they strike just the right balance of professionalism befitting the nation's second city vs. C-list reporters who couldn't make it on the west coast. B-list, really. For C-list talent you have to go to a market like Las Vegas, where at least two prime time news anchors have lazy eyes. I am not making this up.

Most of the time, on the 9 o'clock news, WGN leads with national stories, followed by whatever the big news in Chicago is. There are two (count them!) weather segments, because weather is Serious Business here, and sports at the end (hint: the goddamn Cubs lost again).

Sometimes, a story like this comes up:

She actually led off the story by saying that police were looking for a "short, orange-skinned boy who goes by the name Ernie." Yes, really. The story is that 2,500 rubber ducks have gone missing from a suburban police academy. They were to be used for a fundraiser. So they went with the Ernie angle, naturally.

Government torture

No, it's not quite Gitmo, but still. This poster was on the wall of the hospital room where Henry and I were living for a few days.
I guess I should have taken a closeup, but I don't know if the CrapCam could have handled it. The poster features several Native American children who are all verbing in one way or another. Mountain Bike, Dogsled, Shawldance... you know, verbs. As far as I could tell, the verbs on this poster were sponsored by some government committee to get kids to do stuff. Verb-wise.

It drove Chris NUTS that so many of the things on that list weren't verbs at all, like basketball and soccer. My sticking point was that the website doesn't work anymore. How the hell am I supposed to verb, native style or otherwise, without access to VERBnow.com?

When two feet of snow melts

It magically turns into nothing but garbage and dog crap. It's like a miracle, but gross.

Panhandler of the day

I passed a Gentleman of the Street yesterday afternoon, who asked me for some change, as is according to custom. I smiled, and said no, but wasn't prepared for his most excellent response:

"If you wasn't so tall, I'd marry you. ...You a little tall."

Headline of the day for evoking unintended imagery

A CNN followup story about the overdue resignation of Egyptian president Mubarak is headlined as follows:

"Longtime spy chief now atop Egyptian pyramid"

Here's what I immediately imagined -- you tell me if you're thinking the same thing.

"Chicago Dibs" comes to Argyle Street

After we moved here, we heard about a decades-old tradition of "dibs" that pops up every winter in some Chicago neighborhoods. The rules go like this: after a big snow, if you're parked on the street, you have to shovel out your car, before the snow hardens into a nasty ice cocoon around your vehicle. It's a lot of work. Once you've shoveled out said car and drive it somewhere else, you may hold your spot with any old crap you've got sitting around -- favorite items are lawn chairs, buckets, and sawhorses. This way your hard-earned spot is still there when you come back. Should someone else move your crap and take your spot, it is acceptable to seek revenge upon the offending car. Revenge may include, but is not limited to, "icing" the vehicle with repeated applications of a garden hose, shoveling several feet of snow back on top of the car, and in more anger-prone individuals, keying and even breaking windows.

Yeah, I think it sounds really childish too. This is our third winter in Chicago, and every year I hear stories and see pictures of "dibs," but up until now have never seen it with my own eyes. I guess it took two feet of snow for the practice to make its way to Argyle Street -- from what everyone tells me, this is a lot more common in the western and southern neighborhoods.

Here you've got a CrapCam view of the spot in question. This person has chosen to adorn their parking spot with two or three doors. No, I don't know where you get spare doors.

A few more blizzard pictures

Maggie and I tromped all the way across our side of Lincoln Park in the hopes of finding a beaten path. I soon realized that it was all knee-deep for quite a ways in each direction. The best option was to get out onto Lake Shore Drive and keep going. It's certainly not something one gets to do very often -- the drive was closed in both directions for a little over a day. Just south of us, the northbound lanes were clogged up with hundreds of abandoned cars that had to be towed one by one.

What a view! You can see the Hancock tower from where we are.

Here we are trying to find a way down onto the street... but when the snow's as high as a bicycle wheel, it's tough going.

And still, people had already gotten out and shoveled so the sidewalks were pretty clear. It's called the City that Works for a reason.

The Blizzard of 2011

...one week later. It really was as huge as they were forecasting -- this storm ended up being the third largest blizzard in recorded Chicago history, which is saying something. Chris and I both got a day and a half off of work, amazing in a city that doesn't shut down. It just doesn't. The last time locals remember getting a snow day was in 1999, and even the public schools didn't shut down for that storm.

We ended up with about two feet of snow, I reckon. It's so hard to say once you see the huge difference in drift heights. O'Hare got just over 20 inches, so we definitely got more on account of the lake effect snow.

Maggie and I headed out last Wednesday afternoon, a couple hours after the snow stopped, to take some pictures for posterity.

I took this last one out the window of our back deck -- we got enough sunshine to barely melt the snow in the window, so it curled around on itself. So pretty!

Is it hunkering down or bracing?

I think it's the former for hurricanes, the latter for snowstorms. Now that's sorted. We're bracing for the Great Blizzard of 2011 here in Chicago, where they're forecasting anywhere from 14 to 23 inches of snow, accompanied by sustained winds of 45 MPH, with gusts up to 60 MPH. My office closed at 1, and we're not coming in at all tomorrow. To give you a good idea of how serious that is, most people had to go back to 1999 to remember the last time my company had a full-on snow day.

So that's pretty awesome.

I just got back from the grocery store, which is packed, and I'm somewhat disappointed to report that there's plenty of milk available. I didn't even need milk -- I just went over to the dairy aisle hoping to see a vast wasteland bereft of milk. At the risk of sounding like Jerry Seinfeld, what is the deal with people needing huge quantities of milk before a storm? WHY MILK? Also, orange juice and toilet paper.

Oh, you want to know what I had to rush over to the store to buy before the Huge Whiteout of the Decade. Yeahhhh... about that. I subscribe to a little different philosophy than the milk/TP people. I came back laden with Oreos, Ruffles, and Cheez-Its. And mac and cheese, bacon, and eggs for "real food" options. I know, that sounds way better than the juice-having household, right?

Maybe I'll change once I'm a mom, but I really really doubt it. Old hurricane-preparedness tactics from one's twenties die hard. The kid will be lucky I don't want to open all the windows to avoid a glass blowout.

The internet wins. Again

I've been busy being pregnant. That always means something different, depending on exactly how pregnant I've been. For a while, I was busy being tired, then busy doing all the stuff I had wanted to do when I was busy being tired. After that, I was busy going home for Christmas so people could look at me being pregnant. Then I was busy being pregnant in Hawaii, which was nice. We've also been busy gutting and renovating our kitchen and spare bathroom, which has very little to do with being pregnant, other than wanting to get it done before I'm done being busy being pregnant.

Now. One of the things I was busy doing, aside from all that, was retaining and working with a doula, which I wish everybody knew about but it turns out very people do. A doula is a labor coach -- someone who's seen childbirth dozens of times before, and who knows all the tips and tricks to get through it easier, safer, and less painfully. My doula is named Valerie, and she's wonderful. I'm telling you all that so I can tell you this story, which I'm trying to camouflage as interesting, because it's not.

One of the things Valerie suggested I start doing is drinking red raspberry leaf tea. It's been used for ages to help along all things reproductive. You can google it if you like, but I won't go into it. The last time we were at the grocery store, I sauntered down the tea aisle to see about this magical tea. Yeah, they had it -- at the crazy price of about $5 for 16 teabags. For that price, it better offer to deliver the baby for me. I reckoned the price would be only a bit lower, if not higher, at a specialty hippie store, so I immediately canned that idea.

TO THE INTERNETS!! Here it is, about a week later, and I've received my tea from a crunchy hippie store online. I went ahead and ordered a pound for around $20. Have you ever wondered what a pound of loose tea leaves looks like? Yeah, me too. It turns out a pound of loose tea is enough to pack full a gallon Ziploc bag, and then some; and at 1-2 teaspoons per serving, I reckon I've got enough tea for approximately 3.42 brazillion cups of tea.

So come on over. We'll have some uterus-toning tea and have a wild time.

Caroling at the Bean!

I guess I should have said "Caroling at Cloud Gate," but nobody would know what the hell that was. I've been taking ukulele classes at the Old Town School of Folk Music for the past few months, and the school got the opportunity to perform in Millennium Park as part of the city's Friday night caroling program.

That night, it was the warmest it had been in quite a while -- which is to say, flirting with freezing. We were all fine until we realized we were stuck on those risers for a full hour. That's a long time to stand in one spot, not moving one's blood around. But it was fun, and we got to sing Christmas songs, and how many people can say they've done this?

Thanks to my manager/photographer Chris for the below documentation.

Overheard on the train

"I know Helen Keller had her sense of smell -- but in my family, I'm considered the Helen Keller of noses."

Funundrum Recommends

You know those big tins of cheese, caramel, and butter popcorn that appear like magic in office breakrooms right about this time of year? And how the cheese and caramel always get finished way before the regular kind?

First of all, why even bother with the regular kind? How come you never see half and half cheese and caramel?

Anyway, there was quite a lot of cheese/caramel detritus in the bottom of the tin. These pieces, for reference, were about the size of Nerds candy. I took a big scoop back to my desk and emptied it into my mouth via a paper towel funnel.

It was the greatest thing I have ever tasted. I hallucinated unicorns. I am alerting the Michelin people and recommending an immediate application of at least two stars.