The Kiboomers – Friday August 28

meisajDaily Life

We listen to a lot of the Kiboomers in our house. Marceline likes them a lot and Alexa plays them pretty easily without much error.

We first discovered them in the spring when Marceline’s favorite book was Five Little Pumpkins. Now I know the five little pumpkins song as:

– Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate
– First one says oh my its getting late
– Second says there are witches in the air
– Third one says well I don’t care
– Fourth one says lets run and run and run
– Fifth one says lets stay and have some fun
– Ooooo went the wind
– And out went the lights
– And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight

The book has a few changes to the lyrics here and there. But overall is the same. Sam had never heard of that song. Both of us though got sick of book after reading it 10+ times a day to Marceline.

Where it ties into the Kiboomers is that we asked Alexa to play the Five Little Pumpkins, and the version it chose was by the Kiboomers. Which while having different lyrics than the book or what I’m familiar with, at least keeps the same pace as the book and gave us a little bit of a break.

Eventually we asked Alexa to play songs by the Kiboomers to expand what we were listening to. They have a lot of songs. Over 70 albums, including at least 4 that start with 50 songs…. and one that is titled 150 Toddler Songs. It is ridiculous. A lot of their songs are almost exactly the same. Their songs We’re going on a bear hunt and We’re going on a lion hunt are identical except for seven words.

It leaves me hoping that Marceline’s first full sentence is “Aren’t these the exact same song?” when we hear them back to back again. Just out of nowhere with incredulous inflection.

Highlights from yesterday:

  • Marceline colored a lot
  • She demonstrated that she understands our commands – when we tell her things like “Crayons have to be at the table,” she puts the crayons back on the table. When we say “put down your toy before a snack,” she will throw her toy down to get a snack. She also understands, hug, gentle dollie, and more.
  • Sam hasn’t been feeling well the last several days, but felt better yesterday.
  • I got halfway through my book. Not bad for three days.

Today’s List:

  • Pick up desk area
  • Clean living room and kitchen, including stove top
  • Replace sheets on guest bed
  • Sweep cat litter area
  • Marceline bath day
  • Order photo prints from July forward.

The Good – Thursday August 27

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Yesterday I noticed some blood coming from Marceline’s mouth while we were reading books. Stuck a finger in her mouth to inspect her teeth (which by the way… ew), and her molar on the upper right side had burst through her gums. I’d been able to feel it under her gums for a few weeks, but it was there fully through – which Marceline promptly let me know by chomping down on my finger.

As far as reasons to bleeding from the mouth, that is pretty innocent.

But I am pretty sure that is also why she woke up at 5am this morning and didn’t feel like going back to sleep.

Totally stole this image from the Columbus Dispatch

Oh, and the Cuyahoga River is on fire again. The 14th time! This time it is from a car accident that resulted in an oil tanker spill. And thankfully is much smaller than the larger garbage, trash and pollution fires of the past. Still kind of funny and sad that a river is on fire.

Marceline and I ate breakfast outside today. I think we will try to do this more often. The biggest difficultly is getting outside with Marceline and the breakfast without the cats joining us. They like to try and go outside even though 3 out of 4 of them are scared of being out of the house. They other one will go outside and immediately bolt for anything he finds interesting.

Marceline enjoyed it mostly for the three dogs across that were playing in the yard across the street. I enjoyed it for the quietness and ability to drink my coffee outside.

WCLV has been calming on what already feels like a long morning. I absolutely love that Cleveland has a classical radio station.

Today’s list:

  • Buy cat litter (didn’t leave the house yesterday)
  • Clean Marceline’s room (didn’t happen yesterday)
  • Hydrate (I drank way more coffee than water yesterday)
  • Put away laundry
  • Vacuum, sweep and mop kitchen and living room
  • Mow backyard?
  • Organize downstairs bar*
  • Dinner plan – Corn on the Cob, peas, chicken breast, garlic bread?

*the bar is a holdover from the previous owners. We use it as a tv/entertainment stand.

Wednesday – August 26

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Our bed is too small.

We have a queen sized bed we bought several years ago. It is still pretty comfy, but we bought it when our household consisted of two cats and us.

Surely this can fit 2 adults, 1 kid, and 4 cats…. right?

Our household now consists of 4 cats, us, and Marceline. That’s three more occupants than when we bought our bed. And even though we now have two more cat beds, two additional large cat trees, one more full size bed, and a crib that didn’t exist when we bought our bed, everyone seems to want to join us now.

Last night Marceline went to bed at a normal time, and didn’t even fight as much to fall asleep, but come 11pm she decided she didn’t want to sleep in her crib anymore. She would fall asleep on me in the rocking chair (Ikea chair), but when I tried to put her down in the crib she would wake up and start crying.

After 30 tired minutes of that, I just brought her to bed with us. Where she tossed and turned and spun 360’s and kicked all night long while happily asleep.

Combine that with Sam and a one point three cats in bed with us, and our bed is too damn small.

We actually acknowledged this issue months ago, about the same time we realized our refrigerator was going to need replacing. We decided the fridge was the priority – the freezer section wasn’t keeping ice cream hard, it was like soft serve.

And I shouldn’t say was in the past tense, because like the adults we are, we haven’t bought a new fridge yet either.

I accomplished most things on my list yesterday. Didn’t buy cat litter nor vacuum in the basement. They go on today’s list. I did start a new book – Find Me.

It is the first fiction book I’ve read in a while. I forget how much faster they are to read than non-fiction books. It is good so far, although I’m only a few chapters in (Chapter 5 I think?). It is a suspense book – the lead character’s father was a serial killer who used the lead character to lure his victims when she was a child. Years later and the serial killer dad says he will only lead police to his victim’s bodies if his daughter goes with them. Kept me reading so far.

Today’s list:

  • Keep living room and kitchen clean.
  • Bathroom Laundry (towels, washcloths, mats)
  • Vacuum Basement
  • Buy cat litter and change litter boxes
  • Clip Marceline’s nails
  • Clean Marceline’s room?
  • Run

Tuesday August 25 – Hammock Time

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I accomplished everything on my list yesterday. Feel pretty good about that.

There was a slight snafu in the evening with our pocket door. If you have no clue what a pocket door is, you’re missing out. A pocket door is a door that slides into a wall and is hidden when open. It basically hangs on a track and you push or pull the door along to open and close.

Totally needs to be cleaned now that the track
grease got on my hands and all over the door

Ours is in our kitchen. It is used to block the entry way to our basement. Which now that we have a toddler, we use often to make sure she doesn’t go careening down the stairs. I’m actually not too worried about that, she’s pretty good about stairs right now, but we do keep our cat food dishes at the top of the stairs, and Marceline has a healthy interest in cat food.

So yesterday after grocery shopping, I left a bag of dry goods at the top of the stairs so I could bring them down into our pantry the next time I went downstairs. Towards the evening, one of our cats (Clue) was eating some food (I think…) and backed into the bag causing the groceries to tumble down the stairs scaring the cat. Clue jumped up in the air and banged into the pocket door knocking it off the track and wedging it tight in its door frame, leaving us with half an opening to walk through to get to the basement.

It took longer than I hoped to fix. I couldn’t get to the door without Marceline being interested, so I waited until she was asleep. Somewhere between the door being knocked off the track and Marceline finally being put to sleep a cat vomited in front of the pocket door – I guess they were as annoyed by the half opening as I was – and I totally stepped in it.

I couldn’t pop the door back on track. It was wedged in tight. I tried using a screw driver as leverage, didn’t work. I couldn’t move the door at all, it was stuck tight. I thought I was going to have to take the track down to fix it. After fifteen minutes of staring at the door and futile attempts to fix it, I decided to try the old ‘wiggle push pull’ technique.

I pulled on the door while wiggling it up and down and it moved slightly. I pushed the door while wiggling it up and door and it moved some more. About 30 seconds of that and the pocket door had moved enough to give me space to pull it down off the track, realign it completely and put it back on the track.

Felt accomplished after that.

Oh…. and I got a compliment on my hammock yesterday. I put it up in our front yard to lay in as Marceline plays. A lady walking her dog adn pushing a stroller said it looked ridiculously comfortable.

It has a nice view of the large tree its attached to when you stare up.

Todays ToDo:

  • Clean kitchen and living room (Kitchen floor is sticky?)
  • Put away laundry
  • TVP Tacos for dinner
  • Buy Cat Litter
  • Start a new book ( I tried to start a biography of Grant, but it starts in the middle of the civil war and the writing style isn’t for me)
  • Vacuum the basement carpet

Monday – August 24

meisajDaily Life

So I have been wondering what to do with my website.

Sam and I had agreed a while ago that we didn’t want to post a lot of pictures of Marceline online, whether on my website, or social media or whatever. So here and there some Marceline pictures are fine, but regularly, probably not.

So today.

Things to be happy about:

  1. Finished a book for August. Yesterday I finished A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived.

    Basically it is a look at human history through genes. My favorite part of it was when he dove into the definition of species, in that we are Homo Sapiens – Sapien being our species. Species being defined as the largest group of organisms in which two offspring can interbreed.

    For example, a lion and a tiger can breed to produce a liger, but two ligers can’t produce offspring. So ligers are not a species of animal. Two lions can breed and produce lions who can breed with other lions. Thus lions are a species.

    Species are also different than breeds. There are many breeds of household cats, but they all fall under Felis Catus – Felis being the genus and Catus being the species. Along the same lines, Neanderthals can be considered not a separate species, rather a subspecies of homo sapiens. Everyone alive carries some neanderthal DNA (between 1 and 4%), which means neanderthals and ancient homo sapiens interbred, and those offspring are our ancestors. So cool, neanderthals are homo sapiens.

    It’s a lot more complex than that. There is debate on the classification of neanderthals, but under the generally accepted definition of species, they are the subset of homo sapiens.

  2. I’ve been running more over the last five months and only have minor injuries (sore hip that I stretch, knee pain that has largely subsided).

  3. I slept…. ok last night. Marceline woke up uncosolable at 2am last night and ended up sleeping in our bed (I spent 40 minutes trying to get her back to sleep before giving up and bringing her into our bed). But from 10pm until 2 am I slept great! And from 2am until 6:30 I slept ok (Marceline moves and kicks a lot in her sleep). At least woke up feeling a little rested.

Today’s ToDo list –

  • Bath for Marceline
  • Clean cat litter boxes (its been two days and our cats poop a lot)
  • Clean Kitchen and Living Room (this is daily)
  • Clean Bathroom
  • Go to park with Marceline
  • Grocery shopping
  • Run this evening

Representative Anthony Gonzalez

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Sam and I talk about what is happening in our country all the time. We talk about daily news, national and local events, our horrible president who doesn’t seem to have a good grasp on either, and our congressmen who represent us.

Representative Anthony Gonzalez, our representative in the House, has not spoken, tweeted or given any other indication he even knows about the protests that are going on in our country.

I know I live in a heavily gerrymandered district. I wrote about that in the past. And despite Ohio passing a redistricting measure to fight gerrymandering 2018 – Republican’s petitioned the Supreme Court to ensure any redistricting wouldn’t take effect until 2022 – after census results are released.

My reading of it is “You guys (republican’s in Ohio) created this map to unfairly advantage yourselves in elections for the state and federal levels, and voters agree so much that it is an issue that they voted to take those decisions out of your hands for good – but we’ll (the conservative justices on the Supreme Court) let that slide for another four years because we don’t want to intervene.”

What the conservative court justices actually said is that they aren’t responsible for making sure states draw fair districts. “And none provides a solid grounding for judges to take the extraordinary step of reallocating power and influence between political parties.”

Basically – states made this mess with gerrymandering – they need to fix it. The issue being that technology and data collection has only gotten the point where gerrymandering can be super effectively recently. But the courts don’t want to listen to that argument.

Regardless – my Representative in the House is basically ignoring the issues that are facing our nation now. He is burying his head in the sand and not saying anything about race, police abuses of power, presidential abuses of power (and seriously – how is gassing and shooting peaceful protestors in front of the White House for a photo op not an abuse of power).

And if you don’t think it was a photo op, just listen to the White House press secretary try to compare it to Churchill walking through London after WWII bombings. So American Citizens protesting the death of an American Citizen at the hands of police, representative of systematic injustices, is the same as a foreign country threatening the very existence of your country. That should tell you how Trump views the protests.

Of course anyone who has followed Trump in the media for years would probably know that this is the par-for-the-course. This is the man who said this about Tiananmen Square:

When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the world

The Playboy Interview with Donald Trump

Anyways, I digress. My e-mails and phone calls to Gonzalez have gone unanswered. His twitter feed shows that he celebrated the space launch and nothing since. So in the 6 days since the space launch – 6 huge days of protests, lock downs, curfews, rioting, presidential power abuses, violence against media, violence against foreign media, and violence against peaceful protestors has been ignored by my representative.

It probably won’t hurt him either, because our district is so gerrymandered. But it’s a disgrace that to our district that the obligatory “What happened to George Floyd should never happen in America” didn’t even happen. But he probably feels like he doesn’t need to, we are a 93% white district.

I’ll keep leaving him 2 or three messages a month, which will probably continue to get ignored.

Senator Sherrod Brown has come out pretty forcefully against how Trump has handled this current moment in time. And has an interesting idea of declaring race a ‘public health emergency’ that would require the disparities in mortality among races in America to be looked at. He conisders it an amplified issue, particularly with how Covid-19 is hitting minorities the hardest.

At the very least Senator Rob Portman gave what can only be called an unenthusiastic and monotone speech on the floor of Congress that things must change. Then again, this is Senator Rob “I’m late for lunch” Portman when it comes to Trump’s removal of peaceful protestors so he could have his photo op.

But Representative Anthony Gonzalez, from Ohio-16, can’t be bothered.