Rain Makes Drivers Crazy in LA

Cannot Resist posting an instant message conversation from this morning. I'm M.

. . . . . . . . . . .

09:02:00: M:   Did you get lots of rain?

09:02:19: R:   Was crazy.  

09:02:26: M:   Ooh, sorry!
09:02:38: M:   I kinda lucked out, not too many dumb folks on my roads.

09:03:34: R:   Took the canyon. Parked on Sierra Hwy, guys in the car in front of me got in a fight amongst themselves.
09:03:46: R:   that spilled out onto the street, and then got back in....

09:03:49: M:   In the car?
09:03:51: M:   Good lord!

09:03:58: R:   was entertaining.

09:03:59: M:   That's, um, awesome.

09:04:32: R:   in a lock the doors, get the cell phone ready to record, plan an escape sort of entertaining way...

09:04:44: M:   Crap. You're right.....
09:04:49: M:   to be prepared in that fashion.
09:04:58: M:   Glad you're good.  :-)

09:05:56: R:   Completely parked in.  If they had attacked me, I would have sat there unless they actually broke a window.  Then I would have pinned them against another car.

09:06:12: M:   I believe it.
09:06:23: M:   But they got back into their own car after a while?
09:06:27: M:   Or did one guy take off?

09:07:03: R:   Driver and passenger swapped seats. Former driver spent some time beating on the guy in the back seat before getting in.

09:07:24: M:   speechless.
09:07:55: M:   That is just about as crazy a story as when your engine caught fire.

09:08:08: R:   Yes.

White Noise

The hotel room was entirely too quiet; no background noise, nothing but my own lumpy heartbeat in my ear canals, and the window heater/cooler lacked a fan-only option.

Inspiration: they must make a white noise app, right? Indeed, there are several free varieties, and as soon as I get it running, I wonder how it is that I've ever slept in hotels before without it.

Sweetie has tv quietly on, for his own background falling asleep noise, but unfortunately, the talking he finds relaxing (cable news) drills incessantly into my brain, preventing my drifting into sleep.

Brilliant solution: balance my phone on the side of my head, placing the white noise directly between me and the tv bloviation!

I drift off, with a smile on my face, deeply relaxing into this perfect sleep aid invention...

...until the very moment that someone updates their Facebook status, causing a vibration notice to vibrate directly into my skull, tazing me back to consciousness and raisng me several inches off the bed.

Good things

Cafeteria has pieces of fried flour tortilla at the salad bar today. I take some for me, Buddy gets some too.

After lunch, as he's closing up his styrofoam container (ooh, our company is Green alright, sigh), I notice there are five or so pieces still inside.

"You're not going to eat those?" I ask, my hand already moving across the table towards the container while making an involuntary grasping motion.

He silently re-opens the container, and I make sure they don't go to waste.

"Fried Carbs," I say. "Dude, what could be better, I'm asking you."

We take a few steps, and I pop the last one in my mouth and begin considering whether to wipe the remaining oil on my pants or what.

It hits me. "Fried Carbs with Sugar."

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

{grins}

Nephews, man.

My 8 month old nephew is going through a "clingy phase" it seems -- I asked Nani last week "How's Santi?" and she laughed and said, "attached to my body." He can't quite crawl yet, but he's SO on the verge. I spent a couple of hours with him last week, trying to encourage him to play on the floor, and he just wasn't having it -- all he wanted was to be held by an adult (standing up, no less!), with his arms around their neck. My gut instinct was to push him on this, because it felt like "giving in" to pick him up. Eventually, we ended up with a sort of compromise, with Santi sitting on the floor, playing with a noisy toy (to distract his attention), and me lying on my side with my head in my hand, right next to him, so that every couple of minutes, when he'd start to whine and reach for me to pick him up, I could put my free arm around him, and say (right into his ear) "do you want a HUG? How about a nice HUG?" and he accepted that amount of contact / reassurance (whatever), and would go back to playing with the ball for another couple of minutes, before the next "Pick me up / okay, fine, I'll make due with your hugging thing" interaction.

So that was last Monday evening. Then yesterday afternoon, we stopped by for a short visit, and when Nani brought Santi down from a nap, he looked at us, and I chose that moment to go "Boo!" (the way one sometimes does with babies), and he got this Shocked look on his face and burst into tears.

Rob turned and looked at me with amusement.

I've, uh, never had the experience before of seeing a baby burst into tears when they recognize my face. In my own defense, I said, "Geeze, I didn't think babies understood the *concept* of Boo!" Or was he just sleepy / cranky, or did he actually remember the stress experience of hanging out with me the week before...

Kids, man. Or maybe, more specifically, other people's kids, man.

;-)