The Rankin Zoo

For the first time ever, we cut Pearl’s hair last night. We didn’t cut very much, just enough to keep it out of her eyes.

Yesterday Coral and I carved our three pumpkins. Coral designed two of them and I designed one. It was fun and I decided to record the whole thing – but instead of an hour of us slaving away over a few pumpkins you get a time-lapse version that’s only… 4.5 minutes long! This is probably worth watching only if you really like jack-o-lanterns.

I never post so here are two quick things.

Pearl has never shown tons of interest in Scout and he hasn’t shown tons of interest in her. Scout didn’t really pay attention to Coral until she learned to walk – now they’re pretty good buddies. Also, because Pearl is allergic, we tend to discourage Pearl and Scout from interacting (which I worry about in terms of Pearl’s long term view of dogs).

Well, the other day Pearl was sitting on the floor in the family room with me. Scout happened to walk by, as he’s been known to do from time to time, but for some reason this time Pearl decided to act. As Scout walked by she launched herself at him, grabbing his back and his collar. This slightly surprised him and he just kept walking, pulling her over onto the floor. I was a bit stunned and slow to react because I had never seen Pearl do anything like this. Anyway, Pearl seemed slightly miffed by the outcome, Scout went in the other room to lie down, and that was it.

The second thing is this – when Coral gets frustrated or disappointed she often yells, “Bam It!” Trust me, she is saying “Bam” even though it sounds like something else. I’ve encouraged her to try “Darn It” or “Dag Nab It” but she says she prefers “Bam It.”

This award was bestowed on us by the City of Falls Church Schools this afternoon. I know you’re wondering how you go about winning this award. It’s simple, on the 4th day (ever) that your kindergardener rides the bus to school make sure you get to the bus stop after it has already gone by in the afternoon for drop-off.

Now you’re probably wondering, “what do they do with the kid when you fail to meet them at the bus stop?” Apparently they keep driving. Then they call your home phone (our cordless phones are dead or missing). Then they call your cell phones (B left hers in the house as she ran out to meet the bus and mine magically stopped working). Then they call your house again. Then they call your emergency contact person (who happened to be at a teacher conference at the school – but had turned her phone off when it rang). In the end, the kid ends up back at the school hanging out in the main office.

I found out about all this when I got an email from our home voicemail (technology is sometimes cool) – it was the school wondering where we were. I couldn’t get in touch with B so I called the school and told them I’d be right over. On my way over was when I discovered my phone wasn’t really working. When I got there Coral was happy to see me and not too upset about the situation (not really upset at all as far as I could tell). The first thing she said when I got there was, “why wasn’t mom waiting for me at the bus stop?”

That was a good question, and I still didn’t know why. Had we agreed that I would pick her up that day and I had forgotten? Was something wrong? As we were getting back into the car I managed to get my phone working and got in touch with B. I guess she had run out just after the bus had passed but forgot her cell phone. She didn’t know if the bus had come yet or not and didn’t want to risk missing it by running in to get her phone so she waited for a while – until it was clear that she must have missed it. By the time I talked to her she was halfway to the school so we met up and I handed over the kid.

So, that was embarrassing.

However, as it turns out, we weren’t the only parents who were AWOL at the bus stops this afternoon. Coral informed me that another girl’s mom wasn’t at another stop. Fortunately for that kid mom the bus driver drove around the block and on the second pass the mom had made it out to the stop.

Coral and I have been reading the Rainbow Magic Books lately. These books feature a pair of little girls helping some fairies in their struggles against Jack Frost and his goblins.

Mr. Frost and his goblins are portrayed as mean and scary – but also as bumbling fools. Coral says she’s scared of them and sometimes asks me to skip over the parts of the books that talk about them. Well, if I did that the stories would make even less sense than they already do. So, and acceptable alternative was for me to replace “Jack Frost” with “Larry Frost” and “goblins” with “little Larries” while I was reading.

This seemed like an odd solution to me but it seemed to work. However, the book frequently had this line, “Jack Frost’s goblins did…” and it was kind of annoying to say, “Larry Frost’s little Larries did…” and so I asked Coral is we could call them something else.

So, now whenever I see the word “goblin” I have to say “ducky” instead.

Strangely, whenever I slip up and just say goblin instead of ducky Coral doesn’t seem to notice or care.