Let me start of by saying, my cousin B is OKAY. Awhile ago, he caught himself on fire. Oh, you know 12 year old boys and fire. B was poking the outdoor bon fire with his foot and the fringe on the bottom of his pants ignited. Being on fire, he started to shake his leg up and down, probably fanning the fire. Grandma was on the other side of the yard and yelled out to him. At that point another adult in the yard saw him and yelled, "STOP, DROP, and ROLL!" B did this and put out the fire. This was after he suffered from a baseball sized third degree burn on his leg. The poor kid. His father is a bit embarrassed about the whole incident... he is the fire marshal for the county.

Several days after B was home and recovering, my aunt learned more. This was not the first time that B caught himself on fire! It was his third! THIRD?! The second time he caught himself on fire it was in the same pants and he did it the same way! Knowing that my cousin is okay, I have several questions on the subject. What is it with boys and fire? How come they just can't resist? And, do they ever grow out of it? You would think that after the first time you caught yourself on fire, you would learn to be more careful. I guess not...

My aunt decided that if there was anyone else that she knows who had also caught themselves on fire, it would be T. Dum. And she would be right! As a kid, T. Dum did the usual dumb boy things in relation to fire. You know, things like lighting matches while hiding under his bed. It was, however, as an adult that led him to catching himself on fire. About six years ago, T. Dum was working as a bartender. While working, he light some shots on fire and slammed his had down on the shot glass to extinguish the flame. Unfortunately, he had liquor on his hand and instead of extinguishing the shot, he caught his hand on fire. Oh, T. Dum. Dumb, dumb boys.

Last night, around 7:30, T. Dum announces that he has to get early the next morning. "I should head to bed. Tomorrow is a really busy day. I have to get up early and work late." Off to bed he tromps.

T. Dum works for an Internet provider. It is not uncommon that he needs to work in the middle of the night. Anytime he needs to launch new sites, test new software, reconfigure sites, etc. it is done late. If something should go wrong during testing, they want to effect the least number of users. There are just less people surfing the Internet at 2:00 AM. For him to go to bed at 7:30 is not too unusual and I thought nothing of it.

This morning however, I woke up with the kids and T. Dum was still in bed. I got the kids and myself ready for the day. I walked the kids to my mom's house, dropped them off, and walked back to the house. Back home I went to gather my lunch and laptop for work. As I was heading out the door for the day, T. Dum was sitting on the couch, drinking coffee and reading his e-mail. Some early morning! I went to bed a good two half hours after him, got up earlier and left the house first.

Currently, it is 7:00 PM the next day. I worked today, met The Moo Girl at the bus stop, went to the grocery store, cooked dinner, fed and put Jellybean to bed and am now typing this blog entry. When I am finished, I am going to read with The Moo Girl and then work from the house. Where is T. Dum? Back in bed to sleep! Some late night! Some long day! What time did he walk in the door? Ohhhh, 5:45 PM. Rough work week?! I would trade in a second.

To be fair, he is getting up at 1:00 am to work. But, I don't need to mention that in my blog, do I?

T. Dum was watching Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations. If you haven't watched the show, Anthony Bourdain is a chef and writer that travels the world trying different foods and cultures. On this past week, Anthony visited Ireland. T. Dum's favorite part of the show was when Anthony was eating breakfast on a train. "And with any Irish breakfast, you need to have orange juice," Anthony states as he open a can of Guinness and pours it into a glass. After No Reservations, T. Dum watched Boondock Saints. All these Irish TV programs lead T. Dum to make the following proclamation: "It's Irish Weekend!"

"What should we eat on Irish weekend?" T. Dum asks. Together, T. Dum and I made plans, discuss potatoes, mutton, corn beef, all other tradition Irish cuisine. "This is going to be great."

The next day, T. Dum heads to the store and purchases the following items for Irish weekend:

Is it just me, or do you see a problem with our Irish weekend? He would have probably had more luck if he had not chosen Uwajimaya for his shopping needs.

Not to worry, although not particularly Irish, the live crawdads were quite a hit.

The Moo Girl got out some of her toys and befriended the slimy creatures.

And, then she made a crawdad army...

Complete with lychee hats...

T. Dum states that no Irish meal is complete without octopus, green tea, and seaweed candy! I can't wait for Russian weekend. I wonder if we will eat tacos.

Before starting my story, I have another weird fact about me to add to the list. I keep the clothes in closet extra organized. First, I separate my clothes from T. Dum's. Second, I hang the clothes by type: pants, skirts, shirts, dresses. Next, I hang clothes together by color. I try to fade the colors from one to the next. From white, then beige, next brown. Finally, I hang the remaining colors from colder weather to warmer weather. Button up/Zip up shirts, then sweaters, next long sleeve shirts, short sleeve shirts, and finally tank tops. I have thought about changing my system. Go wild! Hang clothes from most commonly worn to clothes only wear on occasion. I just can't... A little obsessive? Probably.

That being said, now that it is winter time again, T. Dum has been looking for his snow pants. We had a great snow storm, there is snow in the mountains, it is totally snow pant season! Unfortunately for T. Dum, he has not been able to find his snow pants. "I have looked everywhere!" he tells me. No snow pants to be found. Oh, what great sadness! For weeks, he has been on the lookout for his pants, secretly (or not so secretly) he believes that I am the reason that his pants are missing.

On Monday, he finally found his pants! He was very excited. The pants were hanging in the back of the closet with other items that are not worn very often. This is the section of the closet that holds Halloween costumes, summer wear (during the winter), holiday formal wear, and other special occasion outfits. During the spring thaw last year, the pants were moved to this section of the closet since the would not be needed for awhile. The chances are, I made the move to make more room in the pants section for summer wear. Having found them, T. Dum is ready to place blame on their disappearance and I am the perfect candidate... and I am having none of it! Here is a sample of our conversation:

"I found my snow pants," he leads.

"Oh good! Where were they?" I ask.

"In the back of the closet," he tells me jarringly, "Wonder how they got there, Miii-cchele."

"Oh, the back of the closet," I state casually, "I thought that you looked for them in the closet."

"I did!" he tells me, "I looked everywhere for them!"

"Everywhere, except the closet," I state, "You didn't look very hard for them if they were in the closet."

"But they were in the back of the closet!" he exclaims.

"What? They were in the closet? That would be a logical place to find them!" I observe.

Grasping at straws, T. Dum tells me, "Well, the back of the closet is not a logical place for them to be!"

We got no where. He is not very good at finding lost items. In the past, we had this conversation:

Michele, where are my shoes?

They are in the bedroom, near the foot of the bed, on your side.

No, I don't see them.

*sigh, get up from project* Yes they are! They are right where I told you they were!

Oh, I didn't recognize them because they are upside down.

You have got to be kidding me!

To return to my previous snow pant conversation, I add, "Your search for your snow pants sounds about as thorough as your search for your shoes."

"How am I supposed to recognize my shoes when they are upside down?" He asks.

T. Dum likes to take pictures of his car. We have picture after picture after picture of cars. Before we got a digital camera, he would take pictures with our camera and then I would go get the film developed. *groan* Double prints of nothing but the cars! That was money well spent! NOT! What a waste... One year for Christmas, I put together an entire photo album of car pictures and gave T. Dum the album as a present. Best Christmas ever. T. Dum still takes out the photo album to show friends all his great pictures.

Thank God that we now have a digital camera. Now, when I download pictures from the camera, I just sort through the car pictures and e-mail them to T. Dum. I no longer have to pay for all those pictures.

I went through the pictures on my hard drive to find a sample of car pictures that I have not yet deleted. After compiling a bunch of photos, I asked T. Dum to explain all the pictures. After telling me that he could look at these pictures all day, he made the following comments:

The Moo Girl on top of the Jeep	The Moo Girl in front of the Jeep	The Jeep by the side of the house	Top of the jeep, taken from our porch
The Jeep in the creek	The Jeep coming down the hill	Jeep on the side of house, at another angle	The back of the Jeep
The front of the Jeep	What the Jeep would look like as a truck	The Jeep in the snow	Jeep in really deep snow
The Jeep climbing a bolder in Moab	The Jeep in mud up to door	Dry, muddy Jeep	The front of the dry, muddy jeep
The Jeep at the house in Utah	Jeep kind of stuck in a cravat	Maneuvering through the tight walls of a creek	The Jeep in the snow in the middle of nowhere
The front of the Jeep, out in the snow in the middle of nowhere	The Jeep at the ocean with surf boards on top	How deep the snow is that the Jeep just drove through

Over the summer, I bought an oil burner. For months, I had been searching for a potpourri pot or oil burner that I liked and had a horrible time trying to find one that matched the style of my house. I was so excited to find a metal and glass oil burner that I purchased it immediately, along with some nicely scented oil to burner. Oh, how lovely the house smelled...

One summer night, T. Dum was outside enjoying a pleasant summer evening with a couple friends. Unfortunately, "pleasant, summer nights" when you live on a lake equates to mosquitos. As citronella torches don't work and mosquito coils make T. Dum sick, he was on quest was on to find a mosquito repellent and my new oil burner was right in his path.

First step, oil burner. Next, oil... but the lovely scented oil I purchased is not desired in this sort of situation, so he setteled on olive oil. Third, a mosquito repellant. What is we have around the house that smells unpleasant? Hmm... I know, garlic! It works for vampires, so why wouldn't it work for mosquitoes? Sounds logical, right? So, olive oil and minced garlic into the oil burner. Last step, fire!

T. Dum light the tea light and starts up his new mosquito repellant. After a couple minutes, the mosquito repellant was not putting off enough scent. T. Dum decided that the oil was not getting enough heat, so he should raise the tea light up closer to the oil. Using The Moo Girl's magnifying glass and an additional tea candle, he props up the candle higher under the oil burner. He felt that the flames of the tea light should really be kissing the oil burner. Can you see the disaster? Yup. He caught the oil burner on fire. There were little flames in oil burner and and pouring over the edge of the glass. Panic!

It is pretty easy to come up with a solution when you analyze the situation from afar. But, when you actually, say, catch something on fire, logic can fly out the window. Pouring cold water onto an oil burner that is on fire might not be the best decision. The cold caused the oil burner to burst into a million pieces and the water caused the flames to spread all over the patio table. Several more cups of water later, the fire was out. The Moo Girl's magnifying glass, melted. Thankfully the patio tabletop is glass, so no harm was done to the table, but my poor, cute oil burner. *sob*

I don't know if it is men in general or just my husband, but I often hear his ideas about how I should conserve:

1. The lights in the living room
   In our living room, we have a single central light and several small can lights. When we replaced the central light in the living room, we used a bulb that had too low of a wattage. The light that the our cental light puts of is dreary and yet this is the light that T. Dum uses. When I use the can lights, he walks into the room, turns off the light and turns on the central light. "It helps to save electricity." Maybe, but is just so depressing! And, what does it really save over the course of a month? $1.50?
   
2. Air Conditioning
   "You know, the air conditioning in the car uses the same amount of gas no matter how high the air conditioner is set. Low, high, slightly cold, freezing cold, it doesn't matter." So, am I supposed to turn the air conditioner on the highest, coldest setting until the car is super cold, turn off the air conditioner until the car heats up, and then turn the air conditioning on again?
   
3. Windshield Wipers
   T. Dum recently put RainX on my windshield. It is wonderful to have this treatment on the windshield living in Washington and having the occasional rain. The RainX makes it so that the rain slides off the windshield allowing me to see better as I drive. Unfortunately, now that RainX is on the windshield I am not allowed to use my windshield wipers unless it is really necessary. "The windshield wipers scrap the RainX off the windshield." Oh brother.

I don't want to conserve! I want to put my air conditioner on medium as I drive my car. I want to use my windshield wipers however I see fit. And, I want to light up the living room so that I can actually see! Down with strange conservation methods! Up with the over use of windshield wipers!

And the list of obsessions continue...

The Robin
Deer
Our mailbox
And finally introducing: Moles!

The other night, T. Dum was outside fiddling in the yard after work. I asked him what he would like for dinner.

"I was thinking that we could barbeque the tenderloin that is in the fridge, but then I saw a mole hole and got distracted. I don't think that we will have time to cook it tonight," he replies.

That sounds about right...

T. Dum loves working in our yard. We first build our house (maybe 4 years ago), the landscaping was considered "native". By "native", I mean that the lot was covered in trees, underbrush, and whatever junk people threw out of their cars when they passed by the lot. Our yard has been a work in progress for several years. Two years ago, we cleared out some trees, last year we put in a lawn, and this year we have been adding border and a hedge. During the summer months, T. Dum spends most of his time outside working in our yard. The landscaping that he has been working on is a point of pride with him. And then we got a mole...

The agony he feels when he walks outside in his freshly weeded, raked, landscaped yard to see a big mole hole right in the middle. This horrible, terrible, burrowing animal has quickly been ruining his yard! It has been a traumatic summer for him.

T. Dum is a man that acts tough, but is really a softy on the inside. Although a great shot with his BB gun, he has never been able to hit The Robin that tortured him last year. He scowls, he looks mean, and he talks tough to the wildlife that torments his life, but he can’t actually cause it any harm.

Last year, T. Dum went fishing with his step father, Grandpa Ohhs. In the past, when I have been fishing with T. Dum, I am the one that needs to put the worm on the hook and remove the fish from the line. Both fish and worm are slimy and he can't bear to actually touch them. However, he still wants to appear tough in front of others, so he will say, "Can you help me with this worm while I grab this something or another." Pretty tricky… Grandpa Ohhs is from Alabama. He is a welder in Alaska and a hard worker. In reality, I don't think that he is that much bigger than T. Dum, but he can carry himself in such a way that he seems like his seven feet tall. He is a Paul Bunion, tough, strong, large. As he, T. Dum, and T. Dum’s brother-in-law are all out fishing, T. Dum catches a fish. He pulls the fish out of the water and starts to attempt to pass off, in his casual way, to another for removal. Grandpa Ohhs takes one look and him and tells him, in his deep Southern drawl that he better learn to take a fish off a hook. Oh, the poor (and completely slimy) fish! T. Dum, cowering on the inside, bucks up and starts to remove the fish. Blood oozes out of the fishes mouth down his hands. Blood, only making the process more horrific! But, he can't lose face in front of Grandpa Ohhs! He finally manages to remove the now mangled fish and is totally traumatized from the experience. No more animal torture for T. Dum!

As a man who has a mission (rid the yard of moles), but unable to cause any harm to the animals, T. Dum is forced to look to alternative methods. He is unable to the store a purchase a mole trap or mole killer. To make matters worst, his obsession is directly related to the problem at hand. Research how to rid the yard of moles safely? That would take time away from digging up the yard himself and talking mean to the vermin. He has come up with several solutions on his own:

	The Water Method T. Dum’s first and primary method to rid the yard of moles, water. Flood the mole hole with water and this should destroy the moles home, forcing him to move somewhere else! If it works on Looney Tones, then it should work in real life! He has spent hours outside filling up any new holes with water. Sometimes, he likes to dig down into the hole a bit before adding the water, but the principal has remained the same.
	Anti-Mole Noises T. Dum and The Moo Girl were at the hardware store when The Mole Girl spots a Mole detracting device. The device emits a high pitched noise that is supposed to drive the moles crazy, forcing them to move away from the sound. This has been installed in the yard. I can hear the device from the deck and we have not had any new holes right next to the device. However, underground it appears to have a rather small range, say five feet or so... Sidenote: T. Dum felt that this device would be perfect to my desire to have this baby! "It works on burrowing animals," he reads.
	The Moo Girl’s Mole Trap The Moo Girl has been helping her dad rid the yard of moles. When she spies a mole hole, her strategy is simple. She gets the shovel and digs down into the hole a tad and places a large rock inside the hole. She then covers the hole and the rock back up with dirt. Her theory is that when the mole is running around in its mole tunnels, it will run into the rock and bonk its head. To me, that sounds just as likely to rid the yard of moles as any of T. Dum's plans.
	Predatory Urine I did some quick research on the internet to find out how to rid the yard of moles. One suggestion on a website was predatory urine. You can purchase predatory urine (such as bobcat, the natural enemy to a mole) and sprinkle this urine around the yard. The mole is supposed to fear the smell of the urine and move away. When I suggested that T. Dum needed some predatory urine, he told me that he has already been working on that! His predatory urine has been all over the edges of the yard! Great...

The mole is still at large in the yard and all his efforts have not yet made a difference. Just like The Robin, I am sure that the mole will figure out who the boss of the yard is soon. When he figures it out, he will be forced to move onto another yard as it will just be too scary for him in our yard... Either that or winter will hit, the mole will hibernate and T. Dum will return to the house.

T. Dum can't wink. I didn't realized, until I meet him, that winking could be considered a skill. For the last several years, I have wondered if The Moo Girl has the same impairments. She certainly is unable to wink at this point, but I don't know if it is something that she will learn with time, like snapping her fingers and whistling (both of which she has been able to do for several years). Here is a picture of the two of the attempting to wink. Notice the concentration on their faces…

Top Ten Rules of Gift Giving for Men

written by Men*

as dictated by women

1. It can be Flowers, but they can’t have roots
2. It can be jewelry, but not the kind that comes out of a vending machine
3. It can't plug into the wall
4. No IOU's unless they are for backrubs and massages that don't lead anywhere
5. It can be perfume, but it can’t come from the Drug Store
6. It can be Lingerie, but not the kind you want
7. Never, ever give the gift of an oil change. It’s just a bad idea
8. There is nothing for her at Home Depot
9. It can be Chocolates, but not the kind that you like
10. It can’t be paint

*This list was compiled by my husband and my uncle (the former paint giver)