Monday, October 01, 2007

Heloise Goes to the Airshow

I received a handy household tip from a neighbor - baby powder stops wood floors from creaking. So I liberally sprinkled baby powder on the 2 worst spots upstairs (liberally, as in, I'm still sneezing) and smooshed it around with my hands until it sifted into all the cracks and....well, the floors still creak. I think they might creak a little less, though. My friend didn't tell me what to do with all the baby powder that didn't sift down into the cracks, so I smooshed that all over the rest of the floor in our bedroom (the whole house creaks, really). And there was still baby powder everywhere. Then I swiffered a few times. That looked better, so I quit.

But there was still a coating of baby powder on the floor, as my husband observed when he came home with the kids (yes, that was how I spent the precious hour-and-a-half I had to myself yesterday morning - spreading baby powder on the floor - I mean, when I wasn't folding clean laundry or trying to unearth the counters in the kitchen). He said, and I quote, "What the hell happened up there?" So I explained the de-creaking theory and urged him to go back up and take note of how much more quiet the floor in front of our bathroom sounded. I don't think I convinced him. No one appreciates an innovator.

Anyway, my husband, realizing that maybe I needed to get out of the house for a bit, took me and the 4 younger kids to the Flying Circus Airshow, which was only an hour or so from our house, but was plenty long enough of a ride for me to finally figure out how to cast on and do a spiral increase for the top-down hat I'm trying to knit. (No, you don't wear it top-down - that's how you knit it.) (Though, really, you can wear it any way you want to, I guess.) So I went along with his plan, and I'm glad I did (knitting progress aside). The trip was almost doomed to failure from the start, because I had to print out the knitting instructions for my hat and Larry asked me what I was doing and I said, "I'm printing out directions," and he thought, naturally, that they were driving directions for the trip we were about to embark on; but of course they weren't very helpful for that.

We made it there anyway. The field was full of airplanes from the 30's and early 40's, and we were able to watch them do all sorts of stunts, and there was a parachutist, and a wing-walker (her husband was the pilot - boy, I bet she makes sure never to get on his nerves, huh?), and a sort of pilot-clown, and a drawing for a free ride (didn't win - bummer). David was in heaven. It was all very old-timey, which was good, because I was able to spend 3 hours pretending that it wasn't even 2003 yet and we had never invaded Iraq. We all need a bit of a fantasy life now and then, you know?

We ended up feeding the kids crackerjacks in the car for dinner (it's a wonder someone doesn't arrest us), but they didn't seem to mind. My only regret is that we didn't insist on bringing Anna, so that she could see the joke with the clown and the privy and the airplane flying overhead (hint: the walls of the privy fell down) - she would have hated it. Which would have made it even funnier.

11 comments:

  1. My husband bought a laptop for the sole reason of installing a GPS to it. Then, you can discover brave new worlds while driving with a laptop. That's real safe.

    I still print out the directions, because as my father was so fond of say, "Sweetie, you can't find your way out of a paper bag."

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  2. Considering we just managed to upgrade to a CD player in our van, I think our GPS days are still far in the future. It seems we're always behind on these technological advances. My husband was amazed a couple of summers ago when he saw one of the other dads on the Boy Scout hiking trip receiving e-mail on his cellphone. We can barely place a call on ours.

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  3. How's the hat looking. I'm casting on some mittens and then, I'm going to cast on a sweater. No, really. I have the book Knitting Without Tears and I'm going to see if the title is true.

    I love that you admit to what you feed your kids. You know what my Ana eats every day at school? I mean, and I know about it and yet I do nothing to remedy the situation? She eats a baked potato with NOTHING on it and a white bagel. I can tell that she's finally starting to get scurvy because she come home craving lettuce.

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  4. Rickets - she's going to get rickets, also.

    Let me know how the sweater goes - if it works, I'll try it - I bought Knitting Without Tears also.

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  5. I joke about scurvy and rickets all the time. When I was working three jobs and going to college full time and still poor I was well on my way to both. Now I've mentioned them so often that when my 3yo tries to eat nothing but carbs for dinner his older brother will tell him he's headed for Scurvy and Rickets. Can't you see them in your head? Like the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, they always travel together...

    ps my kids had cereal for dinner last night. I didn't even give them fruit to go with it.

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  6. Baby powder -- go figure.

    I was astonished to learn after all these years on Cape Cod that baby powder works like MAGIC for getting sand off feet. No more of that do I rinse it off or just wait till it dries, which way will cause less whining, guess wrong, endure the whining. Now I keep some baby powder in the beach bag and voila. No more sandy feet in the car.

    But on the floor for a creak... I dunno.

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  7. I got so excited when I read about ridding the wood floors of the creaks with baby powder. I have the loudest floors and there is no sneaking into the kitchen to raid the chocolate stash without getting noticed.

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  8. I only know that baby powder is good for stopping sand from sticking to you at the beach.

    Glad you got to go to the show though...

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  9. Love the printing out directions line! Hope the hat works better than the baby powder. How long does it take for the smell to go away. (I hate baby powder smell...)

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  10. The directions thing--too funny.

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  11. "It's a wonder someone doesn't arrest us," - Funny. Good post.

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