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.