Giving the Cat a 'Shiny Coat' and a Visit to the ER...

Today is a 'Two-Fer', because I haven't posted in a while. This may lead some to think that life in the Solaas house has been pretty normal, but that is most definitely NOT the case.

Several weeks ago, NBC put on a Family Friendly show called 'Secrets of the Mountain'. The American Family Association sent me a personal email letting me know that this was a good show to watch.



I watched the trailer and was quite excited about this movie. So I called home as I was getting ready to leave, and talked to my 11 year-old daughter. I told her I wanted to watch this movie, and I wanted to DV-R it in case I missed some of it due to traffic etc.

She told me the DVD Remote was missing, not unusual in our household (or any other I should imagine). So I sent her searching for the DVD Remote, and informed the family I was on my way home.

Now, before you start asking what watching a movie has to do with a cat's shiny coat, or a visit to the ER, bear with me. Watching a movie isn't hazardous to your health, some experts say.

About the Cat. You should be careful what you say. We mentioned in our 5yo son's hearing that the cat's coat was no longer shiny. Tribble, our 11yo longhair Himalayan Tabby mix was about to shed his winter coat.

So I get a call on my drive home that they are going to have to give Tribble a bath. In a hurry. Seems that our 5yo wandered into the garage and found a can of clear-coat our 14yo son had left lying on the floor of the garage, and SPRAYPAINTED the CAT. Yes, you heard right. Only in the Solaas home.

Gave him a nice shiny coat. A coat of clear-coat. Poor Tribble. If that wasn't enough, he then proceeded to turn Tribble into a leopard by using a dry-erase marker to give him spots.

All of this washed off with no problem. Good thing - cats give themselves baths too, and clearcoat is very poisonous.

So, WHY was the clear-coat lying on the floor of the garage? Well, our 14yo son was working on a car. Here's a picture of him working on it. Very focused. Covered in sawdust, making his Awana Grand Prix car. (Like Pinewood Derby in Cubscouts).

It doesn't look much like a car though - more like an upright piano. Here's a picture of it in the competition. Nice and Shiny. But the paint and clear-coat never got put away. Always put away your tools when you're done. BIG ADHD rule. Otherwise, someone might come along and spraypaint the cat.



On to the E.R...
I'm almost home, about 5 minutes away, when I get another call - they're about to pack our 11yo daughter up and rush her to the ER. Seems she was searching for the remote in the van. Yes, the HOUSE DVD remote. In the van. Don't ask me why. In fact, don't ask her why. She didn't know. It was just someplace else to look.

She got in a hurry and jumped out of the van, slamming the sliding door on her finger. Cut it on both sides. Our 14yo dear son, always helpful, provided the information that they could see the bone in the wound.

I faint at the sight of blood. I'm driving on the highway. Don't tell me you see bone while I'm driving on the highway.

I ask if it's spurting blood, while trying to keep from fainting while driving on the highway. It's not, so I tell them to wait and stop any bleeding like a good boy scout, and I'd be home in just a few minutes to do the driving to the hospital.

The time was 7pm, right when the movie was starting.

I got home and we drove our precious daughter to the LeBonheur Hospital downtown, where they are always nice to kids. It's a kids' hospital. Even their logo has kids on it. Here they all are on a license plate.


Anyway, we get to LeBonheur at 7:30pm and check into the ER. The nurses mention they've seen us there before. Oh, really? We're the Solaases. You should recognize us, we've been here too many times.

Unfortunately, when you've brought your kids to the hospital too many times, they get just a trifle suspicious that perhaps you've been hurting your kids, rather than them hurting themselves.

This is expected, especially when they recognize you but they don't 'know' you yet. Usually (isn't that a scary word when talking about hospitals?) they take us to the left to the Disney rooms over in the 'lacerations' area of E.R., where you are treated to a TV playing the Disney channel, and a sweet lady comes in bringing toys and stuffed animals, and the rooms are painted nice kid-friendly colors, with Disney characters painted on the walls.

This time, a Drill Instructor with a Major Payne haircut came out with a clipboard, and said, in his best Drill Instructor bark, "You will follow me, please."

He led us to the right, through a huge blast door that banged behind us, into the Trauma Center.

There's a reason they call it the Trauma Center. You go through trauma when they take you there.

The room was completely white, with a rollaround gurney pretending to be a hospital bed. No TV, no Disney characters. Just a row of 'Bob the Builder' heads stickered on the window. Nothing to look at or entertain us except the screams.

Next door to us was some poor child someone had beaten in the head. I only know this because I heard the nurses discussing it just outside our room.

They went in to examine the poor child, and she began screaming like she was dying.

No, I'm serious. Like she was dying.

Shortly thereafter, four police officers came running around the corner, holding their nightsticks. I presume they wanted to survey the damage to the child and then go arrest Dad or Mom or whatever monster was responsible for the horrible act.

My poor daughter began laughing nervously, saying "That's comforting."

There was little comforting about the trauma unit. It was all business. The business of saving lives, and my jokes here are not intended to disparage their efficiency in helping kids survive trauma.

We were there for several hours. During which time they dressed our daughter in one of those hospital gowns intended to cover the least amount of body. To stitch up her finger. And, I expect, to check her for bruises and such.

But, we're actually a pretty good family. No bruises, no abuse. Just ADHD kids who get in a hurry.

Then they said they were going to have to look at the wound again, and stitch it up. At which point, Dad had to leave the room and stagger back to the waiting room. As I said, I faint.

We got out of there at 12:30am. Needless to say, we missed the movie. Good thing we got it on DVR so I could watch it the next day. Oh, and the funny thing is, we didn't need the remote to record.

The lesson here in both of these stories, I guess, is two-fold. First, Think before you speak. If I'd known what our son would do if we mentioned the cat's coat wasn't shiny, I'd be cleaning the garage. And if I had just thought about the fact that we didn't have to have the remote, maybe the visit to the ER wouldn't have happened.

Second, and more importantly, God is watching over us. He sent our 20yo into the garage to find out what our 5yo was up to. He preserved our daughter's finger, which is now fully functional, no nerve damage or broken bones or severed muscle. And He's watching over the rest of us too, with eyes of compassion.

Late Night Snack??

This morning, when I came down to fix coffee, There was an empty jar of Peter Pan peanut butter (creamy) on the counter, and this mess in front of it...

My first thought was, which of my four kids got up in the middle of the night, to make themselves a sandwich? And why a fork? a Spoon? A bowl??

So, I hollered up at my oldest dear son, asking him what was up with the PB sandwich late at night?

He really had no clue what it was about, and blamed the 4yo.

Hmmm. I couldn't see the 4yo doing this, and the finger smears through the middle of the bowl didn't look like toddler fingers...

Then I went into the bathroom.

It appears that the peanut-butter culprit also wanted some hand lotion. But why in the world? And with peanut butter all over their hands, too! What in the world?

So, then I looked next to the Lubriderm, and there was peanut butter smeared on the gargantuan Sams bottle of hand sanitizer. Looked like whoever the culprit was, they desperately wanted 'clean hands and a pure heart'.


Next to the hand sanitizer, it appeared the water faucet had been turned on by Peter Pan also, and there was also peanut butter under the tap, dripping down into the sink. Yuch. Peter was desperate to get those hands clean.


So, I started asking questions of the kids. Finally, R, the 11yo daughter, admitted it was her. Apparently, she'd gotten some of this stuff called 'Zing' gum. Here's the packet of it, pulled out of the trash.

She decided that if one stick of gum was yummy, then all 15 sticks of gum would be even more yummy. So, she crammed them all in her mouth, and sat up reading a 'Charlie Bone' novel until 2am, when she started to fall asleep in her gum and in her book too.

She knew it wasn't good to go to sleep with gum in your mouth (A baseball-sized wad is such a choking hazard, you know...) so she pulled it out of her mouth. But gum that's been chewed all day and all night tends to gain in stickiness, or at least, that's some of the 'Zing' in 'Zing'. It turned into a goo on the level of taffy, with an adhesive coefficient of tackiness equal to that of Gorilla Glue.

First it stuck to one hand, then the other, as she attempted to get it off the other hand. One finger after another was imprisoned in the wad of goo, until she had a cats cradle between her hands, like a pink spiderweb.

Eventually she managed to get downstairs, open a jar of peanutbutter, and sacrifice all its contents to remove the glue from her hands, her arms, and her face.

The peanut butter worked, but removing slimy peanutbutter from your body at 2am apparently requires liberal application of Lubriderm, Hand Sanitizer, and Cold Water.

Lucky for the rest of us, chemical reactions involving lanolin, alcohol, and peanut oil do not in fact cause fires or spontaneous explosions.

Or so their packages seem to imply. But I think I'm going to write the manufacturers of 'Zing' and 'Peter Pan', requesting that they please add to their verbage on the package, 'Keep out of reach of Children'.

On a side note, R's late-night foray into cleaning up this sticky situation should have turned into a teaching opportunity, because, just as King David found out, trying to cover up your sin, and deal with it yourself, leaves a much bigger mess than getting help and forgiveness.

R should think about this as she attempts to clean the downstairs bathroom before homeschool starts...

Snowing in September

So I looked out the window yesterday morning, and there's snow on the ground. No. Really. In Memphis, in the summer.

Here's a picture of it. It's all white and stuff.


Ok, so it wasn't all OVER the ground. And it wasn't snow. But it was white.


So, the next think I think is, "Who fed the Webkins to the dog!?" Not that I'm very unhappy about losing one of the ever-present, pesky underfoot stuffed animals coupled with their Crack-addictive website.

Except for the fact that the happy little cuddy creatures are not cheap, and if one is killed, it somehow always gets replaced by at least two more.

And this, of course, is why we have almost a hundred of the crazy little stuffed animals underfoot. No, that's not an exaggeration. Ok, well, maybe it is, but not much of one.

Just, my youngest daughter has enough that when she was forced to sleep downstairs overnight when my oldest daughter had one of her college buddies over to spend the night, she surrounded the couch with THREE half-circles of webkin guards to protect her through the night.

Not that they do much good as guards. Even the Ninja Webkins are polite. The extent of their protective methods would be to launch a mexican jumping bean at you and say "With my bean and my sombrero, my candy is never far away!"

Or possibly, just sit idly by and watch as your house gets robbed, and say, "Atomicolicious!"

Can you tell we have a heavy dose of Webkins addicts in the house? If you are just confused by those statements above, then good. You've managed to avoid the addiction. But if a webkin makes it into your home, don't say I didn't warn you.

Anyway, back to the snow. So, it wasn't really snow, and it wasn't really the guts and entrails of a dismembered Webkin suffering a tragic but not undeserved end.

So what was it? Well, to answer that question, you'd have to take a look at the culprit...

Her name is Maya. She's a bi-eyed half husky, half sneaky little neighbor dog. We're guessing Golden Lab.





If you're wondering what bi-eyed means, check out this picture of her...
Isn't she beautiful? One blue eye, one brown eye; This is her serious look. No, really. She's being quite serious right now... Huskies are serious dogs. Especially when you ask them if they want to go outside and run.





And like all Huskies, she decided that September had started (has something to do with that internal doggy clock. So she picked that day to 'BLOW COAT'.

Now for those of you NOT in the know about this particular habit, let's just say that on two given days out of the year (and you never know when it will be, because the dog always waits until you forget about it) the dog sticks its paw in its mouth, and explodes. Literally.


Pieces everywhere. Don't believe me? Just look at this. No, LOOK AT THIS!



This is a piece of my dog on the lawn. No, I'm sure it's not just hair. There's too much of it. It's a chunk of dog.



Now, after the initial explosion, there are tremors and aftershocks, and the family always takes a hand in assisting in pulling off chunks of dog. See my family. They have all come outside to help. See them helping?





Ok, so they aren't helping. Not much. But momma is about to come outside and assist Maya in her explosion.







Here's a picture of Momma carefully combing chunks of dog off our dog...











Here's a piece of dog on the comb...




And here's the piece slowly floating away... It has it's own shadow. It also has its own gravity well, but that's beside the point. Look at the shadow!! That's a substantial shadow for a chunk of hair.





So, after the ritual disintegration of the dog is over, she has this great big grin on her face. You tell me why, when she's lost half her hair just as Fall is getting started...



Seriously, though, Maya is a snow dog. She's designed to grow a winter coat about now, and the summer coat (which apparently is a bit thick for Memphis summers) has to 'blow away'.

All I've got to say is, 'Better out than in.' We sweep up enough hair to make our OWN dog on the inside of the house, and you just saw how much hair was on the OUTSIDE of the house.

So, what do you do with all that hair in the back yard? Use it to stuff a few Webkins, make some use out of all that stuffing??

Well, my youngest daughter said we should leave it out there so the birds can have something to line their nests.

That's all well and good, but it's fall, and the birds aren't going to be making anymore nests around here.

Have your Cake and Eat it Too!

Hey Sports Fans, I think today's lesson is on Gluttony, Family, and... Birthdays!

Well, so yesterday, June 21st, was my Birthday. As well as Fathers Day. It was a little strange, because I spent 12 hours Saturday driving 2 of my 4 kids to Awana Scholarship Camp (you can call it Honors Camp, but it will ALWAYS be Awana Scholarship Camp to me. :P )

Anyway, after 12 hours of driving I was pretty wiped. Spent Sunday Morning at church working with the Cafe56 5th and 6th grade kids, then stopped by McD's on the way home.



I was wiped from the drive still, and the full meal, so I crashed for several hours.

The family got me up to go out to dinner and shopping for a present for me, since it was Fathers Day and my Birthday.


I was still full from lunch, but we stopped in at Steak and Shake, one of my favorite places to eat. After a meal and a shake, I was just about too stuffed to leave.

Then my wife Becca asked if I wanted to stop by Baskin Robins for a birthday cake, one of those IceCream cakes.


Oh no. I couldn't possibly eat even a wafer-thin mint. I said, "Honey, I don't want a cake. I couldn't eat anything right now. Half the kids are at camp. Can't we do without a cake this year?"

"Fine by me, I guess, but Johnny's not going to let you get away without a cake."

"What's the little man gonna do about it is what I wanna know..." I mean, it wasn't like he could bake a cake.

So, anyway, I brought the family home, and staggered up to the recording studio to work on a song I'd just written, while the family watched some Scooby Doo downstairs.

They called me down about an hour later. It appeared that Johnny had made me a cake, mostly by himself. Here's a picture of it...



Well, ok, after we'd blown the candles out, and started slicing it up. Seems Johnny asked for 2 slices of white bread and a can of frosting, and made a cake all by himself. Mom got out some food coloring and decorated the thing. :-)



And here's a picture of the little guy by his piece. He was quite proud of his work. As well he should be. For a 4yo, he did smashingly.

Guess what, he wrapped me a present too. Here is my 19yo daughter Elizabeth handing it to me.


It was, surprise! A can of Sprite!


All in all, a wonderful day, just wish I hadn't URP eaten quite so much. I'm already fighting the Battle of the Bulge, and not doing so well this skirmish.

But, I gotta say, Johnny's cake was JUST enough, and wasn't bad tasting. We all got a taste, and then it was all gone!

It's got MINERALS on it!!

My little toddler just turned 4, and Grandma was up for his birthday. We had cake and icecream and presents and he had just a wonderful time.

Before the party, I had 'damp-mopped' our Pergo floor, so it shined like the 'Top of the Chrysler Building!'



The day after, we were busy watching one of his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movies he'd gotten, along with the action figures (We HAD to get all 4, or there was going to be a war...)

Well, being breakfast time, we were eating in the living room, when he got excited and his biscuit fell on the floor.

I picked it up and tried to give it to him, but he freaked and shreiked and ran in a circle, yelling that it was dirty.

Well, I looked at it.

Anybody with 3+ kids understands about the '30 second' rule - If it doesn't stay on the ground for 30 seconds it's ok to eat.

But I brushed it off, and handed it over to him saying, it's ok, I brushed it off.

He was just about to take a bite when Grandma said 'Oh, it's fine, birthday boy. It's good for you, it's got minerals on it.'

Aaaaaahhhhh!! He hurled the biscuit from him screaming, It's got Minerals on it! It's got minerals on it!

Good pronunciation, son, for a 4yo!

Now, if you could just understand that minerals aren't 'ants'...

Morning Coffee

Well, I'm definitely a person who has to have my morning coffee to get my day started right. Here's a picture of me with a standard cup of coffee...
Needless to say, I'm not fully functional early in the morning without some of this wonderful drink to wake the gray matter up and start the engines.

I've been doing some research on coffee, actually, for a story I'm writing, and discovered that it's not impossible to grow your own coffee, in your own home, for the purpose of starting your day.


Someday, if the price of coffee becomes ridiculous, I may actually try that, just to see how it's done, and if it's a possibility for those of us with a BLACK thumb. But coffee is a priority, and I have to have it each morning or I start having shakes and the world is just NOT a happy place.

So each morning, in order to greet the day, I have a routine, which includes letting the dog out, starting coffee, feeding the cats, and making a cup of coffee (with plenty of milk and sugar) for my wife and I, and maybe my oldest daughter.

This morning, though, I ran into a bit of a hiccup. As I was scooping sugar out, I noticed there was a small orange triangle sitting on the top of the sugar in the canister. Looked like a playing piece for Trivial Pursuit, so I wondered what the kids had been doing with the game, and why they'd stuck the 'Sports' pie in the sugar bowl.

So, I scooped under it, to pull it out and dump it in the sink. But here's what I found...



Needless to say, My little Toddler had been experimenting with hiding things...

You know, I've heard of orange pekoe tea, but I've never heard of orange crayola coffee.

The Vending Machine

Yet another couch story.

After we got our sectional couch, with heat and massage and a queen sleeper and twin recliners, life was all good. It was nice to sit back in the recliner, relax, and stare at the TV each evening with a nice cup holder on the armrest.

The new sectional had a center section that was a flip-down with cup holders, and controls for the heat and massage, or a center seat. The kids loved to sit on the center seat, since they were mostly too weak to yank the recliners out and pop them open.

If the kids weren't sitting in the center section, one of our two cats (the ones that had shredded the previous two couches) would lay in this center seat, all snug and happy and purring like a buzz saw.

And Daddy NEVER sat in the center seat, because the Daddy belonged in a nice recliner, taking his accustomed throne with his many-buttoned scepter in hand, his goblet-o-tea, and his loving attendants (yeah right).

One day, not many days after the purchase of our wondrous throne of many functions, I came home and saw a strange, thick, squiggly 3-foot length of metal laying on the fireplace.

This metal squiggly item was THICK. It had SUBSTANCE. It was SUBSTANTIAL. It had PURPOSE. But, as most clueless Dads, I had no immediate idea what great PURPOSE the squiggle served.

So I summoned my loyal subjects and polled them one by one.

Daddy: "Have you ever seen this?"

Child#1: "Why no, what is it, Daddy?"

Daddy: "What is this used for?"

Child#2: "I have no idea, Daddy!"

Daddy: "Any idea where this came from?"

Child#3: "No, Daddy. I've never seen it before."

Daddy: "Wife, have you ever seen this before?"

Mommy: "No, honey, but it looks like it must have some PURPOSE."

Yes, it had purpose and function. But it took almost a week to find out what.

One day, I came home, and the CAT was in my SPOT. Yes, my throne. The sacred seat with the remote.

Not wanting a fight with the clawless furball, I decided to be a minister of peace, and I got my goblet-o-tea and took the coveted center seat. And sank to the floor.

After much struggling and quite a few invented words, I managed to get my prodigious self up and out of the hole, and inverted the couch, earning me a hiss and an ugly offended look from the furball, who had not yet forgiven me for the loss of his fingernails.

And then, AHA! There was the PURPOSE for which I'd been searching - under each seat but the center one, was a 3-foot black thick metal rod, clamped and bent into place as a spring to support my prodigious rump.

So I retrieved the rod from its place of honor on the fireplace, and with much grunting, bending, flexing of muscle, sweat, and a few more invented words, I managed to bend this heavy metal rod and place it back where it belonged. With a pair of strong pliers I managed to clamp it back in place.

Leaning over the inverted couch, breathing heavily from the strain and exertion, I assembled my loyal subjects for another gathering in the throne room.

"I found the purpose for the black squiggle. It appears that one of my loyal subjects has been jumping up and down on the couch. Now WHO has been jumping up and down on the couch!?"

It was apparent that NO ONE had been jumping up and down on the couch.

So I told them that SOMEONE was lying, and that no one should jump up and down on the couch.

Everyone assured me that they NEVER would jump up and down on the couch, and then we dismissed.

Two weeks later, I came home and there was the black squiggle on the fireplace, in its place of honor. And not under the center seat.

So I inverted the couch, and with much struggling, sweat, and a few invented words, I replaced the black squiggle, and called another staff meeting.

"Let me tell you something, I thought I made myself clear. NO ONE is to jump up and down on this couch. If I catch you doing it again, I will paddle your bottom. Is that clear?"

"Yes Daddy!" All of them gave me their brightest smiles. Nobody was jumping up and down on the couch. No one was guilty. No fear, no guilt.

Ok, so somebody was good at lying. I shrugged my shoulders, and went to pour myself a glass of tea.

Something made me stop in mid pour. I stepped backwards to look in the living room. Halfway up the steps, I saw my 3 year old son, doing a hand-stand on the balcony rail. He held the position for a moment, flipped over the rail and came flying down onto the center seat.

He sank right to the floor and the black squiggle came flying out from the bottom of the couch, flew across the room and struck the baseboard on the other side, like a vending machine dispensing a coke.

He had the most ecstatic look on his face. Just full of joy.

I stood there with tea in hand, apoplectic. I had just promised to paddle them if they did this, and it wasn't more than 5 minutes later.

It just kept playing through my mind. WHAT was he THINKING?!

I hauled him to his mother, and made her spank him. I was too angry.

All that evening, I just kept replaying it in my mind. The hand-stand, right out of the olympics. the squiggle dispensing from the bottom. His joyous look.

What could have been going through his head?? And what could I do to stop him?

I went to bed thinking about it. And somewhere in the middle of the night, a lightbulb came on over my head.

I got out of bed, grabbed a length of 3/4" plywood, and a drill and some screws. I put the board under the seat, to give support for that seat. (It's still there today)

I put my tools away and went to bed. It really didn't even occur to me to tell anyone what I'd done. I just figured I'd solved the problem and promptly forgot about it.

The very next day, I came home from work, and my 3yo son had an ace bandage around his ankle. And he never jumped on the couch again.

But later I talked to my wife, asking, what could he have been thinking?

She just said, in her matter-of-fact way, "Oh, you told him he couldn't jump up and down on the couch. He wasn't jumping UP, just DOWN."

Go figure...