A List

• First, something that's been bothering me:  In a recent post, I stated that tea is nasty.  And I do think some forms of tea are nasty:  unsweetened iced tea, regular black tea, just about any type of tea that tastes like actual tea leaves and hasn't been otherwise flavored.  However.  I drink tea most nights when it's cold outside, but it's this stuff:

Does herbal tea even count?  Are there bona fide tea leaves in herbal tea?  These are the questions that burn through my brain.  I mostly just drink it because it's warming and smells amazing (I spend more time with my face above the mug vigorously inhaling than I do actually drinking) and, with a tiny drizzle of honey, tastes like a treat- a caffeine-free, sugar-free (well, without the honey), everything-free treat.

I feel so much better.  My conscience is once again light as a feather.

• A friend generously gave us a sack of hand-me-down costumes at church last week.

Caedmon has worn that muscle-bound suit for five straight days now.  On Wednesday he ran into the library, tore his coat off, then announced to everyone who was surely just waiting for him to arrive, "IT'S JUST A COSTUME.  These aren't my real muscles.  But I am really Batman."  We went to go have lunch with Adelaide at school Thursday, and he wore the suit "so I can show all the lunch people, if I have time."  This entire post is brought to you courtesy of my procrastination, because that kid needs a bath but I don't yet feel up to wrestling him out of that padded costume he's wearing even now.  Caedmon is very wriggly.

More scenes from his muscle-bound week:

Batman reading about himself with his Daddy, and below, playing Don't Lose Your Head!  

In truth the above photo was a happy accident of perspective; Caedmon was a good three feet away from that sword and this photo catches him mid-stride as he runs through the house and past the sword, gasping for breath.  Derek was... being an over-sized boy playing with a sword, I guess.  Or a fun dad.  Or both.

• I got the best birthday present a couple weeks ago:

My dad got me an Amazon gift card for my birthday back in early December.  Now, I don't know if you know this, but there's a lot of stuff to choose from on Amazon.  It can be the tiniest bit overwhelming.  So I've spent the past month thinking and thinking and then thinking some more, before I finally found it.  A library embosser.

This is a fantastic gift idea for the bookworm in your life.  It can be surprisingly hard to buy an actual book for such people, as they go through them so fast and people's tastes vary so much, but a library embosser allows them to mark their own literary territory, so to speak, so they (hopefully) get all those books they tend to loan out to friends back someday.  Plus it looks pretty dang snazzy for only $20.

The end.

List

• Today has been a tired kind of day because last night was a rough night, Atticus-wise.  I made it through the morning, but when I really started dragging about an hour ago, I decided a cup of coffee should do the trick.  Plugged the coffee maker in, paced for a minute, did some high-knees running around the house (to wake myself up and because I can), then wondered why I hadn't heard any coffee gurgling its way into the pot yet.  As it turns out, you need to add water, a coffee filter, and coffee grounds to the coffee maker, not to mention turning it on, before it will perform its magic.  It took a full ten seconds of me staring stupidly at the empty coffee pot before I figured this out.  

• I've been meaning to write a "Books" post for a couple months now, but every time I've sat down to write one, I've thought Oh, but wait, I wanted to tell everyone about This book and That book and they're next on my reading list.  I'll wait just another week, then write the post so I can include them.  I have done this at least five times now.  It is finally occurring to me that there will always be another book I want everyone to know about and read rightthissecond, as my To Read list is never-ending.  I'm going to try and start the "Books" post tomorrow, but looking back over my Goodreads account and trying to pick which ones to review is a teensy bit excruciating; as such, I may end up doing a few book posts in a row.  Or I may get busy and forget about the whole thing until July.  Isn't this blog fun?

• Caedmon and I went to our local library yesterday morning.  At one point the lovely lady that leads story time said, "Wait... wait a minute.  Caedmon, are your pants on backward?"  Caedmon blithely replied, "Oh, yeah."  She looked at me, and I was forced to admit that yes, I knew his pants were on backward.  I just didn't care.  Not Caring is something I've become excellent at doing, particularly when it comes to backwards pants, backwards underwear (this looks so, so painful but Caedmon continually insists on wearing them that way), backwards shirts, wearing his sister's socks, etc, etc.  I'm so proficient at Not Caring I could put it on my resume, although for what job I have no idea.  Thankfully this library lady knows us well and is regularly confronted with the eccentricities unique to mothers of young children.  She laughed, and that was all.  I suppose it didn't seem all that strange, given that it was from the same child who, depending on the day, insists on being called Batman, Superman, the Head, and, rarely, Caedmon.  The library staff are always very good sports about it and ask as soon as he walks in what his name is that day.  Rolling with the name changes is one of many things they are very, very good at (although "the Head" threw us all a bit.  I still don't really know what that's supposed to mean).  

• Caedmon doesn't use the contraction "won't," instead, he uses "willn't," which I realize isn't a real word, but if you give it (too much) thought, you'll realize "willn't" as a contraction makes more sense for "will not" than "won't" does, anyway.  I may just start using it myself.  It would be a fun social experiment to see how many people I could convince that "willn't" is actually the proper contraction for "will not."  Kind of like the time Derek told a coworker at ESPN that the correct pronunciation of "Wichita" was "Wih-Ih-Ah."  The guy believed Derek, and went on to pronounce it that way.  Hilarity ensued.  For Derek, anyway.

Old-Fashioned, Continued

A couple years ago, Derek and I spent an eventful night battling bats.  The next morning, we woke up tired but victorious. 

As I was helping my daughter get dressed for the day, she told me about a dream she'd had the night before, about a bird that was flying around her room, then came down and bit her.  One of the bats had been in her room the night before, so I had a mini- heart attack when she said those words and immediately got online to try and figure out my next course of action. 

Amid all this searching and googling, I discovered many interesting facts about the little brown bat- the type we believe invaded our house.

• They can enter spaces as small as 1/4 inch.
• It flies at speeds of 4-21 miles per hour.
• It can consume up to 600 insects per hour, and feeds 1-5 hours per night. 
• It eats bugs like mosquitos, corn earworm, and other crop pests.

At this point I started to feel bad.  I felt even worse when I learned that the little brown bat is a protected species. 

Then I read (from several reputable sites, not just Wikipedia) that bats are known carriers of rabies, and that their teeth are so small that bite marks are often invisible.  I further learned - from a helpful flow chart provided by the Iowa Department of Public Health- that Adelaide may need a series of vaccines.

Rabies vaccines.

This information assuaged my guilt.

I called the Department of Public Health, and spoke to a delightful women who told me in no uncertain terms that Adelaide would, in fact, need a series of seven shots to make sure she didn't develop rabies.  She then took down my name, address, and phone number so that she could follow up and make sure we had vaccinated our daughter.

We spent the next month taking Adelaide into the doctor's office every few days for her shots.  She began to cry every time she found out we were driving in to Ames:  "I don't want to get rabies shots!" 

I spent the next few days cleaning the small amounts of bat guano I kept finding on the walls.

We had two more bats fly through our house in the next few weeks.  I tried to remind myself they eat lots of icky bugs, but I had trouble mustering any sympathy for them. 

Six weeks after the first incident, we had Batman (okay, a nice man from Complete Wildlife Control) come out and insert one-way valves at various points on the roof of our house.  Bats can exit through these valves but can't get back in. 

Batman informed us that houses made before World War II usually have something like 18 inches of space in between the floors, and the bats were getting in through the entrance points in our roof, traveling down the walls, and getting into this space in between the first and second floors of our house.  They were then entering the living area of the house through my beloved pocket doors. 

I still love our old house, but I now approach the pocket doors with some trepidation any time we go to open or close them.  I don't want to get rabies shots, either.