Tonight at dinner, Leanna had to go turn off a toy that was not previously turned off correctly. She began to interrogate Sarah as to the method used when turning it off. I stopped the coming fight by saying, “It’s ok, Leanna. It’s off now, you fixed it.”
Cooper piped in with 3-year-old wisdom: “No, girls don’t fix. Boys fix things.”
I became immediately useless as a parent and broke down laughing. Christi picked up the slack, however. “Cooper, girls can fix things, too. Mommy fixes things all the time.”
“NO, you don’t fix! Only Pooper and Papa fix!” (No, that’s not a typo, Pooper is Cooper’s nickname for himself).
I can honestly say that I’ve done nothing, said nothing, to introduce or reinforce this idea in my son. I have no idea where he got this idea. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think it was funny, but I don’t think there’s any way to change his mind on the issue for now.
This is very cool. An adapter that would let any gass guzzler use ethanol. I’m normally not a green kind of guy, and they don’t yet make one for BMW (let alone a 20 year old 5er), but if ethanol were readily available near me, I would consider one of these for the Yukon XL.
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Posted in Cars
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Tagged Other
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It’s amazing! It’s beautiful! The restorer of all things odd, automotive, and oddly automotive now has his own website! The Jay Leno “More money than brains” garage is now online at www.jaylenosgarage.com/!
Up until now, you’ve had to visit Popular Mechanics to see/read anything about Jay and his cars, and that was pretty good. But now, you can actually go to his garage and see the cars. Of course, most of his articles from PM are cross posted here as well. You can also see several videos of Jay and his cars. There’s even a forum and Ask Jay section, which I find very cool.
The site just launched recently, so the articles section is the only thing that’s ‘full,’ but this promises to be a haven for all things automotive. Jay isn’t just a good comedian, host, and mechanic, the guy can actually write!
The only thing I would ask is that the site put up an RSS feed for each of the different sections. There isn’t a feed right now, but there should be.
Or, at least that’s the story my wife will tell. I’ll tell you about a three year old’s quick reflexes, and how cool and collected they can be in a stressful situation…
Today was tree-work day. Actually tree work week. But today was the first day, and Cooper helped out, as much as a 3 year old can. He spent most of our time together picking up leaves and sticks and putting them in the truck.
Today, we had two dead trees in the front yard and one in the back yard that likes to hang in front of the Direct TV dish when it rains. Obviously, the third tree was high on my priority list! Cooper ‘helped’ with the two in the front yard by picking up the twigs that broke off as they fell. In the back yard, he was carefully inspecting my sawing technique (Oh, for the love of tools, I need a chainsaw!) and counting my strokes. Well, counting them up to ten–then he’d start over at one.
This tree was probably only 20 feet tall and not very big around. Of course, when Christi tells the story, the tree will be 50 feet tall and probably large enough that you could barely get your arms around it. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good sized tree, but it’s not like it came to the ground with a crashing thump.
When I got about half way through, I took a breather and told Cooper to stand by the swing set. You see, I reasoned that the tree was leaning towards the fence, and the direction I was cutting it would probably send it toppling that direction–away from the swing set, keeping Cooper out of harms way. The tree had other plans. When I had only a quarter of the trunk left to cut through, it started to move–the wrong direction–straight for Cooper. I was really in no position to be able to direct the tree’s fall, since it was still tied to it’s stump.
Cooper saw the tree move. Saw it coming towards him, and said, “Oh.” That’s it. No scream, no yell. Just calmly, “Oh.” And he ran. Normally, Cooper is a very goofy runner (think Phoebe from Friends), but not today. He gracefully put one 15 inch leg in front of the other as quickly as he could toward the fence. And he cleared the area well before the first branch touched the ground. The tree was exactly tall enough that it’s top branches would probably have brushed him if he had not run. Brushed him. This is key.
The tree falling might have given him a scratch. This tree was still alive, and still had leaves. So, the leaves provided a great deal of wind resistance and the tree didn’t so much fall as float to the ground. Well, not really float…it is still a tree.
After, I just couldn’t believe how calm he had been. I looked at him and he said, “Did you cut the tree down?” Always trust a three year old to ask the obvious question. Always trust a tree to fall in a different direction than you think it’s going to. And always trust that your three year old probably has better reflexes than you think.
Posted in Funny
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Tagged Family
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Run on Thu, Sep 09