theparkerfamily.org

  • i do elevators, too

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    I’ve spent the better part of the last two weeks on crown molding in thhe nursery, and just as it’s winding down … I find out have to recarpet the elevator.

    yes, the elevator.  

    shortly after we moved into our building in mount pleasant, I was elected to our unit-owner association’s board.  i wish it had been some Capra-esque moment, but I was the only one at the annual meeting who wasn’t already a board member.

    long story short, our management company misplaced $30,000 in funds … money which we had already spent to replace our 30-year old elevator.  now we are short on funds, don’t have a functioning elevator, and even the hippies in the building are starting to riot.

    last night I discovered that the only thing separating me from a functioning (though still not entirely paid for) elevator was a 55 by 80 inch fire-resistant carpet, required in order for us to pass inspection.  

    not sure why it fell to me (the rest of the board lives two flights of stairs farther up than I) but I decided I couldn’t risk going into november without a functioning elevator.

    the lady sparkler pitched in and called five different carpet vendors, one of which had something suitable that fell off the back of his truck, and would be waiting for me after hours at their family’s Afghan-Pakistani restaraunt in northern Virginia.

    I picked up the rug and a pound of baklava (the lady sparkler dropped ~27 hints about how good the desserts’ reviews were) and settled in for a long evening of carpet installation.

    turns out my carpeting skills gives my talent for breakdancing a real run for their money, but it went down with two tubes of construction adhesive (replaced duct tape as my universal repair tool of choice) which got our elevator inspected, and back in service.

    in the meantime, i’m glad that my life is going to settle down this winter, and become moderately less bizarre.

  • yellow

    [Nursery Paint Color, Washington, DC]

    “Look at the staaaaaars, look how they shiiiine for youuuuu … And everything youuuuu do, and they were allllll yell-o.”

    so … the insanity? it’s setting in. in two more weeks i will be running around with a tie wrapped around my forehead, talking to “Wilson.” yeah.

    so, like … i, well, decided to paiiiiint. and that was cooool. buuut, the color we picked out???? it was like, chickadee. and, i painted the walls with it. which was cool, and all. but it sucked. and was, like, totally pale. and lame.

    and soooo, i, like, painted the walls a different color??? and this one was totally bolder. like *REALLY* yellow. but it was called, like, acorn squash. and the lady sparkler hates squash. but i didn’t want to paint the walls again, so i, like, didn’t tell her. so please don’t tell my wiiife.

    and nowwwwww? i decided to put up, uh, crown molding? and that’s really going to be great. on 80 year old walls. that are not flat at all. or straight. or flush. and i’m pretty sure that this will totally solve my “going mental” thing.

    did i mention i’ve never done it before???? yeahhh. it’s going to be greeeeaaat.

  • emily likes the bedding, too

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  • poppies

    [Baby Bedding, Washington, DC]
    whatever I said about the crib being the hardest decision to make, I lied. it was just the hardest, most *expensive* decision.crib bedding sucks.

    we’ve been all over the map. we looked at cute (insects, butterflies) and bold (letters, primary colors) and girly (toile, nursery rhymes) and natural (rainforests, coral reefs).

    and the worst part? we would decided on each one in turn, only to rollback the decision the following morning. and then, after we had ruled out everything else, we decided on just a solid color … moments before we figured out that solids don’t hide stains very well.

    after about a month, we finally found carousel designs baby bedding which seemed to have a lot of “normal” looking baby bedding. and you could buy whatever they had piece by piece, so no paying $100 for a baby bumper that you didn’t want.

    (speaking of … wow. didn’t realize the crazy wacko emotions that baby bumper use triggers. i will bring up women’s reproductive health at a party before bringing up whether baby bumpers are safe and / or effective.)

    in the end it was a coin flip between two sets we saw from carousel — one with pink paisley and another with red poppies.

    eventually, we chose the latter … mainly because the pink would have seriously driven everything in the room into a level of “pretty, pretty princess” that neither of us were sure we wanted to go. if baby sparklet decides to go down the princess path herself, that’s more than fine … but the paisley option seemed like a shove down the path to big hair and pageant sashes that she might not otherwise take.

    the next controversy is paint color, and i am (obviously) excited to have yet another decision of seemingly little significance suck up a month of our lives.

    when do we get to the part where we don’t have any decisions to make because our child won’t listen to anything we say? i’m so there.

  • and the winners are …

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    today, the lady sparkler and I started spending the $340,552 it’s going to take to raise baby sparklet until she graduates college.

    I feel strangely proud.

    we’ve been futzing around for *months* on the three “big” purchases — the crib, the stroller and the car seat — going baaaack, and forth, and baaaaack, and forth. but today, after nearly two months of researching, six weeks of trips to the suburbs, and three weeks of dithering, we finally pulled the trigger. on something. eventually.

    and the winners are …

    bonavita_peyton_07116_2bonavita peyton classic crib — a lot of decisions about baby sparklet have terrorized us, but none quite like this one. we’re in a small, small space in the city, so wanted to avoid all of the giii-normous “lifestyle” cribs on the showroom floors.

    unfortunately, all anybody sells are giii-normous “lifestyle” cribs.

    occasionally, you would see a couple of normal looking cribs in a store. in the back corner. under a sign that says “you hate your baby if you get one of these.”

    living in the city, the tween edition of baby sparklet is going to need a loft bed, or is going to have about 2 square feet of floor on which to play. getting a lifestyle crib that converts into a twin bed is of no use to us.

    eventually, we found a crib we liked (bonavita peyton) that had a version (classic, not lifestyle) that was just a crib. not a burr grinder. or a lifeboat. just a crib. it seemed very sturdy in the one showroom (out of six) which featured the model that did *not* convert into a dishwasher.

    the issue that sealed the peyton classic for us was that it was made from good, hard wood … where most of the competition had soft finishes, and were seriously scuffed up from people window shopping. (really, if a crib can’t survive life in a showroom, what’s it going to look like after a couple of years of teething?!?)

    41LiILMKDBL._SL500_AA280_city mini stroller — got a super recommendation from a friend on this one (mightybabyboig) as the stroller they wished they had bought back at the very beginning. it’s light, folds up ridiculously small (important for the bus) and has one of the narrower wheelbases (important for navigating the drunks passed out on District sidewalks).

    another crib, the uppababy vista, went deep into our decision making process when it got a strong plug from the baby bargains book (the guardian of my sanity for the last two months) as the best stroller for “hip urban dwellers.” the vista *was* pretty freakin’ cool as a full strollerpalooza system (included with bassinet, raincover, blender, etc.) but was much wider (2″+) than the mini and no where near as compact folded (might need to be strapped to the roof on a city bus).

    so, i’m not sure how the city mini didn’t get the top pick for my demographic (maybe its just a definition thing — i’m pretty sure we aren’t hip) but i guess it’s a little much asking one little book to make EVERY decision for me.

    of course, none of the stroller models we looked at had either (a) air bags or (b) a star wars missile defense shield, so I’m sure we are recklessly sacrificing baby sparklet’s safety every time we think we even think about leaving the house.

    ECPA20090817_0033graco snugride infant car seat — ah, yes. the Honda civic of car seats. the snugride was at the top of every ranking, and the only thing we really did was shop for the color.

    the lady sparkler hinted that having a car seat that matched the stroller would be a good thing, because apparently the two can plug together into some sort of voltron-like super-combo-robot-stroller.

    speaking of … i wonder if they sell flaming sword attachments? if they did, i’m thinking it would capture the “early-pubescent teen daddy” market that seems to be blooming lately. just a thought.

    on the more boring side, the snugride we got appears to have side impact protection … which is great, because I am pretty sure our car (which cost 200x more) does not.

    i take this fact as yet another sign that I hate my unborn child, as we haven’t dropped everything and bought a tan Volvo station wagon … yet.

    but, then again, tan wouldn’t match.

  • nice rack

    photo
    the lady sparkler and I had a very early realization once we got pregnant — that our poor little Jetta was going to have problems coping.

    first, we have the smallest trunk in the free world (or so it seems…) as when we put two small roller bag in the trunk, there isn’t room for much more. and by “much”, i mean “anything bigger than my self-esteem.”

    next, we have a sick cat whose meds require that she travel with us every time we leave for more than a day. that means a procession of (at minimum) a cat carrier, a cooler for meds, a litter box, a water fountain, replacement litter, not to mention the vaguely mental cat at the head of the entourage (who i am beginning to think has a future in pop music).

    now, we are facing a new baby, the very thought of which fills our back seat and trunk with crap: strollers, clothes, books, bags, diapers, not to mention whatever mommy and daddy needs to not be naked and insane.

    suddenly, getting an SUV doesn’t seem quite so crazy.

    we love our little (fully paid off) Jetta, and specifically how easy it is to street park in DC (and how fully paid off it is). so, instead of downgrading our beloved to a big suburban monstrosity, we decided to experiment with a roof rack for some added storage.

    to date, we just have the a “base” unit that you’d find at REI — a couple of poles running across the roof which other stuff is lashed down to — but we have a low-profile basket (which we can remove and store in the trunk) shipping to us in the next couple weeks.

    the system (it’s a Yakima) is admittedly a little pricey, but we figure we have a long way to go before we spend the cost of a new monthly car payment, so it’s worth a shot.

    here’s hoping.

  • release the $&@#%s list already

    manny_papi
    I hate blogging about sports, but nothing is frustrating me more than steroids in the baseball right now. and that includes my complete inability to sleep, AND all the trips to the suburbs baby sparklet’s pending arrival is requiring.

    once upon a time, there was no steroid testing in baseball … but in 2003, the league and the players agreed to do a pilot testing program to discover if there was really a steroids problem.

    turns out there was. (“Shocked! I am shocked to find gambling going on in this casino!”)

    over a hundred players failed the supposedly confidential 2003 tests, and now two more names have been leaked from the list (bringing the tally to seven). and yet, the sanctimonious morons who cover this sport in the press are saying it is our duty to protect the rest.

    it’s not our duty to protect idiots or cheaters. that’s their lawyer’s problem, not ours.

    you see … in 2003, everybody in baseball knew the “random-in-name-only” tests were coming, and knew that the whole testing regimen would die an unceremonious death if there weren’t enough positive tests to justify further testing. so, it was in the dirty bums best interests to clean up just this once to pass their tests, and yet they still couldn’t stay off the juice long enough to protect their own long-term interests.

    on the other hand, let’s think through this from the point of view of someone on this list: in the last six months, seven names have been leaked at a slow trickle, giving each perp the limelight-of-shame all to themselves for the few weeks that followed. given the choice between this spotlight, or being “outed” at the same time as 96 other players, I’m taking the latter … and banking that there is at least one person more famous on the list than I to distract the press and public.

    we as a country, as a sport, and as a civilization have spent enough time being concerned about protecting the rights of the guilty in baseball. this is a sport, we’re not negotiating world peace.

    how about we *out* these schmucks, and finally remove the cloud of suspicion from those innocent players who have done nothing except play clean ball next to a bunch of dirty teammates.

    keeping the rest of these cheats anonymous isn’t helping them, it’s ruining everyone else.

  • sexy australian: the dual flush toilet

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    i forgot the most exciting part of the last week: we got a new toilet.

    ever since we first stepped foot in australia, we’ve been fascinated by aussie plumbing … and not in a grossed-out-because-it’s-only-a-hole-in-the-floor sort of way.

    apparently, australia has been in a drought for much of the decade (actually, for most of their existence) so the aussies have developed some smack-yourself-on-the-head brilliant toilet technology.

    the best is a toilet with two “levels” of flush: one flush is what one would expect in any bathroom in America, and the other is a half-flush for waste of a liquid persuasion.

    anyway, our building is replacing our old, out-of-date toilets with more efficient models (we’re trying to drive down our shared $16,000 annual water bill) and we opted to pay a little extra for the sexy aussie model.

    needless-to-say, we (a) are both really excited, and (b) both really need to get out more.

  • bambi on skates

    ever since I started really following English football (neé soccer) four years ago, I’ve been infatuated with a striker fans affectionately refer to as “Bambi on Skates” (or “Bambi on Ice”, for much the same reasoning).

    Peter Crouch (as I am assuming his parents call him, tho them calling him Bambi or Skates would be fantastic…) is 6 feet 8 inches tall, and his nickname is a spot on description of how he looks when he plays the game … there are legs flying every where.

    and now, Skates has landed with my team, Tottenham Hotspur … and I am completely cheesed.

    I wish I could say more about his recent playing days … but we just sprung him from a couple of years in purgatory (otherwise known as Porstmouth) so I really have little clue what sort of form he’s in.

    that being said, he does a fab “robot” dance after scoring (see 0:31 above for a sample). let’s hope he’s got plenty of celebratory dances opportunities left for the coming seasons.

  • found: portrait of baby sparklet

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    ECPA20090724_0002, originally uploaded by [ecpark].