I just wanted to use my annual blog post to announce that Elise gave birth to a beautiful baby girl today at 2:09 PM EST and that both are doing great! She is 7 lbs 10.8 oz and 21.75 in. and we can't tell who she looks like yet, but rest assured she is every bit as cute as the other two kids that Elise successfully whipped together.
I know ya'll might be expecting some sort of pictures and delivery story, but I'll let Elise do the full-blown baby-is-here blog post when she can and as only she knows how. Until then, I'll leave you with a wonderful story about the feral animals in North Carolina.
... (Warning: I'm don't write as well or as concisely as Elise, so lots of words coming up)
This semester I had two finals, and they both happened to be due this past Monday, April 30. On my part, I was glad the baby didn't come on her due date because I was studying for these finals. Not that I care about the grades at this point, but the material is relevant to my career so I wanted to put some time and effort into learning it. I took one final in the morning, and the other one was due at midnight. So there I was, at 11:15 PM, feeling like I was in a good position to finish about 15 minutes early, when I heard something thud against our porch door. I would have just ignored it, but then it happened two more times. So I got up, and saw that it was an idiot squirrel trying to force its way into our house through our glass porch door. I let it be.
After 5 more minutes of the occasional squirrel thud, and about 25 minutes away from finishing my exam, I heard an odd scratching sound. I tried to ignore it again, but again it wouldn't go away. So I drew our porch-door blinds up, and there is that same idiot squirrel, stuck between our screen and our door, trying to climb up the screen. I watched as it fell down and crawled back out from behind our screen. I let it be.
5 minutes later, and about 20 minutes from finishing my exam, I again hear the scratching sound, and this time that same idiot squirrel is climbing up the outside of the screen, so I go to watch it. It gets to the top, and then tries to shuffle across the wood siding of our house across the top of the door. It fell on its head. At this point, I was intrigued by this squirrel's repeatedly idiotic behavior, so I watched it. And it continued to behave idiotically. To understand why this squirrel was such an idiot, you have to understand our porch: it is completely enclosed by 3-foot "fence" that is made of a 2x4 on top and bottom with cross-hatch in the middle. The holes in the crosshatch are about 6 inches x 6 inches, plenty big enough for a squirrel to fit through. But this squirrel just kept running headlong into the bottom 2x4, then turning around and running into our porch door. It was stuck in my porch, looking for a way back to its home in the lush forestlands of Sweet Caroline, and it couldn't find one. It tried to climb over the fence via the wall, but it fell off the siding (or the screen) whenever it got high enough. It tried climbing under, but couldn't fit. So it just kept trying to run through it, to no avail. Idiot squirrel. Couldn't it go out the same way it probably came in, through the cross-hatch? I figured I'd better help it out by getting a broom and either scaring it into figuring out that it can crawl through the cross-hatch, or shovel-scooping it over the fence. And I was still okay with time for my test, so I grabbed the broom. I should have let it be.
Well, I opened the door, and stepped into the porch towards the corner where the squirrel had started running in senseless circles. The squirrel looked up, saw me, screeched a very high pitched screech, ran into the 2x4 at the bottom of the fence, then ran back at the glass porch door that had been its only other plan for escape. Only this time the door was open, left that way by yours truly. I wasn't prepared for the squirrel to run between my legs, so he made it through the door. It made it about 2 feet, realized that my apartment wasn't the lush forestlands of Sweet Caroline, and turned around to return through the door from whence it came. But there I was, staring slack-jawed in bewilderment at its entrance into my previously squirrel-free abode. If you were a squirrel, you probably wouldn't go back outside either if there were some broom-wielding monster standing there with its mouth open wide enough to fit a squirrel in it. So it ran deeper into my home.
I watched as it made a bee-line for the open-door to Violet's bed room, and I figured that Elise wouldn't appreciate my letting a potentially-rabid and most-certainly demented feral rodent devour our children. So, as any devoted father would, I took up the mantle of Protector and threw my broom at the squirrel.
As a boy, I had often taken up pitchforks or electric-fence posts, and practice throwing them into haystacks from great distances, imagining myself being the noble protector of some great realm. There were several times that I was humanity's last hope to stop an oncoming horde of aliens (sadly, this was pre-LOTR or it would have been a horde of orcs), with only my farm tools as weapons. Having had all this practice at throwing fake-spears, I won't feign any humility in the accuracy of my throwing arm. In fact, I won the gold medal (or maybe bronze...) in our stake olympic javelin-throw at our Youth Super-Activity in 2001, and I attribute it entirely to my imaginative childhood . So needless to say, my aim with this broom was true. Or it would have been, except that the head of the broom was wider than any fake-spear I'd used previously and so the bristles got caught in the porch doorway before it even left my hand. However, the squirrel knew what I had almost succeeded in doing, and having narrowly escaped being skewered on a broom handle it decided it would be better not to enter the kids' room. Instead it ran into the bathroom. So I ran to the bathroom, turned the light off and closed the door. I listened as the squirrel ran into a few walls, screeched a little, and then became quiet, consigned to its certain death in our dark lavatory, and at 11:35 PM I sat down to finish my test. With an idiot squirrel locked in my bathroom.
So at 11:54 I emailed my professor my test, and with schoolwork out of my life forever , I was ready to focus on the task at hand. I turned my thoughts to how I was going to get that idiot squirrel out of my house. I closed all the doors, opened the porch door, and created an ally with the couches and boxes so that the only place to go was out the porch door. I donned my leather gloves (in case things got up-close and personal), and then I opened the bathroom door and went in. Oh, and I set up a video camera to capture the event in case it turned out to be youtube worthy. I found the squirrel cowering behind my toilet, and after one quick glimpse of my awesome broom, it screeched and took off (again between my legs) out the bathroom door. It made it to the porch door, but instead decided it would be better to avoid the porch, so it hopped the couch and ended up in our dining room.
Giving chase, I tried to herd it back into my alley way towards the porch door. But instead it tried to climb up our dining room wall, then hopped on our table and chairs, then finally ran back into the area in front of the porch door. So I hopped the couch and waved my broom so it would turn around, take two hops and be free forever. But instead it ran under my couch. This time it bypassed the dining room, and got stuck in our front-entry way. Which is good because there is a door there that leads to freedom, but at the same time was bad because that door was closed. I couldn't open the door without letting the squirrel back into the rest of our apartment, and I couldn't risk that happening. So I opened the coat closet that is by our front-entry way, stood so that the only place to go was in, and I threw my broom again.
This time I wasn't aiming for the squirrel, just the area by the squirrel to scare it into the coat closet, and it worked. After locking the squirrel in the closet, I opened the door, stood so that the only way to go was out the front door, and waved my broom around in the closet. Of course, it couldn't go where I wanted it to go, it had to try to go through my legs again. Luckily, this time I was somewhat ready and managed to close off the between-the-legs route so that it stopped right in front of me. I couldn't resist kicking it towards the door, and finally it was gone.
That is pretty much the end, except that there is more cross-hatch that leads from our front-door to the sidewalk and from the sidewalk to freedom, and of course the squirrel tried to run through the 2x4s of the crosshatch fence a few times before finding the sidewalk opening. Finally it was gone. Sadly, there wasn't anything youtube worthy. The squirrel does make a few appearances in the recording though, so I do have proof should any of you doubt what happened.
So, that's my squirrel story. Hopefully you can see why the squirrel deserved all those cruel names. I know it isn't what you were hoping, what with all the much more eternally important events happening around here, but it should at least hold you over until: 1) my next post, which will probably come in about a year; and 2) Elise's next post, which will be awesome because it is going to have some really cute baby pictures in it.
Adios!
