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Columbus Parents

Kevin Joy of the dispatch is still looking for Columbus kid-friendly dining in Columbus. Share your experience.

I so want to be green it hurts

Lately, I've been thinking how to incorporate biking and parenting. The tagalong type youth bike seems like too much effort for the kiddies (and me) for quick trips. And, when you need to get something done, like go to the grocery store and back, I don't think they'll be excited about this option. So, I've been pondering more fun means of carting around the kid and having a bit of carrying capacity. This pedicab is the first thing I've seen that got me excited. I've been enamored by tricycles forever and I have a feeling a kid (or two) would get pretty excited to be driven around in one of these. (Maybe I could even sell the back are of the pedicab for advertising.)

I don't think I could buy something like this by mail, so I'm trying to hunt one down for a test drive. Wouldn't this be cool for transportation to gradeschool and commuting to work?!

Back from the family vacation

Due to unforseen and extraordinarily high real estate-related expenses, we journeyed this year to explore more local heritage - in Cleveland. Yeah, no sandy beaches or large-sized, freakish cartoon characters, but the hotel had a pool. If you could hear Frankie squeal with delight everytime we hit the pool, you'd think we were on the French Riviera. The science museum, the natural history museum, the zoo (which Frankie said was "awesome") and a scenic train ride on the Cuyahoga river highlighted our trip. We were running full steam from about 7 until we both pinned her down for bedtime around 9 (when Mom and I snuck in a little "Hell's Kitchen"). We have only two more vigorously busy days to get her calmed down and back into her routine. It will be challenging.

Snippets heard before 4 pm from Frankie:
thank you, please, constant giggling, "are we there yet, are we there yet, ...?",

Snippets heard after 5 pm from us (bold indicates louder, sterner, more exasperated voice):
"Frankie please ..."
stop kicking me
calm down
stop running so fast, we can't keep up
sit in your seat, no standing, please
stop jumping on the bed
stop wiggling
no more Sponge Bob

We believe Frankie's first big word in her vocabulary will be exasperation.

Despite the torrid pace Frankie set, we wouldn't have her any other way. Aside from late-day occasional melt-downs, we had a blast. In "cleeeve land" (Frankie's pronunciation).

Praise the lord, we have a landline!

For literally YEARS, we have not had a well-functioning landline at home. If we desperately needed a 911 call, it would've been a 50/50 shot whether the operator could hear us over the static. In our old house, it was caused by a lightning strike to the roof of our home. In our current place, it was because of ... I don't know. Just one more thing that those swell dudes left for us, bless their hearts.

This was starting to piss me off. I called India, I mean ATT, and they said they'd do a diagnostic on our line. If it was due to factors inside our home, it was our fault and they'd charge us $70 and call us names. ATT has such great service. They did the diagnostic and never called us back or told us the result (and, fortunately never charged us). But, the line still sucked. I finally nearly attacked a service guy outside our home doing another job and complained. He gave me a card of someone to call - in this country. Two weeks later, our line is static-free. Crystal clear!! And, it was on the outside of the house, no charge. Hooray! So, family, friends, you can now leave a message and we'll actually get it.

on Paris

So the hot house flower is in jail for a whole 23 days (oops, now she's home after a couple days). I find this an interesting case. She and her little life of privilege have decided to do their time "like anyone else". Bullshit. She's in a county correctional facility but is isolated from the rest of the population and had the option for an upscale cell not in the county jail. She had to be isolated because she would undoubtedly have faced certain death if left to mingle with others.

If you or I broke the law, we'd have no option of special treatment; we'd be tossed in with the rest and be physically and psychologically abused so badly, it would scar us the rest of our lives. But, because Paris is stinking rich (nothing she had anything to do with), she's even privileged at the level of incarceration. If you're really bad, like Jeff Dahmer, the system essentially decides to toss you in to be murdered. The system took someone that wasn't desireable, clearly mentally ill and decided to murder him. But, the debutante has so much cash and so much ... something ... that no one would dare put her in harm's way.

The comparison of Dahmer and Paris Hilton is absurd (where else but a silly blog could I ponder this?), but I still find it fascinating how the justice system treats the haves and the have nots.

The time I nearly parted the Red Sea

Saturday was darn fun. Despite Frankie acting wild and running our butts off all morning in 90-deg heat with intense humidity, we barely survived to make it to the North Market where we ran through the farmer's market, Frankie was photographed for a North Market Cookbook and we met with Rosie, Lisa and Lorence (wasn't familiar with your site Lorence, looking forward to future visits!), some fellow Columbus Food bloggers, very pleasant. It was great fun to meet the people behind these local online culinary efforts.

We got home around noon and started with the glamorous chores of parenting: passing out for a an hour (a nap for us, not her), doing laundry, etc. Then, the drain of the washing machine backed up flooding the mudroom.

The washing machine was down!

I put in a call to my right hand plumber, Calhoun's and said, with a quivering voice, it wasn't urgent and could wait until the next business day. I lied; Frankie was on her 3rd outfit of the day and the laundry was stacking up fast. While making bread for dinner, I zipped to Lowe's during the first rise and bought a 15' drain snake, traced drain lines for a while and, after dinner, went at that clog like a maniac too crazed to wait the 48 hours and minimum $400 plumber charge, AND IT WORKED!

I am the least likely man on earth to do any home maintenance job (successfully), but I prevailed and maybe even saved us several hundred dollars. Damn was I proud of myself.