Sarah's Rant of the Month

Several weeks ago I got a letter from the friendly folks at the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles asking me to provide them with proof that I have auto insurance. A portion of the letter went like this:

You have been randomly selected to verify that you have coverage for the vehicle listed above. We are requesting proof that you did have insurance or other financial responsibility coverage for this vehicle on the proof of insurance coverage date of this notice.

And here's the best part:

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. However, obtaining proof of financial responsibility benefits all Ohio drivers by reducing the chances that you will be in an accident with an uninsured driver.

The only way this could have been more ironic is if Beach himself had received the letter to provide proof of coverage for the car that no longer exists due to an ACCIDENT WITH AN UNINSURED DRIVER. Here's some salt to rub in your head wound, sir. If Beach had gotten the letter, I think he would have been well within his right to provide, as his proof of insurance, a copy of the accident report and a picture of himself with his shiny new car, courtesy of our own insurance and a hefty portion of our own hard-earned cash.

But, since I am the one who received the letter, and since I am a law-abiding citizen, and because they would suspend my license if I didn't, I paid my $.41 to send the BMV a copy of my insurance card right quick. I did, however, resist the urge to write in the margins of the letter a few of the shortcomings with this little program they've got going. I've done the same before on our tax returns, but Beach made me start over on a clean form. I thought I'd share my comments here instead.

First, I would be willing to bet that a significant proportion of uninsured drivers are also unlicensed drivers, like Beach's friend Maria Carmen (From the police report: "Driver license number? None yes - Mexico"). If they're unlicensed, they're probably driving cars that are either unregistered or registered to someone else (as in Maria's case). How is the BMV going to find these people?

Second, when uninsured and/or unlicensed drivers do cause accidents, why are they not arrested? If I don't send proof of insurance within 21 days I lose my license, but Maria Carmen slams into the back of my husband's car and gets to go home with nothing more than a slap on the wrist?! I know the BMV can't put people in jail, but maybe the police should get in on this, too.

Third, my guess would be that a lot of the people whose licenses end up being suspended as part of this program probably have insurance, but didn't send in the proof because they're too busy and missed the deadline, they lost the letter in a mass of junk mail, or never got the letter or got it late from that other well-oiled government machine, the USPS.

I'm sure there's more, but I'm done thinking about this. Anyway, I'm definitely in favor of protecting Ohio motorists (the ones who follow the rules). I just think it's clear from our recent experience that their system of checks is broken.

Lola wanted a picture of Finn playing in the snow

He's a tough guy.

Thanksgiving trip

Thanksgiving was long and busy this year. It started last Saturday after a Centerville Hockey game in Columbus. After a one-sided win we packed into the front wheel drive sled and headed to the great white North arriving at 4:30 Sunday morning.

Sunday was a day of rest and recovery from the overnight trip. Monday we went over to my grandparent's house and had the day described in the earlier post. That night the grandparents watched Finn and we went downtown for a date of Himalayan food. Tuesday we went out with Finn with some friends from high school. Cailin is expecting her own little one in March, so she got to see all the fun to be had. We also met Kyle's brother's little boy, Benjamin. What a cute kid! We had plans to go out Wednesday night without the boy, but the snow made the roads a little risky so we stayed in.

Thursday we went to our aunt and uncle's house for a big feast. Finn played with cousin Kai and really liked his bouncy seat. Finn also was very into the Packer's dissection of the Lions. Bring on the Cowboys.

Enjoy the photos.

Early November photos

The first half of November was warm and that allowed practicing crawling both outdoors and in. Here are a few pictures from around the house and down at the park from a few weeks back.

It's a Thanksgiving miracle

Our trip to the great white north became as expected when we opened our eyes to the winter wonderland that appeared overnight.



Last year, I had to work and Sarah cooked a turkey in a mini-sized oven. We heard the Germans on the radio laughing about the American's Danketag. It is nice to be not working and to be at home with family.

Happy thanksgiving to all!

Greetings from Wisconsin

Finn was wiped out today from all the fun of visiting the great-grandparents. He got the taste of his Wisconsin heritage by eating a butter burger and watching us eat frozen custard.

After lunch we returned to their house and Finn was chased around the floor by Grandpa while Grandma, Sarah and I played Yahtzee. Perhaps Grandma uses loaded dice, because she scored over 500 points.

We have the lucky chance of seeing two Packer games in less than a week. They handled the Panthers easily and are all set up to crush the Lions on Thanksgiving day. Perhaps you are wondering about the hometown Bengals. I noticed that the Packers' bandwagon was passing by about week 3 and we hopped back on. I don't want Finn to pin his heart to an awful team without a hope of winning that's just a step up from the Dolphins.

Finn's a left-handed shot

Finn loves playing with the hockey stick he got at the game last week. He holds it like a lefty, but you can see he makes the mistake of dropping his top hand. That's easily fixable, so I'm not worried.

We're thinking of getting him double runner skates so he can skate on the ice being set up down on Fountain Square. He may need to learn to walk first, but that's debatable.

The Shining: Redux

Kubrick Schmubrick

Hockey season starts

The games have started for the year. The opening weekend had Centerville going 1-0-1. The tie was a little disappointing because the lead was lost on a last-second goal by Talawanda. Still, the team is very strong and things are looking very positive this year.

This was also Finn's first hockey game ever. He seemed interested in the movement on the ice and likes the miniture stick one of the moms gave him. He must be a northerner at heart since he didn't mind the cold rink temperatures.

Rowan and his family came out to watch the game as did Joe and Melissa of The Beck's Files. Being from Minnesota, Joe and Melissa had been hankering a hockey game. So it seems everyone got their wish.

What's good for the goose

"I haven't had to wax my eyebrows since July. I guess all those years of yanking the hairs out by the root have killed the follicles."

"Hm."

"Maybe you should start waxing your beard. Then after 10 years or so you wouldn't have to shave or worry about facial hair ever again. Well, except for maybe a pluck here and there."

"Um - no."

"Hey, I'm just thinking of you. I know how much you hate to shave."

"That's enough thinking of me."

Leaps and bounds

Finn turned 10 months old last Thursday and to celebrate this double-digit milestone, we visited the doctor for a checkup and flu shot. The boy is now 17 3/4 pounds and 29 inches tall, which puts him in the 50th percentile for height and the 5th percentile for weight compared to other boys his age. Average height and really skinny - sounds like someone else I know...

Anyway, the doctor said developmentally Finn is doing "awesome" - ahead of schedule, even. She may say that to all the moms, but I'm pretty sure she was confirming what we've known all along - that the kid's a genius. And good-looking, to boot.

So far, month 11 has been eventful for Finn (and us). Since he started crawling 2 1/2 weeks ago, he's gone from being unsure and wobbly to racing all over the house and getting into everything (cat food and water dishes are favorites). He sprouted 3 new teeth in 10 days and the drooling has subsided a bit (for now). He babbles all day long - usually at the top of his lungs, but has also been whispering "dadada" as he scoots across the floor. And, he learned how to pull himself up to his feet. The one problem with this new skill is that he hasn't figured out how to get down once he's standing up. The other morning over the monitor I heard him move around and then suddenly start crying. I went into his bedroom to discover him hanging horizontally just a couple of inches above the mattress, gripping the crib rail for dear life. I wish I had gotten a picture of that. I did get one of him standing up:

With the advent of all this new activity has also come a fatigue Finn has never known. He's bone-tired at the end of every day and has been sleeping a solid 10-11 hours a night. And when naptime comes around, it doesn't matter where we are, we wind up with this:

Finn's fancy new hat

I was going to put the pictures of Rowan's visit to our place a week or so ago, but they were identical to the ones shown on The Daily Squink so I thought it may not be necessary. Instead I'll talk about Finn's new hat. It's a blue corduroy messenger cap and it's quite fetching. His lady friend thinks it's pretty nice too. They each wore their charming hats on a recent walk to protect them from the cool morning air.


Sarah and Finn are off to New England, home of the world champion Boston Red Sox who are originally from Cincinnati. That's not quite right; the Cincinnati Red Stockings were disbanded and a new team formed in Boston the next year called the Boston Red Stockings that was comprised of largely the same players. They eventually became the Boston (Milwaukee and Atlanta) Braves. An American League team formed in Boston in 1901 and changed their name to the Red Sox in 1907 to honor the original Boston American League team. I guess that I'm just searching for a way to connect Cincinnati to a winning baseball team.

As I was saying, Finn got a new hat. It's blue.

Finn's new front yard

The city of Cincinnati, Hamilton county, and The Banks working group finally agreed today on a development plan. This is huge news. For the past 10 years there has been only talk about what the riverfront could be, while the reality has been a giant dirt patch.



Here is an aerial view of the plan. Beginning in early 2008, a massive mixed-use development will be built between the football and baseball stadiums. This is fantastic for us. A question we often get about having a kid downtown is "don't you want to him to be able to play outside?" Well, here's our front yard. Not too shabby, huh?

We already have the park at Sawyer Point, but this new addition will create a 2 mile long riverfront park. There will be a huge playground and a giant waterfall/fountain (below). It also looks like there will be a streetcar built that will run directly from in front of our house to The Banks. No long walks hauling strollers, just hop on a train.



I am a little jealous of Finn. Looking back, he won't remember the fact that he had to wait for the construction to be complete. He'll just remember the fun times he had growing up in the city.

Copy of Police Report Obtained

There were a few interesting points to the report.

1. Blame was squarely assessed to the woman that hit me.
2. She was ticketed for ACDA (being too close) and not having a licence, no mention of insurance.
3. The guy in front of me wrote that he stopped to "wate" for the bus.
4. I filled in my phone number and address wrong. Perhaps my head trauma was worse than I suspected.

Here is the woman-who-hit-me's version of the story. I thought it was a Haiku until there were 10 syllables in the last line.

"The guy stopped. It's not my fault.

the guy in the truck

I have to take my baby to my doctor."

The police seemed to overlook the fact THAT SHE HAS NO INSURANCE AND THAT IS AGAINST THE LAW!!!! I'm glad they sited her for following too closely for conditions, but negligent operation of a motor vehicle seems more the case. Given that it was about 5 seconds between my stopping and getting hit and she was going 30+ miles an hour, her following distance was at least 120 feet. That should be plenty far if you are pay attention or use your brake. By the way, they checked her brakes and they did work.

Here is what I should have given as my statement had I ignored giving details and caught on to the Haiku requirement.

Morning mist, stopped behind bus

Bang and shattered glass

Quiet, smoke, and bloody head

October Photo Dump

October was a month of excitement. Finn and Elena have been spending lots of time together usually walking (strollering) and occasionally playing together at either one's house.

Food has proven exciting for Finn as well. He has discovered the American love of Italian food moving spaghetti and lasagna to the top of his favorites list. Beans and rice as fun for smearing on your head.

Fancy toys were ignored for the wonders of things hung from the inside of a laundry basket. The "magic box" has provided endless minutes of entertainment.

Finn's new found mobility put him on more equal round with the cats. He holds their toy and shakes it, but is arms aren't long enough to really have it work right. He can approach the cats and has touched them a couple times so they have learned to walk a slightly larger radius around the boy when passing.

It looks like the top tooth teeth will make an entrance very soon. All the warning signs are here. We are worried that he may be dehydrating since he loses about a quart of drool per hour.

Enjoy the snaps!

Mr. Turtle Crawls

Finn dressed up as a turtle for the big Holloween festivities this year. We also dressed him up as a turtle for our own enjoyment. Here's a video of him in ation. You can see he is still turtle slow trying to move around, but is cute the whole time.

We also went down to Foutain Square with our neighbors to watch "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown". It was finally cold and autumnal; overnight lows about 37 degrees. Covered in layers of cloth and foam padding, the kids hardly noticed. We were glad that the cold drinks they normally serve were supplemented by hot chocolate. Little Elena, the hot chick, was Finn's date.

Finn was very into the show, being out after dark, and all the kids running around. When we got back he went right to sleep and stayed asleep until 8:30 this morning. 12 HOURS! That treat is much welcomed after the tricks of the last couple days. If that is the result, there is ikely to be more crawling, costumes, and cimena in the future.

Why I so rarely post blog entries

and never get to bed before 11:30.


My life has been a good example of Murphy's Law lately. The things that go wrong for me are minor, but they still add up to an explanation for the title of this post. Take today, for example. Beach was at hockey practice tonight, as he has been many nights over the past few weeks. Finn was happily splashing in his bath when he stopped, screwed up his face, grunted, and just like that we had poopy bath water, complete with undigested corn. I was really hoping we could get him potty-trained without having to deal with this, but that just wasn't in the cards. I grabbed Finn out of the tub and plopped him in Beach's sink to rinse him off, noticing how dirty the sink was. Sidenote: Beach, why is your sink so much dirtier than mine? I clean them at the same time. Anyway, if Beach had been home, I would have told him to clean up the tub and the sink while I took care of Finn. But, since Beach was not home, that stuff had to wait. So, after Finn was cleaned up, diapered, pajama-ed, fed, teeth-brushed, read to, and sleeping away soundly, I went back to the dirty work. Once the poop-water was out of sight, I scrubbed down the tub. After I was done, I thought, I should just clean the rest of the bathroom while I've got all the cleaning stuff out (even though it's already 9:30 - starting to see the problem here?) As I was cleaning the toilet, I accidentally mixed a bleach cleaner with some other cleaner and created some fantastic fumes. When the lightheadedness had passed, I grabbed the bottle of Tilex for the sinks and the cap came off, spilling most of the contents on the floor, into the cats' water dish, and all over my pants. Now I want to yell, except Beach isn't home to be the target, and I can't even blame him for the loose cap, since I was probably the last one who used the Tilex. So, I take off the pants and wash them, wipe the stinging chemicals off my legs, and finish up the bathroom. Then it's on to the kitchen, where I've left a whole day's worth of dishes and Finn has left half of his dinner on the floor. I clean up the kitchen and make my way back to the bedroom at 10:30. But not before pouring myself a glass of wine. In a plastic cup - just in case. And that is why I rarely write blog entries.

Oh yeah, and all night I was wondering what smelled like puke. Turns out it was me, from when Finn vomited his mango dessert on me when I got him out of the tub.

But things aren't all bad - in fact, we've had an exciting week around here. Everyone's mobile - Beach has a new car, and Finn has figured out how to crawl. He's not a speed-demon yet, but he's shown improvement in the short 28 hours that have passed since he first made his way five feet across his room to grab a bottle of baby lotion (this is the thing that motivates him to go further than he's ever gone before?). I'm sure glad I moved all of our guns, knives, drugs, and rat poison into a baby-proof cabinet this week.

More photos of car and bloody head

For those that are into that sort of thing, you can see the inside of my head and more wreckage in this photo set.

We decided to get a new car

I was driving to work in my little Civic coupe yesterday and stopped for a bus at a bus stop. There were two other cars ahead of me who also stopped behind the bus. After waiting for a few seconds and then was rammed from behind by a giant Ford Explorer who seemingly never even slowed down.

My car was pushed forward about 20 feet ending up with my hood under the pick-up truck ahead of me. That truck was also pushed forward and hit the car in front of him. Altogether, there were 4 cars damaged, but the bus was not hit. The firemen had to pry apart my car from the one that hit me.

On the inside of the car, some large piece of plastic flew forward and hit me in the back of my head and landed in the passenger's seat. It cut the back of my head pretty good, one cut of 2-3 inches and another about 1 inch long. I have pictures if you would want to see. I was leaning forward when I was hit, so my body flung back into the seat that is permanently stuck in a reclined position now. I then bounced forward against the seat belt causing bruising to my hip and shoulder. I seemed to have a mild concussion too, but nothing too bad.

The driver was a woman without a driver's licence or insurance. She also spoke very little English. My insurance will cover my car and medical bills, so I'm OK that way too. The police issued a ticket for driving without a licence or insurance, but said that they could not arrest her because they did not see her driving.

When the fire department came the guy asked it I needed to go to the hospital. I said that I couldn't see the cut on the back of my head and asked what he thought. He said that the bleeding was stopped and I could just go to an urgent care center to get a stitch or maybe just a butterfly bandage.

When we got to my doctor's office, both the RN and the doctor were surprised that they didn't say I should go to the hospital. They also said that it shouldn't be up to person who just suffered head trauma to make a decision like that. Pretty good point. They ended up putting 4 stitches in the smaller cut and one long running stitch in the longer one.

So today we are off to look for a new car. Probably another Civic. They seem to be a pretty safe car.

Visit back to Wisconsin

My cousins Chuck and Andi came out to visit Wisconsin so we decided to take the weekend trip up again to see them. We enjoyed a lazy Columbus Day weekend watching the Badgers and the Packers lose. Biscuit the dog (seen above) seemed to exemplify the laziness.

Yes, it was Columbus Day. If you're not a government employee you probably had no reason to know. Lanny even still had school.

This trip marked the last time we need to stop to pay the Illinois tolls. We ordered an I-pass and can now drive straight through the tolls. The tolls are even less for I-pass holders. Hoo-ray.

We had a fun time and can't wait to go back up for Thanksgiving. The photos are here.