Blank Mind Syndrome

Ever have one of those weeks where your brain just stops generating new thoughts? That's what happened to me this past week. No new blog entries for an entire week, and without a good reason!

Monday came along, and I sat at the keyboard and I thought to myself: "I have no thoughts." On any subject. At all. So I didn't create a blog entry, even though I considered writing a thoughtful piece to ponder how, exactly, microwave ovens work. That has always been one of life's greatest mysteries, as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, Tuesday came along. Still no new thoughts.

Ditto for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Now here it is, Saturday evening, and I still seem to have very few new thoughts. I could write about the giant spider that's presently wandering across the window sill, apparently unaware that I'm going to squash it with my Rubik's Cube. Meh.

I'm heading out for a camping trip with Little Smoot and one of her friends this week, so presumably I'll have some new thoughts when we return. Or I'll be completely insane. Could go either way.

Catching a Wave

Well, the local swimming pool is open, at least some of the time. We've had some lousy weather this week, and they're also doing some renovations at the pool that have kept the doors shut for a few days.

I have developed a new strategy this year when it comes to revealing my taut body at the pool. When I visit the pool nowadays with Little Smoot I'll first survey the pool deck area to be sure that there's at least one person there who is much more enormous and more flabby than I am. That way, they can be the ones who are gawked at, instead of me.

Thankfully our pool has several people who more than generously fit that bill. In fact, there's one couple who are so gigantic that the water level rises several inches upon their entry. They even create tides with their collective gravitational pull. So, thanks to them, I am able to feel less embarrassed about being at the pool.

I have found it interesting to listen to some of the conversations people have at the pool. There's one guy in particular who is always whining about something, and he does it at a volume that makes it hard not to be eavesdropping.

The other day he was complaining because his kids were kicked out of our local amusement park because they were "flipping the bird" while riding a water ride. He told the story several times, so I know it pretty much by heart: "Can you believe those idiots at Kennywood threw the boys out for flipping people off on the Raging Rapids!? That cost me over 100 bucks!"

It was very hard for me to control my urge to speak up and suggest that maybe, just maybe Kennywood wasn't the guilty party here. Maybe, perhaps, if your kids had some shred of sense, they might consider that flipping the bird at a family amusement park isn't the best thing to be doing.

And maybe, just maybe, as a parent you should be pretty ticked off at your kids. And, as unthinkable as this might be, perhaps you could blame yourself for being a pretty lame parent if the lackies at Kennywood had to take it into their own hands to discipline your kids because you don't know enough to teach them how to act in public.

But I digress...

Car Pooling

Well, yesterday was certainly an interesting day in the Pittsburgh area. We had some torrential downpours late in the afternoon and into the evening which turned a lot of roads into rivers really quickly.

Mrs. Smoot was on her way home from the city and found herself stopped behind three cars and a pool of rising water. And of course there was no way of getting out of it since she was already in a construction zone, surrounded by barriers.

Those of you familiar with the area probably remember the giant landslide at a WalMart construction area from a few years ago that blocked Route 65 for a week or so... that's where she was stuck. So not only did she have to worry about the water, which rose within an inch of the bottom of her door at one point, but she also had to be weary of the giant, unstable hillside beside her which could have come falling down at the slightest provocation. What a fun ride home!

This brought back memories of an entertaining trip we attempted to take to New York City in the early 90s. We got within an arms-length of the city on some God forsaken route called "Route 1 and 9" (apparently they couldn't decide between calling it Route 1 or Route 9, so they just picked both of them).

We hit a huge storm, and water was pooling at an intersection. Our car gurgled its way through the intersection after some tense moments, and being the genius I am, we somehow got in the wrong lane and ended up back at the same intersection just a couple minutes later. And during those couple minutes, the water had risen even more dramatically. We literally watched cars drive up a street and then float back down.

Mrs. Smoot handled that situation as well as most people could expect. As I was trying to navigate the heck out of there, she spent her time nervously drawing on my car seat with a pen. We all handle stress differently, I guess.

Well, thankfully last night the police finally intervened, and Mrs. Smoot was able to drive in reverse for about half a mile to a point where she was able to get turned around so she could take a different route home (it took 2 1/2 hours to make the 30 minute trip).

She was at a point where she was fully expecting that the car was going to be damaged by the water, and was very lucky to get turned around just in time. I have no idea how much ink damage her seat may have suffered, though...

Relaxing on the Disco Stick

I've been making somewhat of an effort the last year or so to get Little Smoot to be interested in current music. When I was growing up I had very little interest in music, even though I had aspirations of becoming a radio DJ, and I think it was definitely costing me "cool points," socially speaking.

Remembering my own cluelessness when it came to music, I figure it'll help Little Smoot to get into music so she's up on these things. For a good while, the only music she really knew was church hymns, and strangely enough that doesn't automatically put her into the Club of Cool Kids at school.

I've been making a point of listening to B-94, our local Top 40 station, any time we're in the car. And we both enjoy getting to know the latest music, and we both sing along with most of the songs, which is fun. Since it seems that at any given moment, there are merely 5 current, popular songs, it's easy to remember them since they get played to death.

The only bad thing is that many of today's songs are getting more and more blantant with lyrics that aren't exactly appropriate for 10-year-olds, and they're causing some awkward questions from the back seat.

Back in my era, the 80s (yes, that's 1980s, not the 1880s, thank you), we had plenty of sexually-fueled songs, but they were at least somewhat disguised by mysterious lyrics. Take Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood for example. The lyrics are confusing enough that it's easy for a naive person to not know what he's talking about, even though the song is, for all intents and purposes, a three-minute orgasm.

Unfortunately, things are getting a little less murky in the lyrics nowadays. Thank you very much, Lady Gaga, for your new song, LoveGame. She sings over and over again about her desire to "take a ride on your disco stick." No innuendo there, no sir!

Of course Little Smoot asked me the other day what, exactly, a disco stick might be. So I had to start floundering around for an answer: "Uh, well, back in the 70s, Disco was a popular form of music, you see... and there was this magical stick... and Disco was pretty annoying and people danced to it while wearing really funny clothes..." blah blah blah. I was hoping to babble long enough that she'd forget the original question while I was talking myself in circles.

Actually, more accurately, I was kinda hoping a deer would jump out in front of me so I'd have a valid reason to abruptly change the topic, but you can never catch a break like that when you need one.

Frogs and Other Girlie Things

I can vividly remember when the Ultrasound Lady at the doctor's office told us that we were going to have a girl. I can remember having these visions of dolls, and tea parties, and lots of things in the color pink.

Well, here it is, 10 years later, and it's remarkable how few of those things have been in our house with our little girl. Over the years people have bought her dolls and other "girlie" toys, and she'd play with them a little bit. But then she'd quickly get back to doing whatever non-girlie activity she could find.

Fast forward to this weekend as we were at a picnic event, and Little Smoot spearheaded an effort to catch tadpoles and other completely innocent forms of life you can find in the mud. She designed a special implement for the event, involving a styrofoam cup and a stick. Before I knew it, all of the kids had similar gear, and many of them were practically up to their necks in mud.

The end result was that we HAD to bring home a small herd of tadpoles, as well as a tree frog that was the size of a single molecule. Of course I warned her about a thousand times that no matter what we tried to do with them, they'd be dead within a day or two.

By the time we got home, the tadpoles were still in their temporary housing, swimming around and completely oblivious to the fact that they were under the care of a 10-year-old. The tree frog, however, had apparently realized it was being held against its will and managed to escape somewhere into my back seat. I have no idea where it is, but I doubt that it's living the good life amongst whatever crap is in my car.

And I hate to break it to Little Smoot, but I just had to give the tadpoles their official, solemn, Spiral Funeral down the Drainpipe of Doom. They're in a better place now.

Pitching a Tent

MESSAGE FROM THE HANK SMOOT FILES EDITORIAL STAFF: Yes, we know that the title of this posting can take on a different meaning, but rest assured this blog entry is about a literal tent. Hank had originally considered calling this entry "Erecting a Tent," which we thought would be worse yet.

If you ever see me, and you think that I'm in a really, really good mood and I need to be brought back down, just suggest that I go out and attempt to put up a new tent.

This winter we ordered a new tent through an incentive program offered by our bank. For every dollar we spend with their debit cards, they give us "points" which we can redeem for fancy merchandise. For example, $100,000 gets you a fancy shirt with the bank's logo on it. After about 17 years and trillions of dollars worth of collecting points, we earned enough to get a new tent.

Our old tent was getting a bit worn, as I noticed by the stream of water that flowed through it the last time I used it during a rain storm. So the new tent has been sitting in the basement for several months, waiting for me to get up the nerve to try to put it up.

Little Smoot and I retreated to the back yard the other night, and after some degree of toil, we managed to form the materials into the shape of a tent. Little Smoot was very excited about the whole thing, meaning that she has been bugging me non-stop about going camping since then.

The bad part of the deal is trying to get the damn tent back into the impossibly small bag that it originally came in. I suspect that the people at the Coleman company hide a camera in each bag so they can watch people attempt this stunt, knowing full well that it's impossible. They'll use the footage for entertainment at their annual Christmas parties.

Anyway, after using a series of winches, wrenches, wenches and witches, I managed to get the zipper closed with the tent inside. And then, naturally, I realized that I still had a whole bunch of other accessories -- strings, posts, canopies, etc. -- still sitting outside the bag.

I was just glad that the Swearing Neighbors weren't outside to hear me at that point. I don't like to compete with them. Eventually I somehow managed to get it all stuffed inside, hidden camera and all. Next time I do this feat, I'll get to do it at a campground surrounded by people who can watch and mock my actions. Oh, goody!

Checking Out

In my Utopian world, I would create some new requirements for people who want to use the self-checkout line at stores.

It seems that I have a nasty habit of getting behind people who have never in their lifetimes encountered an electronic device of any sort, let alone something like a self-checkout line.

The other day I was at Wal-Mart (or "Stuff-Mart" as our friends like to call it), and I managed to get behind a woman who had no clue in the world what she was doing. Periodically the automated screen would talk to her ("Please insert payment card," etc.), and she would talk back at it, as though it was going to carry on an entire conversation with her. Perhaps she didn't notice that this wasn't an actual person, I don't know.

In response to this woman and other clueless people of the world, I would create several new rules:

1. If you're over the age of 110, please choose a line with an actual person behind the counter.

2. Even then, you should not be allowed to use a debit card. It will only confuse you. Pay with money, or, if you're really old, just trade a pelt.

3. People choosing to stand in front of me in the self-checkout line will have to first pass a competency screening exam to see if you have any comfort level when it comes to dealing with electronics. The test will consist of a computer screen that says, "Press the green button." The screen will consist of nothing but a large, green button. If the person cannot figure out how to press the green button, they must go elsewhere. I promise you that a lot of people would fail this test.

Oh, and another thing. On another, somewhat related topic, I am starting to think that people should have to pass some sort of "shopping cart driving test." I was walking through the store and it seemed like some of these people were specifically aiming for me. I had to dart out of the way of oblivious cart operators several times during my very short visit.

I was getting a little concerned when it occurred to me that these same people would be driving actual motor vehicles in the parking lot.

Beating Around the Bush

Before I get to today's tremendously exciting topic (hedge trimming), I must point out that it is always disturbing to see articles like this in the paper.

Anyway, on to today's topic... It has been a long, long time since I've touched our hedge clippers, but I got brave and attempted to give 'em a whirl last week.

Shortly after we bought the house a dozen years ago, Mrs. Smoot told me to trim the hedges. I wasn't thrilled about doing it, and I wound up doing a remarkably crappy job at it. When I was done our bushes looked like a row of depression-era children who, for economic reasons, had their dads cut their hair. The bushes were all crooked and mangled up, and basically looked horrible.

As "punishment" for doing such a bad job, Mrs. Smoot has always taken the hedge trimming into her own hands so it would be done right. You can imagine how much of a bummer this has been for me.

So anyway, the other day I thought I'd give it another try and surprise Mrs. Smoot when she got home from work. Little Smoot and I toiled for a couple hours, pulling weeds, trimming the hedges and adding new mulch to the scene.

Personally, I think it actually all turned out very nicely. If Mrs. Smoot doesn't like it, perhaps I'll be "punished" again and I'll just have to suffer through another decade or so without messing with the hedge trimmers. Oh, the grief.

Another One Down...

Yesterday was the last day of school. I know that when I was in school, it seemed like it took an eternity to get through each grade. But now it seems like they just fly on by, at least for me as a parent. It really doesn't seem like it was all that long ago that Little Smoot began her first day of 5th Grade.

I'm not exactly sure what the kids may have learned in these last couple weeks. It seems like the last couple weeks of school purely exist to meet state requirements, and apparently the state doesn't require the kids to learn anything.

Our last couple weeks have included Kennywood Day (a day at an amusement park), Field Trip Day, Fun Day (with bouncy things to play on), Sleep Through Class Day, Bring a Wii to School Day, Blow Off Day, Pretend to be Sick Day, Teacher Hangover Day and Two Hours of School to Meet the State Requirement Day.

Yesterday, the kids began school at 9:00, and were home at 11:00. I'm sure they crammed a lot of education into those two hours.

Thankfully, Little Smoot has been doing great, academically. This year she suffered her first B+ (in music, of all things), but she had straight-A report cards the rest of the year. I guess we'll have to buy her a pony as a reward, or something.

I know that school has been very beneficial to her because yesterday I asked her, "So, what did you learn this year?" And of course she answered, "Um. Nothing." That's my girl!

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I've pretty much ditched the idea of being much of a gardener. When we first bought our house, I was pretty excited about the notion of turning part of the yard into a garden. And for many years I'd get all gung-ho in the Spring and plant a whole bunch of stuff.

Of course I'm not a big fan of weeding, so once the excitement of planting vegetables was over (about 5 minutes after planting them), I'd abandon the garden in hopes that it would take care of itself and turn into a bounty of produce late in the summer.

Well, that pretty much never happened. Sometimes I'd get lucky and actually get an edible onion out of the deal, and I had some sporadic luck with tomatoes. In recent years I've always planted a tomato plant or two, and oftentimes they would actually produce a few actual tomatoes.

The problem is that I'd watch a tomato grow from a little blossom, into a little green tomato, into a big tomato, and then into a big tomato with a large bite in the side of it thanks to the stinkin' deer.

Last year I finally got frustrated with this process, yanked everything out of the garden and planted grass back over it. Since I do really enjoy the taste of fresh garden tomatoes, we're taking a different approach this year. I have set up one of those "Topsy Turvy" tomato planters, "As Seen On TV!" Of course, if it's advertised on television, it must be a fine product, right?

We'll see how it goes. I'm not sure whether this device will produce upside-down tomatoes, or exactly what is going to come of it. If I put the tomatoes on a hamburger, perhaps I'll eat it upside-down out of respect for the process.

May The Force Be With You

I had a chance to see something unusual last weekend: professional women's football!

Unbeknownst to me, but knownst to others in the area, the Smoots' community is the home of the Pittsburgh Force, part of the Women's Football Alliance.

Friends of ours (and avid readers of the Smoot Files, I might add!) had been trying to get us to come to a game all season, but our schedules hadn't permitted it until last week.

It turns out that one of the girls from The Force is a Punxsutawney native, just like me. And she was quite impressive to watch, too. Jessica (in black, facing the camera in the photo above) played both offense and defense, and scored a couple times while we were there (yes, I am fully aware that this sentence could be interpreted in an entirely different way -- get your minds out of the gutter, people).

I'm not sure what I was expecting when Little Smoot and I arrived at the game, but I must say it was quite entertaining to watch! I was probably expecting the players to be... I dunno... more "girly" about the sport. I thought maybe they'd be apologizing to one another after tackles, and taking great care not to mess up their hair or nails or whatever.

But that certainly wasn't the case. Some of these girls were roughly the size of Mack trucks, and they seemed to have little trouble with the concept of knocking the crap out of the opposition. I was rather glad I was in the stands and not on the field, frankly.


I also thought maybe they'd have male cheerleaders on the sideline to go along with the gender-stereotype-bending theme, but that wasn't the case either. Instead, believe it or not, they had: Darth Vader. Get it? The Force? Darth Vader? So that was a little odd, seeing Darth and a Storm Trooper wandering around along the field.

At the end of the game, the fans headed down to the sidelines to greet their favorite players. It was amusing to see that some of the young fans would run up to the players, addressing them as "Mommy." You just don't hear that at Steelers games.

B Movies

Nature is getting way out of hand, and I'm getting a little concerned and disturbed about the whole thing.

As Exhibit A, I present to you the photo on the right. I discovered this rather unusual item when I went out on our deck earlier this week.

When I saw it, I couldn't help but ask myself the very obvious question: "Why on Earth would bees feel that it is necessary to create a large phallic symbol in the corner of our awning?" Seriously.

I decided I had to photograph this construction before proceeding to thwack at it with a broom handle. A few moments after I removed this suggestive item, one of the bees came flying up that way, looking for its former, swanky home. I tried to interrogate the bee in an attempt to learn more about what, exactly, they were doing out there on our deck, but I got very few answers.

I have to wonder if, late at night, they're showing tiny little bee porn flicks out there. If I start seeing birds out there with the bees, I'm going to really wonder what's going on.

Direct Questioning

I think I have gotten myself onto some sort of list at DirecTV. I have a feeling they keep a list of customers they suspect are profoundly stupid, and my name is rising higher and higher on it.

You see, we got DirecTV last summer, and I absolutely love it. The combination of the initials "HD" and "DVR" have forever changed my life. The only bad part about DirecTV is that their receivers were apparently built as a science project by preschool children with zero quality control involved in the process.

In addition to the HD DVR, we also have three additional receivers for other TVs, and these things keep dying on us.

Several months ago, the first one died in our spare bedroom. So I called the company, and after some hemming and hawing, they sent us a new one. A couple months passed, and the one in Little Smoot's room died, meaning she was suffering from SBSPDS (Sponge Bob Square Pants Deficiency Syndrome). So I called the company, and, a little more reluctantly, they sent me another unit.

So this week our third unit bit the dust. I knew it was going to be a fun phone call to the DirecTV people. When I attempted to call the first time, my call was apparently transferred to a call center on Jupiter or something, because the line was filled with so much static I couldn't even hear the person (or android, as the case may have been) on the other end of the line. So I called back, which meant fishing through their incredibly annoying automated phone service until I was able to once again reach an actual person. I have slash marks on my wrists from this process alone.

This person, upon learning that this was the third time that I had a receiver drop dead, decided that one of their people should call me and go over some troubleshooting tactics. Swell. I knew that would be a lot of fun.

Two hours later, a man named Steve who spoke v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y called me in an apparent attempt to catch me lying about the fact that the receiver was dead. You see, in their minds, the only possible reason that three of these units could have failed over these past several months is that I must be the most stupid person alive, and I am causing the problem. It obviously has nothing to do with the fact that these things are apparently built out of a few wires and actual horse crap.

So Steve led me through a thorough and tough line of questioning, like: "Is it plugged in?" "Is there a power switch connected to the outlet where it is plugged in?" "Is it plugged into a power strip, which could be off?" "Did you actually make it past first grade?" "Have you been beating the crap out of the receiver with a baseball bat, or other long, slender object?" "Are you sure it is plugged in?" And so forth.

Of course I had to play along with their little game of "20 Stupid Questions," or else I'd honk Steve off and they'd never send me a replacement unit. I wasn't about to tell him that I am actually quite technically savvy, and that I have been dubbed a geek by many people over the years, and when anything goes wrong with any electronic device in the neighborhood, I'm the one who gets the call and I can usually fix the problem... and trust me, Steve, the damn receiver is D-E-A-D! But I digress.

So now I have to wait a couple days for the new unit to arrive, so I can resume beating it with a stick.

Ice Creeeeeeeeam!

Now that it's summertime, the Ice Cream Man has been swinging through the neighborhood.

I hear him almost every day now, with his extremely low-fidelity speakers on his van, playing terribly annoying music, slowly prowling the neighborhood to entice kids to come running.

I was outside mowing the yard the first day I heard him a few weeks back. Since it was hot out, I sprinted out in front of him to make sure he stopped so I could buy an ice cream cookie thing.

A couple days later, I heard him coming through the neighborhood, and Little Smoot and I both ran out to stop him in his tracks.

Now here's the problem. It seems that now Mr. Ice Cream Man seems to have developed a strategy with us. Like I mentioned, and as I'm sure you're aware, ice cream trucks come equipped with really bad loudspeakers, and they play the absolute worst music ever created ("Turkey in the Straw" and "It's a Small World" for example).

For several days in a row now, he has been literally stopping his van out in front of our house, knowing that Little Smoot and I have little ability to resist ice cream, and knowing that his music is dreadfully annoying. So while he's sitting there, we'll be subjected to that terrible music until either he eventually goes away on his own, or we finally go insane, give in and buy more ice cream.

Clever man, I must say.

Losing Our Freaking Minds

As I look back through my blog entries, I can see plenty of evidence that I'm losing my freaking mind. Accidentally wearing two ties to church on Easter Sunday is just one of many fine examples.

Last week I took Little Smoot to Kennywood Park for her school's annual day of fun. As I rounded the curve by Point State Park in Pittsburgh it occurred to me that the tickets were sitting way back at home. I won't mention that when I called Mrs. Smoot to see if she'd meet me half way, she headed down our hill to meet up with us and then realized that she had forgotten the tickets at home, too, and also had to go back home for them.

There has got to be something in our water, making us insane.

The other day I pulled another of my favorite stunts. Perhaps those of you with contact lenses can relate. Perhaps not. Anyway, it was the end of a long day and I went into the bathroom to remove my contacts. It seemed that they were a little stubborn to come out for some reason. I kept at it, though, pinching away to try to get a good grip on my contacts, pulling at my eyeballs to get them free. But they just wouldn't come off.

It wasn't until 5 minutes or so later that I realized that I had already taken my contacts out earlier in the evening. So I was basically prying my cornea right out of my eyeball in an attempt to remove imaginary contacts. Just spend the rest of the day trying not to think about that one...