Dozing polar bear, Indianapolis Zoo

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Dispatches from Stinkbug Ranch

You know how, on television and in popular culture generally, fathers are portrayed as benevolent doofuses when it comes to childcare and their wives are portrayed as sensible types who always have it together with respect to the kids? It's sort of an Everybody Loves Raymond model. That crap has always irritated me, and not just because it offends my feminist worldview. Even more fundamentally, I just don't recognize anyone I know in that model, least of all my own family.

Which would explain why I realized on Thursday night that my son had not bathed since Sunday. You see, my husband always does that, and he's been overseas since Monday. It just didn't occur to me until The Kid announced that afternoon that "hey-- my feet stink!" (He quickly backpedaled on this assertion when he realized he would have to take a bath without Daddy. Fortunately, his grandmother bribed him into the tub with some pumpkin soap.)

Patricia Heaton's character totally would have remembered to give her kid a bath. It seems I have become the benevolent doofus. I guess this means I have to grow a penis or get kicked out of the club.

The weather has been moody this week, as you can see from some of the photographs I've gotten. But I've stolen little bits of light here and there.

As for pictures, I offer you the main road:



Blogger won't let me upload the other two pictures of the gravel road up to the house, so to hell with it. I'll do that later.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks absolutely beautiful... wish I was there.

Wait, I will be there in another month!!

Jennifer (ponderosa) said...

Tamaracks! The tamaracks in Camp Sherman look like that right now, too. (We went walking there this weekend.) They're a tree I never notice except in fall.

Once when I was visiting my parents in Sisters I left my son, who was 2 I think, in the care of the men. My dad, my (childless) brother-in-law. After a few hours my BIL came running, something's wrong something's wrong, there's white stuff falling out the bottom of Blake's pants!

Yeee-ep. They hadn't changed his diaper in so long that it began to disintegrate.

So, you know. At least you've never done THAT!

kris said...

Aww - baths are overrated. Way more important things to do when you're a kid at the ranch, I'm sure.

Your photos are very nice - make me feel almost like I'm there.

Anonymous said...

Hi Trailhead,

I hope I didn't offend you with my Mr. T story. I am intrigued by Pumpkin soap. What is it? Is it made out of pumpkin? Or is it shaped like a pumpkin? I have a weakness for Lilac soap. I never agreed with the word Feminist. To me I’m just a humanist. Why do I have to live in a lie that I am less superior to a man basically? And I hate DR Phil I think he’s telling us to move backwards. I heard one of his shows, and normally I’m a big fan of Oprah till she put this turkey on, talking about how men are intimidated by women who own their own condo’s have careers or make more money than them and basically if you want to snag a man you have to dumb down yourself and appear weaker and more helpless than you actually are. I could go on. Anyway. It’s nice to see so many more people worried about Sancho. Cute little bugger I hope he is still with us and doing well.

Toots

Trailhead said...

Toots you'd have to work harder to offend me than that. That was a chuckle.

I call myself feminist for a lot of reasons, but suffice it to say I think our views don't differ that much.

Pumpkin soap, btw, is a small bit of soap in the shape of a jack-o-lantern. I don't think it smells like pumpkin, but I haven't gotten that close yet. I'll have to check on that.