The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing My Little Pony Appendage

The erratic text messages started at 12:10 pm.

They came through so fast that I was only able to see the last one saying "There" flash across my phone screen. My phone then rang, but I was already talking on my desk phone to a candidate about an internship. The next text came, and this time I saw it. "Call me!!"

I wondered what was going on, but I had to finish my phone screening before I could call back. As soon as I hung up with the candidate, my phone rang again, and I saw that it was Jamie, so I answered. I could tell Jamie was flustered as she told me we needed to take Dulci to the doctor.

"Something is stuck in her nose," she informed me, adding that it was so far up she was unable to see it. "It's a plastic part of a toy. The horn broke off a My Little Pony, and she put it in her nose. I looked it up, and it's possible it could get into her lungs. I don't know if we need to take her to the ER or her pediatrician or what?"

I hung up with Jamie and called the pediatrician's office. They were booked for the day but wanted us to come to another clinic in the same building to see a nurse practitioner. I scheduled the appointment and realized that my coworkers were laughing when I described the situation over the phone. "It's a piece of a toy. About the size of a grain of rice. No, she's not choking; if she were, we would be calling 911, not you."

I cancelled my afternoon phone screens and emailed my boss to let him know that I had to leave for an unplanned trip to the doctor's office. When I got home, Dulci ran up to the door with her coat on and excitedly shouted, "I get to go to the doctor's office!" Afton was sick from school today, but she was miraculously feeling well enough to come along with Dulci and provide moral support.

We checked in and had a seat in the lobby. Dulci and Afton grabbed matching Pregnancy and Parenthood magazines that they flipped through while I read a book I had brought along. They came to a page advertising nursing bras and began chanting "bras, bras, bras, bras." I encouraged them to look for children's magazines, to which I was informed, "but look, Papa, there are bras."

Thankfully our wait in the lobby was a short one. The nurse called us up to get weighed, measured and taken back to a room. We were informed that we would be meeting with the Nurse Practitioner, Dana, and the grad student, Dina. Dina asked what it was that was in her nose, and I handed her the plastic My Little Pony doll whose broken off horn was allegedly hiding in Dulci's nasal cavity. She asked, "Okay, so is it purple like the rest of the pony?" Afton said, "No, it's lavender."

We settled on mauve.

Dina took a good look and couldn't see anything in either nostril apart from some snot. Dana, the Practitioner, came in and could see nothing but snot as well, so she decided we would try to get Dulci to clear her nose. After about a box and half of kleenex, 6 treatments of saline solution, a suction bulb, and 4 q-tips, the verdict came back inconclusive. "I can see there's nothing in the left nostril, but there's this big mucus blockage in the right one that I can't get clear, and there could be something lodged behind it. I'm going to give the Ear Nose Throat doctor a call, and see what he says."

...so we headed over to the ENT clinic, which thankfully was only about a mile or two away. Upon arrival, I was handed over some paperwork to fill out on Dulci's behalf. The first part asked what brought us in today, and I wrote something along the lines of "Twilight Sparkle's horn is caught in my nose." The same page asked for most recent occupation, to which I put "Princess".

The second half of the paperwork was scantron, like the standardized tests we took in high school, where you have to fill in the bubbles with a #2 pencil. This was obviously not written for a 3-year old, so I filled it out as best as I could. "How often do you use tobacco products?" was fine, because I could just fill in "Never have", but the follow up question "Please select the nearest amount of cigarettes you smoke per day," left no choice for "N/A", so I had to choose the most accurate given the choices, which was "1/2 a pack per day."

We were brought back into the office which looked like a hybrid between a dentist's office and a hair salon. After only a couple minutes, we were met by Rich, the Physician Assistant who would be checking Dulci out. He took a good look and confirmed that the right nostril was too clogged to see. He hooked up a suction machine that he introduced as "Mr. Slurpee" whom was going to "help clean out your boogers." Afton thought it was funny that he said, "boogers", while I pondered about how "Mr. Slurpee" is a rather peculiar name for a piece of medical equipment.

Rich suctioned for a minute or two, then took another look and said, "I don't see a unicorn horn in there but it is really clogged." Afton said, "She didn't put a unicorn horn in there; Twilight Sparkle is an alicorn."

Another minute or two of suctioning, and he saw something, grabbed a pair of forceps, and pulled out what looked like either a crumpled up piece of paper, or the grossest, biggest booger that you can imagine. The object was rancid, causing Rich to gag and say, "That stinks." He checked her nose again and could see that it was perfectly clear.

A nurse put on a pair of gloves and unfolded the foreign object, which opened up to reveal itself as a bandaid. "I don't know how long that's been there," Rich said, "but with the way it smells, it's definitely been there for a while. Certainly longer than just today." Part of me wanted to bring the bandaid home for a scrapbook, or to snap a picture of it, but I thought that would be in bad taste.

I would say there were some major lessons learned today. Dulci learned that it's not okay to stick things in your nose, or you might have to stick more things in your nose, to remove the thing you stuck in your nose. Jamie learned that Dulci's recent bad breath has nothing to do with her toothbrushing capabilities. And Rich learned that a Pegasus is a horse with wings, a Unicorn is a horse with a horn, and an Alicorn is a horse with both wings and a horn.

We still don't know where the horn is.

The inward journey

Today, I turned 29...for the 7th time. It's an interesting season of life. I'm a husband, a parent to young kids, a son, a friend, a musician, a bodybuilder...okay, not the last one. And amidst all those things, I'm me. In spite of all the roles that I take on, whether chosen, born into, or fallen into, I remain myself, and I want to take my 35th year on this planet to really dive into who I am, what makes me me, how I can better myself, and how can I become more like the person God created me to be. Hopefully by taking some time to focus on myself, I will be able to improve not only my own quality of life, but my roles as husband, father, and so on to improve the quality of life for those I care about.

I will (try to) engage in some sort of daily self-reflection exercise throughout my 35th year, beginning today. Some of these I will share; some I will probably keep private. Some days, I will just do something fun or funny or random, while some days I will do some serious soul searching. My plan is to do this through utilization of the arts: music, photography, writing, drawing, and whatever else I can think of. Unlike the 365 photography project I did a few years back, I am accepting help from others, for example, I will include pictures taken by other people, as I did above.

Here we go.

Disclaimer: I am new to drawing. I started at the end of 2016, when I probably hadn't tried to seriously draw anything since at least Junior High, maybe earlier. Some of these drawings will probably be pretty crude until my skill improves through practice and time, but hey, Van Gogh didn't start until he was 27, so maybe all is not lost at 35.

The idea here, is that I'm turning 35, but I'm still a child in many ways. A person in their mid 30's should have some things figured out, but I don't. I don't even know what I want to be when I grow up. The parentheses show that the "3" is there, but a lot of people, myself included, will glance over it. 

Fun With Facebook Part 2

This has been a really heavy few weeks for me with some family stuff going on and also with the divisiveness and negativity of this election.  I need to take a break and just laugh for a little bit. These are old, but I've been saving them for a while. Kent Thurman is my fake Facebook; Jeff Thurman is his older brother whose password I forgot.

I would be remiss not to make a nod to Ben Palmer and Ted L. Nancy.

Food Poisoning at White Castle 

Cut Off at Olive Garden

Monkey Trouble

The Day We Were Wed

Steak 'n Shake's Core Values

Flirty Cashier

Ikea's Motto

Gå och knulla dig själv AND  Kväva på en häst kuk

Tall Order

Keep Checking

I'd Like to Return this Parrot

Morton Pumpkin Festival

Life in Morton, Illinois has its perks; some of the best schools in the state, low crime, and Pegasus Pizza to name a few, but one of the biggest things people get excited about here is the annual Morton Pumpkin Festival. Being home to the Libby's canning factory, rumored to be the world's largest pumpkin processing plant, Morton dubs itself "The Pumpkin Capital of the World"; although Half Moon Bay, California and Floydada, Texas may disagree with that title. I've never been to either of those cities, but if they're anything like Morton, the first signs of autumn are not fall foliage, or brisk air where you begin to see your breath, or even Halloween costumes at the stores (which come out around the 4th of July nowadays, I think), they are the unmistakable stench of pumpkin and manure, which lingers in the air like an overbearing houseguest who doesn't pick up on your subtle passive-aggressive clues to leave.

Even after moving to another town, my family attended the Pumpkin Festival every year as I was growing up. Year after year, my brothers, my sister, and I would be handed our tickets and we would go our separate ways with a time to meet up later. 

At that point, the Pumpkin Festival became a sense of mystery and adventure. The flashing lights, the aromas of the deep fried funnel cakes and grilling meat, the passion of the crowd, and the blaring crappy hair metal music the carnies played, put me under some sort of trance, where I thought this could be the best night of my life. Maybe I would finally go through the haunted house, which was really just a truck trailer with broken pop-up animatronics. Maybe I would become a millionaire playing the coin pusher game with the quarters and the automatic sliding wall. Maybe I would meet the girl of my dreams, fall in love, and propose to her on the ferris wheel. 

None of these things ever really happened though. I would go wait in line for the most exciting, most daring ride, and then I would chicken out because it goes upside down. I would then go wait in line another half hour for another ride that fit somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between The Octopus and Bumper Boats.

Once I was out of tickets, I would walk around the exhibition tent and collect stickers and swag from local businesses and people running for public office. I probably looked pretty dumb, wearing stickers for both the Democrat and Republican candidate, though I was too young to vote for either, nor did I know who any of them were. I would sign up to win anything I could from local raffles, which resulted not in prizes, but my family receiving sales calls for weeks to come from companies installing windows or selling life insurance policies or teaching karate.

Eventually, I would make my way over to the carnival games, where I would test my luck to see if I could figure out the trick and win the big toys showcased at the top of the booths. Unfortunately, my luck always popped the balloon with the lowest number behind it, or knocked down just 2 of 10 pins, or picked up the duck that only won me a useless plastic coin purse.

With any change I had left, I would venture over to the 25 cent Coin Pusher game and meticulously scour each station to find my best odds of knocking multiple quarters off the edge and putting them into my coin purse. Of course I won sometimes. I would win 50 cents after I put in about 3 bucks. I would lose it all by the time the night was over, but when I met up with my family and went home with my political swag, my plastic coin purse, and my shame for not being brave enough to go upside down, I would feel exhilarated and start to look forward to next year.

As I got older, the Pumpkin Festival changed; well, maybe it stayed the same, but I changed. My family started to go to Six Flags regularly, whose behemoth rollercoasters put the standard carnival rides to shame. At Six Flags I braved a roller coaster that went upside-down around 7th or 8th grade and then realized that the Salt and Pepper Shaker or the Zipper, both of which I was so terrified of as a child, really weren't that scary or exciting.

My understanding of carnival games shifted from a place of hope that I could beat whatever trick they had set up with enough practice to a place of skepticism, that the tricks were unbeatable. I think it was the Guess Your Weight, Age, or Birth Month game that got me to think critically about carnival games, specifically the birth month part. There's no way other than random luck to guess somebody's birth month (within 3 months) accurately. I assumed a group of data scientists must have created a mathematical formula to calculate which months to guess and how often to maximize their number of wins and ensure that they were winning more than they were losing. It wasn't until years later that I realized that it doesn't matter if they win or lose. That's the key. They could lose every time and still make money. The $5 fee to play the game is higher than the cost of the prize they give out if they lose.

My beautiful children after getting their faces painted

Tonight, this was confirmed for me. My father-in-law treated my family to the Pumpkin Festival, and when the kids went to play games, one specific carny decided to cut the crap and said, "Just give me $5 and you can pick whichever toy you want." The game went like this:

1. Pay the carny $5
2. Pick up a floating frog out of a baby pool
3. The carny says "You win! Pick any toy you want, or take the frog, I don't care. Except for the toys up top, they cost $10."

He knew very well that the toys cost like 50 cents from Oriental Trading, so he didn't even bother making up a game. There was no point to picking up the frog, no skill, no luck, just pay $5 and get your 50 cent piece of junk. My two year old son picked a plastic toy trumpet, which has two reeds in the end pitched about a quarter tone apart from each other, and he cannot put down. My two year old daughter picked a princess baton, of which she took the caps off in the van spilling glitter and confetti everywhere. And my seven year old daughter picked a blow up mermaid, which she realized popped by the time she got home.

I've changed. I'm cynical about this stuff now. I think most of the rides are pretty lame; some of the ones that spin just make me queazy. Instead of being enthralled by the lights, the aromas, and the crowd, I get overstimulated by them. I realize how silly the exhibition tent is. I don't care who is running for public office, and I don't need their stupid stickers (except for my college history professor who is running for Congress; I brought home his button). I know I'm not going to win any raffles I sign up for, and I don't want to be pestered with the sales calls. 

And I wonder, is this how my parents felt taking us to the Pumpkin Festival? Yeah, it probably is. They didn't do it for them; they did it for us kids. And to see my kids' eyes light up as they ride in circles on the kiddie cars or motorcycles, or hear them giggle as they get their faces painted, or see them hunt for candy in the exhibition tent, or feel their excitement as they "win" their game and get to pick their prize, I realize that's why my parents did it. That's why I do it, and that's why its worth it...except for that damn trumpet; I'm going to have to hide that thing.

House full of records, books, and holiday-themed lingerie

We have a problem in America and in my house. It's a problem that I am okay living with, at least the "my house" part of it, but a problem nonetheless. Our problem is possessions. John Lennon imagined a world with no possessions, yet must have been a dreamer, because instead of taking steps to realize this, he took steps in the opposite direction, releasing several albums to sell, many of which I own on vinyl. If my calculations are correct, over 68 cubic inches of my house are filled with objects that bear John Lennon's name.

In addition to John Lennon, I have another 3,000 or so records taking up space in my house. Now I'm not by any means hoarding these. Around 3 years ago, a former record store owner was selling a truckload for $200, and Jamie not only encouraged me, but actually talked me into buying it. I have been slowly sorting through and cataloging these albums since. Every duplicate I find goes into a "sell" box and then to a thrift store if I can't sell it. I mean, who needs 8 copies of John Denver's Greatest Hits when one is clearly enough? Every unique record I haven't listened to gets a spin of at least one side, then goes onto the keeper shelf if I like it, or follows the same procedure as the duplicates if I don't.

Our whole porch was filled with boxes of records upon delivery that night.

At this point, 925 of them sit on the shelf of keepers in alphabetical order by artist, the artists I know better having their releases ordered by year. Sometimes I look through this collection in awe at the eclecticism. The juxtaposition of records on the shelf highlights the absurdity of this collection. The 9 Symphonien of Beethoven sit next to A Night at Carnegie Hall with Harry Belafonte, while Joe Cocker and Leonard Cohen buddy buddy up with Natalie and Nat King Cole. The oddest being either Merle Haggard next to Hall and Oates or Waylon Jennings next to Jethro Tull. Yet some perfect transitions exist, for example Billy Joel turns into Elton John.

Alphabetical order can have its problems sometimes though. Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship sit next to each other, but Starship, after dropping the "Jefferson" part, sits off by itself. I would feel weird putting John Mellencamp out of order to be with John Cougar and John Cougar Mellencamp, even though they're the same man. I've considered filing under "John Mellencougar", but that's ludicrous. And what about when an artist breaks out from the band? How should I organize The Supremes, Diana Ross and the Supremes, and then Diana Ross?

Sometimes while listening, serendipity will rear its head and seem to set up different records next to each other. One time I listened to Janis Joplin's Pearl, which contains "Me and Bobby McGee" then put on Kris Kristofferson's eponymous debut, containing the original "Me and Bobby McGee", which unbeknownst to me at the time, Kristofferson wrote. Sometimes my records will get in fights with each other. Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd will go back and forth between "Southern Man" and "Sweet Home Alabama." Other times I just get mixed messages. Michael Jackson tells me not to stop until I get enough, while Journey tells me not to stop believing and Fleetwood Mac encourages me to keep thinking about tomorrow. What then is a man to do when he's had enough believing and thinking about tomorrow, stop or don't?

Our possession and organization problem is not strictly tied to records. So much of our house is filled with things we don't use. For example, I generally read books in one of two ways: 1) Out loud to the children 2) on my Kindle. Yet, here in the living room, we have hundreds of books, most of which I will never read to the kids, and many that I already have on my Kindle. Yet, we go to garage sales and thrift stores and cannot turn down a hard back copy of David Sedaris' Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, even though I've already read it on my Kindle, and we had another copy that we recently gave away. And I can't tell you how many copies of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer we've bought, forgetting that we already have multiple copies at home.

Garage sales and thrift stores happen to be my family's biggest detriment to organization of our belongings. They are our passion. They are our weakness. When Jamie and I were getting to know each other, I gave her a ride in my car, and she was immediately impressed when I had to move the bags that I had obtained while "Goodwill Hunting" from the passenger seat. We ran into each other regularly at the Salvation Army. And to this day, we hit up multiple shops every week to check out the new stuff and the deals.

That said, we really are pretty thrifty and frugal when it comes to the things we purchase. When we buy clothing at a thrift store (usually only when it's half off) we wear it until it starts to tatter or we become bored with it, and then we either hold a garage sale or return it to the thrift store. We try to purge at least once a year so we don't hold on to too many things that we don't use. We also hardly ever buy anything that we plan to keep indefinitely new, the only real exception to that being underwear...of which Jamie purchased for me one Christmas, kind of.

This part gets a bit personal, but I can't not share it. I opened my gift after the kids went to bed, and it was some Christmas-themed lingerie (think like "Mrs. Claus made Santa's naughty list"), which was purchased jokingly in the after-Christmas clearance sale, to which my immediate response was, "There's no way this will fit me." Obviously, it wasn't meant for me to wear; it was for Jamie to wear...for me. It turns out, she and a girl friend had gone Christmas shopping and bought similar things as gifts to their respective husbands.

After the initial wear (we'll call it that), the "Santy Panties" sat in Jamie's bottom dresser drawer for probably a couple years collecting dust. During those years, I would occasionally encourage using some of the clothing from that drawer, only to say about the Mrs. Claus get-up, "Except for this...it's not even Thanksgiving yet."

During a spring cleanup time, we were scouring our closets and drawers for things that were not needed any more, and since it was too personal an item, instead of being sold at our yard sale, the Mrs. Claus lingerie was going to go straight to the thrift store. It sat off to the side in our bedroom in a pile of other things we didn't think would sell. After the yard sale, we filled several generic white garbage bags with the leftovers and the pile of things we didn't try to sell, and I drove to the Goodwill donation center down the road.

As I arrived, the high school age girls working there, seeing that I had several bags came out with a few shopping carts and helped me load them. The two carts were full, so they took them back inside, but I had one more bag...one incredibly stuffed bag. I figured, "I'll just carry this one in." "You can put that in the empty cart there," one of the girls said as I walked into the donation center. As I was lifting the bag to put into the cart, it ripped open and dropped to the ground, propelling the item on top to jump out of the bag into the air and land on the ground by itself. Sitting perfectly there between me and the teenage girls was the Mrs. Claus lingerie. "Oops," I said, as the color on my face reddened to match the lingerie itself. I picked it up, shoved it back in the ripped bag, put the bag in the cart, spun 180 degrees on my feet, and walked out the door without another word.

My jackass senior year as a jackass, jackass

With the exception of Freshman Biology, I was a pretty solid B/B- student through most of high school. Had I applied myself, I could've easily gotten straight A's. But I was getting by just fine putting forth minimal effort, so I didn't think it was worth the extra time. I was a natural learner, being able to quickly and easily memorize the information we'd be tested on and then forget the useful information as soon as I didn't need it; the useless information, I retain to this day and fish out of my memory when I'm playing trivia.

After 11 years of school, I was burned out, tired, and bored. I knew I had enough credits to graduate, and I knew I would be attending a local community college, so my senior year, I pretty much gave up making any effort whatsoever. Really, the only reason I was in school was for band and choir and to hang out with my friends. Though I wasn't all that interested in the topics, I signed up for World History and Physics, both accelerated classes, so I could be in them with some friends.

Would you take anything seriously if you looked like this?

To teach us about the Industrial Revolution, Mr. Walker, our World History teacher, assigned an exercise that taught us absolutely nothing about the Industrial Revolution. We were to draw and describe an idea for an invention. The class would vote for the best invention, and the winner would receive extra credit. There were some pretty lame ideas, which included a blatantly suggestive vibrating glove to help with arthritis, a remote control that could change the color of stop lights to green as you approached, and a mighty shield of balsa. My design was a Grammy that would sprout legs after the awards ceremony, and then proceed to find and throw itself into the nearest garbage can.

Prior to the vote, unofficial polling showed that the more serious an invention, the less likely it was to receive votes. About half of the room (the more athletic half) thought my invention was stupid and decided to vote for one of their own stupid ideas. The other half of the room knew my idea was stupid and wanted to see such an irreverent idea win. The secret votes were cast, and I learned that my Grammy lost by one vote to some lame invention that one of the football players created. But as people talked, I counted those who said they voted for me, and something didn't add up. Mr. Walker slid his hands through his combover and smugly threw the votes into the trash. I don't remember who it was that pulled the votes out of the garbage after class to recount them, but whoever it was, they were responsible for ruining my faith in elections and any respect I had for my teacher, as the recount showed that I had won by 4 votes.

Champ Walker. That's right, his actual real first name is Champ.

Mr. Walker pled ignorance, and I, along with my half of the class knew the vote was rigged, solely because I was being a jackass and not taking his class or assignments seriously. In retrospect, I don't blame him, but at the time...well, I really didn't blame him then either.  Actually, I took pride knowing that my joke of a project caused a 20 year teacher to compromise his ethics.

Physics was taught by a short chubby Italian guy named Nerio Calgaro. He bore a striking resemblance to Tom Bosley, who played Mr. Cunningham on Happy Days, leading me to walk into class each day and say in my best Fonzie voice, "Hey Mr. C!" Mr. Calgaro was predictable most of the time. He began every morning the same way; he would sit early in the teacher's lounge solving the newspaper crossword puzzle for the day. Repeating his same unfunny jokes again, and again, Mr. Calgaro would say, "No, Procyon," when asked if he was serious (Sirius).

One is Mr. Calgaro; the other is Tom Bosley. Who's who? Does it even matter?

He put up with a lot in his classroom, but one thing he didn't put up with was profanity. An accidental "hell" or "ass" would get you sent to the Dean's office in an instant....unless....unless he swore first, in which case he granted us impunity for the rest of the class period to swear as much as we wanted. Legend says that this only happened one time, where a few minutes prior to class getting out he let slip a "damn it," leaving the class with about two or three minutes to swear like sailors.

Physics was the last class of the day for me; and for this group of burned out, tired seniors, it was hard to take it seriously, even for our valedictorian, Mike Rock. Mike had taken the same approach to his senior year as I did, and by the time it got to Physics every day, Mike was done. He spent most of the class period making fun of Mr. Calgaro and interjecting wisecracks to me and Matt Jordan. One class period, Mike said something that caught Mr. Calgaro's ear and prompted a, "Michael, don't be such a jackass."

We had been trying to catch Mr. Calgaro swearing since learning of the rule, so when Mike heard this, he responded immediately with, "You cussed!"

The whole class gasped and sat on the edges of our seats awaiting our invitation to start dropping f bombs. Knowing the rule, and knowing where Mike was going with this, Mr. Calgaro took what he thought was the easy way out. "Jackass isn't a cuss word."

The class response was almost sheer letdown, except for two people, Mike and me. Mike began trying to debate with Mr. Calgaro, claiming that jackass is indeed a cuss word, but I saw a greater opportunity present itself.  "Mike," I said "stop arguing. He just officially declared that 'jackass' is not a cuss word....you jackass."

Since "jackass" was officially not a cuss word, we were free to use it, and not just for the rest of the class period, but for the rest of the year. "Hey, you jackass, can you tell me again how a jackass figures out centripetal force?" "Do you know the mass, you jackass?" "Don't be a jackass, of course I know the mass, jackass."

Mike dropped the class, so as not to ruin his 4.0, and I think I got a D.
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Fun with Facebook Part 1

So I have been having some fun with Facebook over the past year or so, and I'd like to share some of the fun that I've had. I've been inspired pretty strongly by both Ben Palmer and the excellent books from Ted L. Nancy.

This will be the first of many.