As you may recall from last Saturday’s post Trainboy brought his new train engine with him when he visited cousins. The coupler was broken when he played with it there. I’d glued it and thought it worked. The glue did not hold. I have many glues, none of them worked. They apparently make the couplers out of super-anti-adhesive plastic. Crap.

After Supernurse went to work we headed for the hobby shop. Maybe they would have a replacement coupler. The lady who runs the shop was busy helping a customer so we wandered around for a while. We looked at the train layout they’re building. It has a bridge- he likes bridges. It has a tunnel and he likes tunnels too. He thought it was a fine thing.

The train I had bought Trainboy for his birthday was a Bachman with EZ-lock tracks. From the look of it the track would just snap together. From the look of it. The reality of it was that it still used connectors on each rail for the electrical contact. Trainboy prides himself on being able to do things for himself, but the track was too difficult for him. It was sometimes aggravating for me, requiring pliers to straighten a bent connector.

So I figured there’s got to be a better way. It does no good for Trainboy to have a train he can’t play with when he wants. So we looked at the train sets too. Life- Like sets use a system they call Power Lock. The tracks snap together side-ways and don’t use rail connectors. Hmm…

The set he already has is a fairly small oval. It seemed reasonable that if he liked it we’d just expand it. Buying a new system would mean the first one is either junk, or rarely used. There is such a thing as cutting your losses though and this seemed like such a time.

I picked out a set that’s much larger than his original one. It’s a double oval almost six foot long and about four feet wide. The ovals overlap, meaning it has a bridge- a good thing. It also comes with a mountain so it has a tunnel, the other good thing. There are also loaders and unloaders for coal and rocks, moving gateways, boxcars, gondolas and the always-important caboose. Guys like toys.

He liked it, no doubt about it. Trainboy looked at me and with a very concerned voice asked, “Is it expensive?” He didn’t want to get his hopes up and then see it go back up on the shelf. “Kinda, but we can buy it if you think you would like it.” “Okay.” He was pleased, me too. In the back of my head was a little voice threatening, “How are you going to explain this?” I didn’t care… much.


When we got to the register I asked the lady who owns the store if she had a coupler for a HO scale Bachman. She told me Bachman only came in G and O scale. There were other customers waiting so I wasn’t going to disagree with her in front of them. Call me a weenie but that’s just the way I am. She told me to check the train for it’s make and get back to her to order one. Okay.

We left the store with one large train set and one happy Trainboy. We put it in the trunk and headed out of town to get Ms. Pikachu. She was not there. They’d gone to the zoo. This made me feel even better about the train purchase. After Ms. Pikachu had gotten to go to Adventureland, the zoo, and stayed over at a cousins it seemed fair that he got a train.

We went to older brother, Herr Ronald’s, and Trainboy played with his cousins. Eventually we got the call that Ms. Pikachu was back and away we went. She was happy. Trainboy was happy. They slept soundly on the way home.

-lifelike trains

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The Supernurse went to work and it was just Trainboy and me. He got out his half-his-size-but-still-only-$3.00-at-Wal Mart squirt gun. He showed me how he waters the plants with it. Each plant got three pumps.

When it got dark we went inside and watched some Cartoon Network, because there’s no such thing as too much Ed, Edd, and Eddie.

At bedtime we read ‘Green Eggs and Ham.’ That was it for us.

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Bad news when I got home. The mother of the other Guinea pigs died. Apparently when they shot the video outside yesterday it got too hot.

When she’d had her litter this past winter one of the babies didn’t make it. Since the ground was frozen it wasn’t possible to bury it. The Supermom wrapped it up and put it in the deep freeze. She’d intended to bury it when it got warmer, but it just never seemed like the right time.

They held a little funeral and buried the momma with its baby. Everybody cried, Skunk was a good pet.

We took Heather back home. Ms. Pikachu brought along some clothes and stayed over. She looks forward to this. The last time she visited she was excited that she got to help clean out the chick coop. Imagine that. If she only had the same enthusiasm for cleaning up her room it wouldn’t look like a chicken coop.

It was a quiet drive home.

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When I got home the Superwife told me that she and the kids had shot a movie. They wrote it, storyboarded it, and shot it with the camcorder. It was their version of ‘The Three Little Pigs.’

They used the Guinea pigs for the actors. Costumes were made, including a hat with ears for the fox. Watching the video it was obvious they’d greatly enjoyed themselves. They even had a blooper segment.

We went to see ‘The Lion King’ at the IMAX. I’ve always liked the movie. It has some cute moments, drama, and a fine score. I was looking forward to seeing it on a huge screen. It was a disappointment.

Enlarging the picture so much often made the lines look like they were drawn on a chalkboard. Sometimes the images were so large and moved so fast I couldn’t follow them. The kids have played the DVD too many times to count, so I’m more than familiar with the film. Even knowing everything I couldn’t keep up. It became just a swirl of color. If I’m not getting the experience across think of it this way- watching TV with your nose against the screen.

But the sound was good. Not that it mattered much. I have a nice surround sound system. Part of my system is a 15-inch, 300-watt sub-woofer that can shake the floor. So I wasn’t impressed when the elephants walked during “I Just Can’t Wait to be King.” If you don’t have such a system, and you really want to feel the elephants walk, then go ahead and see it. But I can’t recommend it. The Superwife feels the same way. However, the kids liked it.

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Shortly after getting home the Superwife arrived. She and the kids had gone back to visit her sister and to bring back Heather, a niece, for a visit. In short order we headed to the Playstation for pizza and to let the kids play. The Playstation is one of those places with multi-levels of tubes and slides. The kids love it, but no parent will go in there without knee pads.

An indoor playground, pizza, pop, and lots of tokens for the games make for a good time for the kids. While they enjoyed themselves the wife and I talked. We tried to talk anyway. Near us was a ball pen for toddlers. The toddlers being entertained were as vocal as they were happy.

By the time the kids had worked up a sweat the pizza was ready. Just pepperoni for the kids. Anything besides pepperoni is picked off and discarded, so pepperoni is all we ever order for them.

It doesn’t work the Superwife or myself though. For ours I told the fellow at the counter to put on everything but bacon. No bacon for us, we eat healthy.

After we ate the kids split up the tokens and headed for the game room. By the time they’d used all their tokens they’d won many tickets. The tickets were then redeemed for prizes, in this case it was almost all candy. And why not, Halloween was almost nine months ago. A kid can only hold out for so long.

We left with the sweet booty and headed for Best Buy. The new Piglet movie is out. We now have a copy; perhaps tomorrow I can do a review. The world is waiting.

Then it was on to home, and time to Blog. The Superwife has informed me that Trainboy lost a tooth last night. He wants another gold dollar. The last time I got stamps at the Post Office I got five of them. They are nowhere to be found. It would be no good to have a disillusioned Trainboy, so it’s off to the Post Office I go.

It’s a waste that I’m not in a sleep deprivation study.

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We went to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things. As we entered the shrine to the twin gods Capitalism and Conspicuous Consumption we could not help but notice the latest writing on the wall- the school supply lists were in. It was decided that as long as we were there we might as well get it over with. My hopes for a surgical shopping strike evaporated like the proverbial snowball. Didn’t even melt, just gone.

Trainboy’s list for kindergarten was fairly short. I had it all within five minutes. The older the kids are the longer their lists. Ms. Pikachu must be closer to adulthood than I realize, either that or her list was put together by a teacher still young enough to have grand dreams. It was a grand list- a list suitable for an all-night scavenger hunt. A list of Homeric proportions, a list worthy of a Greek chorus supplying commentary on the search.

Some years we wander from store to store like the Lost Tribe looking for the Holy Grail. That wasn’t the problem though. We were beating the rush. It was one-stop shopping; there was no need to go anywhere else. The problem was the choices. Need a ruler? Will that be plain plastic, or should it have templates, or should it roll up, or should it fold up, should it light up? And after deciding on the model, which color? Hmmmm, light or dark?

Folders, colors, markers, pencils, pens, organizers, on and on it went. It was a creative retentive’s dream come true. The kids could almost be guaranteed to be happy. The parents could almost be guaranteed to finish so tired a good nights sleep would be their reward, unless they dreamed of overwhelming school supplies that were suffocating in number.

She needed a basic calculator, nothing fancy schmancy. That was a problem, because all the calculators in school supplies were much more sophisticated. It was amazing- for $10 you can get a calculator better than one that cost over $150 just… 25 years ago. Time flies and so does technology.

I wandered off to Electronics to find a cruder calculator, and found a mind-blowing solution. They have a basic, palm-size calculator in a variety of designer colors. I guessed purple. It cost 99 cents. How do they do that? Make parts, assemble parts, ship from China, sell it for under a buck and everybody still makes a profit. It seems beyond belief.

When I returned to the hunting party with the purple wonder Ms. Pikachu declared it just what she wanted. Even Frugalwife was impressed. Points for me. As Ms. Pikachu continued her deliberations the Frugalwife and I indulged in a little supply-side envy.

Rulers that fold up with a hinge every inch, protractors that light up when pressed- there was a lot of cool stuff. When we were in high school you had to buy a book of tables to be able to do trig problems. For $10 you can have a calculator that displays the solution as fast as you can key in the problem.

Superwife noticed they did not have the erasers that are half pink and half white. Ms. Pikachu will have to rough it with an all-pink one. Someday she’ll tell her kids about it.

While Ms. Pikachu and Supermom agonized over another choice, Trainboy asked me if he could get a toy. Why not? As we headed back to the toys he took my hand. I love that; every clasp is a golden moment. He asked, “Dad, do you love me?” How many times have I told him? How many more have I shown it? But at that moment he just needed to hear it again.

So I told him, “Yes, I love you.” Quoting from ‘Lovable Lyle’ I said, “Sometimes I love you so much I can hardly stand it.” He smiled and replied, “I love you too. It makes me happy.” I was pretty happy myself. It was a golden moment gilded.

It’s hard to say “no” after a moment like that. He didn’t try to capitalize on it though. He picked out a small set of transforming toys- it cost all of about $6.00. Trainboy asked if it was okay. I granted his boon and we headed back to find Ms. Pikachu and Supermom. After we picked up a few more things it was time to go home, happy, but tired.

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