Anders Rallies Fingerprintees

Anna has most of the good Anders Adventures since she is with him during the weekdays. The best stories are now second hand to me. Yesterday, Anna took Anders to Katy to get her fingerprints in her long quest for a Texas Teaching License. Texas is an interesting paradox because they require an unreasonable amount of documentation and paperwork to due anything official but their dearth of government offices to attain this paperwork makes attaining that documentation difficult. So, that's why Anders was in Katy while Anna attempted to get fingerprinted. And no, Katy is nowhere near Sugar Land. So the computer system was out and there was a two hour delay in Anna's finger printing appointment. The waiting room lost some of their humanity and they became Waiting Room People. Anders then turned it on and worked the room. One woman said he'd lifted everyone's spirits as they waited. Another woman openly declared he was smarter than her three year old. Another guy left, came back with fries, and shared with Anders. He also showed Anders his phone with pictures of his dog on it. Other people were showing Anders their phones and letting him play with them, but that's a dangerous game, as I know. One woman said, "I could have been in Lake Charles by now!" Lake Charles, LA is a gambling hotbed whose motto is "Like Vegas, only hotter." So Anders owned another room and after the two hour wait as Anna and Anders were leaving Anders turned to the room and said, "Bye, bye Friends."

Of course Anders is 2 so he followed up that virtuoso performance by come home and eating dirt. He got it way in his mouth, crunched around some small rocks, the whole deal. Anna was mad at both of us as I was watching Anders. Usually before Anders does something wrong he makes a football move toward the "no no," looks back for disapproval, and then does it. I lost my head as I opened his mouth and saw just brown. I started making short, choppy, spastic moves around the kitchen without actually accomplishing anything, and somewhere in the back of my mind I realized I had become my mom. Whenever I did something similar as a kid, my mom hustled around for a couple of minutes without actually doing anything before she regained her wits. Luckily I had Anna to think clearly and suggest I brush his teeth, which worked well. His toothbrush was just black. What did I try to do? I lifted him up over the sink, grabbed a sippy cup with a little milk in the bottom, filled it with warm water, and tried to force Anders to drink it.

I had a busy week so I didn't see Anders as much as usual. We are going to make up for it this weekend. We'll go swimming this afternoon along with visiting the Galleria for Anna's birthday today. I want to take Anders to the Astros game tomorrow as its the Dog Days promotion, meaning people bring their dogs to the game, which he will love. Monday we will attend a SLAM (Sugar Land Area Moms) BBQ.

One of the interesting thing about living in a new region is the different critters. We have an alligator preserve about 20 miles south of us. I've heard that it's not uncommon to see gators around the water even in Sugar Land. Even crazier is that Texas has a feral hog population of over 2 million! There is a large javelina population in Fort Bend County, where we live. One of my students, who lives in Sugar Land, said there was a stampede through his neighborhood a few years ago. As a result, a new law came into effect on Sept. 1 making it legal to kill feral hogs from helicopters with high powered rifles. If my friend James, a former subscriber to New Zealand Pig Hunter (http://www.amazon.com/New-Zealand-Pig-Hunter/dp/B00007KZKY), reads this, there is no doubt that he will visit us on his next trip to the states. Businesses have sprung up in the past couple of days to take advantage of the new law.

I've gone off topic enough and Anders is waking up, gotta go. Happy Birthday, Anna!