Behind closed doors

Yesterday Devon gave us quite a fright because she locked herself in the bathroom. Our friend Bob has been helping us do some work on the apartment, and recently he went through all of the doors and took the knobs off, cleaned them and in some cases (like the bathroom), fixed them so they worked properly. The bathroom now has a nice, shiny, working lock -- one of the old fasioned type that turns on the inside and throws a bolt. The challenge with this is that there is no way to open it from the outside; modern doors allow you to open from the outside (a lesson I learned the hard way when Devon locked herself in Burke's bathroom a few weeks ago). These old fasioned doors just bolt on the inside, and once the bolt is locked, it's locked. We were really freaked out because we're on the second floor, so we couldn't even use a ladder to climb in through the window since the ladders we do have are too short. We were trying to tell her to unlock the lock, and right about the time we started to panic, she unlocked the door. She's been quite fascinated with locks recently and actually tried locking and unlocking the bathroom door before with me inside, so apparently the practice paid off. We're putting tape over the lock until she's old enough to not lock herself inside (at least unwittingly).

Walt and I made an in-person visit to Floorcraft today, since I thought we'd be able to light a fire under them better in person than on the phone. Hector, our original salesperson, actually sat in the corner studiously keeping his eyes from us -- maybe he was concerned that I'd (rightly) lay into him -- while another salesguy helped us. I've now decided that this place is a serious mess. When I explained that I wanted to know how long it would take to get the new, correct sized cabinet and that we also had an extra cabinet and I wanted to make sure we hadn't been charged for it, he said, "So you've got it! We've been looking everywhere for that cabinet. The customer was in here twice trying to find it." Not only did they screw up our order but they also screwed up someone else's order and shipped one of their cabinets to us. They had to send a delivery truck out today to pick up the other person's cabinet (and at least we got the extra cabinet out of our garage).

On the phone Hector had tried to tell Walt that our correct cabinet was "backordered," which I think is total bull. I'm sure they just messed up the order. Apparently, however, we should get the last cabinet in about two weeks, which is actually a lot better than I thought. It took six weeks to get the first order, so two weeks for one cabinet is less time than I expected. I should probably wait and say that after we have the cabinet in hand, however, since it's feeling a little like famous last words whenever I think something is going to be delivered on time and correctly from Floorcraft. I guess the only good thing is that this works out with Aaron's vacation schedule; he can't come back for two more weeks now anyway, so hopefully we'll actualy have the correct cabinet pieces when he returns.

Aaron did finish the countertop today, though, and it looks great. Kudos to Ikea for producing excellent-looking butcher block countertops at a quarter of the price it would have cost us to purchase evil granite or some other similar engineered stone. It's really nice to have a counter at last; we've been cutting things on top of boxes for days. The place is really starting to look like a functional kichen; hopefully this weekend Walt will be able to install the kitchen sink and then we'll really be up and running. Burke in particular will be thrilled, since we're constantly tromping in his apartment to use his kitchen sink, dishwasher and other amenities.

I recently mentioned how Devon is getting much better at stringing together short phrases instead of just using single words. I've also noticed that she's gravitating towards slightly more sophisticated books too. We're still in the board book phase, since she easily rips books with paper pages; some of our board books are very basic ones with a few words per page, and some are more complicated: Dr. Seuss silly rhymes, longer stories, etc. She had a few favorites for quite a while, and now she's branching out and is interested in more sophisticated books that have a more complicated story line or other things that require a greater understanding of language. We have a Dr. Seuss book called There's a Wocket in My Pocket, which is a book of silly rhymes ("Did you ever have the feeling there's a zamp in the lamp?"). She had never been a big fan of this book before, but now she's really interested in it. My dad's friend Janet gave her a book that's an evolved story building on the Itsy Bitsy Spider storyline, and Devon really likes this one too. It's an interesting evolution that seems in keeping with the evolution of her language skills.

On the political front, I'm continually appalled at how this adminstration continues to push the adoption of torture as a key pillar in the so-called fight against terror. I can't believe that the U.S. is making an argument that it's ok to act like a terrorist (e.g. torture others and engage in other questionable forms of interrogation) as a means to an end of beating back the terrorists. Whatever happened to the idea that when you adopt the methods of a terrorist, you are no better than one yourself? The NY Times has an interesting article about how the adminstration is trying to promote interrogation methods for the CIA that contradict the Geneva Convention. Thanks again, red state voters.