The Women of the Family

I love, love, love this photo. It pretty much tells its own story.

Road Trippin

We are once again safe and sound, back at our cottage on clifford. James weathered the trip very well considering he had to endure 24 hrs strapped down by a five point harness. Mind you they were not in succession but its a lot to ask nonetheless.
The wedding went off with nary a hitch, and there is now one more den Hollander and one less DeMeester in the world. It was all beautiful and quite a lot of fun.
Most of the week's pictures are on my Dad's camera so as soon as I get my hands on them I promise to post some. But for now I just wanted to let you all know that we are safe and sound.

Ready for Take Off

In approximately an hour and a half we'll be leaving for one of our many pilgrimages to Grand Rapids. Road tripping is fun and its always good to see the family. Tim's baby brother Jonathan is getting married on Friday and Tim is one of the groomsmen so we are off. Its also a nice excuse to hang out with Aaron and Meg. (Like we really need one) The little Clone is very excited about seeing his Uncle A. Toodledo!

In Other Words

Today we have a post by a the Phantom Poster, Guest Author and brother to Original Poster. An answer to the recently posted question of why we "Take a crap".

Here's what ADR has to say:

Well, you see, being a philologist (lit. lover of words) by trade and hobby, I’ve pondered this one before as well as other similar but less disturbing examples such as “take your photo”, “take a nap”, take my leave, “take to the hills, “take a hike”, take (this or that) to mean (the other)”, etc. And in fact, there is a systematic method for figuring these things out! You just find as many instances of the word in the past as you can and analyze the usage for meaning and context; then you do the same for recent history and oftentimes some meaningful relationship will surface (meaningful to philologists and snobs mostly). Now about this “taking a crap” business. As the above examples illustrate, ‘take’ can and does mean many things ranging from mental perception/acquisition, physical receiving, motion towards a goal, etc. So too with ‘crap’. It can be a noun, verb, or, my personal favorite, with the inflectional addition of a ‘py’, an adjective. In the case then of our puzzling expression “take a crap”, it is important to recognize that the verb ‘take’ is not actually a verb at all but rather a verbal noun in the form of a present, active, complementary infinitive “to take” and does not strictly refer to the act of receiving. Instead it insinuates more of a motion towards the goal of realizing the verbal action. So too with ‘crap’. Here it is not used in a strict, exclusively noun sense referring to the substance (of crap), but rather has verbal, almost gerundive nuances, just as ‘hike’ does in our previous example referring to the act (of crapping). And so you see that what we mean when we say “take a crap” in our modern vernacular English may very well have been rendered in old or middle English as “to betake myself for the purpose of crapping”. But as with any language, modern English regrettably has been truncated and abbreviated over time causing these occasional perplexities. The main point of all this is clearly that classicists (even crappy ones) are of practical value in the real world! adr

Saturday's Work

Saturday I got up early and headed down to the local Farmer's Market around 6:30 in search of a few canning tomatoes. We already had about 3 overflowing ice cream buckets full, picked from our garden earlier in the week, and about another 3 from my aunt. I managed to get about 30lbs from the market so we were all set to can spaghetti sauce. Mom and Kryna joined me after breakfast and together we managed to can 53 quarts and 1 pint of spaghetti sauce by that evening. We stopped and left our pots to simmer around 3 o'clock to go and donate blood as the blood bank in AR is at less than a day supply right now. Mom and Kryna donated like old pros being quite ready to bleed for the cause. I stepped into the bloodmobile with the noblest intentions, hopped into the chair, surrendered my arm only to find that I would be handing over no blood that day. My veins have always proven to be a little tricky, but Saturday apparently the phlebotomist made some kind of mistake because I felt pain like no other and then my blood stopped flowing into the bag all together. I was willing to give it a shot in my other arm but they said they were only able to use one arm after they got blood in the bag. So another day perhaps. It was a really fun day. Canning is so much fun when you are all working together. I can't wait to teach my hypothetical daughters.

Give and Take

For those of you who define yourselves as refined and have difficulty being uncouth I would advise you not to read this post.

With that said here are some thoughts that I've had for some time.
Why is it that when someone needs to relieve themselves they often use the well known phrase "I need to take a crap" or "I am going to take a crap"? I have no problem with this announcement (in the appropriate setting) other than that it confuses me. Why "Take"? Why not "Leave" or "Give"? Its just not logical. I can't imagine anyone actually "takes", while everyone "leaves". So why do we say this? This has been a question of mine for some time now, I'm just finally getting around to airing it. Isn't this just real brain food for ya?

Update on the Child

Here are a few pictures from this week of my ever growing boy.