Ping....Ping A Pong

Here's the run-down: Friday night was, of course, pizza and movie night. "Mary Poppins". T' life is changed forever. The cutest reaction shot was when she crouched her shoulders into her ears and covered her eyes because she was too terrified when the torn-up note flew magically up the chimney and away to be read by Mary Poppins. It reminded me of the time my Mom let us four kids stay up to watch a special broadcast presentation of "The Exorcist", and I didn't sleep for a month. (Not kidding there, unfortunately.)

I drew a picture of Q as he slept in his journal (sorry - syntax got sloppy - He doesn't sleep in his journal. I'll try again: "As Q slept, I drew a picture of him in his journal"), and absolutely bull's-eyed him. That's always a very nice feeling. Not sure of the quality of trying to put it in through a photo, but without a scanner, it's the best I can do:



Saturday?....Kind of fades into the background for me a bit. After an absolutely glorious sleep-in, there was a lot of house-cleaning, I remember that. And I gave Hobie a bath. I also know I carried a whole heap of wood into the garage from the stack in the back yard, and went to the dump with the week's refuse, as well as our Christmas tree. And we tried to have Q's friend Eli over, but he was booked solid. And none of his other friends were home, so we agreed to put the playdate off until after basketball practice on Sunday.

I also recall that around 4:45, as we were getting set to drive over to Mark and Ronadh's house to have dinner with them in celebration of her brother Peter's and her sister Kera's visit, I suggested that we (Janneke and I) play some ping-pong. We were going to have brunch on Sunday with Brad and Betsy, who love ping-pong, as well as Paige and Nicole, who also profess admiration of Tiny Tennis. And we were a bit rusty.

So the fluorescent lights over the ping-pong table weren't quite working like they ought to, and Janneke had the idea, before we settled in to play, of tapping them with her ping-pong paddle, to frighten them, I guess, into functioning properly. Actually, "bludgeon" might be a better word, because after six or seven whacks, one of them worked itself loose and hurtled earthward and shattered into a billion pieces all over the new table. Which was a lot of fun. Janneke cleaned it up.

Ronadh's siblings are a barrel of monkeys (fun-wise, I mean - not literally), and we had a grand dinner over there of enchiladas. The ones without meat had "JANNEKE" spelled out across them in strips of sliced pepper. It was heart-warming and hilarious. She'd also made a set without cheese for me, but she hadn't written anything out on top of them, in peppers or in any other sort of vegetable. Probably afraid of misspelling my name.

Home, kids to bed, and us to settle in and watch "The Flight of the Conchords". Got it on Netflix the other day. Here's a sampling:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JT5AQIlmM0I

I tried to draw T Saturday night, but I won't be putting that one up here. It turned out pretty grisly. I have a much harder time with her. I'm not sure why it is, but it's almost always much more difficult with her, and now that it's happened a few times, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. I'll keep at it. Stay tuned.

Sunday morning, I ran out to the Death Star (Wal-Mart) to buy replacement fluorescent bulbs for the ping-pong table, then dashed out to pick up the freshly made bagels we'd ordered the day before from Tunnel City, and around 11:00, the festivities began. Paige and Nicole came first with the one, the only, Rafael von Scrumpsh-Mouse - here he is:

http://www.rafilicious.blogspot.com

First time we've had them over, and not the last, I hope. They are a hoot, and they liked Brad and Betsy, whom they hadn't met before. (That's always our test for any folks we meet: we take them home, make sure they're house-trained, and see if they get on with B & B. When they don't, it's kind of sad, because after you've handled them, their mothers won't take them back. So we usually just have to have them put down.) After the eats, we played ping-pong like mad, and then I delivered Q to basketball practice at 1:00. Janneke went to pick him up afterward, around 2:00, and came home with Eli as well. (You may recall Eli from the blog entry, "Orange Tiger Finds Its Claws".) Q and Eli spent hours outside playing baseball, football, and basketball, and then came in to eat a little something before charging downstairs to play ping-pong. T tagged along with them on most of these activities, and they were both super-gentle and accommodating of her. No tears all day, I don't think. Not a bad run.

Then this evening, when Eli had gone home and we'd eaten out supper, we decided that what we should really do was to play some more ping-pong. So down we went, and Q, still dressed in his basketball practice clothes, suddenly felt quite chilled in the basement, and took a quick breather to run upstairs and put some pants and a fleece on. And when he came back down, he was wearing a sly and sneaky grin, waiting for us to notice, which we did, that the pants he'd put on were his snowpants. Such a comedian.

Got an email from my brother Jim today with this picture:



It's the view from the hovercam of Brett Favre's final, Super Bowl Dream-ending interception against the Giants. All 22 men on the field are visible. All 4 potential receivers are visible. Three are open, two of them WIIIIIIDE open.

Brett threw to the fourth, and badly. As Jim said, "I guess we've got next year to look forward to. Youngest team in the league." Very true, very true. And yet I still feel like putting my foot through something. Q, though - he's already thinking about next year. Wrote Brett Favre a letter today, to ask him not to retire. You KNOW I'm sending that one out in the morning.

But now it's 9:00, and Janneke's curled up on Mongo with her sewing basket and a cup of tea, hemming a pair of shorts for Q and watching a Jane Austen production on "Masterpiece Theater", bathed in the warm glow of our wood stove. And I, to complete the stereotypical iconography, am wearing my bright white Air Jordans, boxer shorts and warm-up pants, and am passed out on the dining room floor, shirtless, drunk.

Ah, New England.

Let the Moping...Begin!

Welcome to the land of slow-motion blue funks. The deathly silence from the vast sea of fans of a non-Superbowl team. We didn't play well, we Packers. And the Giants did. We didn't handle the cold well, and they did. And there you have it. Three consecutive playoff appearances where we're eliminated at home. What in God's name is going on here? Eighty years without losing at home in the playoffs, and now we can't win. And it apparently wasn't Mike Sherman's fault.

Janneke said she was impressed with my behavior during the game. I think it was all the witnesses around that kept me in line. Q, Janneke, Don, Mark...I didn't go as over the top as I have in previous losses. I did leap to my feet and do a fingertip chinup on the archway to the living room when Favre threw the interception that Mark Tauscher recovered, and I collapsed to the floor and thrashed when we failed to recover the Giants' muffed punt. But no frothing, little profanity. I think I must be growing up some.

So here's the trajectory leading up to the big game...



Pizza and movie night. Spiderman 3. I laughed, I cried.

Not really.



Q watches Donald Driver addressing the media on the Packers' official website in anticipation of...You know.

And then Sunday happened.

T came up to me this morning as we were about to leave to go to day care and said "Tengo algo en la nariz." I thought she meant a booger, and tried to excavate it for her. "No, no es un moco," she said. "Tiene que ser un moco, Tie. No pusiste nada alli, no cierto?" Which didn't elicit quite as quick a response as it should have. But still, I forged ahead, trying to work out what felt like a dry and well-entrenched nose potato. "No," she said. "Es una cosa orange." And indeed, on closer inspection, it turned out to be a small orange Lego piece.

We got in to Williamstown Medical Associates, and were scheduled to see a doctor who has in the past been much too rushed and brusque. When they sat us down in the examination room and we heard his name, Q's eyes got big. "Isn't he the guy...?" (It was a bad experience for Q, in which he was tricked into opening his mouth so the doctor could quick cram his tongue depressor in there and steal a look at his tonsils. Unnecessary, lazy, uncaring hurriedness.) "Yes," I said. "And if, when he gets in here, he looks at all hurried, or starts to take less time than I think he should, I will let him have it." This calmed Q.

But he was just great. T walked right up to him and said, "Yeah, I just pushed it right in my nose," and then laughed. He was super gentle, and from the time T lay back and grabbed my hands willingly and tipped up her head so he could see better, to the acutal extraction, perhaps 3 seconds had passed. Nary a squawk, no discomfort - 100% successful. Well worth the $20 co-pay for me not to have to pry it out myself with non-sterilized tweezers and in the end be the bad guy. Here's the offending bit of plastic:



And here's the offender herself, holding her trophy, suitably chastened:



We dropped her off at daycare, and then Q and I had some dad-and-Q-get-over-the-Packer-game time. Went swimming first, practicing some football tosses in the horseplay-friendly confines of the Williams Inn pool, and then hit the rink:





A fun mid-afternoon. Almost enough to make a body forget the seven months between him and the next time the Packers can take the field and defend the honor of America's Dairyland against these smug New York and New England fans. There was talk of a Super Bowl party when it seemed likely it would be Green Bay, but now I don't even know if I want to go. I'll get over it, but man, it's no fun right now. How does Brett Favre turn back into Jughead after such a great season? Where did all those scatterballs come from all of a sudden?

I got fingerprinted at the town police station this evening in anticipation of receiving my FID, the card that allows you to own and carry a gun in the People's Republic of Massachusetts. Chatting with the officer there - Officer Lemieux, great guy - and the game came up. He'd seen in filling out my background info that I was from WI, and he sympathized. "Yeah, I wanted to see Favre win the whole thing." "Oh? Are you not a NE fan?" "Well, I am, sure, but c'mon. It's Green Bay, it's Favre. Who doesn't love that?"

Yeah. Right on.

Much to ponder. Moping continues. Steer clear of me in the street, folks, unless you feel like having your mood knocked down a couple of notches. Got one wheel in the ditch here.

The Frozen Tundra

Hey, folks - some news and some thoughts, submitted for your perusal.

Janneke went onto campus this evening to hear a colleague give a presentation, so not too long after supper it was just me and the wee ones. We entertained ourselves with a tickle fight on the floor in the living room for a while, but when that got old (for me, not them), we moved out to the front room, which has become the music room. Q practiced playing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", T opened up a "Curious George" coloring book and pretended to sing Christmas carols from it, and I watched. Then Q stopped playing and started batting a balloon around, so I picked up the guitar and strummed out some songs. "Driver 8", "Swan Swan H" - the usual three or four songs that everyone who's spent any time around me has heard me sing. The only newish ones were "The Great Beyond", "Let Down" and "1979"

It made for a nifty scene - T, singing along but not singing along, using the now-empty guitar stand as a microphone or a lectern for her music book alternately, and Q, nonw booting his balloon around the room as if it were a football. I ended a song, and both asked me immediately to keep going, so I played another. And now I was strictly background music as they ran fantasies and images through their heads, each lost in a little world of imagination. Q stripped down to his underwear and began running with his football from the front door all the way to the picture window, dodging imaginary tacklers and landing every time in the recliner for a touchdown; T danced and watched herself reflected in the window, and then in the mirror in our room, singing songs as they came to her. And I got my now uncallused fingers sore as can be, and stressed out my slightly-froggy throat. But it was well worth it - I got a good 15 or 20 minutes of uninterrupted kid-watching. It was like the music coming out of me rendered me invisible. Like I was in a duck blind, watching how the wildlife acts when they don't know there are any people around. Q had sweat at the top of his gray underwear by the time he was done.

When it was time to go to bed, they opted to draw instead of read, and T drew a very abstract-looking gingerbread house. Q drew Greg Jennings of the Packers, crossing the goal line while a desperate Charger dives to try to stop him. (Q thinks the Chargers will beat the Patriots. And both of us are feeling pretty good about the Packers' chances against the Giants. I hope they make it - otherwise, we're going to have some moping in the house for a while. And not just from me.) Yesterday he announced, "I can name 10 Packers!" I tried to keep track of them with him, but we kept forgetting which ones he'd already said. So I grabbed an old envelope and a pen and kept track. Here's the list, in order, as he named them:

Bubba Franks
Brett Favre
Al Harris
Aaron Kampman
Donald Driver
Donald Lee
Greg Jennings
Ryan Grant
Charles Woodson
AJ Hawk

He also popped "Dorsey Levens" and "Robert Brooks" in there, but I had to object, since they aren't current players.

Last night before dinner Q was asking for stories about the Packers. So I told him about how Warren Sapp cheap-shotted Chad Clifton, and how when the Packers next played the Buccaneers, they took Sapp out of the game when it came time for the Pack to grind out the clock with running plays because they knew we were going to trap-block him into oblivion, and how satisfying it was to watch him stand there on the sidelines, afraid to go back in. And that wasn't enough. So I told him about Max McGee drinking too much the night before the Superbowl because he didn't think he'd play, and feeling terrible, but then having to play because of injury, and having the best game of his life despite his headache and nausea. And THAT wasn't enough. So I told him about Brett Favre responding to the death of his father, not by taking the game off, but by playing because, as he told his teammates, "You're my family, too". And how he wound up with an unbelievable game where his receivers refused to let anything he threw up go uncaught, and how even the Raiders fans were cheering for Brett, and how the whole night turned into a nationally-televised expression of the players' devotion to each other.

That one finally seemed to do it. He just turned to his supper and thought and thought and thought. And then, when I picked him up from day care today, his teacher told me, laughing, that Q had told her the Max McGee story. Q grinned up at me, nodding, and asked, "Is Max McGee still alive?" I had to say no, and to explain that he had died quite recently, a grandfather, elderly and married and happy, in a fall from his roof. Q looked positively heartbroken. That story had really affected him.

Parables, moral lessons, lists of holy names, a desire to emulate the storied actions of heroes..."Sunday school" takes on a whole different meaning around here.

Daemons

Hey, folks. So here's Janneke's and my take on which daemons (from the movie "The Golden Compass", which we recommend you see) would be most appropriate for us, and for some of our friends:

Joe: Coyote was a popular attempt, but some others opted for a badger. Janneke has come up with one that seems to be a compromise between the two: A bull terrier.

Janneke: Ermine. Otter and mink were also considered.

Brad: Otter. Though Mark thought "Spider monkey", for many of the same reasons as were argued in support of the otter.

Betsy: Ocelot.

Mark: Fox.

Ronadh: Kingfisher or raven. Janneke thinks kingfisher. I say raven. Ronadh agrees with me.

My dad: Coyote. Definitely.

Janneke's mom: A terrier of some sort. I like the thought of a fox terrier.

Hobie: Tough call. I mean, a dog doesn't really have depths of personality that could be revealed by an animal companion. He is his own daemon. I kind of like that -I get a chuckle out of the thought of Hobie being accompanied by another Hobie, each of them looking to the other for advice, immediately agreeing. "Right. Stare at the dinner table. Got it."

Further ideas and commentary on these choices are encouraged. Post in comments or send me an email.

In other news: Our friend Chris and her son Sam came over for brunch today. Here the kids all are, playing with the Brio train set that Q got for Christmas a thousand years ago:



We refer to him as "Samuelito" when talking at home, and of course T, a native speaker and all, says it with a perfect accent. But when she's talking to Sam, in English, she says, "Hey, Sam-Well-Eat-Toe", sounding like the most disinterested and untalented first-semester Spanish student you've ever heard. Bilingualism: It's weird.

T got a new tumbling leotard for Christmas from Auntie Jayne and Grandpa, and tried it out for the first time on Thursday:



And T and Q went to Owen's birthday party at the Y, where swag was given out. Here's T playing with some of it - a Connect 4 game, which, if you look at the arrangement of the disks she's putting in, kind of escapes her. But her concentration is top-notch, and you can see her calling out "Tu turno!" after dropping one in. She knew it was a game - just didn't know what the object was.



While watching the football game yesterday ("Which football game?", you say, innocently. I give you a long, scornful look, turn back to the rest of the readership, and say, "ANY-way..."), I screamed so loud after Ryan Grant's second fumble ("Who's Ryan Grant?", you say, bouncing up and down and waving your hand back and forth. I pause, shake my head almost impercebtibly, roll my eyes, cough, and turn even further away from you), that Hobie emerged from the bedroom trembling so bad he could hardly walk. I cuddled and comforted him all the way to halftime, but he never stopped shaking. A good long halftime walk calmed him down, though, and then he slept through most of the second half, still lying close to me and being petted, worn completely out, emotionally exhausted. I tell you, it's tough, living with me. Just ask Janneke.

And ask her who Ryan Grant is, why don't you. 'Cuz I am DONE with you on that subject.

Things I learned tonight while walking the dog: (1): There is a skunk in our neighborhood the size of a Rottweiler. I smelled it when we walked out the door, and could smell it for every step of our twenty-minute round-the-block walk. And (2): If Hobie had an Indian name, it would be "Poops Twice".

Mine would be "Carries One Poop Bag".

Updates and Reminders

Why "updates and reminders"? Not sure. Haven't figured it out yet.

Q has had a basketball practice since the last update. I attended, and spent most of it correcting papers. But it's a lot like soccer practice used to be - the first part was all drills, and allowed for a lot of correcting, but the last few minutes were the "game", which was a lot more fun to watch. Most of the cast of characters were the same - Henry, Sam D, Colton, Bennet, Eli, Cole... The usuals. When they broke them up for the game, one team had pinnies on and the other just had its shirts. And exactly as in soccer, Q could not stop fidgeting with his pinny. The other kids forgot they had them on, but Q's was in constant need of adjustment. It really distracted him from the whole athletic enterprise unfolding around him.

Which was too bad, because he was the point guard. They were trying to teach the kids to play positions, and assigned someone on each team to be the point guard and to be the guy who brings the ball up and distributes it. At first, I thought it might be pretty random, and not a reflection on Q's athletic ability. (To my untrained eye, he seems to be one of the better kids, but certainly not the best. Just pretty good.) But then I noticed that the opposing point guard was Sam D - you know, the kid who's seven and does flips when he runs and juggles a soccer ball twenty times in a row. So maybe they did put the likeliest candidates in those spots. And you know what? He responded like a little pro, and started doing some pretty nifty passes - lobbing it over the crowd to a wide-open man when the defenders all collapsed on him, weaving around to shake things up and get different looks when the outlook got stale...He's enjoying the heck out of it. As am I. And I only called out one bit of advice to him. ("Run!", I believe it was. And, coincidentally, that's when he started shifting around more to create passing lanes for himself. Man, I was a pillar of stoicism compared to a couple of the dads I could name...) Lately he's decided that when he's older, he's going to be the QB on the football team, and he says he's going to play on the little tikes squad next year. If the veins bulged out of my head watching him play soccer, I'll probably have to be sedated before his first football game. Watch it from a gurney, all strapped in and propped up like Hannibal Lecter.

T, meanwhile, is, it can no longer be denied, a huuuge ham for photographs. They did a session at her day care, like school photos, where they get two poses and you can pay for as many of the prints they send out as you like. It seems an awful waste, as we only paid for two prints, but man oh man, you are going to absolutely flip when you see them. We're going to scan them, you see, and give everybody a free digital copy rather than pay for physical copies, doubtless in violation of some kind of Law. But jeepers, the grin on her face, and the way she absolutely revels in the chance to sit sideways to the camera and toss her head back over her shoulder and beam for the flashbulbs...I'm not sure what this augers for the future, but a little bead of worry is beginning to build up inside me, like a pearl. Or a cyst. I'm just afraid of having a little daughter in ten years. Cold and clammy at the very thought of it. Q's friends lurking around the house more than seems normal, calling and talking to Q for two minutes before having the phone passed over -

BRRRR!! Bbbbblalalala - - Quick! Think about something cute... Ah! Yes! That'll do nicely: The kids had pommegranate (spelling, Ronadh...?) for dessert the other day, and things got a little out of hand:



They got much less out of hand with T, but photographs of her mess, due to the reasons I just went into above, were equally necessary. If you look close at her forehead, you can see one little smear of red:



Still haven't figured out the "Updates and Reminders" thing. How about the Alamo. Let's all remember that. Good times, good times.

Up All Night

Well, 'til 3:00 AM, anyway. What a hoot. Kids, adults, games...Big fun. It all started at 6:00 or so, when I went out to put up the little "casitas de luz" that Janneke suggested we make. We'd read about them in a book that one of her TA's had brought back from Spain for the kids. They're pretty easy to make - a little nuclear power plant-looking tower of snow, with a hole down the middle, and a candle in the bottom:



I did ten in all, atop the snow bank lining the driveway:



So that led folks in, where they were greeted by a punch bowl that Janneke had improvised out of a cheese dish cover, and which she and Q had filled:



Not to mention all the appetizers Janneke had whipped up. Which were fantastic. Thereafter, there were just kids all over, playing games, squealing, shouting, and adults enjoying an adult beverage or three. It was just great excitement to see our friends Brad and Betsy bringing in all their overnight gear. It made me feel like I was 12 again. Well, make that 10. 12 kind of stunk for me.

The kids all sat down to supper at the big people table:



While the adults retired to the little kids' table in the living room to partake of the mucha comida that folks had brought to contribute to the potluck. Post-dinner, the kids wound down and were in bed by 11:00 or so - early for us, but monstrously late for them. All but Benni, the oldest, went out like lights, while he bravely waited until the other boys had fallen asleep in Q's room before sneaking out to come downstairs and play ping-pong with the big folk:







Upstairs to watch the ball drop and be horrified by the spectre of Dick Clark, risen from the grave, propped in front of the camera for his yearly ghoulishness. Such a bad move to have their entire audience staring in open-mouthed terror every time the camera went back to him. I mean, hey, it's great that he's still doing as well as he is at his age. But at some point, television hosting stops being the best idea for all of us. He had a good run. He should leave it to the youngsters.

Conversation and laughter therafter:



Post-ball-dropping, we played the Celebrity Game, our secret weapon, guaranteed to bring out the yuks, known by all who have ever attended a social function at our house. Much more laughter, helped along by the giddiness induced by exhaustion, ensued. (Another guaranteed party-enhancer, by the way: A slow leak of nitrus oxide from a tank under the coffee table. Ask about it at Home Depot.) And Benni made it all the way to 3:00 with the big folks before heading home with Magnus and Margaret. (They left Karin here, asleep as she was in T' room.) Kids were up at 8:00, expecting pancakes and a movie. First the movie:



And then the pancakes. No pictures thereof, unfortunately. 'Cuz they were spectacular. As was the fruit salad that Brad made, and for which he sacrificed his left thumb on the knife whose sharpness I was so proud of. Which is just like me: What I do well causes pain and suffering to those I care about. Me and Peter Parker, man. Same situation.

Gonna have to figure out what those spots are on some of the night shots - starting to irritate me...To quote Betsy: "HAPPY NEW YEAR!"