Checken Sie das aus, meine Freunden:
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Sunday Evenin' Comin' Down
Took both kids to the home of one of Q’s baseball coaches this afternoon for a pool party to celebrate a successful season. Got to know the coaches a little better, a couple of the parents (some of whom are the coaches)…Nice time. Q and T both spent most of the three hours in the pool, playing around, having a ball despite the weather. Which wasn’t especially cold, just not the blazing sauna that makes pools the most fun to be in.
The coach (Coach Rand) also has a game room in his basement, where there’s a ping pong table. So after the pool got old, the boys were downstairs playing, and Q extracted a promise from me that we would play when we got home. I was glad to comply, as our table hasn’t seen nearly enough use lately.
So after supper, he and I went down to play while T set up her usual game in the downstairs bathroom, where she’s the mother and we’re both her children. She sallies forth into the area where we’re playing to bring us snacks and wipe our noses, and call us “Sweetie”. And we submit to being called in to sit down to dinner or lunch or copetín every few minutes. It’s fun.
As we played ping pong, Q’s growing athleticism just leapt up out of him and shocked me. I played with my left hand, inspired by Colton’s dad, who does that to keep it competitive, and it’s really not a contest. He smokes me. I was astonished at some of the amazing, leaning, stabbing gets he would pull out of the air somehow, slicing a ball back across the net to just barely clip the edge on my side, much too far for me to have a shot at…I would laugh and howl at each one, and he would cackle and mime the acrobatics involved again, and we’d launch into another point. After ten minutes or so, he just declared to the world, unable to control himself: “This is so much FUN!”
The game slowed down as the conversation got interesting – he wanted to know more about John Brown, with whom he’s got a growing fascination. I’ve narrated him any number of anecdotes about him now from the biography I got as a gift a year or two ago. Then he wanted more Civil War history – “Something about Wisconsin,” he specified. So I gave him the tale of Ol’ Abe, the bald eagle mascot of a regiment from Wisconsin, bought from an Indian for a sack of corn by one of their recruits as he walked to Madison to muster, how his bunch saw much action during the war and never suffered defeat, hoisting a screaming Abe above them on a perch mounted on a pole with a banner beneath, and how they carried Abe in triumph back to Madison, where he lived the rest of his days in the Governor’s mansion. He positively ate that up.
Back upstairs (T had misreported the time to me, so we ended the game before it was really necessary), T took the game of Mami to greater lengths, tucking us both in atop her own big girl bed and settling down beside us before announcing that it was morning, and that today was a special day because we were going to go swimming at the museum, so we had to pack out swimming trunks and our lunches before we got on the bus. Day after day whizzed by like that – we must have done a week in the space of about fifteen minutes. Q got tired of the game, and left, but I stayed on.
T woke me up yet another bright morning and told me that today was a special day because it was my birthday, and I was going to go to Kindergarten (“jardín de infantes”, which when she says it sounds like “jardín de elefantes”) for the very first time! “Y también,” she informed me, leaning close and nodding confidentially, “you’re a girl.”
“Do you want to wear a skirt, or a dress?”
I found the selection somewhat limited. I pouted. “I want to wear pants.”
She thought for a moment, then cocked her head and leaned in, smiling. “Sparkly pants?”
I played my (her) part, and pretended to be scared. “It’s a new place! I won’t know anyone! The teachers will be new!” And she assured me (her) by saying, “It’s OK, because the teachers are all nice, and you’ll have many friends there, and you’ll make new friends, and your friend Hazel will be there, and she’ll protect you.” So I sauntered around the corner to school in my sparkly pants with a big smile and a wave back over the shoulder, confident that my (her) future was bright, and our path secure, all the way over the horizon into adulthood.
Trembling to resist the temptation to mime, as I went around the door, that I was being grabbed and eaten alive by fanged and horrid creatures.
I do have these evil thoughts – but I’m at least somewhat redeemed in that I don’t actually do these things.
Often.
The coach (Coach Rand) also has a game room in his basement, where there’s a ping pong table. So after the pool got old, the boys were downstairs playing, and Q extracted a promise from me that we would play when we got home. I was glad to comply, as our table hasn’t seen nearly enough use lately.
So after supper, he and I went down to play while T set up her usual game in the downstairs bathroom, where she’s the mother and we’re both her children. She sallies forth into the area where we’re playing to bring us snacks and wipe our noses, and call us “Sweetie”. And we submit to being called in to sit down to dinner or lunch or copetín every few minutes. It’s fun.
As we played ping pong, Q’s growing athleticism just leapt up out of him and shocked me. I played with my left hand, inspired by Colton’s dad, who does that to keep it competitive, and it’s really not a contest. He smokes me. I was astonished at some of the amazing, leaning, stabbing gets he would pull out of the air somehow, slicing a ball back across the net to just barely clip the edge on my side, much too far for me to have a shot at…I would laugh and howl at each one, and he would cackle and mime the acrobatics involved again, and we’d launch into another point. After ten minutes or so, he just declared to the world, unable to control himself: “This is so much FUN!”
The game slowed down as the conversation got interesting – he wanted to know more about John Brown, with whom he’s got a growing fascination. I’ve narrated him any number of anecdotes about him now from the biography I got as a gift a year or two ago. Then he wanted more Civil War history – “Something about Wisconsin,” he specified. So I gave him the tale of Ol’ Abe, the bald eagle mascot of a regiment from Wisconsin, bought from an Indian for a sack of corn by one of their recruits as he walked to Madison to muster, how his bunch saw much action during the war and never suffered defeat, hoisting a screaming Abe above them on a perch mounted on a pole with a banner beneath, and how they carried Abe in triumph back to Madison, where he lived the rest of his days in the Governor’s mansion. He positively ate that up.
Back upstairs (T had misreported the time to me, so we ended the game before it was really necessary), T took the game of Mami to greater lengths, tucking us both in atop her own big girl bed and settling down beside us before announcing that it was morning, and that today was a special day because we were going to go swimming at the museum, so we had to pack out swimming trunks and our lunches before we got on the bus. Day after day whizzed by like that – we must have done a week in the space of about fifteen minutes. Q got tired of the game, and left, but I stayed on.
T woke me up yet another bright morning and told me that today was a special day because it was my birthday, and I was going to go to Kindergarten (“jardín de infantes”, which when she says it sounds like “jardín de elefantes”) for the very first time! “Y también,” she informed me, leaning close and nodding confidentially, “you’re a girl.”
“Do you want to wear a skirt, or a dress?”
I found the selection somewhat limited. I pouted. “I want to wear pants.”
She thought for a moment, then cocked her head and leaned in, smiling. “Sparkly pants?”
I played my (her) part, and pretended to be scared. “It’s a new place! I won’t know anyone! The teachers will be new!” And she assured me (her) by saying, “It’s OK, because the teachers are all nice, and you’ll have many friends there, and you’ll make new friends, and your friend Hazel will be there, and she’ll protect you.” So I sauntered around the corner to school in my sparkly pants with a big smile and a wave back over the shoulder, confident that my (her) future was bright, and our path secure, all the way over the horizon into adulthood.
Trembling to resist the temptation to mime, as I went around the door, that I was being grabbed and eaten alive by fanged and horrid creatures.
I do have these evil thoughts – but I’m at least somewhat redeemed in that I don’t actually do these things.
Often.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Nest Builders
You may recall last summer, when we arrived back from Puerto Rico and found a nest of robins under the eaves of our porch. The hatchlings were already well on their way, and so we tried as much as we could to use the side door until they left on their own.
In the last few days, I've noticed a pile of nest-building materials on the ground under where they build last year. But where the nest should be, there was nothing. And I was impressed with Janneke - because I recall earlier in the summer, when they were trying to build, I would sweep it off there, subtly sending the idea that our front porch might not be the best place to raise a family. I knew I hadn't swept anything off, and so I figured it must be Janneke, overcoming her usually soft-hearted nature for the good of the birds. "Good for you," I thought, remembering foggily talking to her about this before at some point. And with a pang of sadness at not having baby birds to look at, but with a firm jaw and the knowledge that the birds would be better off getting used to the notion that people are not to be trusted, I went on my merry way.
Turns out, though, Janneke isn't sweeping anything off. It's just that their skills at nest-building have dropped off somewhat. They're going at it as I write this. Check it out - here's what they've built so far:
And here's the ground under their building site:
Strange how, once the twigs and bark fibers and such fall, they become invisible. Rather than flit down to the ground and pick it up again and try once more, the birds zoom off and scout out completely fresh prospects. Seems to be one of those interesting bird blind spots - like the way they hoist their baby bird tuckuses over the edge of the nest to poop, but don't seem able to differentiate between the edge of the nest that will actually send the poop down to the ground, and the edge that's backed up against the wall of the porch's roof, where all they're going to do is smear it right at eye level. but maybe the fallen-nest-materials blindness isn't quite as simplistic (OK, stupid) as the pooping behavior - evolution may have eventually determined that if something falls off, it's best to assume it was flawed material for some reason and scout out some new stuff.
It just ocurred to me that I could set up the Flip Video camera out there and leave it running for an hour at a time, then see how much activity we get. Wahoo! New project! The kids will be veeeery into it, no doubt.
OK - off to see about a lawnmower. The handle broke off our reel mower, at its weakest point, leaving the rest of the mower basically intact. But the mower was kind of inefficient lately anyway - I hadn't been the best about maintaining it, and I can't adjust the blades anymore, so it takes three or four trips across the grass to get it cut where it used to take two. So if this guy can't fix the handle, I won't feel too bad about getting a new one. The guy I'm working with here, by the way, is fascinating - he's got a backyard workshop where he's been repairing lawnmowers forever. Maybe I'll try to capture some footage of it this afternoon. All the nooks and crannies of this shed, probably formerly a mom-and-pop mechanic or welding operation attached to the back of his house, are filled with oily, dusty, frighteningly useful and arcane doo-dads and thingamabobbers, most of which he probably couldn't name or describe, but which I'd bet he could find in a matter of seconds if the feel of a lawnmower told him he needed it. I love those little workshop spaces, the ones that are somewhere between shabby and lovingly maintained, where someone has managed to make a living and do it his own way on a small scale. My Dad's friend Dutch was that way, and this guy appears to be, too. I'm taking Q with me - a somewhat scary prospect, because this older gentleman has some sort of disorder or injury where his right eye is almost vestigal - clouded, deflated, and downright leaky. I myself had a hard time keeping my cool while speculating with him about whether he could find a handle to replace mine - he told me yesterday to come back today around 10:00, if it wasn't raining, so he could see what he had. And now it's 10:00...
Hasta pronto!
In the last few days, I've noticed a pile of nest-building materials on the ground under where they build last year. But where the nest should be, there was nothing. And I was impressed with Janneke - because I recall earlier in the summer, when they were trying to build, I would sweep it off there, subtly sending the idea that our front porch might not be the best place to raise a family. I knew I hadn't swept anything off, and so I figured it must be Janneke, overcoming her usually soft-hearted nature for the good of the birds. "Good for you," I thought, remembering foggily talking to her about this before at some point. And with a pang of sadness at not having baby birds to look at, but with a firm jaw and the knowledge that the birds would be better off getting used to the notion that people are not to be trusted, I went on my merry way.
Turns out, though, Janneke isn't sweeping anything off. It's just that their skills at nest-building have dropped off somewhat. They're going at it as I write this. Check it out - here's what they've built so far:
And here's the ground under their building site:
Strange how, once the twigs and bark fibers and such fall, they become invisible. Rather than flit down to the ground and pick it up again and try once more, the birds zoom off and scout out completely fresh prospects. Seems to be one of those interesting bird blind spots - like the way they hoist their baby bird tuckuses over the edge of the nest to poop, but don't seem able to differentiate between the edge of the nest that will actually send the poop down to the ground, and the edge that's backed up against the wall of the porch's roof, where all they're going to do is smear it right at eye level. but maybe the fallen-nest-materials blindness isn't quite as simplistic (OK, stupid) as the pooping behavior - evolution may have eventually determined that if something falls off, it's best to assume it was flawed material for some reason and scout out some new stuff.
It just ocurred to me that I could set up the Flip Video camera out there and leave it running for an hour at a time, then see how much activity we get. Wahoo! New project! The kids will be veeeery into it, no doubt.
OK - off to see about a lawnmower. The handle broke off our reel mower, at its weakest point, leaving the rest of the mower basically intact. But the mower was kind of inefficient lately anyway - I hadn't been the best about maintaining it, and I can't adjust the blades anymore, so it takes three or four trips across the grass to get it cut where it used to take two. So if this guy can't fix the handle, I won't feel too bad about getting a new one. The guy I'm working with here, by the way, is fascinating - he's got a backyard workshop where he's been repairing lawnmowers forever. Maybe I'll try to capture some footage of it this afternoon. All the nooks and crannies of this shed, probably formerly a mom-and-pop mechanic or welding operation attached to the back of his house, are filled with oily, dusty, frighteningly useful and arcane doo-dads and thingamabobbers, most of which he probably couldn't name or describe, but which I'd bet he could find in a matter of seconds if the feel of a lawnmower told him he needed it. I love those little workshop spaces, the ones that are somewhere between shabby and lovingly maintained, where someone has managed to make a living and do it his own way on a small scale. My Dad's friend Dutch was that way, and this guy appears to be, too. I'm taking Q with me - a somewhat scary prospect, because this older gentleman has some sort of disorder or injury where his right eye is almost vestigal - clouded, deflated, and downright leaky. I myself had a hard time keeping my cool while speculating with him about whether he could find a handle to replace mine - he told me yesterday to come back today around 10:00, if it wasn't raining, so he could see what he had. And now it's 10:00...
Hasta pronto!
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Torrents and Floods
Hello, friends - most of whom will know that I'm from Gays Mills, Wisconsin. What I don't know is if you all have heard about the flooding there. Last year they experienced the worst flood in their history, highest ever recorded. Knocked houses off their foundations, ruined everyone's carpet and appliances in the downtown area - just awful. And then this year, it was worse. As a result, they're considering moving the downtown to higher ground once and for all. I have to say, I can't blame them - I just hope they do a better job of it than our rivals up the river, Soldiers Grove. They made some goofball rule about every new building in the new downtown having to be solar heated, and then came up with the layout for their new streets by getting Dr Seuss drunk and spinning him around with a blindfold on before sitting him at a drafting table in the hold of a lobster boat in a hurricane. That town really is inferior in every conceivable way. Though they did tend to produce the nicest and best-looking prom dates available.
Here's an article about the proposed move, if you're interested.
The pictures in it are pretty poignant. Robert E, the barber, has cut my hair a time or two, and my Dad's more than we could count. The photographer had to basically turn to his left after taking the picture of Robert E to take another of the pictures - the one with the end loader. The building with the sidewalk being taken out in front of it is the Red Apple Inn, a restaurant that's re-opened in recent years, where we used to occasionally go out for fish when I was a kid. The white building beyond in that picture is the locker plant, owned by Jim Chellevold. They butcher Dad's cows for him. All of the meat in their freezers went bad, I'm sure...The vacant lot between the two used to be Hillman's, the bar owned by my grandmother, and then my aunt Shirley and uncle Ray. Both my parents tended bar there, and used to go whoop it up together and play cards there, both while courting and during their younger years of marriage, practically every Saturday night. It burned in the late 70's or early 80's, can't quite recall. That's where the family heirlooms mostly were - Grandma's blackjack, for example. Kept it behind the counter. Up in smoke. The town has never really been the same since the fire took Hillman's out of its heart, and it looks like the rest of the place might finally have realized that it's dead.
A few people had their houses raised after last year's floods, but only a few. When the veterinarian rebuilt after a flood some twenty years ago, he had his building built on what was essentially a berm he'd had bulldozed, and he's up and out of it, but the mechanic who just moved in, the gas station, the grocery store...All are soaked. Again. I think the furniture makers moved out a few years ago. There are more vacant lots downtown every year. People decide not to rebuild - a few have had the houses moved out to higher ground already. It's sad. If you look at the video I made of our trip to Wisconsin, the shot where Dad is looking out over the valley should give you an idea of what they're up against. The whole bottom flat area of the valley fills up like a punch bowl. Dad's house is out of it, but the rest...It's just going to get it every few years. And people get sick of laying new carpet and buying new televisions.
Some of their rain has made its way out here in the last few days. I sat through a high school graduation - yesterday, at the charter school where I used to work. I knew those kids well, so I went to see them flip their mortarboards. It started at 1:30, and went until three o' bloody clock in the afternoon. Lenox's graduation a week or so ago went the same amount of time - because three students spoke, and they read out every single scholarship that any of them received, as well as their plans for the fall. It went on and on and on - But, hey, there were 68 of them or some such. Figures it would take a while.
This school's graduating class yesterday was ninety strong.
Sorry - typo. It was a NINE strong.
OK, it was their first-ever graduation, so they took their time. And the students had put together a video of their future plans and some interviews, which were funny, interspersed with shots from various video projects they'd done over their time at the school. (Most of which were segments from the music video I shot with them for "Nada que perder" by Mana.) So it was kind of understandable that it should go on. But, cripers, I just couldn't enjoy it.
I was squirming a bit, partly since Q's baseball game had been scheduled to start at 3:30, and I was easily 25 minutes from home, but mostly because I had to go to the bathroom. Because, truth be known, the last hour of the ceremony was held (indoors, luckily) above the din of an absolutely torrential downpour. "Game's canceled," I thought. "I've got time." So I said a nice congratulations to the students, and drove home by way of Olympia Sports, where the baseball bats were 50% off. (Though I later learned that most things are marked at 50% off most of the time there.) When I arrived in Williamstown, I saw that everything was bone dry - The game! It's been going on for 15 minutes...! I raced to the park.
But it turned out they had been delaying while they made up their minds whether to play or not. Rumbling thunder in the distance, you know. They eventually decided to go for it, and played the full game. Never did rain any farther north than Lanesboro The other team was a powerhouse, though - from Lanesboro, in fact. Lots of good hitting (on our good pitching), and very good pitching that we weren't able to hit at first. So we were beaten pretty handily, though the boys (and girls) made it respectable in the end.
Q has this tendency lately, and I'm not sure what to do about it, where he just watches excellent pitches go by. He seems absolutely convinced they're bad, and steps out of the box, and then slumps when the ump calls out "STRIKE!" I think maybe what he most likes is to be on base, regardless how he gets there, and he's figuring (somewhere deep down) that if he just doesn't swing, he'll get on. And most of the time, he's right. But this is not a sustainable philosophy, and it's absolutely maddening to see him take these called strikes and then kick himself afterwards. He walked every time he batted, but never did swing.
So today we did some batting practice - or should I say, "swing practice". We went to the field and I made Q promise that he would swing at absolutely every pitch, no matter how bad. Just to train his brain and his body to smoothly transition between thinking deciding to swing and actually swinging. And it was much better - when I put them in the strike zone, he hit them, very consistently. I'm absolutely sure he never would have swung at most of those had I not made him promise - he was shocked that he hit some of them. "That was outside!!", he would protest. I would shrug. "Parece que tu idea de 'outside' no cuaja con la realidad." Hopefully that will sink in some.
I also told him, as he was taking grounders and firing them back at me, snatching them off the ground to his left and turning that motion into a perfect 180-degree turn and aiming and swinging his arm before he's even all the way around and facing me and firing a curving laser that pops into my mitt some twenty-five yards away, that to my mind, there are two Qs: The one I saw today, so graceful and agile and adult-looking, and the Q who chews his lip and stands there between second and third, watching his teammates madly trying to make an out at second and at third and at home, twisting his lower lip into folds and pushing it into his teeth, mitt hanging lazily at his side, knees perfectly locked, never quite realizing that he is, at that moment, the third baseman - never, that is, until a deep, bearded, vaguely Norwegian-inflected voice cries out in Spanish from the sideline, "Q! SOS VOS EL TERCERA BASE!" At which point he tip-toe jogs to the base, never letting go of his lip. He got a kick out of that idea - and I get a kick out of knowing that soon, the Q who was playing with me in the park today will show up in a game. And then - look out.
Here's some pictures:
Daddy spends some quality time with his precious little baby. And with T.
75% of the Johnstadts, taking in the action at the Cal Ripken Baseball year-end picnic, this very evening.
T making dessert messiness look gooooood.
And T failing to do that very same thing.
Q hangs out by the foul pole and watches the Home Run Derby, where all the coaches take turns seeing how many they can put out of the park. I didn't participate - you may have heard this summary of my athletic abilities before, but here it is again: If the sport involves knocking people over, and / or outrunning them, I'm your man. Anything else? ...Not so much.
Here's an article about the proposed move, if you're interested.
The pictures in it are pretty poignant. Robert E, the barber, has cut my hair a time or two, and my Dad's more than we could count. The photographer had to basically turn to his left after taking the picture of Robert E to take another of the pictures - the one with the end loader. The building with the sidewalk being taken out in front of it is the Red Apple Inn, a restaurant that's re-opened in recent years, where we used to occasionally go out for fish when I was a kid. The white building beyond in that picture is the locker plant, owned by Jim Chellevold. They butcher Dad's cows for him. All of the meat in their freezers went bad, I'm sure...The vacant lot between the two used to be Hillman's, the bar owned by my grandmother, and then my aunt Shirley and uncle Ray. Both my parents tended bar there, and used to go whoop it up together and play cards there, both while courting and during their younger years of marriage, practically every Saturday night. It burned in the late 70's or early 80's, can't quite recall. That's where the family heirlooms mostly were - Grandma's blackjack, for example. Kept it behind the counter. Up in smoke. The town has never really been the same since the fire took Hillman's out of its heart, and it looks like the rest of the place might finally have realized that it's dead.
A few people had their houses raised after last year's floods, but only a few. When the veterinarian rebuilt after a flood some twenty years ago, he had his building built on what was essentially a berm he'd had bulldozed, and he's up and out of it, but the mechanic who just moved in, the gas station, the grocery store...All are soaked. Again. I think the furniture makers moved out a few years ago. There are more vacant lots downtown every year. People decide not to rebuild - a few have had the houses moved out to higher ground already. It's sad. If you look at the video I made of our trip to Wisconsin, the shot where Dad is looking out over the valley should give you an idea of what they're up against. The whole bottom flat area of the valley fills up like a punch bowl. Dad's house is out of it, but the rest...It's just going to get it every few years. And people get sick of laying new carpet and buying new televisions.
Some of their rain has made its way out here in the last few days. I sat through a high school graduation - yesterday, at the charter school where I used to work. I knew those kids well, so I went to see them flip their mortarboards. It started at 1:30, and went until three o' bloody clock in the afternoon. Lenox's graduation a week or so ago went the same amount of time - because three students spoke, and they read out every single scholarship that any of them received, as well as their plans for the fall. It went on and on and on - But, hey, there were 68 of them or some such. Figures it would take a while.
This school's graduating class yesterday was ninety strong.
Sorry - typo. It was a NINE strong.
OK, it was their first-ever graduation, so they took their time. And the students had put together a video of their future plans and some interviews, which were funny, interspersed with shots from various video projects they'd done over their time at the school. (Most of which were segments from the music video I shot with them for "Nada que perder" by Mana.) So it was kind of understandable that it should go on. But, cripers, I just couldn't enjoy it.
I was squirming a bit, partly since Q's baseball game had been scheduled to start at 3:30, and I was easily 25 minutes from home, but mostly because I had to go to the bathroom. Because, truth be known, the last hour of the ceremony was held (indoors, luckily) above the din of an absolutely torrential downpour. "Game's canceled," I thought. "I've got time." So I said a nice congratulations to the students, and drove home by way of Olympia Sports, where the baseball bats were 50% off. (Though I later learned that most things are marked at 50% off most of the time there.) When I arrived in Williamstown, I saw that everything was bone dry - The game! It's been going on for 15 minutes...! I raced to the park.
But it turned out they had been delaying while they made up their minds whether to play or not. Rumbling thunder in the distance, you know. They eventually decided to go for it, and played the full game. Never did rain any farther north than Lanesboro The other team was a powerhouse, though - from Lanesboro, in fact. Lots of good hitting (on our good pitching), and very good pitching that we weren't able to hit at first. So we were beaten pretty handily, though the boys (and girls) made it respectable in the end.
Q has this tendency lately, and I'm not sure what to do about it, where he just watches excellent pitches go by. He seems absolutely convinced they're bad, and steps out of the box, and then slumps when the ump calls out "STRIKE!" I think maybe what he most likes is to be on base, regardless how he gets there, and he's figuring (somewhere deep down) that if he just doesn't swing, he'll get on. And most of the time, he's right. But this is not a sustainable philosophy, and it's absolutely maddening to see him take these called strikes and then kick himself afterwards. He walked every time he batted, but never did swing.
So today we did some batting practice - or should I say, "swing practice". We went to the field and I made Q promise that he would swing at absolutely every pitch, no matter how bad. Just to train his brain and his body to smoothly transition between thinking deciding to swing and actually swinging. And it was much better - when I put them in the strike zone, he hit them, very consistently. I'm absolutely sure he never would have swung at most of those had I not made him promise - he was shocked that he hit some of them. "That was outside!!", he would protest. I would shrug. "Parece que tu idea de 'outside' no cuaja con la realidad." Hopefully that will sink in some.
I also told him, as he was taking grounders and firing them back at me, snatching them off the ground to his left and turning that motion into a perfect 180-degree turn and aiming and swinging his arm before he's even all the way around and facing me and firing a curving laser that pops into my mitt some twenty-five yards away, that to my mind, there are two Qs: The one I saw today, so graceful and agile and adult-looking, and the Q who chews his lip and stands there between second and third, watching his teammates madly trying to make an out at second and at third and at home, twisting his lower lip into folds and pushing it into his teeth, mitt hanging lazily at his side, knees perfectly locked, never quite realizing that he is, at that moment, the third baseman - never, that is, until a deep, bearded, vaguely Norwegian-inflected voice cries out in Spanish from the sideline, "Q! SOS VOS EL TERCERA BASE!" At which point he tip-toe jogs to the base, never letting go of his lip. He got a kick out of that idea - and I get a kick out of knowing that soon, the Q who was playing with me in the park today will show up in a game. And then - look out.
Here's some pictures:
Daddy spends some quality time with his precious little baby. And with T.
75% of the Johnstadts, taking in the action at the Cal Ripken Baseball year-end picnic, this very evening.
T making dessert messiness look gooooood.
And T failing to do that very same thing.
Q hangs out by the foul pole and watches the Home Run Derby, where all the coaches take turns seeing how many they can put out of the park. I didn't participate - you may have heard this summary of my athletic abilities before, but here it is again: If the sport involves knocking people over, and / or outrunning them, I'm your man. Anything else? ...Not so much.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Coughs and insomnia
The kids each have both. It's an hour after bed time and both kids, and both maladies, are still going strong. But they're in their rooms, entertaining themselves. We may need to adjust their bedtime soon. Makes sense - having the house to ourselves past 8:00 PM was always too good to be true. Tess is drawing herself a story and came out with this question: "Como escribis 'Cinco monstruos estaban charlando juntos'?" I wrote it down on a piece of paper for her so she could copy it. See how that looks in the mornin'...
Main reason I'm doing a mid-week entry, though, is to pop some baseball highlights I just cobbled together onto the blog, thereby allowing interested parties - I don't know, cousins, uncles, grandparents, major league scouts - to check out the all-star form of The Q. Behold!
There - now Q is out here to read me his story. And T is hot on his heels, saying, "Papi, it's hard to write this." Yep: Later bedtime. Gotta go!!
POST-SCRIPT:
SO here's the story Tess dictated to me, stopping to add to the illustration occasionally:
Cinco monstruos estaban charlando juntos. Otro monstruo dijo, "Queres jugar conmigo al hide-and-go-seek?" Y los monstruos dijeron, "Eh, que es eso?" y otro monstruo dijo, "Es nuestra casa, en que vivimos. Entremos!" A little girl said, "Those monstruos are wicked bad!" Con su mami, dijo, "Let's give them some food, like bananas, and some pizza!" A whole bunch of kids said, "Hmm. You want to play hide-and-seek?" And they all said, "Yes." A lot lot lot more monsters are playing hide-and-seek.
Main reason I'm doing a mid-week entry, though, is to pop some baseball highlights I just cobbled together onto the blog, thereby allowing interested parties - I don't know, cousins, uncles, grandparents, major league scouts - to check out the all-star form of The Q. Behold!
There - now Q is out here to read me his story. And T is hot on his heels, saying, "Papi, it's hard to write this." Yep: Later bedtime. Gotta go!!
POST-SCRIPT:
SO here's the story Tess dictated to me, stopping to add to the illustration occasionally:
Cinco monstruos estaban charlando juntos. Otro monstruo dijo, "Queres jugar conmigo al hide-and-go-seek?" Y los monstruos dijeron, "Eh, que es eso?" y otro monstruo dijo, "Es nuestra casa, en que vivimos. Entremos!" A little girl said, "Those monstruos are wicked bad!" Con su mami, dijo, "Let's give them some food, like bananas, and some pizza!" A whole bunch of kids said, "Hmm. You want to play hide-and-seek?" And they all said, "Yes." A lot lot lot more monsters are playing hide-and-seek.
Sports Center
So here's a strictly baseball video. Highlights, Quinn, June 3, 2008. Nothing especially artsy or well-crafted. Just another way for Q's fans to absorb just a touch more of the magic that is he.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
The LIght at the End of the School Year
Howdy y'all - Y'know, I realize that my current fascination with the medium of film has meant fewer and fewer written updates make it into the blog. It's a tradeoff. The videos are time-consuming, and tell the story better than a thousand words. But for the sake of brevity and to keep my chops up, here's the latest in narrative form:
Q had a rough outing pitching on Saturday. He pitched one inning beautifully, with a strikeout and two putouts, but then in the second one he pitched, the fourth overall, he was tired. It was ninety degrees, and he was the only pitcher from either team asked to pitch two of the later innings. Everybody else pitched just one. He was spraying the ball all over the place, and a combination of hits and runs - plus a failure to keep a pop-up in his glove that was absolutely TRAGIC - meant that 5 runs, the maximum allowed, came in on his watch. He was brought to tears, but his coach, Allen Hall, had just the aboslute best reaction I could imagine: He picked him up and walked over to the shade with him, thus communicating "You are a little boy, and you're safe now with us" - and then stood him up and chucked him on the shoulder and talked sternly and positively about how proud he was of him and how well he'd done today, pitching in the heat like that, thus communicating "You are a man on this team and you're strong enough to get through this." It was just masterful. I caught the tail end of it on film...He's a great guy. And WSB won anyway, 21-6.
We had some batting practice this evening, and he's getting much better at that. The other day they worked up the numbers and it turned out he was hitting .200 on the season. Marked improvement as it's gone along, but a slump lately, and some re-jiggering of his stance bodes well for the future. We'll find out Thursday.
T had a playdate today that went on far too long. She returned tired and cranky and took it out on anything that moved around her. Luckily, I missed most of it, off as I was doing batting practice. But it was apparently pretty ugly. Unlike her - she is just the most adorable little thing ever, I must say. (And if that bothers you, you can go read somebody else's blog and see if they say about their own children, "Eh, OK I guess." I suspect you'll find that they don't.) She's taken to copying Q's latest kick, which is, on the nights when he is free to draw, he writes instead. He writes poems sometimes at night, or stories - he draws lines across the scrap paper we have for drawing and whips out narratives about his hero, Munk Munk, a mischevious monkey who goes around explaining how this or that came into being, being chased by witches, usually accompanied by his pal Bush Baby. I can't think of Munk Munk without picturing Karate Monkey, whose theme song goes like this:...Well, maybe I'll work that up on Garage Band this summer. Slap it up here as an MP3. But it's written, it's already in ny head.
T's stories almost always include a couple of little "mouses", as she calls them, and they're always in English. Usually the main plot is that someone asks someone else for a place to stay and / or permission to play with them. I've yet to see the request denied in any of her narratives. i should know, too - she dictates to us and we have to write the text over / under the illustrations.
Kids ran in the sprinkler today. Maybe I should go work up a film on that. Actually, I should go clear out the extra clothes Janneke got out of the closet and makred for my inspection pending their being piitched...I don't ever, ever wear them. Can't argue - they should go. But I need to approve it first.
What a weekend - hot, sticky, lots of yardwork and an hour and a half drive (the directions we got were bad - it should have been an hour) each way to Q's Saturday baseabll game. I am bushed. Come on, summer - we need ya pretty bad 'round here.
Q had a rough outing pitching on Saturday. He pitched one inning beautifully, with a strikeout and two putouts, but then in the second one he pitched, the fourth overall, he was tired. It was ninety degrees, and he was the only pitcher from either team asked to pitch two of the later innings. Everybody else pitched just one. He was spraying the ball all over the place, and a combination of hits and runs - plus a failure to keep a pop-up in his glove that was absolutely TRAGIC - meant that 5 runs, the maximum allowed, came in on his watch. He was brought to tears, but his coach, Allen Hall, had just the aboslute best reaction I could imagine: He picked him up and walked over to the shade with him, thus communicating "You are a little boy, and you're safe now with us" - and then stood him up and chucked him on the shoulder and talked sternly and positively about how proud he was of him and how well he'd done today, pitching in the heat like that, thus communicating "You are a man on this team and you're strong enough to get through this." It was just masterful. I caught the tail end of it on film...He's a great guy. And WSB won anyway, 21-6.
We had some batting practice this evening, and he's getting much better at that. The other day they worked up the numbers and it turned out he was hitting .200 on the season. Marked improvement as it's gone along, but a slump lately, and some re-jiggering of his stance bodes well for the future. We'll find out Thursday.
T had a playdate today that went on far too long. She returned tired and cranky and took it out on anything that moved around her. Luckily, I missed most of it, off as I was doing batting practice. But it was apparently pretty ugly. Unlike her - she is just the most adorable little thing ever, I must say. (And if that bothers you, you can go read somebody else's blog and see if they say about their own children, "Eh, OK I guess." I suspect you'll find that they don't.) She's taken to copying Q's latest kick, which is, on the nights when he is free to draw, he writes instead. He writes poems sometimes at night, or stories - he draws lines across the scrap paper we have for drawing and whips out narratives about his hero, Munk Munk, a mischevious monkey who goes around explaining how this or that came into being, being chased by witches, usually accompanied by his pal Bush Baby. I can't think of Munk Munk without picturing Karate Monkey, whose theme song goes like this:...Well, maybe I'll work that up on Garage Band this summer. Slap it up here as an MP3. But it's written, it's already in ny head.
T's stories almost always include a couple of little "mouses", as she calls them, and they're always in English. Usually the main plot is that someone asks someone else for a place to stay and / or permission to play with them. I've yet to see the request denied in any of her narratives. i should know, too - she dictates to us and we have to write the text over / under the illustrations.
Kids ran in the sprinkler today. Maybe I should go work up a film on that. Actually, I should go clear out the extra clothes Janneke got out of the closet and makred for my inspection pending their being piitched...I don't ever, ever wear them. Can't argue - they should go. But I need to approve it first.
What a weekend - hot, sticky, lots of yardwork and an hour and a half drive (the directions we got were bad - it should have been an hour) each way to Q's Saturday baseabll game. I am bushed. Come on, summer - we need ya pretty bad 'round here.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Big Girl Bed
Well, so that was the film. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed making it.
And here's some visual evidence of the events of yesterday:
Q had another game today, and went 2 for 3 with a couple of gritty singles where he hit the ball extremely short, effectively bunting to the pitcher on one and grounding it right to the first baseman on another, but each time, he was motoring so fast that he beat the throw or simply covered the ground between home and first faster than the first baseman could collect himself and run to the base. WSB lost, though, since our pitchers had a hard day and walked a lot of runs in. 11-9 in the rubber match against Comalli Electric, our nemesis. But it was a thrilling game to watch.
I had the most fun, though, having Q's in-the-park homerun from yesterday recounted to me. Here are some random excerpts:
"Oh, man, you missed it!" "That was AMAZING!" "Best finish I've ever seen to one of these games." "I've never cheered so much in my life - I cheered all the harder because I knew you had left! I cheered for you!" "He hit it hard - it was on a rope." "It bounced over first base and maybe bounced twice more in the outfield, and it rolled aaaaaall the way to the fence." "There was a guy on second and a guy on third, and Q just about lapped the guy on second, he was running around the bases so fast." "They had a throw to home, but it wasn't accurate, and Quinn just ran right through the catcher." "He got absolutely mobbed at the dugout. He actually got hurt a little bit because they were pounding his helmet so much." "The Cheshire coach was trying to say it was foul, but I was right in front of it. That baby was fair all the way."
He has been on a cloud ever since.
As has Janneke, who went to graduation today in her new academic robes:
OK, both photos were in front of the same bush. But be honest - if that bush were in front of your house, you'd take all your photos there, too.
Good NIGHT!
Crushing Disappointment
Hey, folks - First, I'll tell the terrible tale of Q's latest baseball game, versus Cheshire 2. Though it's hard.
Q was down to be a reserve the first two innings, and was not scheduled to pitch, much to his disappointment. He looked pretty down as all his teammates - all of them - jogged out to take the field, leaving him there to toy with a batting helmet. So I calle him over and he and I stepped out during the first to do some batting practice over at the cage. (The cage itself was locked, so I just tossed them into the air and let him smack some into the fence that surrounds it.) Bubt then he wanted to go watch his teammates in the field - Adam was pitching, and had gotten himself into a bit of a jam. So I lifted Q over the fence and into the dugout, and he watched as Adam pitched himself back and ended the top of the first scoreless. He's really quite a pitcher.
Bottom of the first, and the top of Williamstown Savings Bank's order put on a clinic, both in terms of hitting and baserunning. They cranked out three workmanlike runs, and spirits were high.
The top of the second went by similarly to the top of the first - Adam had found his stride, and mowed them down almost in order. Then WSB came to bat, and the bottom of the order had its turn. Q was up first.
Cheshire's pitcher could get some serious speed going, but his control was questionable, and Q laid off the first two pitches, fully expecting the wildness he'd shown in warmups. But each one whizzed through the strikezone, or, at least, what the umpire believed to be the strike zone - they appeared to certain impartial WSB fans to be a titch high. But we weren't calling the game, and so Q found himself in an 0-2 hole. His body language seemed embarrassed and rueful - those had been such good pitches! And then the temptation to swing was horrible, of course - but he fought it off and watched two balls go by. The last pitch was high, but Q's memory of the first two screamed that it was going to be called a strike anyway, and so he swung, but much too late, and much too haltingly, and marched off, retired. The poor little guy sat alone at the end of the bench and choked out hot tears of frustration, inconsolable. Very tough moment.
The next two batters went down similarly, and something seemed to have cracked in WSB's resolve. Charlotte pitched the third and the fourth innings, and despite getting a number of hitters to two strikes, she just couldn't manage to hit that third one, and walked in a couple of runs. A solid hit past the first baseman and the right fielder (Q) scored three, although a good throw from right field, to first, to home, held the hitter at third. And thus, the five-run maximum was reached for the inning. They headed to the bottom of the fourth, down 5-3.
At this point, I had to leave. Janneke was at home with T and the babysitter, and I would just have time to charge back, change clothes, and jump in the car to head to Bennington for out 10th-anniversary dinner at Pangea. Q would be brought home by his coach, father of Eli, the catcher / leadoff hitter, and we'd find out later how the game had gone. But I could already tell, it was just not the day for WSB. Q was upset at not pitching, upset at being a reserve for 2 innings, upset at having struck out, upset at having let the ball get past him...And storm clouds were brewing. They'd probably be rained out any minute anyway, and suffer their third defeat of the year. It looked pretty grim.
But Janneke and I still managed to have a wonderful time at Pangea, despite having had to drive there at a crawl through the driving rain that had no doubt called an end to WSB's day. I had the duck breast, Janneke had the curried vegetable stir fry, and we shared an excellent bottle of wine and reflected on ten years of wedded bliss. The speed with which they went by, the speed at which the next 15 would doubtless fly. Very, very nice evening.
We followed that with a stop at a cocktail party held by Jennifer French, a colleague of Janneke's, and met a Puerto Rican faculty member whom we'd never before been able to get to know. A few drinks and home.
Crystal, whom Q had historically given a very hard time on her babysitting stints, informed us that he had been an absolute prince with her. They'd played ping pong, and he'd won, 21-19, and he'd been polite and cheerful all night. Great news; both asleep, happily, and all was well.
I squinted and asked if he'd talked about the baseball game.
"Yep," she said. "He said they got rained out after the fifth inning."
"What was the score? Did he say?"
"He said he hit a three-run home run in the bottom of the fifth and they won, 6-5, and he got the game ball."
We howled and danced around the dining room while Crystal backed away and fumbled in her purse for her Mace.
And we all had a celebratory pancake breakfast this morning.
More later, no doubt - there's a film in the works about Tie's new big girl bed! It's in post-production now. Should be out by midnight.
Q was down to be a reserve the first two innings, and was not scheduled to pitch, much to his disappointment. He looked pretty down as all his teammates - all of them - jogged out to take the field, leaving him there to toy with a batting helmet. So I calle him over and he and I stepped out during the first to do some batting practice over at the cage. (The cage itself was locked, so I just tossed them into the air and let him smack some into the fence that surrounds it.) Bubt then he wanted to go watch his teammates in the field - Adam was pitching, and had gotten himself into a bit of a jam. So I lifted Q over the fence and into the dugout, and he watched as Adam pitched himself back and ended the top of the first scoreless. He's really quite a pitcher.
Bottom of the first, and the top of Williamstown Savings Bank's order put on a clinic, both in terms of hitting and baserunning. They cranked out three workmanlike runs, and spirits were high.
The top of the second went by similarly to the top of the first - Adam had found his stride, and mowed them down almost in order. Then WSB came to bat, and the bottom of the order had its turn. Q was up first.
Cheshire's pitcher could get some serious speed going, but his control was questionable, and Q laid off the first two pitches, fully expecting the wildness he'd shown in warmups. But each one whizzed through the strikezone, or, at least, what the umpire believed to be the strike zone - they appeared to certain impartial WSB fans to be a titch high. But we weren't calling the game, and so Q found himself in an 0-2 hole. His body language seemed embarrassed and rueful - those had been such good pitches! And then the temptation to swing was horrible, of course - but he fought it off and watched two balls go by. The last pitch was high, but Q's memory of the first two screamed that it was going to be called a strike anyway, and so he swung, but much too late, and much too haltingly, and marched off, retired. The poor little guy sat alone at the end of the bench and choked out hot tears of frustration, inconsolable. Very tough moment.
The next two batters went down similarly, and something seemed to have cracked in WSB's resolve. Charlotte pitched the third and the fourth innings, and despite getting a number of hitters to two strikes, she just couldn't manage to hit that third one, and walked in a couple of runs. A solid hit past the first baseman and the right fielder (Q) scored three, although a good throw from right field, to first, to home, held the hitter at third. And thus, the five-run maximum was reached for the inning. They headed to the bottom of the fourth, down 5-3.
At this point, I had to leave. Janneke was at home with T and the babysitter, and I would just have time to charge back, change clothes, and jump in the car to head to Bennington for out 10th-anniversary dinner at Pangea. Q would be brought home by his coach, father of Eli, the catcher / leadoff hitter, and we'd find out later how the game had gone. But I could already tell, it was just not the day for WSB. Q was upset at not pitching, upset at being a reserve for 2 innings, upset at having struck out, upset at having let the ball get past him...And storm clouds were brewing. They'd probably be rained out any minute anyway, and suffer their third defeat of the year. It looked pretty grim.
But Janneke and I still managed to have a wonderful time at Pangea, despite having had to drive there at a crawl through the driving rain that had no doubt called an end to WSB's day. I had the duck breast, Janneke had the curried vegetable stir fry, and we shared an excellent bottle of wine and reflected on ten years of wedded bliss. The speed with which they went by, the speed at which the next 15 would doubtless fly. Very, very nice evening.
We followed that with a stop at a cocktail party held by Jennifer French, a colleague of Janneke's, and met a Puerto Rican faculty member whom we'd never before been able to get to know. A few drinks and home.
Crystal, whom Q had historically given a very hard time on her babysitting stints, informed us that he had been an absolute prince with her. They'd played ping pong, and he'd won, 21-19, and he'd been polite and cheerful all night. Great news; both asleep, happily, and all was well.
I squinted and asked if he'd talked about the baseball game.
"Yep," she said. "He said they got rained out after the fifth inning."
"What was the score? Did he say?"
"He said he hit a three-run home run in the bottom of the fifth and they won, 6-5, and he got the game ball."
We howled and danced around the dining room while Crystal backed away and fumbled in her purse for her Mace.
And we all had a celebratory pancake breakfast this morning.
More later, no doubt - there's a film in the works about Tie's new big girl bed! It's in post-production now. Should be out by midnight.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)