Goodness gracious - I had big plans of giving a blow-by-blow of the weekend, but then the weekend happened, and then the week, and I just haven't gotten back to it until now. And even now I don't really have much time. So here's some highlights:
T had her friend Quincy over last night for Friday Pizza-and-Movie Night. He's a very nice little boy, almost exactly her age, tow-headed and husky of voice. (Although, I tell you truly, something has definitely changed between Q's day care days and now, because when Quincy walked in the door, I would have sworn I had never seen that kid in my life. I just don't know her little buddies like I did Q's.) The two built Brio trains and played with the little plastic pet store that T got for Christmas, and at one point she had to go to the bathroom. So she left the living room and trotted through the dining room toward the john. On the way she passed me, slowed down quickly and gestured over her shoulder toward Quincy. "Papi, I have to go to the bathroom - Can you make sure Quincy has fun?"
Quincy came over to soften the blow to T that Q was away at a birthday sleepover. So he was gone all night, and then in the morning, I drove to Pittsfield to do my first-ever stint of volunteering.
I have never volunteered for anything. I mean, in any capacity, really. I've donated blood, but without any real regularity; I've picked up trash on the street, held doors for people, stuff like that. And once, Janneke and I took the kids to the river here in Billtown and picked up garbage that had been strewn along the banks by flooding. But really, that's it. And then the other day I went to Stop & Shop for some reason, and on the way in, there were these guys handing out flyers. "Hi, we're doing a food drive, here's a list of some of the items we could use, if you don't mind, you could drop it off for us on your way out."
So as I walked down the aisles, I read their info, and they're called "Western Massachusetts Labor Action". Their symbol has a fist holding a hammer. And these days, I'm getting more and more socialist, and got a kick out of it. So I bought them some tuna, and when I handed it off, the tall man asked me if he could tell me about his organization. "Sure," I said.
So he did. They're a grass-roots organization that wants to organize part-time, seasonal or otherwise low-income workers in western Mass, and to advocate on their behalf before lawmakers and / or business leaders. They keep people's utilities from being shut off, they offer legal advice, they organize doctors and dentists to offer free appointments to the poor, etc. And the best part?...They're completely non-religious.
I liked the look of it. It's local, it's grass roots, it affects people I know or could easily know...It would get me more into my community. Something that I've talked about a lot with my friends Brad and Betsy, something I think needs to happen in general across the country, something I should really get into. And so I called them and asked what I could do.
What they like their first-time volunteers to do, turns out, is spend a Saturday canvassing. And they don't ask people for money - they go to poor neighborhoods and try to enlist people as members, with full benefits. Membership costs $7.42 per year, if you can / want to pay it. And then you can come to their offices and get emergency food, furniture if you need it, clothing if you need it, sign up for doctor and / or dentists, etc. They have weekly meetings (Thursdays at 7:00) for all members who can come...It's really very, very cool. So I showed up at 9:30.
There were a total of four of us that went out to canvass, in teams of two. Thatcher went with a college student from UMass who'd heard about WMLA when one of their members went and spoke in one of his poli-sci classes, and another was a very odd man who drove out with him. And since I will probably end up doing more with this organization, I will limit myself a bit in how much I say about him, but I will say that he was my partner, that his clothing, hair, teeth, stubble, and demeanor indicated that he was probably close to homeless, and that he insisted on telling everyone we talked to that he had recently worked as an extra in the upcoming Mel Gibson movie, "Edge of Darkness".
We canvassed until about 3:00, and talked to 17 people, 4 of whom we signed up as members. One was a laid-off carpenter who was doing work on a garage in lieu of rent; we described the dental benefit, and he said he had recently lost two fillings and the edges of the teeth were rubbing into his tongue and keeping him from sleeping well. He showed us a number of other apartments in the immediate area where people he knew lived, and said that one family was Hispanic, probably immigrants (from Ecuador, he thought), and he was sure they were home, but they weren't answering their door.
We went into one of the most fascinating I have ever entered and signed up a very poor, somewhat off-kilter woman who has six children and a number of health problems. I won't get into too many details, but her reality is grim. And we knocked on her door and informed her of an organization that wants to help her out.
And on we went. I managed to survive until the end, and drove home pondering whether it had been an amazingly uplifting and inspiring way to spend a Saturday, or an incredibly depressing day spent among people who really make me sad. And which was spent in the full knowledge that my wife and two children were skiing.
And as you can see from how I'm going on and on about it, I'm still stewing. It was thrilling, it was an adventure. And the WMLA folk may have found a way to hook me - last night, around 7:00, Thatcher, the head honcho, called me at home to tell me that Jim, the man we signed up Saturday, had already had his teeth fixed. They had been calling around to dentists on Monday to see if they could find a slot where someone could see him, and one of them said, "You know, with all the snow, we have this three-hour block where everyone canceled. Can he come now?" And bang - one unemployed man whose country hasn't seen clear to giving him health coverage will now sleep better.
And I'm thinking, "I have to do this again." ...I don't know. I have a lot of stewing to do.
OK, that'll have to do for now. There's more to say, but it's a question of energy and time. I mean, I still haven't walked the damn dog.
Take care, and whatever you do, don't walk like Bobby Jindal.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Attack of the Maine Coon
That's the title of the video you're about to watch. It is not for the faint of heart:
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Dios Los Cria, y Ellos Se Juntan
What a crazy week of vacation it has indeed been! Would you like to hear about a few of the things that happened? Some amusing anecdotes, perhaps? Settle back, then, dear reader, and be amazed at the glory that is this life:
We went to Brad and Betsy's on Friday night for dinner and a movie. The kids watched their movie while we ate dinner (it was "Tuck Everlasting"), and made use of B&B's freshly-cleared-out dining room. They just re-did their kitchen / living room and turned it into a gorgeous space, with vaulted ceilings and the coolest concrete counter you've ever seen. Perfect for drinking manhattans and watching someone else cook while simultaneously having conversations with him, hoping not to distract him so much that he cuts himself. (I was not entirely successful there.) So the dining room had been the receiving ground for all the detritus of the renovation process, and they cleared it out and made an actual dining room just for us. It was super - lasagna and salad, followed by the kids all trundling off to bed. It was a sleepover, you see - T's second one ever, the first also having happened at B&B's. They piled up in their beds and were only heard from once, and that only from the boys, who were still wired at 11:00. But they only came down once. When I went up to see T off and smooch her goodnight, she was in her sleeping bag up on B&B's daughter's bed, being read to by the light of her little lamp, and looked about as happy as a little girl can possibly be. "The only way to make this better for T," I said at the time, "would be if she were actually literally floating on a cloud." M (the daughter) is soooooo good with T - she's in 3rd grade, in Q's class, and is preternaturally smart and mature in just about every way. (I may have said this before, but I've told Brad that Mae makes me feel like she should be in a white room somewhere, surrounded by men in hazmat suits asking her about the future.) And when T comes over, M devotes all of her energy to her, never seeming put out or bored at all. T is treated like an absolute equal by the person she looks up to most on Earth. You can all but feel her little personality firming up and growing stronger under the growth light that is this lovely girl's attention.
W, Brad and Betsy's son, is in 2nd grade, and he and Q get on gangbusters. They make lego castles and weapons and charge around the house scheming and plotting. It's pure boy time, and they are pretty quintessentially boy-oriented. Though we were joking about how Q and M's relationship is going to change (or not) as they get older. We were imagining M's friends saying, "Oh, he's so dreeeeamy!", and M saying, "What?! Him?!" "Oh, yes, wouldn't you love to see him after school some time?" "He was at my house last night. He slept over." It's going to be a lot of fun.
The adults then settled in to watch "The Dark Knight", and I will say this: Heath Ledger will have deserved to win the Oscar he is no doubt about to win this very same evening. (We aren't watching - though I just now realized that Janneke, who is pretty clueless about the goings on in the outside world sometimes ("What? A chimp attacked someone? Where? CONNECTICUT?!?!"), might not know they're on, and called out to her to inform her. So while it is true that "we" are not watching, she herself scrambled for the remote the moment I reminded her.
But "The Dark Knight" is a long movie, and we were driving home at 12:30, which, for a couple of broken-down fuddy-duddies like us (OK: I'm the only one who's broken down), is aaaawfully late. So I didn't roll in to pick the kids up until 8:45 or so the next morning. Brad made me a waffle in his pajamas (that is to say, he was wearing his pajamas - he made it in a waffle iron), and I managed to round them up without any major scenes and head off to what I thought was going to be a day on the slopes.
But Janneke didn't like the wind speed, and since the wind chill was somewhere around 15, and she hates being on a chair lift in the wind, we called it off and went skating instead. Long sharp things on restrictive boots, frozen water, constant danger of falling - Pretty much the same deal.
And I didn't bring the camera, for which I am still kicking myself. We had almost no one on the ice to interfere with us, compared to other free skates we've done, and wound up diong a "Family hug!", as Tess will call them, in the middle of the rink, slowly turning circles on skates with our arms around each other, and I said to myself, "Boy, there should be a Flip video camera on the ice below us right now." "Yep," I had to agree. "You are a dumbass." "Damn right you are," I replied, and bit my own tongue clean through.
And it only got worse from there - Tess fell asleep in the car on the way home, which would have been gorgeous on film, but not until after we'd gone through the CAR WASH...! Damn. That would've been the movie to end all movies. (Though, judging by the number of views on the sledding video I put up the other day, not too many people would ever have seen it.)
Skating concluded, we came home to tune in to what has become a 5:00 PM Saturday tradition: Lawrence Welk reruns on PBS. Now, what educational value Lawrence Welk might have is not something I care to get into - I simply enjoy being transported back to the age of 8. Or younger - this one was from 1971, and the theme was "The Oscars". We got renditions of "Georgie Girl", "Raindrops Keep Fallin'", the theme from "Love Story"...It was funny for us, and fun for the kids. And then supper, horsin' around, and to bed.
This morning we had guests: Mark and Ronadh, and their boy O, who's in Q's grade and is really his oldest friend; and Denise and Pete, whose son C is in T's daycare room. Ronadh and Pete are both Irish (though Pete's from Northern Ireland, so passport-wise, they don't match up so much), and Mark is from upstate New York, which, in terms of accent, culture, and general temperament, is pretty much the Midwest. Janneke and Denise, meanwhile, are both cloying busybodies. So everybody had someone to relate to. The kids settled in to watch "Meet the Robinsons" while the rest of us gabbled in the dining room. Not as nicely redone as Brad and Betsy's, but nice nonetheless. One of these days we'll re-do the bejeezus out of this place, and then, hoo boy, you just wait. They'll be writing about our new kitchen and dining room in their blog that nobody reads.
And it might be happening piecemeal anyway, this renovation - because one by one, all our appliances seem to be giving up the ghost. The refrigerator is leaking, the microwave died, and the washing machine won't put up with super-size loads anymore. It also consistently won't allow you to do "cold-cold" cycles. But then, a few days later, it'll go back to letting you do it. And it suddenly strikes me that that's the sort of stuff that started to happen around the house in "The Exorcist" before the fit really started to hit the shan, isn't it? Oh, well. We had a good run. And we might be able to head it off, since Ronadh and Mark turned us on to this guy in the area who calls himself the Appliance Doctor or some such. He comes to your house and fixes what needs fixin', and his minimum fee is $40 or so. Probably very much worth it, because between the skis and the skiing and the other necessities we haven't been able to live without, it's shaping up to be a lean month. Wouldn't really enjoy throwing a refrigerator on the credit card right now.
This afternoon, Q took off with O and family to cavort and go to a free two-hour baseball clinic put on by Williams College. He had decided not to play this spring, but who knows, he might be feeling the itch. Though, by the sound of things, he wasn't exactly encouraged - we asked him how it had gone, and he said he'd gotten out every time he came up to bat. "But it was to get other people to score," he gamely added. Then at 6:00, he trooped off for the weekly pickup soccer game at the elementary school gym.
I didn't stick around to watch. Far better that way - all I do is get frustrated watching him not play up to his potential. So I remove myself and let nature take its course. When I came back to pick him up around 7:15, I saw him score a goal, and he told me afterward that he'd had 7 assists and that one goal. He seemed very happy, so I fought down the urge to point out the things I had noticed in the five minutes I did watch him...Man, sometimes I feel myself doing these things around him - criticizing too much, seeing the negative everywhere - and I think, "This kid is screwed." But in the end, he's tougher than I am. I think he's going to pull through.
Spring soccer coming up...so I'll have to get some kind of tranquilizer prescribed by April, when the games start. Or self-medicate. Schlitz should work nicely.
Speaking of games: March 14th is Team Trivia- and we have awful, awful news: Ronadh can't make it. That's the night of the final performance of Innish, the Irish dance and music group she belongs to. So we're going to be a man down when we try for an unprecedented 4th consecutive title. Janneke bumped into the organizer the other day, and she was very enthusiastically reminding Janneke of the date. "Don't worry," she said, "we've already decided not to give you guys any more robes if you win."
"If". Ha.
OK, I'm going to go pretend to do something responsible for a while. Got to keep up appearances, don't you know. Just like the way I drive off every morning at 6:15 and then spend the day sleeping in the park. It's not easy, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for Janneke's peace of mind.
'Bye!
But before we go - a bonus track, as it were:
Found this picture. It was a candidate for our Christmas card, but somehow got lost in the shuffle. Glad I found it, though - it's nicer than I remember it.
We went to Brad and Betsy's on Friday night for dinner and a movie. The kids watched their movie while we ate dinner (it was "Tuck Everlasting"), and made use of B&B's freshly-cleared-out dining room. They just re-did their kitchen / living room and turned it into a gorgeous space, with vaulted ceilings and the coolest concrete counter you've ever seen. Perfect for drinking manhattans and watching someone else cook while simultaneously having conversations with him, hoping not to distract him so much that he cuts himself. (I was not entirely successful there.) So the dining room had been the receiving ground for all the detritus of the renovation process, and they cleared it out and made an actual dining room just for us. It was super - lasagna and salad, followed by the kids all trundling off to bed. It was a sleepover, you see - T's second one ever, the first also having happened at B&B's. They piled up in their beds and were only heard from once, and that only from the boys, who were still wired at 11:00. But they only came down once. When I went up to see T off and smooch her goodnight, she was in her sleeping bag up on B&B's daughter's bed, being read to by the light of her little lamp, and looked about as happy as a little girl can possibly be. "The only way to make this better for T," I said at the time, "would be if she were actually literally floating on a cloud." M (the daughter) is soooooo good with T - she's in 3rd grade, in Q's class, and is preternaturally smart and mature in just about every way. (I may have said this before, but I've told Brad that Mae makes me feel like she should be in a white room somewhere, surrounded by men in hazmat suits asking her about the future.) And when T comes over, M devotes all of her energy to her, never seeming put out or bored at all. T is treated like an absolute equal by the person she looks up to most on Earth. You can all but feel her little personality firming up and growing stronger under the growth light that is this lovely girl's attention.
W, Brad and Betsy's son, is in 2nd grade, and he and Q get on gangbusters. They make lego castles and weapons and charge around the house scheming and plotting. It's pure boy time, and they are pretty quintessentially boy-oriented. Though we were joking about how Q and M's relationship is going to change (or not) as they get older. We were imagining M's friends saying, "Oh, he's so dreeeeamy!", and M saying, "What?! Him?!" "Oh, yes, wouldn't you love to see him after school some time?" "He was at my house last night. He slept over." It's going to be a lot of fun.
The adults then settled in to watch "The Dark Knight", and I will say this: Heath Ledger will have deserved to win the Oscar he is no doubt about to win this very same evening. (We aren't watching - though I just now realized that Janneke, who is pretty clueless about the goings on in the outside world sometimes ("What? A chimp attacked someone? Where? CONNECTICUT?!?!"), might not know they're on, and called out to her to inform her. So while it is true that "we" are not watching, she herself scrambled for the remote the moment I reminded her.
But "The Dark Knight" is a long movie, and we were driving home at 12:30, which, for a couple of broken-down fuddy-duddies like us (OK: I'm the only one who's broken down), is aaaawfully late. So I didn't roll in to pick the kids up until 8:45 or so the next morning. Brad made me a waffle in his pajamas (that is to say, he was wearing his pajamas - he made it in a waffle iron), and I managed to round them up without any major scenes and head off to what I thought was going to be a day on the slopes.
But Janneke didn't like the wind speed, and since the wind chill was somewhere around 15, and she hates being on a chair lift in the wind, we called it off and went skating instead. Long sharp things on restrictive boots, frozen water, constant danger of falling - Pretty much the same deal.
And I didn't bring the camera, for which I am still kicking myself. We had almost no one on the ice to interfere with us, compared to other free skates we've done, and wound up diong a "Family hug!", as Tess will call them, in the middle of the rink, slowly turning circles on skates with our arms around each other, and I said to myself, "Boy, there should be a Flip video camera on the ice below us right now." "Yep," I had to agree. "You are a dumbass." "Damn right you are," I replied, and bit my own tongue clean through.
And it only got worse from there - Tess fell asleep in the car on the way home, which would have been gorgeous on film, but not until after we'd gone through the CAR WASH...! Damn. That would've been the movie to end all movies. (Though, judging by the number of views on the sledding video I put up the other day, not too many people would ever have seen it.)
Skating concluded, we came home to tune in to what has become a 5:00 PM Saturday tradition: Lawrence Welk reruns on PBS. Now, what educational value Lawrence Welk might have is not something I care to get into - I simply enjoy being transported back to the age of 8. Or younger - this one was from 1971, and the theme was "The Oscars". We got renditions of "Georgie Girl", "Raindrops Keep Fallin'", the theme from "Love Story"...It was funny for us, and fun for the kids. And then supper, horsin' around, and to bed.
This morning we had guests: Mark and Ronadh, and their boy O, who's in Q's grade and is really his oldest friend; and Denise and Pete, whose son C is in T's daycare room. Ronadh and Pete are both Irish (though Pete's from Northern Ireland, so passport-wise, they don't match up so much), and Mark is from upstate New York, which, in terms of accent, culture, and general temperament, is pretty much the Midwest. Janneke and Denise, meanwhile, are both cloying busybodies. So everybody had someone to relate to. The kids settled in to watch "Meet the Robinsons" while the rest of us gabbled in the dining room. Not as nicely redone as Brad and Betsy's, but nice nonetheless. One of these days we'll re-do the bejeezus out of this place, and then, hoo boy, you just wait. They'll be writing about our new kitchen and dining room in their blog that nobody reads.
And it might be happening piecemeal anyway, this renovation - because one by one, all our appliances seem to be giving up the ghost. The refrigerator is leaking, the microwave died, and the washing machine won't put up with super-size loads anymore. It also consistently won't allow you to do "cold-cold" cycles. But then, a few days later, it'll go back to letting you do it. And it suddenly strikes me that that's the sort of stuff that started to happen around the house in "The Exorcist" before the fit really started to hit the shan, isn't it? Oh, well. We had a good run. And we might be able to head it off, since Ronadh and Mark turned us on to this guy in the area who calls himself the Appliance Doctor or some such. He comes to your house and fixes what needs fixin', and his minimum fee is $40 or so. Probably very much worth it, because between the skis and the skiing and the other necessities we haven't been able to live without, it's shaping up to be a lean month. Wouldn't really enjoy throwing a refrigerator on the credit card right now.
This afternoon, Q took off with O and family to cavort and go to a free two-hour baseball clinic put on by Williams College. He had decided not to play this spring, but who knows, he might be feeling the itch. Though, by the sound of things, he wasn't exactly encouraged - we asked him how it had gone, and he said he'd gotten out every time he came up to bat. "But it was to get other people to score," he gamely added. Then at 6:00, he trooped off for the weekly pickup soccer game at the elementary school gym.
I didn't stick around to watch. Far better that way - all I do is get frustrated watching him not play up to his potential. So I remove myself and let nature take its course. When I came back to pick him up around 7:15, I saw him score a goal, and he told me afterward that he'd had 7 assists and that one goal. He seemed very happy, so I fought down the urge to point out the things I had noticed in the five minutes I did watch him...Man, sometimes I feel myself doing these things around him - criticizing too much, seeing the negative everywhere - and I think, "This kid is screwed." But in the end, he's tougher than I am. I think he's going to pull through.
Spring soccer coming up...so I'll have to get some kind of tranquilizer prescribed by April, when the games start. Or self-medicate. Schlitz should work nicely.
Speaking of games: March 14th is Team Trivia- and we have awful, awful news: Ronadh can't make it. That's the night of the final performance of Innish, the Irish dance and music group she belongs to. So we're going to be a man down when we try for an unprecedented 4th consecutive title. Janneke bumped into the organizer the other day, and she was very enthusiastically reminding Janneke of the date. "Don't worry," she said, "we've already decided not to give you guys any more robes if you win."
"If". Ha.
OK, I'm going to go pretend to do something responsible for a while. Got to keep up appearances, don't you know. Just like the way I drive off every morning at 6:15 and then spend the day sleeping in the park. It's not easy, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for Janneke's peace of mind.
'Bye!
But before we go - a bonus track, as it were:
Found this picture. It was a candidate for our Christmas card, but somehow got lost in the shuffle. Glad I found it, though - it's nicer than I remember it.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
New movie release
Hey, folks - Well, I finally got enough time to put together a little video I've been thinking about for a while. Here it is:
For the longest time, imovie wouldn't let me watch the video accurately while the music was playing. So I had to do some work-arounds, and today finally had the time to do it. After playing the guitar, changing the strings, shoveling the deck, staring out the window, and playing with the cat. I'm amazed I worked all that in today.
I dang near went skiing, but the thought of doing so all by myself felt kind of icky. Despite last night's fresh snow. I was already a little iffy about dumping the kids in daycare for the day - they didn't want to go, and I didn't have any specific and compelling reason why they couldn't stay home with me. Except that I just wanted to putter around by myself, which I couldn't really tell them. So I said I had to do some work.
To which Q responded, "Papi, cual es mas importante: Tu trabajo, o pasar tiempo con tus hijos?"
OK: He's officially too smart. I'm going to have to do some research on what toys dull kids' minds and go buy him some.
Perhaps I'll write more later - not so much more to say right now...I'm off!
For the longest time, imovie wouldn't let me watch the video accurately while the music was playing. So I had to do some work-arounds, and today finally had the time to do it. After playing the guitar, changing the strings, shoveling the deck, staring out the window, and playing with the cat. I'm amazed I worked all that in today.
I dang near went skiing, but the thought of doing so all by myself felt kind of icky. Despite last night's fresh snow. I was already a little iffy about dumping the kids in daycare for the day - they didn't want to go, and I didn't have any specific and compelling reason why they couldn't stay home with me. Except that I just wanted to putter around by myself, which I couldn't really tell them. So I said I had to do some work.
To which Q responded, "Papi, cual es mas importante: Tu trabajo, o pasar tiempo con tus hijos?"
OK: He's officially too smart. I'm going to have to do some research on what toys dull kids' minds and go buy him some.
Perhaps I'll write more later - not so much more to say right now...I'm off!
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Outpourings of Affection
Maybe it's because she's no longer peeing all over the house and reminding me what the place smelled like when we first moved in. Maybe it's because she's spending so much of her time cuddled up to my kids. Or maybe it's just the meth talkin'. No matter the reason, I am in Skittles ga-ga mode. As evidenced by the following explosion of Skittles-related media:
"T and Skittles: A Love Story."
"A Weird Love Story."
"Like, 'Disturbing'-Weird."
Speaking of weird love stories...
Not Skittles-related, but cool: The kids' ski cards.
"T and Skittles: A Love Story."
"A Weird Love Story."
"Like, 'Disturbing'-Weird."
Speaking of weird love stories...
Not Skittles-related, but cool: The kids' ski cards.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Halle-pew-jah
As in, glory be!, the stink appears to be gone.
I went online last night and got a number of suggestions about how to keep Skittles from piddling all over the house. Because the litter box was now anathema to her completely - for a good while, she was pooping in it, but would absolutely not piddle there. But now #2 was also beginning to show up in odd corners. The website had a number of suggestions - the basic jist being, "Make her litterbox as attractive as possible, and all other areas as unattractive as possible, for peeing in."
One of the tricks for making a place unattractive is spreading tinfoil on the ground. So I did - there are now to bands of it that run the length of the floor under our picture window and behind the wood stove.
And since cats often like to scratch immediately after using the litterbox, we put an old bath mat next to it.
And we closed her in there over the course of the day, while Janneke took a few minutes this afternoon to try to find the last piece of the puzzle: kitty litter that she would like. This stuff we'd been using is pretty rough, compared to the strictly clay-based one we'd started out with - and which we'd not been able to find again. The stuff we replaced it with is made from corn and is very granular. So as soon as Janneke arrived at home with it, we put it in the box. And the need was great - because as soon as I had gotten home, I had settled in to mop the areas downstairs where she had done #1 and #2. Neither was anywhere near the litterbox.
Once the new litter was in, I found the kitten and brought her down and placed her in the box. She moved as if to leap away, which was what she had been doing every previous time I'd put her there, but I held her, and took her paws and moved them so she could feel, really feel, that this was different. And it sank in - she suddenly looked down at it and began to relax, then to sniff it. Knowing that cats prefer not to be watched in that circumstance, I scampered around the corner and watched with just one eyeball peering around the doorjamb.
As she settled, turned, squatted, and peed.
I bounded up the stairs and leapt into the dining room, fists high, face jubilant; Janneke immediately knew what had happened, and we embraced in the middle of the room as the camera swung around us and the fireworks exploded everywhere.
I no longer look menacingly at the poor little thing - I shoot her only loving looks.
And the best thing about this kitty litter, apart form its acceptability to the cat?
It clumps!!
Whoah - great video to share, here, apropos of nothing. Some find it creepy. We atheists find it heart-warming.
Mwahahahahahaaaaaaa!
I went online last night and got a number of suggestions about how to keep Skittles from piddling all over the house. Because the litter box was now anathema to her completely - for a good while, she was pooping in it, but would absolutely not piddle there. But now #2 was also beginning to show up in odd corners. The website had a number of suggestions - the basic jist being, "Make her litterbox as attractive as possible, and all other areas as unattractive as possible, for peeing in."
One of the tricks for making a place unattractive is spreading tinfoil on the ground. So I did - there are now to bands of it that run the length of the floor under our picture window and behind the wood stove.
And since cats often like to scratch immediately after using the litterbox, we put an old bath mat next to it.
And we closed her in there over the course of the day, while Janneke took a few minutes this afternoon to try to find the last piece of the puzzle: kitty litter that she would like. This stuff we'd been using is pretty rough, compared to the strictly clay-based one we'd started out with - and which we'd not been able to find again. The stuff we replaced it with is made from corn and is very granular. So as soon as Janneke arrived at home with it, we put it in the box. And the need was great - because as soon as I had gotten home, I had settled in to mop the areas downstairs where she had done #1 and #2. Neither was anywhere near the litterbox.
Once the new litter was in, I found the kitten and brought her down and placed her in the box. She moved as if to leap away, which was what she had been doing every previous time I'd put her there, but I held her, and took her paws and moved them so she could feel, really feel, that this was different. And it sank in - she suddenly looked down at it and began to relax, then to sniff it. Knowing that cats prefer not to be watched in that circumstance, I scampered around the corner and watched with just one eyeball peering around the doorjamb.
As she settled, turned, squatted, and peed.
I bounded up the stairs and leapt into the dining room, fists high, face jubilant; Janneke immediately knew what had happened, and we embraced in the middle of the room as the camera swung around us and the fireworks exploded everywhere.
I no longer look menacingly at the poor little thing - I shoot her only loving looks.
And the best thing about this kitty litter, apart form its acceptability to the cat?
It clumps!!
Whoah - great video to share, here, apropos of nothing. Some find it creepy. We atheists find it heart-warming.
Mwahahahahahaaaaaaa!
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Staving Off Anxiety. And Tinkles.
Hoo-boy, I tell ye, boy howdy!...Hey. How's it going.
Sunday morning, rain is falling, wind is blowing, and the ladies are on the couch under the afghan while Q builds bionicles and I sit in the kitchen and write this. I am the only one not wearing pajamas.
(I am not, however, naked.)
We had a few friends over for dinner last night - Janneke did, more accurately, since she whipped a huge and delicious pan-Latin-American feast. All I did was clean the house. We dragged up a table from downstairs and had five people over. (Would've been seven, but Mark and Ronadh are in Ireland, attending a family funeral - we're thinking of you guys!) It was big, big fun, and the kids, who went to bed half an hour after the guests arrived, cooperated fabulously. T was afraid she wouldn't be able to sleep, but I pointed out that her door was open, the lights from the dining room were reaching her bed, and she could hear every word any of us said. And this was to convince her that she would be able to sleep. It's a strange logic that kids live with - the more disturbances that keep them from thinking the dark thoughts, the more likely they are to fall into unconsciousness. Q, though, who has been lobbying for a later bedtime, claimed not to be sleepy at all, and so, in order to avoid a scene, I magnanimously allowed him to play his Gameboy in bed. (An hour and a half later, he was still at it - I shut him down at that point. And he was up this morning at 7:00, chipper as can be. Maybe he has a point - I'll get all Charlie Wilson on this issue, hold some meetings and see if we can't work something out.)
I'm still working on the guitar. I've got "Fusill contra fusil" pretty close to whipped, and after the guests left last night, Janneke and I ran through "La maza" a few times - and Janneke did so without notes, nailing all the words on the last one. (Which, if you know that song,, is not easy.) Don, who came over last night for the party, was psyched to learn that I was doing that, since he learned to play in Chile and has a number of Silvio songbooks. So this afternoon I'm going to go over to his house and see if we can't break some wine glasses. (With the music.)
Skittles is still Pittles, as in "She pittles all over the damn place". We ordered the musk stuff that Jayne suggested, and at least now have the advantage of knowing where she likes to leave them. I haven't detected any smell for days, since we stay ahead of her. The bathroom door is always closed, leaving the area behind the woodstove, the floor under the picture window, and the kitchen door that leads to the garage. Nothing where there's carpet, thank goodness - though that makes sense, since none of our rugs would have any ancient cat smell that (hopefully) humans can't detect. Maybe I should whip out the anti-icky-poo from years ago and soak it into the floor there...Many possible solutions. They can all get in line behind my nap. Here's the leaky feline last week, checking out our new skis:
Tension builds at work around what the budget cuts will bring in the coming year. I understand it - there's going to have to be some reductions. But I don't feel like my job is in danger, but maybe I'm naive. Just - It seems like there are a lot of steps to take first. Pay freezes, eliminating a sport or two...And then of course, if someone has to be eliminated, there are a lot of part-time people. I would hate to see that happen, but just in terms of my own job security, it seems things would have to get a lot worse before they eliminated Spanish. We have a very successful Latin program, for example, which everybody would hate to see go, but it's one person, and we offer two other languages. Seems that would be on the block before me. So our Latin teacher is worried, and we are all worried for her...French seems a little on edge, too, and one of them is new there, even newer than me. But French is popular, and the new teacher absolutely rocks. It would be a bad move. Besides, I think all of us would take a pay cut if it meant others wouldn't be fired. I certainly would. Or at least a freeze. There are some single moms who teach there, some people whose husbands are hurt and haven't worked in a long time...It could get bad. But we have a good union, so I'm sure they'll get creative and protect everybody. Go Lenox Education Association! (Or whatever they're called.)
Whatever - what comes will come. We're in pretty good shape, financially, in terms of debt and such. Nothing other than the car and the house, and the car, we can sell, if things get bad. But I'm not worried. I'll be employed three years from now.
("So, then," says the bespectacled older gentleman across from me with the bow tie and the cigar, re-crossing his legs and jotting things down in a pad, "why are you going on about it?" So I turn into a bull and gore him to death and then blast through the picture window and across the river to board the train and ride through the tunnel to freedom.)
OK, off to tickle some kids. Take care, brush your hair...
Sunday morning, rain is falling, wind is blowing, and the ladies are on the couch under the afghan while Q builds bionicles and I sit in the kitchen and write this. I am the only one not wearing pajamas.
(I am not, however, naked.)
We had a few friends over for dinner last night - Janneke did, more accurately, since she whipped a huge and delicious pan-Latin-American feast. All I did was clean the house. We dragged up a table from downstairs and had five people over. (Would've been seven, but Mark and Ronadh are in Ireland, attending a family funeral - we're thinking of you guys!) It was big, big fun, and the kids, who went to bed half an hour after the guests arrived, cooperated fabulously. T was afraid she wouldn't be able to sleep, but I pointed out that her door was open, the lights from the dining room were reaching her bed, and she could hear every word any of us said. And this was to convince her that she would be able to sleep. It's a strange logic that kids live with - the more disturbances that keep them from thinking the dark thoughts, the more likely they are to fall into unconsciousness. Q, though, who has been lobbying for a later bedtime, claimed not to be sleepy at all, and so, in order to avoid a scene, I magnanimously allowed him to play his Gameboy in bed. (An hour and a half later, he was still at it - I shut him down at that point. And he was up this morning at 7:00, chipper as can be. Maybe he has a point - I'll get all Charlie Wilson on this issue, hold some meetings and see if we can't work something out.)
I'm still working on the guitar. I've got "Fusill contra fusil" pretty close to whipped, and after the guests left last night, Janneke and I ran through "La maza" a few times - and Janneke did so without notes, nailing all the words on the last one. (Which, if you know that song,, is not easy.) Don, who came over last night for the party, was psyched to learn that I was doing that, since he learned to play in Chile and has a number of Silvio songbooks. So this afternoon I'm going to go over to his house and see if we can't break some wine glasses. (With the music.)
Skittles is still Pittles, as in "She pittles all over the damn place". We ordered the musk stuff that Jayne suggested, and at least now have the advantage of knowing where she likes to leave them. I haven't detected any smell for days, since we stay ahead of her. The bathroom door is always closed, leaving the area behind the woodstove, the floor under the picture window, and the kitchen door that leads to the garage. Nothing where there's carpet, thank goodness - though that makes sense, since none of our rugs would have any ancient cat smell that (hopefully) humans can't detect. Maybe I should whip out the anti-icky-poo from years ago and soak it into the floor there...Many possible solutions. They can all get in line behind my nap. Here's the leaky feline last week, checking out our new skis:
Tension builds at work around what the budget cuts will bring in the coming year. I understand it - there's going to have to be some reductions. But I don't feel like my job is in danger, but maybe I'm naive. Just - It seems like there are a lot of steps to take first. Pay freezes, eliminating a sport or two...And then of course, if someone has to be eliminated, there are a lot of part-time people. I would hate to see that happen, but just in terms of my own job security, it seems things would have to get a lot worse before they eliminated Spanish. We have a very successful Latin program, for example, which everybody would hate to see go, but it's one person, and we offer two other languages. Seems that would be on the block before me. So our Latin teacher is worried, and we are all worried for her...French seems a little on edge, too, and one of them is new there, even newer than me. But French is popular, and the new teacher absolutely rocks. It would be a bad move. Besides, I think all of us would take a pay cut if it meant others wouldn't be fired. I certainly would. Or at least a freeze. There are some single moms who teach there, some people whose husbands are hurt and haven't worked in a long time...It could get bad. But we have a good union, so I'm sure they'll get creative and protect everybody. Go Lenox Education Association! (Or whatever they're called.)
Whatever - what comes will come. We're in pretty good shape, financially, in terms of debt and such. Nothing other than the car and the house, and the car, we can sell, if things get bad. But I'm not worried. I'll be employed three years from now.
("So, then," says the bespectacled older gentleman across from me with the bow tie and the cigar, re-crossing his legs and jotting things down in a pad, "why are you going on about it?" So I turn into a bull and gore him to death and then blast through the picture window and across the river to board the train and ride through the tunnel to freedom.)
OK, off to tickle some kids. Take care, brush your hair...
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
The Young and the Boneless
Gotta be quick - it's late, and I'm very tired. But here's the latest:
My birthday was fantabulous. Up at 7:00 or so, and off to the Chef's Hat, Williamstown's finest eatery. OK, not our finest eatery - but the best greasy spoon in the Northeast...ern part of town. Pancakes and French toast for all, then off!, to Jiminy Peak!, where Q and T once again trooped happily off to be taught the many secrets of gravitationally-enhanced locomotion.
Janneke and I then hit the slopes, and I tell you what, boy-howdy: Best conditions I've ever seen in all my days of skiing. (There have been three.) Nice soft powder - at least, compared to before - and 28 degrees to start, eventually rising to 35 or so. There were a lot of people, sure, and at one point that did cause me to get confused and fall over as I tried to avoid plowing under a group of hapless and clueless teens who had blocked an entire run so they could stand arm-in-arm and decide what to do next. But otherwise it was an A-OK day.
We had our new skis and boots on, and man-oh-man, that made a lot of difference. Not once did I feel like I couldn't go fast enough - a sensation i definitely had in the learner skis. We looked and felt snappy all day.
Picked the kids up and learned that even T was now certified to go all the way to the top and come all the way back down on green trails. So we hooked up with her friend Hazel's family, and rode to the top, four abreast in the ski lift. Which was quite a feeling - just the family, floating slowly above the trees, smiling at each other, admiring our ski tips. Big fun.
We all came down the mountain, and it turns out T is a speed demon. With no annoying instructor to insist that she follow any particular pattern or rule, she devoted herself to going as fast as she possibly could. We called after her and caught up to her and helped her up from a spill here and there, but by and large, she was zooming happily along. At one point I was a little ahead of her, and as she saw me pass her, she called out, "Feliz cumpleanos, Papi!" Watching her smile at me as she did so on the fly was one of the best moments of the last several weeks.
One of the worst came seconds later, when she hit a series of bumps and started doing front flips.
I skidded to a stop below her just as she finally came to a rest. Her helmeted head had done a few reps against the snow, and now she rested on it, her legs curving up over he back and down in front of the helmet. I could hear her muffled screaming - and it was downright screaming - and felt myself sinking into empty nausea as her left knee hung there at an angle that was never intended. I looked down to get my own skis off, hating myself for ever having introduced her to this and for having let her go so fast, sure I would soon be cradling a crippled little girl.
I ran up the hill to her and saw that her leg had righted itself, and as I turned her over and touched her knee, she pulled her legs up and started to stand. And before you could say "Thrombitis", she was lifting first one foot, then the other, and saying through tears that she really wanted to keep skiing. Four-year-olds, I'm convinced, are made completely of rubber.
Eight-year-olds must be, too, because at the bottom of the hill, I found Q, who had gone ahead, quietly taking off his skis, and soon found myself listening to a sobbed description of a multiple-flip fall that had ended in a collision with another person and a lost ski, subsequently recovered. Man. It's that last run of the day - It should just be banned. Officers in space suits should step forward out of a brilliant, lightning-like rip in the space-time continuum and say "Sir, we're from the future, and this run you're about to do turns out to be the last one of the day, so we're not going to allow you to do it. Please go to the lodge and remove your skis. Thank you." Then they'd disappear back into the air. And then they'd poke their heads out again to whisper, "The Steelers win tonight, by the way. Bet the farm."
We all went home and watched that happen, too. We were all pulling for the Cards, but it was not to be. I did take enough emotional distance not to lose any sleep over it, though - the sleep I lost was from starting awake again, shaking my head, trying to rid myself of that image of T's gooey knee, hanging over the back of her head in a way that just doesn't seem possible.
Had a guitar lesson today - here's the song I'm working on now:
AL FINAL DE ESTE VIAJE EN LA VIDA
And there you are. Apart form Skittles peeing everywhere she shouldn't (I'm open to suggestions there, by the way), we're kind of newsless. Hope to talk to you all soon, off to bed...
My birthday was fantabulous. Up at 7:00 or so, and off to the Chef's Hat, Williamstown's finest eatery. OK, not our finest eatery - but the best greasy spoon in the Northeast...ern part of town. Pancakes and French toast for all, then off!, to Jiminy Peak!, where Q and T once again trooped happily off to be taught the many secrets of gravitationally-enhanced locomotion.
Janneke and I then hit the slopes, and I tell you what, boy-howdy: Best conditions I've ever seen in all my days of skiing. (There have been three.) Nice soft powder - at least, compared to before - and 28 degrees to start, eventually rising to 35 or so. There were a lot of people, sure, and at one point that did cause me to get confused and fall over as I tried to avoid plowing under a group of hapless and clueless teens who had blocked an entire run so they could stand arm-in-arm and decide what to do next. But otherwise it was an A-OK day.
We had our new skis and boots on, and man-oh-man, that made a lot of difference. Not once did I feel like I couldn't go fast enough - a sensation i definitely had in the learner skis. We looked and felt snappy all day.
Picked the kids up and learned that even T was now certified to go all the way to the top and come all the way back down on green trails. So we hooked up with her friend Hazel's family, and rode to the top, four abreast in the ski lift. Which was quite a feeling - just the family, floating slowly above the trees, smiling at each other, admiring our ski tips. Big fun.
We all came down the mountain, and it turns out T is a speed demon. With no annoying instructor to insist that she follow any particular pattern or rule, she devoted herself to going as fast as she possibly could. We called after her and caught up to her and helped her up from a spill here and there, but by and large, she was zooming happily along. At one point I was a little ahead of her, and as she saw me pass her, she called out, "Feliz cumpleanos, Papi!" Watching her smile at me as she did so on the fly was one of the best moments of the last several weeks.
One of the worst came seconds later, when she hit a series of bumps and started doing front flips.
I skidded to a stop below her just as she finally came to a rest. Her helmeted head had done a few reps against the snow, and now she rested on it, her legs curving up over he back and down in front of the helmet. I could hear her muffled screaming - and it was downright screaming - and felt myself sinking into empty nausea as her left knee hung there at an angle that was never intended. I looked down to get my own skis off, hating myself for ever having introduced her to this and for having let her go so fast, sure I would soon be cradling a crippled little girl.
I ran up the hill to her and saw that her leg had righted itself, and as I turned her over and touched her knee, she pulled her legs up and started to stand. And before you could say "Thrombitis", she was lifting first one foot, then the other, and saying through tears that she really wanted to keep skiing. Four-year-olds, I'm convinced, are made completely of rubber.
Eight-year-olds must be, too, because at the bottom of the hill, I found Q, who had gone ahead, quietly taking off his skis, and soon found myself listening to a sobbed description of a multiple-flip fall that had ended in a collision with another person and a lost ski, subsequently recovered. Man. It's that last run of the day - It should just be banned. Officers in space suits should step forward out of a brilliant, lightning-like rip in the space-time continuum and say "Sir, we're from the future, and this run you're about to do turns out to be the last one of the day, so we're not going to allow you to do it. Please go to the lodge and remove your skis. Thank you." Then they'd disappear back into the air. And then they'd poke their heads out again to whisper, "The Steelers win tonight, by the way. Bet the farm."
We all went home and watched that happen, too. We were all pulling for the Cards, but it was not to be. I did take enough emotional distance not to lose any sleep over it, though - the sleep I lost was from starting awake again, shaking my head, trying to rid myself of that image of T's gooey knee, hanging over the back of her head in a way that just doesn't seem possible.
Had a guitar lesson today - here's the song I'm working on now:
AL FINAL DE ESTE VIAJE EN LA VIDA
And there you are. Apart form Skittles peeing everywhere she shouldn't (I'm open to suggestions there, by the way), we're kind of newsless. Hope to talk to you all soon, off to bed...
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