Har she blows!
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Several Thousand Words' Worth
By popular demand: Here is the spiral staircase I built for Skittles, originally to come up to our bed, but now moved to enable her to access T's bed, the foot of which can be seen to the right of the feline elevation apparatus:
And here are T and Q, just after Q's performance in "Julius Caesar", about which I hope to tell you a great deal presently:
And here are T and several of her friends, at her birthday party, held at the North Adams YMCA, about which, again, I hope to tell you many a fine thing:
Off to correct papers! Wish me luck...!
And here are T and Q, just after Q's performance in "Julius Caesar", about which I hope to tell you a great deal presently:
And here are T and several of her friends, at her birthday party, held at the North Adams YMCA, about which, again, I hope to tell you many a fine thing:
Off to correct papers! Wish me luck...!
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Easter: Death and Resurrection. Of Teeth.
Hey, man! Long, long time, no see. How to explain it? I don't know - A sort of general evening funk seems to have settled about me like a colossal bank of damp fart. come eight, nine o'clock these days, it seems I'm always about to do something, but mostly spend the time until I go to bed not quite doing anything. Not playing the guitar as much these days, not doing this...I think part of it might be Facebook. Seems I'm always checking in on what the various people I know are doing. And it turns out, 90% of it is not really worth knowing. Shocking, I know: "Most people's lives aren't very different or much more exciting than the one you're living right now." Painful lesson, slowly learned. I may be doing a facebook hiatus soon.
But, regardless the cause, tonight I found myself about to go to bed, having done nothing, nothing at all, since the kids went down, and I thought, "This is unacceptable. I must do a thing. Be that thing insignificant, be it a cosmic nothing, I must do it. Else, I'll have frittered away another night, and so by extension my life."
So I'll herewith get to explaining to you the ways in which I am not frittering away my life. Like this way right here:
That's T, this past Saturday night, having just lost her very first tooth! And that's the glory of digital photography, too: This is probably the fourth or fifth shot I got of her. A couple where she holds up the tooth, a couple where she's just smiling to show me the gap. And then this one, where she did whatever the hell she wanted to, and thank goodness she did. This was the night before Easter, so the Tooth Mouse and the Easter Bunny probably met up and had a smoke as they checked their watches and rubbed at their bleary eyes in the predawn gloaming outside our house.
Easter morning was a hoot - we did the eggs in the back yard this year, which, we thought, would be a departure from previous years. But it must not have been, because T found an egg from at least a year ago. It was pristine - Dirty, yes, but totally uncracked. Brilliantly colored still - it must have been out of the rain and out of the sun. But the inside was a dessicated little ball that rattled around inside the shell with a rubbery sound. I was curious about it and kind of wanted to crack it open and see what it looked like in there, but that somehow never happened. It disappeared into the garbage, I suppose, and was lost to science forever.
Like the raccoon my Dad told me about - he'd hunted it as a younger man with a buddy in the middle of the night, and since they were serious hunters then, bagging many in a night and wanting to take home as little weight as possible, they'd skun it right there in the darkness. (Men were men in those days, by cracky.) And after they'd peeled the hide off, he and his buddy saw that there was something embedded in the muscle of one leg that glowed. It glowed! "What the hell is that?", they said, pondering and peering. The dogs, however, were rapidly disappearing beyond earshot, and they hung the carcass up in a tree and determined to come back and get it during the daylight, bring the specimen in to the glaring beam of modern science, and see just what this queer little metallic body turned out to be. But when they returned, lo!, the carcass had gone, and with it all evidence of their discovery. Just as has now done my mummified egg.
That story may have been altered somewhat in my head over the years. But I'm sure any changes are for the better.
Anyhoo, in other news, Q has been playing a lot of soccer. He had been playing in this North Adams YMCA indoor soccer league for kids 10 and under, but it turned out he was the only kid there with any soccer experience at all. I mean, AT ALL. North Adams isn't quite the bastion of liberal, educated, non-football-type folks that Williamstown is. (And anyone out there who's bristling at the description, please know, as most of you must, that there is a great deal of irony in what I just said. For I am of those great unwashed masses of non-soccer types. Started at RB and CB, ran back kicks and punts, gunned on kickoff and blocked on special teams for the North Crawford Trojans back in the day. Wore #20. Cried as the seconds ticked off my final game as a senior.) So Q just destroyed all opposition there. He enjoyed it, don't get me wrong - he actually played a lot harder in this league than I usually see him play in the tougher fall 5-on-5 league. But it really wasn't worth doing - Nobody even brought a whistle to the games. The "coaches" were local parents who volunteered to run teams - there were only three - and bless 'em for doing it, but not a man-jack of them knew the first thing about soccer. It was also a little depressing - North Adams is a pretty down-on-its-luck town, and there were a lot of chain-smoking, gap-toothed grandmas barely keeping tabs on multiple toddlers as they tottered out into the field of play, sucking away on a sippy cup filled with Pepsi, to be ushered back out of the danger zone by players or other parents, myself among them...Coaches who come out to lead the youth in athletic development but can't be bothered to change out of their pajamas and are wearing shower flip-flops...It's ironic and hip to dress that way when you're 20 and going to college, I guess, but when you're 40? And are in some kind of position of leadership...? Time to put the pants on, Chewbacca.
So that was the league where Q would pound five goals and then sit back. But now we've stopped going to that because the Greylock soccer team is putting on a series of clinics on Saturday mornings. 9:00 to 10:30 is U-10s, and 10:30 to noon is U-12s. But Q and a bunch of his friends were invited to participate in the U-12 scrimmages as well, since the U-12 numbers weren't strong. So he gets 3 solid hours of soccer in on Saturdays, ending at noon, and the YMCA thing starts at noon. So he just stopped going to that. And y'know what? The YMCA thing cost more. Bizarre. Somehow I feel guilty about it - the way Q was so obviously the best player there, merely by knowing anything at all about the game, and then just stopped going. There would be 40 people in the gym each week, and you just know that by now, 2 weeks in, they're at least wondering where he went. And possibly arriving at all kinds of conclusions. Some generous, some not. "I bet he thinks he's better that us," I imagine them grumbling through cigarette smoke and Pepsi. "Bet they think it's not even worth coming to our dumpy little town."
Well, on the second one, at least...yeah. Kinda.
Spring soccer has started for Q now too - the official, practice-twice-a-week-and-games-on-Saturdays league, with uniforms and everything. And he and his entire cadre of skilled pals is going to be playing up at the U-12 level, owing again to the paucity of older players. Had their first practice Tuesday, another tomorrow.
T, meanwhile, due to our negligence and sexism, was not signed up for T-ball. But all is not lost, because it ocurred to Janneke that we should ask her if she wants to play, and she enthusiastically said that she does. So she's signed up! Turns out you have to be 6 to play - and guess what? Somebody turned 6.
TODAY!
WAHAA!!! Happy birthday, Peanut! I have her on film reading her birthday cards form far-flung friends and family. Don't believe me? Don't think she can pull it off? Well, wait right there, mister guy. I'll just upload them. There - Once they're uploaded, I'll quick make a film, which I'll quick upload to Youtube, and then we'll see who's laughing. Think I won't? There - Uploading now. You just wait, missy.
And T has become very interested in a sport that is bound to end in ruin. That's right: Horses. Now, some of you will recall the glee I felt when Q took it up, and might well ask yourselves, "Why isn't he as thrilled with T wanting to do the same thing?" And it's a legitimate question. On the one hand, I am thrilled - I love that she's into something that I myself was very interested in as a lad. I love that she and I are going to be able to bond over this noble pastime, with its intrinsic connection to and affinity for an animal that, whenever Q asks me to name my favorite species, I simply cannot avoid ranking as #1. And there is indeed a reason why I express trepidation with T, where I didn't with Q. The reasons are simply these:
1) T is a girl. And:
2) She is more focused and tougher than Q was at this age. Therefore:
3) She is going to stick with this. Ergo:
4) It is going to cost us.
Now, there's nothing wrong with that, and it's all going to be money well spent. And it won't necessarily be completely over the top cost-wise - In fact, the first couple of installments will have been free: Ronadh took T up for her first lesson (video forthcoming), and has offered to take her up again, just the two of them, on Sunday morning. Those two definitely have deep, deep crushes on one another - tonight T and I were out taking a bike ride on the Burley Picolo, and she insisted on stopping over to say hello. Which is when the invitation to take her out Sunday was first proffered.
(Videos are about 70% uploaded now, smartass. Get ready to eat some crow.)
In other animal news, Skittles' spiral staircase, with which she had been able to climb up onto our bed, has been moved to the side of T's bed. We had kind of had enough of her climbing up at all hours of the night and waking us up by walking across our faces. Let the kids deal with that - they'd be thrilled. And shortly after realizing that it worked to get her up to T's bed, Skittles realized that she didn't even need a ladder to get up to Q's bed. So between the two of them, Skittles doesn't miss our bed at all, and all three are happier. I have begun to suspect that Skittles was making me allergic, but I'm less convinced of that now. The allergic reactions are fading, as whatever came out in the spring air must also be petering out. Perhaps it isn't the cat after all. A big relief, because burying my nose in that fur has become my daily ritual upon arriving home or climbing out of bed. She's just the best damn cat ever.
(Videos transferring to iMovie. Get ready to be humiliated, Doubting Thomases.)
Been saving money hand over fist in anticipation of going abroad in a year and a half or so. Still not sure where, or exactly how - essentially, at this point, we'd take a Fulbright Teacher Exchange appointment to anywhere on our list of Countries We're Interested In Living In For A Year (Uruguay, Chile, Spain, Ecuador). But last year, the only country on the list at all was Mexico. So if that's still the case, we'd just up and go to the number one destination on our little hit parade: Uruguay. And if I can scratch some kind of living together while there, fantastic. If not, I'll find a guitar teacher and improve myself as a human being. And keep the house really, really clean.
A big part of us is still veeeery attracted by the idea of going to Puerto Rico again, this time for longer. Love, love, loved that place. But if we're really going to go away, we feel like we should make it a place that's downright completely foreign. Have the kids go on a truly grand adventure, become truly native in the language. And it'd be fun to explore somewhere new. Have I told you this before...?
(Videos still transferring to iMovie. This is going to take longer than I thought. But you're still not starving me out. Forget it. I'm in this til the bitter end. Never mind that I'll have to do rudimentary editing, then sharing of the file, then uploading it, then linking to it. It's worth it. Your eventual debasement is worth it. My inevitable victory will be the light at the end of the tunnel that will see me through...Probably.)
Here:
...Damn. That might not have been worth it...Ah well. We'll know soon enough. Off to bed.
But, regardless the cause, tonight I found myself about to go to bed, having done nothing, nothing at all, since the kids went down, and I thought, "This is unacceptable. I must do a thing. Be that thing insignificant, be it a cosmic nothing, I must do it. Else, I'll have frittered away another night, and so by extension my life."
So I'll herewith get to explaining to you the ways in which I am not frittering away my life. Like this way right here:
That's T, this past Saturday night, having just lost her very first tooth! And that's the glory of digital photography, too: This is probably the fourth or fifth shot I got of her. A couple where she holds up the tooth, a couple where she's just smiling to show me the gap. And then this one, where she did whatever the hell she wanted to, and thank goodness she did. This was the night before Easter, so the Tooth Mouse and the Easter Bunny probably met up and had a smoke as they checked their watches and rubbed at their bleary eyes in the predawn gloaming outside our house.
Easter morning was a hoot - we did the eggs in the back yard this year, which, we thought, would be a departure from previous years. But it must not have been, because T found an egg from at least a year ago. It was pristine - Dirty, yes, but totally uncracked. Brilliantly colored still - it must have been out of the rain and out of the sun. But the inside was a dessicated little ball that rattled around inside the shell with a rubbery sound. I was curious about it and kind of wanted to crack it open and see what it looked like in there, but that somehow never happened. It disappeared into the garbage, I suppose, and was lost to science forever.
Like the raccoon my Dad told me about - he'd hunted it as a younger man with a buddy in the middle of the night, and since they were serious hunters then, bagging many in a night and wanting to take home as little weight as possible, they'd skun it right there in the darkness. (Men were men in those days, by cracky.) And after they'd peeled the hide off, he and his buddy saw that there was something embedded in the muscle of one leg that glowed. It glowed! "What the hell is that?", they said, pondering and peering. The dogs, however, were rapidly disappearing beyond earshot, and they hung the carcass up in a tree and determined to come back and get it during the daylight, bring the specimen in to the glaring beam of modern science, and see just what this queer little metallic body turned out to be. But when they returned, lo!, the carcass had gone, and with it all evidence of their discovery. Just as has now done my mummified egg.
That story may have been altered somewhat in my head over the years. But I'm sure any changes are for the better.
Anyhoo, in other news, Q has been playing a lot of soccer. He had been playing in this North Adams YMCA indoor soccer league for kids 10 and under, but it turned out he was the only kid there with any soccer experience at all. I mean, AT ALL. North Adams isn't quite the bastion of liberal, educated, non-football-type folks that Williamstown is. (And anyone out there who's bristling at the description, please know, as most of you must, that there is a great deal of irony in what I just said. For I am of those great unwashed masses of non-soccer types. Started at RB and CB, ran back kicks and punts, gunned on kickoff and blocked on special teams for the North Crawford Trojans back in the day. Wore #20. Cried as the seconds ticked off my final game as a senior.) So Q just destroyed all opposition there. He enjoyed it, don't get me wrong - he actually played a lot harder in this league than I usually see him play in the tougher fall 5-on-5 league. But it really wasn't worth doing - Nobody even brought a whistle to the games. The "coaches" were local parents who volunteered to run teams - there were only three - and bless 'em for doing it, but not a man-jack of them knew the first thing about soccer. It was also a little depressing - North Adams is a pretty down-on-its-luck town, and there were a lot of chain-smoking, gap-toothed grandmas barely keeping tabs on multiple toddlers as they tottered out into the field of play, sucking away on a sippy cup filled with Pepsi, to be ushered back out of the danger zone by players or other parents, myself among them...Coaches who come out to lead the youth in athletic development but can't be bothered to change out of their pajamas and are wearing shower flip-flops...It's ironic and hip to dress that way when you're 20 and going to college, I guess, but when you're 40? And are in some kind of position of leadership...? Time to put the pants on, Chewbacca.
So that was the league where Q would pound five goals and then sit back. But now we've stopped going to that because the Greylock soccer team is putting on a series of clinics on Saturday mornings. 9:00 to 10:30 is U-10s, and 10:30 to noon is U-12s. But Q and a bunch of his friends were invited to participate in the U-12 scrimmages as well, since the U-12 numbers weren't strong. So he gets 3 solid hours of soccer in on Saturdays, ending at noon, and the YMCA thing starts at noon. So he just stopped going to that. And y'know what? The YMCA thing cost more. Bizarre. Somehow I feel guilty about it - the way Q was so obviously the best player there, merely by knowing anything at all about the game, and then just stopped going. There would be 40 people in the gym each week, and you just know that by now, 2 weeks in, they're at least wondering where he went. And possibly arriving at all kinds of conclusions. Some generous, some not. "I bet he thinks he's better that us," I imagine them grumbling through cigarette smoke and Pepsi. "Bet they think it's not even worth coming to our dumpy little town."
Well, on the second one, at least...yeah. Kinda.
Spring soccer has started for Q now too - the official, practice-twice-a-week-and-games-on-Saturdays league, with uniforms and everything. And he and his entire cadre of skilled pals is going to be playing up at the U-12 level, owing again to the paucity of older players. Had their first practice Tuesday, another tomorrow.
T, meanwhile, due to our negligence and sexism, was not signed up for T-ball. But all is not lost, because it ocurred to Janneke that we should ask her if she wants to play, and she enthusiastically said that she does. So she's signed up! Turns out you have to be 6 to play - and guess what? Somebody turned 6.
TODAY!
WAHAA!!! Happy birthday, Peanut! I have her on film reading her birthday cards form far-flung friends and family. Don't believe me? Don't think she can pull it off? Well, wait right there, mister guy. I'll just upload them. There - Once they're uploaded, I'll quick make a film, which I'll quick upload to Youtube, and then we'll see who's laughing. Think I won't? There - Uploading now. You just wait, missy.
And T has become very interested in a sport that is bound to end in ruin. That's right: Horses. Now, some of you will recall the glee I felt when Q took it up, and might well ask yourselves, "Why isn't he as thrilled with T wanting to do the same thing?" And it's a legitimate question. On the one hand, I am thrilled - I love that she's into something that I myself was very interested in as a lad. I love that she and I are going to be able to bond over this noble pastime, with its intrinsic connection to and affinity for an animal that, whenever Q asks me to name my favorite species, I simply cannot avoid ranking as #1. And there is indeed a reason why I express trepidation with T, where I didn't with Q. The reasons are simply these:
1) T is a girl. And:
2) She is more focused and tougher than Q was at this age. Therefore:
3) She is going to stick with this. Ergo:
4) It is going to cost us.
Now, there's nothing wrong with that, and it's all going to be money well spent. And it won't necessarily be completely over the top cost-wise - In fact, the first couple of installments will have been free: Ronadh took T up for her first lesson (video forthcoming), and has offered to take her up again, just the two of them, on Sunday morning. Those two definitely have deep, deep crushes on one another - tonight T and I were out taking a bike ride on the Burley Picolo, and she insisted on stopping over to say hello. Which is when the invitation to take her out Sunday was first proffered.
(Videos are about 70% uploaded now, smartass. Get ready to eat some crow.)
In other animal news, Skittles' spiral staircase, with which she had been able to climb up onto our bed, has been moved to the side of T's bed. We had kind of had enough of her climbing up at all hours of the night and waking us up by walking across our faces. Let the kids deal with that - they'd be thrilled. And shortly after realizing that it worked to get her up to T's bed, Skittles realized that she didn't even need a ladder to get up to Q's bed. So between the two of them, Skittles doesn't miss our bed at all, and all three are happier. I have begun to suspect that Skittles was making me allergic, but I'm less convinced of that now. The allergic reactions are fading, as whatever came out in the spring air must also be petering out. Perhaps it isn't the cat after all. A big relief, because burying my nose in that fur has become my daily ritual upon arriving home or climbing out of bed. She's just the best damn cat ever.
(Videos transferring to iMovie. Get ready to be humiliated, Doubting Thomases.)
Been saving money hand over fist in anticipation of going abroad in a year and a half or so. Still not sure where, or exactly how - essentially, at this point, we'd take a Fulbright Teacher Exchange appointment to anywhere on our list of Countries We're Interested In Living In For A Year (Uruguay, Chile, Spain, Ecuador). But last year, the only country on the list at all was Mexico. So if that's still the case, we'd just up and go to the number one destination on our little hit parade: Uruguay. And if I can scratch some kind of living together while there, fantastic. If not, I'll find a guitar teacher and improve myself as a human being. And keep the house really, really clean.
A big part of us is still veeeery attracted by the idea of going to Puerto Rico again, this time for longer. Love, love, loved that place. But if we're really going to go away, we feel like we should make it a place that's downright completely foreign. Have the kids go on a truly grand adventure, become truly native in the language. And it'd be fun to explore somewhere new. Have I told you this before...?
(Videos still transferring to iMovie. This is going to take longer than I thought. But you're still not starving me out. Forget it. I'm in this til the bitter end. Never mind that I'll have to do rudimentary editing, then sharing of the file, then uploading it, then linking to it. It's worth it. Your eventual debasement is worth it. My inevitable victory will be the light at the end of the tunnel that will see me through...Probably.)
Here:
...Damn. That might not have been worth it...Ah well. We'll know soon enough. Off to bed.
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