To paaaaaaaaaar-tyyy. Which we did today. Vast, vast quantities of partying.
We started off with a very strong day of soccer from Q. He has a gift for hitting the post - two shots today, one of the post, one off the goalie's hand. And then a long, arcing, twenty-yard shot for the heck of it after practice, trying for the goal. "PANGGG!!" Right off the post. It's getting to be kind of weird. But a very strong soccer day - he was very pleased. (I will keep my own reactions to myself.)
Mostly, though, we partied. I present to you: Evidence Thereof, consisting both of video and still images. The first comes from Zephie Gollin's birthday party, where Q and Owen did a pretty good job of representing maleness. Of some 14 guests, they were the only boys. Here Q shows the fairer sex just how a MAN does the riding thing. Check out this hyper-masculine, chest-thumping, bone-breaking thrill ride:
And you're right: that horse is smaller than some dogs you've known. By FAR the most popular mount at the event. Poor little thing...Name's Tonka. Killed a kid up in Canada, had to cross the border to avoid prosecution. Just happy to have a job, keeps his nose clean these days. You don't want to cross him, though.
Cake in the barn. What a great place, up in Shaftsbury, VT. Another of the horses:
This one's name was T, strangely enough. I told Q that he and this horse had two things in common. Both are Norwegian, and both have someone named T in the family.
This evening, we went to the Caretaker Farm End-of-the-Growing-Season Potluck, Contra Dance and Cockfight. Put on by Don and Bridget, the farmers at the CSA we're members of. Wonderful event for the whole farm community. T had cracked out the contradancing videotape we got at the last one we went to this morning, and had done a lot of practicing, recruiting the whole family into some dosie-does in the living room. So now, here's some evidence of the potluck:
And now, the contradance:
And now, some more of the contradance:
And now, finally, here it is: The cockfight.
Surprising, perhaps, that they don't escape from that ring. But if people are quick enough and kick hard enough, eventually they stop trying to get out.
And now...Off to dreamland AGAIN! Two nights in a row, I'm in bed before 11:00! Wow. This, I could get used to.
That's us. Droopy and cranky, about to celebrate having a Friday night off by...going to bed early. Yee-haw! I'm all atingle with the excitement at the prospect of going unconscious. Blissfully, gloriously unconscious. Like death leading to Heaven. The difference being, this little death I'm a-headin' for tonight leads to pancakes. (Another difference: The pancakes exist.)
But first - two new items for any interested grandparents out there:
1. Q doing homework. Q got a 15/15 on his spelling test today, getting all three of the challenge words correct. I just knew he was going to crush that test - we drilled the other night, and he was a wall: Nothing got past him. Here's the much-anticipated action photo of his training leading up to the test:
Item 2: T internalizes the motion of her Magic Marker. Who'd have thought it could be so entertaining to watch a kid color a picture. But when you watch, keep an eye on both her hand, and her face, because the two are very intimately connected:
No sound in the video, nor in life - she just flips the tongue back and forth like that, breathing normally. Thank God for video cameras.
Ah, Columbus Day. The childhood memories it conjures up - The decorations, the lights, the cheer and goodwill that fill the streets. The parades, the speeches, the traditional midnight release of thousands of pigeons out the window of the servants' quarters at the Governor's Mansion, to carry messages of goodwill to all the leaders of the world. Kind of a weird tradition, that one, but one we used to stay up to watch on TV. Always a little hard to follow- I mean, it's at midnight. You can't see too much at first. But then come the bright flashes of the blasts from the shotguns of the assembled crowd, each person hoping for one of the candies that are attached to each pigeon's leg. It's a great holiday. Not well known outside Wisconsin, but some day it'll get its due.
But here, since we're not religious, we don't really celebrate the day any more, apart from taking it off from work. The kids got up and watched "Leminy Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events", which Q has seen enough times now to be immune to the bone-level fear he used to feel at the mere mention of its title. Rainy day, which always makes me drowsy - and the Packers' loss had me tossing and turning all night (literally - no joke, there), so today I was pretty droopy. Janneke took the morning and early afternoon to work, hoping to relieve me around 3:00 so I could go squirrel hunting with a guy from North Adams whose truck I saw sporting a squirrel hunting sticker, and on whose windshield I'd once left a note asking to be asked to tag along. (No joke there, either. That was truly the plan.) Once she'd left, we threw in "Planet Earth", the BBC series, and watched "Jungles". Great stuff - the New Guinean Birds of Paradise look like they should be on Mars.
The kids entertained each other most of the morning, and after lunch we went out to Stop & Shop as an excuse to get T to fall asleep in the car. Bought luncheon meat and eggs. Once home, Q and I watched the rest of the jungles episode (chimps go on a murderous raid against a rival band - pretty strong stuff). Then around 3:00, since the squirrel hunt was canceled due to the rain (Really! That happened!), Janneke stayed in to accompany the sleeping T and I took Q up to his riding lesson.
He's doing very well at that. Needs a lot of reminders, but who doesn't when learning something new. "Shorten your reins", "straight back", "don't let the horse stop unless you want him to", "swing the saber down and away from the horse's head", etc. He looks forward to it every week and spends the whole time with a big grin on his face.
Which you can't really see in this video:
Post-riding, I tried my hand (foot) at juggling a soccer ball, mostly to try to get a handle (footle) on just how it's done so I can give Q some pointers. I'd like to find more soccer-oriented things to do together. It seems like for all the enthusiasm he has for it, it's tough to get him to see any value in practicing the skills involved. And over the course of ten or twenty minutes, I really got a great workout. And developed a much more deft touch on the ball than I had at the beginning. Q was indeed intrigued, and came out and tried it for a while on his own brand-new ball, which matches my full-sized one in color - about five minutes' worth. But then he wanted to ride his bike, for about five minutes. And then he took out the lacrosse stick and practiced, for five minutes. And then the field hockey stick. And then the baseball bat...He is definitely not completely sold on any sport, but rather on playinig around in general. That, it seems, is just the way it's going to be, at least for now. And there's naught wrong with that - though it's frustrating to watch when his skills in soccer don't match his physical gifts, and he's left in the dust a bit by kids who are no more athletic than he. It's not about winning, I know. But I hope this doesn't end up meaning he feels frustrated and stops wanting to compete because he feels that for some mysterious reason, he can't. That would be a shame. Because there is no mystery to it.
T tagged along on each and every one of Q's activities, switching interests about twenty seconds behind Q each time. Which meant she got testy when there was only one lacrosse stick, only one field hockey stick, etc. But eventually Janneke came out with her full-sized stick, and then the two of them played out in the sodden yard on their own. Nice when their entertainment needs cancel each other out, and the parents can dash off to do some dishes.
"Twister" after supper, at T' request. (I just heard T go out to the bathroom for her third drink of water since being put to bed, by the way. It's all she can think of as an excuse to get up and move around, and she milks it dry. That diaper better be Huggies' answer to the Hoover Dam. And now she stands in her doorway and fake-coughs, then calls for medicine. No dice, we tell her. "Si vomito, voy a venir a decirte, OK?" Plays it to the hilt, does this one. "Muy bien, Tie. Buenas noches." Calling the bluff. I tell you - this used to be so easy...) Got a picture or two of Twister - T' reading of the rules is pretty liberal.
And now here we are, grumbling about going back to work tomorrow. Well, I'm grumbling about it. Janneke went back to work today already.
I'll be thinking of you at midnight, Wisconsin. Save a butterscotch for me.
Fantastic song, written by Kris Kristofferson, recorded by Johnny Cash. Pretty much describes our day today in its first two lines:
"Well I woke up Sunday morning, with no way to hold my head that didn't hurt; "And the beer I had for breakfast, wasn't bad, so I had one more for dessert."
Except that our heads didn't hurt, and instead of beer, we had pancakes. T slept in until 7:30, which left us all extremely rested and happy. Tossed in a DVD of "Planet Earth", which we all enjoyed (though Mami left when an elephant was killed by lions), and then started in on some hard-core recreatin'.
Bike riding, a trip to the hardware store with T (who brought along her own shopping cart), lunch, another trip out to the sporting goods store to buy soccer balls and socks, nap for T, some soccer practice in the yard, more bikes - and then T' first play date ever, with a boy from down the street. Huge, huge fun.
And this video evidence of the next Justine Henin - I choose her, because like T, she is tiny:
OK, it's a baseball bat. But that is a tennis swing if ever I saw one. And the Russians have been training with bats for years.
We do sometimes put other clothes on her, by the way. It might seem like we've always got her in that Little House on the Prairie number, like we were some sort of cult with tow-headed, wide-eyed kids running all over, run by a grumbling, fiery-eyed, overdramatic polygamist patricarch with an Amish beard. But she wears all sorts of other clothes.
And so what if every one of those descriptors (except "polygamist") is actually true of us. Proves nothing.
T doesn't know it's Saturday. She's up at 5:45, like every other day, but today, when there were no parents willing to cartwheel out of bed and sing to the dawn with her, she went ballistic. So not a whole lot of sleeping went on past 6:00. Q woke up crying, what with everyone else crying and growling, but soon found it was more fun to play, and joined T in some fairly quiet hijinks. Janneke was too awake at this point to bother trying. In short, they were all a bunch of sissies on the sleeping front. I was the only one brave enough to stick it out, and managed, through the power of my iron will, to fall asleep again, rolling out around 8:00.
So we were almost late for soccer practice. 9:00 sneaked up on us pretty quickly, what with the dog-walking and breakfast-eating. (I say "us", but I mean "me", since everyone else had finished with such chores over an hour earlier.) Janneke and T went to the coffee shop for the traditional soccer-day treats, while Q and I zoomed over to the field on the bicycle, Miss Gulch's theme song playing in the background all the way, my bandolier rattling against the handlebars, and Q hit the field for practice. Which always starts with drills. Here's one of them - they were supposed to roll the ball along using the bottoms of their feet. This, presumably, is for when they step in something (often an issue on this field), and need to get it off:
T was a very enthusiastic cheerleader. I kept telling her nobody would see the flame from her lighter, but she didn't care. It's the thought that counts, I guess.
Q took his turn on the sidelines, watching the action, offering encouragement to his teammates for a while, secretly hoping for a devastating injury so he could go back in:
And then...Showtime. Things to watch for: The kid who takes Q down...gets taken down himself.
OK, OK, I won't win a Pulitzer. But this footage is brought to you despite the untimely death of my batteries. Must be something about this field - it sucks the life out of AA's. But if it's a fair fight, if the batteries I've brought with me haven't been tampered with, I am not to be trifled with on this particular front. There's not a nimbler battery changer anywhere in north-western Berkshire County. (I'm not saying anything about northern Berkshire in general. There's a guy in Adams who's scary fast. I swear he's part insect. Doping is suspected.) Still, a pretty stirring bit of footage, in my humble opinion.
Speaking of stirring footage - check out this high-speed thrill ride:
Thank goodness she's wearing a helmet. And, yes: you can see her underwear through that dress. Thanks for asking.
That guy who races around town, shooting through crosswalks ahead of pedestrians with his kid illegally strapped into her older brother's car seat, glancing down at the clock because she might be late for tumbling, smelly and irritated and cramped after so much time in the car after teaching five classes and rousting surly seniors out of corners of the hallways to finish up. This day, I am sorry to report, I am that guy.
But at least I have video. (Oh yeah - I'm that guy, too.) Here's T, paying her dues on the hardscrabble mats of North Adams, a tough town whose mean streets pump out competitive gymnasts the way some burgs do boxers:
But the real test is when the apparata come out. Here's where we separate the pretenders and the frauds from the cold-blooded killers, the wheat from the chaff, the whiners and nobodies from the contenders with the grit and determination of champions. Watch...if you dare.
The crucible where gymnastics stars in North Adams are hardened for competition is the semi-legal, always-controversial, one-on-one contest known as "The Meatgrinder." Two gymnasts. One mat. No rules. Go. This, folks, is not for the squeamish:
Home! Supper! Grab your trunks, Q - Swimmin' lesson time! My god, we are such an overprogrammed lot sometimes. Now, where North Adams is known for its gymnasts, Williamstown is a place where kids learn fast that to survive, you've got to be willing to do whatever it takes in the dreaded...Williams...College...Pool. There's a part in here where, I swear, the water is actually tinged with blood. Remember Czechoslovakia - USSR, water polo, 1968? This is worse. There's a kid you see floating in from the right toward the end of the video. I was there, man. They spent ten minutes reviving him.
Successfully showered, Q crows his victory. He kept his mouth closed for the smile to keep the pressure on the tooth we had just pushed back in. That Jakob Fink throws a mean elbow:
Hoo, boy. I tell you what. If our family were a movie, it'd be NC-17. Pick your jaws off the floor, people, time for bed. Come on, now, move along. Show's over. Nothing to see here.
I don't have any. I went to Q's soccer practice today with the camera and, AND, a spare set of batteries, should the ones in the camera wear out suddenly. Which they did, just as I took the camera out to try to film some action. I chortled to myself and glanced smugly around to see if anyone was going to be witness to my lightning-quick battery replacement. I felt like a war correspondent, flipping through his equipment without even looking, my fingers knowing the machine as intimately as can be, spent batteries clattering to the ground in slow motion, like cartridges from a carbine. (I didn't drop them on the ground, though. Don't worry. I'm just being dramatic.) And when I flipped the switch to take a picture, expecting the whine of electric power to rise eagerly from my camera, nothing at all happened. The batteries I had just taken out of the package at home were DEAD! My GOD, what a jip!
But here's how it went: Q was his usual hyper-aggressive and sprinting self on defense. Dominant at that end. For some reason, when he's playing defense, he slips into a much higher gear than at any other time. He's always the last man back, anticipating where he'll be most needed and turning away the opponents. But lately, when they turn the other way and start heading toward the opposite goal, he pulls up, lets others take over. I'm not sure why this is - last year he was very aggressive, and effective, at that end of the field. This year he's been jogging or standing while his teammates score, clapping and smiling afterward, but not really contributing.
But not today. Three shots on goal in quick succession, all following steals and heady sprints across midfield, some very deft moves to avoid defenders, nice touch and control as he got close to the net. No goals, but the old Q definitely seemed to be back. Maybe on Saturday I can get some film on here for you - though it appears I'll have to wear a bandolier of AA batteries. Just like Chewbacca. Although, unlike Chewbacca, I will wear pants.
Probably.
For reference:
Chewbacca
T has had three (maybe four...?) straight nights without calling out endlessly before going to sleep. She's very proud of herself. She wakes up around 5:45 and turns on her light to start playing quietly in her room. When I get up, I dress her and we go out together to walk Hobie. Every morning she asks me to re-tell her a story I made up the other day, where Caperucita Roja is asked by her mother to go to the clearing to the white tree, which appears every hundred years and bears magical fruit, and which can only be seen by little girls. When she gets to it, Caperucita Roja sees that there are little girls from all over the world there, happily picking fruit from the tree, which glows. So Caperucita Roja picks an apple, and a pear, and a banana, and an orange, and some grapes. On the way home, she's hungry, but realizes she can't eat any of the apple, because her mother will know. Likewise on down the line with the banana, the orange, etc. But the grapes...! So she plucks one and snips off the stem and eats it, and to her amazement she finds that suddenly, she knows how to read! A while later on, she's still hungry, so she picks another one, and finds that, lo!, she knows how to drive a car! So when she gets home, she takes the car for a quick spin and then goes in to hand the fruit to her mother, who's none the wiser. The End.
I told Janneke this story and told her that the fruit is meant to be doled out secretly to the little girls over the course of their childhood by their mothers, and that it is thus that they acquire the knowledge they'll need as adults. And of course, Janneke raised an eyebrow and wondered aloud just what knowledge the banana might represent.
