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...

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...

The Relative Growth and Progress Rates of Cats, Skiers, and Musicans

Just so you can compare, here's a photo of Skittles the day we brought her home:



And here she is now:



That is to say: She has grown a titch.

Went skiing again on Saturday, and it was similarly successful. Janneke didn't go, though - claimed she had too much work to do. So I dropped the kids off at 9:00, bought us some Jiminy Peak Value cards ($42 each, but they give you $15 off every time you go up), bought an eight-hour ticket, rented skis again, and hit the slopes alone. Among thousands of other people, but alone.

Strange - the second time around, with so much better an idea of what was coming, I put probably a fifth the effort into it. I wasn't tired at the end of the day, unlike the first day, when I was exhausted, and every time I went up, I skied all the way to the bottom of the mountain without stopping to rest. This is probably the norm, but before, Janneke and I had always rested after a few turns, probably mostly so she could see how I was holding up. But it was great, if a bit lonely.

They have a board up at the lift so that anyone whose child has a problem in the Skiwee program can be alerted on their next trip up the mountain, but the kids' names never appeared, so I went another round. And on that second round it became clear: at the top of the mountain, there was far, far too much wind to be comfortable. My face and neck and nose were exposed, which was just painful. So I went into the gear store there, and bought an adult-sized and a youth-sized "Turtle Neck" - a fleece tube, essentially, that you pull over your head and wear around your neck and mouth, adjusting it as needed. One would go on Q, and one on T.

But at the bottom of the mountain, where T was going to stay, it wasn't really windy at all. So I found Q as he was about to get onto a lift with his teacher and had him put on the youth size one, and put the other on myself. And was far, far more comfortable.

Our friend Daniel came up to the mountain to meet me around 12:30, and he and I skied together until 3:00. It was just great -he's a great skier, having grown up in Williamstown and having learned in the very same program as Q and T, but he always happily went on the green and blue runs with me, shooting ahead sometimes or zig-zagging through trees, but always staying pretty much in my orbit. We would chat in the lift on the way up, pop into the lodge to warm up...It's a great hobby. Huge, huge amounts of fun...Don't know why I was always so down on it. Jealous, probably. It isn't cheap, after all, and I didn't grow up doing too many things that weren't cheap. But it isn't horribly expensive, either, and it's good exercise. I'm a little more mature now, and have decided that I am all for it.

So now we've ordered boots, skis and poles for me, skis and boots for Janneke, a helmet for Q, and skis and poles for T. Q already has skis and poles, and T already has a helmet. Janneke found this site where you get the same makes and models for 1/3 what you would pay in the ski shop. (We know - we priced them.) And next year, we'll get the season pass and really, really get our money's worth.

Had some friends over for brunch - they're going to France at the end of this month to live for 4 and a half months. They have four kids, so the adults were outnumbered, but we were able to keep them occupied with a movie ("Ratatouille") and a ping pong table. Their kids adored Skittles, as we do, and managed to caress and stroke her without coming to any harm. (Hobie, as happens during all visits from families with children, was confined to a back bedroom throughout.)

Probably the news I'm most excited about, though, is that I have pretty much figured out how to play "La maza" by Silvio Rodriguez, and Janneke sings along when I play it, resulting in a great deal of enjoyment and diversion. It was the rhythm with the right hand that had me floundering, but today I got it down, and over the last couple of days, every time I would start to play it, Janneke would hum along from wherever she was sitting, singing the melody. And today she pulled up the lyrics on a computer, and sat with me as I played it, and whattaya know, it really sounded good. So Janneke skyped her mother, and we gave her a little concert. It was really fun, and Janneke has been very generous with her compliments on how far I've come with the whole Latin guitar thing since December. Once we get a repertoire together, we'll film some, how 'bout, and include it on the next batch of videos that get sent to the families in DVD form. Youtube...? Not so sure. (Though we sound way better than most of the people we found singing it there today.)

T is sick. Coughed all last night, and tonight dropped into unconsciousness without even finishing supper. Q and I were just getting home from Q's Sunday night pickup soccer game (he was fast and active, though he could have been more aggressive - still, he got high praise from the U-12 coach, who was organizing the whole thing), and I just had time to smooch T's hot, red cheek before she started to snore, right there on Janneke's lap. If someone has to stay home with her tomorrow, it'll be Janneke, since she isn't teaching. Though there is a lot to be said for the philosophy that whoever is teaching should be the one to stay home with the little sick-o. She's been pretty well out since we put her down, though. Knock on wood.

OK, I've put off walking the dog too long. Gotta hit the bricks. Take care, brush your hair...

In Dreams

That's the name of the main "denoument" theme song from "The Lord of the Rings", which Q has taught himself to play from a book of film scores for young people that he got for Christmas. He has gotten pretty good at it lately, and usually chugs through it effortlessly. But just now he was having a hard time finding the notes - some false starts midway through where the bridge is, struggling to find the right chords. So Janneke walked over and opened the music book, then spread it out in front of him so he could see what to do.

Q looked up at Janneke and said, dismissively, very slightly impatiently, but not unkindly:

"I'm playing it in G, Mom."

My little key transposer!

It's All Downhill

Holy cow - where to begin? How about the beginning:

Janneke got up absurdly early - 6:23 or so. I stayed abed until well after seven, then quickly ate, walked the dog, and then herded the kids outside to the car. (Q woke up fresh as a daisy, no sign of fever or nausea. And T had been hyper-psyched for days, mostly about the hot dog we had ordered for her for her included mid-day lunch.) We were on our way to Jiminy by 8:15 or so, and headed off to the Skiwee area. It was really very well run - they have this set of stairs the kids walk up so the workers can access their feet without having to bend over, a sizing machine, and bajillions of bright red ski boots and tiny little skis. Down the other side of the stairs, and off to a holding area where - I am not exaggerating - probably sixty young ski instructors awaited in their matching parkas, ready to impart onto the young their wisdom in the sliding arts. We had one moment of wondering what to do, when suddenly all the instructors began to file out the back door, and we milled out with them and when they came to a general halt, we did too. Within three minutes, a tall young man had come up to T and said, "What's your name? How old are you? Have you ever skied before? No? Great! Come on, let's get started!" And off she trundled, with nary a look back. Just about precisely the same thing happened to Q not twenty seconds later, and that was it! They were off, to be cared for and instructed until 3:00.

Janneke and I looked at each other, as if things couldn't possibly be that simple. But it was! We were on our own! Off to the rental counter, where the speed and efficiency of the Skiwee counter was duplicated, only on an adult scale. (They even had the stairs up to the counter.) We put on the boots and headed to the lockers, where we dumped our stuff, and then hit the snow.

Those boots are weird. They're great when you're skiing, but there's just no damn way to comfortably walk in them. Most of you know this, probably, but I didn't. And walking with the skis on isn't much easier - if there's no hill to slide down, you're left to flounder and thrash your way in whichever direction circumstances dictate. And there's just no way to do it. Janneke can do it, but she's cheating somehow. Because nothing she does works for me. If you calculate the calories expended per meter of actual self-transportation on a flat surface, Janneke is probably fifty times as efficient as I am. I think she has a jet pack around her waist.

She took me down the pee-wee hill where Q and T were about the begin their lessons, for a quick lesson of my own. I did the snowplow, the pizza slice, or however you prefer to call it, to the bottom, and then took the kiddie-speed chairlift up the hill. And we took one more run; then we were ready for the novice slope.

The long and the short of it is this: I did not fall down. I plowed and slipped and snurked my way down, and came to a halt not far from where we had begun. Janneke was tickled with my success, as was I, and we went up again. And down again.

I did not fall down.

We took the chairlift up again, slid downhill and across the hill some fifty yards to another chairlift, which we took to its terminus. And then we skied from that point back down to the point from which we had originally begun.

I did not fall down.

We did some variation of this up until 11:45 or so. Up and down, up and down. My skis went more and more parallel; my turns began to take on a distinctly un-snowplow-like caharacter; my speed increased; I skittered across ice and over bumps; swarms of oblivious mothers and children wove around me at not nearly safe enough a remove; physics conspired to make the snowplow, even in desperation, insufficient to keep me from colliding with a skier below, forcing me to turn desperately to the right, which made me go far too fast for my liking, necessating a desperate turn to the left and more and more snowplowing, hoping to keep this momentum-building snowball from leaving dozens and dozens of broken innocents in my wake. But I did not run them down.

And I did not fall down.

Over the course of the entire day, skiing from around 10:00 to around 3:00, with a forty-minute break for lunch, I did not fall down.

While skiing.

Without distractions.

OK, so I fell down three times - but each was very exceptional. The first was when we were down visiting Q and T, catching some film of them as they got their lessons, and I quick went to the top in the chair lift - Q was ahead of me on the lift, and Janneke had wanted me to alert her when Q was coming down. I saw him about to start, and said to myself, "I'm a natural at this - I'll use the momentum of the lift, swoop down around the novices at the top of the bunny slope, and zoom to the bottom and alert Janneke." But in trying to negotiate the turn at a near-complete stop, with toddlers and moms shooting their skis out near me, I decided I was unprepared for the circumstances. And I decided this because trying to turn slowly is a lot different from turning fast, which I found out because I tried to turn, and down I went. I remember thinking that it was surprising, but should not have been - that I had done something stupid. But I was miffed, because I had begun to think how cool it would be to say I never fell down. Rats.

The second time, Janneke had dared me - well, asked me - to try following exactly in her path. But in trying to stay close enough to keep exact track of her path before the marks were lost in the snow (I had been following some thirty yards behind her), and having to keep an eye on her and her tracks at the same time, I got discombobulated, caught an edge, and went down. Had I not been trying to do that particularly nifty and unnecessary little maneuver, I feel very confident that I would not have fallen.

Because I never did again.

Except at the end of the day, when, having skied the entire length of the mountain, Janneke and I tried to go uphill on our skis to the top of the bunny hill and visit the kids, and the uphill flounder turned out to be too much for me. It really was pretty spectacular - it took me a good minute and a half to stand up, right myself, and get my skis off. It was the first time all day I felt embarrassed, and the first time anything on me hurt except for fatigued muscles. I had been at one point face-down, with the skis pointed out and 100% parallel with the ground, which added up to some difficult angles for the ol' tendons and ligaments. But I did recover, and with that, ended my day of skiing. So, to recap:

I did not fall in the course of an entire day of regular, high-speed, non-dare, downhill skiing.

Janneke did great, too. It was amazing to see her zishing and shooshing ahead of me, balanced and graceful and perfectly confident. I can't know, never having seen myself ski, but I get the feeling I was much more tight and hunched and tentative. But, hey, I feel super about it. What a great way to spend the day.

And the kids went bonkers over the experience. "Te gustO?", I asked Q. "No. Me encantO!", he said. He advanced all the way up to "Racoon", and is on the verge of being a "Black Bear". He came away well-indoctrinated to be a skier and not a snowboarder. "SLOW-boarder," he corrected me when I asked him about it. Oh - and his ski instructor turned out to be Chilean! Although he told us that Q hadn't told him until their very last run together that he spoke Spanish. (Come to think of it, we heard a lot of Spanish up there today - it was practically the only language other than English that we heard. Q's instructor told us there were a few Chileans, a few Argentines, and a Peruvian there working. Nice gig - snow instructor here in this part of the year, and then in Chile in the other part of the year.) Here are the categories Q whupped through in his first day of skiing, thanks to his Chilean instructor:

CHIPMUNK:
Can identify, carry, and put on equipment
Get up unassisted
Can walk and step around on skis
Can side-step or duckwalk uphill
Can balance while sliding on gentle incline

MOOSE:
Can make a wedge
Can descend holding a wedge
Can stop and control speed in a wedge
Can descend varying the size of the wedge

RACCOON:
Can wedge turn in both directions
Can ride a chairlift
Can control speed and direction

T, meanwhile, got up to "Raccoon", and on her next day of lessons, that is where she will start.

She was just as thrilled as Q with the whole day. At one point, we (Janneke and I) skied over to check on their progress, and quickly found Q, about to enter the chairlift, which was a big surprise. We climbed into line behind him, giggling as we watched him - and we looked and looked for T, but couldn't find her - until suddenly, Janneke said "LOOK!" - and T was climbing onto the chairlift with him! With Q's instructor, who hoisted her into place. We were shocked that she could advance that fast. And if I can get on my horse here this evening, you may even see the evidence of it in filmic form.

A long, hot bath awaits, however. If it's a choice between getting a film up and getting the bath in, I have to tell you...You're going to have to wait.

Knee-slappers from the day:

Janneke had never used parabolic skis before today, and never quite could recall just what they were called. At different points she referred to them as "hyperbolic" ("THESE ARE THE BEST SKIS EVER CREATED IN THE HISTORY OF ALL MANKIND! I HAVE NEVER HAD SO MUCH FUN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE!!!") and "bipolar" ("The right ski's awesome. The left one sucks."). We had some good yucks.

And here's the damn video.

Quick Quote

T, coming home in the car from a skiing-related shopping trip, and feeling thirsty:

"Does anybody have a water bottle, or a glass of soda, or a beer?"

I got a million of 'em.

So here's the deal with things: Skittles has finished a ten-day stint on anti-parasitical goo, and the vet called today to say the latest present i brought over from her was critter-free. In the first two weeks we had her, she emptied the self-feeder once. And in the past week, she's emptied it again. She is growing like mad - she seems to go for a while getting heavier and looser of skin, and then she stretches. She's in a stretching phase now, and her skin's not as loose. She runs up and down the stairs all day, eating away, and shows every day just how much of a Maine Coon she is. Personality-wise, all the earmarks are there - the way she really doesn't like to sit in your lap, but will sit beside you and purr as you pet her for ever; the way she prefers to be with us, but not necessarily on us, parking under the table during supper to sit there and quietly snooze and purr...She has been such a great addition. I think I'll give her some tuna tomorrow. Go ahead, try to stop me. I dare you.

So, yeah: Skiing. We're going to go on Monday. The kids are scheduled for a day of lessons that will go from 9:00 to 3:00, with lunch served in the middle, and in the meantime, Janneke and I will zish down the slopes. She'll zish, probably - I'll do more of a "wuh-wuh-wuh-boom, shish-a-shis-a-crunch", until my pelvis finally splits or I brain myself on a tree. At which point I'll make other noises: moans, wheezes, assorted gurgles. I have never downhill skied, you see. Not once. In my life.

And Janneke hasn't done it since I've known her, so I'm about to be amazed by her in an entirely new way. So she and I bought some ski pants, and I got some mittens, and Q got some goggles. The rest, they should be able to make do with using the snow clothing they already have. I'm excited, and kind of nervous - though it looks pretty straightforward...

God help me.

Confirmation

Snow day! Meaning that I had nothing but time on my hands, and that I could take Skittles to her complimentary vet checkup, which comes with every adoption from the Eleanor Sonsini Municipal Animal Shelter.

And the vet read her medical history much more clearly than I did, and told me that when she was given to the shelter, she had ear mites, fleas, and a pretty severe case of emaciation. Her back end didn't work that well, and she was lethargic; she got a B12 injection and just three weeks later, she was in our home.

She weighs 3.5 pounds, big for 3 months old (though not huge - after another week with us, I suspect she'd jump up another notch), and no signs of any back-end trouble or lameness. She had a microbial parasite, which she's getting meds for, and she got her shots against rabies and some other dang thing. All in all, a clean bill of health. We're all relieved, and enjoy it even more when we watch her scamper downstairs for some high-quality kitty kibble whenever she damn well pleases. Her skin gets looser and her fur gets thicker every ten minutes. The vet said she'll probably be a 12-to-14-pound cat. Let's just see what happens when I follow my sister's advice and start hitting her with the tuna. (Feeding it to her, I mean.) (The cat, I mean.)

I also took advantage of the snow day to finally put that shrinky film over the windows in the bedrooms and on the picture window in the living room. Not sure why it took me so long this year - perhaps since we mostly heat with the wood stove, it hadn't seemed as urgent. But now we're better-protected. I did put in a message with the National Office of the Passive House Institute, though, to see if they can tell me whether that might be workable - retrofitting this house so that it heats itself passively and doesn't need a furnace. Probably a pipe dream, though - such things are not free.

In other news, we went sledding the other day (there is some pretty cool footage to cook up into a movie for you), and Q, after marching all the way back up the hill, accidentally let his sled fall out of his hands and watched it slide, empty, back to the bottom of the hill. Which is pretty big.

He then said, clear as day:

"Fuck."

I blinked from where I stood at the bottom with T. "What did you say?"

"Fuck," he repeated.

"What?!"

He looked at me in ever-increasing puzzlement. "How could he not get this?", he seemed to be thinking. "The 'F' word," he clarified.

I gave him a short lecture and let him go unpunished, secretly pleased, just like with the "Rat shit" story. Some attitude is a good thing, I must always remind myself.