Q and T were watching "The Santa Claus 2" this past Sunday morning. (Sundays, T picks a DVD to watch, and despite the presence in the house of the only-recently-screened "Free Willy", she went with this old standby.) There came a part where Tim Allen begins to woo the (female) principal of his son's school, and T called out, "Oh, I love this part!"
Q's voice was filled with righteous indignation. "I HATE this part!"
"But, Q! This is the part where they fall in love!"
"I KNOW!", he cried, even louder. "That's why I hate it!"
"But, Q: Some day, you will have a wife!"
A pause of a couple of seconds, and a low rumble from Q:
"Maybe."
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
The Threadless Narrative
Can't find a unifying principle for the weekend's news tonight, somehow. So here it goes anyway - a disjointed list of Things That Happened. Hopefully you'll find your own way through it, because as a guide, I'm pretty useless at the moment...
Friday night, we had pizza, as we usually do, but not at home in front of a family classic movie. No, we went down the street to the Cozy Corner, our local watering hole, and sat in a booth in the bar (roughly the size of our living room) and had one large and one small pizza between the four of us. ("Among", Ronadh. I know.) It felt like being at Cheers - Ronadh stopped in to pick up a pizza and stood at the half-door that leads out to the parking lot, where people who have called in their orders come to pick up - Janneke saw her over my shoulder, and then I trooped over with T, who insisted on getting a hug. And then Rafi the Gorgeous, our neighbor across the street, came in with his Mom Paige and her sister, and they stopped at our booth and chatted a bit with us. And then we ate the pizza. It was a great, affordable little adventure in a gloriously smokeless bar - same place where we had drinks before we were seated when my Dad and my sister came out for Christmas a couple of years ago. Anyway, upon completing our pizza, we split up - Janneke took T to go see The Cat's Pajamas, a kiddie-music group that had played here last year, and Q and I went to Paresky to play pool. Q wasn't into seeing the music, and he's gotten more and more into playing pool at the Youth Center. So he chose that over going out to see a movie or to bowl.
He beat me three times. I scratched on the 8-ball once, accidentally sank it another time, and the third time...well, he just won. BUT: I had agreed on a rule that I get one shot per turn, whether I make it or not, and was also allowing Q, if he made a particularly good slow, careful, accurate shot, and then scratched, to keep his turn going with the cue ball placed at the pocked where it had fallen. So there were some handicaps at work. But he did improve a lot over the course of the evening, sinking three in a row at one point. A techno band whose shows are accompanied by projections of avant-garde animation was setting up shop in the auditorium next to the pool table as we played, and we bailed just as their show was beginning. Probably best for us and them. Observation: Of the 60 or so students we saw troop down to see the show, it seemed that probably a majority were Chinese. As in, from China (or Taiwan or Singapore), speaking to each other in Chinese as they played ping-pong and waited for the show to start. Techno and animation in combination must be big in China.
After pool started to get old, we went home and watched Sports Center until the girls came home. And when they did, we got the whole story:
The band had been performing a story about "Don Gato", who had leapt to the top of a building to eat a snack, but had then fallen and hurt himself. The puppet they were using to illustrate the story had fallen to the stage with a whack, and T had fallen into a blubbering panic, thinking the pupped had "got dead". She locked eyes with one of the performers, who, after the song, interrupted the show for, Janneke says, probably five minutes so she could come down and show T the puppet and make sure she understood that Don Gato had survived his fall and come out wiser on the other side of it. They signed a poster for her at the end, and it's up now in T' room. I'd take a picture of the inscription, but T is in there sleeping. Bother.
Q had a game on Saturday in Lenox, and he was very timid again. He managed to get two shots in, but neither went in - because in both cases, he seemed to remember that he was allowed to kick it a couple of seconds after he probably could have, and the resulting kick was weak, and he didn't follow up his miss. It's amazing to watch this transformation from an eager go-getting playmaker, one of the team's few most effective and aggressive players, to a kid who's reluctant even to break into a jog and seems most concerned about avoiding getting hurt. He did fall the other day, and then caught a hard shot in the same part of his back where he'd been hurt, and toughed it out and didn't come off the field ("I didn't let my team down," he said in the car afterward, to which I responded with a grim nod and a high-five), but over all he was just this somnolent shadow of his former self, which is what he's been for three or four weeks now. Strange. Thats where he is now, I guess - no sense fighting it. But it's just so curious. I could believe a timid player gradually growing into aggressiveness and enjoying the success, and then continuing the upward spiral, but this is an aggressive and successful player who seems to be shrinking more and more into his shell. Not sure what to make of it. Hopefully next year his confidence will have grown to match his talents. Anyway, they lost, 5-2. I think I made less of an ass of myself on the sidelines than at previous games, but who knows. Am I the problem? Should I stop going...? Though I don't think so - when I saw him at practice the other day, he didn't know I was there, and the coach took him aside specifically because of this problem. Weird. And occcupying much more of my mind than it ought to.
Saturday night we had dinner at the house of Denise and Peter, parents of one of T' best friends, and it was lovely. Lots of good food and chatting. And then Sunday we tried to get all the housework done that we hadn't been able to do on Saturday before I had to drive to Lenox to be interviewed by the committee that's re-certifying our school, and Janneke went to the harvest contra dance to celebrate the end of the growing season at Caretaker Farm. T danced like a madwoman, independent of us, going from partner to partner, remembering each of the steps in the dance, grinning like mad the whole time. She had selected a special dance dress (no photos, sorry), and was the belle of the ball, followed everywhere by a troop of adoring pals.
After having hiked to the top of Pine Cobble this afternoon with her friend Hazel and Hazel's parents. During which time Q had his friend Colton over for some football, bike riding, ping pong, Yugi-Oh and video games.
Man, there's just too much to keep up with. I gotta get myself to bed - Monday morning has come around again. I'm going to start agitating for a four-day work week...
Friday night, we had pizza, as we usually do, but not at home in front of a family classic movie. No, we went down the street to the Cozy Corner, our local watering hole, and sat in a booth in the bar (roughly the size of our living room) and had one large and one small pizza between the four of us. ("Among", Ronadh. I know.) It felt like being at Cheers - Ronadh stopped in to pick up a pizza and stood at the half-door that leads out to the parking lot, where people who have called in their orders come to pick up - Janneke saw her over my shoulder, and then I trooped over with T, who insisted on getting a hug. And then Rafi the Gorgeous, our neighbor across the street, came in with his Mom Paige and her sister, and they stopped at our booth and chatted a bit with us. And then we ate the pizza. It was a great, affordable little adventure in a gloriously smokeless bar - same place where we had drinks before we were seated when my Dad and my sister came out for Christmas a couple of years ago. Anyway, upon completing our pizza, we split up - Janneke took T to go see The Cat's Pajamas, a kiddie-music group that had played here last year, and Q and I went to Paresky to play pool. Q wasn't into seeing the music, and he's gotten more and more into playing pool at the Youth Center. So he chose that over going out to see a movie or to bowl.
He beat me three times. I scratched on the 8-ball once, accidentally sank it another time, and the third time...well, he just won. BUT: I had agreed on a rule that I get one shot per turn, whether I make it or not, and was also allowing Q, if he made a particularly good slow, careful, accurate shot, and then scratched, to keep his turn going with the cue ball placed at the pocked where it had fallen. So there were some handicaps at work. But he did improve a lot over the course of the evening, sinking three in a row at one point. A techno band whose shows are accompanied by projections of avant-garde animation was setting up shop in the auditorium next to the pool table as we played, and we bailed just as their show was beginning. Probably best for us and them. Observation: Of the 60 or so students we saw troop down to see the show, it seemed that probably a majority were Chinese. As in, from China (or Taiwan or Singapore), speaking to each other in Chinese as they played ping-pong and waited for the show to start. Techno and animation in combination must be big in China.
After pool started to get old, we went home and watched Sports Center until the girls came home. And when they did, we got the whole story:
The band had been performing a story about "Don Gato", who had leapt to the top of a building to eat a snack, but had then fallen and hurt himself. The puppet they were using to illustrate the story had fallen to the stage with a whack, and T had fallen into a blubbering panic, thinking the pupped had "got dead". She locked eyes with one of the performers, who, after the song, interrupted the show for, Janneke says, probably five minutes so she could come down and show T the puppet and make sure she understood that Don Gato had survived his fall and come out wiser on the other side of it. They signed a poster for her at the end, and it's up now in T' room. I'd take a picture of the inscription, but T is in there sleeping. Bother.
Q had a game on Saturday in Lenox, and he was very timid again. He managed to get two shots in, but neither went in - because in both cases, he seemed to remember that he was allowed to kick it a couple of seconds after he probably could have, and the resulting kick was weak, and he didn't follow up his miss. It's amazing to watch this transformation from an eager go-getting playmaker, one of the team's few most effective and aggressive players, to a kid who's reluctant even to break into a jog and seems most concerned about avoiding getting hurt. He did fall the other day, and then caught a hard shot in the same part of his back where he'd been hurt, and toughed it out and didn't come off the field ("I didn't let my team down," he said in the car afterward, to which I responded with a grim nod and a high-five), but over all he was just this somnolent shadow of his former self, which is what he's been for three or four weeks now. Strange. Thats where he is now, I guess - no sense fighting it. But it's just so curious. I could believe a timid player gradually growing into aggressiveness and enjoying the success, and then continuing the upward spiral, but this is an aggressive and successful player who seems to be shrinking more and more into his shell. Not sure what to make of it. Hopefully next year his confidence will have grown to match his talents. Anyway, they lost, 5-2. I think I made less of an ass of myself on the sidelines than at previous games, but who knows. Am I the problem? Should I stop going...? Though I don't think so - when I saw him at practice the other day, he didn't know I was there, and the coach took him aside specifically because of this problem. Weird. And occcupying much more of my mind than it ought to.
Saturday night we had dinner at the house of Denise and Peter, parents of one of T' best friends, and it was lovely. Lots of good food and chatting. And then Sunday we tried to get all the housework done that we hadn't been able to do on Saturday before I had to drive to Lenox to be interviewed by the committee that's re-certifying our school, and Janneke went to the harvest contra dance to celebrate the end of the growing season at Caretaker Farm. T danced like a madwoman, independent of us, going from partner to partner, remembering each of the steps in the dance, grinning like mad the whole time. She had selected a special dance dress (no photos, sorry), and was the belle of the ball, followed everywhere by a troop of adoring pals.
After having hiked to the top of Pine Cobble this afternoon with her friend Hazel and Hazel's parents. During which time Q had his friend Colton over for some football, bike riding, ping pong, Yugi-Oh and video games.
Man, there's just too much to keep up with. I gotta get myself to bed - Monday morning has come around again. I'm going to start agitating for a four-day work week...
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Landslide
Is what we'd see if Q or T were ever to run for President. As evidence I submit Q's essay, with which he returned home from school today:
"Me for President
"I am thoughtful. I'd stop Hummers and give poor people money. I am adventurous because I like to find countries and stop wars that are happening. I'm creative. I'm creative because I will build a tree making machine. I'm very fair. Very very fair because if I were president, I would give half of my money to the poor. I'd think that I propably be ELECTED!"
Not sure what the actual assignment was, and I don't think I want to know. I'll just imagine him sitting at the computer on his own during his free time and banging that out because the spirit moved him.
T, meanwhile, is a little diplomat herself. As I was perched on the edge of the stairs behind our couch, stretching my calves (those of you who have been to our house will be able to picture this - those who haven't: What are you waiting for, exactly?), T and I had a chat, she standing just in front of the couch, waiting for story time to begin. As she looked at me, she said, "Papi, vos me haces pensar en Brad. Tu cara." (Dad, you remind me of Brad. Your face.)
I said, "Quien es mas guapo?" (Who's more handsome?)
T smiled and immediately said, "Vos!", nodding as if it were obvious.
I pushed it a little farther, not quite knowing why. "Y quien es mas feo, entonces?" (So, who's uglier, then?)
She messed up her face in an utterly inimitable Tie squirm, pulling her chin in and sending the midpoint of her eyebrows up to her hairline. "Yo no quiero decir eso!" (I don't want to say that!)
So there's your ticket. Q for President, T the running mate. She has more experience than Sara Palin, anyway.
"Me for President
"I am thoughtful. I'd stop Hummers and give poor people money. I am adventurous because I like to find countries and stop wars that are happening. I'm creative. I'm creative because I will build a tree making machine. I'm very fair. Very very fair because if I were president, I would give half of my money to the poor. I'd think that I propably be ELECTED!"
Not sure what the actual assignment was, and I don't think I want to know. I'll just imagine him sitting at the computer on his own during his free time and banging that out because the spirit moved him.
T, meanwhile, is a little diplomat herself. As I was perched on the edge of the stairs behind our couch, stretching my calves (those of you who have been to our house will be able to picture this - those who haven't: What are you waiting for, exactly?), T and I had a chat, she standing just in front of the couch, waiting for story time to begin. As she looked at me, she said, "Papi, vos me haces pensar en Brad. Tu cara." (Dad, you remind me of Brad. Your face.)
I said, "Quien es mas guapo?" (Who's more handsome?)
T smiled and immediately said, "Vos!", nodding as if it were obvious.
I pushed it a little farther, not quite knowing why. "Y quien es mas feo, entonces?" (So, who's uglier, then?)
She messed up her face in an utterly inimitable Tie squirm, pulling her chin in and sending the midpoint of her eyebrows up to her hairline. "Yo no quiero decir eso!" (I don't want to say that!)
So there's your ticket. Q for President, T the running mate. She has more experience than Sara Palin, anyway.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
3-Day Weekend Hijinks
Whoah - OK: T put on her "firebird princess" get-up that she wants to use as a costume for Halloween. It's some fall-colored chicken feathers arranged in festoons around the edges of a prancy-girl dance outfit that she got from Flavia, and it is soooome kinda cute. Pictures will have to wait until the big day. But, I mean, wow. Kee-yoo-uhtt. (Those of you not from Wisconsin may need to go find a Packer fan to translate that for you.)
Q was ratted out by Ronadh the other day. Ronadh had sorted out that Owen and Q, and a couple of co-conspirators, had been exploiting a loophole in the transfer system between school and their after-school commitment to spend some unsupervised time. So I had a talk with him yesterday, in a very calm and quiet way - I decided I actually kind of liked the grit shown by trying to put one over on us. A fairly harmless one, at that. So while I made it clear that we weren't pleased, I didn't exactly browbeat him.
We had Monday to spend together yesterday, by the way. T had daycare and Janneke went to work, so Q and I did a whole bunch of stuff. (Though my first activity of the day was to go running with Magnus. We ran 13 frickin' miles. he then went on to run 3 more, but I went home. Sixteen miles? That's just crazy. After I had some breakfast, I went to pick Q up from where he'd just had a sleepvoer birthday party at his friend Sean's house, and our day of daddy-son funhouse craziness began.) We then went apple picking (Macouns are absolutely the best apples ever conceived), watched Sports Center, threw the football, explored the woodsy area between our street and Sean's back yard (turns out you can walk there in five minutes without ever crossing a street), drove to North Adams and bought me some running shoes, and had lunch at McDonald's, before going to Paresky hall to play pool. It was just an absolute hoot.
We're on the very edge of possibilities with this computer. I've got too many movies on here, and I can't get them off - well, the main problem is that I have a half-hour-long movie project, which is an ungodly amount of gigabytes long, and leaves me without enough free space to turn it into a much-smaller movie so I can delete the project. So we're thinking about getting some more memory space, wondering what our options are. And long-term, I need to be able to burn DVDs so I can send these movies off to people. (Like my Dad, who would watch them on the tee-vee but won't on the computer.) So we have to lay out some more money. Which we love to do. I'm thinking I'd like to get a Mac Mini and set it up in the basement with the monitor we have from the old Dell desktop that melted down years ago.
Y'know how sick I am of hitting the mute button every damn time a Cyalis commercial comes on? I just don't need to think about an erection that lasts more than four hours. And neither do T or Q.
Almost as sick as I am of John McCain's flagrant racism. I'm having fun imagining Barack Obama meeting McCain post-election and saying, "I will never forget that, John. Never." And when Palin reaches out to shake his hand, Obama turns his back on her and walks away.
And then Palin and McCain notice a Barbie makeup kit, left behind by one of the Obama daughters on the floor. Palin reaches down and picks it up. "Aww," she says, "I used to have one of these!" She winks at McCain and opens it up.
Blinding light gushes out of it, and she and McCain melt like the Nazis at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
Q was ratted out by Ronadh the other day. Ronadh had sorted out that Owen and Q, and a couple of co-conspirators, had been exploiting a loophole in the transfer system between school and their after-school commitment to spend some unsupervised time. So I had a talk with him yesterday, in a very calm and quiet way - I decided I actually kind of liked the grit shown by trying to put one over on us. A fairly harmless one, at that. So while I made it clear that we weren't pleased, I didn't exactly browbeat him.
We had Monday to spend together yesterday, by the way. T had daycare and Janneke went to work, so Q and I did a whole bunch of stuff. (Though my first activity of the day was to go running with Magnus. We ran 13 frickin' miles. he then went on to run 3 more, but I went home. Sixteen miles? That's just crazy. After I had some breakfast, I went to pick Q up from where he'd just had a sleepvoer birthday party at his friend Sean's house, and our day of daddy-son funhouse craziness began.) We then went apple picking (Macouns are absolutely the best apples ever conceived), watched Sports Center, threw the football, explored the woodsy area between our street and Sean's back yard (turns out you can walk there in five minutes without ever crossing a street), drove to North Adams and bought me some running shoes, and had lunch at McDonald's, before going to Paresky hall to play pool. It was just an absolute hoot.
We're on the very edge of possibilities with this computer. I've got too many movies on here, and I can't get them off - well, the main problem is that I have a half-hour-long movie project, which is an ungodly amount of gigabytes long, and leaves me without enough free space to turn it into a much-smaller movie so I can delete the project. So we're thinking about getting some more memory space, wondering what our options are. And long-term, I need to be able to burn DVDs so I can send these movies off to people. (Like my Dad, who would watch them on the tee-vee but won't on the computer.) So we have to lay out some more money. Which we love to do. I'm thinking I'd like to get a Mac Mini and set it up in the basement with the monitor we have from the old Dell desktop that melted down years ago.
Y'know how sick I am of hitting the mute button every damn time a Cyalis commercial comes on? I just don't need to think about an erection that lasts more than four hours. And neither do T or Q.
Almost as sick as I am of John McCain's flagrant racism. I'm having fun imagining Barack Obama meeting McCain post-election and saying, "I will never forget that, John. Never." And when Palin reaches out to shake his hand, Obama turns his back on her and walks away.
And then Palin and McCain notice a Barbie makeup kit, left behind by one of the Obama daughters on the floor. Palin reaches down and picks it up. "Aww," she says, "I used to have one of these!" She winks at McCain and opens it up.
Blinding light gushes out of it, and she and McCain melt like the Nazis at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Lamest Post Ever
Or close to it, anyway. But I wanted you to know: I still care. Just not that much.
T is in the living room, doing some post-ballet-practice coloring. They give her a new letter and calendar for every month, and she has a binder where she keeps it all. She goes every Tuesday at 3:15 - too early for me to make it back, unfortunately. So Mami takes her, and I hear about it afterwards. I took her once, to the very first time, and wound up sitting on the sidelines with her on my lap, claiming shyness, for 98% of the lesson. She finally felt sufficiently confident to join them when they were saying goodbye. It was only a 30-minute lesson, but I have to say, that's longer than I prefer to be sitting in dirty socks on a folding chair at the edge of a dance floor.
The lessons are held at Pine Cobble School, a local private K-9 school where our friend Danny teaches. From what I understand, it's pretty pricey, but I'm not sure where the money goes. The facilities are a little bit run-down. But the teacher is enthusiastic, and the little helper girls are nice. T hasn't quite gotten the same rapport with them as she used to have with Carly, the girl who helped out at tumbling, but she enjoys the whole concept of dance more, I think. Always comes home chipper, anyway.
I am waiting out the few minutes I have before I go to drive Q from the Youth Center to soccer practice. Q had his debut as a pianist last night - they had "A Little Night Music" at the elementary school. It was a pretty informal soup-and-crackers get-together with students who play instruments performing for everyone in a somewhat free-flowing format. Q played "Bugle Boys" - Here's a link to video that Ronadh shot of it:
http://madmonster.williams.edu/misc/Q.MPEG
We were not exactly on the ball, multi-media wise. Probably at least partially due to the fact that I was sick all day yesterday. I bugged out on a faculty meeeting and came home to sleep before going to pick up T and go to Q's recital, then hit the hay minutes after putting them to bed. And had fevered dreams about those weird domesticated foxes. Anyone who's run into me in the last three days has been regaled with that whole business - so I'd just like to take this opportunity to say: I'm sorry. I swear, I do have other things to talk about.
Like how cute my kids are. Nobody ever gets sick of that! Here's a picture I took tonight - Q and I were on the couch at bedtime, and I was massaging his calf, which was sore for some reason:
Or how nice our family is. I accidentally uploaded this one while trying to upload the one above, and thought to myself: "The world must know...!"
So there you have it. Lamest blog post ever. Hey, like I always say about this rag: It's worth every penny.
T is in the living room, doing some post-ballet-practice coloring. They give her a new letter and calendar for every month, and she has a binder where she keeps it all. She goes every Tuesday at 3:15 - too early for me to make it back, unfortunately. So Mami takes her, and I hear about it afterwards. I took her once, to the very first time, and wound up sitting on the sidelines with her on my lap, claiming shyness, for 98% of the lesson. She finally felt sufficiently confident to join them when they were saying goodbye. It was only a 30-minute lesson, but I have to say, that's longer than I prefer to be sitting in dirty socks on a folding chair at the edge of a dance floor.
The lessons are held at Pine Cobble School, a local private K-9 school where our friend Danny teaches. From what I understand, it's pretty pricey, but I'm not sure where the money goes. The facilities are a little bit run-down. But the teacher is enthusiastic, and the little helper girls are nice. T hasn't quite gotten the same rapport with them as she used to have with Carly, the girl who helped out at tumbling, but she enjoys the whole concept of dance more, I think. Always comes home chipper, anyway.
I am waiting out the few minutes I have before I go to drive Q from the Youth Center to soccer practice. Q had his debut as a pianist last night - they had "A Little Night Music" at the elementary school. It was a pretty informal soup-and-crackers get-together with students who play instruments performing for everyone in a somewhat free-flowing format. Q played "Bugle Boys" - Here's a link to video that Ronadh shot of it:
http://madmonster.williams.edu/misc/Q.MPEG
We were not exactly on the ball, multi-media wise. Probably at least partially due to the fact that I was sick all day yesterday. I bugged out on a faculty meeeting and came home to sleep before going to pick up T and go to Q's recital, then hit the hay minutes after putting them to bed. And had fevered dreams about those weird domesticated foxes. Anyone who's run into me in the last three days has been regaled with that whole business - so I'd just like to take this opportunity to say: I'm sorry. I swear, I do have other things to talk about.
Like how cute my kids are. Nobody ever gets sick of that! Here's a picture I took tonight - Q and I were on the couch at bedtime, and I was massaging his calf, which was sore for some reason:
Or how nice our family is. I accidentally uploaded this one while trying to upload the one above, and thought to myself: "The world must know...!"
So there you have it. Lamest blog post ever. Hey, like I always say about this rag: It's worth every penny.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Docility in Man and Beast
Hola - Just a few things quickly, and then it's back to correcting:
T was walking the neighborhood with Mami today and they noticed how many houses have decorations up for Halloween. T did not like being outdone, and so she came home and immediately set about rectifying the situation, drawing witches and pumpkins and walking out onto the porch to hang them on the posts. She is very dedicated to image maintenance.
Q had two scooer games this weekend, and had streaks of wild action in both, but was mostly a little catatonic. Alex B's mom noticed the same thing both games. They won Saturday and lost today, to the big evil team they had tied a few weeks back. Q had a BRILLIANT run today, frighteningly controlled and showing a touch on the ball that is beyond his years. At another point, a So. Berkshire player started to make a long run toward the goal - and Q ran him down from the opposite side of the field, covering almost the whole length of the pitch, and took it away from him JUST as he was about to shoot. Brilliant plays. But much of the rest of the game, he stood around and watched things happen, yipped and jumped out of the way of players rather than trying to challenge them. Can't force him into it, I guess - he has to grow into it.
We all sat down after supper and found a program on the Discovery Channel about the evolution of the dog from the wolf, something Q and I had talked about at length before, and so we all settle in to watch it. T zonked out after a few minutes, but Q was hyper-attentive throughout. Brilliant show - they outlined an experiment at a fox fur farm in the soviet union, where a manager tried to make them more docile by simple inserting a gloved hand into each adult fox's cage, and if the fox cowered, attacked, or otherwise showed aggressiveness, it was not allowed to breed. And in ten years' time, the foxes had changed color, going to black and white rather than grey; they had gotten blotches of white over their eyes and on their bodies; their ears had lopped over; they began to bark - They turned into a tame animal! Not a dog, of course, but PRACTICALLY a dog! I was fascinated. As was Q. We both want one of them as a pet now - they showed them at that same fox farm now, being petted by school children. They have completely lost their fear of people.
T loved Mami's pound cake tonight, which made mami very happy indeed...And that's the news. Updates as time allows...
T was walking the neighborhood with Mami today and they noticed how many houses have decorations up for Halloween. T did not like being outdone, and so she came home and immediately set about rectifying the situation, drawing witches and pumpkins and walking out onto the porch to hang them on the posts. She is very dedicated to image maintenance.
Q had two scooer games this weekend, and had streaks of wild action in both, but was mostly a little catatonic. Alex B's mom noticed the same thing both games. They won Saturday and lost today, to the big evil team they had tied a few weeks back. Q had a BRILLIANT run today, frighteningly controlled and showing a touch on the ball that is beyond his years. At another point, a So. Berkshire player started to make a long run toward the goal - and Q ran him down from the opposite side of the field, covering almost the whole length of the pitch, and took it away from him JUST as he was about to shoot. Brilliant plays. But much of the rest of the game, he stood around and watched things happen, yipped and jumped out of the way of players rather than trying to challenge them. Can't force him into it, I guess - he has to grow into it.
We all sat down after supper and found a program on the Discovery Channel about the evolution of the dog from the wolf, something Q and I had talked about at length before, and so we all settle in to watch it. T zonked out after a few minutes, but Q was hyper-attentive throughout. Brilliant show - they outlined an experiment at a fox fur farm in the soviet union, where a manager tried to make them more docile by simple inserting a gloved hand into each adult fox's cage, and if the fox cowered, attacked, or otherwise showed aggressiveness, it was not allowed to breed. And in ten years' time, the foxes had changed color, going to black and white rather than grey; they had gotten blotches of white over their eyes and on their bodies; their ears had lopped over; they began to bark - They turned into a tame animal! Not a dog, of course, but PRACTICALLY a dog! I was fascinated. As was Q. We both want one of them as a pet now - they showed them at that same fox farm now, being petted by school children. They have completely lost their fear of people.
T loved Mami's pound cake tonight, which made mami very happy indeed...And that's the news. Updates as time allows...
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Soccer and Other Things
Except that there are not other things in this post. They will have to wait - I just spent an hour on the phone with my sister. Cost me nothing, but kept this from being written for a good while. (Damn you, Skype! Damn you and your free, irresistible Jetson-like wiles...!!)
Two games this weekend, one yesterday and one today, both in Williamstown at the elementary school. Yesterday's first: When we arrived for warmups, the Southern Berkshire team was jogging around the field in a tight crowd, seeming to surround the Williamstown Strikers as they stretched. Even as I approached the field form the parking lot a good 100 yards away, I could tell they were big kids. And the word on the street was that there was not a single third grader on the squad. All of them at least 9, some of them 10, and all of them huge. Their coach stalked back and forth with his arms crossed, watching them jog. He seemed very serious indeed.
As I unfolded our chairs on the sidelines, I chatted with the mother of Jay, the Strikers' main goalie, who'd been there a while. And she said that while they were stretching, the So Berkshire coach had paced back and forth in front of his team slowly, demanding silence as he tried to focus them for the match. One quote she overheard: "The first time you're out of position, I'll warn you. The second time, you'll sit, and it will be for a good little while." We looked sidelong at each other and raised our eyebrows. This might be an intense day.
But I argued for optimism. "They're bigger," I said, "but I know for a fact they aren't faster. There's just no way." Q, Alex, Brady and Sam D have to be the top 4 runners in their grade, and they're probably faster than the entire grade above them. I was nervous for the boys, but I had a good feeling.
By virtue of their having been standing together near midfield when the ref called for the captains, Q and Alex were appointed to represent the strikers and marched to the center. The Southern Berkshire captains were a head taller, and both dark of hair and curly, looking down at Q and Alex, both short-haired blondies. This was the way the game would be, it seemed: Size, strength, experience, versus Williamstown's yellow-headed Tasmanian Devil-style swarmers. The coin was tossed, and Williamstown would take the first possession.
The game opened up with a very quick goal - by the Strikers. Sammy D charged through their entire collective defense for a solo run and beat the keeper squarely on the very first possession. Jubilation on the part of the Strikers, some of whom had been feeling a bit intimidated before the game. And one of whom, Q, remained so even after the quick goal. He wasn't himself - a lot of standing around and looking, a lot of shirt-holding (his own) and grimacing in a withdrawn sort of hunker - he watched players take the ball right past him, watched his teammates launch attacks and not think to go with them...Coach Foehl would cry, "Q! You are a forward!", as Q stood motionless near his own net and folded his shirt edge into itself over and over, seemingly deaf. It was very frustrating to watch, and I found myself trying to shake him out of it verbally. Never a good move - I come off as loud and pushy, and Q never reacts well to it. But it was like a compulsive need to scratch an itch - despite knowing it will only make things worse, I could not stop myself. "Q! Despertate!" ("Wake up!") "Q! Sos el DEFENSOR ahora! Paralo!" ("You're the DEFENDER now! Stop him!) Etc. Janneke tried to shush me, and I managed to keep more of a lid on it than at previous games, but I was absolutely squirming. He was stuck in second gear; he just wasn't himself, and his team needed him.
To complete their image as the heavies, Southern berkshire's coach loudly complained to a ref about a call in the first half. Having already warned the Baddies (probably not their nickname) about playing the ball rather than the man, about knocking people over on purpose, and having reminded one of their players about this not twenty seconds previous, she called one of them for sending Eli sprawling, and awarded a free kick to the Strikers. Which caused their coach to throw his hands in the air and shout, "HE GOT THE BALL!!!" And the ref, a former student of mine at BArT, held up one finger to him and said "Whoah. Stop." He continued, and she marched over and told him (as she recounted to us at halftime) that she would red card him if this continued. He got quieter and quieter as the reality of what it would be like to be known as "the guy who got red-carded at a 3rd-and-fourth-grade soccer game" ("by a girl" probably figuring in as well) became clearer and clearer.
But even without the rough stuff, So. Berkshire is formidable and skilled. Very soon it was 1-1, and then 2-1, So Berkshire taking the lead. Q was subbed out and spoken to by the coaches. "Q," as they told me later they'd said, "we do notice when you aren't playing like yourself. You're not running like we know you can run! Come on, pal! We need you!" And after that pep talk and a bit of time to blow, he went back in.
He was probably in for a minute before Sam D stole the ball from an oncoming So. Berkshire player deep in the Strikers' end, and looked for a place to send it. Q threw up his arm and called for the ball, and Sam sent it right to his foot.
Honestly, I think that at that moment, instinct took over and simply banished his jitters to the back of his mind, because he settled the ball and turned and accelerated to the goal like the Q I've seen so many times, racing past two defenders, never letting the ball get out beyond his grasp, and firing it into the upper right corner for a goal. He charged across the goal and back up the right side of the field, fists clenched and snarling, shouting primally and looking victorious, furiously satisfied, and vindicated. I was on my knees in front of my lawn chair, both fists in the air, roaring along with the other parents, who were, pretty much to a man, not embarrassing themselves to nearly the same extent.
It was a great, great goal. All speed and skill and quick reactions, ended with a calm and surgical strike right where it needed to be. But the sad thing is that I don't believe that he, as he charged and cheered and gnashed his winner's teeth, was happy.
The rest of the game he was again fairly zombie-like, with occasional bursts of attentiveness and speed. And he did contribute some very solid stuff, helping make it so that, after falling behind 2-5, Williamstown rallied and tied it, and the game ended. A huge victory, really, which should bolster the kids' confidence for the rubber match (next week already), and if their fastest player is on his game, they might actually march down there and come out with a win.
Q seemed happy afterwards, but I suspect he was mostly glad it was over. He loves to win, and to be able to say that he's on an undefeated team, but the actual business of being important, of walking under the weight of that responsibility, of taking on the knowledge that if they're going to win, it's partly up to him, of looking the opposing team in the eye (well, the chest) and not flinching - that's something he's not quite as ready for as some of his teammates. He's as talented as just about any of them, but confidence-wise, he's just not there yet.
I vowed not to call out to him at today's game, and even bought myself gum (which I ordinarily never chew) as a physical reminder at all times to be aware of my mouth. But he was zombie-like again to start, and while I was more successful in restraining myself today than I was yesterday, I still said a few too many things...Not shouting at him, not berating him, just reminding. But I must stop - it isn't my job. It's the coaches' job, and they actually stand a chance of making him hear them. I stand none.
Q scored the Strikers' second goal, another breakaway where the hapless defenders dropped farther and farther behind him as he ran and left him all alone with the goalie, who really stood no chance. And despite some more extended bouts of standing around, he snapped completely into "athlete" mode for the last fifteen minutes or so of the game, which had turned into a bit of a laugher, and must have fired four more shots on goal. None went in, unfortunately, one careening off the crossbar and a couple of others either going into the goalie or wide, but he was dominating that end of the field, making clever plays. (Two come to mind: A beautiful cross to the center when he got clogged up on the left side after a long run, which rolled to a tantalizing stop exactly where Q's teammates should have been before the keeper picked it up because no one had gone with him to support him. And, secondly: After sending a shot wide and bringing about a goal kick, Q, who had noticed that the keeper almost always kicked it straight ahead on goal kicks, hid behind the ref and streaked out to intercept the pass just as the keeper kicked it). He was simply, easily outrunning absolutely everybody down there, and seemingly never tiring out. So it was an improvement over yesterday.
But what kills me is how he could absolutely dominate like that all the time, but for a desire to do so, and a bone-level belief, not only that he can, but that he should.
"That's who he is right now," Janneke reminds me gently. "He feels it sometimes, and sometimes he doesn't. And that's OK."
Why is she so much smarter than I am...?
Two games this weekend, one yesterday and one today, both in Williamstown at the elementary school. Yesterday's first: When we arrived for warmups, the Southern Berkshire team was jogging around the field in a tight crowd, seeming to surround the Williamstown Strikers as they stretched. Even as I approached the field form the parking lot a good 100 yards away, I could tell they were big kids. And the word on the street was that there was not a single third grader on the squad. All of them at least 9, some of them 10, and all of them huge. Their coach stalked back and forth with his arms crossed, watching them jog. He seemed very serious indeed.
As I unfolded our chairs on the sidelines, I chatted with the mother of Jay, the Strikers' main goalie, who'd been there a while. And she said that while they were stretching, the So Berkshire coach had paced back and forth in front of his team slowly, demanding silence as he tried to focus them for the match. One quote she overheard: "The first time you're out of position, I'll warn you. The second time, you'll sit, and it will be for a good little while." We looked sidelong at each other and raised our eyebrows. This might be an intense day.
But I argued for optimism. "They're bigger," I said, "but I know for a fact they aren't faster. There's just no way." Q, Alex, Brady and Sam D have to be the top 4 runners in their grade, and they're probably faster than the entire grade above them. I was nervous for the boys, but I had a good feeling.
By virtue of their having been standing together near midfield when the ref called for the captains, Q and Alex were appointed to represent the strikers and marched to the center. The Southern Berkshire captains were a head taller, and both dark of hair and curly, looking down at Q and Alex, both short-haired blondies. This was the way the game would be, it seemed: Size, strength, experience, versus Williamstown's yellow-headed Tasmanian Devil-style swarmers. The coin was tossed, and Williamstown would take the first possession.
The game opened up with a very quick goal - by the Strikers. Sammy D charged through their entire collective defense for a solo run and beat the keeper squarely on the very first possession. Jubilation on the part of the Strikers, some of whom had been feeling a bit intimidated before the game. And one of whom, Q, remained so even after the quick goal. He wasn't himself - a lot of standing around and looking, a lot of shirt-holding (his own) and grimacing in a withdrawn sort of hunker - he watched players take the ball right past him, watched his teammates launch attacks and not think to go with them...Coach Foehl would cry, "Q! You are a forward!", as Q stood motionless near his own net and folded his shirt edge into itself over and over, seemingly deaf. It was very frustrating to watch, and I found myself trying to shake him out of it verbally. Never a good move - I come off as loud and pushy, and Q never reacts well to it. But it was like a compulsive need to scratch an itch - despite knowing it will only make things worse, I could not stop myself. "Q! Despertate!" ("Wake up!") "Q! Sos el DEFENSOR ahora! Paralo!" ("You're the DEFENDER now! Stop him!) Etc. Janneke tried to shush me, and I managed to keep more of a lid on it than at previous games, but I was absolutely squirming. He was stuck in second gear; he just wasn't himself, and his team needed him.
To complete their image as the heavies, Southern berkshire's coach loudly complained to a ref about a call in the first half. Having already warned the Baddies (probably not their nickname) about playing the ball rather than the man, about knocking people over on purpose, and having reminded one of their players about this not twenty seconds previous, she called one of them for sending Eli sprawling, and awarded a free kick to the Strikers. Which caused their coach to throw his hands in the air and shout, "HE GOT THE BALL!!!" And the ref, a former student of mine at BArT, held up one finger to him and said "Whoah. Stop." He continued, and she marched over and told him (as she recounted to us at halftime) that she would red card him if this continued. He got quieter and quieter as the reality of what it would be like to be known as "the guy who got red-carded at a 3rd-and-fourth-grade soccer game" ("by a girl" probably figuring in as well) became clearer and clearer.
But even without the rough stuff, So. Berkshire is formidable and skilled. Very soon it was 1-1, and then 2-1, So Berkshire taking the lead. Q was subbed out and spoken to by the coaches. "Q," as they told me later they'd said, "we do notice when you aren't playing like yourself. You're not running like we know you can run! Come on, pal! We need you!" And after that pep talk and a bit of time to blow, he went back in.
He was probably in for a minute before Sam D stole the ball from an oncoming So. Berkshire player deep in the Strikers' end, and looked for a place to send it. Q threw up his arm and called for the ball, and Sam sent it right to his foot.
Honestly, I think that at that moment, instinct took over and simply banished his jitters to the back of his mind, because he settled the ball and turned and accelerated to the goal like the Q I've seen so many times, racing past two defenders, never letting the ball get out beyond his grasp, and firing it into the upper right corner for a goal. He charged across the goal and back up the right side of the field, fists clenched and snarling, shouting primally and looking victorious, furiously satisfied, and vindicated. I was on my knees in front of my lawn chair, both fists in the air, roaring along with the other parents, who were, pretty much to a man, not embarrassing themselves to nearly the same extent.
It was a great, great goal. All speed and skill and quick reactions, ended with a calm and surgical strike right where it needed to be. But the sad thing is that I don't believe that he, as he charged and cheered and gnashed his winner's teeth, was happy.
The rest of the game he was again fairly zombie-like, with occasional bursts of attentiveness and speed. And he did contribute some very solid stuff, helping make it so that, after falling behind 2-5, Williamstown rallied and tied it, and the game ended. A huge victory, really, which should bolster the kids' confidence for the rubber match (next week already), and if their fastest player is on his game, they might actually march down there and come out with a win.
Q seemed happy afterwards, but I suspect he was mostly glad it was over. He loves to win, and to be able to say that he's on an undefeated team, but the actual business of being important, of walking under the weight of that responsibility, of taking on the knowledge that if they're going to win, it's partly up to him, of looking the opposing team in the eye (well, the chest) and not flinching - that's something he's not quite as ready for as some of his teammates. He's as talented as just about any of them, but confidence-wise, he's just not there yet.
I vowed not to call out to him at today's game, and even bought myself gum (which I ordinarily never chew) as a physical reminder at all times to be aware of my mouth. But he was zombie-like again to start, and while I was more successful in restraining myself today than I was yesterday, I still said a few too many things...Not shouting at him, not berating him, just reminding. But I must stop - it isn't my job. It's the coaches' job, and they actually stand a chance of making him hear them. I stand none.
Q scored the Strikers' second goal, another breakaway where the hapless defenders dropped farther and farther behind him as he ran and left him all alone with the goalie, who really stood no chance. And despite some more extended bouts of standing around, he snapped completely into "athlete" mode for the last fifteen minutes or so of the game, which had turned into a bit of a laugher, and must have fired four more shots on goal. None went in, unfortunately, one careening off the crossbar and a couple of others either going into the goalie or wide, but he was dominating that end of the field, making clever plays. (Two come to mind: A beautiful cross to the center when he got clogged up on the left side after a long run, which rolled to a tantalizing stop exactly where Q's teammates should have been before the keeper picked it up because no one had gone with him to support him. And, secondly: After sending a shot wide and bringing about a goal kick, Q, who had noticed that the keeper almost always kicked it straight ahead on goal kicks, hid behind the ref and streaked out to intercept the pass just as the keeper kicked it). He was simply, easily outrunning absolutely everybody down there, and seemingly never tiring out. So it was an improvement over yesterday.
But what kills me is how he could absolutely dominate like that all the time, but for a desire to do so, and a bone-level belief, not only that he can, but that he should.
"That's who he is right now," Janneke reminds me gently. "He feels it sometimes, and sometimes he doesn't. And that's OK."
Why is she so much smarter than I am...?
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