Quick Hitters

I.
We took the boys to a basketball game at RWC on Tuesday evening.

It was J's idea. She found free tickets for a special alumni night, along with t-shirts and hot dogs. Once we told James he talked about it for the whole two days before. He prayed that we would go watch basketball and eat hot dogs on Monday night. It was the first think he asked about on Tuesday morning. When we visited an ophthalmologist on Tuesday he was disappointed that it wasn't time for basketball and hot dogs yet. (Although he did want the doctor to check Clifford's eyes once he found out that this wasn't the sort of doctor who gives shots. Clifford is the new name of that big stuffed dog he carries around, formerly Hundley, formerly Woof-Woof.) He told the ophthalmologist that we were going to see a basketball game and eat hot dogs that night.

"Do you want to tell him?"
"Should we tell him?"
"I don't think it should be a surprise once we get there, right?"

That afternoon, J asked James to come and sit on her lap for a minute.
"James, do you know how we're going to a basketball game tonight?"
"Yeah, I'm gonna eat a hot dog."
"Right. I just wanted to let you know--and this is nothing to be scared about--I wanted to let you know that maybe there might be a mascot there."
"Yeah."
"Do you remember Reggie the Redhawk from homecoming?"
"Yeah."
"Reggie might be there to help people cheer and be excited. Or maybe not. He might stay home."
"I think Reggie will stay at his house."
"Well, we'll see. He might be there. But you don't need to be scared. Okay?"
"Yeah."

About fifteen minutes later I found James sitting alone in his room, curled up in the far corner of his bed.
"James, are you alright?"
"I think Mommy wants to go the basketball game all by herself."
"You don't want to go?"
"No, Mommy just wants to go all by herself."
"James...are you a little afraid of the mascot?"
He nodded and covered his face with Steven Bear.

We did get him out the door eventually, and thankfully Reggie was nowhere to be seen for the first few minutes of the game. James watched the game attentively, and then once the big red bird appeared he just watched him for about 20 minutes or so. He ate his free hot dog, discovered the pleasures of Gatorade ("Can I have more blue juice?") and then was quiet but intent on the game for the rest of the evening.

J and I talked about how much we enjoyed attending a game. It was, after twelve years of higher education between the two of us, the first time either of had ever attended a collegiate sporting event. (Go RWC, Northwestern, and UNCG!) We would do it again in a heartbeat. The smell of beer was conspicuously absent, there was good sportsmanship all around, and the game was interesting and well played.

I think that hockey is next on our list. Does anyone know if the Amerks have a mascot?

II.
I made a pizza successfully last night. I turns out that all I need is to have the dough and the sauce premade for me and to have someone else set out all the ingredients that I need. Then it's easy.

Except that it actually wasn't that easy, because I had both boys alone last night. J and I agreed to feed them early and then eat together once they were in bed and she was back from her rehearsal. Putting Owen down to bed is always challenging, so I wasn't supposed to actually put him to sleep last night. I was just supposed to keep him awake until 8:30.

He's figured out how to hop/bounce, so he spent a good portion of the evening bouncing determinedly on my lap (with the sort of expression that one might use while conducting important experiments in a scientific laboratory) while James played basketball. James wanted to set up a basketball court as soon as we got back from the game the previous night. He had to wait until morning, unfortunately. So first thing he brought his hoop downstairs, had J put it up on the powder room door, and then made a "foul line" from pillows. He's getting steadily better at shooting and passing. He insists that whoever is nearby clap for him when he makes a basket ("I made a score!") and then he runs determinedly across the length of the room and back, since the teams need to switch sides after a basket. ("I am the white team!") George watches him, but George is not a mascot.

So between Owen's bouncing and James' basketball I thought I'd be pretty well set to do my pizza prep. The most important pizza prep of the day happened after school, when I stopped at Wegmans and picked up some naan. Naan pizza is great. It's just the right size, and it means that you don't have to make a crust. For this particular pizza I browned up some spicy Italian sausage and did some red pepper and onion in olive oil. Owen was getting cranky as I worked over the stove (bouncing is hard work) but he held in. The sauce (leftover from one of J's previous pizzas) and the cheese were already thawed from the freezer. I turned on the oven to preheat and took the boys upstairs for some bedtime prep.

James had his teeth brushed, his friends collected, his sippy cup filled, and his prayers said. Once he was tucked away for the night I took Owen into his room and changed him into his pajamas. He was smiling on his changing table when I heard a thundering crash and a wail from James' room. I'm still not sure exactly what happened, but I think he fell out of bed and landed on the bottom part of his marble run, knocking the whole thing over. He was in a sorry state when I scooped him up. He was embarrassed, insistent that we had to build the marble run again right away, and also in need of "a bedtime story and a quick rock in the rocking chair."

He settled for staying up until Mommy got home so he could say good night to her. (I could hear the chime from the oven signalling that it was fully preheated.) No, he could not play any more basketball tonight. He could wait with me and Owen in the kitchen.

I did manage to get the pizzas in the oven, but I spent the majority of the next 20 minutes holding one screaming infant in one arm and one basketball-requesting toddler in the other. J sorted out Owen once she came back, and James managed to stay in bed without falling out again.

The pizzas were great. They had a nice spicy taste from the sausage. I think naan is the way to go.

The Quotable Three Year Old

His first words of the day, upon my entry into his room at 7 AM this morning:
"Can I help you, sir?"

After pushing a box of stuffed animals around the kitchen for 20 minutes:
"Well, I need to go and drink my coffee."

After walking to the car without needing to be held:
"I AM practically a grown-up."

Trying to get my attention so that we could go down to the basement and practice together:
"Hey Roy, are you done yet? Roy?"

At the dinner table, deferring the portion of stew he was trying to get out of eating:
"So Mommy...how was YOUR day?"

At the dinner table, still putting off the stew:
"I think I need a drink. But in a big boy cup, not a sippy cup."

Later, the same:
"Oops. I dribbled."

Perched over Owen in the bathtub, emptying a cup of water directly onto his face:
"I will help rinse Owen."

Visiting his great-grandparents:
"Hey, I pooped in the potty. Wanna come look at it?"

Returning home from his great-grandparent's house, having fallen asleep for about three minutes after our unsuccessful attempts to keep him awake for the last mile and a half of the 40 minute trip, upon being informed that it was time for him to take a nap:
"But I slept all the way back to Grandma's house!"

Upon knocking over a toilet paper tower:

"That was a great big crash for Grandma. Grandma loves crashes, and I love crashes too!"

Quick Hitters

I.
I just finished reading Arthur Miller's Broken Glass. It was gripping once I was into the main story, and I polished it all off in one day. It made me think again that we just actually try to go out to a real play.

I haven't been to Geva Theatre in over ten years. I was on a date (before J) and saw Death of a Salesman. Every once in a while I hear about something interesting playing there, like Wait Until Dark or Midsummer Night's Dream. But I somehow haven't gotten around to getting back there. J has actually been (twice?) quite recently. She conducted her flute choir there but passed on the free ticket to the show that was playing that night. (Little Shop of Horrors.)

It makes sense that we would enjoy it if we went. A lot of my favorite movies are adapted plays (Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar, etc) and I know the Shakespeare corpus pretty well. I bet we'd have a great time. And then I think to myself, "if we're going to go out and see a play, why not try to go out and see an opera? But if we're going out to an opera, what would be the point of attending the opera if I wasn't hired to play in the opera? And if I wasn't going to get paid for playing in the orchestra pit, what would be the point of changing out of my pajama pants and going outside at all?"

It's a vicious cycle. But if anyone has a recommendation for something to see at Geva, wants to give us free tickets, or wants to watch our children so that we can get dressed up and go out for some theatre, just let us know. The other thing that we feel like we're missing out on in Rochester is going to an Amerks game. But we could take the kids with us for that.

II.
We're down in Pennsylvania for part of this week with J's parents. They look extraordinarily happy, because they just got back from a Caribbean cruise.  Yes, that Caribbean. The one that's warm. They both look suspiciously happy and healthy in their own home. When we drove down on Sunday it was 17 below just south of Rochester. Our own driveway had mounds of snow as tall as we were outside, enormous rows of icicles hanging were off the roof, and it's been weeks since we've had a sunny day. I would be resentful of their good fortune, but hanging around them is actually liking picking up a bit of the sunshine and clear blue waters yourself...they're both still glowing from the cruise.

III.
Both boys are having a grand time in PA. James is building all day long with mega-blocks and all the other good construction-style toys in the Davis house. Yesterday he built several carwashes, a tall-tall tower, a tower especially for Grandma, a tower (much smaller) especially for Daddy, a bed for George, a box for George, a boat, a car for George, a bed for Clifford (his big dog has been rechristened), and Larry the Cucumber. Larry slept in his bed last night. He tinkers in his room upstairs for about 15-20 minutes at a time, then either appears downstairs holding his latest creation or insists that someone (usually Grandma) come upstairs and look at it with him.

Owen is enjoying being held nearly all day long by various parents and grandparents. With both J and I around and unoccupied with the normal course of our cooking/cleaning/working we have a lot more time to tote him around in arms, and of course both grandparents are thrilled to pick him up as well, should he happen to be found on a blanket or in a seat. The poor boy was always doomed to be held less than his big brother, but weeks like this make me feel better about how much people are loving him and pouring into him. For his own part, Owen has been making what appears to be a conscious effort to defy his mother ever since she uttered the statement "I think that maybe he's done spitting up so much." We're already almost out of laundry.

IV.
Recently listening to and very much enjoying the following podcasts:
English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs (Librivox, about 10 min. each. Dark, but entertaining)
Selected Short Stories of P.G. Wodehouse (Librivox, and has anyone else ever read any Wodehouse? I'm finding these stories to be charming and perfect for commuting. About 1/2 hr each.)
Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant (Librivox, incredibly and painfully boring technical treatise on logic and metaphysics. I have to repeat each line as it's read aloud to make myself pay attention. For use only on long car trips alone to Buffalo and Syracuse. Each about an hour)
Beowulf (Librivox, just finished listening to it while running. Hadn't read it in a few years, and now I can't wait to read some Tolkein again.)
Freakonomics (Put out by WNYC, some are better than others, are are slickly presented and interesting. Most about 30-40 min)
Emperors of Rome (Mike Smith and Dr. Rihannon Evans, 15 min histories of each of the major Roman emperors. Dr. Evans in particular is super knowledgeable and an interesting speaker.)

The Comical J

If you read this blog with any sort of regularity you may have a false impression of what J is really like. This struck me as I was talking with her earlier today about how I have nothing to blog about recently because nothing funny has happened. In thinking about the sort of stories I usually tell I realized that I must give the impression that she is the stony faced foil to my hilarious antics with the boys. If you only read my side of the story and didn't actually live in our house, you would think that she only ever sets me up for hilarious one-liners and shakes her head in reluctant amusement at the clever jokes I enjoy with James.

This is actually not true at all. She has a great sense of humor and a quick wit. But I write the blogs, so she gets shortchanged. Part of this is a stylistic issue. She specializes in certain types of physical humor for which I have no talent. Like Mr. Bean, she can contort her face into an inexpressible paroxysm of disgust or pleasure at the drop of the hat, and then immediately resume a straight face a moment later. This is hilarious in the moment, but hard to write about afterwards in a manner that does justice to the timing and effect of the joke. She can also roll and cross her eyes in almost any direction, which is course one of the many qualities that make her such an exemplary parent.

Aside from physical humor she is also quick to craft countless jokes for the boys which go unappreciated by everyone except herself and occasionally me. For example, when cutting up James' lunchtime sandwich she'll ask him every day how he wants it cut. He must think her powers of memory to be particularly feeble since she asks him almost every day whether he would like his ham and cheese to be cut into triangles or rectangles, and then to question him whether he's SURE he wouldn't like rectangles because that was what she thought he liked. (He grows horribly flustered and nearly cries every time.)

I've been particularly appreciative of her non-verbal humor today. While overhearing a particularly unsuccessful attempt at a Bach minuet during one of her Mom's violin lessons earlier her eyes nearly crossed places as her pinky finger lunged over an imaginary fingerboard closer in the frantic search for intonation. When a family friend stopped by to chat and made a pleasant offhand remark about how time and advancing age improve one's tolerance for their spouse's annoying habits she turned back towards me with an unrepeatable look of mixed despair and disdain that nearly caused me to snort in my coffee.

No description of her physical humor would be complete, however, without mentioning her hilarious recurring joke of sliding an ice cold hand under my shirt and onto my bare back. I know that she is perpetually cold during these winter months, but I can admire the fortitude with which she bears this trouble since she always seems to have a cat-like grin when I whip around with a squawk of surprise.

As you can imagine, it's hard to capture her true humor in the usual course of my stories and anecdotes about our life with our children. A photo of her crossing her eyes at James would not to her justice, in addition to the fact that she would not let me actually post it. But even if it's hard to capture in words, I do appreciate on a daily basis her ability to make me laugh, especially on days like today when I want to stay in her good graces because she looks, as I texted her earlier, "real hoot."

She's a good-looking owl.

Adrift?

It's tax season again, so I'm at Wegmans on a double service day in Syracuse entering in all of our income from tax year 2014.

We made a lot of money, it turns out. And now we have the privilege of paying taxes on it.

In theory I am okay with this, because I prefer civilization to savagery in general, and I wish to drive in safety on paved and well-lit roads.

But sitting back and taking a bird's eye view of our income for the last year reinforces the sensation that after so many months of holding to one course with our current scheme of jobs, travel, and goals it's about time to pause, find our bearings and see which waters we're aiming at next.

And we have options. J is looking into another potential job offer. She wouldn't need to drop anything she's currently doing, but we'd need to reshuffle. I was just awarded tenure with the orchestra, and I recently found out that some of my substitute work has entered a special protected status. I have more job security now, if I want to keep on doing the balance of steady work and freelancing that I've relied on for the past two years.

If I want to.

We love our house. We travel a lot. We wonder if it would be smarter to move much further east, much further west, or stay where we are.

This isn't a place we're particularly keen to be. We'd like to just hold the course that we've set and not worry about whether we've made the right decisions or not, whether or not we could do better if we changed this or that.

You know, like all the adults do, since they've got this figured out.

Alternate Life

R lingered in the kitchen, picking away a few more crumbs from the spot on the platter where his recently eaten piece of cake had lain. J strode past with Owen and one arm and the other held out to the side, a recent spit-up stain visible.
"Have you seen my wand?"
R pulled his out of a pocket, pointed at the stain, and commanded "tergeo!"

The stain disappeared, but J still peered over the kitchen counters until she found it behind the sink.

"I thought you had a rehearsal at 10. Don't you need to get going?"
"I suppose so. I don't play the first piece, but I'll still apparate over a few minutes before just in case they've changed the rehearsal order."

With a flick of her wand she magicked open the kitchen cupboards as the clean dishes began to stack themselves neatly inside.

"I don't know how you do that so neatly. Whenever I put away the dishes they always clatter as they go in. Is it just the touch of the wandwork, or are you actually using the same spell?"
"Here, you've got crumbs down the front of you. Can you hold Owen long enough for me to go put James on the potty again, if you aren't leaving quite yet?"
"Sure, that's fine."

As if on cue, James trotted into the kitchen grasping the back of his pull-up. J looked over quizically.
R grinned back "I charmed his pull up to start squeezing him every half hour unless he tries the potty."
"Well, now I'm having trouble getting it off."
"Mommy, my diaper is squeezing me."
"A little help?"
"Finite incantatem."
"Ah, thanks."

R looked out the window wistfully. It was snowing big, thick flakes.
"The poor muggles. Can you imagine having to travel in all this without apparition. I mean, what if I had to go to Syracuse and Buffalo by broomstick? Or in what one of those muggle automobiles. I'd have to leave hours ahead of time! And driving in all the snow and the cold? It'd be horrible."
"I know, bless them. I think about that sometimes. Imagine trying to keep this whole house warm with one of those, what-do-you call them, furnaces?"
"I think it's a fornace."
"Are you sure? The thing that burns gasoline in the basement, right?"
"Oh James, please don't touch Daddy's wand. You wouldn't want to blow up George again, would you?"
"George was funny. George got BIG!"

Snow Day!

This is the consolation of winter in upstate New York.

We may be battered by the elements day in and day out, we may hardly see the sun for months at a stretch, we may spend hours and days of our lives scraping our icy driveways with chapped hands, and we may sacrifice our automobiles to early deaths from cancerous salt and slush, but every once in a great while the weather is so dreadful that we get an entire day off from our responsibilities.

And today is a great day to have off. Today is my big teaching day. I teach elementary school lessons all morning, lead two rehearsals, and then drive an hour south to Houghton, where I teach my three trumpet students. Then it's a long drive back through the elements, up 590 during rush hour, and straight to the boys so that J can leave for orchestra. She might actually still have orchestra tonight, but I'm hopeful she won't.

The one redeeming part about the long teaching day is that I can practice in the cracks of lessons and commuting more than any other day. I've started to find a practicing rhythm here at home, usually putting my softest mute in around 7 AM and playing in the basement with a space heater cranked until everyone else gets up. It's easier to get through the rest of the day knowing that, no matter what happens with naps and trips and responsibilities, I've put in at least 30-45 minutes to start the day.

And today, I have put some time in already. All that's left to do for the rest of the day is to play with happy boys and try to keep the driveway clear. Uncle Tim is still up visiting us (and probably not going anywhere today) so we'll have extra hands to help run the kids around. The house is still mostly picked up and put together from all the company of the weekend, and there won't be much to do there. It's a good day to be snowed in.

Of course, there still are more long-term projects to be done. For instance, we ought to make up our minds about what to do with Tanner tupperware.

One of J's students brought us a meal after Owen was born, and it was a really good meal. It was almost a feast. And it came in nice tupperware. Tupperware is--or are? are the --ware a singular or plural--one of those badges of middle class domesticity that count rather highly in J's subconscious. She is never happier about the state of her kitchen than when her own tupperware is stacked and organized neatly in her bottom shelf. This almost never happens. For one thing, tupperware make excellent drums. For another, I eat a lot of lunches between rehearsals or between lessons, so the tupperware are constantly entering my lunchbox and returning to sink with only mixed success. At any given time there are tupperware that are technically "ours" on my desk at Lima, in my car, and even in the trunks of some of my fellow carpooler's cars. J hasn't looked upon her tupperware as a complete set in many years.

And yet, I know this is important to her. So, I make an effort to bring home my tupperware whenever possible. When the Tanner feast was dropped off, she assured us that there was no need to return the tupperware. We insisted we would. She insisted that it wasn't necessary, but it would be alright if it wasn't an inconvenience. This is code for "she really wants them back." It's one of those codes like "shoes off or shoes on is fine," which really means "shoes off is fine and shoes on is not."

We ate the feast months ago, and then J washed the tupperware and then put them in a tied up plastic baggie which is now on top of our microwave. I keep on looking at the plastic baggie and forgetting what's in there. When I look inside, I remember that we really ought to drop off the Tanner tupperware. I'm tempted to move it somewhere out of the way, like on top of the fridge or down in the basement. The plastic bag on the microwave keeps the kitchen from looking completely clean. (As does the topsy turvy pile of incomplete tupperware bases and lids in the lower cabinet.) But if I move the tupperware out of sight, we'll surely never remember to bring it back to the Tanners.

It's a big problem. But today is a snow day, and this is what snow days are for.

I think James and I will start work on the problem by doing some drumming.