2. neque chorda sonum reddit quem volt manus et mens--Horace
Nor does the instrument always return the sound which the hand and mind desire.
Friday, January 29, 2016
Miscellanea
1. Apparently Iran just flew a drone over a US warship. Here are three absurd points that came out of the news coverage. First, the comment by an Iranian navy chief praising the "bravery of the drone operators." I suppose that it must take some small portion of bravery to operate an expensive bit of equipment knowing that you might wreck something that cost quite a bit of money if you mess up your job...but still, how does any military drone operation constitute an act of bravery? Second, a US navy spokesperson called the act "abnormal and unprofessional." Unless the Iranian drone pilot had been intending to fly somewhere else and bad accidentally flown over the USS Harry S Truman, it seems that the action was extremely professional! The third point, of course, is that the action was eminently normal as well. The United States military (for whose expert defense we are all appropriately grateful) routinely flies drone operations over international waters. Only a fool would have any doubt that drone operations, both of an intelligence and offensive nature, are also routinely carried out unsanctioned over the territories of other sovereign states. Something interesting and worth comment happened over the Harry S Truman recently, but the only news I've read is disgraceful to common sense and to the English language.
Jam and Bread
Owen was up early this morning. I first heard him at 6:30. I waited and continued reading down at my desk for about 5 minutes, but the noise didn't abate.
"Little stinker." I muttered.
I went upstairs in the dark, cracked open his door, and walked inside.
He stopped squalking, popped up, and declared "Uh-oh!"
I changed his diaper, turned off his space heater, and brought him downstairs for a quiet hour of reading and sipping coffee at my desk while he gently drowned against my chest under the blanket.
Just kidding, of course. Really I took my increasingly cold coffee in unsatisfying gulps between his lunging swipes at my coffee, my pen, and my book.
Eventually I gave up. I packed up my desk, turned out the little lamp, and brought him into the dimly lit dining room. It was just starting to get light outside, but all the blinds were still drawn. The heat had kicked in, and it was pleasantly warm and dark.
"Owen, would you like some breakfast?"
"Unh!" <vigorous nodding>
I set him down in his high chair and explored our dwindling end-of-month breakfast options. No more bananas, no more clementines...hmmm.
"Owen, do you want bread?"
"Unh!" <vigorous nodding>
Julie has been making homemade bread a lot this January, and there were four pieces of delicious white bread left on the counter.
"And a little jam?"
"Uh-oh!" <bucking excitement>
I put a thin scraping of jam on his bread, cut it into Owen-sized bites, and placed them on his tray. He munched on them bit by bit, occasionally dropping one onto the floor "accidentally" ("uh-oh!") while I ate a bowl of cereal.
I checked the time, and realized that I needed to start getting ready to leave for rehearsal. I stood up and flicked on the dining room light, then looked at Owen and gaped.
The haircut.
He and James had their hair cut last night while I was practicing. I'd cleaned up the floor and the little tufts of dark hair around James' seat while J bathed them, but she must have cut Owen's hair in his high chair. It was dark when I cleaned up, and I must have missed the fine little clippings of light blonde hair.
The light blonde hair that he'd been eating in for the last 20 minutes. Eating raspberry jam.
He grinned at me.
"Uh-oh!" <extends arms>
...
...
...
"Good morning sweetie, I've gotta get going to rehearsal. Here's Owen, by the way."
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Pensees
I. Horse Dreams
Yesterday afternoon I had a striking and sudden daydream--not sure if that's even the right word--that would have lead me straight to a soothsayer if I had been a Roman. Even now we'd be looking at bird entrails.
I imagined us stabling horses behind our house. I imagined walking out to a barn in black rubber boots and pulling down harnesses, reins, and saddles from large iron nails and leading out a beautiful old mare that was well past mothering years and was going to spend her old age in our care. I imagined little boys growing up with the sound of hooves and snorts and whishing tails in their ears, and thought about all the hundreds of years that humankind and horsekind were in partnership. In the daydream there were vines planted behind the house on a gentle hill that had been dug up just for that purpose.
Next, just as vividly, I imagined crouching down over the kitchen floor and pulling back the old laminate so that I could put in some new tile. I imagined rented tools in the garage, and the stove and refrigerator looking out of place while they waited in the living room for the job to be done. I had no help--I had graphing paper and measuring tape on the kitchen table, and I could smell the old house smell under the section of floor that was already ripped up.
It was mildly terrifying.
I'm not sure where the horse daydream came from, but as soon as I think about it I can remember the smell of my parent's old couch where Sam, Pax, and I would stand looking out through the big living room window that faced south and watch the horses that were pastured across the road. Sometimes we'd get walked over across the road and try to screw up the nerve to offer one of them a handful of clover. (Between the possible nip of the electric fence and the smell of their breath and the peril of the teeth, I'm not sure that I attempted this terribly often.) There certainly is something beautiful about a little boy watching a horse in wonder and fascination.
II. Roasting Coffee
I get Yirgacheffe coffee about every other order, because it's a good bit more expensive than the other varieties. I'll get something cheaper, and then by the time that I'm halfway through the bag I've realized that it simply isn't as good as the Yirgacheffe and that I'm willing to pay for the top-quality bean the next time I order. This time I wanted to save a little money and ordered the Tanzanian Peaberry. The first time I roasted it I burnt it badly--it doesn't crack nearly as audibly as any other coffees I've worked with, and I ended up stopping the roast at the burnt smell instead of the usual timing by listening. Yesterday I watched the roast (and sprayed empty husks everywhere) but came up with a much better tasting result.
III. Food in Company
Last night J got up from her book, went into the kitchen, and came back with a bowl of chips. Guess what I was doing five minutes later? Yes, eating chips and salsa. (Supper was a bowl of soup of 5 PM...we were both hungry.) But I never would have left the warmth of my blanket if she hadn't gotten up first. I think that social context is an underrated factor in eating choices. How many times do I have seconds if no one else at the table is having seconds? How many times do I turn down second helpings if everyone else is reaching in? When I eat with 90 lb vegetarian friend, neither of us are likely to finish all the food on our plate. When I eat with the trombone section of the orchestra, I'm very likely to finish my plate and have an extra half a beer as well. When I eat with J, we eat healthy and we usually don't have extra helpings. And eating with the tuba player is maybe the most impressive/disturbing thing you've ever seen.
N.B. J says she felt disgusting after eating chips at 9 PM and is never going to do it again.
IV. Food in the Iliad
I'm in Book 24 of the Iliad, the greatest and most beautiful chapter ever written. How many hero stories do you know of where the two mortal enemies (if you could consider Priam to the the "enemy" of Achilles...Achilles is really everyone's enemy, including his own) reach the climactic moment by grieving together over their losses, neither softening nor changing from their purposes, but sharing tears, honor, and then sharing a meal together? Bread, meat, and sleep...good gifts from the gods.
V. Maps
I love the map of the Mediterranean in my study. I think James gets his love of maps from me. I'd love to put some more maps up, and I know that somewhere out there is a devoted reader of this blog who used to subscribe to National Geographic and now has, sitting in a pile somewhere, a stack of old maps that they are hoping to give away for semi-educational purposes. Dear Reader, if you have maps of England, France, the Levant, or New York, I am especially interested.
VI. Florida
As far as I know my Mother and Father are still in Florida. (I'm not exactly sure when they left or are planning on coming back.) Florida is such a beautiful name for a state. (It means Flowers in Latin). It sounds even more beautiful when you look out on muddy sidewalks, piles of gray snow, and a bleak, colorless sky. I hope they're having a great time.
VII. Darwin
Reading the whole Darwin book is going to be an exercise in concentration--there are certainly sections of interest, but these only develop gradually as a punctuated variation from long passages of extremely technical biological details. (See what I did there?) One redeeming feature--he was a man (and a writer) intensely and infectiously interested in everything that he wrote about. When someone enthusiastically loves their subject, even if that subject is the tailfeathers of domestic pigeons (a species much-loved and cultivated) they are highly readable.
Yesterday afternoon I had a striking and sudden daydream--not sure if that's even the right word--that would have lead me straight to a soothsayer if I had been a Roman. Even now we'd be looking at bird entrails.
I imagined us stabling horses behind our house. I imagined walking out to a barn in black rubber boots and pulling down harnesses, reins, and saddles from large iron nails and leading out a beautiful old mare that was well past mothering years and was going to spend her old age in our care. I imagined little boys growing up with the sound of hooves and snorts and whishing tails in their ears, and thought about all the hundreds of years that humankind and horsekind were in partnership. In the daydream there were vines planted behind the house on a gentle hill that had been dug up just for that purpose.
Next, just as vividly, I imagined crouching down over the kitchen floor and pulling back the old laminate so that I could put in some new tile. I imagined rented tools in the garage, and the stove and refrigerator looking out of place while they waited in the living room for the job to be done. I had no help--I had graphing paper and measuring tape on the kitchen table, and I could smell the old house smell under the section of floor that was already ripped up.
It was mildly terrifying.
I'm not sure where the horse daydream came from, but as soon as I think about it I can remember the smell of my parent's old couch where Sam, Pax, and I would stand looking out through the big living room window that faced south and watch the horses that were pastured across the road. Sometimes we'd get walked over across the road and try to screw up the nerve to offer one of them a handful of clover. (Between the possible nip of the electric fence and the smell of their breath and the peril of the teeth, I'm not sure that I attempted this terribly often.) There certainly is something beautiful about a little boy watching a horse in wonder and fascination.
II. Roasting Coffee
I get Yirgacheffe coffee about every other order, because it's a good bit more expensive than the other varieties. I'll get something cheaper, and then by the time that I'm halfway through the bag I've realized that it simply isn't as good as the Yirgacheffe and that I'm willing to pay for the top-quality bean the next time I order. This time I wanted to save a little money and ordered the Tanzanian Peaberry. The first time I roasted it I burnt it badly--it doesn't crack nearly as audibly as any other coffees I've worked with, and I ended up stopping the roast at the burnt smell instead of the usual timing by listening. Yesterday I watched the roast (and sprayed empty husks everywhere) but came up with a much better tasting result.
III. Food in Company
Last night J got up from her book, went into the kitchen, and came back with a bowl of chips. Guess what I was doing five minutes later? Yes, eating chips and salsa. (Supper was a bowl of soup of 5 PM...we were both hungry.) But I never would have left the warmth of my blanket if she hadn't gotten up first. I think that social context is an underrated factor in eating choices. How many times do I have seconds if no one else at the table is having seconds? How many times do I turn down second helpings if everyone else is reaching in? When I eat with 90 lb vegetarian friend, neither of us are likely to finish all the food on our plate. When I eat with the trombone section of the orchestra, I'm very likely to finish my plate and have an extra half a beer as well. When I eat with J, we eat healthy and we usually don't have extra helpings. And eating with the tuba player is maybe the most impressive/disturbing thing you've ever seen.
N.B. J says she felt disgusting after eating chips at 9 PM and is never going to do it again.
IV. Food in the Iliad
I'm in Book 24 of the Iliad, the greatest and most beautiful chapter ever written. How many hero stories do you know of where the two mortal enemies (if you could consider Priam to the the "enemy" of Achilles...Achilles is really everyone's enemy, including his own) reach the climactic moment by grieving together over their losses, neither softening nor changing from their purposes, but sharing tears, honor, and then sharing a meal together? Bread, meat, and sleep...good gifts from the gods.
V. Maps
I love the map of the Mediterranean in my study. I think James gets his love of maps from me. I'd love to put some more maps up, and I know that somewhere out there is a devoted reader of this blog who used to subscribe to National Geographic and now has, sitting in a pile somewhere, a stack of old maps that they are hoping to give away for semi-educational purposes. Dear Reader, if you have maps of England, France, the Levant, or New York, I am especially interested.
VI. Florida
As far as I know my Mother and Father are still in Florida. (I'm not exactly sure when they left or are planning on coming back.) Florida is such a beautiful name for a state. (It means Flowers in Latin). It sounds even more beautiful when you look out on muddy sidewalks, piles of gray snow, and a bleak, colorless sky. I hope they're having a great time.
VII. Darwin
Reading the whole Darwin book is going to be an exercise in concentration--there are certainly sections of interest, but these only develop gradually as a punctuated variation from long passages of extremely technical biological details. (See what I did there?) One redeeming feature--he was a man (and a writer) intensely and infectiously interested in everything that he wrote about. When someone enthusiastically loves their subject, even if that subject is the tailfeathers of domestic pigeons (a species much-loved and cultivated) they are highly readable.
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Quick Hitters
I. Berkeley
Finished a survey of the works of George Berkeley early this morning, who may have earned the dubious honor of being the most misunderstood man in the history of philosophy. It took a rare set of circumstances and mistakes for him to be popularly perceived as supporting the exact opposite view of the nature of reality, perception, and the philosophical task as the one he intended to promote. This is even more ironic for the reason that one of his principal points of emphasis was the use of clear and straightforward language. On now to The Origin of Species, which, in the words of GKC "a great many people are under the delusion that they have read."
II. Pancake Breakfast
We had to wait a little bit longer for breakfast this morning, since J made pancakes from scratch. One of my favorite parts of pancake breakfast is to tease James about how I'm going to eat the entire plate full of pancakes and will spare, at the very most, perhaps a half a pancake for him. By the time the pancakes are prepared he's so hungry that he isn't thinking rationally anyway, but I would have thought that by now he'd realize that I'm only teasing him and that there's no possible way I would even be able to eat the whole plate, let alone be so rude as to not share any with him. But no, every single time we have pancakes he comes to me with a nervous and imploring look to make sure that "you aren't gonna eat ALL of them, right Daddy?" It's a regular thing that we do now, sort of like taking his socks off before putting him in the bath. Whenever I have the tub running and am stripping him down for his bath, I always pretend to forget to take off his socks once I've got the rest of him denuded, and then lift him up and ALMOST put him in the tub while he hollers and kicks and protests that I forgot to take his socks off. I then pretend to realize my near-mistake and finally take them off. This has happened so often that he starts reminding me to take his socks off before we even go upstairs, and of course to take Owen's socks off as well. The difference with this situation is that I did once, when he was wearing a particularly ratty pair of old socks, dump him into the tub with his socks still on. (The scream could be heard for miles.) I would make an attempt to actually eat all of the pancakes myself some morning just to inspire a similar neurosis about the pancake problem, but J makes pancakes particularly rich, and I think I would just about burst.
III. $35
I made a promise at the beginning of the year (recorded on a napkin at a Chik Fil-A, then posted on Facebook) that I did not need to buy any trumpets this year. I am, of course, sticking to this promise, and it should be an easy one to keep. I'm perfectly happy with the instruments that I have, and I am (for the first time ever) not lacking any major pieces to the collection of instruments I would conceivably need to do the jobs I'm working. Now the napkin doesn't say anything at all about restraint in the matter of mouthpieces or mutes, but I would be kidding myself if I didn't acknowledge that the spirit of the napkin didn't cover those sorts of purchases as well. And here's the thing--there's a mouthpiece on eBay that I find very intriguing. J has long preferred the sound of one particular cut and style of mouthpiece to all my other ones in a number of blind tests, and this new eBay mouthpiece is that exact model but with a rim I might find more comfortable to play on. It would be $35...how do I convince her that I ought to purchase this new mouthpiece--which by her own testimony makes for the most desirable presentation of my sound--without violating, at least in spirit, the agreement that I signed with her at the beginning of the year. (And yes, I acknowledge that we aren't even out of January yet.) I suspect that the answer is to passive-aggressively write about it in a public space and semi-shame her into acknowledging that I really ought to go ahead and get the mouthpiece, because, after all, it's awfully cheap and maybe this mouthpiece could be a really good thing for our family happiness.
But this trick will probably only work once, so I sure hope this mouthpiece is worth it.
Finished a survey of the works of George Berkeley early this morning, who may have earned the dubious honor of being the most misunderstood man in the history of philosophy. It took a rare set of circumstances and mistakes for him to be popularly perceived as supporting the exact opposite view of the nature of reality, perception, and the philosophical task as the one he intended to promote. This is even more ironic for the reason that one of his principal points of emphasis was the use of clear and straightforward language. On now to The Origin of Species, which, in the words of GKC "a great many people are under the delusion that they have read."
II. Pancake Breakfast
We had to wait a little bit longer for breakfast this morning, since J made pancakes from scratch. One of my favorite parts of pancake breakfast is to tease James about how I'm going to eat the entire plate full of pancakes and will spare, at the very most, perhaps a half a pancake for him. By the time the pancakes are prepared he's so hungry that he isn't thinking rationally anyway, but I would have thought that by now he'd realize that I'm only teasing him and that there's no possible way I would even be able to eat the whole plate, let alone be so rude as to not share any with him. But no, every single time we have pancakes he comes to me with a nervous and imploring look to make sure that "you aren't gonna eat ALL of them, right Daddy?" It's a regular thing that we do now, sort of like taking his socks off before putting him in the bath. Whenever I have the tub running and am stripping him down for his bath, I always pretend to forget to take off his socks once I've got the rest of him denuded, and then lift him up and ALMOST put him in the tub while he hollers and kicks and protests that I forgot to take his socks off. I then pretend to realize my near-mistake and finally take them off. This has happened so often that he starts reminding me to take his socks off before we even go upstairs, and of course to take Owen's socks off as well. The difference with this situation is that I did once, when he was wearing a particularly ratty pair of old socks, dump him into the tub with his socks still on. (The scream could be heard for miles.) I would make an attempt to actually eat all of the pancakes myself some morning just to inspire a similar neurosis about the pancake problem, but J makes pancakes particularly rich, and I think I would just about burst.
III. $35
I made a promise at the beginning of the year (recorded on a napkin at a Chik Fil-A, then posted on Facebook) that I did not need to buy any trumpets this year. I am, of course, sticking to this promise, and it should be an easy one to keep. I'm perfectly happy with the instruments that I have, and I am (for the first time ever) not lacking any major pieces to the collection of instruments I would conceivably need to do the jobs I'm working. Now the napkin doesn't say anything at all about restraint in the matter of mouthpieces or mutes, but I would be kidding myself if I didn't acknowledge that the spirit of the napkin didn't cover those sorts of purchases as well. And here's the thing--there's a mouthpiece on eBay that I find very intriguing. J has long preferred the sound of one particular cut and style of mouthpiece to all my other ones in a number of blind tests, and this new eBay mouthpiece is that exact model but with a rim I might find more comfortable to play on. It would be $35...how do I convince her that I ought to purchase this new mouthpiece--which by her own testimony makes for the most desirable presentation of my sound--without violating, at least in spirit, the agreement that I signed with her at the beginning of the year. (And yes, I acknowledge that we aren't even out of January yet.) I suspect that the answer is to passive-aggressively write about it in a public space and semi-shame her into acknowledging that I really ought to go ahead and get the mouthpiece, because, after all, it's awfully cheap and maybe this mouthpiece could be a really good thing for our family happiness.
But this trick will probably only work once, so I sure hope this mouthpiece is worth it.
Saturday, January 23, 2016
Quick Hitters
I. German Philosophers
Proximally, factical Dasein is in the with-world, which is discovered in an average way.
II. Enchiladas
James reasons thus with respect to suppertime:
1) I'd like to have a ham and cheese sandwich with spicy mustard cut into triangles. This is the best option.
2) My favorite side-food to a ham and cheese sandwich is a pickle, because it's spicy.
3) There is no way that I will ever eat an enchilada, because it might be spicy.
III. Ironing Shirts
Having a closet full of neatly ironed shirts is quite gratifying. It's similarly gratifying to pull on a shirt that's been perfectly pressed and folded neatly on its hangar. But do you know what the problem is? I have to wear a shirt every day, and I usually make it a point to change shirts between days. This means seven shirts a week, and I'm not sure that keeping up with the ironing is worth the gratification of the neat closet and the sharp collars. I need some sort of additional incentive if this is going to last.
IV. Bells Up
I'm still waiting for the magic pill of trumpet playing. Somewhere out there is a mouthpiece that magically extends my range an octave in both directions, plays without fatigue for hours on end, and carries the power of a supersonic jet encased in velvet. Likewise, there's a straight mute on a shelf in some music store that plays pianissimos as delicate as a spider-web and fortissimos as cutting as a diamond-tipped drill bit. All of my "magic pills" so far, however, have had results like "sounds louder but makes your low register super flat," or "the intonation is better on that one, but what happened to your high range?" Practicing in the bottom level of the Civic Center this morning, however, I did find a very nice magic pill. When I lift my bell up out of my stand and hold my trumpet level, it sounds better. There's no way that I could have possibly known this before, because my graduate school teacher reminded me of the concept continuously for two years straight and wrote it out in big capital letters on a piece of paper that he told me to hang up in whatever room I practiced in for the forseeable future, and insisted that whatever the legacy of his instruction to me might be, he hoped that at least people would be able to say "Well, he fixed his horn angle."
That was a judicious use of $80,000.
V. Recently Reading
Just finished A.N. Wilson's biography of Tolstoy, currently slowly working through the MCLE collection on Existentialism. Through Kierkegaard, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Hesse, Heidegger, and Marcel, I'm feeling distinctly anti-German. Maybe you have to read it in the original to appreciate it? I miss Thomas Merton.
Proximally, factical Dasein is in the with-world, which is discovered in an average way.
II. Enchiladas
James reasons thus with respect to suppertime:
1) I'd like to have a ham and cheese sandwich with spicy mustard cut into triangles. This is the best option.
2) My favorite side-food to a ham and cheese sandwich is a pickle, because it's spicy.
3) There is no way that I will ever eat an enchilada, because it might be spicy.
III. Ironing Shirts
Having a closet full of neatly ironed shirts is quite gratifying. It's similarly gratifying to pull on a shirt that's been perfectly pressed and folded neatly on its hangar. But do you know what the problem is? I have to wear a shirt every day, and I usually make it a point to change shirts between days. This means seven shirts a week, and I'm not sure that keeping up with the ironing is worth the gratification of the neat closet and the sharp collars. I need some sort of additional incentive if this is going to last.
IV. Bells Up
I'm still waiting for the magic pill of trumpet playing. Somewhere out there is a mouthpiece that magically extends my range an octave in both directions, plays without fatigue for hours on end, and carries the power of a supersonic jet encased in velvet. Likewise, there's a straight mute on a shelf in some music store that plays pianissimos as delicate as a spider-web and fortissimos as cutting as a diamond-tipped drill bit. All of my "magic pills" so far, however, have had results like "sounds louder but makes your low register super flat," or "the intonation is better on that one, but what happened to your high range?" Practicing in the bottom level of the Civic Center this morning, however, I did find a very nice magic pill. When I lift my bell up out of my stand and hold my trumpet level, it sounds better. There's no way that I could have possibly known this before, because my graduate school teacher reminded me of the concept continuously for two years straight and wrote it out in big capital letters on a piece of paper that he told me to hang up in whatever room I practiced in for the forseeable future, and insisted that whatever the legacy of his instruction to me might be, he hoped that at least people would be able to say "Well, he fixed his horn angle."
That was a judicious use of $80,000.
V. Recently Reading
Just finished A.N. Wilson's biography of Tolstoy, currently slowly working through the MCLE collection on Existentialism. Through Kierkegaard, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Hesse, Heidegger, and Marcel, I'm feeling distinctly anti-German. Maybe you have to read it in the original to appreciate it? I miss Thomas Merton.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Reading Audience
Every once in a while I post something that elicits some responses and reminds me, with a bit of a wide-eyed jolt, that people actually read this blog. In that spirit, I looked up the stats tab of "traffic sources" and discovered the following:
1) The majority of traffic that arrives on this blog comes from the Korean version of Google. I thought for several minutes about the few Korean friends I have, pondered whether my sister-in-law might secretly be connecting with her heritage by doing her internet searches in Korean (answer:no) and came to the conclusion that my site address must closely resemble some culturally important Korean site. To all of the Korean searchers to have ended up on my blog accidentally, I'm very sorry that you missed your turn. Please feel free to have a look around and enjoy the two trouble-making boys' antics before you depart. Unless you are some sort of creepy identity thief, in which case I'm going to start writing all of my blogs in Latin.
2) The American version of Google is my next largest internet source, followed by references to previous entries that I've made on my own blog. This all seems normal.
3) The next highest source for traffic was a random string of numbers. I decided to click it and see what happened, and then quickly thought better of myself. What if this website was some sort of phishing high-tech scam? Or something dirty and pornographic? Was this a safe decision? I then remembered that I have another 5 hours to kill before the concert tonight, so I decided to click and see what happened. I got a dead webpage.
4) The next most popular sources of web traffic (generating one pageview each) were 100searchengines.com, a blog called BudgetConfidential, and the British version of Google. Probably the Brit stumbled upon my blog by searching for some very technical and highly skilled literary criticism, like the time I wrote about when Owen tried to eat my copy of Milton's complete poems. I hope they weren't too disappointed.
5) Last of all, generating one page view, and I truly have no explanation for this...yeastinfection.org
6) 42% of my readers use the browser Safari, 20% use Chrome, 19% use Firefox, and apparently 12% use Internet Explorer, although I find it hard to believe that the Internet Explorer number could possibly be that high. Probably the Microsoft Corporation paid Blogger to artificially inflate that number. 86% of readers were either using a Windows operating system or running iOS. Apparently someone somewhere has accessed my blog using Linux.
7) By country, I've received 418 pageviews from my fatherland, the good old USA. Next is South Korea (again, I think you have the wrong stop) at 41, and then Russia at 16. Portugal (?) is next at 10, 5 from Ireland and Poland, 4 from France, 2 from Slovakia, and 1 each from Canada and Germany. I would have thought that Canada could do better. Where I'm currently writing this in Buffalo, I can pretty much see Canada over the river. Get your act together, Canada.
1) The majority of traffic that arrives on this blog comes from the Korean version of Google. I thought for several minutes about the few Korean friends I have, pondered whether my sister-in-law might secretly be connecting with her heritage by doing her internet searches in Korean (answer:no) and came to the conclusion that my site address must closely resemble some culturally important Korean site. To all of the Korean searchers to have ended up on my blog accidentally, I'm very sorry that you missed your turn. Please feel free to have a look around and enjoy the two trouble-making boys' antics before you depart. Unless you are some sort of creepy identity thief, in which case I'm going to start writing all of my blogs in Latin.
2) The American version of Google is my next largest internet source, followed by references to previous entries that I've made on my own blog. This all seems normal.
3) The next highest source for traffic was a random string of numbers. I decided to click it and see what happened, and then quickly thought better of myself. What if this website was some sort of phishing high-tech scam? Or something dirty and pornographic? Was this a safe decision? I then remembered that I have another 5 hours to kill before the concert tonight, so I decided to click and see what happened. I got a dead webpage.
4) The next most popular sources of web traffic (generating one pageview each) were 100searchengines.com, a blog called BudgetConfidential, and the British version of Google. Probably the Brit stumbled upon my blog by searching for some very technical and highly skilled literary criticism, like the time I wrote about when Owen tried to eat my copy of Milton's complete poems. I hope they weren't too disappointed.
5) Last of all, generating one page view, and I truly have no explanation for this...yeastinfection.org
6) 42% of my readers use the browser Safari, 20% use Chrome, 19% use Firefox, and apparently 12% use Internet Explorer, although I find it hard to believe that the Internet Explorer number could possibly be that high. Probably the Microsoft Corporation paid Blogger to artificially inflate that number. 86% of readers were either using a Windows operating system or running iOS. Apparently someone somewhere has accessed my blog using Linux.
7) By country, I've received 418 pageviews from my fatherland, the good old USA. Next is South Korea (again, I think you have the wrong stop) at 41, and then Russia at 16. Portugal (?) is next at 10, 5 from Ireland and Poland, 4 from France, 2 from Slovakia, and 1 each from Canada and Germany. I would have thought that Canada could do better. Where I'm currently writing this in Buffalo, I can pretty much see Canada over the river. Get your act together, Canada.
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Uh-Oh
Owen's vocabulary has regressed. He used to say Mama and Dada and make intelligible enough noises to convey "yes" and "no." But now he only says one very appropriate word.
"Uh-oh."
He's remarkably expressive with this one word. By his inflection, posture, pace, and cadence he's able to convey poetry in just those two little syllables. Granted, most of the poems are about dropping inappropriate objects into the toilet, but still...poetry. He says it languidly, and always at a slightly softer dynamic than his normal level of verbal noise. He makes no pretense of being genuinely surprised at whatever he's "uh-oh"--ing, but you really do believe it's an authentic expression of reaction. More than his older brother ever did at his age, Owen makes eye contact. If you're in the room with him, he'll turn his head towards you before he says it, and then with big blue eyes turned up towards yours his mouth opens and, "uh-oh."
As I said, it's become his only word. He says it, of course, whenever anybody drops something or knocks something over. Sometimes, as a precautionary measure, he'll say "uh-oh" BEFORE he drops an object out of his crib throws a handful of food out of his high chair. It's best not to take chances, after all, when you can avoid them. But "uh-oh" extends to so many other situations, as we've discovered. If he tips over while walking, it's "uh-oh." If he stands up from a sitting position, that's "uh-oh" as well. If anyone opens or closes a door or a cabinet, that's "uh-oh." Opening the oven door, opening a bag of apples, taking off or putting on one's shoes--all "uh-oh."
My entry into his room this morning was greeted with an "uh-oh," although this was probably merited, as he had his arm wedged between two of his crib slats and his leg between three others, effectively pinning himself in place. He also said "uh-oh" upon seeing J, although we couldn't determine the reason for this. (Was it the fact that she was wearing glasses? Did he think her hair was disorderly? Did he think his hair was disorderly?) He certainly does greet every sight of himself in the mirror with an "uh-oh," and anytime he sees a stranger or a dog passing by on the street. (This is also followed by furious waving.)
Any attempt by his parents to clean a room or prepare a meal is an occasion for "uh-oh." Disconcertingly, we often hear soft "uh-ohs" from the other room when we aren't present. We never know whether the boy is simply stuck on the threshold from the dining room to the library, or whether one of us left the bathroom door ajar and he's trying to drop his sippy cup into the potty. (Again.) We cannot tell whether his obnoxious walker is on low batteries again (the demise of this noisy machine would not merit an "uh-oh" from either of us) or whether he managed to crawl up a chair and is standing on the table. (Again.) He might have dropped a plastic tool behind the couch, or he might have just turned over a basket of freshly folded laundry. (For the third time today.)
Yes, Owen needs to expand his vocabulary. My personal goal is to teach him the phrase: "The catastrophe that I'm currently engaged in is______." If he could fill in the blanks for us we wouldn't need to hurry away from our coffee to determine whether or not his "uh-oh" is supposed to signify "I can no longer see the train on my sock" or "I have pulled down a cutting board and two sharp knives from the kitchen island."
Guess what he's saying out in the family room even as I hurry up and publish this blog.
"Uh-oh."
He's remarkably expressive with this one word. By his inflection, posture, pace, and cadence he's able to convey poetry in just those two little syllables. Granted, most of the poems are about dropping inappropriate objects into the toilet, but still...poetry. He says it languidly, and always at a slightly softer dynamic than his normal level of verbal noise. He makes no pretense of being genuinely surprised at whatever he's "uh-oh"--ing, but you really do believe it's an authentic expression of reaction. More than his older brother ever did at his age, Owen makes eye contact. If you're in the room with him, he'll turn his head towards you before he says it, and then with big blue eyes turned up towards yours his mouth opens and, "uh-oh."
As I said, it's become his only word. He says it, of course, whenever anybody drops something or knocks something over. Sometimes, as a precautionary measure, he'll say "uh-oh" BEFORE he drops an object out of his crib throws a handful of food out of his high chair. It's best not to take chances, after all, when you can avoid them. But "uh-oh" extends to so many other situations, as we've discovered. If he tips over while walking, it's "uh-oh." If he stands up from a sitting position, that's "uh-oh" as well. If anyone opens or closes a door or a cabinet, that's "uh-oh." Opening the oven door, opening a bag of apples, taking off or putting on one's shoes--all "uh-oh."
My entry into his room this morning was greeted with an "uh-oh," although this was probably merited, as he had his arm wedged between two of his crib slats and his leg between three others, effectively pinning himself in place. He also said "uh-oh" upon seeing J, although we couldn't determine the reason for this. (Was it the fact that she was wearing glasses? Did he think her hair was disorderly? Did he think his hair was disorderly?) He certainly does greet every sight of himself in the mirror with an "uh-oh," and anytime he sees a stranger or a dog passing by on the street. (This is also followed by furious waving.)
Any attempt by his parents to clean a room or prepare a meal is an occasion for "uh-oh." Disconcertingly, we often hear soft "uh-ohs" from the other room when we aren't present. We never know whether the boy is simply stuck on the threshold from the dining room to the library, or whether one of us left the bathroom door ajar and he's trying to drop his sippy cup into the potty. (Again.) We cannot tell whether his obnoxious walker is on low batteries again (the demise of this noisy machine would not merit an "uh-oh" from either of us) or whether he managed to crawl up a chair and is standing on the table. (Again.) He might have dropped a plastic tool behind the couch, or he might have just turned over a basket of freshly folded laundry. (For the third time today.)
Yes, Owen needs to expand his vocabulary. My personal goal is to teach him the phrase: "The catastrophe that I'm currently engaged in is______." If he could fill in the blanks for us we wouldn't need to hurry away from our coffee to determine whether or not his "uh-oh" is supposed to signify "I can no longer see the train on my sock" or "I have pulled down a cutting board and two sharp knives from the kitchen island."
Guess what he's saying out in the family room even as I hurry up and publish this blog.
Monday, January 18, 2016
Practicing Problems
I'm slowly driving everybody nuts, including myself.
It's a daily thing...going down to the basement, pulling out the trumpet, warming up, and practicing.
Often it happens twice a day. It's never less than forty-five minutes, and often runs close to an hour and a half. I think that to the uninitiated, the idea of living in close quarters with a professional musician might have some appeal. Don't you get to hear beautiful melodies all day?
No, you don't. You get to hear lip-slurs. And etudes. And exercises designed to stretch the outer reaches of one's range, up to those shrieky high notes that only dogs can hear. And then comes the part where I look at my folder for the following week and put on loud, blasting drones. (They have to be loud, otherwise I can't hear them over the loud trumpet.) The drones go on, well, droning, for a very long time, and then the metronome starts.
TOCK TOCK TOCK TOCK TOCK TOCK
It keeps on going while the kids have utterly given up reading quietly and are now throwing legos at the stairs and shrieking.
TOCK TOCK TOCK TOCK TOCK TOCK
And then, just when J is almost certainly going to start ripping out her hair in clumps in frustration at the drone and the metronome and the second trumpet part that is very beautiful in the context of a whole Beethoven symphony but isn't anything other than the same two notes over and over again when practiced on its own, it's all of a sudden time to switch--to the piccolo trumpet. Or to a bunch of audition excerpts that she's heard me preparing continuously for the last eight years. Or to some awful extended technique work.
Actually, that's pretty much normal life for a trumpet player. The problem is that it takes place eight feet directly below her feet, and the floor isn't particularly soundproof. And the kids, while handling it pretty well for a four-year old and a 15 month old, tend to just get even louder when there's trumpet noise coming from the basement.
I think it's going to kill her, eventually. When I go downstairs to practice she looks happy and fresh and cute and rosy-cheeked, glad to accommodate my professional obligations for an hour or so. She'll play with the kids, she'll maybe bake something, and be sure to come up by lunch, because it's going to be good today.
When I return her hair is matted and sticking up in odd directions, and there's a wild, desperate look in her eyes. She looks like one who has aged many years over the course of just one hour-long practice session, and she has the haunted expression of one who has seen war and destruction. (Maybe this means that I'm beginning to get the right sort of character for Ein Heldenleben.) She winces every time the kids make a noise, and she has a slightly unsteady gait...yes, the trumpet playing is definitely going to kill her one of these days.
So the question is, what should I do?
Here's what I've come up with so far:
1) Practice after hours at the church down the road. This isn't a bad idea at all, and I do it sometimes. It means being gone in the evening, when we finally have a chance to see each other alone, but I can play as loud and as long as I need to, and it doesn't disturb anybody. Granted, it's a bit of a walk and it's usually pretty cold in there, but that isn't the biggest obstacle--the biggest problem is that I can never tell when there's going to be somebody else in the facility. A few weeks ago I waited around until almost 11 PM just for a group to leave. That turned an hour of practicing into three or four hours of frustration.
2) Soundproofing the basement. At J's parents house, which was designed for musicians by musicians, the soundproofing is excellent. I can disappear into their teaching studio and play as loud as I want. I think that it's audible in the rest of the house, but it doesn't have nearly the same piercing, penetrating, soul-sucking volume that it does at our place. When I practice there, no one is driven insane by the volume of the trumpet noise or the click of the metronome. They are only driven insane by the repetitive repertoire choices and the fatherless children running about. The obstacle to soundproofing our basement is that it would probably be really expensive and I have no idea how to do it. If we ever build a place for ourselves--and I very much doubt that will ever happen, but you never know--we will make sure that there is an airtight trumpet-proof chamber located somewhere in the bowels of the basement. Preferably with a coffee-maker installed right into the wall.
3) Outside shed. I used to practice in outside "practice sheds" at one of the summer festivals I attended. They were hot and dark and unpleasant, but there's something kind of appealing about practicing in the great outdoors. The upside to this would be that I would hardly be audible at all to J and the boys. There are multiple downsides, however. First of all, acquiring a shed would be an expensive proposition, and then there's the whole issue of winter in Western New York. I suppose it would be possible to run a space heater out to the shed, but that means running power out to the shed...and that sounds complicated. Then there's the question of whether or not you keep instruments/music/mutes out in the shed or not, and finally the big issue--does it disturb the neighbors in our relatively close suburban street? (Probably yes.) So, there's a lot arguing against the shed.
If anyone else has any great ideas about how to deal with the practicing problem, I am ALL EARS. Because I think that if we let things go on like this indefinitely I could be in real peril. You wouldn't want to read a headline like this:
An area man is dead and his wife is in custody today after she unexpectedly bludgeoned him to death with his own metronome. The husband, a trumpet player, was apparently practicing in his own basement when the wife suddenly ran shrieking down the stairs, seized the metronome, and began rhythmically pounding it against his skull. Much of his equipment and numerous mouthpieces were also damaged in the attack, and while she was removed by mental health authorities, the assailant emerged from her catatonic state long enough to whisper to herself "No more lip slurs...no more lip slurs ever again."
It's a daily thing...going down to the basement, pulling out the trumpet, warming up, and practicing.
Often it happens twice a day. It's never less than forty-five minutes, and often runs close to an hour and a half. I think that to the uninitiated, the idea of living in close quarters with a professional musician might have some appeal. Don't you get to hear beautiful melodies all day?
No, you don't. You get to hear lip-slurs. And etudes. And exercises designed to stretch the outer reaches of one's range, up to those shrieky high notes that only dogs can hear. And then comes the part where I look at my folder for the following week and put on loud, blasting drones. (They have to be loud, otherwise I can't hear them over the loud trumpet.) The drones go on, well, droning, for a very long time, and then the metronome starts.
TOCK TOCK TOCK TOCK TOCK TOCK
It keeps on going while the kids have utterly given up reading quietly and are now throwing legos at the stairs and shrieking.
TOCK TOCK TOCK TOCK TOCK TOCK
And then, just when J is almost certainly going to start ripping out her hair in clumps in frustration at the drone and the metronome and the second trumpet part that is very beautiful in the context of a whole Beethoven symphony but isn't anything other than the same two notes over and over again when practiced on its own, it's all of a sudden time to switch--to the piccolo trumpet. Or to a bunch of audition excerpts that she's heard me preparing continuously for the last eight years. Or to some awful extended technique work.
Actually, that's pretty much normal life for a trumpet player. The problem is that it takes place eight feet directly below her feet, and the floor isn't particularly soundproof. And the kids, while handling it pretty well for a four-year old and a 15 month old, tend to just get even louder when there's trumpet noise coming from the basement.
I think it's going to kill her, eventually. When I go downstairs to practice she looks happy and fresh and cute and rosy-cheeked, glad to accommodate my professional obligations for an hour or so. She'll play with the kids, she'll maybe bake something, and be sure to come up by lunch, because it's going to be good today.
When I return her hair is matted and sticking up in odd directions, and there's a wild, desperate look in her eyes. She looks like one who has aged many years over the course of just one hour-long practice session, and she has the haunted expression of one who has seen war and destruction. (Maybe this means that I'm beginning to get the right sort of character for Ein Heldenleben.) She winces every time the kids make a noise, and she has a slightly unsteady gait...yes, the trumpet playing is definitely going to kill her one of these days.
So the question is, what should I do?
Here's what I've come up with so far:
1) Practice after hours at the church down the road. This isn't a bad idea at all, and I do it sometimes. It means being gone in the evening, when we finally have a chance to see each other alone, but I can play as loud and as long as I need to, and it doesn't disturb anybody. Granted, it's a bit of a walk and it's usually pretty cold in there, but that isn't the biggest obstacle--the biggest problem is that I can never tell when there's going to be somebody else in the facility. A few weeks ago I waited around until almost 11 PM just for a group to leave. That turned an hour of practicing into three or four hours of frustration.
2) Soundproofing the basement. At J's parents house, which was designed for musicians by musicians, the soundproofing is excellent. I can disappear into their teaching studio and play as loud as I want. I think that it's audible in the rest of the house, but it doesn't have nearly the same piercing, penetrating, soul-sucking volume that it does at our place. When I practice there, no one is driven insane by the volume of the trumpet noise or the click of the metronome. They are only driven insane by the repetitive repertoire choices and the fatherless children running about. The obstacle to soundproofing our basement is that it would probably be really expensive and I have no idea how to do it. If we ever build a place for ourselves--and I very much doubt that will ever happen, but you never know--we will make sure that there is an airtight trumpet-proof chamber located somewhere in the bowels of the basement. Preferably with a coffee-maker installed right into the wall.
3) Outside shed. I used to practice in outside "practice sheds" at one of the summer festivals I attended. They were hot and dark and unpleasant, but there's something kind of appealing about practicing in the great outdoors. The upside to this would be that I would hardly be audible at all to J and the boys. There are multiple downsides, however. First of all, acquiring a shed would be an expensive proposition, and then there's the whole issue of winter in Western New York. I suppose it would be possible to run a space heater out to the shed, but that means running power out to the shed...and that sounds complicated. Then there's the question of whether or not you keep instruments/music/mutes out in the shed or not, and finally the big issue--does it disturb the neighbors in our relatively close suburban street? (Probably yes.) So, there's a lot arguing against the shed.
If anyone else has any great ideas about how to deal with the practicing problem, I am ALL EARS. Because I think that if we let things go on like this indefinitely I could be in real peril. You wouldn't want to read a headline like this:
An area man is dead and his wife is in custody today after she unexpectedly bludgeoned him to death with his own metronome. The husband, a trumpet player, was apparently practicing in his own basement when the wife suddenly ran shrieking down the stairs, seized the metronome, and began rhythmically pounding it against his skull. Much of his equipment and numerous mouthpieces were also damaged in the attack, and while she was removed by mental health authorities, the assailant emerged from her catatonic state long enough to whisper to herself "No more lip slurs...no more lip slurs ever again."
Sunday, January 17, 2016
Mark Twain's Autobigraphy
The North thinks it knows how to make cornbread, but this is mere superstition. Perhaps no bread in the world is quite so good as Southern corn bread, and perhaps no bread in the world is quite so bad as the Northern imitation of it. The North seldom tries to fry chicken, and this is well; the art cannot be learned north of the line of Mason and Dixon, nor anywhere in Europe.
It seems a pity that the world should throw away so many good things merely because they are unwholesome. I doubt if God has given us any refreshment which, taken in moderation, is unwholesome, except microbes.
...and it had swimming pools too, which were forbidden to us and therefore much frequented by us. For we were little Christian children and had early been taught the value of forbidden fruit.
There were no dentists. When teeth became touched with decay or were otherwise ailing, the doctor knew but one thing to do--he fetched his tongs and dragged them out. If the jaw remained, it was not his fault. Doctors were not called in cases of ordinary illness; the family grandmother attended to those.
Dr. Meredith removed to Hannibal, by and by, and was our family physician there, and saved my life several times. Still, he was a good man and meant well.
I suppose we all have our foibles. I like the exact word, and clarity of statement, and here in there a touch a good grammar for picturesqueness.
I am as fond of complements as another, and as hard to satisfy as the average; but these satisfied me. I was pleased as you would have been if they had been paid to you.
...some fire-auction carpets which blaspheme the standards of color and art all day long, and are never quiet until the darkness comes and pacifies them.
Outside it are exceedingly heavy and coarse Venetian shutters, a fairly good defense against a catapult.
The average [Italian] villa is properly a hospital for ailing and superannuated furniture.
There is a trick about an American house that is like the deep-lying untranslatable idioms of a foreign language--a trick uncatchable by the stranger, a trick incommunicable and indescribable; and that elusive trick, that intangible something, whatever it is, is just the something that gives the home look and the home feeling to an American house and makes it the most satisfying refuge yet invented by men--and women, mainly women.
...a French which he could get a patent on, because he invented it himself...a French which curdles the milk.
...fragrant with the odors of Presbyterian sanctity...
Of the ninety-six creditors, only three or four stood out for rigorous and uncompromising measures against me and refused to relent. The others said I could go free and take my own time. They said they obstruct me in no way and would bring no actions and they kept their word. As to the three or four, I have never resented their animosity, except in my Autobiography--and even there, not in spite, not in malice, but only frankly and in only a brief chapter chapter which can never wound them, for I have every confidence that they will be in hell before it is printed.
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Take Me Out to the Hockey Game
James was pretty excited.
He knew we were going to a hockey game this week, but I think Friday sort of snuck up on him, but by the time he woke up from his nap ("Whaa...? is it time to go to the hockey game? Hey, I'm hungry!") he was beginning to get excited. Or, as he pronounced it, recited.
"Owen, are you recited to go to the hockey game? I bet you ARE! You've never been before! Mommy, are you recited to go the hockey game? I bet you are TOO. You nebber been ei-ber! Mater, are you recited to go to the hockey game?" (Mater voice) "Oh yeah, James, ah am!"
"James, do you know that we're probably going to leave everything in the car except George and Steven?"
(Mater voice) "Ah, okay. Ah'll jes' wait in the car for you, James!"
James talked about the hockey game all evening.This is no exaggeration. While he was shoveling lemon poppyseed pancakes into his mouth at dinner, he was still talking about the hockey game. While I was pulling his sweater and hockey "jersey" onto him as we got ready, he was talking about the hockey game. And while we were swatting around a puck in the living room just before we left, he was at fever pitch, talking about the hockey game.
Owen's outlook on the hockey game was just about the same as his outlook on the everything else in life: "I'm very happy, I love everyone, let's find things to eat in the kitchen trash!" He might have slightly resented being bundled up in his big winter coat as we loaded him into the carrier and prepared to walk up to the arena, but I could tell that James' excitement was infectious and that he knew something great was coming too.
J was excited also, although I could tell, after a few blocks, that her enthusiasm for the hockey game was slightly dampened by an economics problem she was working out, something about the expense of paid parking vs the cost of a longer walk to the arena while parking for free on the street with a heavy baby on your back in January.
We rounded the last corner and the arena came into sight, and James practically shrieked with excitement. We got in line, acquired our tickets, and made our way in to find our seats. Both teams were out warming up on this ice, loud music was pumping through the sound system, and other fans were trickling in around us. I looked over at James.
He was completely silent. He was staring unblinkingly down at the ice.
"Do you want me to take your coat off?"
"No."
"Do you want to go down to the ice and get a closer look at the players?"
"No."
"Are you okay?"
"Yup."
"Are you sure?"
"Yup."
That was about the extent of the conversation that we got out of him for the next two and a half hours. He asked, over the course of the evening, three unprompted questions:
1) "When is the zamboni going to come out?"
2) "Can we get some crackerjack?"
3) "Can we get some ice cream."
Turns out that we had to wait a bit for the zamboni, because we were there over a half-hour early. But when it finally did come out to clean the ice right before the game, James was, if possible, even more transfixed. He did get some crackerjack at the end of the first period, and as he watched the zambonis take another run at the first intermission, J remarked to me "I think he's the happiest kid in the world right now."
He was munching on crackerjack, bundled up between his parents, holding George and Steven, watching the zambonis go over the ice with an intensely focused expression but an undeniable hint of a smile tugging up at the corners of his mouth.
"James, are you having a good time?"
"Yup."
Owen, on the other hand, enjoyed the game in a much less focused way. He got bored pretty quickly waiting for the game to start, so J walked him down to the glass beforehand and he waved wildly to each hockey player that skated by him in warm-ups. He got walked around the arena and grinned at all the noise and milling crowds, and then when the game started he danced on our laps to the music that was pumped through and applauded enthusiastically for any signs of excitement in the crowd. He made multiple attempts to break free from parental guidance, and did manage to crawl all the way into another section over the course of the five seconds that it took me to get James' crackerjack open. He munched happily on the fries that we offered him, and once they were used up he stood up on my lap and looked expectantly at the strangers sitting behind us eating burgers. He nodded impatiently to them, then signed for "please" and "more," and, still having no success, ultimately resorted to just reaching towards their food and attempting to grab it. (He also tried to steal a hat off of a kid who was sitting in front of us.) He quieted down by the second period, obviously sleepy, and was mostly happy to be held for the last 20 minutes we were there.
I asked James, who was also up past his bedtime, if he was ready to leave yet.
"I wanna see the zambonis again."
We stayed through the end of the second intermission so that we could see the zambonis again, and then bundled back up and made our way out of the arena back towards our car. As soon as we were out the door, all the words that James had been saving for the past two hours torrented forth.
"Mommy, did you see the teams hitting the ice with their sticks? That was SO siwwy! And there were two zambonis and there was a blue zamboni and a yellow zamboni, and I think one of them was the first zamboni IN THE WORLD!!!! Did you like the hockey game, Mommy? You've never been to a hockey game before!"
When we got back to the car he retold the entire evening to Mater:
"...and then, Mater, we went and we got ketchup and fries and crackerjack!"
(Mater voice) "You got ketchup n' frahs n'crackerjack? That sounds yummy, James!"
"Yeah Mater, it WAS yummy!"
Both boys went to bed pretty easily. And both slept well.
But not as well as their parents.
He knew we were going to a hockey game this week, but I think Friday sort of snuck up on him, but by the time he woke up from his nap ("Whaa...? is it time to go to the hockey game? Hey, I'm hungry!") he was beginning to get excited. Or, as he pronounced it, recited.
"Owen, are you recited to go to the hockey game? I bet you ARE! You've never been before! Mommy, are you recited to go the hockey game? I bet you are TOO. You nebber been ei-ber! Mater, are you recited to go to the hockey game?" (Mater voice) "Oh yeah, James, ah am!"
"James, do you know that we're probably going to leave everything in the car except George and Steven?"
(Mater voice) "Ah, okay. Ah'll jes' wait in the car for you, James!"
James talked about the hockey game all evening.This is no exaggeration. While he was shoveling lemon poppyseed pancakes into his mouth at dinner, he was still talking about the hockey game. While I was pulling his sweater and hockey "jersey" onto him as we got ready, he was talking about the hockey game. And while we were swatting around a puck in the living room just before we left, he was at fever pitch, talking about the hockey game.
Owen's outlook on the hockey game was just about the same as his outlook on the everything else in life: "I'm very happy, I love everyone, let's find things to eat in the kitchen trash!" He might have slightly resented being bundled up in his big winter coat as we loaded him into the carrier and prepared to walk up to the arena, but I could tell that James' excitement was infectious and that he knew something great was coming too.
J was excited also, although I could tell, after a few blocks, that her enthusiasm for the hockey game was slightly dampened by an economics problem she was working out, something about the expense of paid parking vs the cost of a longer walk to the arena while parking for free on the street with a heavy baby on your back in January.
We rounded the last corner and the arena came into sight, and James practically shrieked with excitement. We got in line, acquired our tickets, and made our way in to find our seats. Both teams were out warming up on this ice, loud music was pumping through the sound system, and other fans were trickling in around us. I looked over at James.
He was completely silent. He was staring unblinkingly down at the ice.
"Do you want me to take your coat off?"
"No."
"Do you want to go down to the ice and get a closer look at the players?"
"No."
"Are you okay?"
"Yup."
"Are you sure?"
"Yup."
That was about the extent of the conversation that we got out of him for the next two and a half hours. He asked, over the course of the evening, three unprompted questions:
1) "When is the zamboni going to come out?"
2) "Can we get some crackerjack?"
3) "Can we get some ice cream."
Turns out that we had to wait a bit for the zamboni, because we were there over a half-hour early. But when it finally did come out to clean the ice right before the game, James was, if possible, even more transfixed. He did get some crackerjack at the end of the first period, and as he watched the zambonis take another run at the first intermission, J remarked to me "I think he's the happiest kid in the world right now."
He was munching on crackerjack, bundled up between his parents, holding George and Steven, watching the zambonis go over the ice with an intensely focused expression but an undeniable hint of a smile tugging up at the corners of his mouth.
"James, are you having a good time?"
"Yup."
Owen, on the other hand, enjoyed the game in a much less focused way. He got bored pretty quickly waiting for the game to start, so J walked him down to the glass beforehand and he waved wildly to each hockey player that skated by him in warm-ups. He got walked around the arena and grinned at all the noise and milling crowds, and then when the game started he danced on our laps to the music that was pumped through and applauded enthusiastically for any signs of excitement in the crowd. He made multiple attempts to break free from parental guidance, and did manage to crawl all the way into another section over the course of the five seconds that it took me to get James' crackerjack open. He munched happily on the fries that we offered him, and once they were used up he stood up on my lap and looked expectantly at the strangers sitting behind us eating burgers. He nodded impatiently to them, then signed for "please" and "more," and, still having no success, ultimately resorted to just reaching towards their food and attempting to grab it. (He also tried to steal a hat off of a kid who was sitting in front of us.) He quieted down by the second period, obviously sleepy, and was mostly happy to be held for the last 20 minutes we were there.
I asked James, who was also up past his bedtime, if he was ready to leave yet.
"I wanna see the zambonis again."
We stayed through the end of the second intermission so that we could see the zambonis again, and then bundled back up and made our way out of the arena back towards our car. As soon as we were out the door, all the words that James had been saving for the past two hours torrented forth.
"Mommy, did you see the teams hitting the ice with their sticks? That was SO siwwy! And there were two zambonis and there was a blue zamboni and a yellow zamboni, and I think one of them was the first zamboni IN THE WORLD!!!! Did you like the hockey game, Mommy? You've never been to a hockey game before!"
When we got back to the car he retold the entire evening to Mater:
"...and then, Mater, we went and we got ketchup and fries and crackerjack!"
(Mater voice) "You got ketchup n' frahs n'crackerjack? That sounds yummy, James!"
"Yeah Mater, it WAS yummy!"
Both boys went to bed pretty easily. And both slept well.
But not as well as their parents.
Thursday, January 14, 2016
An Interview with James (Or, How Many People Do You Have In There?)
Me: Lightning, what's your favorite food?
James (as Lightning): Gas
Me: What's your favorite color?
James (as Lightning): Red
Me:Who is the fastest car?
James (as Lightning): Lightning
Me: Who is your best friend?
James (as Lightning): Lightning is his own best friend
Me: Who do you like to play with
James (as Lightning): Lightning
Me: Mater, what's your favorite food?
James (as Mater): Wus mah favorit' food? Gas is mah favorit' one. Ah like gas d'best. Cuz cars eat gas.
Me: Mater, what's your my favorite color?
James (as Mater): Mah favorit' color? Brown.
Me: Who is your best friend?
James (as Mater): Lahtnin'.
Me: Mater, do you like Curious George?
James (as Mater): Ah like Curyus George. Yes, gee.
Me: Sally, what's your favorite snack?
James (as Mater): She lahks gas d'best cuz cars eat gas. Her favorit' color is byu, okay? She lahks Lahtnin'.
Me: Is Lightning her boyfriend?
James (as himself): Weww...yes.
Me: George, what's your favorite food?
James (as George):What's my favorite food? My favorite food is bananas, because monkeys eat bananas. Did you know that, okay?
Me: Who's your best friend?
James (as George): James!
Me: George, what's your favorite color?
James (as George): Umm...brown!
Me: Do you like Lightning or Mater better?
James (as George):I like Mater the best.
Me: What do you think of Owen? Does George love Owen?
James (as Mater) Yeah, he does. Hey, Owen's favorite color is green, okay?
(as James) Hey Owen, what's your favorite food? Owen says (as Mater) I like green beans...and milk. (as James) That's what Owen says. What's your favorite friend, Owen? Hey, one more magformer, Daddy! Grab it as fast as you can. I got them, I did it. I got those two, Daddy. Here they are, here they are Daddy.
Me: Hey, you didn't tell me...who is Owen's favorite friend?
James (indistuinguishable voice): James
James (as Lightning): Gas
Me: What's your favorite color?
James (as Lightning): Red
Me:Who is the fastest car?
James (as Lightning): Lightning
Me: Who is your best friend?
James (as Lightning): Lightning is his own best friend
Me: Who do you like to play with
James (as Lightning): Lightning
Me: Mater, what's your favorite food?
James (as Mater): Wus mah favorit' food? Gas is mah favorit' one. Ah like gas d'best. Cuz cars eat gas.
Me: Mater, what's your my favorite color?
James (as Mater): Mah favorit' color? Brown.
Me: Who is your best friend?
James (as Mater): Lahtnin'.
Me: Mater, do you like Curious George?
James (as Mater): Ah like Curyus George. Yes, gee.
Me: Sally, what's your favorite snack?
James (as Mater): She lahks gas d'best cuz cars eat gas. Her favorit' color is byu, okay? She lahks Lahtnin'.
Me: Is Lightning her boyfriend?
James (as himself): Weww...yes.
Me: George, what's your favorite food?
James (as George):What's my favorite food? My favorite food is bananas, because monkeys eat bananas. Did you know that, okay?
Me: Who's your best friend?
James (as George): James!
Me: George, what's your favorite color?
James (as George): Umm...brown!
Me: Do you like Lightning or Mater better?
James (as George):I like Mater the best.
Me: What do you think of Owen? Does George love Owen?
James (as Mater) Yeah, he does. Hey, Owen's favorite color is green, okay?
(as James) Hey Owen, what's your favorite food? Owen says (as Mater) I like green beans...and milk. (as James) That's what Owen says. What's your favorite friend, Owen? Hey, one more magformer, Daddy! Grab it as fast as you can. I got them, I did it. I got those two, Daddy. Here they are, here they are Daddy.
Me: Hey, you didn't tell me...who is Owen's favorite friend?
James (indistuinguishable voice): James
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Stages of Chaos
I am teaching in the basement, and J has Owen, so she sends James to go to the potty by himself downstairs while she gets dressed to leave and go run a rehearsal.
James uses the powder room downstairs and apparently closes the door locked behind him.
J can't get into the powder room, which is where all her make-up is.
I serve the kids dinner and have to leave them alone at the table so that I can go to the bathroom upstairs.
When I come down there are two sippy cups spilled on the dining room floor.
I work at unlocking the door while James rides his trike and Owen attempts to get my phone out of my pocket.
James freaks out because he has stepped in a puddle and needs someone to change his socks.
I am not having any luck getting the door unlocked.
James freaks out because his trike got hooked in a cloth library bag, and his sock is still wet. Owen is also still freaking out, because I hid my phone.
I unlock the powder room door and leave it open.
I change James' socks.
I find Owen in the powder room, sucking on the brush end of the toilet bowl brush.
James tells me I look like I'm "hard at work."
Owen screams at me while I write everything down because I am no fun and don't let him get into anything.
James uses the powder room downstairs and apparently closes the door locked behind him.
J can't get into the powder room, which is where all her make-up is.
I serve the kids dinner and have to leave them alone at the table so that I can go to the bathroom upstairs.
When I come down there are two sippy cups spilled on the dining room floor.
I work at unlocking the door while James rides his trike and Owen attempts to get my phone out of my pocket.
James freaks out because he has stepped in a puddle and needs someone to change his socks.
I am not having any luck getting the door unlocked.
James freaks out because his trike got hooked in a cloth library bag, and his sock is still wet. Owen is also still freaking out, because I hid my phone.
I unlock the powder room door and leave it open.
I change James' socks.
I find Owen in the powder room, sucking on the brush end of the toilet bowl brush.
James tells me I look like I'm "hard at work."
Owen screams at me while I write everything down because I am no fun and don't let him get into anything.
10 Things I Love Today
1. A blanket (a Christmas present from D&E) big enough to cover both J and I comfortably while we read in the sunny quiet of afternoon naptime on the couch. We have plenty of big, comfy blankets in the house, but sharing one with another sweater-clad book-reading person means true comfort.
2. The Presbyterian Glory to God hymnal. Because there are sensible arrangements of modern choruses, all of the old Protestant hymns, a good bit of Catholic service music, and plenty of modern takes on old and obscure texts. It's a big hymnal--over 700 tunes. Last Sunday we sang Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing, which is currently James' favorite hymn. He was so excited about this that he told J about it as soon as we saw her afterwards. But he didn't sing himself, of course, because "James doesn't like to sing when there are other people around."
3. This passage from the Thomas Merton book that Mom lent me: Christian education at the university level remains important if we believe that we stand to gain something by keeping alive the Christian cultural tradition of the West....The Christian, according to Dawson, still remains responsible for communicating something of a traditional Christian wisdom and culture to a subreligious and neopagan world. He believes that the subrational and rational levels of social life need to be coordinated and brought to focus in a spiritual experience which transcends them both, and is entirely lacking in modern technological culture. And recovery of this experience, this outlook, is the task of Christian education.
4. Looking at pictures of Owen and Silas playing next to each other. Loving that they look so much alike. Looking at pictures of Abby and Hayden next to each other. Loving that they hardly look anything alike. Watching James and Owen race around the downstairs on their trike and walker, attempting to figure out whether they look alike or not.
5. Coming into a dark house after a 6 AM run in the chilling wind and snow and pouring a cup of steaming hot coffee, then sitting down at my desk under a big blanket under the light of a single bulb with a good pen and a beautiful old edition of the Iliad.
6. "This morning, before Prime, in the early morning sky, three antiquated monoplanes flew over the monastery with much noise, followed by a great heron."
7. Finishing the final sixty pages of Henry Esmond, realizing that I had no idea how it was going to turn out after all, and flipping page after page spellbound by the historical twist that closes the book.
8. Owen standing on a footstool by the front window, looking out and waving to all of the elementary schoolers and dog-walkers who pass in front of our house.
9. Watching J, wrapped up in a thick pea-coat, make her way out of the children's section of Barnes and Noble, past all the Curious George, Hungry Caterpillar, and Dr. Seuss books, over to the School Resources section to look at Kindergarten level phonics and math books for the little boy who is rapidly outgrowing his pre-K world. (We brought back about six George books he'd never read from the Webster library, and he hasn't even ASKED about them.)
10. Not teaching anywhere this year.
2. The Presbyterian Glory to God hymnal. Because there are sensible arrangements of modern choruses, all of the old Protestant hymns, a good bit of Catholic service music, and plenty of modern takes on old and obscure texts. It's a big hymnal--over 700 tunes. Last Sunday we sang Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing, which is currently James' favorite hymn. He was so excited about this that he told J about it as soon as we saw her afterwards. But he didn't sing himself, of course, because "James doesn't like to sing when there are other people around."
3. This passage from the Thomas Merton book that Mom lent me: Christian education at the university level remains important if we believe that we stand to gain something by keeping alive the Christian cultural tradition of the West....The Christian, according to Dawson, still remains responsible for communicating something of a traditional Christian wisdom and culture to a subreligious and neopagan world. He believes that the subrational and rational levels of social life need to be coordinated and brought to focus in a spiritual experience which transcends them both, and is entirely lacking in modern technological culture. And recovery of this experience, this outlook, is the task of Christian education.
4. Looking at pictures of Owen and Silas playing next to each other. Loving that they look so much alike. Looking at pictures of Abby and Hayden next to each other. Loving that they hardly look anything alike. Watching James and Owen race around the downstairs on their trike and walker, attempting to figure out whether they look alike or not.
5. Coming into a dark house after a 6 AM run in the chilling wind and snow and pouring a cup of steaming hot coffee, then sitting down at my desk under a big blanket under the light of a single bulb with a good pen and a beautiful old edition of the Iliad.
6. "This morning, before Prime, in the early morning sky, three antiquated monoplanes flew over the monastery with much noise, followed by a great heron."
7. Finishing the final sixty pages of Henry Esmond, realizing that I had no idea how it was going to turn out after all, and flipping page after page spellbound by the historical twist that closes the book.
8. Owen standing on a footstool by the front window, looking out and waving to all of the elementary schoolers and dog-walkers who pass in front of our house.
9. Watching J, wrapped up in a thick pea-coat, make her way out of the children's section of Barnes and Noble, past all the Curious George, Hungry Caterpillar, and Dr. Seuss books, over to the School Resources section to look at Kindergarten level phonics and math books for the little boy who is rapidly outgrowing his pre-K world. (We brought back about six George books he'd never read from the Webster library, and he hasn't even ASKED about them.)
10. Not teaching anywhere this year.
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Monday, January 11, 2016
Around the House
I. Kitchen Trim
I finally put the crown molding back up in the kitchen. It came down during the Great Plumbing Disaster of 2015 (also known as Küchedammerung) and has been stored in the basement ever since the ceiling was ripped out, then put back together, then ripped out again, then put back together again, and then left in an unfinished state for several months while gigs and small children happened. This morning I went down to the basement, pulled out my drill, and started piloting holes for trim nails. (Yes, I know you're supposed to use a nail gun to fasten crown molding, but I don't have one, or an air compressor for that matter.) I climbed on top of the refrigerator, bent my head and my hammer at awkward angles, sweated profusely, and made noises worrisome to those in the next room. But all the trim is up! It's spackled and caulked, and once I put on a coat of touch-up paint tomorrow everything will be finished and we can get into the bottle of wine we've been saving "for when the kitchen is put back together." Of course, it doesn't really look great, but that depends mostly on your perspective. From the western side of the kitchen, especially in the dark, the finished crown molding could look very nice in an impressionistic sort of perspective.
In daylight and plain view, however, it looks a bit more like the subject for a brutalist painting. In fact, I think that my work this morning could be fairly classified as brutalist interior design.
II. Doorknobs
I need to order locksets for all of the rooms upstairs. It's gone from a convenience to a necessity. None of our upstairs doors close properly. You can attempt to close the door all the way, and there IS an old knob that theoretically used to latch into place, but the door always just swings back open, either from the worn-out age of the latch or from the gradual warping of the door in the frame. This happened with the bathroom too when we initially moved in, and I replaced that fairly quickly. The bedrooms, however, we've just allowed to be perpetually cracked open. For a long time we've lamented our inability to leave Owen, well, anywhere unattended for more than a few seconds. But if the upstairs doors could latch shut, we could let him play in James' room and actually go downstairs to pour another cup of coffee without worrying he was going to crawl out and fall down the stairs. We could put away laundry while he plays in his room.
But really what's making the locksets necessary is James' most recent revelation--he can get out of bed without asking. I blame Uncle Tim, as I'll explain later. For the longest time James was GREAT about staying in bed. I don't know what unknown consequences he feared if he dare put a pajama-clad foot on the floor after we'd tucked him in for the night, but even if one of his stuffed animals fell onto the ground within his reach he'd call for one of us instead of daring to get out from under his covers and retrieve it himself. He never has crawled out of bed on his own in the morning, always waiting instead for a parent to come and retrieve him. We've had it good.
Uncle Tim gave James a stuffed Pete the Cat doll for Christmas, and it was immediately added to the retinue. I'm not exactly sure how high Pete ranks...definitely not at George and Steven level, but at least as important as Woof-Woof and Meow-Meow (didn't this blog used to be about literature and theology, by the way?) and certainly important enough to merit sleeping at James' pillow. Well, James forgot Pete the Cat downstairs one night while we were in Pennsylvania. And wouldn't you know it if instead of calling to a parent, the little boy rolled out from under his covers, came down the stairs, and retrieved Pete himself.
A light bulb went off in that moment.
Since we've been back he's come downstairs after bedtime for cars, for Pete again, to ask for a drink, and to "put away books."
Yesterday morning he asked me "Were you and Mommy watching football or hockey when you were eating pizza in the living room last night?"
Given the serious problems that might arise from James crawling out of bed and sneaking around the house after bedtime, I called upon all of my parental wisdom to give him the following answer: "Get your coat on right now, we're already late for church."
Yes, locksets for all the upstairs doors are must-haves. I don't care yet to field any questions about why Mommy and Daddy were "wrestling."
III. J Running
This entry needs to be wrapped up shortly because J is going out for a run at 2:00, and it is 2:00 right now. Even though she is under a blanket reading Harry Potter, she definitely said she was going out into the cold to run at 2, and since that's a public statement she'll most certainly follow through with it. Anyone reading this right now should ask her how her run went, because now that it's 2:00 she's going to put down the book and head out. She must be SO excited!
Saturday, January 9, 2016
Correction and Chastisement
Yesterday felt like one of those days when I was yelling at James all day long.
Don't throw your shoes at Owen.
Don't grab stuff from Owen without asking.
You can go to the potty without bringing the entire retinue of animals and cars...Owen can't possibly eat them all.
Please get into your carseat the first time we ask.
Seriously, sit down and be still so we can buckle you up.
No, you can't cross the parking lot by yourself.
What did we say about throwing shoes at Owen?
You have to eat that before you get up from the table.
No, we aren't going to give you any more Christmas presents to open. Christmas was over a week ago.
Seriously...don't throw shoes at Owen.
et cetera
et cetera
et alia
But do you know what? For a four year old boy, he's really a pretty good kid. Here are a bunch of things that I didn't tell him yesterday:
James, you came to a boring grown-up staff party with your parents and played quietly by yourself in an appropriate manner while the adults small-talked and your less behaved younger brother kept on attempting to fall down the steps. You were polite and social whenever people talked to you. Good work.
James, in a room full of screaming and writhing toddlers you calmly and quietly picked out the books you wanted, put them in the bag, and then checked out at the library without making any trouble at all. Nice work.
James, you didn't beg for any TV or iPad time today. When we got back from the library you crawled under a blanket with me and asked to read through your entire library bag. Twice. I couldn't have been happier to spend an hour that way, even though my voice hurt by the end of it.
James, when we loaded you up in the stroller and took you out on a run in the 39 degree weather you were quiet and peaceful, unlike your brother, who kept on screaming and attempting to take off his hat. Thank you for understanding and enjoying the situation.
You waited patiently for the cookies Mommy made, you requested vegetables for supper of your own free will, and you helped your little brother when he was making a mess of his own dinner.
You're a pretty good kid.
Please don't throw shoes at Owen, though.
Don't throw your shoes at Owen.
Don't grab stuff from Owen without asking.
You can go to the potty without bringing the entire retinue of animals and cars...Owen can't possibly eat them all.
Please get into your carseat the first time we ask.
Seriously, sit down and be still so we can buckle you up.
No, you can't cross the parking lot by yourself.
What did we say about throwing shoes at Owen?
You have to eat that before you get up from the table.
No, we aren't going to give you any more Christmas presents to open. Christmas was over a week ago.
Seriously...don't throw shoes at Owen.
et cetera
et cetera
et alia
But do you know what? For a four year old boy, he's really a pretty good kid. Here are a bunch of things that I didn't tell him yesterday:
James, you came to a boring grown-up staff party with your parents and played quietly by yourself in an appropriate manner while the adults small-talked and your less behaved younger brother kept on attempting to fall down the steps. You were polite and social whenever people talked to you. Good work.
James, in a room full of screaming and writhing toddlers you calmly and quietly picked out the books you wanted, put them in the bag, and then checked out at the library without making any trouble at all. Nice work.
James, you didn't beg for any TV or iPad time today. When we got back from the library you crawled under a blanket with me and asked to read through your entire library bag. Twice. I couldn't have been happier to spend an hour that way, even though my voice hurt by the end of it.
James, when we loaded you up in the stroller and took you out on a run in the 39 degree weather you were quiet and peaceful, unlike your brother, who kept on screaming and attempting to take off his hat. Thank you for understanding and enjoying the situation.
You waited patiently for the cookies Mommy made, you requested vegetables for supper of your own free will, and you helped your little brother when he was making a mess of his own dinner.
You're a pretty good kid.
Please don't throw shoes at Owen, though.
Friday, January 8, 2016
Quick Hitters
I. The State of the New Year's Resolutions
I love New Year's Resolutions. Every year on New Year's Day you have a beautiful blank canvas: 365 brand new, completely unspoiled days to work out what you want to do better than you did for the previous year. Here's how it's going so far.
1. Straighten out bedtime/rise-time schedules. This has been easy. I turn off my phone at 8 PM when we put the kids to bed and leave it downstairs on my desk. I'm asleep by 10 PM with no trouble whatsoever
2. Stay in regular correspondence with those family members who I wouldn't regularly see otherwise. Harder, especially since I can't text them after 8 PM anymore. But not everybody texts. And some people don't text, but like email. And some people prefer a letter impressed with a wax seal. (Sorry M, I owe you a letter.)
3. Save ---$---. Okay so far. No major expenses in January yet, but I know that our car insurance renews in February. (Blargh)
4. Add some yoga into my regular running routine so that my back isn't perpetually on the fritz. This has not worked out at all so far. Running is just so much more enjoyable that yoga...but MAN, is Owen getting heavy. And he really likes being held...and bouncing...and dancing.
5. Finish all Unread Books. I've been making solid progress on my big list of books that I own but haven't finished reading. Just since the first of the year, I've finished: Rabelais, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, In Dubious Battle, Polikushka, and A Tale of Two Cities. (Which I'd read before but didn't own. I ran out of books while traveling and had to buy a cheap copy of something.) Now on to Henry Esmond...
II. Folding Clothes
It's important to make things new again. And the best way to make something feel new again is give it a good cleaning. But when all of your clothes are clean and they still look like a wrinkly mess, you can make them all seem new again by folding them EXTREMELY meticulously and storing them in a pleasing-looking manner. This was a great game for the boys and I. I folded all of my undershirts to the tightest and neatest looking fold I could get and stacked them all perfectly atop one another in my laundry cube. The game was that they would be normal human boys while I attempted to neatly fold the laundry, and I would try to protect my work. They mostly won, but I will say that my clothes drawer (and all of J's, after I finished mine) look like department store shelves for the time.
III. DFW Airport
I was sitting in the terminal thumbing through a book and itching to get home to my family. I saw a little blonde boy with a bouncy step--the sort of step that you have when you're three years old and you know that you're about to take a ride on a REAL airplane--holding his mother's hand, backpack on pack. In his other hand was dangling something brown and very well-loved. It was a George. The George had no shirt, and had the same shapeless well-loved look of a certain other George that I know. I was happy for George and the boy, that they would get to ride the airplane together.
IV. Bad Back
Seriously, I might need to do some yoga soon. An hour of lying in bed in comfortable PJs with the mattress pad heated up and a glass of wine is not loosening anything up. Also, Owen might not get picked up very much tomorrow...
I love New Year's Resolutions. Every year on New Year's Day you have a beautiful blank canvas: 365 brand new, completely unspoiled days to work out what you want to do better than you did for the previous year. Here's how it's going so far.
1. Straighten out bedtime/rise-time schedules. This has been easy. I turn off my phone at 8 PM when we put the kids to bed and leave it downstairs on my desk. I'm asleep by 10 PM with no trouble whatsoever
2. Stay in regular correspondence with those family members who I wouldn't regularly see otherwise. Harder, especially since I can't text them after 8 PM anymore. But not everybody texts. And some people don't text, but like email. And some people prefer a letter impressed with a wax seal. (Sorry M, I owe you a letter.)
3. Save ---$---. Okay so far. No major expenses in January yet, but I know that our car insurance renews in February. (Blargh)
4. Add some yoga into my regular running routine so that my back isn't perpetually on the fritz. This has not worked out at all so far. Running is just so much more enjoyable that yoga...but MAN, is Owen getting heavy. And he really likes being held...and bouncing...and dancing.
5. Finish all Unread Books. I've been making solid progress on my big list of books that I own but haven't finished reading. Just since the first of the year, I've finished: Rabelais, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, In Dubious Battle, Polikushka, and A Tale of Two Cities. (Which I'd read before but didn't own. I ran out of books while traveling and had to buy a cheap copy of something.) Now on to Henry Esmond...
II. Folding Clothes
It's important to make things new again. And the best way to make something feel new again is give it a good cleaning. But when all of your clothes are clean and they still look like a wrinkly mess, you can make them all seem new again by folding them EXTREMELY meticulously and storing them in a pleasing-looking manner. This was a great game for the boys and I. I folded all of my undershirts to the tightest and neatest looking fold I could get and stacked them all perfectly atop one another in my laundry cube. The game was that they would be normal human boys while I attempted to neatly fold the laundry, and I would try to protect my work. They mostly won, but I will say that my clothes drawer (and all of J's, after I finished mine) look like department store shelves for the time.
III. DFW Airport
I was sitting in the terminal thumbing through a book and itching to get home to my family. I saw a little blonde boy with a bouncy step--the sort of step that you have when you're three years old and you know that you're about to take a ride on a REAL airplane--holding his mother's hand, backpack on pack. In his other hand was dangling something brown and very well-loved. It was a George. The George had no shirt, and had the same shapeless well-loved look of a certain other George that I know. I was happy for George and the boy, that they would get to ride the airplane together.
IV. Bad Back
Seriously, I might need to do some yoga soon. An hour of lying in bed in comfortable PJs with the mattress pad heated up and a glass of wine is not loosening anything up. Also, Owen might not get picked up very much tomorrow...
Saturday, January 2, 2016
Pennsylvania Highlights
Highlights for James:
-Bowling with Daddy, Grandpa, and Uncle Tim
-Sitting at his new kid-sized table, but only in the green chair.
-Playing his Minion Trouble game, but only with the green Minions.
-Live-acting the Minion Trouble game by running wildly in circles around the downstairs.
-Eating in a cafeteria during our visit to Grandma and PopPop.
-Searching for beach houses on the iPad with Grandma.
-Adding a plush Pete the Cat to his entourage.
-Magformers. Over and over again.
-A never-ending supply of ham and cheese sandwiches with spicy mustard. Also, granola for breakfast.
Highlights for Owen:
-Starting to walk a bit on his own.
-Doing a better job of going back to sleep on his own.
(What are we kidding--these highlights belong under our headings.)
-Digging in Grandma's house plants.
-Pushing around the yellow chair through the downstairs.
-Learning how to crawl out of the high chair onto the table.
-Snuggling a new stuffed Clifford from Uncle Tim.
Highlights for Roy:
-Star Wars: The Force Awakens
-Seafood and hors d'oeuvres after the kids were bedded for Davis Christmas.
-A new globe for the Harwick branch of the Old Crow.
-Getting my brand-new Christmas watch adjusted to fit.
-Ample practice time in a relatively soundproof space.
Highlights for Julie:
-Star Wars: The Force Awakens
-Davis Christmas night: food and leisurely family time
-Extra grown ups to play with the boys.
-A queen size fleece blanket: a magical blanket that led to almost instantaneous napping whenever in use.
-Seeing my maternal grandparents' beautiful new apartment and classy living situation.
-Inside Out movie night at home.
-Bowling with Daddy, Grandpa, and Uncle Tim
-Sitting at his new kid-sized table, but only in the green chair.
-Playing his Minion Trouble game, but only with the green Minions.
-Live-acting the Minion Trouble game by running wildly in circles around the downstairs.
-Eating in a cafeteria during our visit to Grandma and PopPop.
-Searching for beach houses on the iPad with Grandma.
-Adding a plush Pete the Cat to his entourage.
-Magformers. Over and over again.
-A never-ending supply of ham and cheese sandwiches with spicy mustard. Also, granola for breakfast.
Highlights for Owen:
-Starting to walk a bit on his own.
-Doing a better job of going back to sleep on his own.
(What are we kidding--these highlights belong under our headings.)
-Digging in Grandma's house plants.
-Pushing around the yellow chair through the downstairs.
-Learning how to crawl out of the high chair onto the table.
-Snuggling a new stuffed Clifford from Uncle Tim.
Highlights for Roy:
-Star Wars: The Force Awakens
-Seafood and hors d'oeuvres after the kids were bedded for Davis Christmas.
-A new globe for the Harwick branch of the Old Crow.
-Getting my brand-new Christmas watch adjusted to fit.
-Ample practice time in a relatively soundproof space.
Highlights for Julie:
-Star Wars: The Force Awakens
-Davis Christmas night: food and leisurely family time
-Extra grown ups to play with the boys.
-A queen size fleece blanket: a magical blanket that led to almost instantaneous napping whenever in use.
-Seeing my maternal grandparents' beautiful new apartment and classy living situation.
-Inside Out movie night at home.
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