9/100

I.
Adult: So in this picture that you drew, I see you have a smiley face. Are you happy in this picture?
James: Yes.
Adult: And can you draw a picture of what you would look like if you were sad?
James: Yes. I want a purple crayon.
Adult: Here you go. Oops! The paper came off of that crayon.
James: Now the crayon is naked!
Adult: Haha, you're right. How do you think that makes the crayon feel?
James: <rollings eyes> It doesn't have any feelings, because it's a crayon. It doesn't even have eyes.

II.
Owen is sick. Owen is always sick, according to Owen.
It's become his go-to defense mechanism whenever anything doesn't go his way. If you tell him that he needs to find his shoes and coat, he'll flop down on the floor and pathetically declare "Ah'm sick!" Somewhere along the way, someone must have dropped what they were doing and showered him with love and attention when he said that truthfully. But now, about once an hour, he's sick. He's sick when James doesn't want to play with him anymore, when he can't find his toy car, when he has to eat toast and jam instead of cereal, when he has to get the jam wiped off of his face after he's recovered, when he gets his arm stuck in the neck of his shirt, when he can't find his sippy cup, when he can't find his favorite book (Hint: He can't find his favorite book because we've started hiding it behind the bookshelf), when he finds his favorite book but can't find someone to read it to him, when I won't let him play with shallots, or with knives, or with the toaster, or with the stove, and also anytime he might feel the least bit chilly, which is OFTEN, because it's January in Rochester and Owen doesn't like to wear pants.
So Owen is sick a lot. But don't worry, it apparently isn't contagious.

III.
Recently Reading:
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Just Mercy
The Millionaire Next Door
The Hedgehog, the Fox and the Magister's Pox
Hamlet
Brave New World Revisited
George Bernard Shaw (Chesterton)

8/100

Updates on whether being a boy has changed in the last 30 years:

1) Owen, upon being served an expensive cut of steak: "Ah wan' tchetchup. An ah wan' mustard."
Upon running out of ketchup, which he was scooping up with his hands and licking off: "Ah nee' mo' tchetchup." Me: "You need to eat some brussel sprouts first." "Ah feel sick." Upon eating some brussel sprouts and being rewarded with more ketchup: "Daddy! Ah'm all better!"

2) James, upon being served an expensive cut of steak: "Mmm, steak!! It's like a hambooger!" Upon taking a bite: <reverberant groan of masculine pleasure>

3) James, upon watching Wile E. Coyote fall to bottom of a cliff and crushed by a falling anvil: <collapsed on the floor rolling about in hysterical laughter, pounding his fist on the carpet and trying to draw breath>

4) Owen, upon watching Wile E. Coyote fall to the bottom of a cliff and crushed by a falling anvil: "He eat, he eat--'MEEP-MEEP!' Ha-ha, big rock!"

7/100

I. Snow Day

James is my most important shoveling helper. In addition to giving some very real assistance clearing the driveway, he made himself a mound of snow at least as tall as him for sledding purposes.

We didn't go anywhere today. This was as far as any of us went from the house, except for me taking a jog while the kids were sleeping. It was a perfect indoors day.

And this is why our woodpile never gets properly dried out.

Hot pancakes for breakfast, lots of coffee throughout the day, and soup and fresh bread for lunch. It was a delicious day to be trapped indoors.

Not too old to enjoy being pulled around the yard.

I don't think it's cold enough to stick, but it made the yard look pretty

I told James I would look up what these are, but I promised him that they weren't blueberries

Owen didn't come out with us. He loves the idea of coming out in the snow, but he can't abide wearing boots. As soon as you put them on his feet he starts shrieking and trying to pull them off. If he succeeds in getting them off, he tells you he doesn't want to put them back on or go outside anymore. If he can't get them off and you do get him outside, he just stands in place and screams.

J and Owen came to the big front window over the hedge, and James and I threw snowballs at them. Owen jumped and then laughed uproariously every time. And James made a very small snowman.

II. Calamari
We've had a pound of calamari ("tubes and tentacles") in our freezer for a couple months, and we decided to make it up tonight. I was going to take beautiful pictures of dinner, but J said that she didn't want to get any big dishes dirty, because the dishwasher was almost full and there was just enough room for some small supper plates. She gave my James' sports plate. I put my tubes and tentacles on the basketball, the sweet potato baked chips on the soccer ball, the barbecue sauce on the hockey puck, and the hot peppers on the football. It was a good meal, but it didn't look particularly elegant on the sports plate. And now that it's over, I'm really thirsty and a bit queasy. (We deep fried the calamari.)

III. Profanity
James, like most little boys, talks gibberish from time to time. And today, in his stumbling through all of the interesting sounds that one can make with various combinations of consonants and vowels, discovered the F word. He said it quite confidently while we were playing a board game with him this morning. J and I exchanged a glance, and said nothing. He said it again and looked at us. Still nothing. Then he went onto more nonsense. And then at dinner tonight, he said it nice and slowly, as if it were a pleasure to roll around in his mouth just after we finished blessing the food. I know he didn't learn it from us, because we haven't done any home improvement projects in the recent past. I doubt he learned it at church. It must still be an accident. He received a gentle caution about how that was a rude word, and hasn't said anything since. Also, in much more important news, Owen hasn't picked up on it yet...

6/100

J's favorite metaphor for her before-bed mental ritual is "closing her tabs," as if her mind were a cluttered internet browser with too many open windows that ought to be X'd out of before she might find peace and rest. It's an ongoing point of debate in our marriage that I have no problem opening (and leaving open) endless tabs on the laptop, while she prefers the cleaner look a browser that has maybe her webmail and one or two other tabs. Proving her accusation of me right (in practice, if not in principle) here's what I currently have open on my phone browser:

1) Ephemeria Alcuinus-the news (or "acti") in Latin, currently headlined by news of Donaldus Trump.
2) The BBC guide to how to cook a goose, which I think I opened up back before Christmas. Might be time to close this one.
3) 21 Reasons to Bust Out a Ramekin. The pot pie recipes look really good, and one of these days I'll get around to trying one
4) A list of tracks to The Idiot's Guide to Classical Music, because it was an excellent list of pieces that kids might be interested in. (If, of course, you fast forward to the good bits and only play them for 30-45 seconds.) Someday James and Owen might appreciate how much that CD shaped the path of the family career.
5) A recipe for simple crusty white bread from Seriouseats.com
6) An article about endurance exercises from the trumpet prof at University of Miami.
7) The Collins French-English dictionary. The last word I looked up, apparently, was "poinçonner."
8) The trumpetexcerpts.org page for Scheherazade.
9) A list of French verbs which use "être" in the passé composé.
10) "An Arundel Tomb" from Philip Larkin's poetryfoundation.org page
11) An interview with NT Wright from the National Catholic Reporter
12) A recipe for shaved brussel sprouts and bacon from electroluxappliances.org.
13) How to start a Roth IRA
14) Compare Vanguard Mutual Fund profiles
15) Blogger.com, which I have open because I did not bring a second book to rehearsal, and now have nothing to read for the next hour and a half

4/100

Lux pointed out to met that I skipped from 3/100 to 5/100. I was sure that I must have written a blog and then failed to publish it, but when I opened this up there was nothing inside. Oh, well.

Owen is a fan of THE END. It comes at the end of all of his stories, you see, and if he knows we're on the final page he likes to say it along with me. The "e" in the word THE is long, which makes it sound more final. And the word "end" receives a grave accent, so there's no doubt that when I say the words "Now I feed Otto so much and no more. Never more than a spot or something may happen, and now I know what!" he can tag it with a resounding "THE END."

Sometimes, when we're reading Pierre (his recent favorite bedtime story in the form of a prologue and five chapters) he adds the final word to the line "...and stayed on as a weekend guest. The moral of Pierre is..." "CARE! THE END!"

The trouble is that Owen now things these words are invested with magical powers that can put an end to any literary task. For example, if we're reading his Thomas Look and Find book "It's a beautiful autumn day, and Percy has a special delivery" and sees that James has come out of the kitchen holding two particularly interesting Lego creations, he will suddenly slam the book shut and declare "THE END Choo-Choo-Train. JAMES! Wa' play?"

Or, if as is my morning tradition, I'm sitting at the kitchen table sipping my coffee and softly murmuring aloud my chapter of Livy I'll suddenly feel a burrowing into my lap and all of a sudden:
"Ubi cum obvius nemo ne inermis quidem fieret perque omnia non praesidiis modo deserta--"
"Modo deserta THE END Daddy's book. I wan' snack?!"

Recently he's figured out that THE END doesn't even need to be limited to literary activities. It can also be applied to practicing trumpet, wearing pants, sharing Legos, and eating vegetables. Right now he's telling me "THE END Computer," so it looks like we're back to reading A Fish Out of Water.

But there's only 40 more minutes until THE END Owen conscious.

5/100

I. Breakfast Sugar

I stepped out of my carpet slippers into the garage and pulled on my black rubber boots. It was Tuesday afternoon, so I had to take the garbage and recycling out to the curb. First the big dumpster, then the little blue recycling bin filled with cans and glass jars, then the sadly bare Christmas tree, then a couple of collapsed cardboard items. I poked my head into the kitchen and asked J if there was anything else that needed to go out. She handed me an empty box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I walked down the driveway looking over the nutritional content, shaking my head critically at the amount of sugar the boys had been spooning into themselves each morning that week. Then I set the box down in the blue recycling tote in between an empty cookie butter jar and an empty nutella jar, which had been the principal sweeteners in the ramekin baked oatmeal that J and I had been having all week. And I thought that maybe I wasn't the best person to judge the kids after all.

II. What's That Called?

During the warm weather break we wheeled our double jogger out of the garage, bundled the boys up, and went for two runs. The first one was to the bakery, and several of the employees recognized us and smiled as we squeezed the stroller in through the narrow doorway. We hadn't been as a family in weeks--probably since late November. An older lady ahead of us in line was looking through the cake display and asking about each item--the tiramisu, the carrot cake, the ladyfingers, the cream horns, the rum torte, the caramel latte cake.She was taking a while, but we weren't in any hurry. It was nice and dry in the bakery, the kids were already set with their complimentary sprinkle cookies, and we were catching our breath. Finally, the older lady was ready to order. She asked for two tiramozzi and a rump tart.

III. Where'd the Recycling Go?

We didn't sleep well Tuesday night. The wind was absolutely howling all night long, and no matter how many times I turned over in bed or pulled my hoodie over my head, I would be awoken again a few minutes later by a fresh blast of wind and icy rain beating against the house. My alarm went off at 5:30, and I went downstairs to brew some coffee. I was meeting a friend for breakfast, and I read for a few minutes under a blanket, trying to screw up the fortitude to put on a coat and shoes and head out into the wild weather. I looked outside. The recycling was gone. I looked up and down the sidewalk, but there wasn't any sign of it. No bin, no cardboard, no cans or glass jars. It was still almost completely dark, so I decided to drive off to breakfast and go hunting upon my return. When I got back at 8:30, I walked up the sidewalk towards the school and saw an empty nutella jar resting against the tree. A little further up the parking lot was an empty orange juice carton. Finally, blown all the way past the neighbor's, across Helendale Road, through the school parking lot, and into the school playground, was our recycling tote. I tossed as much as I could find of its original contents inside, and then started walking back to our house. And then I spotted, blown up against the playground fence, our Christmas tree. I had to make a second trip for that.

IV. Fire Truck

We'll remember this evening as the day that we thought we had a gas leak and called RG&E about it. J was preheating the oven and the whole downstairs began to reek of a gassy, keroseney smell. We turned the oven off and called the safety number, just to see what they'd recommend. They told us to leave the house immediately and that they would have someone there right away. James and Owen will remember today as the day that a fire truck came to OUR HOUSE, and that even though there was a real fire truck parked in our driveway and real firemen walking in our house Mommy put them in the car and drove them away and they missed all the fun.
The verdict, by the way, was that there was nothing wrong with our gas lines or our stove, but that the odor was a combination of the oven preheating fumes from the staining and painting I'd done in the basement earlier that day. Also, we discovered how dirty it is (was) behind our stove. I'm just glad that everyone's okay. But I think Owen had really set his heart on taking a ride in the fire truck.

3/100

10 Facts About Last Week

1) We kicked the kids out of the downstairs. They're still allowed downstairs, of course, but in an effort to declutter our main living space we moved all of their toys up to their rooms. It feels a lot more peaceful already. They bring a couple of toys down every day, and we put them back up at the end of the day. It's a better arrangement.

2) We have three types of bread going. J made her usual wheat bread, started a slow rising oatmeal bread that's going to be baked today, and I have a sourdough starter that's been out on the counter all week. I can't exactly tell whether it's doing what it's supposed to or not, but I'll try to bake in next week and see what happens.

3) No more Christmas. Christmas ended the day after Epiphany in the Smith house this year with the traditional singing (with made up words) of O Tannenbaum in minor and the unceremonious dumping of the Christmas Tree out by the garbage bin.

4) J's new kitchen gadgets work just fine. The immersion blender turned out a nice curry soup earlier in the week, and we just finished a homemade tapenade that was helped along by the new food processor.

5) We got burgers and fries as a family last night for the first time...ever? While that particular meal might be emblematic of everything that's wrong with American nutrition it is also the most delicious way to consume large amounts of "tchetchup" and was an awfully tasty indulgence. That said, I haven't been particularly hungry today.

6) It's really cold and snowy outside. Total number of work miles driven: 0

7) Owen's wardrobe nearly doubled when we found a lost bin of 2T clothing in the basement while looking for J's faded floppy cloth bags maternity clothes.

8) I'm reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles again for the first time since college, and it may be the first Hardy I've read since...North Carolina?

9) Sometimes living with a curly haired person means that the tub drains slowly even after you use the draino and snake it out. And sometimes there's so much curly hair that the screw fastening the strainer can't be turned.

10) If I were the Pittsburgh Steelers, I would not want to pick between a new contract for Antonio Brown or a contract for Le'Veon Bell.

James at Nama and Papa's

Another generation playing the cattails

The Laundry Basket Literary Society

One of the only photos from tree decoration this year

Has anyone seen Owen?

Snow hiking

Owen wants to go down the big hill

One of the few photos from Christmas morning

The boys in DC

What happens when you leave a yellow pepper out on the counter

2/100

I. Prince of Egypt reactions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WKN0XF8-3Q

We put this music on in the car the other night. The only way to keep the peace when we're choosing music is to take turns, so naturally Owen picked O Sing, My Soul, from a Getty album. I think that J also picked something from a Getty album, and then I chose Prince of Egypt. It's great music. It's stirring, it's textually rich, and it starts with a trumpet solo. (What further criteria do you need?) James never had a turn to pick (it would have been Life is a Highway), because my song brought us all the way to our house. As the last chord finished, J looked over and said "I'm not sure if it's being pregnant or if it's just great music, but I was tearing up at the end of that." I nodded and said something about how magical music can be. And then from the backseat, we heard "I don't ever want to listen to that song in the car again."
James was scowling. James was tired. And I brought James up to the bathroom to brush his teeth. He wasn't looking at me, and then as I tried to give him the toothbrush he screwed up his face and covered it with his hands.
"Daddy," he sobbed "I don't EVER want to hear that song in the car again!"
I was at a loss.
"James, it's okay...we don't need to listen to it again. Was it scary?"
He threw his arms around me and said it was.

This has been a thing with him. Sometimes he loves having loud and exciting music on for games of Chase (if you haven't ever heard of Chase before, the rules are kind of explained in the name of the game), but if he isn't in the right mood for it the battle music from Star Wars can terrify him up in his room. He's at an age where he's a sophisticated enough listener to really be moved by music, but apparently unable to regulate the experience.

Owen, for the record thought we should "Do Again" the Prince of Egypt music.

II. Things That Were Said During Last Night's Campout

Okay, boys, love you. Time to go to sleep. That means no getting up, Owen.

Daddy, are you sleeping?
Yes. You should be too.
Okay, I am.
Me too. I seepin'
Is it morning yet?
Not yet.
Will you tell me when it's morning?
Yes.
How many minutes 'till morning?
A lot of minutes.
How many?
Six hundred and sixty something.
Oh. Is that a long time?
Yes. Go to sleep.

<giggles>
<giggles>
Boys, go to sleep

Owen, give me the flashlight. Now's not a time for flashlights, it's a time for sleep

Owen, give me the cars. Now's a time for sleep, not toys.

Owen, sit down.

I jumpin! I jumpin! Hop hop hop!
Owen...go to sleep.

I wan' read books.
It's not time for books. It's time for sleep.
I wan' read.
No reading. Sleeping.

Owen, that's my George
No, mine.
Daddy, make Owen leave my George alone.
Daddy's asleep.
I need Dee! I need Dee.
Do you know where Dee is Owen?
I no know! Dee, ah you?
Okay, we're going to turn the light on for just a second to find Dee.

Owen, that's Daddy's drink, and it's scotch. You can't drink it.
Yum. Mine.
No, give it here. Hey, stop that.

Lights out for good now boys. Owen if you keep on getting up I'm going to put you up in your room to sleep. Do you want to stay down here?

Daddy, Owen keeps climbing on me.
That's because you keep on getting up to. Just lay still and he'll get bored.

Owen, what are you doing?
Bee-bye.
Daddy, Owen's out of the tent!

Okay, Owen, you're sleeping in your own bed...
NOO!!!!!

Daddy, did you put Owen in his own bed?
Yup, and he rolled right over. Sleep well, James. 'Night.
Okay, Daddy.

1 (of 100)

I. New Year's Resolutions
It's January 2nd, which means that it is already possible in this fresh and gleaming New Year, to be behind on one's New Year's Resolutions. I love making resolutions, and my first for 2017 is particularly important for readers of this blog.

MY NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS 2017
1. Blog one hundred times in 2017. (Hence the title of this blog.) Twice a week ought to do it. Also, I will try not to count any one sentence blog+photo entries in the overall total. To increase the likelihood of my completing this resolution, and not even having consulted my wife beforehand, I am hereby declaring that the incentive for completing this resolution will be a new laptop, something smaller, more portable, and with better battery life. Something like a Chromebook, but really probably a Macbook Air. Having said all that, I'll take any and all blogging requests. It can be hard to come up with content, but on the other hand, Owen is learning how to talk...

2. Memorize Hamlet. Partly to have a classic memorized, partly to see if my powers are still as sharp as in my teenage years, and partly because I just love the play. If anyone is aware of staged production in 2017, please let me know, as I would love to watch it live once the project is completed.

3. Memorize 1000 words in French. I'll be keeping an actual physical list on this one, but really it isn't about hitting a total number of words. It's about Vacation 2018, the 10th anniversary trip that we'll be taking some time during the summer of our 11th anniversary. Along those lines, I'm going to start asking now if anyone wants to babysit our (three) kids for a couple weeks while J and I got to Paris.

4. Wegmans-free month. J doesn't have to (and won't) participate in this project, but I want to see if it's even possible to go for an entire month without stepping foot in a Wegmans while living in Rochester, NY. As part of the financial summary I prepare at the end of every month I break down our grocery expenses with a total of how much money we spent at Wegmans and how many trips we made. Last month it was a scant 11 times. It's been as high as 26. It's not that I don't love Wegmans...it's more to see if such a thing can be done.

And how did the 2016 resolutions go?
Pretty well, overall. We hit the savings goal that we set out at the beginning of the year, and I finished all of the books that I put on my To Be Read list. More mixed results came on my resolution to go to bed earlier each night (without my phone)--I was going to bed pretty reasonably for many months of the year, but holiday pops and other busy times pushed bedtime back to midnight or later, and I ended up bringing my phone to bed on many of the nights between Owen breaking my first alarm clock and Owen picking up a second--and also the resolution to mix in some upper body fitness work with my running routine. There were several months when I was really good about coming downstairs at 6 AM and doing down-dogs and push-ups while the coffee brewed. But then, again, holiday pops. So we'll try to pick that back up in 2017. Finally, I did NOT get a website launched for 2016. I did pick away at a couple of the components that I would need for the project, like an updated CV and headshots, but I never got around to making recordings or actually building a site. Putting up a website with my own name on it would be a great idea professionally...but maybe I'll just work on the blog for this year too.

II. Ribbit
Potty-training Owen is going to be a challenge. He's been asking to sit on the froggy potty he got for Christmas, but he doesn't want to actually use it. He wants to grab it around the sides and hop it out of the bathroom shouting "Wibbet! Wibbet!" The child has always been an exhibitionist--nothing makes him happier than running into a room full of surprised people with his little boy bits dangling out. Now he's found a way to combine his instinct for nudity with animal noises, and somehow (in a connection that he understands very vaguely, if at all) some sort of action that involves a candy reward.

III. Pishke
Owen likes to play with my mouthpieces. If I'm practicing trumpet, he wants to hold a spare mouthpiece and sing through it, pretending that he's playing just like Daddy. If I'm up on stage performing with other musicians in an actual concert, he also wants to come up and play "his mouthpiece."
So, I've become a little careless about letting him take one. And yesterday he was walking around the downstairs (without pants) singing into a spare mouthpiece and slobbering on it while I did long tones.
He came back into the library.
"All done! Hooray!" he declared.
"Where's your mouthpiece?"
"All done!"
I checked in the living room. I didn't see it on the floor.
"Owen, can you point to the mouthpiece."
He pointed to the pishke. The pishke is a waist high ceramic jug for spare change (I don't quite understand the origin of the word or the custom) that J's family has handed down to us. Ours is starting to get satisfyingly full of coins. And apparently, a mouthpiece. And, as I discovered when I shone a flashlight down into it, several spoons, a toy car, and a bunch of marbles.

I don't even want to know what he's thrown out in the kitchen trash.

IV. 2016 Reading List
It was a lovely year

Marmion
Romans (Greek)
The Iliad (Greek)
Rabelais
In Dubious Battle
Henry Esmond
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Polikushka
A Tale of Two Cities
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Mark Twain's Autobiography
Tolstoy (A.N. Wilson)
Existentialism Essays
Berkley
Origin of Species
Modern Man in Search of a Soul
Spinoza
Rawl's Theory of Justice
Anarchy, State, and Utopia
Reconstruction in Philosophy
Lippmann's Preface to Morals
Bringing up Bebe
Decline of the Middle Ages
The Tradition of Courtly Love
Buber I and Thou
Dead Sea Scrolls
To Kill a Mockingbird
Superforecasters
Josephus Jewish War
Christ and Culture
The New Jim Crow
The Responsible Self
This is Your Brain on Sports
Fear and Trembling
Sickness Unto Death
Bhagvad Gita
The Documents of Vatican II
The More of Less
Theogony (Greek)
I Maccabees (Greek)
Out of Africa
Moll Flanders
The Tenth Man
Everyman and Miracle Plays
The Plague Dogs
CS Lewis Oxford History of English Literature
Cousin Pons
Martial Epigrammata (Latin)
A Modern Instance
Autumn Quail
Memoir of Marco Parenti
Islands in the Stream
Pygmalion
The Fellowship of the Ring
Olynthiacs I-III (Greek)
Aristotle Essays
The Two Towers
The Return of the King
Booknotes
Tristan (Strassenberg)
Maurice (Forester)
I-III Phillipics (Greek)
Watership Down
Pride and Prejudice
Pinnochio
Amusing Ourselves to Death
The Three Musketeers
Lorna Doone
The Metaphysical Club
Tortilla Flat
Cannery Row
Point Counterpoint
The Will to Believe
Luke (Latin)
Burke Reflections on the Revolution
A Nation of Immigrants
Barfield Unheavenly City
Letters of Pliny the Younger (Latin)
On the Cheronese (Greek)
The Classical Utilitarians
Harry Potter 1-7
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Little Drummer Girl
Aeneid Book 2 (Latin)