There's a Bad Moon on the Rise

The "super moon" through the romantic
Harbor City smog.

The moonrise tonight was the largest and brightest of the year. It is a "super moon," a relatively rare coincidence of the full moon with the lunar perigee - the point in the moon's orbit where it is closest to the Earth. While full moons have a long and rich history in folklore and superstition, being blamed for the awakening of demons, the agitation of animals, and the derangement of "lunatics," the super moon has come into its own in recent years, drumming up arguably more than its fair share of blame for myriad cosmic mishaps. Earthquakes, floods, and inclement weather have all been cited as likely side effects to having the moon, sun and Earth all lined up just so. Others consider such attributions lunacy.

Personally I was originally a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic, unwilling to give credence to any such silliness. Until, however, I strolled outside this evening to witness the celestial display. I found, to my shock and horror, that the backyard that had been so clean and orderly just an hour or two before, was strewn with every toy and in our possession. The kid's paints had been dragged out, along with several pieces of spare wood from my woodbox, and several planks had been drenched in a quart or two of primary colored poster paint. The paint that didn't make it on the scrap wood was slowly sinking its way into the patio concrete. The imps and pixies had definitely been hard at work in my yard this evening; I could only wonder what the coming hours of the night had in store. And there above it all was an obese, orange, glowering moon, looking on and laughing a cruel mocking laugh.

The World's Oldest Culinary Creation

The poor Baudelaire children are orphans, plunged into a miserable existence upon the deaths of their parents in a terrible fire. Rich, but having no close relatives, they are sent to live with a distant cousin, the evil and bizarre Count Olaf who is fixated on obtaining their vast fortune. Biding his time until Violet, the oldest, comes of age and provides his opportunity to swipe the dough, Olaf keeps the children, but abuses them mightily, leaving them in near despondency. So begins the Gothic tale by Lemony Snicket, told in his aptly named The Bad Beginning that kicks of his Series of Unfortunate Events.

Only a few rare opportunities temporarily brighten the children's outlook. One of these occurs on being assigned the chore of making dinner for Olaf and his troupe of thug-like friends. Borrowing a cookbook from their sympathetic neighbor they discover the joys of cooking. Their culinary adventure? Puttanesca sauce - a spicy red pasta sauce with capers and olives and anchovies! A colorful dish both culinarily and etymologically.* Our children, obviously identifying greatly with the sorrowful and bleak homelife of the Baudelaire children, begged Countess Stacy to be allowed the solitary pleasure of making Puttanesca sauce, or "Pukaneka sauce" as N puts it.

*"Puttanesca" translates literally into "in the style of a prostitute," and suggests that ladies of the Italian evening may have lured in their sailor prey with bowls of spicy pasta alongside their usual wares.

Ach du Lieber!

Today L's class celebrated "multicultural day." All the kids were invited to dress up in a traditional costume, present a report on their native culture (however diluted), and bring a dish for the multicultural pot-luck. Having a smattering of German on both sides, L donned a dirndl and gave her presentation on her Teutonic tracings. Mom made Rotkohl (red cabbage) for her feast offering. Evidently Hefeweizen was frowned upon in the 1st grade.

L and her good friend K:  We all know what happened
last time Germany started palling around with Japan...

Vacation Rats and Relaxation

Sure, rats and their little flea friends may have killed off one third of the population of Europe a couple of centuries ago, but in our house we let bygones be bygones. We choose not to dwell on the dearly-departing of what was probably a rather significant percentage of our predecessors, but rather to live in the freedom of forgiveness and peace. Rats are our friends! Or at least they became so for a quick week a few days ago.

The family of one of L's friends at school has a similarly open-minded tolerance for those previously plague-ridden rascals. They have a pair as pets, and when they took their spring-break vacation they needed a rat-hole in which to relocate their resident rodents. Having succeeded so valiantly in our adoption of Mitt the Newt over the last couple of months, we felt we were ready for that crucial amphibian-to-mammal transition.

Snuffles and Spotty were welcomed into the family with much joy and ceremony. They came with a fairly large cage, an assortment of food-stuff, and a rather long list of do's and don'ts which Stacy dutifully memorized. Friendly and curious, our esteemed guests were treated to numerous romps in the bathtub (an ideal place to let them shake a leg). Never ones to sit still and always looking out for higher ground, any offered hand, elbow or arm would quickly serve as an a up-ramp straight to your shoulder. A few seconds of dedicated shoulder snooping would lead to a scratchy crawl up the back of your neck and soon you'd be sporting a rat-chapeau. From the peak of your person the little mountain climbers would sit and scan the horizon, all 360 degrees, looking inevitably for the next road UP!

Considering the price of a good
toupée these days, I might actually
be on to something here.

The kids and I had a blast with our temporary pets, allowing them full run of our laps, shoulders and heads. But it was almost as much fun to watch the involuntary shiver run down Stacy's spine every time she's see a rat shoot up that of one of her kid's.

Shear Joy

Deforestation may plague the Amazon, but defoliclization is a far more pressing local problem. At least for me. Everyone else seems to look upon it with joy and anticipation. (N will learn soon enough to rue this attitude.) This week our excessively-coiffed kids underwent a major pruning at the skilled hands of Kash and Angela at Salon Kharazi.

Like lambs being lead to the... um, shearing.

Bye-bye Bieber-head!

Miss Angela goes in for the kill!

A pixie!

Is it just me, or should he have a large slingshot
protruding from a rear pocket and a  fat bullfrog
in one hand?

They may have gotten rid of lots of golden locks, but they have a ways to go yet to catch up to their Daddy's considerable accomplishments.

The Call of the Wall and the Pain of the Sprain

L is the graceful one of the family...

We are a family of little hope.

I was out mowing the front lawn on Saturday and the kids were with me darting around where I was trying to mow, dead set on sacrificing a limb to the mower gods. For their safety, and mine (Stacy-wrath is a powerful motivator), I sent the kids to go play in the driveway and away from my mulching.L, bored with the lack of adrenaline inspired by riding her scooter around and around the minivan, decided to step up the excitement a notch. We have a cinder-block wall about waist high that separates our front yard from our neighbor's. It is an utterly irresistible balance-beam for those would-be gymnasts who have been warned repeatedly to stay off it. Out of the corner of my eye I watched L approach the wall a couple of times, shoot a glance in my direction and then back away. I tried to be more subtle in my watchings and made as if I were engrossed in the joys of my mowing. Soon enough her devious spirit took hold and she quickly scrambled up.

I surreptitiously watched her as she made her way, arms out-stretched, bobbing and jerking like a tight-rope walker with with alcohol issues, down the length of the wall. I took my eyes off her for a moment to tend to my mowing, and then when I looked back a half-second later she was no longer on the wall, but rather hovering beside it. In mid-air. Feet toward heaven. She remained locked in that suspended state for an eternity of milliseconds, before proceeding on that downward journey that gravity invites us all to enjoy. I turned my head again in an attempt to spare her the humiliation of watching her fall, knowing that if the results were catastrophic, I would know it soon enough. I head a dull splat and a winded "Oooff!" and looked back over. L's eyes were fixed on me, wide and panicked. She flopped instantly back up onto her feet like some marionette-master had jerked her from above. "What?" she said to me, in her best attempt at acting like nothing ever happened, as though through sheer force of unspoken denial she would somehow convince me that all was normal and uninteresting and that I should just continue on with my mowing and pay her no heed -- a junior Jedi waving her hand before my face and saying, "These are not the droids you're looking for," but not quite pulling it off. The glowing red scraps the length of her forearms did not bolster her in her attempted misdirection. But I had mercy on her. "I didn't say anything," I said to her third "What?"

Lesson Unlearend

Probably suspecting she didn't quite pull the wool over my eyes, she sheepishly we headed off for the house. Once inside a tender conscience and evidently a tender finger prompted a gradual, but eventually full confession to her mother. When I came in and was told what had happened, I showed L what true poker-faced deception is all about, and fawned over her like it was all new to me. The finger didn't look too bad, so we let it go.

Then on Sunday after church we took a family bike ride through the neighborhood and up to the high school where we raced around the parking lot chasing each other like WWII planes in a dog-fight. The aerial superiority was definitely on the side of the parents. N's training wheels kept coming off sending him into a tailspin, and on several occasions L managed to zig when she meant to zag a couple, leaving her in a smoking pile of rubble in the middle of some French hay field. The final time she bailed out of her stalling Mustang she managed to sustain further casualties to her already wounded hand. The war quickly ended and we all flew home amid tears and whimpers.

This afternoon I got a call from Stacy at work - the finger had remained swollen in the morning so she had taken L in to her doctor for a check out. The x-rays showed nothing broken, but indicated a nice healthy sprain. L is now the proud displayer of a finger brace with colorful binding tape, which is freely waved about for all to see. "What?" I ask whenever she flaunts it in front of me.

In Flagrant Disregard of Palm Sunday

Notice anything different?

WAS

IS

The cute little bush we had when we bought the house had grown into a monstrosity. It was above a safe trimming height, and quickly building up a tatterous frock of dead fronds. It was a beast to maintain, even when I could get at it, and now I couldn't, requiring regular (and pricey) annual visits from arborists, presumably ones wearing full body armor and gloves made of solid steel. We thought it best to send our little upstart on to palm tree heaven. The only down side was that the trimmed fronds did provide a surprisingly effective, if somewhat medieval, weapon of bash destruction. Club someone with one of those puppies and they'll know they've been clubbed!

It was an emotional parting... OK, not so much. But we did get some final photos before yelling "Timber!!!"

Without their native jungle habitat, the young local primates were forced to resort to other places to get their climbing fix. (Like Mommy Monkey would ever let them within 10 feet of those serrated knife-fronds from hell.)

While at it we also took a whack at the curly willow in the backyard - another over-achiever in the mandate to multiply and fill all the earth.

Bye-bye, squirrel nests...

*** UPDATE ***

Cleaning up the willow has had some unexpected consequences.  We now have an unobstructed view of our  rear neighbor's horticultural endeavors...