Of Loud Fog and Thing-a-ma-bobs

It was raining this morning when I got up. L was up soon after. I asked her if she had heard the rain. She responded, "I hear-ed the rain but I looked out the window and it wasn't rain. It was just the foggy."

I was working on some plumbing later this morning. While taking a break in the kitchen, N came wandering in with one of my tools.

"Whatchu got, N?" I asked.

"It's a dinglehopper!" he announced proudly.

Double Digit In-face-tion...

There's just something about that Harris bloodline that's just so darned tasty!

...And yes, I agree, that was pretty much the corniest title ever.

Pumpkin Patch Animals and the Gourding Thereof

One might think that the South Bay is the most fertile of pumpkin-growing lands for the ubiquity of the pumpkin patches presently scattered throughout. L and N's "Mommy and Me" class took their annual trek to one of the local purveyors this week. Horse rides and barnyard animals in spades, bails of hay and, of course, pumpkins out the wazoo.

L has always enjoyed the event, but N really took to it this year. He especially liked feeding the animals. The lethargic, uber-stuffed goats were presented (none to gently) additional brimming handfuls of food pellets with calls to "open your mouff!" The poor creatures were not granted the option of "no." They've outlawed force-feeding ducks, but evidently shoveling food down a goat's throat is still perfectly legal.

L is, in theory, much more humane. She just wants to love the animals. Sometimes, however, a hug and a world wrestling federation choke hold can be difficult to distinguish. There's a sad literalism to how L smothers her friends with affection.

...With Apologies to Jodi Benson

There's a comfort in knowing that no sea witch is likely to be bartering for this mermaid's voice.

Mermaid Madness

Four years of intense psychotherapy addressing L's Ariel-identity crisis are all down the tubes now, thanks to this, which arrived this morning in an email from Mimi.



Thanks a lot Mimi! We'll be sending you the counselling bill.
:-)

Library Wary

Our children have a rich and diverse tapestry of obsessions and neuroses. Given their parents, one needn't ask why. L's are somewhat understandable and age appropriate. A year or so ago she gave up Elmo and in the last few months has taken up a passion for Ariel of The Little Mermaid fame. Were Ariel a real person, she would have some cause for concern; there's a decided stalker-like quality to L's love and devotion. You kind of get the impression that L might just grow up to be one of those people who give Jodie Foster all that trouble. Ariel is a frequent subject injected into any of the most unaffiliated conversations. She's honed that eagle-eye she first developed in the Elmo years and can pick out a microscopic Ariel image on a piece of marketing at a thousand feet. (With much shirt tugging, pointing and "Look Daddy! Look!," I might add.) A number of times she has mentioned going to the beach so that she can sing to Ariel.

N's current Xanadu: the Harbor City Library.

N's flirtations with OCD, however, are a little more one-of-a-kind. His current flavor of overarching obsession is our public library. Yes, I didn't mistype that. He is fixated on our library. He talks about it constantly. I mean CONSTANTLY. I will come home from work and give my usual quiz:

Daddy:	N, how was your day?
N:	Good!
Daddy:	What did you do today?
N:	N go to the libewwy.

This will illicit that ubiquitous side-long glance over to Stacy, where she will give her typical eye-roll that translates to "I don't know where that's coming from; we didn't go anywhere near the library."

Whenever I take the kids our for a walk, the library is always N's suggestion for a destination. Guess that's not too out of our slightly skewed norm -- L had a particular gate at a gated community entrance that she had to go see every walk for a year or two. The other day Stacy related to me how she was out at Trader Joe's with the kids and the guy at the check-out asked N his name. N thought for a second, smiled and said, "Libewwy." The checker-dude rolled with it. He addressed N in polite conversation as he finished ringing Stacy up, always referring to him as Mr. Library.

I'm choosing to look at all this as an early indication of a life of scholarly and academic pursuits rather than early onset of severe bibliocentric compulsive disorder. N may end up being a distinguished journalist or researcher, or one of those rare, insular American Nobel-prize winning authors. He might just be prepping for his future job as Librarian of Congress. Yes, that is how I choose to interpret this. Everything will turn out just fine. Really it will. Nothing to be concerned about at all. I'm not going to obsess over it.

Bedtime Basics

Bedtime ritual at our house is not necessarily all that ritualistic. Usually it's a gang up effort where Stacy and I will collaborate to get the kids in bed and to run through all the requisite books, songs, catechism lessons and prayers. Sometimes if I'm out or busy it's Stacy alone. Tonight Stace had a class and it was all up to me.

Before we pray I alternate back and forth between the kids, collecting the list of people they want to pray for. A snippet from tonight's polling:

N: Grandma Flo!
L: Mimi & Grampy!
N: Grandma Flo!
L: Grandma & Poppa!
N: Grandma Flo!
L: Pastor Greg!
N: Grandma Flo!
L: Grandma Donna & Grandpa Wayne!
N: Grandma Flo!
L: Aunt Claudia!
N: Grandma Flo!

As you probably noticed, the kids have about two dozen honorary grandmas and grandpas. L had a special request for Grandma Helen, complete with a semi-non sequitur. "Let's pray for Grandma Helen because if we don't pray for Grandma Helen she will get a cold. Boogers are green, like our walls." (Her bedroom walls are, I must admit, rather booger-hued.) There were also prayer earmarks for the lights on her ceiling fan, for her new Little Mermaid shoes, and that N would go to sleep quickly tonight.

Later I quizzed N on the Apostles' Creed:

Daddy: I believe in....
N: God the Fadder alminey -- AMEN!
D: Maker of...
N: Heaven n Eurff -- AMEN!
D: And in...
N: Jesus Christ all Lord -- AMEN!
D: Who was...
N: Conceived Spirit -- AMEN!
D: Born of...
N: Burgin Mary -- AMEN!
D: Suffered under...
N: Pontus Pilate -- AMEN!

.
.
.

Ice Cream for Invalids

Last night when I got home from work L rushed up to me with a typical run-on request.

"Daddy, can we go to the ice cream store and get a special treat but Mommy can stay home cause she's too sick and we can bring her some ice cream and give it to her in bed and that would make her feel better." I cast a sidelong glance at Stacy and she visually responded with one of those I-don't-know-where-that's-coming-from looks.

"Wouldn't you rather have Mommy come with us?" I asked.

"No. She's too sick. And maybe N can stay home too." I was beginning to see the method to the madness.

"No," I said, "If we go get ice cream, we all get to go."

Well, as it turned out none of us got to go. An ill-timed temper-tantrum on N's part scuttled those plans. But rather than succumb to the doom and gloom of a disappointed 4-year-old I agreed we could all have ice cream at home. Surprisingly this was a perfectly acceptable alternative.

But suddenly, disaster struck! Out of the blue, Stacy developed a most terrible cough and was sent immediately to her bed. Fortunately for her, Nurse L was at the ready, armed with a highly medicinal bowl of Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia.



It was a miracle healing, if ever there was one. One small bowl of B&J and Stacy was back on her feet, almost as if she had never been at Death's door. Thank goodness L had the presence of mind to prescribe the right treatment.

Tonight when I got home from work, it seemed ice cream was still on our minds, and since the children had been relatively good (My, how standards fluctuate!), we decided to make good on our previous night's aborted Baskin Robbins run.

It was most important that we go. We did, after all, have Stacy's sustained recovery to keep in mind...

Trying Tahoe

Neither here nor there.
Hunkered down on the Cal/Nev border

Now don't get me wrong. I really enjoyed Reno and the air races, and I thought Virginia City was... interesting. But Tahoe is more my kind of vacation. I'm a mountain, forest and lakes kind of guy. Stacy, a Burbank girl (or "Bird-bank" as L calls it), has always been more of a sand and surf person. I've been working it very hard and am slowly luring her over to the dark side. (With our camping trip earlier this summer, I think I'm almost there!) But at any rate, Stacy has been telling me for years how much I would like Tahoe, and I was really excited about getting to finally go.

We stayed on the North Shore at a small place called the Firelite Lodge in Tahoe Vista. It was a nice little place for the price, with a pool and a decent continental breakfast. There were several other kids in other rooms, which greatly abetted my debilitating vacation neurosis. (I almost always suffer from a nearly overwhelming paranoia that my children and their incessant noise are singlehandedly ruining the vacations of dozens of vacationers unfortunate enough to be lodged beneath, directly above, or in any of the rooms within a six room radius of ours.)

The real kicker was the almost deserted sandy beach just across the road. We didn't let the first night pass without some prime lake time. It is one of those beaches that stays knee deep for a hundred feet out, so the kids could truck themselves half a mile from shore and still be well on their feet. L was quite excited to find a dead but fully intact crawfish bobbing hither and yon. It was a plaything tossed merrily about between her and N for a good hour or two. Daddy enjoyed watching Mommy struggle to suppress her own germ neurosis uprising.

The bulk of their energy expended in the waves, the kids were at just the right level of boisterousness to take in a late-night Grandma story. I wish I could say Stacy and I took advantage of the time for a moonlight lakeside stroll or some such fluff, but we really just went back to our room and watched the news. Romance, it seems, never had the dignity of a funeral.

The next morning I woke up before the sun came up. I'd been reading some photography books recently that made it seem like the only way to take a passable picture is to get up when the crack of dawn is still a hairline fracture and set up shop while it is still pitch black. If you're not taking all your pictures between 5am and 6am, say these gurus, then "mediocre," "uninspired," "trite," and "proletariat" are all adjectives too good to be applied to you. A true master, with a true burning passion for his craft, will not hesitate to abandon a perfectly good mattress when all less devoted forms of human life are still clinging to them greedily.

Photography book writers are sadists.

I went out to the lake in my bare feet and sweat shorts and set up my camera. I lasted (I believe) ten minutes at the very most before I ran shivering and stammering back to my warm hotel room like a whimpering, wayward three-year-old. I got a couple of decent shots (most of them cocked at a 30º angle because I didn't bring a tripod and had to balance the camera on a rock), but if that's what it takes to kick it up a notch, I'm doomed to be "bland" and "insipid." I think I can live with that.





By the time I got back to the hotel room L was up, and if left to her own devices, it would only be a matter of time before the rest of the family (and all those other unfortunate guests I alluded to earlier) were also up. So taking advantage of my excellent short term memory, I put on some shoes, threw another pair on L, and went back out and down to the lake. It was considerably warmer and brighter by then, so L and I took a little stroll so that her endless jabber could jolt the rest of the lakeside community into the new day.






Once we were well past that brutally early 11am hour, L and N and Stacy and I all braved the thundering surf and took a family kayak ride. I love canoeing and kayaking and was intent on dragging the flock, kicking and screaming if I had to, into the fray. There wasn't much objection. The attendant said we could rent the kayak by the hour or by the half day; I was sure we'd want the half day at least, but she said we didn't have to commit to it before we left; she would just wait and charge us appropriately when we got back. We squeezed ourselves into our petite-sized life preservers that I'm sure were rated for at least 50 lbs., and hauled out. That Celine Dion song was running through my head the entire time.

N rode fore with Stacy while L and I headed aft and took the stern. Her head was perfectly aligned with my kayak paddle and she received a nice little clunk on more than one occasion. It is a sign of a healthy daddy/daughter relationship when you can essentially club your daughter in the head repeatedly and she still loves you.

Notice how low the kayak sat in the back once we put L in!

We set off out into the deep and then bore hard to starboard before striking Flick Point then doubling back along the coast. (I'm very nautical, as I'm sure you've noticed.) L was thoroughly entertained the entire time, at least once she was suitably assured that the Lake Tahoe sharks would be in much deeper waters than those we were traversing. N, however, began wailing shortly after our weighing anchor and maintained his shrieks most of the way across the lake. Stacy and I, wishing for beeswax to plug our ears, paddled on as best we could while the strange inverted kind of Odysseus and the Siren Song thing played itself out.

After a good eight or ten hours contending feverishly with the watery wild, we returned to the safety and security of port and hauled ourselves out of the foaming tumult and up on to dry land; we were exhausted, dehydrated, sun-scorched, but ALIVE!

"That was 45 minutes," said the attendant, "but I'll have to charge you for the full hour."

After the harrowing sea adventure L and N needed some beach time to recoup. N latched on to a friend on the beach (I think his name was Aidan) and followed him around like a groupie as he built elaborate rock castles, mortared with the richest of muds. Aidan quite liked the company and the two chittered back and forth with an intensity that L would have to work up to.





After a quick lunch Gramlynne, Stacy and I took the kids on a new adventure. (Will wonders ever cease!) Miniature golf. The concepts were a little past both of them, but that did not in the slightest diminish their enthusiasm. L displayed a pretty powerful shoulder-to-shoulder drive swing, complete with follow-through, while N showed quite a bit of dexterity in hooking his ball with the topside of his putter and raking it as one would with a hoe into whatever hole he was challenged with. Stacy, who may or may not have gotten in a couple of better shots than me, was simply conceited and annoying. (I've often heard you never really know someone until you putt with them.)

Soon the day arrived when the vacation was over and it was time to hit the road. L and N get strangly sentimental about leaving a hotel. We got in the car and followed Poppa and Gramlynne on down the mountain and south, back to the Land of Mordor where the shadows lie.




We hit the June Lake Loop and had lunch with the grandparents in June Lake, and then stopped again in Bishop for a second visit to Mommy and Daddy's favorite way station. While the ride was a long one, the road home always seems to go quicker than the road out and I was actually pretty surprised when we found ourselves amid the tell-tale signs of the greater Los Angeles area. (Sirens, smog, and lots of traffic, to name a few.)