Summer Lovin'

The summer's first harvest is always a memorable time for me - basically because I'm always amazed that I was able to get anything to grow at all. I may have pretty mixed results with most of the stuff I plant, but for some reason tomatoes are my friends. While this year hasn't been the year of jubilee of years past, the tomatoes have still done me proud.

The kids have been watching the greenish orbs with growing impatience for a week or two as they slowly blushed with orange then, one-by-one, presto-chango, instantly transformed into tender plump and deeply red beauties. My would-be gardeners had been threatened with pain most excruciating if they picked any tomatoes apart from Daddy's direct authorization, so they have been pacing back and forth in front of the garden planter for days, like panthers, or perhaps more appropriately, like those precariously trained dogs who will hold the doggie-treat on the end of their nose until given the call, at which point the treat will disappear in a lightening flash of teeth and saliva, complete with thunderclap. When I watch those dogs, I can't help but suspect that the owner is as finely trained as the dogs, and knows down to the microsecond when the dog's self-restraint will reach the breaking point, giving the command precisely before the dog cracks and loses its soul in sinful disobedience.

My doggies were getting antsy.

So this afternoon we pulled out a big carrier bowl and headed out to the planter. One-by-one each kid alternated in picking a single tomato at Daddy's direction. We learned not to pull or yank, but to look for the little knuckle an inch or so above where the tomato stem met the fruit and learned how to gently crack the knuckle as to hurt neither the vine nor the fruit. Much to my surprise they were very careful and did their best to follow my advice.

Absolute equality and fairness is the watchword among my tomato pickers. For every tomato L picked, N got one too. If N got a big one on his turn, then next time L got a big one. Tomato picking is tightly regulated, evenly distributed labor in this household. No room for tomato picking prima donas or over-achievers. To the gulag with them!

After the tomatoes it was the peppers. I planted one Serrano plant and one red Thai chili. The Serranos are looking good, but were still green; the "Thai" chilies were beautiful and bright red, but suspiciously rounded and decidedly unlike the long slender red chilies on the little plastic wicket that came with the original starter plant. I think I got duped, but they look good so I'm expecting that all will be OK in the end. (Just wonder how hot their going to be.)



As satisfying as it is to pick things that you've grown yourself, even more satisfying is the logical conclusion of such sacred labor: the hallowed BLT(B) - bacon, lettuce, tomato (and beer).

Love, summer style!

A Career in Marine Biology?

A couple of months ago L's school had a photoshoot where they asked the kids to come dressed as what they wanted to be when they grew up. Despite much parental career counselling to the contrary, L's plans were firmly anchored and she wouldn't be swayed, though it seems to me her career aspirations involve a general lack of the need for aspiration.

Heart of (Temporary) Darkness

Last night Stacy and I slipped away to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. (Really enjoyed it, by the way.) Stacy's Mom came down and watched the kids for us while we were out. The movie was a long one (2.5 hours!) so we caught the 5:30 showing without dinner and grabbed a burrito on the road, getting home around 8:45. The kids were out cold. Gramlynne is evidently quite proficient with the Gotto Sleepum spell.

This morning I was up early for my ritual Sunday tea when L bopped in, way too full of life and energy. She recounted the details of her evening, concluding with her bedtime struggles.

"I missed you," she confided. "I tried to stay awake until you got home but I was tired because my day was too big. I tried to look around and see you but it was too dark because my eyes were closed."

A New Beach Portrait

I finished another oil painting last week. This was a painting I did for Ray and Karla, friends of ours from church. It's their son and his grandfather, Karla's dad. Karla's folks have been so generous to us over the years that when Karla asked me about doing the painting I was stoked.



At first I thought it would be difficult for me to give away or sell any of my "children," but now that our house has no more room, and folks seem happy to get them, it's a lot easier. I now look forward to doing paintings for friends and family to keep my hobby alive, but sooner or later I'll run out of willing recipients and I'll be back to being saddled with a growing stack of piled-up canvases.

Poached Eggs and Flying Fish

We don't get to see Aunt Joyce and Mr. Jay nearly as much as we'd like to, and when we do see them, it's usually because they made the effort to drive all the way into the South Bay from Monrovia. But since I finally had a weekend when I didn't have to go into work or worry about being yanked in by my pager (a.k.a. my beeper of obedience), we decided to return the favor and go see them! Of course we decided to pick a day that hovered in the upper 90º's, so we had to plan accordingly.

Beating the heat (and the traffic), we strapped down the kids and hit the road at 8:15 - our destination: Pasadena! Joyce and Jay have been trying to get us to one of their favorite restaurants/cafés up there for quite a while, so this morning we met them at Central Park for breakfast. It was awesome! Stacy had French toast made with a citrus batter and sprinkled with shaved chocolate. I had "Alaskan Benedict," poached eggs with Hollandaise on English muffins topped with shrimp and salmon. Unbelievable! We were quite impressed and now understand why Joyce and Jay have worked their way through the menu a couple of times.


N only shattered one dish, so it was an all-around successful outing.

When we were done it was only a short hop over to their place where the temperature pranced upward to tap dance around 100ºF. No never-mind to us! We hit the pool! Few things these days bring on the squealing spastic dance like the promise of going swimming. Both L and N have been taking swim lessons and it appears they've been sinking in; the last month or so they have begun to grow gills and scales and smell a little off when they sit in the sun too long. Fortunately they had Aunt Joyce and Mr. Jay on whom to demonstrate all their newfound lack of terror and need for oxygen.

L will swim the length of the pool now without floaties. She's very proud of her breast-stroke and side-stroke, which she demonstrates by alternating one or two breast- or side-strokes with about ten thrashing, wild-eyed, air-gulping doggy paddles. Not quite a Michelle Phelps yet, but there's a hint of grace-in-the-rough to be seen.

She's starting to learn how to dive, but evidently didn't get the memo that you're supposed to enter the water vertically. (I suspect someone has a pretty red tummy tonight.) Along with pseudo-diving, she loves to be hurled great distances to strike the water at great velocity in all kinds of splayed out postures. She generally finds her way back to the surface each time.

L demonstrating a dive I call the "Hudson River Landing"

While N can kick up a tsunami of his own when he wants to, he tends to be a lot more laid back when left to his own devices. In his lessons he's learned what they call the "starfish float" which he's adopted as sort of his pooltime modus operandi. Makes you kind of want to stick a beer in his hand to complete the scene.






We would have been hard pressed to find a better way to beat the heat this morning.

Since we were in the neighborhood, on our way home we swung through Glendale and paid a visit to GGMa and GGPa. Bunny looks so good compared to how she looked a year or two ago. Having the full-time staff available to tend to her and help her has made tons of difference. She's been up walking around, has been reading books and is in altogether much better spirits. It has been a great relief and encouragement to Stacy.

But the day was long and our kids tend to get rather "extreme" when they're tired - though it seems they each seek out their own personal and opposite extremes:

We tried clearing the kids out of GGMa's room by going out to the garden, which helped for the short term, but it was soon obvious that the day's activities needed to be winding down. So our visit was short and then it was back in the minivan to carpool our way back to Harbor City, with kids sawing logs before we hit the freeway on-ramp!

Infinite Rest

Back at home among its brethren.

I started it in February and finished it last night. (~1AM) Infinite Jest is done! For the last week or so I'd been burning through the pages at a fevered pace reminiscent of so many of the drugged, obsessed and desperate characters in the book.

My assessment? A stunningly well written book that is worth the hype it's been given. My fundamental disappointment was the "leave it to the reader to decide"-type ending that suggested the trajectories for each of the major characters, but still left it very open as to where they'd actually end up. (When I read 981 pages of very small print, plus 100 pages of footnotes, I expect every bloody loose end to be tied up!) But the end not withstanding (and I'd characterize the end more as frustrating than outright unfulfilling), it is a book that has gotten steeped inside me, one I won't forget. It's a book whose characters were so vibrant and original that they will forever be archetypes to compare and contrast other characters against. Certainly not for everyone and I'd be very careful about who I enthusiastically recommended it to, but I'm really glad I stuck with it after the initial toe-dip when it became clear it was going to be a major investment.

Thanks again to my buddy Dave for recommending it, and to "Gee" for the copy she bought me, keeping me from having to renew it from the L.A. public library 400 times.

Proto-Picassos and Toddler Tolstoys

Rudimentary Rembrandts. Mini Melvilles. Beginning Botticellis.

If I can instill any modicum of art appreciation in the kids, I'll be thrilled. I don't need them to be art majors or have aspirations of careers in literature, music or painting, but I do want them to love a good book and enjoy both experiencing and creating things of thought and beauty.

Early Elgars. Nascent Norman Rockwells. Vee Wagners.

Yesterday they petitioned their mother to go outside and paint, an exercise towards this end which, in my opinion, is generally worth the sizable clean-up efforts afterwards. They donned their plastic painter's smocks, and had at it. N found his smock uncomfortable and immediately turned it around negating any protective powers it might otherwise have had.

Tolkiens in training. Apprentice Austins. Budding Beethovens.



The library is another thing we try to stress. We want the kids to be excited about the library and reading, so Stacy and I always make sure we get a little disturbingly excited about the prospect of going to the library to check out a book or even to return one, hopping our creepy, manic enthusiasm will transfer. It usually does. Tonight was one of those beautiful late summer evenings when the sun just can seem to bring itself to go down, so even though we knew it was closed we took a walk to our local chapter to return a couple of things coming due. The kids decided they must bring their various modes of transportation along, insuring the trip would take twice as long as otherwise.

Dickens in development. Burgeoning Bouguereaus. Hidden Hemmingways.