Holy Holding Bins, Batman!

We have cabinets!!!
(Or at least the rudimentary vestiges of them!)
(Woo-Hoo!)

Morning Momento

This morning as I was packing my bag to go to the gym I reached down to grab my shoes. Picking them up they felt unexpectedly heavy. I looked at them more closely to find that one of N's shoes had been tucked carefully into each one.

I think there's a metaphor in there somewhere.

Reno Rendezvous 2010 - Day 3

When planning a mountain vacation in late winter/early spring it is always wise to pull out a good selection of warm clothing – bluejeans, slacks, sweatpants, that sort of thing. Even more wise after pulling them out is actually putting them into your suitcase and not leaving them in a nicely folded pile on your bed when you set off on your adventure. My patented brand of wisdom scored a 1 out of 2 on that particular test. I managed, against all odds and with stunning totality, to pack all my shorts and none of my jeans or slacks. Fortunately I packed jackets and sweatshirts, so it wasn't an immediate crisis, even in the blustery flurries of the roadtrip north, but while Reno wasn't too chilly, I knew I didn't want to venture on to Tahoe any more au naturel than I needed to. And so, our first real morning of vacation was spent scouring Reno for a pair of blue jeans. After breakfasting back at the Coffee Shop, Mom and Dad and Kirk (a.k.a. Mimi and Grampy and Poppa) hung back at the casino engaged in some sort of purportedly lucrative financial transactions while Lynne (Grandma) joined Stacy and the kids and I on our adventure. I could take the time to describe our experiences doing so, but I could not possibly be as complete and faithful in my recounting as is the following website I offer for your perusal:

http://www.peopleofwalmart.com

Stacy, suitably appalled by this site, made me remove the hotlink, but I've left the URL if you want to travel at your own risk!

Our lunch took a similarly highbrow turn – a delightful repast at the gourmand-Mecca Wendy’s, conveniently incorporated directly inside the above referenced shopping behemoth. (I‘m so glad we drove 800 miles for these experiences!) On our way back to the casino Stacy noted a scrapbooking store and wanted to stop; I agreed whole-heartedly, thinking the diabetes-inducing sugar and syrup of the place, along with the choking assault of potpourri to be the only viable hope of balancing out the cultural aromas to which we’d recently been subjected and yet clung to our psyches.

Back at the ranch, Stacy needed some down time, so she and N took naps while I took L to the pool. It was brisk out, but sunny and the heated pool failed to meet none of L’s demanding entrance criteria. I sprawled on a deck chair with my good friend John Adams and drifted off to Philadelphia for a bit while L gently chlorinated. As the afternoon warmed up more folks drifted to the pool, including, eventually, Stacy and N. Our kids, being small, tend to hang out at the stairs into and out of the pool, leaping out into deeper water and then panickedly paddling back to the safety of the stair rail. As the crowds gathered L and N were joined at the stairs by another little boy about N’s age. Charming child. His idea of pooltime play was filling his mouth with pool water and spraying it out on N. His dad who was circling nearby seemed to think it a jolly game as well. N, fortunately, was too naïve to perceive the affront and kept to his swimming in typical good cheer. After about the fourth or fifth time, however, I decided that it would be best to relocate N to the waterfall pool nearby rather than let my rising thirst for blood land me on the next episode of Reno 911.

Our evening was mellow. We all regrouped, our typical love for adventure and variety driving us back to the Coffee Shop for dinner. It was there at dessert that N rose to Grampy’s ice cream challenge and proved himself triumphantly and unequivocally the true and rightful heir of both the Perkins and Harris thrones.

L also established herself as being of the royal bloodline.

Suitably sticky, N was assigned an evening berth with Daddy in Mimi and Grampy’s room, while L got to bed down with Mommy over with Grandma and Poppa.

Reno Rendezvous 2010 - Days 1 and 2

L and N tend to see their Maine grandparents (Mimi and Grampy) more frequently than you might expect given our cross-continental status. Since the kids were born we've been able to hook up with my folks at least once or twice a year, alternating our reunions between the East and West Coasts, and trying to incorporate as much vacation fun as possible into the mix. Last summer we did a rather extensive northern seaboard excursion that took us between Pennsylvania and Maine and back again. This year we kept a little more local, meeting my folks up in Reno for a few days (to give them their gambling fix) and then another couple of days in Lake Tahoe, for my outdoorsy benefit. This time there was an added enticement for the kids because Stacy's folks (Poppa and Grandma) were able to join us on the Reno leg!

Knowing Stacy's head doesn't much love the "CLING! CLING! CLING!" and flashing lights of the the casino world, Mimi and Grampy flew out to Reno on Easter Sunday, a day before we were to meet them, to "earn enough to pay for the trip." Meanwhile, Poppa joined us at church in the morning for the Easter service and then we all regrouped up in Agua Dulce in the afternoon for Easter Dinner. It was an ideal arrangement because Agua Dulce is an hour's drive out of L.A., and it's right off the Antelope Vally Freeway (Hwy 14), which is the road we had to take to get to Reno anyway. We had dinner with Stacy's parents and the kids got to do just what Stacy was hoping to avoid in Reno. Poppa has a number of vintage, probably antique, slot machines, the kind you have to actually put coins into by hand and pull a lever to operate. He loves to let the kids feed the machine with the bucket of quarters he keeps handy. I think he started getting a little concerned, however, toward the end of the evening, when L started into a lucky streak and pretty much cleaned his machine out. Hold on one second:

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: No monetary funds were actually transferred
to underaged persons in the engaging of this recreational activity!

There. I feel better.

We spent the night at Kirk and Lynne's, and got an easy jumpstart out of L.A. in the wee hours on Monday. At least 6am is considered "wee" for us. We knew the more time spent on the road with sleeping kids, the less time spent on the road with screaming kids. It was a good plan in theory anyway. We tried to slip the kids in the car with their jammies on, but it was cold enough outside that they were up and chatty before we could get them in their car seats. We kept to our early departure time, however and took off for the great white north. Kirk and Lynne hung back a while to walk dogs and finish packing. (I wasn't worried that we'd beat them there. We don't exactly burn up the road.)

A quick coffee in beautiful Palmdale, and it was on to Mojave for a gourmet McDonald's breakfast. (We had to step it down a notch because Carl's Jr. hadn't opened yet...) L and N were quite impressed with the enormous train yard right across the highway from the Micky-D's. We counted off, with mounting excitement, a train being pulled by - WOW - six locomotive engines! And each had a huge American flag painted across it! We could have called the vacation complete at that. But we didn't. Tanked up on copious Egg McMuffins and Styrofoam pancakes, we remounted the desert highway and set our course north for the Sierras, the southern most vestiges of which where vaguely visible in the far-off distance.

If you take California Highway 14 north from Mojave you drive for 30 miles or so across the famed Mojave desert. There are not a lot of good things to say about this desert when you are speeding through it. I'm sure there are all kinds of wonders and amazements if you get out and up close and personal, but from the road it's rather depressing. There are a handful of towns and lean-tos dotting the road, but mostly its just open scrub brush with an amazing array of powerlines running through it. (Gotta feed the L.A. beast somehow!) But once you get to Red Rock Canyon State Park and join up with Highway 395 you pull along side the long stretch of the eastern slope of the Sierras and things (slowly) start to get interesting. The Owens River valley is a long narrow gulch blocked by the Sierras on the west and the Inyo and White Mountains on the east. It's in a rain shadow due to the Sierra Nevadas, so it is a pretty dry and lonely place. But at least here, unlike Mojave, there are signs of life. Cattle, deer and even elk can be spotted from the road, and its not uncommon to roll a minivan a couple of times swerving to dodge jack rabbits, squirrels and the occasional road runner. (Beep beep!)

Southern Owen's Valley in Green

Arid though it be, we've gotten a lot of rain this winter, and even the Owens Valley benefited from the boon. It doesn't take much to make a desert grateful. The few scraggly trees that lurked about were festooned in new green and there were flocks of wildflowers blanketing the fields below Sierra slopes and erupting out of the dry lake beds. The mountains on either side were snowy white all the way down to the edge of the valley. The few collections of water left in the Owens River (another victim of the appetite of L.A.) were sitting at levels I'd never seen before.

It was an overcast drive through the Owens Valley. So overcast, in fact, that the Sierras that should have been rolling by on our left disappeared in the clouds as soon as they broke from the valley slopes. The few ridges and arms that we could see beneath the cloud cover were dusted with snow. The more we drove, the more cloudy it became. A storm seemed to be following us up the valley. About the time we got to Independence we started getting the first of the snow flurries. As we proceeded toward Big Pine and Bishop, gaining altitude only slightly, the snow line sank lower and lower and eventually the flurries would be matched by patches of white a mile or two wide along the road. Strangely as we got to Bishop, the snowing stopped.

Snow Descending the Sierras

The White Mountains to the East

Through the miracles of modern technology we were able to ascertain that Stacy's folks were only twenty minutes or so behind us on our arrival to Bishop, our planned lunchtime rendezvous. In the interim we gassed up and Stacy talked to some of the locals about the road conditions further up the mountains. It seemed likely we would need tire chains eventually, so we picked up a set to have at the ready. By then the stars aligned and we converged with Poppa and Grandma at the famed Schat's Bakery for lunch. We love that place, as does everyone else travelling on highway 395 it seems. We picked up some sandwiches for lunch and cookies for the road, and crossed the street to eat in a park. Some rather hungry ducks and geese kept N intrigued.









Bishop is essentially the gateway to the Eastern Sierras. If you continue on Hwy 395 you will almost immediately hit a long-haul climb where you leap from 4500 ft to over 7000 ft in about 20 miles. It's the most direct route to Reno, and this is where you hit the mountains for real. It's also where you'll hit the snow in abundance if you catch it just right. An alternate route, Hwy 6, branches out a little into the desert to the east and cuts into Nevada. A little more out of the way, it avoids the higher altitudes and subsequently most of the risk of snowy roads. Based on more conferences with folks about town we decided to play it safe and head up Highway 6. In spite of our caution, we still climbed a bit and couldn't fully dodge the snow and flurries and light sleet that pecked at us as we road. Eventually the weather had its way and all along the road the desert was covered with an inch or two of powder, and looked all crumbled and lumpy, like a fiberglass insulation factory had exploded nearby.

Open Road: Highway 6 North of Bishop

Eventually the call of the snow (and other things) lured us to the roadside...











From the 6, we struck Hwy 95 which meandered about the desert valleys with barren hills on all sides. Our drive took us on routes I'd never seen before, up through really strange and isolated desert towns. The snow disappeared entirely and if it weren't for the hills breaking up the terrain it would have been a vision of Mohave. At Hawthorne we came upon Walker Lake, one of those oxymoronic watersheds in the desert. They always look somewhat ominous and suspect to me, like they're probably filled with sulfur and house only mutant creatures bent on evil. The lake is huge and Stacy and I thought for a while that that we saw jet fighters practicing their dog fights over the lake. With all the pseudomilitary bases around, it wouldn't have been too big a surprise. We've watched them train before over the Owens lakebed. We thought we saw them a couple of times, but they were quite a ways away and we could have been mistaken. They might very well have been dueling seagulls or, more likely, a pair of pteranodons being ridden by Nazgul.





The remainder of the drive was taken up with walkie-talkie silliness between L and N in our car and Poppa and Grandma in the lead. A pit stop in Fallon for chocolate-dipped DQ cones went a long way to stifling the late-afternoon whimperings. We entered Reno around 5pm, after eleven hours on the road - actually a lot more of an efficient run than I'd expected. It took us only a few more minutes to track down Mimi and Grampy at the Peppermill Casino and Hotel and get our copious junk into our copious rooms. Dinner with all the folks in the casino coffee shop made for a raucous occasion. Mimi and Grampy were mobbed by the kids, and what little energy everyone had left was spent enthusiasically. By 7pm little more needed to be done to convince the kids that an early bedtime was a propos. With only two rooms between the eight of us, we divided and conquored. Stacy and N crashed with Poppa and Grandma, and L and I bunked with Mimi and Grampy. It felt rather odd to be on our first real night of vacation and sleeping in separate rooms, but at least it gave the kids some much-needed time apart to enjoy the grandparents.

Lions and Witches and Wardrobes, Oh My!

I've been in a bit of a children's literature renaissance lately. It started months ago when I read L and N A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh. (A most cherished gift from Grandma Gee, I might add.) Both Stacy and I have been pretty consistent about reading to the kids, but up to this point it had always been a bit of a duty for me. I mean, seriously, would you eat the #%*#@! green eggs and ham already! But with Winnie we seemed to cross a threshold. L latched on and stayed with me. She got involved and it clicked. N came willingly along for the ride, but really only looked at storytime as a convenient bedtime delay. But L became engrossed. I'd seen the flickerings there before; The Boxcar Children had been successful enough a spark to justify the reading of at least four more sequels. But Winnie fanned a true flame into being.

We loved the Hundred Acre Wood, timid yet self-righteous Piglet, not-to-be-bothered Rabbit, and of course, the Pooh of very little brain. I would try to read them with voices and for some inexplicable reason Pooh always came out sounding Irish. Stacy has since found some well done audio versions of the books and has been playing them for the kids in the car. Pooh sounds much more gravelly and appropriate. The other day N ran up to me and said, "Rum tum tiddle tum!" After smirking at my bewilderment, he explained, "That's what Pooh says!" And I've since found L repeating over and over to herself, as if it were a mantra, "How sweet to be a Cloud / Floating in the blue!"

Pooh led us on to another of my childhood favorites, To and Again by Walter R. Brooks. Vintage '20s lit, this was a story about a group of discontented farm animals who decided they should give up the farm and go to Florida for the winter. Charles the Rooster, Jinx the cat, Freddy the Pig and old Mrs. Wiggins the Cow, among others, were all extremely popular, and L and N followed them expectantly as they visited Washington (just like Daddy!) and had to deal with nasty robbers and smugglers, and even some crafty alligators in the Everglades swamps. Every time we'd get in the car over the course of the book, either L or N would have to ask if we were "migrating" like Farmer Bean's animals. One utterly peripheral character, she couldn't have been mentioned more than once, struck a strong chord with N. "Mrs. Hackenbutt!" became a giggle-filled rally cry for several weeks.

Revisiting such an old favorite of mine got my own engine primed as well, and I pulled out a copy of a children's book I'd read years and years ago and remembered enjoying. A little too old for L and N, A Day No Pigs Would Die is a wonderful coming of age story that ranks up there with Johnny Tremain and possibly even To Kill a Mockingbird. It was about a poor Shaker boy growing up on a farm in isolated and rural Vermont in the Calvin Coolidge '20s. It's one of those warm and honest types of books that have that inevitable bittersweet streak to them. (I made the mistake of reading the last two chapters while I was riding the life-cycle at the gym the other day, and I'm sure I made quite the scene sweating and blubbering away as I rode.)

As much as personally I loved The Boxcar Children and To and Again, reading A Day No Pigs Would Die gave me a craving for children's stories with some meat on their bones. Sweet, "ah shucks" books from the World War era are absolutely wonderful, but they lack enough darkness, grit and mystery to be a tolerable steady diet. I could read a few of them, but I really needed to dig into something that all children's literature really should aspire to be - an adult's story dressed as a kid's tale. For a year or more I'd been hesitating - having one book in mind, but not quite sure the time was right. I still wasn't sure, but suddenly it wasn't about the kids anymore. I needed to read it again. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe had waited patiently, but it didn't seem willing to wait much longer and its beckon had an irresistibility to it. I figured L would enjoy the silly animals and N would enjoy not having to go to sleep, but I didn't know if either of the would really sink into it, and I so badly wanted them to sink into it. A week or two ago I gave up pondering and cracked it open. The first night's read seemed to lend fire to my fears. A pleasant reception, but not much out of the lukewarm realm. But the second night's read, and the second and third chapters, I began to feel a little tug on my literary fishing line. A White Witch! How scary! And yet how intriguing!

"I'll have to cover my ears when you read that part!" insisted L.

"But then you won't hear the story," I reminded her.

"I'll only cover them a little bit."

Hook line and sinker. Both of them! Now they hang on it! Every night before we read we recap the story, and both can give me, almost word-for-word, a most detailed accounting. L can give a fairly complete and accurate anatomical analysis of a faun, and even N who is always playing with some other toy, clearly not paying attention while I'm reading, was able to give quite the eye-witness account of the first encounter with Her Highness, Reputed Queen of Narnia -- what she wore and what she drove. It has been so much fun seeing how much they resonate with that character. How they squealed when she dressed down Edmund! How they cautioned him against the Turkish Delight! ("It's probably enchanted! warned L.) And now, every foreshadowing of her next appearance is met with indrawn breath and the anxious "Oh no!" I no longer have any worries; they are loving it.

But I also have no real doubts about who's really enjoying this book the most!