Pax Matutinus

I sit this morning drinking my tea with N on my lap. He is curled up, sleepy and snuggling, his puppy-dog breath a far cry from the toothpaste mint of the previous evening. I sit there and hold him and massage his back and shoulders and give his wild hair an occasional gentle tussle. He keeps his head down, buried into my chest and I can feel him growing as he sits there. His bones quietly stretching and his frame taking on a coating of muscle one thin layer at a time. He fits curled up on my lap, but just barely. What was once a whisper of weight on my lap is now substantial and accruing, gaining momentum and closing the gap with the loud weight of years on my shoulders. His knees and elbows now poke out at awkward angles; I'm cradling a goat kid or a foal. I make a mental note to check his paws - just how big will this puppy get? L will still sit quietly on my lap, but when she does it's like holding a St. Bernard. He sits there silently. He hasn't asked for any tea. He hasn't asked for anything. But I know he's quietly waiting for me to relinquish control of the computer I am working on. He's discovered the game of Hearts and is monomaniacal in his pursuit of it. He will play all four hands, assigning one to each family member, and his squeal of delight when he sticks Daddy with the Queen of Spades can be heard throughout the house. But for now patience endures and he sits there warmly and passively. I half whisper what a special boy he is. He raises his head just enough to reply "I know" without the slightest trace of vanity. As I rub his pajamaed back he wiggles a bit to get my hand to just the right spot. I sit with him there for the next thirty-odd years, then I get up and relinquish the computer.

Aren't They Charmin?

I finished this painting of my niece and nephew a couple of months ago, but since it was slated to be a Christmas present, I had to keep it under wraps (so to speak).  But Fed Ex has done its thing and my sister got it today so I can post it now.

My sister Sue and her husband Victor are super hardcore Auburn alum, and while this painting will make perfect sense to the War Eagles in their inner circle, it probably bears a little explanation to those not well-versed in Auburn lore.  After every Auburn victory the crowd spills out of Tiger stadium to Toomer's Corner in downtown Auburn where the victors (and sues) celebrate by launching a few tons of toilet paper into the trees.  A cool tradition, so long as you're not employed as a city maintenance worker.

My niece A (10) and nephew G (8) are as rabid fans as their folks and have done their own fair share of tree bedecking.

Music to Our Ears

N thought Buttercup, our neighbor's pit bull, could use some vocal pedagogy.

It's Always Good to Know the Worker Bees

L lost Tooth #4 tonight.  The tooth fairy found the following under L's pillow.

So she left a response.

I Bet on the Wrong Dog

Stacy's Mom Lynne is a die-hard dog person.  She has been running dogs in agility competitions for years and has got all the ribbons and trophies to prove it.  She's intense.  I'm not saying she gets carried away or has difficultly separating dog world relality from human world reality or anything, but before I was allowed to propose to Stacy she did make me get a qualifying score in the weave pole event.  It wasn't a pretty sight, but hey.  You do what you have to do.

Her first agility dog was Ace, a Jack Russel terrier.  There have been many other additions to the brood, but Ace was the prototype of canine insanity to come.  Ace and I even bonded somewhat.  A rather tense and high-strung animal, I'm one of the few people he would let pat him, and on a good day, rub his tummy.  Ace is an old codger now - 15+, half bald and all trembly.  His time is short.  If all dogs go to heaven, Ace is significantly late for his appointment.

Knowing that fateful day, when if finally arrived, would be a hard one for the MiL, I figured I would make a rare attempt to be kind and considerate (and preemptively earn some mother-in-law brownie points) by painting her a portrait of her beloved show dog.  I purloined an old photo of puppy Ace and put together the soon-to-be memorial portrait, shooting to give it to her for a birthday present.  I was happy with the way it came out.

She seemed to like it too.

But as brilliant as I thought my plan to be, it had a significant flaw that manifest itself only days before I'd finished the painting.  I came up to Stacy on the phone one day and she was looking concerned and making comforting sounds to whoever it was on the other end.

"What wrong?" I asked.

"It's Kyle," she said, speaking of her brother.  "He just had to put Mom's dog to sleep.  Mom's quite upset."

"Ace is dead?" I asked.

"No, not Ace.  Charlie."

I bet on the wrong #@%$  dog.

Probably Not As Smart As I Thought I Was

N's kindergarten teacher let N bring home a dice learning game from school today.  I don't think N quite got whatever the rules for the game were, but he had tons of fun this evening tossing the dice and very seriously and deliberately manipulating the little wooden, numbered flags on the toy after each throw.  Occasionally he would shriek with satifaction and squeal "I won!" though I never saw any rhyme or reason to what he did and never understood his trigger to celebrate.  After a while watching I decided I would inject myself in the name of pedagogy and create a learning moment.

"OK, N, L, we're going to run some experiments.  If we throw one die over and over and count how many times each number comes up, which number do you think will come up most often?"  "Four!"  "Free!"  "Five!"  "Six!"  They had difficulty with commitment.  I made them all sign up to a number then had them initiate the experiment.  N tossed the die over and over, gleefully calling out the count while I tallied the results.  Then L had her turn at the wheel and scores of additional samples were added to the sample space.  After nearly a hundred tosses we closed the experiment and performed our analysis.  Hmmmm...  Not quite what I expected. Seems 6 was a particularly popular number.

Not overly concerned, I upped the ante.  "Now we're going to roll two dice.  What do you think will appear the most often?"  This time we documented our guesses and made everyone take a stand:

• N chose 10
• L chose 12
• Mommy chose 10
• Daddy chose 7

L (I was very pleased to note) very quickly pointed out that no one should chose 1.  Unfortunately her spot-on logic for why she should avoid 1 was not extended to other related concepts that would have spared her some upcoming humiliation.

And the die were cast!

The results were a lot more comfortable from my point of view, though something mysterious seemed to be happening in the upper registers.  (I think N's teacher might be having shady craps games in the teachers' lounge after school.)  At the end of it all L was bitter; Mommy and N were suspicious, and Daddy was smug.

As with all important analytical work, documenting your data sets is critical, so I therefore submit our extensive catalog of original research documentation.

Kindling My Displeasure

I have been an avid, perhaps even rabid fan of the Amazon Kindle since I got one for Christmas last year.  But this week an event has transpired to burst my bubble a little.  (Note to self:  Can bubbles be partially burst?  Seems like no...  Maybe if it were a multichambered bubble, like a heart, and only one chamber burst.  That would tie in nicely with an allusion to a broken heart which would also be appropriate for this tale.  Or perhaps I just need to work on the metaphor a little more...)

At any rate I set my Kindle down one evening after my before-bed read and then picked it up again the next evening to continue on and found this!:

Powering it down and back was little help.  The bottom half of the screen responded, but the upper part with its smeared ink wave and its amputated Harriet Beecher Stowe left it generally illegible.  In my panic I made one of those 11:30pm customer service hotline phone calls which assures you that while your call is important to them, it isn't important enough to staff their U.S. call center at that hour, so you get help from very nice people in Bangladesh or the Punjab provinces.  The lady I talked to, whose English was a little bit thick and a struggle to lock on to, was nevertheless very pleasant and walked me through all the secret tips and tricks to hard-boot my Kindle.  But love was not to be found.  At the end of the day (or rather at the beginning of the next day, by this time), the Kindle was declared a lost cause.  Fortunately, it was still under warranty, so she told me that would ship a replacement out to me immediately for no cost.  Fair enough.  I went to bed that night illiterate, but not inconsolable.

The next day I decided to explore the issue a little further and did a web search or two to find out if this was a prevalent problem.  Unfortunately I found story after story about people whose screens crapped out due to torsion or falls or for no apparent reason at all.  They seemed to happen quite easily and often.  People were  anywhere from a few months to a few days into their Kindle experience.  From the sample set I looked at, I got a longer life than most!  And some were on their third, fourth or fifth Kindle with all their predecessors succombing to the same fate.

I know this was hardly a scientific sampling space - only the people with problems would complain about them, so naturally everyone I heard from had a gripe.  The (hopefully) millions of untarnished Kindle users wouldn't post on those forums.  But still it seemed a little concerning.  The pearl ink technology in the Kindle is such a joy to use, but perhaps it still has some mass production kinks yet to be worked out.  I don't like the idea of having to replace my Kindle every six months, and I'm not exactly sure how the imminent expiration of my warranty in December will play into the replacement policy.  Got conflicting reports from the websites on that one.

As someone who works to develop new technologies for a living, my heart and good wishes go out to Amazon and hope they figure out any systemic problems and rework them.  But I also hope they'll keep me in free Kindles until they can last a few years at a pop.

A Pomegranate Still Life

My painting productivity seems to have taken a hit lately.  It's not that I haven't been painting, its just that I've had too many projects going on at once and they've all been "in progress" with nothing being "done."  There is something irritating and unsettling about not coming to a place of closure on something, even if you're not spending an inordinately long time in the process.  It's much more satisfying to me to have several things going that are staggered in their "doneness" so that there's a completion point for one or the other in the foreseeable future.  Lately all my projects (I've got three in works right now) have kind of lined up in the development time/space continuum -- all pretty much following the same schedule.  In theory I could just put one or two aside and concentrate on a single project for a while to get in out ahead, but that doesn't work practically because I can't really work for a full three-hour class on any one painting.  Things get too wet and mushy and you just have to switch to another project.  I am more or less forced to have at least two things going at once, or waste my class time.

But fortunately the log jam is beginning to break.  I did wrap up two of them this week and I've managed to photograph one of them:

This is an original composition using Stacy's china and some pomegranates given us by a family friend (right before Stacy transformed them into jelly).  I'm trying to do more and more original work and less copying.  I have nothing against copying - its a great way to develop your skills - but at the end of the day, you can't really sell a copy or enter it into competitions, and someday I would like to be able to that.  So this is one I pulled together myself.  I'm pretty happy with it.  I didn't know if I'd be able to pull off the detail in the china, and there are a couple of places where I know I didn't, but overall, it came out better than I'd expected.  I sure love still life!

I've got ideas for my next two projects, but I'm always open for suggestions or requests!

Ruls for Daddy!

Perhaps I've been laying down the law a little too heavy around the house lately.  Perhaps I haven't been as nurturing or generous as expected.  Perhaps I have failed to notice pain and suffering in our midst, or worse, perhaps I've condoned or instigated it.  Whatever the offense, I have evidently been singled out for a protest.

I heard the kids conspiring together back in one of their bedrooms this evening.  Eventually they emerged with a list of demands entitled "Ruls for Daddy!"  These are evidently my punishment for perceived atrocities.

Ruls for Daddy!

1.  Daddy does not play on the computer.
2.  Daddy doesn't get to wrap presents.
3.  Daddy does not get to make satellites.
4.  Daddy can't read books to us.
5.  Daddy is not allowed to play soccer!
6.  Daddy is inappropriate to do stuff.
7.  Daddy is mean!
8.  Daddy can't love us!
9.  Daddy is not allowed to cuddle.
10.  Daddy can't do anything.


I expect they will soon be hanging out on Wall Street demanding that the 1% stop loving them.

It's Not Easy Being Greenie

A week or so ago our neighbor brought over a bunch of fresh radishes from his garden. Unbeknownst to our neighbor, he also brought over a soon-to-be much loved family pet. A small green caterpillar was nestled up in the produce and on discovery he was quickly transferred to a jelly jar with a cheesecloth lid. I gave him four to six hours, tops, but L and N's love was more nurturing than I'd credited, and "Greenie," as he became known, was well provisioned with samples of every leaf in our backyard. Variety is obviously the spice of life, or at least a general contributor, for in the abundance of delicacies offered, he found a couple that he clearly enjoyed very much.  We watched him polished them off day after day and grow quite plump in the process.

Worm Watch 2011!

All seemed to be going quite well until about a week ago. I came home to find the jelly jar sadly empty. "What happened?" I asked.

Stacy, my biology major wife, told me that Greenie had stopped moving a day or two ago. She gave him time, but it was clear he had died. "I just threw him out a minute ago."  She pulled open the garbage bin to show me.  Greenie was lying on the heap all hard and crusty.  At that moment the light of realization flickered in Stacy's eyes, followed by a mad scramble in the garbage to retrieve the cast-off cocoon.  This only served to knock it further down into the muck.   We pulled aside cantaloupe rinds and empty yogurt containers, paper towels and other assorted unidentifiables until at last we found the identifiable we were looking for. We delicately scooped out Greenie's immobile "body" and restored him to his jelly jar home, reattaching the cheesecloth lid and settling him in a quiet corner on the counter. Or at least as quiet as they get around here. He did look rather moribund lying clunkily on the bottom of the jar, but every once in a while, if you spent the time to watch, you'd notice a little spastic twitch that said that the spark of life had not departed Greenie just yet. Another few days and the twitching stopped and even I began to lose faith - though I could almost be persuaded that the little crusty green thing was a little bigger today that it had been the day before.

On Friday our fretted waiting was over. I came home from work to find nothing crusty on the jar bottom, and something light and feathery hanging upside-down from the cheese cloth. The florescent jade of the caterpillar had faded to wings of a palest green, like hydrangea petals. One wing was out, the other still somewhat curled up in the chrysalis hull. Another day and things were unraveled enough to do a more thorough examination. A quick internet search confirmed that Greenie was now a proud male Cabbage White Butterfly. Unfortunately is appears that his second stowed wing may be damaged or malformed and if so, I revert back to my prior predictions of life expectancy, but Greenie's obviously a fighter and has overcome plenty of challenges already in his short metamorphic life, so who can really say?

WAS

IS

(or some semblance thereof...)

More Dental Drop-outs

For the last week or so L has been boasting an ever more flexible front tooth.  A jiggle turned into a wiggle which evolved into full-fledged  flappage.  Tonight by dinner it was clear the end was near and none too soon, as everyone was getting a little tired (and grossed out) watching L put her tooth through its many pirouettes, held in place by a micrometer strand of who knows what.

Having lost two teeth previously (amplely documented here and here), one would think L a jaded pro, but this particular instance marked the first time one of the defectors came from the upper echelons of her standing army, so new life and excitement were breathed into the tired regimen.

Snaggle-tooth

N wanted everyone to know that regular brushing
will ensure his teeth stay put as long as possible.

Since the tooth seemed to be rather attached to its lifelong home, and all wobbling aside, seemed to give no clear indication that it was going to speed up its vacating timeline, L and Mommy had to have some serious discussions on assisting nature to take its course. L was unconvinced that any form of external influence need be applied, but Mommy was much more adamant on the matter. The thought of having the tooth lost and swallowed overnight, and the recovery discussions that would no doubt follow, gave her more of a reason to [e-hem] sink her teeth into the argument.

While maternal tenacity and pre-pubescent pluck are generally well-matched contenders, Mommy's insistence was unyielding and eventually L gave up the fight and submitted herself to having Mommy grope around her mouth with a big paper towel. A snag, a yank, a pop and a squeal, and it was all over except the gloating.

All present and accounted for...

A Little ME Time - Of Trinkets, Tide Pools, and Technicolor Yawns

The end of Pax Kindelis

It was a misty, moisty morning and cloudy was the weather when our final B. H. sunrise asserted itself. For some reason a foggy morning keeps the riff-raff in bed longer, so I was able to secure a good hour or two of Kindle-time out on the balcony before I heard the shuffles within and my budding apprentice photographer emerged with her mother's digital and a smug expression that indicated she'd been using it and wasn't afraid to wield it again.

Photo by the backup camera crew.

Wrapping up a rather dense-packed vacation, checking out of the Wonder View wasn't as depressing as it sometimes is. We settled accounts, made arrangements to stow the Great White Wonder for a few additional hours, then awaited the Bar Harbor shuttle for one last morning hurrah in town.

The Wonder View Inn is a pet-friendly establishment and we had the good fortune to have neighbors on both sides who had brought quiet but very affectionate dogs along with them. L and N had spent a couple of cumulative hours over the course of our trip hanging out on the balcony playing with one or the other of the "puppies" between the balcony bars, with much excitement generated on both sides. At one point an ill-adviced game of fetch on the elevated balcony resulted in L and I spending 30 minutes in the woody undergrowth below looking for an overly enthusiastically returned rubber ball. As it would happen, as we sat waiting outside the lobby for the town shuttle one of our next door neighbors also pulled up to check out. This gave the kids one final opportunity to be bathed in saliva by the large, dopily happy mound of fur in the backseat - a Goldendoodle, a golden retriever/standard poodle mix. A disturbingly cute and good natured mutt.

On every trip of note we are obligated to address the gift-buying fetish that flows down the Harris family line (a line which, not surprisingly, also retrieves the bulk of the gifts purchased). Our morning ambitions were simple and semi-capitalistic - a walk through the kitsch shops and then a final walk by the coast. The trinket acquisitions were done by seasoned verterans and there is very little of interest to report there, other than to note the Bar Harbor could do with a couple more benches strategically placed outside the myriad "Christmas in July" stores.

By the time we were ready for our ocean walk the mists of the morning had mostly burned off, leaving a few rag-tag fog banks hanging out here and there looking rather foolish. There is a well-maintained walking path that weaves its way along the promentory rich coastline for a mile or so south of Bar Harbor. It is host to numerous rose hedges and meticulously disheveled (New) English gardens as it winds its way between the rocky waterline and the high-class blue chip hotels that look down their long lawn noses at us. It is a delightful family favorite.

Cool granite textures

The kids couldn't care less about the Martha Stewart retreats on the land side of the path. They are all about the rocks and ridges and the million teeming tidepools on the water side. Every time we go Stacy, gathering all her inner peace and centeredness, has to close her eyes, commit herself to Providence, and turn the kids loose to scamper on those fatal Maine granite boulders. She will stand off to the side and whimper slightly as she watches (or shields her eyes) as they dart and weave over and through the slippery rocks and crashing waves. Like a veteran returing from an umpteenth combat mission, you can't quite tell if Stacy emerges from these experiences a little more stalwart, or a little more prone to post-traumatic stress syndrome.

The tidepools proved glorious. Many varieties of seaweed were pointed out; many conchs and whelks and periwinkles were gently abused. The highlight was a challenge from Daddy to find a crab in what appeared at first glace to be a lifeless landlocked pool. The challenge was quickly taken up and dozens of unexpected lifeforms were brought to light before the crowning achievement - the coveted crab - was uncovered. The excitement of the victory prompted crab-walks all the way back to town.

Crab hunters on the job.

Ah HA!!!

The remaining vacation hours were a blur of bustle to get home. We drove to Portland and crashed at an airport hotel in prep for an early morning flight out. We got to the airport and our plane on the morrow without serious incident. The only "hiccup" of note occurred as we were taxiing to the runway for our departure out of Portland. The man sitting next to me had seemed a little anxious. I suspect he was a little scared of flying. His tension built until just before we got to the runway. And then...

"Ummm, flight attendent. Can I have a couple of wet paper towels please?..."