A Math-terpiece

Dinnertime conversations in the Perkins home can be a little non-standard. Our conversation tonight, for example, was all mathematical. N was in a numerical frenzy and spent most of the meal begging for challenging math questions. Addition and subtraction are passé. We've moved on to simple multiplication, square roots and are dabbling in decimals. Eventually the meal was over and my interest in the endless stream of questions was sated as well. N, however, needed something postprandial and soothing to ease him into the bedtime frame of mind. A timed math quiz was just the thing.  I wiped up a print-out, seated his butt at the kitchen table and put 10 minutes on the clock.  You'd've thought he was at Disneyland.

At the sound of the buzzer, he was working on his last problem, so we was given some math grace and allowed to finish the test.  I graded it ruthlessly.

Boys' Day In

Stacy and L are off at a birthday party this morning.  We boys have a busy day ahead of us, so we jumped right on it.

Lunchtime Update:

Stacy and L are eating at their party so I'm on the hook to keep N well-nourished for the afternoon.  A quick refridge review left me thinking my options were limited.  But never underestimate the "make it work" dedication of a temporarily single-parenting engineer!  Scattered throughout the house I was able to track down enough essential ingredients to make Nachos a la Perkins.  I'm sure it will be hitting the menu of a boutique cafe near you soon.

I found a half eaten bag of blue corn chips in the pantry.  The deep freeze in the garage offered up a pound of ground beef frozen late in the last decade.  Hidden crannies of the refrigerator deli drawer yielded a motley crew of international cheese remnants in various stages of "aging."  Our one remaining onion was moldy, but only half moldy!  (The glass is half full!)  We had a little sour cream that looked white, but we were out of salsa.  No problem - Stacy had some leftover spaghetti sauce tucked away in the back that could pretend to be Mexican.  A quick jumble and a run under the broiler and voilà!  Gourmet goodness fit for a king!*

*Of a somewhat underdeveloped third-world country.

Detailed N-vestigations

I've been reading Encyclopedia Brown stories to the kids.  They get all excited about figuring out the mini-mystery of the eveing, though usually they usually get a little over-the-top in their clue hunting.  I'll have barely finished the first sentence of a given story (e.g. "Encyclopedia Brown lived in Idaville.") and my sleuths in training will already be declaring beyond a shadow of a doubt that the statement is a lie and tantamount to the first clue.  But I have to hand it to them - they have learned to pick apart every little detail and consider it's merits.  Generally their considerations are way out in left field, but at least its out of the box (or ballpark) thinking.

Tonight after the story they were particularly amped up.  N kept making up "solutions" and trying to get people to figure them out.  They were mostly nonsense, but they were taken very serious by Mr. N.  When they were finally sent to their rooms the cross-room chatter went on and on, N quizzing L on hypotheticals, L giving her conclusions, and N declaring her correct or not.

"Good night, N," I called down the hall, but the verbal stream from under the covers continued unabated.  L gave up answering, but N did not feel much inclination to give up quizzing.

"Good night!" I repeated a few minutes later with a little more bellow to my voice.  I looked at Stacy in disbelief as the jabbering continued.  Finally I got up and walked down the hall to N's room where he sprang bolt up-right in bed on seeing me in the doorway.

"Daddy!  Come cuddle with me.  I have a really hard solution for you!"  Unable to be as mean and grouchy as I wanted to be, I said, OK, but he would have to go to sleep right afterwards.  I lay down beside him on the bed and he began to tell me his "solution."

"Daddy, once I was all alone in my room and I had 10 doughnuts.  The next thing I knew, there were only 5 doughnuts!  What happened?!?"

"Hmmm," I thought, knowing I didn't stand a chance at guessing whatever utterly random nonsequitor of a solution he had in mind for this particular puzzle.  So I winged it.

"You were in your room with the doughnuts, but you weren't paying very close attention and when you weren't looking, Daddy snuck in and ate 5 of your doughnuts!"

"Very good, Daddy.  You were very close, but you weren't quite right.  Try again."  I didn't want to try again and told him so, and said it would really be better for everyone if he just told me the answer.

"OK," he sighed, as though grievously disappointed that his Dad wasn't a team player.  "The clue was that I said I was alone.  Nobody can sneak in if you're really alone.  So if I was all alone, what could have happened to the doughnuts?"

I gave him a sidelong look.  "You ate them?"

"Very good, Daddy!  You figured it out!  That was a very hard one.  You did very well."

"Thanks, son," I said, not wanting to bask in my glory, "but it's time you went to sleep."  I gave him a peck on the cheek and got up to leave.

"OK Daddy," he acquiesced.  "But I figured out another solution."

"And what is that?"

"When you say 'good night,' you mean 'be quiet.'"

The kid's a genius.

Angry Nerd

Stacy was out running errands with L today, and since I was home from work sick, I got to entertain N. N has long valued and relied upon he extraordinary head-butting skills, but today even he was excessive.

"N, stop it,"   I whined after the fifteenth slam into my kidneys.  No notice.

"Cut it out!" after the thirtieth.

"Why are you doing this!?!" I half pleaded, unable to stand straight with my bruises and swelling.

"I'm an angry bird and you're a pig." he said matter-of-factly.

Seeking to Save the Lost

I woke up this morning to an utterly quiet house, which is not unusual, and did my morning bed check ritual.  I still live with the pagan superstition that a kiss on the forehead while they sleep will act as a talisman warding all danger and harm away from my children while I am at work or out and about.  I checked on L first, as her room is closest - but her bed was empty.  Vaguely remembering the scamper of knees and elbows over me at some distant point in the previous night, I went back to my room to see if Stacy and L were compatibly arranged.  I didn't remember any further awkward pokes or kicks, so L must have slept on the other side of Stacy, and it must have been a tight squeeze since I'd had my usual spacious side all to myself.  But on examining the room, Stacy was snoring comfortably with no one challenging her for mattress real estate.

I went back to L's room thinking I just somehow missed her.  There was a lump of covers on her bed that I, somewhat relieved, realized had to be her - I had just failed to probe it.  But my subsequent probing turned up no cocooning kid - they really were just cover lumps.  I hastened to N's room.  He was virtually cocooned with his comforter drawn tightly around his face.  He looked like a Indian or Eskimo papoose.  But L was not with him.

I was pretty sure she had not gotten up - the living areas were dead quiet.  I couldn't imagine she would get up in the middle of the night with a bad dream and want to sleep on the couch so far from the rest of the family.  I quickly verified that assumption.  The living room was empty, the bathrooms deserted, the kitchen clear.  All the doors were still shut and locked.  Beginning to feel my adrenaline concentrate, I started wracking my brain.  The bunk-bed - I hadn't checked the bunk-bed!  So I checked the bunk-bed.  I beat on N's top bunk with my hand, feeling up and down the length of it.  No L.

I retraced my steps, checking all the empty spots again to see if a small child might have materialized in the moments since I'd last checked.  I began wondering how to tell Stacy.  Somehow this seemed all my fault.  Should I wake her up?  Maybe L would reappear if I just waited it out.  Usually happened with my wallet or watch.  Perhaps I could distract Stacy long enough when she woke up that she wouldn't notice L was gone.  How long could I pull that off?  An hour?  A month or two?  On scanning N's room for the third or fourth time I became engulfed in a burst of  protective anguish over the one child still left to my care.  At least I still had N - but what if I lose him too?  I stooped down to give him that guardian kiss I'd started to deliver twenty minutes ago.  (Did I forget to kiss L before I went to bed last night, I suddenly wondered?)  Wheezing peacefully in his full-body blanket binding, N was oblivious to his sister's abscondence; I scooped my arms around him to add an additional shot of voodoo hug protection to my kiss.  Something warm and solid collided with my hand as I sought to engulf my son.  There was a rustling of sheets, a murmur of "ouch" and then again, quiet.  I ripped back the sheets and there, fidgeting and shuffling in the sudden cold air, was my little fugitive, balled up and huddled behind her brother.  I stood in stunned disbelief.  The two cannot be within three feet of each other for more than ten minutes without a laceration, dislocation or near-dismemberment of some kind.  How dare they sleep so peacefully cohabitated when I'm in such a state!

A Tale of a Trail Where You Might See a Whale

Point Vicente on Palos Verdes

Last weekend Stacy and I celebrated our 11th anniversary by taking a one-nighter down at a highbrow inn in Dana Point. It was a great 24 kid-free hours. (Thanks, Grandma Lynne!) Our room had an ocean view and as we were sitting out on the patio after breakfast on Saturday morning we were able to see a few whales spouting way off in the distance. They were pretty far out and you couldn't spot them easily; the best thing to do was to look for the whale watching boats scattered about and when they all fired up their engines and raced to a common spot, you could train your binoculars and see a spout or two. It has been a very good season, supposedly, as the whales make their way back up the California coast to their summer quarters off Alaska.

On Sunday we were back in the real world and fully parental again. Inspired by our sightings in Orange County, and knowing the kids would get a kick out of it, we decided to pack up a picnic lunch and head to our local lookout after church. The Palos Verdes penninsula is a much-touted whale watching area, mainly because just opposite of where the peninsula juts out into the ocean, Catalina Island stretches long and large and forms a natural whale funnel, forcing the migrating monstrosities to bunch up and shoot through the narrow channel like cars on the 405 during a SIG alert.

We got to Point Vicente, the primo spot for water-watching, found a table and had our eclectic lunch - a hodge podge of things pulled from the fridge on our run out the door that morning. It was a beautiful day and Catalina was reclining lazily across the channel like it too realized it was Sunday and need not make any special exertions.

After we had our lunch the kids played on the rocks and fences and tormented their mother with stories about all the rattlesnakes they knew were lurking about (as all the signs insisted). Then we got out the binoculars and began our survey of the sea. We were chagrined. Sunny and beautiful, the waters frothed and churned, but were apparently devoid of life, at least of the aquatic mammalian kind. After fifteen or twenty minutes of fruitless searching we grew restless and decided to save our straining eyesight and take a stroll on the walking path that lines the cliffs. As we progressed, we were actually treated with more natural wildlife, but not the kinds were were really hoping for.

N demonstrating how to surf around rattlesnake infested areas.

Thar she goes!!!  Oh, nevermind.  It's just a rabbit.

Mommy's binoculars were the source of much grief and petty bickering. It might have been a little self-serving, but I quickly laid down the law the if anyone squabbled, Daddy got the binoculars for 5 minutes.

N enjoying his pristine view of the fence railing.

Look over there!!!  Oh, nevermind.  Just pelicans.

As we were making the reverse leg of our excursion we had just about returned to the look-out area when there was a commotion among all the other would-be whale watchers draping the fences. Everyone was chittering and murmuring and pointing. There, just beyond the lighthouse point, was a frothing band of water. It was foaming and spitting and slowly moving northwest around the point. It looked as though the bottom of the ocean floor was slowly rending apart sending spurts of boiling volcanic steam up as the split rent the length of the channel. A closer view with the binoculars, however, revealed something much more biological than geological: an enormous pod of dolphins or porpoises was making its way up the coast in a mad frenzy, arching and jumping and leaping and twirling. It was an unbelievable sight - the line kept growing as more and more dolphins rounded the point. There could have been 200-300 hundred of them, maybe as many as 500 - who could count the heaving, foaming mass? They would clump up then spread out then regroup again. They were making incredible time as they raced past us and off toward Malibu and points north.

We watched them until they were a shimmering splash of spray far out and away and then slowly gathered ourselves for the walk to the car. We were not another fifteen feet further along when another of those now familiar gasps of excitement sloshed from the sightseers along the fences. "A spout!" someone cried.  Back to the fence we raced and got to watch a retrograde whale making his way against the flow of traffic, down the coast heading southward. I expect he'd found something tasty as he headed north and had swung around for another helping. He would spout and crest one or two times, then disappear for a few minutes only to throw off another spout a quarter mile south of where we last lost him.

He was right up front and fairly close to the shoreline, which surprised me somewhat. (I looked it up later and found that the sea bottom plunges down very quickly just off the cliffs, and he didn't have to be far afield to be in very deep water.) We watched him make his meandering way south, looking very leisurely compared to the mob rush we'd just seen from his cousins. Soon he was lost to our eagle eyes. We turned yet again toward our car and this time let no cries of joy divert us from our journey home.

Not exactly a National Geographic shot, but the best I could do.

It Was Probably that Brooklyn Accent

L was peeking over my shoulder as I was watching an Anonymous 4 video on YouTube. She listened, but couldn't make out the words.

"Where is that?" she asked.

"I think it's at a radio station in New York," I replied. Her puzzled look intensified.  

"Are they speaking New York?"

By the Sweat of Your Face You Shall Eat Bread..

"Daddy," N whispered to me in church this morning, "Be-member that I'm going to help you in the garage today."  N is all into helping and does so willingly and with great spirit.  We encourage it because generally it helps shame his sister into actually doing the one or two chores specifically laid out for her.  On Saturday the kids found me cleaning out my files for the new year, shredding old bills and receipts in my garage man-cave.  For L and N, few things incur the wide eyed glee of watching full 8½ by 11 sheets of paper go crinkling to their confettied demise.  I always get the full court plead for permission to feed in their own doomed docs.  N is the more conscientious of the two.  With L it's just a matter of time before she snags her hair or shirt sleeve or some other bodily accouterment and is dragged kicking and screaming into the gaping ¼-in slit that has been the bane of so many reams before her.  On Saturday we wiled away a minute or two pulverizing some old water bills before the task got old and fresher fare caught their interest, but N, ever the sensitive soul, promised me he would come back later and help me finish the task.

This afternoon as I headed out to the garage were I would be able to ignore the Super Bowl in peace and quiet I beckoned to N to come lend a hand (or finger or shirt collar or whatever he wanted to offer).  N is all sincerity, and his offers to help are anchored in the bottom of his heart, but he does possess all the focus and single-mindedness of the 5-year-old that he is.  He mounted the chair that brought him up high enough to reach the shredder and joyfully eviscerated a handful of old gas company bills and then quickly lost interest and started to find something else to keep himself occupied.  He was savoring the male man-cave bonding time, so he didn't want to go back in the house or out to the yard to play, but boredom takes a heavy toll on free spirits such as his.  I locked him down for another couple of minutes by pulling over a tall stool for him to climb up on.  The simple act of climbing up a stool and sitting a couple of feet above the floor is a joy and game that for we older, stoggier sort, has faded to the point where we are no longer capable of understanding all its inherent fascinations.  We quickly devolved into a scene that is probably replicated in garages world-wide on a regular basis - one guy mutely doing all the work, the other "assistant," ostensibly there to help, holding down a bench and yacking the first guy's ear off.

N's topics of conversation tend to be somewhat free ranging, stream-of-consciousness kinda stuff.  Were it not for the frequent "Don't you think so, Daddy?" pauses for acknowledgment to which I'm obliged to respond, I would likely have let him blur into the sound of the grinding shredder.  One topic seemed pretty pertinent as I was working through a pile of four-year-old credit card receipts.  "Daddy, if you don't have any money, you can't go to the bank and get any money, right?"

"That's right, N," I agreed.

"You have to get some money before the bank gives you any money," he explained, while I cocked my head and squinted at him, wondering exactly where this was coming from.

"And how do you get this money?" I asked, preparing a moralistic little jaunt down Work Ethic Lane.

"By going on walks and finding quarters." he replied.

My Idea of a Super Bowl

Last month I got to go out to lunch with some coworkers to celebrate the Chinese New Year. We went to a traditional Taiwanese "hot pot" restaurant in Gardena and I had such a good time I've been jonesing to bring Stacy and the fam. Given that neither of the kids have been seriously maimed in a week or two, so we decided this would be a good weekend to press our luck.

We piled into "Goldie" (as L refers to our golden minivan) and made the jaunt up Western Blvd to the Asian metropolis of Gardena to the Boiling Point restaurant. Stacy ordered the seafood soup, I got the beef, and we ordered a second seafood to split between L & N. Klutzy kids and bowls belching prominences of fire always make for an edge-of-your-seat dining experience!

The kids were fascinated by the food; N was particularly impressed that the shrimp in his bowl still had their eyes.  L pointed out that a significant number of the denizens of her soup were in fact "bivalves."  Eventually N became concerned that the "smoke" coming off the boiling bowls and the fire whipping out from under them was drying out his sensitive lips.  Mommy's emergency lip balm evidently wasn't rated for hot-pot dry-out, so the complaining continued on through the meal.

By the time we finished we'd managed narry a spilled drink nor a single scorched body part!  This was a celebratory accomplishment!  (We don't count the 8 or 10 dropped chopsticks recovered from the floor.)  As a reward for "trying and not dying" we made a second stop on the way home - the Ranch 99 Market on Artesia Blvd where we promised the kids a special treat.  I love that place.  It is a real-deal Asian market and I always feel compelled to show anyone I drag there the meat counter.  You'll find staples like filet mignon and pork tenderloin along side more unexpected delicacies like duck feet and twelve different types of tripe.  The pork bung looked especially fresh.  Sadly they appeared to have run short on pork uterus.

The special treat ended up being peanut butter ice cream bars, which is about all Mommy would let me get away with after the meat counter tour.

The Newt Testement

L's 1st grade classroom has been the home of an amphibious mascot this year, but around Christmas Mrs. Shepard decided that the newt was a little more fragrant than she liked in a classroom already replete with the assorted aromas of 20-odd seven-year-olds.  So the newt got the boot, but rather than being cast aside and quickly forgotten like a primary election drop-out, Mrs. Shepard offered him to Stacy, and Stacy, never one to turn down a great deal on an aquatic semi-reptile, jumped at the suggestion.

We now have our little black friend crouching on his slippery rocks amid his frothing water aerator, showing all the signs of happiness and utter contentment that a newt can muster.  The kids have obviously bonded with such a loving and affection animal.  He's already filled that little black newt-shaped hole in our souls we never knew we had.  Our hearts are strangely warm, despite the fact that his will never be.

Need I mention we've named him Mitt?