Recreational Bugs

N has a new game he's all excited about.  You play a bug and jump from leaf to leaf performing silly tasks and avoiding nasty spiders.  Your goal is to attain bug mastery and receive the coveted "Super Bug Scout" badge.

 N feels free to modify the rules on a situational basis.  If you are a butterfly, for example, you can fly right over the sticky spider's web.  If you are the spider itself, you are likewise immune.

I was treated to a game while Mommy was out doing some errands. I got to be the butterfly while N was the common housefly. As we went along N was directed to put his left thumb on a brown spider, and find three bees and then buzz three times. On one of my turns I was requested to tell a story about one of the bugs on the board. I picked the millipede.

Once upon a time there was a small millipede.  He got up one fine summer morning and asked his Mommy if he could go out and play.  "Certainly," said Mommy Millipede.  "Just be sure to put your shoes on first."

The little millipede hurried back to his room and began putting on his shoes.  Can you imagine how long that took?!?  When he was all finished he came back out to his Mommy.

"Mommy, I've put my shoes on.  Can I go out and play now?" he said.

"Oh dear, I'm sorry," said his mother.  "But its dark out now.  It's time to go to bed."

Of Belts and Bards

My wife had the utter audacity to ask me to fix dinner last night. So I BELTed her. It turns out that wasn't enough, so I had to BELT her again. I was just about to BELT the kids too, but Stacy pleaded with me (in between my BELTing her) not to. Her maternal pleas touched my soul and I relented -- if the kids didn't want egg on their bacon, egg, lettuce and tomato sandwiches, they could eat their BLTs plain.

After it was all over, I BELTed myself a couple of times too.

A good BELT is all about fresh tomatoes. My tomato plants are looking a little stunted this year, but they've nevertheless produced a decent first crop of 'matos. I think, however, I'm going to be getting pretty much this one single harvest, so it is important to not waste the opportunity and inadvertently miss out on the whole point of fresh tomatoes in the first place -- BELTs.

But while tomatoes are the foundation and anchor of a good BELT, they don't stand alone on the stage. The BELT is definitely an ensemble production. All the actors must appear, well costumed and seasoned in their roles. First, the bread - a nice white bread; none of those whole wheat abominations - must be lightly and delicately toasted, a nice golden blush on a fair maiden's cheek. The lettuce must be as fresh as a springtime meadow, and preferably a more consummate actor than iceberg. The bacon must straddle that fine line between crispy and tenacious, asserting itself with salty poignancy, but never occluding the performances of its cast members. The egg must draw strength from the performance of the bacon, being seasoned to perfection in the very renderings of the fair meat. All must be staged carefully and dutifully with a gentle spread of mayonnaise, or, to lend an exotic mystique, with a cameo of horseradish sauce. Together, and only together, does the company achieve greatness. A weak showing on any part, and the entire production suffers in toto.

This evening's BELTs were a worthy undertaking, but in the end some slight flaws dimmed the brilliance of the entire spectacle. The bacon I used was Costo's maple bacon. Prior to opening it I imagined something cured with a microscopic amount of maple syrup, just enough to legally allow the advertising reference. But on opening it I found that the bacon was not "perfumed" with a hint of maple, but more or less reeked of it. Upon throwing it into the pan it immediately gave up a lot of juice and left a sticky residue on the bottom of the pan. It was also a very think cut, which at the end of the day cooked up more like thin slices of sugary ham than salty bacon. The cascading failure of it all was that the eggs, cooked in the syrup goo that should have been nothing more than the pure southern sacrament of bacon grease, seized to the bottom of the fry-pan and refused to be unseated save but by the most violent of scrapings. But frustrating though it was (culinary domestic abuse!), the show did go on and the audience seemed to applaud the presentation.

After dinner we piled into the car for yet another thesbian offering:  Shakespeare by the Sea, or in our case Shakespeare-in-a-Torrance-park-which-is-relatively-by-the-sea.  We've been meaning to attend one of the troup's free performances for several years, and finally the planets aligned so that we, like star-crossed lovers, could take in an open-air production of Twelfth Night.

Observation:  Shakespeare in Wilson park draws a significantly different crowd than the fireworks in Wilson Park do.

The kids were duded up in their PJs and we had sleeping bags and blankets in tow.  We got there 45 minutes before "curtain" time, and there was already a pretty big crowd.  We plopped ourselves down on the grass off in right field and settled in as the sun set, the temperatures dropped, and the eucalyptus trees waved gently overhead.  We weren't quite sure how the kids would handle it, but hey - it was outdoors, and if things got ugly there was a swing set a hundred yards away!  Actually, once the show started they did quite well.  L sat transfixed, focused on the stage laughing obediently whenever the crowd laughed; booing as society dictated.  She snickered that all the boys were wearing ballet pants just like hers.  N was similarly focused and from time to time he would turn around to us and quote back an entire line an actor had just spoken.  It was a little spooky, like he was channeling some long dead Elizabethan.

Everything went swimmingly the first act.  At the end of the act there was an intermission during which I took the kids and stood in line for hot chocolates while Mommy kept the blankets from blowing away.  I gladly paid for my four packets of hot chocolate powder and four Styrofoam cups and then stood in the line for the hot water.  When it came my turn I saddled the first cup up to the hot water dispenser and ... drip, drip, drip. The thermos went dry.  The attendant was all apologetic and offered my money back.  Together, through tipping the thermos, I was able to get one of the four cups full, and two of the remaining ones I was able to fill with hot coffee.  (Mocha turned out to be a much better idea anyway!)  I redistributed the left over fourth chocolate powder pack to the three filled cups (Mmmmm, rich!), then split the true chocolate cup into two half-servings and we were set.  The family in line behind us didn't seem to have the same make-do attitude and as we headed on back to our seats I heard them giving the woeful attendant an earful.

The next act started up and not 30 seconds into it there was a crack and the sound system went dead.  The actors didn't miss a beat, but plowed along steadily, projecting for all they were worth.  I was worried at first, but after a minute or two the crowd settled down to a lower level of ambient noise and your ears grew more attentive and you could hear it all well enough.  The sound never came back on, but all in all it was a fun production, warts and all, and we had a fresh and fun time of it.

By the time the play wrapped up L was sacked out and N was awake but whiny.  I flipped L, sleeping bag and all, over my shoulder, grabbed a blanket or two and headed back to the car, Stacy and N hauling the rest of our belongings.  I could hear N's litany of long-suffering complaints the whole walk back.  Once they were stowed soundly in the car we hit the road and headed home, our sights set on our beds.  To sleep; perchance to dream.

I Think We'll Need Another Ecumenical Council

I was quizzing the kids on some catechism questions yesterday. I got some disturbing answers.

DADDY:	How many gods are there?
L:	There are three gods!
DADDY:	<shocked> Really?
L:	Oh wait! No! There's only one God. But He has three friends!

For no really good reason, other than it's convenient, I'll blame this little bit of abomination on Stacy's family. I shall call it the "Trinitarian Harris-y."

Travel Losities

A few random and sporadic notes from last week's business trip:

Monday, July 12, 2010

Going out of town sucks when you can’t bring your family with you. I remember when I was single how bitter I was that my job never called for any out-of-town travelling. Back then it seemed exotic and adventurous: airports and hotels and expense accounts. Fancy restaurants and bars with your coworkers after the workday. Extra vacation days taken to align with the travel so you can sightsee your travel destination. But no matter how much I wanted to, I could never land a project that required any travel. Now, of course, that it is thoroughly abhorrent to me, I travel three or four times a year. I know that that is still small potatoes compared to what a lot of folks I work with have to do, but the timing-irony of it all still gives me what I’d refer to as a “pouty face” if ever it were to show up on my kids.

I’m wrapping up day two of a seven-day stint. Yesterday I flew out; today was the first day of work. It’s hot and humid and foreign on the east coast. My hotel is fine, but nevertheless a hotel.
I called home when I got in and tried to talk to the kids, but they were so sugared up from a day with Aunt Claudia that it was a futile undertaking. She took them to a movie, doused them with adrenaline and confections, and promised to take them places and let them do things that I won’t agree to for at least the next three years. (For L; five years for N…) (Maybe...) (We’ll see.) After three or four minutes of listening to them bounce on their bed and shriek to one another I asked them to give the phone back to Mommy. The real pouty-face-inspiring thing about it all was that Stacy told me Aunt Claudia had given them a play phone today, and all day long they had been walking though the house carrying on long and quite serious conversations with me on it. The Daddy’s always greener…

I dropped a postcard off with the hotel front desk this morning. It had a picture of the Long Beach airport on it. I’d picked it up in the terminal yesterday while I was waiting for my flight. I haven’t had a chance to pick up any local postcards yet, so maybe for tomorrow I’ll jot off a quick letter on hotel stationary. Stacy mentioned that L was in tears yesterday because the “travel picture” she’d drawn for me to take with me on the plane had inadvertently gotten left in the car to be discovered on their drive home. I was kind of bummed when she told me; they really do cheer me up to have them with.

Now it’s off to tug down the overly tight bed sheets of my sanitary and impersonal and quite empty hotel bed, to be followed by a night of inane TV comedy into the wee hours when I’ll finally be able to semi-fall asleep on the overly abundant assortment of alien bed pillows. Travel.


Wednesday, July 14, 2010

When I travel I generally try to pick up something for the kids, and for Stacy too if I can find something interesting. On my last trip I loaded Stacy down with a couple of pounds of interesting loose-leaf teas from a truly old-school tea shop – dark and alchemistic, like a set from a Harry Potter movie. Stacy loved them, and under normal circumstances we would easily and speedily drink our way through them, but we tackled our kitchen remodel immediately thereafter, so they are still sitting in their bags on some half-assembled shelf, unused and lonely, because we have no stovetop on which to boil water. But that’s another story.

I remember my Dad bringing home stuff on the rare occasions when he went on business trips. I don’t remember a single thing he brought back, but I do remember that he brought things. I know that’s kind of a kitschy Americana memory, but in our case when my Dad travelled, it was rarely actually in America. I’m sure, tucked away in corners of my parents’ attic, or in Goodwill stores or landfills, there are copious but forgotten testaments to my Dad’s thoughtfulness from Japan, England, South America and assorted parts unknown.

I had a few minutes before going in this morning, so I walked to a nearby kids’ bookstore I’d seen on a previous excursion. It was one of those independent bookstores that has to work extra hard to create a compelling identity apart from the Borders and Barnes & Noblei of the world. Now I’m not a death-to-Walmart kind of guy, but when it comes to the dying breed of independent bookstores, I do like to support the little guys. (He says with a straight face as he checks whether his Amazon order has shipped or his library hold has shown up at the local branch.) They politely let me bring my coffee inside -- I always ask as I come in, not so much to be a nice guy, but to see whether the shop owner is an uptight jerk; my passion for the little guy tends to evaporate in those cases. I browsed about bit. It looked like they had a preschool or daycare class that met there regularly, which I thought was cool. Off in the corner of the small store there was a marginally stressed looking 20-something lady and a dozen 4- or 5-year olds in various places on the mellowness-to-agitation spectrum, all sitting on a mat having snacktime. As I browsed a bookshelf nearby I began to hear mummers of “Someone’s Daddy is here!” I glanced over and happened to make eye-contact with one little girl. She smiled at me and then leaned over to a friend sitting nearby and whispered “That’s my Daddy over there,” gesturing in my direction.


Friday, July 16, 2010

One workday left, then the long travel day home on Saturday. Flights heading east always go by quicker than flights west. There are good physical reasons for it – the jet stream actually clips half an hour or more from flight times heading east and thwarts progress westbound. But the extra time spent traveling west can’t be fully accounted for by wind speed and good hard science.

There’s definitely a psychosomatic component to it. The relativistic bending of business travel time is the mirror opposite of the similar phenomena I’ve noticed surrounding vacation road trips as a kid. The drive to our coveted vacation destination, though covering the same geographical terrain and comparable road conditions, always took approximately 1.3 eternities longer than the lightning-quick return drive home after all the fun and happinesses have been expended. On business trips my flight “back east” is long but bearable; the reverse trip takes that half hour jet stream offset and parleys it into multiple hours of agonizing psycho-torture. I’ve heard scientists postulate about space/time wormholes that allow you to jump from one spot to another far distant spot at speeds quicker than the speed of light – short circuiting thousands and millions of years of travel time. Being a good conservationist, that leads me to conclude that all the time savings is “made up” somewhere, and I strongly suspect my return flights are subject to a significant about of this time-travel tax.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

To market, to market,
To buy a plum bun
Home again, home again,
Market is done.

My return flight proved to be everything and more than I expected. We closed the cabin door right at 11:50 to secure that statistical “on-time departure,” then sat on the tarmac for an additional 45 minutes until we were cleared for take-off. Then the captain came on the net and said we were being rerouted due to weather, so expect another 15-20 minutes worth of travel time. But luckily my iPod was charged, I was sleep deprived, and Loreena McKennitt was ready, willing and able to serenade me through the heavenly regions.

Whenever I can I fly in and out of Long Beach and avoid the evil behemoth LAX. It’s a sweet little retro airport that looks like something out of a Doris Day movie. We landed an hour late at beloved Daugherty Field and they hauled out the aluminum tarmac staircase and we all deplaned like a multitude of presidents on Air Force One. As I emerged into the dry warm California sunlight at the top of the stairs I was greeted by frantic waving from the observation deck off on the second floor of the airport terminal. Home again, home again. Jiggity jig.

Dreaming My Dreams With You

I starred in my own action movie last night. Unfortunately, it didn't go too well for the hero. The details of the plot are a little sketchy now, but evidently the climactic scene involved me either running with a bomb or me catching one thrown in my direction. As I clasped the bomb to my chest it went off blowing me sky-high and wide awake. In my panicked disintegration I reached out and seized Stacy sleeping to my left, setting that domino a-tumbling. She instantly started screaming for her life and thrashing around, but in a slow-mo running-through-jello sort of way. Even her voice was low and distended, like a Dolores O'Riordan banshee lament in a Cranberries song, or rather, like an Arnold Schwarzenegger death-yell played at half speed. As Stacy convulsed in her alternate universe I screamed at her, not quite up to speed myself, "It's me! It's me! It's me!"

Eventually she came out of her panic and we both collapsed on our backs panting, recovering. That's when we noticed L lying to my right a little shocked and trembling. I asked her what she was doing there and she couldn't remember, explaining that she had a hard time remembering her dreams. As she calmed down she started hiccuping. Stacy, evidently not quite satisfied with the level of ambient adrenaline in the room, whispered in my ear that I should scare her. Never the one to pass up a chance to torture my family, I waited until everything was quiet (save the rhythmic popping coming from L) and lunged at her going "BOO!"

The hiccuping stopped instantly.

Evidently it also pushed some other bio-emotional buttons because all of a sudden she remembered her dream. "Daddy, I was on the deck of a boat. Shooting cannonballs."

And that's were all of this started...

Backyard Bushwacking

A little over a year ago Stacy and I bought a new tent at a charity auction for L's school. Our old tent was a three-man job, but really only slept two adults. The new one was advertised as a seven-man tent, so given the previous ratio I figured it could just about accommodate our family of four. We didn't get any camping in last summer, so the tent sat in our garage unopened all year. On Saturday afternoon, however, well over a year after we bought it, I decided to pull it out and see what it is we got.

The thing is huge! We're talking ginormous. The floor canvas covered our entire backyard with inches to spare; it was a feat of engineering to get it laid out between my raised garden on one side of the yard and the flower beds on the other. L and N, all worked up about the idea of backyard camping, buzzed about the deflated carcass like disturbed hornets, wanting to "help." I expect we hadn't hit the 30-minute mark before N started yanking on one of the main tent poles I'd laid out and snapped the center elastic string that held the jigsaw pieces together. It was around the 2-hour mark before I managed to finish clumsily restringing the pole in enough of a temporary fix to allow the building to proceed.

I've camped a lot in my "yoot" so I'm generally pretty adept at setting up a tent, but this monstrosity nearly beat me. It wasn't hard to figure out, just way too big and bulky for a single person to assemble. Lynne, Stacy's mom, happened to come by as I was struggling, and between her, Stacy and I we managed to get the thing erected. (Notice who I neglected to credit with "helping.") I understand a little better now why the Egyptians needed all those Israelites when building their pyramids.

Did I mention it is huge? Fully assembled, it stands literally 6 feet high. It has a central chamber with two little side wings on either end, and represents a significant increase in my home's overall square footage. If I didn't disassemble it soon I would be cited by the City of Los Angeles for building without a permit and my property taxes would go up.

The juvenile insects, now with a hive to claim as their own, proceeded to move in the vast bulk of their pillows, blankets and toys from their bedroom. Evidently toys you haven't touched in months suddenly seem a lot more exciting if you can play with them in a tent. To build on the roughing-it mood, we grilled hamburgers and hotdogs and ate at the picnic table by the tent. The frenzy of excited chitter-chatter from L and N throughout dinner and early evening seemed to weary adults to be unsustainable, but we were sorely mistaken. Soon it was pajama time and both kids proudly emerged with full-body footed pajamas. L's looked a little painfully stretched out and Stacy reminded me that she actually doesn't own any footed pajamas anymore and that those were N's and a little, umm, small.



While we waited eagerly for encroaching darkness, L, N and I concentrated on destocking the tent and restocking the house of excess toys and linens; Stacy went off to assemble the camping mainstay of s'mores - those are melted marshmallows, Hershey chocolate and graham crackers for all you uninitiated. I forbade the roasting of gooey, drippy marshmallows over my gas grill, so Stacy resorted to nuking them in the microwave. We discovered in this act that marshmallows and microwaves are not kindred spirits. After a prolonged nuke the chocolate melted into the pool of pleasantness we hoped for, but the marshmallow had no outwardly discernible change of state. I stressed the words "outwardly discernible" for a reason. On trying to eat one of these disturbingly white and puffy looking monstrosities, one finds that a change of state has indeed occurred, but not for the better. The formerly light and springing puff has now become a stiff, stringy, dough-like substance. As you would bite into the s'more, the transformed mallow would stretch and not break, and you got the distinct impression you were eating chocolate-covered mozzarella. A petrochemical disaster alarming enough to earn kudos from BP.

Eventually it was bedtime. Or at least tent-time. Sleep, as we all knew, was many, many hours away. We climbed into the tent, zipped up the door, and established our domains. Our family of four barely covered half the available floorspace. It seemed a little like sleeping in an empty and more sparsely decorated version of the Capitol rotunda. All open floors and soaring dome. (I'll need to install some statues of dead presidents around the perimeter next time.)








As it got dark we endured an hour and a half of the joy that only flashlights, 4-to-6-year-olds, and a tent can bring. After suitable battery drainage, the flashlights were confiscated and we settled down to try to go to sleep. After some last-minute appeals for water and a trip back in the house we settled down to try to go to sleep. After another 10 minutes of trying to wrestle a rediscovered camera from L and N we settled down to try to go to sleep.







As I lay in the tent I noticed several things I hadn't noticed before.

1) We live in a city. You can forget that inside a sealed up house. There were fire engines howling and neighbors talking and a freeway one mile away that sounds like a long-winded demon constantly exhaling.

2) The ground has gotten significantly harder over the last ten years or so. I'm not quite sure how this is possible, but I'm convinced it has. I know I certainly haven't, and you'd think that would compensate for it somewhat, but it doesn't.

3) Everyone in my family snores. Verbal testimony indicates I'm included in this group.

And then the fun started. At precisely 11:00pm L woke up and started screaming. Inconsolable. I thought she was still asleep, caught up in a bad dream, but Stacy said it was probably her stomach bothering her and that when she did this she usually threw up. She and I were out of the tent in seconds flat. Back in the house her crying was the choking, sputtering sort that allows for no discussion of any kind. I couldn't get any confirmation on what was wrong. I did get a negative head shake that eliminated her tummy as being a problem, but that was it. After ten minutes or so lying on her bed, she calmed down but still couldn't/wouldn't tell me what was wrong. I asked her if she wanted to go back out in the tent and she nodded affirmatively. We reentered the tent and I explained my lack of diagnosis to Stacy; N was still snoring not having budged through L's extremis. (I think he's pretty used to it.) We settled back in, but within another 10 minutes she was crying again - once more all choking and snorting. We marched back inside, again with no indication of what was wrong; this time I was getting angry.

I left her to cry it out on her bed and plopped on the couch to wait it out. Eventually she softened and I went back to her room again. She was a little more talkative now, but she still said she didn't know what was wrong. I asked if she wanted to cuddle on the couch and she nodded enthusiastically that she did. I carried her out there and we lay there together for a while until she started crying again. She wasn't as overcome this time as before and I was able to talk with her. It wasn't her tummy she said, it was her leg. "What's wrong?" I asked. "Is it bruised? Is the pain sharp or is it an ache?"

All she could said was "I dunno!" through her tears. First it was one leg, then she started complaining about the other. I rubber her legs, secretly looking for tender spots. She neither winced nor indicated that the rubbing was helping. Now her foot was feeling funny. I started rubbing her foot, but it was difficult because her footed pajamas were so tight that I... wait a minute... Her footed pajamas were so tight... Hmmmm.

"L," I said. I think your pajamas might be a little too tight for you. I think they are cutting off the circulation to your legs. Can we take them off? Oh no. That wasn't up for discussion, because N had on footed pajamas, so she needed them. I thought through this a bit, then I had an idea.

"L," I suggested, "What if I said you could wear a pair of Daddy's pajamas?" Her eyes got big as if they were saying "Really?!?" But all she did was nod quickly. I left her on the couch and fished through my drawers. I came back out and made my offer, "L, you can wear these striped pajamas, or these that have bears on them, or these - these have mooses on them! There was no hesitation, as I knew there wouldn't be; the trembling hand shot out to point at the moose pajamas. We quickly peeled my daughter and robed her in moose. Even with the drawstring fully tightened they were genie pants on her. I had to wrap the string around her middle and tie it in the back. A Georgia Tech T-shirt completed the outfit.

We lay back down on the couch and I proceeded to rub her legs. "Feel any better?" I asked. Not willing to give up the drama too quickly, she responded a little. But soon both legs were good enough that we could risk the 6-inch walk across the yard to regain the tent.

The rest of the night went peacefully, if not particularly comfortably. Other than the early morning nails of a neighborhood tomcat who thought the tent canvas the perfect sharpening implement, all went smoothly. (Well, not for the cat. He received a belt through the tent wall that sent him spiralling into the clivia patch. He didn't come back.) On Sunday morning I emerged from the tent stiff and unrested around 5:00 am. L was up and in the house by 6:00. She seemed none the worse for the wear. Stacy and N dragged it out, as is usually the case inside too.

Later in the day Stacy came up to me to relate an L story. For some reason they had been talking about who they loved. L had professed her love for N and for Mommy. "But," related Stacy, "I really love Daddy, because he helped me last night."

I immediately when out and set the tent back up.

A Preoccupied Pirate

Arrgg! Ye be interferin' with me quest fer booty!

(And yes, that is purple play-doh matted to the back of his head.)