bentangle

Fruit flies, that is.  I somehow gained them last weekend while my wife was away and by mid-week despite our best efforts to thwart them, they became a plague upon our kitchen (still not sure what they were drawn to).  I began to think that I may have to share residence with them long-term and considered whether they could somehow pull their weight around the place.  But after a couple of strokes of ingenuity, I managed to reclaim my keep.  My remastery was a three-pronged attack involving (a) ‘humane’ traps (not that I really cared for their welfare) of old veggies and vinegar in bowls covered in perforated plastic wrap, (b) inhumane traps (fly strips) and (c) a vacuum with a long hose – the latter proved to be the game-changer.  There are a few survivors, but they won’t last in the long game.  I’ve got their number.

In other news, we are doing our best to squeeze what juice we can out of what remains of the summer.  Yesterday we treated ourselves to a dessert of evening pool time.  We bought a membership in for the summer and I think that it was only the third time I’ve personally made it there.  I did get the chance to see the fruits of my daughter’s swimming lessons.  Her general swimming and treading water has improved a lot (still room for growth, but she has more confidence at it) and I got the treat of seeing her jump off of the diving board about a dozen times (the last two of which she actually attempted to dive and succeeded in belly-flopping).  My son, who chickened out of his lessons 3/4 of the way through the first session, still sticks to hit comfort zone.  I guess I should look on the bright side – he has never seemed overly concerned about how he compares to anyone including his sister, so perhaps peer pressure won’t be all that heavy a factor with him later in life (one can hope).

In continuing our summer fun and not to be daunted by the stormy weather, today (I guess yesterday by the time this is posted) we spent the day at Giggleberry Fair (an indoor play place in Peddler’s Village).  The kids had hours of fun, my wife got tons of pictures, and I got pelted a lot by foam balls and dragged through many spaces not meant for upright, full-height adults.  Granted it was a blast, but by the end my neck and knees ached, my hair was slicked and my shirt semi-saturated with sweat, and my thirst nigh unquenchable.

But now the temperatures seem to be going back into the miserable range (and there is that pesky thing called work), so our summertime adventures will be dwindling as the start of first grade looms on the horizon for Cricket (and Grasshopper will too be returning to preschool, though details as to where have yet to be worked out).  So I return to the grind, mindful that there will be storms to be weathered and some share of pests, but fully prepared to dive in and slough off what missiles life shoots my way.

They say (whoever ‘they’ are) that you learn something new every day.  I’ve learned a few things today.  To name just a few, I learned that I’m going to be an uncle once more over, that I am apparently boycotting Target, and that even though I know very little about the new Showtime series, “The Big C”, I have no intention whatsoever to ever watch it.

In many ways my life is currently about development.  For one, I am currently one of the lucky members of a company-sponsored leadership training program at work.  Myself and 11 others were selected from over 50 people who applied for the program, and we collectively meet for 2 hours a week to learn how to be better leaders.  There is also a project component to the program (there has to be some sort of measurable benefit, right?).  Some seem to be of the opinion that the project is more important than the training to the powers that be, but while I doubt that is necessarily true, even if it is it seems that the project is an important one and what better way to enforce the lessons at hand than practical application.

Additionally, I’m learning how to manage my kids more effectively.  When every suggestion/request/command that I issue is greeted by my daughter with inquisition and and by my son with either ignorance, abject compliance, or abject defiance, it is difficult to avoid yelling from time to time.  But I’ve noticed that yelling often begets yelling and can rapidly deteriorate even with the best of efforts to steer back.  So I’m making an effort to avoid yelling at all (it is a true test of stamina sometimes, believe me).  Now I just have to groom them not to yell back … I’ve got time.

Also with my kids, I’m learning to be careful what lessons I pass on.  I was explaining how picking flowers is traumatic to the plants and in doing so anthropomorphizing the parts of the plant to better impress upon her the pieces of it and how the interact (e.g., the roots are the plants mouth, the leaves its arms) – while she got the message that the plants had little chance of survival given her incomplete extrication, in the end I get a shrug and the statement “but I love the way their butts feel on my face.”

To elaborate on some of the learnings of the day, firstly my sister-in-law seems to be expecting her second child.  We are all routing for a girl (other than Cricket, the rest seem to be boys on my in-laws’ side).  Target apparently stepped in it with the homosexual community by contributing $150,000 to the right-wing political action committee, Minnesota Forward, who then used the funds to promote Tom Emmer in the Minnesota governor’s race, who happens to support banning gay marriage.  Being generally anti-right-wing-wingnut and of the stance that everyone should have the right to be happy in whatever shape or form suits them so long as no one is getting hurt (non-consensually), I think this is a big step in the wrong direction and is disappointing coming from Target.  I won’t likely be picketing, but I do tend to shop there semi-frequently due to my dislike of Walmart.  But I’m sure I can find somewhere else to purchase my random household items until they dig their way out of this one.  Finally, the last item is related to work and is frankly the main reason that I’m up and on my computer at this hour on a Sunday night/Monday morning.  I will likely be sleeping in a bit and going into the office late to cover for these late hours (they’ll live).

My final lesson learned for today is that is likely smarter once all is said and done and obstacles are cleared to going about ones preferred business (in my case, going to bed), spending a half an hour delaying that by writing an arguably cheeky blog post about nothing in particular is not the wisest course of action (especially since the motivations behind writing said post are mostly vague feelings of guilt and spite).  And I know that in such a state, I’m not likely to go back and proofread it either to make sure I didn’t make any important mistakes or make an ass of myself (not that I often avoid those things anyway – it keeps things interesting), so this post could be doubly dubious.  But I’m nearly done, so I may as well let it be what it is.  After all, you live and you learn.

It seems that it will be a mom-free weekend.  Starting tomorrow morning through Sunday it will be just me, Cricket, and Grasshopper fending for ourselves.  I’m not actually particularly concerned.  I’m not one of those passive working dad’s who defers the majority of parenting to the matron of the house.  I even cook sometimes (mostly on the grill, but not exclusively).  So I’m sure we will survive …. hopefully.

My wife will be departing early tomorrow morning on a trek to NYC for a blogging conference (in case you weren’t aware, she has not one, but two blogs that she likely updates more often than I do: Down to Earth Mama and She Acts).  She will be whooping it up in the Big Apple for the weekend with blog-related discussions and parties.  Not that I would worry for the sanctity of our marriage regardless of the nature of the conference, but being that she will be surrounded mostly by female bloggers, the most that will likely happen is some all-girl drunken music videography (it’s happened).  I guess there is a sliver of the possibility she might get swept into an overzealous celebration of the repeal of Prop. 8, but I’m not overly concerned.  What hyjinx will ensue are likely to be of a much more tame and innocent variety of which she greatly deserves.

Anyway, besides regularly scheduled events of the weekend (of which there are surprisingly many) I have very little in mind for our sans matronus weekend.  As it stands, I have to take them to swimming lessons, the farmer’s market, a family reunion, and potentially a free movie screening (and probably some other events that my wife will point out that I forgot to mention and therefore will not remember to do).  So outside of meals there is limited bandwidth for other events.  But I may try to fit in some shopping and some other entertainment where I can – perhaps even some fruit picking if time and weather permit.

My biggest concern is that I’m going to be plagued with work issues that try to follow me home.  I’m slowly working to have more redundancy and less direct dependency for certain things, but the curse of being good at certain things is that you are the only one who can handle them – I’m not playing arrogant here, it is simple fact.  But I’m training a new guy to be the next me, and trying to leave no issues up in the air so that I can make the most of a wife-free and hopefully work-free weekend.

I’ve decided that I need to redefine what I term a vacation. While I enjoy visits with my family immensely as they are rare due to distance, such visits are not truly vacations and often another one is required shortly thereafter (no offense intended to those family members I recently visited – we absolutely enjoyed coming down). Being back at work is no vacation, that is for sure. Anyway, there is no single cohesive narrative of my trip, but a number of small anecdotes. So that will be the form of this post.

Part of our visit to my parents’ house overlapped with a visit from my grandmother. My grandmother is very religiously-minded and has a very low tolerance for bad language. I like to think I was tame, but my wife pointed out on our drive home that I still managed to drop a few mild bombs (e.g., what the hell, darn) and whenever I did, my grandmother would visibly flinch. Meanwhile, one of these overlapping evenings she was playing cards with my mother and had a moment of frustration with her choices in discards to which she exclaimed some phrase that was clearly not a swear, but carried all the tone of one. I made a comment along the lines of whether it was really not cursing if the inflection was there to which I got no response from her, but my mom nearly burst into snorting laughter.

On the ride home (which was during the day this time), the kids spend good amounts of the time ‘reading’ – by which I mean the got out theyr Tag books and let their Tag readers read the stories to them. They were entertaining themselves and not complaining, so I can’t fault them on it. Well there was a book that Cricket wanted to read that was one of Grasshopper’s and which was only on his Tag reader, so she asked him nicely if he wanted to switch readers. He responds by looking at her and saying “No,” in a tone suggesting it was a stupid question then turns to the back of the reader where his name tag is affixed and drawls out his name as if reading it slowly to her. Being as he is 3 and can barely recognize all of the letters in his own name, I couldn’t help but find the moment hysterical.

Due to coincidental travel, my sister-in-law had left her cat at our house while we were gone (there are clearly a lot of questions as to the logic there, but bear with me). See she lives about 30 minutes away from us and her parents (who live a mile from us) and she doesn’t have any reliable acquaintances near her who could feed and check on the cat at their own home. But she didn’t want to have to burden her in-laws with another cat in their own house, and since my mother-in-law had already been commissioned to water our plants, it seemed to stand to reason that she could feed the cat while she was there. So we came home from our travels to a paranoid cat. It would spend the majority of its time hiding from all of us and only seemed to eat food at night when we were all sleeping. Cricket wanted to take it for a walk … in its carrier. She seemed rather disappointed when we turned her down.

We also managed to fit in a beach trip this weekend (though it still involved visiting family). The kids had a blast – Cricket spent hours getting knocked over by waves while Grasshopper chose to have no truck with the sea and stuck to digging randomly in the sand. I played in both capacities off and on and eventually resigned to relaxing in a beach chair and reading on my new Nook (book and product reviews coming soon). Being that it was a very sunny day, we were vigilant with sunscreen application – the kids got at least 2 extra coats and I reapplied at least 3 or 4 times. Ironically the kids came out of the day with minor rosiness in a few spots and I ended up lobster red from waist to neck. But I was able to drown my pain in boardwalk food, so it is all good.

Now if only I could find time (and money) for a real vacation ….

Just to be clear, I don’t intend to do daily updates of my vacation events – that would be semi-contrary to enjoying my vacation. Yesterday was an eventful day in leisure. We started by heading to a local swimming hole (a lake nearby that had several swimming beaches) where we enjoyed several hours of swimming, playing in the sand, and picnicking. Then we attempted to go hiking, but due to heat and navigation issues, we gave up after about ten minutes and headed to the mall to watch Toy Story 3 in 3-D. Finally we stopped by Barnes & Noble for an early birthday present – a Nook.

The swimming was fun and went as would have been expected. Cricket spent as long as possible in the water. Grasshopper spent as little time as possible in the water. Gumba (their grandfather) spent the majority of the swimming time fabricating various tall tales for my daughter to consider. Grammy spent little time in the water and mostly sat either in the shade or on the beach playing with my son. The water was as warm as bath water which made the hardest part of the day getting out of the water – despite the air temperature being in the mid-80′s, leaving the water was a chilling affair. Then we enjoyed some sandwiches and chips while we dried off before changing and heading out to eventually arrive at the movies.

Toy Story 3 was much better than I had anticipated. As usual, it tackled the same types of issues typically addressed in this series – themes of loyalty, pride, betrayal, love, and friendship in the face of adversity all masked behind the role of a toy and its relationship to its owner. In this film the struggle came in the form of Andy growing up and going to college, both he and his toys coming to grips with change and learning when to hold onto the past and when to let go of it. I don’t typically find myself emotionally moved by movies (well, except in the forms of excitement or frustration), but this movie moved me to such levels of empathetic joy that I almost started to feel choked up (almost). Of course constantly keeping my son from swinging from the seat or running down the aisle helped keep me grounded.

So finally, the Nook. As is probably obvious by how many books I’ve been reviewing here (and there are several that I read and opted not to review), I’ve been reading a lot of books lately. So I’d been considering going digital with my hobby for a while now. And to my fortune, my parents had also observed my reading affinity and opted to help me achieve my digital goal. Yesterday they sprung for my Nook as well as a nice travel case for it. By the end of the day I’d already setup my account, bought my first ebook, and went to bed having gotten to chapter 7. Now the only outstanding issue is figuring out what other books to download.

There were other events that occurred after the Nook purchase, but they generally blurred together as I was somewhat distracted. Though among those events was my children camping out in Grammy and Gumba’s yard for the night (my wife volunteered to spend the night with them). It seemed to go well – no middle of the night fallout – but they did troop in early this morning at which point they became my problem so that my wife could get a couple hours of rest in a soft, dry bed. So I put on some cartoons, grabbed my Nook, and settled on the couch for a low-key morning (or at least as low-key a morning as is possible with a 3 and 6 year-old).