Homo Domesticus

A Call For Data Points

2007-02-01T20:55:00.000-06:00

I was recently contacted by a prof at the University of Texas, who asked if I might help him with a study he is doing about Stay at Home Dads. I agreed. So if you're a SAHD, you might want to follow the link here or over there on the side to the study questionnaire.

Its basically a series of questions about your attitudes towards various aspects of life, work, and family, with an emphasis on things that would apply to our particular situation. The survey doesn't ask anything that struck me as terribly outre', and no personal information is taken, so in my view there are no privacy concerns.

Let's give this guy some data!

Um, Hello, there

2007-01-22T21:05:00.000-06:00

Well, it has been a while. There comes a point in every blog's life, some sooner, some later, when you to decide if this is still fun or a chore. For my part, I always wanted this to be more than an on-line diary. But the simple truth is, as I wrote once before (I forget when and I'm too lazy to try and find it), that as time went by and this strange "new" life became simply "my life", new insights to pass on came further and further apart, and all there was to talk about was doorbells, and school hijinks, and the best way to make a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich.

Woof, that was a long sentence.

But now this basically is an on-line diary, where I try to wax whimsical about the things that I see wander by every week. I'll have to see how that continues to grab me.

Post Thanksgiving, Pre-Christmas

2006-12-06T21:21:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the lack of updates. We had a busy November, including a wonderful visit by Trish's sister Leslie and her beau, Mike. It was Leslie who helped us so much in decorating our house, and she also had good words on contractor choosing and how much work to try and get done before moving in.

They were here a week over Thanksgiving, and a heckuva week it was. We had enormous amounts of wonderful food and all kinds of great wine, trekked down to the ranch for stargazing, canoed, rode bikes, and generally had a blast. Mike was very patient with Jacob, and seriously earned his keep in my eyes by regularly making killer margaritas. Leslie also finished this massive paint job on the hall bathroom, this amazing undersea motif, with sea creatures of all kinds, sunken ships, etc.

As good a time as that was, I was a week recovering. I did get most of the Christmas lights up on the house. Most of the light gear is still out front, as I hope to do some more any day now, but any day keeps getting pushed back. Then there's the Christmas tree to decorate, and gifts to buy. I also need to send Jake's grandmother a list of suitable choices. And I have all of two things picked out for people to choose for me, exclusive of the stuff on my Amazon wish list. I always have a tough time picking out stuff for others to get for me. At least, stuff that is under budget and not of a technical nature. Trish refuses to buy me anything having to do with computers, for fear she will make a mistake. For my part, after the last fiasco, I avoid buying her any sort of clothing more complex than a scarf.

At least Jacob's Advent calendar is mostly filled with goodies.

Various Ruminations

2006-11-15T21:08:00.000-06:00

I think 90% of my hits are Google searches. Which means only 10% of them are actually people coming here to read. Well, when one updates at most once a week, you can't complain about traffic.

Its finally feeling like Fall around here. Despite a couple of prior cool snaps, today (as I write this) was the first time we had a truly blustery day. Leaves blew, a few branches broke off, the air chilled. It has also caused seed pods from our giant oak tree to fall onto the carport with a sound like guns going off in the street. Trish to remarked that it’s a good thing we don't have a metal roof over the whole house, or we'd be diving under the couch on a regular basis.

We had a tin roof on my grand-dad's old place. No nut-dropping trees, but I recall it could be kinda loud when it rained. Despite the noise, tin or other metal roofs are making a bit of a comeback. They are almost impervious to hail, and the lighter colored-ones reflect light and heat and so contribute to energy efficiency in hot areas (like here).

Next week is Thanksgiving, which means that soon after I need to put up the Christmas lights. This being only our second Christmas in this house (and since during the first one I didn’t even know where the lights were, much less care about putting them up), I have NO idea how they should be put up. Well, not quite NO idea, but very little idea, I can tell you that.

Huh. That reminds me that it is almost our first anniversary of moving in here. Amazing that it has been nearly a year already. Wowzers.

A Bit of a Confession

2006-11-02T20:47:00.000-06:00

I used to spend a lot more time reading blogs than I do now. Political blogs, the SAHD blogs, whatever. I kept up with everything, it seemed. Nowadays I don't do that. In fact, I realized that I hadn't even looked at the blogs in my link list in a very, very long time.

I finally did yesterday, and discovered that almost half of them have either vanished or quit updating months ago. Guess some housekeeping is in order soon.

I feel a bit guilty. I know some of those folks still pop in here from time to time, and occasionally they even leave comments. Sorry, folks. I'll try to pay more attention in the future.

Still, I think I can trace my decline in following other SAHD adventures pretty closely to the degree that being a SAHD evolved from being this strange thing I was learning how to deal with to…what I am. Kinda funny, that.

Mommanities

2006-10-19T21:53:00.000-05:00

It's funny being one of the Afterschool Moms. Well, I suppose I should say, one of the Afterschool Parents, but I'm pretty much the only Dad out there on anything like a regular basis, so…one goes with the name that’s already there.

I may have posted a long time ago about what it was like to wait for the bus with Jake, and how the moms there on our block seemed unsure what to do with me. I never really felt as though I were accepted. I was a dad hanging out in their mom-space, and no-one was comfortable.

It has taken a while, but hanging out after school almost every day so Jake can play for a while has literally gotten me a place at the table. The picnic table, to be precise (there are 2-3 picnic tables set up around the playground). There, school policies are dissected, teachers compared, summer programs evaluated, and world problems occasionally solved.

I mostly just sit and listen, though I do contribute. I am most uncomfortable, oddly enough, when things get silly, because, lets face it folks, guy silliness is not quite the same as gal silliness, and I'm afraid I might overstep the bounds were I to cut loose.

Its cool, though I am slightly disappointed that Trish gets the invite to the "Mom's Only" party instead of me. :-)

Tripping the Lights Fantastic...

2006-10-12T10:20:00.000-05:00

I eventually got that water filter for the ice maker installed. I had to stand in front of the tubing fixtures at Lowes for a good 30 minutes before finding the right ones, but they did the trick. No sprays, no drips. Gotta love that Teflon tape.

In the end, though, I also had to clean out the freezer and the refrigerator sections in order to get rid of all the stuff that was contributing to the funny-tasting ice. Probably should wipe down the freezer more often.

But anyway, on to the topic at hand...

So when we were working on this house I got into compact fluorescent bulbs. They've been around for a while, and what with the cost of oil and whatnot, they've gotten a real push here lately. I'm sure you've seen them. They are getting pushed because they use less energy, put out less heat for the same light, and last longer. They cost a lot more too (and have a bit of mercury in them, so recycle the suckers, don't just toss them), but the trade-off is supposed to be worth it. I bought an early one years ago for a lamp, but in those days, "compact" was relative. The thing wouldn't fit in the lamp, and I lugged it around for years before putting it into an outside light socket.

The first CFL's were a bit bigger than incandescents, and had a small but noticeable and annoying delay before they came on. Some of them made a buzzing noise, too. And, that little swirly shape just didn't look right. It was with these things in mind that I selected the first batch of CFL's for this house.

The initial ones were some brand called Bright Effects. They were enclosed bulbs that looked like slightly larger incandescents, and they advertised that they came on instantly. And so they did, but rather dimly. Over a period of a minute or so, they brighten to full. You can actually see the light coming up as they do that. Well, that wasn't quite what I was hoping for. I'm not sure I can describe it right, but somehow the initial dimness of a room with these lights made it a less pleasant place, even after the lights had brightened.

As a temporary measure, I mixed in some different brand swirlies that did the delay thing but came on full brightness. So the lights were mixed, but at least the brightness issue was dealt with. I wound up doing this in several places.

Recently, I had some old incandescents go out and got a bunch more CFL's to replace them. I stayed away from the Bright Effects this time, and decided just to put up with the swirly shape (how often does one look directly at a light bulb, anyway?). The next batch were Sylvanias, and I think some technological shifts had happened in the meantime, because most of these came on with no delay I could notice, and came on full blast as well. I noticed this because I was nearly blinded when the 150W equivalent CFL I put in the tool room blasted on as soon as I flipped the switch.

Cost or no cost, I might ditch some of those old Bright Effects for these new guys so I don’t have to worry about dim start-ups or mixed bulbs.

I have to say I like these things. Some people don't like CFL's because they don't like the quality of the light, but 1) I don't mind that much and 2) they have done a lot to make the new CFL's a lot less, err, fluorescent-looking than they used to be. They are also a LOT cooler burning. No doubt about that at all. You still wouldn't want to grab one bare-handed, but they won’t turn a closed room into an oven, either.

One oddity for me is that people are used to measuring their light's brightness in watts, which is a unit of power, as opposed to lumens (or even candela or candles), which is the light brightness measure. That sort of made sense in the old days, but now its making things confusing, because as you may have noted above, the CFL's are put out in "brightnesses" corresponding to the old wattages people are used to, 40-60-75, etc, even though a 150 "Watt" CFL only uses 37.5W to get the same amount of light. And most lamps and light fixtures are also rated in regard to incandescent bulbs. I'm certain you could stick that 150W equivalent CFL into a lamp only rated for a 60W bulb, because the CFL pulls only a bit over 1/2 the power (and heat!) while spitting out 2.5 times as much light as the 60W.

If you haven't done so already, I'd suggest making an investment in these things as your old incandescents give out. I think you'll be pleased.

SLIME IN THE ICE MACHINE![*]

2006-10-04T21:24:00.000-05:00

Nobody likes funny-tasting ice cubes. And most city water systems, while perfectly safe, have a bit of a "flavor" to them that is not exactly pleasant. In some areas, the calcium buildup is bad enough that you can clog your icemaker, which makes a mess. It happened to my folks once. So we've always had a filter on the fridge icemaker. Well, the old filter is getting a bit long in the tooth, and I've been meaning to change it for a couple of months now, with no success.

The problem is that new filters are too easy too use. Yes, you read that right. All the ones I saw at a couple of hardware stores are so-called "tool-less" devices. Instead of having to screw the filter connectors on to the water lines, which might require such exotica as a pair of pliers (by the by, I personally feel that anyone who lacks a pair of pliers in their home and the basic understanding of how to use them should not be allowed to vote or drive a car), they use gaskets so you just have to push the tubing into the holes. Of course, our water feed is the screw kind. Copper, no less.

So in order to use the new, easy, tool-less water filters, I need to buy adapters that convert from screw-thread to push-in gasket, and, just to be safe, a mounted version of the filter so I won't obsess about the thing pulling the tubing out when it gets heavy with sediment. Oh, and drill holes for it, etc. Plus hope the copper line doesn't snap off at the nasty bend it takes coming out of the wall (no doubt part of our previous owners handiwork) or spring a leak at its connecting point.

Fortunately adapters look pretty cheap, and tubing is a whole $0.07 a foot (I need well under three feet). But if I can't make this work myself, I plan to buy a 10lb bag of ice from the gas station to tide us over until the plumber can get here and install the "tool-less" water filters for me.

* A little joke for all current and former residents of Houston, Texas.

Return of Soccer Dad

2006-09-29T10:00:00.000-05:00

Jacob won his first soccer game this past weekend. It was a nice change. We'd already dropped the first two of the season and I was not looking forward to another semester of futility. Its funny, I almost typed "year" there instead of semester. I'm used to a sports season lasting its time and then ending for a year. But of course youth sports often run year-round, so "last season" really means "a couple of months ago".

But they won, which was good. It’s a completely different team this year. His old coach and all of the girls from last season's team elected to move into the all-girls league. So a new team. And really, a very different sort of game. At this age level, you now have actual positions (including goalkeeper), as opposed to having every kid out there chasing the ball. The field is much much larger. And they are enforcing more rules, like "offsides", which I looked up but still don't really understand.

Another change, and I don’t know if this is league-wide but I think that it is, is that parents and spectators have to be on the opposite side of the field from the players. Last season we all hung out together. I'm not sure why, though maybe coaches didn't like parents coaching their kids (I never did that ), or something happened last time around that

He and this team were completely new to each other. They aren’t a bad bunch. Some are in fact awfully good, including the two girls, a guy who seems destined to becoming a goalkeeper, another defender, Jacob of course, who loves being mid-midfielder, and another kid who would be pretty scary if he had longer legs. Most of the rest seem average to me, but I have seen another guy making some moves at practice, which if he can do that in a game, will make some noise.

I like the coach too, so I don’t think I'll have the same sort of troubles I had last time around when I felt like the coach was missing some important nuances. Now all I have to do is restrain myself when the other team scores a goal because a couple of defenders are standing around, paying no attention to the ball and talking about whatever 8-year-olds talk about in the middle of the game.

The Doorbell of Doom

2006-09-19T15:36:00.000-05:00

So the pixels weren't really dry on my last post when I finished up a little project that turned out to be a lot more trouble that I had thought, something that required a bit of Tool Man chutzpah, and partially restored my faith in my own abilities.

Yep, I replaced our doorbell button.

This was not my first foray into the world of announcement devices. I had attached a knocker to the door of our old house. Here, I had replaced the old chime mechanism with a new, louder one, and added a wireless extension to it to boot. But these matters were small beer.

The doorbell proper was a serviceable bit of white plastic. When you depressed the button the chimes would sound and when you let up they would stop, which is pretty much the least you can ask of a doorbell. But for reasons unknown to me, I grew to detest the thing. It was, frankly, far too utilitarian.

I like to think of myself as immensely practical, and sometimes I am, but not here. Here I was a slave to appearances. Here we had this gorgeous door and cool hardware for it, and the device people used to signal they needed us to come to this door was a hunk of ancient Bakelite.

So I looked around and nowhere in the regular hardware stores did I find a suitable replacement. Eventually I returned to the place where we got the door and the locks/knobs etc that went with it and it turned out that the lock manufacturer had a nice doorbell that went with our lockset. But they didn't keep that in stock, I would have to have them order it. So I did.

After a week or two it arrived. So then I got ready to install it. I gathered up my cordless screwdriver and drill, and set them down next to the front door. Then I went to the electrical box to see about shutting off the power to that part of the house, something you generally should do when working with electrical stuff. Only I couldn't figure out which breaker might do the trick. I could have eventually managed the feat, if only by trial and error, but I was frankly afraid to. The folks who did the electrical work on our remodel had kindly labeled all the breakers (yep, when we bought the house, the breaker box was a veritable tabula rasa), but none were marked "doorbell", and it was clear to me that, like much else that had been done to the house in the past, the layout of the electrical circuits could only charitably described as "eccentric". It was entirely possible that killing the power to the doorbell might also shut down the refrigerator, or even SAC/NORAD.

I knew though, that doorbells run on a low power circuit, stepped down by means of a transformer (which for some reason was installed in the HVAC closet). It was highly unlikely that it could injure me, though it would probably sting a bit if I shorted the circuit. So I decided I would simply have to be careful. After all, I wasn't rewiring a power station, all I would need to do was attach a couple of leads to some posts and tighten the screws. Nevertheless, I stopped by the tool room for some gloves. Don't try this at home, kids.

I picked up my screwdriver to remove the screws of the old button only to discover that the head of my cordless driver was too large. The screws holding the old button in place were tiny little guys. I went back into the house and pulled my jewelry screwdrivers out of my desk. I had never used them for jewelry repair, nor so far as I knew, had my dad (they had originally been his), but they were useful to have at times like these. With some effort (the screws were tight and screwdrivers small) I got the doorbell housing free of the wall. I then used the same screwdriver to loosen the post screws and detach the thin electrical wires from it. Halfway home, I thought.

Not so. I couldn't pull much of the old wire out of the hole in the wall, which meant it was going to be hard to attach the wires to the new bell; there wasn't much slack to play around with. The old wires were also stiff and a bit brittle, a bad combination.

That was bad enough. But the posts of the new doorbell were also small, and the screws for them did not come out very far before coming off. The wires were thin, all right, but not compared to these small screws. There wasn't much space for me to squeeze the wires in. There was also the issue of my trying to avoid getting an unpleasant shock.

Well, there was a simple trick for getting wire onto a screw post, and was to shape the end into a hook, and wrap it around the screw. So back to the tool room for some needle-nosed pliers. I made my hooks, and then spent a good ten minutes trying to get the old wires wrapped around the new screws, and then tightened down into place. It was maddening. I could get one on, but then struggle with the other. The wires were tight, as I said, so there was little slack. The screws were small, so I had to use the jewelry screwdriver, which allowed little leverage. And I was wearing gloves to avoid shocks.

At one pint, I managed to get both wires on and screws tightened. As I tried to ease the new doorbell into place, I discovered that its innards were not flush with its edges. They stuck out a bit, and the small cylinder that was doing the sticking was just a tad bigger than the hole in the wood from which my wires came from. And then the second wire fell off again.

At this point, I was beginning to get a little bit crazed. Without thinking, I grabbed my drill and stuck in the largest bit I had at hand, intending to drill out the hole so the doorbell would fit properly. I stuck the bit in, pulled the trigger, and watched as it spun slowly, then slower and slower.

The battery had gone dead. And since I had pulled the drill off the charging cord on my way out of the tool room, that meant it was really dead not just mostly dead.

It was at this point I decided I had better take a break for lunch in order to clear my head. I returned about half-an-hour later to try again.

With the benefit of food and some rest I could see that the drill option for enlarging the hole was a real bad idea. The risk of tearing up the wires I needed was simply too great. I was fortunate to my drill battery go dead when it did. The call to an electrician to fix my mess would have been more than a little embarrassing.

Not that I was out of the woods yet. I did need to enlarge the hole. So, back to the tool room, where I was able to find some woodworking gear I had picked up when Jacob was doing a science project on atlatls. With these carving gadgets, the names of which I don't even know, I was able to dig out enough wood without slicing the bloody wires.

Ah yes, those wires, the bane of my project so far. I needed another solution here as well. And with some time to think, it was actually pretty obvious. If the problem was not enough wire that was just a bit too stiff and thick, I should splice on some more, not so thick or stiff.

It took me a while to locate some wire suitable for splicing. I ended using some bits that were left over from a failed attempt to set up a pair of wireless speakers. Of course, even so basic an operation as this had its complications. For some reason, I was using my dad's old hunting knife. I was able to strip the protective covering off the wire okay. But when I went to cut off a small piece of electrical tape, the blade tip scraped across the underside of the middle joint of my left middle finger.

I stopped and looked at my finger. At first, I thought it had just been a literal scrape; the blade had hurt but not actually cut the skin. But when I pressed on it, a thin line appeared, outlined in blood. I sighed. It wasn't bad, but it was irritating. So cleaned off the wound and stuck a bandaid on it.

I finished the splicing job, being a bit more careful with the knife. And the thinner, more flexible wires were the answer I had been looking for. They wrapped nicely around the small post screws, and tightened down firmly. I eased them back into the hole, and held the doorbell up to its spot. I pressed the button and heard the chines ring inside the house.

One handed, holding the doorbell in place, I reached over and grabbed my cordless screwdriver, pulled a screw out of my mouth (where I had placed it just before finishing up the splice), and managed to get it started and in on the first attempt. I then inserted the second screw, tried the bell again, and I was done.

My fifteen minute project had ballooned to almost an hour and a half. But it worked! I had "adapted and overcame" as Clint Eastwood said in Heartbreak Ridge.

And, may I say, the new doorbell looks pretty darn spiffy.

Requiem for a Geek?

2006-09-13T09:40:00.000-05:00

For years now, I have gradually gotten more and more adept at taking care of the physical parts of my computers. I had a computer in high school, and I got another while in grad school. It was, of course, a gradual thing. I learned about adding memory, then swapping out video cards. Then I graduated to installing CD-ROM drives, then hard drives.

For a long time I wasn't quite ready to put everything together myself, but when the time came to change out everything instead of a part or two, I would spend weeks going over part reviews and pricing, trying to get the most bang for my buck and be placed so I could upgrade easily (for you non-hardware geeks, hardware upgradeability is the single trickiest part of building a PC). Then I would order from the outfit that could provide most of the gear I wanted, and I'd put the finishing touches on myself. I stayed at that level for a while, but a year or two ago I bought the parts and put together my current machine myself. It took a lot of fussing but in the end I was pretty proud of myself for pulling it off. I was sure I had a machine that I could just slot parts into as needed for years to come. Hah.

What got me was this: I was playing the recent RPG release Oblivion (not a bad game, BTW. It was technically very proficient, but ultimately a bit of a let-down) and decided I really needed to get a better videocard. I don’t mind running newer games with some of the visual bells and whistles turned down, but this time it was really bad.

So I start checking on newer mid-range cards only to discover Something Awful.

Pretty much none of the better mid-ranges would fit in my machine. In the two years since I built my current box, a new interface had arrived and pretty much taken over in the video world, an interface that as far as I can tell had not even been on the radar when I made my choices. Sure, I had read about the new interface as it came out, but what I was unaware of was the degree to which it had pushed the old one out. And yeah, I know two years can be an eternity in the computer world, but trust me when I tell you that interface changes don’t usually go that fast.

I eventually managed to find a video card that would serve, but it was still quite a shock to me, and I couldn't help but wonder if it was something similar to what my Dad felt as car engine technology advanced and got all fuel-injected and computery in the 80's. Dad had been a mechanic in the Army, as a teenager he used to soup up his cars to the limit, and he remained a fair shade-tree mechanic for a long time. But I noted as the 70's petered out and the 80's wore on he spent less time doing repair work himself, eventually stopping altogether.

I don't think I've quite reached that pass. And maybe this is more just one of those things, like buying a Betamax VCR, or a laserdisc player. You know, just a bad move. Still, it was startling, and not in a fun way.

Lets Have A Round of Applause...

2006-09-07T08:44:00.000-05:00

This is something I meant to write quite some time ago. Long time readers will know that we suffered long in searching for a new place to live, and then, having found it, spent another long while waiting for it to be fixed up the way we wanted it. Despite the struggles and frustrations that are part and parcel of those types of endeavors, I have to say that we were really very lucky, and that by and large things went about as smoothly as one could expect.

That sort of thing does not happen unless you have good people to help you out. And I have to say that we were blessed in our choices from beginning to end. This post is to name the names of the people that helped us out, and the recommend them to others who might be in a place to use them. Mostly then, this is a post that will apply to folks in the Austin, Texas area. But not entirely. You shall see.

I suppose one should start at the beginning. With the internet, you generally no longer really need a realtor to search the MLS listings for you. But a good one can give you information that no MLS will have on it, and can point out things about a prospective house you would never notice -- both good and bad. They can help you through the legal part of the process, plus do legwork on things like pricing that you could do yourself -- if you had hours and hours to spend looking at other houses in the area like yours. Save yourself some time and let a pro handle it. Better yet, let Barbara Hilliard handle it. She's also very patient, a good thing when on extended searches that go into double-overtime, like ours did…

Having bought the house with Barbara's help, we were then faced with the task of remodeling it. Replacing carpet with tile, repainting all the rooms, converting the garage, that sort of thing. In stepped Trish's sister Leslie Hamilton (not to be confused with Terminator star Linda Hamilton's twin sister). She flew in from Los Angeles, and we schlepped all over Austin looking at paint, tile, and other knicknacks. And she was a huge help. As goofy as it can sound sometimes, there really are a couple of million different colors of white paint, and the wrong one will look awful. She helped us get the right one, plus the floor tile, and for good measure painted our hall bathroom with a cool underwater scene.

Another thing she did was help us pick out a contractor. It's possible that we could have pieced the jobs out ourselves, but with all the back and forth going on, it seemed to make sense to have someone else who did this for a living handle the scheduling. We had talked with 3-4 different possibilities, and she pointed out one of them had some serious issues with the bid, and things to look for in the others.

We chose Bobby Zirkel of Shelter Design and Construction, a certified Green Builder. Bobby was not the cheapest, but his subcontractors were solid and he worked with us to get what we wanted within a reasonable cost and time frame. Here and there he also steered us away from boondoggles and towards things we might not have considered on our own.

The major subcontractors were Jan's Solar Heating and Electric, Forte (pronounced fortee) Rodriguez (tile), and Marvin Allen (paint and drywall). Jon Shannon of Concrete by Design did some concrete staining for us, and Mike Dunn sealed and stained our grout lines.

Ryan Gossen, a certified arborist, trims our trees and has provided much useful advice on taking care of them. Colleen Dieter of Red Wheelbarrow also gave us landscaping advice and improved the soil of a really dead area. Steve Nelson of Nelson Engineering provided a lot of useful information about foundations and foundation repair relevant to Central Texas. The folks at All Year Heating and Cooling provided suggestions on improving energy efficiency and installed our spiffy little one room AC unit for the study. Jaye Starke of Austin Mason Man took apart my grandad's old petrified wood fireplace hearth and jigsaw puzzled it back together again in our dining room, where it looks smashing.

Yep, all in all, we had some spectacular good fortune in the folks who made our house what it is now. I linked to those I know have web pages. For the others, if you can't find them in the phone book, drop me an email and I'll send you their contact information.

Bicycle Agonistes

2006-08-30T09:04:00.000-05:00

Last week, you read about why Jacob got a new bike. This week may be about why I got a different new bike. In returning from school Monday, I noticed that one of the pedals felt funny. After a short distance, it felt really funny, and I stopped to look at it. It was loose. Actually, it wasn't the pedal that was loose, but rather the little arm that the pedal is connected to. That arm (I believe bike people call it a crank) was itself coming loose from the drivetrain. I tried to tighten it up, but fingers are not really adequate to that kind of job. Still, it was just loose, I tried pulling on it and it didn't come off, so I figured I could make it home.

I got about 100 yards before it fell off.

I managed to gather everything up and tried to put it back on enough to get home. It fell off again (50 yards later), and this time the flange bolt that is supposed to hold the thing on managed to go missing. So I pushed it on home, muttering dark (and deeply unfair) imprecations about Trish, who had the idea about bike riding to school in the first place. Fortunately, I had passed through that phase before getting back.

I went to Lowes in search of the proper flange bolt. I found one that seemed right, but the fit was a bit funny. I was afraid to force the thing, and it was also looking like a special tool might be needed to do the job properly. So my attempt at self-repair was stymied.

The bike is maybe 2-3 weeks from the store. So I could return it. But we got it at a Toys R Us (spare me, oh bike experts. We didn't know if this idea was going to pan out the way it did), and the nearest one is a ways off. It was worth it to me to try a nearby bike repair place, if it would save time. But I wanted to avoid the place I went to a couple of weeks ago, mostly out of embarrassment. Would they recognize me as the guy who chose not to repair his son's bike, but never showed up to buy a replacement bike there? So I tried another place, only a block or two away (living on a street that is a major bike thoroughfare has some advantages). The guy took one look and said in a friendly, indeed, almost apologetic way, that he couldn't help me with that bike. The guys down the street might, though.

What he really meant was that the bike I brought in was way too cheap and crappy for him to mess with. He didn't bother to carry the parts for something like it. I don't think he was being superior or stuck up about it at all. More likely he felt sorry for me.

So I wound up at the place I had wanted to avoid. I wasn't so embarrassed I was willing to drive all over Austin. Besides, I liked the guys at the shop. They had been helpful and had not charged arms and legs for another minor job months earlier, and nothing at all for the recent aborted repair on Jake's old bike.

Turns out they couldn't help either. It was more than a matter of replacing the missing bolt. The socket on the crank the bolt threaded through had been scrunched out of shape by my pedaling it while loose. This is, no doubt, something a real bike person would know. Something akin to "don't run with scissors" or "never shave in the shark tank". I can now add "never pedal on a loose crank" to my list of wise sayings. You see, because of the scrunching, any new bolt would simply work itself loose again. The crank had to be replaced. And the shop didn't carry cranks of my length with a square socket, which is what my bike had. Nor did two other places the guy called. And with that, I was out of time to deal with the bike that day.

The next morning, once the traffic cleared, I headed up I35 to the Toys R Us, where I returned said bike. Then I drove around to various bike shops looking over their wares. I confirmed something I had suspected when shopping for Jake's bike, namely, that there are cheap bikes that most people use, the most expensive of which tops out at around $150. Then there are the better bikes from the bike shops, the cheapest of which (new) start at $250. And there are darn few of those. We paid $70 for the Toys R Us bike, so you can do the math. We could get three or more of those for what we might pay for the cheapest of the better bikes (unless we go used, which I have not yet checked into, but plan to). In short, we could completely replace the cheapo bikes three times for less than the cost of a good one. That goes against my grain. I'm not a throw it out type of person, I prefer to fix things most of the time. Of course, if the cheap one breaks a lot...

So there we are. Despite getting some advice from helpful people, we are still not fully decided on if I should just get a cheap replacement bike, or suck it up and get a more expensive bike that can be repaired by actual bike people. And which might also break less in the bargain.

Getting Schooled

2006-08-22T09:13:00.000-05:00

School has started again 'round here, with all the changes that go with it. I have to get up earlier, but on the other hand, there's no worrying about keeping Jacob entertained all day. We're riding bikes to school, which necessitated getting a cheap adult bike and a less cheap new kid's bike. We needed an adult bike because, well, we didn't have one, and a kid's bike because his old one had a flat tire.

Well, okay, not just because of a flat. I can fix flats fer cryin' out loud (I am Tool Man, Grrrr). But there was also this odd problem with the steering wheel. It was supposed to be adjustable. But the pin that was supposed to hold the handlebars in place had an annoying habit of coming partway out and allowing the handlebars to flop around. Jacob didn't seem to mind, but this made me and Trish crazy. Me especially because I had to keep putting the pin back in place, and Tool Man or no, I couldn't make it stay.

So the flat tire on the first day of school caused me to bite the bullet and take his old bike to a nearby bike shop. Of course, it turned out that a problem that was essentially caused by a bit of metal I suspect cost a nickel (if that much) was going to run around $60 to truly set right, involving ordering a new steering wheel/handlebar assembly thing. So we got him a new bike instead, for about $30 more. He was truly getting a bit big for the old one, anyway. And now we can ride to school.

But that isn't what I am writing about, though in a way it makes for a potentially interesting metaphor. Read on…

Very near the end of the previous school year Jake was reading with Trish when he asked her if maybe he could skip a grade? Because he was bored a lot? "Oh, really?" She asked. Yeah, really.

So she told me and I was also very surprised, because while I had heard him getting a bit antsy as the summer approached, I hadn't caught anything about his being bored all the time. And we both felt that he a good and flexible teacher. Actually, he thought so too, as he said he liked her a lot, he just already knew a lot of the stuff they were doing. Rut-ro.

So we set up a meeting with his teacher and the principal. It was very helpful, and to me it seemed clear that in most cases, the decision to skip was as much as social/maturity thing as an academic one. We got the info we needed to proceed if we chose to, which involved getting some tests taken, essentially credit by exam for the third grade.

We talked to Jake about it next, explaining what skipping might mean in term of his friends not being in his classes, and he definitely lost some enthusiasm for it, but it was decided that he should take the CBE tests anyway, for informational purposes. I pursued that while Trish began talking to various people who had skipped, or whose kids had skipped, including several members of her family (her dad skipped TWO grades).

In the end, it was the interview process that Trish conducted that did us the most good. That was because Jacob aced the first three tests. Only the social studies one had a low score -- 59 out of 100. The tester suggested we re-test that one, given the other scores. Well, we did, and he aced that one as well. While Trish had her doubts about the ability of an hour-long test to gauge someone's knowledge of a year of course material, it was clear that Jake was well ahead of the game.

I confess, I found the whole thing pretty unsettling and was hesitant. I didn't know anyone who had skipped up a grade. In my town, you either went up one or were held back. None of this skipping business. Possibly I could have skipped a grade (Trish too, for that matter), but I lacked something Jake had; namely, two parents with graduate degrees. That and the History and National Geographic Channels on cable. Anyway, this was out of my experience. So it was very helpful that Trish had found these other people and gotten their stories. The upshot of their contributions was that some skips went great. Some were a bit of a struggle. Not skipping was both great and the occasional struggle. But everything turned out okay in the end. People still got in to Harvard Medical School. No axe murderers turned up. Which was a big relief, since it seemed to mean that even if we made the wrong choice, we weren't going to be Screwing Up Our Child's Life. Forever (dunt dunt DUH!).

So, with test scores in hand and double-checking with Jacob, we called the principle and told her we wanted him to skip. And so it was done. And so far, so good.

Last night, Jacob was complaining a bit with some math stuff he was trying to deal with. If he had gone to third grade he said, he would already know it, and not have to spend "fun time" trying to catch up. True, Trish replied, but then you would be spending months on this. He considered that for a second, and said that this way was better. So I think we'll be all right.

In a Gadda Da Vida...

2006-08-15T21:24:00.000-05:00

I 'm sorry, it been a long time since my last post, even considering the summer factor. I've been lazy about it, as well, I confess. I'll try and do better. As a partial recompense, this is a looong entry.

Now for my perspective of Trish's post on gardening.

I first conceived this post while recovering from injuries I received gardening. Frankly, I had not considered it possible to become injured while gardening without a power tool being involved somehow, but I managed it. This was, I think, the first yard-work injury I have ever had that required more than a band-aid and methiolate to deal with. And this was despite the fact that for most of my life, yard work pretty much instantly implied power tools.

When I was a kid, yard care consisted of mowing the grass when it got too long, with occasional edging. Even that wasn't too bad once Dad broke down and ditched the impossible-to-start-self-propelled mower with a riding mower (with electric start. Woo-Hoo!). At what seemed to me to be random intervals, mom would send me out to clear weeds from the flower beds, of which we had two. Sometimes Dad would fertilize the grass, and sometimes we watered it. I don’t know who did the watering, Mom maybe. Dad was gone during the day, and I never recall having to set up hoses and stuff myself.

While I was single I lived in apartments, so I didn't even do that much. Of course, when Trish and I got married, we bought a house, which had a lawn. I picked up where I had left off as a kid, mowing it when the grass got too high. I added watering to my chores, and even fertilized it once. At what struck me as random intervals, Trish would run out and plant some flowers. I didn't think about that too much, as I was too busy trying to figure out the right kind of water sprinkler to cover the most yard with the least fuss (not to mention where it should be placed), as well as how long to let it run so the grass wouldn't die.

I was only partially successful with the watering gig, but the lawn survived, despite being huge and oddly shaped (we were on a cul-de-sac, so the yard was shaped like a pie wedge on a hill). When we later moved to Texas, our yard became rectangle shaped. This was theoretically simpler, but I had spent the previous two years working on that pie wedge, so it took me a while to adjust.

Trish had a couple of flower beds put in, and again, at what seemed to me to be random intervals, would go out and plant things in them. Oh, and I had to periodically chop back some shrubs. Thus our lives continued much as before, except for the vegetable garden she eventually set up. The garden was a new twist, and threw me for a while. Finally, after killing several sets of herbs and vegetables, I gave up and took to watering it every day, just to be safe.

So then we moved here. It took quite some time to think about anything out of doors, but eventually, Trish did. Oh sure, while we were having the place worked on she had talked about planting some stuff here and there but to be honest with you I didn't pay it much heed. I was too busy worrying about water faucets and what-not. Perhaps I should have.

After some time passed and we had more or less managed to settle in, she got to work in earnest. Gardening books began to appear on shelves, and magazines popped up on the table. Diagrams with the outline of the house and shape of the lot proliferated, with notes and squiggles denoting potential locations of various flora. To be honest, it was a lot like the way I get when I decide I need to really upgrade my computer. Of course, eventually I either buy the computer with the stuff I've picked out or buy the stuff and spend a day or two getting it all in place, at which point I'm done, aside from firing up the latest, hottest game and playing it.

Oh sure, along the way we spread compost all over the front yard, and I built a raised bed for a vegetable garden. Between those things and managing to install a brick walkway from the driveway to the backyard gate I was feeling mighty pleased with myself. But Trish had just gotten started. And in all honesty things get kinda blurry at this point, because the transition from her sort of noodling around and putting in a tree here and there to her returning from various nurseries with the entire back of her car (I'm not kidding. The entire back of her car. With the seat down. And she drives a small station wagon) full of plants day after day is lost to me.

I had to dig the bigger holes, and the holes in the tougher parts of the soil (which is mostly this gooey clay stuff, except when its rock hard clay stuff). I put in edging and border fencing (okay, that was my idea), dug more holes, built and put in an arbor (this involved renting an auger for the 3' deep holes), dug more holes, weeded, dug more holes, put in a misting watering system for the new vegetable garden, dug more holes…

And to think my folks paid for 6 years of college so I could avoid heavy manual labor. Oy.

Have I mentioned we made a special trip down our old ranch so she could pick up some ancient implements to set plants on and around? And an old iron bedstead? Or the coal-burning stove our neighbor let us have as long we we would pick it up? Which weighed more than an old Volkswagen? Then there were these "hypertufa" planters we made out of concrete and peat moss and stuff…Okay, actually, they looked pretty cool. But still!

Oh yeah, those injuries I spoke of. They were a wrenched foot and bruised tailbone. I got them -- wait for it--digging a hole. I was working on a slope near the curb, and when I shoved down on the shovel with my weight to force it into the tough soil, the shovel blade hit a rock or something and jammed. My foot slipped off and I lost my balance, but not before giving my body a good push up and back, towards the asphalt. Yeah, it hurt a lot. My butt was sore for two or three days…

Well. With all that, I have to say, it does look nice. We get a lot of compliments from people walking by. It does help when I'm nursing my latest contusion to hear someone say "I just love what you've done to this yard!"

No Noggin, No Bloggin; Or, Why Jammer has not been blogging

2006-07-25T20:44:00.000-05:00

I apologize for the lack of posts. I've basically had bloggers block. I've been staring at this piece about yard work for weeks now.

Luckily my lovely and talented wife has graciously stepped in with a piece of her own not unrelated to the one I was working on. So without further ado, take it away Trish:

***

In case you're wondering why the blog has been quiet, this is why.

At our previous house, we didn't do much with the garden. We put in a few raised beds to try to deal with problem areas--the line along the fence where the dogs ran barking at the neighbor dog (a continual source of muddy paws--a non-trivial issue when your dog poundage equals around 250 pounds); an area along the sidewalk right on top of limestone, so the grass was essentially being pan-fried; an area that would not grow grass under any circumstances. Gardening was basically unattractive for several reasons. Our neighbors all had two-story houses, so you're talking private as a fish bowl. There was no shade (although by the time we left the trees we had planted were beginning to help), so it was as pleasant to sit in the yard as the hot box in Coolhand Luke. I generally left the house at seven in the morning and got home around six at night, and night gardening is not really my long suit, whereas Jim was putting hundreds of miles on his car running errands (traffic flow is so badly designed in Cedar Park that even a short trip involved fighting major congestion). And, most important, we were always sort of camping in that house--it was not really explicit, but somehow we both knew this was not where we were going to stay. (So, for instance, we carefully placed trees so that the next owner could still put in a pool--when your planning is based on the next owner, you know you aren't thinking in the long-term.)

Then we moved to this house.

It's a classic sixties ranch-style house, although one of the nicest of that breed (dang close to Prairie Style, if you ask me). There is a magnificent, awesome, extraordinary, red oak in the front yard, but otherwise no real landscaping to speak of. The classic sixties Texas landscaping--St. Augustine grass, hedges against the house--had been only mildly modified by some previous owner, who tore out a bunch of hedges (yay!) and planted or allowed to grow various invasive exotics, including Chinese Tallow, Red-tipped Photinia, Ligustrum, and Nandina. I'm not criticizing them, as people still recommend many of those plants, including people who sell books with words like "Natural" and "Organic" in the title. (I am, however, criticizing the people who write those books.)

If you live in Texas, and someone recommends that you plant Nandina, cover your ears and sing Yellow Rose of Texas as loud as you can until they go away. Cast that person into outer darkness, perform a personal exorcism, and wash out your ears. (This is one of many reasons I think Howard Garrett's book is vastly over-rated--anyone who recommends Nandina to a Texan is a spawn of the devil.) It is not just that it sends up runners all over the place--that would be bad enough--but that birds eat the berries and then plant Nandina all over parks and preserves. And, it's a royal pain to try to get out of your yard. Okay, you think I'm exaggerating. Well, it took Jim (with some help from me) about an hour to pull out one Nandina plant about two feet big, which required, iirc, a pick, a shovel, and a saw. We had an entire fence lined with Nandina--something like thirty or forty feet. We paid people to pull that out.

I'll spare the long description of the next three months, but the short version is like this: the coffee table begins to fill up with gardening books, pamphlets, and magazines; I keep showing Jim pictures and asking, "What about this?" "Do you like that?" till he starts to get that hunted look; I arrive home with a car full of plants at least once a week; I start talking about selling blood in order to get more money for plants (I even used my book budget for plant-buying); I place them around the yard and Jim plants them; Jim digs up a fair number and puts them in the next spot I think will work better (not entirely my fault--the magnificent tree fills out and turns full sun spots into full shade); he builds me a raised veggie bed; he builds me an arbor (I painted it--badly); he assembles an arbor; he builds three more veggie beds; he puts out something like sixty bags of mulch; he spends hours digging grass out of an area that, when it was grass, wouldn't grow anything but dirt but, now that it is supposed to be flowers, is growing grass like a mofo.

This business of digging out grass and digging holes is no trivial exercise. The soil (I use that word loosely) around here is called "clayey," but that really isn't strong enough. It is not quite as hard as concrete, well, not really well-pored concrete anyway. I couldn't get anywhere with a shovel, so I have to use a pick to dig anything. After I took out a sprinkler head, my shin, and my elbow, I resigned as chief digger. Jim's tenure as digger has not been without incident--when he threw his strength into a particularly hard bit of dirt, the dirt threw back, and Jim lost. Once he picked himself up from the road, and assessed that he had not actually broken anything, he declared himself done for the day (Ibuprofen, a heating pad, and a Margarita helped the healing).

Jim never wanted to be a rancher, as he says he doesn’t like hard physical labor in the heat. But this isn't work, I tell him--it's a hobby!

Those old Houses

2006-05-24T21:37:00.000-05:00

This has nothing to do with SAHD's so, if you are looking for that, move on.

We have, at long last, sold our old house. This was a long process, much longer than I had thought it would be at the time. A year ago, I was obsessively scanning the MLS listings literally morning and night, just in case something had been added in the time since I'd last looked. I fiddled with zip codes and price ranges, tweaked this and that, drove around neighborhoods looking for "For Sale by Owner" signs, and obsessed like mad over a house I never even had a chance to look at because it sold in like three days. We agonized over a couple of places that were almost right, and even made an offer on one (just this once I think it would be okay to breathe a prayer of thanks for crazy out of state siblings that don't belong to you). It would be early July before we found a truly suitable place, the end of July before it was ours. Long-time readers of these pages will know that the process of getting the place ready was a long one, and it was not until December we could move in. A month later began the job of getting the old house ready for sale, with new paint and carpet, clearing out the trash and detritus of the move, all that crap. A month later that was finally all done and we could go on the market. A month and a half later, we got a good offer (not without some other nibbles along the way), and a month and a half after that was last week. The process was a bit over a year from start to end.

I tell you what, that was a load off.

And on top of that, last week we closed a sale on an old house that had belonged to my grandfather. My family used it when working at our ranch near Tilden, Texas. Trish and I hung on to it for five years after Mom died, thinking we might be able to use it ourselves. In the end, we finally realized it would be better to put a cheap little hunting cabin on the ranch itself than to keep that house (in town, about 10 miles away from the land), and we put it up for sale as well. After many fits and starts, it went last week as well. We were there this past Sunday, clearing out the last little bits of stuff we wanted or needed to get rid of.

But now we are done with all that. Done. Finished. Kaput. And we can concentrate on polishing the one house we have left.

In Which I Channel Andy Rooney

2006-05-08T21:11:00.000-05:00

…and I wonder how many people still know who that guy is.

I use my credit card a lot. Much more often than five years ago, and an insanely lot more than ten. And really, since you get the 1% (or 3%, or 4 2/3% or whatever it is) cash back and you were going to spend the money anyway, why not? Even for amounts I wouldn't have considered using a card for back when. Not quite "stick of gum" levels, but sub $10 ones, anyway.

This has caused me to notice odd quirks in how businesses deal with cards. In Ye Oldene Dayes (as late as 1992 or thereabouts) using your card would cause people to pull out this heavy mechanical thing with a lever or a runner and some special carbon paper. Then they would take your card, go klerchunk-unk, make a totally illegible copy of your numbers and you would then sign it. I forget now if you got to keep the good copy or the unreadable one. Then they got the electronic things where the clerks would enter your number and it would print a (usually) very readable receipt for you to sign. The next steps were the gadgets that read the magnetic strip on the back of the card.

There things stopped for a while, and all was good. But gradually new wrinkles have been added.

I first noticed it with gas stations, the whole "pay at the pump" thing. You just swiped your card. And you did it yourself. No clerk action required. Pretty much everyone seems to do it that way now.

Back to the gas stations. Used to be you always had to sign the reciept. No more. No matter how much you buy, you swipe and you're done. Actually, I suppose there must be some limit where they make you go into the store and show ID or something, but for your average gas purchase, that's it. More and more stores are doing this. A drugstore and a bagel place near my home don't require signatures for purchases under a certain amount. A different amount at each place, I might add. This messes me up, because I can never recall if its purchases under $20 or $25 and I never know if I need to reach for a pen or not.

All the grocery stores I trade at still require a signature, even if you're only buying that stick of gum. Some places have you do an actual signature with a pen and ink. Others use those electronic writing pad things. I'm not wild about those. They start out dutifully creating a decent copy of your signature but after only a few months devolve into reproducing a bizarre squiggle that might be a two-year-old's attempt to draw a cat or a reproduction of one of Picasso's doodles as rendered by an epileptic forger. I've pretty much ceased to care what shows up on the screen and just hit "okay" as long as something is there.

Probably the weirdest store policy for credit cards is the one used by Lowes, the giant hardware retailer. You swipe your own card, but then you have to tell the checker the last four digits on it. This makes no sense to me whatsoever. It can't be to stop fraud, you're standing there holding the credit card. Who couldn't just look down and read the four digits? How many people have those numbers memorized anyway? People who shop at Lowes a lot? It’s an utterly pointless extra step, and I'm certain the checkers hate it. Some day I need to ask if they have ever been told the rationale for this.

The Ballad of The Shower Handles

2006-04-26T09:09:00.000-05:00

For a while, I toyed with the idea of setting the following tale to song, or maybe even iambic pentameter (verily, forsooth, etc.). Back in the early 90's, I gained quite a reputation as a wit by doing that sort of thing (among others) which my boss would post on his office door. Eventually, I was expected to crank stuff out at birthdays, going-away parties and the like. I was the poet laureate of the department. Ah, those were the days…

But I digress. Get yourself a drink, this is a long one.

Late last week I finally put the period to a saga that had been running, off and on, for months. Four months, in fact (or nine, if you want to count the VERY beginning. More, much more anon). I was at last able to make my shower handles stop when shutting the water off. You might think this was a fairly basic thing, here in the 21st century, a problem easily diagnosed and simple to rectify. You would be wrong.

Back when we were determining the things we wanted to change in this, our new-current home, one thing I decided I wanted was water faucets that used levers to control the flow of water instead of knobs. You see, just before we closed on the house, we went to LA on vacation, and while there we spent several days at Disneyland. The bathrooms at the Disneyland Grand Californian Hotel were equipped with levers, and I fell in love with them instantly. I realized I was really tired of knobs that you had to grab and twist to use, often when your hands were slippery with soap or raw chicken or mud or whatever. And then you had to grab them again to turn them off, getting whatever you had just washed off back onto your hand. I'm no germaphobe, but this still struck as not a good thing, especially the raw meat part.

So when we returned I spent a lot of time in Lowes, Home Depot, and plumbing supply stores until I found the right levered faucets for the shower, tub, lavatories, and kitchen sink. And eventually, just before we moved in, they were all installed. It was only while we were moving in that I stumbled across an odd problem with the controls to the shower.

It is easy to show but harder to describe. I shall persevere as best I can. Okay. The handle starts in the "off" position. You then move it away from off, water proceeds to flow. The farther you get from off, the faster the water comes, until the handle comes to a stop. You cannot turn it any farther and the water can't come any faster. Only my shower didn't do that.

I turned the knob, the water flowed, only there was no stopping point. It just kept on going around until it came back to where it started, and the water ceased. It moved through a full 360 degrees. I spun it round several times, watching the water ebb and flow like a bad cosine function until I found "off" and hollered for my contractor.

He "hummed" and went for the plumber. The plumber sort of hummed but said that was the way those controls were. I asked him to check further, to see what might be done, but I later decided he didn't really care. The controls were in, he was done, and he was not terribly interested in mysteries. Despite several attempts on our part, he never really did anything, and we had more pressing issues. The controls did work, after all, and despite lacking a stopping point it was not hard to find the "off" spot.

But it continued to bug me. It was possible to leave the thing dripping until the lever was moved another half-inch into the "off zone". I also didn't want Jacob to scald the heck out of himself by accidentally spinning the lever all the way through "off" and back into "full blast". And I got tired of having to place the levers just so.

Eventually, I had reason to call out another plumber, and I had him look at the shower while here. He said that without knowing the model and type of valve he couldn't do much. But he did say that changing the handle might be sufficient. This was possibly good news, since when we got the handles we had also gotten new valves (the anti-scald kind, which makes the yelping noises you used to hear while flushing a toilet during someone's shower a thing of the past), and it meant that I might be able to handle this myself.

Some weeks later I dug around and found the receipts for the valves and handles. I went to the plumbing supply shop where we'd gotten them and told the woman at the desk the troubles I was having with my PP03-61XA's and my PP07-81BC's. But she was only a salesperson type and said I should talk to this one guy who apparently was the only person there who knew anything about actual plumbing. But said guy was busy at the moment. I hung around for a bit, but he didn’t get unbusy, so I went to lunch. When I returned, he was at lunch. I ground my teeth and left my phone number with an explanation of the problem.

Later, a message was left on the answering machine from the plumbing supply place suggesting I call the faucet maker's 800 support number. I confess I found the idea of a faucet company having an 800 support line pretty funny ("Your faucet is stuck? Have you tried re-booting it?"). Anyway, a few days later I called them. I got a very nice fellow who sounded like he was from India but for all I know was in Topeka, KS. I explained the issue with the PP03-61XA's and the PP07-81BC's and he said he would send out a new set of PP03-61XA's to take care of it. No muss no fuss, no charge. They didn't even try anything to confirm that I'd actually bought the things before. It struck me that unscrupulous plumbers could garner quite a few free supplies this way before they caught on. Still, it had been much easier than I had thought, so I was pleased enough.

About 10 days later, the package arrived. In it were two six-inch long brass valves (PP03-61XA's), wrapped in heavy protective plastic. I confess I despaired a bit when I saw them. Was I going to have to summon another plumber? A handle I could…err…handle. The valves worried me. I might be a Tool Man, but some areas I left to the pros, and plumbing was generally one of them. The hard plastic covering was a bit confusing too. Was that stuff supposed to remain on? I finally decided it was not.

I set aside some time, and a another few days later took the stuff into the shower, where I removed the handles (PP07-81BC) and stared hard at the exposed bit of valve (PP03-61XA). A small flange was exposed at the end, perhaps three-quarters of an inch long. It rather looked to me like the end points of the flange coincided strongly with an "off" position and a "fully open" position. I took another look at the valves I had been sent. Fitted neatly over the end of each was a small piece of white plastic, rectangular in shape and maybe a half-inch long. Also at the end of each valve was a flange identical to the one already installed.

I removed the bit of plastic from the valve I had been sent, and placed it onto the valve there in the shower. It went on smoothly enough once I found there was only one way it could go on. I reattached the handle, and turned it part way. The water came on. I turned it the other way. The water stopped -- and so did the lever. I turned the handle as far as it could go, noting that now there was a point that was as far as it could go. The water came out full blast. I turned the handle back again. The water stopped again. So did the handle.

I repeated the process for the other handle, and tested it. It worked like a charm.

So, there it finally ended. Nine months from inspiration to planning to implementation to correction, who knows how much time actually spent in the project, and it all came down to a half-inch bit of plastic that might have cost a nickel. There's a moral in there, somewhere.

I decided to keep the rest of the valve. Who knows? I might need it someday.

This Old Wrench

2006-04-18T08:49:00.000-05:00

It can be very hard sometimes, as a SAHD, to feel masculine. And no matter how role models eventually come to adjust themselves, I feel that most men are never going to feel all that comfortable squinting at the "feminine hygiene products" trying to recall if their wives wanted maxis, minis, wings, wing-tips, or "turbo".

Nevertheless, one unexpected benefit of this sort of thing is a surprisingly enhanced ability to get to play with tools, the most masculine activity there is short of killing a wild animal and roasting it over a fire.

I certainly can't speak for every guy, but for the first several years after college about all I did with tools was hammer in a nail for hanging my pictures. I also unscrewed the case of my computer now and then. Woo.

But to be honest, as a single guy living in an apartment, I didn't have much need of tools. To really need tools, you have to live in a house (or be the sort who reassembles your radiator for fun on the weekend, which I'm not). Houses give you lots of opportunities to use tools. That is, if you try to take advantage of them. For the first few years of married in a house life, I didn't truly take advantage of the chance to work with tools.

Partially this was a function of time. We were very quickly new parents in addition to everything else, and projects of greater scope than assembling a crib were just not high on our lists.

But I realize now that a huge part of it was just not having the right tools. Any home improvement task will suck if you are trying to use a pair of needle-nose pliers to insert a wood screw (no, I never actually did that. I used a speed-wrench). Gradually, I came to realize this problem. The first step was a useful but not quite Nirvana inducing set of boxed-end wrenches and what my Dad always referred to as a "socket set" (i.e., a Snap-On tools style ratchet set).

Then, a couple of years ago I finally requested a cordless drill and screwdriver for Christmas. Wow, was that a big change. For ages I have been hand-forcing screws into the walls. I wasn't even pre-drilling the holes with the heavy drill I did have. But now I could just zing! zing! screws into wall studs all I wanted. I wouldn't have survived this last move without those cordless guys, and I really do wonder why I waited so long to get them.

I have since used my heavy drill's special masonry setting to bore holes into the bricks of our house so I could make a gate work better. Later I also used it to attach hose reels. I rescued a set of punches and chisels from my Dad's old workbench five years ago, and they say gathering dust until last month, when I used them to break paving stones in half to fill in gaps of a short walk I laid. I've put up shelves in Jacob's room, Trish's closet, and the hall closet. I've added a valve to my shower and fitted it with a detachable showerhead. I replaced a bad tire on the wheelbarrow, sharpened a lawn mower blade…

Okay, once in a while being more self-reliant is a waste of time. A couple of years ago, the lawn mower started acting up. It would run for a while and then die. If you waited a few minutes, it would restart, only to die again. I replaced the spark plug and air filter. No help. Then I took the carburetor out, took it apart and cleaned it. Still nothing. I gave up and took it to a small engine repair place. Turned out the gas cap had gone bad, and the thing was getting a vaccum lock after a while. So I wasted some time on that one, but if it had been something else, I could have fixed it myself. I am tool-man, hear me roar!

Trish talked me into getting an electric hedge clipper. I used it the other day, and it cuts through half-inch branches like butter. Yeah, baby!

I got a worktable for my birthday, and hope to eventually mount a vise with an anvil surface on it. I confess, I haven’t really had a need for a heavy vise yet, but it will be good to have one all the same. You never know.

And all this is without going on about how my tools helped rescue a little girl whose foot got caught in a bicycle wheel.

I Am SoccerDad

2006-04-11T10:32:00.000-05:00

So, I am a Soccer Dad. Jake decided he wanted in on soccer this year, so we asked around and joined one of the local leagues. So far its been good. One practice and one game a week, and everyone seems pretty laid back. Oh, we want our kids to win of course, but no-one seems to be slipping steroids into the apple juice, and I have yet to see a gun pulled on a ref who made a bad call [ed. note, I wrote this before the most recent game. Still mostly true, but see below]. I will confess to occasionally being a tad overzealous in my encouragement.

Our team strikes me as decent, with a record 1-1-2, though the order of one win, one tie, and two losses strikes me as a bad trend.

Except for Jacob, this particular team is all girls. He doesn't seem to be too put out by this, which is what you might expect from an eight-year old. Trish noted this sort of thing is wasted on him now. In a few more years he'd kill to be the only boy on that soccer team.

With four games and about as many practices under his belt, I have to say that I think he's one of the two best players on the team. I know I'm a proud parent and all, but this is an easy call. After Jake and his partner in talent (actually, the gal might be better than he is -- I know she was better when the season started) you have an interesting trail downwards that would fit into almost any sports movie (the one with talent but not a lot of interest, the one who tries hard but isn't real good, the stolid plodders, etc.).

The biggest problem the team faces is a lack of aggression or assertiveness on the field. They do a bit too much of watching to see what will happen, as opposed to making something happen. Or at least that's what I think. We are trying to provide Jake with a few tips with that in mind, like always run fast etc, but I am doing my best not to try and say a word to the other players or to the coach. It ain't my place, and odds are she already knows. There are other suggestions I might be minded to make, but I'm not sure they would truly help or not.

On the other hand, they are starting to struggle against the 6 year olds practicing on the field next to them. I know the kids would like to win. I suppose I could start standing near our coach and make "innocent" observations like "You know, that pseudo-goalie thing seems to really help the other team" or "Y'know, when the other team gets the ball they always initially kick it hard and that keeps the ball down on our side all the time."

Or maybe I should just keep my mouth shut and let the team handle it. I dunno. I want to help, and I presume the kids want to win in order to have more fun playing, but I also don't want to get my ego involved. Take our last game. We had an unpleasant incident in which a boy from the opposing team threw the ball too hard after an out-of-bounds and painfully jammed one of our player's fingers. I didn't see it happen, so I don't know if the kid was overexcited or being mean or just frustrated, but they both took to crying, and both were out of the game. Then, we had a granddad of the hurt girl hassling the other kid's coach over the incident (the game did have a high incidence of hand-checking and stuff before this -- soccer is a rougher sport than most people think), well within earshot of the offending kid. The coach responded very defensively and not well at all. The boy's parents eventually took him over to the girl and he apologized, which I think was totally appropriate and good for both of the kids.

Anyway, the point is, I want the kids to do well, but I don't want to be either of those guys.

Gross Dog Tales

2006-04-03T08:48:00.000-05:00

The following post should not be read by people with particularly weak stomachs, right before a meal, right after a heavy meal, expectant or nursing mothers, or those with immune disorders.

So I'm starting to think our middle dog, George, (75lbs) is a bit accident-prone. We hadn't had him six months when, on his first trip to the ranch, he cut a neat hole in his hind leg on a barber-wire fence. Last year, you may recall, he managed to get a bump on his face (possibly from a scorpion sting) and was forced to wear a cone. This also resulted in my having to get a new keyboard.

Late one afternoon about two weeks ago now, Jacob was on his trampoline and Trish and I were inside the study when we heard a God-awful series of doggie yelps. We rushed outside to find George dashing about with a BIG gash in his side. Skin, muscle, fat layers…no bones showing, fortunately. Eight inches long, I'd guess. Straight to the vet we went, where he got stitched up and had to stay overnight.

First day or two back went okay, but then he nibbled a stick or three loose and I had to take him back. Well, it was okay aside from the fact he had a big tube stuck in him to help drain the gunk out of the wound. Gunk which was dripping out on the floor, and the dog beds, and what-not. Most of the floors are tile, so, no big deal. It wasn't all that much, anyway.

So I took him back for the new stitches. While there, they removed the drain tube. So of course, he swelled up around his wound. Lotsa fluid. A few days later I took him back, fearing an abcess and an infection. While I held him, the vet made a small incision and drained a big pile of bloody gunk out. But the good news was that it was clean gunk. No infections. A few days later, though, we had to do it again.

This next paragraph is going to be particularly gross.

The doc seemed pleasantly surprised that I could stand there while this was going on. As I explained to him, I spent a lot of time on a ranch. While I didn't go into detail with him, what that meant was the following: Dad used to notch the ears of cattle we vaccinated with his pocketknife. I used to wield the syringe with the vaccine. We gutted birds with our bare hands, and I got to see deer guts, smashed snakes, etc. up close and personal. This latter stood me in good stead when Trish had to have a c-section and I looked over the curtain after the birth and saw the docs almost literally pouring her guts back into place. So dealing with a dog who had bloody serum squirting out of his side under controlled conditions was no big thing.

A few days later he lost some more stitches. I think it was an accident of some kind, and it happened on a walk. Yes, I took the dogs on a walk despite George's stitches. They all needed the exercise or they were going to tear up something, perhaps each other. So anyway, this opened a new hole, and we got more drainage. It never really stopped draining, this hole, so after another day I took him in again. The vet looked pleased, cleaned him up, and said he was doing fine. We'd just leave the stitches out there in order to allow the draining to continue.

This draining was a lot worse than the prior stuff with the tube (I hope I can get the stains off of the stuff he has been laying on). Thursday we went back for a scheduled visit. This time, the vet removed most of the stitches on purpose, but left a few in just to be safe. Still with the cone, still with the draining hole. Tuesday (tomorrow) is another scheduled visit, probably to remove the last stitches. I'm, betting he won't, but I wish he would plug that dang hole. I can put up with some fairly gross stuff; that doesn't mean I like it.

Brief Reading Comment

2006-03-30T20:22:00.000-06:00

There are days (many of them) when Jacob's reading habits strike me as, well, totally weird. Maybe it's just because its him, as opposed to me, but one day he'll be reading Harry Potter, or The Lord of the Rings (yes, really), or Summerland (highly recommended) or Sherlock Holmes (yes, really), or some other book really written with the teenage audience (or older) in mind, and the next he's reading Horrible Harry, or Geronimo Stilton, or something written for, well, eight-year olds. For some reason, I expect him to keep reading the more mature stuff, instead of bouncing back and forth. I don't know why, he is only eight.

I'd swear when I was a kid my reading progression was a lot more linear (and with a lot more Richie Rich comic books).

NOW I remember Why I Quit Doing That...

2006-03-27T09:04:00.000-06:00

Since moving I've felt I haven't got as much walking in. Two things have changed. Jake rode the bus to his previous school, and I'd wait at the stop with him and the dogs. After the bus left I would walk the beasts (they would get very excited when they saw the bus coming. They knew what was next). But Jake's "new" (we've been going there since last August) school pulls from such a tight area that it has no bus service. So I drive him in every morning. The second change is that very close by is an off-leash dog park. So, most mornings I put Jake and the dogs in the Highlander, drop him off, swing by the park, and let them run around like lunatics while I pace out the "Y" shaped pathway and try to decide what 4 things out of the 25 I have to do might get done that day.

Now, there isn't really anything stopping me from coming back to the house, leashing up the hounds and then walking down to the park, unleashing them, walk through it, re-leash, and come home. We actually did that a few times shortly after school got going again. That is a substantial morning walk. But for some reason, despite my occasional feelings of disquiet regarding the amount of aerobic exercise I've been getting, I've not felt strongly motivated to do it.

Well, if you read the Spring Break Report, you know that George tangled with a trampoline and lost. He's got a big line of stitches that should not get exposed to the icky run-off water that can usually be found in the park area. The beasties still need a chance to work off some energy, but the park is obviously out. So I've been putting on the leashes and taking them on a short circuit of the neighborhood.

Now I remember why I quit walking them down to the park. They yank. They pull. Hubert cuts in front of me or will stop dead to sniff something (and when 120 pounds of Great Dane stops or cuts you off, you notice). Usually at the same time, the other two decide to try and charge forward to sniff something, leaving me feeling distinctly like a wishbone getting pulled crosswise. And they always try and pass behind me, instead of alongside, forcing me to hop over the leashes like a demented ballet dancer in order to avoid getting clotheslined at the knee.

All this yanking around might be good for me in some awful fashion, but in order to avoid strangling the hounds and to keep my acid reflux down, I think the absurdity of driving them somewhere to go on a walk is the lesser of two evils.

Spring Break For The Family Man

2006-03-24T09:36:00.000-06:00

Well, Spring Break was interesting this year. We really started on Friday, when some really good shit I had asked for came in.[1] We both got supremely buzzed off it multiple times, and were truly wiped when we finished[1.5].

Later, when that ran out, we dropped a few more c-notes on our other shared vice.[2]

Still, I was pretty grumpy when Trish threw me over and spent the whole week sleeping with another, younger guy[3]. What I was left with were real dogs, even if I often got to have two with me at once[4].

But to prove that its not a really good party unless someone gets in a fight, George managed to get himself pretty badly torn up (like, needing stitches tore up) close to the end of the week.[5] And naturally the big lunk wouldn't keep still like he was supposed to, and opened some of them up again, forcing us to take him back to the doc a couple of days ago.[6]

All in all, quite a time was had by all.[7]

[1] We bought 3.5 cubic yards of cow manure compost, which we spread out over the yard.
[1.5] We were stung by bees from the house next door.
[2] We went to Book People and bought a LOT of books
[3] The weather was mild, so our son Jacob and Trish slept out on the patio.
[4] I preferred the bed. The dogs came and joined me periodically.
[5] George the dog got himself caught on an exposed trampoline bolt. Ick.
[6] He nibbled on them.
[7] I'm not sure how to work in the brick pathway I started on.

The Incredible Sameness of Being

2006-02-21T09:29:00.000-06:00

Or, Where Jim Once Again Realizes Something Most Women Learnt In The Fifties. Or Earlier

I recognize the irony of this posting, coming as it does on the heels of this one, but it was what I felt.

I was doing something I had done a thousand times before. Unloading the dishwasher I think, but it could have been any one of a myriad of tasks. You know the kind. The sorts of things that have to be done, if not every day, then at least more than twice a week.

So I was doing this task, whatever it was, and I had this thought enter my head: "Gad, how many times have I had to do this? And how many more times will I do it in the future? I'm really sick of it, but tomorrow I'll do it again. And the next day, and the next day. Bleah."

It might not have been in so many words. It may or may not have had actual words at all, it might have been just a sort of feeling of incohate dread. This is your life now, pally, it seemed to say. Can you dig the drag it is?

Well. I'm sufficiently self-aware that when something like that happens, I can stop, pull the shrink-wrap off and look it over a bit more closely. My first thought was something along the lines of "Ah, so this is what those housewives were talking about back in the day." And that was true enough. But later I had more thoughts. After all, almost everyone has patterns, set tasks and so forth. In my former life as a computer programmer I followed the same pattern that got me to my desk every day. My specific task might vary, but it was all about setting up IF…THEN blocks and DO…UNTIL loops. Certainly my job had more variety than that of an assembly-line worker (how much change to they get now, anyway? Do you screw in spark plugs for thirty years, or do you rotate every week or two? Anyone?), but any programmer who has user support in their job description can tell you that every week you're virtually certain to get the same sort of help calls for the same sort of mistake. And there were days in front of the computer screen where I just shook my head and said to myself, "Cripes, this thing again?"

I recall when my summer job was unloading watermelons I would occasionally get the "unloading dream", where I would be working in my sleep. And when I woke up, I was exhausted because I felt like I had been pitching melons all night. Which I had, they were just in my head. You try moving watermelons from 10AM until 10PM (with lunch and dinner breaks) for days on end and see how easily you can get them out of your dreams!

Still later it came to me that the issue is not so much one of variety. Sure variety can help, but if your tasks go from pitching watermelons to washing dishes to shoveling manure or screwing in spark plugs, how much help are you going to be getting from that change, really? What really helps keep you from feeling oppressed is how much you enjoy what you are doing.

No job is perfect. There are always going to be aspects of your job that you could do without. In my case, I came to see that at least a part of what I enjoyed about being a SAHD was not that I got a charge out of doing the dishes (I don't) or sweeping the floor (that either), but because of the things it did allow me to do. Like write this blog. Or be in a movie. Or take acting class. And time of course. Time to do all those things and still be certain we have enough milk. And printer ink. Some things do change, I guess. I think this was stuff that many women once did in a search for a change, when what they really needed was to get to choose things they wanted.

[Side note -- When I started this post I really was trying to actively avoid anything that smacked of having an answer/solution. But then I had the following thoughts. So deal with it]

So I think we have to give ourselves permission to be sick of the dishes (or the laundry, or the vaccuuming, or whatever), and not worry about it. We don't have to like everything about this job in order to like it as a whole.

And one more thing: Maybe you don't actually enjoy this gig. That's okay too. Choose something else. Easier said than done, I know. But we have to allow ourselves freedom to make choices. Often its not someone else holding us back, but our own inhibitions. Go for it.

And if by chance you really like doing dishes, or laundry, drop me a line. I have a way to increase your happiness.

The Last Roundup

2006-02-07T08:31:00.000-06:00

Everyone's life has some odd things in that make for interesting stories. Mine does too, although unlike most people's it often gives me more than just some old stories. Like what, you say? Well, I'm glad you asked…

We own a ranch. Actually, wilderness preserve would be more accurate nowadays, but once upon a time the around 1300 acres were an actual working ranch, with cattle and everything. During the last drought, we kicked the person who held the lease off of it and continued the process of letting it go wild, aside from a few efforts to keep things from becoming completely overrun with mesquite.

Almost a year ago now, the two fellows who own the hunting lease reported seeing three cows wandering around. Trish and I even saw them for ourselves once. The dogs saw them too, and chased them off into the brush barking like mad.

After some false starts, I eventually got around to contacting the local sheriff, and had him ask around to see if anyone had some cattle missing. It turns out that at least one ranch thought they had. And then things got a little weird…

The sheriff gave me some phone numbers to contact the ranch owner (who I'll call M) in question. Only problem was that he was dead.

Yep, right around the time I finally began to try and deal with the mysterious mini-herd, the person suddenly took ill and died. I was only vaguely aware of this at the time I began trying to make my phone calls. I had three numbers from the sheriff. Two were non-working numbers, and the third never answered, no matter how long I let it ring.

Soon after, the three cows dropped out of sight. I presumed they had wandered back home via whatever hole in the fence they had wandered in through and let the matter drop.

Spring gave way to summer, and summer to fall. Hints appeared to suggest that the cattle had not left, or if they had, it had been just long enough to get a tall latte (or perhaps a moocha) and bagel before returning. So I tried the numbers again, with no luck. I called the sheriff again, and discussed matters with him. He said those were the contact numbers he had, and if after sufficient time had passed, I could simply have the cattle removed and sold, the proceeds to be divided up between my self and the owner.

I was hesitant about just doing that sort of thing, but my exasperation level was high. Finally, (and if memory serves, at Trish's suggestion) I got a mailing address from the tax office and sent a registered letter explaining that these animals were on my land and if I didn't hear from "To Whom It Might Concern" soon, I was going to have them removed and sold.

A few days later I got a phone call. It turned out to be from the widow of M. She (we'll call her S) had been very upset by my letter, appearing (it seemed) out of the blue, and she had fired a testy one back at me. But, she had thought about it, and decided to call before the letter arrived (I had included our phone number, of course) to see if things could be handled in a more amicable fashion. And since we were both agreeable folk that was accomplished.

Soon enough we had reached a modus vivendi, agreeing to split whatever proceeds there were from the sale of the cattle 50-50, and in the process I got a tale of family skullduggery and small-town snippiness that left my head spinning. As part of the whole discussion I arranged to send her a map I had made that showed who was paying taxes on different plots of land (and thereby probably owned it).

So then I had to call the sheriff again to get the name of someone who could help me round up the cattle. He gave me one, and it turned out to be a man who used to help my dad and me work cattle years ago, when Dad still ran the place himself. So that was cool, but he wanted me to come down and show him around and hopefully spot the animals in question. Lets call him J.

This happened right before we moved. I let the matter drop and concentrated on getting the heck out of Dodge, planning to pick up the thread sometime after we had gotten settled in the new place. Weeks later, with most of the boxes unpacked and something vaguely resembling normality returning to our lives, I made arrangements to head for the ranch and see the guy. By a happy coincidence, S was going to be in the area the same day.

So I got up at 5AM and drove two and a half hours to the south. I met the cowboy and we drove in. One of my hunters was there and we stopped to talk to him for a while. He had seen the cattle that very morning. I drove around with J and while we didn't see the animals we could see where they had been spending a lot of time. He said he would come back later in the week when his brother could help him. We settled on a price for the rounding up and hauling, and I split.

I managed to catch up to S in town. She thanked me for my trouble and regaled me with a tale of woe and small-town family skullduggery that left me dizzy. Thing is, I could well believe it. I was also as certain as I could be that I wanted no part of any of it.

At any rate, I eventually returned home, very tired.

A day or two later J called me up to say he had successfully retrieved the cattle and taken them to the auction barn. Great, I thought. I left a message on S's cell phone with the news and the dollar amount to send to him once we received our checks from the auction. A day or two later she called me up and said she thought J's price was too high. She had asked around. So I asked around a bit myself. I decided that it was high, but not overcharge high, and I told her so. She decided to go along with me.

Finally, I thought. It took forever, but the cattle were gone and all was settled.

Well, until today when I got a phone call from S. She hasn't received her money yet. She's convinced something underhanded is underfoot and…maybe she's right. How the heck would I know? Anyway, I found the check stub I had received and gave her the number of the auction barn plus some other information that might help.

This is the sort of thing I do in between loads of laundry.

The End of The Tunnel

2006-01-24T20:42:00.000-06:00

Moving sucks rocks. Still, a month and a half from the beginning of this madness we have pretty much gotten ourselves settled in. The back yard no longer resembles a cardboard box graveyard. Our books may not be neatly arranged everywhere on the book shelves, but they are at least stacked near their eventual alphabetical position.

I've gotten used to new living space several times now, but this one is very different from all of the others. We had months to wander through, getting to know every nook and cranny. We spent lots of time thinking about where things should go and how best to arrange them. While Trish spent a lot of time thinking about where the furniture should go, I thought about how to arrange things in cabinets and closets. As a result, thing are far less haphazardly arranged here than they were at our prior houses. We're actually organized. It does help that the house is blessed with a surprising amount of storage space for something from the 1960's (my stereotype is that big closets and such came in the late 70's). The kitchen in particular has lots of cabinet spaces and drawers. Heck, we have two kitchen drawers and two bathroom drawers sitting completely empty at the moment and vague plans for only one of them.

We did need a storage shed to make up for the garage we turned into a study. That enabled us to clear off the covered back patio and make it pleasantly livable. I was getting pretty tired of staring at random boxes and the handle of the lawnmower while eating dinner.

There are of course, areas of chaos which remain. My tools are sitting in a large box until I can get a proper peg board in place for them. Two closets have stuff kind of just stuck in them until we can do some re-arranging. I need to put up some shelves in Jake's room (which will help empty one of those closets). A lot of paint left here by the previous owner needs to be hauled off to the hazardous waste dump. But all in all, things have progressed in a very satisfying way.

Still Alive At Christmas

2005-12-23T15:42:00.000-06:00

Just a quick note. We did manage to move, though it was not a terribly edifying experience, complete with taking longer and breaking things and not being real happy with the movers, who are hiding behind a claimed Federal Law against their giving a refund. WTF? I have actually contacted our congressperson about that one.

The kitchen countertop still isn't done, but its done enought to cook and use the sink. Its gonna look real good when done. The master bedroom window has been replaced after the dogs knocked it out trying to attack someone walking their dog along Shoal Creek Blvd. No damage from that but the stitches from Marquis' run-in with construction debris and Hubert's wrassling with George (the second set of stitches. The first set from 10 days ago had healed and been out for about 45 minutes before he got a new set of gashes. The dogs really need to get walked) do seem to be healing nicely. We may have stumbled onto a good vet via that misadventure.

All five of the window blinds I bought at Lowes were the wrong size (too short), but they were awfully decent about refunding everything and getting me a new set. But they couldn't do anything about the special order I had placed being delayed by the factory until after Christmas despite the factory saying the blinds had shipped already.

Aside from Jake and Trish, I'm terribly off on my Christmas shopping. But I think people know our situation and will understand.

On the plus side, the cable internet has been installed and is working fine so far. Woo-Hoo!

Commence Silent Running...

2005-12-11T20:11:00.000-06:00

Next week we move in to our new house (sans a kitchen countertop, at least for a few days -- that's a long story). So that means I am and will be very very busy. Then comes Christmas. Which is all a way of saying that I will not be posting much the next couple of weeks. Wish us luck, and have a Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Good Kwanza, Pleasant Yule, Spiffy Winter Solstice, etc.

Or you can do the moving for us. That way, we will have time to deal with the Appendicitis Scare, the Wrong Grout Color Issue, the Shed Conundrum, Finding Food, Trish Going to A Conference Right After Christmas for Days, Getting High-Speed Internet, and Miscellaneous Crap.

I may be a little stressed right now. But compared to the last move, this one should be a piece of cake. At least if we forget something we don't have to drive a thousand miles to retrieve it.

Santa

2005-12-05T08:40:00.000-06:00

Jacob is 7 3/4 (I think he might insist on the distinction). He believes quite strongly in Santa Claus, and we haven't done anything to disabuse him of that notion. We (perhaps I should say I -- Trish has always been determined not to lie to Jake on these matters, and rightly so I think) have temporized from time to time ("Santa is as real as we want him to be").

He has just finished re-watching The Polar Express and re-reading Berke Breathed's The Red Ranger Came Calling, both of which deal with the issue of belief (and disbelief) in the fellow in red explicitly. They both come down pretty hard on the side of real, so despite the fact he generally knows the difference between true things and make believe things I think they might have strengthened his convictions despite acknowledging there are people who don't believe. Of course, why grown-ups wouldn't believe in Santa despite the appearance of toys they did not buy under the tree is a subtle detail he hasn't caught yet.

As I recall, I was around eight or nine when I realized that there was no actual Santa. I was old enough to recognize that things did not quite add up, and finding the stash of Christmas toys in a closet (I was an infamous poker into places I did not belong) was the kicker.

Trish and I have better hiding places, but Jacob is smarter than I was at that age (he might be smarter than am right now), despite sometimes missing important details. At some point, we won't be able to sidestep the problem, and I really wonder how the heck to handle it. Do I sit him down and have "The Talk About Santa"? Or will he come to the conclusion himself and say "Dad, there's not really a Santa Claus, is there?" Will he be angry? Tearful? Matter-of-fact?

I think I'm more worried about this than trying to teach him how (and how not) to deal with girls.

Ultimatum

2005-12-02T08:51:00.000-06:00

As you may recall, we are working on a house. We have been working on it since the first week of September. The people doing the work are good, but often no one has been there doing much of anything. Finally, we decided we were going to have to be ugly about things, and have simply set a move-in date. December 13. 2005, mind you, not 2006. We told our guy that was the date. Get things finished. Or else.

Now, of course, having done this, everyone is saying "oh yeah, that's what you have to do." Well hell, couldn't they have said that oh, maybe a month ago? Sheesh.

So now a crash program is developing. I'm interested in seeing what can be accomplished once they stop using us to fill in the gaps between bigger jobs.

Post-Thanksgiving Short Takes

2005-11-27T21:38:00.000-06:00

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. We did.

When it comes to traditions like the last posting talked about, I do have a couple of personal ones for the holidays, which I hope to add to in the years to come. The week before Halloween, I like to read Roger Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October. Then, sometime in December I like to pop in my tape of Patrick Stewart's brilliant one-man performance of A Christmas Carol.

The dishwasher finally got fixed last Wednesday. I won't bore you with the details, but it was quite an adventure. Two different guys said it was a bad pump, but the third guy said it was the electronic controller. Fortunately he had one in his truck. Whee! A dishwasher! I almost ran it every time I dirtied a glass, I was so thrilled. I'm not joking.

It's damn hard to leave Lowe's without dropping well over $100. Especially when getting a new house ready.

I had an interesting idea for a long post, but wasn't anywhere I could make a note of it. Now, of course, I have forgotten. I hate that…

Ritual

2005-11-21T08:40:00.000-06:00

As we approach the time known as the holiday season, I, as most years, think back to a simpler time -- 1975, or thereabouts. What, you don’t recall the '75 as being particularly pleasant or simple? Okay, it wasn't, really, but I was only about 8 years old and it seemed tranquil compared to, say, my years in high school.

As an aside, I think that is why many people seem to think "life was simpler then" -- they were kids and life was simpler -- for them.

Anyhow, in those golden days of Watergate, gas lines and the fall of Saigon, and on through the pleasant era of inflation, hostage crises and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, my family had an established and welcome pattern to its holidays.

July 4 was for a time spent at my Aunt Audrey and Uncle Bill's house. Bill ran a trucking company which shipped cattle all over the country. They therefore had a huge caliche rock drive and parking area, perfect for fireworks. My parent's home town was so small that not only was there no ordinance banning fireworks in the city limits, the fireworks stand itself was across the street from the county court house and next to the waterworks.

Thanksgiving was spent at our (my grandfather's old) house there. Mom got the dressing (stuffing) started early and one or two older cousins of mine would come over to taste test it before she put it in the oven. Mom's dressing was justifiably famous in the family. Later more and more people would show up and eventually we would stuff ourselves silly, scattered all over the kitchen, living room, and back porch while the Dallas Cowboys played some sacrificial lamb on TV.

Christmas was spent at Aunt Hasey and Uncle John's place, which was just across the road from Audrey and Bill's. We would gather there Christmas Eve. Mom was invariably the last to arrive. Finally (after what seemed hours to us kids) Hasey would plant herself under the tree and hand us presents, telling us little ones to whom they were to be delivered. These gifts were from family members to other family members. Eventually, all the gifts would be distributed and we could rush back to our own piles to rip the paper off and see what goodies we got. At some point, carolers would wander by. Then we went to bed at our various places to await Christmas Day and Santa's goodies. It was a good time to be a kid.

If we lack for anything these days, it is that sense of family ritual at the holiday season. I realize now that there were tensions and cross-currents I knew nothing about, and what I really want is something I can't have without being 8 again. Still and all, I wish we could do the Big Family Holiday Thing.

Historical Reality

2005-11-14T08:58:00.000-06:00

When I was in college I developed a habit of doing all the dishes I used as soon as I was done with them. This was partially in self-defense. I knew that arguments over cleaning the kitchen would develop, and I wanted to stay out of them. This was mostly successful, though I think my roomies resented having to acknowledge the mess in the sink wasn't mine. Or maybe they resented my forcefullly observing the mess wasn't mine. Over and over. Nah.

When I got my own apartment, I continued the habit. I didn't enjoy doing dishes, but I also didn't have enough dishes to fill a dishwasher before running out of stuff to eat on and with. A little silly, I suppose; who cares of the washer is truly full before running it? But it seemed wasteful. So I did 'em myself after every meal. It wasn't until I got married that the generation of soiled dishes outstripped my ability to keep up and I had enough to fill the thing before needing to use large banana leaves to put my cereal on. If memory serves, Trish had a hand in convincing me the dishwasher was an actual labor-saving device, and used less water to boot.

Anyway, last week the dishwasher had a problem. The water wouldn't drain out, so I've been thrown back to hand-washing for the better part of a week. Washing all dishes by hand for one person for 1.5 meals a day is a minor pain. Doing so for three while also cooking etc. is a royal pain. I can’t even just stuff things into the washer for later cleaning. They sit on the counter or in the sink taking up space I need for other things.

Okay, so its not hauling all the water needed for drinking, cooking and cleaning two miles from the community well. Sue me, I find it a serious hassle. And it certainly serves as a forceful reminder about all those history lessons that mentioned the introduction of labor-saving devices for the home back when. For the (mostly) women of those eras, it must have been like…having a stay-at-home-parent. Or something like that.

Baby on Board

2005-11-09T08:59:00.000-06:00

A while back Slate ran an article about choosing a baby stroller. Strollers aren't really something we need much of these days, but I've often considered a series of posts for new parents or parents to be on what our experiences were with various baby gizmos.

Most people who write about this grumble (with justification) at the below the belt nature of much of the marketing for baby stuff. For most people, the struggle is not to get too much stuff, including fripperies like the baby wipe warmer. In our case, for quite some time it was almost the opposite.

As I recall, despite the morning sickness and the fact that her stomach was out to here, Trish and I were in a vague sort of denial about Jacob's impending birth. With only a week or two left before the big day, we only had the stuff we had received as part of the baby shower. I felt a vague sort of unease about this, but nothing strong enough to make me say "You're getting in the car and we're going to Babies 'R Us. Now."

It took a friend of ours to give us a good kick in the rear and get moving. She had actually come up to visit and help us move the last of Trish's stuff from her old apartment in Columbia (three hours away) over to our house. That is a story in itself, but she was scandalized at our lack of baby prep.

"I can't believe you guys!" she said. "Come with me, we're going shopping." And so we did.

Fortunately our friend was something of a country girl, so we were not steered towards things like Tommy Hilfinger diapers or what-have-you. We did get a bunch of things that we were later to make much use of, and certainly saved us from many, many trips to get some thing we needed direly post birth. If memory serves, we got such basic items as a crib, a diaper pail, a changing table, wipes, more diapers, a monitor, some functional baby clothes, blankets, bottles, and an extraordinarily useful "baby bag" (where you stuff all the spare diapers, medicines, wipes, chewie things, etc whenever you leave the house, hopefully not forgetting the baby in all the packing). I'm sure there were some failures in that pile of things as well, like the baby backpack thing that Jacob never seemed to fit in right, a musical mobile, and others.

But, thanks to her, we were as prepared with stuff as we reasonably could be.

Sick and Tired

2005-11-02T08:21:00.000-06:00

I was sick this past weekend. Nothing bad, just a low fever and a general feeling of tiredness. It was the sort of illness you could almost forget about as long as you kept still. Anyway, I think it gave me an insight.

When I was a kid there a sense that moms didn't get sick. Granted, in the cultural milieu where I grew up, moms tended to stay home as well, so who knows to what degree this was universal, but at any rate, moms did not get sick. Kids got sick all the time. Dads got sick, too. Rarely, but it happened. Mothers, however, seemed invulnerable.

This, of course, was bunk. Moms got sick just like everyone else; they just didn't acknowledge it. There was too much to do. Intellectually, I knew that. But this weekend, as I was able to pretty much take it easy while getting better, I think I came to understand how they kept going.

Guilt. Yes, guilt (and me not even Catholic!). I think it was the first time I ever felt truly guilty over an illness. No doubt the mildness of the episode played a part. But still, there it was, and it hit me then that my mom, and surely other people's parents as well, had felt as down as I did plenty of times, and yet went on. Playing with pain, they call it in the sports world. You're not 100%, but the team needs you, and so you go in anyway. You could refuse; you could say no, but you feel you would be letting people down.

Yeah, it's an imperfect metaphor. They all are, sue me. And no doubt many people ignored illness because they had to work and needed the money. But I'm thinking more about stay-at-home parents, here, and I think there's something to it.

Kiss the Cook

2005-10-31T07:43:00.000-06:00

I've never regarded myself as a cook, with the exception of working a smoker to create barbecue. Otherwise, while I could cook, I wasn't a cook, if you get my drift.

This semester (a consequence of working for a university for three years after college and then marrying a university professor is you define your life by semesters) Trish has been teaching a late class, and since we haven't gotten to move in to our new house yet, I've had to do most of the preparing of the family meals.

In the past, this sort of thing was pretty much restricted to one meal a week. I've managed to make the adjustment, but it's still hard for me. While I do get a sense of accomplishment those nights I manage to pull it off it, it feels like work in odd ways that folding laundry does not.

Last week, I felt like I really outdid myself. I made a cheesy potato soup with salmon for Monday, a nice white bean soup Tuesday, slow-cooked pork with stir-fried veggies for Thursday, plus various combos for leftovers on the other weekdays. Everyone liked them, they were fairly easy with not a huge amount of cleanup, a huge success.

Problem is, that was last week. Now I have to do it all again.

Life Comes in Bunches

2005-10-26T08:56:00.000-05:00

Life comes in bunches.

Sometimes, life comes at you in a way that can make a day feel like a week, and a week feel like only a day. This is one of those times. And it's not due to anything awful or terrible. It's just stuff.

Times like these are the sorts that make you want to get organized. And I don't mean the garden-variety sort of organization, with Daytimers and checklists. I'm talking file folders and Gantt charts, here people. Milestones. Choke points. Pre-requisites. And a Partridge in a pear tree.

I want a system able to handle either moving the furniture or the invasion of Normandy. Where I'll need to change is the size of the poster board tracking everything. Actually though, I'm more likely to need lots of sheets of loose-leaf paper. My issue is not one big project with lots of interlocking parts; that might actually be easier than what I do have. I have lots of small individual projects, each fairly linear, but all vying for time and attention and which intersect only vaguely and at irregular intervals.

This is not something I've really done before, or really have had to do before. Or maybe I should have done this before, but it didn't occur to me it might be a good idea. Trish has had to do this for a long time. I find her example and advice very helpful. The occasional teasing goad doesn't hurt either! :-)

This Old House: Austin -- The Concrete Contretemps

2005-10-20T08:28:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago I was at the new house and found a crew pouring concrete to level out the old garage. It looked fine to me and I left. Yesterday I came back to find a carpenter at work framing in what are going to be window spaces where the old garage doors were. A few minutes later that concrete fellow shows up, grumpy.

It seems the contractor in charge was not happy with the surfacing of the concrete. The surface was too rough. This irritated the concrete guy, who knew that we intended to stain and score that floor. He said that was the exact sort of surface you wanted for staining. The carpenter fellow backed him up. I was non-committal, saying only that I wanted the proper surface for staining and scoring, whatever it was supposed to be, and suggested a call to the guy who was going to do that job. The concrete fellow wasn't interested in that; he'd done stain jobs, he knew concrete, and it was fine, he said.

The contractor was adamant in a call to me later. It seemed in both cases as though he and the concrete guy wanted me to say something about the matter.

Frankly, that was the last thing I wanted to do. You'd be better off asking me a question about atomic physics than concrete. You really would, I've read books on cosmology and stuff, and understand the basic concepts. But concrete? You make it with water and sand or some other aggregate, and after a while it dries and turns hard and gray. That's what I know about concrete.

So I told him what I told the concrete guy. I know nothing about concrete; all I want is a good floor. Talk to the guy who is staining and scoring and see what he has to say.

I hope they get this straightened out.

This Old House: Austin The Sandpaper Chronicles

2005-10-17T08:48:00.000-05:00

This weekend I spent several hours trying to save some money by sanding paint off some bathroom cabinets. I've had worse jobs than using a power tool in the shade of a pleasant fall day, but I've had better as well. Whoever did the painting and stuff in an attempt to make our new house more sellable deserves to be taken out back and shot, or at least strung up by the thumbs for a while.

They appear to have done none of the things you are supposed to do when painting, for example. It would have been better if they hadn't painted at all. They painted latex paint over oil, and so it will just flake off. They used exterior paint on the inside (or was it interior paint outside? Whatever, it was wrong). They did a slapdash job of preventing spills, drips, and overbrushing that created as much mess as it prevented. They painted over dirty wood, rotten wood, and in some places no wood. It is, in a word, crap. The people we have hired to paint things the way we want have spent a lot of their time scraping off the most recent paint in order to do their own.

So there I was in the back bathroom with a palm sander and a lot of coarse texture sandpaper sheets, hoping to save us a few bucks by giving our paint crew a hand. Thank God for power tools. I don't want to think about what it would have been like to try and get that stuff off purely by muscle power. As it was, I was incredibly stiff and sore at the end of both days.

Of course, you would figure that the half-assed way the previous people did things included really laying the paint on thick in those places it was easy to reach, like the tall cabinet doors in the water closet. The paint on those doors almost ate my sandpaper, rather than vice-versa. Those doors were what I spent all of yesterday afternoon working on.

Although tiresome, the previous days work on drawer faces and under-sink cabinet doors and stuff seemed like child's play compared to the grunt work those tall doors presented. Naturally, I was covered in paint particles from the sanding. Arms, hair, beard, shoes. An inch or more deep in spots on the floor. I wore a surgical mask, but I would rather not think about the amount of gunk I almost certainly inhaled despite its presence.

Uphill in the Snow etc. etc.

2005-10-11T08:25:00.000-05:00

This past weekend I may have utilized that great parenting crutch of "walking to school in the snow. Uphill. Both ways" for the very first time[*]. Admittedly, we were engaged in a boring and un-fun task. We had driven about 3.5 hours with a trailer down to a house we still own in Tilden, Texas. Once there we loaded up the trailer with the stuff. As unpleasant tasks go, it wasn't that bad. We had food and drink, Jacob had a book to read, some old toys of mine to mess with, and the weather was cool and sunny.

Nevertheless, he was bored. Bored, bored, bored. Nor was he shy about communicating this, and at some point I had enough. I told him about how I had to go there every weekend, and how I had to work on the ranch, and how we didn't run the air conditioner, and how I didn't get to carry around a book, and about the heat and the dust and the long drives after a hard day. I was about to start in on how I had to feed cattle on cold winter days when I realized what I was doing and allowed myself to run down.

Jake was impressed, however. Not enough to quit grumping completely, but he did quiet down for a while.

Speaking of that trailer…It was a bit of old home week there. As a kid I really had done all the stuff I was telling Jacob, including something I didn't go on about, which was driving the pickup with a big gooseneck trailer full of cattle behind it. The sixteen-footer were pulling this weekend wasn't much compared to that, and I found the skills of backing and maneuvering the thing not too hard to recall.

There were some important differences, though. A gooseneck hooks onto a heavy eyebolt which is threaded into a massive (ours was 8" across) nut welded to the pickup frame. This makes the truck-trailer much more of a unit and pulls the center of gravity forward a bit. The other difference was that in those days, the official speed limit was 55. Which meant we basically drove 60 all the time. This cheap trailer we had this weekend hooked on by way of your standard ball hitch. Even more importantly, I discovered pretty early on that at anything like current highway speeds, it was unstable. Press the speedometer anywhere past 65, and the tail of that thing began to sway ominously back and forth. Scarier than seeing that in the mirror was feeling it in the steering wheel.

So I kept things below 65mph. I tried for 63, which was good empty. On the way back every once in a while the trailer got a little antsy, and I'd have to back off some more until it settled down. Probably I should have settled for 55 or 60 at most, but I confess that I was sick of pulling that thing after a while and begrudged any loss of speed that meant for a longer drive.

I have to say I never thought I'd miss that old gooseneck.

Charley and the Chocolate Lunch

2005-10-05T09:11:00.000-05:00

So, less than a week after I grumble about a sudden dearth of new things to say about being a SAHD or even a parent, I stumble across this little tidbit on a parenting blog (which I found via a convoluted process I don't remember and could never repeat). In short, there is a plan afoot in the UK to limit what parents can send in their kid's school lunches.

What to make of this? I find it interesting because there has been a move in this country to get junk foods out of schools as well. I basically support this effort. But here for the most part it is has been a matter of removing or changing the contents of vending machines, not serving ice cream as part of a school-supplied lunch, and not allowing teachers to use candy as a reward (this last is mostly honored in the breach as far as I can see), and improving the quality of school-supplied lunches.

I recall the brouhaha that erupted here a couple of years ago when the state imposed these new guidelines. We were at a start-of-school meeting where a mom complained that she would no longer be able to send a coke in her kid's lunchbox. Neither the mom nor her daughter were exactly svelte, if you know what I mean. As it happened, the rules did not extend that far. Oddly, what had people most exercised was they would no longer be able to send in cupcakes on their kid's birthday. Or at least I have to infer this, because this part of the rule was later rescinded.

We already have a fair number of limits on what we can send in to school with or on our kids. Guns and machetes are frowned upon, and I think see-through clothing or thong bathing suits might be considered gauche as well. But I have to say this idea that schools can control what I feed my kid (even if, admittedly, its on their property and on their time) creeps me out, no matter how much I agree with the idea that kids should not have a lunch consisting of Coke and Twinkies. It's a nasty grey area, and I'm well aware of the fact that parents (including myself) are always fine with schools teaching stuff that isn't strictly speaking academic (manners, for example) until they get to a topic we don't like, whereupon the school becomes a parent-undermining busybody.

Observation

2005-09-30T13:19:00.000-05:00

One thing which I did not think about when I started this blog, but should have if I'd spent about 5 seconds looking ahead, was the likelihood that, after a while, new insights would become a lot more rare. And while I never intended this to a blog that described what I had for lunch today, as the meta has faded into the background of everyday existence, that is more or less what has happened. Looking back over the past few months, posts dealing with the special concerns of being a SAHD have dropped pretty close to zero. Even posts about parenting are not exactly flying off the presses.

Part of it is distraction. The House Business™ has been my life since April at least. Searching the MLS (sometimes several times a day), meeting the realtor, looking at houses (many of them twice -- once for myself and once with Trish), driving around neighborhoods, delving into demographics, asking about schools, etc. etc. And then we get a house and immediately plunge into fixing it up. This past week I've actually had a day or two in which there were no house-related errands and I found myself wondering what to do with the time. It was kinda weird.

All of which is a long way of saying that, in addition to the standard list of stuff that must happen every week, I had a lot to do which, at least to my mind, didn't really have anything to do with being a SAHD, and tended to drive out anything that did. And if I didn't just write to say what was going on, I wasn't going to have much to say.

I'm pleased to see that despite the unconscious morphing of the blog into what it is today, folks have continued to read it. Which must mean there is at least still some entertainment value to be had, even if the insight has dropped off.

This Old House: Austin Day 18

2005-09-26T09:38:00.000-05:00

I had a hurricane post half-written and never got back to it, so I guess its too late now. Too bad, I had a great title for it: "Praise the Lord and pass the Plywood".

Work on the new home continues apace. I wish it would go faster, but considering the guy thought he wouldn't even have gotten started until last week, I can't complain too much. What’s wild is the effort I've had to go through in order to choose stuff for the house. Multiple trips to Lowe's, Home Depot, and numerous specialty tile, woodwork, and plumbing shops to find what we like and want.

The tile has been particularly rough. The tile we plan to use in most of the house is set, but the tile for the entryway and countertops has been a bear, to say the least.

This. No, that. No, not that, its marble and no suitable for a kitchen counter top. Granite? Needs to be sealed periodically. Silestone? Costs too much. This? Too rustic. Too light. Too dark. Too plain, too striking, too much much much!!!

Except that we may have finally nailed it down. That just leaves the backsplash…

Write? Right? What?

2005-09-21T08:04:00.000-05:00

Approximately a zillion years ago (okay, more like 10 months -- pretty close) I said I going to try and devote myself to writing and acting. Wanting to be helpful, Trish suggested I read Bastard On The Couch so that I could see what sorts of reflective essays were getting published. After all, what is a blog like this but a set of self-reflective essays? It's also part of the reason I read Slacker Mom.

And we all know how well those turned out.

Between Couch and Slacker Mom (admittedly, not a statistically valid sample), I wonder if there's a market for self-reflective essays for someone who's not either self-obsessed or an inveterate whiner. Not that I don't whine on occasion (like now). But as one person in that otherwise excerable book noted, Redbook and its ilk have a storyline, and they are not keen on publishing something that doesn't follow it.

It is true that when I fantasized about being published, I thought I had a different sort of writing in mind. But on reflection what was different about it was mostly the subject matter. Instead of being about my experiences in relationships, it would be about struggles to fix up our ranch, or my work in the movies. I'm just not going to be an investigative reporter, at least not until Jacob goes off to college. More likely, never.

Which does make me wonder about this writing for money thing. I think I could do a good Dave Barry. Except we already have a Dave Barry. Well, maybe no one would notice. I would hardly be the first copy-cat.

Booger. Which, by the way, would be a great name for a rock band.

Total Parent Quality Management

2005-09-19T08:39:00.000-05:00

I don't know about you, but I regularly go through periods of wondering if I'm doing a good job as a parent. This feeling can take many forms. The most recent being the "playmate" thing. I know for a fact I'm not the most fun dad there has ever been, and I mostly accept that, but it doesn’t mean there aren't days when that knowledge, for whatever reason, gets to me more than others.

When I was in college, I had a course or two that dealt with the ideas of Total Quality Management (TQM). Books have been written on this, but the idea I took from it was the one of using feedback to engage in a process of continuous improvement. In theory, this could be applied to almost anything.

So, in a fit of concern and a recollection of the feedback principle, I screwed my courage to the sticking place and asked. Specifically, I asked Jacob while on our way home from school last week what, of things that could be changed (we couldn't go to Disneyland every day, for instance), would he like to see changed about what I did as a Dad. I told him that he needn't answer right away, that he could take his time.

Nevertheless, I gripped the steering wheel a bit tighter than usual.

His response did not take long.

"I think you should park closer to the playground. That way, we could stay longer, and I wouldn't hurt my feet as much on the walk back."

I see, I replied. Well, I couldn't park closer if other people got there first, but I would try. Was there anything else?

"Could you come by and eat lunch with me at school?"

I realized we were a month into the school year and I had not stopped by to eat with him. I solemnly promised to try my best to come by the next week.

He felt that was good enough, and addressed himself to finishing his smoothie. My eyes didn't mist over or anything, but my heart was light enough to boost our MPG by at least 5 the rest of the way home.

Review: Confessions of a Slacker Mom

2005-09-14T09:40:00.000-05:00

Confessions of a Slacker Mom
By
Muffy Mead-Ferro

I picked up this book at, of all places, a Scholastic Book Fair being held at my son's school. Somehow, in dipping into it, I thought I was going to be getting a funny look at modern child-rearing from the mom perspective, perhaps a kind of Erma Bombeck-Dave Barry stir fry.

Not quite.

Mom is actually fairly serious, despite a certain irreverent tone. More on that later.

The author in this short and small (a sort of pamphlet after several rounds of weight-lifting and high-protein shakes) book takes issue with…well, pretty much everything most people seem to take issue with regard to the rearing of children these days. Overscheduling, getting the kid on waiting lists to exclusive prep day cares before birth, scrapbooking their first sippy cup, that sort of thing. Oh, and being overprotective, etc.

At first I was nodding my head in agreement. After all, she grew up on a cattle ranch in Wyoming, and much of formative years were spent on a cattle ranch in South Texas. Kids don't really need a battery-powered geographic globe-thing to have fun -- a sturdy stick will often do nicely. But after a while I began to get a bit tired of the same ol' same ol' of the book, which ran thusly: Slacker mom encounters some excessive behavior, slacker mom decides either out of conviction or laziness not to engage in said activity, slacker mom justifies outcome of said non-engagement by describing how it is better for the children not to have it.

There's only so much of that one can take, even if you are in general agreement. Oh yeah, and that tone. What starts out as irreverent after a while starts to seem…I'm not sure I can describe it, but to me it comes off as a sort of sarcastic smugness. And aren't these sort of things often pretty easy targets, for all that people do seem to engage in them? And while I confess to having given our son Jacob too many toys, the arbitrary way they limited toys for their kids struck me as insane. And even when admitting it was arbitrary, the author rolled on to her standard defense of her attitudes.

[you need a "to be sure" graph here -- ed.]

To be sure, the author says she might be wrong, the things she complains about might not always be all that bad (even harmless). But its pretty clear that she doesn't really buy that. Otherwise, why do it? Finally, I have to acknowledge that part of my reaction may be due not getting what I expected. I wanted something funny, not a long bit of self-justification.

In the end, despite generally agreeing with the slacker mom's thesis of trust your instincts, don't over do it, you don't really need the "Baby Genius Super Brain Developing Mobile" in order for your kid to get into Harvard Medical school, I can't say I liked this little book, nor can I recommend it (unless you have a friend who could really use a good talking to about chilling out on the French flash cards for their two-year old).

This Old House Austin: Day 1

2005-09-12T08:09:00.000-05:00

I really must apologize for the lack of blogging. And for that matter, the tenuous if not non-existent link of the blogging I have been doing to being a stay at home dad. But if you've been reading this thing you know I've been busy with the work on the new house. And that's tough, because my best times to write are in the morning or the evening. Lately I've been dashing out of the house in the morning, and by evening I've been way too tired to produce the sparkling wit you, my dear readers, have come to expect.

(I have to confess, though, that prior to last weeks exhaustion due to house business, I spent many nights playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in a fashion that could only be described as obsessive. I've not had that much fun with a computer game in a long time, and a supposed RPG ever. And because it was an older game it was also pleasant to go into the Options and turn everything up to "Maximum Glitz" while still getting a smooth-running game. But, I digress.)

I spent the better part of last Thursday and Friday dashing about hunting down the perfect bath fixtures™ (and that's important because you can spend absolutely freaky amounts of money on a faucet). The amusing part for me is that I'm the one who cares what they look like. Trish for the moment is a lot more worried about the light fixtures in every part of the house except for the bathrooms, which for some reason I care about.

Why was I spending that time hunting parts for the bathroom instead of blogging about the inability of people to "get" SAHD-dom, a la RebelDad? Well that was because the electricians showed up on Friday and were going to need some of this stuff, and the plumber is supposed to arrive on Monday and they will need even more. That is assuming, of course, that they show up. Everyone who has dealt with contractors and major projects has told me that these people are rarely on time. The electrical guys, for example, were late Friday morning. Now, once they arrived they were extremely professional, but there you go. The plumber was also supposed to come by and have a look at things, but he had been knocked cold by a freak air bag deployment when his car smacked a curb after he had swerved to avoid another car. I swear I'm not making that up. Maybe he made it up, I don't know, but even so it’s a helluva story, even if you can only use it once per job.

Hopefully he'll be feeling better by Monday.

Onward Through The Fog

2005-09-06T08:58:00.000-05:00

I do hope you enjoyed your Labor Day weekend. We did, though we were sort of working. Trish's sister came into town to help with the new house. Her sister is the sort of person who can tell you that brown is Right Out for a room, but Burnt Umber would be the bomb. Since I'm the sort of person whose ability to color coordinate pretty much ends with "Light pants-dark shirt or light shirt-dark pants" she was very helpful. In fact, as I type this she is at the new house engaging in a bit of decorative painting for the hall bathroom.

She also helped us in contractor choosing by applying her observation skills to the bids, and telling us which ones looked more reasonable to her. There are times I still think it would have been better and faster and cheaper if I had simply done most of this job as piece work, handling all the details myself. But c'est la vie.

And I do wonder about expense. I'm the sort who in this case feels like that if we want to do these various things, best to do almost all of them right now. Trish is clearly leaning to letting a few go for a couple of years, in order to save some money. Hers is an altogether sensible proposition. I do wonder if we choose to wait if we will ever work up the courage to do them two to five years down the road.

Sometimes I find myself screaming in my head "We can't do it, we can't do half of it!" Then I remember we are planning to sell this, and sell that, and some money will come in from over here, and I relax.

This Old Contractor Work: Austin

2005-08-31T20:48:00.000-05:00

When we started this process I really thought we'd be almost done by now. Well, we are almost done -- done choosing a contractor, that is. It's taken weeks to get all the bids back, and frankly, I am wondering if it was worth the trouble. Nothing has changed at the house, unless you count the toilet flapper I replaced myself.

It's true that we had to have a builder-type person to handle to garage conversion. And at the time it seemed to make sense to get one person to handle the details of tilers, painters, carpenters, etc. But you do pay a premium for that, not to mention time while they do their estimating. And the money estimates they sent back have really given me some sticker shock.

As I've wandered about here and there asking for people to give me estimates on different line items, I've found that they tend to be lower than what I've been quoted. Sometimes quite a bit, and while I know that in some cases it’s the contractor estimating their cut for choosing and making arrangements, and in others its got be a certain fudge factor. But how much is fudge and how much is cut? I don't object to folks getting something for taking care of arrangements, but since in many cases this has to be along the lines of "Hey Joe, I need you to lay some tile for me this month" I do object to its being a fixed % of the cost of that item, rather than a flat fee, though the % thing seems to be the way its done.

Part of what you pay for is someone else dealing with the headaches of people running late, etc., but I have to drive by that house every day anyway, and from what I hear about home building, you really need to be there all the time anyway. I told Trish last night I was about that close to just grabbing people from the phone book and turning them loose individually. Probably not wise, but at least something would be happening.

Addendum: While writing this I finally got the last estimate, which has put me in a better mood by being lower than I had expected it to be. I still need to see its details, but I'm happier for the moment.

This Old House: Austin

2005-08-30T07:55:00.000-05:00

As I've mentioned here recently, we bought a new house. We closed on it almost exactly a month ago. We haven't moved in yet, despite the beginning of school and the arrival of Trish's "regular" work time with the Fall semester.

Actually, its not a new house. Its a different house from the one we have now that is actually about forty years older. It needs work. Well, "needs" is a bit subjective. Structurally, there is nothing preventing us from moving in. Its in excellent shape, really. But esthetically, it’s a bit of a nightmare. Okay, not a nightmare, more like thpse weird dreams you get after devournig a whole plate of cheese fries with ranch dressing and watching the end of 2001 while sipping stale Heineken. Like the pale pink walls in what will be the living room. Or the pale yellow (I call it p!ss-yellow) paint in the dining area, the too-pink laminate wood in the kitchen, the stained off-white carpet, the…well, you get the idea.

Then there is the garage, which we want to convert into a study/library/office. It's half-converted right now, but with the original car doors in place and no insulation whatsoever. Despite the fact someone ran an AC duct into it, as well as network cable for high-speed internet.

There are some minor actual repairs that do need doing, but they are mostly outside. The point is, we could move in now.

Except we would still want the walls painted, the carpet replaced (mostly with tile), and the garage properly converted. We could do this while living there. We could. With the dogs barking at the workers, and the cats, already traumatized from moving, trying to either make a break for the door (along with the dogs, who would be having a fine old time (aside from the workers) and mostly trying to sniff every molecule of new scent in a three block radius) or trying to hide in the attic. Plus our furniture getting shunted back and forth again and us dodging the dust and carpet nails and tile cement. Hopefully our computers would not get clogged with sawdust or our sinuses with insulation bits.

In short we are envisioning the sort of whole-house work that tends to make your life miserable if you have to live through it. So, since we don't have to we're choosing not to. But the waiting isn't easy, especially for poor Trish, who is still driving an extra 30-45 minutes because we haven't gotten in there yet, or me who has to drive down to pick up Jake at the school there and mow two yards. But we think the wait will be worth it. If we can just get the last bid to arrive and then get these people started.

More to come!

Book Review: The Bastard on the Couch

2005-08-22T09:01:00.000-05:00

My wife got me this book, called The Bastard on the Couch. It’s a companion book to The Bitch In The House.

It's interesting. A series of essays by men about men and what they feel, and sometimes why they feel that. It leads off with singles, then people in relationships, men in marriages good and bad, divorced men, etc. A couple of the essays spoke to me, and I guess a couple (a different couple) might speak to anyone, but in the end I felt the book was wanting as a source of insight.

I think the book got off to a bad start with a series of essays by single men. My main thought about them was, "What losers". But not because they were single (I was single for a loooooong time); rather, because of how they viewed their singleness. One fellow refused to get involved with a woman unless she was completely independent, and had no need of anyone or anything outside of herself. From the essay, it seemed such a woman also had no need of any sort of companion to keep her happy. It seemed strange to him that the one woman he encountered that seemed to fit the bill was remarkably likely to ignore him on a date if she found something more fun to do. So he was alone, partly because because he had created an ideal that excluded about 95% of normal humans and the remaining 5% were mostly composed of selfish, narcissistic assholes. The boy had issues, as they say. Another guy enjoyed being a boy toy for older women. His appreciation of their experience and depth was ironically, totally superficial and self-centered.

I'm not sure I was able to get over my turn-off of reading these sorts of essays right off the bat.

Another problem is typical of these sorts of books. Most of the essays have a tendency to speak for all men. "Men do this" "men feel like this" when of course, I'm a man, and I'm thinking, "Actually no, I don't do that".

Then there was where they came from and what they did. There about 21 essays all told. Nineteen gave me an idea of the writers location. Twelve of them were written by men from what I would call "back East". New York City (6), Massachusetts (2), Vermont (2), and two who gave a location as "East Coast". Three others were West Coast, two in California and one in the Pacific Northwest. One in Ann Arbor, one in Gettysburg, PA, one in Chicago. One lived in Arkansas, and one wrote from prison.

Of the occupations I could determine, eleven were writers of some kind. One was an artist. Then we had a stay-at-home-dad, and a bouncer. And the fellow in prison, which I thought was a good addition, even if he didn't discuss how he got there, something I thought was important.

No essays from men living in Georgia, Florida, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, etc. No obvious computer programmers, engineers, firemen, cops, bus drivers, car salesmen, farmers, ranchers, retail clerks…

Not exactly what I would call a representative sample. Granted, if you're asking for essays, you're a lot more likely to get writers than shop foremen. But if you're trying to get a look at the gamut of actual living breathing men…well, I think its lacking. I think the editor could have cast a wider net.

So if you want to know more about men and what they think and want, I don't think The Bastard On the Couch is for you. Unless you need info on men who are writers living on the coasts, the east coast especially.

Kids Can Be Observant

2005-08-19T12:38:00.000-05:00

Jacob asked Trish why he changed schools every year or two. She (and I) were taken aback by this, but we realized that it was true. He's been to four different day cares ("school") and now two schools. I doubt he recalls the first day care, but we left it when we moved from Kansas to Austin. The next place was semi-convenient to our places of work, but not to home. The third was a good place, but we didn't care for the woman who would be his main caregiver, so when a brand new place opened up (Bluebonnet School of Cedar Park) even closer to us which got raves from some people who had left the third, we moved him there. And it was very good place. He went in to kindergarten, and continued at Bluebonnet in after-school care until I began to move into SAHD mode. And now we're moving to a new house (more on that later -- remodeling, even minor remodeling, is way expensive) and so a new school. We were so concerned and worried about keeping things stable for him, and yet we were shuffling him around anyway. Granted, some it could not be helped. And granted, the price to be paid for overdoing that stability would have been excessively high. I don't regret anything we did. But it was still a surprise to have him comment on it.

I'm Going To Disneyland

2005-08-17T09:41:00.000-05:00

Well, I guess actually "I've been to Disneyland!".

Nobody said anything, so I guess I'll talk a bit about our vacation, the Disney part of it (since many families are apt to want to go there at least once).

One thing I would strongly suggest to anyone thinking about a trip to Disneyland or Disneyworld is to invest a few bucks in a book called "The Unofficial Guide". The Guide is great. It goes over travel arrangements, describes the hotels around, describes all the rides and reviews them, describes all the fixed dining areas and reviews them, and provides many handy tips of a miscellaneous nature. Examples of miscellaneous tips include hidden quiet areas in the parks, short cuts, and things to look for when on the rides. The books also include itineraries to use in order to get in as much as possible as efficiently as possible. Some folks might be put off by that, but if you only have a single day to spend in the park, it could mean the difference between a fun (if exhausting) day and a series of incredible frustrations.

This was our third trip to Disneyland (plus one to Disneyworld) so we are getting to be old hands and didn’t use the books. One thing I'll put in up front: If you can stay in the park, or very close by, and especially if you are spending more than one day there, try and take a break in the early to mid afternoon. Go back to your room and hop in the pool or take a nap for an hour or two. The park stays open till 10pm or even Midnight, and is much much cooler (Southern California is a desert area, and so is very hot in the day, but cools off fast at night) than the afternoon. If don't or can't, you'll probably hear yourself saying things like "Shut up and have fun, dammit!" by 8pm…

By the way, Disneyland is sort of two parks these days. The old Disneyland, and California Adventure, which is a more like your average theme parks (more doesn't mean exactly -- plenty of the extra touches which set Disney apart even today). Adventure was never as crowded as Disneyland proper, and I expect it filled more with locals or people like us who were staying three nights or more. Oh, and make use of Disney's call-ahead service if you plan to eat in the resort area. The nicer and more popular places can fill up quickly, sometimes even days ahead of time.

We decided to take three days this time, and stayed at Disney's Grand Californian. Very Nice. For some reason this summer three nights there was only 50-75 more than three in the older Disneyland hotel, so we went for it. Gorgeous. Jacob had a bunk bed all to himself. Our room would have suited a larger family just fine, as the kid's bed was a bunk with a trundle; three could have slept in it just fine. My and Trish's bed was supposed to be a queen, but it seemed more like a double to me.

We did pretty much all the thrill rides. Trish wasn't prepared for what the California Screaming roller coaster did and took an hour to recover. Later I rode it, but I'd gotten so much scary talk beforehand the actual ride was not that bad.

We did the Tower of Terror, which is one of those dropping elevator type rides. The first time I didn't know where the handholds were, and was trying to keep my hat, camera and T's bag from flying everywhere. It was disconcerting. The second time we did know where the handholds were, and although I think I got very sore muscles it was okay for a ride. The bad part is the fast ride up, 'cause you know its going to stop suddenly!

We rode lots of times on Star Tours, and Indiana Jones. I think Indy is my favorite ride.

We did the new Space Mountain. It's a little darker, or at least harder to catch glimpses of anyone. They've added speakers to the seats and play fast music while you're in it, and I think its just a bit faster. The line was always very long, except early in the morning. Our first night we waited well over an hour, and I don't think it was worth that.

Another major piece of advice is to use your Fastpasses! The FP tries to manage lines by giving you an hour-long window later in the day to skip most of the line on a particular ride, allowing you to go elsewhere and ride something else, eat lunch, or whatever. Depending on the popularity of a ride, your "return time" could be in 15 minutes or 6 hours later. The really popular rides like Splash Mountain and Space Mountain get FP times running late in the day very quickly, and usually run out at some point. Oh, and some rides don't use them (like Matterhorn, and almost everything in Fantasyland). I won't go into all the limitations and strategies now, since they change from time to time, but read up on the rules when you go. Judicious use of these little guys really helps a lot.

As I said this was our third time. I found it interesting how standing in line was not all that bad, most of the time. A 45 minute wait was no big deal. It might have been helped by the fact that this time around, Jacob was able to read. So we brought some paperback books into the park with us (Harry Potter, which Trish had purchased so she could read them in the tub without worrying about inadvertent soakings) which he would read while we waited. This kept him entertained and allowed Trish and I to talk. We have several pictures of him in line at various rides sitting or standing with his nose in a book.

It was Trish's birthday while we were there. I told our check-in person, and got us some "autographed" pictures of the Disney characters, a birthday button, and a few other little extras. Trish wore her button into the park, and got a zillion "happy birthday's", plus a couple of free desserts.

We had fun our three days. It was nice to not be in a rush to see everything we could. I think we could have done a fourth day as well, but five would have begun to get a bit stale, I think. Unless we took a day off from the parks just to hang out. There are certainly things to do just outside the parks and in the hotels.

For example, about the coolest thing that happened there was at the hotel one afternoon while we were resting from the parks. Jake and I did the "Grand Quest". Its a very simple scavenger hunt-like thing in the hotel where you go round and collect words and phrases from different locations, then go on to the next location give them your word or phrase, then they give you a new one for the next area. We did it and got free cookies. But that wasn't all. The cool part was that (maybe because only two groups did it) we got to be Grand Family of the Day! This meant some extra goodies (chocolate, ballons), AND admission to the Concierge Lounge that night to watch the nightly fireworks show from Disneyland, complete with music. Plus all the treats and drinks we wanted from said lounge free. Pretty cool.

Man, I'm sure I'm leaving out something else interesting and or useful, but there was so much that went on. Well, if I think of something or Trish reminds me, I'll add it in.

For Want of A Nail; or As The Drying Fan Hums

2005-08-03T09:50:00.000-05:00

My apologies for not blogging more. With the Jakester doing the Summer Camp thing all day I thought I'd have more time. Ha!

Part of the reason for that is humming in the background. You see, one night I noticed the sink in the hall bathroom (its not really a hall bathroom, it’s the upstairs bathroom shared by Jake and the guest room, but that takes too long to type) was draining rather slowly. This is odd all by itself since the things that normally get drains clgged up don't go on in there, unless the dogs are using it to trim their whiskers or something. Anyway, I made a note to try doing something about it in the next day or two. Because you are reading this here, you know where this is heading.

Well, the next day or two were busy. And Monday night I headed upstairs after cleaning to get Jacob to bed early. I headed for the hall bath to get his toothbrush set up and discovered a lake had formed. The water had not been completely turned off at the sink (something I had fussed at him before) and had overflowed. It was probably 3/4 of an inch deep.

I screamed threw down a couple of towels on the carpet and ran to grab a wet-dry vac to suck up the water. Actually, that was not the best idea; the vac is really for cleaning floors, not for flood control. Trish got about a zillion towels thrown down in order to soak up the water. Somewhere in the dashing about we saw that water was forming on the ceiling of the room below, and even dripping down from a fluorescent light fixture (which we turned off and in a calmer moment I taped over the switches, because every time I went in there I wanted to turn on the light).

At this point Trish suggested it might be a good idea for me to contact a water removal and remediation service. Actually, I think her words were more like "I think you should call somebody RIGHT NOW!" I was not frankly, operating at a high level in this mini-crisis. My high point was that bit with the tape. Anyway, I did call places, and the first ones to make it got the work.

By the time they arrived, which was actually fairly quick, all things considered, we had sopped up pretty much all the standing water, and the dripping down into the kitchen had slowed considerably. After looking things over this is what was done: several holes were drilled in the ceiling of the kitchen to get airflow to the subflooring, and four largish fans were set up to blow air under the carpets and up into those holes.

That was Monday night. Its Wednesday morning right now, and the guys are supposed to come this afternoon to see if the fans can be removed. I've also summoned a plumber to deal with the drain, which mysteriously refilled itself at least twice since we shut it off.

We're Back!

2005-07-30T22:12:00.000-05:00

Hey there! We got back from our vacation Monday late. Since then, I've been kept pretty busy dealing with the cleanup from that trip and getting ready to close on our new house. As I type this, we are closing tomorrow. Probably by the time this gets posted it will have already happened. Then begins the task of getting the new place ready; its in fine shape, but will need a fair amount of work done before its ready to handle us. And of course, school starts early this year, at least a week sooner than I can ever remember it starting, and there is no way on earth the place will be ready and we can be in it in two weeks time. So Trish will be ferrying him to school in the wee hours of the morning and I'll have to go and pick him up for at least the first two weeks. I have a hope that a month will be enough time to do what we want, but Trish is thinking October. I fear she will be right.

In the meantime, I can give you househunting tips, trips to Disneyland tips, or highlights of the vacation stories or something of all of them, if you like. Let me know in the comments. Otherwise, I'll just go with what strikes me.

Californee-ah's the Place You Oughtta Be...

2005-07-10T20:59:00.000-05:00

On July 16, the next Harry Potter book will be out. I pre-ordered mine from Amazon about a zillion weeks ago. We figured that when it came out, we would take Jacob to one of those midnight sale thingies that started up around the time book three arrived. It would be fun.

Well. We are scheduled to be vacationing in California at that time. No big deal, we can go to a midnight sale there (unless as Trish suggested, we just order a book and have it sent to her dad's house, where we will be spending part of the time).

The fly in the piontment here is that we are only going to have one copy of Harry between Jacob and myself (mine is going to be sent to my house, remember?). This could lead to some friction. I know this kid, he'll be reading in between every driving stop and when we're hanging out in hotel rooms or at his Grandad's house. And seven year-olds aren't known for their discretion. He's likely to blurt out something like "It was cool the way the Flortibasts ate the wall in order to save Harry and get the Maguffin back, wasn't it?!?" without considering the possibility that I or others around might not have gotten to the part about the Flortibasts. Or the missing Maguffin, for that matter.

So what this means is I'll be staying up late at night, trying to get far enough ahead so he can't inadvertently spoil me, and so I can read to him (despite being totally able to read on his own, he still likes for us to have a reading time together -- very sweet) for bedtime without being caught unawares. I'm going to be fighting with my own son over reading time for Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince.

A note. This shall be my last post for a full two weeks. Our vacation will be that long, and on our return I may be caught up in the details of finalizing the purchase of a house closer in to central Austin, not to mention the effort to move in to said house, and the disruption that will cause. So expect things to be sporadic for quite a while even after August gets well under way and school starts up again.

A Tale of Two Reunions

2005-07-08T09:36:00.000-05:00

In the past three weeks I've experienced two reunions. One was a by-product of a wedding, the other was planned. The first was the wedding of my old college buddy Pete. Most of those people I hadn't seen in person (or in some cases, even in email) since my own wedding almost eight years ago. The other was my Twenty-Year High School Reunion. I hadn't seen any of those folks since my last reunion, ten years ago. Some I hadn't seen since graduation.

Both were enjoyable. But I found the impromptu one more satisfying.

I enjoyed high school. It was and is a small place (my graduating class had 65 people in it), so we didn't have the sort of cliques that develop in bigger schools. There were groupings, but you had to work at it if you wanted to be exclusive. There just weren't enough people to create the distance. I wasn't popular, but neither was I unpopular. I was smart, and so had something of a license to be weird. But most of my better friends were older -- they were juniors, seniors or sophomores when I was a freshman. In a way, I had more fun in the hour or so I spent with one of older friends than the 5+ hours at the reunion. I got on well enough with my classmates, but only one of them was really a close friend, and he couldn't make it. So I was left with the standard stuff, where are you, what are you doing now, etc. etc. Oh, and the typical observances of who had sagged the most, held up the best, or had actually gotten better-looking since the last reunion or graduation.

At the ten year, I had received the Most Eligible Bachelor Award. This time, I go the "Most Improved" Award. I dunno what I was to have improved from exactly (graduation? Ten years ago?), but the sense of backhanded compliment was pretty strong. Funny side story: One classmate came up to my wife and related how she and others were so happy that I had "found someone." Apparently she and some others were "worried". Trish just stared at her, and she apparently realized how awful she had sounded, made some excuse, and scurried back inside. Thing is, I'm pretty sure she was one person interested in being "someone", and hadn't exactly been Miss Popularity back in the day. Meow.

Another element getting in the way was answering the question of what I was doing. I've talked about this before. I had a hard time with that question. I'm not sure I ever answered it precisely the same way twice. I didn't want to lie, nor did I want to sound like I was bragging. So at different times I emphasized I was retired, had gotten lucky in the stock market, was a stay at home dad, was busy handling the family portfolio and taking care of the house, and so on. All of that is essentially true. Well, perhaps not the retired part. As my mom famously observed more than once, "Your daddy may have I retired, but I haven't!" I reckon most SAHD's would concur with that sentiment. We may not be working in an office or wherever 8-5, but we sure ain't retired! Anyway, the point is that dealing with that issue was still confusing and uncomfortable and detracted from my enjoying the event.

The wedding was different. For some reason, I was able to be pretty up-front with my old college buddies about events, and did not really care about their reaction. Was it because we had been closer in college, and shared more experiences than most of those who were from my high school? Was it was because I had been able to continue to be around many of them after college, and so they all knew I'd been in the job world and been a working stiff just like everyone else? Was it because I had been voted most likely to succeed in high school and felt I had to live up to that, whereas in college I was just one more bright kid amongst the bunch? Some of whom hadn't gotten a degree anyway, whereas I had, and on time too? I don’t know. They mostly acted envious, while the folks from high school seemed a bit bemused. But that might stem from my own difficulties in settling on a single narrative or take on events.

All in all, an interesting pair of events.

Redwall Agonistes

2005-06-23T15:53:00.000-05:00

As I have written several times before, our son Jacob is a voracious reader. For the past couple of months he has been working his way through the Redwall series. Put briefly, the Redwall books focus on talking animals and their adventures in a quasi-Medievalesque setting. The books themselves are fine, but Brian Jacques has written 17 of them since the first was published in 1986, and things are getting a wee bit repetitive.

Things tend to go like this: The good beasts of Redwall/Salamadastron/The Forest have a feast. Joe Bad Guy has this horde of bad guys, and they are marching on Redwall/Salamandastron/The Forest to pillage and maim. Trish wonders why the good guys haven't figured out that if they would only give up feasting, they would have a lot fewer invasions to deal with.

Eventually, the Good Guys see the Bad Guy army, and a siege develops. The Bad Guys outnumber the good guys, usually by a few zillion. Treachery and double crossing abound amongst the bad guys.

Good guys die. Creatures will be called by name solely to get offed a sentence later. For reasons usually unrelated to the battle, a handful of creatures journey across the forest and get involved.

Creatures eat. What they eat is always described in considerable detail. Always. And is always some weird vegetarian thingy. I don't know if they are made up foods or its stuff they really eat in the UK.

Someone encounters the shrews and gets them to help out. Always. Baby creatures appear and take a prominent part in the action. They tend to speak with cutesy voices.

Eventually, the creastures on the journey encounter the siege or return with the object of their quest, which has something to do with ending the siege. In a final climactic battle, the vermin are driven off. If a badger is leading the good guys, then he tends to die while killing the bad guy leader. Badgers are just that way, it seems. A big feast is held, the end.

Like I said, its actually a pretty good series. And no doubt the repititions are no worse than other classic series, like the Hardy Boys, or even Harry Potter. But after 17 books, read almost in a row...oy.

Progress Report

2005-06-15T12:58:00.000-05:00

So, it's been a while. Nice to see that the hit meter has been pretty steady over the week or more since my last post. Gee thanks, guys! Nice to be appreciated. Your reward is a longer post than usual!

Much and little has happened. The big event of the last week for me has been surviving Vacation Bible School. Many people (parents, fellow workers) commented on how well the whole thing came off. Which is good, because the conceit of play-acting like ancient Israelites in the city of Jerusalem around the time of the Crucifixion was certainly something that could be fraught with peril.

My own role, which was that of a Rabbi teaching in Synagogue was apparently a big hit. I'm not sure how much of that had much to do with me or the fact that for part of three days the kids got to practice writing Hebrew letters (on tablets I made out of oil-based clay and heavy posterboard. Oil-based clay won't dry out -- at least not easily). That activity was surprisingly popular.

I had to do my thing outdoors, which was mostly just as well, since the younger kids tended to leave bits of clay scattered about. Mostly just as well, since it was pretty warm, and several days saw me with a soaked shirt by the end. The way we did things was thus: I'd bring them in, make them wear their yarmalukes, ask what they had done that day, and do a reading from the "Torah" (I made a scroll out of heavy dowels, stained them, and wrote the OT verses we needed for the week on the paper), which I kept in an "ark" made from a nice wicker chest, covered in burgundy cloth. I'd give them the meaning of the Torah reading in words of one syllable, then follow up with a story of some sort, and describe some experiences a temple or synagogue goer of the time might see.

At times, either via my script or because of comments from the kids, I was called to upon to talk about Jesus. Credit to the script in that it said I should be hesitant and uncomfortable about how to deal with him -- though it didn’t go so far as commenter Dave suggested it probably should. Frankly, I was uncomfortable with that part of the role. I've no clue to what degree the kids saw me as a real authority figure, and how much stock they put into what I said, but while I desired to be true to the role, I didn't want to come across as too down on this Jesus fellow. I mean, I am, and we all there were Christians, after all (probably. I mean, I suppose its possible some of the kids were Hindu or something, but that strikes me as unlikely). We were there to present a Christian message, albeit in a different way. I suspect I'm worrying too much. Moving on…

I don't know if we have a house or not. We thought we had a contract on the place by last Thursday. But in the intervening time, the wicked stepsister (a realtor in California) has intruded, and is apparently berating the local family members (the house in question belonged to their parents, now deceased) for being too accommodating. Granted, it’s an unusual situation, which I'll spare you more details of, but I thought we basically had a deal (admittedly very skewed in our favor, but we weren't going to screw anyone) and she's interfering. Anyway, we're adjusting our terms to satisfy the other folks.

We'll walk away if we have to, but it’s a bit frustrating to me. Whups, while typing this, I just got an email from our realtor, including some new document. Hmm, seems computer error made things a wee bit more complex than intended, but they are now getting sorted out. The seller's realtor thinks things will be okay. Well, we'll see.

As if that weren't confusing enough, I've been trying to sell and buy some land on our ranch down below San Antonio. The lady I tried to sell some land to told me she already owned it! It took me a week between Bible School and the house business to get back to them, but I finally called the County Clerk and the Tax Assessor. Neither one of them is sure who the land really belongs to. In '56, Some family we call "Z" paid the taxes. In '58 it was my family (my grandfather and his wife). Then in 1960, someone else (who we'll call "X") did. In '61, both my family and group X paid taxes on it. In '66, Another outfit, "Y" paid. In '69, It was my family and "X". In '82, it was definitely my family (in the person of my dad). From at least 1992 onwards, both "Y" and my Dad were paying. Got all that? Now, I'm assuming here I didn't miss something while the Tax Assessor was telling me all that, and we both suspect that "Y" and "Z" are actually relatives, quite possibly a father and daughter.

I'm entirely willing to believe that my Dad or Grandad sold this piece of land in the ancient mists of time, and that it was somehow missed on our deeds. It would be easier than you think for that to happen. Our land, all 1200 acres of it, is subdivided into 10 acre tracts (well, most are 10 acres. A handful are slightly larger, another handful much smaller). The plots were often bought up piecemeal, over a period of 40-odd years. I have deeds referencing single tracts. Other deeds deal with 20 or thirty. Anyway, the point is, I'd wouldn't make a fuss if it looked like that was the case (I've already composed the apology letter in my head). But I want to know for sure, and it may take a full-on title search to determine that. What we'll do if it turns out we probably own the land and the other person chooses to fight, I don’t know.

One final note. I'm doing better about getting things done this summer than last. Not great, but better. Not sure what the difference is. Maybe more things that are urgent in character and need doing right away, so they get done. Some of my longer-term projects are still kinda stuck. So we'll see what happens next, but I’m writing July off as far as productivity goes.

Till next time I get some time, have a good one!

The Lazy Days of Summer

2005-06-01T20:28:00.000-05:00

Whoever wrote that was obviously not a stay at home parent. Or perhaps just not me.

Since Jake got out of school I've helped have a nice dinner for the new pastor and some friends, gotten some training for Vacation Bible School, looked at houses, planned for and got stuff to play my role for VBS (I'm a Rabbi -- Yahweh, give me strength, and apologies to all the Jewish folk reading this), took Jake to the dentist, shopped for a new DVD player, installed said DVD player, and oh, yeah, tried to keep up with the regular house stuff.

Tomorrow, we go to SeaWorld, the next day meet some guys to look over their plans to finish out a house we're interested in, and go to an extra-long drum practice. Saturday we have karate, a birthday party and a music recital. Sunday features a special church service and then set-up for VBS.

Yeesh. I knew I said we were going to have a busy summer, but its something else to actually live it. And this isn't really supposed to be the busy part.

When does school start again…?

Two Days of School Left. Not That Anyone's Counting...

2005-05-24T09:01:00.000-05:00

Despite daily watering, portions of an attempted herb garden were bone-dry an inch or two below the surface. I find this most frustrating, and it's not even my project. The soil must just be wrong -- we're going have to cart in a bunch of compost or soil from elsewhere and till it in. Assuming we stay here, that is. We'd rather not, but the house-hunting has yet to turn up an underpriced palace 10 minutes from campus in a hidden canyon where the people live to be thousands of years old…wait, that’s a plot from an old movie…

Anyway, still here. Tonight is Jacob's "student led conference" where apparently the kids explain to us what they learned all year. Should be interesting. Just two more days of school, and we'll have a week to get ready for Vacation Bible School, where I have graciously or foolishly consented to act the part of a rabbi teaching in the synagogue. There's some ironic justice to that, as my birth-grandfather was Jewish (a long story), but I've a feeling I'll be pretty much shot for the rest of the day when we get home from VBS at noon.

I'll try and keep you posted

In The Good Ol' Summertime

2005-05-18T09:21:00.000-05:00

Next week is the last week of school. The summer begins. I look towards it with anticipation and dread. No more getting up at 6AM! No more trying to make a tasty breakfast and lunch while still half-asleep. On the other hand, there is the issue of having my wonderful son in tow for all the errandry that there is, and having to force myself to say "no" sometimes when he asks to play with me (and thereby get that blasted Harry Chapin song running through my head).

Then. We tried to determine all the things we wanted to do with the summer. We had far more things than we had summer. The entire month of July is booked. When we aren't going somewhere we're going to have to be recovering from having been somewhere. There are Seaworld trips, Schlitterbahn trips, several possible weekly activities (vacation bible school, a drama camp, a nature camp)…

We have striven to not be one of those families constantly on the go from soccer practice to piano lessons to little league to karate etc., but we tend to lose it during the summer. It seems like such a vast expanse of time, but it goes by pretty quick once you're in it. You've got about 12 weeks all told, and fitting stuff in is harder than one thinks.

Oh and there's that bit about moving closer in to the university. We haven't found the perfect house. We've found one that has definite possibilities, but its at the top of our range, which means it would be a while before we could make it more to our liking. Or we could just wait and see if we could find a less expensive place and then fix it up the way we want it. Then I start thinking of all the contractor horror stories we have heard over the years.

Finally, I worry about the implications for my time management project. Physical tasks are generally not a big problem. I can easily refocus despite interruptions. But when working on a mental project, like writing a letter, or an article, or filling out a form, I am easily distracted and have a hard time getting back into the frame of mind I need to do that job. I've seen it happening this week, as I've interrupted my days to run out and see some houses. It has been very hard to return and do what I need to do to meet my goals for the week and month.

Well, we'll just have to see what happens. My hope is that being aware of what I need to do and trying to do the Daytimer thing will help me stay focused, but I don't know if that will work.

Women's Clothing

2005-05-12T13:09:00.000-05:00

Women's clothing is a trial for me. And I don't even wear the stuff. How you ladies manage to put up with what strike me as complete absurdities without strangling every designer who ever held a pencil is beyond me.

Take pockets. Despite forty years or so of women's lib, most designers of women's clothing apparently continue to assume that their customers are going to carry a handbag. Even in clothing that would otherwise appear to assume that handbags might not be practical. When wearing a nice suit, a man could have as many as eleven pockets, with a probable minimum of five. A woman in a business suit might have two. Maybe. And they will be small. A party dress would have none. I'm sure many pixels have been slain and quite a bit of ink spilled over the whys and hows of this, so I'll skip that part and move on.

One of the items Trish was interested in for Mother's Day was a…I think it is called a camisole. This is another thing about women's clothing, that similar things often have vitally important name distinctions. Men have shirts, for example. They may be dress shirts, undershirts, t-shirts, muscle shirts, what-have-you, but they are all shirts. Women have shirts, but they also have blouses, camisoles and God knows what else.

Anyway, she had indicated this camisole-thing, and noted the size she wanted, medium. So, a couple of weeks before the big day, I went to the website of the catalog and ordered it. It arrived in due fashion, and was presented with the appropriate ceremony. Trish was pleased, and later went to try it on.

It was too big. Rather a lot too big. As she put, we could have both worn the shirt--er, camisole, at the same time. She checked the size. Medium, just as she had requested. Very odd. She checked again, then she knew what had happened. I had been caught by euphemism.

Y'see (women may skip this paragraph) fellas, sometimes women's clothing comes in groupings. Even I had heard of "petite" and "plus-size". Well, when ordering the camisole-shirt, I had to choose not only the size, but the grouping to which it belonged. My options were "misses" and "women's". Women who are still reading this are nodding their heads sagely. To me, "misses" calls to mind images of braces and Junior High. I therefore chose "women's". It turns out that these things mean not quite what they might appear to mean to the ill-informed, namely, me. "Misses" in this case means essentially "regular". "Womens" means -- big.

Luckily for me Trish is not the sort to read Dark Implications into these sorts of errors.

Slow Motion

2005-05-10T09:46:00.000-05:00

This past weekend was one of those where time does this weird thing of moving with a peculiar langour. Its not as if there seemed to truly be more time, rather, it seemed that the time there was stretched out, pulled thin. As Bilbo Baggins once said of himself "like butter spread across too much bread."

The original plans for the weekend were pleasant enough, dinner with friends on Saturday and then of course celebrating Mother's Day. But Thursday morning I received a phone call from a relative I had not heard from in a long time. Five years, in fact. I knew it wasn't going to be good news and I was right. An uncle had passed away, and so I needed to go to the funeral in Houston.

Okay, I made the necessary phone calls, found my suit, fiddled around until I remembered how to tie my tie, and went to bed early Friday night. At 5AM I got up, dressed, and headed out. It's amazing the sort of time you can make on the roadways of cities early on a Saturday morning. Still, it took three hours to get there. I attended the services, had lunch with an aunt, and headed back. The return trip took around 4 hours, as traffic and construction had congested the byways of Houston in the meantime.

In my absence, Trish and Jacob were both sick. Nothing too bad, but a general feeling of tiredness, with fever, some coughing, etc. They spent the day pretty much moving slowly aside from a quick trip to the store for comfort food and frozen dinners. So, when I staggered in the door around 5pm, we were all pretty much in the same boat.

The next day, I got up, made a simple Mother's Day breakfast and went to teach Sunday School to the pre-K/K group. I managed it, came home, and then realized that I now had what Trish and Jake were beginning to get over. I laid down on the bed for about 2 1/2 hours, then spent the rest of the day moving slowly, counting the hours until dinner and bedtime.

Jake was clearly feeling much better as the day wore on, which only contributed to my feeling of being stuck in cold molasses. Trish chose to take a mulligan on the day, and we declared that Mother's Day would be celebrated in full the following Saturday.

Yesterday, everyone seemed to have recovered more or less fully. Time resumed its normal march.

Home Shuffle

2005-05-05T09:22:00.000-05:00

We're planning to move. Not real far, in terms of distance, but considerably in terms of time. Trish's commute can take anywhere from 30 minutes (way off peak time, i.e., when she doesn't go very often) to an hour, worse in bad weather or if there has been an accident. I'm well aware that some people would kill for that commute, but it’s the sort of thing that gets to her and me after a while. So we'd like to get in closer to her place of work.

We are picky people when it comes to houses. I'm the pickier one, but if a house passes my muster its almost certain to pass hers, so it makes for an efficient division of labor for me to make a first pass at house-looking and then bring her in.

The problem is that we are low on houses to choose from. We had a list of eight when I took Trish around (culled from even longer lists we had started from), and some of those eight I doubted very much were worth the candle, but I know my biases and so left them on the list. Two went under contract before we could even get to them. Of the rest, only two more were really worthy of further thought, and those were not without serious issues as well.

One was a quite lovely home, tastefully decorated, but very problematic in terms of its layout. The other house had more space and a better arrangement of rooms, but a much smaller yard and lots of signs of water damage. The water issues may or may not be properly taken care of . The house was a foreclosure and the bank is going to fix it up before sale, but will it go far enough in dealing with the problems?

Then we have the matter of timing. We want to move out of our current house before putting it on the market. It needs some cosmetic repairs, and it would just be much, much easier to do what needs doing with us and the dogs and the cats mucking about. But we're about to hit the slow season for home selling. If we don't get going by early June, it might sit on the market for months. On the other hand, mortgage rates are still pretty low. Will they be this low next year, or six months from now? Would it be worth it to pay two mortgages for 6-8 months in order to get a good rate now (a point might mean tens of thousands of dollars over the lifetime of a 30-year note). But we have to live in this house. Is "good enough" now going to be good ten years from now? Argh.

Yard Man

2005-05-03T09:00:00.000-05:00

I found out a week or so ago that our yard has something called "take-off". It apparently is some sort of fungus that attacks the root system. The best advice from the company that we use to take care of the yard was to spread out peat moss. Apparently peat moss is good for yards in any case. So I've been spreading this stuff out and watering it in. It isn't too hard but you have to wrestle these really big bags of the stuff around. I can only fit about 6 of them in the back of my Highlander, and six bags only cover about a section of my yard. I estimate I have 4 (out of 7) sections left to do, if I want to get the whole thing. Its not clear if the whole yard really needs it or not. I can't tell if the back yard has patches because of this fungus or because the dogs continue to beat the living you know what out of it every time they chase a squirrel.

Some Day, Some Way

2005-04-27T08:50:00.000-05:00

As part of my quest to improve my time management skills, I've started keeping a journal of the stuff I do all day. Its not an exhaustive list, but I try to write down, across various blocks of time, what happened. It's both a tool for study and a spur to action. Seeing my activities written down sure seems to encourage me to get some more stuff on the list. Your mileage may vary. So far this week, I've not lacked things for doing, some of which require multiple hours.

One thing I've observed that applies to me is that after a certain point in the day, a bunch of small tasks is far more tiring (mentally, anyway) than a few larger ones. I've no idea why. Does it feel like more work to have done 6 things in an hour than one thing? Weird.

Another thing is that errands away from the house really eat up time ways you do not expect. The one checker has a long line of people paying with third-party checks from Botswana. You realize that in addition to milk you are in dire need of plastic bags--which are halfway across the store. Or, worse yet, you're picking up pictures at the mall camera store and realize you need dog food, or to return movies, or something else that require another stop. Next thing you know, you've been away an hour for something you thought would take 15 minutes. Yowza.

If I Could Catch Time In a Bottle

2005-04-25T08:11:00.000-05:00

I find it ironic that ditching my desk job has actually made my day more complex. For the longest time (almost a year now?) I didn't realize that. When I worked away from home, I was generally in one of two modes: long-term and short-term. And my day was very basic. Get in, get settled, and work on my main, long-term project. Sometimes the phone would ring and I would need to drop everything and fight some fire. Then, when all we had was some wisps of smoke, I would return to the long-term project. And that was how I worked best, doing one thing until it was done, then moving on. You don't need a Daytimer when your life works like that.

For the most part, being a SAHD isn't like that. Sure, there are times when you spend the whole day sodding the yard or what have you, but most of the time your tasks (well, my tasks, anyway) are done in these little chunks. Get the laundry going. Pay the bills. Make a phone call. Run some errand.

Big deal, you say. These are just small long-term projects. Do them in order. Well. Here's the rub. Have you ever noticed how dogs will often make several little circles before lying down? I do that before getting to work. It can take minutes or hours or days (depending on how complex and/or unpleasant the task might be). Not much of an issue if you can then sit down and plug away for hours or days at a time. But when doing myriads of small tasks? Oy. Prepping (or, more correctly, psyching yourself up for) a day to do something that might require twenty minutes is generally not efficient.

Time Will Come Today

2005-04-20T09:11:00.000-05:00

Springboarding from what I wrote the other day, I think some posts on the issue of time management are in order. Not all in a row, but over the coming weeks.

I have written before (many times before) on the issue of time and how, as a stay at home parent, you suddenly have a lot more of it to accomplish things that you had before (even if it isn't as much as you think). There's a trap there, though, and you have to be aware of it. It’s a classic one, the most basic form of procrastination. The idea you have is that with so much time, there's no hurry to get anything done beyond the most pressing and routine. And then one day you wake up and realize that everything is due tomorrow.

Anyone who has been a student, especially a college student, has fallen into this sort of trap at least once. And its an easy one to fall into at home as well.

The first trick, as I see it, is not in choosing the perfect day planner or organizational method. Almost any system will work well enough if you can commit to getting things done. There are tricks to help you along, and I'll discuss things I have done and am trying out in days and weeks to come. But the most important is: To keep on doing stuff and not put it off.

Things Your Mom Could Have Told You, Part MMIXVII

2005-04-18T09:04:00.000-05:00

Okay, I hope everyone enjoyed my posts on the movie biz. Now, lets take a peek back at Domesticus life…

This is one of those things a stay at home mom probably could have told me twenty years ago if I had thought to ask her.

For reasons we needn't go into detail over (I screwed up. More than once.) I had a realization. When you work outside the home, home is generally a haven. If you screw up at work, unless it's bad enough that you might get fired, you don't have to take that with you. You can spin the chewing out from your boss all the way from not even mentioning it to fully acknowledging it was all your fault and you deserved what you got. And unless you were truly awful to someone, your spouse is likely to commiserate on the unpleasant circumstances, and try to buck you up.

On the other hand, if you work at home, and blow it on something that matters to the family, you don't have anywhere to run. And your spouse is stuck in the uncomfortable position of having to give you the business. Its not fun for anyone, and knowing you deserve it doesn't make things any easier (Been there, done that).

How one deals with it and tries to prevent it (short of never, ever screwing up, a tall order) depends on your circumstances. In my case it means better organization and less procrastinating. Even if this has not happened to you yet, I suggest a look around and a taking of stock. Figure out what is tripping you up and deal with it appropriately. We can't avoid all mistakes. But we can avoid making a habit of it.

So You Wanna Be In The Movies -- Part 6 and last (I think)

2005-04-14T09:58:00.000-05:00

The film-makers had a problem looming over them. We had done a bunch of shots in gloomy, cloud-covered light on Monday, but since then things had been sunny. Wednesday was also predicted to be sunny and clear, so the next step was obvious.

We had to come in earlier. As it happened, only a half-hour earlier, but in addition, I expected that things would move very fast as the crew scrambled to get in as many shots as possible before the sun came up fully and the morning clouds cleared away. I was right. Call time was 6:00AM, and by 6:40AM we were on the set, watching people hurriedly get set up.

By 7:30AM, I had gotten something to do. They needed more shots of "Sara's" pickup coming into the plant, so I and two other guys were sent up 3-4 floors to provide background as it entered and drove by. It made for good exercise, as I had to climb up and down steps in heavy work boots.

This sort of thing went on for the next 90 minutes. We would be moved from one part of the plant to another, given our marching orders, and they would get in a few shots. Most of the time I couldn't see what the main action was, but I did see the end.

We all watched as the last wisps of cloud began to clear the sun. Sara was down on the pavement with the fellow from Monday (whose name I never caught), apparently finishing whatever discussion had been interrupted by the clearing sky. The crew had fashioned massive shades of stretchy black cloth and light tubes that might have been aluminum in an effort to minimize the growing glare. I think they got the shot, but when the clouds finally vanished that was it for that scene. We got the "take five" and headed for the snack truck. It was 8:51AM.

From here on in, the action took place up high on the generator towers. Remember, when I say tower, I don't mean some slender, relatively clean thing like a lighthouse. These were somewhat squat, with stuff hanging all over them, with grilled flooring, and cat walks at various levels between the towers. Equipment, pipes, and tanks stuck out at odd angles, and sometimes got in the way. It was there the camera, sound and lighting people moved and began to set up.

I'm sure that a life in pictures eventually innoculates you to working all manner of strange environments, but watching those folks hanging lights and other heavy gear all over those tight spaces up high impressed me. And from 11:00AM onward, all the action was up there on the platforms, roughly six stories up. I watched Gellar dash across the catwalk between towers several times. Let me tell you, if you anything like a normal fear of heights (you know, the sort of fear that might keep you from jumping out of a perfectly good airplane for "fun" or keeps you away from steep drops because, you know, falling would be bad) dashing across one of those things was no picnic. The wind was blowing pretty hard up there too, which I doubt was fun for a small person like her. Once she almost lost her hardhat in a gust and they had to restart the take.

At noon we broke for lunch, and as I munched on a delicious piece of pork roast with grilled summer squash and a brownie for dessert, I reflected that I damn glad it wasn't me up there playing one of the Flying Wallendas, perhaps complete with the tragic fall.

***

So it was that at 1:55PM, I found myself at almost the very top of the power plant, and my action was to climb up a flight of steps in order to reach the actual tip top of the plant. I tell you, I was Not Enjoying this aspect of acting. I could see across to the other tower where the action was taking place, and what I could see was not much. In all honesty, I'm not sure the reason I didn't see much is because much of the action was taking place behind masses of piping or because I was mostly looking down to make sure my feet did not somehow inadvertently head off into empty space

This was the first time I had spent much time in close proximity to this particular PA, whom I mentally referred to as "the boy PA" because of his baby-faced features. Up until now, I'd had pretty negative opinion of the fellow, since he was the one who seemed to spend most of his time chivvying us extras into out-of-the-way corners where we couldn't see anything.

But now, up close, I had to say the fellow was nothing if not solicitous. He asked if we were okay, not too tired, if we needed water, etc, until they finally had enough shots and we could come down. It was a major relief. Of course, I left my windbreaker up there and had to go all the way back up to retrieve it. After that, a nice long drink of Big Red from the snack truck was what I needed to settle my height-jangled nerves. Fortunately, at 3PM, I was done with the high-wire act.

Shooting continued, but much of the crew activity at this point consisted of packing away gear. It's possible I could have seen this on the other two days, but all but one of us had never returned to the set after lunch for any extended period of time. I only had one more interesting set of shots.

About 2-3 floors up, a group of us gathered. The camera was to watch someone working down below, who was to stare at Sarah "significantly" as she climbed up some steps. I was to mime talking to another extra, and then we were to walk over a catwalk to the other tower. First, her stand in did some climbing while they got the lighting right, and they she came over and we did some takes. I think she'd ditched the hard hat for these. When we were done the director called out "Okay we are goodbye to Sarah for the day and we are goodbye to the power plant." Many cheers all around.

And that was that. We got in the van to return to the base camp, got our pay vouchers signed, turned in our costumes and props, and we all went home.

Thanks everyone for reading this, I hope you found it entertaining and perhaps even educational. I'll try and do a bit more of the actual Stay-At-Home Dad thing for a while. Not to mention try to get back to my regular posting schedule.

So You Wanna Be In The Movies -- Part 5

2005-04-10T20:46:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the delay in posting. I've been having a complicated week. Nothing bad, really, but complicated and its kept me doing other things.

***

One thing people who've done the extra thing a few times like to do is talk about the stars they've seen. In short, gossip. Many, many stars came in for criticism of their high-handed ways. They drank a lot, threw tantrums, insisted on certain fussy details, and treated underlings badly. It was a veritable cornucopia of poor behavior. I'm not going to name any names of the folks caught behaving badly. I wasn't there, and even though (in some cases) multiple witnesses vouched for the story, its just doesn't seem right for me to be telling tales.

There were a few who got good reviews, and I don't feel like I have to avoid mentioning their names. Billy Bob Thornton would hang around on the set and mingle. Al Pacino once got up to get a drink and asked if anyone else wanted some. One brave extra said he would. Pacino got him the coke. Brian Van Holt, despite being covered in some gruesome makeup that had to be uncomfortable, joked with extras and happily posed for pictures.

The stories about the folks who were not so nice varied from the ridiculous to the disgusting. While I can understand wanting some privacy and not desiring to be mobbed while trying to work, I really wonder how some of these folks develop these odd tics. Too much…what? I dunno.

***

Tuesday (with one slight exception) proved to be my most frustrating day on the set. Fortunately, I was prepared with a paperback copy of Harry Harrison's "The Stainless Steel Rat For President".

Things started well enough. We were on the set by 7:30AM, inside part of the power plant. The inside was much like the outside, pipes and heavy equipment everywhere, metal gratings as walkways in some areas. But with no access to the sky whatsoever, it managed to be considerably more claustrophobic.

The PA's scattered us about, and in some cases gave us instructions on how to move. I and another woman are stuck 30 yards away from the main action, but we do get to walk towards it. In fact we are supposed to walk and walk until we turn off to the side just before Gellar and several people dressed in suits pass by. Word is she is trying to sell this plant to the guys in the suits. She's dressed the same as the day before (apparently, all the events in our three days of shooting occur on the same movie day) with the addition of a hardhat.

We tried the scene a few times and frankly, it was a pain. My partner and I had to start our movies based on the motion of the camera, which was hard to see from where we were. So we didn't always make our move at the same time, which is a problem. Apparently, the director agreed with me on this one, because we were eventually just moved off to the side where we could only watch. At this point, the head PA told us to go over to the canteen truck and grab a snack.

I'd never been to the canteen truck, and had no idea what it was. I admit that when I saw it, I was impressed in spite of myself. It was a large van, something like a UPS truck, only a bit smaller. The inside was full of shelves, and the shelves were full of goodies.

Bags of chips, Ruffles, Lays, Fritos. Cheese crackers, Oreos, bagels, doughnuts, sandwich fixings, chocolate bars, Snickers, multiple kinds of gum…a snack food smorgasbord. Outside were ice chests full of soft drinks, bottled water, and PowerAde. "Wow," said my partern, and I could only nod in mute agreement.

I grabbed several items, some for immediate consumption, but others for later, since there was no way of knowing when we'd get another shot at food.

We returned to our spot of waiting. Then we were moved again, and again, for no reason I can readily discern, other than we to place us farther and farther away from things. We finally end up in an out-of the-way corner, a bit damp and a bit chilly. I was glad I had brought along my windbreaker. I made it into a pillow, lay down and proceeded to read.

As the morning wore on, more and more extras began to collect in our dank little corner, and I continued to read my book. I think a transcription of my notes for the remainder of the day will tell the tale:

9:45AM apply band-aid blister protection to right heel.
12:00PM finish book, still waiting
12:45PM lunch. Excellent chicken-fried steak, mashed potato, corn, roasted acorn squash.
Ice cream for dessert.
4:00PM one guy is called to the set
5:50PM we are released

And that was it. We had one more day of shooting, and it would prove to be the best and worst day of all.

So You Wanna Be In The Movies -- Part 4

2005-04-06T20:51:00.000-05:00

A quick shout-out to the folks at the SMG forums, who I've seen in my hit lists (though for some odd reason I can't seem to find the post directing you to my little corner of the web). I can confirm fully the Ms. Gellar had her hair a dark brown, relativley long, and straight. She wore jeans, a jean jacket, and what seemed to me to be some sort of light sweatery thing. Okay, on with the story:

I left out the catering crew in my initial list of production people. Technically, you don't need them, since a PA could simply call for pizza, and come back from HEB with a sackful of chips and cookies to snack on, but a good catering crew can make a major difference in a crew's outlook on life.

The people we have are very good. I've eaten their stuff before, when doing extra work on "Man of the House". The setup here is much the same as before. For breakfast, they lay out an amazing pile of goodies: eggs, bacon, two kinds of sausage, toast, biscuits, gravy, spicy potatoes, and tortillas. This is just the stuff they cooked. Also out are all manner of doughnuts, pastries, yogurt, fruit, cereal boxes, juices, whole, low-fat and non-fat milk. And coffee. I've probably left something out. In addition, they cheerfully accepted a number of special orders like omelets, breakfast tacos, and the like. I managed to restrain myself until the final day, when I asked for some sausage egg, and cheese tacos.

Lunch on each day consisted of a choice of three entrees, plus vegetables in various styles (potatoes mashed or grilled, grilled sliced summer squash, sweet potatoes, and more). And there were three kinds of salad, bread, assorted desserts, ice cream, tea, lemonade, milk…You might say we ate well. I had grilled amberjack, a truly amazing chicken-fried steak, and pork pot roast as my entrees on my three days of working, with assorted veggies to go with.

The smaller the production, the more random the eating arrangements are likely to be. I've only worked "major" productions -- no independents -- and the food on all of them was generally good. But I did hear stories of fourteen-hour shoots with nothing but a light breakfast. So it ain't all gravy.

***

After lunch, the crew returned to the power plant, but we didn't. What we did was sit there and talk. I was impressed at the number of people who had done this before, several times. One fellow even did some video production work. In retrospect, it wasn't so odd that the people there were old hands. The movie folks only had the plant for three days, and we extras would be in close proximity to the star; they needed people who would hit their marks and not bug the talent.

A couple more extras showed up, including a fellow I'll call G. I missed where G was from originally, but if he wasn't from Texas he should have been, as the man was something out of central casting. I'd brought a book to read, but wound up instead listening to his stories. G had a lot of stories, and never seemed to cease talking for more than a minute or two at a time. In the vast majority of people this would have gotten old very fast, but G had a storyteller's gift. Some of my comrades thought he was making stuff up and perhaps he was, but I knew several of the stories were true and a couple of others had been on the same shoots as he had and were able to confirm some of the others as well.

I mention G in detail because from my point of view he was pretty much the highlight of the afternoon, aside from one curious incident.

At approximately 2:15 a PA showed up and said they needed one extra. Somehow I managed to get myself chosen. This was a risky move, since I didn't know what they wanted an extra for, but it seemed worth it to me. Anything for more camera time!

What I got was farce. I got off the van at the set and was taken in tow by a baby-faced PA (the same one who would later direct me at the top of the plant), who planted me in a spot and told me to wait a second. Then he moved me to another spot, then a third. None of these spots were remotely connected to a shot. Finally, after more consultations via his headset walkie-talkie setup, he said "They changed their minds, we won't be needing you after all." The van returned and I was back at the base camp area. Elapsed time: About 15 minutes.

That was the end of our day. We sat there at the base area and watched the catering crew clean up and get ready for their next day, talked, read books, and generally killed time until the boss PA appreared around 6pm and told us we could go home.

So You Wanna be In the Movies -- Part 3

2005-03-29T10:37:00.000-06:00

Personal note -- We're going to be on vacation for the next week, so no updates until the following Wednesday. Hang in there. -- Jim

***

The Austin Energy Holly Street Power Station resembles a giant erector set that was built in and around a mad scientist's chemistry lab, then dropped off by the Colorado River to rust in place. Pipes and tubing of all sizes snaked in all directions, serving perfectly inscrutable purposes around the large turbine stacks. Peculiar notes were scrawled on different bits in pencil and marker, messages like "Close A valve to open B valve", and "do not overpressure".

On this day, the station was standing in for some place called "Mid States Ethanol Processing Plant". A large tank had been repainted with the logo, which was also on all of our grey hardhats (the crew wore orange hardhats with the "Revolver" movie logo on them).

It doesn't seem all that big for a place that can generate 600Megawatts of electricity. Unless you're standing on top of it. Then it seems plenty big enough. At one point I and several other extras found ourselves near one of the plant workers, who gave us an earful about the place, and how it was slated to close down by 2008 because of complaints by the neighborhood.

It struck me that there was a great magazine article to be written about the plant's closing some day.

***

Of course, being on the set didn't actually mean we were going to do anything. Another thing few people know about making movies is the amount of waiting that goes on, especially for extras. Oh sure, some of the crew never seemed to stop the entire three days we were there, but there is still a lot of hurry up and wait in the movie business. I've been on shoots where a twelve-hour day had at most 2 minutes of actual filming, if that much.

On this day, however, we get to business fairly quickly. After some drizzle passes, our small group is set up in various spots and given props and marching orders. Some of us get tool belts and/or walkie-talkies. Everyone gets an id badge, labeled "Mid States Ethanol", with a picture of one of the production crew on it.

I'm in a group with two others. We are told to walk around a parked 18-wheeler, wait as another passes by us, then split up. I have to climb up some stairs and wander around the second floor. During all this, a pickup, ostensibly driven by Sarah Michelle Gellar's character drives by and parks. Gellar isn't doing the driving of course, its her stand-in.

We do this several times. Each time, we get a litany of yells from the director, passed along by the PA's. The first is always "picture's up". I don't know what that means technically, but for us it was basically "Get ready". Then, you get "rolling." Sometimes you can hear "speed" or "sound" but that generally doesn't get passed along. Finally, if we've made it that far (and sometimes things get aborted for various reasons), you get "background action" and "action".

The various "actions" could get messy. Depending on your location you might be going on "background", to give you a natural movement before the actors come in, but you might need to go at the same time they do, or you might need a completely different cue if the camera is moving and you come into view after action has begun. You might get cued directly by a PA, or just wait until something specific happens, like a vehicle goes by, or a character passes your location. Sometimes it was hard to hear cues, and you just had to guess.

Eventually, they have shots of the pickup driving up and its time for Sarah to exit the truck and walk over to talk to some guy. I'm pretty far away at first, and can only note that she is wearing jeans and her hair is a dark brown. Later, I'm amused by the fact that every single extra feels the need to comment on how small she is (Sarah is maybe 5'2" and quite petite. Small indeed, but you'd think she was a midget from the way they talked. I guess they expected Buffy to be more like a WNBA player).

We have no scripts (of course) so we can only infer what is going on. Sarah's character has some sort of argument with some guy. It's during this that the clouds, which have been with us all morning, begin to break up and we find ourselves with a dazzlingly sunny (if breezy) day. This is a problem, because all the shots so far are of a gloomy, cloudy day. The light is now wrong and the directors have to regroup. We break for lunch.

So you Wanna Be In The Movies -- 2

2005-03-25T10:20:00.000-06:00

Most people think that being in the movies is incredibly glamorous. Most people have no idea what they are thinking. They know about the stars, the directors, and the producers. They may be aware that there are people who run the cameras, put on make-up and make costumes. And of course, the FX people usually get their own "extra" on the DVD. But even those people are dwarfed by the amazing constellation of skills on a major motion picture set.

You take, for example, set builders. These people can take an isolated piece of 4-lane road with a bridge and turn it into a major border crossing between two countries, complete with working electric gates, stoplights, booths equipped with cash registers, and clipboards that say "Dept. of Homeland Security" on them.

You have the prop guys. They obtain, make, and keep track of a thousand little things, from fake guns to badges to (in our case) hard hats. You have the electricians making sure the cameras have power, the lights are safely hooked up and the radios have batteries. The lighting people work with not just lights, but giant or small shades, reflectors, deflectors, and diffusers, to create the look the director needs.

There is a group of people who, when needed, can slap together platforms, or hook the cameras and lights to the most unlikely of objects in order to provide a stable place from which to film. There are drivers who bring in the equipment and ferry cast and crew back and forth from the set. You have the production assistants, those glorified gofers who become the most important people in an extra's world, who place you, tell you what to do and where to go, help handle props, bring coffee to the director, and a myriad other little tasks.

***

In the pre-dawn hours even Austin's awful traffic is pretty light, and despite initially turning the wrong way on Cesar Chavez Street, I managed to get to the gathering place (a city park pavilion) by 6:20AM. I was also very nearly whisked off to the set by a slightly over-zealous van driver before his partner managed to get someone on the radio to explain what I was supposed to do. And that was to go to the PA and sign in. This also included filling out your W2 tax form, something we had to do each and every day (said form has a littler mini-form on the back which asks for all of the same information you just wrote on its front -- I'm not kidding -- in addition to a series of boxes you check to indicate you are either a citizen, green card holder, or otherwise legally able to work in the United Sates. I'm not kidding about that, either). You need this to get paid, and extras don't rate having someone punch your data into a computer and getting it pre-printed.

After that, I grabbed a second breakfast (movie set food ranges from non-existent to amazing), walked over to Trailer City to get my overalls and a brief safety lecture from the power plant managers (lead paint, asbestos, explosive gases, don't mess with the controls, that sort of thing). Then we were off to the set.

So You Wanna Be in the Movies -- Part 1

2005-03-23T10:10:00.000-06:00

The following is part of what I hope to someday turn into a magazine article on my experiences as an extra on a movie set. Hope you enjoy it, I plan to have more installments at irregular intervals.

"Ya'll doing okay?" asked the baby-faced production assistant.

"Fine," I replied, with considerably more heartiness than I actually felt. It wasn't every day that I stood on an open platform eight stories up, hanging on to a "railing" made of 1-inch metal rods, and where the "floor" was a metal gridwork that did nothing to hide unpleasantly long distance to the ground.

That was bad enough. But when the director yelled "Action!" (they really do that) my companion and I had to climb up another flight of stairs and end up a nine-story platform, this one without walls of any kind or even the impression of a roof. As small a comfort as those things seemed down on the eighth floor, they were sorely missed on the ninth.

But it wasn't so bad sitting down in between takes, where I could look at the clouds and pretend I wasn't all that close to them.

"Pictures up!" said the PA, scrambling to his feet. With a groan, I did the same.

***

The internet has almost certain made it much easier for people to find out about movie shoots and get involved. Its what I did. A site called AustinActors.net has a place where people can post casting calls for all manner of plays, commercials, student shorts, and feature films. The governor's office also has a website that lists major productions in the state of Texas. It was on the governor's site that I found the listing for a Sandra Bullock movie about Truman Capote with the working title ""Every Word Is True" (most pictures have a working title that may or may not be the one that goes up on the theater marquee). I printed my acting resume (very scanty), included a couple of pictures, and sent it in. Some weeks later, I got a call, not from the EWIT people, but for another movie, "Revolver", starring Sarah Michelle Gellar of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" fame. This is also fairly common, when a single casting company handles extras for several movies, for you to get a call for something you didn't even know was going on.

The caller asked if I was available for three days the next week, and if I was afraid of heights. I said I'd have to check back on the availability, and fudged on the fear issue by saying "not really". "Not really" was not really true. I am scared of heights, although it doesn't rise to the phobia level. I figured if I could handle being on a ski lift, I could handle whatever they were likely to have me do (extras don't "Tarzan from a vine" as Lee Majors once sang in the theme for his "The Fall Guy" TV show). As it happened I was right, but I surely did not enjoy it.

Next was a call to my wife, who is thankfully very supportive of my occasional forays into the acting world. This was important, as my life as a stay-at-home dad made it easy for me to show up for acting, but harder for us to have a place for our son to go after school. Arrangements were made, however, so my gig was on.

***

The next step was wardrobe. I showed up near the old airport with several combinations of "work clothes"; jeans, t-shirts, heavy boots, etc. I tried a couple combinations, put on a set of coveralls, and that was it. They labeled the overalls with my name, and sent me home to wait for a call time.

The "call time" is what time you are supposed to appear on the set or, more commonly, some gathering place nearby. My call time turned out to be 6:30AM Monday morning, at a park near downtown. The night before I packed my bags with stuff; extra clothes, some bottled water, a snack, a book, my notepad and a pen. I was ready.

Scattershooting

2005-03-21T09:18:00.000-06:00

One nice thing about being in a house full of people in school (Jacob in elementary, Trish teaching at the U) is that when its Spring Break, everybody gets a Spring Break. We traveled hither and yon, with weather that alternated between mild to sunny and cold to wet and icky back to beautiful again. And it is clear to me that Spring has finally sprung around here, with wildflowers popping up and increasing temperatures (this morning we're having a spring thunderstorm). I think the sweatshirts can go back into their drawer for another few months.

One nice thing about having a voracious kid reader in the house is that he's grabbing books from the "young readers" section of the bookstore that also interest me somewhat, but which I'd never have had the guts to buy for myself.

Last night he complained that school was teaching him too much stuff he already knew. This after a week off. It is really too soon for that sort of thing to start. Are we going to have to start sending him books to read if he finishes his classwork early? And how much of that did he really mean? Whenever I ask he has something new to relate that he learned.

Because of the aforementioned storm, I don't think I'm going to get to one my planned Monday projects, throwing up a lattice for some vines to climb up. Perhaps I'll just try and pick out a power saw for my birthday. No, can't do that -- yet. Need to mail off some legal stuff, make a call or three on business matters, deal with laundry issues, run by the bank -- your standard list of stuff when you've tried to take a few days off from the regular grind.

Cut!

2005-03-11T09:23:00.000-06:00

The cameras stopped rolling in my vicinity 36 hours ago, but I'm still tired. Since I'm in charge of the home fires, the next day I'm up at 6am (which actually was sleeping in, compared to when I got up on the days of shooting) getting Jake off to school and trying to catch up from three days of missed effort. Poor Trish had much to deal with while I was gone, and getting out from under that as well the normal stuff has left little time for rest.

I managed to scribble about 3 pages of notes about my experiences, which I'm thinking of trying to turn into an article-length…er…article. But that takes time, and since time is something I’m short on for, oh, maybe the next month, I'll let you have some tidbits.

I've been an extra a few times before, but one thing you never realize is the extent to which you simply sit around and wait. And you have no idea how long you are to wait. And even if you ask someone, they don't know, and if they do think they know, they are wrong more often than not.

The food on a commercial production is generally good. And on a major motion picture, it can be really good. Each day there was a full breakfast buffet, with sausage, bacon, eggs, biscuits, tortillas, cereal, fruit, doughnuts, bagels, coffee, juice, milk, yogurt, and probably some other stuff I've forgotten. Lunch was similar. I had grilled amberjack, an excellent chicken-fried steak, and pork roast, plus assorted veggies like roast potatoes, roast squash, grilled asparagus, etc. And of course dessert. We also (sometimes) had access to snacks during the course of the day; chips, candy bars, water, soda, pretty much whatever.

Something few people who haven't actually been on a movie shoot appreciate is just how much of moviemaking is about high-speed temporary construction. Platforms to film from, places for people to stand, reflectors for lights, shades to create shadow, smoke generating gadgets, "concrete" abutments, small offices…simply an amazing array of stuff that is built with surprising speed and attention to detail.

Years ago, I heard a grip say to one of his buddies about Hollywood "It ain't all sunglasses and cast parties", and that’s the truth.

Checking In

2005-03-04T10:01:00.000-06:00

We had a good visit with my birthmother, who was walked, walked and walked over many of the area's pleasant trails. She has returned home now, and regular life resumes with its accustomed jolt. At least until Monday that is, since I am going to spend three days next week as an extra in a movie titled "Revolver" starring Sarah Michelle Gellar of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame.

That's going to play hob with routines, but its part of what I want to do, so Trish is, thankfully very supportive. Of course, that mean not much is going to be written here, though once I'm done I'll give you all the details, juicy or not.

Meanwhile, I've reviewed a recent book, "To Rule The Waves: How The British Navy Shaped The Modern World" over at my other blog. Check it out

Family Matters

2005-02-25T09:05:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow, my birthmother arrives. This will be only the second time I've seen her in person. Well, perhaps really the third, but I don't remember the first time, so I don't think it really counts.

You see, I'm adopted. Or was adopted, I don't know how you're supposed to tense this sort of thing. This was something I knew from a very early age. It was not dwelt on, but neither was it ignored. About seven or eight years ago, I got a call from the agency which had done the placing of baby Me. Long story short, I got back into contact with the woman who gave birth to me. Letters, phone calls, and eventually an actual visit. She lives pretty far away, and there are further complicating factors, so we haven't gotten to visit in person but the one time.

But now, a fortunate confluence of events means she is coming to visit, for about 5 days. This ought to be interesting. Last time, I was of course at work for part of the visit, and it was Trish who did the entertaining. This time it will be the reverse. What this means for next week's blogging is anyone's guess.

I'll let you know how it goes, maybe say a few words about adoption stuff, if anyone's interested.

By Golly, Time Does March On, Doesn't It?

2005-02-23T09:32:00.000-06:00

This summer my high school class is having its twenty-year reunion. Good Lord, has it really been twenty years? I hadn't even been alive for twenty years when I graduated.

Anyway, this does bring up an interesting question for me. How much do I tell people about what I'm doing now, and how do I tell them? This is, of course, a subject I have visited before. And no doubt will again, as events warrant.

I could just give it to them straight. When my job ended and another one did not turn up after several months, we decided to just do the SAHD thing, and write and act as it came to me. Or I could say I've semi-retired, which amounts to the same thing, but with a different spin.

And do I say that it happened because of some luck in the market? Or do I admit the full truth, which is that the deaths of my parents created a nest egg (and lets face it, an opportunity) we didn't expect to have and which most people never get.

Its quite silly (but since my brain served it up to me one night it must mean something to me somewhere), but I was voted "Most Likely to Succeed" (more or less by default as the smartest guy in my class, as it was lacking in Joe Valiant types). I think I'd like to be able to lay some claim to having lived up to that, all these years later. One might say being able to leave the rat race at least part way is a pretty good definition of success, but the truth is that I didn't do much to achieve that. Managing not to do anything too stupid is an accomplishment of a sort, but it's not what I or most people think of when we say you achieved something.

Hmmm. Y'know, I think I've been down this road before as well.

Jake and the Seventh Birthday

2005-02-21T09:15:00.000-06:00

We got through Jacob's birthday party in one piece. The guests, mostly boys, acted pretty much exactly like…well, boys. The lone girl did not seem to think much of the festivities, poor thing. We had gone to some trouble to set out toys and stuff for the kids to play with, but what they (the boys) did was head immediately to the toy swords and toy guns (or things that looked like they could be used as toy swords and guns) and proceeded to shoot and slice at one another. Then you had the fart and penis jokes.

If they had known about sexual innuendo they could have passed for tipsy college boys. I find this sorta scary.

There were only about 7 guests, and I found herding them to be more than a little tiring, even when all we were really doing was trying to prevent them from hurting each other, or to do something they would like, like eat pizza or have cake.

Seven years ago he was just a little lump. Now he's making fart jokes. Quite impressive in its own way.

The only downer on the day was the fact that it took us an hour to get seated at Benihana for the birthday dinner. Had I felt hungry even 15 minutes sooner, I don't think we would have had that problem (calling ahead for a reservation would also have helped). Well, live and learn, I guess. At least the kid thinks its more fun to eat at Benihana than Peter Piper Pizza.

Friday Miscellany

2005-02-18T09:06:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow is Jake's 7th birthday party. Got a lot to do, and it just seems like one of those days where scheduling could be nightmarish. Carpet cleaner types, store runs 9including cupcakes for a school treat -- I'd forgotten that, extra-special housecleaning…I know I'm going to forget something or get behind an eight-ball time-wise. Here's hoping.

After all that effort laying down fresh sod, it looks like its going to rain all weekend. Oh well, we needed to lay it down anyway.

The problem with today's high-tech, well-grooved (like an all-weather tire) sneakers is that it is really, really hard to dig all the dog poop out of those ridges and divots. You just can't do it the way we learned as kids, which is to find a good clump of grass and twist back and forth like Chubby Checker on meth. Boots, which I wore quite often in my youth on the brushy plains of South Texas, had it all over sneakers when you needed to clean off less than desirable substances. Too bad they aren't as comfy.

Wrap Them In Many Layers of Cotton

2005-02-16T08:16:00.000-06:00

Its funny sometimes how we go through phases of protectiveness with out kids. At first they can't really move or get into trouble on their own, but you constantly check to make sure they are still breathing. Then they start to move around, and you follow them everywhere, watching every move. Eventually, you feel you don't have to watch every move, but you still prefer to be in the same room with them. Then they go outside.

Outside, you follow them everywhere as they toddle, rarely more than six inches away. Then you allow them to wander farther away as you watch every move, and then you aren't watching every move, but you are outside with them the whole time. Then you allow yourself time to dash in to get a drink, go to the bathroom, or grab another book/magazine. Finally, you stay in the house and just poke your head out from time to time.

Now they start to want to go over to other people's houses. Not just the people across the street, but people around the corner where you can't easily see what's going on. I swear, that's the hardest for me for some odd reason. It's odd that taking Jacob to a near-stranger's house a mile or two away to play with some other kid from his class is easier for me than to take him to another near-stranger's house in our neighborhood. I suppose it’s the theoretical ease of checking in that does it. I could check, but I won't. At least, not unless he's been over there for a whole day or something (which he did occasionally with some folks who have unfortunately moved away).

Then there's the fairness factor. I don't like Jake being over at someone else's house for several days in a row without reciprocating. But what if they seem uninterested in coming over? As long as its clear we've made the offer, should I just get over it?

DANGER! FUN MAY BE HAZARDOUS

2005-02-14T08:23:00.000-06:00

Not too far from our house is a city park. We can walk there easily by traveling up a drainage ditch if we want to. Yesterday we took my SUV. This was because we took Jacob's bike with us, and the ditch is pretty much impassible to bikes.

Why a bike? It’s a pretty large park, with soccer fields and a full-size pool, playscapes, a jogging track, the whole nine yards. One of the yards is what we called in my day a BMX bike track. Dirt trails, ramps, and berms, that sort of thing. Totally cool for anyone under the age of 18, or who has not had a recent reminder concerning the laws of gravity. Thus the bike.

On a tree at one corner of the bike trail area was a warning sign. I think you know the kind of sign I'm talking about here.

WARNING! The activity for which this sign is a warning sign is dangerous for pregnant women and people with disabilities. Also, non-pregnant women and men, as well as young children, teenagers, people in their twenties, Sherpas, EMT's, Olympic athletes, Green Berets, Navy Seals, and Spiderman. Anyone who actually gets out here and engages in this activity is a complete fool. Even stopping to read this sign suggests you are in dire need of a refresher course in common sense. Idiot.

Anyway, in addition to all that was this: No one may use these trails without having a permission form on file at the City Park Office.

That last really got to me. A permission form? On file? What else could it possibly have on it that the sign lacked? I suppose the form could be in Latin, just to make it really official and legal-like. As if even that would protect the city from being sued if little Johnny took a jump wrong and scraped an elbow.

I think we really do have too many lawyers in this country sometimes.

Earning My Pay

2005-02-11T09:05:00.000-06:00

There are days when I wonder if taking this course (of stay at home dad) is worth it financially. Do I really add as much value doing what I do as I could by holding a "regular" job? The intangible benefits are certainly real, but they are hard to add up.

Still, there are times when I feel like I'm really earning my pay (so to speak). This is one of them

Jake is sick. Apparently, some variety of the flu. Not too bad (though for one 24 hour period the kid was really, really trying to cough up his lungs), but he's been stuck at home for 5 days now. We've been to the doctor's office twice. Rented a lot of movies. Played on the computer. Finally went to the hobby store yesterday to get some things he could do on his own that would at least partially engage his brain.

Oh, and Trish is out of town this weekend. She left Thursday and will be back on Monday. So, except for a couple of hours in the evening, I've been in charge of a sick kid since last Monday.

Okay, okay, its not like I'm facing cancer or people trying to repossess my home because I'm on dialysis and can't work, or lost everything in a tornado. But you spend a week at home with your sick kids, who are unable to play outside, or go to a park, or go and do anything fun out of the house, and see what it does to your brain. Especially if you're an introverted type like me.

I just hope this passes by tomorrow. He could use some air, and so could I.

Sodding Off

2005-02-08T08:08:00.000-06:00

So I was going to post last Friday about dealing with The Kids Next Door. Or The Kids Around The Corner down The Street. But I had a problem with my internet connection in the morning (minor bit of winXP weirdness, not worth the effort to explain), and the rest of the day I spent sodding my back yard.

Yes, laying sod. Why? Glad you asked.

In this part of Texas most lawns are composed of a grass called St. Augustine. It’s a reasonably durable grass, and has the added feature of propagating via runners instead of seeds. In theory, a single 12" square chunk of the stuff could eventually spread to your entire yard. Most folks don't want to wait that long, and so new houses have their yard completely covered with these squares of grass, cut up from a grass farm with about an inch or two of dirt holding them together.

I said this stuff was durable but you have to give it an inch of watering a week, more during late July and August, to really make a strong root system. I didn't really water it enough to do that, but it survived just fine. No big deal, except…this stuff goes pretty dormant during the winter. And, we've never had three dogs. Including two very young and active dogs. Who like to romp and play and tear around the yard.

You see where this is going right? A vast strip of yard, about 1300 square feet, was worn down to bare earth. Any kind of rain turned that strip into a sea of mud (it didn't drain well anyway, creating a swampy area that didn't help it hold onto grass back when there was still grass). And in about 1.5 weeks, we'll be having Jake's seventh birthday party. Here.

February weather is extremely unpredictable. It could be 70 degrees and sunny one week and 30 degrees with an ice storm the next (that actually happened last year). We could make do with a swamp, but not a mud pit.

Fortunately, numerous outfits around here will sell you little (in our case, 16" x 24") chunks of grass, and even deliver them, for a reasonable fee. They dropped the stuff off bright and early Friday morning. After lunch, I headed out and proceeded to spend about 5 1/2 hours (with a working break of about an hour -- I wasn't humping grass, but neither was I sitting still) covering the dirt patch that was our back yard with about a zillion (well, somewhere between 450 and 500) patches of grass.

I finished up in pretty much complete darkness, knowing that, as the final pile of grass to be plopped down grew shorter and shorter, if I stopped for so much as a cookie, I might never get going again. I was, as they say, wiped. At Trish's suggestion, after dinner I sat in a hot bath for 30 minutes, sipped on a strong margarita, and ate ibuprofen like it was candy.

I honestly don't know why I wasn't a mass of throbbing, aching, unable to move muscles for the next two days. The bath? The ibuprofen? The margarita? Beats me. But I'm not complaining.

Celebrity Baby School Holiday Keepin' It Real

2005-01-31T08:41:00.000-06:00

Today through Wednesday are school holidays, so I've got Jake at home, expect little blogging until Friday at the earliest. But I also have things to do on Friday, so it might be next week before I get 'round to more observations.

I don't want this blog to turn into a simple recounting of my week and the (sometimes) interesting things that happen to me. I always wanted to deliver a kind of meta-narrative on what its like about being a SAHD. But that sure does seem to get harder to do as I continue along this path. There are only so many times you can revisit the "Wow, lookit how much more time we have!" theme. Is this a silly concern of mine? Do people who try ther meta-narrative have ideas for how they are able to keep it fresh? Feel free to comment.

Finally, I can't help but comment on the Celebrity Babies site. I've gotten quite a lot of hits from the folks over there (and I love them all!) but I just have to ask the question: Why are coming here? I like to think Homo Domesticus provides entertainment, education, and witty social commentary, but it does seem a step or two removed from the starry offspring trail! Not that I'm complaining! Far from it. I'm just, you know, curious. Please leave a comment and tell me what you like/dislike. Or even if you're just trying new links. One thing about blogs is you can get reader input and decide to make changes if you feel like it.

A Days Work Before 9AM

2005-01-26T08:53:00.000-06:00

If I can ignore the dogs long enough (squirrels have been in the yard this morning, and so every time a leaf blows or I scratch my nose they bolt for the back door) I can write this short post about this morning.

Today is group picture day at Jake's school. I've known this for a week. The note with the little envelope to send in a check for the photo has been on the kitchen island for the last three days. Each day, I would forget to write the check, gripe at my failure, and say to myself that I'd write it "tomorrow". Well, today there was no "tomorrow" to be had, as after seeing Jake off at the bus stop and walking the dogs, I came home to find the picture envelope leering accusingly at me from the kitchen island. Just to add insult to injury, I hadn't taken into account the described background ("rustic red brick with ivy") when dressing him in a red shirt.

So there was Jake at school with no picture money, a shirt that would clash, and no doubt a serious bit of upset coming on. But, I was at home, staring at that hateful envelope, and not at work, suddenly remembering (assuming, that is, I remembered at all).

I grabbed my checkbook, scrawled some numbers on it, stuffed it into the envelope, dashed upstairs, tried to find a shirt (or two) that might go with red and green (I'm not sure I succeeded), jumped in the car, stopped and goed my way to his school, jogged up to his room, dropped them all off, and got back in time to pay bills and write this piece.

I'd pay myself on the back harder if I couldn't help remembering that if I'd just written the doggone check last night none of this would have been necessary. :-)

Spare the Rod, Spoil the Parent

2005-01-24T08:25:00.000-06:00

Last night I was well and truly rebuked. And the hell of it is, it was totally deserved. As rebukes go, it was quite gentle, actually. I suspect that the rebuker didn't even realize part of it.

What happened was…well, it was kind of complicated in the details. Suffice it to say that while they were playing, the kids next door (lets call the boy M and his older sister N) did something that really upset Jacob. Just short of tears, in fact.

The story came out as we were eating dinner. It started out as a tale of goofing around on the part of one of the neighbor kids, and evolved into quite a bit more. I should state right at the outset that it wasn't anything that would have gotten anyone hurt, and these kids aren't any better or worse than your typical kids of that age. But what isn't good is Jacob's being unwilling or unable to feel like he can leave, or tell them what is going on isn't right and make his vote against it stick.

M is the only boy about Jake's age in the immediate vicinity (he's actually a year older). They have played together ever since we moved here. I've gotten a bit dependent on them. And I think having M be Jake's only out of school playmate has begun to be a bit of a problem. It may be that Jake feels that if he walks away form some game or activity of M's he doesn't like, then he doesn't get to play with anyone his age (parents are still cool to play with -- we played a lot of football last week, but still, kids your own age are always better). It would be better if he met some other kids from school, from his own grade, more often. You know, the occasionally maligned "playdate" (mostly maligned by those who lack a real understanding of families lives today, I might add).

I'd like to say that those were my insights above, after having gotten him to talk about what was bothering him at dinner last night, but it wasn't. They weren't my insights. Nor was I the one who kept asking questions and got him to spill the beans. Both of these accomplishments were the result of Trish's efforts, not mine.

So I stand thrice rebuked: Failing to dig deep enough, failing to see the problems beginning to crop up (this wasn't the first time M had done something that Jake went along with against his better judgement, or had upset him in some way), and failing to move before to involve other kids in Jacob's after school playtime.

I'm not Superdad (though someday I hope to play him in on TV), and I know that we parents are going to screw up. Its part of life. Still, I'm the guy on the front lines, and I didn't notice or act. I got lazy, and Jake had to pay the price for it.

Friday Short Takes

2005-01-21T10:02:00.000-06:00

I just installed Windows XP on my computer. I had managed to keep 98 running for a while on up to date hardware, which some folks seemed to feel was kinda impressive. I did this partly to be cheap and partly because XP was the new target for every bit of mal-ware to come down the pike. Win98 was apparently passe` for hackers. But I went to spend some of my Christmas money on a new game and it wouldn't run on 98. I checked around and the supply of software that would run on 98 was getting thin, so I decided to bite the bullet. The install actually went quite smoothly. My old copy of Norton AV doesn't quite work, and I hard a surprisingly hard time getting Firefox going, but all seems good now. I'm sure a few more kinks will turn up, but all in all, it went a lot better that I feared it might.

I could use advice on how to make Explorer (not Internet Explorer) open up on the C drive instead of My Documents. 90% of the time, I don't need a document.

I'm having a devil of a time getting Jacob to drink milk for lunch. Its not that he dislikes milk. Quite contrary. The problem is that he vastly prefers whole milk over any lower-fat version. And the organic milk we like to give him does not sell small (6-8oz) containers in whole, only lowfat, or flavored lowfat, which of course makes them very sugary. So far, he isn't real thrilled with the other varieties of whole milk that do come in smaller containers that we've tried. The other option, using a thermos or kids cup to send in his regular brand of whole milk, is foundering. The best device we have found so far to use to hold the milk is actually a variety of baby cup. It's actually pretty "big kid" for a baby cup, being equipped with a straw that folds down to make a solid seal using a flip-top thingy. But apparently some kids at lunch teased him for having a baby cup. I might head up to lunch with him today and use it myself. With luck, that'll put a kibosh on the baby cup thing, but we'll just have to see.

One problem with being home all day is snacking. I've done a lot more snacking on cookies, chips, etc. in the past month or so that I used to, and certainly more than I did while working. Now, I am getting more exercise than before, so I'm not actually gaining weight, but it is still irritating. I could lose 20 pounds and not miss it, and this isn't helping. At this moment I'm chomping on an apple, which I hope will help.

Disguised as Dogs

2005-01-19T10:07:00.000-06:00

I'm pretty sure one of my dogs is really a cartoon space alien. I'm also pretty sure one them is really a cat, or perhaps was a cat in a former life, like Shirley MacLaine (and if Shirley hasn't claimed to be a cat in a former life, just give it time), or maybe is a cat driving a big robot dog. Only one of the beasts in this house that looks like what we commonly refer to as a "dog" is really an all-out dog.

Why do I say these things? I'd like to give you some examples. Start with Hubert. Hubert looks like a Great Dane. But he is pretty obviously really a cat. The main clue is that he is the finickiest eating dog I've ever seen. Despite having a mouth bigger than most European cars, Hubert manages to eat his food with a daintiness that would impress Queen Elizabeth. Most dogs, when given something that isn't totally off their "food" list, eat so fast that you wonder if their taste buds aren't actually located in their stomachs, and only after they have swallowed and are licking their chops do you see the occasional quizzical look come over their faces, suggesting that maybe that hunk of broccoli might not have been so tasty after all. Not El Huberto! He somehow manages to operate that gaping maw of his such that any medications hidden in his munchies are left behind, often licked clean of the tastier bits. Then Trish or myself gets to do our lion tamer trick, where we stick our arms down his gullet up to our elbows in order to deposit whatever medication he's on that day. About the only thing that periodically makes me doubt the cat hypothesis is the number of times he manages to injure himself, but that can be explained by the fact that his cat brain doesn't fully understand how to handle his dog body.

I'm convinced that if could communicate the idea to him, he would be completely capable of performing that trick with the cherry stem where you tie it in a knot using only your tongue. There are other clues (like his love of fish), but that will do for now.

At first we thought Marquis was a pig of some sort. He makes the oddest grunting sounds, and like a pig, will eat almost anything. I caught him gnawing on a carrot one day. But he didn't like to root around like pigs and despite his grunting grumbling was actually a bit of a snuggly dog. Then Jacob decided that Marquis was in fact Stitch.

This made a lot of sense. Marquis is much stronger than his size would indicate. He doesn't like to swim, though he does like to wade. He has a somewhat short temper but his bark is far worse than his bite (I don't think he's ever snapped at a person). He is very destructive of his toys. And paper. And cardboard boxes. He makes those odd gruntings, which we now realize aren't grunting at all, but his native alien speech. Granted, he isn't blue and doesn't have six limbs like Stitch, but I'm certain there is a good reason for that. Some sort of disguise, no doubt.

This leaves George. Now George is all dog. He eats anything in front of him, and he eats really, really fast. He is totally in your face, licking away. He will jump up on his hind legs to hug you (especially if you have a white or otherwise nicely clean shirt on). And he's a good 6'2" standing up, so it's an impressive hug. He obsesses over squirrels and birds in the yard. So much so that I'm almost afraid to type the word "squirrel" for fear he will attack the back door. And he manages to get into dog sorts of trouble. You may recall that he was forced to wear a funnel for a while to protect his face while he recovered from a minor operation. Just yesterday I discovered what looked for all the world like a piece of fishing line sticking out of the scar. I think it’s a suture that was missed when they removed them, but who knows? It might really be a piece of fishing line. I've no idea where he could have gotten into it, because we don't have anything like that in the house, but that is exactly the sort of trouble a real dog would get into.

Update:

Upon arriving at the vet, we couldn't find the consarned bit of string. But the vet at least said that wasn't unheard of for internal stitches to do that. Disappearing ailments seems like a cat thing to me, but I'm pretty sure that is only an isolated incident.

Just Checking In Again

2005-01-14T13:50:00.000-06:00

As you could see from the lack of posts since Tuesday, Jacob was not quite well until, I think, last night. I mistakenly let him go to school on Wednesday due to an apparently broken fever and claims of feeling good, but that evening the fever was back (our doc has said that fevers tend to be highest in the afternoon and evening). But yesterday numerous temperature readings showed normal, and we declared him healed. Of course, now Trish is showing signs of coming down with something.

School is out Monday for MLK day. Probably won't be any blogging then.

The writing project hasn't really gone anywhere, what with the disruptions of the past week, but the acting one at least has something to aim at. Two productions are going to be shooting soon in here in Austin, and are accepting submissions. I've got the photo place working on some 8x10s as we speak. It would be nice to get something with a line. Crowd scenes are completely necessary, but you should know, I'm a complete ham.

Speaking of smoked meats, we are having a potential candidate for new pastor of our church down this weekend, and I have been volunteered to smoke brisket for the meal. Cool. I love working my smoker, but rarely get the chance to do so. It takes so long, and with Trish being vegetarian, its serious overkill to get the thing going for just Jacob and myself. Which is too bad, people seem to think I'm pretty good at it. Another good thing about this is that it might mean the end of the Call Committee, which Trish has been on and has sucked up a lot of her free time over the past 6 months.

Brief Appearance

2005-01-11T09:47:00.000-06:00

A quick note here. Light blogging due to Jacob being slightly ill. Nothing serious, but he has had to stay home from school, and it did give my wife and I a bit of a sleep deficit one night. More for her than me, since she volunteered to stay up with him. As I told her the next morning "I'd complain about lack of sleep, but I'm afraid you're too groggy to kill me cleanly." Playing catch-up by napping didn't work for me, as one of our dogs dropped a wooden block on my head, suggesting, I think, that he wanted to play.

Only other note: When Jacob is home sick, even when he is occupied watching TV or playing on the computer, I am unable to get myself to perform any but the most elementary of tasks. Strange.

Choose, But Choose With Knowledge

2005-01-07T10:12:00.000-06:00

I wanted to write about what made for drudge work and what made for play work in the SAH world, but the ideas I had seemed to evaporate as I sat down to write. For now, I guess we'd better just acknowledge that doing the same sets of things every week can become boring and seen as drudgery. You just have to be ready for that and recall the other drudgery you faced in the office -- because I suspect that if you loved your away from home job, you wouldn't make the choice to be at home, unless it was forced upon you by circumstances. But then you'd still be faced with the end of the novelty at some point, and yearn for what you loved before, assuming it was possible to get back to it in some way.

I have had jobs I liked and jobs I loathed, and in my case it really boiled down to the people I worked with and for. As a solitary type of person, I find the loss of that contact (when it was good) a negative, but nearly so as to make me want to change my mind about being mostly a SAHD. And the crap-shoot aspect of finding a good office environment doesn't make me eager to try again, either.

Is This a Guy Thing?

2005-01-05T09:27:00.000-06:00

A couple of things are on my mind as I type today. First we have Rebel Dad's announcement that he is taking a job (something I will explore more fully in Friday's post). The second is an observation my lovely and brilliant wife made last night, that these things that are a revelation to me would not be so revelatory to a woman, and that my blog would not be all that interesting if it were written by a woman. Or at least, not as interesting to others.

After thinking about what she said for a time, I've decided that's not quite right. Now, certainly, a woman writing about staying at home with the kids would be totally in the category of dog bites ma-…er, person. But I can't help but think that its actually quite likely that any woman today choosing to leave the "workforce" after 15 years to take up a place in the home would discover many of the same things I have, and face many of the same issues. Especially if she came from a family where the mom worked outside as well. And popularity would depend on the quality of the writing as much as the subject matter. Erma Bombeck wrote a column for years just about things she did with her family (and how many Bombecks were there? Good point, but I think that had as much to do with opportunities for women in general as interest in the subject matter).

[pause to toss dog toy across room]

We'd both discover time, we'd both probably struggle with the change in tasks, issues of self-worth in sweeping the floor as compared to memo-ing Marketing to death, that sort of thing. Maybe she wouldn't be as surprised by the amount of pet hair that collects in just 48 hours time (having gotten some training in domestic issues that a brother wouldn't have), but that's not the sort of revelation that I think about when thinking about the changes I've made.

I even suspect there have been about as many news articles written about women leaving the "working" world for the home as there have been about men doing the same. More, even. Granted, they would have a different emphasis, but its not as if there is no interest.

[pause to toss dog toy across room]

Differences there would be, of course. Vastly fewer people would look askance at her or call her manliness into question, for example. A mom that says she stays at home in response to "what do you do" doesn't have to explain any further. But she might feel pressure from other women that are working to justify her decision in ways that are uncomfortable. I don't pretend to truly understand the contradictory pressures women face in dealing with work and home, but I do know they are there. Issues of working and staying home affect women very differently, and I'm not saying it would be easier at all, just err..., different.

I await the slings and arrows of women who will point out to me all the ways in which I've gotten it wrong. And really, if I have I'd appreciate hearing it. I'd like to think I've cogitated on the matter logically, but I'm no woman and many a beautiful hypotheses has been slain by an ugly fact -- and rightly so.

The Meaning of Time Off

2005-01-03T09:25:00.000-06:00

I see from my Sitemeter that folks checked in here regularly over the Christmas Holidays. Thanks! Sorry there wasn't anything new to read during that time, but vacation is over now, so regular posting will re-commence.

I'll spare you the detailed holiday post-mortem, except to say that it was great. The one exception to sparing will be in this detail: I can't recall a more relaxed Christmas, ever. After some thought, I realized the reason for that was that I was at home.

Other things contributed, of course. We had no visitors, no travel to visit relatives (Trish had to duck out for about 3.5 days for a conference, but that didn't affect MY relaxation -- well, mostly. I got to welcome her back, which was very relaxing), and most importantly, no schedules to keep. That really hit home this past Friday, as I reckoned on what today would mean. Up at 6am, get Jake off to school, the dogs fed, laundry going, etc. meet him at the bus at 3pm, off to karate at 4:15, drum practice, dinner, etc. For two weeks we got up when we were ready, did things as we pleased, and never worried about bedtimes.

The big thing there is still that two weeks. I don't think I've had a two-week break since I started working, with the exception of Jake's birth. If I was still working away from home, I might have taken 1 week off this year. And that would have been nice, but it would have been nothing compared to what we had. Instead of an extra seven days having fun, I would have spent most of them basically just marking time at the office (the period between Dec 21 and Jan 1 has got to be the most unproductive of the year).

Okay, I didn't spend that entire time laying on a couch, popping bon-bons and watching all 6 discs of the "Return of the King" Extended Edition (Jammer sez -- thumbs up!). I still had the basic cleaning and the laundry and straightening up of the after-effects of Christmas Day (that took about three days all by itself). But still, with no places to be and no marks to hit, it was still amazing laid back and restful. Mark me folks, big blocks of time are generally better for relaxation that lots of little ones.

I'm Alive

2004-12-28T10:59:00.000-06:00

Just enjoying the Christmas holidays. Check back next week for a full report!