Frenzied Daddy

Over the weekend, we finally got Miss B’s birthday party done and out of my mind. Our plans were to invite a handful of kids to get dessert and drinks at Rose’s Deli and then cross the courtyard for the Bridge to Terabithia. Aside from the minor problem that Rose’s name changed to “Lloyd Grill,” the morning of the party (and all Rose’s signage was gone), the party went just as planned. I took seven kids to the movies, I kept them reasonably reined in, and they had fun. The movie was great. I give it about eight or nine out of ten; make sure to take your kleenex™ though; it was a real tear jerker.

However, we saw a lot of previews. Previews for Petunia (some girl born with a pig snout), that show where the kid goes to the future to find a place where he belongs (I don’t remember the title), a CGI/Live Action version of Underdog, and a silly movie called “Firehouse Dog” about a movie stunt dog who gets lost (and loses his wig) and eventually adoped by some kid. Honestly, Firehouse Dog looks better than Underdog. And if that doesn’t tell you anything… yikes. Imagine a guy, in black, climbing up the wall on the outside of a building, with some sort of night-vision goggles. He looks up ahead of him, and omigosh there’s a dog standing on the side of the wall!. The dog speaks! He doesn’t even rhyme

I mean, I know underdog is a parody, but this just looks atrocious.

On the other hand, is it wrong to be considering playing hooky from work to go watch Ghost Rider?

No one knows what it’s like To be the bad man
To be the sad man Behind blue eyes

My teenage anthem. I listened to a lot of teenaged anthem, and while I understand some songs better now, this one I’m pretty much discarded. I’m no longer “the sad man behind blue eyes.” I haven’t been, since I met Ms B, really.

But my dreams, they aren’t as empty,
as my conscience seems to be.

My dreams aren’t empty. But for the most part,they consist of “I’ll show them.” As in, “I’ll show Mr Keupker.” Or “I’ll show Dr. Cogan.” Although, I don’t really have much to show her. She told me that I was an unusually lateral thinker, and that she expected her students to call her when they were working on the doctorate,or when they had discovered the cure for cancer, or … you know; when they “made it.”

I don’t ever expect to be calling her to tell her that I made it. I’m not sure why not; it’s probably something to do with how I normally say that I don’t have much aspiration.

I don’t have a good segue here.

When I was a kid, I remember my dad saying “I bragged about you at work today.” I don’t remember anything he actually bragged
about though. Of my specific memories of my dad, they’re either neutral times (oh, gee we went fishing. I fell in the creek. He caught a fish. We saw some weirdos in waders. ) or times I messed up. Which don’t need to be gone into right now (grin). I was smart. Ok, I am smart. But then I was in the TAG (talented and gifted) program at school. People told me I was smart. How’d I get in? The part of my evaluation I remember was being given a piece of paper and a yellow crescent piece of paper, and being told to make a drawing with the crescent on the paper. I made “a little dutch girl” with the crescent as her hat. You know, like Madeline. TAG consisted of leaving the normal class and going to a special class for an hour every Wednesday (and doing something “smart”).

Mom, Dad, I’m not fishing for compliments. But, I don’t remember being told what I had done that was especially smart.

These days, I’m “anti-TAG.” In the sense that it doesn’t help kids to be singled out and given what amounts to extra work along with an extra label. I believe that all kids have talents and by focusing on “TAG” kids we neglect other kids. Well, it’s not so much “anti-tag” as … apathetic to TAG. I don’t think it’s a good solution for the problem our kids face.

The NY Times has an interesting article on what it means to call kids “smart” that just might give me more “anti-tag” ammunition. Apparently, when you praise a kid as “Oh, kid, you’re so smart” it doesn’t emphasis something they have control over. So, given kids that are “smart” versus kids that “have worked hard at…”, the second group shows more willingness to try new things and more resilience when they “fail.” That’s its first point; to praise something the kid has control over.

The second point is that “Intelligence can be exercised and made stronger.” Which is a somewhat different point, but falls into my
belief that all kids are smart (within some exceptions, ok? I acknowledge that some kids are more smart, and some kids are less
smart).

I don’t want my girls to grow up as “ambitionless” as me. I want them to be able to make a decision as to what they want, and not let stupid things stand in their ways. Looking at the numbers in this study (referenced at the top), it appears that I need to focus more on praising their efforts in the face of adversity. Right now, we have a problem with Miss B and homework. This week she’s been a lot better, but usually it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge exactly parallel to the one Thomas’s (read the article) parents face. She’s a brilliant kid, but would rather complain about something being “too hard” and not do it, rather than just try it.

This article has touched me, both as a “samrt kid” and as the parent of “smart kids.”

Two of my favorite comic strips have done nifty things in their plots lately. Francis pranked Brent which backfired. And now Erika is playing games with Largo (Um, I’m not sure those two scripts do justice to the story arc Largo has gone to help Erika with her computer. )

We had our oldest cat pass away night before last. She was older than Malkin, but it was still sad. I don’t have any pictures of her- I just spent the last 30 minutes going through my digital photos and there are none of our tan and white shorthair kitty, so you’ll have to use your imagination.

We got her at the Humane Society in Eugene. For most of her life, she was our “fat kitty;” she weighed about fifteen or so pounds. Most of that was hair; she’d shed at the drop of a hat. She loved everyone, but she hated the outdoors. Once, when we lived in an apartment, we had to evacuate both cats for a flea bombing. Sienna spent those six hours hiding under a chair on the porch, crying.

Over the last year or so, she’s taken to sleeping in Miss B’s room, hiding from the other animals and from Miss K. She’s gotten very thin and frail, and we knew she was aging quickly. She liked being warm. When I came upstairs yesterday, she was laying in the living room gasping for air. I took her to Dove Lewis, and found out she was having congestive heart failure and that she had a lot of fluid in her abdomen. She’s sleeping easy now.

One of the lessons I’ve taken away from something I read, regarding my relationship with Ms B, is “when guys talk about problems, they’re looking for solutions, whereas when women talk about problems, they’re looking for community.”

Talk about your vast generalizations.

However, I can tell you that this generalization is frequently true in my discussions with Ms B, though; when she complains that she doesn’t like the food I’ve made for dinner, she’s not really asking me to go to Dairy Queen and get her chicken strips (well, not always), but she’s asking for reassurance that she’s not crazy; worchestershire sauce makes tuna casserole taste funny.

So then I read this…Programmers Don’t Like To Code (short summary: programmers like to solve problems, not to code). Combining these two generalizations … is this why the stereotypical computer programmer is male?

Yes, yes I know they’re all total generalizations. But are they linked?

I was outside with Miss K this afternoon, trying to get her to eat a peanut butter and jam sandwich. She pointed up in the sky and shouted “Elephant!” …. I was willing to play along with her… “Elephant?” She gave me an odd look and said “Elephant!!!” even more emphatically. So I looked up, and said “uhh, ok, elephant.”

Then she looked at me and very slowly and clearly, said “No. BIRD!”

Yeah, Really.

This is the same kid who was just running in circles in the middle of the living room shouting “RUN! RUN! It’s meatloaf! RUN! HIDE!”

I swear, no more naps for her!

With Flickr’s integration with Yahoo, you can place your photos on a map, and then when someone looks at them, you can see where they were in the world! Awesome!

Wish I’d thought of that.

The girls looking for sticks

Originally uploaded by rgilmanhunt.

… is taking them for a long walk in the cold cold rain.

The newest batch of pics I’ve posted to flickr will be from a hike I took the girls on today. They were seriously tired and cranky all morning, and I was beginning to sense that Ms B needed a break. I needed one too, but I figured I’d get a nap when I got back.

We went to Forest Park for a walk. I love Forest Park, and today was ice-cold. It was so cold I had to hold my breath when I took pictures because I didn’t want the breath-fog in the photo. We went across the St Johns Bridge and down Highway 30 for a little bit. At about the Arco sign, just as you enter Linnton, there’s a little turn around behind a bus shelter. The trailhead is behind there.

Miss K cried the entire way in the car, but when I stopped the car and took her out at the trail head, she got real quiet. She kept saying “big” and “wet.” It was definately wet. We had a lot of mud and muck. Miss B kept talking about how the scenery reminded her of how she imagines Terabithia. She’s been reading Bridge to Terabithia in preparation for the movie’s release, and she walked along naming various features. “I’m going to name this tree ‘Green Bark’.” … “That tree is ‘Witch’s House.” … It was precious; reminded me of myself at her age.

Miss B picked up a stick, a small barkless smooth stick she termed “Ivory wood- it’s pretty, and strong, and it’s used by elves to make their arrows.” She was washing it off in the little creek, with Miss K looking on, very intently. She (Miss K) put her hand gently on Miss B’s shoulder, and watched as the stick got clean, and then she announced she wanted a stick too. So she found a stick (bigger, hairier, and more bark), and washed it off in the stream just like her big sister. It was cute neat touching to watch their bonding moment.

We saw some terrific rotten stumps serving as “nurse logs” for smaller trees. You can see the roots of the younger tree over the rotten stump, down the side and into the dirt (not just into the log.) There were a lot of mossy tree branches; Miss B was startled as a loose piece of moss dropped out of the tree in front of her and drifted silently to the ground. There was a very small waterfall, and there was some neat places where the creek had washed away all the dirt and just ran across a flat piece of rock; like a rock bed made of one single rock. There were trees with mushrooms, moss, ferns and ivy growing on them; it was really pretty.

There’s some parts that are steep too; but even the two year old made it up and down them without slipping and getting all muddy. Don’t recommend this trail for wheelchairs or canes (but the Lower Macleay trail would be fine, for a little bit).