Frenzied Daddy

So, for reasons I won’t go into, I had to come clean with my daughter this morning.

“Honey, the only reason I had kids was for science fair projects. I go to Michaels’ (arts and craft supply store) and just pick up and hold the solar system model packages, and then put them back on the shelf. And I do it again with the dioramas. I just want to make science fun; and I can’t.”

Hopefully I put enough pathos into my delivery (These are real tears!!) that it sank in. I’m the guy who took three AP science courses his senior year in High School. I’ve had some fan-fricking-tastic science teachers and I loved the stuff; chemistry, biology, physics, even the geology we did for the “Natural History of Oregon” class. Ms Dexter, Mr Carlsen, Mr Sauer, I’m lookin at you. On the other hand, Mr Keupker (AP Calculus) can go jump in the Willamette.

I told her we could split up water in to H2 and O2. She thought that meant just boiling it (no). And I described how we could do it and then demonstrate that these were those specific gasses. We talked about some other science projects she could do in the two weeks she has remaining before this project is due. We talked about how to find out what her teacher is expecting, and that I wanted his rubrick to come home with her tonight.

Do you know any good science fair projects? Have any good science stories?

My favorite might be telling Peter Gunn to “hay feel this little white pellet… feel that slipperyness? (it was Sodium Hydroxide) … That’s your skin dissolving. You might want to wash that off…” … No, wait, that’s not my favorite.

Sometimes when I walk from the car to the office, I go past a huge child care place, down on first and oak (and second and oak, it takes up most of the first floor of this particular building). I like to watch the kids playing in there. One day, as I marched past, head down so I didn’t get rain in my eyes, I noticed something strange. There was one boy and two girls away from the rest of the kids, kind of tucked around behind a wooden play set. The girls were facing the boy and he was facing them. Behind them was the window past which I was walking purposefully, behind him was the wooden play thing. Kitchen? Yeah maybe a play kitchen. The teachers were on the other side of the room doing something with the rest of the kids and hadn’t noticed anything amiss.

The look on the boy’s face sent me back; way back to when I was cross country skiing* in Anchorage…

I went past a friend’s house. Her name was Katrina. We were freshmen in High School together. She was cute and I liked to pass notes back and forth with her in Social Studies. And, uh, math. Maybe some in english too. Bah, I liked flirting with her, and she never said “get lost.” The main problem was that I had a girlfriend at the time, Stacy. Stacy was pretty much my first “real girlfriend.” The first girl I kissed, and meant it. She went to a different school though, and Katrina was closer to home. As I passed her house, Katrina came out and waved me to a stop. She invited me into her garage where we could “talk” without her parents butting into our conversation. I took off the skiis, put them and the poles up against the wall (leaving would be more of a production now than just running off). And I went into the dark garage with Katrina, not knowing what to expect, but thinking it couldn’t be too bad.

This is where I learned that Katrina and Stacy knew each other. A sinking feeling, then some fifteen or thirty minutes of “discussion,” after which I was supposed to “choose.” And then, of course, both of them telling me to go away and not talk to either of them any more. I knew it was a foregone conclusion when I found Stacy at Katrinas. The Jig, as they say, was up.

The look on this poor kid’s face looked just like I imagine mine did when I was cornered like a dirty, lying, dog-faced, two-timing rat.

So, some advice for you, kid. Hang tough. Apologize to the women and hold your head high. Don’t make unnecessary choices. It’s not really “either x or y” — it’s more likely “neither” than “both.”

* Don’t mistake me. We didn’t get to ski a lot in Anchorage. I just happened to be tooling around on my skis.

I hate stuff in the road.

I don’t know where it comes from, probably my socialist side, but I hate that when there’s a big thing in the road (bag of trash, et cetera), people just swerve into the other lanes and cause traffic problems rather than just move it. I don’t think you should put it in your car, or whatever, just get it out of the way. And I remember seeing things along the freeways as a kid, wondering where they came from and what their stories were.

Maybe it was the crowbar that came flying at me and stuck in my car so long ago. I don’t really know.

Last year it was a big five gallon tank that looked like it fell off a jeep or something. I was surprised how heavy it was as I dragged it off the highway. Last week, I pulled a big bag of trash out of one lane on Columbia. And today, there was a road sign (“steel plate in roadway”) that had fallen over and the sticklike supports were in the road just ready to be jammed into someone’s wheels or under their suspension. So when I pulled around at 42nd at the construction, I went up the hill a little way (it doubles back) and pulled over.

I thought I successfully navigated down the hill and to the sign but, alas, a sneaky (and thick!) blackberry runner caught me around the ankle and I fell down the rest of the hill, landing on my knees and hands in the muddy gravel. Not an image I like to present. But I dragged it out of the road and stuck it in the construction area anyway. Bah. Maybe I saved someone’s wheel. Maybe not. Just wonder where this hatred comes from.

This is the most lights I’ve put on the house in … Well, ever. There’s a strand along the roof, one in the window, one on the Japanese Maple and even a little net of lights on the Rhody in front. Not to mention the tree.

Oh, Krampus, the tree. We went up to our new favorite lot; ($20 per tree, u-cut) SkyLine Tree Farm. It was surprisingly muddy; I should have worn shoes with better traction. I slipped and … “got mud on my butt” is an understatement. It was still wet an hour later and when I got into the car I sat on my coat. I fell on my hand and after the mud treatment my palm is nice and soft.

finally we settled on a tree. It was cute, and about 8 feet tall. Nice and bushy Noble Fir, with places for bigger ornaments. A great little tree. I crawled under the branches and got to work with the tree saw. And worked, and worked. The wii fit wasn’t much help. I was laying down to get to the trunk, so my angle of attack wasn’t so great and my shoulder still hurts (two days later) from having to hold the saw up. The tree was very wide down at the base and after forty five minutes of sawing I realized the cut was all twisted and wouldn’t match up anyway.

Ms B gave me permission to start again; so I went up a foot and cut it again. It only took about 15 minutes after starting that cut. Tied our kill to the roof of the Ford and drove home.

When we got it home, we realized a flaw in our plan. The base wasn’t long enough to touch the bottom of the stand while the branches sat on the ring at the top of the stand. After trying to “just screw it in” (the cats knocked it over) and then trying some blocks under the tree to hold it up (Ima gonna put this tree up on blocks in my yard and fix it right up) (the cats knocked it over again), Ms B decided that a straight, shorter tree with fewer branches was better than a taller tree tilted at at 45 degree angle. Honest, I thought the angle tree was nice. But I pulled it out and lopped off the ring of bottom branches with the circular saw.

Now, it’s about 6 feet tall and actually kind of cute, in a “why did we buy a 4 foot tree” sort of way.

The kittens adore it, but most importantly, the girls love it. With the lights on the house, it’s been pretty fantastic. Now I’m ready for hibernation- I’m tired and sore and my knuckles are all scratched up.

As the nights grow colder and I start to shiver (not likely), I’m considering pajamas. Usually I call it good, with a pair of sweatpant shorts and some socks, and maybe a t-shirt. But I have a friend over at Big Feet PJs who sells Adult footed pajamas — they’d be perfect for lounging around the house, especially if I weren’t going to work (and just hanging out in the basement). For me, however, they might be a little too warm. On the other hand, you can order them with the butt-flap, so they’ve got that going for them.

I noticed on Reddit this link: now that Canada has Google Street View, we can show you the horrible truth. Don’t let stoners work in your public signs department. I shared it with my 4 friends on Facebook, and then shared it with Miss B. Her response? “Haha. Someone probably slapped a decal on it.”

She’s so smart!

Miss K was superthrilled today to go to Kindergarten. She’s going to our neighborhood school, because she didn’t get into Alameda (there weren’t enough slots open for her). She doesn’t know the difference, but Miss B was extolling the virtues of not following in your sister’s footsteps to school. “And you won’t get compared with me by all your teachers…” … uh, humble much? ( Actually, I’m thrilled that her self-confidence is so high ).

We dropped her off with her backpack full of supplies. She might get a backpack from SchoolhouseSupplies.Org, but she may not. Again, it’s only her first day of kindergarten; she doesn’t have high expectations to compare her experience with. An interesting thing I noticed is that the neighborhood school didn’t require as many supplies as Alameda did- fewer overall supplies, and everything into the community buckets. I was originally thinking it was because that school is getting a lot more federal funds ( because of the no child left behind act) but it might be a difference expectation on the local kids.

Another one of those mornings where I have to balance between dad-the-teddy-bear who likes to play with his kids and dad-the-grizzly-bear who needs to get to work. It’s frustrating sometimes that while I want to play with the TT and she wants to play with me (this is her last full week before she starts Kindergarten next friday), I do have other obligations and responsibilities that she just doesn’t cotton to. Like going to work.

Anyway; I’m here now and workin like the dickens. Hope she has a nice time at the neighbor’s.

Is it true that girls grow up to marry their dads? To look for, in a partner, similar qualities to what they had in their fathers?

I compare myself to my Dad In Law, Rich, and I see some similarities- we both make sacrifices to “take care of” our families, we’re both engaged with our spouses (and kids). We’re both “family guys” – our aspiration is to take care of our families, not to make a million dollars or rule the world. Of course, there are some differences. He mumbles was in the Navy, for instance.

If this is true- what qualities would the TT or the DQ see in me that she would want to have in a partner? And what qualities do I have in me that I wouldn’t want them to think are appropriate? I don’t (seriously) beat them, for instance. What about you? What do you see in your women and their fathers, and what do you see in yourself?

On reflection, I don’t think this is the first time I’ve contemplated this.