Frenzied Daddy

We are a dog free family. For now. Honor, our Aussie, passed away pretty gently yesterday in the sun-lit freshly mowed grass. She’s been resting on the mossy patio lately, when she’s been put outside.

We got Honor from a mall pet store (the one in Lloyd Center, now closed), before Miss B was born. She had been there a while and was marked down half price. She was a sweet, sneaky, little wench of a dog. She had some mild behavior problems and she had some bad hip dysplasia, which led to her FHO surgery. But she was a big part of our family. We’ve been worried about her age, and last week I thought she was going to be staying at the vet’s. She came home with some pain medicine.

It’s been about a year since Perrin died and we’ve been talking about getting a younger dog. There have been a couple of real winners that have gone through the Humane Society, and we’ll probably get one from there in the next few months. I’m sure the girls will like a younger dog to play with. It was hard to rough house with Honor.

Those of you who see me on Facebook have already read about this.

Miss K lost her tooth yesterday. This was not a surprise. Not to me, not to her mother, anyway. It came as a total shock to the kiddo herself though. Back when the girls had a dentist appointment, the dentist said she had a couple of loose teeth and that she could, if she worked at it, lose her teeth before Christmas. That was more than two weeks ago.

Last night, she asked for an apple, but had to stop because it hurt to chew. Then she put her fingers in her mouth … and withdrew a tooth! One of the two in the front, on the bottom. There was a little blood and a little pain, but she wasn’t really upset about that– she was upset that her tooth had come out of her body! Miss K had always expected her teeth to be there for her, and now this one rebel was going to let her down.

Soon though, she was happy. We’ve all lost teeth, even the neighbor kids (K, H, and E). We got through those and we’ll get through this. And it shows she’s growing up. And, I bet her teacher will be so pleased for her. Eventually, her mother got her mood turned around, and the sun came out from behind the clouds of toothlessness. It turns out her bus driver was happy for her too!

The good news is that the tooth fairy came by and left a gold dollar coin for her tooth. The bad news is that she’s already stuck her tongue in the tooth hole, so the tooth will not be growing in gold.

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.

Am I strange? Am I the only one who reads “Work – kick your butt into line- self -help” books and thinks how they apply to family life?

This guy, Larry Winget, has this to say…. “It’s your fault. It’s not your coworkers that make your work suck. If sales suck, it’s because you suck (as a salesman).” This really led itself to reflection on my life as a father- “The house sucks because you suck as a house cleaner / house maintainer.” or “The kids’ work ethic sucks because you suck at teaching kids work ethic.” And then the corollary to this, once you’ve acknowledged that it’s your fault, is “You like it like this.” Because it’s your fault and it’s not changing. This also applies, once the kid is old enough to examine their lives, to the kid. Miss B must like getting yelled at, being ordered to do her practicing, and being embarrassed at school when I walk her to school to turn in her homework.

Actually, as just an training/observation thing, it works for the five year old too. I can observe her and consider if she’s doing a particular thing because she likes the result.

Interesting book so far. I’m only on chapter 5, I’m skimming through it pretty quickly (he repeats himself a lot).

Never take 40 or so vanilla wafers (generic is ok), mash them into crumbs, add half a stick of butter and some sugar and press into a pie dish, then bake at 350 for about 9 minutes.

Never, ever, slice three ripe bananas on to the top of the crust. Never, ever, dump a cup or so of fresh blueberries onto the bananas. And don’t ever slice up another cup of strawberries and put them on top of the blueberries.

Whatever you do, don’t take a package of pudding mix and mix it with a little less milk than the directions say (2.5 cups rather than 3) and pour it over the fresh fruits. Don’t put it into the fridge until it more or less solidifies, at the same time taking a tub of cool whip out of the freezer.

Don’t smear the thawed cool whip over the set pudding.

No, don’t do any of that. Make the kids do it.

(ps, don’t dunk the left over nilla wafers into the cool whip to test its thawedness. Nope.)
(pps, no I don’t really consider banana cream pie to be a serving of fruit)

Miss K requested a chocolate cake, with white frosting and red trim. And roses; she wants roses like she sees on the Dairy Queen posters. You know, those little fondant jobbies.

This coming-home-late’s got my schedule all frickenfracked and I’m starting to freak out about her birthday cake. Of course we want it to be delicious. So I stopped at the Tulip Bakery to place her order. The doors right in the front were locked, but the ones next to them were open. I went in and ordered her cake, and it’ll be ready Saturday.

I wonder why the claim check says Tre Bone…

I’ve landed a temporary gig at a place in Beaverton, remaking their website. I’ll be working there at least 30 hours a week. It’ll be interesting; I haven’t had a daily “go to work” job in over two years; the last one was Interlink. Since then, it’s been a combination office/work from home or just plain work from home. I’m excited and nervous, wondering about the culture there; do people eat at their desks? Will they understand peanut butter and jelly, an apple and a juice box?

Thirty hours a week won’t keep me from my other engagements. It’s temporary, so I’ll be looking for more gigs. But the stress will be off for a little while.

On the other hand, Miss B will be out from school soon (about this time next month) and we’ll have to discuss if we send her to a sitter or trust her alone. Alone in quotes; the neighbors are awesome. What’s the age you at which you were left alone? I was alone in the house … uhm third grade?

The DQ is studying genetics in school. She’s working out how she gets brown eyes when I have blue and Ms B has brown. Also, I can curl my tongue, and so can Ms B and so can the DQ, but not the TT yet. And she’s working out hair color. But there’s an interesting other genetics thing she’s picked up too.

In High School, I helped with the rejuvenation of our literary magazine. I was a fairly prolific writer. What can I say, High School was angsty and paper was cheap. Ms B is no slouch either when it comes to writing; she’s been known to put pen to paper and come up with some pretty good stuff. I’ve written papers on poetry, that’s how geeky I am. I worked my way from structured poetry like sonnets and haiku, through free verse, and back again to structured poetry.

I haven’t written a lot lately because, in a surprising (to me) turn of events, my codewrighting (I spelled that the way I mean it), uses a lot of the same energies that my poetry did. Also, a lot of my poetry was fueled by sadness, depression, the emo pain that a lot of teenagers feel.

Imagine my surprise (and pride, and pleasure) when I found the DQ’s school newspaper, and an entry by her.


As the world goes dark
when the sky turns black
thousands of lights turn on
when they fade
on dawn's return
the sky is once again alone
even though the stars were
mirrored by lights
they will never be caught
ever eternal they shine in the
darkest nights they are
stars


I really couldn’t tell you how impressed, pleased and proud I am of her. Being able to write, and being self-assured enough to place it in the school paper with her name attached. Just like a chip off the old blocks.

I’m just getting used to the changes in the whitehouse website, when recovery.gov has been sprung on me. So far, I’m really happy with what I’m hearing from and seeing in the Obama administration.

But enough about those heavy politics Let’s talk about my kids.

The DQ had “a date” last weekend. Sunday, she went to the movies with her friend. A guy friend. Both Gramma P and I refuse to call it “a real date” for similar but different reasons. Her stance is that “sixth graders do not date,” while mine is “my sixth grader doesn’t date until she’s thirty.” At any rate, the mothers (Ms B and the young man’s mother) dropped them off at the theater in the mall, he bought her a soda-pop and they enjoyed Bedtime Stories. She came back all flushed and happy for the rest of the day.

Of course, that was wrecked when we learned how behind she was in school. But she has been summarily chastized and we are in direct contact with her teacher as she picks herself back up. I hope she manages to keep her solid 4.0, but I’m not seeing any band practice forms. She’s smart enough that the added homework is just an extra speedbump, though.

This weekend, I lifted the grounding because she sprained her ankle. I admit that I was a little skeptical when she called me from school at about 4 and claimed to have “kinda sprained my ankle,” but I went and collected her anyway. Yup, it’s sprained. She missed some classes on Friday and she’s been on the couch all weekend with an ice pack and the television controller. She’s nursing it for all she can get; limping around the house and whining for someone to get her some milk.

Too bad for her the cable’s off But Netflix to the rescue, I guess. I made her sit through Underdog.

The TT’s got some great updates too, but I have to go catch her and make her watch The Muppets Take Manhattan. Talk atcha later!