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Stone Ax

Tuesday 16 July 2019

The Boy, like all children, imitates what he sees. When the folks on his favorite YouTube show, The Axel Show, tried using a stone as an ax, he did the same thing.

“I’ve been making spears,” he explained. “I think I’ll sell some of them on Ebay.”

He’s come up with his own design as well — the two-ended spear. By “own design,” of course, I mean something he’s never seen. “This way, I can attack like this and like this,” he explained, waving the strick around furiously.

The Dog has her own interest in sticks.

Big Air Adventures

Sunday 30 June 2019

The Boy spent the afternoon/evening at a birthday party held at Big Air, a local trampoline park. This particular attraction fascinated him, but he was a little nervous about taking it on. Until one of his friends invited him to join him.

Building

Monday 10 June 2019

A legacy of Nana: she kept so many of my old toys, and we’ve recycled them, giving them to our own kids. L was never interested in most of them; the Boy, though is a different story.

What does that say about gender differences? Our son is interested in his father’s old toys; our daughter isn’t. Is that nature? Nurture? Both? We’ve never told our kids “this is a boy’s toy” or “this is a girl’s toy,” but they’ve gravitated that way. Perhaps it’s so saturated in our culture that it’s impossible to escape.

The Boy’s latest interest: my old Girder and Panel building set. I was about his age when I got it, and I loved it immediately. The Boy had a similar reaction.

It took him a while to get the hang of snapping the girders together, and the windows were as frustrating for him as they were and still are for me, but his verdict was unequivocal. “I love it.”

Spring Monday

Monday 29 April 2019

I was worried that this would be the first of several very difficult days. With no one here to help with the kids (read: E) in the morning, it’s difficult for me to get out of the house very early. This week, however, is my duty week: I get to spend thirty minutes before my contracted arrival time supervising kids on the eighth-grade hallway. It’s loads of fun, but the downside is that I have to leave much earlier than usual. Which created a dilemma: what to do with the Boy. Two options: ride with the neighbor or leave without breakfast and have it at school.

At around 6:15 this morning, the Boy toddled downstairs, still rubbing his eyes, and presented a third option: “I’m just going to eat breakfast now.”

“Are you sure? You could still sleep another half hour.”

“Nah, I’ll stay up.”

And so the Boy proved once again that life is like calculus: there’s often more than one (or even two) solutions to a given problem.

Once at school, the usually peaceful morning duty transformed temporarily into one of those moments when, as a teacher, I see a student’s future and think, “Wow, if this kid doesn’t make some serious changes, do some serious maturing, she’s in for a long, tough life.” And much of that, in most cases, is due to environment: they’re not choosing necessarily to be a disrespectful kid. It’s something that works on the streets and/or at home, and they just bring it into the school as well.

That particular exchange foreshadowed the discussion I was to have with my honors English kids, who read Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” last week as their article of the week. We began with a review via video:

Then the kids went through a few discussion questions:

  1. To what extent do you find Socrates’s point about the human tendency to confuse “shadows” with “reality” relevant today?
  2. What could be the elements that prevent people from seeing the truth, or regarding “shadow” as the “truth”?
  3. In society today or in your own life, what sorts of things shackle the mind?

The common theme that came through in all of these discussions was the role social media plays in creating false realities, in preventing people from seeing truth, in shackling the mind. It’s ironic: I see so many of these kids buried in their phones before and after school, yet they’re strangely aware of the negative effects.

After school, I hopped out of the car thinking, “So far, other than the little issue in the morning during hall duty, this supposedly tough day is surprisingly enjoyable. After dinner, it was even more so: one of E’s choices in his literacy log is to find a pleasant place to sit outside and read for a while.

And after that, a little project: a bird house. Where did this idea come from? I don’t know. The Boy simply talked K into buy him a piece of pressure-treated 1 x 6, and although he originally planned on building a tree house from that single plank, he was flexible enough to realize that a bird house was probably more in the scope of that single plank. So he found instructions on YouTube, gathered tools, and together we built a little bird house.

“Once you’re done, I want to help with the painting,” the Girl declared, and so with twenty minutes to go before the start of E’s evening ritual, they began working.

“Let’s decorate it with birds,” the Girl suggested. They began drawing various silhouettes of birds while I got the dog’s dinner ready, only to discover we were out of dog food.

“Alright kids, you’ll have to do the actual painting tomorrow. E, you’ll have to go with me to the store to buy some food for Clover.” I was expecting a small fit, some protesting at the very least, and I was reluctant to stop the work in progress: it’s so rare that they find something that really engages them both.

Still, the Boy was surprisingly mature. “Okay,” was all he said, and off we went to get some kibble for the pup.

And so at the close of this surprisingly pleasant day that was supposed to be the first of several tough ones, I find myself realizing anew that “tough days” and “bad days” and “rough days” depend more on our perception than anything else, just like Plato’s shadows suggest.

Crash

Thursday 25 April 2019

Our swing broke. K was swinging; the kids were playing; I sat down in the swing to join her.

We were soon on the ground. Thus ends “The New Swing.”

The New Swing

Flip

Monday 25 March 2019

Sunday from Monday

Monday 25 February 2019

Yesterday, the sun finally came out. I had dreams of taking the kids to the park with the dog and playing with the Boy in the backyard — exploring, he calls it. But it was one of those days that seemed to finish before they began.

After a lunch of waffles, we made it to the creek to do a little exploring. We were both curious to see the effects of all the rain on our favorite locations. The impromptu bridge we’ve always used to cross the small creek was all but gone, washed away by the water of a week’s rainfall. Not deterred, the Boy insisted that we could find another way across. We did. It involved accidentally putting his entire left foot into the water. While wearing school shoes.

What were we thinking, heading out in school shoes?

Later, after the camera’s battery died, we found a new little spot where we could climb down to the water. The Boy slipped on the way down and spread mud all down the back and side of his jeans.

“Mommy said these are my best jeans,” he informed me with a giggle.

Saturday

Saturday 16 February 2019

The Boy and I began the day early for a Saturday. My alarm went off at 6:15 but I snoozed it until 6:30 — that was really the plan when I went to bed last night, I must admit — and we both go up and had breakfast and cartoons (Tom and Jerry) before heading off to Clemson University for the annual Clemson Day for South Carolina Scouts.

It’s supposed to be in the main stadium, which makes it a great draw for everyone, but this year, with the weather questionable, it took place in the football team’s indoor practice area. (You know a football program is bringing in a lot of money for the university when they have a couple of outdoor practice facilities and an indoor one to boot.) Clemson football, soccer, volleyball, and track athletes ran the kids through drills and games for three hours, with each rotation ending with an autograph session.

“Parents, please remember that the autograph time is only for the kids,” the announcer reminded everyone several times.

As I suspected, the Boy was not keen on participating at the beginning. He’d been excited about going when I first mentioned it many weeks ago, but the excitement had waned as the day itself approached, and he suggested that he might just stay with me on the sideline and watch.

I tied gently encouraging him, but he wouldn’t budge. Finally, I went nuclear: “Buddy, I didn’t get up at 6:15 on a Saturday to sit with you on the sidelines.” Once he got out there, he was fine.

In the afternoon, a little exploring.

Monday

Monday 28 January 2019

When I got home from work, I asked the Boy if he wanted to go play outside — to go exploring or something similar. With the coming cold spell, we have to make the most of the relative warmth while we have it. He was eager to go, and he was eager for L to join us.

He’s always talking about doing things as a family. “When can we go on a family bike ride?” “When can we watch a family movie?” “Can we go on a family walk?”

L, now twelve, is starting to show typical teenager behavior, like a reluctance to hang out as a family all the time. She enjoys it, but she also loves “alone time” as she calls it.

Today, though, we were able to talk L into going exploring with us. The Boy, utterly thrilled, took the lead and instructed L how to cross the creek, how to scale the bank (of course she found her own way), how to navigate the thorny places.

Tough

Sunday 6 January 2019

No doubt about it — this has been a tough week. Probably the worst week we’ve had in memory, K suggested. A good friend died on Monday; our cat died on Wednesday; Thursday saw two funerals (the friend and the cat, obviously) and a visit to the emergency room with Papa; and Nana still in rehab this whole week. The kids are likely feeling neglected but are showing great patience with everything. The parents are feeling exhausted. And, well, the kids, too.

Breakfast this morning started with a little nap at the table. After breakfast, we went our separate ways: the kids with K to church; I went to spend the morning with Nana.

When we came back, the clear skies, after weeks, months, no years of cloudy, rainy weather, called us outside. First things first: I finally finished up Bida’s grave. We’ve been afraid that the dog might be too curious and tempted by the freshly dug earth despite the fact that we put a large stone to mark and protect the spot.

So today, I spread the best dog-digging-deterrent we’ve found al around: straw. K thinks it’s because the straw gets in the dog’s nose as she’s sniffing around, which would cause a fair amount of pain, I suppose, if the strand of straw got jammed in a dog’s nose just right. Or it could be that it hides odors, because the digging always starts with sniffing. Whatever the cause, we feel better about Bida’s grave now, though we don’t feel so much better about her absence. It’s amazing how much a little old gray grumpy cat adds to the family dynamic.

Next, we went down for some swinging, jumping, and Clover-entertaining.

Next, a little homework. We’re trying to get everyone back into a normal schedule, which includes daily reading and writing, especially for the Boy. The Girl takes her own initiative with the homework. The Boy — not so much.

So we sat on the deck, and between yogurt breaks and tossing the ball for Clover, we finally finished the homework. The Boy was trying his best to make the process more difficult than it needed to be, and I just wanted to get through it all, because I knew what we were planning next:

Today’s task: find a way to cross the creek. We found one, made another. Something tells me we’ll be spending more and more time out there as the weather warms.

Finally, a small dinner with Aunt D, who’s come to stay with her big brother and help out with everything.

First Day 2019

Tuesday 1 January 2019

With unseasonably warm weather following several rainy days, we spend the afternoon outside. The Boy and I explore, expand our island, and have a generally great afternoon. K reads, talks to her family on Skype, talks to her best friend in Poland on Skype, and has a generally great afternoon.

Previous Years

Hel

New Year’s 2014

New Year’s 2016

New Year’s Eve

Poor Bida

Sunday 30 December 2018

We have a cat who’s so old now that I’m a little surprised she’s still walking about let alone jumping on tables and the like. She’s a rescue cat we got at least ten years ago, and at the time, the vet said she was four to six years old, which makes her fourteen to sixteen years old. She was rough to begin with, hence the name: “Bida” means “poor little thing” in Polish. With cats having an average lifespan of 16 years, this puts her right at upper limit.

Playing cars after breakfast

She’s completely deaf now. When she’s on any surface that largely absorbs vibrations, you can sneak right up on her without even trying to do so. She has no idea what’s going on around her, and I think it’s only through the vibrations through our hardwood floors that she anticipates anything that she can’t see.

She’s lost all of her teeth except the small incisors at the front of her mouth. This makes for a pathetic moment when she gets angry — say, when you’re trying to get one of her many, seemingly endless clumps of matted hair out — and she tries to bite you. Without her canines, there’s simply nothing there that can actually do any damage or cause any pain.

Her claws are brittle and largely dull. She can’t do much of anything with them but get them stuck in something she’s trying to scratch.

Working on the “island” we’re creating

Her body is withering away, and she’s literally a sack of bones now. And since she’s developed arthritis over the last few years, they are knobby and protruding hideously. Running your hands along her back, you feel each and ever vertebrae clearly.

She no longer grooms herself very much. This means her hair gets matted easily and thoroughly, and I’ve quite honestly given up on trying to get them all out. The only option is the nuclear option: shave her completely, especially her belly. We don’t have the heart do that, so we do what we can. The other side of this is the odor that emanates from her: a long-haired cat who doesn’t groom herself simply stinks for reasons that don’t need further explanation. This is why we give her a bath on a fairly regular basis.

I mention all of this simply because I bathed her tonight and noticed, when she’s completely wet, there’s almost nothing there. She is literally nothing but a sack of bones, and I’m quite surprised she can survive like that.

Exploring the same area we’ve explored countless times before

“Has she not been eating?” I asked K, and apparently, she’s turned up her nose at everything but human food. So I took her into the kitchen, still wrapped in towels from her bath, and made her one of her favorites: scrambled eggs. No salt, no pepper — just a bit of butter and the eggs. She initially had some trouble finding it, but once she located the pile of eggs, she hunkered down for a long, slow meal. (With no teeth, it takes her a long time to eat anything.)

She’s a fighter. Of our two cats, she’s the one who’s stood up to our dog from the time she was a puppy, and she’s the one who, though defenseless, defends her territory fiercely while the younger, faster, stronger cat with deadly teeth and sharper claws runs. Bida knows she’s a member of our family and refuses to let anyone forget it: she’s always looking for a lap, always begging to be with someone.

“She’ll outlive us all,” K laughs on a regular basis, and she’s probably right.

Three Boys, a Creek, and Pain

Saturday 29 December 2018

N and R came over for a little play time today after the Boy spent a couple of hours at their house this morning as K and I went to visit a dear friend who is in the final stages of a battle against cancer.

“The fight’s gone. It’s done,” said our friend. And what a fight he’d put up: this summer I helped him with an addition to his home, and he worked with a chemo backpack on, pumping him full of pain to fight the ultimate pain.

Seeing the boys playing, with all their energy, excitement, and passion was jarring in juxtaposition. All three of those boys will, at some point, grow old and die, long after I’ve done the same thing.

That’s what we all assume. We all wake up every day and work under that assumption without even thinking about it. We obviously can’t paralyze ourselves thinking every day, “Something could happen this day that takes someone we love away from us,” but a little reminder about our mortality is a good thing from time to time. It inspires us to do the little things that we might not have done because we’re tired, we need to do something else, or we just have other priorities at that moment.

Perhaps that’s what’s just beyond the edges of the addiction to pain some athletes feel. I’m nowhere near that level, but three nights of running have left my muscles aching in a way that I almost look forward to the next run, the next shot I have at pushing through the pain, of bettering the pain, because I won’t always be able to do that. There will come a time when I have to give up the fight, but each night I run, I can push against it.

Seeing that perseverance, limited though it might be, in my own children would be the purest blessing. One of the character traits I consistently see less and less frequently in my students is perseverance, or “grit” as edu-speak likes to call it these days. So many give up before even trying, convinced that they can’t do it, persuaded before they even begin that there’s no use in even trying.

It’s a natural enough inclination, I think. I already see it in E: he sometimes gives up on something so quickly that K and I just look at each other, that concerned parent look on our faces simultaneously.  So when E suggested tonight that he might want to join me on my run, it brought such a smile.

“But we’ll run the whole time, Daddy,” he said.

We did half a mile in just under seven minutes, with three short walking breaks and a lot of sweet, nonsensical chatter.

So I left for my solo run with a lighter step: the Boy took a little step toward becoming a fighter, toward realizing that that excitement in the creek with his friends can be found even in moments of pain.

Playing with The Boy

Wednesday 12 December 2018

The Boy got several new toy trucks today, adding to his already-extensive collection of toy cars, trucks, bulldozers, tractors, and the like.

Only one thing to do after dinner…

First Clues

Tuesday 11 December 2018

The Boy found an old SIM card the other day and was convinced it was some sort of memory device. I, of course, played along thinking it might be a good way to transition into an actual treasure hunt.

Last night, K told E it wasn’t a memory card. “It’s from T-Mobile,” she explained. I’d explained that the “T” was for technology, perhaps.

“Why’d you tell him?”

“One day, he might take it to school and tell everyone it’s a memory card and someone will laugh and him and say, ‘It’s just something from T-Mobile.'”

Still, I persisted. Today, I shared with him the message that was buried in the memory card.

The Game Master breaks his silence.

I had in mind hiding something in his copy of Green Eggs and Ham with the final half of the clue, an allusion to the ending in which Sam-I-Am promises to leave the protagonist alone if he’ll just try the green eggs and ham.

I hoped the clue I had the Girl plant while we were walking in the park would help solidify the connection: “Agent Rex, are you Sam?”

When we first arrived, E was terribly eager to look for clues; he looked in the unlikeliest of places, convinced that the Game Master would hide clues only in hard-to-find locations. I looked down at his shoes, though, and realized it woudn’t be the adventure I’d initially planned.

“Why did you put sandals on?”

“Because I couldn’t find my shoes.”

So I was constantly telling him to stay away from the remnants of snow, carrying him over spots where a puddle covered the entire path, and asking him, “Are your toes cold?”

When he finally reached the tree to which L had pinned the clue, he completely missed it because it just above his eye level.

When he finally found it and read it, he was perplexed. I knew I’d have to guide him toward Green Eggs and Ham, and I thought he could figure it out if we steered him that way deliberately.

We didn’t succeed.

And then K came home and the Boy explained everything to her.

“Oh, like Sam-I-Am.”

I’d considered texting her the details so she could respond just like that, but it was apparently not necessary.

Soon enough, the Boy was in possession of his third clue of the day:

Agent Rex, your mother doesn’t have an agent name. I can’t communicate with you until she has a name. When she does, send me a message in a manner I will explain at a later date. Until then, be brave, Agent Rex!

By now, though, the novelty of it was wearing off.

“This isn’t a treasure hunt,” he lamented. “It’s a clue hunt.”

True enough: Axel’s dad has set up all sorts of treasures along the way; I’m just winging it with clues I write in Evernote so I can keep track of everything I’ve said for the simple reason that I’m still not sure where we’re going.

“Maybe the Game Master will have us looking for stuff in Poland!” the Boy had said in anticipation of this summer’s trip.

“Maybe!” I replied, wondering if I could string him along for that long. The answer came today: not with clues alone, silly amateur, not with clues alone.

Still, it was great fun, not only because the Boy had fun (at first) but because the Girl enjoyed being in on the secret.

Pig Reef

Monday 10 December 2018

The day began as yesterday began: outside.

The Boy has for some months been obsessed with The Axel Show, and lately, they’ve been going on an extended treasure hunt, set up by the Game Master and continually disrupted by imposter Game Masters who steal clues and create chaos. E desperately wants to have his own treasure hunt adventure, so we set off today to have one. No one’s hidden any treasure anywhere, but as with many things in life, it’s the process — the journey, the adventure — that matters.

When we got back home, we did some cleaning, ran some errands, then played Scrabble with the Girl. We’ve played Scrabble Jr. together before, but as we were cleaning, L discovered real Scrabble and knew we had to play today.

The Boy began and with some help from L, played “pit.” A simple start that didn’t offer a lot of options for continued play, but I had u, r, t, and s, so I played “trust,” which eventually led to “tug,” “rug,” “roar” and “diver,” but the Boy’s next play was to add “ig” to his first word and create “pig.” A few plays later, he took four letters from his holder and suggested adding them to “pig.” The letters: f, r and two e’s.

“You know, like a ‘pig reef,'” he explained.

The Girl and I decided it was the best play of the whole game.

A quick search on the internet revealed, much to our surprise, that there really is such a thing as a pigreef.

Snow

Sunday 9 December 2018

A snowy Sunday morning really has to start with bacon, eggs, and a couple of cinnamon buns. The long-awaited snow arrived, beginning last night, and we were all excited to see white outside in the morning.

As is the case more often than not when we finally do get snow, there was not much of it to speak of. Wet and heavy, it sat on the yard with blades of grass sticking up almost everywhere.

The kids were eager to get out as soon as possible, especially E.

“Let’s make a snow fort!” he squealed.

“I don’t think it’s good snow for that,” K tried to explain. “It’s too wet. Wet, wet, wet,” she said, but E wasn’t convinced. What six-year-old living in South Carolina would be? Snow is snow is snow.

We had similar a year ago:

Slush

Heading out, we discovered the freezing mix that followed it had coated most everything with a layer of ice, leaving K to worry if her rosemary bush, which seems indestructible, might indeed finally die. But there were more important things, like a dog that was thrilled to be in the snow and two kids almost as excited.

We decided to head out and see what the neighborhood looked like. Part of that was to gauge how K might make it to work tomorrow and part of it was to estimate whether we’d be heading back to school on Wednesday or Thursday.

Monday and Tuesday, we knew, would be a wash. The temperature is supposed to drop Monday night, leaving everything an even slicker mess, and even if it didn’t, our county is huge, running up into the foothills up north. Even if it’s passable here, it’s not there.

Our exploring showed us that we weren’t the only ones out: there were a few tracks left behind by brave souls — tongue in cheek there — who went out in the snow (which was more slush than anything on the road and entirely drive-able), and we encountered a couple returning home with staples in hand — beer and chips.

The Boy, golf club in hand, enjoyed exploring all the places the slush looked like ice. He slapped and swung at every slushy puddle he saw.

The Girl was thrilled to have the dog in tow.

In the evening, K made the pierogi and uszka we’ll be having Christmas Eve. The Boy got to play with some dough, and I was given the boot since I don’t work well with perogi, K in formed me.