the girl | matching tracksuits

the girl

Turtle

Saturday 08 August 2020 | 0 Comments

"Padre! Padre! Come here!" The Girl had discovered a new dilemma -- I could hear it in her voice. (She's taken to calling K and me "Madre" and "Padre" of late -- I think it's kind of cute.)

"What?"

"There's a snapping turtle in our backyard, trapped by the fence, and Clover is going crazy with it."

I put on some heavy gloves and went out for a turtle rescue, only to discover

that L doesn't know what a snapping turtle looks like compared to a regular box turtle.

"Does that mean we can take it up and show everyone?"

"Of course."

More Hearts

Monday 03 August 2020 | 0 Comments

Papa won, hence the "heart attack."

K and I played a three-handed game of hearts with the Girl tonight. We wanted to watch a movie, but L was not in the mood. "She'll play a card game," I thought, and bounded up to her room to suggest it.

I like throwing down the queen of spades on unsuspecting players, and I usually keep her in my hand. L did poorly on the first hand, and so for the second hand, I wanted to make sure she didn't get the queen. I almost ended up with it myself as a result.

But I did manage to do something that has crossed my mind a few times, but I never did: announce to everyone I had the queen. I began the hand with 7 spades; K gave me the ace, king, and queen of spades. But I had not a single diamond. At one point, I even lead with spades to get the hand to someone else, waiting for the first person to lead with diamonds. It was K. I laid it on her.

In the end, I gave her the queen probably four or five times. When we finished, she said, "Well, pack up your stuff to sleep on the couch."

L thought it was uproariously amusing. And I think that was what it was all about. Next time, I'll have to fall on the sword a number of times -- it should amuse L even more, and K, too.

Saturday

Saturday 01 August 2020 | 0 Comments

The day began with a challenge: the Swamp Rabbit Trail. Our goal was to ride the whole distance (well, the main part of the trail) and back again -- a total of 22 miles. For K and me, it was probably not that big a deal -- we've ridden further, and faster. For the Girl, it was no big deal: she's been cycling a lot lately, plus she's just young and strong. But for the Boy? His longest ride to date was 16 miles, just over a year ago.

Other than being younger and not as strong, he has another disadvantage: a smaller bike that cannot possibly go nearly as fast. Yet he soldiered through.

In the afternoon, he and I finished our summer project. French drain completed and completely hidden.

Tuesday Around the House

Tuesday 21 July 2020 | 0 Comments

We’ve had problems for years with water standing here and there on our property, but our massive flooding in February convinced me that it’s time to take the next step and start implementing a system to pull the water away from the house. The larger challenge: dealing with the front yard. This will involve massive amounts of digging, the installation of a fairly stout French drain system, and it will all begin with the removal of the shrubs in front of the two-story portion of our house. In other words, it will cost a lot in time and money, and we don’t have a lot of either now.

The manageable concern is the backyard. The water tends to gather in certain places due to poor drainage, which I’m fairly certain I’ve exacerbated over the years. Still, it’s not a major issue. Or so I thought. But when the lower part of the deck stairs began wobbling back and forth, I realized there was a problem. The wood of that part of the staircase has rotted completely, leaving nothing in contact with the ground. I fixed that last week. Now it’s time to deal with the water problem because it’s also beginning to rot the exposed portion of the support posts.

The Boy and I took care of that today.

Well, we began taking care of it. We still have a lot of work to do, but at the very least, we have uncovered the posts to the concrete (why would you then shovel four inches of dirt on top of the concrete? don’t you know that just hastens rot?) and removed the outer eighth-inch of rotted wood.

While we worked on all of this, K did some repainting: she’s got a few doors done and some trim. It makes the rooms look new.

L did her share of work but stayed out of camera view. Until the evening, when she was watching an episode of one of her shows.

The Boy, by then, was sound asleep.

Sunday Orthography, Bugs, and Monopoly

Sunday 19 July 2020 | 0 Comments

The Trick

Saturday 18 July 2020 | 0 Comments

The Girl comes running in where I am working and asks, “Hey Dad, what does ‘t-w-a’ spell?”

“It stand for ‘Trans World Airlines,'” I reply.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

She shakes off mild frustration and fascination and continues, “But if it were a word, what would it spell? How would you say it?”

“Twa.”

“What does ‘t-w-e’ spell?”

“Nothing.”

“What would it spell?”

“Twe.”

“Say it three times.”

“No.”

“Come on.”

“Twe. Twe. Twe.”

“And ‘t-w-a’?”

“Twa.”

“And ‘t-w-e’?”

“Twe.”

“And ‘t-w-o’?”

I don’t fall for it. She gets frustrated.

Tuesday Adventures

Tuesday 14 July 2020 | 0 Comments

We all woke up at seven this morning. For K, that was sleeping in half an hour; for me, that was my normal wake up time; for E, well, it depends; for L, it was definitely early. Our plan: a morning bike ride on a route that we repeat regularly to check for improvement. After mapping out a route, we headed out. I stuck with the Girl because I knew she would be zooming ahead; K stuck with the Boy because he just doesn't have the stamina a thirteen-year-old possesses. L and I made the 7 km ride in 24 minutes, which means an average speed of 16 km/h. Not too bad for a then-fussy girl who didn't even want to get out of bed to begin with.

After breakfast, the Boy and I set up his wooden train set to take some pictures: he wants to sell it (eBay? Facebook Marketplace? Craig's List?) since he doesn't play with it anymore.

Then we did the same with his Duplo blocks. "I haven't touched those in years!" he proudly informed me. But after we just display them, we have to make something out of them.

One last time.

The afternoon passes with a lot of reading.

The Girl reads Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in its entirety for the second time. It's the HP book I've agreed to read, so she wanted to get through it quickly so I could read it. I struggled through the end of Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot -- a book I had high hopes for but which ultimately left me disappointed.

In the evening, the Girl played a game of chess with K while E and I went on another bike ride:

And throughout the day, I popped downstairs for the next lesson in the series on Photoshop compositing and ended this evening with this creation:

Next step -- apply those newly-learned skills to pictures of my own kids...

Stay-cation

Monday 13 July 2020 | 0 Comments

We were supposed to be leaving tomorrow for a small vacation with the family. It seems like a crazy idea to go out during a pandemic, but we were just going to the beach — easy enough to stay away from everyone, and since we were Airbnb-ing it, we wouldn’t even have to go inside restaurants or stores.

Then we realized K and I have chickenpox. How is it possible to have chickenpox during a pandemic that is forcing us to isolate ourselves? Well, we go to the store; K occasionally works with real estate clients; we have been going for hikes. During all of this, we take the appropriate CDC-recommended precautions.

Morning reading session

What’s more frustrating about it is that I’ve had them before. When my best friend came down with chickenpox our senior year, I was one of the friends who would drop by every day and tell him what he’d missed in school. I brought over R.E.M.’s newest release at the time (Out of Time). and we listened to it together.

Perhaps it was for the best, though — perhaps we were being idiots even for thinking about it. At any rate, the Airbnb host agreed to let us change the date and agreed to be very flexible about that new date, so we’ve theoretically lost nothing. Perhaps we gained more than we thought, though.

Composite play

Morning Hike

Thursday 09 July 2020 | 0 Comments

We’ve been doing more hiking lately. Three hikes in three weeks. Last week’s hike was a grueling seven-mile hike that included a fair amount of climbing. Today’s hike, in theory, seemed like it would be easier: 5.5 miles with only 1,000 feet of elevation gain.

In actuality, it was easier than even we anticipated. Much of the beginning of the hike was downhill, and then a substantial, flat portion around a lake.