Working with the Dog
the girl
Family Sports
"Can we play some family sports tonight?" the Boy asked during dinner. He's always interested in doing something as a family: a family bike ride, a family film, a game of family soccer. But our busy lives (busy even in this time of pandemic) being what they are, it's rare that we get to play together. Tonight, for example, K had to write an offer on a house for one of her clients, and that takes a fair amount of time. So I went out with the kids and the dog and played some soccer and volleyball with them.
Tonight, the Boy learned a lesson during the game. He'd been bragging to L, insisting that he was a much better soccer player than she. Had the Boy developed fully the critical thinking skills a thirteen-year-old has, he would have looked at relative size, relative experience, and relative speed and thought, "It's unlikely I'm much better than she."
Then again, I've had plenty of thirteen-year-olds challenge me to chess, swear their going to beat me badly, and then ask as soon as the board is set up, "So, how do you play?" that a thirteen-year-old's critical thinking skills can be less than ideal.
So they played. E lost. E fussed. I encouraged. And in the end, instead of giving up, he kept trying, kept attacking, and made some really good plays in the end.
Raven Cliff Falls
Today was the last Sunday before the school year starts, so we made the most of it with a hike that was supposed to be 5 miles total but ended up being 8. A lot packed into that sentence.
Starting school. What does that even mean this year? For weeks we've been wondering about what the year will look like. When our average daily new C-19 statewide case number was 100-200, we ended the school year in March and spent the rest of the year online babysitting for the most part. Now our daily numbers are 1,000+, and they have been for weeks. And we're talking about going back to school? It seems like madness. But we've got a Republican governor and a staunch Trump supporter to boot, so science be damned -- let's send those kids back to school. (Our governor pointed out that there's little risk in school-age children dying from this. When asked about the risks to teachers and their families, our fine governor said, "Well, they signed up for the job" -- as if he were talking about police officers or infantry soldiers.)
As for the 8-mile-should-have-been-5-mile hike -- what can we say? We used AllTrails.com to calculate the distance and didn't realize it was only calculating the portion of the hike that was on the red trail, neglecting the portion of the blue and pink trails we had to go on to reach Raven Cliff Falls. One would think that "Raven Cliff Falls Trail" leads to -- guess -- RCF. But it only gets you so far -- the rest is whatever the blue and pink portions were called.
But all the kids made it -- with minimal complaining. Well, "minimal" is often so very relative...
Turtle
"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
Papa won, hence the "heart attack."
Hearts
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
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
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
The Trick
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.