A Dog, A Squirrel, and Death

Dark thoughts ahead.  Be warned.  Here's a picture of Maddie with her blood up.

I've been thinking a little about death lately.  Morbid? no, not really.  Just tonguing my own mortality.  A bunch of little things have crept up around me and shifted my thoughts toward that undiscovered county.  On my other blog I illustrated a poem I wrote after a sixteen year old acquaintance was killed in a car accident. Re-exploring that territory reminded me of other kids around my age that didn't make it to college. There were two who accidentally shot themselves in the head (one with a gift they had received as a graduation present at his graduation party.)   A couple were killed doing stupid things in their cars.  One friend fell off a cliff while hiking in Dinosaur National Monument.  We all did really dumb stuff growing up.  Sometimes it's a wonder I'm here.

A teenage boy was killed a couple of days ago in L.A. dancing on his seat on top of a double-decker tour bus.  He didn't see the freeway sign.  That seems like a harsh punishment for cutting a little loose.  He was with a group of students seeing the sites.  The chaperons were downstairs.

Last Thursday Maddie cornered a squirrel in the backyard.  It has chewed its way into the container where I used to keep the bird seed.  Maddie pounced on the bin from the back steps and the squirrel ran.  First into the kitchen where it tried to hide behind the fridge.  Then back out the door and into the flowerbed near the back of the house with Maddie right on its heels.  Maddie caught it and shook it pretty good before I could get there.  I grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and she let it go.  The poor thing crawled limply into a corner by the house and panted miserably.  I took my ferocious puppy inside and crated her.  Her blood was up and she really really wanted to get back to that squirrel.  Robin was completely mortified by the whole experience, so it took me a little while to calm him down.  Maddie's hysterical whining and barking didn't help.

I checked on the squirrel a couple of times with the hope that maybe it would recover, but it was not to be. The poor thing stopped breathing and closed its eyes.  When Alice Louise got home, I packed it up and put it in the dumpster.  It was both stressful and sad.

I know it's odd to feel regret over the death of a squirrel.  We have several of the critters living round our house in the trees.  They get into the birdseed and into the walls.  They've trashed the insulation in the shed (why the previous owners put insulation into a shed that is open at the rafters is beyond me).  I guess my regret is really for the way that its life ended.  It didn't end up as coyote chow, or heroically leap in front of a car to save a baby squirrel.  Their was no great meaning in its end, just an angry dog getting in touch with her terrier roots.  But I suppose that's actually the way of the world.  Which is probably where the regret lays down its roots.  The question comes: Will my life and its end have meaning?

My dad died ten years ago this year.  It seems impossible that its been that long.  A lot of things have happened in that time that he didn't get to experience.  We were just entering the point in our lives where our relationship was transitioning from father and son to something more like friendship.  Sadly I'll never get to have my dad as a friend.  I've been lucky in my life to have a number of surrogate dads.  Michael Ramsaur, Ross Williams, Paul Strayer, Jim Severson and my Uncle Peter all contributed greatly to the person I became.  It does take a village.  And Robin will have a similar set of people to call on in my own friends (his Uncles) if I'm equally unlucky.

All of this of course colors my thoughts about my relationship with Robin.  I'm an older dad.  We didn't mean to wait so long to have kids, we just weren't in the right place in our lives yet.  But it means I'll be 55 when Robin graduates from high school.  My dad passed at 58.  I want to see more of his life than my dad saw of mine.  I want to make it to his wedding.  I guess I'll just have to make sure to duck those freeway signs.

Well, maybe that did get a little morose.  I promise to write something cheery next time.

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PrePup Agreement - Do Not Sign

Last Friday, while I waited for my sister to show up for breakfast, I read a piece on Slate.com that kinda got my blood up.  I've linked it here.  If it's TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read: I totally had to look that abbreviation up on the internet) basically a woman who might become a mom wants her husband to sign a prenup style document outlining all of his responsibilities once the baby arrives.  She wants him to sign it so that after the baby comes, she won't hate him for not living up to her expectations.  His response was pretty spot on.  He called it a prepup agreement, giving the idea exactly respects it deserves: none.

The unsaid assumption is that her husband will automatically be a lessor parent.  She bemoans the fact that he is less organized, more spontaneous.  She wants to set all the rules, yet she doesn't want to be the boss. She wants him to automatically know what to do without telling him, yet she wants it to be exactly as she wants it done.  Warning warning, run run away Will Robinson!  Do not sign.

If this is how she wants to approach motherhood, then she will absolutely hate her husband by the end of the first year.  Moms tend to judge their husbands contributions to the workload against their own contribution. Men, no matter how much work they take on, will never ever be able to match this bar.  Firstly, moms , especially in the first year, will automatically do more for their child.  The husband can't breast feed. Secondly, the mom will always over estimate their own contribution.  This is human nature.  It's why everyone in Lake Wobegon is above average.  Even a 50/50 split of labor will not be so in her mind.  I'd imagine that constantly checking the husband's contribution against the document would make her pretty miserable.  Thirdly, moms are competitive.  If she for a second thought that she was doing less for her children than someone else, she would feel terrible and immediately step up her game.  For the husband, this is a lose/lose situation.  Do not sign.

But the biggest thorn in this article for me is the assumption that husbands will be lessor contributors to their children's upbringing and need some sort of  document to help them step up.  She seems stuck in a 1960/70's idea of marriage and child rearing.  Mom will raise the kids and dad will earn the money.  But that is quickly changing.  Almost every couple I know takes on the effort of child rearing with equal intensity. And it's important to remember that dads and moms contribute different things to the cause.  Most of it is intangible.  For this couple I hope that his spontaneity will provide a wonderful model for dealing with the curve balls of life.  Her focus on organization will be a great boon in teaching time management skills.  His rough play will balance out her over-protective tendencies.   I hope they allow this theoretical kid to eat dirt and run around barefoot, but also instill  the value of personal hygiene.

Dads have gotten a bad rap for a while now.  Just take a moment and think back over how dads have been portrayed in TV and movies for the last couple of decades.  Mostly they are idiots, and usually deserve and get little respect.  (Easy A is a great counter-example to this tread where most of the adults are intelligent caring human beings)  It makes for good television.  But that stereotype seeps into the way that wider culture views dads.  The piece plays into that some and it makes me wary.

I've found that since becoming a parent that when I read an opinion piece by someone who is not yet a parent, I tend to write it off.  It's the equivalent for patting a precocious child who just jumped into an adult conversation on the head.  That's cute dear, but the adults are talking.  Before I was a parent, I did my best not to have opinions about parenting for this same reason. (Or at least I didn't voice them)  What did I know?  How could I judge other's parenting skills?  One of the best parts of being a parent is that now the flood gates of judgmental-ism are wide open.  My brother-in-law likes to point at people and shout "I'm judging you!".  It's all in good fun.

The last thing this article forgets is that a baby/toddler/child/teen/etc is a new person.  S/he will have their very own theory of self and will totally shatter the perfect thought-bound system the theoretical child now inhabits. If they do decide to have children, I wish them all the best in the world, because their lives will be enriched.  But no matter what you do, do not sign that piece of paper.

Last Tuesday - Planes, Strays, and Arachnophobia

I have a soft heart when it comes to stray dogs and spiders.  When a spider infiltrates the house I usually try my best to capture it move it outside. I have a lot of respect for spiders.  They do creep me out on a visceral level, like everyone else, but they do us a great service by capturing and eating flies and mosquitoes. So I try to give spiders a run at freedom.  Even in the dead of winter, when moving them outside is probably akin to death sentence in Siberia.  I've found that the best way to capture them is with a short water glass and a cardboard mailer from Pam, the real estate broker who helped us buy our house.  Then its a quick jaunt to the trees near the compost bin.  Flies like the compost bins, go figure.  Spider paradise?

I also try my best to help stray dogs, which brings us to last Tuesday.

Last Tuesday was incredibly hot.  It topped out at about 98 degrees.  We live in a old Victorian with no A/C, so we make do with a couple of portable condensation coolers which allows us to keep at least a couple of rooms of the house cool.  They work well most of the time because Denver is generally pretty dry. One is aimed into Robin's room upstairs, and the other one migrates between the living room and the bedroom.  Okay, that last bit wasn't important to the story, but just know it was hot, and because of the amount of rain we've been getting, too humid for the coolers to really do any good.

My sister, brother-in-law, and nephew were flying back from Michigan and due to pick up the dogs around 3:30pm.  Around 11:00am I got a text from my sister that their flight was delayed and that they would probably be getting over here around 4:30.  So I decided that I would make them dinner so that they didn't have to worry finding food after traveling with two year old all day.  Looking through my fridge I had the stuff to make chicken burgers and a pasta salad, but I needed buns and some ketchup.  So when Robin was up from is morning nap, I fed him a snack and scooped him up to head to the store.  This is when the plan got completely derailed.

Just outside was cute little 8 pound stray mutt.  She immediately ran up to me and started jumping up excitedly on my leg.  She had a collar and rabies tags, but no identification tags.  As she ran in happy little circles that sometimes included the street I decided I had to keep the little thing from a horrible accident involving tires.

My first thought was that she had escaped from the dog park just around the corner.  So I grabbed one of Maddie's leashes and with a toddler on one hip walked over to see if anyone was missing a pooch.  There wasn't anybody over there, which made sense since it was noon on one of the hotter days of the summer so far.  So we walked back to the house while I contemplated my next step.

Baby gates are great not just for keeping kiddos contained, but for keeping dogs separated.  The gate between the kitchen and the dining room was especially helpful because Maddie hated this adorable little dog right from the start.  "Don't you dare usurp my lap space or my food" she's bellow.  How could anybody hate this little girl:

But Maddie sure did.  They other two dogs followed her lead somewhat.  And everyone sure wanted into the kitchen to see the new pup.

I ended up putting Maddie in the crate in the bedroom to calm her down, because she wanted to eat the little girl.  She keep charging the gate and barking, which started everyone else barking.  The usually tolerant Robin was kinda scared by the whole thing and got pretty upset.

After getting all the animals separated I called denver 311.  After a wait of around 5 minutes, I spoke with a dispatcher who took the little girl's tag numbers and told me that they'd get back to me with the owners info shortly.

I posted a picture of the pup on the neighborhood facebook page and waited.  Robin and the little pooch got on quite nicely.

I then got a text that Paige's flight had to make an medical emergency landing in Chicago and would be at our house even later.

I was drenched in sweat from wrangling four dogs and a kiddo who was rapidly approaching nap number two, so I did what anyone would do in my situation and went into the kitchen to bake buns for dinner.  Robin settled into his second nap and we waited.  and waited. and waited.  After about 2 hours I called 311 back to make sure they had the correct contact info for me.  (they did).

I continued to wait.  I prepped the chicken burgers and then set about reading.

Around 5pm I decided to call 311 back and ask them to send an officer over to pick up the little pooch.  I didn't really see a workable way to keep the little girl around over night.  I guess escalating the request to a pick up got attention, because I got a call from animal control within about 5 minutes of getting off the phone with 311 with the owner's phone number.  A couple of calls and texts later, the little girl's (Grizz) owner showed up and took her home.  Hooray.

When my sister's plane landed I got another text.  Something had bitten Jack's face in Michigan and now he had swollen up like Quasimodo.

Some benedryl and a couple of chicken burgers later, everyone was happy, if exhausted.  All in all it was a good day.  But darn was it hot.

The next day around 3:30pm the animal shelter called me with Grizz's tag info.  I guess better late than never.

Last Saturday

Last Saturday:

It is a fine tradition (Do it once and it's novel.  Do it twice and it's tradition.) to take pictures of the boys and photoshop them doing extraordinary things.  Nobody falls for it, but its fun.  Plus I get to practice my photoshopping skills.

Robin Chin - up:

 Jack's one-handed pull-up.

Clearly I've improved in my skill level since I doctored the photo of Jack.  If you look closely you can see the pixels, and my sister's shadow and shoe.  I also did a terrible job on his shirt.  Hopper is also missing an ear.

The shot of Robin was easier because I had a cleaner background image.  Plus I've learned a few tricks about manipulating masks that made it easier.  The biggest challenge was adding a shirt to him to cover up Alice Louise's hands.  It doesn't look too bad, but you can still see the pixels.  

Jack Goes Camping:

Most of the time the ideas to shop things come from my Brother-in-Law.  Usually its to punk his mom who worries about Jack in the wilderness.  If you're wondering there was a huge fight but Jack emerged king of the jungle deep woods.

Why do I bring these photos up?  No real reason except that maybe these photos represent our hopes and fears for our kids.  It might be a leap, but perhaps we want our one year old to be able to do a chin up on their own to prove to the world how special we already know them to be.  Actually, the photos are just for fun.  Everyone knows a 13 month old can't do a chin-up. 

But it brings up another more serious point which is that these kids are going to be more photographed than we every were.  Sure our parents took photos of us, usually on special occasions.  Casual photography used to be a lot more difficult.  You had to actually put film into the camera, and them you were limited to 24 - 36 pictures on the roll.  Then you had to get the film out without accidentally exposing it.  Then it was off to the developers, where you had to hope you didn't mess anything up.  It was a lot of little inconveniences that added up to less documentation of our youths.  But these kids will have a pretty clear record.  That's pretty exciting.

But it also means that mistakes made could hang around a lot longer.  Photos are no longer just a print on a piece of photo paper, but are now easy to distribute digitally to the whole world with the click a button.  And once released it's almost impossible to completely delete its presence.  This is something I worry about.  As our parents grew up in a world without computers, we grew up in a world without social media.  So we don't have experience to fall back on to inform our decision.

I was bullied a lot in Middle School and some High School.  But the bullying ended at the school door, and so was a school only problem.  I grew a thicker skin eventually, probably because I had that breathing room to mentally refute the mean things said to me at school.  I'm pretty sure that if I met those folks now, they would be nice and considerate adults.  Middle school kids are just mean.  But in this generation bullying can follow you everywhere, spreading online.  And kids these days are nothing but online.  

And so I wonder how to deal with it.  I'm sure I'll be the parent I need to be when the time comes.

Well, I wandered pretty far afield from the start of this post.  But it's another post in the month of July.  Two posts makes it a tradition.  Maybe I'll even try for three.

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Art of the Binge

Don't you hate it when someone starts to tell you a good story and it goes somewhere you don't sanitizer? That was my favorite internet quote of the week mined from some random online comic site.  I warn you that this post might be somewhat like that quote, which isn't to say that all my posts are a little like it.

Writing posts consistently is proving to be a little challenging.  I'd love to blame this on Robin, but I've had issues doing things consistently since well before he was born.  I think it really is more a symptom of of my general work history which has been mostly project based, which means I've trained myself very well in the art of the binge.

I'm good at binge.  I  binge read books, devouring four in a row.  Then I'll have not desire to touch a book for days or weeks.  I'll binge (yes I know) anime.  I'll watch 24 episode all at once.  Once done, I'm bored with that for a while.  I'm really good at throwing a lot energy into something for a short period of time, but then I get burned out.  This made me a great fit for free-lance theater.  Every show needs a big burst of energy for a week, then I get to move on to the next project.  It's also why shows with 2 weeks of tech drive me crazy.  I could never be a stage manager and live with a show for months unless I found a way to break the project a smaller projects I could binge.

And so, blogging reliable is proving to be a challenge.  I tend to binge out a post then I'm sated for a while. Yes, blogging is all about me, not you...Sorry.

I think another challenge to my blogging career is that I want to have something meaningful to say.  And lets be honest, when you spend your days reading "All the Hippos Go Berserk!" to a 13 month old, it is somewaht difficult to have deep thoughts.  Although that book really is a great example/explanation of factorials (n)!, but Robin doesn't grasp the concept yet.  He likes to carry around my crocs sandals and hit things with them.  I suppose I could write about the everyday joys of raising a fun and busy child, but I let my poet membership card lapse.  I often search for a grand statement to make before I post, some insightful observation, but most days it's that "Apple Sauce is good." Which in fact I will probably be writing righteously about soon.

Speaking of righteousness.  That would be another reason for resisting the blog post.  The current political environment gets me so worked up that I usually refrain from writing, because I do want to find a job again someday.  So I should probably keep the google search quotes down to a minimum.  I mean Hobby Lobby gets to practice religion?  What happens during the Rapture?  Do all the Hobby Lobby's ascend too?  What about the non-Christians shopping for yarn at the time, do they get a free trip to the pearly gates?  What will the sudden appearance of thousands of Hobby Lobby's in heaven do to the property values of those Saint's mansions. (See, I should keep those type of things to myself, or at least on Facebook.)

Therefore today I decided that I needed to just have a chat with my imaginary audience.  No grand point.  No deep insightful inspiration.  So instead I'll tell you a story.  It's about a boy named Robin who has wandered into the kitchen is now hanging on the dishwasher door.  I should Sanitizer.

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Hell is Other Parents

Before Robin was born, my greatest fear wasn't that he'd be born with 11 toes, or that I would be bad father, but that I would have to hang out with other parents.  Again, most of my experience with this idea was informed by movie and TV stereotypes about how catty and competitive parents can be about their children: "My kid's the 80th percentile for height!"  "Yeah, well my kid's the 90th percentile for weight!"  Alice Louise and I were mostly spared from this sort of competition for two reasons.  One, we have no other friends with kids in Denver that aren't related to us, and two, Robin is pretty small for his age.  His weight has been pretty consistently at the 13th percentile, which means that 87% of babies at his age weigh more than him.

This isn't actually worrying.  The nice thing about this stat is that it makes you realize that every kid is different and is the perfect percentile for themselves.  I feel that this is the start of an important epiphany for my own understanding of my life as a parent.  Developmentally Robin is trucking right along.  He started walking on June 19th and has decided that crawling is for suckers.  He tried running a couple of times to disastrous and hilarious results.  We think the squeal followed by the mmm and dddeee sounds when he sees the dog might actually be an attempt to say Maddie.  He'll wave at you when you leave, and he claps when he thinks he's done something of importance.  He does make sure to look at you when he does it, so that you too know that he has done something important.  It's a pretty joyful time.

But I do worry a little about his lack of contact with other kiddos.  He and his cousin Jack see each other all the time and get along great.  Jack is a real sweet-heart, but that 18 month gap at the moment is a little too much for much meaningful play.  We've also started dropping Robin off for a day with a wonderful woman named Helena every other week for some training in daycare.  But it isn't really enough socialization and so that means its time to strike out and find other parents.  It means facing my greatest fear, meeting other people and discussing our kids.

There is a pretty active dad's group in town and I've been getting meet up requests for a year.  So I need to break my own insular inertia and get out there.  I'm sure it will be better than I'm imagining.

A couple of weeks ago Al's sister's family came to visit to celebrate Robin's birthday.  Beyond the glimpse into my future of spending two weeks with a 4 year old and a 21 month old, it was a really nice time.  We used almost every membership card in my wallet.  One trip to the Zoo was particularly interesting.  I screwed up the time and we missed the sea lion show because of the change with the summer hours, but there was a nice sandbox play area near the sea lion enclosure.  Lexi and Jasper had a grand time digging and painting the rocks with water (somehow that was cool).  Robin was far too young to play in the box (handfuls of sand in the mouth didn't appeal) so we sat on the edge in the shade and watched Sally chase Lexi and Jasper about.  Sitting near me were three stay at home moms on a meetup.

A casting agent couldn't have done a better job filling the roles.  Of course I eavesdropped.  And it was pretty much the mix of complaining and self-congratulatory dialogue I would have expected on a TV show. Every kid was exceptional and head of all the other kids at such and such.  They were the best moms ever because of this and that.  All their husbands were lazy losers*.  It was pretty fun listening as each tried to out do the last with a story of spousal misdeed. (Which really came down to him letting Ralphie use the i-pad on a school night!)  The more I listened the more I realized that these women weren't that different than me (except I have a good spouse).  Their were covering up for their insecurities as parents by boasting about how good they were at it.  And a boast only really has any power if it has an audience.  The women weren't friends outside of the meetup, so it was a perfectly safe place to bolster their parental bona-fides.  And as they packed up their kiddos and went off to have a picnic I thought to myself: "There go three mom's doing the best that they can."  Then as I surveyed the pack of children they lead away, I thought "Robin is cuter than that whole lot."

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The Epic of GilgaNap

Well. It's been a month since my last post. Between everyone getting sick, cutting teeth, and sleep training, there hasn't been a lot of time for thinking or writing. (Also, Robin is now speed crawler.)

A couple of weeks ago was Alice Louise's company's holiday party. The party was a full month after the holidays, and on a Thursday because the people that work with Alice Louise are very important and busy, so getting a majority of them together took two months and could only land on a Thursday. As a consequence of such a late holiday party, they decided to celebrate the closest holiday to the actual date, which turned out to be Cowboy Poetry Week. So all of the groups attending were asked to bring and recite a poem with a cowboy theme. Here was my entry: (Sorry if it's TL;DR)

The Long Ride of NoNap the Kid.

There once was a young cowboy named NoNap the kid.
He dressed in snap button shirts and cowhide chaps, and leather boots.
His pa gave him a bolo and belt with a big buckle.
His ma gave him a Stetson so the outfit was complete.

NoNap’s name was true, as he resisted every naptime.
His ma would put him down for siesta in his small wooden corral,
He would only fake close his eyes, counting the heartbeats,
And waiting for the echo of her footsteps to fade down the hall.

Then NoNap would grab his favorite roping lasso,
And would toss the end out of the window so high,
To where his mount, Yap was ever waiting to catch it
To hoist him up and out of his sleeping chamber to ride.

The Imperious Yap stood 15 inches to her shoulder
A black and white mutt with mighty shoulders and back.
She wore a saddle fashioned from duct tape, brown and tan crayons.
NoNap the Kid would ride her on every afternoon range.

NoNap and Yap would travel miles on the prairie,
Checking fences and minding the gathered herds of cattle and sheep.
They knew where to find that sheep that was straying.
And when they found her one yap would get her back on her way.

Sometimes they’d ride to where the prairie met the ocean,
And ride out across and on over the waves of the sea.
They’d nod at the long swimming whales and the dolphins,
And wondered where in the ocean all the sea cows could be.

On far shore they’d explore the dusty trails of elephants and warthogs,
Sometimes seeing giraffes, necks tall and tongues black.
They’d ride cross rivers teeming with crocodiles,
And marvel at the shapes of the baobab trees.

Yap liked to race with the antelope and cheetah
Who would bow to the pup with respect at her speed.
The gorillas would wave as the two rode through the jungle
The hippos they avoided, as they could be mean.

Then the day would grow late, and it was time to head westward
To where NoNap knew Ma would be setting chow down to eat,
Yap would gallop many miles in a minute,
And restore little NoNap to his place of no sleep.

And he’d open his eyes and see ma peering down,
And she’d ask, “How was the prairies and savannas of yer dreamin'?”
And NoNap would say proudly, "Didn’t nap, and I'm not even tired."
So Ma would pick him up with great big bear hug, while Pa flashed her a knowing quick wink.

That's all for today.  Hope you all are having a healthier February than us.