Category: lil’ chino

the coming spawn

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this pear is, beep!, $100


Hi late-night Wednesday people, or early-morning Thursday people if you’re technical. Oh, and hello Thursday morning people, you count too. I’m sitting here alone listening to music and writing. It’s what I do. Look out, here comes the blog…

Tonight I had a funny series of thoughts that I thought might be interesting to document as a way of exposing just how anal I can be at times.

Setting the scene: Sharaun’s off at a hair appointment and I’m down on the floor playing with Keaton. Currently, we’re playing a new game I’ve just invented: Grocery Store. I’m taking the little plastic fruits and vegetables out of her toy shopping basket one-by-one and waving them over a pretend scanner in the coffee table, of course making a “beep” of recognition each time an item is successfully scanned. As I ring up her items, I hand them to her in turn and she puts them in a bag. Suddenly, I get a brilliant idea: This game would be so much more fun if she had some pretend money to spend on each item. My brain races, the process outlined below summing up the progression:

Oh, I should get her a little wallet to hold the fake money in.
…
No, wait, girls have purses. Not wallets.
…
Oh, she totally has toy purses, several of them, in fact. I’ll go find one.

I tell Keaton to “hang on” as I set out in search of one of her play purses. Unfortunately, my efforts turn up nothing (despite the fact that I seem to be constantly tripping over things like toy purses on my lights-out nighttime walks to the bathroom). I instead find some small paper bag with string handles. What this bag could actually be for, I have no idea – it seems to be void of any function save serving as an utterly useless miniature replica of a larger and, antithetically, quite useful bag. I decide it might be good for holding money, and grab it in a hurry to get back to the living room before my daughter has lost all interest in our game of Grocery Store. On the way back, my mind drifts again:

Now I need some play money.
…
I could do quick green marker drawings on some printer paper and cut it up.
…
No, that’ll take too long… she’ll get bored before I’m done and my efforts will be wasted.
…
Monopoly. We have Monopoly. Monopoly has fake money in it.
…
I remember my brother and I used to play with that fake money all the time.

I make a hard right as my left leg clears the baby-gate blocking access to the hallway, heading for the coat closet near the door (which, interestingly, contains nary a coat… and is instead stuffed full with a vacuum cleaner, steam cleaner, and a shelf piled with our board game collection – a coat closet usage model borrowed wholly from the model my parents followed when I was growing up). All the while I’m thinking:

Do I really want to borrow money from the Monopoly game? I know that it’s probably just going to be abused and eventually lost. Then the Monopoly game will be missing money when we want to play it next.
…
C’mon, when is the last time we actually played Monopoly? In fact, have we ever played it?
…
But, the game will be missing money!

Against all my OCD urges, I grab the Monopoly box and open it up and… Horror of horrors! This is a brand new Monopoly set! My mind processes swiftly:

For crap’s sake, this money is still all wrapped up in cellophane! Each denomination containing the proper “virgin” amount of bills, each bill crisp and new and untouched!
…
I mean, if the thing was already well played-with and the corners of the twenties were bent and curled already… maybe I wouldn’t care so much, but I’m about to knowingly deprive future Monopoly games of hard cash. What will that future banker do?
…
What if that future banker is me? How will I live with the guilt? What if someone needs twenties? Will I have to do that novice crap-banker move where I buy them off other players for hundreds?!
…
But, Keaton… awww who the heck cares?

In the end, the above proceedings took all of a minute and I ended up having one of the most interactive playtimes I’ve had with Keaton in a long time. I sold fruit, she bough fruit; I sold vegetables, she bought vegetables. I beep-scanned them all, gave her change and even offered her friendly “good evenings” and “have a nice days,” as any cashier worth their salt would. Even though she did grossly overpay for an orange once, $500 is pretty dear for a fruit you know. I was honest though, and threw in a one-third scale plastic banana and a pressure-molded broccoli floret on the house.

Evaluating the impact to the integrity of a board game over the immediate joy of playing with my daughter… Those are the thought processes I’m up against, y’all… Lord in Heaven help me out once in a while.

Goodnight.

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party’s over


Greetings from a sore-muscled Sunday evening… late evening, at that.

I attribute the sore muscles to the rather minuscule amount of manual labor I did over the weekend while working to repair the fence we lost in the storms over a month ago. Saturday, after my Spring-inaugural lawn mowing (first of the season), I tore down the four sections of fence hanging on busted posts. Erik and Pat stopped by for some assistance yanking those huge cement teeth out of the dirt, with some help from the Ford and a nylon tow-rope. Sunday I cleaned up the post-holes and set the new 4x4s (pressure treated this time, not like the cheap-out stuff the builders used) in cement, Sharaun helped hold the posts level while I cemented. And, while we still don’t have a fence at the moment, we’re on our way… sore muscles and all. Seems like I need to get a little bit more done with these muscles, their protests at such a tiny amount of work are fairly embarrassing.

Other than that, we had to cancel Keaton’s birthday party at the kiddie-gym place on Saturday because she’s sick. When I got home from work Friday (a little early, around 4:30pm) she was still down for her nap. The noise of the garage door and me coming in must’ve woke her, and she was babbling by the time I walked by her door. When I went in to get her she was just burning up, the thermometer showed 104°. We stripped her down and put her in a cool bath to try and make her a little more comfortable, and started the regimen of Tylenol she’s still on today. She kept the fever through the weekend, although never as high as that afternoon, and has a nasty cough, a horribly runny nose, and nice gooey eyes. Sharaun, having become quite good at armchair diagnoses, predicts the doctor will call it a double ear infection when she takes her in tomorrow. Poor little thing. Kids get sick a lot, it seems.

Getting right back on the horse-ishly though, Sharaun’s planning a do-over on the party for next Sunday, hopefully she can pull that off. And, we ended up having an OK evening anyway when some friends stopped by with their brood and I got to give the grill its first post-Winter workout (salmon and asparagus). So, despite the canceled party we ended up having an OK day, and since Keaton never really acts sick, even when she is, she appeared to have an OK time too.

Alas, I know, I’ve returned to the standard play-by-play, unable, for now, to get back to the weird-style phase of writing I went through last week. Maybe it was something about Sharaun and Keaton being gone… mind wandering and all… I’ll see what I can do, but only after tonight… because… for now…

I’m done. Goodnight friends and lovers, I love and friend you all.

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laundry coup aside


Tuesday night and my wife and daughter are still not home.

Sharaun came down with the dreaded influenza on what was to be her last day in Florida, and she was knocked onto the couch as her parents traded days off work to help take care of baby Keaton. Luckily, her flight was a free voucher-based one, allowing her to essentially infinitely push it back until she’s feeling up to the long solo flight with the baby on her lap. Well, I say infinitely, but in actuality she’ll have to make it home shortly before midnight tomorrow night, when Keaton officially turns two and goes from a free lap-child to a paying passenger.

That’s the other bit of sadness on my part for wife and child not being here as planned: I’ll be missing most of her actual birthday. Not a big deal, but still stinks that I can’t wake up and tell her “happy birthday!” (Guess I could do that Thursday, she’d really never know.)

My head is sleepy-thick right now, I had a tiring day at work and wanted nothing more than to take a quick hour-ish nap before the Democratic debate started. Unfortunately it didn’t work out, and I at best got a few closed-eyed moments while a familiar episode of Andy Griffith played quietly in the background. The only other noise was the whirring of the washing machine, an appliance I had to reacquaint myself with this afternoon, lest I be forced to realize the nightmare of going into work not wearing pants. Honestly, and somewhat shamefully, it’s been a good amount of time since I’ve actually done laundry. Not that it’s all that hard, or difficult to recall in terms of methodology, but it’s just something I’m rusty at – and realizing that made me remember how it used to be living alone. I decided I’m much happier now as a married man.

Not solely for the laundry or anything, but, y’know… whatever…

Although I must admit, as a guy who hardly ever does laundry, I still seem to do it a lot more efficiently than our family’s primary laundry-doer. Heck I did the whole overflowing bin’s worth tonight, and managed to fold and put it away. Maybe I should take over the role? Execute a laundry coup, perhaps, a hostile takeover of that noisy little room. I don’t mind the task at all.

Anyway, folding Keaton’s little socks and shirts and jeans makes me miss her so much. And, laundry coup aside, I these little socks sure do wont for some little feet to fill them up and run around the house with them on… don’t they? She calls it “La-la-lee-la.” Boo!

Oh, and before I go, something interesting: Sharaun says Keaton’s recent st-st-st-stuttering stint has all but disappeared since they’ve been in Florida.

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ch-ch-ch-ch-changes


Hi Tuesday. Back to work today, fresh of my latest trip on ship-sick. Felt OK, the busyness of the day working to keep my mind from dwelling on how I felt, letting me instead be washed away in the stress and decisions of my daily eight-hour farce. I suppose that means I have to go back tomorrow, so I will. Today, I went a little mad near the end there (sorry about breaking the no-cussing streak, blame Art). Let’s do this.

♫ Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes… ♫
♫ Oh, look out you rock ‘n rollers… ♫

Just within the past few days, Keaton has begun stuttering. At first, I thought this was utterly cute. She’s always done some amount of stammering or word-repetition at the beginning of her phrases, and I’d always chalked that up to her knowing she wanted to form a long string of words, but needing some extra time to process what she wanted to say and buying it through repetition. This recent stuff though, this is different. All of the sudden at my folks’ place in Oregon last week, she started getting really hung up on her ‘W’ lead-words. “Where’d the doggy go daddy?” turned into, Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-where’d the doggy go daddy?” With the ‘W’ sound repeated an almost comical amount of times. Actually, with the ‘W’ sound repeated a downright comical amount of times.

“W-w-w-w-w-wan-wan-wan-w-w-w-wan-wanna use the potty” began to replace the previously smooth and fluid “Wanna use the potty.” Again, the amount of repetition on the lead word was so prominent I figured she must be doing it on purpose as a reaction to the giggles we initially reacted with.

Within just the past forty-eight hours, though, she’s branched out from just ‘W’ words and now hangs up on all sorts of words. She draws out initial words too, like, “Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii wanna bite daddy’s cheese,” or “Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmy babydoll is sleeping.” Still, I saw no reason for concern, and figured it was some sort of normal speech pattern per development. Sharaun, however, was a little more prudent, deciding she didn’t like the new Keaton-speech and doing some online research. Here’s what the sage internet has to say about toddler stuttering:

Many children go through a developmental stage of speech disfluency that’s often confused with true stuttering. This normal disfluency does disappear over time without need for treatment.

Children with true stuttering tend to repeat syllables four or more times (a-a-a-a-as opposed to once or twice for normal disfluency). They mmmmmay also occasionally prolong sounds.

Hmmm… sounds like our Keaton…

Children with stuttering show signs of reacting to their stuttering — blinking the eyes, looking to the side, raising the pitch of the voice.

Oh yeah, blinking eyes, screwing up her face, seemingly looking into space for the words: check, check, and check. Hmmm….

True stuttering is frequent — at least 3 percent of the child’s speech. While normal disfluency is especially noticeable when the child is tired, anxious, or excited, true stuttering is noticeable most of the time.

Well, as long as the internet is still an infallible source of information and a viable method of self-diagnosis, I’m convinced: Our baby may have a legitimate stuttering problem. The doctor on the internet said we should alert our pediatrician, so that’s what we’ll do.

Still, I secretly think it’s cute, and am not really too concerned. Call me naive.

♫ Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes… ♫

Tomorrow I’m dropping Sharaun and Keaton off at the airport bright and early so they can catch a flight to Florida to see Keaton’s brand new cousin, baby Hobson (blog-style congratulations to Aunt Breck and Uncle Doug). After that, I’ll be on my own for five whole days. Cast back into the shadowy realm of bachelorhood (well, minus all the wild stripper-pole parties I used to throw in my true bachelor past, ahem). On my own for meals, clean boxers, sexual gratification (nothing much new there), bedtimes and waketimes, and whether or not I have to don knickers on the weekend. My barnburning plans include the cleaning jag I’ve outlined here before, and completely eschewing the television in favor of the iPod. In some ways I’m looking forward to the time, but in reality I think I’ll start to miss my girls right-quick.

♫ Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes… ♫

Has anyone ever heard an old fable, or story, or Mother Goose or… something… about a man, or king, or maybe it was a pauper, who woke up one morning to a solid-gold reflection of himself in the mirror? Yeah, I figured not, because I just made that up. But today was my solid-gold day. I was untouchable. I walked on water. I touched souls. The heart-hardened wept open-mouthed as babes for tit.

Below please find the actual photo that sits unblinkingly on my sawmill’s badge. Note the lethargic smile, crooked nose, and fucking hair. It was taken some eight years ago now, and I’ve worn it around my neck five days a week for those long years like a sinner’s millstone. While this is, in what I hope would be anyone’s opinion and not just my own, a spectacularly awful picture of me, it’s constantly displayed on my chest in miniature contrast to my real face just a foot above it.

I like to think I see something better than that in the mirror each morning, and usually I do (changing that pitiful post-college hairstyle really opened up new avenues for me, how on earth did I ever pull tail with that gel-back?). In actuality it’s likely not that far off the mark. They got the underlying concept right.

I hate that picture. Hate.

So imagine my apoplectic joy when, this morning, smiling back at me in that reflective glass, I saw instead an Adonis of an alpha-male, chiseled face sculpted from shining polished gold. I took avenue-wide strides all the way to work, stepping from cloud to cloud and smiling down on creation from my appointed place in the Heavens. I called lightnings with my fingers, distilled the entirety of human consciousness into my hands and cast it to the wind as worthless. I was amazing.

When I got home at 6pm, the chump from the badge was back, only he was eight years older and balder. I berated him, tore him down layer by putrid layer and tried to rebuild him again in all the gilt perfection of twelve hours prior. Resisting my efforts, he slithered back into decline, rusting in real-time, biodegrading on a hook in the backyard.

It’s not over.

♫ Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes… ♫
♫ Pretty soon you’re gonna get a little older… ♫

To those of you who were lucky today and didn’t even know it – Goodnight and sweet dreams.

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margarita fever-dreams


Sorry so long between entries folks, lots has happened. Keaton can do long division, Sharaun now detests untidiness, and I’m now 100% bald. Nah… I’m just screwin’ with ya. Not much happened at all: A trip back from Oregon and a day spend on the couch in misery yesterday. Why? I’m sick.

Being sick, the Monday I had planned was ruined. No waking up early to get Springtime fertilizer and spreading it on the lawn, no pulling weeds, no time in the sun. Instead I spent the whole day laid up on the couch alternating between freezing and boiling with a pounding headache and more snot than brains in my head. I started feeling bad when I woke up Sunday in Oregon, our last day there, it was worse yesterday, and I’m cautiously optimistic I’m on the mend today.

Yesterday, in a brief flicker of feeling-OK, I decided to amass the tax documents and do our 2007 taxes. The past few years, I’ve developed a strategy: Use the online H&R Block tool to rip through the process as quickly as humanly possible, trying hard to not be anal or stressed about it. Then, when I’m done, I close the whole tool and wait one day. Going back that next day, I do a very cursory review… just an eyeball to see if things look semi-right, no number-matching or data-checking or anything wise like that. Then, I press “file.” Simple as that. Taxes are a mystery to me anyway, I always think I understand what’s going to happen each year, and each year I get surprised. I guess I just don’t have a head for numbers when it comes to finance. Hell, I guess I just plain don’t have a head for numbers, period. But, we ended up getting some money back this year – which is a good thing in one way, and a bad thing in another because I’d rather not loan the government my dosh. Either way, we’re done for this year.

Speaking of windfall, we’ve managed to pre-spend some of that tax money already by way of booking tickets for an April vacation in Mexico. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to actually buy airfare for Keaton, and it hurt just as much as I thought it would. We’ll be spending a full week somewhere south of Cancun, splitting the cost of a two-sided “lockout” timeshare thing with a coworker of mine and his family. The price was decent, and the accommodations are brand new and look fantastic. Plus, since we’ll both be bringing our broods along, we plan to work out an alternating babysitting scheme that gives the husband-and-wife duets some time away from kid-duty. I’m just excited about the carnitas, swim-up bar, and sunshine. Bring it on.

And, on a funny logistically-related note, the US government says that Keaton needs to have a passport to travel. I used epassportphoto.com to whip up some pictures of her for the application, and Sharaun and I will have to both tote her down to the post office so she can give the requisite fingerprints, pint of blood, hair sample, and get her “not a terrorist” tattoo. It’s a pain in the butt, is what I’m attempting to sarcastically say, to have to “pose” my two-year-old daughter for a passport photo and whatnot. What’s she gonna do anyway, score a key and smuggle it back in her baby dolls? Doubtful.

Anyway, I just wrote this entry to get something up here for Tuesday, as I couldn’t stand to go nearly a week without a post. I have the best of intentions to also have something ready to auto-post at midnight tonight as Wednesday’s entry, so, we’ll see about that. Until then, see ya.

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How a B3 sounds through a Leslie


Happy voting day, Super Tuesday friends. Hope, if your state is having a contest, that you go out and exercise your rights today, regardless of which way your favor flows. How we gonna do it without you and me? We ain’t. So, go do it. Me, I’ve got the 7am hour blocked off on my calendar. Was thinking I’d get up early and walk to my polling place, which is quite literally right across the street. Maybe take my travel coffee with me and bundle up against the cold. Could be a fun civics exercise. Oh, I’m on fire tonight… Where’s my sting?

I’m secretly trying to raise a girl so well-rounded in her knowledge of rock and roll music that she stuns her mopheaded male middle-school classmates by knowing who played drums in all the retro-cool 1970s rock band patches on their denim jackets. A girl who’ll know that the latest screamolectric anthem, Murder In My Heart, is a remake of a musty Lee Michaels track. A girl who can describe how a B3 sounds through a Leslie. That’s the kind of girl I’m raising. Well, and also a beautiful princess who will be good at math, kick butt on the soccer field, and is smarter than all the bepimpled punks trying to get in her pants. Yeah, there’s a lot I want for my little girl… but I do hold out hope that my fanaticism rubs off just a wee bit.

Television told me today that Valentines day is coming. I’m glad it did, even though I sort of already knew. We’re going to be in Oregon for the occasion (the third of three trips in as many weeks for me, the second being tomorrow, as you read this), so I’m gambling on time out on the town while Keaton naps and Grammy and Grandpa’s place. A Portlander buddy of mine is helping me pick a nice swanky place to do dinner, somewhere where I won’t feel ten years too old for the crowd. After that I’d like to go see a Pink Floyd laser show. But, Sharaun would totally hate that… especially on Valentines day. So instead, we should probably go see a movie or something. It’ll be nice to get some time out on the town, even though we’ll likely give up early for being old, ending up at a local coffeehouse by 11pm. It’s OK by me as long as she doesn’t bring her crochet.

Gdnight friends and lovers, until tomorrow.

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it’s going to be thin


It’s 11:30pm and I’m just sitting down to write. In fact, I only have about twelve more minutes to finish this thing. I’ll warn you now, it’s going to be thin.

Keaton’s third fevered day and the doc says she’s got an ear infection. She still acts like a million bucks, you’d only know she’s sick by the snots, coughs, and wheezes. Sharaun swung by the pharmacy after I got home from work to pick up her prescription, hopefully it’ll start her mending soon. I hate looking at her puffy eyes and red cheeks, it makes me sad even if it is contrasted with her spastic and joyous dancing around the room singing “Sunny day… sunny day… sunny day.” Seems that even sickness can’t suppress the Sesame Street within.

I used my 7am meeting, and my relatively light morning, as an excuse to phone it in pre-lunch. Sharaun was kind to me and tolerated no TV or music while I worked on the employee review documents I’ve been laboring over this week. And, compared to the cubicle-clustered environment at work, the sensory deprivation in the quiet of my living room allowed me to get a ton of solid work done. I still dread finalizing that annual review totem… does that mean I’m soft? I guess maybe it does, but I also think it makes me normal, and I’d rather be normal.

I’m sorry guys. This is it. I really just didn’t want to miss a day in what, is otherwise, shaping up to be a wall-to-wall month (New Year’s Day doesn’t count, by the way). Goodnight.