Posts

Posted on

babydoll kidnapping

Ahhh, the sun sets on another day.

In some charade of preparedness, I’ve been taking Keaton on long wagon-pulled walks now for a few evenings running.  I know these will in no way actually prepare me for the 65mi Muir Trail hike we’re doing in just a few weeks, but, somehow, they ease my conscience at not doing anything more tangible.

Tonight all three of us walked over to the nearest home improvement warehouse store and looked at their selection of ceiling fans (I hope to have one installed in the new front room before Sharaun’s folks get here this Saturday).  After that we indulged my wife’s sweet tooth and stopped at the local McDonald’s for soft-serve cones all around.

Oh, I remember what I wanted to talk about today… Keaton has been baaaad lately!

I mean, our daughter has always been (to us, at least) a shining example of perfection.  Every once in a while she’d have a little too-tired meltdown… but, to be honest, I always thought she was pretty easy to deal with. Not so anymore friends, not so anymore.  Lately, she’s really been playing with just how much she can get away with and how far she can push.  In some ways, I find it interesting to see her flexing her control – but her methods leave a little to be desired.  She’s particularly fond of screaming, flailing, lying dead-weight on the ground ala passive resistance, the word “No,” and complete and utter disdain for, or ignoring of, our instruction – the list goes on.

All of this started as the occasional boundary-checking, but it’s gotten a little more systemic of late.  Today, Sharaun supplemented our trite and predictable nouveau-parenting technique of “timeouts” with something I dubbed babydoll-kidnapping; because, see, Keaton loves her babydolls.  She has, by my estimates, near ten of them.  In fact, let’s count them to be sure…  From memory (pretty good Dad, eh?), they are: Baby Kia, Baby Claudia, Baby Finna, Baby Finny (I think they are brother/sister), Baby Hannah, Baby Sabrina, and Muñeca (she’s from Mexico).  She usually knows where each baby is at all times, whether they are sleeping, playing, hiding, crying, need to be burped or fed or held, etc.  Today, however, they all got rounded up and put on the high shelf of our closet.  Yup, Sharaun interned them all as some measure of additional bad-behavior deterrent.

When I got home from work, the first thing Keaton did (after my required big hug and lip-kiss) was to follow me into the bedroom and point out her dolls on the shelf.  “Look Dad,” she said, “My dolls got put up.”  Using my new-grown parenting skills, I deduced that there must be some logic behind all seven dolls being put in the closet, and chose not to comment aside from a, “I see that baby…” When I got the chance to ask Sharaun what was up with the hijacked dolls, I could hear the frustration seep back into her voice: “When she misbehaves from now on we take dolls away in addition to timeouts!, ” was her simple yet authoritarian reply.  Mmmm-hmmm; sounds good.  I’m on-board by decree at this point, “OK, I’ll remember.”

Poor Keaton; dolls all up in the closet gathering dust.  I guess we’ll see if the new technique works… but I have my doubts.  I figure this is just part of the “two year old” phase and that we’ll have to simply weather the growing and stretching and rattling fetters.  For what it’s worth, she’s still my favorite thing on Earth and I can never really be all that mad at her…

Goodnight internets.

Posted on

I dunno about you, but I loved that

Closing in on 7pm Sunday and I’m about to sit Keaton down a for a late dinner (it’s OK, we shared some chips and guacamole after we woke from our naps a little earlier).

Today was an extremely lazy day, with the entirety of our post church activities being an Olympics-in-the-background nap. I broke down last week and hired an acquaintance who does landscaping to send a crew out and fix-up the slope above the retaining wall, adding some circular stone planters and new greenery – so they toiled out there under the sun while I napped inside… which made me feel a bit guilty. I mean, it’s not like I’m some rich landowner or anything… so sleeping while I pay folks to do labor that’s rightfully mine is kinda much even for me. But, the yard looks nice – and just in time for Sharaun’s parents to get into town next weekend.

Moving on…

Remember a loooong time ago when I wrote about Keaton’s “first song?” And then, a few times after that, I’ve written about how she has been able to sing along with it now for a while. In fact, she sings a lot now, and the number of songs she remembers the words to constantly impresses me. Tonight, after we all got done eating dinner, she started serenading Sharaun and I and we decided to get it on tape. After one unaccompanied run-through, I put the real song on the computer nearby and asked her to sing along with Paul. I liked it so much I wanted to share. Here, then, is Keaton singing along with the Beatles (well, Paul, at least – it was the turbulent White Album era) to the song I Will:

[flv:https://blog.pharaohweb.com/video/I_Will.flv 320 240]

I dunno about you, but I loved that.

Well then… I suppose it’s time to give up the bloggin’ for tonight. Monday tomorrow and, since I’m taking some time off next week while the parents-in-law are here – it’s a happy Monday (I just get excited the week before I know I get to vacate).

Goodnight folks, love you all.

Posted on

mercedes. i have a mercedes. mercedes.

Happy Friday all.  Welcome to the entry that almost wasn’t, but came together in a rushed half hour around 10:30pm last night.  Guess sometimes it all just works out, huh?  Moving on…

Today I left work around 11:45pm to meet Sharaun and Keaton at one of the local parks.  We had lunch in the shade and then hit the playground for a while before I had to leave and rejoin the ranks of corporate zombies back at the sawmill.  I love doing this, having some time during the day to spend with Keaton is the perfect way to break the spell of to-dos and teleconferences.

During lunch there was a couple of moms sitting at a picnic table near us.  As their young’ns played some kind of stupid Pokemon or Dragonball game on the playground (“You’re an egg now!”  “No, I’m a human already – and if you look into my eyes you’ll die!”), they sat and gabbed.  Well, one of them did – the other one just listened and gave deferential harrumphs and confirming nods.

The one talking, and boy could she talk, was rambling on and on and on (and on some more) about a car accident she’d been in recently, and the harrowing events which befell her life thereafter.  The thing is, though, she somehow managed to work in the fact that her wrecked vehicle was a Mercedes SUV at every turn of the conversation.  Soon, I began to think this was no mere coincidence:

Yeah, I had to take the Mercedes to a special Mercedes body shop that the Mercedes dealer recommended, because not just any body shop can work on a Mercedes, you know.

The rental replacement SUV they gave me was some GM or Chevy thing, and when I climbed in for the first time I couldn’t believe how small it was compared to the Mercedes.  I had to call my insurance agent and ask if they had anything more truly comparable in size the the Mercedes, because my back just couldn’t handle that thing – it’s so used to the Mercedes.

The people who hit the Mercedes were Yugoslavian or Russian or something.  When they pulled over I parked the Mercedes right in front of them because I was afraid they might try to run.

On top of this, she bemoaned how the wrecked Mercedes had hampered her and her husband’s plan to buy a boat, as they now had no vehicle to tow it with (presumably, the time the Mercedes would be in the Mercedes body shop would ruin an entire Summer boating season?).  She admitted, small hints derision vocalized at the corners of her words, that they had “settled for” an old pickup that they’ll “only use to tow the boat around,” but “never to just drive.”

I felt intensely sorry for her rough life.  And, also because I am pretty sure she was only telling the story so her friend (and whomever happened to be within earshot) had no option be to be keenly aware she owned a Mercedes, a boat, and a truck specifically for the purpose of lugging around the boat.

Not that I’m not occasionally taken into a swirl of materialism and status-symbol one-upmanship myself, but I hope I never hawk my wares quite like that.  Eh, it wasn’t even that egregious an offense… just made for quick and easy writing. And, now it’s over.

‘Night.  Have a good weekend, see ya Monday.

Posted on

back when i did nothing

Hi from Wednesday night.  Sitting here playing with an iPhone… yeah, I know I said I wasn’t going to jump on that wave, but when the sawmill finances it – it’s hard to deny.  So, on the bandwagon I climb…

Right now the iPod shuffled up “Morning Bell” from Radiohead’s brilliant Kid A album. I think I’ve written about it before, but this album brings back such strong memories for me. It dropped shortly after I started working here at my current job, when I was still the new guy and no one know what I should be doing. I can remember spending what seemed like interminable days simply browsing the internet, listening to CDs, writing, having absolutely no clue what I was supposed to be working on, and feeling guilty about it to boot. In fact, and I’m almost certain I’ve written this before, I can recall vividly standing in the bathroom after work one day staring at myself in the mirror, angry and ashamed for essentially stealing money from the sawmill.

I used my time as best I could: Spending it online researching various things, letting the web lead me from one topic of interest to the next. During those long months of being corporate flotsam, I became fascinated with alchemy (both the “let’s make gold from rocks” kind and the more metaphysical Jungian kind), brushed up on my knowledge of serial killers (no real explanation there), and did a good bit of “spiritual” research (I dunno, a phase, at the time). I listened to a lot of music, I wrote a lot, and I wondered what the hell this “career” I’d chosen was ultimately going to end up being. Looking back now, I can understand how things like that happen – and realize that those pointless months in the grand scheme of an operation as large as this really mean next to nothing. So I skated along under the radar, they’ve got me in a reverse-naked now and are wringing me for every dollar. Honestly, I prefer the crunch…

Anyway, just hearing this album reminds me of those days instantly. The environment then was so lonely. I sat isolated from most of the “team” I was supposed to contribute to, and I had bounced back and forth between no less than three managers (always a bad thing for someone knowing what the heck you do). The people who did sit next to me were in roughly the same boat, but I didn’t really hit it off with either of them – and wasn’t that interested in developing non-working relationships with them. I still think back to the time when I finally got transferred under a good manager with a team that was executing. From there it was a simple connect-the-dots to meeting the friend-base I have now.  Time, time, time… I suppose.

And, that, is what I have to say tonight.

Posted on

bloggin’ ain’t easy lately

Wednesday.  Sorry for the sporadic entries of late, I’ve been busy with work… and a day without time for my mind to wander usually means a night without much to write about.  Gonna be random today I think… but I want to get something out there.

Last night we had friends over for dinner.  I came home about an hour early to start the barbecue and char the meat; not a bad deal.  I can remember watching my dad barbecue for us when I was a kid, we had one of those traditional round Webbers, black – the kind like you see in those 1950s episodes of Leave It To Beaver or Ozzie and Harriet.  I remember we had some sort of Sunset Guide to Grilling cookbook which showed the novice grill chef how to form two mounds of charcoal on either side of the bowl for indirect heat.  I was always fascinated with cooking over fire, and still enjoy it.  So, like I said, coming home an hour early from work to start a fire and cook meat isn’t bad at all.

Tonight Sharaun had a volleyball game so Keaton and I got some time to hang out just Dad and daughter.  We took a nice long bath, playing in the bubbles and transferring water from one litte cup to another.  After that we got dressed for bed and brushed our hair (I brushed hers, she then returned the favor), and played for another ten mintues before getting into the crib.  We had a little tea party, and played in the “pretend pool” (which is just a comforter spread out on the ground with pillows for “floaties”).  I like when I can give her my full attention, although I admire Sharaun for doing it all day long, as it’s pretty demanding and requires putting aside whatever you might want to be doing (I mean, not to say I don’t want to be playing in the pretend pool with my daughter… but you know what I mean).

It’s less than a month now until Anthony and I embark on our “makeup” trip back into the Sierra backcountry along John Muir Trail.  This time, we’ll be four as Ben and Erik will join us as we try to finish the sixty-plus miles we failed to complete last time around – stupid snow… (what, you don’t believe me?, there totally was snow).  The four of us got together last week to have a planning session (read: pizza and beer and about fifteen minutes of me going over our slightly-modified last year’s itinerary).  I’ll go ahead and do a big kickoff entry here as that date nears, with the same kind of boring data I posted last time (I know, you can’t wait).  I think we’re all getting pretty excited, and hopes are high that we don’t get turned back by weather this year.  (In fact, the portion of the hike we plan to do this year has few “easy” outs, so we’re banking on Mother Nature being good to us).

I guess that’s all I have.  Bloggin’ ain’t easy lately.

Posted on

is akismet broken?

Anyone else having issues with Akismet lately?  For about the past month or so (from a timeline perspective, I want to associate it to the release of WordPress 2.5+, but I don’t think I have any real evidence to do so) it’s been passing a pretty large amount of spam each day.  Prior to this recent behavior, I almost never had to worry about comment and/or trackback spam getting through Akisment and onto my frontpage.  Lately though, about three to ten pieces a day are slipping through Akismet’s filter.  Just take a look at today:

Yeah, all of those passed through Akismet’s filters and onto the blog proper (and that’s only all that would fit in the screenshot).  I always diligently report the spam mistakes back to the Akismet servers, so I was hoping maybe I’d be helping ID some new kind of spam technique and these would eventually dry up.  No luck so far though, still getting multiple pieces a day that make it through.

What’s up Akismet?

Posted on

just another weekend

Sunday evening and I put Keaton down before 6 o’clock.

I know, seems early, but we had a napless afternoon spent swimming at Pat’s place.  No sleep combined with sun and fun make for one very tired Keaton. In fact, we were only a scant ten minutes into an episode of the Backyardigans before she curled up next to me and put her head down in my lap. Of course though, she wasn’t tired at all when you asked her. But, Dad knows best, and put her down with the sun still shining. I swear she was asleep before I could tiptoe out of the room.  And now, with Keaton down and Sharaun still out, I’m watching Roy Rogers in 1947’s Apache Rose and thinking what I’ll cook up for dinner.

Saturday Sharaun and I finally got some inspiration and painted the front room.  Since we’re using it now as our main “sitting room,” or whatever, we’ve both been anxious to make it feel a little more “liveable” (most of the house is still the same stark white that it was when we bought the place right after construction, some five years ago).  And, although we’re extremely slow to dress the place up, I think we’re making some good progress lately.  Next on the list: a ceiling fan and (hopefully) a screen door that Sharaun won’t mind (she’s 100% against them, but I love the “notion” of an open door, sor some reason – even though it’s not really open… or something).  Yeah, well, let’s see what else I’ve got.

Anyway, part of the reason behind all the freshening up is the fact that Sharaun’s folks come to visit a just a couple weeks.  And, while Sharaun has a few more inside projects lined up, I’ve got some outside ones that are calling.  My goal is to have the place looking a little more all-around nice by the time they’re here.  Their stay here usually involves a lot of kickin’ it around the house, with things like barbecues afternoons in the sprinklers.  I’m excited, becasue I get to take some time off work.  Still a ways off though, so best to not get overexicted now…

OK folks, love you.  Sorry it’s nothing grand tonight, I’ll try and do better tomorrow.  Goodnight.