Ann had taken a sudden, and previously unexpressed interest in tinkertoys.
It’s a Tinkertoy Tower of Babel. I don’t ever remember building such a thing.
Category Archives: Family
A Dog’s Life
Some updates: My mother has moved from the hospital to a rehab center. I spoke with her on the phone not long ago, and regarding rehab she said, no, no, no. Actually, she said she found the exercise regimen “boring,” something she rarely says, so it must be so. She never was one for exercise anyway, except walking. And she’s lived to be 87 and counting. Hm.
Our dog is settling into her new routine. Food in the morning provided by Lilly before she goes to school; a walk with me to do her business not long after; a daytime of lying around the house while I work (I move her dog-bed into my office, she hops in and only rises when I do, or when a noise outside sets her to barking); much joy when Lilly and Ann come home, and even more when Yuriko does; an evening walk with Yuriko and sometimes Ann, again to do her business; the evening meal, provided by Lilly; lying around in the evening; and sleeping when we sleep, mostly. Also: visits to the back yard, watching intently while we prepare and eat our food, time with some chew toys, and so on. Definitely a dog’s life.
Been a rainy few days lately, and this seems to have intensified the smells the dog enjoys on our morning walks. At least this morning it seemed to. But then again, dogs always live in an olfactory world we primates can only dimly imagine.
The new dog prompted a visit to a pet store chain the other day, a kind of store I haven’t spent a lot of time in over the years. I noticed all kinds of interesting things. For instance, Martha Stewart has stuck her name on all kinds of pet products. Martha Stewart? Really? Remember, she’s a convicted felon.
I happened to see Titanic recently. Not the big-damn-deal movie of the 1990s, but the more modest melodrama made in 1953, most notable (besides for its setting) as a Barbara Stanwick vehicle. She plays the estranged wife of a wealthy man, played by Clifton Webb. From the get-go I was sure he was going to die nobly and she was going to survive sorrowfully, and sure enough, that’s what happened. Other parts in the movie were played by an astonishingly young Robert Wagner and the unmistakable Thelma Ritter – unmistakable for her voice, but I had to look up her name – who was the Unsinkable Molly Brown, though not using that name for some reason.
Not a bad movie. Pretty good for a ’50s melodrama, in fact. The Wiki entry on the movie is amusing for the long list “historical inaccuracies.” I’m sure if you’d suggested to the screenwriter that the movie could be made more historically accurate, he’d have cast you an odd look for a moment, taken another sip of his whiskey, and gotten back to typing without so much as a word.
Dog Day
Something new in our house, as of today.
We got her from a rescue organization. She’s a three-and-some-year-old Lab-Bassett mix, they said, and already had a name, though not necessarily one I would have picked for a dog. Since she responds to it, we decided to keep it. In the few hours she’s been around the house, I’ve also called her “dog” and “hound” and “animal.” Not too worry, all are affectionate nicknames.
It’s early still, but my impression is that this dog likes to do what dogs ought to do, namely this:
I’m sure we’ll be taking more pictures, and probably some action shots, maybe as soon as a squirrel shows up in the back yard. I expect her to respond in a dog-like way to that, too.
San Antonio ’13
We, that is Lilly, Ann and I, went to San Antonio last week to visit my mother, both brothers, a nephew, an aunt, and a cousin — from my point of view. For Lilly and Ann, they got to visit their grandmother, two uncles, a cousin, their great aunt, and another cousin.
We also saw a few places. Not much new for me, though including some spots I hadn’t seen in years, but new places for them. For them, San Antonio will always be, I hope, that interesting city where their dad grew up.
More about all that later. For now, though, prayers for my mother, their grandmother, who is recovering from a fall last Friday — a few hours after we left — that broke her hip. She had surgery over the weekend, and is still in the hospital.
R.I.P., Eleanore Triplett, whom we learned had passed away in Dallas while we were in San Antonio. She was my late sister-in-law Deb’s mother, Jay’s mother-in-law, and my nephews’ grandmother.
Thursday Debris
Sure enough, the snow started to melt today, when it was above freezing during the daylight hours. But there’s still a lot of ground covered, so this is going to take a while. It brings to mind the preternaturally warm March we had last year. Which was a prelude to drought, so I don’t think we want that again.
During the snow day on Tuesday, Lilly and Ann went out to build a structure in the back yard. They called it a snow couch, which they said was easier than a snowman.
Yuriko got a package of Curly’s Meaty Barbecue Baby Back Pork Ribs from a warehouse store recently, and we ate them even more recently. At least I think that was the name. I’m not going to dig the wrapping out of the trash now. Precooked, so all you do is heat them. Meaty, all right. But the sauce was too sweet, we concluded. Not enough tang. I’m sure it can be a difficult balance, but they erred on the side of sweetness. Maybe they were misled by focus groups.
Pictured on the right, fruit on custard. Yuriko didn’t bring that home, but made it not long ago, and we liked it a lot. The kiwi on it, I happened to find out, was imported from Italy. That was my new fact for the day: Italy has a kiwi crop. That’s been true for a while now, it seems. A 2008 article in the Los Angeles Times tells us: “Somewhat improbably, Italy has grown to become the world’s largest producer of the odd furry fruit, according to the National Institute of Agricultural Economics, surpassing even New Zealand, which coined the name for the fruit once known as the Chinese gooseberry.”
Hinamatsui 2004
Sequester Day came and went on Friday without much fuss here in the heart of North America, though we may come to rue it eventually. Texas Independence Day was Saturday (177 years now). According to our school calendar, March 2 is also Read Across America Day. Someone might have noted that day at our township library, but I didn’t go there this weekend, and every day can be that as far as I’m concerned.
All the while, about a foot of snow covered the ground. It hasn’t been warm enough to melt most of it. That’s a little unusual for early March, which typically sees the beginning of mud season.
Today is Hinamatsui, or Girls’ Day. We’ve been hit-or-miss over the years in marking the day, which is a Japanese festival, more about which here. This year, Yuriko brought out those few dolls we have appropriate to the day. Back in 2004, we went to some kind of event for the occasion. I don’t remember what we did, exactly, or where it was, but I did take a picture. It isn’t that great as a picture, but I like the subject matter.
The Presidents Day Blackout
At 5:10 p.m. the electricity flickered, went out, returned for a few seconds, then went out for about 50 more minutes.
Time to be dramatic: Blackout! NW Suburbs Without Power! Family of four plunged into uncertainty of powerless, dimly lit Monday evening! Forced to eat dinner and play a board game by candlelight!
But it wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t that cold today, so the house didn’t even lose that much heat. There was no obvious reason for it — no windstorm or ice buildup on power lines. Just one of those things.
Only three of us were here, since Lilly was visiting a friend at the time. I checked the block and everyone else’s power was gone as well, though the lights outside the school behind our back yard were still glowing. Lilly reported later that Twitter had informed her that some undetermined local area was dark — her friends were tweeting about it, I guess, but it couldn’t have been too large an area, since her friend (about a half mile from us) didn’t lose power.
Our TV and Internet were gone, but how can that be a bad thing for a few minutes, especially that fine silence where the TV used to drone? We discovered that our camping lantern, which contains four D batteries, has actually been a container for dead batteries for a while now. But we have about a half-dozen candles, and so ate our Japanese curry-rice by their light. Good thing the rice had cooked by the time the juice went off, though we could have boiled pasta and had curry-pasta.
Ann wanted to play a game: Sorry! As we prepared the table to set it up, the power came on again. I told her we could still play, and she still wanted to play by candlelight, so we did, though her mother was watching TV in the same room, so it wasn’t quite the throwback experience it might have been. Her yellow men edged our a victory over my green ones, four home to three home.
The Driver’s Seat
One more daughter picture (for now), because how can a father not post daughter pictures with some frequency?
Lilly, behind the wheel recently. Before we backed out of the driveway. I had to remind her to put on her glasses.
Sledding ’13
Now that snow’s on the ground, a few inches anyway, the girls wanted to go sledding. So I took them to the catchment where they’ve been sledding for years — except for last year, when snow covered the ground only for a few days, and they didn’t get around to it.
It made me recall fond old memories of sledding as a child… actually, no. I never did that. Snow was in short supply in South Texas from the late ’60s to the late ’70s. And so was the equipment necessary to slide down a slope, in case we ever got any snow.
Anyway, a Nashvillian friend of mine took me sledding for the first time ever when I was 22, in Nashville, during one of its snow events, which happened once or twice a winter. That was a good time, but probably not the thrill of being a small child on a sled.
I didn’t get any good pictures of the girls in motion, like I have before. But I did take one or two that I liked.
Ten Times Around for Ann
This morning I looked out and saw puddles of water. I was expecting ice. I didn’t bother checking any weather reports last night, so I was surprised. Actually, I’m still surprised, since this afternoon it felt like a post-rain day in March — not warm, but not freezing cold either, and a lot of soggy ground.
Ann’s 10th birthday is later this week, but she elected to mark the occasion on Saturday with some friends, cake and ceremonial candle extinguishing. Some of Lilly’s friends were around too, mostly to eat some food.
Have the last ten years passed quickly? Like the wink of an eye, or another cliche of choice? No, not really. It seems like quite a while ago, because it was.
Ten years ago: “I got back to the hospital at about 7:30 am, and things were moving along nicely, but I hadn’t missed the main event. Before long, though, the show was on. At about t-minus 10 minutes (in retrospect, I can call it that) the doctor asked me if we knew it was a boy or girl. I said no. Do you have any names? Yes, Ann and Alexander. Duly noted. And so the baby came — hard to find a verb here that really describes it — pushed out, squeezed forth, slipped through bloodily, noisily, suddenly. ‘It’s baby Ann,’ said the doc, which was a nice thing for her to do. When Lilly was born, there was much hubbub, the view was obscured, and no one mentioned gender until I asked.”