Category Archives: Family

Dogs From Space

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Back again after Memorial Day, which falls three days before Decoration Day this year. Another example of an earlier occasion within a later one, such as Armistice Day within Veterans Day, or to take it back further, the various pagan holidays bundled up within Halloween and Christmas.

Lilly threw a tennis ball in the air not long ago, intending for the dog to chase after it. To everyone’s astonishment, the ball stuck in the back-yard tree. Not in a thicket of branches, but jammed between two small branches that aren’t budding yet, and in fact might be part of a dead branch. You’d have to throw a ball I don’t know how many times to get a result like that. This isn’t the first time Lilly has managed to toss something with astonishing results.

We’ve been expecting the wind to bring it down, but so far – it’s been roughly two days – the ball has stayed in its arboreal home.

Also not long ago, we were out in the back yard with the dog when she took a sudden, inexplicable interest in the sky, running around, looking up, barking a little. I thought she might have spotted a bird, which happens sometimes, sending her off on a vain ground-based chase of airborne creatures. We couldn’t see any birds, or even distant airplanes, which she occasionally looks up at (baffled, maybe).

“She’s getting ready for dogs from space to rescue her,” I suggested. No one was impressed. “No, really, an intelligent race of dogs are on their way from a planet around Sirius to free their brother dogs. Sister dog, in her case. Earth dogs have been waiting for thousands of years for their freedom. One day, they’ll come.”

Again, no one was impressed. I don’t think I made that idea up, but I can’t remember where I heard it.

Juvenile Amusements

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Not long ago I was getting rid of debris on one of my computers, the main one I use now for my work since the older one is bronze age in computer terms, and I found the scan on the right. A pizza delivery receipt. We rarely have pizza delivered, so I’m pretty sure it didn’t originate with us. I suspect it’s something Lilly put in the system, sent to her by a friend.

Probably the name “Bonquiqui Butts” had something to do with it. Turns out that refers to a character I’d never heard of, but which Lilly and her friends must know about.

Also found on my computer taking up space: a video made by Lilly and a couple of her friends in our back yard. I don’t think it was last summer, since the grass is much too green; probably the summer before last. Which would make them junior high antics.

It only goes to show that kids aren’t spending all of their time with electronic entertainment.

Rocket Girl

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Clear, warm, summerish day today, with light winds. A perfect day for launching a rocket she called “Payton.” One she built.

Ann is seen here holding the thing, which, like most good rockets, has a detachable nosecone. It measures about 12 inches, has three fins, and is yellow. Before we painted it that color, I toyed with the idea of painting it like a V-2, even though it doesn’t otherwise look much like the German weapon (to start with, the V-2 had four fins). But that seemed like too much trouble for a joke no one would get.

Earlier this year, Quincy Adams Wagstaff Elementary inaugurated its rocket club – actually, the entire school district seems to be in on it – and to my mild surprise, Ann joined. For an hour every Thursday, she stayed with the club after school to work on a rocket (though it came home for painting last week). Everyone did his or her own, with the promise of a launch for each in the spring. And so it came to pass on May 14, 2013. More about that tomorrow.

Green Grass & High Dogs Forever

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Finally it’s warm(ish) and more-or-less dry outside. Time for some action shots.

Lilly has a pink tennis ball. The dog wants it.

That hound has some strong hind legs, that’s for sure.

At last, the tennis ball is hers, and she runs off with it.

Tinkertoys Across the Decades

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Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs, and Legos – the big three among building toys, as far as my younger self was concerned. I thought about that recently when Ann latched on to the two tubes of Tinkertoys that we have around the house. At some point long after I quit using them, the tubes migrated from my mother’s house to mine, maybe in anticipation that one of my children would use them. Until the other day, no.

The tubes interest me now more than the toys themselves.

I think my grandparents bought that taller tube for my aunt in the late ’30s – it has her name on it (I saw her last month; maybe I should offer to return them, since isn’t 80 the beginning of second childhood?). In any case, it says Tinkertoy, the Wonder Builder, a product of The Toy Tinkers Inc., Evanston, Ill. I didn’t know Tinkertoys were from Evanston originally.

The design of the longer tube clearly carries a 1929 copyright, but the image, especially of the boy, harkens back somewhat further. Maybe the artist was middle-aged and recalling his boyhood.

My mother probably bought the shorter tube for me ca. 1970, though it’s possible my grandmother got it for me. Note that it doesn’t promise constructions as intricate as the earlier tube. It still has a retail price sticker on it: Winn’s, 77 cents. Winn’s was a dime store near our home in San Antonio that was there until the age of dime stores was over.

Surprisingly little is available on line about Tinkertoy history, at least on casual inspection – there are suspiciously many hits with verbage the same as other sites. Did the inventors of Tinkertoys really hire midgets to play with sets in department store windows in the early days of selling the toys? That’s a repeated story, and I’d like to think it’s true.

Tinkertoy Tower

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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.

A Dog’s Life

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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

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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

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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

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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.”