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.
Tag Archives: Ann
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.”
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.
New Media Moose & Squirrel
Not long ago, Ann wanted to see something on Hulu, and came to me for suggestions. I discovered that regular old Hulu, not the pay-extra Hulu, offers Rocky and Bullwinkle. I picked Season 2, Episode 1, the beginning of the shaggy-moose story about Upsidasium.
Upon further investigation, I discovered that as a story arc, “Upsidasium” has its own Wiki page. According to that source, it was the second-longest story arc for Moose & Squirrel, coming in at 36 episodes. The fictional metal also appears on this list.
Ann’s taken a liking to the show, and asks to watch it more often than I have time for, and we’re not done with the Upsidasium story yet. We have some Rocky and Bullwinkle on VHS (or, to be pedantic, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends), but it’s been years since she’s seen any of those.
She’s also been taking pictures of some of the characters. I thought the one she took of Mr. Know-It-All (above, in a sauna) turned out well, considering it’s a shot of a video in progress on a laptop. This is a Mr. Know-It-All I’m particularly fond of.
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.”
Noisemaker, Noisemaker, You Have No Complaint
Pauline Phillips was still alive? Maybe I was confused by the fact that Eppie Lederer’s been dead a while. I think both of them were in the San Antonio Express-News in the late ’70s, and I would have been hard-pressed to say who was who after I’d read the columns. That notion would probably have aggravated the sisters, and their editors, and in fact anyone who believes readers care about bylines, which they do not, but that’s source amnesia for you.
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have admitted reading Ann Landers and Dear Abby back in high school, but I did sometimes, and intermittently for years afterward. They were windows into worlds where people had problems I had no inkling of, back before people-with-weird-problems became a staple of 24-hour television.
Pictured: a recent moment of ordinary interaction between Ann and I, which for some reason I liked when I saw it. I didn’t know Lilly was taking the picture when she took it.
Speaking of things supposedly gone, I recently bought a box of chocolate cupcakes under The Snack Artist brand, which belongs to Safeway. They look and taste exactly like Hostess Cupcakes, down to the Jack Lew signature squiggle on top, except they’re a bit flatter. So I’ve done my little part to confirm that as far as consumers of insanely sweet snack cakes are concerned, not much was lost with the demise of Hostess. (Jobs were destroyed, of course, but that’s another matter.)
Back again on Tuesday, after MLK Day and the 57th Inauguration ceremony, which is different from the number of swearing-ins, since not all holders of the presidency began their terms on March 4 or January 20. This is the seventh time that the constitutionally specified inauguration day falls on a Sunday, with the public ceremony the held next day. James Monroe set that precedent in 1821 after checking with John Marshall, who signed off on the day’s delay.
The last time was on January 21, 1985, during an intense cold spell that affected much of the country. Heavy snow had fallen in Nashville, and I didn’t have to go to work. I didn’t have a TV at the time, so I listened to the event over the radio. It was so cold in DC that the swearing in was in the Capitol Rotunda.
Christmas Morning ’12
Christmas morning isn’t quite the land rush it used to be, but the girls still want to open their presents as they always have. Ann had some trouble going to sleep on Christmas Eve, but that was because she’d slept late that morning, rather than excess excitement for Christmas morning (though there was strong anticipation).
Gift cards, clothes, a little money, toys for Ann, a lot of sweets—it was all in the mix.
This year on Christmas and on the Sunday before, I managed to catch a few hours of a radio show devoted to Christmas music oddities hosted by two guys called Johnny & Andy on WDCB, the public radio station at the College of DuPage. I’d heard them years ago, maybe even these shows, since this year’s seemed to be rebroadcasts from earlier years.
So I got to hear “Solar System Simon, Santa’s Supersonic Son,” by one Francis Smith, which I haven’t heard in years. I’d forgotten how bluegrass-like it was. I’m also happy to report that when you Google that title, mid-2000s BTST entries turn up. Space Age Santa songs seemed to form a short-lived, and little remembered, subgenre of Christmas songs ca mid-1950s. Johnny & Andy even played a song of that exact name by I-forget-who-and-am-too-lazy-to-look-up (that guy records a lot of songs).
Other Christmas recordings played by Johnny & Andy included elf songs, Cajin-themed holiday tunes, Christmas polkas, and songs that tried to capitalize on the monster success of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” all in vain. One involved putting a light on Dasher’s tail, another had two reindeer named Percival and Chauncy becoming Donder and Blitzen, and one parody included the line, “Rudolph is lazy, tired, and has been fired.”
Even Gene Autry recorded other reindeer-themed songs, such as “32 Feet – 8 Little Tails,” and “Nine Little Reindeer,” which aren’t exactly forgotten, but hardly the hit Rudolph was. Then again, Autry recorded a lot of Christmas songs.
Card by Ann
Ann asked me to mail this to her Aunt Deb, which I did on Tuesday, December 4, 2012.
A Christmas card and get-well card, all in one.