The Most Normal Day in the History of Forever

- Let's have oats for breakfast.

It's not called 'oats,' it's called 'oatmeal!'

The Day Begins / 2013.01.02

Masters of the Universe, Unite! (Some Days, Nobody Understands You Better Than Your Nemesis).

The Day Ends / 2013.01.02

Daddy, Hulk is being rude. He's making a face that  I don't like. He's being mean.

- Johannes, eating oatmeal and inspecting his new Avengers bowl this morning. The superhero pantheon, mashed up with Star Wars, Sesame Street, and various fairy tales, has been on his mind much lately.


Song of the Day : Lo Boob Oscillator / Stereolab

Five Things About the Only First Day of the Only 2013 That Will Ever Exist In This Universe

01.
I wish something bad would happen so I could call 9-1-1.

- Magdelana, 5

Sadly, her wish went unfulfilled.


02. 
A Visual Depiction of the Dynamic Range of Universal Emotions the World Will Experience Over the Coming Year.

2013.01.01

It was a very windy day. 

Windy days do not make everyone cheerful.

03. 

Conversation with Johannes (2.5) at bedtime:

Daddy, is Superman real?

- Umm...well, who do you know that is real?

Batman? Hulk?

- Almost. Try one more.

You are real.

- Yep, that is correct. I am real. 

And owls are real.

- Yep, owls are real.

No, owls aren't real!

- Yep. Owls are real, Johannes.

Oh. And lights are real. Christmas lights are real. And Bob is real.

- Bob? You mean Bob your dolly? The one laying next to you in bed who's already sleeping, like you should be?

Yeah. Bob is real.

- Okay...are you pretending that Bob is real, like we pretend Superman is real?

Yeah. And drumsticks are real. They're for playing drums.

- Yep. 

04.

Great-Grumpy with Children Reading Newspapers.

2013.01.01

05.

Things I did today:

- Made a pot of really good coffee and enjoyed a couple cups with my bride and sister-in-law.

- Weighed myself and remembered I forgot to exercise last year.

- Ate some creamy & delicious potato soup that my mother-in-law invented.

- Played a card game with my in-laws in which my attempts to cheat were foiled, and I lost, as usual, making the beginning of the year a very depressing one.

- Had the shower go cold halfway through, which leads me to suspect that the year ahead really will be horrid.

- Had a coffee date with Becca in order to make a list of resolutions and plan for the year ahead, and the primary thing we figured out is that we need to have many more coffee dates in order to figure things out.

- Am writing this while my wife is paying bills next to me.

- Looking forward to maybe - maybe - starting the Joseph-Gordon Levitt sci-fi thriller Looper this evening. Maybe.

We'll see. Hello, Twenty-Thirteen. I'll be around.

Song of the Day: Rose Rouge / St. Germaine

Time To Say Goodbye (or at least "Goodnight")

Andrea Bocelli's Con Te Partirò is one of our quiet-but-glorious Friday night listening rituals; Italian pop opera that is both sensuous and spiritual and a beautiful way to wind down a week and soundtrack a soft-lit bowtie pasta and artisan bread dinner.

Another good way to wind down a long week: having children stay in bed after they go to bed and you're trying to sneakily get into sugary treats.

*off 1995's Bocelli

Cool Morning Sun, Which Barely Peeps Through the Trees in Our Front Yard, Which I Never Pruned Last Year

My back is better, thanks to ice, heat, some sort of white pill Becca gave me, and managing to avoid further injury from my four-year old orangutan (name: Magdelana) who leaps on me (frequently unseen) every chance she gets. Thanks for all the cards and well wishes.

(There were none, but I'd like to think some of you thought about sending something, like chocolates, or cash).

Cool Morning Sun is a great dishwasher loading song by PDX psychrockers Vive Voce. It has nothing to do with doing dishes or other chores, but it makes me smile and think of Nancy Sinatra.

(Off 2011's optimistic The Future Will Destroy You. Obviously, they use a Mayan calendar.)

Too Tired (And The Fact That I've Gone Four Days With No Coffee Has Nothing To Do With It)

Too Tired. DeVotchKa. 2004. How It Ends.
It is impossible to top the title track from How It Ends, made famous by the film Little Miss Sunshine. Too Tired is one of their more subdued, haunting melodies...but with a little gypsy dance buried in there.

Everybody Hurts (But Especially Me At the Moment, Due to Unbearable Pain That is Worse Than Anything That Anyone In the World Has Ever Experienced, But Fortunately I Am Quietly Being Brave and Resisting the Urge to Shriek)

Daddy?

Yes, Magdelana?

I have to go to the bathroom. Which bathroom do you think I should use?

How about...the blue bathroom.

Okay. I think I'll use the yellow bathroom. Thanks!

Everybody Hurts. R.E.M. 1992, off Automatic for the People. A very soft, beautiful, contemplative ballad that should never be listened to before 8pm.

The Forest is a Cozy Place for Christmas Creatures

The snow had not yet arrived;
we sneaked out, into the sun-lit forest.
Magdelana guided the way down the invented garden path to the fortress
I can reveal nothing more.
It is secret.
Deep in the heartwoods.

Nightfall fell.
Kids in pajamas (said with British accent);
tooth breeshed, upon our favourite hygienist's recommend.
Hopped in the automobile for surprise trip down
Mount Norway.
Pulled into the drab house neighborhood turned 


BEAUTIFUL

illuminated and alive with creatures from the Poles.
Zooey Deschanel & M. Ward dueting with us.
Slow drive, caroling to us.
Then,
home to bed.

HOLIDAY SONG OF THE DAY
Baby, It's Cold Outside / She & Him

RITUALS & EVENTS
Singing O Holy Night very, very loud in the automobile and not remembering most of the words.
Exploring in The Woods and having Magdelana discover another secret fort.
Driving through the neighborhood Christmas lights at the bottom of mountain. 
Finishing Crazy, Stupid, Love and having Becca stay awake until the end. A Christmas miracle. Heh heh.

We Hope You Enjoy Parenting. Don't Fail At It.

There are only a few things that can compete with a ball for something simple, versatile, and open to unlimited possibilities for play. Wood blocks offer some stiff competition to the classic ball though. There is something pure, visceral, and peaceful about stacking, building, arranging, and yes, knocking down a collection of blocks. And, it's an activity that you can concentrate on with kids, but also simultaneously have great conversations with them. Magdelana and I have had some of our best conversations while creating massively-ambitious wood structures, and Johannes loves to jabber his three-cents in while he's building his Gehry-inspired Towers of Babel.





So, the sun was out, the air chilly. Just for something crazy, I had a hot cuppa Joe in the early morning. There are people who drink their coffee black, which I respect, and hope to maybe be one of those people someday. But December is just too fun a month to do that.


Drew another Block City as a birthday gift for a really swell one-year old lad, Koen. As noted in previous posts, I use paint markers for these. I spend so much time in front of a computer, editing this, undoing that, living in the digital world. It feels wonderful to live on the edge and paint something that can't be undone with a click.


My friend Joel Henriques introduced me to Elmer's non-toxic paint markers via his blog, and they rapidly became one of my very favourite tools ever. I'm sure everybody uses them differently, but my approach is to just start with a few simple lines for outlining some buildings, and then just wing it from there. No pencil, no pre-planning, just living on that dangerous ledge of no-return. Or, no-erase :) It is addictive. And it is so fun painting on wood. (Makes a big difference to do a good job sanding beforehand).



Buddies by Joseph Ivan Long & MDL .


Magdelana and Becca closed out the day's events by going to a baby shower my sister Leanna threw for our friends Jodi and Kit, who have their firstborn due in January. I cannot imagine being married to someone more crazy, and fun, than my wife, though I forget her name at the moment. Oh yes...it's Becca. We make a good team - she is a person who outlines things in pencil beforehand, and gives me brutally honest feedback on what's working and what's not. She is a funnel for many of my ideas, and she serves a vital role, as one of my creative partners, in determining which ideas:


A. Deserve to be shared with the public, and
B. Need more work before being shared with the public, or
C. Should never, ever be shared with the public.


Our senses of humor are different, but overlapping. She is one of the funniest people I have known, and there are select people who will vigorously endorse that fact. We have fun writing out greeting card messages together, like the card we included with the baby gift last night:

We hope you enjoy parenting, and don't fail at it.

Okay, maybe it's not that funny. But guess what: the two of us guffawed heartily about it in the automobile, and our children looked at us strangely, as they will likely do frequently over the course of our lives. We are a team, and we have fun together. So it will be a pleasant memory for us.


HOLIDAY SONG OF THE DAY
Angels We Have Heard On High / Sufjan Stevens


RITUALS & EVENTS
Singing Jingle Bells very, very loud in the automobile.
Eating not just delicious pumpkin pie, but also warm gooey apple pie baked by our friend Liesl.
Watching the first 45-minutes of Crazy, Stupid, Love with Becca on the couch before falling asleep, unbelievably, before midnight, and thinking that my abs do not closely resemble Ryan Gosling's at the moment.


If you like these, here are some related posts!
Block Party 01.
More Block Rockin'.
Even More Block Rockin'.

Adventure Log

Adventure Log

Stumbled upon a nice little British Columbian family blog. Fans of Unschooling, which you can also learn more about there.

Nurtured by Love

Also: watch Jason Marsh's 25-minute documentary film Unschooled. Met him at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival several years ago. Extremely articulate, nice guy who made a lovely little piece about...Unschooling.

ZOO AND THE HOLDING OUT AND HOLDING OF HEROES.

M's first zoo trip last weekend. She had a grand time, other than slumbering through five-eighths of it. Coincidentally, we shared the same favourite animals: hippos, turtles, orangutans, baboons, tusk boars, fruit bats, and her mom, the latter whom she was fond of shrieking for in a voice that is reminiscent of a hoarse walrus dueting with Bonnie Tyler*. Odd though it may sound, it is music. I love her voice. Shrieking, crying, laughing, burping, and especially hiccuping.

She is so incredibly, hilariously fun.

*Fact: Bonnie Tyler is the singer behind the greatest sing-a-long song ever, Holding Out for a Hero (coincidentally, also the Greatest Song Ever). Every time I hear it regardless of where I am, I lurch for the nearest hairbrush, throw back the hair, and lip-synch like there's no tomorrow, except there is one because we're waiting for a hero.

*Note: there will be more zoo pictures. A priceless shot of mating turtles will be appearing soon. It's obvious once you see it that humans are not the only species who take pleasure in coupling rituals. The look on old Phillip's face...priceless (Phillip is the amorous shellback mounted atop his playmate).



Bonnie Tyler

Holding Out for a Hero

Footloose soundtrack

1984

I Prefer E-sharp

Quietly celebrated M's 17-Day Birthday with a quiet ditty some of you may have illegally sung in restaurants. Little tune called Happy Birthday. Think she's starting to get annoyed with it. Which may have something to do with the fact that she's now heard it sixteen times over the course of 2+ weeks of post-womb living at exactly 12:46 pm. Although we were late by a minute today.

Banality be dammed: this has been such an unbelievably cool experience. Sleep loss and fetid diapers fly to the engorged short-term amnesia bin every time I catch her staring at me, unblinking, mouth perpetually in motion, yawning, searching for the magic milk button, fingers twitching like Charlie Parker two minutes into I Didn't Know What Time It Was. Just an unbelievably interesting, entertaining, vulnerable little being, similar to a person almost. A little person with the most bemused eyes I've seen since sub-teaching 7th grade and eliciting a similar response with every apparently lame witty anecdote I told up front.

Well, might as well learn early on that her Dad's a corny kinda dude and has no plans to head in another direction.

Grandpeppy is not unfond of Maggie. It's not settled whether it will be Grandpeppy or Granda. Think Jack Handey for the former, Irish for the latter. Talk about nonparallel analogies. Oh well. It's who we are?



Charlie Parker has one of my favorite remarks about music. Talking about his style:

I try to play clean and look for the pretty notes.

Love it.

Tale of a Toad

Download Tale of a Toad. A story of ethics by Joseph Long.

I ran across this old school project and decided to make it available for a short while. If there are any copyright-holders with a problem, it will be taken down immediately.

Long Live Toad. Enjoy.

Daughter Tardiness, pt. 03

Fireworks of the traditional kind. That's it. Still nothing.

It's perhaps not a tragedy that I've had a few extra days to prepare for the entrance of my daughter. It's given me time to formulate some plans for the upcoming year.



Specifically:

I will be launching a blog series about "Fathering the First Year: How to Do It Almost Perfectly."

Notice I didn't say "Completely Perfectly." I will probably make mistakes.

Somewhere between four and six, I suspect. But by Day 366, expecting fathers should be able to look over my notes, recommendations, lists, and tirades and weather their own Year 01 with great aplomb.

Yes, I did just use the word "aplomb." It's archaic. But so is Neil Diamond. And "Forever in Blue Jeans" will still be classically archaic in 2048, and quite possibly still be the Greatest Song Ever. And Daughter and I will still be listening to it together. And Mum.

NOTE: That's me and my nephew Torsten at Burgerville. Not my daughter.

NOTE 02: Their Mocha Blast milkshakes are refreshingly healthy. Torsten attempted to steal mine, but I intervened at the last second.

FACT: children should not heavily drink coffee before the age of Three.

RELATIVE WAYS (GREATEST SONG EVER).

I've thought a lot about all the things I'm going to do with my daughter. Like cooking and teaching her how to use a chainsaw. Close to the top of the charts, I relish the thought of teaching her the basics of music appreciation and how to make meaningful lists of the Top 14 Songs to listen to when you're driving in the rain on I-90 in November.* And I have to tell you, I have just been so blessed with listening to "...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead" during these pregnancy months.

They have brought so much joy to my eyes and rock 'n roll to my heart. I am filled with love for my daughter and aggression for the world.

Relative Ways: one of the Top 100 Songs of All Time. Possibly the Greatest Song Ever.

Also, I should probably teach myself how to use a chainsaw first.