59 HOURS, BUT NOBODY'S COUNTING.

She came along a road. On a dark night. My buddy, Becca's bud, our pal.

Home again.

Briefly.


It is always the beginning of something.
She pulled in on the dark late night, and brought a big hug - I kindly let Becca squeeze her first before shoving my wife aside - and a bigger box of her baked delicacies full of sugar and butter and cinnamon and spices and secret stuff and such to savor over the next 59 hours. And we did. The molasses ginger cookies were sublime and exquisitely textured.


As you like it.
She slumbered for a number of hours that dug deep into the following morning, and I measured carefully the contents of our coffee supply and determined there was enough for a single serving each, and impatiently waited with patience for her to awake, and waited, and waited, and waited, and debated making myself two cups, but the potential of being able to share a cup on a Friday morning with an adult, and historically one of my favourite drinking companions, was strong enough to back me down, so I waited, and waited, and waited - but I stayed busy educating minds with the joys of a Shakespeare comedy, Latin, a breakdown of the U.S. Constitution and genius of James Madison, a refresher on the beauty of the Fibonacci sequence, and the difference between metals and metalloids on the periodic table. And such. And I waited, but not with inaction.


One more cup, or one cup only.
Up. I made the coffee, and it was mediocre, possibly a few notches beneath. This is not a subjective analysis; she observed this accurately, in the deadpan voice I like to think she saves primarily when mocking me, and I do not mind, because she sneaks the lightest trace of affection into the corners of the deadpan and I can tell.


In which a general satisfaction is found. 
She expressed appreciation, once more, for the single cup of, to quote precisely "...mediocre coffee." This was the second conveyance within a nine-minute span whereupon she found occasion to observe the quality of the handmade beverage I made with my hands. A particular glee at the left corner of her mouth accompanied an otherwise straight countenance in delivering this observation for the second time; a glee that was perhaps an enthusiastic rebuttal to a statement I had made before gently setting down her container of black gold:

I,
I said,
am intimidated to be drinking coffee with you, let alone making and serving it to you. 

Why?
she asked, the left corner of her mouth fighting hard to stay down and being utterly defeated.
You shouldn't be.

I can see by your expression,
I replied.
That you know exactly why. You have spent the last ten months being trained in the exotic art of making exceptional coffee and paying attention to subtle variances in external temperature and relative humidity and the exquisite care one must take in preparing a proper cup of coffee, and knowing all that, and knowing that I know that, and knowing that I have dug to the bottom remainder of our stash to prepare...this...it is difficult. 

Oh, I'm sure it will be fine,
she said, her eyes betraying the lie of her words and alighting on the truth of what I had just spoken; a truth which was confirmed by her coupleted statement not ten minutes later.

Thank you for the coffee,
she murmured in the sun, looking up post-sip.
It really is mediocre.

I know.
I said.
You're welcome.

The left corner turned upward ever so higher in either mirth or disgust. It was a difficult tell.


The vanity of time. 
After that she did not initiate a conversation about time and how the reality of time is unchanging, but the social construct we have built around time is so different than what it used to be. We did not have this conversation - I am usually the one who brings up such conversations with her, and then she eagerly jumps in and we repartee and argue, and she may make me feel like an idiot sometimes, but it is generally because she made a relevant point that I did not see coming and should have; importantly, it is rarely, if ever because of the fact that I have brought up a silly conversation to begin with, such as a questioning of the social construct of time and its evolution - devolution - over time.

Our hyperconsciousness over time and constant awareness of the calendar, of obligations and responsibilities and alarms and timers and reasons to never forget to do anything are an horrific example of the wreck that techno-efficiency brings to our lives in the guise of progress. Incandescent bulbs and microwaves and silicon chips are all great inventions on so many levels...but now we get to work later, make food faster, and be connected at all times to a reflective screen that we live so much of our lives on...in the name of efficiency, productivity, and...connectedness.

The persistent melting away of connection in an age of hyper connective potential. Sad. A reminder of the beauty of scarcity, and how having more than you need of something - e.g. the ability to constantly connect - does not mean you will connect better. Or even well.


Of electric sheep.
She also did also not casually integrate Salvador Dali into any of our conversations, although such casual slip-ins have occurred enough times to not be uncommon in our dialogues going back twenty years. Dali was another individual fascinated by time; a fascination symbolized best by his 1931 Surrealist masterpiece The Persistence of Memory, in which pocket watches are melting across a desert  landscape in a nod to the relative nature of time and space.

We did not speak of that, except perhaps in telepathic dreams?


Call me anytime, but not then.
In addition, she did not begin talking of how Dali was often inspired by the landscapes of Catalonia, the autonomous area in the northeast of Spain. I've never been there, but she has been to Spain, and Becca has been to Spain, and my understanding is that Spain, like many hot regions, takes a siesta at midday as a respite from the sun. Later, shops begin reopening and stay open late. As a lifelong American with an interest in other geographies and living, this is fascinating: being on a completely different sort of clock than I'm used to; a clock that is out of sync with the standard we've been on since the Industrial Revolution helped invent the standard work day in which efficiency and production matter most. Anyway,

we did not speak of that, but it would not be strange if we had.


There is a soundtrack to your life and it is not mine. 
Shortly thereafter, she did not shirk or shrink as I pulled out my phone in the midday sun to take a selfie of us; a practice I have been engaging in heavily since 2015. It is difficult to know whether the greater joy is what I feel much later on in looking at the snapshot of a moment frozen, or whether it is the evolution of her reaction in the moment I pull out camera to selfie. A reaction that went from groaning and eyerolling years ago externally to pose-striking deadpan Kim Deal cool with Mediterranean warmth now. Combo killer. It has never been a wasted moment.


Waste a moment. 
She did not scream at the boy, at my son, as he kissed her. As he kissed her six hundred and twenty-two times with snot-bathed cheeks and blue smile targeted at her, she did not waver in returning the aggression in the hot sun. It was love, and she wore a rugged flannel built for wiping toddler-phlegm off cheeks, and she never screamed.


The modern age. 
At a certain point, she tried to steal my mug, my Wonder Woman mug; her fingers grasped the ceramic but not enough to tug from my grasp. I kept it from her and gave her my third favorite mug to drink coffee from. There are immutable laws in the universe: gravity exists, objects in motion stay in motion until a force acts upon them, etc. Also: nobody drinks from my Wonder Woman mug but me. No one. Not even Becca, except once on her birthday because I was being nice. So I could not, did not let her, one of my best buds, drink from it.

But I let her touch it. Interesting thing about immutable laws: they're not always immutable. For example, I was talking with the children earlier this evening about the circumstances in which natural and immutable laws do not work the immutable way they're supposed to. Like around black holes. The gravity that defines a black hole's existence is so powerful that it sucks everything in. Everything. Including light. The area around a black hole is very strange: the immutable laws governing force and motion that seem to apply everywhere in the universe don't apply here. Same with subatomic particles like quarks; the beginning of the insanely cool and insanely in-understandable world of particle physics. How can the same object exist in multiple spaces simultaneously? Physicists, astronomers, geniuses are still trying to figure out how and why sometimes the immutable laws of the natural world don't apply.

I love that. I would rather exist as an exception than a rule; an outlier rather than an indicator. I am happy to surround myself with others who embrace the exceptions to immutable laws. If there's one thing you take away from this paragraph, it's this: yes, you read correctly; I am strongly inferring, if not guaranteeing, that time travel is not only a possibility, it is a certainty and will definitely happen within this century. Though probably after I'm dead.

So I guess if there's two things you take away, it's this: don't touch my Wonder Woman mug. Also, I need to look into the affordability of cryogenics.


Seventeen.
She accepted my invitation to drive into the big city to a big store, where I bought a large bag of coffee, thirteen bananas, and picked up my contacts from the optometrist - which is vastly different from an ophthalmologist - inside this big store. I looked longingly at a diverse assortment of items, such as a kayak, a standup paddleboard, and a small boat. Perhaps in violent reaction to my reactionary longing, she took decisive action and ordered me to deposit a single item in her cart: a flotation device for two, requiring paddles and starting with the letter 'k.'

She bought a kayak, which I thought was the appropriate method to get a kayak if you want one, as opposed to shoplifting. Had she chosen that route, the remainder of the weekend could have had a different flavor. I acceded to her demand; demanding in exchange a second selfie of the day as we stood dour-countenanced in front of three thousand shopping carts.

I bought my bananas and coffee and checked to ensure an appropriate number of children were flailing their infinite elbows within a hundred foot radius as we headed into the parking lot.

A boy in front wiggled and waggled along as he held onto an adult across the concrete walkway, tugging and kissing her leg and losing balance, but kept sure-footed by the firm grasp of a bigger hand over a small. The sun beat down, one was wearing a baseball hat as we climbed in and left the parking lot...

...to drive into another parking lot on a Friday afternoon artery to the highway. Yuck. An hour to go two miles or so. Should I have bought iced coffee previous to this? Life is full of should haves. But we work to eliminate them going forward. So next time. Fortunately I had some emergency music stashed away I was able to put to use, and got a few words of conversation in as the two-year old in the back bantered and played with who had once been my friend, but who had now been transferred over to his dominion. C'est la vie, que sera sera.


Black water.
She then stopped by the grocery with us, which brought a big bill, more yellow berries, and and a rendezvous with our other friend, also known as my wife. The Countess - my wife - and I parted ways with her temporarily and shared a banana in the sunshine.

At this point, there is a break in this narrative's chronology, as she conveyed herself ostensibly for a visit with grandparents; a divergent path which led down physically a separate road from us, but also a divergent path from honesty, as later events led to a somber moment where it was revealed she spurned a grandparental generational chit-chat in favor of a gourmet mid-afternoon lunch with her mother. This was a circumstance outside of my prior knowledge. I do not know what she ordered, though it is unlike me to have not asked.

The hour is late. 
She posed for a shot with her sister before they departed for a show. A concert beginning at a witching hour, a concert which I urged my wife to attend for the joint reasons of:

A) it'll be a fun bit of culture and melody.
B) you'll see your brother up on stage slappin' da bass.
C) you'll make a great memory with your sister that can never be stripped away, save through severe and sudden traumatic retrograde memory loss or genetic-markers leading to extreme dementia and the erratic cleansing of your memory bank; either way it's out of your control, so if all goes well you can use tonight to construct a delightful memory that won't disappear, ideally. But take pictures too.

So they hopped off the porch, rolled away on wheels, giggling and done up, gorgeous and fifty-percent pregnant.  I returned to children, scrounged up enough morsels for their stomachs to survive them through the night, and yelled them into bed before settling with a blanket, my laptop, two notebooks, seven books, and my fave G2 gel pen to make little notes and work on my little book I'm working on in little bits.

Moby remixes swirled in the background, probably too loud, but what can you do? I wasn't going to turn it down in the name of sleeping children. I wrote. Some good things and some mediocre things and I tried some new tricks with a semi-colon, and I reheated a cup of mostly uncaffeinated coffee that was mediocre and befitted the weekend in terms of beverage quality.

The sisters returned post-Cinderella clock, but radiances and attire intact. I had been preparing myself all evening long to back off upon their return. By 'back off,' I mean "not initiate a conversation that would keep one of my favorite conversational partners up into the wee wee hours of the morning. I held firm to that commitment, because I am strong, and watched her crawl into bed, also known as our living room couch, without brushing her teeth. I commented on this because my wife is a hygienist and our relationship is such that I can ask those questions of her at 1am and I helpfully suggested she could borrow our two-year old son's teethbrush.

She declined, and I left with nothing more than a small judgmental look tossed her way. But she was already dreaming.


The hour is early. 
She asked me a question, and I allowed a significant number of time to elapse before responding. Around fifteen hours. Rather than responding, I waited for her eyes to run to slumber twelve feet away. Skipping backwards through time, this is what happened:

I awoke at a premature hour, an hour which could have been used for sleep, but instead was used for the entrance of two sleepy boys joining our bed. Sleepy boys with the bed-sharing habits of a Cirque du Soleil trapeze artist, which is to say they are acrobatic, and the vocal subtleties of Tom Waits, which is to say that the growling, throat clearing, and whistly breathing of bed partners is not the companion of restful early morning slumber.

So I quietly ducked out to a couch and discovered enough light to read through my ragged paperback Sophie's World, a literary trek I have been on for a couple years now and immensely enjoy. It is a Scandinavian novel whose narrative involves following a young girl's mysterious journey into studying the history of philosophy. Thus it is a plot-driven approach to learning about the eras and titans of philosophy throughout history. I typically read it Friday evenings or nights; sometimes a page or two, sometimes 20 or thirty.

I carefully turned the pages in as rustle-less a fashion as possible, knowing from long experience the impact that "quiet" noises can have in distracting one from sleep, such the hypothetical situation of an 11-year old girl choosing your 20-minute power nap time to suddenly take an interest in thumbing through your book collection at the foot of the bed. One rustled page at a time. This is also why I avoided anything more than a millisecond eye contact when she threw off the comforter and trotted across the room and down the adjacent hallway, perhaps to use the toilet, perhaps to do tai chi, perhaps to go crawl in bed with her sister, who was accompanied by the two young men I had sought to escape.

My suspicion of the former was confirmed a short time later when she returned and asked in her passage across the room: "What are you reading?"

followed by a glance at my small journal and pen precariously perched on the arm : "How is the writing?"

There are moments in a person's life where they can clearly see everything in an instant. I have not yet embarked on a near-death experience, although I have broken one ankle and two legs, though both were the same leg at different times, but my understanding is that at the moment of death minus one-second, everything flashes before your eyes. Perhaps this is a novelist's construct that has waded into modern archetypes, or perhaps there is something to it. There is certainly a romantic allure of having the split second before death be filled with a hyper-sped version of your life. I think Walt Whitman would agree.

Again, I have not experienced the nearness of death, aside from some near-near-ish experiences I will tell you about someday, such as the time I saved a prostitute along the Ala Wai Canal from her knife-wielding pimp, but what else I have done is to practice the art of exercising an ability to immediately size up a particular situation in an instant, and in that instant know the right thing to do.

I knew the right thing to do was to ignore her.

Because I knew, based on my instant assessment of posture, gait, head turn, voice modulation, tone, angle of head, amount of eye contact, and inflection at the end of the two questions, that she was simply asking out of misguided responsibility and obligation.

Do I believe she was interested? Yes. But I also knew in this instant that these questions were driven by a motivation other than a deep desire to be up at this hour engaged in conversation. Even if it was me, who is often her able and capable conversational partner and verbal duelist. And I knew if I used the next five seconds to answer, her synapses would move from dormant to alive, against their will, and all other body and brain functions would slowly grind their gears into action, and it would be against her will. And face it: some people are cranky when they don't get enough sleep. I make no inferences. Simply that some people are.

So I ignored her, although I would have swapped ten pages of reading Sophie for five minutes of conversation with her. But I knew it wasn't right, and I was able to smugly peer over my book at the sleepy figure of my friend as she ignored my ignoring and trotted into bed, pulling the comforter up and burying her body underneath, and I knew that I had performed a beautiful and self-sacrificing action. Truly the action of a saint.

The sun broke through the slits around the thirteen-year old blinds hanging over our thirty-year old windows as I polished off several more pages, and she finished her night's nap. When she awoke later, we spoke some words. She had little memory of the encounter.

Yeah, I said, I don't really remember it either.


A time to turn.
At 9.56 am I took three selfies of us holding a small stuffed animal. I wore a white tank top for the occasion.


Impossible request.
For a period of four minutes between 10.02 and 10.06am, she backed out of our driveway, executing one of the greatest 27-point turns seen in my lifetime, in which a turn was never executed, but did, in the end, allow for a successful exit.

The time required to execute this move might have dropped from four minutes to ten seconds had I moved a vehicle or two in order to allow for a clear exit path, but I was heavily involved in the important task of laughing as she made micro-turn adjustments and attempted to extricate her vehicle. In the end she did so.

If I had intervened, she surely would have lost the opportunity to show her capability at executing a 27-point backup maneuver.


Over.
She sat in the pew behind at the memorial service we attended, and I stepped out with our two-year old son who had a soggy diaper and tired eyes, and he finally lolled to sleep on my shoulder, whereupon I returned to the sanctuary and dumped his plumb body across her chest, where he lay splayed upon her bosoms, chest rising and falling and falling and falling deeper into nap and the dreams of a good dream brought to life when he opened his sweaty eyes at long long last and saw in whose arms he lay; a circumstance which led him immediately to begin kissing her with his sweaty face, again and again; an activity which continued for the entirety of her fifty-nine hour stay, if anyone was counting, which they probably weren't, which I was.

Because sometimes to savor the moments, you gotta own up to their scarcity and make em count.

Also, I tried to eat soup while driving.


Homecoming. 
We drove home in silence, save for bottomless sounds of talking, laughing, and music. A child kept her attention for most of the duration, and she gave it with something less than a sullen presence.

There are many people who treat time as a fixed entity, and there are others who invoke Albert Einstein and Salvador Dali in creating elaborate reasons for why time is more of a fluid concept. I could be described as falling into the latter category; however as I watched the minutes tick away, in maddeningly un-fluid fashion, and I swiftly used calculus to determine the timing of making it to my brother's album release show at the scheduled time, I came to the conclusion that there was a discrepancy between the two numbers.

The long version is, if we drove all the way home - 35 minutes past the concert venue - and then drove back, we would most certainly be late to his show.

So my wife, the Countess Becca, spoke the words that John Huss and John Wycliff and Joan of Arc spoke so many times (or perhaps only once, as they were being burned at the stake):

"I'll take care of this."

This is not technically what she said, and probably not what they said either, but it does capture the spirit of what they all meant, which is why I included it in quotation marks, and also to give it more gravitas. I did not take care of it. Becca did, and what she did was this: she dropped us off at the show so we could be there on time and she took the children home, and promised to drive back in, long after bedtime, to pick us up.

A saintly thing, although I can say with delicious knowledge that she may be a heavenly-bodied angel, but she is not a saint, in the best way possible she is not, and is much more interesting and rebellious than one. But what she did was a kind and saintly gesture. She lifted the responsibility and the anxiety and the stress of us potentially missing the show away with her saintly decision and sent us off with a wave as the sun began to set in northwest Portland.

We walked the thirty seconds to the venue. I used eight of those seconds to selfie-video us walking, and looking back at the video, I am deeply irked at myself for not using at least twenty. She wore a jean jacket and was applying lipstick and looked very cool,

and then we crossed the street and entered.

Hearing is weak, listening is strong, so which do we do with music? 
The venue was small and the people were many. Chairs were found and we found ourselves located in a center-front vantage point where we watched two performers - first the lovely duo of Adam Black and Ariel Roxanne Cook (the latter on my fave guitar solo of the year), then the stompin sounds of Jacob Westfall, and finally...

my little brother. Jeremy M. Long, or as he goes by professionally: J.M. Long. A beautiful set with him splitting time between keys and guitar, ink rippling his lithe dense arms as he danced sang and played his way through a falsetto-soaring set of rockers, ballads, and experimental pop gems. My toes tapped and I felt her head bobbing time and my heart leaped when he said "...this one's for my brother Joseph" before launching into People Worry, a track that has both brought and taken away tears in the last month. So good.

We ducked out and found fresh oxygen immediately thereafter; we looped around 300 blocks or so while waiting for Becca to arrive. She spent 275 of them grumbling about not having brought knee socks on a cold night. She was grinning while grumbling so I found it unnecessary to break Anthropologie's window at 11 on a Saturday night in order to get her a pair, which I totally would have done if needed. But again, grinning-while-grumbling. She somehow survived until Becca arrived.


Because it's what I do.
After sliding almost-sleeping Becca over to the passenger seat and giving a brief synopsis of the show, I launched into an appropriate discussion question for the ride home.

So,
I said.
Tell us about this fellow you're with.

She did.

Because I asked.

INTERLUDE:

You can ask me two questions,
I informed her.
Go.

She thought briefly, and then asked two questions. I will only list one of them.

My fave Shakes right now,
I answered her,
is Twelfth Night.

We approached the bottom of our mountain and I knew it was time to play a special song that would bring us home as we pulled in the driveway, which is what happened as the closing strains of Kings of Leon's True Love Ways died out and I cut the engine and I don't know if she thought it was special but I know her and I know that someday she'll realize it was and is.


The morning after. 
There was coffee on the porch, and late birthday gifts given, and sunshine which bothered me because sunshine when I'm sad does not make me happy and I was sad because the clock would not stop ticking and time would not stop moving the wrong way and there was nothing to do to prevent her from leaving.

Again.

And I wanted to grab hold of the stupid little seconds winding their revolutions and slow each one down but they wouldn't stop moving. I gave her a CD, and I gave her sister a CD and I said:

It is the same playlist on each CD. Maybe sometimes you can each listen to it when you're driving and feel connected, or something. They're songs that are special to me.


The 59th. 
I hugged her, a good hug, and other people hugged her, and Becca squeezed her, and then I skulked over at the last minute to sneak the last hug in, and then she left,

and drove along the road.

The wrong way.

Away, way away.

There were some good hours in those fifty-nine, and I think the mountain misses her.

I took my stupid watery eyes inside and angrily ate a ginger molasses cookie. Allergies.


HOME / SISTERS
True Love Way / Kings of Leon
Pretty Voice / Cloud Cult
Ran / Future Islands
Jade / Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
The Vanity of Trying / Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
River of Brakelights / Julian Casablancas
Keep You On My Side / Chvrches
No Widows / The Antlers
Waste a Moment / Kings of Leon
The Modern Age / The Strokes
Seventeen / Sharon Van Etten
Black Water / Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes
Don't Miss It / James Blake
Blood Bank / Bon Iver
Seasons (Waiting On You) / Future Islands
Impossible Request (alt version) / Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Over / Kings of Leon

I guess it's good to feel even when it doesn't feel good. 

all times are not exact times and all quotes are not exact quotes; for both there is no apology. the truth is still contained within these hybrids of fact and interpretation. 

SOME DAYS.

Some days, you get a message from your carrier in the morning saying you have less than 2% data remaining for the month that ends tomorrow, so you put your phone into airplane mode for the day while you're away from wifi to avoid paying an extra $20.

Some days, you drink coffee black.

Some days, you ditch responsibility and the growing list of to do's and take the family to the water park, and feel smug about how little guilt you feel, especially when the kids remember to say thank you at the end of the day.

Some days, you enjoy a random few minutes of conversation with a stranger about structural engineering and the amazing feats of genius it took to build airplanes and spacecraft in the 1960s.

Some days, your wife winks at you from across a crowded space filled with strangers and it makes you feel super good. Some days.

Some days, you watch your two-year old racing down a four-foot waterslide with an attitude of focus, enthusiasm, and energy that is infectious, and then you realize he's wearing a swim diaper and pray heartily that it holds up on his 497th descent of the slide.

Some days, you watch your eight-year old take on something scary and challenging and dark, like an enclosed supersonic waterslide, and you see him emerge with bravery and the confidence of the conquered, and you feel like Mr. Miyagi must have at the end of the first Karate Kid, even though you know it's not really about you.

Some days, you watch your 11-year old daughter-athlete exit a pool with her mischievous smile of undisguised joy and you want to grab onto that and do whatever it effing takes to keep that mischief and that smile and that inimitable sense of unique self growing boundlessly and eternally.

Some days, you exchange almost no words with your eight-year old son on a rainy afternoon drive because he's so deeply absorbed in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and you smile with happiness at being ignored for a splendid reason.

Some days, you think about stopping for coffee on a rainy day because you really feel like it, and you don't because then you'd wake up your sleeping wife who looks magical with little damp ringlets of blonde drizzled down her face after she's played hard, and besides it means you'd have to take your attention away from listening to Future Islands' Ran, and you're just not okay with breaking up that piece of magic.

Some days, you listen to Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire, the Pixies' Gouge Away, and Xavier Rudd's Storm Boy back-to-back-to-back and think nothing of it.

Some days, you eat a bean burrito from Taco Bell when you're so hungry and it tastes like one of the top five burritos you've ever had in your life. You know it's not true, but for a few brief moments, it seems like it.

Some days, you fight with your wife over a book from the library your daughter finished, and you've both discovered it's pretty good, and then she's two chapters ahead and selfishly dived into bed with it before you could wrest it away. Some days that happens.

Some days, you look over at your wife in bed, reading the book you're supposed to be reading, and she's falling asleep and you can hear frogs singing away in the forest creek a hundred yards away and you know it's time to put the day to rest, because it was a good one, and also you still have .07% of data left on your cell phone plan that rolls over tomorrow, and you totally stuck it to them because you saved twenty bucks. Looks like you're gonna buy yourself some good coffee tomorrow. But that's a different day. Not today.

Some days, you realize were inimitable, like and unlike every other, and you'll carry some special snippets from it around with you for a while. Like...forever.

Some days.

A DAY, A WEDNESDAY.

01
Would you rather have good food and poor service, or poor food and great service?

Trick question. I vote for great food combined with great service. We got one of the two this week.

One of the first things I would do, were I a camp director, would be to ban the use of kitchen and dishwashing staff wearing headphones while interacting with campers.

I married a camp kitchen worker. Her mischievous smile in line was one of the tiny things that added joy and spice to a mundane part of the day. It took nothing extra. Just a willingness to connect with others on the job with personality and spirit.

And there’s a bond that forms in the back kitchens when you’re forced to compromise over radio listening, as opposed to everyone being on separate earbuds in their own little private worlds.

At the least: not when interacting with the public. There’s something that slowly sucks the life out of air when you’re interacting with people who are trying hard not to make eye contact and using headphones as a signaling mechanism that ‘I am not available for friendly communication on any level and in any way, which includes smiling.’

I believe there were hash browns, chicken eggs, tofu, oatmeal, and muffins.

I ate an oatmeal and a hashbrown, plural.

02
This is a really sad incident with a sad ending, but I’m going to tell it because you need to hear it.

I have told our children: play hard, get dirty, scrape yourselves up.

They can start doing their own laundry and we can afford plenty of bandaids.

But don’t,
I say.
Do anything to your head or your spine.

No brain or spinal injuries. I feel strongly about this.

It felt good to have our 19-month old absorb this philosophy already. I had previously forbidden him from doing somersaults on the 4th floor window ledge; a stern command I gave that made sense to me, if not him and everyone else.

Go find something slightly less dangerous,
I said.

- and I should note that I am slightly rearranging facts here again to fit the narrative I want to tell, because I did not actually tell him this, and I was not actually with him when the incident I am about to tell you took place.

He was with his mother, a girl who is frequently good at dangerous things, and sometimes not so skilled at being a triage nurse. So what happened was

- and I should tell you ahead of time in case you’re getting excited about what is about to happen, that he did not get attacked by a moose. That is another story for another time -

The short version is this:  You know the skin underneath your upper leg that everyone, aside from triathletes and people who exercise too much, have?

Some people have more of this fatty skin than others on their thigh. If he was in Alaska and he was a whale, the Inuit might call it ‘blubber.’

It is cute blubber, I have to say.

So what what happened is, he was apparently playing with a friend, a friend who was a bee. I do not know the bee’s name, but they were having fun I would guess, and in the midst of their playing, his friend flew underneath him playfully, and got lost.

Where did he get lost? In the folds. The folds of blubber, of fatty tissue that all non-triathletes have. Mr. Bee was flying around and got caught in a fold of fat that closed around him as he was flying, and as our son was kicking his legs around playfully.

When living creatures encounter danger, they usually go into fight or flight mode. For Mr. Bee’s sake, I wish he had gone into flight mode.

But he didn’t. He fought. With his stinger. He plunged his stinger deep into the fat of our son’s leg, and then with a final gasp...

...died.

Our son valiantly screamed, and then cried, and recovered over a period of days. He is fine.

Mr. Bee is not. He’s dead. Sad. Sometimes you gotta run, not fight.
Don’t fight if you’re going to end up dead, unless it’s for a bigger cause than yourself. And choose your friends carefully, because some of them can be dangerous, especially if you’re a bee and they’re a little boy with a lot of fatty tissue on the backside of their upper legs.


03
I watched my sister-in-law Meilani reading a one-page black-and-white photocopy of a camp schedule to a nephew and niece, ages 19 months and almost three years old.

They sat with her, happy and absorbed, toys all around, ignored. The toys ignored.

Reading a single page of text-heavy paper with their aunty. Laughing, pointing, squealing, absorbed for precious minutes in interacting.

They had her attention.

It’s hard to overestimate the value of giving kids conscious, focused attention.

I have to remind myself every day, as I get distracted like everyone else and try to escape that focused attention by throwing toys and easy entertainment at them. There’s a time for that too. But still: reminders. #reminders

I loved watching those moments.

04
My mom is a wheeler-dealer; a talent that many people might not peg her as having. But she is. She is sincere and straightforward and nice and empathetic...and also knows how to keep nudging and pushing people into giving a better answer than their original. As in: “Well yes, the ceramics class is full...but I suppose we could set up another table so you and your grandchildren could join too.”

Ceramics and then Giant Swing. The Giant Swing is another very difficult activity to describe. Essentially, it’s a swing that is huge. You might say it’s giant. You get hoisted up into the air 40 or a hundred meters or so, attached by a climbing harness and a piece or two of rope, and people pull you higher and higher, and when you’re ready, you pull a little smaller rope that releases you and you...swing through the air in a side-to-side arc that is...giant.

The idea is that it’s fun. Several years ago, I did it and screamed so loud and for so long that I lost my voice for several days. Seriously and literally.

Becca also made fast friends with one of the instructor guys. They had a little meeting on the ladder and just really hit it off, and they were so cute just standing there talking, for a long time, while the rest of us were waiting to swing. On the giant swing.

05
I like having good salad fixings. Ingredients that make it extra good for me are kidney beans, sunflower seeds, and non-soggy tomatoes that are cut correctly; that is to say: with a sharp and SERRATED knife.

I’ve been having Ejvindr help clear the tables after meals. He wasn’t sure what to make of it the first time, but once he figured out what the process was, he loved it.

He gets to drop the dirty silverware in a giant tub filled with water and other dirty silverware.

He gets to help stack the plates and bowls in the back by the dishwashers and tell them thank you, although they will sadly be too absorbed in their earbuds and in one case, an especially gigantic pair of over-the-ear headphones, to realize that he’s telling them ‘thank you’ in his garbled and semi-intelligible way. With a big smile.

And most importantly, he gets to dump leftover water from the cups into a five-gallon bucket filled with waste liquids, and then stack the dirty cups, upside down, into trays. The trays are arranged in a grid, with little slots for each cup to go upside down. Sometimes he forgets this. Idiot. I remind him, and he figures it out. It’s awesome. He’s very proud of himself.

People offer to help. They helpfully come up and try to take a stack of dishes as I have him in one arm, carefully helping me carry that stack of dirty plates, bowls, silverware, cups to the back, and I say no. No. The point is not that it’s more efficient, or effective, or easier, or faster. It’s none of those things.

It’s more fun.

And possibly he’s learning something valuable about helping out and being part of a collaborative community. I don’t know.

It’s just more fun.

06
When it’s bright outside, I like to wear sunglasses. I typically try to stick to glasses that are constructed out of very poor plastic and are in garish colours. If they cost over a dollar or so, then they are overpriced. If they are freebies from some company’s marketing team, even better, and chances are I can easily rub their logo out in twenty seconds and I’ll be good to go. Becca is good at helping hook me up with these types of sunglasses. It is a skill.

She found six pairs of these sunglass types in children’s sizes, and gave them to all seven of the cousins, including our three. Well...six pairs of sunglasses, seven kids. The 19-month old got stuck with some old adult-size rejects of ours. Sad. We got a photograph of all seven squirming their way around in various contortions as they looked rico suave cool with their cheap shades.

It would be truly terrifying to own expensive sunglasses.


07
Johannes went waterskiing.

There was crashing.

There was improvement.

There was never quite getting up.

And there is next year and next time.

Sometimes it’s valuable to learn that you can crash and still survive. That was a good thing he learned, and I am proud of him for going through the terrifying process of learning that. The actual skill part will come at some point. Probably. Or maybe not.

But he is trying.

He is improving.

And he is giving his best in the face of fear.

That is what I ask.

08
When a person is getting pulled behind a boat, and they crash, then it’s legally required that somebody on the boat hold up an orange flag to let everyone else around know that there’s somebody who wasn’t skilled enough to successfully complete whatever activity they were doing, like waterskiing, and that nobody should probably run over them because they’re treading water while they wait to go again, although they might be crying and not ready to go again because they’re eight-years old and waterskiing is a very terrifying experience.

My dad is very good at holding up an orange flag and holding an infant and simultaneously heckling both the boat driver and whoever the boat driver is pulling.

09
Mud runs are one of the coolest things ever. The mud is only a small part of it. The best part, besides the glitter. We made all our children go, including the 19-month old, because. Because. Because because! Because it’s fun, and he shouldn’t have to miss out. This made sense to us, thought not to all present, especially as this particular Mud Run was a timed competition, and some were planning on winning it.

Our team’s name, coined by our oldest son, was “The Super Slow Sloths.” A team was never named more appropriately. We slogged through mud, over walls and barricades, dogpaddled through a pond, rolled through glitter, slid through sudsy slide, ran down a steep dusty mountain, and finally swam a short sprint in the lake. The latter was terrifying. No joke. I had Ejvindr, who was lifejacketed up, but I was wiped out and barely made it to shore intact. #ironman I doubt my heart rate has come close to what it was during the final leg of the swim. Terrifying.

Loved it. So fun. Also grateful to have a wife that supports the involvement of our children in these activities from early ages and doesn’t take the easy route out of not doing them.

10
I don’t know what we had for supper. It might have been calzones. I don’t think they that terrific. I think I slipped mine to my three-year old niece, who wanted a third.

11
There’s a bunch of safety stuff at camp that’s super important to them, like...let’s see.

Oh yes, adults are required to wear life jackets if they’re playing on the water toys.

And there’s safety stuff that’s not such a big deal to them, like not having railings on 4th floor staircases and decks where small children are staying.

And also doing s’mores on the lakeshore beach at night, with 50 sharp skewers waving around in a small space with hot marshmallows, young children, and fire. Johannes was surprised and disappointed they didn’t have dark chocolate available.

Fortunately, the night passed with no eyeballs on sticks. So, it’s definitely safe. #blackswanevents

That was a day.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON.

Sunday, time to play?
Reality is so lame
We will clean house now.

Kids are excited.
They love work Sundays so much.
This is sarcasm.

Could I be on couch?
All day with HBO shows?
Yes, absolutely.

Becca walks with girls
I make mediocre food.
The kids watch Brain Games.

The coffee ain’t good.
Really super sad, really.
Still better than tea.

Afternoon middle
A voice is telling me to...
...fine, yes to more Joe.

KING AND COUNTESS OF CONVENIENCE.

Becca and I were watching an episode of Elementary after the children were in bed. We ate deep fat fried cheese jalapeño poppers, a remnant from New Year's Eve partying. This is what we consider a date night out. At least if we get through an episode without any children awakening or one of us falling asleep. Under these criteria, our date night was almost successful.

There was an idea thrown around in this particular program (S3E7?) about the choice of a life of convenience versus a life of adventure, and the ongoing battle between the two for certain types of people.

This is a short post, so I will end it here by saying this: I am one of those people.

I fight hard for an optimal balance of the two, and my fighting is sometimes successful, in the sense that the fight is the adventure and the occasional success is the convenience. Anyway.

Here I am, 41, running as hard now as a decade ago, except now I tuck the kids into bed, watch a little telly with my love, and then head down to my dark dungeon to work. That is part of the running hard: sitting on a hard chair under terrible lighting ruining my already rotten eyes doing work I should not be doing at midnight.

And that is part of the adventure, and the quest to build a slightly higher level of convenience for my family so that we may someday be able to embark on other adventures that are still yet dreams.

Farewell.

DEAD WONDER.

In this miserable world, there is one thing that brings me joy. That's about it. That one thing is my mug. My beautiful, powerful Wonder Woman mug that I drink coffee out of every morning. It starts off the day with a brief moment of sunshine before the eclipse of reality smothers the light.

That brief moment of sunshine was ripped away from me a short while ago.

"What mug do you want?"
she called from the kitchen, a worthless question if there ever was one, as she knows the answer to that as well as she knows the twenty-fourth President of the United States, which is to say she knew the answer well.

"The usual,"
I said, wondering at her odd and ridiculous question.

As I glanced over my to-do list for the day, I knew that hope would die the further the day lived, but that I would put one foot in front of the other, slap on a brave face, and fight forward for tiny joys on behalf of my family, and I knew I would be able to do so because of the undying optimism Wonder Woman represents. My morning coffee, held secure in my Wonder Woman mug, would give the fortitude to move ahead just a little bit and delude myself that the world would be right soon.

"Here you go, Dear,"
she said with a strange lilt in her voice as she confidently catwalked toward me, arm outstretched with mug...

...a mug with these stupid little leprauchans* dancing around. Def not Wonder Woman.

"What the?..."
I trailed off as I watched, in slow motion, as her other arm swooped up from her side, carrying coffee to her mouth, where she delicately slurped it grandiosely with Derek Zoolander flourish.

The coffee being carried in a mug to her mouth.

A Wonder Woman mug.

MY Wonder Woman mug.

"Give to to me NOW!"
I snarled gently, and went to grab it.

"You HAVE a special mug,"
she said rudely, shoving me across the room with great fury.
"It says 'snap crackle pop.' Reminded me of the sounds your body makes."

The interchange continued for many seconds, and in the end...

...Wonder Woman is still being held hostage. The world is truly upside down, my heart is hard, and all hope is shattered.

Have a great Friday, everyone. Enjoy it while you can. Sooner or later your mug will be brutally ripped away from you in a violent act of betrayal by someone close to you.

____

*sorry Sasha 😬

FIVE THINGS HELPING ME LOVE THIS WEEK.

1. The 1952 Ray Bradbury short story A Sound of Thunder; the time travel tale famous for giving rise to the phrase Butterfly Effect. Man goes back in time to hunt a dinosaur with strict instructions to disturb ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, lest the ripple effects of any minute alterations change the future... Poetic, terrifying, and despite a million iterations and spinoffs since, still packs a wallop.

2. James.
(Incomplete sentence example:) That idea that most people tend to eventually default to the music they loved in high school. James was a bridge for me between that and college; their Britrocky melodies and strong production flirting with commercial success. Bandleader Tim Booth has one of my favourite male voices and their latest album, La petit mort, is a gem; showcasing his gorgeous voice with a dime's worth of beautifully crafted anthem ready rockers that manage to still sound intimate. Reminiscent of some of U2's better work with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Some stunning tracks.
Current faves are Moving On and Frozen Britain.

3. The cashiers at Grocery Outlet. So friendly and positive.

How's your day going?
I asked the 50ish woman.

Oh, I'm always good working here!
she exclaimed.
I love it here. Best job I've ever had.
I'm serious! I get here and it gets so busy that when I look at the time it's almost time for me to go home!

Right on.
I said.
Well, I'm going home now.

4. A YouTube video of this guy rattling off 35 different accents in five minutes. I want to get good at doing a bunch of accents, but I don't know, I may focus on learning to juggle instead.

5a. My wife getting up super early this morning on a morning she didn't have to be up early and making me lunch to go. I didn't actually wait until lunch because I got hungry.
Delicious burger...maybe next time I'm hoping she'll get up in enough time to make me TWO.

5b. My daughter waiting for me in our driveway to return home; rain coming down, big smile, massive hug that lit up the mountain.

5c. My son drawing an illustration of the Biblical tale of Abraham and Isaac in which a rescue helicopter comes to save Isaac from his father's sword, but unfortunately it arrives too late...not a happy ending.

His version.

On that note, happy midweek, all.

A THOUSAND, A BILLION, A FORTUNE AND BRUCE BANNER.

Daddy,

he pointed as we sped down the highway.

I can see a billion trees.

Johanni,

I said.

It's highly doubtful that you can see a billion trees right now.

Oh.

He said.

Is a billion more than a thousand?

Yes.

I said.

Okay,

he said.

Then I definitely see a billion trees.

Oh.

I said.

Okay.

____

"Normally I don't approve of children staying up late,"
he said finally,
"unless they are reading a very good book, seeing a wonderful movie, or attending a dinner party with fascinating guests."

- Hector
The Vile Village,
Book the Seventh
A Series of Unfortunate Events

Post by Joseph Long.

I AM THE GOOD GUY HERE.

Can we please have a snack, Daddy?

They asked ever so nicely.

No...we just ate a little while ago.

I replied not unkindly,

as I left to go make myself a snack.

REDHANDED LOSER, IN WHICH ETERNITY IS TWO MINUTES, GIVE OR TAKE A BILLION.

I love to read, and I also have children, 
and those two things are not always ultra-compatible,
in a simultaneous sense.

Fortunately, I have been proud, up until today, of my innovative solution,
which is basically to simultaneously work my way through a 
combination of 6-8 books and magazines strategically placed throughout 
the house so that at any given point, I am within twenty feet or so from something to read,
whenever there are moments to be stolen,
or borrowed.

I know, multitasking at its worst. But I am also a rather fast reader and synthesize large amounts of information rapidly, so it's a solution that lets me
rip through content quickly. Malcolm Gladwell for two minutes here, ninety seconds of Wired there, four minutes of Speaker for the Dead, skim through a page of Sophie's World...

...I'd like to think my time estimates are accurate. However...
my theory and solution got shredded earlier:

BATHROOM SINK.
Washing my hands,
where I had a copy of a Neil Gaiman / Al Sarrantonio anthology* 
splayed open a foot away.
Scrubbing and QUICKLY soaking in the 
relentless verb-laden prose of Chuck Palahniuk for a few seconds,

while I quickly washed my hands
for somewhere between two and twenty minutes,

and then
my little girl,
my exasperating spy,
my accountability partner for truth and accuracy in measurements and time-keeping,

burst in,
burst in,
hurtled in,

and,
eyes widening in shock; melodramatic horror,
arms spread up and wide in universal frustration language,

& shrieked:

"Daddy!
is a BOOK REALLY 
more important than 
YOUR CHILDREN?!?! 

You are taking SO LONG!"

I hung my head,
shame a little,
but mostly disappointment
at being caught
and called out.

Masterful. 

Just masterful,
our protege,
evolving spymaster and life coach.

Tonight, I guess I will try to finish.
Shouldn't take more than three or four more minutes.

I am tired of being outwitted by children.
It's my turn to win.
Probably tomorrow,
or a tomorrow in a future decade.

Goodnight, Mr. Palahniuk, and Messieurs Gaiman and Sarrantonio, and 
children.

Sleep well, and long,
childless writers.

____

*Stories (2011)

STAR WARS SPOILER / WHICH TO SOCHI?

I have been extraordinarily mean and frustrating to our son; requiring him to make up his own Star Wars stories, as opposed to him absorbing the canon (yet).

I may have to re-think this, as a number of his recent tales - which are monumentally thrilling and original - end with...

"...and then Luke and Princess Leia get married."

Luke and Leia. 

"I don't want to impose my authorship upon your stories,"
I say kindly.
"But no. Luke and Leia do not get married. Not gonna happen. How about...Leia and Han? Or even...Leia and Jabba the Hutt? Could be funny."

- "No."
he says with finality.
"Princess Leia and Luke get married."

I sigh, and wonder where he learned to be frustrating. Probably from his mother.

May the Force be with you on this
Freitag.

ADVICE.
Just to be safe, always carry a flashlight at night, and when traveling, "always arrange to hire a limousine or rent a mule rather than take a bus to your destination." Also, it's much safer to get a companion fare for big slides.

the quotes portion:
The Vile Village, p. 20
Book the Seventh by Lemony Snicket


Happy snow, Northwest.

SORT OF.

I'm sure having a great time with you.
I said.

Oh.
he said.
I'm sort of having a good time with you.

VIDEO: ENDER'S GAME, PIRATES, AND SCIMITARS.

A race through the day, in which I also get irritated at my son and forbid him from reading my copy of Ender's Game, and in which he retaliates by threatening to knock my scimitar out of my hand. 

With his bigger scimitar.

Also, there is some skipping.

FIVE THINGS: THIS IS MY LIFE, AND I LIKE YOU.

1. 
The only bedtime lullaby that might possibly be better than Andreas Bocelli singing goodnight to Elmo might be...Ricky Gervais singing goodnight to Elmo. 

2.
I love Arcade Fire, but sometimes I feel sad for them because despite every ambitious and visionary album they do for the rest of their career, I'm not sure they'll ever create a breathtaking masterpiece as beautiful as 2003's Funeral. Although, as my brother Jeremy has pointed out, the vocals could be brought up in the mix.

Go watch the video for Rebellion before bedtime. 

3.
An ugly black truck passed me on the mountain against a double yellow line in the rain. Plate: B9372something-something. I hope their cassette player player stops working and their horn gets jammed and their radio will play nothing but Aaron Neville at earsplitting volume. 

4. 
I walked into the busy coffee shop. Been a week or two. Several employees working. Got one of THE NICEST, most resounding welcomes I have ever gotten in a coffee shop from several of them. Like a long-lost family member returning home. Maybe it sounds overboard, but it was such a heartwarming, authentic greeting and I loved it and what a great reminder to make a big deal out of hellos and goodbyes. Alas, no free drink. Warm greetings stop at the wallet.

3.
I am thrilled that my wife has had such a splendid time running around in pirate regalia all day with our children. But now that they are in bed, I am having difficulty getting her to remove her pirate hat and put away her scimitar. This is my life.

5. My son and I have lots of good times, but lately he thinks that no one is cooler than his Mom, so my attempts this evening to involve myself with some of their pirate shenanigans have gone largely rebuffed by him, making me feel incredibly uncool. But the last words murmured as I tucked him in and started to leave his room:

"Daddy. I really like you."

- "I really like you too,"
I whispered.
____

There is a piece of pumpkin cheesecake sitting in our refrigerator and I think Becca wants me to do something with it, because it is still there.

QUARTER SWEDISH ICESKATING BARBARELLA.

I feel our lives are eighty-five percent reflective of thirty percent of the country west of the Mississippi, which leads me to believe that there are probably other guys with wives who are also currently chasing their son around the house playing pirates with a cup of coffee in one hand and BB rifle in the other. I don't know though; I didn't get an A in Probability and Statistics, but I love numbers nonetheless.

I am 70 percent certain there are many others.

CROWDSOURCED BRO.
I know a great deal about humor because in my heart I know what's funny. My daughter has been calling me "bro" all afternoon and thinks it's hilarious. As in: 

"hey bro, can we go ice skating?"


And laughing hysterically. Fact is, it's not funny. I know this to be true, because I am funny. I am a funny person, and she is six. Please simply comment below with a simple "not funny" if you are in agreement that a six-year old calling her father "bro" is not funny. At all. 

ICE, ICE, BABE.
"The most important thing to remember on the ice,"

I said,

"is to truthfully tell people afterwards that your daddy is a very, very good skater."


- "Okay bro."

HARD ICE.
It's true about how your memory starts to go as you get older. For example, I had totally forgotten what an awesome skater I am.

Thanks to Melvin the stranger for snapping us.

FIVE QUOTES CONCERNING VIKINGS, SWORDS, AND SUN-TZU FROM MY SON TODAY. AND YES CHILDREN, HE IS ALMOST AN ADULT.

Note: oftentimes I like to end with the strongest, but in this case I'm not sure there's ever been a better quote concerning swords than
#1.

1. "The reason I put my sword in my underwear is so I have a place to put my sword."

2. "I'm the kind of Viking who chops thorns so they don't scratch my legs."

3. "You know when I was a little kid I broke one of my ankles." (Explaining battle scars to his sister while dancing around in underwear waving sword)

4. 
Me: "I'm so excited to start watching Christmas movies soon!"

Him: "Can we watch a Viking movie first?"

- "No,"
I replied accurately,
"Although perhaps we could watch 2007's Beowulf, in the spirit of the holiday season."

4b. "Daddy, is my sword the kind that can break?"

- "Yes,"
I replied truthfully.

5. "Can I sleep with my sword, my shield, and my helmet next to me so they will help me have scary dreams tonight?"
____


Happy Friday, all. May your weekend be peaceful and exciting.

YES CHILDREN, HE IS ALMOST AN ADULT.
Taking my children grocery shopping solo: piece of cake; done it a billion times.

Taking my children grocery shopping with their Uncle Jeremy Long bumper carting them way through narrow aisles filled with expensive breakable bottles and thousands of other shoppers while shrieking like they are at Disneyland: ENORMOUSLY challenging; may not survive this episode intact.

TEA WITH FRIENDS.

anonymous children / Uncle Marc Guipilan

Such is of the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.

- J.R.R. Tolkien

Franz Ferdinand and Androcles

Stepped out of my (home) office where my wife handed me a cup of late afternoon joe before she returned to swordfighting with our son. New Franz Ferdinand lighting up my little speakers, sleepy sun getting ready to tuck himself in over the horizon. A large spider a few feet away whose life I have chosen to spare, possibly having something to do with the fact that I have told my children the tale of Androcles and the Lion six hundred times. I realise I have not only a phone with a cord, but two of my favourite
typewriters close by. What does all this mean? Nothing, I suppose, except I'm glad to not be dead. Although to be fair, today also brings me one step closer to extinction. 

Happy Thorsday, all. 

Monty Python Jellyfish (Can't Hurt to Try), and Requiem for the Beatles

I attempt to keep my mind open to new ways of doing things, but I haven't decided whether or not I should follow my son's advice for fixing a toilet:

"Okay Daddy, this is what you have to do: first you have to get a piece of cardboard, and then you need to get a hammer and a nail, and then you have to nail the cardboard onto the side of the toilet and then you need to put a jellyfish on the toilet seat. Then it will be fixed. Okay?"

- "Okay," I shrugged. "I have almost everything I need, but it looks like we may need to make one stop by the pet store."

It seems like there has to be an easier way to deal with plumbing issues, but he speaks confidently and seems to know what he's talking about. Wish us good fortune.

____

NEVER SURRENDER (REQUIEM FOR THE BEATLES)

Our children are extraordinarily successful at some things, like eating dessert, and really terrible at some things, as this little gem of dialogue illustrates:

"Why are you covering your ears?"
I asked my daughter as we were driving, the Beatles' Revolver scoring our commute.

She lifted her hands slightly enough to respond. - "I don't like the Beatles."

"What?!?! Since when?!"

Calmly. - "I like Cheap Trick now. And I do not like the Beatles."

Her brother's voice offered his own original assessment, in his own words: "Yeah, we like Cheap Trick now. We don't like the Beatles."

I kept my calm. "You know you can like BOTH."

She refused to budge. - "No, I don't like the Beatles now. Not one bit."

And...the Echo: "Yeah, we don't like the Beatles. Not one bit.

"WHAT don't you like about them?"

- "I don't like their voices. I don't like their songs. I don't like anything about them. Not even Octopus Garden."

I stuck to Reason: "You understand that you can like BOTH Cheap Trick AND the Beatles, right?"

My son, pre-emptive: "Yeah, but we don't like the Beatles. WE JUST LIKE CHEAP TRICK!!"

"That is ridiculous. You have loved the Beatles. In fact, that is a family rule: if you're in this family, you like the Beatles. That's a rule."

- "We don't like the Beatles!" They chanted in unison.

"Just because we've listened to Cheap Trick's 'Surrender' three hundred times in the last month doesn't mean you have to stop liking the Beatles. You can like them BOTH. Liking them both is not mutually exclusive."

- "That doesn't make sense," one replied.

- "Yeah, you don't make sense," another replied.

"You know what? You know what?"
I said. 
"You guys don't make sense. And you DO like the Beatles. End of discussion."

- "We'll just whisper then, so you can't hear. And we do NOT like the Beatles."

I cranked up Good Day Sunshine as loud as I could, and the storm clouds gathered.


Our children are terrible at some things, as you can tell. Sad.

A Day Like Many Days, But Different, and I Chat Music With Fred

Woke up.

My wife made me French fries, toast, and tofu for breakfast.
Headed into my mobile office at Stumptown for a couple hours of work.

Took a couple of my students on set to Portlandia, where I had a pleasant conversation with Fred Armisen about Parquet Courts, and also about my friend Art at Jackpot Records, whom I have never met, but is the one who introduced me to Parquet Courts, therefore morally obligating me to credit him to Fred.

Returned home at 11pm, where Countess Becca made me hot chocolate.

Good day.

CARLOS, JASON, AND JOSEPH.

Carlos
My wife just made a statement something along these lines:

"If you started working out, you could probably look really good, sort of like Carlos on Desperate Housewives."

Please use your Googling capabilities if you're not aware of who he is and then tell my wife how far off in Loonyland she is. Because the truth is, if I started working out, I would look like exactly like Jason Statham's younger brother. Bam.

Carlos

Jason

Me
(January 26, 2013)