Maybe all along we should have been leaving Santa a couple enchiladas instead of another stupid plate of sugar cookies with no nutritional value.
Showing posts with label eating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eating. Show all posts
12.10.2018
NOTHING SAYS CHRISTMAS LIKE...A BURRITO.
Maybe all along we should have been leaving Santa a couple enchiladas instead of another stupid plate of sugar cookies with no nutritional value.
7.31.2018
A DAY, A TUESDAY.
01
The cafeteria. A terrifying environment for many of us with vivid memories of high school. Also, a terrifying place for people who pay attention to cross-contamination issues. Also, a terrifying place for people with food sensitivities, allergies, or specific dietary needs.
Now picture an eight-year old boy, dutifully, every meal, trudging to the back to check in with kitchen staff and find out what vegan option is available.
Also knowing that at least half the time, even if they’re nice which they sometimes aren’t, that they will likely make some reference to him being a girl, due to his long blond hair. He will apparently not notice ninety-nine percent of the time.
Pancakes. Pancakes and oatmeal and some toppings. No peanut butter, because it’s a peanut-free camp this summer.
I had oatmeal with seventeen raisins, a small spoonful of brown sugar, and a bunch of toasted walnuts. There were no wieners.
02
I would like a boat. Also, I would like somebody to take care of my boat, because everyone I know who has a boat says they soak up a lot of money and time taking care of, and I don’t feel like doing that.
I might like some kayaks and a canoe. Maybe we’ll go that route.
But it is important to make and maintain friendships with people who have boats. Because they’re good friends.
03
Magdelana waterskiied this morning.
It looks so simple. “Keep your tips up. Just let the boat pull you up. That’s it.”
It reminds me of the advice I got for trying to land a backflip snowboarding. “Just hit it hard, and kinda lean back and tuck, and then land it.”
Instructions are so easy to give when something comes naturally to you. That’s why I think the best teachers are the ones who struggled. Because they give better instructions and don’t have the mindset that it just comes easy. They had to fight their way to an understanding of a particular subject or skill.
And a good waterski instructor understands how terrifying the experience of strapping sticks to your legs and being told to hang onto a rope attached to a very fast boat might possibly be a scary thing for the ninety-five percent of people who don’t grow up going out on a ski boat every weekend during the summer.
“You can do it, Mags!”
I yelled at her.
“Just keep your tips up and let the boat pull you up!”
04
When I was a kid, I painted a ceramic lion at camp. Yellow. Still have it. It’s not very good, but I loved doing it. There’s an instructor there now, name is Trish. She has transformed the ceramics area into something quite remarkable. Taken it from being a dumpy little hobbyist’s corner into being a charming, fully functional little teaching studio for all ages to learn ceramics.
The power of one driven person with a will, a vision, and a bankroll.
05
I love it when you discover you have an incredible aptitude for something you’d never known about before. Like unicycling. I was walking down the road and saw these kids unicycling. A unicycle is like half a bicycle, and only has about approximately one wheel. Anyway, these kids are hugging this fence, straddling these one-wheel cycles and trying to figure em out, and there’s a spare so I pop on a helmet and give it a go, and turns, out, whoa! I’m pretty good.
By ‘pretty good,’ I can go 20 or 30 feet before gracefully crashing, and I have not emasculated myself, in the most literal sense.
It is fun, very fun, and dangerous, which is how I go about life, carefully.
06
I don’t know what we had for lunch because I didn’t take any pictures. And that gets to a fundamental reason I document much of what I do: the fragility of memory.
I don’t need to remember everything. I don’t need to know exactly what we ate for lunch. I’m okay with it. I wish I had taken a picture, because I did for every other meal (I think). But, like a big puzzle with one piece missing...you gotta learn to be okay missing the things you miss and not wishing otherwise.
So I don’t know, I might have eaten a pastrami sandwich, I don’t remember. I don’t think I did, because I’m vegetarian and I haven’t usually forgotten that before.
07
I guess one of the five valuable things I learned from my parents about being a parent is the value of of playing. Lifelong playing. Playing as metaphor, but also literally playing. Getting down on hands and knees and physically playing with kids. Wrestling, running, sitting, crawling, sculpting dirt, swimming, throwing mud.
I watched my little brother Jonny (ignore the below reference to a different completely non-related Jonny) swim with his nephews and nieces and spit water on them and throw them seven feet high and terrorize them in the lake and I thought,
“That is the is beautiful spirit of our dad being carried on. Wouldn’t he be proud if he were here right now?”
Then a few minutes later, I realized our dad actually was there, and was busy reading a David Baldacci novel and ignoring his grandchildren playing in the lake.*
*this part is not true, but in befitting the truth-adjusting times we live in, I felt this fact fitted the story I wanted to tell better, so I adjusted it to fit.
08
When I was a little kid, we didn’t wear helmets when we rode bikes, snow skiied, or inner tubed behind boats.
Now, I wouldn’t think of biking or snowboarding without a helmet.
Should I be wearing one innertubing? Yeah.
Especially when you’re five feet in the air, hanging on for dear life at 20 miles per hour and the tube perpendicular to the water and your daughter’s butt is about to crash down on your head because you didn’t allocate your weight properly on an 85-degree nanosecond turn by a crazy guy named Steve Hopmann. Also known as Friend With Boat (FWB).
Johannes asked him if his original name was Steve or Stefan. Apparently it’s Steven. Sometimes he drove with no hands.
We wore no helmets, and I was grateful to be alive in the end. Steve laughed.
09
They assign groups at the beginning of the week, ostensibly to simplify and streamline certain processes, but really it allows the camp authorities to more readily identify problematic figures. So we are the Pink Group. I’m happy to be pink. There’s people here who don’t know me very well and thus are not familiar with many of my common sense philosophies that have led me to become a feminist. So it’s interesting being engaged in certain conversations with those people who assume they’re speaking to a friendly audience (i.e. choir) about certain topics. Because we’re in Idaho, and there’s a bunch of white people, and a lot of them are dentists, doctors, or in this case, a physical therapist.
In this case. This one guy. Nice guy from Canada. On the sandbar, something like this. I’ll start partway through. Greek storytellers would call it in media res. Starting the story in the middle. So we’re talking. I’ll call him Jonny, because he has the same name as one of my brothers, but it’s not Jonny.
We could definitely learn a few things from Canada about hospitality,
I said.
Yeah...I don’t know.
Jonny said.
There’s a lot of Canadians pretty upset at the U.S. about the tariffs Trump set last month.
I don’t blame them.
I said.
If I was Canadian, I’d be mad too.
Well there’s a lot we don’t know,
He said.
Of course all the news is liberal and they never say anything about the good things Trump has done.
Uhh,
I said.
There’s a lot of respectable people of integrity in journalism, and if Trump ever does do something good, I am certain they will report on it.
Well they don’t like him,
Jonny said.
I mean, the economy and jobs, they’re doing the best they’ve been since the recession, so I guess he’s doing something right.
Yeah...
I said.
Trump is very good at taking credit for anything that goes well, such as those things. Regardless of what nonpartisan economists have to say about how those trends work and the factors that affect jobs, inflation, and the economy that were set in motion long before his presidency.
Well,
He said.
The media is so liberal it’s hard to know exactly what the truth is I guess. I’m not really into politics anyway.
We stood there for a few more minutes. Then I ran into the water to attack defenseless little children. He stood on the shore, deeply pondering and reflecting on the wisdom I had shared with him moments before.
I am certain that’s what he was doing.
___
I walked through the sand in my wet swimsuit late in the afternoon and thought of what I would be doing the following Tuesday: trying to catch up on being away from work for a week. There is cell service, but very poor cell service. There is internet, but very poor internet. I almost wonder if it would be better to have neither at all versus a poor version of each. I don’t know. There are a handful of times throughout the week that I truly actually need both for financial and work reasons. I don’t know.
Potatoes, meatballs, bad kale, corn on the cob, apple crisp for supper. The food has been decent. The kitchen service...not so much.
We had KP duty, which means sweeping the entire caf and cleaning tables. I am quite skilled at sweeping.
10
Every evening, there is an activity known as “The Big Event.” Some are enjoyable. Others, such as the Mega Marathon, less so.
Tonight was the Mega Marathon. It is an event which I do not anticipate with excitement, primarily because there are two types of philosophies for its competitors:
1. those who are playing to win
2. those who are playing to get children involved, bond with them over some shared friendly and supportive competition, and help them learn some core life lessons about teamwork and good sportsmanship.
I am a bit aggressive about making certain that every child who wants to be a part of it has the opportunity to do so, and have willingly sacrificed both my spot as well as other adults spots in order to make sure that they are able to be on the team. This has not endeared me at times to some adults who have more of a Type 1 mentality (see above).
Also, there was an infamous incident last year in which me and two unnamed teammates capsized a canoe during one leg; an action that left us roaring with laughter, and other teammates not so pleased, as it dropped us from second-to-last place to last place by a wide margin.
So the Mega Marathon. There is running, cycling, stair running, chair obstacle crawling, swimming, canoeing, paddle boarding, and so forth. Magdelana ran a leg of the stairs and Johannes ran anchor on the four-person sprint relay. I ran with him. Just because. We waited in a hornet-infested conclave outside the camp parking lot, and after an initial handoff that resulted in my eight-year old teammate starting off in the wrong direction, we Jesse Owens-ed ourselves pull mell to the next phase : the canoes.
I was not asked to be a part of the canoeing this year.
We finished in last by a wide margin, and our team had the biggest smiles and the grandest high-fives afterwards. For another year, I was grateful we did it. I still dread the next time.
11
Some things I love to do at night, like skinny dipping and watching movies and drinking Italian sodas, not always simultaneously, but sometimes. Tonight I got to do one of those. Hint: it has to do with the country shaped like a boot and it’s a drink.
As an adult, technically, I often forget what it’s like to experience events through the lens of Childhood and how seemingly trivial events can be huge and exciting during that part of life.
Like walking around a lake late at night drinking an Italian soda with friends. Why should that not be exciting now? What’s stopping us?
It is helpful, in that scenario, to have both a lake and friends.
Elevating the trivial to the level of spectacle. That is one of my foundational mantras. Yes, I did coin that.
So that was a day.
The cafeteria. A terrifying environment for many of us with vivid memories of high school. Also, a terrifying place for people who pay attention to cross-contamination issues. Also, a terrifying place for people with food sensitivities, allergies, or specific dietary needs.
Now picture an eight-year old boy, dutifully, every meal, trudging to the back to check in with kitchen staff and find out what vegan option is available.
Also knowing that at least half the time, even if they’re nice which they sometimes aren’t, that they will likely make some reference to him being a girl, due to his long blond hair. He will apparently not notice ninety-nine percent of the time.
Pancakes. Pancakes and oatmeal and some toppings. No peanut butter, because it’s a peanut-free camp this summer.
I had oatmeal with seventeen raisins, a small spoonful of brown sugar, and a bunch of toasted walnuts. There were no wieners.
02
I would like a boat. Also, I would like somebody to take care of my boat, because everyone I know who has a boat says they soak up a lot of money and time taking care of, and I don’t feel like doing that.
I might like some kayaks and a canoe. Maybe we’ll go that route.
But it is important to make and maintain friendships with people who have boats. Because they’re good friends.
03
Magdelana waterskiied this morning.
It looks so simple. “Keep your tips up. Just let the boat pull you up. That’s it.”
It reminds me of the advice I got for trying to land a backflip snowboarding. “Just hit it hard, and kinda lean back and tuck, and then land it.”
Instructions are so easy to give when something comes naturally to you. That’s why I think the best teachers are the ones who struggled. Because they give better instructions and don’t have the mindset that it just comes easy. They had to fight their way to an understanding of a particular subject or skill.
And a good waterski instructor understands how terrifying the experience of strapping sticks to your legs and being told to hang onto a rope attached to a very fast boat might possibly be a scary thing for the ninety-five percent of people who don’t grow up going out on a ski boat every weekend during the summer.
“You can do it, Mags!”
I yelled at her.
“Just keep your tips up and let the boat pull you up!”
04
When I was a kid, I painted a ceramic lion at camp. Yellow. Still have it. It’s not very good, but I loved doing it. There’s an instructor there now, name is Trish. She has transformed the ceramics area into something quite remarkable. Taken it from being a dumpy little hobbyist’s corner into being a charming, fully functional little teaching studio for all ages to learn ceramics.
The power of one driven person with a will, a vision, and a bankroll.
05
I love it when you discover you have an incredible aptitude for something you’d never known about before. Like unicycling. I was walking down the road and saw these kids unicycling. A unicycle is like half a bicycle, and only has about approximately one wheel. Anyway, these kids are hugging this fence, straddling these one-wheel cycles and trying to figure em out, and there’s a spare so I pop on a helmet and give it a go, and turns, out, whoa! I’m pretty good.
By ‘pretty good,’ I can go 20 or 30 feet before gracefully crashing, and I have not emasculated myself, in the most literal sense.
It is fun, very fun, and dangerous, which is how I go about life, carefully.
06
I don’t know what we had for lunch because I didn’t take any pictures. And that gets to a fundamental reason I document much of what I do: the fragility of memory.
I don’t need to remember everything. I don’t need to know exactly what we ate for lunch. I’m okay with it. I wish I had taken a picture, because I did for every other meal (I think). But, like a big puzzle with one piece missing...you gotta learn to be okay missing the things you miss and not wishing otherwise.
So I don’t know, I might have eaten a pastrami sandwich, I don’t remember. I don’t think I did, because I’m vegetarian and I haven’t usually forgotten that before.
07
I guess one of the five valuable things I learned from my parents about being a parent is the value of of playing. Lifelong playing. Playing as metaphor, but also literally playing. Getting down on hands and knees and physically playing with kids. Wrestling, running, sitting, crawling, sculpting dirt, swimming, throwing mud.
I watched my little brother Jonny (ignore the below reference to a different completely non-related Jonny) swim with his nephews and nieces and spit water on them and throw them seven feet high and terrorize them in the lake and I thought,
“That is the is beautiful spirit of our dad being carried on. Wouldn’t he be proud if he were here right now?”
Then a few minutes later, I realized our dad actually was there, and was busy reading a David Baldacci novel and ignoring his grandchildren playing in the lake.*
*this part is not true, but in befitting the truth-adjusting times we live in, I felt this fact fitted the story I wanted to tell better, so I adjusted it to fit.
08
When I was a little kid, we didn’t wear helmets when we rode bikes, snow skiied, or inner tubed behind boats.
Now, I wouldn’t think of biking or snowboarding without a helmet.
Should I be wearing one innertubing? Yeah.
Especially when you’re five feet in the air, hanging on for dear life at 20 miles per hour and the tube perpendicular to the water and your daughter’s butt is about to crash down on your head because you didn’t allocate your weight properly on an 85-degree nanosecond turn by a crazy guy named Steve Hopmann. Also known as Friend With Boat (FWB).
Johannes asked him if his original name was Steve or Stefan. Apparently it’s Steven. Sometimes he drove with no hands.
We wore no helmets, and I was grateful to be alive in the end. Steve laughed.
09
They assign groups at the beginning of the week, ostensibly to simplify and streamline certain processes, but really it allows the camp authorities to more readily identify problematic figures. So we are the Pink Group. I’m happy to be pink. There’s people here who don’t know me very well and thus are not familiar with many of my common sense philosophies that have led me to become a feminist. So it’s interesting being engaged in certain conversations with those people who assume they’re speaking to a friendly audience (i.e. choir) about certain topics. Because we’re in Idaho, and there’s a bunch of white people, and a lot of them are dentists, doctors, or in this case, a physical therapist.
In this case. This one guy. Nice guy from Canada. On the sandbar, something like this. I’ll start partway through. Greek storytellers would call it in media res. Starting the story in the middle. So we’re talking. I’ll call him Jonny, because he has the same name as one of my brothers, but it’s not Jonny.
We could definitely learn a few things from Canada about hospitality,
I said.
Yeah...I don’t know.
Jonny said.
There’s a lot of Canadians pretty upset at the U.S. about the tariffs Trump set last month.
I don’t blame them.
I said.
If I was Canadian, I’d be mad too.
Well there’s a lot we don’t know,
He said.
Of course all the news is liberal and they never say anything about the good things Trump has done.
Uhh,
I said.
There’s a lot of respectable people of integrity in journalism, and if Trump ever does do something good, I am certain they will report on it.
Well they don’t like him,
Jonny said.
I mean, the economy and jobs, they’re doing the best they’ve been since the recession, so I guess he’s doing something right.
Yeah...
I said.
Trump is very good at taking credit for anything that goes well, such as those things. Regardless of what nonpartisan economists have to say about how those trends work and the factors that affect jobs, inflation, and the economy that were set in motion long before his presidency.
Well,
He said.
The media is so liberal it’s hard to know exactly what the truth is I guess. I’m not really into politics anyway.
We stood there for a few more minutes. Then I ran into the water to attack defenseless little children. He stood on the shore, deeply pondering and reflecting on the wisdom I had shared with him moments before.
I am certain that’s what he was doing.
___
I walked through the sand in my wet swimsuit late in the afternoon and thought of what I would be doing the following Tuesday: trying to catch up on being away from work for a week. There is cell service, but very poor cell service. There is internet, but very poor internet. I almost wonder if it would be better to have neither at all versus a poor version of each. I don’t know. There are a handful of times throughout the week that I truly actually need both for financial and work reasons. I don’t know.
Potatoes, meatballs, bad kale, corn on the cob, apple crisp for supper. The food has been decent. The kitchen service...not so much.
We had KP duty, which means sweeping the entire caf and cleaning tables. I am quite skilled at sweeping.
10
Every evening, there is an activity known as “The Big Event.” Some are enjoyable. Others, such as the Mega Marathon, less so.
Tonight was the Mega Marathon. It is an event which I do not anticipate with excitement, primarily because there are two types of philosophies for its competitors:
1. those who are playing to win
2. those who are playing to get children involved, bond with them over some shared friendly and supportive competition, and help them learn some core life lessons about teamwork and good sportsmanship.
I am a bit aggressive about making certain that every child who wants to be a part of it has the opportunity to do so, and have willingly sacrificed both my spot as well as other adults spots in order to make sure that they are able to be on the team. This has not endeared me at times to some adults who have more of a Type 1 mentality (see above).
Also, there was an infamous incident last year in which me and two unnamed teammates capsized a canoe during one leg; an action that left us roaring with laughter, and other teammates not so pleased, as it dropped us from second-to-last place to last place by a wide margin.
So the Mega Marathon. There is running, cycling, stair running, chair obstacle crawling, swimming, canoeing, paddle boarding, and so forth. Magdelana ran a leg of the stairs and Johannes ran anchor on the four-person sprint relay. I ran with him. Just because. We waited in a hornet-infested conclave outside the camp parking lot, and after an initial handoff that resulted in my eight-year old teammate starting off in the wrong direction, we Jesse Owens-ed ourselves pull mell to the next phase : the canoes.
I was not asked to be a part of the canoeing this year.
We finished in last by a wide margin, and our team had the biggest smiles and the grandest high-fives afterwards. For another year, I was grateful we did it. I still dread the next time.
11
Some things I love to do at night, like skinny dipping and watching movies and drinking Italian sodas, not always simultaneously, but sometimes. Tonight I got to do one of those. Hint: it has to do with the country shaped like a boot and it’s a drink.
As an adult, technically, I often forget what it’s like to experience events through the lens of Childhood and how seemingly trivial events can be huge and exciting during that part of life.
Like walking around a lake late at night drinking an Italian soda with friends. Why should that not be exciting now? What’s stopping us?
It is helpful, in that scenario, to have both a lake and friends.
Elevating the trivial to the level of spectacle. That is one of my foundational mantras. Yes, I did coin that.
So that was a day.
7.30.2018
A DAY, A MONDAY.
01
To wake up in the morning with shirt pulled up, bellybutton hanging out, hair matted from sleep sweat, roll up to face the day with a big toot and bigger grin...that is the life. That is Ejvindr’s life. How do you hang onto that forever? Or get back to it?
#babysteps
02
There are few better smells in the morning than that of bacon. But then I think of those baby pigs, and their precious blue eyes, and snifflesnuffling sounds and...no.
Wait, am I thinking of bacon, or meatless sausage patties?
Also, there is nothing like having a breakfast that is interrupted not only by one of your offspring stage whispering their need “...to go number two,” but also actually getting pooped on by another child, and having a 16-ounce bowl of wet oatmeal deposited all over you by the nephew sitting in your lap.
03
Regarding the appropriate use of restraining devices in religious analogies:
There was a worship skit that involved Jesus attaching himself to a person with handcuffs.
Not the direction I usually take with my New Testament story interpretations.
04
Do I need coffee? I don’t know. Do we need love? Do we need each other? Do we need to find that convergence of skill set, innate ability, opportunity, and interest? Do we need hope or faith or premium gasoline?
I don’t know.
Drank a cup of coffee outside, and it probably wasn’t that good, but it was good. The key is, it was outside.
05
When hot, there’s two ways to get cool.
A) air conditioning
B) water
One of these is better than the other. And it involves getting wet. Also, sometimes it involves jumping off a big platform onto a giant inflated bag that has a person sitting on it, and launching that person into the air. It is scary if you are the person waiting to get launched, which is why I made our daughter do it while I leaped and launched her 42 feet into the air. We got cool, we cool.
06
There are people whose bucket list includes things like skinny dipping in the Bering Strait, and taking a bath in a giant claw foot bathtub filled with spaghetti, and I acknowledge that my name is on both those lists.
Also, we had noodles for lunch. And a salad bar that included kidney beans.
07
I dream of mandated afternoon naps.
Daydream of them. Becca told me to lie down for 15, post-lunch, on a soft mattress with a white blanket over that did not include sheets professionally Swiss-style folded by Rachel Nutter, yet was an inviting place to get comatose for a few. I did so, to the sounds of toddlers and young children playing and arguing. More the latter.
I woke up 22 minutes later, after hitting snooze a couple times, and was so refreshed that I had to make myself a cup of iced coffee.
08
We walked to the waterfront, because we didn’t run. The sun made the air hot, and everything. Super hot. I drank iced coffee that no longer had ice, and was more diluted water mixed with some coffee grounds and almond creamer, and I still took some satisfaction in drinking under the heat. There were toys, a lot of toys, water toys, because we came to play in the water, and there was water. So we played in the water. Because it was hot. And there were toys for people who got bored with the water.
09
We shot arrows into a target; a sport known as archery. A sport that became famous to me because of fellows named William Tell and Robin Hood, and famous to new generations because of Hunger Games.
I hit a bunch of bulls eyes, is how I remember. Johannes almost took an arrow to the crotch from an anonymous seven-year old who declined to observe the most important rule, which was: don’t shoot people in the crotch with an arrow.
10
Supper. An Asian kind of theme going that included broccoli, rice, and spring rolls. I had none of the latter. Why?
I don’t know. Because I’m still trying to lose five more pounds to help my body feel better, and these particular deep fat fried spring rolls - couldn’t they be shallow fat fried? - didn’t seem ones that would encourage me in that direction. I don’t know. I should have eaten them.
After supper, we took a dusty bus up a dusty road to a grass field, where people gathered to play Medic.
Medic is a game like dodgeball, except there’s a designated Desmond Doss figure on each team to unfreeze people when they’re hit with a ball. When a team’s medic is hit, the game’s over. It is a very fun game. There are many young children who play hard because it is extremely fun. There are many adult males who play hard because they are competitive and want to win and need some sort of conquering victory to fill a hole in their lives. Those are the people that I like to take out, with every ounce of my residual youthful strength, and nail in the crotch with a nice hefty playground ball.
#satisfaction
Also, it is very, very fun to see the kids playing so hard. With no apparent sense of strategy, and in some cases, understanding of even what game it is they’re playing. It is glorious mayhem to behold and be a part of.
11
I ate trail mix, because I couldn’t say no. I love trail mix. I have a little stash hidden away. They have melted and hardened and melted and hardened and gotten soft and hardened over and over, sort of like a male mammal in heat. I do not eat male mammals, but I do eat trail mix that has gone through those cycles, and I do engage in the same activities male mammals in heat do when they’re lucky. I am lucky, sometimes frequently, though less so on family vacations where many of us sleep communally outside.
Later, there was campfire, there was singing and silly skits, there was a prayer which I didn’t really pay attention to, but I did ponder this question: is it not a thing anymore that guys take their hats off during prayer?
I don’t know. I still take mine off.
My mom, spirited adventurer that she is, signed us up for nighttime zip lining. This is very difficult to explain. The long version is that it’s where you go zip lining at night. In this case, my mom was an adventure-starter, which means she enabled other people to go, but did not go herself. My wife, spirited adventurer that she is, insisted that we go, despite my reluctance and aching body.
So we went, the five of us, and Ejvindr, wimp that he is, did not zip line. Also, they do not allow 19-month old toddlers to go. So he slept instead. Despite my initial fury at Becca for making us go, it turned out to be memorable and fun-ish, and most of the cables and harnesses held.
We got home at 2am, or 11pm, or somewhere in there, and I desperately wanted to watch some television, or read a book, or write or drink coffee or something, but my stupid 41-year old eyes were too tired so I unfortunately fell asleep.
That was a day.
To wake up in the morning with shirt pulled up, bellybutton hanging out, hair matted from sleep sweat, roll up to face the day with a big toot and bigger grin...that is the life. That is Ejvindr’s life. How do you hang onto that forever? Or get back to it?
#babysteps
02
There are few better smells in the morning than that of bacon. But then I think of those baby pigs, and their precious blue eyes, and snifflesnuffling sounds and...no.
Wait, am I thinking of bacon, or meatless sausage patties?
Also, there is nothing like having a breakfast that is interrupted not only by one of your offspring stage whispering their need “...to go number two,” but also actually getting pooped on by another child, and having a 16-ounce bowl of wet oatmeal deposited all over you by the nephew sitting in your lap.
03
Regarding the appropriate use of restraining devices in religious analogies:
There was a worship skit that involved Jesus attaching himself to a person with handcuffs.
Not the direction I usually take with my New Testament story interpretations.
04
Do I need coffee? I don’t know. Do we need love? Do we need each other? Do we need to find that convergence of skill set, innate ability, opportunity, and interest? Do we need hope or faith or premium gasoline?
I don’t know.
Drank a cup of coffee outside, and it probably wasn’t that good, but it was good. The key is, it was outside.
05
When hot, there’s two ways to get cool.
A) air conditioning
B) water
One of these is better than the other. And it involves getting wet. Also, sometimes it involves jumping off a big platform onto a giant inflated bag that has a person sitting on it, and launching that person into the air. It is scary if you are the person waiting to get launched, which is why I made our daughter do it while I leaped and launched her 42 feet into the air. We got cool, we cool.
06
There are people whose bucket list includes things like skinny dipping in the Bering Strait, and taking a bath in a giant claw foot bathtub filled with spaghetti, and I acknowledge that my name is on both those lists.
Also, we had noodles for lunch. And a salad bar that included kidney beans.
07
I dream of mandated afternoon naps.
Daydream of them. Becca told me to lie down for 15, post-lunch, on a soft mattress with a white blanket over that did not include sheets professionally Swiss-style folded by Rachel Nutter, yet was an inviting place to get comatose for a few. I did so, to the sounds of toddlers and young children playing and arguing. More the latter.
I woke up 22 minutes later, after hitting snooze a couple times, and was so refreshed that I had to make myself a cup of iced coffee.
08
We walked to the waterfront, because we didn’t run. The sun made the air hot, and everything. Super hot. I drank iced coffee that no longer had ice, and was more diluted water mixed with some coffee grounds and almond creamer, and I still took some satisfaction in drinking under the heat. There were toys, a lot of toys, water toys, because we came to play in the water, and there was water. So we played in the water. Because it was hot. And there were toys for people who got bored with the water.
09
We shot arrows into a target; a sport known as archery. A sport that became famous to me because of fellows named William Tell and Robin Hood, and famous to new generations because of Hunger Games.
I hit a bunch of bulls eyes, is how I remember. Johannes almost took an arrow to the crotch from an anonymous seven-year old who declined to observe the most important rule, which was: don’t shoot people in the crotch with an arrow.
10
Supper. An Asian kind of theme going that included broccoli, rice, and spring rolls. I had none of the latter. Why?
I don’t know. Because I’m still trying to lose five more pounds to help my body feel better, and these particular deep fat fried spring rolls - couldn’t they be shallow fat fried? - didn’t seem ones that would encourage me in that direction. I don’t know. I should have eaten them.
After supper, we took a dusty bus up a dusty road to a grass field, where people gathered to play Medic.
Medic is a game like dodgeball, except there’s a designated Desmond Doss figure on each team to unfreeze people when they’re hit with a ball. When a team’s medic is hit, the game’s over. It is a very fun game. There are many young children who play hard because it is extremely fun. There are many adult males who play hard because they are competitive and want to win and need some sort of conquering victory to fill a hole in their lives. Those are the people that I like to take out, with every ounce of my residual youthful strength, and nail in the crotch with a nice hefty playground ball.
#satisfaction
Also, it is very, very fun to see the kids playing so hard. With no apparent sense of strategy, and in some cases, understanding of even what game it is they’re playing. It is glorious mayhem to behold and be a part of.
11
I ate trail mix, because I couldn’t say no. I love trail mix. I have a little stash hidden away. They have melted and hardened and melted and hardened and gotten soft and hardened over and over, sort of like a male mammal in heat. I do not eat male mammals, but I do eat trail mix that has gone through those cycles, and I do engage in the same activities male mammals in heat do when they’re lucky. I am lucky, sometimes frequently, though less so on family vacations where many of us sleep communally outside.
Later, there was campfire, there was singing and silly skits, there was a prayer which I didn’t really pay attention to, but I did ponder this question: is it not a thing anymore that guys take their hats off during prayer?
I don’t know. I still take mine off.
My mom, spirited adventurer that she is, signed us up for nighttime zip lining. This is very difficult to explain. The long version is that it’s where you go zip lining at night. In this case, my mom was an adventure-starter, which means she enabled other people to go, but did not go herself. My wife, spirited adventurer that she is, insisted that we go, despite my reluctance and aching body.
So we went, the five of us, and Ejvindr, wimp that he is, did not zip line. Also, they do not allow 19-month old toddlers to go. So he slept instead. Despite my initial fury at Becca for making us go, it turned out to be memorable and fun-ish, and most of the cables and harnesses held.
We got home at 2am, or 11pm, or somewhere in there, and I desperately wanted to watch some television, or read a book, or write or drink coffee or something, but my stupid 41-year old eyes were too tired so I unfortunately fell asleep.
That was a day.
7.25.2018
POEM : ODE TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS.
Dreamed a dream, a little dream.
A little dream with cold ice cream.
No, not ala mode cold
Ice cream with something fresh, not old.
Like apple, berry, something sweet.
Please, I beg, keep out the meat.
With that creamy ice I’d like to try
Nothing more than fresh warm peachy pie.
A little dream with cold ice cream.
No, not ala mode cold
Ice cream with something fresh, not old.
Like apple, berry, something sweet.
Please, I beg, keep out the meat.
With that creamy ice I’d like to try
Nothing more than fresh warm peachy pie.
4.14.2018
HIGH, WE WERE ALL HIGH ONCE.
The throne he sat upon and within,
Contained by constraints and controlled and satiated with the patronizing gift of what the authorities called “dinner.”
The throne called “high chair.”
A device meant to enslave and prevent independent movement; a device intended to prevent the widespread spreading and sharing of food from a single geographic space;
An horrific instrument whose purpose was to control and keep a lesser species - homo sapien childus - from engaging in what Sir William Wallace called simply
“Freedom.”
My brother Joshua fought for freedom hard; alternating between fight and acceptance, and I learned much from him as he silently accepted morsels from the guards and would pretend to enjoy the prison meals he was begrudgingly gifted; I never saw him scream or heard him whimper.
He accepted the fate and ate in what the Italians call “silenzio,” save for when he sang, and his tool of protest was his hands. A refusal to bow to the authoritarian mandate of the ruling class, the Parentals, and to use his bare hands as Romulus once strangled Remus with his and lived in glory forever, as my brother certainly will, with his quiet Spartacus revolt against tyranny as he sat on high and devoured his “dinner” with bare fingers and fists; fork and spoon defiantly dropped to the floor far below.
Freedom, he sang in his heart to all; freedom was the song he sang, and slavery was the chair upon which he lived on high.
Contained by constraints and controlled and satiated with the patronizing gift of what the authorities called “dinner.”
The throne called “high chair.”
A device meant to enslave and prevent independent movement; a device intended to prevent the widespread spreading and sharing of food from a single geographic space;
An horrific instrument whose purpose was to control and keep a lesser species - homo sapien childus - from engaging in what Sir William Wallace called simply
“Freedom.”
My brother Joshua fought for freedom hard; alternating between fight and acceptance, and I learned much from him as he silently accepted morsels from the guards and would pretend to enjoy the prison meals he was begrudgingly gifted; I never saw him scream or heard him whimper.
He accepted the fate and ate in what the Italians call “silenzio,” save for when he sang, and his tool of protest was his hands. A refusal to bow to the authoritarian mandate of the ruling class, the Parentals, and to use his bare hands as Romulus once strangled Remus with his and lived in glory forever, as my brother certainly will, with his quiet Spartacus revolt against tyranny as he sat on high and devoured his “dinner” with bare fingers and fists; fork and spoon defiantly dropped to the floor far below.
Freedom, he sang in his heart to all; freedom was the song he sang, and slavery was the chair upon which he lived on high.
7.26.2017
1.27.2017
FILE UNDER : FAMILY ACCOMPLISHMENTS.
#accomplishments
Four people. 16 days. 70 ounces Adams peanut butter.
Four people. 16 days. 70 ounces Adams peanut butter.
1.25.2017
Hey Becca,
I did the maths, and there are five cookies remaining. There are four of us who currently eat cookies in this household. I think I have devised a plan that will make things simple for all of us tomorrow, and it involves there being four cookies left when you wake up in the morning. I pray I have eased your stresses, and if I have done so, you are welcome, and we will all have one cookie apiece to enjoy tomorrow.
Also, I will try* to save you one of the bigger ones.
- Joseph
*no promises though
Also, I will try* to save you one of the bigger ones.
- Joseph
*no promises though
11.16.2011
Dear Dad,
Hello, Father,
Was going to do P90X tonight and thought of you. But then I realized Modern Family was on so I watched it and ate chocolate chips instead. Overall, I think you are probably a better dad than Val Kilmer. Well, catch you on FB tomorrow.
Joseph Long
Was going to do P90X tonight and thought of you. But then I realized Modern Family was on so I watched it and ate chocolate chips instead. Overall, I think you are probably a better dad than Val Kilmer. Well, catch you on FB tomorrow.
Joseph Long
4.25.2011
AEROPLANE TRAVEL WITH MY DAUGHTER.
1.03pm.
Indianapolis Airport. Magdelana and I are an hour-and-a-half early for our scheduled 2.29 flight.
Airports smell good, mostly. Which is good, because airplanes do not smell good, mostly. We bought some gum tater tots, and water, and admired the installations and sculptures. Also, Magdelana sang, loudly. Nothing specific, just the faux-English, Sigur Ros-channeling dialect she has been developing.
Odie odie hay ong omie omie say /
My say oh my ohsay yoh odie my may
We board our United flight, a few minutes late. The red-haired gate attendant, Katrina, is not friendly. She does not smile, or acknowledge me when I say thank you and inquire how her day is going. It is obviously not going superb. I notice out of my eye's corner, that the other attendant (I later learn he is Mr. Patel) is slamming the phone down.
Our seats are on opposite sides of the aisle, so I ask a gentlemen if he might be willing to switch. He is nice, and does. Magdelana commandeers the window seat, and immediately begins sharing her thoughts on the plane's aroma, loudly.
Phew, it smells really really really awful, she groans repeatedly, not to the amusement of the first class gentleman eating Chinese takeout.
We settle into our seats. Mags peruses the contents of her precious blue bag. We wait. And wait. The flight attendants have a sort of headless chicken aimlessness about them, peppered with an air of panicked irritation. We keep waiting.
Finally, an announcement is made: will somebody give up their seat, in exchange for a ticket voucher and a later flight?
Short version: I ask if they'll double up. We'll give up our two seats and take a couple ticket vouchers, a a later flight, meal and hotel, and a suitcase of cash. Okay, they say, so Mags and I grab our bags. We are heroes. Now, the plane can depart.
To the ticket counter. I meet Mr. Patel, who is slamming the phone down again. No. No. No. Absolutely not! (and then the phone slams)
For the next 45 minutes, we haggle out details. Our original flight soars away, though there still seems to be some issue over a missing flight attendant who stomped off somewhere (seriously).
Our flight is scheduled for five-something the next morning, but Mr. Patel suddenly gets a message, or call, or something from somewhere.
We can get you out tonight...actually, on the next flight. Are you interested?
- Uhh....yeah.
So we hop in the next line for O'Hare, instead of D.C.
We make the short jog to Chicago. I read aloud Around the World in 80 Days. At O'Hare, we spend $45 in meal vouchers on a veggie sandwich, raisin bagel, eight-dollar peanut butter smoothie, and four Naked juices at $4.25 a pop. Mags is almost sleeping on her feet, but gets a shot of adrenaline* from a bottle of apple juice. We dine on the floor next to a fivesome of United crew. One, a Japanese flight attendant, is sleeping across three seats an I aggressively work to not not look at her skirt, which is pulled far above her knees. Some things just take a conscious effort to do. Or not do.
Finally, we board our 5.43. This one smells too. We read some more. We sit on the tarmac, again. I wonder how long it will be until we take off.
Patience! Magdelana reminds me. Patience!
We fly up, at last. Mags conks out at 6.25, snuggled against me. She is wiped out.
I love her so much, my little adventuring travel buddy.
*sugar
Indianapolis Airport. Magdelana and I are an hour-and-a-half early for our scheduled 2.29 flight.
Airports smell good, mostly. Which is good, because airplanes do not smell good, mostly. We bought some gum tater tots, and water, and admired the installations and sculptures. Also, Magdelana sang, loudly. Nothing specific, just the faux-English, Sigur Ros-channeling dialect she has been developing.
Odie odie hay ong omie omie say /
My say oh my ohsay yoh odie my may
We board our United flight, a few minutes late. The red-haired gate attendant, Katrina, is not friendly. She does not smile, or acknowledge me when I say thank you and inquire how her day is going. It is obviously not going superb. I notice out of my eye's corner, that the other attendant (I later learn he is Mr. Patel) is slamming the phone down.
Our seats are on opposite sides of the aisle, so I ask a gentlemen if he might be willing to switch. He is nice, and does. Magdelana commandeers the window seat, and immediately begins sharing her thoughts on the plane's aroma, loudly.
Phew, it smells really really really awful, she groans repeatedly, not to the amusement of the first class gentleman eating Chinese takeout.
We settle into our seats. Mags peruses the contents of her precious blue bag. We wait. And wait. The flight attendants have a sort of headless chicken aimlessness about them, peppered with an air of panicked irritation. We keep waiting.
Finally, an announcement is made: will somebody give up their seat, in exchange for a ticket voucher and a later flight?
Short version: I ask if they'll double up. We'll give up our two seats and take a couple ticket vouchers, a a later flight, meal and hotel, and a suitcase of cash. Okay, they say, so Mags and I grab our bags. We are heroes. Now, the plane can depart.
To the ticket counter. I meet Mr. Patel, who is slamming the phone down again. No. No. No. Absolutely not! (and then the phone slams)
For the next 45 minutes, we haggle out details. Our original flight soars away, though there still seems to be some issue over a missing flight attendant who stomped off somewhere (seriously).
Our flight is scheduled for five-something the next morning, but Mr. Patel suddenly gets a message, or call, or something from somewhere.
We can get you out tonight...actually, on the next flight. Are you interested?
- Uhh....yeah.
So we hop in the next line for O'Hare, instead of D.C.
We make the short jog to Chicago. I read aloud Around the World in 80 Days. At O'Hare, we spend $45 in meal vouchers on a veggie sandwich, raisin bagel, eight-dollar peanut butter smoothie, and four Naked juices at $4.25 a pop. Mags is almost sleeping on her feet, but gets a shot of adrenaline* from a bottle of apple juice. We dine on the floor next to a fivesome of United crew. One, a Japanese flight attendant, is sleeping across three seats an I aggressively work to not not look at her skirt, which is pulled far above her knees. Some things just take a conscious effort to do. Or not do.
Finally, we board our 5.43. This one smells too. We read some more. We sit on the tarmac, again. I wonder how long it will be until we take off.
Patience! Magdelana reminds me. Patience!
We fly up, at last. Mags conks out at 6.25, snuggled against me. She is wiped out.
I love her so much, my little adventuring travel buddy.
*sugar
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