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World’s Favorite Songs for Children

July 16, 2010 in Adults by J | 3 comments

When I moved from my parents’ house to college, to California, to Oregon, I brought all my good piano music with me, even though I didn’t have a piano after I left home. So when Todd and I did eventually buy a piano earlier this year, I had all my nice familiar stuff handy, and the only hard part was relearning everything.

But I still missed some of the books that I remembered from my childhood – the ones that had been played through so many times that the binding was cracked and everything was held together by thick transparent tape. So I called my mom, and she said that, sure enough, there were still some books at their house and she’d ship them along right away. I think she must have cleared about ten cubic feet of closet space because that was a lot of music.

But the one book that I especially wanted was there: World’s Favorite Songs for Children (1977). I can’t really explain why this one is so special to me. Perhaps because I remember my mom taking requests from it after tucking us in at night, and how I would fall asleep listening. Perhaps because it’s how I learned such catchy tunes as “As the Caissons go Rolling Along” and what a caisson is. Perhaps there were Turkey in the Straw dance parties at our house. Or maybe all of these and lots of other wonderful things I don’t remember anymore.

World’s Favorite Songs for Children comprises six sections: Kindergarten Days, School Days, Cowboy Songs, Foreign Songs, Patriotic Songs, and Church Songs. The table of contents adds another category missing from the cover: Old Time Songs. I can’t think of an old children’s song it doesn’t have. Plus, it has the lyrics to songs like Greensleeves or Shenandoah. (The lyrics to La Cucaracha, however, have been altered, sadly.) Did you know that in She’ll be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain there’s a part about killing the old red rooster and us all having chicken and dumplins? I learned that this week.

The music itself is written simply enough for me to sightread easily, so when Simon is old enough for family sing-along, we can easily plumb the depths of World’s Favorite Songs for Children for weeks without repeating a tune.

In going back through this book this week, I’ve realized anew how much I love it. And here is another reason why.

Page 50 shows Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes the Renaissance song of unrequited love by Ben Jonson (both verses are below, though World’s Favorite Songs for Children only reprints the first stanza):

Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss within the cup
And I’ll not ask for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee
As giving it a hope that there
It could not withered be;
But thou thereon didst only breathe,
And sent’st it back to me;
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of itself but thee!

It’s sappy. It’s sentimental. It’s over the top (in my opinion).

Page 51, which faces page 50, shows The Old Gray Mare (She Ain’t What She Used to Be).

I’ve decided to believe that the editor of World’s Favorite Songs for Children had a big crush on a young woman in middle school, was spurned after months or years of pining away, and now as an adult, figures she knows who she is and she is playing music from this book, and she will get the message.

What’s not to love?

Palate Repair, step 1 complete

June 23, 2010 in Adults, Progeny by J | 4 comments

Where to begin? The palate is repaired, we’re home from the hospital, Simon is adjusting.

Todd and I did the math on our way out of Doernbecher and realized we’d been in the hospital for about twenty-eight hours. It seemed both freakishly short for such a seemingly major surgery, but at the same time extraordinarily prolonged on account of all the adrenaline and lack of sleep. I think general relativity addresses this, but only if we were traveling some significant fraction of the speed of light, which may actually have been the case for all we know.

We (okay, I) were a little concerned they would want to postpone the surgery on account of Simon’s recently (i.e. the night before) developed cough. But apparently, the cough was just an upper-respiratory ailment and his lungs were clear, so they went ahead and operated.

Simon’s surgery was the surgeon’s first one of the day. So we checked in a little after six in the morning. By quarter after eight they were underway, and by eleven, he was done. It took him a while to wake up, and evidently did try to wake up at some point, but was very upset and “wild” (I imagine there was a lot of screaming and trying to hit people, since that’s what goes on at home) so the nurse gave him some medicine, which sent him back to sleep for a very long time, earning him the title of Narcotics Lightweight.

When he did wake up, he screamed a lot and tried to hit people, but since his arms were immobilized by the “No-No” restraints (more later), he couldn’t wind up a good swing, which just made him madder. We’ve learned that nothing really makes Simon madder than People Messing With Him and Being Restrained, both of which he was having to endure while coming off of anesthesia. “With a temper like that, you could grow up to be a surgeon!” the recovery nurse told him. Simon continued to scream as we were escorted to our private room, as we settled in, and until we stuck some Pedialyte in his mouth. Dude sucked it down (six ounces total – some kind of record we were told) and collapsed into sleep.

So we thought we had this all figured out. The Boy cries because he’s so thirsty. We give him Drink, and he returns to sleep to rebuild tissue and regenerate his stores. Neato!

And then we had a two-hour screaming freakout. Which eventually subsided. Which is enough said about that.

Our room had a bench-like bed for Todd and a pull-out chair-bed for me. The chair-bed was about six feet long and two feet wide, and comprised three sections, none of which were coplanar, and the head of which swallowed at least one pillow. This would have been endurable had Simon wanted to sleep in his own bed. And so it was that Simon and I spent the world’s longest night (technically, one of the year’s shortest, but we were traveling at 0.8c, remember) in the world’s narrowest chair-bed. He started out on my chest, I awoke around midnight, thinking it must be near dawn. The nurse came in to medicate him, and I assumed it was four in the morning. I realized I was soaked with something, felt his diaper, confirmed my suspicions, and was too tired to act. The nurse came in to medicate him again around four. It was very confusing. In the meantime, Simon had somehow shifted onto his back next to me, arms spread eagle, hogging the entire chair-bed. I wondered why his own bed would not have been satisfactory for this purpose, but whenever he would stir, and I would pat him and say “Mama’s still here” he would quiet back down and go back to sleep. So I guess it was worth it.

Now that we’re home, Simon’s demonstrating amazing resolve in getting back to normal. He’s required to wear his No-No (unofficial name) arm restraints at all times for four weeks, to keep him from putting fingers (his favorite) or objects (a close second) in his mouth and reopening the cleft. Each arm is encapsulated in what looks to most people like an oceanographically themed air cast (so most people, strangely, don’t ask about them). In reality, they’re thickly velcroed splits with a piece of sturdy substance (metal? plastic?) in them to keep him from bending at the elbow.

Do you know how useful elbows are? Simon does. He started off the morning pretty upset that all he could do was pick up a toy and toss it behind him. But by the afternoon, he was pointing, turning pages, patting toys, and hitting Mama in the face. Watching him negotiate eating, playtime, and reading time between morning and afternoon was like watching a time-lapse reenactment of his babyhood developmental milestones. I’m pretty sure in the next day or two he’ll learn to move from place to place (currently, he just looks longingly and whiningly at where he wants to go, but hasn’t figured out how to make it happen). At this rate, he will start walking, speaking, and doing physics before the month is out.

But anyway, it’s eleven at night and too late for this Mama to be up. I’m so very proud of the Boy and how well he’s adjusting to his new situation. Would that we were all so resilient.

Simon’s mouth is awake, thanks.

June 2, 2010 in Adults, Progeny by J | 1 comment

This boy. He’s been a little late with the milestones sometimes, but when he decides to go for something, there’s no holding back. We’re not sure if it’s been the cleft palate, the small jaw, or the low muscle tone (and associated low body-awareness), but the little man really wasn’t all that enthusiastic about eating solid food for, say, the first thirteen months and two weeks of his life. He rejected the “baby-safe feeder” nylon mesh bag. He rejected baby-mush from a spoon. He rejected delicious morsels on his high-chair tray. For a while, he would only eat Cheerios (and extra bonus if I planned ahead to dip them in something nutritive). At some point, we knew he could feed himself (because we’d occasionally see it happen), but he wouldn’t eat unless we put individual food pieces in his mouth.

And then, one day last week, there he was, in his high chair, shoveling his own food into his own mouth. His favorites are still cheese and carbs (a cheese pancake might conceivably be his favorite, but I haven’t quite worked out the recipe for that yet). But he will also eat fruit on purpose if that’s what’s on his tray. Especially strawberry. Especially Oregon strawberry.

Now, maybe to most families the transition from the bottle to solids isn’t very groundbreaking. But to us, it’s like the most fascinating, earth-shattering thing in the whole world. I can put food on his tray and watch him eat it, without feeding it to him one piece at a time. Really, this is revolutionizing our lives. I know I say that about a lot of things. But now I can eat my own food, while sitting near Simon, who is also eating, and have a conversation. It’s like a date, every time we have a meal. (Mainly, his conversation is still limited to “mamamamamama! mamamoooooo! Ayayayaaaaaaa.”)

So while we were celebrating (and hoping that it wasn’t just a transitory preference) the new eating regime, a new toothbrushing regime started at our house.

We’ve been trying to be really diligent about brushing Simon’s teeth (he’s teething, like, all the time, and has lots of teeth, and they’re super-adorable, and also sharp), since his “toddler” formula is composed mainly of water, sugar, oh, and some nutrients. Now, let the reader understand, Simon is what professional people call “orally defensive.” I couldn’t even get my finger in his mouth let alone a foreign object (c.f. food). So toothbrushing time was mainly a family togetherness experience where one parent would immobilize the hands, while the other one, while holding the toothbrush, would squeeze Simon’s cheeks together enough to expose teeth, and begin brushing. At some point, this would infuriate him enough that he would open up to scream, handily exposing the molars, which would then also get brushed. At some point, he got wise, and started screaming with his mouth clamped shut. Still, we would prevail, but the whole process took longer. It always seemed a little incongruous to follow toothbrushing with our family prayer, blessing, and hymn. But then, really, do you do the prayer, blessing, and hymn, and then follow it with toothbrushing? There was no real solution.

And then. One day (at the same time Simon started feeding himself), he just started letting us brush his teeth. He opens up voluntarily. He barely fusses. He also likes holding the toothbrush and playing with the bristles, or chewing on it. He throws a little short-lived tantrum if we have to take the toothbrush away. It’s been a toothbrush-attitude-180-plus-also-love-affair at our house this week.

At this point, we felt like we were pressing our luck with one breakthrough leading to another. (And narratively, telling the reader how very advanced your child is, maybe can wear thin? But I figure we’re justified because he’s behind in his skills. I’ll be brief.)

So bathtime: He used to love it, then he started screaming the entire time, for no apparent reason. And then tonight we let him hold the toothbrush during the bath. Problem solved. Happy bath, happy baby, disgusting bath-toothbrush. But I bought a pack of four, so we now have a bath-toothbrush and a real toothbrush.

In other news, I’m back from the Science Olympiad trip. Simon and Todd did great on their own, and I may just have to go on another solo trip, to say, Veracruz (kidding, Todd). And my team got a fifth-place medal (out of sixty teams) in Experimental Design (one of the twenty-three events).

Oh, and Simon got a haircut and looks like a Big Boy now. At some point, we’ll post pictures or see you in person.

Julia’s Rules for Medical Professionals

January 28, 2010 in Adults by J | 5 comments

Simon and I have both had more than an average number of medical appointments in the last eighteen months. Between pre-natal visits, gastroenterology, well-baby checks, and the cleft-palate team, I would say we’ve seen our fair share of medical professionals. Many times (but not all — we have some fantastic providers), I leave an appointment feeling vaguely irritated, but have had trouble putting my finger on why. It’s taken me eighteen months to figure out that it’s because one of the four following rules has been broken. (But now that I know why things bug me, I can let them go more easily, at least in theory.)

1. Introduce yourself.
It takes about five seconds, tops. It’s something our culture thinks is polite. Are you going to touch me or my child? When all is going well, only people I know do that, so it would be nice if I knew your name.

2. Read the chart.
It will save me from having to repeat myself. It will make you look like a genius with a really good memory. It says “I care.” Asking someone for information on their chart looks lazy.

3. Take two minutes to determine how smart I am.
This will keep you from wasting your time explaining things I already know or things I have no chance of understanding. A good way to do this is to ask what I do professionally. From this you can discern my general level of education and my familiarity with topics we are going to discuss. High school science teacher? Can probably read graphs and very likely knows some basic anatomy vocabulary.

4. I should leave feeling as though I’m doing something right.
Because if all I get is messages about how I need to change what I’m doing, it’s depressing, and doesn’t empower me to change anything. Likewise, leaving with a list of things I need to do (say, for my child) is overwhelming if I don’t feel like what I’ve been doing is adequate. Now, maybe it hasn’t been, but if you can find one tiny thing to affirm, I have somewhere to start.

The next step is learning how to firmly and courteously assert myself when I get irritated. Saying “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name…” or “Hmm, I think that’s in my chart,” in my head is one thing, but actually saying it to a person is quite another.

My rich inner life

December 18, 2009 in Adults, Progeny by J | 1 comment

We make up a lot of songs at our house. I often find myself pondering how the lyrics would translate to prose. To wit:

Great Big Belly
Your belly is large, and your tush is small. Your nose is smaller than the rest of your head. For the small size of your baby toes, your toenails are larger than I would have thought probable. These things, and others, make you my special baby.

The Burping Song
If you have air trapped inside, and I think you do, now is the time to let it out. No matter if you think your burp is too small to matter, or too large to release in mixed company, I assure you we will all feel better afterward. I know because I’m your mom.

The Stink Police
The stink police are surveilling our residence and will probably find you out. But don’t worry. They don’t give citations, just baths, which you like. Also, Papa and I are the stink police.

Tell Your Mom
If you see a mouse in the house, don’t take matters into your own hands. It won’t go how you are expecting. No, tell your mom and she will kill it.

The Barium Ingestion Club

August 7, 2009 in Adults, Progeny by J | 1 comment

Several weeks ago, I got to do an upper-gastrointestinal-and-small-bowel X-ray. While I can’t say that it was “enjoyable,” it was interesting from a scientific point of view — my being, you know, a chemistry teacher and all. Seeing pictures of your insides is both macabre and fascinating, and it was nice to be told by the technicians (two of them, separately) that the curlicue pattern of my small bowel is “unique to me.”

The worst part of the whole process, aside from the slimy and gelatinous barium sulfate emulsion I had to drink, was the waiting. The technician would take a picture every thirty minutes, and my job was to help speed the barium through by walking up and down the twenty feet of hallway in the middle of the building. I had taken my crossword puzzle along, but I’m not very good at those, so it didn’t relieve the boredom very much.

Now, since infants aren’t allowed in the exam room with their moms (and really, I can understand why), Todd stayed at home with Simon that morning. And while Todd is an excellent father and I knew Simon was probably enjoying the change of pace, it was frustrating not to get any cell phone reception as I was pacing the halls. I wanted to call every ten minutes to report things like “barium sulfate: disgusting!” “I just got 39-across!” and so on. I lamented about this to the technician between pictures, and she sent me out onto the balcony in my hospital gown. It felt weird, but I was desperate for news from home and a friendly voice, so I did it. She asked me lots of kind questions about my baby and was generally very nice about it.

After about two and a half hours, they did the upper-GI exam, which involved drinking Pop Rocks (or a very close equivalent) and more barium. I must have looked like I was going to kill someone about the barium because the technician tried to calm me down. “It’s not as bad as the other stuff! It’s thinner!” I must have looked dubious. “You know who really likes this stuff?” she continued. “Babies! It’s because we don’t let them eat for several hours before they have to drink it, so they just suck it right down.”

All I could think of right then was what a terrible thing that was to mention, not because this is true, which I discovered later, but because the idea of withholding food from your baby only to feed him something completely non-nutritive seemed, well, repulsive. And I had just gotten done telling her how much I missed my baby. Fortunately, the whole experience was over shortly thereafter, and I got to go home and everything turned out fine.

Then a few weeks later, Simon decided he didn’t want to finish bottles anymore. His intake dropped precipitously, and he lost a little weight, which concerned us and the good folks who see him at Doernbecher. There was no obvious reason for him to not want to eat. We went in for a feeding evaluation, and he totally lost it in front of the feeding specialist, screaming and squirming. It was the opposite of taking your car in to the shop. So, the specialist suggested we do a barium swallow study to make sure no food was getting in his airway.

Of course, this involved waiting several hours for Simon to get hungry again, which we spent in the Starbucks at the base of the elevators (for reasons I won’t go into, don’t buy items from the pastry case at the Doernbecher Starbucks). When it was time for our appointment, he was very very ready to eat, and we set him up in the X-ray video machine. I was handed a bottle of the familiar-looking goo and told to go for it. So, feeling kind of deceptive and mean the whole time, I fed my baby an inorganic salt emulsion while the radiologist videotaped his head. And amazingly, Simon didn’t mind. In fact, he
kind of liked it, which makes me question his judgment about food, and which I will remember when he is a toddler or teenager refusing something delicious at our dinner table: “You can’t talk about not liking that. You don’t know anything, you like barium sulfate!”

The X-ray video itself was pretty amazing. They played it back for me later, and I could even see the food dripping down his chin. Next up: Todd? Want to join the Barium Ingestion Club?

Just to tie up narrative loose ends, although this is not the point of the story, we’ve made some adjustments to his feeding routine, the most notable of which is an increase in his antacid medication, which has done wonders for his intake and attitude about eating.

Mother’s Day

May 10, 2009 in Adults by T | No comments

Like many of you, I have a mother. In fact, I’ve recently gotten to spend a lot of time with her and my father, both of whom have been in town for a few weeks to help out after Simon was born. (Julia’s parents were in town before that to also help out. It’s been sort of a parental torch-passing, really.)

I love my mom, and she’s a wonderful parent (same goes for you too, Dad, but I’m not supposed to say anything for a month — you know, legally). Loving, giving, patient … all that and the proverbial bag of chips, to this day, even now that I’m old enough that I don’t feel like anyone’s baby.

But this year, on Mother’s Day, I find myself with more than one mother figure to contemplate. Because, you see, my wife has somehow managed to — while still remaining fully my wife — also become a mother. Now, at some level, this was fully anticipated — I’ve read up on all the biological underpinnings of this transformation and all. But it’s still something of a shock that this beautiful, fun woman I’d known for many years had all this mothering inside her. Who knew?

In times past, I had always considered myself the tough one. When hiking up a mountain (or its Scottish equivalent), I was usually the one in the lead. I was the one, say, who went on a bonus hike to the relatively creepy garden of carved wooden objects while Julia rested up from the morning hike to the waterfall. And so forth.

And then Julia told me that she wanted to have a drug-free childbirth for Simon. Now, I will admit that I initially took this in the same way that I might say that I want to have a chocolate milkshake appear in my hand: it would be nice, if not terribly likely. But Julia kept saying it. More importantly, she said it to the nurses when we checked into the hospital the night Simon was born.

And after seeing her go through that labor without any drugs, I relinquished the title of Toughest Stadler. Which title, you know, technically, I had never actually won. But Julia certainly did, that night.

But it wasn’t just some extraordinary burst of strength on the occasion of Simon’s birth. No, her amazing abilities have continued the whole month-and-change that is Simon’s life. It hasn’t always been easy — there have been challenges for both Simon and Julia — but through it all, she’s just kept going. And doing amazingly well, no less.

It’s like finding out that you’re married to Wonder Woman after years of thinking you’d been living with a very nice Diana Prince … only without the invisible plane and so forth. (And yes, I did have to look up Wonder Woman’s non-secret identity on Wikipedia. What the heck, Wonder Woman can fly? I mean, without the invisible plane? What?)

Point being, my wife — and, more to the point on this day, my son’s mother — is amazing. She’s tough, she’s loving, she’s beautiful. And I love her.

We won Science Olympiad

March 16, 2009 in Adults by T | 2 comments

So I did my best to avoid this story in the previous entry, since I’m insane and writing two entries in as many days about current events — take that, my former companions in lazy blogging, he said ironically before lapsing into silence for another few weeks! …

Uh, that opening got too complicated. Here’s the upshot: J’s Science Olympiad team won yesterday for the third time in as many years, earning them the right to advance to the national Science Olympiad competition this May in Augusta, Georgia — which competition the careful reader will note J is not attending (somewhat sadly) for the first time, since we will almost certainly have a beautiful new baby to care for and teach simple ion formulae and basic music theory to and whatnot.

But eyes on the prize(s): we won! Huzzah!

Actually, this is a somewhat tricky thing for me to exult in (to be cockahoop, if you will). First off, while winning any competition is reason for happiness, it should be noted that there aren’t a lot of schools competing in Science Olympiad in Oregon — five this year — so the state competition is a bit more like a regional event in more competitive states (like just across the Columbia in Washington, where there are over 100; this also makes hobby shops in Portland suburb Vancouver, Washington much more likely to be able to offer advice on whether you want to use balsa or bass wood in building your elevated bridge for Science Olympiad, say).

Second, there is the awkward nature of being associated with a team that has won first place every year it’s competed. I don’t want our team to become the Yankees, if you will, of Oregon Science Olympiad. The other schools also worked hard, were worthy competitors, won many medals, and I hope will continue to compete for years to come. I was especially impressed by the newcomers this year from Sunset, which fielded only half a team (in terms of the maximum possible), and yet won third place and no small number of medals, including several golds.

But in the end, our team did better across the board and won, and I can’t help but be happy for them. While there were times I was worried they weren’t working hard enough, in the end they worked really hard and pulled it off. And, thinking back to my own very, very late nights (occasionally becoming mornings) of last-minute work in high school, I can’t really fault them. Too much.

And now, some notes from the Science Olympiad.

As can be seen at the national Science Olympiad site, www.soinc.org (pronounced “soink!”), there are corporate sponsors, most of whom are what you might expect in the whole “promoting science and engineering among the youth” milieu: DuPont, Texas Instruments, 3M. There are, however, two sponsors I find a bit … odd, if nonetheless appropriate. One is the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, sponsoring It’s About Time, a competition in part about building a functional time-keeping device. I guess I’m just surprised that such an association has apparently as much largesse as your corporations that I assume are generally much better funded. Also: watch and clock collectors? Really? The association of, you know, clock builders was too busy?

And then there is Egg-O-Naut, an event in which the competitors build water-powered bottle rockets, with the intent of having an egg-bearing capsule separate from the main rocket in mid-flight and make it safely back to earth as slowly as possible. Perhaps you saw this coming, but that event is sponsored by none other than the American Egg Board, the people who brought you “The Incredible, Edible Egg” campaign. Actually, they’re still bringing it to you, it turns out — and brought several bright-yellow “Incredible!” egg-picturing t-shirts for the winners of said event, which was our team. I will refrain from speculating as to whether the t-shirt or the gold medal was the better prize.

Regarding Egg-O-Naut, that was a rather difficult event at the tournament, given the strong wind and rains that plagued the area. But the Egg-O-Nautery must go on, as they say, and so most of the rockets, designed for much more favorable conditions, were, my friend, a-blowin’ in the wind after a prematurely short ascent. The winning rocket faced even more difficult conditions, as one section of it — thankfully, not the egg-bearing part — was also run over by a car, what with the event taking place in a parking lot, the winds having carried it beyond the car-free section of said lot. Regardless, the egg survived.

The events at such tournaments are supervised by volunteers, who, in addition to coming from the various competing schools, are also pulled from local Industry, as the academics say. This year, J also managed to snag some of our friends (who do, after all, work in Industry) to supervise, and it was really fun to see them working with the events and kids we’ve come to know so well. Even more fun was hearing that they enjoyed preparing tests or seeing what the kids had come up with. What can I say, we’ve got good nerd friends.

Our team is also, not surprisingly, blessed with many good nerd parents, several of whom helped out over the season as assistant coaches of sorts. Given that these parents come from engineering backgrounds, it’s not too surprising that our team did especially well in the engineering events this year (in previous years, we had been stronger at the knowledge-based test events). And yet this was no case of overbearing parents doing all the work. On the Trajectory event, involving the construction of a launching device that can hit any target within certain parameters, made her own unique mark on the event — she enjoys sewing in addition to Science Olympiad, and I couldn’t help but notice that her device’s launching mechanism involved a Rube-Goldbergian use of fabric scissors to cut through embroidery floss to send her projectile flying. It’s all very clever and endearing, frankly.

I’d write more, but frankly, editing this post has already prevented me from posting twice in one day. I’d hate further writing and editing to prevent me from a still-unprecedented twice-in-two-days series. So, yeah: Science Olympiad! Huzzah!

We survived Science Olympiad

March 15, 2009 in Adults by T | 1 comment

Yesterday was Oregon’s state Science Olympiad competition — a science competition with many different types of events that the clever among you will note is very Olympic in nature — which J coached for the third year in a row for the school where she’s also a science teacher.

(Here’s where I catch my breath from the wreckless pace of this blog entry, what with the writing about events mere hours after the events transpired and all. What do I think this blog is, some sort of newspaper with fancy, fact-filled ledes? No, really this entry is less about describing our lives and more about shaming our friends with their new blogs but less-recent posts — less about information, more about competition, as it’s meant to be on the Internet.)

In any other year, this would be just another story about how J coached and I helped (occasionally even assistant-coaching) and the girls worked hard and so on. But those paying attention or otherwise in-the-know know that, in addition to coaching an award-winning team, J is also 37 weeks pregnant. And we’re moving into our new house next week. Oh, and J was also one of three people running this year’s Oregon Science Olympiad competition.

In short: [mild exclamation of your choice]! What were we thinking? What? Were we thinking?

Yes, well. I won’t say it hasn’t been one of the most stressful periods of our life together — indeed, while I usually consider myself a fairly laid-back kind of guy, I haven’t been this stressed since late college. Which is exciting, because perhaps it means that my time of stressful-college-nightmares-as-dreamworld-metaphor has come to an end, henceforth to be replaced by nightmares about hiring contractors, packing boxes, and working twelve hours at a science competition.

All of which sounds far too whiny. With the competition now over, and one fairly major item on our checklist now largely checked off (for simplicity’s sake, I will simply ignore any preparations needed after the competition … but more about that in the next entry), I’m already in “happy retrospective” mode vis-a-vis Science Olympiad: “It was all worth it, to see the team having competed and worked so hard!” And so on. Hopefully, the following weeks will see similar shifts in opinions about buying and moving into a new house, and the final days of pregnancy.

And while it can be trite, after a endeavor has been successfully completed, to thank God (I’m thinking here of the occasional televised award ceremony winner), I really can’t see how we could have made it this far without him. It’s easy enough to ignore his blessings when I feel in control of things, when I have a plan, when I know how everything is going to play out.

But in times like this, when I come home from a stressful time at work to a house that is full — but not yet full enough — of boxes and calendar full of activities that do not lend themselves to filling more boxes, not to mention the occasional, looming feeling that I am ill-prepared for my imminent parenthood and thus already a bad father … well, there’s precious little else to lean on besides God (and the blessings he puts in our lives, namely family and friends). At times like this, trusting merely in my own abilities leads me to lying awake two hours before I’m supposed to get up, quietly freaking out. And while I’ve certainly tried that approach a lot lately, it hasn’t generally been one I would dub successful.

Anyhow, that’s done. Phew. Thank God.

The winter of our Web content

December 23, 2008 in Adults, Weather by T | No comments

Since I last blogged about Portland’s winter storm, the snow and cold temperatures have continued (and continued), resulting in the longest spate of winter weather I’ve ever experienced.

I realize “bad winter weather” is all relative, and many from points north and east of here would scoff at what we’ve been going through. Still, you can’t argue with the effect the weather has had on Portland, shutting down various aspects of it because, well, we don’t get feet of snow very often!

Anyhow, things were actually looking pretty good through the end of last week, such that, while Julia was off every day due to school being canceled, I made it in to work along with everyone else in my office. This was mildly disappointing, not only in that I begrudged Julia’s ability to stay snuggled in a warm bed while I went off to work, but also because, after walking over the ice and snow and then hopping on a bus with chains, I was kind of hoping to find the office empty of less stalwart folks who weren’t nearly as brave as I’d obviously been. Turns out everybody who rides the bus was equally brave, which is to say that it wasn’t that brave after all.

They’d been forecasting bad weather over the weekend, so we weren’t surprised when the predicted snow hit Saturday morning. In fact, the heavy snow was charming in the way only that ironic things that you’ll later come to fear/loathe can be.

But all the nearby restaurants — or at least the ones within a shortened walking distance — were open, and I consider this a win for local businesses. The employees could walk or bus to work, and so could we. And boy, were we happy to see them open! Given that we were flying out on Monday (he said, ironically foreshadowing … perhaps), we hadn’t stocked up a lot of food at home, so our food options were a meal at Sckavone’s or Detour Cafe, or … whatever odds and ends just happened to be in our fridge or pantry, the true details of which I am too embarrassed to admit.

Anyhow, Saturday passed without problem. Julia went to a prenatal yoga class, we had lunch nearby, and then we went over to the Kunze’s for the night. Not the sort of stuff I’d usually blog about, except that every trip, every meal seemed exceptional, hard-won, a victory over the snow continuing to pile up outside.

Church was canceled Sunday morning, which was not at all surprising, but frankly a tad welcome, given the previous week’s adventure. With the extra free time, I engaged for only the second time in my life in shoveling the walk. After only a few minutes of this activity, I was glad I’d only done it twice so far — that is hard, aerobic activity. Nothing like sweating while cold! I was even feeling so charitable that I shoveled most of the neighbor’s sidewalk, too, though this was only marginally useful, given that most of our neighbors did not clear any snow away. Heck, I had to borrow one of our neighbors’ snow shovels just to do my bit.

Lacking any other plans besides sitting inside and looking at a computer screen, I decided to light a fire — another surprisingly rare activity in my life. In our house, the fireplace is somehow designed to completely fail to heat the room, so we only light them when it really suits the moment. Basically, it’s the thermal and visual equivalent of one of those fireplace DVDs.

We’ve never bought any firewood because whoever rented the house before us left a few dozen logs in the garage (along with other things — there were dishes in the dishwasher and clothes in the dryer; one wonders exactly how quickly she left and under what circumstances). There were also a few pieces of scrap wood which we used for kindling.

But, to be honest, one of the main reasons I wanted to light a fire was to destroy documents. See, we’ve had this ever-increasing collection of papers with sensitive data we’ve meant to shred for several years. At one point, it would have been manageable, but as it grew, it became obvious it was simply too much for our dinky shredder to complete in a reasonable amount of time.

Of course, why shred things when you can spend an hour balling them up and throwing them into the fireplace, I always say? With a soundtrack of Mussorgsky playing in the background, I felt legitimately sinister, as if I was nefariously destroying crucial evidence of my own malfeasance. In reality, I was burning tax documents from 1990, when I didn’t even have a job and hadn’t graduated from high school. If the IRS wants those, they can now piece them together from the copious amount of ashes in our fireplace. Along with too many credit card offers to mention.

And while Julia got no warming benefit from the fire, I, seated mere feet from the flames while I tossed paper wads in, found myself sweating for the second time that day. I sweated more on December 21st than possibly the whole month of November.

We woke up on Monday to see that even more snow had fallen, rendering the previous day’s shoveling largely undetectable, and the previous day’s shoveler a bit cynical about the whole process. “Well I’m not going to bother doing that again!” Everyone was trudging through the compacted snow of the street, anyhow, the sidewalks being slow-going due to the deep snow.

It’s not the most exciting story ever, but given the relatively historic nature of the weather, I wanted to have some documentation of it. Other, of course, than the hundreds of largely-white photographs I took, which I will inevitably upload to my Flickr account in, say, several months.

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