Month: November 2010

Weekend Wrap-up

/ Shane / 2 Comments

We had a weekend at home, and it felt like we got so much done! We’ve been away from home so much for the past few months, that it feels like we are always doing catchup whenever we are home. So it was nice to get some time just to sort of kick around the house for once.

Evie and I had a little baking project. We made “candy chestnuts” (a.k.a. buckeyes to everyone else). I had a stroke of brilliance combining her love of the peanut butter cups she got when trick-or-treating with the chestnuts she collected all over Paris. This ended up being the perfect recipe since A) you have to mix all the dough by hand, B) you then have to make little balls out of the dough, Play-Doh style, and C) she had fun dipping them in chocolate as well. Oh, and eating them of course. The only problem is, she figured the entire batch was for her, since she made it.

On Saturday we went to a Family Jam at music class, which is always fun because the entire family can go (usually they go when I’m at work, unless I take them for a make-up). We had a good time, as usual, but this time they were doing something different – encouraging people to bring their instruments. They started a beginner guitar class, so I figured all of those folks would go, and the Family Jam would be a pretty easy thing to do. They would probably select easy songs for the beginners, and they’d probably sound terrible, two things that would work in my favor! 🙂

However,  none of them showed up. So somehow I ended up being the main guitar person (besides the teacher of course). I’ve been playing for about 8 years or so, but I very rarely play for anyone except Sara, Evie and Oliver. Also, I usually like to play songs a time or two to get everything down, especially if anybody else is going to hear me play. Of course at home I usually play the same songs all the time, so those ones I’ve got down. So anyway, I winged it and it worked out okay. I sounded good when it counted and only messed up when it was too loud for anybody to notice anyway! It was fun. Eventually though it was a little too crazy with all the kids and stuff, so I was needed to kid-wrangle instead of play guitar.

Finally, on Sunday we went to pick up the meat order from the farm. We’re in a little buying group that buys organic meat and eggs from a farm downstate. You put in your order once a month and pick it up at someone’s house. As part of being in the group, you agree to go pick up the shipment, maybe once a year or so. This happened to be our turn.

We planned it so that we could pick it up at the farm, so that Evie could see the animals. During farmer’s market season, they’ll drop it off at the market in Chicago, although not the one by our house. Still, it’s a little closer than going to the actual farm. But someone has to take the trips during the winter, and that someone might as well be us. They had chickens, turkeys, sheep and lambs, calves, and pigs and piglets. I have to say, it was amazing the amount of room the chickens had to run around in. In chicken-selling standards, it was ridiculous! Made me feel a lot better about getting food there.

Evie liked to see the animals, but she was disappointed because she was under the impression that they would be killing the animals for our order right then and there. (Maybe she was hoping to see a guillotine in action?) She was really grilling the people who worked there on how they killed the animals, and they were obviously very reluctant to tell her. I got the impression they didn’t feel like they should tell her, either because we wouldn’t want them to, or because they just didn’t think a little girl aught to know.

This got me thinking. Obviously back in the day, when everybody was in charge of their own food, (as opposed to getting it from the grocery store) kids were around animals that they later ate, and it wasn’t weird. (Yes, my friends that live in the country, maybe you’re STILL around animals that you later eat for food (Lisa), but Evie’s not, and neither are the majority of kids). Kids are sort of a blank slate about it, until we TEACH them it’s weird to kill the animals and eat them. We’ve discussed with Evie how the sausage patties we got used to be pigs on that farm, and she couldn’t have cared less. If anything, she was MORE excited to eat the sausage.

So I guess I’ll try to do my best not to instill this disgust in her. I myself throw my hands up and shriek like a little girl when presented with any evidence that my chicken was ever anything other than a tasteless, boneless, marinated 7 pound monster-breast. So wouldn’t it be great if Evie never learned that from me? Yeah, yeah, things were better in the old days. My curmudgeony is starting to be a major theme around here.

Quote Monday goes to school

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Evie: “I think there are 3 apartments under the school for the teachers to live in.” – Remember when you thought your teachers didn’t exist outside of school?

Evie: “Sometimes my eyes just water, so I didn’t want Mrs. Laura to think I was crying.” – She didn’t want her teacher to think she didn’t like school. What a sweet girl!

Evie: “I wish I could go to school 5 days a week!” – Well, I’m glad she likes it!

Evie, telling me about her day: “…and, oh my Lord! We didn’t even sing Johnny Works with One Hammer!”

Evie, shouting out of nowhere: “Momma!”
Sara: “What?”
Evie: “Your finger bones are called phalanges!”

Evie: “No, I don’t want to wear [my mittens]! I want to go to school first and see if any of the other kids are wearing theirs!” – Ah, peer pressure, you start so young.

Zounds!

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Moments ago, as the bathroom experienced an extremely rare, empty moment during the great bath hand-off (switching from Oliver to Evie), the heavy glass dome on the ceiling light worked itself loose and crashed to the ground. A big heavy glass dome gets a lot of speed falling from our super-high ceilings, and the destruction was loud, swift, and total.

I couldn’t help but think that, had it fallen two minutes earlier or two minutes later, someone in my family would be dead. (Sara says it probably wouldn’t have killed the adults at least, maybe only knocked us unconscious)

As it was, no harm, no foul, and we even have a spare globe in the basement. Makes me want to tighten all the rest of the lights though! Maybe we’re safe; I’m assuming that this one was particularly likely to come loose, since every time the upstairs neighbor flushes the toilet it sounds like someone dropped a bowling ball right above that light.

Watch your heads!

Organ Trail

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I’m pretty sure most of you have played Oregon Trail. Ride your wagon from landmark to landmark, busting axles and getting cholera and dysentery until you eventually try to ford a river that’s too high and your entire party is swept out to sea. Just think of all the hard-won buffalo meat you’ve lost!

Well anyway, that’s all fine and well, but you can’t really relate to it. Who’s a pioneer these days anyway? No, we need something more realistic. We need Organ Trail.

Organ Trail is a little different. Organ Trail has zombies. It’s essentially a one-to-one redo of Oregon Trail, except this time you’re traveling in a station wagon, and your ammo is for killing zombies, not harmless wildlife. You get the t-virus instead of dysentery, and you cross hordes of agitated zombies instead of fording rivers. How grueling will your pace be? How filling your rations?

I made it through on the first try, so it’s not necessarily that hard. My score was 2330. Everybody in my party lived, but Nathan took the brunt of the abuse (stop breaking your leg you clumsy oaf!) and Jackie somehow managed to get bitten by a zombie 4 times! Thank god their fearless leader was a little more competent.

Normalized

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Every generation has it a little bit better than the previous generation, or at least that’s the dream. At the very least, they have it different. Now that I have kids, I’m really starting to notice a lot of these things. Certainly, growing up in Chicago is worlds different than growing up in Anytown, Midwest, U.S.A. like Sara and I did.

But the funny thing about kids is, they don’t have any life experience. At all. Anything that happens has, for all intents and purposes, always happened that way. They don’t know enough to be amazed at things, or happy for opportunities that they have that are actually quite extraordinary. They don’t appreciate that everybody doesn’t go through the same things they do.

The President of the United States lives across the street from where Evie goes to school. You and I know that this is a somewhat unusual, if not unique, circumstance. However, all Evie knows is that, every day of her life that she has gone to school, we have to pass through a sort of (not really) security checkpoint. There are always men in dark suits lurking around, with strange cords running to their ears. Sometimes they use the bathroom in her school. Normal.

I never flew in a plane until I was a senior in college. Evie has flown more than once a year since she was born. Not little flights either; Seattle, Phoenix, Philadelphia. So why shouldn’t she go to Paris? Doesn’t every 3 year old have the opportunity to go to Pairs? That’s normal, right?

There’s little things too about growing up in Chicago. Everybody lives next to a huge museum they can drop by at any time, right? And parks and activities all the time that you can walk to? Farmer’s markets and community gardens down the street, and art fairs and book fairs, and people all around all the time? Riding trains downtown just for the fun of it? Normal.

And that’s to say nothing of computers and smart phones. Evie will routinely say things like, “Can you look that up on the computer?” or “Put that on your e-blog, daddy!” She thinks nothing of looking through thousands of pictures and videos of herself or other people she knows, who, by the way, don’t even live in the state with us (thanks Facebook!). She loves typing letters on the keyboard, to the point where we had to ban it to get her to stop obsessing about it. After all, everybody has a computer, right? Always have and always will?

I should specify, that none of these things bother me. And I’m certainly proud that I can give my daughter opportunities that are extraordinary (even if they don’t seem that way to her). It just makes me laugh at how blasé she is about all of this stuff. After all, she’s never known any different. And hey, maybe everybody SHOULD be able to fly to Paris and walk two blocks and see the President.

(Okay, 30 is not that old, right? Because, between this post and the one on materialism, I’m really starting to sound like an old fogie, waxing nostalgic about the good old days. Get off my lawn!)