August 2007 Archives

After the wanton hyperbole of my assessment of Thing 1's cycling prowess yesterday, it is only fitting I should get a comeuppance. And so, en route to our Friday donut, I was reminded just how young my boy is. For some reason, he totally forgot about his hand brakes, and was frantically freewheeling backwards as he entered a busy 4 lane street from the perpendicular. It is possible to bellow while your heart has stopped.

He managed to stop about halfway into the first lane, in what appeared to be the empty space between bouts of traffic—by skidding his feet on the ground. After I got finished yelling at him, I hugged the stuffing out of him and then made him practice those brakes repeatedly the rest of the way to the Lab. And then I hugged the stuffing out of him again.

The donuts were good. I am grateful we all made it out alive. Well, until the saturated fat catches up with us in 40 years, by which time I am certain I will still remember this day. The giant roll of bubble wrap to totally enclose the children is on the way, priority overnight shipping.

So, I am perhaps peculiar in this, I certainly am in my vicinity. I like to ride my bike. Since I've moved to Cali I haven't done much of it what with all the baby making and raising. But the babies are big enough! A year ago, I was taking Thing 2 to preschool in a Burley trailer, which was great and made me feel really free again. Well, there was the whining that I wasn't going fast enough, which I am frankly not interested in hearing (only on the uphills, go figure). But now Thing 2 is old enough to get pulled behind me on a contraption that has him pedalling his own bike. Ha! Oh for crying out loud, he brakes for everything interesting. Ergh.

Anyway, Thing 1, having mastered balancing on two wheels just prior to the Burley year, accompanied us as far as the elementary school, where I would shepherd him carefully into his first grade class before heading off with his brother. This Fall, we're going to be riding to school every day this year—we had to skip a year because kindergarten starts at 8:10, and I'm not willing to herd everyone to their cycles that early. 8:30 though, now you're talkin!

So we've been practicing riding this last couple of weeks en route to tormenting the computers in my lab. While Thing 2 has distiguished himself in his ability to unbalance us through vigorous gesticulating at god knows what but its very important I see it RIGHT NOW, Thing 1 is an absolute dream of cycling intuition: Stay to the right, but not so far you get trapped there. Keep an eye out for people inside parked cars popping their doors open. A car ahead means shout "car up!". A car behind means shout "car back!". Obey traffic signs. Wave traffic on at the intersection if your mom hasn't caught up because your brother keeps hitting his brakes. Try to keep a really straight line.

If you see a 7 year old on his shiny new 7 speed bike waving you to pass, wave back! I'm so proud of him I could burst! He is totally ready for peloton riding. I can't wait till he's 17 so I can draft off him shamelessly!!!

Well, summer is certainly lasting forever. For those parents who are fortunate to have school stop in May and start again in August, I envy you. Our school year will not begin until September 6th. Even Thing 2 is hopeful that the time between then and now will fly by (Thing 1 not so much, but he has more homework experience under his belt.)

Because I have drug the kinder off to the computer lab for several days now, I was feeling like they were starting to turn into stunted computer game playing praying mantis heads. After piano and violin lessons today, I took them to our local nexus of culture, Huntington Garden. For the first time, I did not direct them to the Children's Garden, wonderful though it may be. Its hot outside, mommy is tired of being hot. We availed ourselves of the art galleries, and I marched them through the European collection, past Blue Boy and Pinkie. After a short tour, I informed them that their mission was to draw and color a couple of the paintings in their own style, with paper and crayons I provided. It was marvelous. Heavily air conditioned, interactive, with lots of colors. Heaven.

Thing 1 immediately marched off with the intent of duplicating a Fragonard portrait of a boy. I was so pleased— that's my boy!! About 3 minutes later, after a conversation about airplanes (I was informed by the docent who participated), Thing 1 sauntered back announcing, "this, is not as easy as it looks". Prouder still.

So we all sat companionably on the first gallery bench, reimagining a painting of a volcano by someone I did not study in art school (who knew there were any left). I had no idea anything so appropriate would be on the premesis, but it was the perfect inspiration. Well, until Thing 2 started with the graveyards and aliens, but that's to be expected. Did I say it was air conditioned?

We proceeded to the conservatory, so the bloodthirsty Things could briefly ogle the carnivorous plants before the place closed. (I couldn't seem to talk them out of going into the all glass building on a hot day.) Afterwards, I was the mommy STAR by treating actual ice cream cones at an actual ice cream shop, where you choooooooose a flavor. As opposed to Drumsticks from the drive-through dairy.

Clearly, that can't stand, so when we got home, Thing 1 was was busied stocking the toilet paper pantries (costco run yesterday), Thing 2 got to clean out the Beluga, which was getting too crammed with stuff to walk through. Oh! The moaning! I love making them do work sooooo much more after I've been nice and interactive with them. There's no guilt, just sheer pleasure.

Ahhhhh.

Ok, for a person who majored in art and is not particularly technical, I sure seem to attract a lot of computers. The school has a raft of original iMacs, most of which will run the most recent os with a little coaxing. So, I'm trying to set that up. They're slow, relatively speaking, but its not like the kids are planning to render a movie or something. The plan is just to introduce more up-to-date browsers so they can take advantage of more of the cool ed. stuff available online.

So Thing 1 and Thing 2 and I have been off to the lab pretty regularly lately. They are liking the time playing computer games while I do stuff. They also like that I project a movie for them when they get really bored and start fighting. Sigh, I am not terribly proud of my parenting in this respect, but hopfully this will be but a brief period in their lives. Here are some photos, this is so wildly unusual for me, I can't get over it. First, a view of my little spot in the middle of the lab where I made the image machine,

. Its not terribly pretty, but it gets the job done. The boy's ersatz theater is here . Then there's the army of computers waiting for me in the library: Fifteen on the librarian's counter, another 16 on tables around the room . I have no idea what these photos will look like in the blog. This is an experiment.

Meanwhile, once I get all the older iMacs set up, also pushing the previous lab eMacs out to the classes, I get to set up spiffy new new (as opposed to merely new) flat screen iMacs that aren't even in yet for this fall. Yee Ha!!

For the Kinder

I wanted to add these photos of Thing 1 and Thing 2 trying to look serious and meaningful in glamour shots of some recent Lego creations. The wanted them posted to the lego site, which I did, but the site wisely does not allow you to include pictures of humans. The guys were dissappointed, so here they are in their full glory, Thing 1 and his amazing Zipper 2000, and Thing 2 and his Zipper 32thousandmillion (ha! that will teach his brother!!)

Lest you get the idea that this computing precludes knitting, HA! Its amazing how many rounds one can do on a sock while the computers are uploading some brains. Well, fewer rounds than I had hoped, but progress is being made on the STR solstice slip.

Here we are with the lovely new blog software. New look, new feel, and photos! Sysguy and I have been busy figuring out which tool to use. Movable Type won. I like it so far, We'll see how it goes.

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch, Thing 1 and Thing 2 are rapidly growing gills in the pool, after recovering from our many travels. I am spending quality time in the computer lab teaching a veritable horde of ancient iMacs the finer points of osX to the extent they can comprehend. Next up: the teachers who will be using them!!!

Gratuitous photo, because I finally can!:
these are goofy pool floats I picked up at Costco in May. I introduced them to our pool after our July travels, mostly to keep them from getting gross with that "dust" that falls out of the air here. The floats include some cool looking but anemic squirt guns with infinite water supplies. Good idea, poorly executed. But the guys are having fun with them.

ttfn!