Category: spring

Spring Riding

My ride to and from Faribault was a lot of fun, though now I have fried legs and a vicious, bizarre sunburn: the tops of the middle third of each arm. The skin is roughly the color of the roof of this lovely little barn along the route. From the spot where I took this picture, I could see two horses, a herd of cows, a donkey, and a bunch of chickens. It was like a Richard Scarry drawing of a farm, come to life.
Two-Toned Barn

My ride also gave me a great semi-marcelled hairdo, thanks to copious sweating and my three-vent helmet:
Helmet-Marcelled Hair

Julia, Six

Tomorrow, Julia turns six years old – and not a moment too soon for this smart, funny, adorable, independent-minded little girl. She’s been looking forward to this birthday for a long, long time.

Sprinkler Girls

I won’t comment at any length on the sheer weirdness and wonder of this kindergartner being the same creature as the tiny pink baby that struggled to be born six years ago – except to say that it’s been amazing and to post this updated collection of photos of Julia on (or near) her six birthdays. (I ran a slightly smaller version of this set in a blog post last year.)

Oh, and to say,

“Happy birthday, Julia Charlotte!”

What I Learned During the Girls’ Naps

Yesterday,
Sitting on the patio
During the girls’ naps,
I learned that
I don’t have to sit long
Or even very still
Before the birds forget I’m there.
I wasn’t even trying to be quiet,
But I must have been quiet enough,
Turning pages and sipping water.
The birds sparrowed out of the sky.
Chickadeed around the concrete.
Robined in the birdbath.
Grackled at each other.
They let me study their oddness,
Or, I suppose, they were indifferent to me
Until one or all sensed
My toothed mouth,
My earthbound feet,
My unfeathered skin,
And they all flew away.

More Krazy Kid Kwotes

J, watching a Wiggles video: “If they say ‘wiggle’ one more time, I’m going to throw myself out the window!”

J, with slight annoyance: “I have to teach everyone in this family to be fancy because nobody in this family is fancy.”

Me, as Vivi runs headlong down the hill in the backyard: “Yep, gravity works!”
G: “Who’s Gravity?”

J, touring the St. Olaf art gallery: “Abstract art looks like someone just threw food on the paper.”

Hitchbiker

I picked up a little hitchhiker on my ride to work today, probably somewhere in the Arb. Thing is, I didn’t even notice until I’d been at work about a half hour, when I felt something tickling my cheek. Swiping it away, I found this little critter, who then crawled perplexedly – but, as insects go, cutely – all over my hand and arm. I finally put the caterpillar outside, in front of my building, where an undergrad on her way to class gave me a very odd look. What, you’ve never seen a grownup on his knees in front of a flower bed at 8:30 in the morning?

Hitchbiker

Hitchbiker

Hitchbiker

Bike Riding: Fiction vs. Reality

Just as, at the top level of professional cycling, the fiction of superhuman athletes is being superseded by the reality of decades of doped champions, the fiction and reality of bike riding at my house (toward the bottom of the cycling world) have sharply diverged. In the movies, or at least the TV shows and commercials, a kid learns to ride a two-wheeler after a little struggle, and maybe a spill or two. But soon enough, the dad pulls his hand away from the seat and then looks on, beaming, as the kid speeds off down the sidewalk.

At my house, though, it’s been different. Julia was excited to try to ride without training wheels, and in fact did pretty well right away, going quite a ways without help – but always freaking out when she realized I wasn’t holding on. Then, for several weekends in a row, we couldn’t find the time for a ride, and now her confidence and skills (such as they were) are gone. A bike ride on Saturday afternoon was a colossal failure, 45 minutes of crying and begging to go back home. So tonight, the reality of bike riding was me in the garage at 11 p.m., putting the training wheels back on.

Sigh. I hope this at least lets her enjoy buzzing around the neighborhood for the summer. Maybe being six will encourage her to try the two-wheeled life again…

Mis-Wired: Problems with the Best TV Drama

God, but I love The Wire, the HBO series that aired from 2002 to 2008. I’m just over halfway through the series, and while I’ve enjoyed every episode, I enjoyed each season even more. The plotting, the characters, the dialogue – it’s great art, not least for its incredible realism. David Simon, Ed Burns, and the other writers deserve immense credit for creating such excellent work.

A show this layered with detail and nuance must have a few little glitches, though, right?I’m sure Baltimoreans would recognize many of them, while cops, lawyers, and criminals would recognize others. Me, I’m just a grantwriter, so I can only find a factual problem every now and then – and then only pretty nerdy ones.

Toward the end of season 3, for instance, the drug lord Stringer Bell, trying to legitimize himself, is told to seek federal grants for his expanding real-estate activities. The next day, he has the grant applications pretty much ready to go. As his political patron would say, “Haaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiillllllllll no!”

Then, at the beginning of season 4, an academic from a Baltimore university enlists a former cop to find 18-21 year old black men who could participate in the academic’s anti-crime project, which (we’re told) has a half-million dollar grant behind it. These subjects prove too hard to handle, though, so the academic adjusts on the fly and, later the same day, selects a new population, 12-14 year old kids. Again, no. Where’s the institutional review board approval he’d need to change his research project so drastically? Where are the approvals from his grants office and funder to do so?

Leash Law

This sign, on a trail in Carleton’s Arb near the Rec Center, has borne this bit of editorializing about Carleton’s now-retiring president, Rob Oden, for as long as I’ve been working at Carleton. I wonder if the author of this graffito will return to modify it for the new president, Steve Poskanzer? (Click through for a more legible full-sized image.)

Oden Sign

Library Science

Today, after our usual breakfast at the downtown coffee shop, I went with the girls to the library, where we hoped to find a trove of Magic Tree House books. Sure enough, we found a shelf with almost all of the books, from which Julia chose a dozen. I had her put half of them back, because, really, with that many at home she wouldn’t do anything but read them (or have them read) for a week. Okay, for four days. Okay, until Monday.

And but so, we headed up to the circulation desk to check out our haul, and Julia asked me, as I pulled out my library card, when she could get her own library card. I said I didn’t know, but turned to the librarian – a lovely woman who’s always working when we’re there, and recognizes us on sight – to ask how old a kid needed to be to get her library card. She said, “There’s no age limit; the child just needs to be able to sign her name.” Julia instantly blurted out, “I can write my name! I can!”

And away we went. As I filled out the appropriate form, Julia chose one of the four different kid’s cards, the grown-uppest one, featuring a cool picture of the library itself. Once the paperwork was processed, the librarian handed over a Sharpie and pointed out the teeny-tiny space on the back where Julia needed to sign. I cautioned her  – a kid who can routinely use up an 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper just writing her first name – that she needed to write very small, and she did, printing tiny little letters in just the right place. A few clicks of the scanner later, she was a legitimate patron of the Northfield Carnegie Library – 100 years old this year. All six of her Magic Tree House books went immediately on the card.

“Over the moon” ain’t half of it. She carried the card in her hand all the way back to the car and all the way home, burst through the door to show it to her mother, and then – after depositing her books in the living room – went upstairs to find a purse in which to keep the card (along with other essentials that included a tube of ChapStick and a coin purse containing four quarters). Later on, she interrupted a backyard soccer game to knock on our neighbor’s door and show off the card. Our neighbor, a wonderful older lady, was appropriately impressed, and even more appropriately reassured Genevieve that she, too, can get a library card soon.

This was parenting heaven.