Hot, Hot, Hot

Today was beyond hot – for southern Minnesota. The air temperature was up over 90°F for a good part of the day and the heat index was up over a 100°F for even more of it, while the relative humidity was in the upper 70% range and the dew point was well over 80°F for most of the day – including an outrageous 90-something high in the early afternoon.

Which was when I had the time for a run. Oops.

Later on, the girls and I braved the heat to catch one of the last acts in the second annual Vintage Band Festival here in Northfield: the phenomenal Ameriikan Poijat, a brass ensemble that plays Finnish and Finnish-American music from the 1880s to the 1940s (or so). The music is beautiful, and the girls liked it – though they didn’t like the heat.

Ameriikan Poijat Playing

Happy-Making

Three moments made me glow with happiness today:

  1. At the coffeeshop for breakfast with the girls, several people stopped to compliment the girls on the art they were doing – Vivi’s “scawwy monsters” and Julia’s detailed depiction of the coffeeshop itself.
  2. I had a good fifteen minutes of playing catch with Julia, helping her get accustomed to catching and throwing, since we know she’ll need to be halfway decent at these skills for first grade. She’s resisted learning for a long time, but in the last week, she’s finally caved in, and today she was really throwing and catching well – stepping forward to fire good overhand throws, crouching with her arms bent and ready to catch.
  3. Listening to Vivi read to me is pure pleasure: her tiny voice, her characteristic (mis)pronunciations, her choice of books, and of course the sheer marvel of having a three-year-old reading aloud!

This is a good life I’m leading.

Shut Up, Legs

That’s the famous demand that Jens Voigt, a superlatively tough pro cyclist, makes during especially hard rides. My ride today was hardly a Tour de France stage, but it was both the longest ride and the longest workout I’ve ever done.

The ride took me further away from Northfield than any ride I’ve done, into countryside that features some sizable lakes (and little lake towns), endless marshes that come right up to the roadside, and some bizarrely roads, like this gravel superhighway, easily four lanes wide and connecting noplace to nowhere:
Gravel Superhighway

All this was very scenic and pleasant – at least until the legs started to shut down. About three-quarters of the way through the ride, as I started (slowly) climbing a very long gravel hill that I swear was at least a 50% grade, I actually said, “Shut up, legs!” The obeyed, getting me up that hill and some others that came later. After a rough stretch of brutally corrugated gravel, I hit a curvy downhill and saw, not too far away, the Northfield water tower that’s not far from my house. I whooped out loud. Four miles later, I was immensely pleased to get off my bike.

As usual, I saw a lot of interesting stuff on this ride, but today I concentrated on riding at a good pace, not taking (as many) photos. For instance, I didn’t take pictures of the huge smiley face painted on the side of an abandoned building in a hamlet alongside Roberds Lake or of the red leather sofa sitting in the ditch somewhere west of Faribault. However, I couldn’t resist snapping a shot of either this odd dead tree
Strange Tree

Or this picturesquely wrecked barn, which is a pretty accurate metaphor for how I feel right now.
Fallen Barn

The Day in Haiku

Something about Thursday called for haiku.

Flower Shadows
Flower Shadows

Morning
Days without meetings
Are easy to get up for
Time to get stuff done

Noon
A baby swallow
Grounded on the hot sidewalk
Parents swoop madly

Afternoon
The roofing tar stench
Displeases, causes sneezes,
And inspires queases

Evening
The girls think “Heigh Ho”
By the silly Seven Dwarfs
Is funny and great.

Night
Crickets and breezes,
A marine haze, a sunset
Hiding to the west

Musical Interludes

Five musical things that have made me happy lately:

1. Listening to the Argentine jazz pianist Guillermo Klein’s new album, Domador de Huellas. The album can be streamed for free on NPR until the official release on the 10th, and it’s worth the time. Klein is a great player.

2. Rediscovering Sleater-Kinney. Such a freaking great band. “Dig Me Out” is like aural caffeine, with a shot of pissed off.

3. Finally learning the lyrics to AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” the perfect metal song. This tune is so good, I think someone should do an album of covers in various styles: a country “Back in Black,” a power ballad “Back in Black,” a  chanteuse-y “Back in Black,” a disco “Back in Black,” a rap “Back in Black.” I would love this.

4. Initiate, the recent (more or less) instrumental album by the guitarist Nels Cline (and his band “the Singers”), lately of Wilco. I suppose it’s mostly accurate to call the album “free jazz,” but much of it is close to the wide-open rock sound of Wilco, too.

5. Watching Steve Earle sing his classic “I Feel Alright” – and enjoying the wonderful interview afterwards.

The Saddest Girl in the World, Part II

In yesterday’s post, I described Vivi’s unusual meltdown on Monday night about having me stay home from work. Tuesday morning, in the clear light of day, we solved the mystery of the meltdown, which had its origins in something heartbreakingly adorable and adorably heartbreaking.

Long cry short, it turns out that poor Vivi was terrified about a particular cartoon that she and Julia watch every morning – Sid the Science Kid, a neat little PBS show that fosters scientific curiosity. (Really!) It seems that Monday’s episode included a segment about brushing your teeth, and showed a little germ that was – we know now – a vision of Hell for Vivi. (It might’ve been this one, but I’ll never ask Vivi to confirm it!)

We found all this out when, this morning, Vivi started to weep again as I got ready to go to work. I told her that I would stay home to watch cartoons on Wednesday, but it was no help. Then Shannon – the mom, of course – put two and two together and asked if there was something on TV that Vivi had found scary. Vivi could barely grunt out a “yes,” but between Shannon, Julia (the hyper-sensitive sister), and me, we figured out that she wanted me to be with her so she wouldn’t be frightened again. Julia innocently said, sticking a stiletto right in my heart, “She was so scared she covered her face with a pillow!” Shannon reminded Vivi again and again that she can always “call for Mama,” who is just in the kitchen or upstairs, but I got the feeling that Vivi thinks only Daddy is up to the really scary stuff.

With the secret finally out in the open, Vivi calmed down quite a bit – though she also made damn sure I am still staying home to watch cartoons with them on Wednesday. I’m glad to: it beats working!

The Saddest Girl in the World

This evening Vivi and I were  drawing when she looked over at me with big sad eyes and asked, “Is amorrow a weekend day?” I shook my head. “No, honey, tomorrow is just Tuesday. It’s a few more days until the weekend.” Whereupon she burst into tears – heavy, gasping, wailing tears – and leapt onto my lap. “But I miss you tho much, Daddy! I want you to stay home on the weekend!” I hugged her, my shoulders getting wet from her tears, and said, “I do stay home on the weekend, honey! It was just the weekend yesterday and the day before, remember?” She snuffled out a “yes,” but then repeated, “I miss you tho tho much, Daddy! I wish every day was a weekend day so you could stay home!”

From all this, you’d think I was a road warrior salesman, sleeping in hotels 200 nights a year. As it is, I’ve taken one three-night trip in the past year – but it clearly had a big effect on Vivi, who since then (a month ago) has been telling me a half-dozen times a day, “I WUVE you, Daddeeeeeeee,” and who has been unusually cuddly with me (that is to say, she’s been very slightly cuddly).

She continued to weep in my lap for a few more minutes, begging, “Pwease stay home amorrow, Daddy!” I told her that I couldn’t stay home tomorrow because I have several meetings and quite a bit of pressing stuff to do (and goddamn if you don’t feel like an asshole saying that to a crying four-year-old), but that I could stay home another day later this week – and that next week we’d be on vacation. “I can check my calendar and find a day to stay home.”

This made her feel a little bit better, but she pushed her luck: “Daddy, can you stay home amorrow and watch ‘Curious George’ wif me?” I told her that I couldn’t, since my meetings were in the morning, but that I would go in late on Wednesday, which she told me was “the day aftew amorrow.” Snuffling less now, she said (again, heartbreakingly), “You check your calendar and find a day to stay home wif me.”

“I will, honey,” I said. “Should we look at my calendar right now and find a day for me to stay home?” She liked that idea, so we opened up my work email and made a couple appointments: to stay home on Wednesday morning to watch cartoons with her and to stay home the day before our vacation. Now she felt much better, and even said, “Amorrow, you go in to work early, right aftew bwushing my teef ad’ den you come home early, okay?” I told her this was no problem. “Oh, good! Then I can see you and pway wif you!”

In related news, today the College’s HR department informed me that I was more than 70 accrued days of time off. It looks like I have a good reason to use them!

Betsy-Tacy Spectacular

The Betsy-Tacy road trip was a huge hit.* We spent the better part of four hours touring the beautiful (tiny!) houses, walking the neighborhood, and picnicking in the same park where Betsy, Tacy, and Tib picnicked. The girls were great – curious about the oddities in the houses (a sewing machine! old-fashioned telephones!), patient on the tour (even answering some of the guide’s questions), and eager to see everything we could – and to pick up a Betsy-Tacy coloring book for each of them.

A few shots from the day are below; I especially like the picture of the girls at a stove like the one that B, T, and T used to make “Everything Pudding.”

* I must note that I’m especially happy the outing was such a success since it was my idea. I had no idea if any of the other members of the family would think it was a good idea, much less enjoy the trip, so I’m pleased that they all did.

Construction, Cows, Colleges, and Contentment

Re-roofing of Laird

The customary quiet of campus during the summer is gone, gone, gone this year. In addition to (seemingly) larger-than-usual contingents of high schoolers and others attending various summer camps on campus, a number of construction projects are underway in virtually every part of campus. Take the visual tour! (For realism’s sake, you should watch this slideshow while running a cordless drill near your ear and listening to hard rock on a fuzzy radio a few feet away.)

Betsy-Tacy Road Trip!

Julia is totally enamored of the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace, a Minnesota writer who turned her experiences as a young girl in the 1890s and 1900s into a long series of novels published in the 1940s and 1950s. They’re good books, full of very tame mischief and exciting-for-a-kid adventures and just enough period detail to get a smart kid thinking. I mean, she knows what shirtwaists are, and who ruled Spain in 1900, and why one of the character’s brothers died as a baby.

Julia has three of the novels, and she’s read each of them at least a dozen times. If she’s awake and in the house, she’s probably reading one of them or being dragged away from one of them or scheming to get back to one of them. It’s not too much to say that she has them memorized: if by intention or omission I skip a word while reading one of the books aloud, Julia instantly corrects me. Half the time, Vivi does, too.

All this is more than great of course, but for present purposes, the best thing about the Betsy-Tacy books is that they’re set in a fictionalized version of Mankato, Minnesota, which is an hour away from us. And as luck would have it, the Betsy-Tacy Society there owns and maintains the houses in which Maud Hart Lovelace (“Betsy”) and her best friend Frances ‘Bick’ Kenney (“Tacy”) grew up.

I dunno about you, but this means a road trip, and this weekend we’re taking a day trip to “Deep Valley” to see the houses and walk around the neighborhood and have lunch in the park where Betsy, Tacy, and Tib (who joined the two of them later on) picnicked and sit on the bench on which they sat and looked down at their little river town. Who knows – we might even pick up a copy or two of the official Betsy-Tacy coloring book.

Motorhead

Vivi spends quite a lot of time thinking and talking about the kinds of cars she’ll have when she grows up – “when I’m sixteen or firty.” Presently, the summary goes something like this:

I will have a gowden Pwiuss, because thewe awe such things, you know. An’ I’w have a minivan that wiw be wed, an’ I’w have a puwpow convertibew, an’ I’w have a bwue Beetew Bug!*

If you’re wondering, she’s going to buy all these cars with the money she earns running an ice cream shop with her sister.

* translation: “I will have a golden Prius, because there are such things, you know. And I’ll have a minivan that will be red and I’ll have a purple convertible, and I’ll have a blue Beetle Bug!”

Summertime Dusk Runs

Summer is a great season for running, along with the other three. There’s something to be said for running in the heat of a summer afternoon (namely, “Holy shit it’s hot,” and “I wish I didn’t have to run during the girls’ naps/the lunch hour”), and I’ll bet there’s also something to be said for running early in the morning (a moment with which I’m unfamiliar), but my favorite summer-run time is the late evening.

A number of reasons, all excellent, explain this preference. The lack of heat isn’t one of them: I like running in the hot-hot, firmly (and unfoundedly) believing that running slow in a good old 105°F heat index has the same training effect as running fast in 70°F.

But there are just so many nice things about dusk runs, whether or not the temperature stays up or goes down. I like being able to start in full sun and end just as the sun goes down – or even later, in that yellow post-sunset haze. I love seeing how the already sharp angle of the light from the setting sun gets more and more acute, throwing cartoonish twenty-foot-tall shadows in the open and creating deep dark shadows in the woods. And those shadowy places often, in turn, hide animals: squirrels, rabbits, pheasants, turkeys, deer, mice and voles. The word “crepuscular” ricochets around my brain, distracting me from the pesky bugs.

And I especially like the way a dusk run carries me through pockets of air that are cool and damp (in hollows that the sun hasn’t hit for hours) or hot and dry (in high places where the breezes blow away the humidity but the sun can still bake the ground). This micro- or nano- or femto-climate aspect of runs can only be enjoyed (at least around here) in the high summer. It’s magical, the weird sensations of running through a patch of cool air as I swoop through a little valley and then hitting zone of oven-hot air on the hilltop.

Summer Day

Today was a wonderfully busy day. I went out with the girls for our usual Saturday-morning coffeeshop breakfast, which we cut short so that we could head down to the Rice County fair, where we looked at a lot of animals and had delicious milkshakes. After the girls’ naps, they and I went to the city pool, which was ridiculously fun and capped by both girls leaping uncaught into the pool – a first for them both, I think. After dinner, Julia was tuckered out from all that activity, but somehow Vivi caught a second (or fifth) wind, and so she and I went out for a short bike ride and visit to the playground. I was barely dragging myself around, but I did manage to take good shots of the amazing clouds in the distance
Summer Sky

and of the beautifully linear division between fields of corn and soybeans
Summer Fields