Family
Wordless Wednesday: Rack’Em
Categories: Family, kids, Life, NaBloPoMo, Wordless Wednesday
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Sew Me A Sail
Thursday an even bigger bunch of us got together for another karaoke night, this time at a Mexican restaurant/bar here in Anza. We’d gone up to Idyllwild last time because an old mutual friend of ours runs the karaoke setup there, and she joined us when we checked out the local place.
It was a lot more crowded, which was fun but not as cozy. Also the sound system was not quite as good and there was an odd echo on the mic. The general consensus in our group was that the local place is fun for hanging out and socializing, but for serious karaoke-ing we’ll still be heading up to Idyllwild.
But fun was had. Luke got up all by himself this time and sang Day-O with heartwarming confidence, Jamaican accent and all. It was a hoot, and he got the loudest applause of the night, by far. Anyone who could listen to his earnest eight-year-old treble impersonation of Harry Belafonte and not want to offer encouraging praise is a soulless commie and dead inside. There were none of those in Casa Gamino Thursday night.
And then Elizabeth went up and ROCKED THE CASBAH with a MASTERFUL rendition of “I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight.” I was freaking amazed. Seriously, next time I’m bringing my camera and getting video. She NAILED that song.
Steve wandered in at some point and hung out at the bar for a while. He’d missed Luke’s song, but saw Elizabeth’s. Then he wandered back out. Poor guy, having his kids there probably put a serious crimp in his pick-up action.
There are two billiard tables in Casa Gamino, and I’ve realized that next on my list of parenting goals is teaching my kids to shoot pool. I used to be pretty good back in the day, but I gave up the game when I was dating Steve because he used to accuse me of cheating whenever I beat him. Which was almost every game. Apparently I was moving the balls around when he wasn’t looking. Whatever. Anyway, Luke and Elizabeth were goofing around with one of the billiard tables Thursday before the crowd showed up, and it hit me how remiss I’ve been. They should TOTALLY know how to shoot pool by now. Honestly, where have I BEEN?
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In other news, I was planning on seeing “Twilight,” but it’s getting dismal reviews over at Rotten Tomatoes, so now I’m thinking I’ll wait for the dvd.
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Today’s Fun Image: 404 — page not found.
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And here’s a little children’s poem that captures my mood today:
Needles and pins, Needles and pins,
Sew me a sail to catch me the wind.
Sew me a sail strong as the gale,
Carpenter, bring out your hammers and nails.
Hammers and nails, hammers and nails,
Build me a boat to go chasing the whales.
Chasing the whales, sailing the blue
Find me a captain and sign me a crew.
Captain and crew, captain and crew,
Take me, oh take me to anywhere new.
–Shel Silverstein
Contributing To The Geekiness Of Minors
One of my very favorite times of day has always been that magical pause in the evenings when the kids and I snuggle up on the sofa for storytime. This has been a treasured part of my life since Elizabeth was a baby and we used to curl up every night in the big cozy rocking chair together and read Babybug magazine or one of her chunky board books.
Alas, time marches on. My kids are eight and ten now, and no longer content to let me read a story to them chapter by chapter. We’ll start a new book — say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — and I’ll read Chapter 1, and they like it…so by the time the next night rolls around they’re both halfway through the book and fidgeting restlessly because they’re way past the part I’m reading to them.
As much as I love storytime, even I finally had to admit that maybe they’ve just outgrown it.
But how to get my nightly fix of snuggle time without sharing a book? I pondered this dilemma and realized that I didn’t necessarily have to give up storytime. Stories come in many different forms, after all. On dvd’s, for instance. I’d shared most of my favorite childhood books with them, maybe now it was time to start sharing my favorite old tv series, one episode per night.
So then it was just a matter of deciding which show to start with. I can’t wait to introduce Elizabeth to the Gilmore Girls, but she’s a bit too young to really appreciate it yet. Same with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars. Luke will LOVE The Wild Wild West (the original series, not the lame movie)…in about five years. So where to begin right now?
You know where this is going. That holy grail of geekdom: Star Trek.
I actually gave some serious thought to whether I even wanted to introduce them to this show at all, ever. I mean, in this day and age it’s tantamount to making your kid take accordion lessons, right? Just give him a bad haircut and a pocket protector and be done with it already.
In the end, I couldn’t help myself. Resistance is futile. The next generation must be assimilated into the collective. I added The Original Series to my Netflix queue and when the first disk arrived we popped it in.
Observations:
1. It had been more than 20 years since I’d seen a full episode of ST:TOS.
2. This was the cheesiest. show. ever.
3. Both kids are mesmerized by its colorful, hypnotic cheesiness.
4. It helped that they were already familiar with the basic concept thanks to our fabulous deck of Blogography playing cards.
5. The kids’ preliminary consensus is that Captain Kirk is “tricksy.” And they’re fascinated by the fact that the turbolift can move in any direction.
6. Shatner’s line delivery is hardly mockable at all in these first few episodes. I guess it wasn’t until the show gained an audience and success went straight to his head that he started milking every syllable for all it was worth.
7. I’m glad I decided to do this. I mean, sure, I’m dooming Luke and Elizabeth to a desolate existence on the geeky fringes of social acceptability, and torpedoing any chance that the cool kids will ever talk to them, but hey, that 45 minutes of basking in the warm glow of nostalgia every night makes it all totally worth it. You know, to me. They can thank me later.
Happy Love Thursday, everyone. Live long and prosper, and don’t forget: infinite diversity in infinite combinations!
Because popularity is totally overrated, right?
In This Case, Fiction Is Stranger Than Truth.
So I’m 18 days into NaBloPoMo and I’m already running out of stuff to post about. I’ve got a stack of half-finished posts in my Drafts folder, all utterly devoid of any entertainment value whatsoever. As in, “Look, I’ve changed the decor in my computer room! Here are pictures!” And, “Dude. I cannot BELIEVE that I let myself run out of dishsoap.”
Gripping stuff, folks.
Steve’s horse Sam caught his leg on something out in the pasture a couple days ago and ripped the hell out of it, but…that’s a one-sentence story, and you do not want to see pictures.
A month or two ago our rooster was killed by a stray dog (that subsequently got the everloving crap beat out of it by Gericault), and this morning I think I heard one of our hens attempting to crow. That was just…odd. But also not something I can fill a whole blog post with.
So much for reality. How about some fiction instead?
Shortly after Elizabeth was born I discovered play-by-email role-playing games. For the non-geeks in the audience, basically you play by first creating a fictional character, and then inserting your character into an ongoing story that is populated by other players’ characters, and guided by a gamemaster. All game moves are executed via email. For me it’s a creative writing exercise and a creative thinking exercise, and it kept my brain oxygenated at a time when my “real” world had shrunk down to changing diapers, breastfeeding and housework.
I’ve played in a bunch of pbem’s over the past ten years, but as my kids got older and my real life got fuller, I let go of all the games but one. Austin After Dark is a World Of Darkness game, run by the incomparably evil Aron Head. It’s populated with vampires and werewolves and Fae, and yes I do realize how nerdy I sound right now.
It’s the writing that appeals to me, and the challenge of dealing with all the bizarre situations that arise in the game. And once, a couple of years ago, my character got into a situation that was so intense, so difficult to play, so freaking SCARY, that it stretched my playing skills to the limit just to stay in the game and keep sending back moves.
You have to understand, in this particular scene I didn’t know any more than my character knew. This wasn’t a situation where I knew everything was going to be okay in the end…this game is HARSH, and characters actually DIE in it, like, ALL THE TIME, and I LOVED my character and did not want her to die.
It was a very long scene, so I’m just going to post the first little bit of it. And then a little bit more every day that I can’t think of anything else to write about.
Okay, so here we go. My character is Casey, a 22-year-old human psionic. She has been captured by Mardmor, the Goblin King, who wants some information from her and has temporarily shut down her powers. Aron directed the scene and played all the other characters that were present here.
One last note: The game is written in present-tense, but I’ve changed it to past-tense here for better flow. I think it reads better that way.
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Casey awakened.
She was seated in a hard wooden chair, her wrists locked to the armrests.
Her telepathic senses remained dulled. She could not sense beyond herself.
Looking about, she saw that she was in a dimly lit room draped in shadow.
Off to her left was a hard wood table. Dark stains colored the wood. Ranching experience told her that those were blood stains. A roll-away cart was positioned a few feet from her right. On it, an assorted number of sharp surgical objects were arranged.
Her stomach lurched at the sight of those gleaming blades.
If her telekinesis were working, she could utilize those as a fine arsenal for attack… but instead, she found herself staring at them…
She had no idea how much pain she was capable of enduring.
But oh, she didn’t want to find out.
Terror washed through her in cold waves, until she had to clench her teeth shut to keep from sobbing aloud.
“You’re awake,” Mardmor greeted her with a smile, stepping out of the darkness. The shadows moved about him like curtains. “I suppose we should get down to business. Don’t you agree?”
He drew a scalpel from the cart.
Shakes wracked her slender body. She searched desperately for the anger and defiance that had bolstered her courage earlier, but the sight of that razor-edged blade in Mardmor’s hand drove everything from her mind but the overwhelming fear.
“Please,” she whispered unsteadily. “I don’t know anything.”
“Casey,” he said earnestly, “I need you to believe two things. Just two. But I *need* you to believe them wholeheartedly.”
He drew close, his face filling her field of vision.
“First, do you believe that it is in within my power to hurt you? To make you suffer such torment as you have never imagined? To make you weep until you have no tears left to offer? To make you beg me for the sweet release of eternal death? Do you?”
She tried to draw enough breath to answer, but her chest seemed paralyzed with terror. Maybe she’d get lucky and just die from heart failure right then, before the torture began.
Finally she managed to jerk a bit of air into her lungs. “Yes,” she breathed hoarsely. “I believe that.”
“Good,” he almost whispered, sounding relieved. “Second – and, Casey, this is very important – do you believe that I do not want to hurt you? Because I don’t. You are a profoundly powerful and intriguing woman. I would much rather share a meal with you than cause you harm. There is much you can teach me, and I dare say, much I can teach you. Why then would I ever desire to inflict upon you pain? So, my dear, do you believe that I do not wish to hurt you?”
His words loosened the crushing grip of terror on her chest just a little, just enough to let her breathe. “Maybe you don’t,” she whispered low. “But I believe that you’ll do it anyway. Because I have nothing useful to tell you.”
“I…” He shook his head, “I am sorry to hear you say that.”
In a flash, he slashed down with the scalpel with tremendous force!
Casey jumped, startled by the sudden action.
The blade is plunged deep into the arm of the chair, mere millimeters from her own flesh.
She pulled reflexively away from the blow, but her arm was held tightly in place. A short whimper escaped her throat before she could choke it back.
“It would take nothing but the will to do so, Casey. Pain and torment. They can be provided with little effort. Do you believe me? Do you believe that I do not want to hurt you?!?!”
She huddled motionless in the chair, head bowed, heart pounding thunderously against her ribs.
And then a window of clarity opened in her mind. She was still terrified, but her capacity for rational thought slipped back in through the haze of fear, offering her a wider perspective beyond Mardmor’s blades and the threat of unimaginable pain.
The Goblin King…the master puppeteer pulling the strings of the Talons, the Vampire Prince, presumably even Kilarothes himself…was offering to sit down with her for a little friendly conversation.
It was conceivable that she may yet escape this dungeon. What if she were to bring with her information that could change the course of this war?
What if this, right now, was her opportunity to find a chink in the enemy’s armor?
Slowly, slowly, her hands unclenched on the chair’s arms. She drew a deep breath into her lungs, tried to calm the trembling.
She didn’t quite look at him. “What do you want to know?”
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Categories: Animals, Austin After Dark, Family, Fiction, Gaming, Horses, kids, Life, NaBloPoMo
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It’s A PLAYSET.
Friday I picked up the kids from school and we headed down to Temec to see Madagascar 2. We had some time to kill after we’d gotten some lunch (primary rule of family outings: eat first, hungry children are the devil’s playthings) and before our showing started, so we decided to kill some time in the mall.
One of the shops we popped into was an American Greetings outlet. We spent about twenty minutes in there because Luke could not be pulled away from the big rack of 2008 collectible Christmas ornaments. Specifically, the Model T ornament, the “antique console-style television that shows the Andy Griffith Show on the screen and whistles the theme song when you press the button” ornament, the Union Pacific vintage aerotrain ornament, the John Deere tractor ornament…you get the idea. This isn’t the first time I’ve suspected that my son was born in the wrong era: he has an ardent passion for gadgets and vehicles built during the first half of the 20th century.
Sadly I could not afford to buy any of them for him — the matinee movie and lunch at Souplantation were our big splurge for the week, because we’re high rollers that way — and eventually we got him out of there.
After the movie (which was hilarious) we did some grocery shopping. Our last stop of the night was at Henry’s, one of those save-the-planet whole foods stores. We were in the dairy aisle when suddenly Luke’s eyes lit up and he pointed to something up high on the wall. “I want one of those!” he announced in tones of suppressed excitement.
I looked where he was pointing, and saw this:
“You want…a dollhouse?” I asked uncertainly.
“It’s not a dollhouse,” he said, sounding mightily affronted. “It’s a playset. And also I want a Model T that’s the right size for the garage, and a little TV. And a fireplace.”
“I…um…” Possibly I could afford to get him these things for Christmas, in addition to the Satisfactorily Manly microscope and pocketwatch he’d already requested. But…well, I’m not proud of this, but…my brain was seizing up at the thought of what would happen if word got out that I had bought my eight-year-old son a dollhouse for Christmas.
It must have shown on my face, because Luke’s own expression lost some of its self-assurance. “It’s a playset,” he repeated, but he didn’t sound as sure of it this time. “Except…I guess that one does look a little bit like a dollhouse. I want a playset that doesn’t look like a dollhouse. With a TV and a fireplace and a Model T.”
Well then.
Yesterday while the kids were visiting their dad I was surfing the net, searching for the manliest dollhouse — er, playset — I could find.
Turns out there really are some fine manly dollhouses out there. This one’s nice:
It’s also $250. Apparently you pay extra for the manliness, because pretty much every “playset” that isn’t made of pink plastic costs upwards of $80. Which didn’t seem like a lot last Christmas when the bucketfuls of money were still coming to this address, but now it sounds like a big damn chunk of cash. And naturally they don’t come STANDARD with Model T’s and fireplaces and televisions, so THAT’S going to be another limb. Why can’t he just be into Pokemon like all the other eight-year-olds?
Elizabeth has asked me for exactly one thing for Christmas: a metal detector. She is SO OVER the whole budgeting thing, and wants to use her metal detector to find loose change wherever she goes so that she can return to the good old days when she actually got to buy stuff from time to time.
Ah, the heartwarming spirit of Christmas.
Can you feel it?
An Invincible Summer 