One of the neat things about having Nana nearby is that I get to hear stories from her. Not just the major, life changing stories, like how she met Papa, or what it was like to have kids in Juneau's early days, but normal stories. I wanted to capture a few of them here for my siblings/ nephew and niece.
Last weekend over dinner I was talking about reading the Monuments Men (about the effort to save art, artifacts and monuments during WWII), and I confessed that I know embarrassingly little about world history. Did you know that Germany tried to invade Russia? Which is why Russia ended up in the war? And that we weren't exactly on the same side? Matt and I bemoaned that Juneau schools never seemed to take history very seriously, so now we are just ignorant adults. Nana said she also didn't get much world history. In high school she was on the annual commitee (yearbook), and she has this very sweet, very dull world history teacher. Should would just come in the class, flash him a smile and say, "I have to work on some things for the annual. Can I do the assignment next week?" and he would let her out of class. Pretty much all year. Seriously. I never pegged Nana for ditching class.
Earlier this week, we were talking about hot water heaters, and Nana reminisced about how when she was growing up, their hot water tank was basically uninsulated, so you could feel on the site how much and how hot the water was. (I assume Nana's Mom had impervious hands as well.) Nana said her mom always seemed to have infinite energy. I have heard he describe the garden that kept the family fed all year, especially when beans, fruits or other things were ready for canning. Because it was a large garden, there were huge spurts of urgency where Grandma Sandlin would have both Nana and Auntie Jeanne in the kitchen, canning for hours. Nana said she could see out the window that it was blue skies and sunny, but she was always caught in the sweltering kitchen heat. And at the end of a major canning effort, her every energetic mother would pat the hot water heater and say, "Come on girls, we still have enough hot water to do a load of laundry." I thought of how ambivalent I can feel about laundry when I'm tired, and then she told me how they DID laundry: manually. They would fill up two tubs, one with soap and a rinse that they would run it through a ringer, and they drop it into the second rinse, with "bluing" and then ring that out, and then hang it all out to dry in the sun. Just hearing that makes me want to flop into a frazzled domestic mess, but she said her mom never wanted her dad to see how much work it was. He liked to see her looking calm and relaxed when he came home from work, so she always made time to clean up from all these things, including scrubbing the floor, brushing her hair and changing her apron so that when her dad got home things were calm and quiet. I asked if she was ever able to achieve that standard with her own kids, and she just laughed.
We had planned to see her and Jerry this week to have dinner and go to the movie Saving Mr. Banks. Due to my poor planning (oh, the movie starts when?) and our general lack of urgency, we missed the movie, but it was nice to have dinner with Nana and Jerry. Just like "old times" before the folks moved here.
Oh, and I feel like bragging. As I mentioned we had a really great time at MOHAI a couple weeks ago, and when I mentioned this to Nana and Jerry, they thought it sounded cool, too. So cool, in fact, that they got one of the buses to take a load of people down there for the day. And they ALSO enjoyed it a lot.
Matt has been busy this week. He gave a talk on Friday, and is gearing up for the mountain bike race series. This means making changes and updates to the bike, that seemed to involved new wheels, and new cables, and many hours in the garage. He really enjoys that.
Showing posts with label Story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Story. Show all posts
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Father's Day Thoughts
The material, mundane component of my present to Dad will have to wait for while before it arrives and it deposited in Dad's hands. (Is he 'grandad' now? Do we all just have to shift up by one generation?) But I wanted to take a moment to muse upon the aspects of fatherhood which are the most important but, for some reason, the least often discussed.
Being a parent is not a responsibility, it is the responsibility. It's the thing that everyone points to when you talk about being a grown-up. Are you ready to be in charge of another human being that can't feed, dress, change, or even fall asleep on it's own? All the time? Well then you're responsible now. High fives all around.
And as a task it's really hard to quantify. Being a dad is easy in the same way that knitting is easy. There's really only a few maneuvers you have to know. Few key differences, though, obviously. Primarily, it's okay if you're not very good at knitting. No one wants to be a bad father. Everyone wants to be great at it, it's demanded of us by these little bundles of needs and crying we are presented with every moment of the day. But you can't be great, because you're being measured against your own dad. And he was a full fledged dad. You're just you. For every new generation the task is impossible.
The only secret, as it turns out, is that you fake it. You go with your gut or book-learning, or try to adapt some half-remembered scrap from your own childhood. If you can keep up the facade up long enough, eventually they move out of the house, none the wiser that you never really had any idea what you were doing. Until, of course they have kids of their own, at which point it's too late to go back.
And the sacrifices. Let me tell you, it seems endless. Even just standing on the tip of the iceberg I have to eventually melt, I get a size of the vastness and weight of the things I won't be doing now that I'm a dad. Endless sleepings-in and fast cars sacrificed just so that someone else can have food and diapers so that they will grow past a point of their life that they won't even remember in a few years. And they'll never appreciate everything Dad could be doing with his time and money instead because hey, I didn't. Dad's are expected to toss those things away stoically and without second thoughts because after all, your dad did. Didn't he?
Oh.
So thanks for everything, dad. The more I understand about what you've already given me, the more glad I am to have had it so well.
-N
Being a parent is not a responsibility, it is the responsibility. It's the thing that everyone points to when you talk about being a grown-up. Are you ready to be in charge of another human being that can't feed, dress, change, or even fall asleep on it's own? All the time? Well then you're responsible now. High fives all around.
And as a task it's really hard to quantify. Being a dad is easy in the same way that knitting is easy. There's really only a few maneuvers you have to know. Few key differences, though, obviously. Primarily, it's okay if you're not very good at knitting. No one wants to be a bad father. Everyone wants to be great at it, it's demanded of us by these little bundles of needs and crying we are presented with every moment of the day. But you can't be great, because you're being measured against your own dad. And he was a full fledged dad. You're just you. For every new generation the task is impossible.
The only secret, as it turns out, is that you fake it. You go with your gut or book-learning, or try to adapt some half-remembered scrap from your own childhood. If you can keep up the facade up long enough, eventually they move out of the house, none the wiser that you never really had any idea what you were doing. Until, of course they have kids of their own, at which point it's too late to go back.
And the sacrifices. Let me tell you, it seems endless. Even just standing on the tip of the iceberg I have to eventually melt, I get a size of the vastness and weight of the things I won't be doing now that I'm a dad. Endless sleepings-in and fast cars sacrificed just so that someone else can have food and diapers so that they will grow past a point of their life that they won't even remember in a few years. And they'll never appreciate everything Dad could be doing with his time and money instead because hey, I didn't. Dad's are expected to toss those things away stoically and without second thoughts because after all, your dad did. Didn't he?
Oh.
So thanks for everything, dad. The more I understand about what you've already given me, the more glad I am to have had it so well.
-N
Thursday, April 7, 2011
I have no idea what time it is
One year in college, for spring break, I decided to stay in my apartment for a whole week and do nothing but play video games and eat pizza. I would stay up as late as I wanted, sleep in as much as I wanted, and pretty much fill my days with recreational video game playing.
It was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed the solitary time, and it was my first time having a PS2 (borrowed) that I could play all the cool new games on. But the sleeping...that was a lot of fun. I stayed up until 2 in the morning the first night, then later and later, until I was staying up until the sun came up, sleeping all day, and going out at night to pick up frozen pizzas. Eventually I ended up succumbing to the standard sleep cycle, but a good time was had by all.
And I’m reminded by this, now, because my sleep schedule has gotten all borked up, but it still a lot of fun. It’s 1:30 in the morning when I’m writing this, and I got a good 6 hours of sleep earlier...yesterday. I went to bed at 4 and slept until 10 thanks to the kind baby-watching skills of Mom.S and Jessie. It was great, but when you wake up from that, at that time of night...what do you do? Am I supposed to have breakfast at midnight? Because I just did. Tuna sandwich. I don’t know...when is cereal an appropriate food in these circumstances?
But really, I’m fully enjoying the wonkiness. Once Tyler gets to sleep, as he so often does, and I’m in charge, and Jessie is out and getting good rest on the couch next to me, and Mom.S is recharging her batteries upstairs, I get the whole house to myself. It’s quiet, is solitary, and as long as I don’t actually have anywhere to be or anything to do tomorrow, I don’t even have to worry about how weird all of this is. It’s fun, in a strange way.
I’ve been peed on twice, now. Not in the more traditional ‘fountain’ style. I’ve been holding him and reading to him, and noticing how cute he is, and how sweet his face is, and how budgy his arms are, and how warm his back is, and how warm...uh...and wet...oh. Time to go change some diapers.
Tyler has been doing some impromptu smiles. I’m not sure he even knows he is doing it, but it just *melts* the heart.
Tyler has been a real sport about getting his day-night cycle in check. He’s eating about every 4 hours at night, now, and while he does wake up pretty periodically, the restful stretches are getting more and more established. Good for him. And us.
Jess went for a walk today with Mom.S. They put Tyler in the stroller (while I was sleeping) and went out to get some exercise. Jess did a few cul-de-sacks and was on the way to the park when her gas tank ran out. So they came back. But that’s a pretty impressive benchmark for a girl who had a hole in her abdomen just a short week ago.
Tyler is 1 week old, officially. Though wednesday was his ‘birthday’, it wasn’t until a few hours ago that we crossed the 1 week mark. We got him some formula to celebrate.
I’m glad jess is sleeping. She’s feeling a lot better than she has in the past, but I can tell the lack of sleep is not good for her. Lucky for both of us, I’ve got the energy to keep the house, and baby Tyler, well cared for in her absence. Sometimes she likes it when I’m big and strong and in charge, and sometimes she likes it when I don’t know what I’m doing. She says it makes her feel better that she can’t always calm him down either. He’s a baby, sometimes he just does stuff.
We’re getting some of our first visitors over the next few days. Local types. First is a lady from roller derby that let us come see her baby when she was just 4 days old. We also got a nice gift from our neighbors: diapers! Can’t go wrong with that.
I’ve signed up for Amazon Mom. I guess we get free Amazon Prime Shipping now? It didn’t cost anything. I figure they have to offset the cost by letting us know about baby stuff we can buy, but that’s a tradeoff I’m willing to make. You can also sign up for a subscription to diapers. They just show up at your door. We might try that later, but I’m hoping to try some G diapers or some cloth diapers soon. We’re going to have this kid for several years, and I’d like to try and keep the landfills at least a little bit clean, if I can. Experimental cloth diapers are on the way (thanks, amazon mom!) We’ll try them out and see what we think. But clearly there’s something to be said for the ease of disposables in the early going when you have no idea what you’re doing.
-N
It was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed the solitary time, and it was my first time having a PS2 (borrowed) that I could play all the cool new games on. But the sleeping...that was a lot of fun. I stayed up until 2 in the morning the first night, then later and later, until I was staying up until the sun came up, sleeping all day, and going out at night to pick up frozen pizzas. Eventually I ended up succumbing to the standard sleep cycle, but a good time was had by all.
And I’m reminded by this, now, because my sleep schedule has gotten all borked up, but it still a lot of fun. It’s 1:30 in the morning when I’m writing this, and I got a good 6 hours of sleep earlier...yesterday. I went to bed at 4 and slept until 10 thanks to the kind baby-watching skills of Mom.S and Jessie. It was great, but when you wake up from that, at that time of night...what do you do? Am I supposed to have breakfast at midnight? Because I just did. Tuna sandwich. I don’t know...when is cereal an appropriate food in these circumstances?
But really, I’m fully enjoying the wonkiness. Once Tyler gets to sleep, as he so often does, and I’m in charge, and Jessie is out and getting good rest on the couch next to me, and Mom.S is recharging her batteries upstairs, I get the whole house to myself. It’s quiet, is solitary, and as long as I don’t actually have anywhere to be or anything to do tomorrow, I don’t even have to worry about how weird all of this is. It’s fun, in a strange way.
I’ve been peed on twice, now. Not in the more traditional ‘fountain’ style. I’ve been holding him and reading to him, and noticing how cute he is, and how sweet his face is, and how budgy his arms are, and how warm his back is, and how warm...uh...and wet...oh. Time to go change some diapers.
Tyler has been doing some impromptu smiles. I’m not sure he even knows he is doing it, but it just *melts* the heart.
Tyler has been a real sport about getting his day-night cycle in check. He’s eating about every 4 hours at night, now, and while he does wake up pretty periodically, the restful stretches are getting more and more established. Good for him. And us.
Jess went for a walk today with Mom.S. They put Tyler in the stroller (while I was sleeping) and went out to get some exercise. Jess did a few cul-de-sacks and was on the way to the park when her gas tank ran out. So they came back. But that’s a pretty impressive benchmark for a girl who had a hole in her abdomen just a short week ago.
Tyler is 1 week old, officially. Though wednesday was his ‘birthday’, it wasn’t until a few hours ago that we crossed the 1 week mark. We got him some formula to celebrate.
I’m glad jess is sleeping. She’s feeling a lot better than she has in the past, but I can tell the lack of sleep is not good for her. Lucky for both of us, I’ve got the energy to keep the house, and baby Tyler, well cared for in her absence. Sometimes she likes it when I’m big and strong and in charge, and sometimes she likes it when I don’t know what I’m doing. She says it makes her feel better that she can’t always calm him down either. He’s a baby, sometimes he just does stuff.
We’re getting some of our first visitors over the next few days. Local types. First is a lady from roller derby that let us come see her baby when she was just 4 days old. We also got a nice gift from our neighbors: diapers! Can’t go wrong with that.
I’ve signed up for Amazon Mom. I guess we get free Amazon Prime Shipping now? It didn’t cost anything. I figure they have to offset the cost by letting us know about baby stuff we can buy, but that’s a tradeoff I’m willing to make. You can also sign up for a subscription to diapers. They just show up at your door. We might try that later, but I’m hoping to try some G diapers or some cloth diapers soon. We’re going to have this kid for several years, and I’d like to try and keep the landfills at least a little bit clean, if I can. Experimental cloth diapers are on the way (thanks, amazon mom!) We’ll try them out and see what we think. But clearly there’s something to be said for the ease of disposables in the early going when you have no idea what you’re doing.
-N
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Things you didn’t know about balls and cups
Two years ago while I was up in Juneau, mom and dad got me, in my stocking, traditional home of small presents and cute extras, a little ball-in-cup game. I played around with it while up in Alaska and then brought it into work and left it on my desk. Well what with the flow of people into and out of the room, the ball in cup game got to be pretty popular. So we started seeing how good we could be at getting the ball in the cup. We made a table up on the whiteboard and competed to see who could get the most number of successful balls in cups in a row. The record was 46. My personal record was 12 in a row, but I held the record for the ‘mad minute’ with 18. We’d make up tricks and do all sorts of crazy stuff.
So knowing about my obsession with balls and strings and cups, Jessie got me a little stocking stuffer for christmas this year. It’s a little thing with a ball and two cups on either side, a cup on the handle, and then a spike on the end, and the ball can be tossed into either the cups, the handle or the spike. So, of course, I brought it into work and we started the BoSoC (Ball on String on Cup) Pro league. Same table and everything.
So I got a little curious, though, what was this thing called that we were using? I did a little bit of google searching and discovered that it was, in essence, a Kendama, Japanese in origin. Two cups, one extra on the handle, and a spike on the end, simple, right?
Well I did a little more searching and discovered something really weird. You know how there are Yo-yo’s? Remember how it felt when you discovered that there are people who are *really* into Yo-yo’s? Like you discovered a whole new universe that is both strange and intriguing? Well the same is true with Kendama. There are people that are really, REALLY into kendamas. How into it?
There is a Japanese Kendama Association, the JKA, that has competitions for kendama. They have a belt ranking system, just like martial arts, that can measure your progress. There is even an official specification for what an official kendama is shaped like and only a few companies are allowed to make it. The sticker at the bottom of the handle means that this is an *official* JKA kendama.
So, of course, I bought one.
After I post this I’m going to create a Google Document which will allow us to chart our collective progress through the belt ranking system as well as our various records in number of consecutive catches and whatever other tricks we can think of to name and attempt. We’re engineers, we’re crazy like that.
-N
So knowing about my obsession with balls and strings and cups, Jessie got me a little stocking stuffer for christmas this year. It’s a little thing with a ball and two cups on either side, a cup on the handle, and then a spike on the end, and the ball can be tossed into either the cups, the handle or the spike. So, of course, I brought it into work and we started the BoSoC (Ball on String on Cup) Pro league. Same table and everything.
So I got a little curious, though, what was this thing called that we were using? I did a little bit of google searching and discovered that it was, in essence, a Kendama, Japanese in origin. Two cups, one extra on the handle, and a spike on the end, simple, right?
Well I did a little more searching and discovered something really weird. You know how there are Yo-yo’s? Remember how it felt when you discovered that there are people who are *really* into Yo-yo’s? Like you discovered a whole new universe that is both strange and intriguing? Well the same is true with Kendama. There are people that are really, REALLY into kendamas. How into it?
There is a Japanese Kendama Association, the JKA, that has competitions for kendama. They have a belt ranking system, just like martial arts, that can measure your progress. There is even an official specification for what an official kendama is shaped like and only a few companies are allowed to make it. The sticker at the bottom of the handle means that this is an *official* JKA kendama.
So, of course, I bought one.
After I post this I’m going to create a Google Document which will allow us to chart our collective progress through the belt ranking system as well as our various records in number of consecutive catches and whatever other tricks we can think of to name and attempt. We’re engineers, we’re crazy like that.
-N
Friday, October 8, 2010
My least favorite thing about houses
I like my house. It’s a place of safety, of support, of investment in my present and in my future. I want to trust it. I want to believe that it will always be there, solid as a rock, and unchanging.
But inevitably, things break. I hate that.
I’ve always hated that. Even when it wasn’t my house, or when it was just an apartment. If it’s my space, I want it to be solid and safe. When things go wrong in my house it drives me crazy. I remember a few times back in Alaska, even. When I saw that something was going wrong with the house itself it made me really, really nervous. Bugs would get in the house. Not even a lot of them! Just a couple of ants, and I’d start to get worried about bug invasions and walls coming down. Or those drips from the ceiling that we, now, know were the result of really bad insulation in the roof. Or water stains on the ceiling. *Where did they come from?* It puts me on edge.
So now I own my very own house, my very own walls, my very own foundation, and so I have to start worrying about things going wrong in a space that isn’t just my home, but my *property*. And when things go wrong in the house? Rrrrr.
A few weeks ago there was a big tropical storm here in Austin. The winds weren’t that bad, but it rained for about 24 hours straight. Heavy rain the whole time. I heard reports of > 6 inches of rain in a lot of places. And just like I get really tweaked when things go wrong in the house, when things go right? It’s fantastic. Blissfull. 24 hours of rain just bouncing off our new roof. Streaming down our stone walls. Incapable of penetrating, impotent! Behold my mighty house! Capable of keeping me dry. When it rains, I feel good.
Until I discovered the wet carpet.
Arr! Tweaking out instantly. It was the carpet by the TV in the living room. Not just a little wet: the entire corner was pretty moist. I immediately pulled up the rug and set some fans to start drying it off, but the betrayal! This is my house! Why isn’t it working right? It’s broken. And it needs to get FIXED.
Later I went out with a hose and started watering down the outside of the house to see where the water went, and it didn’t take long to find the leak: a big crack between the window and the stone façade that the water was just pouring into. A hole. In *my house*. This will not stand.
I went out, I got some caulk, I got a caulk gun, I did some reading, and I *filled that hole*. And several others beside. And let me tell you something. Fixing that hole? It felt good. I felt accomplished and manly and dad-ish and everything. Problem with the house? My house? I will fix it. And the next time a storm comes by that carpet had better be bone dry or I’m going to go out there and fix it again. Now I know how dad felt when standing on his massive, stone sea wall and watching the waves crash, impotent, against his efforts. It feels good.
The kitchen sink is dripping. You’re on my list, buddy.
-N
But inevitably, things break. I hate that.
I’ve always hated that. Even when it wasn’t my house, or when it was just an apartment. If it’s my space, I want it to be solid and safe. When things go wrong in my house it drives me crazy. I remember a few times back in Alaska, even. When I saw that something was going wrong with the house itself it made me really, really nervous. Bugs would get in the house. Not even a lot of them! Just a couple of ants, and I’d start to get worried about bug invasions and walls coming down. Or those drips from the ceiling that we, now, know were the result of really bad insulation in the roof. Or water stains on the ceiling. *Where did they come from?* It puts me on edge.
So now I own my very own house, my very own walls, my very own foundation, and so I have to start worrying about things going wrong in a space that isn’t just my home, but my *property*. And when things go wrong in the house? Rrrrr.
A few weeks ago there was a big tropical storm here in Austin. The winds weren’t that bad, but it rained for about 24 hours straight. Heavy rain the whole time. I heard reports of > 6 inches of rain in a lot of places. And just like I get really tweaked when things go wrong in the house, when things go right? It’s fantastic. Blissfull. 24 hours of rain just bouncing off our new roof. Streaming down our stone walls. Incapable of penetrating, impotent! Behold my mighty house! Capable of keeping me dry. When it rains, I feel good.
Until I discovered the wet carpet.
Arr! Tweaking out instantly. It was the carpet by the TV in the living room. Not just a little wet: the entire corner was pretty moist. I immediately pulled up the rug and set some fans to start drying it off, but the betrayal! This is my house! Why isn’t it working right? It’s broken. And it needs to get FIXED.
Later I went out with a hose and started watering down the outside of the house to see where the water went, and it didn’t take long to find the leak: a big crack between the window and the stone façade that the water was just pouring into. A hole. In *my house*. This will not stand.
I went out, I got some caulk, I got a caulk gun, I did some reading, and I *filled that hole*. And several others beside. And let me tell you something. Fixing that hole? It felt good. I felt accomplished and manly and dad-ish and everything. Problem with the house? My house? I will fix it. And the next time a storm comes by that carpet had better be bone dry or I’m going to go out there and fix it again. Now I know how dad felt when standing on his massive, stone sea wall and watching the waves crash, impotent, against his efforts. It feels good.
The kitchen sink is dripping. You’re on my list, buddy.
-N
Monday, August 9, 2010
Tiny stories from the weekend
Nothing *largely* exciting happened recently, so I present to you a series of small little vignettes from a very nice weekend.
Jess decided she wanted pizza this weekend, so pizza was made. By me. I make great pizza. All you readers have experienced it, I think. I made 7 personal-pizzas worth of dough, and we made a large version of our collective favorite, the Gorgonzola pizza, and two personal pizzas each. Jess kept hers traditional, with another blue cheese and a garlic and cheese pizza, her favorites. I tried some cooked sausage on one and made a taco pizza on the other with some leftover taco meat and spaghetti sauce and pizza cheese on one half, Mexican-blend cheese on the other. Both halves were delicious. It was all topped off by jalapenos I grew in the backyard. Not spicy, but definitely mine.
We got a hammock. Jess came back from derby practice to find me setting it up in the front yard. She had stopped off at a smoothie place and asked for a strawberry banana smoothie for her and ‘something tart’ for me, because she knows what I like. We set up the hammock on the front yard and tested it out by lying down, smoothies in hand, and rocking back and forth under the shade of OUR trees while Jess relaxed on my chest. “This,” I thought, “is why I went to college.”
Much of the rest of Sunday was spent *completely* idle. I spent most of Saturday evening (a bit of Sunday early morning) and most of Sunday playing a game of Civilization 4, an *incredibly* complex society-building strategy game that is heavy on the complexity and light on the explanation. Jess sat next to me running some numbers on refinancing our mortgage and playing game of her own. We topped off the evening with some Rock band, which doubles as exercise, for me.
-N
Jess decided she wanted pizza this weekend, so pizza was made. By me. I make great pizza. All you readers have experienced it, I think. I made 7 personal-pizzas worth of dough, and we made a large version of our collective favorite, the Gorgonzola pizza, and two personal pizzas each. Jess kept hers traditional, with another blue cheese and a garlic and cheese pizza, her favorites. I tried some cooked sausage on one and made a taco pizza on the other with some leftover taco meat and spaghetti sauce and pizza cheese on one half, Mexican-blend cheese on the other. Both halves were delicious. It was all topped off by jalapenos I grew in the backyard. Not spicy, but definitely mine.
We got a hammock. Jess came back from derby practice to find me setting it up in the front yard. She had stopped off at a smoothie place and asked for a strawberry banana smoothie for her and ‘something tart’ for me, because she knows what I like. We set up the hammock on the front yard and tested it out by lying down, smoothies in hand, and rocking back and forth under the shade of OUR trees while Jess relaxed on my chest. “This,” I thought, “is why I went to college.”
Much of the rest of Sunday was spent *completely* idle. I spent most of Saturday evening (a bit of Sunday early morning) and most of Sunday playing a game of Civilization 4, an *incredibly* complex society-building strategy game that is heavy on the complexity and light on the explanation. Jess sat next to me running some numbers on refinancing our mortgage and playing game of her own. We topped off the evening with some Rock band, which doubles as exercise, for me.
-N
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Adventures in Home Ownership: Destroying a tiny ecosystem
Around the north side of our house it gets really wet. It’s in the shade pretty much all day, it’s got a couple of air conditioners shading it too. And we have to use the sprinklers on it because that section also waters our rose bushes et. al. along the side of the house. Not to mention that our air conditioners drain out of there too and I think the neighbors also water our side of the house. So it’s wet, and it stays wet, and it doesn’t really drain away.
This is no good for us home dwellers because the things that like to live around all that moisture are bugs. Lots of ‘em. I noticed the wasps first because of course you notice wasps because they’re crazy. But when exploring over there I’m always getting bit by mosquitoes and seeing other critters crawling around. The water forms into pools and will just sit there, not draining, for days. Definitely a small, but consistent, bug breeding area. So it’s got to go.
Our plan was to just cover much of that area between the A/C units, which is already ugly, with gravel. There still may be some water in there, but as long as it’s hard to get to we, hopefully, won’t have to worry about mosquitoes breeding next to our house. So we got some bricks to form a little barrier and several bags of gravel and one evening after the sun had started to set and let the temperature get down below 90 degrees, we struck.
Most of the work involved was just getting the rocks over there. Jess did the bricks, so I got to do the massive bags of gravel. (Okay, she did cary one, I just had to lift it up for her). Then we blocked off the area with the bricks and started covering up all the muddy, standing-water area with gravel. It seemed to work really well, giving good ground cover and looking pretty nice. And then we saw the frogs.
I felt a little bad, actually. A little brown frog and an even littler brown frog had evidently taken up residence in this micro-swamp, and we were just coming in like humans always do and paving over his home. They hopped away and Jess managed to grab one and relocate it to a drier area of the house, but I doubt he’ll stay. I did feel bad, and then I remembered why I was doing it. Mosquitoes and wasps and who knows what else? It’s not good for us to be having those things breeding near our home. That’s how diseases get spread.
Of course, it’s always nice to leave little pockets of ‘nature’ around: our native flowers, parks and nearby undeveloped (for now) areas. But let’s not kid ourselves. If you want to have nature, real nature, you’re going to have bugs. And a lot of them. And things eating those bugs and those bugs attacking you and trying to eat your food. We tend to romanticize ‘living in tune with nature’, but nature isn’t kind. Everything is trying to eat everything else, and the only reason we’ve become so successful as a species is because we’re the best at the war. The best. We can take any place and make it sterile and safe.
Clearly there’s a balance that needs be struck: if we really tried to win the war we’d just end up wiping out every other species on the planet and killing ourselves off for lack of biodiversity. That’s not healthy either. But sometimes you have to chase away the cute little frogs because you can’t have mosquitoes living near your house. So I felt a little bad that I couldn’t carve out that area for critters to live, but that’s the choice I had to make today. Maybe someday later I’ll be able to make a little pond way, *way* out away from the house where there can be bugs and cockroaches and frogs and snakes and deer and all sorts of crazy animals just eating each other like there’s no tomorrow. But not today.
I just had to make sure my house was safe.
-N
This is no good for us home dwellers because the things that like to live around all that moisture are bugs. Lots of ‘em. I noticed the wasps first because of course you notice wasps because they’re crazy. But when exploring over there I’m always getting bit by mosquitoes and seeing other critters crawling around. The water forms into pools and will just sit there, not draining, for days. Definitely a small, but consistent, bug breeding area. So it’s got to go.
Our plan was to just cover much of that area between the A/C units, which is already ugly, with gravel. There still may be some water in there, but as long as it’s hard to get to we, hopefully, won’t have to worry about mosquitoes breeding next to our house. So we got some bricks to form a little barrier and several bags of gravel and one evening after the sun had started to set and let the temperature get down below 90 degrees, we struck.
Most of the work involved was just getting the rocks over there. Jess did the bricks, so I got to do the massive bags of gravel. (Okay, she did cary one, I just had to lift it up for her). Then we blocked off the area with the bricks and started covering up all the muddy, standing-water area with gravel. It seemed to work really well, giving good ground cover and looking pretty nice. And then we saw the frogs.
I felt a little bad, actually. A little brown frog and an even littler brown frog had evidently taken up residence in this micro-swamp, and we were just coming in like humans always do and paving over his home. They hopped away and Jess managed to grab one and relocate it to a drier area of the house, but I doubt he’ll stay. I did feel bad, and then I remembered why I was doing it. Mosquitoes and wasps and who knows what else? It’s not good for us to be having those things breeding near our home. That’s how diseases get spread.
Of course, it’s always nice to leave little pockets of ‘nature’ around: our native flowers, parks and nearby undeveloped (for now) areas. But let’s not kid ourselves. If you want to have nature, real nature, you’re going to have bugs. And a lot of them. And things eating those bugs and those bugs attacking you and trying to eat your food. We tend to romanticize ‘living in tune with nature’, but nature isn’t kind. Everything is trying to eat everything else, and the only reason we’ve become so successful as a species is because we’re the best at the war. The best. We can take any place and make it sterile and safe.
Clearly there’s a balance that needs be struck: if we really tried to win the war we’d just end up wiping out every other species on the planet and killing ourselves off for lack of biodiversity. That’s not healthy either. But sometimes you have to chase away the cute little frogs because you can’t have mosquitoes living near your house. So I felt a little bad that I couldn’t carve out that area for critters to live, but that’s the choice I had to make today. Maybe someday later I’ll be able to make a little pond way, *way* out away from the house where there can be bugs and cockroaches and frogs and snakes and deer and all sorts of crazy animals just eating each other like there’s no tomorrow. But not today.
I just had to make sure my house was safe.
-N
Saturday, March 6, 2010
A bit of history: Papa's granddad
While I was in Spokane, I asked Papa about where his family was from, and we got to talking about the history of the family in Kansas. I was hoping to get some sense of the family's cultural identity, since... well, I don't have one. For starters, Papa has no idea where or when his family immigrated from- but they've been here a long time. His granddad had been a coal miner in Virginia, as his dad before him. At some point, he decided to start homesteading, and the family- the whole family, moved east to homestead. They started out to farm in Iowa, and eventually resettled and claimed land in Kansas to raise wheat. Papa's grandparents, and his grandmother's sisters, were all out in the same area. Papa told me he wished that he knew his grandfather, he sounded like an interesting guy. (Papa did get to know his grandmother.) He was known to say that he would never set foot in a slave-state (which explains Kansas). He was very religious as well. He used to walk around a lot, and collect rocks. The rocks he collected, he used to build a small chapel in Rollins County. There hadn't been a church there, and the little chapel served as a place for visiting ministers to preach. The chapel may still be standing.
By the time his parents were coming up, all the land in the area was spoken for, and they lived in Atwood proper. Because this whole generation had moved out and homesteaded in the same county, they were able to share labor. Papa got to go out to his aunt Lizzie's farm and help as a kid.
By the time his parents were coming up, all the land in the area was spoken for, and they lived in Atwood proper. Because this whole generation had moved out and homesteaded in the same county, they were able to share labor. Papa got to go out to his aunt Lizzie's farm and help as a kid.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Papa stories: The proposal
I am visiting this weekend in Spokane, I did escape the weather on the east coast, and Tsunami on the West. Since I didn't have my voice recorder out at dinner, I wanted to commit this story while it is still fresh.
I was asking Papa about the UW campus when he was a student there, and we transitioned easily to this, one of our favorite stories. When Nana and Papa had been seeing each other for a while in 1941, he brought up marriage. He said to Nana, " We seem to be getting along pretty well. Do you think you might like to get married?" To which she said, oh no. She was very focused on finishing her degree and it seemed like a bad time. But they continued dating. On December 7, they were headed to have dinner with their friend Mignonette and her husband somewhere they were house sitting. They were supposed to pick up a friend, who ran out of the house saying, "The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor! It's all over the radio!" It was pretty apparent that this would force the US would engage in war, and a draft seemed inevitable.
After dinner, Mignonette suggested they walk up to UW to see the Christmas program. On this walk, Nana said quietly to Papa, "I think I've changed my mind. I think I'd like to get married." The rest is history.
***
Another bit that I heard about for the first time tonight was that Nana and Papa used to live in GI housing Kirkland. When I asked when, Papa said plainly that when Bart was born, he only trusted him not to crawl off into Lake Washington until he was about 6 months old. After he was about 6 months old, it seemed they should sell the house boat and move to the affordable housing for veterans in Kirkland. Any one know where this was in Kirkland?
I also found that the summer Papa work in herring processing, he was based out of Little Port Walter on Baranoff Island.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
How I Met Your Grandmother "Sort of "
This is from an email we recieved recently. I thought more readers would like to see it:
I was the smallest boy in my class in high school. I worried until I was junior that I would not get my weight up over 100 pounds before graduation. But in my senior year year I got up to 103-104. When I got into the navy I tipped the scales at a robust 108 lbs.
In 1937 I went to Hospital Corps School and was assigned to the USS NAL Hospital in Pensacola, Fla. I'm not much of a talker and this was a new life for me and being around southern people I had some learning to do. I listened very carefully at the nightly gab sessions as these were older, knowledgeable men. They called Floridan girls from the northwest panhandlle "sand crabs" for the hundreds of sandcrabs you could see on Florida's sandy beaches, All others were called "Piney Girls" as lots of them were from Mississippi and Louisiana. I made several trips with other apprentices and had gained some confidence. So one evening I approached a young lady just like the older guys did.
"Do you want to dance?" says I. She suddenly confronted me with an unsmiling face and blank stare. "You are a Yankee," she said. For a second I was speechless. "Heavens, no", I said "My people were all wheat farmers. The nearest Yankee was 1500 miles away" Still unsmiling, frozen and unbending. I remembered a story I had once read in the Reader's Digest. You asked a Southerner where a Yankee lived and they said "North of the Mason-Dixon Line." You asked those people they would say a Yankee was from New England. You asked a Vermonter you were told a Yankee was from the Green Mountains and ate pie for breakfast. I finished my story triumphantly "I never had a piece of pie in my whole life for breakfast."
Still unsmiling she said, "You talk funny." "I talk funny?" I said. "I talk the same as 90% of the people in this country. If anybody talks funny its you southerners are the ones talking funny." In the silence that followed I knew I had lost. She slowly turned her head and talked to the girl next to her, leaving me to look at the back of her head. It was clear that on this night she was not going to dance with a funny talking, skinny sailor from Kansas. I never found out if she was a "sand crab" or a " piney girl." Crushed, it took a year and a half before I got up enough nerve to again ask another girl to dance. This time on the California coast. Just maybe--just maybe--if she had danced with me, you might have had a sand crab for a grandmother.
I was the smallest boy in my class in high school. I worried until I was junior that I would not get my weight up over 100 pounds before graduation. But in my senior year year I got up to 103-104. When I got into the navy I tipped the scales at a robust 108 lbs.
In 1937 I went to Hospital Corps School and was assigned to the USS NAL Hospital in Pensacola, Fla. I'm not much of a talker and this was a new life for me and being around southern people I had some learning to do. I listened very carefully at the nightly gab sessions as these were older, knowledgeable men. They called Floridan girls from the northwest panhandlle "sand crabs" for the hundreds of sandcrabs you could see on Florida's sandy beaches, All others were called "Piney Girls" as lots of them were from Mississippi and Louisiana. I made several trips with other apprentices and had gained some confidence. So one evening I approached a young lady just like the older guys did.
"Do you want to dance?" says I. She suddenly confronted me with an unsmiling face and blank stare. "You are a Yankee," she said. For a second I was speechless. "Heavens, no", I said "My people were all wheat farmers. The nearest Yankee was 1500 miles away" Still unsmiling, frozen and unbending. I remembered a story I had once read in the Reader's Digest. You asked a Southerner where a Yankee lived and they said "North of the Mason-Dixon Line." You asked those people they would say a Yankee was from New England. You asked a Vermonter you were told a Yankee was from the Green Mountains and ate pie for breakfast. I finished my story triumphantly "I never had a piece of pie in my whole life for breakfast."
Still unsmiling she said, "You talk funny." "I talk funny?" I said. "I talk the same as 90% of the people in this country. If anybody talks funny its you southerners are the ones talking funny." In the silence that followed I knew I had lost. She slowly turned her head and talked to the girl next to her, leaving me to look at the back of her head. It was clear that on this night she was not going to dance with a funny talking, skinny sailor from Kansas. I never found out if she was a "sand crab" or a " piney girl." Crushed, it took a year and a half before I got up enough nerve to again ask another girl to dance. This time on the California coast. Just maybe--just maybe--if she had danced with me, you might have had a sand crab for a grandmother.
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