Wii wish you a Merry Christmas

I realize this is very late getting up, but, frankly, so am I. I've been couch-ridden for the last few weeks after rupturing a disc in my back not once, but twice, around Christmas and New Year's. Oy. I can now tolerate sitting at the computer. Yay! Stay tuned for "The Day It Was Finally Easy to Dress Myself" and "Widen Your Stance: How I Relearned to Load My Dishwasher".

Here are some videos from Christmas morning. A big thank-you to faraway relatives who sent packages, especially for the kids. (Note, any intolerable camerawork is my fault. I forgot that while you can rotate the camera to take tall pictures rather than wide ones, rotating the camera to take a "tall" video just results in a sideways one. Sorry Mom and Dad!)

Christmas morning, Thomas coming downstairs to find what Santa left for him

A present from Thomas's cousin Matthew

A present from Sethie's cousin Jessica

A present from my parents

A present from Nate's parents

Presents to the kids from Gram and Grandpa Poulsen

Oh and the title for the post refers to the fact that we also got a Nintendo Wii for Christmas which is now providing many many hours of post-Christmas merriment (which saved me during my couch-ridden days from just staring slack-jawed at the TV. Instead I stared slack-jawed at the TV while repeatedly shaking the "Wii-mote"). I'll leave it to Nate, if he wishes, to post how he managed to secure a Wii during the crazy holiday shortages (Note: Interestingly enough, it was not from the Nintendo World Store in NYC, despite the fact Nate works a mere block away from there).

Sethie plays a mean boxing match on Wii Sports. If I can manage to capture it on video, I'll post that a little later.

A very late Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

Santa takes time out for the little guys...

A few weeks ago, Thomas wrote a letter to a Santa (well, he dictated and I wrote it). Here's a video I took of the event pre-posting.




In case you missed it, Thomas asks for "Geotrax with Eric", which is a new version of the Fisher-price electric train set we have and he also asks for two "Scoopadivos"*, which in the letter he explains are for both him and his little brother, which is bound to win him points with the big guy (can a four-year-old be that calculating?).

Well, we did in fact post his letter. A little while ago he asked me how we would know if Santa had gotten it and I said we would just have to assume the post office did their job and got it to him.

Well did they ever! Yesterday a letter came in the mail addressed to Thomas with the return address "North Pole". Here's a pic:

The letter is hand-written and says, "Dear Thomas, Santa got your letter at the North Pole and he knows how good you have been this year! Be sure to get to bed early on Christmas Eve...he'll be coming to your house! We've been so busy getting ready for the trip! Love, Santa's Elves and the Reindeer"

Thomas almost fell over with delight when he got to open this. Let me just say a very public thank you to Santa's elves and reindeer who took time out of their very busy schedules to make a little boy so happy.

*Thomas is famous in our house for inventing creative names for toys he loves. He currently has a Transformer here that broke, but he wouldn't let us throw it away. He determined the broken Transformer is known now as "Bedaton" (pronounced by him as "Bed-a-tahn"). He also has a small plastic rabbit he calls, "Rescue Apartment Bunny", presumably because it rescues apartments? "Scoopadivo" is his name for small Chubbies truck with a scoop on the back that he got when he turned 3. He lost this truck at the beach this summer and was absolutely devastated. We looked around local stores to see if they had any to replace it, but we haven't been able to find one. He's really hoping the big guy will come through for him Christmas morning.

They're coming for us!

Nate and I were making dinner last night when we heard a series of loud "pops". Now, most suburbanites would probably assume a backfiring car or some such, but of course, we thought they were gunshots. As they say, "You can take the people out of New York, but..."

Turns out someone was doing an enormous fireworks display somewhere very close to us. We could easily see the fireworks over the tops of our neighbor's trees. I took some pictures, but they turned out terrible because our motion-sensor light outside comes on if you so much as exhale in proximity to it, but it was very nice to stand out on the porch and watch the display.

Especially now that we know no one was trying to kill us.

Let's Not Go to the Poulsens' House

'Tis a silly place.

Trick-or-Treating on its last, candy-seeking legs

Last night, Thomas got his first real dose of trick-or-treating. We took him two years ago, when we lived in Ithaca, around the woodsy neighborhood of six-plexes we lived in, but he was only 2 1/2 at the time and the idea was a little fuzzy to him. Last year, we were dealing with a preemie newborn and also, fond as I was of our NYC neighborhood, I'd as comfortably taken him out around there after dark on Halloween night as I would to hand him off to an overly friendly stranger on the subway, saying "Thanks for offering to babysit!"

We figured, though, our new digs in Princeton were more than safe enough for him to do a round of houses with us in tow. You can imagine his excitement. Here is one night out of the year where any random adult answering the door will give you candy, no strings attached. You don't have to earn the candy by doing chores and you don't owe them anything after you leave. They're just giving you candy! For showing up at their house! It's craziness! It's the greatest kids' night of the year!

Here's a video of Thomas's first door-knocking experience (warning, video is pretty dark on account of it being night-time and whatnot):



We weren't the only trick-or-treaters on the block, but we did notice a certain dearth of kids. So, in fact, did the candy-dispensers who gave whole handfuls to Thomas, presumably to get rid of their stashes. At one house, the woman answering offered him the candy bowl and Thomas, being polite I can only suppose, actually took just one. She said, "Oh you should have more than that!" and proceeded to put several fistfuls of Spongebob gummy hamburgers into his bag. At home, we noticed the bowl of candy we had set out on the front porch had lost a certain amount of sugar poundage, but it wasn't empty and once we were home, no one else knocked on the door the rest of the night (it was barely seven o'clock when we walked in the door).

What's going on? From friends and family all around the country, I'm hearing the same news: the death knell of trick-or-treating has been sounded. Most people are speculating that it's a safety issue, which made sense to me in New York, but out here in quiet suburbia, I'm genuinely puzzled at the idea. Is the greatest kid's night of the year actually doomed? When I was a kid (warning, nostalgia alert), I used to roam around my hometown from dusk until...well if not dawn, at least a lot later than 7 pm, usually with a few friends. We'd hit all the big candy givers and avoid spoilsports (like the town dentist) who gave out apples and pencils. Even after we stumbled home exhausted, we'd sit up the remainder of the night scarfing and cataloging our booty.

I'm devastated that this tradition might be disappearing. What do people think? Is the picture the same everywhere? Is there any chance of a revival?

My current, and possibly future, ninja turtles hope so.

Thomisms

Thomas and I are playing Peggle together.
Me: "Wow, great shot there, Mr. Thomas!"
Him: "Thanks, Mr. Two-Brains."

Enjoying Our Stunted Agricultural Tourist Traps

Ah, the Northeast American tourist farm. If you live out this way, you know what I'm talking about: the apple orchards and the pumpkin patches where you take the kiddies every fall and pick your own produce. While you're at it, you can take haywagon and pony rides, feed plump goats, navigate through corn mazes, and buy cider donuts. We started going to these places about three years ago when our friends Sarah and Josh invited us out to their parents' place in the Poconos. We visited a little farm there mid-Oct. with its own apple and pumpkin picking, along with a children's playground, animals to be fed, and painted boards with holes in them where your child can stick their head through and you can photograph them being a cow or a tree or some such (every farm is required to have one of these). Here's a few pictures from our first farm adventure:

Thomas didn't really understand the concept then of "stick your head

through", so after numerous attempts to get him to go around to
the other side, we finally just took his picture anyway.

Apple-picking (and eating) in the orchard

Clearly, he wants THIS pumpkin

This is also the scene of my crime. I can't really post the footage here because this was before we owned a camera that could take .mpg movies. We had a clunky old separate videocam then and, in my defense, it required a lot of attention to operate it to avoid ending up with videos that would induce motion sickness. Here's the set-up: the feeding apparatuses for the animals at this farm consisted of a small rubber conveyor belt with a plastic cup attached to them. You bought the food, natch, then placed it in the cup on the conveyor belt. A little crank at your end would "convey" the plastic cup through the fence to the goat-side where said animal would presumably gobble it up. I had been trying to get Thomas to do it from the time we arrived, but two-year-olds are famously difficult to reason with, so right before we were to leave, I decided I would try one last time and capture the magical event on camera. Nate, Sarah, and Josh had all headed to the checkout with our apples and pumpkins, so Thomas and I lingered behind, newly purchased food pellets in hand. The moment swims, hauntingly, in my mind.

The evidence of the events following is probably still sitting around in a box of old videotapes, but the footage goes a little something like this: The camera shows the conveyor belt. The camera switches to Thomas standing off to the side. My own hand appears in the scene with the food pellets, depositing them in the little cup and my voice urges Thomas to come turn the crank. Camera switches to Thomas toddling over to the conveyor belt and my hand taking his and bringing it up to the crank which I proceed to help him turn. Camera switches back to the little food cup starting on its wobbly way to the goat salivating on the other side of the fence.

And then...a little child's scream. Camera goes wild, whirling around. My voice shouts, "Ah! Oh no!" Camera tilts to the side. Everything goes black.

In my effort to capture us rustically feeding goats through some contrivance presumably created to keep the kidlets at a safe distance from gnashing goat teeth, Thomas's fingers had gotten stuck in the conveyor belt. When I turned the crank (which I wasn't watching because I trying to videotape the moving food), Thomas's fingers got turned with it, rolling on the belt around the underside of the metal wheel. He was screaming hysterically. I dropped the camera and tried to pry his fingers out which just made him scream louder. For all I knew, they were broken. Finally, in a gleaming moment of reason amid the panic, I thought to turn the crank in the opposite direction, rolling Thomas's fingers back out. Lucky for us, the rubber of the conveyor belt was relatively soft and so even as Thomas's fingers had become trapped between it and the wheel, it gave way and didn't crush them. In the end, they were okay. Still, more than a little shame-faced, I abandoned my quest to video him feeding the animals and carried him, still sniffling, over to meet up with the others. The goat never got his food.

This story demonstrates a little of the trouble of trying to live an approximation of the rustic life for a few hours on an autumn Saturday. As Daniel Gross points out in this Slate article, these farms really aren't that rustic. Like an amusement park styled up to look like the Old West, these are tourist money pits whose actual agriculture is so stunted, they would be incapable of surviving if not for their annual fall "harvests". And frankly, the set-up is a genius of American capitalism: instead of paying pickers, they actually charge people to come and pick their own. And the people do come. When we lived in Ithaca, we visited a place called Iron Kettle Farm at least four times over the fall (and no children or goats were harmed in the filming of our memorabilia). Even the name is hokily evocative: the only iron kettles at that farm were for sale in its over-priced giftshop.

Yesterday, we loaded the kids in the car (we've got two now! Yay, more fun!) and headed out to Terhune Orchards for more of the fake rustic same. At this point it's reasonable to ask why, if I'm so down on these places, do we keep going? The truth is, I'm not down on them. I love them. I think they're adorable. I happily charged into their cornmaze even though it turned out to be not so much of a maze as just some rows of corn. Sethie's stroller even got trapped as we tried to force our way down one too-narrow aisle and he yelled angrily until I could manage to finally free him. And their food was so overpriced, we forewent all but the cider donuts and opted to pick up some hotdogs on our way home and cook them on our own backyard barbeque (which, dogs and buns included, was cheaper than if we had bought just one hotdog at the farm).

Still, Thomas got to ride a pony and when I told him he looked like a right cowboy, he held up an arm and shouted "Yeehaw!" We managed to find a lovely round pumpkin that's hanging out in our kitchen now awaiting carving, and even Sethie got in on the cider donut-eating action. And not only did it get us out and about in some beautiful fall weather, it inspired us to spend a little more family time in the backyard grilling hotdogs, playing soccer, and turning our faces into the chill and sharp-scented wind heralding a not-too-far-off winter. If it sounds idyllic, romantic even, it was, for all that its rusticness is a veneer. So are carriage rides in Central Park, but snuggle under the blanket with your honey during one, and you'll feel your heart swell.

Here are some pics and videos of our family farm fun (both Iron Kettle and Terhune):

Thomas tackles the cornmaze at Iron Kettle Farm Oct. 2005

Sethie makes a friend at Terhune Orchards Oct. 2007

Thomas "milks" a "cow" at Terhune Orchards 2007

Thomas wants to get in some Halloween fun a little early...

Today when I was driving Thomas to preschool, we were stopped at a light across from a small Baptist church that also runs a preschool. Thomas pointed out the window at the church and said, "Mommy, I want to go to that preschool."

Me: "Why is that?"

Thomas: "Because they have a cool playground!"

I looked out the window and had to bite my lip. "Uh, Thomas, that isn't a playground. It's a cemetary."

Him: "What's a cemetary?"

Me: "Well, it's a place where people are buried after they die."

Him: "Buried? Where?"

Me: "See those large stones all over the yard? The people are buried under them."

Him: "Really? Can we dig them up?"

Me, trying to dissuade him without creeping him out: "Uh....they are buried quite deep down, about six feet. It would be really difficult to dig them up."

Him: "We could get a shovel."

Me, trying even harder now: "Well, their families paid a lot of money for them to buried there. It would be really rude to dig them up."

Him: "We could put them back when we're done. No one would know!"

At this point the light changed and I stepped on the gas. Next thing, Thomas is saying, "Is Alex going to be at preschool today?" and happily kicking his legs against the seat, having already forgotten all about his plan for exhuming corpses. Yay.

Thomasisms from Dad

Thomas is becoming increasingly aware of gender differences, both actual and perceived. He is also starting to have fun with wordplay, something Mara and I quite enjoy.

At the diner, munching on a cheese toasty:

"Hey Daddy?"

"Yes Thomas?"

"Boys don't like girled cheese sandwiches."

Freeing Pink

My friend Grumpator had this link on her blog to an article about reclaiming the color pink for women (and women gamers in particular). Now if you spend a lot of time in children's clothing departments, like me, you wouldn't think pink had gone out of style in any way. In fact, head to the barely-adolescent Claire's store like I did this last week with my nieces and you would think middle school girls might as well be spray-painted from head to toe in pink--it would certainly be cheaper than plunking down cash for thousands of cheerily pink accessories a girl can deck herself out in these days.

But other than identifying semi-gender-neutral-looking babies as XX and as a way for newly pubescent females to advertise their sex to oppositely-pigmented males, pink really does have a bad reputation. It's the brand of girlishness, the mark of blank-eyed giggling, the hue of "math is hard", the stamp of non-threatening femininity. You can see why feminists would snarl at the color: it's an expression of everything they have been fighting to overcome. Pink says, "I am a girl and all the insipidness that that implies."

The article's author tells the story of how she came by her first Gameboy Advance (a handheld gaming device): a boy returned it to the store because it had a pink cover. In fact, he didn't even return it in order to get a new one: at the time GBA's were so popular there were no other ones in stock. The boy was willing to give up his chance at what was then a real advance in personal gaming just because the cover color was, frankly, too girly.

The author's--and just about any woman's--natural reaction is defensive indignation. Isn't this proof that no matter how far women come in this world, we will never overcome this idea of "girl = weak"? A pink-covered GBA plays the same games as a black-covered one. The only reason a boy might give up his chance to own something like that must be a perpetual, deeply-rooted, cultural misogyny.

Well, yes and no. The truth is that, for years, the feminist movement, however flawed, has been breaking down gender barriers--for women. Not for men. The reason: being the "fairer" sex, the "weaker" sex, meant acquiring masculine traits--clothing, careers--as a step up in the world, a move toward equality from the standpoint of an underclass. That means traditional femininity still reeks of that underclass and the cultural landscape that holds it that way is far more ruthless with men who are willing to cross those barriers than women. Dress your girl like a boy and she's an adorable "tomboy". Dress your boy like a girl and he's an embarrassing "fruit".

Truth is, I can only feel sympathy for the boy giving up an awesome new gaming device because likely his only other option would have been to walk into open degradation by anyone who saw him using it. And that's males and females, women and men, girls and boys. Because equality still means masculinity and when we as women aspire to it, we acknowledge that we want to leave femininity behind, as a lesser, a garishly pink reminder of weakness and frailty. No wonder that for all the inroads we've made in a man's world, men are still standing far outside the door to ours.

The song "When I Was a Boy" by Dar Williams starts out as her lament about moving from a free and boyish childhood, where she could climb trees and scratch her knees, into an overly feminized adulthood where she's offered skimpy clothes to wear and has to have a man walk her home to keep her safe. The turning point in the song is where she admits as much to a man, saying, "I have lost and you have won." Instead of ending there, the man gets a chance to also lament the small expressions of femininity that he has been forced to leave behind in order to be considered manly now:

Oh no no, can't you see
When I was a girl
My mom and I, we always talked
And I picked flowers everywhere that I walked
I could always cry
Now even when I'm alone, I seldom do
And I have lost some kindness
But I was a girl too
And you were just like me
And I was just like you

I'm not advocating a gender-neutral world, which doesn't seem possible or even desirable. Our current sexual dichotomy is part of what makes life so very interesting and exciting. But I do think that the human race would be better off if ideas traditionally thought of as feminine--nurturing, kindness, compassion, gentleness, sensitivity, emotion--were as accessible to men as wearing pants is to us. And maybe femininity wouldn't be seen as weakness; something for women to flee and men to avoid any appearance of. This is not an exclusively male bias. Note that the author titled her post as "reclaiming pink". Clearly she once shunned pink for the very reason the GBA-returning boy had, something she was angry at him for. And how often have we said, "It would be nice to have a sensitive man", then watched a man cry and secretly thought, Oh, grow a pair.

Let's not reclaim pink. Let's free it.

One Year Later...

When I was kid, I found it very difficult to fathom that time would always keep going forward. I couldn't get my head around the idea that I wouldn't just stop aging at some point--say my mid-twenties perhaps--and be able hang on around there for an indefinite period. Seriously.

The inexorable march of time has befuddled me again. Exactly one year ago, I woke up in the middle of the night with a splitting headache. I was thirty-two weeks pregnant and had been sick for all but maybe two months of that. The morning of 10/2/06, a Monday, I told Nate I wasn't feeling well and he spontaneously offered to stay home from work with me, which is a testament to how terrible I must have looked because Nate is not a spontaneous "take-off work" kinda guy. I spent most of the day in bed feeling ill, but nothing specific, just a general malaise. That night before going to sleep, I sat on the bed and put my head against Nate who was standing in front of me. I said to him, "Ever have a feeling that something is wrong, but you just can't articulate what it is?"

Around 1 am, I woke up with the migraine. I've been a migraine sufferer all my life, but this was unlike any headache I had ever had. I woke Nate and he called my doctor who told us to come to the hospital.

Well, most people who might be reading this know the story by now: the headache was an indication of a huge spike in my blood pressure and a symptom that I had developed full-blown pre-eclampsia. Unable to get my symptoms under control, they induced me the next morning and little Sethie was born about two months before his time.

I think, though, that he and I both knew that time would come for him early that year. He had developed enough to breathe room air, and only spent about two weeks in the NICU, barely a week more than I spent in the hospital. He has grown so briskly in this last year that looking at him now, it's hard to believe he was ever so small.

Once again, I just can't get my head around the fact that some day he's going to be a grown man--he acted like a newborn for so long that I half-expected him to stay that way indefinitely, my infant Peter Pan. I still don't get time. Its endless forward push seems as alien now as it did when I was little.

And speaking of little...Happy First Birthday my little Sethie, who fills my heart with joy, who blesses me every day with his sweet temperament, his contentedness in my arms, and the ruthless way he tears into whatever food he can manage to get his hands on. That's my boy.

My wife is the best birthday present I could ask for

Hello my friends and family:

Thanks for the many birthday wishes - I will be returning phone calls over the next few days on my way home from work/school. Please forgive the late responses - wife and the boys kept me busy busy.

In addition to the beautiful poem in the below post, Mara gave me an excellent birthday celebration. Saturday was full of adventures and delicious food (including a penuche cake), topped off by a walk on the beach. As we sat together watching the blood-red harvest moon rise over the ocean, I was reminded once again of just how lucky I am.

Best to all,
Nate

Ode to Nate, on This Day, the Day of His Birth

(Apologies to the writers of Star Trek: The Next Generation and of the episode "Schisms" in particular)

Nathan Poulsen is your familial nomenclature
Born to pursuers intellectual, scholarly by nature
Your studies physical, cor-por-ate, and chemical
Have confirmed to you some sulfamides are non-symmetrical

I find myself intrigued by your instant dormant status
When I scratch just right the spot of your muscle infraspinatus
And how you like to press the couch with your latissimi dorsi
to study anthropology ("Cops") and drink an eight-ounce pepsi

On unsuspecting females you have honed romantic talent
But your help with our consanguines small proves you to be gallant
And though I think they love me with their effervescent glee
On weekends they prefer a manly, congeneric knee

Oh Nate, I know that you are erudite, solicitous, and staid
yet the grecian inking on your forearm shows contumaciousness in spades
And though you must be gone a lot to New York up above
I nonetheless consider you my true and only love

The Secret

Yesterday at the store, Sethie was flirting with the woman at checkout, as he is wont to do. He tried to catch her eye, gave a shy smile pressing his cheek into his shoulder, and giggled when she squeezed his little socked foot. She was quite taken with him, especially his two little bottom teeth that have been very slowly coming in over the last month or so. As we were about to leave, she said, "Let me give you a little secret, something my grandmother told me. If you get an egg and write his name on it, then hide it in your house, the rest of his teeth will come in quickly. I did it. Worked for my son."

I smiled, thanked her, and left.

I'm a fantasy fiction fan--movies, books, you name it--and so I understand the appeal of the mystical, of the fantastic, of magic. I'm also a lifelong Mormon (minus a few years in college there...) and I have always believed in God and that there are mysteries in the universe that humans--no matter how technologically advanced we become--will never figure out. I suppose on the face of it that might seem to make me ripe for hiding eggs in the house in the hopes that somehow this will hasten my baby's orthodontic advancement. Instead, I'm okay with knowing that are certain things over which I have no control.

But I understand where she was coming from. Magic is the answer to helplessness. In fact, the less control we have over something, the more the idea of magic appeals. In fantasy fiction, magic can take many forms: personal powers, the enchanted sword, and so on, but there is usually an aspect that underlies it: its secretiveness. Secret magical orders, secret magical weapons, secret magical abilities. Why secret? Well, if it's not secret, then anybody can have it, and once everyone has it, it ceases to be magic. It becomes ordinary.

We're living in an age of unprecedented technological innovation that has rendered quite a bit of the world under our control. You can call anywhere in the world--talk to someone as if they were standing right next to you, even if an ocean separates you. We can fly through the air like birds. Diseases that once decimated entire populations have been eradicated with vaccines. Diseases that still don't have cures--cancer, AIDS, etc. now have such amazing treatments to fight them that they aren't always the death sentences they were even just a few years ago. These things should be amazing, magical even.

But they're not, not really. They're ordinary because they're ubiquitous. Now maybe income inequality renders some of these things more attainable for some than for others, but that's a discussion for another day. The truth is, the more control we have, the more we're bothered by things we can't control.

In fact, we seem to be tipping in the opposite direction. Despite the phenomenal success of western medicine and pharmaceuticals, there's a growing mistrust of standard doctors, standard treatments. It can't cure everything--people still get sick, people still grow old, people still die. Despite technological advances in agriculture that allow us to produce more than enough food for the entire planet, there are people still going hungry. And despite the tremendous wealth in the world, and in America in particular, there are still people who struggle to support themselves, who live in terrible poverty. And so we become disillusioned with our own power because it has limits.

Someone once said, the more perfect our world becomes, the more glaring its imperfections. If our own technology fails us--and it does, it fails us--then there must be some secret we're missing. Some people believe these secrets are actually known and a vast conspiracy of intellectuals, or government officials, or religious leaders, or name-your-group-of-powerful-collectivists is withholding them from us for some reason. Other people believe that someone somewhere has the secret and if only you could get a hold of their mailing (and send them your $100), you can be in on the secret, too.

The secret is magic and the magic is secret. Magic is appealing because it implies the fix already exists and if only we could access it, our problems would be solved. The truth is, progress is slow. It is agonizing. It takes years and the collective efforts of many people to come to fruition. And we will probably never fix everything. Humans are imperfect and so our efforts are doomed to be imperfect, too.

The idea behind conservatism is there are some notions/actions that have been shown to work and work well and that we ought to conserve these things. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be on the lookout for new solutions, but it also means the old solution isn't bad for being old, for being ordinary. And we should always be skeptical of the secret, of the promise of magic, recognizing that its appeal is in our own impatience to see a problem fixed. The old adage is true: there are no quick fixes.

So the only time I'll be hiding eggs around the house is Easter. Sorry Seth. You're stuck with babyfood for now.

Simple End of Summer Happiness

Truck Adventures

My Dad recently fulfilled his longtime dream of owning a really big truck. He spends quite a bit of time out in the back country and driving to my parents' property in Colorado, so it's about time he had a machine worthy of his lifestyle, but every machine has its limits. Here is his first person account of a recent "truck adventure":

On Labor Day (3rd of September 2007) Marcia and I decided to take the day off and head up into the Cache National Forest. I had heard that it was possible to drive from the head of Logan Canyon over to the Hardware Ranch at the head of Blacksmith Canyon via the dirt and gravel roads between US Highway 89 and Utah State Highway 101. So we loaded up the pickup truck with gas and a picnic lunch and headed out about 11:30 am.

By 12:30 we were almost to the top of highway 89 just short of the Bear Lake summit. At that point, just before you reach the Limber Pine trailhead, a wide gravel road takes off into the Cache National Forest. According to the map it is probably 30 to 40 miles to the Hardware Ranch. For quite a ways, the road was wide and well graded and through out the forest we saw quite a number of trailers parked in the high meadows of the forest. There was also a fair amount of traffic on the road in the form of both trucks and ATV's.

After a while, as we got deeper into the forest, the character of the road began to change.

It narrowed to the width of a one lane road and started to have more rocks and eroded spots in it. Still it was nothing a four wheel drive truck couldn’t handle easily. Also the road dropped off from the high meadows into a canyon. At several points we encountered traffic coming the other way and either we or they had to maneuver off the road to let the other fellow pass.

Part way down this road there was a place to pull off. Here the forest looked cool and inviting as a picnic site. Marcia and I set up our folding chairs and had a nice lunch (which we shared with the flies and bees). From time to time trucks and ATV’s would pass our site on the nearby road. Also three cows stopped to moo at us on their way to government spring which is further down the canyon. After a short hike up into the forest we loaded up the truck and headed on down canyon.

Quite a ways farther on and after a couple of narrow passes of other vehicles the road came out of the timber into a high wide mountain valley with little timber. The road itself was fairly wide but had lots of potholes and rocks in it. It stretched off into the distance but appeared to be the way to go to get to Hardware. The speed on this road was 5 to 10 miles an hour depending on how good or bad it was. From time to time we did however encounter Forest Service signs which said, among other places which we had never heard of, that we were headed toward the Hardware Ranch.

For quite a while now we had seen no other traffic. The canyon began to narrow towards a slot which we thought the road would go down thru to the ranch. However, just as we got to the beginning of the slot, the road forked. The right hand continued down canyon, but the left hand turned and started up what looked to be maybe an 800 foot high ridge. And at the fork was a Forest Service Sign with the word ‘HARDWARE’ and an Arrow pointing to the left fork. The left fork was decidedly a much more narrow rocky road which started to climb and disappear around the flank of the ridge.

By now we had been on the Forest roads for nearly three hours, so the prospect of going back wasn’t very appealing, but neither was the look of this road. At that moment down the left hand fork came an old pickup truck with three bow hunters in it. They waved as they passed; and I decided if they could drive down this road I could drive up it. Just as we started up the road we encountered three more bow hunters on ATV’s. I asked the first one how much farther it was to the Hardware Ranch and he replied “Its only 14 miles!” What an answer – we had already come what seemed like 30 or 40 miles. He told me that once you got up on the dug way at the top of the ridge to turn south and it was down hill from there to the Hardware Ranch.

As we started up the road it turned the flank of the ridge and I got a better look at where we were headed. As I looked at the road my heart dropped into the pit of my stomach. Above us you could see on the steep rocky hillside a series of switchbacks which climbed higher and higher and finally disappeared from view. It was apparent that once you started up this steep and narrow rocky road there was no turning back. Putting the truck into 4 wheel drive low gear we commenced out slow crawl up and I prayed that this would turn out all right. Marcia later told me she was also scared spit less by what she saw ahead of us and wondered why I didn’t say anything. I replied “What was I supposed to do – start crying!” Part way up we encountered three more bow hunters on ATV’s, but they were able by careful maneuvering to pass us. Had we encountered another truck there would have been nothing to do but try backing down this nasty road. But thankfully we were spared that ordeal. After what seemed like forever we crawled up onto the top of the ridge. At that point the road visibly improved. And about twenty minutes later we came to the hardtop at the Hardware Ranch.

I was almost tempted to get out of the truck and kiss the asphalt. After a pit stop we headed down Blacksmith Fork to the Cache Valley and by 8pm we were home again, having covered by the trip odometer some 138 miles. Doesn’t sound like much distance, but at 5 to 10 miles an hour a lot of the way it took a long time. Some parts of this area we intend to visit again, but never again will I drive up or down that hairpin rocky track.

Ah! Bugs!

One change moving from urban to suburban that hasn't been positive is the number of bugs. Naturally you would think that ew, city, very dirty, but while that may be true, the bug level seems to be on the lowside. There are flies of course, and, shhhhhhuuuuddddeeerrrr, cockroaches (big ones!), but other than that, there are really very few bugs that you see on a regular basis and most buildings have an exterminator that comes round usually once a week, so, unless you are a total slob, you don't even really see those very often.

Here it's completely different. This has been the summer of bugs. And I have seen some REALLY BIZARRE creatures, things that I have never in my life laid eyes on. I wish I had pictures of them, but inevitably they catch me offguard as I'm strolling through the neighborhood, or, heaven forbid, strolling through my house and one of two things happens: either I'm outside and I run or I'm inside and I strike out at the wee beastie, squashing it into wee beastie pulp, beyond all recognition, clearly before adequate preservation techniques can be employed.

This morning, however, we headed out the backdoor to pile in the car for Thomas's first soccer "game" of the fall season and nearly walked headlong into this, which a very intrepid spider had built IN THE COURSE OF A SINGLE NIGHT (you will probably have to click on the image to see it in its full glory):

Here's a close-up:

Mr(s). spider was quite grumpy to see us as (s)he was wrapping up a tasty meal in the center of the web and was forced to abandon it to cower surreptitiously up in a corner, hoping we would pass by and not happen to notice the enormous, over two foot diameter web that (s)he had built from the tip of our porch railing to the overhang of our roof. Here's a picture of the intrepid arachnid:

The thing looks to me to be what I've always known as a crab spider, but google image search produced crab spiders that don't really resemble this. The only thing I've seen otherwise is the thorn spider, but those appear to be native to Madagascar, so the chance of one being in our little backyard in Princeton Junction is, hopefully, rare. If anyone knows what this thing is, let me know. I'm pretty curious.

When we returned from soccer, the web was still there, but the spider and its tasty meal were gone. Don't know if the spider is planning to come back, but I hope it's moved on because Nate has promised to take the hose to the web ASAP.

UPDATE: Nate has actually caught the spider and is gleefully taking it upstairs to alcohol it. Up close and personal, the spider looks very different than from its initial wrapped up position. It has a distinctive marking on its abdomen that we're trying now to use to identify it.

Maralee's Happy Birthday

I realize that I am not a regular contributor -- in fact, I think this is my first entry (other than comments) on our blog. I have prepared a few posts, but I have never published them. For some reason, I am resistant to actually put it out there, but for my beautiful wife, I will do it today.

I am at work today, and with school tonight, I probably won't see Mara until late this evening (provided she can stay awake until then), so I wanted to publicly wish Mara a Happy Birthday, and let her (and readers of the blog) know how much I love and appreciate her.

I am always amazed by how she cares for the boys - when I have had them for even a few hours, I am at my wit's end. They love her so much - Sethie is usually happy to see me in the morning, but will claw his way to mom when he catches sight of her.

Thomas told me yesterday that "it would be fun if mommy went to work and daddy stayed home and we could play transformers all day every day!" When I asked him if he would really like that, he said no, because mommy "takes good care of me." I didn't follow up on the implications of that statement.

She is also very humble - her story that was included in the anthology has been mentioned (along with her name) in many of the reviews of the book, including Publisher's Weekly and the McClatchy family of daily papers. In fact, I may even get in trouble for mentioning this... but as those of you who read this blog know, she is an excellent writer, and I am very proud of her.

Mara is also supportive and encouraging of both my (never-ending) school and work endeavors, and has been my mental and emotional anchor for the last 6+ years. She is the love of my life, and I feel so so lucky to have her. She is my best and closest friend.

Happy Birthday Maralee!

Thomisms Redux

Nate: "Thomas, you need to get cleaned up. Thomas? Thomas, are you listening to me?"
Thomas: "Daddy, I didn't hear you."
Nate: "What didn't you hear me say?"
Thomas: "That I needed to get cleaned up."
Nate: "You didn't hear that?"
Thomas: "Nope."

Thomisms

"Wrong answer, punk." Optimus Prime to Star Scream (via Thomas).

Me: "That was very clever."
Thomas: "Thank you. I thinked it in my head."

Me: "Thomas, I have to do laundry today. Do you want to help?"
Thomas: "No, Mommy. I've got a lot of things to take care of this morning. My toys...that sort of thing."

Puddle Jumping Goes Awry

For those of you suffering around the country (and world, I suppose) from unnatural heat waves, this has really been the summer to be on the east coast of the U.S. Most of our summer temps have been in the 70-90 F range, with only middling humidity. In fact, for the last several days it has been rainy and chilly outside. Today we topped out at a smoking 67 degrees. Right now the temp is about 62. We've gotten increasingly tired of being stuck in the house, so earlier this afternoon, I outfitted Thomas in his rain gear which, I am embarrassed to admit, consists only of waterproof boots and a jacket with a vinyl-like exterior that keeps the wearer dry for roughly ten minutes of outdoor rain action. We really ought to get him some actual raingear, but I only remember that when it's, you know, actually raining.

Of course, Thomas, being Thomas, doesn't do anything halfway, so when I told him he could go outside and "jump in puddles" he interpreted puddle as "any available body of water" and "jump" as a verb covering WWF moves.

I take some comfort in the fact that even if he had been outfitted in actual waterproof items, he still would have ended up soaked. Don't feel bad for him--he loves the cold (he's strangely insensitive to pain, too. Should I be worried?) and he still got to have a nice warm bath afterwards.

Here's the evidence:

"But you need a little Bubby"

Thomas and I have been singing the "Frowny face" song today, which goes:

No one likes a frowny face
Change it for a smile
Make the world a better place
By smiling all the while

One way Nate and amuse ourselves and (mildly) distress our children (well, only Thomas since Seth is oblivious to lyrical correctness), is to change out various words or lines in songs such as this with one or both of their names. After singing the song through the right way a couple of times, I teasingly sang to him,

No one wants a Thomas face
Change it for a Seth...

At which point, he stopped singing along, blinked, and then said, "But you need a little Bubby." (Bubby has been Thomas's nickname since he was about six months old)

I said with a smile, "Oh yeah? Why do I need a little Bubby?"

"To make things for you."

"Like what?"

"A.....peanut butter and mud cake."

"Ewww. That doesn't sound so good."

"But Mommy, it's your birthday. You don't have to eat it, you just have to look at it. All the time."

Thomas and I can have conversations like this all day. Peanut butter inevitably factors in, just as unicorns did for me when I was his age until, oh, about 15.

Ok, 21.

Ok, last year, but that was, really, the end of it. Really.

Anybody seeing Stardust this weekend?

Rules of Engagement

Witness the dating ritual of the suburban mother. There is the list of hopeful potentials. The first, awkward, giddy phonecall. The well-rehearsed invitation. Relief at acceptance or forced flippancy in the face of the polite decline--you wonder if their excuse is valid or they don't really feel the same way about you that you do about them. The first group date. Later one of the polite declines calls you back, asks you out this time. You wonder, is this one for real? Is this burgeoning relationship going to grow into something that will stand the test of time?

I'm actually talking about something far more trepidatious than just romance, though it gets a lot less ink in women's media: the making of friends among married women with children, especially those of us who have opted out of immediate careers in order to be our kids' primary caregivers. When I worked, most of my friends came from my job. If your personalities are at all compatible, it's a lot easier to become friends with someone you're forced to be around day in and day out. There are no awkward introductions, no wondering when it's an appropriate time to duck out of a get together. Plus, you always have something to talk about: work. Many years now of moving around and restarting the new friend dance has made me a veteran. I don't know that that means I'm terribly good at it, but at least I know the moves. Church seems to be the easiest way to ingratiate yourself with potential friends. Here are three hours a week where you get a mini-work environment--a chance to chat with people who just might share some common interests and with whom you're expected to socialize. Once you've appeared on the scene and scoped out potential friends, the best thing you can do is casually remark how you ought to get the kids together to play. This is, of course, a front, but it's well-established and the underlying meaning doesn't get lost. If you're pretty gutsy, you can go ahead and try to acquire their phone number or email address on the spot. If you are the newbie and they already belong to a group of friends, you can hope that they will make the first move and invite you along to their next gathering. If that works, you should host the next event to more firmly entrench yourself in their posse.

This is the stage I've reached with a group of women from my ward. I had one false start where a woman gave me a general invite to her playgroup, then told me she would call or email the next time they met and I never heard from her again. Further attempts to chat her up or find a time to get together have pretty much failed. I'd like to think this isn't because she suddenly decided I wasn't her type, but just because sometimes these things fall through. You're too established in your life to make the outreach past the first Christian fellowship moment. The window closes for making the connection permanent and you're left with awkward church run-ins--the newbie's face going from eager and friendly to guarded and polite.

I am that newbie. Today I hosted a little pool party for Thomas's new friends--and by extension, maybe mine. I had gotten pretty comfortable in New York with my group of friends. Thomas had a regular gang of three to five year-olds (including his best pal, the affable and ineffable Desmond P. Jones) that he loved to run around with and their mothers were my really close friends. We hung out several times a week. I had friends to confide in and friends to talk books and movies with and friends who were just good humor company. Now that I've moved, I find myself relying more on distant friends, email and phone friends, to stay connected. But I started the suburban "dating" dance here, too. Virtual friends will do for only so long. Eventually you need someone of flesh and blood or you start to feel unreal.

Sometimes I wish I still worked a 9 to 5 job so I could get all my socialization in automatically and not have to "work the scene". Making and keeping a friend you have to actively engage over and over again in order to stay connected takes so much more effort.

At least, though, if things don't work out, you don't have to performance review that person later.

Gingerism: It's Real

Nate and I have talked about the possibility of living abroad at some point, usually focusing on the British Isles (not having to learn another language being key here. We're kinda lazy that way). Recently, though, Nate mentioned that we might have to dye Sethie's hair in that case, due to the rampant "gingerism" in Britain. At first, I laughed, thinking the idea of red-haired people being harrassed was simply so ludicrous, it couldn't possibly be true. Frankly, I'd never even heard of such a thing--not even the term "ginger".

Apparently, it is true and seems to stem from England's long-standing bias against the Irish and the Scottish (in Scotland, about 13% of the population is red-haired; in Ireland, about 10%; in the U.S., the figure is about 2%). Of course, once I heard about ginger bias, I started noticing it everywhere in the British cinema we frequently watch. Just tonight, we watched the movie Hot Fuzz (both hilarious and disturbingly gory, just like its predecessor Shaun of the Dead) and during the climactic fight scene, the villain grabbed a red-haired boy and threatened to shoot the "ginger-nut". Earlier this week, I rented School of Seduction, another British comedy. Again in the climactic scene, one of the heroines this time accused another character of being a "four-eyed geek" and a hideous "ginger whinger" who was bullied in school.

Both Nate and I have red-haired nieces and nephews and I had always kind of hoped I might have a red-haired baby at some point. Thomas was born with almost black hair that's lightened now to a mid-brown, about the same color as Nate's (though Nate was a toehead as a baby). But Sethie was born with strawberry blond hair that has both deepened and brightened into a shiny copper. His red hair has always solicited gushing comments from the people around us. How interesting that here in the U.S. red hair is something to be admired and desired, while our nearest neighbor in the western world treats redheads as trash. I wish I had something pithy to say about it, but frankly, it's gotten so much under my skin, I can't think what I could possibly say.

I guess if we do go to Great Britain, we'll have to stick to the "inferior" isles--Scotland and Ireland. No problem here. I've always liked my men in kilts.

Science and bath time collide!

Normally I would be loathe to embarrass my children with a bathtub pic or video posted to the web, but this one is pretty cute and I think Nate did some excellent camera work in avoiding accidental exposure of anything, uh, important. Note that both Nate and I are in full baby-talk mode which no parent can help, no matter how cynical.

Captain Wonder Crawl

About a week ago, Sethie started crawling in earnest. This week, he also learned how to sit up (mostly). This makes him my second child who has crawled before he sat up, though Thomas had a much bigger gap between the two: he crawled at seven months and didn't sit up until he was nine months. In Thomas's case, it had to do with his muscle tone--let's just say he's a natural gymnast. He has great muscle strength, but low muscle tone, i.e. he's very very flexible. Because of it, he needed both speech and occupational therapy until he was about three years-old. Now people are amazed when I mention Thomas's speech therapy considering the fact that he talks about as much as he moves, which is to say, all the time.

When I was pregnant with Sethie, I wondered what it would be like to have a child that hit all his milestones on time, like most of the other babies we knew when Thomas was little. I was never embarrassed to have Thomas in therapy; he clearly needed and benefited from it. Still, it was a stress. You don't like your children to suffer for anything. Listening to him struggle day in and day out to make sounds and form words broke my heart. Of course, every little triumph was a cause for celebration. And he is so very naturally happy in attitude, his struggles didn't seem to affect him as much as they did me. Still, I thought, how much better would it be to have a baby who didn't have to struggle?

I recall telling a friend who was worried about her baby being born with birth defects something to the effect of, "Even if they're born fine, they're still going to have problems. You don't get to choose their problems. They might not have any real problems until they're older and it might be problems with school, or friends, or something we can't even fathom now. You just have to help them with whatever it is. That's what being a parent means." I never could have predicted that I would have a baby two months early, which means of course that his milestone schedule is completely off. He is ten months today, so he's off the sitting up by about four months and the crawling by two or three, depending on who you ask. Does it matter? I look at Thomas whose muscle tone issues might actually benefit him now as he starts into sports requiring flexibility. Sometimes problems become strengths.

And sometimes your children are Captain Wonder Crawl and other times, TV Watching Zombie.

Thomism

Thomas has recently discovered television commercials. While I was afraid in the past that he would start craving the toys and food he saw on TV, in fact it's much worse. He appears to be susceptible to everything he sees advertised.
Thomas: "Mommy, mommy! Can we get that?"
Me: "You want to get a 30-year mortgage with a low down payment?"

Thomas, bringing me a book, "Mommy, can you read this to me? I don't know my language."

Thomas, showing us his hand, "Hey, look what I smell like!"

Me: "Thomas, what's wrong?"
Thomas: "Mommy, I'm pretending to be a king who's crying because he got married."

Thomas is helping me with dinner.
Me: "Thomas, you're doing a good job."
Thomas: "I'm doing a great job, Mommy."

Harry Potter and the Humongous Hype

This is not a Harry Potter-bashing post. My copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, pre-ordered around Jan., came Saturday and I've already finished it, so count me among his fans. Still, as Marc Antony, via Shakespeare, once intoned, "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him", even as his speech goes on to remind the Romans why Julius wasn't such a bad bloke after all. What kind of bloke is Harry? Why does the whole planet seem to care so very much?

Tolkien, like Rowlings, was also once vaulted into an instant spotlight, but even he had to have a specific movement and time--the drug-addled sixties--to explain his sudden popularity. Rowlings barely had time to blow her nose before her first novel started disappearing off bookstore shelves in droves. Potter also has Frodo beat on another score: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone has sold more copies alone than all three Lord of the Rings books combined, and Tolkien has been hanging around a lot longer than "the boy wizard". I know these stats won't exactly shock anyone--the Harry Potter Hype Machine has been in full bore since the first book rounded up kids and adults alike into one big cult of four-eyed magic mania--but can anyone explain them? Modern Library's list of 100 Greatest Novels isn't short for science fiction/fantasy writers--it has Tolkien, Robert Heinlein, even Ayn Rand--but J.K. Rowlings fails to make it. And that's not just the Board's list, that's the Reader's list, too. TIME Magazine's list is similarly Potter-less. So why are these tales of a scar-faced, wand-waving adolescent squashing all but a handful of religious tomes as the best-selling books of all time?

Greater minds than mine have attempted this question and it's probably better suited to some comparative lit's Ph.D. thesis, but I can't help but wonder. On the face of it, Rowlings' writing is solid, but hardly splashy and she slides a bit in the later books, probably because no editor dared touch them. She occasionally attempts to use a simile or metaphor when she's actually describing the real appearance of something--in this book she says the ground-up shards of a mirror were "like glittering dust". She overuses a pet plot device--having Harry overhear details crucial to his mission from unsuspecting antagonists--all too often, culminating in the near constant mindmeld Harry shares with Voldemort that endangers Harry only once, but ever afterwards gives him an easy, constant update on Mr. Name Unspoken's whereabouts and activities. She also can't resist the "all is revealed" moment, either, where characters get together to rehash in clunky exposition what's happened and how it all fits together, especially the cliched bad guy "monologue" ending--"Before I kill you, Harry, here's how I did everything prior to this point!"

But wordcraft is not enough to sustain a book--and its lack isn't enough to condemn one, either. The book I finished prior to picking up Harry Potter was a much more literary sci-fi called Life by Gwyneth Jones. Jones' writing slaps Rowlings sideways. It is beautiful, poised, provocative, and requires careful attention. Her characters are sharply and poignantly drawn. The plot is driven less by adventure than by, well, life as her title indicates and it has some uncomfortable and challenging things to say about gender in a modern world. Still, a few weeks out of it and it's mostly slipped my mind. Nate and I had a similar reaction to a movie called The Fountain which we saw because Nate is a big fan of director Darren Aronofsky. The Fountain also has a lot of very pretty packaging--it's a very visual arresting film. But we were strangely unmoved at the end, despite the fact that characters spend most of the film wracked with grief. "Bloodless" is how I described it to Nate and he agreed. We simply didn't care what happened to these people.

And on that score, I think Harry Potter gets a punch back in at its more literary counterparts. Even if many of Rowlings' peripheral characters are more caricature than real (the Dursleys in particular come to mind), Harry, Ron and Hermione, a classic heroic triumvirate, have enough personality for all of them. Through seven books, they've grown up and the magical wonder of the first book is appropriately mirrored in the grief of the seventh book as they (and we) see the things we found so amazing in childhood take on deeper and darker meaning when viewed from adulthood. Rowlings isn't afraid to let them fully experience adolescence, either, even in front of a backdrop--evil maniac torturing and killing his way to triumph--that seems too serious for explorations of young crushes, hormonal-induced depression, and--for Ron--suddenly discovering your childhood girl friend has breasts. In the final book, the three of them are finally of majority and they strike out on their own together, trying to do what they think is right without the reassuring guidance of better-informed adults. The thing they realize is that adults are not especially well-informed either. Every decision is wrought with peril, and often, regret. Courage has been described as not the absence of fear, but going forward despite fear. Rowlings proves that courage is really the going forward despite doubt. Because of these things, the characters endure, grow large in the mind of the reader. We want them to win. We wish we could help them--we read voraciously alongside them as if we could.

And what Rowlings might lack in wordcraft, she more than makes up for in storycraft. I read the first book several years ago and dismissed it as so much fantasy fluff. It wasn't until after the first two movies had come out that I decided to try them again and from there, I read books two through six in a few months' rush (rather dumbly, I didn't wait until all seven books were out, so I was forced into the position of waiting restlessly for its debut, after having rolled my eyes at all the hype and giddiness that accompanied earlier books to stores). Small nuggets in the first few books that had seemed out of place, or too easily come by grew with meaning in each following book. By the seventh book, a carefully laid heroic arc for Harry becomes shockingly clear, building on these little dropped hints across what now amounts to thousands of pages. It reminded me, not favorably, of some other fantasy series I have read where the writers start out clever and smashing in the first few books and then you realize by the third or fourth book that they shoved all their great ideas in early and are petering out now (Robert Jordan, anyone?). Rowlings seems to have infinite patience. Something laid without adequate explanation in the first book might not reappear until book six or seven and to find it again is like a treasure hunt, like discovering on Antique Roadshow that ugly old painting of grandma's is actually worth $30,000. How she managed to keep track of it all should be made required study by all writing students.

Some people have complained that her later books have too much filler surrounding the center action. Maybe so, but the Tolkien that everyone admires suffers the same complaint on re-inspection--clearly the man was more interested in the literary and historical aspects of his own novels than the driving plot (Frodo's destruction of the ring comes very early in the last book and comes off as anti-climatic. Tolkien really needed an editor like Peter Jackson). It's hard to blame Rowlings that she has grown to such mammoth proportions as a writer that editors are loath to harass too much change out of her (would you complain to your money cow that her milk is too creamy?) Tolkien's "filler" was a lot of droning place descriptions and non-sequitor singing. Rowlings maybe spends too much time worrying what Harry is thinking about in between the moments where he's actually doing something. She is invested in him. So apparently are millions of other people.

I'm pretty sad to see Harry go. The seventh book is the best of the series, invested with real emotion and a well-executed bang-out ending--if anyone was worried. It's been a little disappointing for me to emerge back into the real world, where the chance to participate in an epic battle against evil is pretty slim. Here's hoping that some bright young writer is just waiting in the wings to emerge as the next grand storyteller and give us all a reason to stay home on Saturday nights, curled up with a good book.

Sidebar: While reading Harry, I was thinking of the idea of being the protagonist in my own story--how absorbed I am in my own concerns and how narcissistically my own world seems to revolve around those concerns, as if other people are the bit players in my drama. In Harry's world, several characters make the ultimate sacrifice and their deaths get varying levels of attention, but hey, this is Harry's story and Harry triumphs, so it's all for the best, right? I'd be interested in hearing what people think about being the bit player--would you be okay with being a footnote on the way to glory, fighting your tiny square of the fight, if a Harry Potter-like hero needed your minuscule help to accomplish his/her goal? I'm not talking about soldiers in an army, necessarily, but ordinary people who hear the news, decide for themselves what they think they ought to do, and suffer the consequences of those actions, maybe without much acknowledgement either. What do you think?

Wedding Throwdown: Mormons vs. Those Other Guys

So much has been written about the American Wedding that I'm not sure I've got anything of substance to add. Still, there's something about attending a wedding that makes a person want to psychoanalyze the state of American life and its unions in particular. Yesterday, Nate and I attended the wedding of Nate's cousin, Laila. Nate's uncle, Brian, is the freewheeler of his family, having defied his more traditional father's wishes on more than one occasion: he went to Harvard instead of MIT, majored in English instead of a "man's field" like engineering, he plays the sitar professionally and is married to Shubha, the only professional female surbahar player in the U.S. Laila is his adopted daughter with his first wife, Sandra, and their only child at all, so naturally the event of her marriage needed to be a grand affair.

And grand it was. I wore adult shoes (3-inch heels), ate adult food (caviar and expensive imported cheeses), had adult conversations ("Oh yes, Princeton is a lovely little town"), and did some very unadult dancing (I shook it to "Mony Mony", but declined to do the macarena). On separate occasions, Nate and I each got hit on (his bailed when she found out he was married, mine already knew I was married and waited until Nate had left to break out his line). I declined to have my champagne glass filled several times until an exasperated waiter went ahead and filled it anyway (when I tried to tell him no while he was filling it, he just leered at me).

I've had the privilege of attending the nuptial ceremonies of several major religions: Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, and Mormon (both in and out of the temple) and I've concluded that the Mormons are the most efficient. Most of the time, while the officiator might make a little five to ten minute speech about why marriage is a good thing, it's still just a quick "Do you?" and "Do you?" affair. All these recitations of poems, singing of singers, ceremonial hand-wrapping and/or glass crushing, etc., these don't make it into the Mormon wedding. As a Mormon, therefore, you can feel a bit cheated. That's why the Utah "Wedding Breakfast" was invented, to smash all that stuff back in. In fact, while the Mormon wedding is the most efficient, the Mormon wedding day is usually the longest. Most Mormons get married in the morning, then there's a wedding breakfast, afternoon pictures at the marriage site and at the reception site, and at least one wedding reception in the evening. Mormons can't get over the need to be efficient, though, so unlike the demure sit-down $100-a-head dinner of most wedding receptions, Mormons invite everyone they know (and everyone else they know) to bring a present, walk quickly through a receiving line of bride, groom, and close relatives, then sit at a table for another ten minutes eating mints and drinking sprite mixed with sherbet before feeling compelled to go home in order to free up their seat for someone else. The efficiency level increases as the servers are usually young women from your ward, the platers are relief society members, and the reception site is most likely to be the cultural hall of your ward building, with the receiving line posted under a rented trellis by the basketball hoop.

I suspect it's because with most Mormon families having a multitude of children and with a large population of young adults getting home from their missions all the same time, the procession of weddings in a town with a high Mormon population can get to be a little overwhelming. There are always wedding reception invitations on my parents' countertop whenever we visit them in Utah and the lucky couples are usually the child of someone my parents knew from something, however briefly. "Who's this, Mom?" "Oh, that's the daughter of the woman I stood next to in line at the supermarket." Knowing you only have to go for a few minutes to say hello, then devour your mints and take off enables you to attend four or five weddings in a week. Of course, the gift-giving can get a little prohibitive, but only family and close friends are expected to give actual presents. The 500+ additional reception invitees can usually drop a few bucks in a collective fund for the bride and groom to buy themselves a nice couch. The system is well-established.

Nate and I took the Mormon wedding efficiency one step further by squashing the wedding breakfast and reception into a single event (we ate breakfast with family and friends upstairs at our reception hall, then went downstairs afterwards to start greeting additional guests). We gave our poor photographer a bit of a heart attack, since there was so set picture-taking time--he was forced to follow us around at our reception (efficiency decrease: we didn't have a receiving line), waiting until we stopped talking to people, then dragging us out to snap as many pictures as he could before we escaped again. The whole thing was over by two in the afternoon. Frankly, most of it is a wonderful blur. Two events stick out in my mind: 1) seeing Nate for the first time after our temple ceremony, flanked by his brothers and decked out in his Scottish finest (Nate's ancestors on his mother's side are Stewart Scots). My heart nearly popped out of my chest, and 2) Nate pulling a sword out of his belt for me to cut the cake (and getting to lick the frosting off the sword tip to the appreciative yells of the crowd).

I wouldn't presume to say which wedding style is better: Mormon efficiency vs. Everyone Else opulence. The opulence, frankly, is more fun and when yours is the only immediate wedding in town, you get a little more attention for it. The party is louder and goes longer--and the food is far better. There are first dances and toasts (Mormon weddings, lacking alcohol, also lack the drunken friend salutes that make most weddings so entertaining), multiple courses and wedding singers. The Catholics in particular get to have an entire worship event, audience participation included, to go along with the wedding itself. The length of the ritual begins to wind itself tightly with power, culminating in the well-known recitation of vows that, by their very familiarity, seems to unleash a collective feeling of spiritual joy. There is something wonderful to be said about spending half a day really feting someone you love as they start into a completely new chapter of their life, combining your collective good wishes into a foundation for their marriage which will largely have to continue without your help.

Mormon efficiency is a cultural thing--in Utah, we have made efficiency into a worship art. However, Mormon wedding efficiency has its own unique origin, tied to the same reason most Mormon engagements are so short:

We're anxious to get to the hotel.

A Candle (or five) for a Man

As I mentioned earlier, my sister Alyssa is here with us until Sunday. Roughly three years ago Alys was visiting me when we were first living in New York. We headed down to 5th Avenue south of Central Park to see the notorious stores: Saks Fifth Avenue, Tiffany's, Bergdorf Goodman, etc. Right across the street from Saks is the very famous St. Patrick's Cathedral which Wikipedia lists as the "largest decorated Neo-Gothic-style Catholic cathedral in North America". It's an absolutely stunning church, and has millions of visitors a year. Inside there are stations for various saints where a petitioner can pay a dollar and light a candle. Those three years ago, Alys, who was having fairly dismal luck on the dating scene (One of her dates refused a piece of gum she offered because, as he put it, "Ah, I'd just swaller it."), lit a candle to St. Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland, and put out her hopes for a decent man to come along.

Well, maybe because we're Mormons and not Catholics (in which case, our actions yesterday may not have helped much), or maybe St. Andrew has a sense of humor, but about six months later my sister met a certain Scottish-descended laddie with whom she began a long and pretty ineffectual romance. Fed-up with the whole thing, she told me before she came out that she had just one wish: that we could return to St. Patrick's and light a different candle to a different saint in the hopes that maybe someone else could get the job done a little better.

I made a video diary of our quest, but unfortunately, the audio appears to be screwed up on a few of the files. I am working on the problem and as soon as I can post all of them, I will. Until then, here are the working ones:













In the end, we spent six dollars (St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes got two dollars) and lit five candles. Slease, I hope you get good one this time. :)

Music and memories

It feels like we're living in an unprecedented age of being able to revisit our youth through music we used to love. I had a few tapes as a kid, though most of my music tastes ran to the stuff my older brother and sister listened to when they were teenagers and I was impressionable and also desperate to impress. Of course, I used to say I loved '80's music, but I have to admit that I only loved a very narrow segment of it--i.e. whatever was in their tape decks.

At the same time, I had my own private music, stuff no one knew I liked, songs I listened to mostly alone as a kid (a lot of my childhood was spent hiding the things I liked for fear of ridicule or reprisal. My older siblings were--and are--pretty blunt in expressing their views and being the least mature in a lot of ways made my preferences easy targets). Not surprisingly, as an adolescent girl--even as my older brother was introducing me to Pink Floyd's The Wall--I really went for easy listening love songs of the Richard Marx's variety. I thought George Michael had the best voice and there were several Phil Collins songs on my private top ten list of GREATEST SONGS EVER. I didn't have the money to buy my own music and I didn't want to ask someone in my family to sport me the cash (ridicule thing again), so most of the time I listened to the radio fanatically in the hopes that every now and again I could catch a favorite and get it secondhand onto my own tape recorder.

Of course, I grew up, music changed, I changed, old tapes got lost, new ones got made (some even from boyfriends) and I forgot--unintentionally or deliberately--a lot of those private songs that seemed to have so much meaning to me only a few short years ago. In college, I acquired a whole new host of music tastes, mostly through the music collection of my roommate (having never bought music, I just wasn't in the habit and I couldn't stand to waste money on an album before I had heard it through completely and knew I would actually like it). Lots of angry women and their guitars, mostly. Then again, there were still the private songs, a list of which I was starting to keep on my lab computer (I ran a computer lab in the basement of the science building and had staked out a private computer for myself). In the early days of file sharing and mp3's, people on our local network were making music compilations and sharing them over their Apples. My friend Rachel and I spent a lot of late nights in that lab, playing music and doing roley-chair ballet.

Well, I'm an adult now and my CD collection is still pretty lacking (I hate to buy CD's. I really really do). My music collection on the other hand has exploded out, thanks to iTunes (I did a bit of the "free" music sharing back in the day when that was the only option, but you get tired of the sneaking, the bad recordings, the unreliability of downloads and all that). Like I said, you lose old tapes, and then later, old CD's, and you forget. There is a wake of old songs behind us, a musical coming of age history and until now, it was primarily lost, even to us. But just today, I downloaded Savage Garden's To the Moon and Back, a pretty silly song with too much synthesizer and yet listening to it over again, I was back in the computer lab, dancing around with Rachel and the roley-chairs. Here is my history, for 99 cents a piece at a time. Some things I downloaded and eventually erased again--like Billy Joel who was a big part of my childhood, but whose music just hasn't translated well into my current tastes and most of Ani DiFranco who is a very talented songwriter, but I left angry feminist angst at Bryn Mawr. Other songs, however, are wriggling back into my collection, if for no other reason than I like to remember being a little girl, sitting on the edge of my bed with a tape recorder, waiting, just waiting for that song to come on the radio. Yeah, I bought Richard Marx's Hold Onto the Nights. Just because romance didn't turn out to be what I thought it was, doesn't mean I can't remember, and enjoy, my old romanticized version of it.

I love finding my musical past on iTunes. Here's one of the ways I'm finding my musical future: http://www.pandora.com/