Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Mishpucha (mi familia)
Tonight
Dinner party at the boss’s place. Have I mentioned lately how very, very nice it is to feel wanted?
Okay, I need to add for all of my Crescent City readers: YES, y’all made me feel wanted. That’s NOT what I meant. I was thinking about those job interviews up in Washington, where I got anything but the vibe that I was wanted and needed.
The boss has an awesome place with what is very nearly the kitchen of my dreams. Huge granite island and beautiful granite counter tops, two ovens, Wolf range, lots of cabinet space. I could do a lot in a kitchen like that.
Nice people, too. I dislike parties (being the kind of person who hangs everything out in a blog, but at parties, I tend to feel like I’m outside the stream) but this wasn’t so bad. Karen’s the same way, and she did well, too. Even Jake liked it, owing in large part to the fact that my boss showed him the computer and let him use it all night long.
The wife of my partner (from the Santa Rosa office) asked Jake what he would be if he could be anything at all. “God,” Jake said. “No,” she said, “you can’t choose that.” But Jake was undaunted. “A demigod,” he said.
Finally she realized what Karen and I have known since Jake first spoke — you have to use language with great precision around this kid. “What career would you choose — and it can’t be anything godlike.”
“I don’t know.”
“What if you had to decide right now, right this instant?”
Jake said, “It’s too important a decision to decide in a minute.”
This blew her away, I guess because she saw it as a sign of great maturity. I, however, know otherwise. I figure he was tired of this conversation and saw this reply as the most expeditious way of bringing it to a close.
(Jake claims he was just speaking the truth. YEAH, RIGHT, KIDDO. I’m YOUR DAD. I KNOW BETTER.)
D.
Morning conversation
Jake is shadowing a 10th Grader today. Right about now, he’s walking from his Period 1 to his Period 2 class.
He wore his little kid shorts and Cal tee shirt. While he was eating his breakfast (ten pepperoni-and-cheese Bagel Bites) . . .
Me: You may get swarmed by a bunch of teenage girls saying, “OOOOOOH! How CUUUUTE!” My advice?
Jake: What?
Me: Enjoy it.
Jake: That is so demeaning.
***
When I stepped out the front door, I cried, “Damn! It smells like I have my head up a horse’s ass!”
He wouldn’t stop laughing and he wouldn’t leave the house until he did stop laughing. He wanted to hold his breath and race out to the car. You know how hard it is to stop laughing when you consciously try to do so?
We still made it to school on time.
But the car interior smelled like a horse’s colon, too.
D.
PS: In the future, we’ll all stay regular with prunes. Ray Bradbury said so. (Hat tip to Lyvvie.)
Why it’s a good idea to clean the office once per decade
Look what I found! Is this a great photo, or what?
The date on this is December, 2000. Jake is five years old, and we’re at the Newport Aquarium (Newport, Oregon — a terrific aquarium, by the way). Note Wild Things tee-shirt and cute kid.
Sorry it’s crooked. I’m feeling too tired and lazy to futz with cropping.
D.
1000 pounds
That’s how much garbage I dumped this morning.
I am happy to report that our U-Haul truck came through unscathed.
Our housekeeper suggested we rent a big dumpster and do it that way. Doh! Why didn’t I think of that? Admittedly, we had way too much junk to fit into a single dumpster, but we have time to load and unload a few dumpster-fulls.
***
Some commercial flashed on a moment ago, something about a product that helps you control your child.
“. . . WHICH WE DESPERATELY NEED!” Karen said.
“You do,” said Jake, and I said, “No we don’t, we have you under perfect control.”
“You do not.”
I pointed at his computer. “Every day, you’re right there in front of the computer . . . which is just where we want you.”
Cue evil laugh.
***
Live-blogging tonight — I’ll shoot for 8 PM at the latest.
Tammy, I found you a great little housewarming gift. It’s not tacky kitsch, as I had hoped. It’s actually kind of nice. Don’t tell anyone — I have a rep to preserve.
D.
Blowin’ Shit Up Day
Here in America we celebrate the birth of our nation by settin’ shit on fire and blowin’ shit up. I’m always tempted to get a bunch of $1s and $5s and set them all ablaze, but Jake likes the glittery stuff. None of us like the screamers so we always ask about that. Nevertheless, every year they sell us at least one screamer. I’m tempted to take the burnt-out husk back to the tent the next day and ask for my money back. Jake could drip a little red food coloring into his ear canals and let it run out onto his neck. I’d say, “You said this wouldn’t scream.” Then I’d point to his bloody ears. “Now look what you’ve done.”
Really, though, we do a damn fine job of (nearly) setting ourselves ablaze every year. Safe and sane is for pussies. Jake likes to put a bunch of ground blooms together on the ground, their fuses all pointing inward. That way, he can light one or two and get them all spinning at once. We also like to save fireworks from year to year, because old fireworks carries that cachet of unpredictability. Will it be a dud? Will it explode?
Ground blooms fly this way and that. One of them flew under our rented U-Haul (I’m dumping eight years worth of accumulated junk this weekend) and I had visions of the beast turning into its very own red-and-white ground bloom. Would our insurance cover that? As it is, they had our names on their blacklist from the last time we rented. Blow up a truck and I’m sure that earns you a spot on their Double Secret Blacklist.
After we shot off our Big Mama Grand Finale firework — and you know, don’t you, that they’re never as much fun as the medium-priced fountains — we did some more ground blooms and then we got tired of it all and threw a huge brick of 48 ground blooms into the burn barrel (which by now was blazing pretty good). You’d think 48 ground blooms would do something cool like make the burn barrel explode, lacerating our colons and spleens with rusty burn barrel shrapnel, wouldn’t you? Sadly no. The 48 ground bloom super-brick merely smoked and flamed and pissed itself into ashen oblivion.
I was a kid back when they didn’t have fire-safe pajamas. I remember how sparklers would sometimes leave little black spots on my jammies, places where the micro-fireballs would try to take hold but never managed to gain any momentum. I suppose they could have doused me with lighter fluid first, but then it would have been harder to make it look like an accident. Anyway, I disliked sparklers. The sparks hurt. I guess I was a sensitive child.
Back then, I liked fountains best. I can’t recall when I first saw “real” fireworks, up-in-the-sky fireworks, but it must have been at Disneyland, where every evening is the Fourth of July. That’s been my favorite form of July 4th entertainment ever since. Last year, we spent the Fourth with protected static and his family. They live close to a show — and what a show. Those Seattleanianites sure know how to blow shit up.
Roman Candles are back. They don’t call them Roman Candles, but the idea is the same: it’s a fountain you can hold. I vetoed that idea. And do you remember pinwheels? They had another name which escapes me. Saint something, or maybe it was named after a queen. Why did they take those off the market?
A few years ago, one of the locals was showing off to his friends — he’d been a demolitions expert in Nam (or maybe the first Iraq War) and so he thought he knew shit about blowing shit up. And he did, too — he blew a few fingers off really well.
But I guess it’s too late to give you a cautionary tale. I hope you all had a safe Fourth. We did, but it wasn’t for want of trying.
D.
Of bubbas and pain
I wheeled my cart back to my car and watched a three- or four-year-old Mustang pull into a handicapped space. The placard went up, and then two apparently able-bodied people got out and walked without effort to the grocery store. No chair, no walker, no cane. No limp.
When we lived in Texas, it seemed like a month couldn’t go by that some bubba would stop me as I got out of our car and observe, “You ain’t handicapped.” The first one or two times, I would say (in my least friendly voice), “No, but my wife is,” and watch them furrow their brows at Karen. I suspect many of them would have liked to extricate themselves from their embarrassment by saying, “She ain’t that handicapped,” but even though she “only” uses a cane, it’s obvious to anyone with eyes that Karen doesn’t have an easy time of it.
Did we ever lecture these busybody bubbas? We might have. It’s hard not to be at least a little angry over the unfairness of being young and disabled, and if a target for that anger presents its mulish ugly puss, why not take the opportunity to vent? But it does no good. The bubbas don’t learn and we’re no less unhappy than we were before.
I would never dream of bitching someone out for parking in a handicapped space, provided he had a placard, no matter how able-bodied that person looked. I can control my inner bubba. I can do that because I understand something about disability: it doesn’t always show up in a person’s gait. Some of these people are in severe pain, and not all of them limp. Sure, there are a lot of limpdicks out there with placards they don’t deserve; maybe their mom or grandmother died or had an extra, or maybe they had an injury which has long since healed. But I can’t know that. Ultimately, it’s none of my business.
***
Wasn’t it Karen’s brother who looked at our placard and said, “Gee, I wish I had one of those”? Or maybe it was my brother. Or both of them. Anyway, there’s only one reasonable response to a dimwitted comment like that: “No. You don’t.”
I have a fading memory of someone’s spouse getting all wide-eyed, saying, “Gee, honey, he’s right!”
No duh.
***
My philosophy on this? It’s better to let the limpdicks slide than to add to the troubles of the folks who already have a pile of crap on their shoulders. The limpdicks are their own punishment. I used to have the same philosophy when it came to prescribing pain meds: better that a few drug-seekers should get their fix than for me to under-treat someone who really needed his pain meds. That was before the Feds started busting docs for over-prescribing. Yes, I can go to jail for doing my job. Isn’t medicine in the USA wonderful?
***
Nah, I don’t know where I’m going with this. Life’s unfair. Bubbas are assholes. Not exactly a news flash, is it?
Live blogging tonight, probably after 8 PST. See ya.
D.
Geography question
I’m afraid we’re still very much in open-minded job search mode. With that in mind, Karen just asked me a question I can’t answer.
Perhaps some of you know the answer.
Aside from the Pacific Northwest, are there any other areas of the country which have good weather?
Here are our requirements:
- Summers should have highs averaging no higher than 80F. Occasional spikes are fine.
- We could tolerate snow in the winter, but please, no arctic climates. Much below 20F and I think we’ll be very, very unhappy.
- For Karen’s health, Jake’s education, and my mental well being, we need to be near a major metropolitan center.
We may yet choose one of the standing offers (in case you administrator types are lurking out there). But you see, we’ve rushed into things before, and as we get older and wiser we get more deliberative, too.
That’s all for tonight. My mind is still humming from travel, from the job search, from the vicissitudes of this, that, and the other thing. I’m tired.
D.
Mo pix
We saw a cute bird over near Pike’s Market. Me, I don’t know birds. I can distinguish crows from herons, vultures from pigeons, and that’s about it. To me, anything small and brown like this is a sparrow. If anyone wishes to correct me, go right ahead.
During lunch, we had an entertaining view.
More photos below the fold.