Pixelpost

pretty pretty

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:37 -0700

There are no words.

Blessed

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 18:55 -0700

Hey Elle,

Good job today, little one. Way to not scream through the blessing at church. I mean, that was one big audience you had to confront. If it were me, I'd have wailed at having nine semi-random dudes bob me up and down in front of a crowd for sport. And kudos for snuggling with me through some of the meeting instead of crying for mama like usual. If you remind me, I might just extend your curfew past 6:30 when you're eighteen for that.

Girl, you got passed around a lot. To people that - and you're just going to have to take my word for it - are related to you. By and large, you smiled at them or just plain didn't scream at them, and that sure did make them feel good. Thanks.

Also, good work on pooping through your dress. I'm glad you feel the same way about dressing up all fancy like that I do. (You saw how fast my suit coat came off, right?) 'Course, I don't have the same recourse you do so live that one up while you can.

I love you, little girl.

Papa

The Duck Trilogy

Wed, 28 May 2008 19:30 -0700

How do you spend a day off in the middle of the week? Why, you take your kid to feed the ducks, of course. And not just ducks, but über-menacing geese, too. Geese that defecate everywhere and treat you like the stereotypical goombahs of television when you either a) get too close or b) aren't liberal enough with the goods. Yeah, those kinds of geese. I pity the ducks, really.

And do you feed them bread? No no, silly. You feed them old Chex cereal that is only good for coating in sugar and then more sugar. But alas, your sister-in-law isn't here to properly coat this old cereal in the proper dosing of confection. Therefore, or ipso facto if you will, the stuff has to go, as it were, to the birds.

At any rate, here are three rather large shots of Amber enjoying the day. Enjoy.

Bowling

Sun, 25 May 2008 20:04 -0700

Christina thought we should go bowling as a family yesterday. You know that old adage, right? The family that bowls together, yada yada. So bowling we went. Sure, I'll have to work a second job to pay off the alley bill - but who cares.

As you can see, Amber loved it, though the trip the ball took to get to the pins was too long to capture her attention. Her favorite part was actually semi-holding the ball as it was carried to the lane; pushing it down the lane was a distant second.

Bongos

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 20:57 -0700

Did you know there was an old GameCube game that was basically like Guitar Hero but with bongos instead? Me neither. But Amber didn't care either way; girl had fun bashing those toy drums. And she gave Gavin a run for his money, too.

(and yes, I'll be the first to admit that the nerd phone's camera sucks so no need to point that out in the comments, m'kay?)

Girls and Breakfast

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 20:49 -0700

As in, "the ladies and I went out to breakfast this morning." Not, "I ate the ladies for breakfast this morning."

That would just be weird. And wrong.

What is wrong with you people?

Car Show

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:08 -0700

Fuzzy dice? Really? Who thought that was a good idea?

Pot and Hose

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:31 -0700

When I was 14 years old, my parents let me go on a summer canoe trip into Canada's Algonquin Provincial Park. Just getting to go on this trip was an adventure; I had to call in my "baby of the family" status to overcome the fact that neither of my parents were going to act as chaperons on this none-too-little adventure. That, and my parents had concerns that Mr. Smith* -the eighth grade science teacher -was just taking us across the border to "make child pornography films" with us. (Hand to heaven, it's true. You just had to be there to see his face when that question was posed - classic.)

But get to go I did. Using just brawn, our little band of teens canoed and portaged and traversed our way days into the barely tread wilderness of interior Canada for over two weeks.

Right about now, you're saying to yourself: "Whoopee-frickin'-do, J. This is a picture of a pot and a hose on some random loading dock. What does this have to do with Canada?" If you'd be just a little more patient, I'll tell you. I'm not just some Tivo'd show you can bleep-bloop your way through, you know.

Sometime in the latter half of this wild sojourn, we found a particularly nice camping site. It had taken a grueling day and a half of portaging and sweating and swearing to reach this site (where one diabetic member of our crew's blood sugar reached near-teen levels) so we holed up there for a few days to enjoy the spoils of our labor and to recoup.

One of the features of this location was that our campsite was situated with a 20 - 25 foot cliff overlooking the lake. Mr. Smith dutifully swam the area under the cliff, diving as deep as he could to find the bottom. After failing to find anything that could potentially kill us (he assured us he'd been down no less than 20 feet without touching even a fish), he declared open season on cliff diving.

One thing this group of 14 year-olds had was bravado. Sure, we all said we'd jump off the cliff. But given the green light to do so suddenly brought an onslaught of chores and naps and interest in drawing on the local fungi. Bravado gone; no one would jump.

I'm not saying I'm generally a brave person, and I usually try for some (minor) modicum of humility. I'm not saying I jumped with any kind of skill, flair, timeliness, or particular panache, either. But dammit, I'm glad to say that jump first I did.

I chose to celebrate this in a manner that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike discrete. I emerged from the water screaming bloody murder. Then I swam to shore screaming bloody murder. Then I ran through camp, well, screaming bloody murder.

But this wasn't doing the trick -I simply wasn't getting the attaboys I knew I deserved.

So I grabbed a big empty pot, much like you see up there on your screen. I put it over my head and proceeded to run around camp banging the pot all the while screaming "I'm on pot! I'm on pot!" over and over again.

When I see an old busted pot like this sitting out, I think of two very different things:

I fondly contemplate on the wilds of Canada and all the fun and adventure I had on that trip, and
I wonder who in their right mind would take a bunch of 14 year-old's into the completely cutoff wilds of Canada. Not me, certainly. Not me.

*yup, that's his real name.

You've Got Permanence

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:00 -0700

When I first moved here years ago, one of the first things I did was to get a post office box. I couldn't commit to a single address, but I would commit to the town for at least six months at a time.

Here I am eight years later and it looks like I'll never get out. And despite the fact that I own a home now and have been in it for more than three years, I refuse to give up the PO box. In some small way, not renewing it would signify that I'll never escape this clime.

$43 every six months is a small price to pay for perceived freedom.

Red

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 10:39 -0700

Aww, now poor number 21 is going to feel so inferior.