Radio Free BannGerald

Stuff we need to blog about

2012-01-11T13:13:00.002-07:00

Not that our lives are that much more interesting than yours, but we probably need to put some information up here to, you know, help us remember in years to come.

1. We have three full grown, laying hens again. We lost two, tragically, just before moving into the new house. We really ought to get pictures of them up here. You simply would not believe the size of Boxy, the barred rock. I'm also happy to say that Veronica, the americauna, did survive chick-hood, and the laying of her first egg: a traumatic affair. Audrey is still pretty and friendly, but her eggs are just awful compared to those of the younger hens. Still better than anything you get at the store, mind you.

2. Bryce has started school at a Montessori program only 3 blocks from our house! This accomplishes several things. First of all, we no longer have to drive all the way to the North Valley of Albuquerque to take him to school and pick him up at the end of the day. He's also in school for a shorter time period every day - 9 to 2 rather than 8 to 5. I think that it's better for his psyche. He has made the transition with ease, and he loves his new school. We're having to figure out how to address his "spiritual education," though, as the school is part of the Lutheran church. Neither of us is Lutheran, so it's an interesting challenge when the kid comes home letting us know that God is a "big man who is magic and made the world with his magic wand."

3. Ty is a writing machine. I don't mean that he's a word processor or a typewriter, but that he is diligent and productive, despite having two kids at home now.

4. I remain employed! ...but for how long? I have funding on a contract through the State department of health through June. After that, who knows? Hopefully one or two grants will come through and I'll be secure until next June (2013) when my contract goes back into full-time status.

Other than that, I knitted a kick-ass stocking for Ty. I'll try to get a picture of that up for posterity. And we survived the holidays again this year, though it was a close call there around hour two of Bryce's present-opening extravaganza. The baby continues to grow and so does the boy. The dogs continue to be a nuisance.

Life is good.

Stuff Bronwyn does at 6 months

2012-01-11T13:11:00.001-07:00

She likes to scream loudly when she’s not happy with her current situation. We try to ignore this.

She enjoys grabbing her feet and sucking on her toes during diaper changes.

She likes to grab and pull my hair. It makes her laugh hysterically.

She will eat a little bit of solid food, but she exhales/blows out as soon as the food is in her mouth. I wear a lot of it.

She will watch, and laugh at, Bryce any chance she gets.

She enjoys riding in her stroller on walks with Papa to take Bryce to school.

She likes Sharka. She will grab her fur whenever she gets a chance, and giggles when Sharka snuffles her.

She flirts with strangers at restaurants/coffee shops/etc.

She kicky-kicky-kicks her legs when she’s really happy or excited, and sometimes she buries her face in her papa’s chest when she gets just way too happy.

She has a tooth on the bottom left, and enjoys chewing on anything she can get into her mouth. She would LOVE to get hold of the newspaper but has thus far been thwarted in her every attempt. She did nearly eat a receipt I didn’t catch until it was almost too late.

5-K RUN

2011-10-31T13:05:00.002-06:00

I DID IT!

I ran the 5K race at the 2011 Duke City Marathon. I ran the whole time. My time SUCKED!! It took me 40 minutes. But that doesn't matter because my goal was to run the whole race and not walk, and I DID IT... in 40.00 minutes. I could have run faster and walked a bit, but I wanted to run. And I did! FOR 40.00 MINUTES.

I would post my finisher's picture here for you to admire, but it's $39 to download your finisher's picture. Ridiculous. The Duke City Marathon benefits the New Mexico Cancer Center, but the photo purchase benefits only the photo company.

I imagine they make a killing on this sort of thing.

I came in 716th place overall out of 852 runners in the 5K, and 44th out of 56 in my age group for females.

I want to do another one...

This Little PIggy

2011-09-24T11:17:00.001-06:00

5-K

2011-09-18T15:59:00.002-06:00

I signed up for the Duke City Marathon 5-K race. I don't think that I'll actually be "racing" so much as "hoping that I can run the whole time, and finish."

I started this week with walk/runs for 25 minutes, taking Bryce in the jogging stroller. Downloaded a nifty little app (free!) to use on the iPod. It basically just shouts out when to walk and when to run, and it will gradually up the running time and lower the walking time until I'm running the whole time. It feels so good! The only challenge is, of course, finding time to go do it. There's no way I can get myself out of bed before 6:30 a.m., so running on weekdays gets tricky.

This, and Ty and I finally hooked up the kid-trailer to the bicycle. Bryce enjoyed his ride and Ty felt pretty good afterward too!

Bronwyn chats

2011-09-18T15:28:00.002-06:00

Bryce as a horse

2011-09-13T14:39:00.002-06:00

Click to see Bryce as a horse! It may be a little early for Halloween...

Is it a little early for Halloween crafts?

2011-09-04T20:51:00.003-06:00

Bronwyn in the bouncy-chair

2011-09-01T16:56:00.002-06:00

L & D

2011-09-01T16:48:00.002-06:00

I had to go to OB triage the other day because I was incredibly ill with whatever horrible virus has been circulating, and I just needed to see a doctor (or, in this case, a nurse midwife - just as good, if not better). All the rooms were full, so I had to wait in the waiting area, which is between OB triage and the Labor & Delivery unit - L&D.

I watched all the people in the waiting room, they were there waiting for new grandchildren or brothers, or sisters, or nieces, nephews, etc. They were patient and happy. One older gentleman and his wife looked a bit concerned. I saw them wheel a woman and her brand new bundle out of L&D to the elevator that takes you down to the Mother/Baby unit. She looked exhausted and happy.

I started to feel sad that I'm not going to ever go into an L&D unit again as a patient. Sad, and at the same time, totally relieved. But still there was a sadness I can't deny. I did like being pregnant for 6 of the 10 months, but I am also really happy to be not pregnant. So much ambivalence!

So the child-bearing part of my life is done, and I'm working for the next 20-odd years on the child-rearing part.

Bronwyn, hungry

2011-08-27T13:34:00.003-06:00

My little girl

2011-08-27T13:29:00.002-06:00

Stuff Bronwyn does at 6 weeks:
1. She smiles a lot - though not always at what we might consider "appropriate" times. Her favorite thing to smile at is a picture of me and baby Bryce hanging over her changing table. She also loves to smile at Mimi and Nonny.
2. She sleeps a LOT - still. I forget that infants kind of ease you into raising a kid. They spend their first couple of months just sleeping and eating, with occasional wakeful periods.
3. She coos! Baby coos are the cutest sounds.
4. She hollers. She doesn't really cry... she kind of shouts.
5. She "plays" with toys. She has started to notice the stuff dangling over her changing table, bouncy, chair, and swing. She takes swipes at them with her hand, her mouth wide open in concentration. She kicks her feet when she actually makes contact!

I love Bronwyn...

2011-08-25T16:36:00.002-06:00

...and she is starting to notice me!!!!

Holy cow, is it ever hot!

2011-07-18T16:44:00.002-06:00

Today, it's 102 degrees in Albuquerque. Inside our house, it is currently 85. This is, indeed, 17 degrees cooler than outside, but my god, my god it is hot.

And here I am with this 2 day old baby who wants to be right up against me, skin to skin, and I can't take it and it looks like she can't either, given how red and blotchy she gets after just a few minutes.

We're closing on our house on Thursday and take possession on Friday. The new house has a new swamp cooler. We'll try sleeping there on Friday.

Anyone got a pick up truck?

New pictures of Bronwyn Rose

2011-07-17T15:12:00.001-06:00

As promised, some better pictures of Bronwyn and the run up to her birth can be seen at our Picasa album. Just click the photo above!

Presenting Bronwyn Rose Bannerman

2011-07-16T22:31:00.005-06:00

Artificial membrane rupture (crochet needle to the amniotic sac: pop.) No pitocin during labor. 10 hours of significant labor. Epidural in the last two hours. Vaginal birth. I caught her and cut the chord. ~~With my teeth.~~ With an appropriate medical implement.

8lbs 5oz. 20 and 1/4 inches long. Long black hair. Alert, good disposition. Beautiful and clearly a genius.

Better pictures tomorrow. The good camera is out of batteries and can't upload; she's hungry and we're tired.

Epidurals are kind of awesome

2011-07-16T17:43:00.002-06:00

That may be a controversial a statement, and maybe for good reason, but when the white knuckles and clenched teeth give way to a serene nap, I just can't help but reflect positively on the wonders of modern science.

The contractions, obviously, reached a high level of intensity about an hour ago, and Courtney grimaced her way through them until she decided to say "screw it" and call for the comfort men. All went well, and continues to go well.

Sometime soon?

Contractions!

2011-07-16T13:07:00.003-06:00

Hard, slightly painful contractions coming at about 3 minutes apart!

Passing the time

2011-07-16T11:57:00.001-06:00

A few hours after the water break, Courtney bounces on the ball and feels something.

For real this time

2011-07-16T08:48:00.002-06:00

Suited up, brought the computer, the iPad, the camera... but forgot the camera cable, so I'm afraid you're just going to have to visualize Courtney in her pink gown, reclining in the wood paneled birth room, monitor sensors affixed to her bulging, rippling belly.

Sometime in the next few minutes, the midwife will flutter in and break the water (we swear!) and give Bronwyn her notice that the time has come to vacate the premises.

Will update!

Fog of war

2011-07-15T19:13:00.003-06:00

Well, it turns out that pregnant ladies sometimes think their water breaks when it doesn't. After about half a day of waaaaiting for something else to happen and getting nothing but some very low-grade (but noticeable!) contractions, we went to the hospital to see WTF, man. A bit of poking and prodding and a few tests later the midwife determined that no, it hadn't really happened after all.

How could such a mistake have been made, you ask? My answer is simply "fog of war", as anything else would be TMI, which probably still exists somewhere out there beyond the boundaries of pregnant land (or so I've heard it rumored.)

Anyway, so other than the aforementioned low-grade contractions, not much is going on, and here we sit, 10 days after the due date. Tomorrow, then, we will go back to the hospital and magic Dympna the midwife will start to... um... nudge things along with a series of increasingly serious intervention techniques.

Unless, you know, a certain infant girl would like to surprise us all with an earlier appearance? HINT HINT

Something else broke.

2011-07-14T17:33:00.002-06:00

Postponed

2011-07-14T08:00:00.004-06:00

WAIT! The situation is developing... Turns out that there is now an induction slot open on Saturday, which was the day we wanted originally anyway, mostly because our midwife is on schedule then. And if you're going to submit to medical inducement of unknown complication and length, you may as well do so with the assistance of an English cunning woman with a Blue Peter demeanor and Christopher Eccleston's accent. Also, it will give kiddo another couple days to shake herself loose.

So now we are sitting at a table outside the Pete Dominici Building, drinking coffee and eating donuts while we wait for a "non-stress test" to determine Bronwyn's current health.

And then the fridge broke...

2011-07-14T05:47:00.001-06:00

It's been a hell of a week.

Induction tomorrow

2011-07-13T21:17:00.002-06:00

Tomorrow, the midwives will break my water with a crochet hook (sort of) and then time me to see if I have contractions. If I don't I'm going with epidural + pitocin. Epidural + pitocin worked beautifully for me with Bryce, after 20+ hours of trying to do it myself.

Going in at 7:30 a.m. Feeling a little anxious about it all, but it's also really good to know that there is a foreseeable end to this pregnancy! Besides, I have wasted a lot of days of my leave time.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2011-07-12T20:51:00.002-06:00

Had an excellent birthday today! Started out with a long walk through the zoo with Bryce and Ty. I really like the Albuquerque zoo - but of course I had an ulterior motive... shaking this baby down was definitely on my mind. Bryce was freaked out by the spider monkeys, but he really enjoyed the parrots today. He also was REALLY into the crocodiles. He was also a little unnerved by the duck following him around, wanting to be fed. Poor kid has PTSD from his own chickens, I guess. When we got home, I had a lovely nap.

Had a little lunch, then off to my birthday midwife appointment! Dympna asked me whether we wanted to go ahead and schedule induction. I asked a lot of questions about how it would go, and she figures the best option is to artificially break my water, then give me some time to hike around the hospital and see if we have any progress. Then, I'd opt for epidural + pitocin if nothing happened. We talked about what the most current research indicates for outcomes with labor induction. Apparently, it increases risk for emergency C-section for only 15% of women whose cervix is not favorable. OH! Well, mine is apparently favorable, so sounds like decent odds. She then stripped my membranes - a charming procedure that I won't describe in detail today.

Back home, mom and I took Bryce for a tricycle ride around the block - in 98 degree weather. He did a great job! Mom only had to push him about half the time. When we got home, I had a lovely nap.

Had dinner with mom and Julie at St. Clair Winery, and it was great. Lemon meringue pie at home after, and I probably don't need to spell out my wish.

Right now, I am having braxton hicks contractions, I think. Everything's getting all tight and hard every 15 minutes or so. Also feeling crampy in a way that reminds me of the very earliest part of labor with Bryce. We'll see... certainly, this kid and I will not share a birthday, but hopefully she's coming soon.

Waiting, still.

2011-07-11T11:50:00.000-06:00

No baby yet! She is quite comfortable, apparently.

Back at work today.

At work

2011-07-08T12:55:00.002-06:00

Well, I am back at work today, because really - why not?

There's no indication that this baby will EVER be born. I have already cleaned the house and all of her clothes and receiving blankets. My bag for the hospital is all packed and has been for over a week. I even organized all the baby clothes into piles: 0-3 months, 3-6 months, 6+ months. The diapers are loaded and ready, and the diaper champ pail is in its designated location ready to receive the inevitable.

I know that she WILL be born, I just can't stand not knowing when. I used up 3 days of my leave to get the house ready, and that was good. Now if I stay home I'll just be sitting around waiting (and probably driving Ty nuts), and that's not productive. So, here I am at work today trying to get some manuscripts up to scratch, pounding out a conference proposal abstract, and... well... sitting around waiting. But hey! At least it's air-conditioned in this building. It's been getting up to 83 degrees in the house every day from 3:00 until about 7:00. Misery for a huge pregnant woman.

Really, Bronwyn, you can come any time. I want to get a look at you, love.

These entries will all be entitled "Waiting"

2011-07-06T16:46:00.003-06:00

Because that's all that we're doing. It's like life has stopped. Courtney is off work and more or less paces the house with a weary look in her eye. I spend way too much time on the computer, sometimes working, sometimes "working", but really, all we are doing is waiting.

Waiting means that we have more time to consider this coming child than we seem to have had the whole pregnancy, distracted as we normally are by Bryce and work and school. Unfortunately, that mainly means we have time to whip up anxieties and full blown fears, pausing from time to time to take a few breaths and realize that everything will probably be fine, but what if...? And back to the breathing.

This heat is ridiculous and really not helping. I suppose that when we get tired of waiting for a baby we can start waiting for rain instead, and then when that gets old we can try waiting for the closing on our new house. It's a sweltering sort of limbo.

Good lord, are there people out there actually living their lives? Getting things done? Could that be possible? Please tell me what it's like.

Impendingness

2011-07-05T17:48:00.003-06:00

It's a hot, hot day in July and Courtney is due tomorrow. Of course, that doesn't mean a darned thing about when the baby is actually *coming*, but July 6th has a symbolic importance. It means that shit is about to get real.

And this baby, Bronwyn, she's ready. I see the ripples moving across Courtney's belly and I can't help but think that she's going to arrive not only walking and talking but also ready lead to a world wide revolution. Consider this fair warning: the kid's going to be trouble.

In the meantime, yes, it's so goddamned hot and the whole state seems to be bursting into flame every time I turn around. This is an antagonistic summer, no doubt, one that leaves you no choice but to hunker down in place and wait for it to swelter itself red and bursting until the fabled monsoon season sees fit to send a rain shower or two. But no, as of yet, only heat and fire and smoke and waiting waiting waiting...

Introduction to Sewing

2011-07-05T17:00:00.003-06:00

I took a sewing class through the University of New Mexico Continuing Education program. Unfortunately, they've decided that this will be the last year employees can use their tuition remission to cover "personal enrichment" classes, so it was my last chance to take the class for free. I made a single-strap, drawstring bag with a front pocket and inner zipper pouch. It turned out pretty well! I selected a really loud fabric to hide my less-than-perfect stitching. Hey! First thing I make - it's functional and pretty neat! I learned to make button holes, sew in a zipper, use fusible interface, and do binding. Behold! My creation!

Courtney and Bronwyn

2011-06-30T19:39:00.003-06:00

Here is a picture of me and Bronwyn Rose. Hopefully, there won't be many (any) more opportunities for full-on belly pictures before the big event. Everyone think positive thoughts. About evacuations, expulsions, etc.

Long, hot summer

2011-06-27T03:07:00.002-06:00

It's going to be a rough summer. We haven't had any rain for a couple of months. This month we've had absolutely 0.0 inches of rain - average is about 1 inch. The "monsoons" don't seem to be coming any time in the foreseeable future. It's hot. We've had 100+ degree temperatures for the past few days, with no relief in sight.

And we're on fire.

Today as we drove up to Santa Fe for a belated Bernice birthday lunch at Harry's, we saw a plume of smoke from the Pacheco fire in the Sangre de Cristo mountains. It was impressive. By the time we left Harry's there was a new, enormous plume of smoke rising from the Jemez mountains. I told Ty and Julie that it looked as if the Valles Caldera was erupting, the plume was so large and intense.

This is called the Las Conchas fire, and as I am writing this it's already burned about 6,000 acres and is growing. It's about a mile outside the boundaries of Los Alamos National Labs, and they're closed tomorrow as a result.

Updates

2011-06-23T14:30:00.003-06:00

Here are some updates for June 23, 2011:

1. Bronwyn - The baby has not arrived. She is taking up the bulk of my midsection at this point, and I'm finding it difficult to sit, sleep, digest food, and breathe. She's due to arrive in a little under 2 weeks. I wonder whether it's even possible to make it that long. We have most of everything that we're going to need for her now - we've received so many wonderful presents from so many wonderful people. We have very kind and generous friends, for sure. In fact, I have a SECOND work baby shower scheduled for next Wednesday in the department of emergency medicine. There's a lot of love going on over here. Let's see if she says put until then.

2. House - Well, we have put an offer in on a house, had the back-and-forth and reached an agreed upon price with allowances and closing date. During the house inspection, we discovered that there are in fact termites in the house, and some damage in one of the rooms from them. The house needs to be treated, and the damage repaired. The current owners of the house do not want to do any repairs above and beyond the $1,000 allowance they (begrudgingly) agreed to in the first place. Thing is, the termite treatment (not really a repair so much as a treatment) is going to cost close to $750.00. They hadn't anticipated this I guess, and they don't really want to do more than $250 in other repairs. The other things we're requesting are things like bringing the electric box up to code, the line from the city up to code, the outlets in the kitchen and bathrooms up to code, and to fix some plumbing problems. These are things that will cause them to have difficulty selling the house to ANYone - we're not just being extra picky. So, we responded to their refusal with a, "no, we really need to have these things fixed." We'll see what they do next.

3. Jobs - I am currently in employment limbo. the great news is that I have the opportunity to stay in the emergency medicine job now through November, so my pay is guaranteed not to go down at least until then. AND, my other fabulous boss at the PRC seems to value me as an employee and is considering posting a position at the pay rate I'm currently earning (the average between my two departments) so that I can just come over here full time and not lose any income. The only "problem" is that she'll have to post a new position and hire for it competitively. I can't believe my good luck at having two really kind bosses who seem to appreciate my work. It makes me want to work extra hard for them both. Who knew? So as far as employment limbo goes, I'm still in a pretty good position.

4. Us - We're all doing okay! The chicks have stopped trying to eat each other, and the hen seems to be okay with them now, too. They sleep at night in the hen house all together, but we keep the chicks in the chicken run during the day while Audrey gets the run of the yard. The dogs have a brand-new bark deterrent device in their run, and I swear it has reduced overall irritation in our household by at least 50%. Bryce is in school 3 days per week, and Ty is working on a piece for NPR. I plug away here at my two jobs and wait for Bronwyn to arrive. It's hot out. That's pretty much it! We hope all of you are doing super as well.

36 weeks pregnant...

2011-06-05T19:06:00.002-06:00

Wow, they're not kidding when they say that your organs literally become displaced by the growing fetus/expanding uterus. Check out the liver in this picture...

Overdoing it...

2011-05-30T20:22:00.003-06:00

Well, we officially have a lot going on.

Baby is due in 5 weeks. She has officially relocated all my internal organs and is working on expanding my pelvis. She evidently enjoys interior design. All the organ rearrangement is causing me a lot of pain in my back, my left side, and - well - my pelvis. We still need to get a car seat and a few more things for her before her arrival. Thankfully, as a result of the surprise baby shower I had at work, we're far more prepared than we were a week ago.

We put an offer in on a house, and it was accepted, and now we are in pending status. We're due to close on July 21st. This is good - the original counter-offer was for us to close on the 7th, the day after Bronwyn's due date. Still, it means a whole lotta crazy and not much sleep in July, and then having to move in the midst of it all. I'm a wee bit terrified. I'm sure it will all work out, and sometimes I actually wish I could get in there early and get a nursery ready.

My job in the emergency department ends in August. That's actually okay, as my fabulous other boss has offered me full-time employment working on her studies, and my emergency medicine boss has offered to help me find hospital social work employment to keep me in the ED. It's good to know that I'm appreciated and looked out for... only a little bit stressful to not know for sure what is going to happen.

Bryce has recently decided that he doesn't want to nap anymore. This leads to extended and heightened temper tantrums because he's constantly tired. It also means a more difficult and demanding bed-time routine, because he's over-tired by 8:00 and practically inconsolable.

Thanks to the guilty feelings we have about the untimely death of Bess, we got two more chicks to keep Audrey company. They were supposed to be pullets - pre-teen kind of chickens, but really, the dude sold us chicks. One of them is really small, and the bigger one has decided that she would really like to eat the small one. The bigger one constantly pecks the little one, who has lost about a third of her feather covering on her back and her shoulders. We've read that they sometimes actually will eat each other. So, we separate them and they both cry and cry and cry, because being babies they want to be among other chicks. Then we put them back together and the whole violent spectacle begins anew. Not sure whether to just "let nature take its course" or to make them both miserable by keeping them apart. I think I'm going to rig up a box with chicken wire on it to keep them separated, but make it possible for them to see each other. We'll see how that goes... assuming the big one doesn't kill the little one over night tonight. They've slept together two nights in a row so far without incident. It's when they're awake that they have problems.

Right now, I kind of want to go back in time 5 years and just stop at the one dog - no Tesuque, no kids, no chickens, no house. Too late now.

Surprise Baby shower

2011-05-26T14:40:00.003-06:00

So, it turns out my co-workers love me. Today, they threw me a surprise baby shower!

House Hunting - Day 3

2011-05-16T21:26:00.002-06:00

We saw something sad today. A cute little house that was almost completely trashed by the three dudes renting it. They were growing a little something interesting in one of their closets, too. Do they not think that prospective home buyer would, you know, look in the closets??

We saw a really neat house in a really nasty neighborhood. That was also pretty sad, because the asking price on that house was WELL within our means. We'd have been able to do some serious renovations to it, too.

We saw a house that is a real contender. It's in a GREAT neighborhood, and it has a very doable floor plan. There will need to be some work done - one wall between the kitchen and living room will need to be taken out, and one wall between the living room and what will become a master bedroom will need to be re-built. Otherwise, it's got a lovely view of Sandia from the front yard, and when we pulled up, a nice couple taking a walk stopped and said, "it's a great neighborhood, you'd really like living here!" That's always a plus.

The last house we saw today was awesome for sheer kitsch value. It was obviously decorated painstakingly in the 1970s, and it still looked catalogue-worthy... for 1972. Well-maintained and awesome. It even had big yellow tulip floral wallpaper in the kitchen. Loved it, but would need to renovate it, and it's priced at $200K.

So far, I've got one favorite from each day of house hunting. They range in price from "just-what-we-can-afford" to "probably-more-than-we-can-afford"

We talk to the loan lady tomorrow, so we'll see what she has to say about them.

House Hunting - Day Two

2011-05-14T20:50:00.003-06:00

On Friday, our realtor took us out again. We actually saw 6 more houses today, again in a two-hour time frame.

Gloria is a machine!

The houses ranged from oh-my-god in a good way to oh-my-god in the worst possible way. Imagine a little beat-up house, inhabited by college boys, bedecked by posters (including one of Michael Jackson with a panther), and furnished with futon mattresses and a Foosball table - with a city housing project across the street. We saw that house yesterday.

We also saw the most amazing, cozy, wonderful house in an incredible neighborhood. Sadly, it's about $20k outside the high end of our price range. Drag.

We also saw a house that has a lot of potential but needs a complete interior overhaul. There was a double oven that I swear was older than I am. It was pea-green, along with the dishwasher. The bathrooms were ancient and in a sad state. The crowning glory was an enormous brick fireplace with flagstone shelves scattered about here and there. The place could, in the right hands and with an additional $50k, be really impressive. Sadly, they are asking wayyyy too much for it. Plus, I wouldn't want to have to keep paying rent here while the contractors tear it up and rebuild it. Still, I gotta say I liked that house and found it intriguing. The sad thing is that it was obviously the former home of some little elderly person who probably passed away recently. Ty found it depressing, but I felt like someone really loved that house for many, many years. The yard was filled with roses.

So, day two down. Probably a third day of looking next week. Talking to the loan lady on Monday, too...

New House Hunting: Day 1

2011-05-05T20:36:00.003-06:00

Our realtor took us out today to look at houses. She had five to show us in one afternoon, and we saw them all in a two-hour span, even with Bryce in tow.

The first house was in an unexceptional neighborhood - perhaps a little too close to one of the busier streets in Albuquerque. When we got inside, the house was really lovely. There was a nice, open floor plan but only two bedrooms. The kitchen was great, and there was actually a garage (which, I suppose we could turn into a bedroom like everyone else in Albuquerque does). But the yard... my god the yard...

I've read "park-like setting" on descriptions of outdoor living spaces before, but I've never seen anything quite like this. There was a pond, a little acequia, a chicken house with a pen, and just about a full quarter-acre in the back.

The second house was in a gorgeous, stunning neighborhood, in the right school district, and had three full bedrooms. The yard was really nice with excellent shade trees. The only problem: no dining area. There was also a really sketchy garage - though it is detached. I think that we would have loved that house more had we not just been thoroughly wowed by the previous home's yard.

The next house we'd actually seen before. But the fourth house was like nothing I've ever seen.

As we pulled up, Ty pointed out a huge 1980s era RV parked in the driveway. He asked the realtor, "Have you ever seen Breaking Bad." She laughed and said, "I KNOW!" Well, turns out it wasn't too far from the truth. The place was littered with old furniture, the cabinets were falling apart, you could see the wood frame of the house in several places where the plaster was falling away from the walls, and there were some very creepy, dark stairs that we didn't end up venturing up. A shirtless man was in the house, evidently "fixing it up." Our realtor found this confusing since the house wasn't supposed to be occupied. Yeah, that place was a mess. So sad, too... you could tell it was once a very charming bungalow - and a rare thing in that particular neighborhood where most houses are the pueblo-style cinder block variety.

That was exhausting and pretty enlightening. Our realtor didn't seem wowed by any of the homes we saw. She told me to keep my eyes peeled because once school ends, a lot of homes evidently go on the market. Day one: down.

Bronwyn Rose

2011-04-28T14:45:00.003-06:00

The baby's name will be Bronwyn Rose Bannerman.

Unless she just absolutely doesn't look like a Bronwyn... then who knows what we'll call her.

I discovered the name Bronwyn in 2003, about six months before Ty and I got married. I was in an accident (documented in the Emergency Dept. as "bicycle vs. auto") on my bike en route to Kyle Zimmerman photography to see whether I wanted to hire her for my wedding photographer. Cars were passing on the left, I got over to the right. I remember thinking, "uh oh, car door," and then nothing. Though I was wearing a helmet, I still got knocked out. I lost my short-term memory for about an hour or so, as evidenced by transcripts from the ambulance ride - every fifteen minutes or so, I asked, "what happened?" I had a lovely gash on my face, just below my left eyebrow. A resident called Bronwyn Head sewed up my face while I stared at her name badge. Bronwyn. Wow, that is a really cool name. I bet nobody else you knew had that name, did they? No. ...and she was really beautiful and really smart and very kind. Bronwyn. The name stuck with me.

We're getting mixed responses to the name "Bronwyn." Our midwife, Dympna (obviously biased from having a very unusual name herself), adores that name. She thinks it's "just lovely" that she'll be the only Bronwyn and that's so special! My dad thought that the name was "beautiful... wow." Ty's mom likes it, and Bernice, who is never shy about sharing her opinion, has also given the name her stamp of approval.

My mom isn't convinced.

When we told her the name, she said, "Oh, that's interesting... Here are some other names you should consider..."

But her name will be Bronwyn. We're already calling her that. If you ask Bryce who is in mommy's tummy, he will tell you it's Bronwyn. He kisses her sometimes. He likes to play with her Haba teething ring, promising that he will give it to her when she is born.

She'll be here in 10 weeks or so.

Shameless Baby Registry Promotion!!

2011-04-14T21:20:00.001-06:00

Here is the link to our Amazon Baby Registry. I know, I know - technically you're not supposed to register for the 2nd one. But I figured - hey, just in case people want to get her some presents... right?

Baby BannGerald 2

2011-04-07T20:16:00.002-06:00

We had a follow up ultrasound to check up on the fetal pyelactasis. Baby's earlier measurement was 4.1mm on her right kidney, and they like to double check for anything over 4.0mm. Today, she had 3.0 on both kidneys! So, issue apparently resolved. Yay!

Here are two of the 3-D ultrasound photos.

Bryce on a hike

2011-04-06T21:20:00.003-06:00

During the last days of winter, we took a short walk at the Rio Grande Nature Center. Bryce enjoys "hiking."

Robert cooks!

2011-04-03T15:55:00.004-06:00

For Robert's birthday this year, we went out to have barbecue at Johndi's, which is the best stuff we've had since living in central Texas. We highly recommend it, if you happen to be in Albuquerque long enough to have eaten your fill of New Mexico cuisine, and you crave some meat.

The next night, we cooked in. This ended up being a LOT of fun, and (quite frankly) even better than what we'd had the night before at the restaurant.

Robert altered a recipe for Chicken-Parmesan Bundles on allrecipes.com. We used ricotta cheese, added sun-dried tomatoes, and grabbed some fresh oregano from the garden to give it more flavor than what's promised in the original recipe. The recipe calls for breading the chicken with ritz crackers, which is excellent because the butter in the crackers helps make the breading brown and wonderful. The result was FINE!!

End product, sliced, served over pasta with sauce and some zucchini. It was really, really good.

Pure Evil

2011-04-01T19:10:00.002-06:00

So, I don't know whether I have a cold, or just really REALLY bad allergies. In New Mexico, the most evil of all evil plants for allergy induction is the Juniper. Here he is in all his glory:

And god, it's been windy here. And dry.

Differences

2011-04-01T18:51:00.002-06:00

Things are so different for this pregnancy than they were for the last one.

For one thing, I mostly forget that I am, in fact, pregnant. I spent a lot more time thinking about it when I was pregnant with Bryce. I could sit alone in the bathtub and watch my belly move, or spend time alone while Ty was writing to decorate the baby room or shop for little clothes. If it weren't for a growing belly (and I swear that this time I am much bigger than I was with Bryce, though Ty disagrees) and some serious rockin' and rollin' from time to time, I wouldn't remember that there's a baby in there. And, this time, we know it's a girl. We refer to the bump as "she," and "her," sometimes "Bronwyn." That's different, too. Bryce was "Whoozit" for the whole nine months pre-birth.

Another difference has been that with Bryce, the early pregnancy was wrought with drama. There was the previa - nights in OB triage wondering if I was miscarrying. With this baby, the early part went really well - with the exception of nausea of course. Now we learn that she has fetal pyelectasis on her right kidney. It's slight - only 4.2 mm - but enough to require a follow-up ultrasound to make sure that it's not getting worse. The worry about it is that it does have a weak association with Down Syndrome. I am really, really hoping to avoid that - our risk came back in the "very low" group in the ultrasound + blood work testing - 1 in 10,000 - so we are probably okay. Still, it does kind of weigh on the mind sometimes. Not the best way to remember that I'm pregnant.

Of course, the biggest difference is that Bryce is here already. He is excited about having a sister on the way, but he is also dealing with the realities of being a three-year-old. He wants the world to work the way he wants it to work, when he wants it to (which is typically RIGHT NOW!). Poor guy. He has his tantrums, he yells, he becomes inflexible and uncompromising, and he has melt-downs. In all, though, that typically happens when he's tired or hungry or not feeling well. Still, it's a rough patch to get through, developmentally - for him and for us! I certainly have my "what-was-I-thinking?" moments sometimes when I consider the impending reality of having 2 kids.

The lack of personal space that comes with the three-year-old is tough. We can no longer just lounge around. Can't go out whenever we want, wherever we want to go. I don't think that we've seen a movie for over a year. Certainly preparation for this second child isn't as "magical" or romanticized as was prep for Bryce. I know I'm going to be covered in puke for the first three or four months. I know that I won't get any sleep for at least that long. I know that I'll have to find time to pump while I'm at work, that Ty will be doubly exhausted when I get home.

But still... still, I can't wait to meet her. It's different, to be sure, but it's still pretty awesome.

Bryce's birthday wish

2011-03-23T21:13:00.002-06:00

Bryce turns 3

2011-03-23T21:04:00.003-06:00

Our little toddler is no longer a toddler! He's an honest-to-goodness train!! Er, I mean boy! Though he is still obsessed with trains, and often insists upon being called a train: "No, I am NOT Bryce, I'm a train!" Of course, on his birthday we got to go train crazy. Here he is with his train cake, made by his Nani. It was delicious.

Fitzerman Baby 2

2011-03-23T21:01:00.002-06:00

Here are the ultrasound images from February. We're having a little girl!

Life goes on...

2011-03-23T19:48:00.002-06:00

So things keep on changing. Should really update the blog more often - it's a much better record than facebook. It's quieter, too...

So, stuff that's new:

I have two new jobs.
I work 40% at the UNM PRC still, but on a new project. I am co-coordinator for the New Mexico Youth Risk and Resiliency Survey (YRRS). It's part of the CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance (YRBS), and it basically asks questions about health behavior risk and protective factors among students grades 6 -12. For example, New Mexico kids have the 2nd highest cigarette smoking rate in the nation. My job currently entails contacting superintendents statewide and requesting their districts' participation in the survey. It will get busy in August when we start coordinating the survey's implementation in schools - scheduling and packing and shipping and receiving... it's gonna be awesome. I myself am looking most forward to getting results in and doing analyses!!
I also work 60% at the UNM Hospital Emergency Department. I go from room to room and screen patients for a study about drug use. If they screen in, I recruit them and enroll them, and sometimes I get to do a brief intervention with them using a technique called Motivational Interview. It's been demonstrated to be effective for people dealing with alcoholism, but not with drug use so far. It's a really interesting study, and I REALLY enjoy doing MI. I also like talking to drug users. Who knew?

Ty is in his second semester of graduate school. I think that he's finding this semester somewhat less challenging than his last. I'm sure he could probably say more, and that I should probably leave it to him to say it...

Bryce is 3!! He had a great birthday and I totally need to post some pictures of it. His birthday wish before he blew out his candle was, "I wish for train cake." Lucky kid! Said candle happened to be atop a Nani-made chocolate frosted train cake.

Tomorrow Ty and I are going to Seattle for three days. Mom is being super kind and watching Bryce for us! Last big trip for me and Ty with just the one kid to need a sitter for!

2011-03-11T17:05:00.003-07:00

New car. Welcome home, 2005 Pontiac Vibe.

Merry Merry!

2010-12-06T19:36:00.000-07:00

Family Disco Christmas.

Expecting

2010-11-14T19:36:00.002-07:00

So! We're pregnant again. That is to say, I am pregnant again, and in the midst of feeling like total garbage. I know I need to eat, but food is absolutely repulsive. This sucks, too, because I really, REALLY like food. Normally.
Only 7 weeks or so along, and probably due sometime in July. I know it's not a good idea to announce a pregnancy this early along, but I feel so miserable right now I kind of need an outlet, and the blog certainly beats facebook. Only good friends and family tend to read the blog. And, if I am so unfortunate to have another miscarriage, I will certainly be blogging about it anyway, so no harm in posting the pregnancy at this point.
That's pretty much the news. Pregnant. Feeling like crap.

Playing with the web cam

2010-10-14T22:19:00.002-06:00

Which leads us to

2010-10-12T17:18:00.004-06:00

The present. And here I am, seven years later. With a few more roles fitting somewhat loosely but let's say more or less appealingly upon me: In 2010, I am husband, father, master of dogs, lord of chickens, receiver of royalty checks ("author of history" seems to be fading at the moment), graduate student.

Any wonder that I seem to be suffering juuuuust a touch of identity crisis? Not so bad, and I've been through this before. Two years ago, with the book finished, the radiation over and the fatherhood new and terrifying, was much worse. Transitional times are difficult, and I don't think I'm very good at them, but they do end, they do settle, and the next thing you know you're content again, and comfortable and all set up for the next transition to knock you on your ass.

But let's see, how am I managing? The baby, now a toddler, is happy, healthy, intelligent; the same can be said for the marriage (can a marriage be intelligent? Let's just say yes and not probe too deeply); the chickens enjoy my company; the dogs still come when I call. And student life- well, no disasters yet. I've more or less kept up with reading, more or less kept up with writing, more or less not freaked out too much due to assorted academic anxieties, more or less not found myself on the wrong side of some intradepartmental machinations.

And the Autumn is settling nicely around us, with only a headcold counting against its favor. I think, yes, I think I deserve the beer I'm about to open up.

The story so far...

2010-10-11T21:49:00.008-06:00

So, the blog has been closed for a few days. A little time out, a bit of breathing room. I mean, look, I know that only a few people read it, but still, it's a point of exposure, of vulnerability, and for some reason, I needed that closed off for a bit. While I thought.

Thought about the blog. Whether I should keep it going. Whether it was finally Time. I mean, not that many people read it, we don't update it like we should, and it seems, in many ways, like a relic of the pre-social-networking world. When people want to see how we're doing these days, they don't check the blog like they used to a few years back; they check Facebook. And it's not like I've got a huge following of people hanging on my every word (Hi to my six followers, by the way! One of which is myself!), so what's the point?

And then, I went digging through some old posts.

This is a venerable piece of blogger real estate, you know? It's almost, let's see, seven years old. Seven years old. SEVEN YEARS OLD. Holy christ, how is that possible? It's not actually older than my marriage; it's exactly one week and one day younger.

That's kind of incredible.

In that time, this blog has been a record of:

- Our season in Prague
- Easter for the Czechs
- Danger in the Alps!
- a tiny little fluff of antisocial puppy that turned into spirit dog Sharka
- Various going-crazies and unhappinesses in Austin
- Warnings of Medicine Dogs in advance of our time in South Dakota
- The first pregnancy
- An exciting tribal election
- The miscarriage and the decision to leave Pine Ridge
- A longing for mountains
- The Return
- The last known sighting of the Domiwaitrix
- The first hints of an impending Bryce
- Forgotten Albuquerque (still locked for now, alas)
- OMG SANTA FE GHOST
- Courtney's huge belly
- Labor!
- Birth!
- BRYCE!
- Cancer!
- Forgotten Albuquerque the Book
- More Bryce!
- Insightful commentary on the 2008 election
- Book launch!
- The things Bryce could do at 17 months old
- Chickens
- Naps
- Barium Sulfate Suspension
- Why Papa is tired
- And, uh... Now.

You know what I've got here? I've got a pretty good record of our life during some very interesting and often turbulent periods. Almost every major milestone of our lives that has happened over the past 7 years is recorded here. That's kind of... awesome.

Yeah, we haven't been real great about keeping it going consistently, and yeah, sometimes I'm not as funny or as deep or as creative as I'd like to be, and yeah, there's probably a bit too much complaining if you go digging around, but in spite of all that, I'm really glad this thing is still kicking around.

I did a lot of worrying about it this week, worrying about what the blog is for, whether or not I should just kill it off once and for all. And the answer is: Nah. There's been a lot of good, important stuff on this site over the years, and my six followers and I know it.

So, let's make this official. This site's going to stick around for a while yet.

Bryce enjoys vegetables

2010-10-03T19:58:00.002-06:00

Bryce's School

2010-08-05T18:27:00.003-06:00

He starts in two and a half weeks. Oh man!

State of the Chicken Address

2010-07-21T13:10:00.007-06:00

It’s been about 5 1/2 months since we made the decision to give over our backyard (and Courtney’s brother’s front yard) over to three shit-where-they-please roach eating Rhode Island Red chickens, so we’re due for a little update about them, aren’t we?

They’re awesome.

I love owning chickens. In general, there’s a certain pleasure that you get from sharing your space with a pet, and the chickens have filled in a niche we didn’t know we had. No, they’re not particularly loving, nor do they offer much in the way of personality (well, one does, more on that further down), but there’s a contentment in owning them that I ascribe to two things- 1) the contemplative enjoyment of simply observing them as they stalk around the backyard, scratching up insects, tearing weeds to pieces, standing up to the dogs and just generally pursuing their own agenda with little regard for anything other than their own immediate needs, and 2) they’re productive, actually adding something tangible to the family, unlike those free-loading dogs with their “unconditional love”, or whatever.

In other words, there’s a satisfaction in tending to an animal who you’ve brought into your life, not for companionship, but because you’re actually working for mutual benefit. I’ve never had livestock, but now I see the appeal. You’re forming an actual working relationship with an animal, and that’s, well, wholesome.

So, there they are stalking about the backyard, retreating into their hen house at dusk or in the heat of the day or if it rains, or, every day at 9am for one of them, to lay an egg. They do their own thing, and we’re happy with that.

The chickens formerly known as Audrey and Bess. Don't ask me which is which.

You may recall that we named them. This has turned out to be a moot point for two of the chickens, once known as Audrey and Bess, now referred to as “the other ones”. They are, as far as any of us can tell, completely interchangeable, and uninterested in any but the most passing and food-producing of interactions with human beings. They stay away from us and we stay away from them, and we're reasonably happy with each other. The third, however, seems to have sucked up all the personality from the other two. That would be Blackie, named for three black spots that were on her fuzzy red head when she was a few days old that have long since disappeared. She is actually the lightest in color of the three, so a bit of accidental irony there.

Blackie.

Here’s the thing about Blackie- Blackie likes us. No, no, Blackie looooooves us. Blackie comes running when we go outside, Blackie enjoys being picked up, Blackie wants to follow us inside the house, Blackie wants to go for rides in the car, and Blackie talks to us in a constant croaking chicken soliloquy. This means, naturally, that we like Blackie, and the fact that she is the first of the three chickens to actually start laying only bolsters our regard. Make no mistake, Blackie will never be eaten, even after she has outlived her laying capabilities. The Other Ones? Well...

Speaking of eating- Damn but fresh chicken eggs are good! The yolks are the yellowest I've ever seen, and the whites have a cohesiveness to them that store bought eggs seem to lack. And their delicious, lacking in some off-flavors that I'd never realized weren't an integral part of egg-taste. Of course, the fact that they are rarely more than three days old when eaten probably helps immensely- we'll see how the flavor changes once we're getting enough eggs that we have to store them for longer. Currently, Blackie is giving us one a day. The others haven't yet gotten there, but we expect them to start sometime in the next month. If not, well, maybe I'll start sharpening the cleaver outside the henhouse door in the evenings.

Or perhaps Sharka will have a suggestion.

Bloggers Block

2010-06-29T15:21:00.003-06:00

Writer's block. I'm familiar with it. But, over the years, I've gotten pretty good at just saying "who cares" and writing something, anything and then moving on. It does wonders, really, to take a half hour and write down some utter shit and kind of free up the mechanisms. But with a blog, well, it's different isn't it?

Mainly because when I write something for myself at home nobody has to see it and I don't have to show it to anybody, so no matter what absolute tripe comes out I can be comfortable with it and just let it slide and no one need be the wiser. But with a blog, well, the entire frigging world could theoretically stop by to take a gander at it the moment I hit "publish" AND continue to do so for all foreseeable eons until the frigging power grid somehow collapses or, less likely, Google clears out its cache servers.

Part of the theory behind the whole "blog more" plan that I started with this summer was to get over that nonsense. I mean, for one thing, the entire internet connected world has way better things to do with its time than mock my humble postings (there's a LOT of pornography out there, you know) and it's far more likely that the only people who stand to see them are my five loyal followers and assorted family members who have already outed themselves as hardly possessing discriminating taste simply by electing to check this blog out on a regular basis. So screw it, here's a post that more or less sucks because it's my blog and sometimes things I do just kind of suck.

Now, with that out of the way, maybe I can find the wherewithal to finish some of the partial posts that are stuck in editing limbo. I wonder what horrors I could find if I went back a few years?

Blog Rodeo

2010-06-11T12:57:00.004-06:00

Just some blogs that I've been reading. If you'd like, you can pretend that you're witnessing an exciting rodeo, except that instead of broncos and bulls you have blogs and instead of bucking and goring you have interesting subject matter and enjoyable writing styles, and instead of cowboys you have authors, and instead of clowns you have google ads.

Playground of Doom- Albuquerque film-maker and writer Dusty McGowan (whose most recent film, Mickey, you should definitely check out,) writes about "film, pop culture, and existential dread" in an entertaining, introspective manner. It also looks like he's going to be devoting space to reviews of trashy, dvd-discount-bin cinema on a regular basis.

Zone 8- Mike and Miranda, formerly of Seattle and Albuquerque, document their experiences as recent arrivals on the Isle of Yap. Read along as they battle against continuous home invasions by an insurgent wildlife and insect population, struggle to find their place in the baroque and inscrutable Yapese social hierarchy, and drown their sorrows at Yap's best and only karaoke bar!

Regislacher.com- Regis, former editor in chief of the Seattlest, former 'Burque resident and all around elitist intellectual, offers his slightly askew observations and pontifications of The Big Issues (for instance, is that toddler frowning cutely, or "contemplating killing you without consequence or guilt"?) via his new Tumblr blog.

Yee Haw!

Why the Papa is tired

2010-06-10T19:06:00.003-06:00

I recently had an email conversation with a friend of mine where he expressed an inability to understand what, exactly, is so tiring about being a stay-at-home father. Since this is one of my most consistent excuses for various procrastinations, and, in the interest of, ahem, educating the world, I'm going to try and explain it as best I can, even though I think it's something that really must be experienced to really get.

Let's just make no bones about it: life as a stay-at-home parent is hard . One of the most taxing things I've ever done, as a matter of fact. Not physically taxing, mind you, but mentally. There is, first of all, the constant and unrelenting fact of being in demand. When Bryce is awake, he wants as close to my undivided attention focused on him as possible until he goes to sleep, simple as that. We're talking every second of every minute of every hour that we're sharing space. And there are consequences for not agreeing to his demands, namely, whining. And maybe it's evolution or something, but hearing Bryce's whining has exactly the same effect on me as hearing teeth scraped across a chalkboard (don't ask me how I know, that's a story for the bar). But, the thing is, I'm not physically or mentally capable of devoting all of my energy to him throughout the day. I need to do things like, oh, go to the bathroom, make lunch, catch up on phone calls, that sort of thing at the bare minimum, and he's not always willing to grant that without a fight. So, there's this constant tug of war going on throughout the day, with me trying to give him enough attention and play-time and so forth (not to mention the unavoidable needs like diaper changes, meal times and keeping an ever watchful eye to prevent dangerous situations like paperclips finding their way into wall sockets) while making sure that I'm able to Get Things Done That Need To Be Done, AND maintain a vestige of my own sanity. The last being important because the adult brain WILL begin to turn to mush if fully focused on baby/toddler activities for too long.

Now, as he's grown up, things have generally gotten easier with this tug-of-war. When I think about how he was at t about 9 months old, I'm kind of amazed that I survived. He was even needier than he is now, but incapable of really communicating what, exactly, he wanted, resulting in a great deal of frustration on both of our parts. These days, he can tell me what he wants AND understand my answer as to whether or not it's possible to grant that request, and this has really opened up a whole new world in our interaction. For instance, I can now say "We'll play trains in just a second, Bryce, right after I'm done talking on the phone", and chances are that he'll be willing to hold out for a few more minutes before the whining begins. Overall, in fact, we've adapted to each other's needs and reached a point of more-or-less equilibrium, where he feels that he gets enough play-time with Papa, and I'm able to get Stuff Done and even do a little bit of low-focus activities like face booking or reading Salon articles or something like that, as long as it's nothing too involved.

However, there's a second aspect to the whole stay-at-home father thing that is tiring in its own right, but very sneaky in how it goes about draining energy. Babies require Constant Vigilance. And not just when they're awake, either. It's like, you know how when you have a big trip planned the next day, and even though everything is all packed and you're ready to go and there's literally nothing else you can do to prepare until the time that you're actually on the plane, but you can't really concentrate on your day-to-day tasks because you're constantly thinking about making sure you get to the airport on time and should we take a cab and I hope the plane's not late and what should we do when we get there? Like, there's nothing out-of-the-oridinary actually happening for you on the day before, but a significant portion of your brain power is constantly preoccupied with the trip anyway? Having a kid, and being responsible for the kid's well being and happiness, is pretty much just like that, but every single day. For instance, right now, Bryce is asleep in his bed and safe and there's nothing to worry about regarding him at all. But still, a significant amount of my attention is firmly fixed on his door: my ears are hyper alert to any sound of movement that might come from within, part of my brain is wondering whether I should open the door to make sure he's breathing, another part is wondering whether I should turn the fan off in case he gets too cold, another is monitoring for any loud sounds that might wake him up. It's like my brain has been split, and half is able to work on writing this, or whatever naptime task I choose to pursue, but the other half is totally occupied with thoughts of him. This is how it is all day long; there is literally no second where I am not evaluating the environment in relation to him, even if he's happily playing by himself and I've got a spare second to finish reading an article I'd started, or do the dishes or take a leak or whatever. And, just like an application running in the background on your computer while you browse the internet, this takes energy and, frankly, compromises my other functions. By the time Courtney comes home, even if it has been a good, easy day with no surprises like skipped naps or extended visits to the car rental outlet (and yesterday, I had both,) or anything else out of the ordinary, I'm pretty damned tired. And if, heaven forbid, it has been "one of those days", then I'm exhausted to the point of uselessness.

My guess is that this comes as a surprise to a lot of men who find themselves in a similar situation to mine (and a few that I know might be reading this, so if you have something to add or disagree with, please drop a comment). It certainly did to me, especially right around that 6-9 month mark when I could literally get nothing done during the day, and by the time evening rolled around I had zero energy for any personal projects or the like. At that point,I felt like my life was completely subjugated to a pre-toddler's will. Fortunately, I adapted and he grew more capable of communicating, so by this point we've got it pretty much figured out. But still, it's a constant drain on energy, and sometimes I'm amazed that I get anything done outside of papa-time at all.

So, to all the ladies who've been stuck with this since time immemorial, I salute you and your hard, under appreciated work.

But it's a dry heat

2010-06-08T19:14:00.002-06:00

It. Is. Hot.

Why is it so hot? Why is it so, and please, pardon my usage of filthy, filthy frenc, why is it so goddamned hot!?

I mean, I live in a desert, I get it. But STILL it's not supposed to be this hot so early in the summer. I literally just got my swamp cooler (or, for those of you who prefer their no de a/c more descriptive than romantically accurate, evaporative cooler) turned on a week and a half ago! It's not fair! It's not right!

So, here I sit, in the basement of the Press Club, sipping away on an Old Fashioned as the raging sun begins its descent. And blogging about the weather on my iPad. I guess things could be worse.

Love of the Inanimate

2010-06-02T14:18:00.009-06:00

The Little Engine That Could, my favorite of Bryce's trains.

Bryce likes trains.

This is an understatement.

Bryce lives trains.

In fact, over the past year and a half, one of the few consistencies in his ever-shifting identity and interests has been a near obsession with trains. It began on his first birthday, when my sister gave him a battery powered engine and a set of cars for it to pull. He wanted desperately to push it around on its blue plastic track, but it was little too large and awkward for him to manipulate well. Seeing his frustration, I picked up a set of wooden tracks and a small, red engine that fit into his hand. He still had trouble putting the tracks together, but once they were down, he was able to push the engine around the figure eight pattern with ease. Even better, the red engine was small enough that he could take it with him in his little hands, to the dining table, to bed. It immediately became a prized toy.

But it was nothing compared to the trains with faces.

One of the original Thomas illustrations.

Once Thomas entered our house, all other toys were forced aside. If you are the parent of a child born in the last decade, then you need no explanation as to who Thomas is. If you’re not a parent, there’s at least a chance you haven’t heard of him, although his near ubiquity is such that I think it’s unlikely that even the childless can escape his influence. But, for the sake of the ignorant, Thomas the Tank Engine is a marketing juggernaut that began life as a series of charming stories authored by an Anglican vicar in the 1940s. Not that anybody really remembers those original stories (seriously, just TRY to request a copy of the books at Barnes and Noble, just try it!) because in the last 20 years (and especially the last 10), the Thomas “brand” has well and truly eclipsed them. Thomas now lives through computer animated cartoons, poorly written films, cheaply made pajamas. And cute little wooden trains.

Most importantly, Thomas and his ilk have faces. Wide open, grinning and friendly, their faces are just this side of creepy for an adult, but for a toddler the features are perfectly positioned and proportioned to cut a path straight through the brain and trigger the neurons in charge of social response.

Or, at least, that's how it seems to have gone with Bryce. Because once Thomas arrived, the trains were no longer toys, but rather, they became peers. Suddenly, Bryce and the trains were inseparable. He carried at least one around the house with him at all times, would demand one for every car trip, slept with one at night in place of a teddy bear. We gave him several more in light of his obvious passion, some of the Thomas brand and others from elsewhere, some with faces, some without. Whatever switch was flipped with the Thomas acquisition remained on for the other trains as well, whether they had faces or not. He began to speak to them, then speak through them. "What is Thomas doing?" "Thomas is hungry for toast!" "The Black Engine wants to pick up Mama from work!"

I don't know a whole lot about child development, and even less about child psychology, but I don't think that this behavior is unusual. Typically, I suppose the kids latch on to teddy bears and dolls and the like, but a train with a friendly face isn't so far away from those. I suppose that this signals a deeper change inside, an element of who he will become building itself inside his ever-expanding brain. He is just at the age where his interactions with other children will begin to become more sophisticated, where "parallel play" (two children amusing themselves side-by-side, more or less independently) gradually gives way to actual interaction with others in his age group. My guess is that by making Thomas and his retinue into ersatz peers, Bryce is essentially practicing for these deeper social experiences. The specifics of his play often bear this theory out- with Bryce offering a running commentary on Thomas' supposed actions ("Thomas is being silly! Oh, Thomas, you're running away!"), issuing commands ("Oh, Thomas, stop it! Thomas, don't fall off the table!"), and, in perhaps an early sign of actual empathy development, making requests on the behalf of the trains ("Thomas wants to be on the table. Thomas wants to eat pancakes").

Bryce cleans Rosie the train after supper.

It's an interesting idea, and one that I'd never really considered before. I'd always thought of my own solitary play in childhood as more or less pure fantasy, but it makes sense that a growing social awareness would necessitate some testing. It might be an awfully detached and, hmm, technical way to look at a child shouting orders to his smiling trains, but I must admit that I find the idea comforting that there are no idle actions in childhood, and that play is especially important work.

Dungeons and Dragons Friday: Default D&D?

2010-05-28T14:27:00.006-06:00

So, I've encountered a problem In discussing D&D as though it's one body of work- It's not. This is, actually, obvious. Not only does every Dungeon Master run a different campaign with a different set of assumptions, but the Official D&D sources (TSR, WotC) have released a huge amount of material over the decades that features a just-as-huge level of variance. You've got your more-or-less vanilla fantasy of Greyhawk, your Tolkienian Dragonlance, your sci-fi-esque Dark Sun,all the way to the bug fuck craziness of a setting like Eberron, each of which breaks the D&D mold in interesting ways (with the exception of Greyhawk, as it more or less created the mold in the first place). Take, for instance, Halflings- in Greyhawk they are de-infringed Hobbits, roly poly pipe smokers who tend to thieving; in the D&D 4e, they're a kind of mini-warrior race; while in Dark Sun they're a feral cannibal race. Obviously, I'm going to have to be careful in how I assert my broad generalizations about this game. Because, you see, I plan on asserting quite a few.

So, let me propose a construct. Let's call it Default D&D. The basic idea is that if you were to get invited to three different games of D&D, run by three different DMs with three different groups of players, in three different decades, and not really given any information beyond that, you could make some assumptions that were reasonably likely to be true in all three games. You would probably show up to each game day ready to choose between playing Elves, Dwarves, Humans and Halflings, and then choose between magic users, fighters, thieves and clerics, with perhaps some more choices extending from there. You would expect the game to primarily feature combat in one form or another, and that you mainly be fighting some sort of non-human monsters. You would expect to be rewarded for your efforts with treasure and magical items. You would probably plan on there being goblins and giant rats and, somewhere out there, giants and dragons and evil wizards. These are all assumptions that you would probably make without thinking about it too much, and, I think this part is important, you would probably make them if you were interested in D&D but had never actually played the game before.

Consider it a sort of D&D oriented collective unconscious.

Where things like this can happen.

Now here's where things get a bit tricky: What would the game session itself be like? Unfortunately for my Default D&D construct, I don't think that there's a good answer that applies equally well from group to group, much less across the decades. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that, generally speaking, this is the area where the assumptions have changed to most over time . In the late 70s to mid 80s, adventures were primarily about the exploration of location. Go into the ancient dungeon and, well, see what's there (while trying not to die, of course.) At higher levels, you would go out into the Wilderness and again, see what's there. "Plots" rarely went beyond "Oh, hey, there's a totally awesome pile of treasure in this labyrinth and maybe you want to go get it?", and rarely but rarely did the world need saving.

These guys are there.

In the late-80s to sometime just before the present day, starting with the introduction of the Dragonlance campaign setting and ending at around the time of 4th edition's release, the emphasis shifted from location exploration to "succeeding" at a Tolkienesque narrative: stop some evil guy from doing a thing so that the world doesn't end, with a thousand thousand variations upon that theme. Dragonlance seems to have offered a particularly rigid version of this narrative centric play style, even going so far as to recommend that players portray characters from the various Dragonlance novels, and that if one of the characters died they be magically brought back to life at the beginning of the next module, so as to make the over aching story "make sense".

With 4th Edition, the emphasis has shifted yet again to a sort of hybrid of the two that came before. Dungeons are entered and explored, but now the emphasis isn't so much a free form process of discovery, but rather in forging a path to the next huge set piece of a combat encounter, wherein the players get to whip out their never ending panoply of awesome powers and the plot of the game is incrementally revealed. Again, please keep in mind that I'm purposefully speaking in generalities here.

Not default D&D.

For my own part, most of my play experience has been with the second Tolkienesque variety, though only rarely through published modules. This makes sense, as I "came of age" (in a D&D sense) during the early-to-mid 90s, when epic, Tolkienesque fantasy was enjoying a sort of renaissance. At the moment, I'm far more interested in the first style of exploration based play, however, and pretty much entirely averse to the combat oriented 4e style. And, as far as I'm concerned, these three emphases contain enough variation between them that they should probably be considered three different games. Still, I am going to lump them all together, or at least their trappings and general setting tropes, into my construct, and try to make it clear as to which emphasis I'm referring when it matters to whatever assertion I'm making.

So, Default D&D. Makes sense? It's a conceit, obviously, though a valid one. And it'll help later on.

Back to the Routine

2010-05-27T15:23:00.002-06:00

You know what's even more difficult than starting a routine? Getting back into one. After almost a week of houseguests, everything still feels a bit out of place, and the monotony required to get a good blog going is hard to come by.

The guests, a friend of mine from high school and his three, almost four, year old daughter, were very enjoyable, and I got a chance to do some of those New Mexico things that one only does when guests are around. But man, it is kind of exhausting, isn't it? I wound up going to bed at 9:30 last night, and sleeping through most of Bryce's nap time.

Adding to that sense of exhaustion is the fact that today feels like the first taste of summer. It's only about 88 out there, which is pretty much a crisp Fall day by Austin standards, but it's just about the same temperature inside which is distinctly unpleasant. There was a time when I'd try to drag out asking the landlord to turn on our cooler, perhaps some sort of attempt to prove masculine prowess?, but those days are long gone. I expect to be knocking on his door shortly.

Guests

2010-05-20T20:49:00.001-06:00

Just FYI for anyone who cares: We've got house guests through the weekend, so I don't think I'll be doing much in the way of posting until next week.

Letter of the Law

2010-05-19T19:33:00.003-06:00

So far, this has been a week of getting almost nothing done. Oh, I have things on my agenda, lists that I've made being ignored on the fridge and other places, but it's been too easy to procrastinate my way out of those. If I have a fatal flaw, that's it, right there. It's just too damn likely that I'll put things off until the moment of their relevance is gone. Hell, I did it today with this blog post. Instead of writing a neat little article about all the various things I briefly considered at the beginning of Bryce's nap, I played a game on my iPad instead.

I wish I could blame technology for today's malaise. It would be so very pat to say that the modern age of distraction du jour kept me from my self-appointed tasks, but it's not true. I'm a dawdler, a procrastinator, a putter-offer by nature.

If there's a value in this blogaday project beyond anything worthwhile gleaned through the writing of individual posts (surely it must happen sometimes!), it's that it gives me a bit of accountability in my otherwise self-policed writing regimen. If I miss a day, somebody besides me will know. Even if it's just the google-bot creeping its way over an absense of words. There's an undeniable psychological effect to that, and maybe it'll work for me?

So, here you go, Internet, have some more words.

Season of the Moth

2010-05-18T14:48:00.004-06:00

And now the moths are here. Last night, stepping out the back door to shut the chickens in, I triggered the yard light and was suddenly swarmed by dozens of non-descript grey-black moths, battering into my body and face in their sudden desperate need to get to the bulb. Moments later, after I finished with the chickens, I stepped back inside, and was followed by at least four of the winged nuisances. They immediately began kamikaze rushing the kitchen ceiling fan, the sound of their fat little bodies thwacking into the blades.

This is something I forget about every year until it happens. Late spring and cool breezes through open windows, grilling in the backyard with a beer and the company of chickens and dogs, and then one night Oh, yeah. These guys. The reason that we have screens in our windows despite having no mosquitoes.

I don't know what they are, and I don't think I've ever heard anybody refer to them as anything other than The Moths, but they infiltrate like no other pest I've encountered in this town. For a few weeks now, I'll be finding moths hiding in my bookcase, moths destroying their bodies agains the grated security door, moths landing on my face at night and shocking me into sudden frantic wakefulness. And the thing is, they are utterly the stupidest animals on earth until the moment I try to catch them. Then, they become all cunning and quick reflexes, and my hunter's pursuit is just embarrasing comedy. No, they'll starve to death inside my house, thank you very much, and my job is not to remove them to the outside world where they may pursue their mothly goals in the full flush of their vigour, but rather to gather up and dispose of their frail and tattered corpses.

A Brutal Purge

2010-05-17T14:11:00.004-06:00

I loaded up five boxes of books into the back of my car today, ready to cart them up to the Northeast Heights and sell them for money, or, failing that, give them away. Didn't I just do this a few months ago? How did I wind up with five boxes of books that I'm willing to let go of? Deepening the mystery, I can count on one hand the number of books that I've bought this last year. Where do they come from?

I understand where the migratory clumps of dog-hair that flutter across my floor come from. I have dogs, dogs spontaneously grow and lose hair. Maybe it's the same with bookshelves? To keep warm over a hard winter, a bookshelf will sprout copies of Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, The Mystic Mandrake and the Ace "bootleg" edition of Return of the King? But no, I know these books, there is no parthenogenesis involved. And yes, I will admit, I bought them all.

But... Why? I haven't read them. In however many years it's been since I acquired them from whatever bookstore I was working at, they've mainly just sat on my shelves, or, in boxes during and after moves, waiting for me to put them on shelves, where they will sit, unread, for an indefinite period of time.

Until a day like today, when I suddenly realize that I could use both money and space (given Albuquerque's used bookstore market, fortunately the latter more than the former), and it becomes time to kill the darlings.

No tears. Shiva! Guide my hand.

D&D Friday: The Trouble with Goblins

2010-05-14T13:50:00.009-06:00

First of all, I missed the update yesterday, the first since I began this daily regimen. What can I say? When the two year old skips his nap (or, in this case, sabotages it) I don't get any time to write. The act of sabotage, by the way, was that he got a pack of wet wipes out of the drawer of his changing table and used the first thirty minutes of nap time to pull them out one by one and pile them up on the bed. Not only did this provide a nice alternative to sleeping for that time, but it also soaked his sheets, ensuring that sleep was impossible from that point on.

Anyway. Time for the weekly D&D meander.

This guy is three feet tall and thinks that he can kick your ass.

My intention in starting a Swords & Wizardry game was to play a classic Dungeons & Dragons campaign, with as many of the old tropes as I could stomach. Endless dungeons spiraling under the earth and mapped out on graph paper, random encounter charts, seedy taverns filled with seedy villagers who have come into possession of mysterious maps, and a vast array of monsters that don't make much sense if you think about them too hard. But there have been a few casualties of the Olde Ways that offended my sensibilities to the extent that I just couldn't bring myself to include them.

Goblins, for instance. I hate goblins.

As anyone who has ever played D&D or read through any of the endless numbers of Tolkien rip-off fantasy novels knows, goblins (and orcs and bugbears and hobgoblins and all those different "creatures" that basically boil down to the same thing with different hit points) only have one reason to exist: They are there so that "heroes" can kill some people without feeling bad about it, or even being particularly justified in doing so.

And yeah, I mean "people". There's nothing even particularly monstrous about a goblin. Let's see, they're short, dark skinned and, uh... as the Monster Manual informs us, they "have a tribal society". And that, apparently, makes them bad enough that the default assumption is that a group of players can slaughter a whole village (including women and children) and feel like they've performed some noble deed for the greater good, whether the goblins have done anything to deserve this or not. Oh, I forgot. They're "lawful evil", whatever the hell that means.

If they didn't want D&D genocide declared on them, maybe they shouldn't dress so provocatively.

Oh, you don't have to play it that way, of course. But if you've done as much D&D as I have, you can't deny that this is how it usually goes, and almost 36 years of Dungeon Master sanctioned goblin slaughter have left an irrevocable mark on the mind of the modern gamer- if it's a goblin, it's evil, and the DM put it there for you to kill.

I'm not going to get into the racial and cultural implications now, because plenty of people have dived into those waters before me, and, frankly, if you're still not seeing it, I'm not going to convince you today. Instead, I'm going to focus on an arguably more pertinent problem (from a game narrative point of view, anyway) with this mode of play:

It's frigging boring.

To me, the whole point of role playing is to imagine scenarios that require interesting decision making and that may evolve in unexpected ways. In D&D, one of the most potentially rich areas to explore these decisions lies in finding some weirdo people in the dungeon and trying to figure out what they're all about: Are they smart? are they good guys or bad guys? Can they be negotiated with? Will they try to trick you? What are they doing down here? When the dungeon weirdos are a bunch of goblins, the party already knows the answer to most of those questions (Not very smart; bad guys; can maybe be negotiated with; yeah, they'll try to trick you; who cares what they're doing? Start killing!) and the decision tree devolves into "when do we kill them?" and "how?".

Humans have clerics. Filthy, primitive goblins have shamans.

What to do? I mean, for my game, I want something with a bit of brain power and cunning living in the dungeons, and although having actual human beings fill in the goblin niche is attractive and opens up a wealth of potential complexities, the fact is that I like more of an exotic and otherworldly flair to the societies that lurk in the depths. So, in my campaign I've basically filled the goblin niche with ratmen.

Yeah, men + rats.

The FUTURE.

I'm not fooling myself. I know it's not a perfect solution, nor a particularly original one, but I think that it answers many of the problems neatly. They're reasonably exotic, and they're pretty much an unknown quantity. At the very least, the common conceptions of anthropomorphic rats range from the desperately nasty Skaven of Warhammer to the superintelligent and morally complicated scavengers of the Secret of NIMH, and there's no particular reason for a D&D player to assume they know where on the spectrum these particular ratmen are. True, a number of the characteristics we ascribe to rats themselves are present in my ratmen (cunning, fearfulness and perhaps duplicity and an unwholesome affect), but eeeevil isn't one of them, and in play it seems that my players are not as quick to leap to the slaughter as they would be with your bogstandard goblinoids.

Does it work? Well, the proof is in the pudding. I've played through the same ratman negotiation scenario with two different groups so far, and I'm pleased that the outcomes of each were quite different to each other- one party formed a guarded truce with the ratmen that soon broke down into hostilities, while the other forged a trusting alliance that has so far lasted the campaign. Importantly, neither group was entirely sure of what to make of the ratmen, the heuristic for this particular group just wasn't present and instead they had to judge them based on their actions and words. Exactly what I was hoping for.

In as much as both of these outcomes evolved organically from the players making decisions that made sense to them given the circumstances (and not because the creatures carried the DM sanctioned Goblin Badge of Evil), I consider the experiment a success.

Typewriterotica

2010-05-12T14:54:00.007-06:00

This beautiful machine is the latest acquisition by the BannGerald Museum of Anachronistic Communications Technology. It is the second acquisition by the museum, the first being a Royal Quiet DeLuxe typewriter that I've dutifully dragged every place I've lived since 1998. It is the "latest acquisition" by sheer accident of order, not because I got it any time recently- I've had it for at least two years. But here's the thing- when I picked it up for $5 at a flea market, it didn't work.

Then, just a few days ago, I dragged it out from a nook in the closet and kind of played with it for a bit, and now it works, almost perfectly with the exception of a non-functional backspace key. How this happened, I have no idea. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I can only assume that it repaired itself supernaturally, something like this:

Regardless of the particulars of its no-doubt demonically instigated self-repair, it's a beautiful machine, isn't it? You'll notice the extra wide carriage, suited for ledger paper and the like, the myriad strange levers that seem to have no other function than to make satisfying "thunks" or ratcheting "clicks". What you may or may not be able to tell from the picture is that it weighs a frigging ton. Seriously, if you ever need to club a deranged superfan who has been holding you hostage in her isolated snow-surrounded cabin to death, THIS is the typewriter for you.

Two Stephen King references in the same post? IT MEANS SOMETHING!

I wish I could tell you a little bit more about the age and the model, but it turns out there are so many Underwood models out there that most collectors' websites only list a few of the seminal ones as examples. Since I'm not willing to give this more than a cursory amount of research, I've decided to be satisfied with "cool, old Underwood" and leave it at that.

Well, there's one more obvious clue-

So, the typewriter did some amount of time with Stanolind Oil & Gas Company. A quick Google reveals that Stanolind was the name of a conglomerate of companies that eventually became the Amoco Corporation. The name Stanolind was only used between 1931 and 1957, so, uh... I've narrowed it down to only three decades! Go me.

But, this is New Mexico, so maybe that can narrow it down a bit further. Turns out that there was a flurry of Stanolind activity out here between 1947 and 1952 or so, with hundreds of oil wells drilled in the north and western parts of the state during that time, so that seems like a pretty likely window.

And now, a moment just to picture this self-same typewriter in 1951 being slaved over by a Stanolind secretary, some quiet spring evening in a hastily erected wooden shack out in a barely productive oil field. Ledger paper rests in the carriage as she takes a moment to cross check the figures on the yellow pad that hold the day's totals. Maybe the open windows let in the sweet tar smell of crude oil and the clank of machinery, or maybe they let in nothing more than the scent of the cooling desert as the sun goes down.

Taste Test: Barium Sulfate Suspension

2010-05-11T13:53:00.008-06:00

First off, there's nothing wrong with me. Every six months, I go in for some testing to make sure that the cancer isn't attempting a encore in my lymph nodes. One visit a year is devoted to a CT scan, and that means I get to spend my morning attempting to down two pints of barium sulfate suspension.

The suspension is a contrasting aid. The idea is that it fills up your gastrointestinal tract so that your stomach and intestines easily stand out in the scan image. So, obviously, since the purpose is to fill up your whole digestive system, you have to drink a lot, and over a two hour period so that it gets down into the lower nooks and crannies that I'd rather not think about too much.

The first few swallows aren't too bad. It doesn't taste awful at all. In fact, it doesn't really taste like anything. It has the barest hint of vanilla to it, but other than that, it's just pure texture. A thick, chalky, slimy texture. And, with each swallow, it only seems to get thicker, chalkier and slimier.

The second pint is the worst. By the time you crack it open, you've probably been choking the stuff down for 45 minutes all ready, and have just been sitting there feeling your stomach fill up with... filling.

Did I mention that they tell you not to eat or drink anything for four hours before starting the suspension? That's because they want your stomach empty, so that when you puke it's easier on you.

Not that they recommend that you puke, but there's a good chance you're going to want to.

I've done this, four or five times now? Today, for some reason, was the worst. Maybe because I had an early morning appointment and thus had been de facto fasting (read: sleeping) for some 10 hours before starting the suspension. I had a killer headache and desperately wanted some coffee and eggs as I opened the first cannister. I didn't feel hungry anymore after the first swallow, but the headache stayed on. And I just felt worse and worse as I struggled through the first pint and a half.

In order to coat my esophagus in the right way, I was instructed to reserve the last half pint until I was actually in the room with the machine. My stomach gurgling, I dutifully choked it down, and managed to make it through the scan itself without any retching (good thing, too, because then they would have just made me start over). In fact, I thought I was in the clear as I walked out of the Cancer Center, started the car and then turned onto Lomas.

No. I wasn't in the clear.

I've never had the experience of vomiting while driving, and I'm happy to say that I avoided it by the narrowest of margins today. I pulled over onto the rough road in front of one of Albuquerque's most neglected cemeteries (the picture is from a different visit) and let the inevitable occur.

Back at home, Courtney made me drink water and brewed me some tea. About an hour later, she made me a grilled cheese sandwich and I felt better.

I am 0% thrilled with barium sulfate suspension.

A Sudden Realization

2010-05-10T19:34:00.003-06:00

If I'm going to be doing this blogging every day stuff, I really need to start hauling my camera around and taking pictures of everything. It would make an entry like today's more interesting, certainly.

See, if I tell you that I grabbed Courtney and the kid right after work on Friday and headed up north to Santa Fe, stayed the night, and the following day went trekking high into parts of Northern New Mexico that I've either never been to or never really took any time to get to know about, that's one thing. But if I could show you the pictures of the surprisingly lively downtown Las Vegas (NM, of course), or Montezuma's Castle (some strange stories on that web site, please take with a shaker of salt), or the 45 degree road to Morphy Lake, or the crumbling adobe churches of Mora, well, that would mean that I had been thinking of you, my dear readers (hi Ringo! hi Regis!) even as I was galavanting about these pastoral mountains villages with my family. Yes, thinking of you and how I might bring these morsels of my experience back for you to partake of and enjoy with me.

I totally wasn't thinking of you at all.

But next time, I will, I promise. Maybe the attitude I should be adopting here is to treat the every day experience as nothing less than an exotic trek into the wooly parts of the world. If I blogged about this banal stuff like I did about Prague or Pine Ridge, maybe I would start to embrace my life as a valuable experience that must, MUST be shared with others. That's the point of writing, isn't it? To find the value in your experiences and communicate it to others? Consider the rhetorical question answered in a loud affirmative grunt, a "hoo-ah!" even. Why not? It's my blog, I'll hoo-ah if I want to.

Anyway, the point is that I'm going to be downing a vial of barium sulfate contrasting solution prior to going through the "popcorn" setting inside one of UNMH's most expensive microwave ovens tomorrow morning and I'm going to bring a camera so that YOU, my treasured and more-or-less imaginary companions can enjoy the experience with me.

Dungeons & Dragons Friday

2010-05-07T12:59:00.012-06:00

I just made this theme-day up, right this second. Why not, right? So, let's say, starting NOW, every Friday I'm going to post something related to role playing games, and since the one I'm currently playing is a knock off of D&D, I'll probably post about that.

Anyway, let me show you what I bought!

It's a box! With a dragon and a wizard on it and inside. . .

A bunch of little books and some dice and a... hmm... pencil.

So, yeah, this is a printed copy of the game I mentioned above, the D&D knockoff. Why a knock off? Well, this is a legal "clone" of the original 1974 ruleset, with better editing and a few little improvements. It's basically a way to buy a copy of the original set without spending $150 on ebay.

But, more importantly, this box represents the promise of the internet fulfilled. Why? Well, story time.

Once upon a time, back in the glorious 1970s, a bunch of crusty old wargamers invented a game where they could play around in a Swords & Sorcery world of their own creation. Pretty much everybody even slightly inclined toward such things dug it, and, after whipping up some capital, a couple of the guys printed up a few dozen copies of

a white box with some little books in it and some dice in a little bag. Probably no pencil, though. And, despite being poorly edited and formatted and having some of the worst illustrations you've ever seen in a "professionally" published product, it sold like frigging crazy. And, at this point, even as it was selling more and more copies, it was still just a bunch of guys who played a silly game and had a good time and nobody took it very seriously, and people who bought it made up their own rules and published their own material and DIY was the order of the day.

And, you know what happened next. D&D became a phenomenon and the money came in by the truckload and suddenly everything changed. The products became slicker and more well organized, TSR launched a war against the people who were publishing their own rules expansions and if they couldn't shut them down legally they adopted a tone of derision to sway their fan base away from anything but Official TSR products, there were corporate manipulations and underhanded backstabbings and boardroom coups and parents freaking out about Satan and a second edition was released that got rid of the stuff that freaked parents out and was even slicker and more expensive than anything that had come before and there were terrible novels and terrible cartoons and terrible movies and when the internet came TSR's legal department worked overtime sending out cease & desist letters and the company teetered on the edge of bankruptcy somehow and was bought out by Wizards of the Coast which was bought out by Hasbro and new editions were released that drew on the lessons learned from collectible card games and even newer editions came out that encouraged even more reliance on official TSR rules and, well, here we are.

For better or for worse, time passes and companies change hands and games change. But, to my mind, something important got lost along the way. Specifically, the idea that the game was ours, that it literally belonged to the people who played it. That the official rules weren't nearly as important as the fact that you were having a good time sitting around a table with your friends, and if TSR's interpretation of the Sleep spell seemed kind of dumb, you could change it, or if somebody really wanted to play a a robot, well, go ahead. In the beginning, the rules were put together by some guys hanging out in their basement trying to have fun; if they could do it, why not us?

But that culture was fragile, and as the books became more aesthetically impressive and the company that made them became more corporate in its structure and ruthless in its actions, new crops of gamers saw things more and more in terms of "right" (the official published way) and "wrong" (the dreaded houserules that threaten to derail a whole finely balanced ruleset). And, in those days, you basically had your choice of a small group of peers or the official products to look to for guidance, and as the original group of DIYers drifted away from the hobby, the official products gained more and more influence.

But now it's the age of the Internet! Essentially, what has happened recently is that the official Dungeons and Dragons game has moved radically away from its roots, with the fourth edition rules being almost unrecognizable when compared to the original, and very complicated. Seriously, kudos to the guys who thought this stuff up and spent untold hours testing it, it's a wonder to look at. But not a game that I feel like I can screw around with. However, the Internet has made it easier than ever for people who enjoyed the older systems to connect with each other, and something of a counter movement has formed, mostly centering around this guy and his various pontifications. Due to a bit of legal weirdness, someone in this group realized that they could legally put together a restatement of the original rules, and basically bring them back from the grave. And so they did.

And that's what this is. Swords & Wizardry was created to call back the DIY, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants make-the-game-your-own aesthetic that the original rule set encouraged. And, they've succeeded in creating a product that is at once a heartfelt homage to the spirit of the basement-produced original, and a fun, very playable game in its own right. Most importantly, it's a game that makes you want to take ownership of it for yourself. I know that I couldn't read through it without immediately wanting to try out new systems of my own devising.

That's what the internet should be for; it should put you into contact with things and people and ideas that encourage your creativity. It's strange that, for all its power to put powerful tools into the hands of almost everyone and then connect them with each other, so much of the net's output seems to be negative and cynical. Dammit, it's time to get past that.

After all, if those guys in the picture can make something awesome, so can you.

Still not sure that the pencil was necessary, though.

Awesome D&D horse by Lauren Gregg.

A Triumph in Two Acts

2010-05-06T15:38:00.003-06:00

Call it- The Trains and the Ant.

Act I- The pleasant pastime of railroading is interrupted when a Frightful Insect appears upon the tracks. A plaintive cry for help!

(For the benefit of ladies and children, the actual act of ant removal occurs off-screen, due to its intensity and drama.)

Act 2- The still-dazed conductor recounts the Tale of the Defeated Ant in a tone of wonderment. The railways safe once more, the trains resume their operations and peace is restored.

The Not-Napping Nap

2010-05-05T14:14:00.003-06:00

At this exact moment, Bryce is breaking The Agreement. For the non-parents who may be reading this, The Agreement is a sacred and binding, though unwritten (no point in writing for the illiterate, after all) contract that states something along these lines: I, the undersigned Papa, will feed you and play with you and take you to the park or the zoo and other fun things and generally devote the majority of my attention to you between the hours of 8am and, roughly, 1pm. You, the undersigned baby or toddler, for your part, will consent to snuggle up into your bed at roughly 1pm and, after the previously negotiated two stories (or one long story) and three songs (Hush Little Baby, Carrickfergus (1 verse) and I've Been Working on the Railroad) go to sleep for a nap of a length no less than one hour and no greater than 3. Both parties agree to uphold this contract under penalty of Papa/toddler crankiness.

Unfortunately, The Agreement is easily trumped by the whims of a two year old, and today that whim is for him to, apparently, throw his toy trains around the room and shove railroad tracks under the door. He won't actually open the door, because when he does this I immediately put him back to bed, so instead he attempts to exploit a loophole that if he remains in his room and doesn't sound like he's getting too out of control or hurt or something, I'll generally leave him alone and he can get away without actually sleeping. The problem is, of course, that this loophole doesn't actually prevent the aforementioned toddler crankiness (and, necessarily, the aforementioned Papa crankiness). Also, I will eventually relent if he goes for an hour like this, and bring him out into the living room, because really, what's the point? And, invariably, when I put him in the car to pick up Courtney he will hit the car-seat and immediately fall asleep, which is maddening.

I really need a lawyer to get that contract written up. But ever since he got optioned for a movie, Harvey Richards, Esq doesn't have the time for us little people anymore.

I am a cruel, cruel person.

2010-05-04T20:32:00.002-06:00

Thoughts on the iPad and the Sony Touch

2010-05-04T14:04:00.001-06:00

This is actually something I’ve been meaning to do for a while. Over the past six months, Courtney and I have acquired two much-hyped pieces of technology and many of our friends have had questions about our experience with them. So, then, here’s a reviewish breakdown of my thoughts. As most of you know, I’m not particularly tech-savvy, although I am somewhat gizmo inclined, so please bear in mind that these are basically the impressions of an ordinary 30-something (god, has it come to that? now I’m referring to myself by the title of an 80s dramedy?) schmo.

The Sony Touch eReader (PRS 600)

Right off the bat- Electronic ink is nothing short of a display revolution. And, honestly, I really, really mean this, a reading revolution to boot, perhaps even the savior of long-form ,profitable , writing, whether journalism or fiction or essays. Without E-Ink these readers would be overpriced garbage, little more than crippled cell phones. E-ink renders text readable in a way that a light emitting screen cannot approach, and the eReader display is, by far, the most conducive to actually sitting down and reading for an hour or so of any medium this side of an actual piece of paper. So, make no mistake, if it doesn’t use E-ink, it isn’t an eReader, nor should it be considered a viable alternative.

Now, is an E-ink display actually superior to a book? No, absolutely not. The background is not quite white enough, the fonts are limited, the tactile experience is lacking, blah blah blah. That’s all true, but you essentially exchange that for the device’s portability (even the comparatively cramped storage of the Sony readers can hold dozens, if not hundreds, of books) and access to a huge number of free, public domain titles through sites such as Project Gutenberg. For new releases, sure, go to bookstore, purchase a good, old fashioned hard cover and curl up in anachronistic bliss. But if you have an interest in catching up on older works, or if you’re a student who’s sick of lugging around text books, I can’t recommend an eReader strongly enough. Since getting our Reader, my long-form reading has increased several fold, especially after picking up the Calibre program, which has a nifty feature where it downloads RSS feeds from magazine websites (like Newsweek or Atlantic) and compiles them into an eBook perfectly suited to the Reader.

As to the particular variety of reader that I, personally, own, well... The touch screen is a trade-off that I’m not sure I can recommend. In order to have the nifty layer of touch-sensitive material over your screen, you must put up with a somewhat murky text read out. Oh, and glare. The glare is bad enough that reading in full sun is out of the question (which isn’t a problem with the Sony Pocket edition or the Kindle), although it’s still perfectly usable under artificial light . It’s still an enjoyable read, but I sometimes find myself wishing I’d gone for the cheaper the Pocket edition instead. Of course, the Touch has a bigger screen AND native pdf support, which is what pushed me over the edge in its direction, but, honestly, I don’t use the reader for pdfs so much since I acquired the iPad, and the larger screen is really neccessary to make up for the loss of clarity.

So, in summation- eReader? Yes! Get one! Sony Touch? Er... maybe?

I am 85% thrilled with my Sony Touch.

The iPad

I stood in line for this thing. Seriously. You know those idiotic news reports where they show footage of all the douchebags waiting in line for the latest gadget from Jobs and Co.? That was me, I was one of those guys. Waiting in line. For an iPad.

And you know what? I’m glad I did. The wait was twenty minutes and they had free coffee and bagels and everyone was kind of friendly and excited. When you got toward the front of the line, one of the Apple blueshirts made sure to get your name and relay it to an Authority insde the shop, so that when it came time to go in and get your doodad they would open the door and say “Hey Ty, come on in! We’re ready for you” and you felt like Willy Wonka had opened the gates of the factory just for you. They even assigned each customer his personal blueshirt employee to take you through the process from entry to purchase to exit. So, props to Apple for making it a little more fun to spend $500 on something you probably don’t really need.

The iPad itself? It’s awesome. Don’t let anybody tell you anything different. We use it all. the. time. For web browsing, for email, for watching movies, for stupid little games about flinging exploding birds at catatonic pigs, for pandora radio and itunes and just having a second computer that you can slip into your satchel and cart around to wherever you need to use it. And it’s super fun to use. It’s responsive and smooth in its transitions, the display clarity is outrageously bright and sharp, and even the tiny little speakers on its sides are surprisingly high quality. I mentioned above that we are using it to read pdfs on and it’s perfectly suited for the purpose.

I guess there are some downsides. Yeah, the lack of Flash is a drag, and a pretty weird battle for Apple to start waging, but definitely not a deal breaker. And if you’re into coding applications, than I’m sure that the “walled garden” approach to the OS and the App Store is a real pain in the ass, but for someone like me who is a consumer of said apps? I’m totally happy. The virtual keyboard is juuuust a little too small to feel totally comfortable, but you can use any bluetooth keyboard with the device, so that’s not really a factor unless you’re just stubbornly refusing to shell out any more money on the thing. But that’s really it. So, let’s see, I’ll just plug in some numbers here and... it looks like I’m... Hmm... Carry the 3.

I am 97% thrilled with my iPad.

The Morality of Discipline

2010-05-03T14:04:00.003-06:00

The title of this post is a phrase that turned up in one of my course descriptions for the MFA program at UNM (did I mention the big news? No? Well, here it is. What are you complaining about?), and it struck a chord. The meaning should be obvious, that being disciplined, in the manner of your choosing, is a moral imperative. And, conversely, that being undisciplined is, at the very least, amoral. This is, no doubt, debatable, but for the purposes of saving my immortal soul, I've decided to take the assumption as beyond argument.

See, the thing is, I haven't been writing. Much. Oh, I manage the every-few-monts late night scrambles required to complete my handful of articles for the Alibi, but other than, that nothing has been happening as far as regular, every day writing. Why? Well, let's see... how about the baby? Partly, yes, but mainly my own mental stumbling blocks. I'm good at creating obstacles for myself, and having the baby to pin it all on has been very handy for my procrastinating nature. But guess what? He's not going anywhere (thank god, as I've grown rather fond of him), and I still want to write. It's time to figure out how to work around him.

Grad school is going to be an ass-kicking experience, no doubt, and if I'm going to survive I'd better get used to the idea that I'll be writing every day. Several hours. In addition to reading for classes and baby-watching (toddler watching? He is two, after all,) and the usual family and home life obligations. I need to train.

Hence, this blog entry. My training schedule is something like this: 6am-7- stream of consciousness gobbledygook, fit only for the Pythia or my therapist; 2-3pm (approximately, as it's dependent on Bryce's nap), blog entry. So, obviously, this site will be updated a whole lot more often. Hopefully, my two followers have a great appetite for my navel gazing, as daily entries means that there'll be plenty. Expect there to be filler between our every-two-months Bryce picture posts.

I've shut down my Forgotten Albuquerque site for the time being. Since ending the Letters entries in a whimper I just haven't been able to muster the passion for pursuing Albuquerque's history, nor the time to do proper research. I'd like to write "hopefully, there'll be more to come in the future!", but the fact is that I just can't promise that right now. The next six months will bring major changes, and I'm not exactly sure where they'll be taking me. I could leave it up, I suppose, but really, it's only purpose lately has been to make me feel guilty.

So, a bunch of BS? Will I even be able to make it a week with this newfound "discipline"? There's no room for self-doubt here! This is about morality!!!

Bryce at UNM, Easter

2010-04-18T22:18:00.004-06:00

UNM does an Easter egg hunt every year. It takes all of 21 seconds before all the eggs are gone - and that's for the under-4-year-olds. The 10+ kids clean out their area in under 5 seconds. Here are some pictures of Bryce from the hunt this year. He got 3!!

Update!!

2010-04-15T14:25:00.002-06:00

The weather is good now, AND we have good news!! Well, specifically, Ty has GREAT news.

Compalining Spring

2010-03-15T08:29:00.003-06:00

It could be Spring out there, if it would stop snowing. Not even worthwhile snow, just sloppy, wet "snow" that melts into mud the instant it hits the ground. Somehow, the juniper are still spreading their toxic dust even in this chill, and now I get the double joy of the worst part of a lingering, dank winter and allergy season all rolled into one. On top of that, the chickens have pretty much come to the end of their time as house pets, but the sudden cold snap means they'll be inside for another week. There's a reason people keep chickens outside. To spell it out: they smell bad and crap everywhere.

Thoughts On Turning Two

2010-03-11T15:06:00.001-07:00

Bryce turned two on Saturday.

So, yes, another milestone. But, I can’t help but think that there’s something different about this one. Oh, sure, every milestone has been unique, of course, but there’s an odd quality to a Two Year Birthday that sets it apart even further. Let me try to put this in words.

During Bryce’s first year of life, he changed rapidly and dramatically, seemingly from one day to the next. Beginning with the sudden, irrevocable fact of him existing at all, continuing through the first day of opening eyes, the first smiles, the first time he laughed or grasped or sat up or ate solid food, right on through his first words and finally, a little over a year ago, his very first steps- every change was sudden, monumental and utterly transformative. The baby we had the first day in the hospital was completely different than the one we had at one month, or three months, or six or twelve. And when his first birthday came, it didn’t really seem like a milestone in itself, it was more of a sigh of relief, a celebratory denouement after a relentless year of wild, building milestones, one after another after another.

And then, it all sort of stopped. Well, slowed down. He has changed, oh yes, in countless important ways since the last birthday, but the changes have been more gradual, a filling in and a deepening. For example, it was a shocking moment when I heard his first word, just over a year ago, and as I told Courtney at the time, I wouldn’t have been any more nonplussed if the dog had spoken his name instead of the other way around. But since then, his vocabulary and overall communicative ability has grown gradually, and the day that he told me, “Dogs like to eat dog food, and trains like to eat train food” I took it in stride, even though his first real extrapolative analogy is no doubt representative of some vitally important cognitive leap or other. Similarly, his first unassisted step was greeted with cheers and applause, but when walking was joined by running (with a bit of daredevil hopping thrown in), we greeted it with quiet, assured smiles. And that’s how it’s been the last year: his abilities have grown and expanded rather than suddenly appearing out of nowhere, and as a result we tend not to celebrate the changes as they happen, instead only doing so when we take the time to notice them.

That's what a second birthday is for: taking a day to notice who he is. And that's what all subsequent birthdays are for.

A first birthday is a baby’s birthday, and a baby is a chaotic, shifting being, a series of explosive manifestations, an entity that keeps you off balance and in a constant state of wonderment. A second birthday is, well, a person’s birthday, a person that you’ve gotten to know, and yes, a growing and changing person, but one for whom the changes are now building on the familiar. And so, on this birthday, we celebrate Bryce and the person that he has become. Happy birthday, Bryce, I love you.

Birthday Video Dump

2010-03-11T14:59:00.000-07:00

Here's Bryce and the family on Birthday # 2-

And here's Bryce enjoying one of his presents- a toy garage from his Mimi!

Firetrucktoddler BED

2010-03-05T16:22:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is Bryce's 2nd birthday.

Today, he received his Fire Truck Toddler Bed from Grandpa and Grandma, and he is thrilled. The box arrived just before his nap, and I had it assembled by the time he woke up.

Bryce upon waking from his nap - very excited:

Poultry-Blogging

2010-03-02T15:14:00.000-07:00

I’ve been informed that I’m overdue for a chicken update, and indeed, it’s been a week and a half since we picked them out: long enough for some major changes in chick terms.

The most important even, at least when it comes to our relationship to them, is that we’ve given the chicks names. This, naturally, goes hand in hand with our increasing awareness of their personalities (chickenalities?). Here, then, is the first chicken roll call:

“Blackie”- She was the first to really stand out, mainly because she is the friendliest. She always rushes over to my hand when I put it in their box, sometimes even going so far as to jump and flutter to get my attention if I’m just passing by. She likes to be held, and will happily roost on a finger. We called her Blackie before we knew it was her name- there are three dark spots on the top of her head, and it was natural to say “You, with the black there. Come here, Blackie”.

“Bess”- Bess is the smallest and, as of a few days ago, the meanest. She seems to have calmed down now, but when we gave her the name she was constantly pecking at the feet of the other two, and bore some sort of minor wound that marked her beak with a spot of blood (remnant of the egg tooth?). I suggested “Bloody Bess”, thinking of some sort of vicious poultry pirate, and it’s more or less stuck even as her bloody whats-it healed up and her demeaner softened. Whereas the other two are friendly, Bess is, unfortunately, scared of us. She runs from the hand and pitches a fit when picked up. I’ve been picking her up and being nice to her just as often as the others, but she doesn’t seem to be growing any warmer to me. I suppose it’s just how she is, and I doubt that she’ll ever become friendly toward us. Oh well. You had better be an egg-laying machine, Bess. Not that I’m threatening you. Yet.

“Audrey”- Audrey was the last one named. At first we called her “the one with no distinguishing features”, but later changed that to “the pretty one”. Since we already had a Blackie, we briefly flirted with the idea of naming all three after Twin Peaks characters, but Bess was already Bess and it just fit too well to trifle with. Still, Audrey stuck, and Audrey she remains. She’s friendly, but not quite as eager as Blackie. She typically hangs back until Blackie is picked up, then moves herself into position to be next out. Now that Bess has lost her blood spot, she and Audrey are virtually indistinguishable, and I usually judge them apart based on their behavior alone.

As you can see from the video, the girls have doubled, if not tripled, in weight since we got them. They also have acquired real, if miniature, wings and are capable of, well, extended fluttering jumps. A few tail feathers are making an appearance as well.

CHICKS!

2010-02-20T11:01:00.000-07:00

The Chicks have arrived! They peep. A lot.

Ty's Old Town Article

2010-02-04T14:16:00.001-07:00

Ty's artilce about Old Town Albuquerque came out today. Read it here - for now.

Ty Builds A Chicken House

2010-01-24T18:51:00.000-07:00

Ty will almost certainly have many wonderful things to add, but I thought I'd go ahead and post some pictures of the progress he's making on his chicken house. It's basically a converted dog house, and he's done a fantastic job on it.

Baby, it's cold outside

2010-01-06T08:45:00.000-07:00

How many ways are there for a parent to feel guilty?

Last night I was reading Dr. Spock's Infant and Child Care book. I skimmed through the chapters on infants and noticed that the good doctor recommends 2 to 3 hours' time spent outdoors for babies.

Of course, I immediately felt guilty. I don't know that Bryce has had even 30 minutes outdoors for a while now. Then I remembered something important: it's really, really, REALLY cold outside right now. And, on top of that, he refuses to wear a hat or gloves (pulls them off). When I take him outside for any length of time, his lips go blueish and his hands feel like ice.

So it looks like we'll be waiting until spring to do any real outdoor activities again. If I can get him to keep his mittens and hat on, maybe we'll try that sledding thing... but I predict a very short experience given his current tendencies. At least I would really like to go!

Yesterday

2010-01-03T12:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was rough.

6:00 a.m.: Bryce wakes up from a long, sweating, feverish sleep. He wants mama. I get him and bring him to our bed where he attempts to nurse for a little while with a stuffy nose. He urgently requests juice. I do not deny him this, as he is sick and I am desperate to keep him hydrated. He chugs it. I hold him on my lap and he stares blankly ahead, blinking sometimes. His right eye is bloodshot. Suddenly, I hear a churning sound from his guts as he lurches forward and vomits all over our bed.

10:30 a.m.: Bryce has been clining to me all day. He does not want to be put down or held. He insists on watching "Hard Workin' Dog" on an old episode of Sesame Street over and over and over again. The remote breaks, so I am no longer able to jump chapters on the DVD. He has a meltdown. He resists napping, but not too much. His fever is around 101.

12:30 p.m.: Bryce wakes from his nap. He is still pale and doesn't want me to put him down, or hold him. His fever is around 100.

2:00 p.m.: Bryce's baby ibuprofin begins to wear off. His fever goes up to 102. We dose him again. He is miserable.

6:00 p.m.: Bryce eats! He says that he is hungry and eats some toast. Two slices!

7:00 p.m.: Bryce goes down to bed. He screams and crys and shakes his crib. I am happy he has energy and exhausted from the day. I go in at 7:45 and comfort him and put him back down. He continues to scream until 8:10, then apparently passes out. He sleeps all night without waking.

10:00 p.m.: 8 hours since his last dose. Ty checks on him. Temperature is 98.8!! THANK GOD!!

And that was our day. Oh yeah, I was sick too, but I really don't care :)

Sick Baby

2010-01-02T11:55:00.000-07:00

Two days of sick baby. There's really nothing worse than watching a helpless creature in distress, shivering and crying, radiating heat like a hot water bottle. Catatonic stares, listlessness. His fever topped out in the upper 103s, with 105 being the magic "take him to the hospital" number. We dosed him with tylenol and ibuprofen and kept the temperature down, so at no point was the fever dangerous, but it was miserable for all of us. Courtney was down with a fever of her own both days, and now I've got a touch of sore throat.

He's better today, back to energy and babbling about everything. A touch of pale, but seems to be firmly recovering.

Happy New Year.

A New Year

2009-12-31T16:24:00.000-07:00

Here we are on the 'Eve, and Bryce has suddenly come down with a 102.5 fever. Poor kid woke up red faced and howling, I picked him up and it was like holding a hot water bottle. He's since cooled down, and calmed down, and he's watching some old Sesame Streets with Courtney in the bedroom. And so, it looks like out New Year's Eve will be spent hoping he feels better in 2010, maybe waking up to comfort a few times on either side of the year. Not that we had plans, mind you, but it's too bad to spend an evening feeling sorry for a baby rather than waiting out the old year in contentment.

But it is a New Year coming up tomorrow, and that means some consideration is in order, perhaps even a resolution or two?

The Old Year-

Relatively peaceful compared to 2008, no cancer, no birth, no book.

Well, the book did come out in 2009, of course, and a brief flurry of signings and events was pretty fun. Some doors opened, and I accomplished some more writing-related goals. In that regard, I end 2009 in a better position than I've been in before, and many things that I found intimidating (article proposals) are no longer things that I really worry about.

Bryce has gone from a barely walking, barely talking infant to a real, honest to goodness toddler, full of energy and a constant stream of commentary. His memory often surprises me (he easily rattles off the full alphabet, and recites long passages from his books on a regular basis). Parenthood is, well, incredible, and I don't know how we managed to get along without him for so long. What did we do with our time? I guess we just watched a lot of movies.

Courtney is plugging away at her job, which will soon be coming to an end. In order to increase her prospects she obtained her licensure this year, and is eager to take a crack at the job market sometime in the fall.

Overall, just a feeling of steady advancement on our life-path, and after the turmoil of 2008, I am pleased with the relative gentleness of 2009.

Now, how about the Future?

That's a tough thing, isn't it, to verbalize one's goals. I have some, mind you, but I intend to stalk them quietly through the year and then climactically leap upon each one and throttle it into submission. For that sort of thing, you need quiet, you need tactical advantage, you need the element of surprise. If I were to write it down here for all to see, well the goal would find out and take the initiative to flee and I'd never be able to catch up. No, this is better, circumspection, silence, soft-footedness and patience.

Besides, if I wrote them out here and didn't accomplish them, then next year I'd just keep reloading this page and crying and crying. And I already do enough crying now that youtube has made it so easy to rewatch all the "very special" episodes of Diff'rent Strokes.

Post-apocachristmas

2009-12-28T09:53:00.000-07:00

It's December 28, 2009. I've propped myself up in a corner table at the local Flying Star (which I still call Double Rainbow out of habit, despite the name change having occurred, what, ten years ago or so?), in front of a window affording a view of the abandoned mixed-use condos across the street (fluorescent green posterboard "for rent" sign hanging akimbo from an aesthetically rusted porch, the empty, mostly-finished shop space behind it still visible despite the gauzy curtains that someone put up in a half assed effort to block casual eyes). Got a moment here away from the baby, away from family, some time to catch up on various to-dos.

This is one of them.

The subheading on this blog reads, as it has for over six years now (!), "Harrowing Tales and Thrilling Adventure!". Christmas, I suppose, counts for both. Christmas happened, and it was our biggest and most complicated for many years, involving not just Bannermans, but also Kronemans and FitzGeralds. Brittany, my sister of course, lives here now, as does Robert, Courtney's brother, and Denise, her mother. Throw them into the New Mexico Christmas mix, along with my grandmother and uncle, and my mother visiting for the holidays. Bryce is now almost, very very close, to two years old (22 months in January), and thus aware of the X-mas thing in a way that he just wasn't last year. We have a real tree festooned in the appropriate way, and he is very good at "looking but not touching", bending way over to peer at the ornaments on his level, being oh-so mindful not to touch, until, of course, he forgets himself and pulls a skiing reindeer, his particular favorite, off. The Christmas tree is not the first source of "time-out" (that would be his experiments in dog torture), but it his most frequent.

"Remember Bryce, look but don't touch."

"'Member Bryce, don't look but don't touch."

"No, you can look, but don't touch."

"Don't look! Don't touch!"

But the fine point is irrelevant now anyway as he is exploiting what he hopes is a loophole in the instructions.

"No, Bryce, don't touch the tree with your face either."

And around we go, until the dreaded "If you touch it again, that's a time out". "Time out" is still a novel concept and at this point he is just as likely to take one of three options- 1) Stop touching, with a vaguely defeated look on his face; 2) Keep touching in feigned obliviousness; or 3) skip to the chase and with an announcement of "Time out!", walk into his bedroom and take the appointed "time out" seat.

Time-out lasts for 15 seconds, at least when parentally initiated. He sits by his big stuffed bear on the floor and I stand in front of him with arms crossed, a serious expression on my face, and we count. Typically he lays down after a second or two, simply stating "Laying on top of big bear". I suppose that's okay, but attempts at standing are met with me picking him up and putting him back down. It's sort of a game more than half the time, but it does serve to interrupt his desired activity, and is thus successful at causing him to consider the consequences of touching the tree or stomping on the endlessly patient Sharka's tail, or what have you.

And there were presents of course, lots of them, way too many, probably. And now, three days later he is still asking for more- "Want to open another present! A present from Nonny!". We tell him that the presents are "all gone", and he accepts it. We've hidden most of his gifts away from him for now, the theory being that it's best to parcel them out in a rotating fashion.

Christmas for the grownups was as it should be- frantic, stressful, wonderful. Every one of us undoubtedly had our moment of "Oh, shit, why do we do this again?" and also our moments of love and comfort. Most of the planned events went semi-awry but also worked out just fine, and a good time was had by ALL, hopefully. There was eggnog and rum and wine and mulled mead (a revelation! Sure to reappear next year) and beer. Ham and cookies and candy and more candy and more candy. And, of course, the candy. We made an attempt on a farolito walk and made it a whole block before the baby decided that he was both too cold AND unwilling to put a hood or mittens on.

And now, things are winding down. Courtney has the rest of the week off and my mother's in town till Wednesday. Things are quite now, peaceful, the only big family thing left is the requisite trip to see Avatar just like every other family in America. Oh, I suppose New Year's is coming up, but we've always been quite reserved when it comes to that day, usually opting for a night of board games or a few movies instead of whatever it is that you people do.

Speaking of you people, here's to wishing that your holidays were as enjoyable as ours, and as stressful, because why should we suffer alone? And a Happy New Year to you!

Cars

2009-12-27T12:33:00.000-07:00

We are rapidly approaching the time when we will be needing a new car. The Rav-4 has 170k on it, and though it is still running well, it's got an oil leak that we've already sunk $1500 into to no avail.

What we need: a solid vehicle with good gas mileage that can accommodate 2 dogs and a car seat. My ideal would be a wagon (SUVs are too big, gas-guzzley, and the dogs can't see out the windows when standing on the floor).

What I'm looking at: Mazda5, Hyundai Elantra Touring (surprisingly well-ranked by Consumer Reports), Pontiac Vibe, Kia Spectra5, Toyota Matrix. I would love to consider a Volkswagen Jetta Sportwagen or a Subaru Outback, but both of them are a bit pricey. Maybe an older model...

If anyone has any recommendations I'd happily entertain them!

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-27T11:02:00.001-07:00

Home for two weeks!!! God, I love working for the University.

This was Bryce's first Christmas to actually be somewhat aware of what was happening. He now knows who Santa Claus is, and he seems to have developed an insatiable desire to open presents. He had something like 50 of them, and even today he is asking for more. The joy seems to be in the opening of them rather than in the gifts themselves. I'm thinking of getting him a refrigerator box... can you still get such a thing? Best playhouse I ever had...

Trying to decide what to do with all this free time has been something of a challenge. We'd like to go on a sleigh-ride or sledding/tubing one day, but GOD it's cold in the mountains right now. I guess that's the price you pay for winter sport. Bryce did get a smashing snow suit from Grandfather JD and Grandmother Cora, so we certainly better put it to use. Just got to find him some mittens that he can't take off.

Ty is enjoying his new e-reader and has already loaded almost 20 books onto it. He has it in hand more often than his laptop these days. Dad sent us a webcam that is VERY unfortunately not mac compatible (despite the indication on Amazon that it IS). So hopefully we can exchange that soon and take our Skyping to the next level.

Hope that everyone had a lovely holiday, and that you all have a wonderful 2010!

Okay okay!

2009-11-29T08:47:00.000-07:00

For all of you who have been asking me, here is a link to Bryce's with list.

Just don't blog like we used to

2009-11-25T22:11:00.000-07:00

Facebook is an evil thing. For one thing, it's keeping me from updating the blog at all. I think it's got Ty as well...

Tomorrow we're attending Thanksgiving with some 12 or so people. My brother is creating a marshmallow-cranberry thing called ambrosia and the sausage bread stuffing that will be put in the turkey tomorrow. He's nervous because we got a free-range, all-natural turkey, and he's worried that it's not going to be as good as a butterball 'cause it's not injected with brine and sugar. I've told him no worries.

I am off work tomorrow and Friday, and I took Monday off as well. Here's to an EXTRA-long weekend!! Instead of shopping on Friday, we're going to go to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center to celebrate Native American Heritage Day 2009 (Congress has to renew it every year). Looking forward to that.

Otherwise just kind of trying to figure it all out. I've got 14 months left on our grant and it's probably time to start looking for something new, now. We'll see.