(continue reading “Falcon” on my other blog)
Figure 1 – Ben’s Arkansas Razorback Chair
Ben often makes up conversations between his toys, and sometimes he talks directly to them. Even something as simple as a chair (detail, Figure 1) purchased at a craft fair is not immune. My wife wrote down this one.
“Do you hear me, Razorback pig? You woke me up.”
(If you’re reading, “Falcon,” then click here for Part Eight)
I’ve heard it said that how-to’s are good subject matter for blogs. Welcome to my first.
Here we have two pictures of our boy, Benjamin. The difference between them? It’s not different cameras, different lenses, or different settings. It isn’t some in-camera red-eye correction feature.
It’s all about the angles.
You ever make up weird voices when you’re bored? I don’t mean talking to yourself. That’s a whole different thing. I just mean, for fun, you play out stories with different characters with various accents. Male, female. You just let it all go and become a one-person show?
No? I was afraid you were going to say that.
(Please see new poll relevant to this post.)
(Continue reading “Falcon” here)
Below is the post that was inaccessible most of Tuesday, thanks to Web host problems. Enjoy. If you’ve already seen it, then take this time to go get caught up on “Falcon.”)
The things people search for online, and then somehow end up here, are often funny, sometimes sad, and sometimes scary.
I check statcounter.com to see how many people are reading this site, and how they’re finding it. A few get here via links from other sites, others are led here by a search engine like Google, and still more (I can only assume) get here by clicking their own Favorites or bookmarks, or just by typing the URL in the address bar.
It’s that second one that I present as exhibit A, in an uncensored screenshot.
(keep following “Falcon” over on my story blog)
Ben asks for an apple. I gladly give him one after he says, “Please.” I start making myself a sandwich, which I plan to grill on the griddle I used to make pancakes earlier in the day. For some reason, every time I use that thing, it sits for two or three days on the kitchen island, as if we’re both waiting for someone else to clean it.
When I’m about to cut the cheese for my sandwich, Ben asks that I cut his apple. His mouth is still a little small to eat a Royal Gala apple, and it ends up looking like a mouse gnawed out a few spots to get to the sweet stuff inside. As I deftly slice his apple, he notices the hole in the middle, where the seeds lie in wait to create a new tree. “There’s a hole in it, Daddy,” he says.
I took this picture about 18 years ago, on top of a mountain about one mile outside my hometown’s city limits (as much as you can apply that term to a town of 5,000 people that’s the largest within a 30-mile radius and the biggest in the whole county).
I figured I would let readers form their own stories, or throw out questions. It has not been altered digitally or in any other way, except for the spot-cleaning of a few dust particles after scanning.
Enjoy.
(click here for more of my sci-fi short “Falcon,” which my wife digs and so might you. I made a TOC page for easy reading start to most recent.)
Update: The audio clip links are fixed now.
The beauty of electronic publishing over traditional methods is that it’s immediate and it’s multimedia. It’s immedia. Nevermind.
What I’m trying to say is, get ready to press play.
(Falcon Part Four is available at my story blog)
The mud wars took place in the larger of the two ponds. A sleepover including a few other guys led us to the smaller one, and one of the most memorable Chris’ farm days.
Everybody brought his bicycle. At first, we just rode around in the fields, on the pond levees, and in the woods. One of the guys accidentally hit a large hole that stopped his bike cold and sent him over the handlebars. After he hit the ground face-down, the seat came over and hit him in the back of the head. We called it an “endo,” BMX terminology shorthand for “end over end.” Being boys, we made a game of it. We all gave it a try, and took pictures, but I can’t find them.
Then someone got the bright idea to build a ramp in front of the smaller and shallower pond.
(the third installment of “Falcon” is all set for you over here)
I try not to be that guy who effuses sickening amounts of kid-related thoughts. Sometimes, though, they barrage relentlessly and I can’t contain them. I also just had to share about our latest date night, which was one part perfect, one part average, and one part fiasco. ‘Tis a twisty yarn, indeed.
We were half-assing the job of potty training Ben. He turned three earlier this month, passing our self-imposed deadline of putting this particular parental task behind us. With kids, deadlines are never a great idea, but some general timelines are. So, still hoping to at least stay within that more forgiving framework, we took action Saturday.
(I posted the second part of “Falcon” on my story blog, and it will finish over there as I write it. Thanks to those who have commented on it so far. See part one here.)
With all these health issues popping up, I started a new poll. See it in the sidebar.
The boy still is having sleep issues, and it has us scratching our collective parental head. Tuesday night went like this:
I read Ben his bedtime stories and put him to bed at about 8 p.m., leaving his door open on my way out. He goes to sleep. The phone rings and he sleeps through it. The doorbell rings (oblivious people ringing doorbells at 8:45), and a minute after I tell the unscheduled visitor that we have no cash or checks on hand for that tub of delicious white chocolate macadamia nut cookie dough of which we could use a big dose, Ben wakes up.
He announces loudly, “That doorbell woke me up.”
We wait, orifices puckered.
