Benjamin enjoys his backyard slide on Christmas Day 2009. (click any pic to enlarge)
Regular Life
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on. – Robert FrostBrowsing Posts in Family
I always thought building gingerbread houses was for an evil old lady trying to lure innocent youngsters to her lair. On Christmas Eve morning, after driving a friend to the airport, my wife and our son opened up a kit to make our own. Gingerbread house, not lair.
Maybe a lair would have been easier.
As Shannon pulled the two roof pieces from the package, they broke in the same place along a diagonal line. She was ready to call it quits.
“Maybe we can make our own gingerbread to replace those,” I said.
“We can’t do that. Sometimes you say things without thinking first,” she said.
“Just brainstorming, dear.” Admittedly, it wasn’t a very brainy suggestion.
I tried repairing the broken pieces with tape, but it wouldn’t stick. Then Shannon came out with the hot glue gun and did a beautiful job.
If only the icing had worked nearly as well during construction, we might have had an “after” photo. I was working from home, so I couldn’t dedicate a large chunk of time to the effort, and Shannon’s patience by that time was gone.
Benjamin, who by that time had decorated and gobbled down the gingerbread man, was content decorating the remaining pieces without making a house of them.
Then the snow piled up to cover the grass and turned everything brilliant white, promising a Texas Christmas just as white as the wall Benjamin decorated for Shannon.
A photographic round-up of the Silver Dollar City Christmas train ride. (as usual, click a pic to enlarge it)
My mom tries to finish off a piece of fudge while the rest of our crew poses. My brother was sober, I assure you.
I cropped the following pictures. Hey, I get to cheat a little while I’m stuck in a train seat, right? I also turned the old storyteller black and white, because the light shining on him made him look like a Smurf.
The next morning, our first day in what some call “Las Vegas without the casinos,” Shannon said there was no way she could walk anywhere, much less on hilly terrain. “Maybe I’ll just stay here while you guys go,” she said.
“No, we’ll figure out something,” I said.
I called Silver Dollar City and found out that they have wheelchairs available, but no guarantee we would get one. I got on the phone to medical supply places and found one to rent, delivered to our front door.
About a half hour before we were to leave, I took Benjamin and his cousin to the local playground. Quickly bored with the equipment, they wrestled, pushing each other against the surrounding iron fence. Less than a minute after they moved a few feet away from it, Benjamin fell backward and his head clanged against the fence.
Crying ensued, as did our departure from the playground. Just inside the condo’s front door, Shannon’s chariot — the rented wheelchair — welcomed us.
I waited to post this because the photos would have given away something Shannon preferred to keep a secret.
How many times does something recur before it is considered tradition? For the third year in a row, my folks planned a winter trip to Branson, Missouri, for fun at Silver Dollar City and other area attractions. We weren’t able to attend the first year, but, as I wrote in my ill-named “Things to Do in Branson When You’re Alive” series, in 2008 we had great fun.
Instead of using the weekend our family celebrates Christmas, this year we used the Thanksgiving break. Unlike last year, this time around we had to keep moving or tuck ourselves into rarely available corners to keep from getting trampled.
Thanksgiving morning at my parents’ house, Shannon awoke with pain in her left ankle, but after undergoing physical therapy for illiotibial band tendinitis, she was determined not to fall farther behind in training for December’s Dallas White Rock Marathon relay. She didn’t want to let down her team, she said.
She decided to walk instead of running, and while hanging out with my family I occasionally caught a glimpse of her bundled form striding valiantly past the driveway on the rural blacktop. At the appointed time, I called her mobile phone to let her know it was time for her to come in. I got no answer. A moment later she again came into view and I called again. She didn’t react.
At least she was getting good use from the second generation iPod Shuffle I bought her from Apple’s refurb department.
“Guess I’ll have to run out there and get her,” I said.
I asked her how her ankle felt. “It hurts a lot,” she said.
Visions of Shannon hobbling around steeply-graded Silver Dollar City danced in my head. Although I had never tried one, I was sure sugar plums would have been better.
We had a great time with visiting family and copious food, and then loaded up in three vehicles for the three-hour drive to Branson. Before anyone asks, we all would be going significantly divergent ways after that, so carpooling didn’t make sense.
“If your ankle hurts that much, then maybe we should go back for Mom and Dad’s wheelchair,” I said about 10 minutes into the drive. “They said we could bring it.”
“No, I don’t want to do that,” Shannon said. She was trying not to focus any more attention on her plight, and hoped that by morning her ankle would feel better.
Instead, it got much worse.
(to be continued)
Since 2005 I have used my blog to share what’s happening in our lives. Four days from when this publishes, I begin the final year of my 30’s. What better time to look back on what my 30’s brought before I started a public journal?
I turned 30 in the dreaded year 2000. By the time my birthday arrived, it was fairly clear that the world was not going to end as a result of the rollover from 1999. It also was fairly clear that Prince’s song “1999″ would never be the same.
We had moved to northwest Arkansas in 1999 so I finally could leave information technology and follow my dream of writing for a living, for exactly half the pay I had been earning. The funniest thing about that was the number of people who asked me, “Is your wife going with you?”
That was only the beginning of a period that can be summed up by that overused word, “change.”
(click to enlarge)
We had a great weekend visiting my family in Arkansas. Shannon and her mother, who already had plans with other family in the area, joined in for part of the festivities. That’s why she wasn’t in the above picture.
I included a couple more pictures for this teaser post, after the jump.
(click to enlarge)
The phrase “I told you so” has become tired from overuse, but sometimes it fits a situation perfectly. Take our Saturday adventure at Plano Balloonfest 2009, for example.
“I don’t want to go outside at Balloonfest,” Benjamin said. “I want to go inside at Balloonfest.”
Usually he would rather play under the open sky than under a roof, so this caught me off guard.
“Well, son, they don’t launch the balloons inside,” I said.
He cranked up to a whine. “I want to see them inside.”
Shannon sighed. Benjamin had been whining earlier in the day, too, and my wife’s vision of finally getting out of the house after being sick all week was dying. In the back of her mind, too, was an invitation to nearby Addison’s Oktoberfest.
“I think once we get there, we’ll all have a good time,” I said.
“I don’t want to go outside at Balloonfest,” Benjamin fussed. Haven’t we covered this already?
“Then we’re not going. Just take us home,” Shannon said.
I wordlessly maintained my original heading, determined that we were going to have fun and we were going to like it. Had my wife been at the wheel, we would have ended up home in record time or tangled in wreckage.
“Okay, but when it all goes wrong, I’m going to say ‘I told you so,’” Shannon said.
I laughed. “That’s fine. I can accept that.”
A small part of me still wishes I never had said that.
(click any image to enlarge)
Fatherhood is absolutely huge. Yes, this could be expanded to include parenthood in general, but I like to be specific.
As a father of an only child, I find myself worrying whether I’m a good playmate for a six-year-old, at the same time reminding myself that I’m not there primarily to be his friend. It is difficult to balance the two, because nobody wants a playmate constantly stopping to throw in points on ethics and morality. It is not his fault he’s an only child, so shouldn’t I step back and just play sometimes, as if I’m six, too?
(click to enlarge)
I awake on Sunday to the sound of my son’s voice. “Here, Daddy. Here’s the card I made for you.”
He hands me a sheet of paper. Glued on it are several S-shaped packing peanuts, and glued on those is the cutout shape of what slightly resembles an elephant, painted brightly in thick globs of some sort of paint that surely must be safe for children. A pair of eyes — enveloped in black, green, and blue — peer out at me.
“It was his idea to make it 3D,” Shannon says. “He said he knew we had some S’s in the garage somewhere, and there was a whole bag of them.”
It hangs in my cubicle now, still slightly resembling an elephant.
The rest of the day went downhill, fast, so I’m skipping it here.
On Monday, Shannon declared I was getting a “Father’s Day Do-Over” because she had been in bed sick while the boy and I hung out.
(click any pic to enlarge)
About Mark
Cubicle geek by day, proud husband and father by choice. Living in Texas by some weird twists of fate.
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