It’s a wonder when your child enjoys reading and is so proud of it that he reads aloud to his cousins. An equal wonder is each teenager listening patiently until he finishes.
Below he reads to himself on Christmas Day 2009. (click pic to enlarge)
Nikon D50
50mm Nikkor AF
f/2.8
1/30 sec
Aperture Priority
Spot Metering
Benjamin enjoys his backyard slide on Christmas Day 2009. (click any pic to enlarge)
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)
At a recent Cub Scouts den meeting, one of the boys brought his mother to help explain and showcase the violin. It is one of my favorite instruments, so despite my usual reservations about taking Benjamin to a meeting that ends a half hour past his bedtime (on a school night), I looked forward to the evening.
I took along my digital recorder to capture some of the live music. What I got was not what I expected.
In this clip, the young lady explains the bow, and Benjamin’s input bewilders one of his fellow Scouts who happens to be just as vocal. If not more.
A transcript follows after the more link below, for those who either have no way to listen or cannot make it out.
Benjamin created the picture above over Thanksgiving weekend, from memory, and I photographed it because it was about to leave with his cousin. Though his sharpest focus has shifted to Transformers recently, he has been a fan of Star Wars for a while.
I’ll always remember his final words one night after I tucked him in for bed.
His small voice, tired from a long day of playing, said weakly, “Dantooine.”
Instead of asking why he said it, I just quietly closed his door as usual and made my way down the hall to the living room.
(For you non-SW geeks, Dantooine is first mentioned by Princess Leia in the movie that started it all, when she tries to prevent Grand Moff Tarkin from blowing up her home world of Alderaan. **Spoiler alert** Her ploy failed.)
Despite the myriad of choices we were given, our “sandwich artist” denied us the one that mattered. I found myself in that increasingly rare state called incredulity.
In the middle of a seven-hour drive back from a festive Thanksgiving weekend, the three of us were hungry, so we stopped at a convenience store featuring an embedded Subway sandwich shop. I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect because Benjamin never had eaten at that particular chain.
For the kid’s meal Benjamin was asked the following: What type of animal print bag would you like? Would you like a cookie, chips, or yogurt as your side (they were out of apples)? What would you like to drink? As the line of patrons behind us grew longer Benjamin explained that he would like the cheetah print bag, the yogurt, and the milk.
Before that, however, was the most important question: What meat would you like on your sandwich?
“Do you want turkey, or ham?” we asked him. It seemed simple enough to let him decide, considering that is one of Subway’s selling points.
“Both.”
I think even my spleen cringed at the word.
“He would like turkey and ham,” I told the sandwich artist.
“Sorry, sir, but you have to choose one or the other.”
I stared, agape, for about two seconds, and then had a Jack Nicholson-ordering-toast moment (from Five Easy Pieces).
“How many slices of meat go on the sandwich?” I asked.
“Two.”
“So, you can’t use one slice of turkey and one slice of ham?”
“That’s what we’re told. Hold on.” She leaned over and consulted someone else. Then, back to me. “Yes, that’s right.”
I turned to the boy. “Ben, you have to choose one: turkey or ham?”
Benjamin mumbled something, his mind having wandered to something else. I knelt down and held his face in my hands, and looked him in the eyes. “Turkey or ham, son? You can have only one type.”
“Turkey,” he blurted, and then easily decided on his remaining toppings, including black olives, just like his daddy.
Back in the van he ate every bite, without gripe or whine. The fact that he happily scarfed it down took the edge off my rant, but I felt the need to share, if not to write a letter asking Subway to explain exactly why that policy is in place, and whether it is chain-wide.
I understand that when ringing up the sandwich, the staffer probably has to punch in “turkey” or “ham,” and that this probably helps them track their use of each. Is it too much to add a way to combine meats on a sandwich?
Next time I go to Subway, I am going to ask for turkey and ham. If you eat meat, please do the same and report back.
Sound Clip – Ben explains how some spiders catch their prey.
It wasn’t what I had in mind when I started the car Sunday morning.
After my son and I played catch and other games in the back yard early, I decided we needed to get out of the house, to one of the places I recently discovered while wandering away from work.
On past walks and bicycle rides to the donut shop, Benjamin had toted along books in his backpack. The tradition became this: move a while, then stop and sit on the sidewalk for me to read him a book. Benjamin decided to continue this tradition on trips that don’t involve deep-fried breakfast food.
This time there was a twist that, while initially undesirable, turned out to be pleasant. (as usual, please use headphones or earbuds for maximum immersion)
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.”
