Happy First Birthday, Hazel!!!
May 15th, 2008
Excuse me, Hazel?
How old are you today?
Darn tootin’!
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Workin’ ‘n a Buildin’
May 12th, 2008
Megan and I have moved a lot over the past eight years — seven times by my count. It’s like one of us is in the military or wanted by the authorities (or both á la The A-Team!) and we have to keep stealing away in the midnight hours. I have to seriously wonder if all this relocation has given us an aura of displacement because my workplace, situated in the same Mid-coast town since 1990 and in the same cozy offices therein for the past 12 years, just up and moved last month. The move was only 8 miles down Route One, but still I feel somewhat responsible for our recent need of change of address forms and sturdy brown boxes.
Overall, I love the new office. The building is more modern in both its design and amenities and is only two miles from home, so I can bike to work, thereby combating both high gas prices and my carbon footprint. It has been kind of strange to make the shift from our old “single serve” bathrooms to the large, public affairs we have here. It wasn’t a huge leap back into my memory banks to remember that, even if you see someone you know in the men’s room, anything beyond a polite nod and quickly muttered salutation is sort of taboo. Like when you find yourself in a dicey neighborhood, keep your eyes forward, just keep moving, and for God’s sake don’t point.
We’re located at the topmost floor, the fourth, so this gives me great opportunity to exercise a little bit each day. But whenever I come across people on the stairs, any smile or friendly hello on my part is treated with surprise and even suspicion. Something about the stairs — closed in by cinderblock walls, narrow with lots of blind corners — spooks people. A frighteningly large percentage of the folks I see look fearful of some masher attack. It makes one wonder if something unfortunate happened in this building, in the very stairs that are meant to connect floors. But most likely it’s just the insular attitude that many people in Maine have. It’s not unfriendliness, but it certainly isn’t sociability.
Of course, I could always just sell out and take the elevator. I do periodically when something large or unwieldy needs to be moved up from or down to our basement storage area. But then you can be trapped with people in a little box, forced to decide between idle chat or staring resolutely at the floor number display as you ascend. But taking the elevator wouldn’t only betray my marginal fitness goals, it would also seriously slow me up. Several times, people who can clearly walk have gotten on the thing for a ride of just one floor. Trying to get from the basement to the fourth can be confounding enough, but running the gauntlet of one-floorers can be downright enervating.
Maybe it isn’t laziness though. Maybe these people take the elevator because of the Incident that happened in the Stairs. Maybe they know the elevator to be a safe haven, a story-spanning sanctuary. Perhaps that humble lift is this building’s version to the Headless Horseman Bridge: offering secure passage to those who reach it in time.
Toro Tirade
May 8th, 2008
Picture yourself in front of an impossibly tall door that can easily be opened, but not by you. Imagine, if you will, the sound of a small hand smacking against a pane of glass. Visualize the frantic motions of someone whose dexterity is still in beta development, spurred into action by a burning need to get the attention of a person who is looking the other way and cannot hear your warnings. Can you imagine the frustration felt, the panicky sweat that would make smooth hands clammy and brushed hair matted?
Hopefully you are picturing a cute, active baby and not some sort of demon spawn just birthed from the unholy womb of Hell because I’m talking about Hazel, not Beelzebub Jr. This week was the inaugural First Mow of the Yard and I’m embarrassed by the glee that bubbled up inside me at the thought of cutting the grass, one straight, deliberate row after another. But what made me actually laugh out loud (and I don’t mean LOL) is when I briefly looked over at our front screen door. As I shore our lawn to a respectable height, there stood Hazel — 30 inches of flailing fury, desperately trying to get my attention and alert me of the big scary monster (i.e. the push mower) that could very well make me into Daddy mulch.
Don’t Grumble - Give a Whistle
May 5th, 2008
One of the best skills a person can have is the ability to put a positive spin on a potentially bad situation. I’m not talking about someone who blindly ignores the icky parts of life in favor of Precious Moments figurines and posters of kittens staunchly “hanging in there.” This optimistic outlook needs to be authentic and honest, boldly acknowledging that things aren’t perfect without actually focusing on that glum fact. Take for example this anecdote from my college graduation. Commencement was held outside on the Marist College green despite warnings of heavy rains to come. And come they did; dumping rains began soon after the first diploma was handed out. Many of my classmates left in a huff as soon as they walked across the stage, but a good handful of us stayed on to cheer our fellow graduates. By the end, the mass of students who had stuck it out congregated to the front of the seating area, celebrating as the steady rain soaked us through our gowns, our eyes barely protected by our waterlogged mortarboards. Once the last name was called, Marist Brother Paul Ambrose took the microphone to deliver the closing benediction. He cleared his throat as said, “May your young lives have as many blessings as rain drops that have fallen on your heads today.”
So that’s what I mean by effective positive spin. Let’s now use this method to assess our dry(ish) basement. We had originally planned to finish off a good portion of it, making a play room, a dark room, and two office spaces for Megan and myself. Moving forward, I feel that we’d be foolish to blithely disregard our basement penchant for getting wet. Even with a sump pump installed, we’re still talking about a potentially damp environment from time to time. I don’t want to put our computers and their peripherals down there. So now what?
Well, we’re considering an addition. Right now, two of our three bedrooms are being used as advertised with the third servicing as an office/craft room. But if we’re going to expand our family (a serious possibility in the next year or so) then we are going to need to revert that third bedroom to a nursery. With no extra space for computer stuff, an addition may be just the thing. So the estimate gathering has begun, but I have to say how very nerve-racking this is. If anyone out there has a better idea, I’m all ears.
At the very least, we can always depend on Hazel to take care of clean up.
All Wet
May 1st, 2008
I realize that I have been remiss in reporting funny Hazel anecdotes, illustrated by unbelievably cute photos of our little girl. Just so you know, this post won’t really have much to say about Hazel, but with her First Birthday coming up in just two weeks(!), she’ll have much attention lavished upon her. For now, let’s focus on two occurrences that happened this week to pull Ragozzine optimism into a pin-wheeling nosedive.
First off, let’s turn the clock back a few nights. Hazel was slumbering peacefully in her crib, affording Megan and I the chance to sit back and watch some good old fashion network television. With upwards of four static-snowed channels provided FOR FREE by our rabbit ears antennae, a veritable world of entertainment waited for us in our living room. One of us was already sitting on the right-side of the futon when the other came in and sat down on the left-side of the futon, and with a KER-THUMP! the left-side of the futon frame collapsed to the ground, leaving us askew and laughing. That futon has been through a lot, including holding up the heft of O3Paul (One Ounce Overweight) on several occasions with nary a crack nor a sag. But its time has obviously come, so we resolved ourselves to buying a new couch with our well-timed economic stimulus check.
We settled on a sofa from IKEA’s Ektorp series. Not only will this match our Ektorp loveseat, but now we have twice the reasons to randomly bark out “Ektorp!” in a nigh passable German accent. Ektorp! And yes, we realize that IKEA is a Swedish company. But just like Paul, Ektorp has a distinct German connotation to it. However, unlike Paul, our soon-to-arrive Ektorp sofa won’t set off any “too much weight” elevator alarms.
I suppose now would be the best time to wish Paul a happy birthday. We hope to be making fat jokes about you for decades to come, so here’s to your long and joyous life!
The second ill-fated happenstance bubbled to the surface yesterday morning. In addition to May flowers, April showers brought us another flooded basement. We just got too much precipitation in too short a time earlier this week and the excessive water found its way inside again. Since we already have everything of value off the floor following the last flooding episode, nothing of great importance was lost except for some tag sale stuff, a few more cardboard boxes left over from our move, and all of our surplus stock of toilet paper. If you know me, you know that the latter actually may impact us fairly hard, but I’m trying to be positive.
After 5 hours of work with our utility pump and wet/dry vac, the tides seemed to have turned, so Megan and I went downtown for some lunch (Hazel having been magically whisked away to Grammie house). When we returned to the basement after about an hour or so, all the water had come back. Clearly our methods were not keeping up with the rate of ingress. Lucky for us, though, a new Lowe’s store opened up just 4 minutes from home and were offering 10% off on all purchases to celebrate their opening. So we were able to buy a larger, better pump with an electronic on/off sensor along with a few other things necessary to get our affairs in order. After just three more hours of work, the pump could now keep up with the water’s continual entry and we could take the rest of the night off from mopping and such.
All told, I wound up moving about 300 gallons of water by bucket and vacuum container up our bulkhead steps. In a moment of desperation, we also tried moving the many bags of tube sand off the floor drain (covered over by me based on a theory that it is not so much a drain as a forever-on faucet for groundwater) to see if it would do what it was designed to do. After hoisting 540 lbs of sand up the stairs to the backyard, we discovered that the drain is definitely where the water comes in; when I lifted up the last bag, water began gushing in like a leak in a submarine. So back down came 420 lbs worth of tube sand (the two last bags were just too many) and we picked up where we left off with water removal. If we can agree that one gallon of water weighs about 8 lbs, then I moved about 3400 lbs worth of water and sand yesterday up and/or down a half dozen cellar stairs. That’s close to 1-3/4 tons of stuff that I personally relocated, which ain’t half bad for a guy who hasn’t been to a gym in five years!
I’m happy to report that no new water has gotten inside, so things are looking up once more. In closing, I think this week can be most adequately summarized thusly: EKTORP!
Ich Bin Ein Baby
April 27th, 2008
Megan and I had lots of misgivings before sending Hazel to daycare. Would we become strangers, ranking behind all those fun teachers? Would she learn all sorts of nasty behavior? Would she be permanently snot-ridden and coughing? The pessimistic litany went on and on, our cyclical conversations on the matter amounting to nothing more than philosophical tires spinning in the mud. In the end, we had to admit that Hazel needs to see other kids and have other adult authority figures without us around. Independent relationships are important, and we certainly don’t want to raise a high marking but socially inept home schooler. We won’t be able to clamber onto the school bus with her on the first day of kindergarten, so we may as well give her a social head start and give her over to daycare two days a week. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?
Well the worst didn’t transpire, but one of our top concerns reared its mucousy head: by the end of week one at “school”, Hazel managed to contract Daycare Ick. Unlike the parasitic Ich that ruined many a fish tank in my life, Daycare Ick involves a lot more sticky shirtsleeves (both the infected child’s and any nearby adult in consoling distance). Daycare Ick symptoms can vary from a perennial runny nose to a nagging cough to what Hazel wound up with: Conjunctivitis. I can easily imagine all those other kids in her room, older kids by as much as a whole year, holding her down and taking turns rubbing their grubby fingers in her then brown and now pink eyes. Between that and her dripping nose and teething aches, Hazel is only ranking at most a 7.5 on the Funshine Bear Cheer-o-meter.
But just as a South Pacific island youth must kill a Great White Shark using nothing but half a coconut, I suppose that Daycare Ick is a necessary if not annoying right of passage. What would my youth have been without the classroom colds, the locker room awkwardness, or the sundry wedgies? Fortunately, none of my wedgies were atomic and my freshman year gym teacher let us shower with bathing suits on. But don’t ask about sophomore year, I really can’t afford to miss any work from the post-recount catatonia.
American History Leads To Wendy’s
April 21st, 2008
My work trip to Chattanooga ended very nicely. I even found time to walk around their downtown, which is darn nice what with the river walk along the Tennessee River, the Walnut Street Pedestrian Bridge, and the spacious, wide sidewalks leading to loads of quality restaurants. The nice thing about doing consulting work with schools is that you are typically done by 4 p.m. at the latest. I am happy to report that many a Frisbee floated in the Chattanoogan sky that eve. If that city wasn’t in the South, I could totally see myself living there.
While at our client’s school, I was able to admire some of the artwork in the library, including several prints by John Falter. In fact, I liked them so much that I did a little bit of research on a few of my favorites. “The Bridge” stood out for its chaotic layout and stark portrayal of a Revolutionary War era battle, soon-to-be Americans bayoneting the hell out of some British jerks (no offense, Dan) who were trying to cross some bridge, hence the title (no image online of this painting as far as I could find, dern it). After a bit more Googling, it turns out that the bridge in question is The North Bridge of Battle of Concord fame, a integral moment in American history and one of the reasons why I had today off from work.
For today is Patriots’ Day! Most of the workin’ folk of Maine and Massachusetts had today off from toiling thanks to those long deceased minutemen. I spent the day most patriotically, starting off with a nice three-hour yard raking session. “The Pond” has all but dried up in the back, and I am determined to make use of as much of our property as possible. Those American revolutionaries didn’t charge into battle with rifles that couldn’t shoot a man with his finger in the barrel just so I could sit back and let a full third of my half acre estate fall into forgotten disrepair. No sir. As a true patriot on Patriots’ Day, I left no leaf unraked, no fallen branch uncollected. I’m happy to report that the yard looks a large percent better and ready for some shade gardens and such. And I even unearthed an action figure — a humanoid camel who turned out to be none other than Sandstorm, the cool camel captain!
Following all this patriotic lawn work, I loaded the family up and drove us all over 40 miles to the nearest Target for some all-American consumerism. Truthfully, we just needed to stock up on some things for Hazel’s first day of daycare, which is tomorrow. Rather than just settle for our local Wal-mart, we made a day of it and head to Augusta, our state’s fine capital. How could we have better paid tribute to those fallen nascent Americans than by touring the cerebral cortex of Maine’s democratic government? No better, fair readers, no better at all.
America, we breathed you deeply today, this glorious day, this Patriots’ Day. Amongst the olfactory tinge of the Union worker on the line, the immigrant family yearning to be free, and the odorous smoke of freedom-ringing fireworks, we sniffed fries and burgers. So, on the way home, we had a drive-thru dinner, like true American patriots.
Tennesseein’ Is Tennebelievin’!
April 15th, 2008
Greetings from sunny Chattanooga, Teneessee! The last time I was in this state, Jim, his Cherokee Territory wife (Christina), and me were ascending its highpoint, Clingmans Dome, along a snow-strewn access road under a bright midnight moon. Following this summit, Jim got really, really sick from gas station Cheetos and we hunkered down at a truck stop just outside of Pigeon Forge (home to Dollywood and all things super classy) and I had the pleasure of using a truck stop pay-by-the-hour shower stall. Over vending machine peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, while Jim might have been dying in the back of the van, Christina and I spent the evening watching Top Gun on a ridiculously huge television in the trucker rumpus room. The year was 1998 and it was the first time I saw that movie. I was a deprived child.
Speaking of deprived children, Hazel should not be counted among their swarthy lot. She spent Saturday Running Errands With Daddy and had a hoot, as did I. We went to the post office and the grocery store and still had enough time (and baby energy) left over for a quick trip to buy Mommy a brand new Red Sox hat. Hazel bought it with her allowance, which I bestowed upon her as we waited in line at the register and summarily suspended before we had crossed the parking lot to our car. While Hazel is very sensitive to the fact of our taking away tangible things (toys she insists on banging against each other, our cell phones she likes to chew upon, nigh swallowed cat food) intangibles like the concept of allowance can be turned on and off like a faucet without any tantrumic repercussions. Until she figures out that money is special paper, things should be just fine.
After Hazel was put to bed and the rain delay was lifted, Megan and I settled in for a nice night of televised Major League baseball. I am no august sports fan by far, but seeing as how I own a Red Sox hat, and had bought a second one for my wife (Hazel somehow has the king’s share of Red Sox paraphernalia in our house with two hats and one outgrown onesie), I make the effort to watch a game when it is on a channel our rabbit ears antenna picks up (ABC, PBS, or FOX - CBS should the atmosphere by particularly benevolent). Saturday’s game was pretty tense; both the Sox and their dread rivals the Yankees played excellently in the field and kept the score low and close. After a second rain delay, we arrived at the top of the 9th with 2 outs, Papelbon on the mound. Just as he was to throw what could have been a game ending strike, FOX cut the feed and switched to stupid NASCAR. With a pox cast on Bill France, Sr., I shook my fist angrily toward the heavens before realizing that I could just check the live feed of the game online. Technology fixes everything.
Since watching car racing on television is tantamount to torture in our house, we turned the channel to PBS out of desperation and the Saturday evening movie was just starting: Penny Serenade starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. The entire movie is couched as a series of tedious flashbacks sparked by different songs being played on the phonograph in deliberate succession by Dunne’s character. I can’t remember her name, as another character’s fictional moniker far outshone her, that of the “aw shucks” best friend of Grant, Applejack Carney. I’m not officially calling dibs on that name should we have a boy next, but consider this a penciled in dibs. Beyond his name, Applejack is a fantastic guy, capable of fixing printing presses with his fist (à la the Fonz), bathtubs using no tools, and marriages with adopted babies. All in all, the movie features loads of chauvinism, a miscarriage, purchased Japanese children, and that great clomping around sound effect made famous by the Three Stooges. You can watch Penny Serenade in its entirety online — consider it for your next rainy day distraction or betting device.
Anyway, by the length of this post, can you tell that I’ve been cooped up on three separate plane flights today? I’m off to see what Chattanooga has in store for a simple Mainer. If I make it to Rock City or a Lookouts game, I’ll let you know.
Consarnit
April 10th, 2008
Megan and I are both getting more parent-y by the second. We’ve already moved well beyond the not-being-grossed-out-by-bodily-excretions stage; most mealtime conversations revolve around what Hazel did or did not pass through her body that day. Hopefully, this is the only time in our lives that taking a massive poop at the dinner table qualifies as a witty rejoinder. Yesterday, Megan turned one more corner toward total parent-ness while making dinner. Looking out the window above the kitchen sink, she declared, “Those damn kids are in our yard again!” [Editor’s Note: She might not have cursed, but it makes a better story if she did.]
For privacy’s sake, our road name will heretofore be known as Awesome Land North. Awesome Land North is a quiet, little cul-de-sac running directly parallel to Awesome Land South, a down and out dead end. Our AL North backyard abuts (haha) the backyard of a nigh identical suburban plot of land over on AL South — a small expanse of trees and shrubs serves as a line of demarcation between us. Toward the back corner of our half-acre is a low spot where water collects, often cited by Megan as evidence that we own waterfront property. A gaggle of AL South elementary schoolers insist on playing in this muck, climbing on fallen trees and throwing around mud and rocks. They don’t do any real harm, but it bugs us to no end just the same. I’ve spoken with them a few times, asking them to not play in our yard but somehow, they always manage to wander back over, sometimes moving well past the “shoreline” to within an arms length of our home.
It just reminds me of a stereotypical neighborhood old man, shaking a liver-spotted fist at a group of giggling children who never retreat further than just beyond the reach of a garden hose spray. Add this to my getting up early at Big Dave’s Bachelor Party to turn off all the lights someone left on overnight, the white hairs that are threatening a coup by my left temple, my prideful obsession with the state of my lawn, and my honest enjoyment of picking up sticks in the yard after a good rainstorm, one starts to get a fairly focused profile of a cantankerous dad. I almost want Hazel to start dating just so I can dislike whomever she brings home.
Almost.
