Happy New Year

Molly’s sister and her family stayed with us this week for a pleasant visit- the nephews played well together and there weren’t any more or less fights than normal. We took in the zoo, and the Franklin Institute, and ate a lot of food. I’m a bit cooked-out now, and we’ll be eating leftovers for a while in any case. We visited my parents yesterday; dad ordered a sugar-cured Virginia ham, and it was delicious. I ate so much I actually slept poorlyl. I haven’t done that in twenty years and I forgot it was possible. The creek froze over and we went ice skating. It seems to happen about once a year, and it’s always special. Eliza got out there and shuffled around; she’ll be taking lessons with Asher and Silas next week, if she agrees to get on the ice. Today we’re trying to do nothing, and doing a decent job of it.  It’s so cold we’re not going outside more than necessary,  though our cold is nothing like in the Midwest. They’re getting sub-zero brutalized and we’re just getting the “dang, it’s unpleasant” treatment. I need to get back to doing nothing now, it’s rare we have the luxury.

 

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Merry Christmas

We’ve been  watching The Fantastic Mr Fox a lot in the car recently… that is, the kids have been watching it; I’ve been listening to it. The movie uses the word “cuss” as a substitute for any curse word, which is surprisingly effective. It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. Anyway, Molly was making an apple pie the other day, in preparation for Christmas dinner. Eliza walked into the kitchen and said “Let me help peel the apples, I’ll peel the cuss out of those apples.”  We couldn’t believe our ears.

Kerry, Calvin, and Zachary are visiting this week for Christmas. The cousins are all running around getting used to each other. Underpants were apparently just shown to somebody- I can’t tell who showed them to who, for all the laughing and screaming.

I overcomplicated dinner… sometimes I manage it well, sometimes I don’t. I bought turkey legs a few days ago, and they turned out incredibly dull. On Saturday I went out shopping for ham, but I only found giant ham butts, so I bought a prime rib. What the heck. I’ve never cooked prime rib before. It caused me no little stress but it turned out well. I think we’ll throw the leftovers into some hoagie rolls for lunch tomorrow.

The Christmas tree  sheltered many gifts this year, although I think our gift-giving was a bit off the mark. Asher has been asking for a guitar for months. We bought him a real one. He was tickled pink for five seconds, and then set it aside and moved on. Like most American males, he got a guitar, and won’t play it. I cobbled together a new bike for Eliza (12″ pedal bike. ) and she seems psyched, but I’ll be surprised if she rides it before spring. Sias, however, received a remote control car that has a “crazy mode,” so he’s tickled pink. He pushes a button and it ricochet’s all over the house.  I bought Molly a bluetooth key-phone-finder, after we lost her keys for a day and a half last week. I got one for myself too- I used it to find my phone twice today. It paid for itself already.  This post is already a day late, so I’m gonna let ‘er rip now. None of us have work or school this week, so it’s going to be about rehab for the parents and idleness for the children, although I guess we need to find something for them to do, otherwise they’ll drive us crazy. What do good parents do?

 

 

 

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“Camping”

Silas made his performance debut on the cello this week, during the Lea Winter Concert (which Molly basically runs.) He played both Jingle Bells and Oats, Peas, and Beans along with his stand-mate, who is from the Dominican Republic, but who is white, swears Silas. Gotta love those conversations. Silas also sang along with the k-2 choir, singing…. I don’t remember. If you want to know, ask Molly.

This weekend we headed up north to our old haunt World’s End State Park to reunite with our friends Keith, Rebecca, and Simon for one last time before they leave the country for a year (lucky dogs.) Seeing them was wonderful. Yelling at the kids for doing dumb stuff over and over was less wonderful. The cabin was about 10 degrees when we arrived, and the kids were not having it. They whined and cried while we built a fire and set up the space heater. It was about an hour before we all settled down and exhaled. Molly and I are used to sleeping poorly the last….decade… but this weekend was especially bad. I’ll leave it at that.

Eliza was reunited with Simon, who was born about 22 hours before her. They’re the same size, have similar language, can both be extremely trying little monsters- it was adorable seeing them together again.  They’re all off to Australia for a year (work-research related) and we’ll miss them.

On the drive home we drove over a screw and starting losing air about half way between the park and Wilkes Barre, which if you don’t know, is about the middle of nowhere. We got air at a construction site, a dude with a compressor at a gas station (whose air station was broken) and finally made it to a Turkey Hill convenience store just a hundred yards from a legit tire garage. No, we didn’t have a spare tire- don’t ask cause I ain’t telling. Yes, I’m an idiot. We managed to Uber down to Wilkes Barre, while we hoped our car would be fixed the next morning (we just put our key and contact info through the shop’s drop box and hoped it would work out. It all worked out… we just got home almost a day later than we hoped. Now I’m about to fall off my chair I’m so tired.

 

 

 

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Sick!

Molly and I estimate we’ve done a dozen loads of laundry in the past 24 hours. I am sure I did at least three, and she usually does many multiples of what I do, so the dozen seems realistic. Eliza has had impetigo, which is a surface bacteria that often starts in the sore, raw nose of a little runny-nosed kid. That was Friday… we got her doped up and on the mend just in time for Silas to catch a stomach bug Saturday evening. He was griping all day, although not very convincingly, but he showed us that night by getting sick off the top bunk. We’ve been doing laundry ever since. Asher was under the weather today but seemed to just be really tired- he perked up late in the evening though and rattled off a dozen quick Magformer structures before bed.  Molly and I are keeping it together for the moment- my hands are raw from washing them so often.  It was such bad timing, too. We have at least five inches of snow on the ground and we barely got to play in it at all. I’m sure the sledding down at Clark Park was mediocre, but we would have done it anyway. All I want for Christmas is a good night’s sleep and to get all the kids off to school tomorrow.

And also I want God to smite down the FCC… that too. Or to be more exact, I’d like the FCC chair, Ajit Pai, to get stuck under an Ikea dresser for the duration of his term. This Thursday it’s expected that the FCC will strike down broadband’s Title II status (enacted in 2015) which means not all web traffic will be treated equally. Which means he with the most dollars wins (on the internet, which is pretty much life at this point.) So let’s all make some angry calls to our congressional staffers this week. Unfortunately I’ve got Pat Toomey to deal with, so complaining to him is like pissing in the wind, but I’ll do it anyway.

 

Sleeping at the Walmart

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December 3

On a positive note, the weather was lovely this week, I took the girls to the zoo, I started a new sleep schedule that has improved my days, and we had a relaxing weekend. On a different note, I think I need to polish up my German and get ready to leave the country, as it seems to be inexorably marching into the swamp. Except I like swamps- they’re very bio-diverse. We’ve just been marched into the wasteland- Kansas, maybe.

giraffe tail (dead)

hide and seek

Christmas cookies

slime

slime!

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