Building Castles on the Beach

So, mostly I just gush about the boy all the time around here. But I'm noticing our Christmas tree over in the corner and it's looking sad. In the past, dozens of different kinds of ornaments have adorned its branches. We don't follow any certain style; over the years, we've collected a variety of flavors. Some fancy crystal, some homemade felt. Some green and red balls, some tourist souvenirs. But place them all overlapping the festive blinking lights, fill the room with more eclectic tastes of the season, and the tree appears downright elegant. Here's what it looks like this year: That looks even worse than in real life. Here. It looks slightly better with the lights on, but you can't really tell how the ornaments are distributed. It's just such a mess, I'm embarrassed to even post these pictures. Any guesses why it looks this way? Generally, Xander's pretty great. But the fact that he's turned our Christmas tree into this mockery ...

I don't know where my son is right now. I'm pretty sure he's in his room. I'd have heard the door open if he'd escaped. But exactly where he is in that room? That's a mystery. I could check. A good inch-wide gap separates his bedroom door from the floor, the result of wall-to-wall carpeting however long ago. These days we go with naked hardwood. If I lie on the floor a little ways down the hall, I can get something of a view inside the room. But right now, I think all I'd see is blankets piled on the floor, tossed off the bed. Not long ago, a monkey foot wrapped in footie pajamas forced its way under the door in an effort to escape the confines of the room then got stuck there. I had no choice but to open the door and replace the monkey boy back into his big boy bed. Thus began Xander's first night sleeping without a crib. A couple of days ago, the boy was committing some random terrorism around the house and ended up in time out. His mother and ...

At two-years-old, Xander can't get enough out of trains. He wakes up in the morning calling out, "Choo choo!" Mom and Dad hear it through the baby monitor, and it's enough to make me want to ditch the whole system. If he wants me to wake up, he can climb out of the crib and say "choo choo!" at me in person. I don't think Mom is there yet, though. When we finally pull him from the crib, then, he runs to wherever he was last night with his trains before being forced to give them up in favor of a pacifier and cup of milk. He carries at least three trains in his arms, wanders around the house, sometimes putting the trains on a track, sometimes just pushing them around the floor or couch or table or bathtub, always with the mantra, "Trains. Choo choo. Trains. Choo choo" on his lips. And the perpetual smile is kinda creepy. He watches a variety of train-related videos during the day. Thomas the Tank Engine is one of the favorites, much to m...

Here is the boy at the local skate park. I swear there are kids tricking (Is that the proper skate term? Sounds wrong.) out there every time I look. Don't they have school? Or homes? Except the area was uncommonly deserted this day when Xander discovered that the skate ramp makes a pretty good slide. No longer satisfied with wholesome Bieber bangs or even a faux-mullet, Xander had opted for the who-has-time-to-think-about-his-hair 'do. We had a couple of options: 1. Do nothing, which would mean we'd have to get him a board. Maybe a longboard to start? Then just send him over to hang with the cool kids. He's already got the hoodie. 2. Take him back to Sport Clips. The first time we did that has been previously chronicled . Not a bad option. But I believe that when you're getting a haircut, you should get your hair actually cut. Which brings me to option 3. Break out the clippers and shave his head myself. You can see for yourself which option won the ...

The Boy is nearly two-years-old and it's about time he learned how to kick a ball. I mean, Ronaldinho was juggling a futebol de salao right out of the womb, right? Xander's behind schedule. As for me, I started playing soccer when I was five. It was the mid-seventies and soccer was exploding in popularity all over America. "Soccer Made in Germany" was broadcast semi-periodically on PBS. Pele was paid millions to play out his waning years for the New York Cosmos. And the AYSO's "Everybody plays" policy helped extend the Sixties nearly into the Eighties. At some point I realized that I was rather comfortable with a ball at my feet, so my parents put me on a team. I played my whole young life, then didn't for many adult years, then started coaching a few years back, and now I'm consistently playing again. I play indoor, managing maybe three minutes without keeling over, and somehow I end up stepping on an opponent's toes nearly every game....

I got no excuses. Except for the plenty of reasons I have to continue to neglect my blog. But it's still October. Two posts for the month ain't bad. To the point, I've been reading a bunch of nonfiction lately. Partly for work. Partly for fun. And I don't say that lightly. I'm not in the habit of reading nonfiction for fun. If I'm looking for fun and can't get to the mini-golf course, I go in for the fiction reading. Which goes to show these must be some extra-superb books, right? Let's begin with a book I haven't even finished yet, but can't wait to explain to people. How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization by Franklin Foer purports that soccer effects everything from small communities to society at large, from ganglords in war-torn Bosnia to political divisiveness in America. At least those are the two chapters I've read so far. I picked it up and read the last chapter first because it was about the Uni...

Where have I been? Who cares.  What's up today? Nostalgia for the go-go Nineties. Brought to you by Dave at Dave Wrote This .  Because the calendar in my head only works in terms of what I listen to at certain points in time, naturally I've chosen to count down the best of the decade in music. For my personal life, it was college, marriage, babies, Seattle. But for my musical tastes, prepare your ears for some politically correct trip hop madchester shoegaze neo soul grunge. As well as some jargon and description that makes little sense to the uninitiated. I was out of the country in 1990. Sadly, I didn't hear much music that wasn't church hymns or Brazillian samba, both of which can get a bit repetitive. Thus, this year I will skip. 1991: The Dream Academy, A Different Kind of Weather No contest here. This was the first album I bought upon my return from my mission to Brazil. The Dream Academy was a brilliant band unfortunately pigeonholed as a one-hi...

I'm already in negative mode because I had to go back to school today. Students show up next Tuesday. I will have very little time to prepare for their arrival. But I whined enough about that last post . Instead I will add more whining about other lacks of time. With school starting, that means less time to write. I also coach soccer, so most days between now and November I will be away from home for nearly twelve hours a day, even more when we have away night games. And it's not like any of those hours include down time. I have thirty minutes for lunch, and with that time I basically have to eat lunch. The other two hours a day when I won't be teaching or coaching I will be planning and prepping and gathering data and, soon enough, grading. (My IB classes have summer homework to turn in the first day of school. Don't tell them, but I usually give a day or two grace period; still, I have to start grading stuff early on.) I'm not bemoaning my job. I love tea...

As I've said, I go back to school on August 1st. That's pretty early. At least it's not July, though, like it was the year before last. I'm not talking about year-round schools or anything.  Our district has decided that an extra week or two of instruction at the beginning of the year can only mean better scores when the state tests come around in March. Why don't  we   start school in June for maximum exposure and have our break in April and May? Or just test students in May to determine improvement over a complete year? You got me. Luckily, that isn't my point today. Instead, I simply ask w here does the summer go? I start off with such lofty goals. I want to fix things that drip. Weed the lawn. Patch holes in the walls. Even dust the ceiling fans. No, I don't WANT to. These are just things I CAN do (with the possible exception of the plumbing), and I feel like I SHOULD.  So I set myself up for failure, knowing good and well it's going to ta...

Every summer the LDS church sends their young women, ages 12-18, to a week-long summer camp. It's there they learn the ways of The Force, as well as the best fixins for Dutch oven cooking. Actually, I know about as much about what goes on at Girls' Camp as I do about what goes on at Boy Scout Camp, which most Mormon teenage boys attend every year, but which I never did, despite being a Mormon teenage boy. I was busy playing soccer or something. This started long before Title IX, by the way. In fact, 2012 is the 100th anniversary of Young Women Camp . In your face, 2014  Division I women's lacrosse at the University of Colorado. Where were you in 1914? Anyway, today my wife and my twelve-year-old daughter  drove   a car full of teenage girls  to their camp site near Cripple Creek, Colorado, tucked away back there on the sunset side of Pike's Peak. T hat leaves me alone with the boy for the rest of the week. The following is the account of how our first day as c...

I don't have much to say about shootings at the Century 16 theater .  You can follow the news yourself. I've had   9News  on all day. For me,  it's too shocking and horrific. I don't feel especially eloquent right now. Still, I thought I'd let everyone know that my family and I are safe. And especially to those reading this who I don't know personally, you might know I'm from Aurora, Colorado. It says so right over there to the right. But Aurora is a big place, east of Denver proper, spreading out into the plains of Colorado. We're urban and suburban, even rural. So the chances of a tragedy of this magnitude happening in Aurora and still hitting close to home are pretty low. The apartment where the shooter lived is only a mile from my house. Right now the police still haven't entered the place. It's booby-trapped. Authorities have evacuated a  radius of a  couple of blocks. That doesn't reach my place, but it's literally close to...

It's time once again to get meta. Much like Chandler Bing's reasons for spending Thanksgiving in a box, my discussion today will be threefold. A kind of long bit of nonsense follows. But when has that ever stopped you? Point One : Following First of all, last week my little blog gained it's one-hundredth follower. It's been a long time coming, really, but still I rejoice. Now, if one-tenth of those people actually read my writing, I could die contented. So, congratulations to Heather M. Gardner from The Waiting is the Hardest Part . She wins nothing, but continuing to read this blog will enhance her knowledge, health, and appreciation of good music. In a way, then, she wins everything. Point Two : Blog Awards A couple-few weeks ago I was kindly awarded a blog award for nothing less than being a recently new follower of  Miss Farawayeyes at the   Far Away Series  blog. I've been dubbed versatile before. I'm not sure if it's due to my ability to do dis...