The Sound of Reading

Today was a VERY big day for Kara! She and I went on an excursion to the local library today to do some research for a project she is doing for Girl Scouts. While there Kara asked if she could go over to the book section that has the reading books for her age group. Every other time we've been to the library she goes immediately to the train table and the other toys that are there for the little kids and she's never shown any interest in actually looking at reading books for herself. So, I assumed it was the same today. I was in for a delightful surprise!

After locating the children's cookbook of international foods that I was hunting for, I found my way back to the area where Kara had asked to go. Even from a distance I saw something different -- she was sitting in a chair at a table looking at --- a BOOK! As I got closer and told her I had found what we were looking for, she politely asked about a word she was having trouble sounding out and then showed me a book she wanted to know if she could check out. The book was a CHAPTER BOOK! in the Junie B. Jones series! For those of you who are unfamiliar with children's books chapter books are books with mostly words and only a few pictures, generally one picture every four or five pages or so, and, as the name suggests -- chapters. Up until now Kara has been a very reluctant reader feeling only confident enough to tackle picture books, primarily Clifford books. She personally would like to be reading books about animals, but she's not allowed to test on those and they are all above her tested reading level. So, for her to ask to check out a chapter book and want to read it herself was a bit of a surprise --- but still not the biggest suprise. I said yes that she could check it out but that she would have to be the one who would read it, not Daddy or I. She agreed and commented that this is what "everyone" in her class is reading. Ok. We'll see how it goes.

We checked it out and got in the car. Where, to my shock, she began reading! The first few words aloud and then silently with focus she studied the page and in the silence in the car you could almost hear the words of this story jumping off the pages of this book and bouncing into her little head. I could see in the rear-view mirror the intent look on her face and the commitment she had to what she was doing. SHE WANTED IT AND IT WAS HERS! She slowed down a couple of times to spell a word to me for help, then kept right on reading. The story had her. The squiggly lines of letters were funny, serious, entertaining -- a world of words on the pages in this funny code called the alphabet. She was reading and she was loving it. After a few pages she started telling me what page she was on -- sharing the amazement she had at her own success.

We arrived at our next destination, another store. Her book came with her. She sat on the floor to read. We got back in the car to come home. The silence of her reading filled the air. It was the most beautiful thing I have seen in a very, very long time!

Tonight it finally happened. For years I had imagined a time when Kara would sit in her bed and read and read and read. I came home from grocery shopping and the house was filled with the same sound that had filled the car earlier today, the beautiful melody of words floating silently through the air from the printed page into the mind.

So, I brought her her glasses... and she smiled and said "I was about to ask for those. "

I dreamed about you last night

Is it just me, or is everyone fascinated by neurobiology, or the study of the brain? Thanks to magnetic imaging and other technologies, scientists can monitor living brains in real time. The result is that old questions are getting fresh answers, and one of the oldest has to do with dreams.

Why do we dream? Is there any meaning to the show between our ears? Do animals dream like we do? All of these questions have eluded evidential research for years—until now.

Radio Lab, one of my favorite podcasts, recently did a show on sleep, and a Harvard professor named Robert Stickgold featured into the last third of it. Dr. Stickgold walks patients through certain activities while awake—most notably the video game Tetris—and then wakes them up at various intervals in a sleep lab to get the skinny on how their dreams are going.

Turns out, there are two activities going on while you are asleep. The first activity is that the brain bathes all the synapses formed during the previous day’s experiences. This weakens them, so that only the most prominent connections stay in the memory. Think of every experience you have like noise. Sleep turns the volume down, so that only the loudest noises remain. I don’t remember eating breakfast last week, for example, but I do remember the plot to Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, which I finished at the same time. The second activity is problem solving. During the day, the brain marks any activities which peaked your emotions, good or bad, with a tag that says something like, “Could be a problem. Work it out later.” While you are asleep, it gathers up all the tagged material and starts figuring it all out. At first it is very literal. You see the social gaffe or the details of the financial decision. But then it begins to free associate, plugging in other stored memories that sort of match the initial situation.

Both activities mean that your brain is not a static entity. Every experience that you have during the day creates new synaptic connections, and some of these remain over the course of time. They also explain why learning occurs so much easier in the mornings: you have less noise, less synaptic clutter, in the brain, all of it having been cleaned out while you were sleeping the night before.

Now where am I going with this? Well, my wife and I have very different dream lives, and I am wondering whether this new information might actually help me understand her and myself a little better. I almost never remember my dreams. I hurtle into sleep, but once there I drift around aimlessly. When I wake up and stumble into the bathroom for the morning pee, I hardly ever think about the dream life I left behind. My wife, on the other hand, has terrifically vivid dreams, full of complicated situations and emotions. She enjoys and even cultivates her dreams like a dedicated hobbyist, and enjoys regaling a listener with them upon waking. Her worlds are populated with the same people, primarily her mom and people from high school. I and the kids make an appearance on occasion and, just recently, some church friends have shown up. Her dream life is very important to her. My dream life doesn’t get a nod.

Now based on this science, can we learn anything from this? And how do we know what is an important brain-tag and what is just detritus? Might someone say that the inconsequence of my dream life means I’m not emotionally engaged in the world? Might someone ask whether my wife is still trying to work out some issues left over from high school? (Who doesn’t have those? And she had a fantastic high school experience; mine was the reject.) What does this mean for marriages? If the daily experiences of man and wife are very different, doesn’t that mean that, over time, the synaptic outline of their brains becomes radically different? Is there a neurological reason why husbands should take their wives out on occasion: to build a few synapses in common? Could a dream diary help you understand what your brain thinks are the most important issues in your life? What if someone you know never shows up in your dreams? Is your brain trying to say they are a wet fish, though good manners calls for reciprocal hospitality ad infinitum? And instead of thinking it is creepy if someone says, “I dreamed about you last night,” it may just be that their brain finally included you in the contacts list.

Stretch out thy rod over the waters

Two mornings ago, we awoke to the sound of our maintenance man, Charlie, banging on our door. A water main in the neighboring apartment had gone during the morning, and, as Charlie said, “I waited as long as I could before waking you.” It was an inch deep in the kitchen, and already seeping into the carpet around the entrance to the hallway. Six hours later, the plumber had come and gone, leaving a three-foot hole in the back wall of the pantry. After him was the carpet guy. He left a giant dehumidifier blowing with instructions not to turn it off for forty-eight hours. L’s parents graciously allowed us the use of their guestrooms.

Go-go seems to be weathering the disruptions with a turtle’s patience, unflustered endurance. I noticed this morning that I’d left her light on all night, and I switched it off. Turtles need sleep, just as humans do.

Emotionally, however, the rest of us aren’t doing as well. It isn’t exactly a vacation, but it is a few nights sleepover. They aren’t sure what to do, and they certainly aren’t sure why they need to go to bed at night. (At least Kara pulled three tests in the eighties this week.)

L is barely holding it together, what with the apartment shoved back into the bedrooms to clear space and the damage to the carpet itself. To peel back the carpet and remove the damaged padding, for example, the carpet guy had to cut right across the entrance to our hallway. If he is planning to fix it, no one has said.

I remember how, at our last place in Massachusetts, we moved in with all this alteration enthusiasm. Let’s paint this. Let’s repair that. Then came the first flood with, water two feet high in the basement. Gone were those dreams of do-it-yourself to be replaced by a sober renter’s pragmatism.

This plumber’s flood has had a similarly cold effect. And it could mean we buy a house that much sooner.

Excavation

There are duties that are common to every job. Architects design buildings and write in BOLD letters. Doctors diagnose and prescribe remedies. Lawyers charge ridiculous amounts of money by the hour to think and speak and know the law better than the common citizen.

Similarly wives and mothers have common duties. Some of these duties are really just an extension of being a person. Clothes and dishes need cleaning. Food needs to be purchased and prepared. Floors need vacuuming. Beds need making. Etc. Etc. These sorts of things have little to do with motherhood, despite the amount of time mothers spend doing them. These are merely basic standard of living issues.

So, duties of motherhood. Well, there was one defining moment in Kara's childhood that comes to mind. She was not feeling well. She had a stomach ache. She had diarrhea. Then she began puking Orange Pedialyte and I caught it with my hand. Without even thinking twice. That is a duty of motherhood.

Caleb, a year ago, decided to decorate the room with the contents of his diaper. While not for the faint of heart or those with a quick gag-reflex, it was the duty of a mom to know what type of cleanser not only removes, but disinfects.

Well...today I can add to this -- excavation. No, not the type archeologists are comfortable with. No sand or dirt could compete with the excavations required in motherhood. Excavations in motherhood usually involve gross bodily secretions. This morning I calmly removed a little green rubber man and an oddly shaped rock from ... you guessed it --- the contents of Caleb's diaper! Lord only knows how long these have been in his system, but they are there no longer. What's worse --- they weren't what we were looking for in there!! We were looking for the small prongs that hold up the shelf on his bookshelf. Hopefully more excavations will be successful.

Silly me, I thought that was all of the excavating I'd do today, but no, Kara got a splinter today and still won't let me remove it from her hand. So, tomorrow the duties of motherhood shall continue ... I'm sure excavation will be on the things to do list, but only tomorrow will tell what other duties might appear.

"All Gone"

You never know what a day might bring. Today was relatively uneventful, oh, up until about two hours ago. We ate a fun family dinner at a great all-you-can eat pizza place we love and came home to enjoy a nice Family Game Night after putting Caleb to bed. So, there we were, most of us two properties into having our first monopolies when we heard Caleb stirring in his room. We figured we’d been too loud and we had woken him – probably true. After a few minutes I went in to check on him after hearing him sneeze a couple of times. He had his finger in his nose and I commented sweetly, half-jokingly -–“did you put something up your nose ?” He replied “All gone.” Since I wasn’t sure if that meant yes or no, I decided to let it go. I noticed he had a pink plastic ear to a Mr. Potato Head with him and thought briefly about taking it from him, but realized it was really too big to pose any kind of choking hazard. I tucked him in, him still holding the Mr. Potato Head ear and I left the room and went back to the game. A few minutes later I heard a weird noise from his room and hushed all of us. Then we heard Caleb was crying and obviously in pain. Thom immediately rushed in to see what was wrong and I followed. Well – I’m learning – evidently “All gone” means “ Yes Mommy I put something up my nose.” And the crying that followed meant that the pointy, stick part on the pink Mr. Potato Head ear was not an appropriate tool for retrieving whatever was up there!! With a crying, drippy little boy in Thom’s arms we frantically searched for a flashlight to shine up his nose, remembering briefly that it was last seen somewhere in Kara’s room --- Lord only knows what nook, cranny, box, or drawer it’s been shoved it by now. So, Kara grabs one of these cool magnetized flashlights from Thom’s mom and sure enough Caleb has something bright green and plastic shoved in his left nostril! I vaguely recognized it as something I had seen yesterday in his room and had designated as trash but neglected to obviously throw away.

Ok, shoes on everyone, we’re going to the ER.

I called my parents regarding Kara to see if they could somehow watch her – there place, our place, the ER waiting room, I don’t care – just let me focus on the one in pain for the moment. So, they chose here. I go to the ER with Caleb while Thom waits with Kara for Grandma and Papa to arrive. He sends us off and says “I’ll meet you at the ER.” I go ahead. Caleb had a grand time in the thankfully empty waiting room. He ran about 10 laps around the very large room while I wondered when Thom might arrive, keeping an eye on the door. We were ushered into an exam room and quickly seen by a very efficient female doctor from Bavaria, Germany. In a matter of moments she had Caleb easily restrained thanks to Man Nurse and myself and had relieved him of the foreign body in his nose. Where is Thom? Hmm. So, now I’m waiting for the discharge nurse. Will Daddy get here before we’re discharged? Do I wait in the waiting room? What might the hold up be? So, I’m at the “here’s-where-the-rubber-meets-the-road, what’s-your-insurance” desk when in walks Thom.

And now his side of the story --- so Lynn-nore leaves with Caleb and about ten minutes later L’s parents arrived. That was good cause it gave Kara and I a few minutes to get our bearings. Kara was very calm. She was VERY concerned about Caleb and is wise beyond her years when she finds herself in emergency mode. When L’s parents arrived I handed Kara off to them, which was very difficult because she really wanted to be with her brother. She wanted to comfort him and help him. She offered the pillow she had been given at her last hospital visit as something that would make him feel better, so I took it with me. I got out to the truck and headed for the ER. Right away I noticed the truck was running really rough, but I thought I could make it. Then the engine light came on and I smelled something strange. I pulled over and called my father-in-law. Jack came to get me and drove me to the ER, dropping me off just in time to chase Caleb down the hall while L answered the “how-will-you-be-paying-for-this-tonight” lady.

We came home, exhausted. The whole way home we told Caleb – “No. No. No. Do not put things in your nose. No toys. Nothing. Never!” We’re pretty sure all he heard was “brum, brum, brum, no nose.” We got home and caught everyone up and put both kids to bed. Thom got on the phone with USAA to find a towing company to get the truck out of the median on the road. He then had to go out and meet the guy with the tow truck and now --- at 12:15 we’re finally all at home.

Did I metioned that I was already exhausted when we were playing monopoly.

This was Go-Go shortly after we got her...

 

Go-Go Now

 

Caleb in Grandma & Papa's Backyard

 

The Last Warm Day at the Pool

 

Kara's New Glasses!

 

My chair reclines

What a day!! Some woman was screaming at her kids in the parking lot at 6 a.m. One thing she said was so close, I woke up, alert, thinking that she was in our bedroom. There was nothing but the blue light of morning, the awareness of every second left on the alarm clock, the sound of some kids slamming a car door. I made the best of the forty minutes that remained, and then got up.

Kara was asleep when I stumbled into her room. I sat on her bed, and she rolled over and groaned. "I'll give you a few more minutes," I said, mostly to give myself a moment. Couch time. Time to wake up, have some cereal, catch a few minutes of news. I go through periods of watching the news obsessively and not caring. When I watch it obsessively, it is because of the future. I'm trying to assemble some kind of now which will suggest then. And that future is usually about money: the housing market, the DOW, the Fed. I think a lot about money these days.

Caleb gets up happy. I hear him thumping around in his room, and so I open the door. If he gets up early, he will sit against his door and talk himself awake, usually ending with a variation on "Daddy." (One of the best sounds on earth.) Today I caught him early enough so that he was just sliding out of bed. He stumbled around like a cold boy scout and then picked up a toy car. I open his shade and morning light fills up the space.

The rest of any morning is just getting things done. Changing a diaper--sometimes the first thing I do in the morning--or fixing some breakfast. L. and I have the system worked out. I get the beds made. She dresses Kara and does her hair. Everything was going okay, though slow, this morning until we discovered that the holes in Kara's earlobes had grown together a bit during the night. It took fifteen minutes of screaming, crying, cooing, ice cubes, rubbing alcohol, and pain to get new earrings in there. I felt terrible for Kara, and so did L.

Dropping Kara off at school everyday feels like an apology. I'm sorry I can't go with you. I'm sorry we can't play at a park today or go and have breakfast together and make faces over pancakes. I'm sorry that I drive off and if you need to call me or miss me you can't just open your mouth and call me. I'm twenty miles away most of the day, and, trust me, there are times in the day I'd like to pick up the phone and call you. "Say, how's music going for you today? How's that spelling? When are you taking your test. Gotta go? Okay, I'll see you later. Hugs and kisses."

My chair at work has gotten progressively lazy. When I first snatched it after a co-worker left, it was habitually vertical. Sitting in it was a reminder that one slip and some horrible error, like an egregious typo or a bleeding running head, could occur, permanently scarring the work and effort of half a dozen people and more than that number of months. Now, however, it has relaxed, tilting back and back until it comfortably reclines like an off school adolescent working the kinks out of Halo 3.

Well, 11:44 p.m. I posted. Goodnight.

L talking about "the weekend of no house"

The following longer quotations are taken from some e-mail L wrote in the last few days talking about "the weekend of no house." The plot is quite simple. We looked at a house that was almost what we were looking for. And, in the course of a weekend, we went from talking ourselves into it to talking ourselves (quite rightly) out of it.

"Thom and I have continued looking for a house and we are going back today to look at one again that we are pretty serious about. It’s a older home (by regular standards, not New England standards – meaning it was built in 1967 – not 1867! ), but VERY well kept up. It’s in a very established neighborhood where everyone seems to keep their homes and yards very nicely taken care of. It’s a 3BR, 1.5 bath – not our favorite plan, but it would work for our family. It’s a ranch style house where the garage has been nicely converted into a den and utility room. The biggest selling point for me is that it has a beautiful deck and a fenced yard where the kids could play safely and I could sit on the deck. The deck is so large it would be great for entertaining – having my parents and my brother and sister in law over and the yard is the perfect size. For car coverage it has a two-car carport that is also well-maintained and not tacky-looking – you see a lot of car ports down here and some are better than others. The house is very livable and yet there are some areas where we could make upgrades over time – bathroom could be updated, kitchen, etc. but it’s all cosmetic, not structural. So, we’re praying about it and thinking about it and talking about it. It’s in our price range, which seems amazing to us, since our range is pretty small and this house has been so well kept up and is in such a nice neighborhood. So, please pray with us about this, it is a huge decision and we want to be sure we make a wise choice. I’d tell you the list price, but you’d drop over dead when you compared it to house prices in New England!"

The funny thing about this house was that portions of it resembled our grandparent's houses. The flat white ceilings, the 50s colors, the way the rooms opened into the straight hallway like independent compartments. Moving around in it, I passed through different ages: six, twelve, sixteen. It has been a long time since I thought about my grandparents homes. About how they felt as a boy, and I wanted to go back to each one and spend a moment there just for a little longer.

The kitchen is all knotty pine paneling with really ugly 1980s wallpaper and the bathrooms also need to be updated – one has aqua/torquise blue tile and the other is more hideous 1980s wall-paper – bold strips plus floral. The layout was a nice ranch style and the home had been very well kept up. There’s a deck out back and a fenced backyard.

At one point we went into the bathroom and L started to tell me, "The linen closet is behind the door." But, thanks to my grandmother's house, I already knew. As I told L. later, being there it was hard to think about purchasing the house. We were children intruding into the strange space of adults. They know the past which we will never know, and we could very well see the future which they will not see. In us, those two poles stare across a divide at each other and hardly know what to do.

By Sunday night, we were coming out of the reverie.

Here’s the catch – lead paint. Homes built before 1978 generally have lead paint on the interior and exterior surfaces. With the remodeling projects we were imagining it would kick up the lead-paint and cause lead-paint dust – which in turn becomes lead poisoning in children and seriously affects intelligence. It wouldn’t be a problem to live there, just to do any of the updates we would want to eventually do. So, after two days of hemming and hawing and not being sure what we thought we finally got a sense of peace when we decided it wasn’t the right house for us. My parents, who had visited the home with us on Sunday, think we’re making a wise decision to wait. It would have been livable and nice enough, but not really wonderful."

Try as I might, I can't see myself owning a home. It is like seeing oneself living in a foreign city or being one of those successful guys in the movies, hurring to cross the street with the cell phone wearing a four thousand dollar suit. I grow up slow. I can't help it. My corneas opened too wide one day and they can't close again. Nevertheless, when the time comes, we will.

Otherwise forgotten Sept. 5, '07

L. sent me this in an e-mail this morning. It was too precious a scene, so ordinary and fragile, and yet so sweet that I couldn't just consign it to the recycle bin.

"Caleb and I played under the kitchen table for a while. He is such a sweetie! It’s funny how we think alike sometime. We were sitting under the table. I was trying to think of what to do under the table. So we counted things for a while and then moved the chairs around. At one point, Caleb brought all of the chairs in close, and then he bent forward to give me a kiss--it was so sweet. Like it occurred to him that the space felt cuddly. Then he looked at me, and said “book,” and tried to get out and get one from a box he had seen me put them in yesterday, but I had since put them away."

Ever Herded Cats??

I have!!! Well, not really, but it sure feels like it every time we try to get Kara to do her homework! I suppose any metaphor would do ... like pulling teeth or maybe something about gouging your own eyes out slowly because it would be more fun!

When Kara was four we often joked that she lived in Rainbow Land. We haven't heard from the residents of Rainbow Land in a while, but they have been replaced lately by the distraction of the moment. Presently it's a bleeding paper cut on the back side of her right elbow. Sometimes it's a shadow on the wall, sometimes it's an itch on her foot, back, neck, leg, ear, or whatever. As I'm typing this on one corner of the table, Thom is attempting to get Kara to read about 20 pages out of her reading book while she is complaining that she's bleeding from a paper cut! A PAPER CUT! We're thinking if it's not a puddle of blood on the floor, we don't care --- just read!!! Please!!! PLEASE just read!! No. Ok. Would a bandaid put you back on track? FINE! So, now she has a bandaid on a paper cut on her elbow and she's ALMOST done!

Did I mention we've been at this homework thing for nearly an hour already!! AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

Admittedly this is only on reading nights that it feels as if the teacher hates us and wants us all to cry all night. Math nights!! Oh how I love math nights. She actually does her homework herself without anyone hovering over her and making her keep her eyes on the paper. Ah, math. We love math. The only thing better than math is art -- who doesn't love art. Ah, art.

Maybe someday they'll give homework in recess!

Here's To You...

Mrs. Robinson -- that tune has been playing over and over again in our minds lately as Kara has begun the 2nd Grade. Every time we tell someone her teacher's name we get the same amused look of recognition or the pleasant sound of friend and family breaking into song! So, 2nd Grade is upon us! So far so good. Kara started school on Monday. She had her first 2nd Grade spelling test on Thursday - 25 words! School's in session!! Kara is quite happy about her teacher and seeing her friends. The shy and sometimes awkward or hyper Kindergartener and 1st Grader has been replaced by a happy and confident 2nd Grader! She still doesn't delight in doing homework, but she is happy about school in general and enjoying her friends and her teacher.

The Friday before school started Kara had another big event. She got her ears pierced! We were down at the mall and I asked, as I often have, if she'd like to get her ears pierced. Out of nowhere, she unexpectedly said "Yes. I'm ready today!" So, we hopped into Claires and a few minutes later Kara came out with two 3mm gold studs! She was so brave and they look so cute! I'll post a picture soon.

Meanwhile, the house is quieter -- well except for Caleb yelling "Bo-Box" which means "there's a problem" or "Daddy" which means "hey, I need a grown-up in here!" or "TT" which means "TV." His current favorite toys are a couple of Matchbox (or Hotwheels, depending on what you call them!) cars from Grandma and a little toy Monster that sings a Happy Birthday song from Grandmommie. He runs in circles and dances to the Happy Birthday tune about 100 times a day!

Spider Trappers on the Loose

From the great land of make-believe known only in childhood Kara came to me this afternoon and announced - "Caleb and I are going to solve a mystery!" I said, "Ok sweetie, have fun." She returned in a few moments with a pink feather boa drapped around her and a few odds and ends in her arms and the words "Mama, just call us "Spider Trappers on the Loose!" She went into Caleb's room - where they often play together because all of the toys there are safe for Caleb and she called out - "Mama come and see, us." Obliging, I stepped into the doorway to discover my son walking in circles in the middle of his room wearing an old brown hat and a carrying binoculars -- evidently these were the uniforms of Spider Trappers. If you've seen or read "The Rescuers" -- this was Bianca and Bernard in human form in Caleb's room. I returned the living room and enjoyed the pleasant sounds of make-believe. After a few moments I heard "Oh no, Go-Go's in trouble, we have to save him." This, of course, was not the real Go-Go, but the stuffed animal turtle from Grandma that lives in Caleb's room -- what good is make-believe if the family pet doesn't get involved somehow?! Clearly, Go-Go was in trouble -- stuck beneath Caleb's bed and requiring a Spider Trapper to save him. Soon after a few clues to the mystery were revealed-- a piece of string and a feather. Ah-ha! Then someone got thirsty and the phone rang and the game was over, only to be revisited another day.

Yet another answer to the question : if you have a kid, why have another kid? Make believe is better with a younger sibling to follow instructions!

kara heart art

I think it is official: Kara LOVES her art class! What? You didn't hear? Yeah, Kara is taking art lessons for two weeks this summer. She is one of about six other girls being taught by a middle-school art teacher named Ms. Rita. The class meets in a plantation house in an upstairs room that is altogether art. Ms. Rita has schooled her pupils in landscape, in warm and cool colors, and in the difference between fore-, middle-, and background. I'm sure they've covered more, but it isn't always easy to pull information from Kara by the time I get home. You can already see the effects in the drawing and coloring she is doing at home in her room.

Caleb is screetching. You know that stage that kids go through where they just screetch? Awful, isn't it? L. calls me at work and I can barely hear her over the squeek, shreik, eeek.

L and I sat up last night until midnight. She was scrapbooking and I played guitar for awhile and then just talked. Kara has been listening to an instrumental CD of acoustic Christmas music lately. It seems strange, I guess, but it is really very pretty. Hearing snatches of it gets those advent hymns going in my head, and I was thinking last night about the value of "owned" hymnody.

How many hymns can you sing full out? I can stumble through a few. With the change to the Anglican tradition, the hymn tradition changed as well. Gone are many of the "Would you be free of your burden of sin?" camp-meeting era songs of the second great awakening. They've been replaced by a, frankly, richer fare--some of the hymns going back as far as the Church Fathers. But, though of better quality, it is still a strange soup.

I pulled the guitar out last night just to pick my way through a number of the hymns set aside for use during vespers, and discovered a nice setting of "O Glorious Light." The problem with hymns is, in many cases, they are set in the most boring quarter note common time sort of way. Or they have no time setting or key signature and resemble open-ended medieval plainchant. How does one make sense of that?

Chattanooga girl slow routed to a blue dog

Kara came home today. She's been away with her Grandparents visiting the sights in Chattanooga, TN. She rode the incline to the summit of Lookout Mountain. She wandered the warrens of Rock City. She gazed on the over-hyped-but-yet-still-pretty Ruby Falls. And she did lots of other things, such as the aquarium and the children's museum. She came back buzzing and brown as a nut. She and I sorted through the stack of brochures she brought home, and, at 10:49 p.m., she still isn't sleeping. L. says she's older. "She's been away from Mommy and Daddy. She's seen things we didn't see." She does seem taller, I suppose.

Caleb could watch Blue's Clues every minute of the day. And, strangely enough, he actually learns something from watching. To be honest, I thought that whole thing about children's television being educational was a load of crap to make parents feel better. Yet, Caleb truly picks things up from this show, words and shapes. The other day, he pointed at a circle and said "serkul!" (He talks like his mom: fast!) And now "cookie!" And when he says, "I-doo" when you ask him if he wants something . . . well, its is pretty darn sweet.

L. and I have been fighting the computer wars. First, our e-machines motherboard fried, and it took the power suppply with it. And then our router freaked out. Routers, despite their ubiquity, are still like black boxes. A friend said to me, "They are like printers. When something goes wrong, you don't fix it. You just throw them away and buy another one." (How American.) Determined--and poor--I swore at it for two nights and managed to get the thing working. Turns out, it was working fine, I just hadn't read the manual closely enough. And finally, the laptop started working as if we'd poured Vermont maple syrup in through the UBS ports. The problem has something to do with the router. Yeah, better not get going on that one.

Finally, two changes for me this week: a new pair of glasses, and a gleaming silver iPod Nano. I'm a 24/7 lecture-listening machine now; hear me learn! (I also put some Hendrix, Cash, and Bach on there.) By the way, I saw this cool video on CNet today about mashups, the future is looking cooler than ever. Almost makes me want to learn C++.

Behold, the Caleb of myth and legend

It finally happened. This morning I opened his door to find him standing in the middle of his Little People toys. He was holding something black between his fingers. "What do you have there sweet boy?" I asked him. My glasses have had some serious problems recently. A few weeks ago, Kara asked if she could tighten the little screws that hold it together and, for some "Dad" reason, I said yes. We fished the tiny screwdriver from my toolbox and, after a quick refresher on the "righty-tighty" rule, I set her loose. Thing is, she didn't quite get the rule. Next thing I know, my glasses are in pieces. And, further than that, somehow I lost one of the earpieces. Think of a three-legged stool, or a three-legged cat. That's what my glasses look like now. I kind of stick-slash-balance them on my nose when I'm driving, and otherwise they live in my pocket. Anyway, I certainly didn't have them on this morning when I was squinting to see what Caleb had pinched between his fingers.

It was a spider.

I smacked it down from his hands--he cried, of course, so I picked him up to console him and give him kisses. Then I fished the carcass, its legs folded in on itself, from the carpet and put it in the toilet.

You may remember that Hercules also had a tangle with a nasty when he was a baby. Several snakes--it could have been one, but I think it was several, slithered into the crib of the young hero during the night. He grabbed the snakes and killed them. So I guess that's it, then, my son is a mythical hero. Aaaaawwww.

Pet's-a-Go Go

Papa found it in the filter of his swimming pool. Who knows how it got there. I think a bird dropped it. It could have come from a nearby creek. Either way, L and the kids took one look at it, Caleb said, "Gogo!," and we had a new pet, a chrysemys scripta elegans, a red-eared slider . . . a turtle. It has completely altered the daily habits of our home.

First of all, it gets L. out of bed. Or at least it did. The first few days Gogo was with us, L. was worried he (or she) might die. A few times when Gogo was settling in to sleep submerged safely in the watery corner of his tank, she tapped on the glass until he--annoyed--opened one eye or both. "Whew, he's not dead." she'd say. This anxiety motivated her to get up in the morning and check him. "I see he's okay," she'd say, and then watch him for awhile. That leads to the second change.

We watch Gogo constantly. Gogo's tank is positioned strategically in what amounts to the most-observed square foot plot in our entire apartment, believe it or not right above the kitchen sink (a respectable distance for those of you who think "What if we drop a plate into the tank?" or for those of you with a dark side, "What if Gogo should fall into the garbage disposal?"). What that means is that watching Gogo is an activity that requires merely a flick of the eyes or a turn of the head from almost any position. The result is that you always know what he's doing. He could be swimming on the left. He could be swimming on the right. Gogo might be putting his nose out of the water, exploring his rocky beach head, or even sleeping. Whatever it is, you know it. It is vitally important that you know it. I caught myself getting up out of a chair and turning full around yesterday just to update the Gogo-Twitter in my head.

I should also mention the intense desire to give Gogo things. He hasn't been in his tank a week, and I want to put some live plants in there. L. bought him some different kinds of food. One of these are live meal worms in a little white cup with a lid. We keep it in the fridge. It is only a matter of hours before we purchase a filter and spend a few more hours moving everything around to accomodate it. Our whole world has gone a-go-go. And, you know, it is kind of fun.