Speedy Juanito

It took me three or four days to get the back third of the roof ready for rain. But yesterday and today i got the front third of our roof mostly waterproof, ready for modest rain, and almost ready for shingles. Woot woot. That's me being excited, while being sore and exhausted.

In case you want to redo the roof on your house, let me recommend a proper shingle ripper (or a flat bladed shovel with notches cut in the blade) and "roof jacks" which hold a board so you can stand on something while working on the roof. And drink lots of water.

Sleep, Roof.

There i am about to attack the shingles with my newly notched shovel. See, you can buy a "shingle ripper" for nineteen bucks, or you can buy a flat bladed shovel for twelve bucks, and cut notches into the end. I did the latter. Proper shingle rippers are a bit narrower, but other than that, they're identical. My new tool works much MUCH faster than the combination of pitchfork, hammer, hands, crowbar, and screwdriver i used before.

Before working on the roof, Karen whisked the kids off before i woke up, and i slept until just after noon. I haven't slept in that late for a long time. It was awesome.

Okay, while i was doing the roof, i found a peanut hidden under a flap of tar paper. Isn't that weird? A peanut? A squirrel must have found it, stuffed it in its cheek, and climbed right to the crest of our roof, and hidden it. I felt a little bit sad throwing it down. Also, i found an earwig, all panicked because his whole habitat (apparently) was being destroyed. I really like earwigs, so i let him (it was a male) climb on me. He immediately calmed down because i wasn't as scalding hot as the sun heated boards he had been on, and then i flipped him into our hedge, where he'll be happier. There's also silverfish living in our shingles, which is odd. I expect something like a roof to be fairly void of life. There's no rotting leaves or neglected food crumbs, and shingles are made of asphalt, fiberglass and little tiny rocks, none of which seem appetizing to me. Not that rotting leaves sounds like a epicurean delight, but that's just because i'm a little more sophisticated than an earwig. I am a vertebrate, after all.

Porn is a bummer.

I went to see a famous guy named Robert Jensen talk about pornography. He wrote Getting Off (Pornography and the End of Masculinity). Dr. Jensen started out saying that if he did his job well, we'd all walk out of there feeling pretty horrible. He was right.

He talked about pornography and its use not as a moral or legal issue, but from a feminist viewpoint. He explains how porn is the systematic degradation and humiliation of women. That pisses me off. Oh wait, i should use feeling words: i feel disappointed, frustrated, confused and hopeless.

I don't think he likes organized religion. He said at one point, "I don't mean to sound unnecessarily provocative, but Christianity -- particularly Protestant [he probably meant Evangelical] Christianity -- and pornography are flip sides of the same coin when it comes to subjugating women." That's a bold statement to make in Grand Rapids, home of the CRC, Zondervan publishing, and, like... God. But when we Christians use the bible to repress women, i agree. I wish i could remember where i'd read this, but the numbers of fundamentalist Evangelical families who have significant sexual problems (addiction to porn, sexual offenses, incest) is disproportionately high. The need for power and control in a fundamental, conservative household is great, and sex offenses (and porn) are all about power and control.

I can't even think of anything upbeat to end with. The weather was cool and thunderstormy. Oh, it's my buddy Michelle's birthday today. Happy birthday, Michelle!!! And, i played chess with Houston twice, and got checkmate twice, but he's sticking with it. Good kid.

Sleeeeeeeepy. You can probably tell.

We went for another walk today, which totally kicks butt. Then i made egg rolls. They were the best egg rolls i've eaten in a LONG TIME. And i stuffed myself. I never do that.

Karen has mentioned on her weblog that she taught Houston how to play chess. He's very interested, and knows all the rules, and usually doesn't make illegal moves, and easily accepts correction. Katrina doesn't want to get left out, so she asked me to play chess with her. Awesome. I'm a bad chess player, due to my lack of attention to detail, lack of organized linear brain function, and, um, being bad doesn't bother me. So if i can play a game against my three year old daughter, i will probably win.

Here's another picture.

That's the lot where they'll be building three houses.

And i did. But let me tell you how cute it is to have a darling little girl like Katrina confidently move her pawn forward, facing one of my pawns, and say with her squeaky little voice, "Check." After we were done playing chess, Katrina was goofing around near Karen and Houston, and Karen got Houston in check. Houston tried other moves, and Karen said "Houston, you need to protect your king." Katrina piped up, "Yeah, Houston. Because you're in check."

Just a video

Oh wow. The genius of this video is the realistic camerawork along with the astonishingly precise blending of the CGI with the real background. Even in Pirates of the Caribbean 3, some scenes with Davy Jones were subtly bad, with Davy Jones wiggling against the live action background.

And speaking of amazing camerawork and totally seamless integration of CGI, allow me to recommend heartily the movie Children of Men. Besides the naughty language (they're Brits, which makes it more okay, somehow) and pervasive, gritty violence... oh yeah, and a lady shows her boobs in a non-sexual context... it's amazing. My jaw dropped at some of the long, single shot scenes. And it's a hopeful, uplifting movie, even though almost everyone ends up violently dead.

Hmm, i didn't describe the movie very well. But seriously, put your kids to bed, make sure they're asleep, and watch it.

Baking

It was really hot today. Probably record highs. I guess at about four o'clock, the temperature peaked at 91F. And that's about when i started preheating the oven for the apple pies. And then i started the sauce for lasagna, and started the stock for soup. We don't have air conditioning.

I don't know why i decided to cook a soup, main course, and dessert today, on a record high day, but i did. Dumb. But the food was really good, and we all enjoyed it. Especially the apple pie. Yummy. There's two left over. If you want some, come over soon.

POTC3 and ACC (that stands for Anonymous Community Church)

About once a month i attend church with the kids from work. We go to ACC. It's a large, posh church, with stadium seating and flashy lighting. Today, as i watched the zooming colored lights, and listened to the talented, sixty-person worship crew, i was reminded of Pirates of the Caribbean 3, which i watched with the kids from work last Friday. At first i blamed the association on my random brain and general fatigue. But then it occurred to me that the similarities are less tenuous than that.

POTC3! What a movie! Now, i enjoy a good romp of an action picture as much as the next guy, and i can suspend my disbelief pretty high. But i like my disbelief to have atmosphere. Or at least be somewhere near Earth's gravity well. But with this movie, my disbelief would have to be suspended somewhere around Alpha Centauri. Every five minutes, Johnny Depp would grab a rope, cut it with a knife, shoot it with a pistol, or (most offensive to my sense of reason) bang it with a box, and the rope would fly up into the air, taking him with it. A guy with a tentacle face and bizarre diction? Sure, i can believe that. But whacking the end of some random rope with a box and having it fling you sky high, where you land balanced on a spar? Um, sorry, no.

And the plot was clearly secondary to the action and jokes. Naturally, this is to be expected for a silly Hollywood franchise picture, but stuff should make some sense. So, the film was overall very showy, very entertaining, impossible to take seriously, and almost nonsensical.

And now we come, sadly, to ACC. I repeat to myself, like a mantra (i suppose it is a mantra), that God works in ways i don't understand, and there are many spirit led and indwelled people who attend and serve at that church. But it's so showy. It's so entertaining. Some songs border on nonsense: "I'm gonna take back what the devil stole from me"? And finally, i'm an introspective, thoughtful person, and if ACC's Weekend Experience^TM was my only exposure to Christianity, i would not be able to take it seriously. That makes me sad.

What makes my happy (seasoned with a poignant touch of confusion) is that far more Americans are the kinds of people who hoot and holler with joyful abandon at movies like POTC3, and bless their hearts, they'll love the services offered by LCC.

Emotinal range

Eight or sixty four years ago, when i first started working at Wedgwood, there was this kid who was freaking out because he couldn't go to a dance. My fellow staff very unwisely decided not to tell the kid until about an hour before the dance, when everyone else was getting ready (d'oh!!!) so naturally when they dropped the bomb, he melted down. I remember standing at the office door, listening to this kid's wailing and verbal lashing out, as he cursed all of us staff, Wedgwood, the home he was placed in, his very life... so the staff asked him to go to the "quiet room", which is a bare cell type room which locks from the outside. It's not padded, but it oughta be, i sometimes think. The kid did walk to the QR, and we let him stay there for a while, checking on him every quarter of an hour. We directly watch kids in the (more accurately named) seclusion rooms now, and document what they're doing every five minutes.

This kid has his crisis, and i thought, while observing him, that he was going through some kind of life changing moment. Everything Was Going To Be Different Now. I was surprised the next day, when he acted a little tired or sad, but otherwise normal. As though nothing had happened. Indeed, nothing had happened; nothing unusual, at least. The kids we work with have emotional ranges quite foreign to us mentally balanced citizens. I can remember only one emotional crisis i suffered when i was a teenager. As i was crying, possibly even yelling at my family members who were arguing over whether or not we'd pray before school, i remember the looks of shock, the "oh dang, Juanito's mad, what have we done???" feeling in the room. And stuff changed. Both in myself and in our family for a little while.

I suppose the less often we explore the limits of our powerful emotions, the more meaningful the experience, for us and those around us. And of course, managing ourselves so that we don't injure anyone is very important. Self control is managing yourself without repressing yourself.

Today at work, i was with a kid who was deeply in crisis. But this kid's life is such that he seems to accept the reality that he can threaten to kill someone, and tomorrow be totally cool with them again. My job is to be warm, empathetic, caring, loving, all that stuff. But in this situation, it's actually therapeutic for me to be cold, distant, being this kid's staff without being friendly. And that is way harder for me than just forgetting the whole incident and going back to happy, friendly me.

Apples!

Today we went apple picking. Oh man. As Karen and Dave were saying back and forth on their Facebook accounts, my yearly rave about blueberries and apples are utterly necessary for me to write every year. I think i wrote two raves about blueberries this year.

Honeycrisp apples. Mmmmmmm. I only ate three Honeycrisp apples while at the orchard, but sampled an Empire, a Jonagold, a Golden Delicious, and a Northern Spy. So i ate a total of six apples, i figure. And my iron stomach held up well. Now see, that's why i like blueberries so much. I can eat until i'm stuffed, and my tummy feels great. After six apples, my stomach complains slightly, with a rumble or two, and a "i just ate six apples" feeling.

I took a seventh one to work in my pocket because it's not safe to eat apples while wearing a full face helmet, driving a scooter... so i bragged a little bit. I'll try to recapture my description of the apple while i was eating it in front of all the kids and a couple apple enthusiast staff.

Ah, the perky Honeycrisp. Starting with an explosive, juice filled bite, there's a delightfully crisp body to the flesh of the apple. The flavor is subtle, almost reclusive, but precociously sweet. There are sparkling highlights to the aroma, with a gregarious finishing aura.

Yeah, i'm full of crap. But the first part is true, the apples are explosively juicy, astonishingly sweet, but not boldly flavorful. But the texture and juiciness and sweetness... oh man, i need to go eat one. So yummy.

The other apples all have subtly different flavors, and varying levels of sweetness and tartness, but what really separates the Honeycrisp from the others is the texture of the flesh. The others are dense, a little pulpy, but usually more tasty. I'm gonna make apple pie with the other apples. A careful blend. Our friend Linda swears by Ida Red apples, which will be ready in early October. We'll see.

Pictues of other kids

I didn't put any pictures of Houston or Katrina on yesterday. So enjoy a picture of each. From yesterday. Karen's post from today is replete with awesome pictures.

There they are. They're cute!

Walking!

All i have to do for Operation Tan Guy (roofing the house) is put the cap shingles on. Temporary cap shingles, that is. But the rest is done! Oh, plus i have to do the other two thirds of the house. What annoys me most is the fact that there's not supposed to be rain for the next several days, but i work my other job. Y'know, the one which pays money. And i have only two days of time off i can take. Grr.

In more upbeat news, i took a walk today! I haven't taken nearly as many walks this year as the last couple years. Partly because managing three kids is lots harder than just two, and also Karen's not gone from the house two evenings per week. When i'm the sole parent in the house, i reason that the mess easiest to clean up is the mess which doesn't get made. So i used to try to keep the kids out of the house as much as possible.

This time i took the two big heavy strollers, which are good because they have wheels which are bigger than a nickel. But Houston and Katrina are so heavy now, that if they're not cooperating utterly, making the strollers go straight becomes a task of herculean proportions. That's right, HERCULEAN!!!!! So on the way back from the park (which is 1.7 miles away, according to Overlord Google the Omniscient*), Houston decided that he'd push his stroller the whole way back. It was warm today, and he's only a little guy, so it was a LONG WALK. He was bright pink and sweaty a little over half way through the walk, so i asked him, "Hey, do you want to sit in the stroller and have me push you?" and he responded valiantly, "I think I can keep pushing the stroller." He's all growing up!!!

*That's for when Google becomes sentient, so it doesn't crisp me.

While we were at the park, Zane proved his mind boggling lack of fear by climbing up the play thing and going down the twisty slide. Karen's talked about this before, and i believe her, but there's no substitute for seeing it in real life. So i'll post a video on Jumpcut. Also, Houston offered to give a cute girl who was there a bagel. He's friendly.

So besides work (where i took huge mutant yellow colored flour tortillas, put thick slices of processed turkey on it, with cheese, black pepper, and varying other ingredients, which i then rolled and briefly grilled and then sliced, sushi style, prompting five kids and three adults to sing my praises, hailing "these things" as the most awesome food ever) and being light headed from roofing exertion and not-enough-sleep, that was my whole day!

Operation Tan Guy Update

After more than a week not working on the roof, i did some more shingling today. So the smaller part of the roof is pretty much done. The larger part of the roof shouldn't take long, and then it's flashing-around-the-chimney time. Oh my, lemme tell you how much i've been looking forward to flashing-around-the-chimney time. It's the most wonderful time of the year.

I noticed last time i did a lot of roofing that my feet and legs hurt a lot from standing with my toes pointed up towards the sky. So i made some platforms out of wood to stand on. Um, that seemed like something interesting to write... turns out it's not.

Um, this might be more interesting. Katrina and i were the only awake people in the house for a while today, when Karen was fetching Houston from school. So she sat on my lap and we drew together. She drew a tree, and i drew the trunk. She drew a face, which looked very grumpy because "He doesn't know where the horse went!" So i drew a horse, and then changed her grumpy guy into a happy guy. She drew a pig... i drew a sheep... and then she carefully scribbled on all the parts i'd drawn with the pen and now it's just black scribbles on a piece of paper. But we had a lot of fun drawing together. I'll see if Houston wants to do that sometime too.

It's funny how Katrina calls letters "email". If she runs into the home school room proclaiming her intention to write an email, she'll emerge later waving a piece of paper with chicken scratching on it which says, apparently, Dear Grandma, I love you and we're coming to your house. And she'll get an "mlem-a-lope" to put the letter in, and then need tape to close the flap.

Long. About race.

With school in session, sometimes my job has me stationed in the classrooms where our kids go to school. There's four homes whose kids attend, so many of the kids are new to me. A couple days ago in the school hall, a kid walked by, through a scattering of other kids, and he said quietly "Man, I'mma knock yo' ass out". I have no idea who he was talking to, but he wasn't talking to me. But threatening others is not an option in school. So i made it my job for the next minute to get to know this kid.

Predictably, he wouldn't give me eye contact or respond to my friendly self, besides telling me to get lost. So i informed him how sad it was that he wasn't willing to take responsibility, and threatening isn't allowed, so he's getting kicked out of school. Again, predictably, he ignored my requests. At that point, we staff types talk to each other and figure out how to proceed, and clearly (to me -- the only adult dealing with the kid so far) he needed to go back to his home.

And then i watched something unfold which has bothered me since. See, this kid is tall, African American, dark complected, and usually looks sullen. When i told a couple staff what was going on, they started to ask this kid what was going on... please just do what you're supposed to do... come on, buddy... it's no big deal... here, just take a stroll with me down the hall and get back to class. "Get back to class?" sez me, "No this kid needs to go back."

So after some flashy anger display, the kid went downstairs. This stuff happens all the time at work, but this particular one bothered me more than usual. Here's why: there was this coddling and pampering that the other staff gave this kid. They begged him to comply with rules which are quite concrete. My fellow staff thought he was somehow incapable of following basic expectations. I've been working with kids long enough to get a quick read, so i'd decided he wasn't mentally limited or developmentally disabled or anything. He's smart. He's well socialized. He understands what he's supposed to do. He knows the rules. So why the big problem?

He's big and mean. And black.

Maybe it's fine to enforce rules for the timid white kids who will only whine and scuff their feet when they're mad. But if you're trying to get a young black man to follow rules, you'd better not expect too much. This strikes me as the worst kind of kind-hearted racism i've encountered at work. We are doing this particular kid a massive disservice.

Nowhere else in the US is this kid going to be given special consideration. On the contrary, as a dark complected, scary looking young black man, he's going to be treated with suspicion and prejudice from almost every side. We need to be straightforward with our youth of color* and at least let them know that we understand that this society is riddled with racism. We need to acknowledge that racism is evil. And it's here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Socialization is what we're all about at Wedgwood. We're trying to get kids socialized. It's not socially acceptable to steal or beat people up or molest little kids. It's not socially acceptable to have yourself a little anger outburst when a cop pulls you over for speeding. If you're white, you might get breathalyzed. If you're black, you might get arrested. Socialization isn't about some theoretical society where Martin Luther King Jr's dream is a full reality, it's about the society we have right now. We spend a lot of time talking about socially acceptable things (like Playboy) which are problematic for our kids. We need to go further and talk realistically about race roles and socially acceptable behavior. My buddy Dave is in Wedgwood's training department... Dave?

*Explaining why it's okay to call someone a "gentleman of color" but offensive to call him a "colored gentleman" is a delight i've been able to indulge in twice.


Also, i found out today that the sudden turns flying insects make are called saccades.

Fun!!!

I've got two fun ideas to share. First: The Statue Game! It's great -- you stand or sit there, while your kids pose your arms and head and legs and... you get the idea. I didn't think this would be much fun, but evidently it's hilarious. The other way works too. I think Houston's a little too wiggly to be much good at being a statue, but Katrina is astonishing. That picture of her? She let me pose her arms, legs, head tilt, hands in fists, and she held it! Even when i said "Hang on, lemme get my camera..." and ran off for a minute.

Second fun idea: School Bus Races! Yes, this is exactly what it sounds like. I took Houston to Berlin Raceway, our local circle track (which is a half mile oval, because nothing is what it seems in the richly nuanced world of stock car racing*) where we sat through over a dozen actual, for-serious races. I saw how frustrating it must be to have the fastest car on the track, but be stuck in third place, trying to pass into second place, while the leader is calmly pulling ahead. Twice that happened, and in both cases, the hard-won second place was all the guy got, even though he could have won first place if the battle hadn't been just for second. Also sad was when a guy crashed. He didn't get hurt, but he banged up his car, which he'll have to fix himself, or worse, pay for someone else to do. Ack.

Then the real race started, the one we'd all come to see. Five buses came out, complete with seats, flashing lights, most windows, and i heard at least a couple turbochargers in there. Turbochargers used not for performance, you understand, but because turbocharged diesel engines are the most fuel efficient bar none. And don't hassle me about regenerative braking, because that's not an engine. But okay, the buses. They were long! They were silly! Houston's school system had their name painted on one of them, which was totally the slowest one there. They let him start the second and third races five or six, um, bus lengths ahead. But somebody would still slam into him before two laps were up. There was contact. Paint was traded. Shameless acts of unbusdriverly conduct. It was awesome.

On the way home it drizzled, having waited until we were in the car, and Houston and i talked about the race, video games, kids at work, and stuff like that. Being able to hold interesting conversations with Houston is as pleasing as i always hoped it would be. I'm anticipating him becoming a teenager, at which point he'll be smarter than me.

*Sorry, i just had to draw attention to the most ironic thing i've ever written.

Young Life Begins

Tonight was the first night of Young Life club. Usually we just kind of do some fun silly skits to introduce ourselves, but this time we did something Sara (YL leader for Wedgwood) called, um, Game-a-palooza. There were stations scattered around, where kids would run in teams to test, for instance, how high they could throw a sack of flour. Or make baskets while harnessed to an rope, attached to your opponent trying to make baskets in the other hoop. Or eat worms.

And of course, my station was the worm eating station. I did not eat any worms, but i cleaned all of them off for the kids, and observed astonishing things, like a kid who snorted the worm up his nose and coughed it into his mouth. And the kid who barfed a little bit onto the table. I hope earthworms don't carry salmonella. Or botulism. Or anthrax. I mean, botulinum and anthrax are very common in soil. So you'd think that there wouldn't be many kids willing to eat worms, huh? But my station was, as far as i could tell, the most raucous of them all. Try to kick a soccer ball through a goal while legs tied in a sack? ...nah... Eat a worm? YES SWEET ME ME ME ME PLEASE???

Juanito the Group Dynamologist was interested to watch the intense peer pressure at work. It was the kinds of dynamics one sees at crazy parties. You know, lampshade-on-head, falling down drunk parties. The kids were completely goading each other on. One girl who saw a worm and recoiled in disgust was back ten minutes later once the chants of "EAT IT EAT IT" echoed around the area. Even one of my kids, who's so clean he's almost OCD, ate a worm. I totally, totally wish i'd taken my camera.

I don't have anything to write

I just read my posts from this time of year from the last couple of years, wondering if my lack of decent posts recently has anything to do with the time of year. Turns out, it doesn't. I find the 34 and 33 year old me as entertaining as ever. I hope the 36 year old me is entertaining too.

I suppose my creativity is being absorbed with problems like:

• Why does my laptop keyboard sometimes write random characters?
• Why must i wait until the laptop is fully booted to plug in my proper keyboard in order for it to work?
• What is a good way for the power plug to stay perfectly positioned while plugging in the keyboard to keep the computer from rebooting?
• What can i do to fix my awesome, monstrous computer when there's so many other, far more important projects clamoring for my attention???
• What's going on when not fixing my computer isn't a top priority????????????

Like finishing the roof. Oh, good news: i managed to avoid overdoing it today! I didn't do any roofing, besides fetching supplies! Shingles, while heavy, seem much lighter when they're cold, because they don't flex and wobble. It's analogous to the boneless thing that toddlers do which makes them seem fifty pounds heavier. Also, our favorite famous blogger and our favorite randomly brilliant genius guy had a baby today! Andrew said "I flopped a set", which doesn't mean anything to me. Nothing on Andrews blog means anything to me. Except pie. Pie has meaning.

Operation Tan Guy update

Operation Tan Guy has evolved into Operation Worn Out Guy with Project Heat Rash and Plan Itchy Healing Sunburn progressing nicely. I have been suffering from a separate organism's Assignment Invade Juanito's Cells and Replicate, that organism being some microscopic pathogen, which was responsible for my punched-in-the-stomach feeling and the fact that i shuffled around the house all yesterday in my underwear and a sweatshirt. But today i feel great, but i am probably going to overdo it today or tomorrow, because i always do that in the euphoric wake of Schedule Feeling Not Good.

I'll try really hard not to.

I wanna be a cowboy

Curses to Kid Rock for stealing that phrase. And i'm pretty sure there's a country song with that phrase in there. But if there was any justice in this broken, fallen world, everyone would instantly think of the hilariously cheesy song of that name by Boys Don't Cry, which has a video, who knew? Awesome. Isn't the lead singer fetching in his mascara and long hair?

Um... oh yeah. So i bought Houston's cowboy hat on an impulse, and yesterday i bought one for me because it was on clearance. $1.99. I don't think i'm as cute in it as Houston is. I'll wear it in public... someday...?

Ow!

I'm used to feeling GREAT!!! With lots of exclamation points. And maybe an eleven on the end. But now i feel like someone punched me in my stomach. Weird, huh? And it's not a symptom i recognize, besides having been punched in the stomach. And while i was called an a-hole and, um, a kid threw a pen at me, nobody punched me.

But i want to feel spry! Lithe! Gay! Er... happy!!!!!!11eleven!!

TIRED!!!

Today i lifted about four hundred pounds of shingles onto the roof, one bundle at a time. I worked from 8:15am to 8:15pm, with a half hour to eat dinner with the fam, and two trips to the builders store. The part of the roof i'm fixing is a little less than half covered with shingles, and there's actually insulation above the ceilings now, and maybe the roof will rebound from being a little saggy...? And you knw the rain i was racing? It came while i was only part way through getting the tar paper lain down. Grr. There's moisture in our attic now. But i think long term drips and drops and standing pools are what cause water damage. Or, you know... natural disasters.

I feel sad for leaving Karen as a "roofing widow" this week, but at least i have been working and working and working and expending tons of energy.

So how come it's so hard to stand up after sitting for a minute?

Roofing on a school night.

Yesterday Houston came up onto the roof with me for about an hour. During this time, our new neighbor, whose name i don't know (i think he's the one who said that the natives were restless where he used to live) broke down in his truck right in front of his house. He yelled some curse words, took another drink from his beer bottle, got out and hit the truck a few times. Houston looked at me wide-eyed, and asked "Does he want to break his car???" Our across-the-street neighbor offered to help the fella push his truck into his driveway: "Don't kill yourself, lemme give you a hand!" But our temperamental open-container'er said rudely "Nope, I don't want no hand!"

So i yelled, "Hey Andrew, i could use a hand!" Andrew guffawed and reckoned that i would, so we chatted about roofs and stuff. But then Mister Truck Beater came back out and apologized for being "a dick". Cool, cool.

Houston loved the whole episode up on the roof. He ripped shingles off with a screwdriver, and threw them over the side, and usualy not at our conversing neighbors. Karen put pictures up yesterday.

Today it was Houston's first day of school ever. EVER! And there'll be over a thousand more school days... so it's a Big Life Change for the boy. I only saw him after i got home from work, and before i absconded to the roof, but the poor little guy sure seemed down. He's probably sick, says Karen, which is a bummer of a day to be sick on. Pretty much no parent will buy the sick routine on the first day of school, even if the poor guy really is sick. Poor kid.

Also, i took Katrina up on the roof today, complete with a home-made full body climbing harness. She loved it too. I think our kids have, like me, no fear of heights. But at least they both seemed worried at first... and i suppose they trust their daddy's safety devices. She was also really very cute. She mostly played with the rope.

Symptoms i avoided today:

Dry, hot, flushed appearance. Racing pulse. Dizziness. Headache. These are things which didn't happen to me, but would have, had i not drunk, i dunno, three or four liters of water today. Operation Tan Guy is coming along, and it's really hot. Like, the soles of my feet were burning through my shoes from the early afternoon sun. And even with SPF 40 slathered on, my poor torso is a reddish hue. Unless it's a kind of camouflage mottled appearance from splotches of asphalt dust and grime. Yech, the tearing-off-of-shingles thing is filthy, hot, miserable work. Especially with the three layers of shingles. I thought there were four, but i was confused by all the extra layers at the crown of the roof. I would love to weigh all the material i'm removing. It might be a couple of tons, when the whole roof is done.

Which reminds me... what do you think of the Ford Pinto logo? You don't see them around anymore, not in the midwest, at least, but i never liked it. I didn't like the font -- it's all confused; the curved part of the P is too thin, the serif up there is too long and there's no balancing serif below... and what's up with making the P and the i normal, but the switching to cursive for the last three letters of the logo? Stupid.

There's other examples of this kind of sloppy logo design from the same era, one of the best is the early '80s Chevy Suburban logo -- the letters don't even line up. I am convinced this is due to the mainstreaming of drug culture. See, all the innovators of the fifties and sixties were on drugs at one point, so the graphic media of the time was under that influence, if you will. Well, logo designers caught on, and started being "wacky" and "zany" with what would otherwise have been "straight lines".

What made me think of this is that the diamond shaped shingles on our roof are different colors. Some are orange with blue flecks. Some are lime green with a touch of red. Others are purple. There's at least some teal colored ones. I wonder what the salesperson called that kind of shingle. Puff the Magic Dragon Scale Shingles? Rainbow Zest Shingles? Groovy Technicolor Herringbone? The shingles are still on the north side of our roof, but they're a uniform Weathered Greenish Grey color at this point. But i would love to have seen the house when the shingles were fresh. I'm sure they were far out.

Operation Tan Guy

Operation Tan Guy is what i've dubbed the project i started today. I'll be spending most of my free time ripping off shingles and laying tar paper and banging shingles onto our roof. There's four layers of shingles, which explains why there's a noticeable concavity to the part of our roof which is supposed to be, like, a plane. I hope to be somewhat tan by the time the job is finished. I thought it was already working this afternoon when i came inside, but then i took a shower and the "tan" washed off. Stupid dirt.

It's kind of fun. Our friend Mark loaned me a harness and some high-dollar rope to harness myself into something safe, which increases the fun factor a lot. Because it's fun to jump around up high, but if you're aware of your mortality, it's more fun if you're not in any real danger. Although i can still play mental games with myself and think about the eye bolts ripping out of the wood or my bowline knots somehow magically coming undone. That makes it more fun, see, because actually i'm safe but i can pretend i'm in danger.

So anyway, here's what we have on our roof: the top layer is deteriorating to the point where there's none of those little rocks on many of the shingles -- they're just cracking, curled tar paper. Then the next layer is these weird diamond shaped shingles, which are probably from the early seventies. Under that are nondescript rectangular shingles which are in pretty good shape, compared to the top layer, and under that are antique looking, thin, small shingles. Under that are the boards which make up our roof. And there's two inch gaps between the boards. Huh? They shingled right over gappy wood boards??? I think i know where some of the water damage on our walls came from. And the shingles are so thick, that in some areas, the nails are just nailed into shingle.

Probably, the house was built with cedar shingles, and when those got too old, they replaced them with those small shingles, which they put straight down on the boards, because that's how you do cedar shingles -- you just nail 'em down. But this time, all layers will be torn up. I'm going to put insulation between the roof and the sloping ceilings in the upstairs rooms. Then, proper underlayment will be, um, layed under, and good shingles will be installed. And it'll be lots of hard work.

This evening, we went to The Olive Garden for Houston's and Katrina's half birthday celebration, which was totally exactly what i needed, even though it was just a few hours of work. Usually, i'll just have to drink a big glass of water and eat some crackers.