Poor Houston!

Today i felt a little better, especially after downing two large cups of coffee, so i tried to cajole the kids into helping me clean up. Oh... and making birthday cards for a party we were invited to. So the cleaning part was a pain -- everybody was pestering everybody else, so much drama, squealing, breaking down in fountains of tears! Wow. But then we got to go to the party, which was really fun, except Houston... oh boy. First, the other boys at the party figured out that Houston's silly, because, i dunno, he was entertaining them by riding everything vaguely long and skinny like it was a play horse. So the boys were being silly with him, poking and teasing, and Houston couldn't handle this for long, and ran to me nearly in tears. Okay... so he's at least coming to me when he's frustrated. But then when he found other ways to play, i had to make him stop because it's not okay to run into others while you're on a tricycle (for instance).

When we got home i caught him trying to wash off the tattoos he's gotten, because he didn't want to EVER be reminded of that PARTY!!! Sigh. At least Katrina, Zane and i had fun. And the cards turned out cute.

Oh... and parts of the house are definitely, without a doubt, cleaner. Awesome.

Corbyn visited!

Look! Corbyn!!! He stopped by just to say hi. Karen'll be grumpy that she STILL didn't get to properly say goodbye. At least i got a picture this time. He says hi, Karen.

See... because Karen's in Chicago for her annual ladies' trip. So it's just me and the kids. Usually this means loud music and much goofing about, but i'm still getting over the 'flu' (if that's a contraction of influenza, it should have apostrophes before and behind, right? How do you -- heh heh -- contract influenza?) so i tried to sleep. This is usually not successful when there's free running Zanes in our house. He LOVES climbing on adults, so he let me sleep for about half an hour and then climbed up onto me, touched my cheek and nose ever so sweetly, made a car run all over my arms, and generally allowed me to attain nothing more sleeplike than "light drowse".

I tried to clean the house a little bit... but now i'm going to go to bed. My eyes are doing the involuntary crossing thing they do when i'm unreasonably tired. At least my eyeballs aren't twitching all REM on me while i'm still nominally awake. I've done that before. It's weird.

I'm a joker.

I have actually tricked two kids into responding properly to this joke. Usually kids have heard the joke and either play it up grandly; "UnderWEAR!!!" or they act all wise; "I know that one." Or they are suspicious enough to never respond to anything i say in that certain tone of voice.

My very favorite interaction is when i surprise kids and they say "Where did YOU come from???" and i get to say "Well, sometimes a mommy and a daddy get..."

Finally! ZUMBA! Video!

Oh man. I am coming down with a cold or something, so i'm achy and stuffy and tired, but had to lead two ZUMBA! classes today, so... i sucked it up, and led the classes. I only felt like barfing a little bit one time, and got more tired than usual. But i did have a lot of fun, and videoed myself! YAY! It's uploading right now to facebook.

Besides that, it's sad that i didn't get to see my family a whole bunch. Ow. I'm achy. Embedded video after the jump! Fun!
___more___

Jumping spider! And stereotypical dread-heads!

Most of the day i spent at work, OH YEAH I FORGOT!!!!!

Restart:

At work i took all the kids to church. Our home church is low key in a megachurch way, so they're laid back and funky; no stadium seating, no rotating, color changing lights, no brass section (usually)... but all of these are regular features of the church we take the kids to. One of the boys today said "If you're trying to get us to try out different religions, you should take us to other places sometimes.... like.... a Baptist church." Can you tell we live in Grand Rapids? That a Baptist church is a different "religion". I suggested a mosque or synagogue, but i don't think the kids knew what those were. Plus, i think they meet on Saturday, and i'm pretty sure the kids aren't THAT interested.

Anyway, we take the kids to a flashy, fancy, high-dollar megachurch. Before the service starts, the giant video screens up front show a countdown to eleven o'clock, with various trendy eye catching themes. Well, today's theme was various still pictures of wholesome looking, racially diverse people, with a constant background of a US flag, and down in the corner... a bar code. A bar code! It sat there..... existing.... it was clear from the look that it was intentional. My forehead wrinkled, and i asked one of the kids (smartest kid we have right now) for his analysis of the interesting juxtaposition. Instantly he said "That's God telling us that it's okay for us to use the Internet."

Um, okay... so i went on, pointing out how we're in church, and up front is a giant flapping American flag, and a bar code. Religion, patriotism, consumerism? Is this church telling us that religion and patriotism are products for us to consume??? Are they reducing God and pride in our country to, basically, double cheeseburgers from McDonald's? The kid said instantly "Those are really good." Sigh.

I got home, and instantly the kids said "Daddy! Come here! We found a jumping spider!" Sure enough, it was exactly that; a jumping spider. My kids are so smart. We watched it for several minutes, thrilling at the way she (don't really know the sex, but it was bigger than most jumping spiders i've seen) tracked us when we got close. And we worried about her maybe jumping onto us, which would be quite a surprise. But she didn't, and i managed to coax her onto my finger. Usually, spiders hate crawling on people -- in my experience they jump off as soon as they can. But this one was content to crawl about exploring. We ran downstairs to find a bug to put the spider near. A fly was lurking on the window. We put the spider up to the glass, and her attention was instantly riveted by the fly. She crouched. She jumped! And missed. The fly flew, and i got the spider back onto my finger for another try. This time she judged perfectly, pounced directly from my finger to the fly, and snagged it in her jaws, and dropped to dangle from a tether of silk. The fly flapped and wiggled, but the jumping spider held tight, and... ate the fly while we watched! Absolutely amazing. It was one of those things we will never forget. She's living somewhere on our front porch now, which seems to attract lots of flying insects... wasps sometimes... which sucks, because many wasps sting spiders and take them back to their nests paralyzed for their grubs to eat alive. Sad! And really freaking creepy.

Most of our local wasps are paper wasps, which collect nectar for their grubs, which is much less H.R. Geiger.

Then we went for a bike/scooter ride. We found a group of dreadlocked people fighting battles with foam swords and war hammers. I couldn't resist, so i flung Katrina up to my shoulders and walked across the street to chat. They were all very friendly, talking amiably with me, told me their names, and whacked ungracefully at each other with foam noodles held together with spray adhesive and duct tape. Awesome. And they smelled like weed.

Houston opined "They did seem a little mean." Because smoking weed is illegal, and we have told him that it's not an option for anyone in our family, therefore people who do must be mean. We chatted for a while about that... most people who smoke marijuana are quite friendly, probably even more friendly than most people. But we still don't do it in our family. Plus, i don't know how much weed costs, but i know i couldn't afford it.

Gardening! And my old monitor.

There's my old monitor. Back in... 2001? I bought a damaged 21" Sony Trinitron FD monitor on ebay, paid, like, fifty bucks for shipping, and when it came, the first thing i did was take off the cracked, messed up plastic container and got it down to the mechanical metal guts. Then i put lots of stickers on it. It weighs nearly eighty pounds. It was an amazing monitor. Then it played second fiddle to my bigger LCD screen, and then it died. It now shows purple. Mostly just lines of purple.

The second time i took the monitor to a LAN party, i broke the circuit board which was taped under the CRT in three places. I fixed it with lots of wire and soldering... and now, since it is very large and would only work as a computer monitor if i was extremely colorblind or... blind... it's time to let it go. I planned on keeping it forever, and i have thought of modding my computer to fit into the gigantic case, with my LCD bolted to the front. It would be really cool. But i have a big yellow case for my next computer rebuild, and three kids and a job and a garden...

Oh yeah, the garden! We spent time shoveling, moving dirt to fill our raised-bed garden, moving more dirt, dirt dirt dirt, and now it's done! I'm not a passionate gardener like my mum (who has a weblog! look!) but i enjoy mindless tasks i can do well like shoveling dirt. Karen and the kids planted the veggies. It'll be good in late summer. Fresh asparagus! ...um, except with asparagus, it'll be late summer of 2011...

Look! Cute!

Okay, Zane with his huge blue eyes, wispy blond hair, and big pouty lips is SOOOO CUTE!!!! According to Katrina, though, it's not okay to eat your own children. She amended that to include anyone's children... picky picky. Also, my back feels great! And Graham got an overdue bath! He'll be filthy soon, because we're spending a lot of time outside, and that's where dirt is... and he loves dirt. But at least he'll be nice and soft for a couple days.

Owie back...

In spite of my assertions that ZUMBA! helps keep men's backs healthy and pain free, my back hurts! I strained it shoveling dirt last week, and there's just too much stuff to pick up, too many things on the floor, too much work to be done for me to just let it get better. Plus, from my experience, this kind of back pain will heal even if i ignore it. It's not like i have a compressed or herniated disc that needs special attention. Although i did have one of those a way long time ago.

Happily, my spine is healthy, it's just the muscles and tendons which are strained. Weird: i can be seated, look down, and the back of my pelvis will hurt.

Besides that, today was completely beautiful. We went to Wedgwood, filched some dirt for our raised-bed garden (it's half full, grrrrr) i let the kids play at a park for almost an hour, and then we went shopping and had a front-yard picnic. Then i had to work booooo. On the plus side, i have three more ZUMBA! songs choreographed, two of which are stupid-fun. It's getting a lot easier to make good choreography.

Houston got a guitar! And i got a job!

Okay, so you know how i'm not an ex-con? Well, finally today i found out that the YMCA agrees, so now they'll properly let me be an employee! Sweet! Except, the first time i had a chance to lead a class, they wanted a new instructor to lead, and me to give my recommendation or not. I recommend her -- she's French, little, and crazy energetic. I've never been to a ZUMBA! class where the leader was short. But when you're short, you can move so much faster and jump around even crazier than i do... but i kept up. ...i think she's better than me...

Houston's guitar came today! It's dark blue! It's 3/4ths size, which means it's not too small for me to play well! And it fits Houston really well! He's definitely got rhythm, which can make learning to play more than twice as difficult. He's learning tune, but can copy me when i pluck. It is a real guitar -- of course, it's cheap, so it's nothing special, but it's got real metal string tuners, a neck made out of some kind of hardwood and not a sawed down 2x4, and, well, it sounds really bright right now because the strings are brand new, but it'll mellow very nicely once the strings... get dirty or whatever happens to guitar strings to make them sound better. I've been using the same ones since... well... since before Tim died. And they sound great to me! My humble guitar sounds great even though the neck is warped, the body is dented and has cracks fixed (by me) with Gorilla Glue... and most of the strings are eight years old. I guess i have a guitar to play, not to keep nice. I think Willie Nelson's guitar has a hole worn in the sound board. Sho nuff! Plus he has really long arm hair. Weird. I wonder if when i get that old my guitar will be that beat up and if i'll be vain enough to clip my arm hair.

Karen's camera is broken

That's the CCD chip for Karen's confirmed broken digital camera. Pretty.

A few months ago, Karen turned on her high quality older Olympus E20 digital SLR camera, and it wouldn't recognize that there was a memory card in there. I wondered if there was a little switch in there detecting if a card was physically present... and so after hemming and hawing for a few months about taking it totally apart to get to those areas (possibly permanently breaking it) i did take it apart today. Good news: i didn't break it at all more than it had been broken. Bad news: it still can't recognize that there's a card in there. Buuuummmmmeerrrr.

We're accepting donations to my not-for-profit organization "Buy Us A Nice DSLR". Karen's camera has a fantastic lens -- the optics are professional quality. But any DSLR we could remotely afford will come with a cheap starter lens. So maybe we should look for an older body and spend more on a nice lens. But when i say "spend" i mean "save up for and then spend".

A weekend at work

Weekends at work can be annoying. There's a very solid routine on normal days, but weekends are a lot more free flowing. And me, i'm comfortable with free flowing, laid back stuff. Not the kids, though. They need routine a lot.

But the rest of the day was great! I have nothing to say. Too tired. Bed... calling me...

Chairverine

I had a kid at work take a picture of me with... chairs... coming out of my hands like Wolverine's claws. He thought it was pretty cool, so he tried the same thing, but he's not very strong, and those chairs are possibly the only institutional quality feature of our new building. Besides the new polished concrete floor -- that's tough. I admit that i would rather have indestructible metal claws extend at will from my forearms, but chairs would be pretty sweet too.

ZUMBA! was awesome today! I had five actual paying grown-ups including Beth, and about ten kids and their staff. It was enthusiastic.

Then i came home to Karen feeling tired and the kids being really cute. Okay, Houston is a voracious reader. He asked me the other day "Daddy, have you ever read a Michigan Chillers book?" I responded that i hadn't, but i'd like to. We kept shoveling dirt. A minute later, he said "Daddy, have you ever read a Jonathan Rand book?" Isn't, said i, he the guy who writes the Michigan Chillers books? Houston replied "Yes, but I didn't know if you knew who the author was." I LOVE that i can get glimpses of surprisingly complex though going on in Houston's head.

Katrina made a "Pin the Butterfly on the Flower" game today, complete with loops of tape on the butterflies. There was squealing of delight while we played that. During supper, she fleshed out dozens of other games, all of them in the "Pin the [small thing] on the [large, related thing]" format. She seems most enthusiastic about Pin the King on the Castle. We'll see how that goes.

Zane is gobsmakingly cute.

Most embarrassing post ever

I opened up uTorrent, my application to download torrent-protocol data, and was embarrassed to see that "Nickleback Discography" was in there. Nickleback? Good grief.

I'm used to DJ Armz and Julez Santana music being downloaded. These are Corbyn's favorite musicians. But Nickleback? I'll have to have a talk with that kid.

Long Tuesday

It started with me waking up every hour at least, terrified that i wouln't hear my alarm again. I ended up lying there awake until right before my alarm went off, and got up. Humph. Then work happened without much of anything interesting going on. Except we got a sixteenth resident today. Sixteen! Our maximum was always thirteen, which was really pushing it. But now we've had fifteen for a while, and.... sixteen. That's a big, unwieldy number of people to be in a group home. And a power of two.

Then, ZUMBA! My boom box worked. The residents are astonishingly not very active when they come to class. Two of the kids had a mild sheen of sweat when they were done, but the two staff were properly soaked. Then, home, where we ate delicious food Karen had made, and then ZUMBA! again! They're letting me lead classes at the Y even though i'm a possible ex-con. Leading experienced, motivated adults was really awesome. Except the carpet floor sucks. I almost tripped once.

Whole lotta driving going on

This morning my alarm went off like it always does on Monday, but my right ear was filled with wax (it does that sometimes -- i have to get it out with hydrogen peroxide) and my left ear was squished to the pillow, and it's a gentle, mild little whimper of a beep, so nobody heard it at all. Yep: Karen crashed awake JUST in time for me and Houston to zoom him off to school in time. Leaving his carpool mate to make her own way to school. Whooooops.

Then i tried to make breakfast in bed for Karen (who'd gone back to bed after the crash awake thing) but by the time the pancakes were made, she had gotten up again. So after breakfast at the table, i took the kids away to drive to Holland, Michigan to have some gentle police person with keen observation skills look at me, determine that my right arm is not nor has ever been tattooed, i'm taller than five feet ten inches, and my eyes are blue, not brown. But it turns out that i need to have a state police person do that...? So we went 30 miles back home, and another 15 miles the other way to Rockford, Michigan, to talk to a very helpful Sergeant Hancock, who told me to tell the YMCA to call HIM with any questions. Sweet. Later in the day i wrote a carefully worded cover letter, included copies of the erroneous criminal record, a clean background check from this town, my birth certificate, my passport, and a document from Ecuador, called a Certificacion Simple Gratuita Para el Bautizo, translation: Simple, Free Baptism Certificate.

Hopefully that'll get me finally, formally hired.

Then, we went to Meijer, got some picnic fixings, went to a park, and ate. Then we came home and i further tried to keep the kids from pestering Karen (it's "Juanito-try-to-do-all-the-work-day-because-it's-close-to-Mother's-Day" day today) and put them to bed. And finally, i made a boom box. The sound system i've been using for my ZUMBA! classes have so far been a little junky circuit board amplifier kit with four heatsinks hanging off the back, two pots sticking out the front, with a spaghetti of wires springing from it, and a couple bookshelf speakers. Very hard to carry around. I usually needed to make three trips. Now it's all self-contained, and has twice as many speakers, with some large multiple of watts per channel compared to the old home-built kit. The amp is old and solid enough to not have a wattage figure printed on it anywhere, but it does specify what ohms speakers it can drive. That's what i'm talking about.

So anyway, now i have to go to bed, because tomorrow's an early day.

Happy Mother's Day!

We spent most of the day at Karen's parents' house. Happy mother's day!

Other significant happenings: Houston jumped on the trampoline, Katrina jumped on the trampoline, and of course, Houston is a total ham. My wife's kids are so cute and silly.

More door business

I fixed our front door properly. It's perfect now. No longer does it hang limply from its hinges like an overcooked asparagus, no longer does it refuse to shut like an obnoxious Wedgwood kid's mouth, no longer does it scratch the doorjamb like, um, when you play pool and make the cue ball go in by accident...

Okay, basically, i tore out multiple pieces of disintegrating, cracked wood, let a big pile of what can only properly be called "rubble" fall out from behind the door molding, cut and placed a large, solid chunk of wood where the multiple cracked junky wood had been, screwed that in place with giant screws and a metal plate to keep it extremely strong even in the event of an earnest break-in attempt, and then made the holes and stuff for the latches. It's good.

Also, i built a raised-bed garden. It's twelve feet long, a little more than two feet wide, and eighteen inches deep. We need to fill it with dirt before we try to plant anything. No vegetables grow well suspended in an empty box. I hope the raised bed keeps the bunnies etc. away from our zucchini and yellow squash. Mmm, yellow squash.

Here's the monitor

There it is! Okay, must go to bed. I lead ZUMBA! tomorrow.

Just a couple product endorsements...

Rain-X. It's been years since i put it on our cars' windshields. A few days ago, i found a decades old bottle, put it on my car, and tonight on the way home it rained. And i didn't even have to use my wipers even once. I couldn't even tell it was raining except i could hear the drops hitting the windshield, and of course lots of spray was being kicked up by all the other cars on the road. Conclusion: it's really awesome stuff, especially for driving in the dark, and while it's fresh. Once it's a few weeks old, the wipers become necessary again, and the rain kind of ends up streaky all over your windshield.

Other one: Intelius.com. It's creepy the amount of information this website has about people. I'm not actually creeped out by it, since i flatter myself that i understand the implications of there being three hundred million US citizens of whom i represent 1:300,000,000th portion, so i'm not worried that anyone will... i dunno... hunt me down or anything. But it's still creepy. And you can get a moment or two of voyeuristic glee from looking up random names from your past, and finding out what their middle names are. Corbyn's sister's middle name is Elexa. Sounds like a med. Might be a med. Ask your doctor if Elexa might be right for you.

Okay, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Elexa is a brand of condoms. I wonder why they named her that...?

I don't exist...?

I couldn't teach my class at the YMCA today, because my background check isn't coming through. They can't find any evidence of me... existing. Which is weird, because i think... therefore... y'know.

So i was pretty bummed about that today. I did get to stay home with my family, though, which was a bonus. Except the kids were whiny and needy. And Karen got to open her late birthday present, which was a big LCD monitor for her computer. It's big. And energy efficient! It's like a wall.

My day off!

I like days off.

Went shopping with the kids... picked Houston up from school with Zane sleeping in the back seat... went to ZUMBA! and took a video of one of the songs (you can't see me except my legs because i walk in front of the camera)... came home and ate on the front lawn making friends with the 4 year old next door and his mom, and then cut the grass.

Speaking of grass, did you know there's multiple magazines devoted to marijuana? Weed World is the publication i encountered when Karen went on our date Friday. Amazing.

Sunday!

I didn't decorate or bake Karen a cake for her birthday, which made her a little sad. And it certainly made Katrina sad. But today, our amazing friend Beth showed up laden with streamers and cake, and Karen got a proper cake with candles and everything. But i think we forgot to sing. I'll sing to Karen later. Maybe "Love Me Tender" or "Close to You".

Cute picture of Katrina

Yesterday Katrina was crying because Corbyn's dad was moving stuff into a U-Haul truck. She likes Corbyn. And he's moving. Emotion! Sadness! So i took some pictures, because that's what we do in this family. Take pictures of crises.

Today at work was one of those days i can't believe i get paid for. I took in a computer with a hot video card and let what few kids we had play Burnout. We had four kids for much of the shift. Incredible. Then back home, we enjoyed the amazingly beautiful day, and then had a pizza-movie-night. We watched The Tale of Desperaux, which was like a whole different story from the original, but with names and some other details lifted from the book. And the book would have made an excellent movie, as is.

Karen's birthday!!!

It's Karen's birthday! I'm so happy and proud to be her husband.

Today we got to go on the third date in a year... maybe fourth! So we've had a pretty good year on the romantic tip, if you count going on dates as the only criteria for "romantic". I don't, personally. I made Karen a chocolate shake a couple months ago. That's romantic. We learned ZUMBA! together. That's romantic. She cut my dreads one time. That's romantic.

And when Karen says she's thirsty, i tell her that i too have been thirsty, i know what it is to thirst, and i recognize and appreciate what she's going through, and respect her for her strength. That's romantic too.