The Average Blogger

Look Who It Is!

Hahahaha.  OK, that was a slightly longer hiatus than I intended.

Work kicked my butt, y'all. That learning curve was steep, and I had a hard time adjusting my own expectations that I'd be done, not half-done, at the end of any given day.

I thought about ditching the blog altogether, frankly. I didn't write here, and I didn't really miss it much. I had lots of other writing to do (rewrite on my novel is officially with the editor again), and not nearly enough time to do any of it. I had games to play with the kid, and a to-do list that threatened to bury me.

But the thing is, then I went back and read some stuff I've posted over the years, and I realized how much I like having it. I wrote about stuff that I'd forgotten even happened. I don't know how much of a dodderer I'm going to be in my old age, so having it all recorded might help preserve the warm memories for those cold winters.

Here, then, are some highlights of what I didn't write about in real time:

The Young Prince attended tennis camp, basketball camp, two drama camps, and a math camp. He won a talent contest by singing Loser Like Me, which was hella cool and made him a BMOC for that week. He was wroth about spending the last two weeks of summer doing multiplication, and yet I do believe it is the camp he's enjoyed the most. He asked to go to the next level next summer.  I'm so thrilled with what they've done, I can't begin to sing their praises loudly enough.  The kid learned all his times tables in eight days -- after fighting with his teachers, his parents, and his babysitter for more than eight months. Amazeballs.

The Young Prince also got himself into a heap of trouble during one of his drama camps, which precluded his participation in the B-52s concert at Wolf Trap last month. Instead, he and Not Your Average Blogger stayed home that night, and I went to the show with a friend of ours. We made it through Squeeze, the opening act, and then it absolutely dumped rain.  We toughed it out through two songs, but then the lightning started and I didn't really love the idea of standing in a big field with a bunch of electrical equipment nearby, so we left.  We were so drenched that my car seat was still damp the next day (this, despite sitting on a towel!) and the cash in my wallet never did dry out while in my possession.  Still, it was gobs of fun -- at least, I thought it was.

We went to a water park and commented, "We should do this more often."  Then we didn't go back, becuse things got crazy busy.

We went to Chincoteague and loved it as much as ever. Then we didn't go back, because things got crazy busy.

I spent a weekend making jelly, and was rewarded with another blue ribbon from the fair, this year for my blueberry offering. For the second time in a row, they misspelled my name on the ribbon.  This time, I was Arwen Brickwell. OK, then.

While we were in Chincoteague, we visited the Goddard Space Center.  The YP got a bunch of lunar landing model kits and action figure things.  Then he and his dad built a movie set for them and re-enacted the 1969 trip to the moon.  It was inspired.

Then we went on our official vacation, to Orlando.  Many anecdotes.

1: Being a parent has shortened my patience for standing in line with teenagers. On the last ride of our first day, NeighborGirl and I were waiting with a bunch of squealers behind us, and some guy ahead of us was yapping with them. The girl behind me tried to push ahead to him, and without even thinking about it, I barked at her, "Absolutely not!"  as if she were my 9-year-old.  Then she pushed again, and I said, "I'm pretty sure I said no..."  at which point her friend who spoke English interceded and said, "She just wants to go talk to him."  I said, "I don't care. If he wants to talk to her, he can give up his place in line and come back here. I haven't stood here for 40 minutes to let all six of you cut in front of me." NeighborGirl was cracking up by this time, and the guy in front of me just looked astonished that I stood my ground.  Ah, the joys of being a Cranky Old Lady.

2: Karma bit me for it, though. As we were getting off that ride, I tripped going over a bridge thing, and rather than splatter my face into the pavement, I caught myself -- and chucked my phone into the lake 30 feet blow us. So I spent the next several hours trotting around to the Apple Store, Verizon and Best Buy, and shelling out an embarrassing amount of money to replace it RFN in case the dogsitter called.

3: A good friend of mine from high school came to visit us at our kamping kondo, which was absolutely wonderful. She's not as sweet as I'd painted her in my memory, and I was delighted with her wickedness. We had all kinds of fun and wine and I'm very excited that she's coming up here next summer so we can do it again. 

4: Universal Orlando is a lot of fun.  Three-day passes were nice, because I didn't feel all stressed out with all the time spent standing in line. We still got to see everything, and hit the highlights twice.

5: Harry Potter's Field is impressive. Butterbeer is good, but not worth the souvenir mug. The YP felt his wand pick him, and then, weirdly, some woman who worked there (who hadn't been around when the kid was going through this flight of fancy) recommended the same one he said had chosen him. Spooky.

6: LegoLand is impressive too, in a different way.  The stuff they've made out of Legos is mind-boggling. I wonder how you get the job of creating a scale model of the Capitol out of Legos.

7: We also visited my old neighborhood. It's a suburb now.  So weird. And all the trees in my old front yard are gone, which makes the house look much shabbier and not as secluded as it used to seem. Or maybe I'm just old and jaded now. There are also a slew of McMansions that went up -- across the street from the Boys and Girls Club.  For the view, I suppose. 

Then, last weekend, NYAB and I ditched the kid with NeighborGirl and went away for our anniversary. I was basically along for the ride, NYAB did all the planning and he did a brilliant job.  We went to Valley Forge and saw everything and completely amused ourselves with jokes about all the signage and railroads. Then we went to the Nats-Phillies game and had a great time, even if the Nats lost.  Next morning, we visited the Liberty Bell before heading home. (It's still cracked. But now it lives in a lovely air-conditioned museum-y type building.)

The boy lost his two top teeth this summer, and he's grown about an inch since we marked his height on Opening Day.  I reckon he'll have a beard in his next school photo. Sheesh.  He met his teacher for fourth grade today. Word on the street is that she is smart and fit, and will keep the kid on his toes. Both the YP and NYAB had favorable reports on her, so that's promising.

Next week, I hie myself to California for business. Don't I sound all impressive? I'll be staying with my aunt and uncle, and I think I have dinner with a few friends lined up, unless I wuss out and decide I need bed more than food.  Not sure when I'll have time to post next, but I'm optimistic it won't be as long a break as the last one!

OK, Break's Over!

And there's so much you've missed!

Not really.  A lot has happened, but as I've said before, while I am almost never bored, I find it hard to believe anyone else would find my life anything other than dead boring.

So, let's see.  What's changed?

The kid escaped third grade with all A's and B's, although it seems like he cut it awfully close.  This summer he's dedicating his time to behaving himself, relearning his states and capitals (same as every summer) and mastering the fricking multiplication tables he opted not to lean while his teacher was going over them in school.  Actions, as they say, have consequences.  I'm hoping the consequence of repeatedly reminding him that if he'd learned them when he was supposed to, he'd be free to watch more movies this summer will be that he does his classwork in class next year. 

As for the summer, he's been to a day camp where they made rockets out of soda bottles. He's been to a camp where they play a lot of games and run around most of the day.  He slammed his thumb in a car door and got a brace for it even though it wasn't broken.  He was absolutely stellar on the Fourth of July, and he's got all kinds of excitement in store for him in the next couple of months.  But I'll need blog fodder in the future, so I won't share what that stuff is just yet.

The house is still the house.  Lots of dog hair, lots of grass, lots of lethargy as far as doing anything about either. We survived the "derecho"  with the power going out for a whopping 20 seconds, and the cable/internet/phone mysteriously going out 4 hours after the storm and staying out for about 36 hours.

Not Your Average Blogger is still trucking along.  He's working on a new book.  Because I "shamed" him into it.  What I actually did was suggest he resurrect a book he wrote several years back, retool it and start shopping it around again.  Apparently he'd rather REsearch than REwrite, because he took on a new idea instead.  I have already told him that I'm going to take on his old book and turn it into gold, but I'm not entirely sure when that will be, because......

1: I have a new job! and,

2: An editor liked my YA superhero book!

So the new job is as an editor with a wonky think tank and I absolutely love it and I'm reading all kinds of very cool stuff that I'm not going to tell you anything about unless or until I get explicit permission to do so because, HELLO I GOT FIRED BEFORE I WAS HIRED last time I talked about work. I will say that I really do believe that the first six months of this year were serendipitous: The fact I got jilted by That Other Place simply meant I was free to take this job, which is a monumentally better fit for me and infinitely more interesting -- and, not for nothing, seems to have much nicer and much saner people on the payroll. (And someday, yes, someday I will tell you exactly what I think of That Other Place and the assorted nonsense that transpired and how Your Tax Dollars factored into the whole sordid mess, but today is not that day.)

The book news is very exciting.  Now I just need to figure out how to carve out 16 uninterrupted hours to go through the thing and retool, rewrite, reshape and reform. I'm hoping next weekend will provide the time.  I may have to check into a motel to get the distraction-free environment, I'm not sure. But I'm hella excited that someone is hella excited and wants me to put the work in. 

The problem with a new job and a book rewrite is they aren't exactly compatible.  In my new life, I can actually sleep until a reasonable hour, and given the option, I choose to take advantage of it.  So where I used to get up at 4 a.m., be at work between 5 and 5:20, then usually home by 3 or 4 and able to watch the kid and write and do assorted other things until I dropped dead at 10:30 or 11,  what now happens is I get up at 6, run the dog, leave for work by 6:45 and arrive between 7:30 and 8, workworkwork until I leave at 4, and get home around 6, which really only gives me four hours to Do Stuff, Including Dinner.  Four hours is barely enough time for me to figure out where I left off on a manuscript, certainly not enough for me to get back into the mood and voice and make any headway. I was all set to work on it last weekend, but we had no cable/internet/TV -- which meant no GoogleDocs. (Because that's where I started storing the thing after my hard drive crashed. I'm constantly outsmarting myself.) This weekend we have a concert tonight, and dinner with friends tomorrow, and I really really do need to do some more yardwork ... or housework ... or napping. Probably napping. So, maybe next weekend. 

The only other thing worth reporting on is that the Fourth happened, and it was probably one of the nicest days we've had in years, despite the fact it was literally 100 degrees out.  We started the day with NYAB and myself taking the dog for a walk, then everyone packing into the car and going to a ballgame, which was a great, great show. And sitting in the Red Porch seats means the wait staff don't want you to keel over in the 100-degree heat, so they brought out ice water along with ice-water drenched towels for all the delicate flowers.  It was great.  The kid pulled his usual trick of playing his videogames instead of watching the game, but he was generally well-behaved and as a reward we took him to see Spiderman -- a much better outing than the Toby Maguire version, I must say, although a bit alarming to me in its liberal use of recombinant DNA gene-splicing stuff (upon which my book also hinges, le sigh.)  After the movie we headed back to NYAB's office and watched all the fireworks shows in a 50-mile radius.  It was as lovely as last year, but it also made me a little sad to think of how much has changed in the intervening time.  On the other hand, the 2 hours it took us to get home hadn't changed a bit, and reminded me I don't miss commuting from the Capitol at all.  

And now you're all caught up.  See you back here in a week? Maybe? Maybe not. Time will tell

That Time I Dropped the Ball

So, when I was decorating for Christmas, I was doing up the guest room and I felt lazy.

"We aren't having any company, right?" I asked NYAB. "I can just put on the Christmas bedspread but leave the usual everyday sheets?"

"Yep," he said.

Last week, we were sick and short-staffed at work. Congress stayed in all weekend and I worked both of those days, with a lovely break Saturday night to attend a friend's party (where I got to fulfill a bucket list goal of giving Helen Thomas a withering glare, though I imagine she's so old and blind she thought I was a piece of furniture,) followed up by a grownup dessert date with NYAB. 

And work continued into this week.  I had my vision trained on Thursday and Friday, when I would finally only have to work from 5-8 a.m., and then Do My Own Stuff. 

And then I got a message from my dear college friend on Tuesday morning: "Hi! Looking forward to seeing you! I'll be on this afternoon's train!"

Uh. Whoops.

So my sweet pal Cynthia is in town til tomorrow, and she very nicely entertained herself in DC yesterday while I worked, and even more nicely overlooked the fact that when she arrived, her bed was buried under the contents of my linen closet. In fact, she helped me uncover said bed. Bless.

Today we are waiting for the dryer delivery man, the contractor to fix our shower, and the kid to wrap up his last half-day.  I don't know what we're going to do when all that's taken care of, but it better be fun, dammit.

That's life in our fast lane.  Perhaps tomorrow I'll work on my writing.

Here Goes Nothing...

So, I've been dabbling in writing, as most of you probably already know, since I do tend to go on about it.

Most important? Please go here and vote for my story to win. Not only will it make me happy and published, it will also give an infusion of books to the grade school in the weensy Illinois town my family hails from (whence my family hails? Sounds snobby.)

Second most important: I'm going on about writing even more, but I won't do it here as much.  If you want to see the writerly side of my sparkling and multi-faceted character, head on over.  I'm also back on Twitter.

But family news and whatnot will continue to show up here, however sporadically.

Thanksgiving was a lovely affair, with the delightful Porter/Graham-Silverman/Player to Be Named Later as our company. They make excellent desserts, y'all. I had pie for dinner last night, that's how good it was.

The rest of the weekend was gorgeous weather, yardwork, playing with the kid and the dog, and several visits from NeighborGirl, all of which we thoroughly enjoyed. Say what you will about leaf blowers and emissions -- one gallon of gas and about 8 hours accomplished what probably wouldn't have gotten done in 24 hours with two people raking and swearing and acquiring blisters upon blisters.

We also headed out to the theater and saw Hugo.  It was a nicely done movie; very pretty and artful and true what I read of the book. (The Young Prince read it on his own but showed me huge chunks and asked about a thousand questions.) The sad part of where I am in my life right now is that most of the time I was watching it, the refrain in the back of my head was, "Damn. Can you imagine hearing that Martin Freaking Scorsese wants to make the movie of your book? Sigh. Screw you, Brian Selznick, you amazingly talented and rightfully recognized bastard."

Now the family is into a headlong downhill slide toward Christmas. This weekend is a sing-along at Wolf Trap and baking like mad; next weekend is our cookie party, the weekend after that is another friend's party, and the weekend after that is the big day.  (Not to mention assorted school and extracurricular events for the YP.)

I keep saying it because I keep being surprised by it: I am far too busy for a person with no social life!

Another Mouth to Feed

For starters, my parents visited. While they crammed a lot of stuff into a fairly short time, this probably sums up the high points:

So, yeah. That happened.  Tree removal was pretty exciting, and we've got all the stuff sorted and moved now -- logs to a new logpile in back, stump-ground mulch augmenting a path to hopefully circumvent my annual Getting the Riding Mower Stuck in the Snowmelt Swamp Event.

The big addition to our family is a half-lab, half-shar pei, and arrived via my niece, who had named the black bundle Yoshi -- which the Young Prince later explained is the name of a videogame character.  (Hi, I'm old. I was still trying to figure out why a half-Chinese dog had a Japanese name.) The YP took it upon himself to rename her, and she is now Miss Amy Pond.  Because when he walks her, he says this. 

It's been an interesting adjustment, since the YP alternates between utter frustration that she is untrained and jumps all over him and badgers him and nips his fingers, and complete affection and friendliness.  I alternate between utter frustration with his losing patience and his flailing around trying to get away from her when she chases him, and complete joy at watching him when they work. 

And she's a cute little thing, isn't she?

With her one white paw.

In other happy news, our friends who came out for Thanksgiving last year were not frightened off by the experience and will be rejoining us.  Hopefully those chuckleheads in Congress's deficit committee will not have ruined my week by going to the 11th hour -- hahaha! Who am I kidding! Of course they will! The good news is that such nonsense is at least predictable nonsense, so I can work around it.

Otherwise, work remains work.  Drama, agita, understaffing and overanxious. La la la.

The YP has been off school for the past two days (They say "conferences," I say "Union sweetie deal to get teachers to the voting booth,") so we have made great strides in getting the house back into semi-presentable shape after the mayhem wrought by a Halloween party, a puppy and a boy, and in getting the lawn to look like a lawn despite autumn.  I've also resumed my efforts to make home-schooling augment the kid's real schooling -- right now he's writing a screenplay called The Space Circus.  So far he's written the chatter that comes before the credits. Hey, it's a start.

So all that's really left now between today and Thanskgiving is the kid's Monster Epic Time Sink Dramatic Production Thing That Eats Time. We missed last night's rehearsal because my Camaro's clutch fell out in the drive-thru at Taco Bell -- and boy, if you ever want to see a cashier look highly alarmed, tell her your car's stuck in front of her window.  Hahaha.  Fortunately, it was on a grade and I could get the car rolling enough to steer it into a parking spot.  Still waiting for the phone call that gives me the checkbook damage.

But yes, the play. Rehearsals every night this week (lawd,) running til 10:30 and 11 p.m.   Rawr.  Then two performances on Saturday that basically have us locked in a school from noon til 10 p.m.  Rawr, again.  They get Sunday off, thank goodness, then two more performances the next weekend. Factor in, of course, that the parents are expected to ride herd on kids, props, snacks, etc., etc., etc.  and I think we will ALL need a nap at the end of this hootenanny.

(And I can't promise any posts because they're insanely hardcore about this stuff -- no parents with cameras, no photos during the performance, no saving seats in the auditorium ACH TUNG!!)

I'm more and more glad every day that I didn't let him try out for the second of their three season performances.  (Of course, it was Annie, which either means he wouldn't get a part at all or he'd wind up with the lead role in a wig. Chortle.) 

Here's what I have to say about that:

See y'all in another couple weeks, I'm guessing.

Such Is Life

I wish I had some amazing photos or some beautiful words to share with you after my extended hiatus, but you'll have to make do with average -- and meager -- offerings on both counts.

What we did on our summer vacation:

Played with dogs.

Ditched the kid and celebrated our tenth anniversary with a visit to St. Louis and amaaaaazing seats at a Cards game.

Played with family. This is Totally Awesome Nephew Jude. I asked him how old he was and he said, "My mom says I'm 3."  Atta boy, Jude. Trust but verify.

We went to Hutsonville, where NYAB's dad grew up, just to poke around. Found the gravestones of his grandparents. The YP was much more taken with the park.

After the Midwest, we went east, to the beach.

And the many entertainment venues Chincoteague has to offer.

All in all, a good couple of weeks.

Then it was back to school -- which doesn't really look like much of a change from kindergarten, does it?

I also finished the first draft of my book and am furiously rewriting it now to add texture and depth and threads of continuity and all the other stuff that theoretically make books good. Between that and my day job, it'll probably be another two weeks til you hear from me again.  Maybe. I don't know. Every time I think I'm ready to hang up this blog biz, something comes along and gets me in a mood to post. We'll see.

Weekend Trip

So, this weekend was the gorgeous wedding of Adam and Katie, and I am so glad we went to see these two amazing people get married. Their personalities and passions were so clearly demosntrated in every detail of the event and you could tell that all the elegant simplicity took huge amounts of attention to detail.
The Blogger weekend was not so detail-oriented, a bit to our detriment, though not necessarily to our disappointment.
First, I worked from home Thursday to get things organized. I cleaned. I packed. I went to the grocery store. (Where I missed the part of Not Your Average Blogger's e-mail where he said to buy cat food.)
Then, for reasons I still don't remember, NeighborGirl floated the idea of going to see the midnight showing of Cars II, and I decided that might be a fun thing to do. NYAB assured us we could count him out, as he would be sleeping in preparation for the drive to Rhode Island the next day. The Young Prince, on the other hand, was absolutely over the moon at the prospect.  He was practically vibrating as he walked into the theater, yet he was incredibly well-behaved -- and alert -- for the duration. This, although NeighborGirl had given him carte blanche to talk as much as he wanted and to kick the chair in front of him because three other people had decided that out of the whole fairly empty theater, they wanted to sit Right In Front of Us. I do tend to wonder about people who do that.  Are they just That Angry about showing up second and not getting their perfect preferred seats? Or are they clueless with no sense of social space? Or some other idea I'm missing? I mean, I rather doubt they sat right in front of us because they knew we would have such sparkling MST3K badinage. Whatever, they were fine, we were fine.
After the movie, we came home, where I worked and stayed up pretty much straight through.  The YP did his level best to keep up, but he conked out at 5:30, about 20 minutes into the original Clash of the Titans. He woke up when we bustled him into the car and stayed awake for another hour, but crashed for a good chunk of the trip.
So sleep-deprived and a little spaced out, I parked myself in the passenger seat. I'm not sure when I fell asleep, but when I woke up I saw that Not Your Average Blogger had taken a route that I thought we'd agreed not to take, and we were in gridlock upon gridlock. This, however, simply gave us more time to listen to the iPod.
We got to Providence and drove around town once trying to figure out how GPS thought we should get to the hotel. 
We got dressed, and wandered the streets, taking a couple wrong turns trying to figure out how GPS thought we should get to a pre-wedding gathering at the Other Hotel.
We had dinner that was Not Bad because even though we got lost, we still showed up a half-hour early. The sea bass was pretty good. The salmon was nice. THe kid's burger vanished, so I assume it was edible.
When we were done eating, people had arrived at the lounge, so we went back in, where the YP introduced himself to the other kids, we chatted with a few people, said our hellos to the bride and groom, and then bolted back to our hotel, stopping along the way for dessert and a book.  (Because my kid, y'all, said he'd rather have a book than a brownie. I think that must come from NYAB's genes, because I can't imagine he got that from me.)
Next day, we wandered the mall (connected to our hotel by a skywalk! So exciting!) in search of dress shoes for the boy.  We went to every store in that place -- most didn't carry dress shoes for boys, one place only had them in sizes 4 or 12. So I finally ground my teeth and stepped into Nordstrom.
Seriously, if you are of my age/weight/income bracket and want to feel terrible about yourself, just go spend a few minutes in Nordstrom's fancy-dress section. It's terribly demoralizing. Gorgeous dresses that look lovely on the rack, but would look awful on your lumps and bumps, were you able to afford such togs. Of course, we did find shoes for the boy there. Kenneth Coles. At the age of 8, my son got a pair of shoes that cost as much as the last 3 pairs I bought for myself at Payless.  He better wear them more than once, is all I have to say.
Then we went back to the room and decided to get ready and head out early -- at which point NYAB discovered that although I had set out a dress shirt and tie for the kid, I had somehow managed to pick up only six out of seven hangers.  So we got as ready as possible, reversed course back to the mall, got a shirt and tie, realized we'd left the parking voucher in the hotel room, doubled back again, and finally got on the road.  We drove to Little Compton, where we spent a few minutes playing on the beach (with repeated admonitions to the YP that he Not Get Dirty,) and then driving back up through town (and yes, dad, we stopped at Charles Wilbour's house, but decided not to pay the $15 to get in since we'd have to leave in 20 minutes,) and arriving with a bunch of other guests at the wedding.
The YP was immediately recruited to hand out programs and fell in with a gang of other kids; with the exception of sitting with us during the ceremony, we barely saw him for the whole evening.  He did deign to dance to Forget You with me -- and the groom joined him for a flail-heavy interpretation of Katy Perry's Firework.  Video was taken, but the YP and I agreed it should remain classified.
After the wedding, we returned to the hotel, and took off the next morning to head back home. We stopped in Coventry along the way to check out the Nathan Hale memorial, and the YP took a little solo hike down a hill to the edge of a lake, where he doused his feet and threw some rocks. A nice drive back, and we got home last night.
Today is all recovery/cleaning/laundry. Tomorrow is Lady Katherine!

Going Places, Doing Things

Since moving to DC, we've had a number of encounters with friends here on family vacations.

A woman I've been friends with since third grade was in town yesterday with her husband and three kids, and we had lunch together. It was very nice to see them, the family was absolutely lovely, and everyone else at Union Station for lunch at that time was reasonably polite and friendly.

But it's funny to me. The kids were clearly worn out and I could see that the idea of hiking up the road to look at paintings of dead people in yet another frigging museum would not have been in their top 10 -- not even top 100 -- choices for a fun afternoon. And it got me thinking about how none of the kids I've seen from out of town ever seem to have a lot of enthusiasm for DC visits. And as a kid who made an annual trek into DC with my Virginia-resident grandparents every summer, I can completely understand it. There's a lot of walking, a lot of standing around in museums where you don't really know enough to understand why it's a big deal that you're looking at this stuff, a lot of walking, not a lot of places to play, and oh, did I mention the walking?

(When I was a kid, this visit was always kicked off by getting up before sunrise so we could take the train to Union Station. Honestly? I still think my grandfather was a little insane for preferring that method. The train was sort of nice and all, and I remember -- this being the old and unsafe days -- standing outside on the platform of the last car and watching the track fly away behind us, and the water cooler was sort of neat -- but jeez, we could have gotten up two hours later and arrived at the same time. Except if we had done that, OMIGOD WE WOULD HAVE HAD TO PAY FOR PARKING!!) 

Plus, some of the most pleasant memories I have of those DC tours are gone now. The old-fashioned ice cream parlor at the American History Museum? First they fired the waiters (this was the first place I ever saw waiters in black pants and starched white coats,) and made it a buffet, then they cut back on the menu, then they ditched it completely in the overhaul.

And you can't just blunder in and out of the Capitol anymore. There are stickers and mental detectors and I don't know what all. And it's shut down entirely on Sundays, even the visitor center. This strikes me as kind of dumb, to not allow people in to look around when there is no actual business being conducted. But I guess that lack of logic isn't too surprising; this is the seat of federal government. I loved roaming around that building as a kid because there was so much cool stuff to look at. Paintings, frescoes, statuary, really cool furniture. And I knew that Important Things went on there. Although I remember my grandmother took me in so we could watch a House floor session one time, and I was ready to pass out with boredom. I didn't know what issue they were talking about, I couldn't figure out how any of the speakers felt about it, and I had the distinct feeling that my grandmother couldn't have cared less so it didn't seem like it was worth trying to figure out.

I took Thomas to sit in on a session of the Senate when he was about 5. After about 10 minutes he said, "You watch this on CSPAN and it looks like court on TV too. Why are we here?" 

It seems that the one enduring fascation for the under-12 set is the wildlife.  I remember being astonished at the sheer number of pigeons in the city, and stomping after them to chase them off. Thomas is a big fan of the ducks in the reflecting pool. And pretty much every kid we've ushered through the city is way, WAY more interested in the squirrels than in the Hope diamond. So there's the welfare critters and the carousel, and once you've hit those, you might as well wander up to the Air and Space museum because they've got a McDonald's and you know the food will be what you expect.

Now, I'm pretty sure it isn't just DC that does this to kids. We went to New York and the YP was bored stiff with huge portions of our planned activities. He was far more interested in the M&M store than he was in the Met. He found room service far preferable to venturing out on yet another hike, even to find an ice cream place.

So why do we do this? Why do we take our kids places where we know they are going to whine that they are bored, complain that their feet hurt, and ask over and over and over and over and over when they can play their video games?

Mostly, I think we do it for ourselves.  I know there have been plenty of cases where I dragged my kid places because I wanted to see them and couldn't really figure out a way to ditch him. There have been other times where I dragged him somewhere because I thought it was important for him to be exposed to something; even if he didn't have the faintest idea what was going on, there might be some tiny impression made so that in later years I could tell him, "you saw that, you remember any of it?"  And of course, there have been other times when I thought our plans would go over like gangbusters and instead they were a big fat failure that left everyone miserable and mad at each other.

So is it worth it? Is it worth dragging your kid halfway across the continent so that five years later they can remember the pigeons? So they can say, 'Oh, I remember Mount Rushmore. I remember you made me eat a hot dog I didn't want because they were out of hamburgers."

I think the answer is yes. Because while I might remember the pigeons more clearly than the presidential exhibits, what really stuck with me was that everyone in my family cared enough about me to take me a whole bunch of different places and show me all kinds of strange stuff, and even put up with me when I was being a godawful brat about all the damn walking. That involvement isn't something you can just hand off to a coach or a teacher, and it's something you can't really try to play catch-up on at the end of a childhood.

So to all my relatives who took me places and showed me stuff, thank you.  And thank you also to all you grownups out there who do this stuff for the kids in your sphere of influence.  And finally, an extra big thank you to all the other people milling around the planet who have the kindness to keep their opinions to themselves and who graciously tolerate those kids being exposed to such things, even when the kids in question are resisting and kicking up an awful scene about how miserable they are. 

(This weekend, though, we are going somewhere I know will be a big hit. We're driving up to Hershey tomorrow and spending the day at the park, then tooling around town the next day and Sunday-Driving home. Huzzah!)

Genetic Misanthropy

When I was a kid, I had scads of friends, and we all lived fairly close together. I was always off at someone else's house, or someone was at mine. At the time, I couldn't really understand how my parents didn't function in much the same way. They had an extremely small circle of friends, and rarely, it seemed to me, did they have much in the way of a social life.

Looking back, they were a lot more outgoing than I am now. While it was pretty much the same three or four people on the roster every weekend, there were people around. At the same time, I was a lot more social in second grade than the Young Prince is.

I wonder what happened?

Part of it is me. One of the most freeing things I've done in months was to close out the old year by hacking my blog reader back and ditching feeds to several blogs I realized only served to raise my blood pressure and get me all fired up and righteously indignant. Tell you what, I haven't missed the breathtakingly ignorant alternative viewpoints nor the insipid "inspirational" stories one bit. I hid a lot of people on Facebook. I have pretty much given Twitter up for dead at this point as I find I don't have much to say and I don't care at all what some casual acquaintance had for lunch, snack, appetizer or dinner, unless they have found a way to make such posts amusing or at least informative to my existence, like, "Do NOT eat at Joe's unless you want to spend the next 5 hours barfing."  I realize being anti-social sort of defeats the point of social media, but I find myself much less irritated all around having taken these steps.

The thing is, that Virtual Reality attitude is extending to Actual Reality as well. Or maybe it started there, I've lost track. But these days I am much happier spending the weekend sprawled on our couch knitting or reading or watching movies than I am at the prospect of getting up, putting on clothes that have actual waistbands, and going out somewhere to talk to people. I still have Christmas gifts I haven't managed to deliver to the family who lives two houses over. And worse, I don't feel completely guilt-ridden and torn up about this. I know the way to get people to come to my house is to go to theirs and extend the invitation, but ... well, I'm sure that would be a fine thing, if I were at all inclined to put on my shoes. Which I'm not. Let them put theirs on and come here!   

Part of this is geography, I know. I spend 90 percent of my waking hours 40 miles from my house, and even if WorkFriends were inclined to hang out with us in off hours, it is rather a long haul to meet up. Conversely, I almost never see any of my neighbors (especially in winter, when there is no commonality of yard work to get us all out and waving to each other,) so the chances to really connect and become Every Weekend Friends are few and far between. The YP's friends all live several miles away, and not the sort of miles that can be traversed by bicycle.

So it is always surprising to me when we wind up with weekends full of outings and people and what-all. This weekend the family wound up with four -- count 'em, four -- different Plans With Friends. The YP had a party on Saturday and is going to hang with a classmate today. Friends of ours are moving up from New Orleans and were in town this weekend, and they were over for dinner last night. A woman I used to work with who lives even farther in the boonies than we do stopped by this morning with her family for breakfast and a hand-me-down-kid-clothing swap.

And it was all quite lovely and enjoyable. Completely wonderful, "wow, we should do that more often" kind of nice. So why don't we?

I remember having the same sort of relationship with Chinese food when I was in college. I'd be sitting in the dorm and someone would say, "Let's go to Chinatown and eat at Hop Li's!" And I'd think, "ohhh, god. I'd have to find pants. And then hike to the parking structure. We have to drive there -- at dinnertime, in LA -- and THEN we have to find parking. And ... ehhhhh."  But then, every time I actually got up, got dressed, went and did it, by the middle of the meal I couldn't understand why I didn't do this every single night of the week. That food was beyond compare! And the service was amazing! And it was completely reasonably priced!

I have yet to figure out what the problem is. Lack of energy? Lack of motivation? An object at rest and all that? Maybe I'm like my parents and have an equally small social circle, but the diaspora covers a larger geographical area?

I don't know. I'm trying to figure it out. I guess I should try harder to work on that?

Well, maybe. I've got an awfully big backlog on Netflix Instant View to get through.

October = Social Life. Who Knew?

Let's see.  Two weddings down, one to go. 

The first wedding was that of a friend who used to work with NYAB and myself. The YP attended that one and was an astonishingly exemplary guest -- especially for him. He waited for the late-starting ceremony without too much squawking, he was quiet for the grownup blather, he found a friend and didn't bother the adults during cocktail hour, and he entertained himself relatively quietly during the dinner we knew he wouldn't touch.  He toasted the bride and groom, he danced with the bride, he decided it was entirely too cold to hang around for an outdoor wedding and we headed home.

The second wedding was my cousin's.  We drove to Cleveland on Friday night, and I spent Saturday with assorted relatives at a lovely occasion while NYAB and the YP entertained themselves with hours of TV, video games, the hotel pool and room service.  It was enjoyable seeing people I hadn't seen since my wedding, and although my kid love-love-loves to work a room, I think he was actually more enchanted with the idea of an entire day of screwing off and watching Cartoon Network -- something he NEVER gets to do at home, because we are all in competition for the set.

After that happy occasion, we detoured to Niagara Falls on our way home.  It was fantastic, and I am looking forward to going back up there someday and spending a bit more time hiking around, watching the water, seeing it from different angles -- esp. the Canadian side -- and just generally taking it a bit more leisurely. (Photos from this weekend are up on Flickr, in case you don't have Facebook and want to go take a look.)

This weekend another friend from work is getting married, and again the boys are leaving me to my own devices. The boy has a birthday party and NYAB volunteered to do the dropoff and pickup and so on. Then next weekend, one of the YP's friends has invited him to go to a Caps game -- luxury box! -- so he'll be off doing that and I reckon his dad and I can figure out something to entertain ourselves during his absence.  Probably watching college football, because we live in the fast lane, dontcha know!

And after that it is Halloween, and then it is November and the election and my life -- and that of my staff -- goes all to hell for that week.  Looking forward to it!