Category: Life

Spring break: Yesterday, we went to the Dickerson Park Zoo, the Springfield Parks zoo.

You know, I might have only taken my boys to the zoo three times: Once in Saint Louis, with my brother and his wife and his son when my oldest was two. I have pictures of only the oldest, so I don’t know if the youngest, who would have been one, stayed home or was in a stroller and therefore not in many pictures. I remember the boy in the pictures and short videos, though, saying “There he is! There he is! There he is!” when spotting the black rhino for the first time and bending in half at one point while walking to lick the pavement–perhaps the paint looked like candy or frosting to him then.

I took them a couple years back (a couple being, let me do the math, six) when I had more free time in my schedule, again. Few photos exist of that excursion, as the number of photos we take of the boys has diminished over time. Which is odd, because now we carry the equivalent of a camera anywhere. I just don’t like to take out my phone in situations, perhaps, where I would not have minded pulling out a dedicated camera.

After we parked and as we crossed the parking log, the oldest said, “Aren’t you going to say ‘1, 2, 3, to the zoo?'” As I mentioned, I used to say this when they were younger when it was time for us to go somewhere–it’s the title of an Eric Carle counting book.

The boys were old enough now to go romp on their own, and they did, moving more quickly than my beautiful wife and I did among the elephants. The single Asian elephant at the zoo–it is a big zoo for a small city, but it’s a relatively small zoo–started out at the far end of its enclosure, but my wife talked to it and it slowly, nonchalantly approached us, taking a step, eating a couple snootfuls of some of the emerging greenery, and then taking another step, until it took a close look at us, posed for a picture, and then moved quickly away.

The boys, moving faster than we did, moved quickly through the exhibits and rejoined us for our last continent, Africa. They fed the giraffes, and we got to the enclosure of the Black and White Colobus (Colobi? Colubuses?).

C’mon, man. The zoo has Squirrel Monkeys and a Spider Monkey (no spider monkey puppy, though), but the fact that these creatures are called black and white colobusesi and not skunk monkeys is proof that they were named by scientists and not explorers or conquistadores.

At any rate, the zoo has a whole troop of them. They started inside their little enclosure, but a couple of them came out, and when the alpha male spotted my oldest, who was dressed in black and white, he (the skunk monkey male) came out, showed his genitals to my son, and then sat right in front of him, baring his teeth (but not his boy parts) because, I guess, he thought my oldest was another skunk monkey looking for a ready-made harem.

At any rate, or at least the rate we’ve been going, this is probably the last trip to the zoo we will take as a family. Until grandkids, maybe. On the plus side, I did not let the double-effect narrator, the part of me that knows this is the last time to overwhelm the day.

Light posting this week; it’s Spring Break for my boys, and since my schedule is more self-determined this year than in the previous three years of consulting on contracts with strict hours, I am spending most of the days with my boys.

We’ve gone fishing, and we’ve gone to the Springfield Nature Center so far. You know, ever since they could walk, we’ve been going to the Nature Center. A couple of times a year in the old days. I think we’ve skipped some years, but we went last summer and again this year. There’s a bench on the Fox Bluff trail that I insist they sit on every time, so I have a series of pictures that shows them growing up. Aside from that, the only pictures I tend to get are when I drop behind them and catch them as they walk.

You start out carrying them.
Then you ‘walk’ them by pushing them in wheeled conveyances.
The you walk with them, ever faster.
Eventually, they want to walk on their own, a little ahead or a little behind you, because they’re big enough to do that now, but still close.
Then, if you succeed as a parent, they walk away.

I wonder if there’s a poem in that, or if it’s too true for poetry.

In the JJ Sefton Morning Report at Ace of Spades HQ, the cob demonstrates an ignorance of fictional geography:

The second story is supposedly a scratch formation of the 1st SS Panzer Division along with the Ozark goobers who buggered Ned Beatty in Deliverance are planning to storm the Capitol tomorrow.

C’mon, man. Deliverance took place in Georgia.

Since I’m a long-time no-longer Wisconsin resident and a resident of the low hills of the aforementioned Ozarks, I feel the need to defend my new hometownregion.

So the local papers to which I subscribe often have a “Remember When” sort of feature every week where they comb through their morgues and come up with news stories and photos that can fill column inches easily. Also, probably, their regular subscribers are generally older and have probably lived in the area for a long time, so when they go back twenty or fifty years, you might see someone you recognize. I just tend to glance over these sections, even though I sometimes linger on the ones from thirty-five years ago because they remind me of when I was young even though I was not young there, wherever there is.

This last week or so back–paper delivery was delayed because of the weather–the Douglas County Herald offered a picture of the the Ava High School Homecoming Court of 1969:

Those girls are, what, two years older than my oldest? But they look so much older. Partially probably because it’s black and white and partially because they’re wearing the clothing that my mother wore in some of her pictures, and my mother was old to me when I was young and my mother was younger than I am.

But, wait, look closely at the faces.

Ah, yes, now I can see teenagers in those old people clothes.

You know, I don’t know if fashion has flatlined since I was younger, but the clothes I’m wearing in the pictures from thirty-five or forty years ago pretty much match what I wear now, casually, and the khakis and dress shirts I wear when going grant aren’t bound by style. Aside from the fly hand-me-downs from our next-door neighbors in the projects that I received in the early 1980s (I was the last kid on the block wearing bell bottoms, and it wasn’t because I couldn’t let go of disco), we never got fashionable clothes like parachute pants or even polo shirts. I have been wearing jeans and sweatshirts or t-shirts for the duration. Actually, I guess some of the sweatshirts are actually approaching twenty years old themselves. But never mind.

So at least in my mind, when I look back at older pictures, I think I look like that now. Except the face, maybe. Also the fact that I was finally able to gain weight and grow into a man’s body instead of a spindly boy’s.

The women in these pictures are about to turn seventy. Which doesn’t seem old, now. But I go to church, so most of the women and men that I see regularly tend to be pretty vital and involved. I hope they still are. I hope I will still be.

So I’ve got this puzzle piece on my desk.

The normal trouble is to find, when you’ve almost completely assembled a puzzle, to find a single piece missing.

However, sometimes during the disassembly process here at Nogglestead, a single puzzle piece will hit the floor, especially if the cats are helping with the disassembly, only to be found some time later.

At which time, I apparently put it on my desk.

I cannot throw it out, of course, since we might assemble the puzzle later and need it. So I will put it with the other stray puzzle pieces; and, if we think of it, we can look for this piece if we ever come one short.

Although, given the distinct markings on this piece, perhaps I can just look for the box.

But, no: why deprive myself of a future item for a Five Things on My Desk post?

Also note, gentle reader, that I still have a couple incomplete young children’s puzzles wrapped up in storage, each missing one or two large wooden pieces. I cannot give them away incomplete, so I have set them aside in case those pieces turn up. They’ve been in storage for probably six or seven years now, and Nogglestead does not shake out as many stray kids toy bits as it used to. But that’s something for my estate sale planners to decide.

Gentle reader, you might have heard on the news that the south has gotten another visit from the jet stream this week, bringing with it not only the ice last week but also cold and snow this week.

It has basically snowed lightly all week until yesterday afternoon. We got a couple of measurable snowfalls, maybe six to eight inches total, and most everything closed down. My oldest has only had a partial school day in the last week and a half; the youngest has only had one. They have been off all of this week and have “virtual learning” for the day. So it has felt a little bit like the lockdown from last spring except that the cold has kept us from running outside or riding bikes. I haven’t actually left the house since church on Sunday morning.

So, yesterday, I needed a little me-time, and I was tired of sitting at my computer.

It had warmed to 20 degrees, so I went outside to shovel.

I have only shoveled the driveway at Nogglestead, what, two or three times since we lived here. Most snowfalls are an inch or two at most followed by days warm enough to melt them, so I haven’t bothered. But yesterday, the depth of the snow plus the lingering temperatures made it worthwhile to shovel. So I put on a coat, hat, and gloves (and my gym playlist), and I got to it.

It took me almost four hours of peace and quiet (well, except for the metal blaring in my ears), but it reminded me of home. The last winter I spent in Wisconsin, we got like 75″ of snow. It would snow eight inches, pause a couple of days, snow four inches, and so in. So I did a lot of shoveling then, but my father’s driveway was significantly shorter.

I have a birthday coming up, so of course I’m thinking about aging. I am blessed to be able to shovel for four hours in the cold with no ill effects. Or do triathlons. Or take martial arts classes. I just have to slow down and enjoy that I can while I can and not worry about that I’m not winning, or that I’m not super sharp on my skills currently, or that it takes me four hours and an eventual Advil. I’m trying to distill it into a pithy statement to put on a sky image and share tweeiously on the Internet, something like Someday I Will Can’t, But Until Then I Will Not Won’t.

I think I will venture out today for some errands, so the clear driveway will come in handy to be able to see it and avoid the ditch. And I won’t have to tromp through the snow to take out my trash since the can will likely be out there all week as well.

Next week, it is back to springtime. Today, I shall enjoy looking at the snow and listening to the snow-muffled silence when I take my trash out.

This Quickbooks ad made the rounds on television this season:

I chuckled, because it’s true.

My martial arts school awards black belts with special jackets and belts with the student’s name (and the school’s name) on them.

I, however, only wear those to testing, which means I only wore my first degree black belt and jacket four times: Once when I received it, briefly, and then every time I tested until I got my second degree. My second degree belt and jacket I wore only once, when I was awarded them almost two years ago. I am a little behind in the testing process given the events of the last couple of years; I should wear it for a formal occasion sometime soon.

For classes, I have a well-worn gi and a plain black belt that I have worn since I was awarded the black belt (although I might have replaced the gi since then). This is, of course, my casual gi.

So I can relate. Also, I use QuickBooks for my business, but not the live assistance since I have an accountant.

So I spoiled my beautiful wife with an Apple Watch for Valentine’s Day, and when I ordered it directly from Apple.com, I noticed how much Apple loves green.

Apple loves green so much that it does not include a charger with the Apple Watch.

It loves green so much that it will sell you a charger for an additional $30-80. A charger that will come in its own set of bespoke packaging that you will throw away after you get it.

Hey, I’m an Apple shareholder. I love how Apple extracts money from me for me. It’s kind of like the government, except with more for me at the end. Well, it would if I were to sell more of my holdings before the economic bubble bursts. Which I probably won’t.

Ah, my foes, and ah, my friends, how very carefully we undecorated last month from Christmas to make sure we got everything into storage. It helps that we’ve got a diminishing number of little touches that we put into random places, and although I felt confident that we got all of the things we put onto display, apparently I overlooked one thing: A Christmas ornament that we laid aside, not to display, but to either put on the tree or put back in the box.

Apparently, when decorating or undecorating the downstairs Christmas tree, we laid this little angel atop the books on the bookshelves next to the tree and unfilled book jackets were shuffled atop it, hiding it from sight. I found it when doing the detailed dusting on Sunday. I posed it artfully for this picture; it was, as I said, lying on books toward the back with a dustjacket over it.

So, in my defense, it was not a decoration put on display in such a fashion where it would be nominally visible, so I hope I can be forgiven for overlooking it.

Although, admittedly, there is a non-zero chance that this is a Christmas straggler from some previous year that has gone unnoticed for more than one solar orbit.

But the betting is on: The over/under of me actually putting the ornament with the Christmas decorations, instead of just taking a photo of it for the blog, is four weeks. Hang on, Southie is scratching something else on the chalk board as I type: four and a half weeks.

Probably still worth taking the over no matter how far it moves.

Also, watch for its appearance in a future Five Things On My Desk post.

Well, on Monday, I made light of schools cancelling based on predictions of an ice storm.

A couple hours later, both of my boys’ schools sent them home early, and they have not been to school since. Today is Thursday; one boy has off tomorrow because teachers are people, too, and they need mental health days built into the school year. The other has school scheduled, but the principal sent out an email that says “See you on Monday!” which is odd, because today is not Friday, and Monday is Presidents’ Day.

The issue has not been a snowfall of any note (so far–see below, or maybe just the next sentence). We had freezing drizzle on Tuesday, which got the boys of school on Tuesday and Wednesday; and although it did not drizzle exactly yesterday, we did get some freezing fog which doesn’t really fall per se but does leave a glazing of ice on the things it touched, like plants and roadways. So they’re off today as well. And it has started to snow, so perhaps the younger’s school will just call the whole week a wash.

My beautiful wife was out on Tuesday night and said it was a bad drive–mostly, the freezing rain kept freezing on her windshield. On Wednesday morning, she was scheduled to do a livestreamed presentation from a studio in central Springfield. About twenty-five minutes before she was scheduled to leave, she awakened me and asked me if I would drive. Of course I did–I haven’t lost control of my vehicle in an ice storm in like three or four years, so I am just the man for that job.

I schlepped her up there and then sat in an underheated warehouse studio while she streamed live.

In case you’re wondering what talking dog joke I tell at about 4:30, off camera and before the audio and presentation begins, it’s this one:

A man walking down the street comes to a sign that says, “Talking dog: $10.” So he goes up to the house and knocks on the door. A man answers, and the first guy says, “I understand you have a talking dog for sale.”

The dog nudges his way to the door and says, “You bet. I was in the military, an explosive sniffing dog, and I found a lot of IEDs and saved a lot of our guys. After my tour was up, I worked for the highway patrol, and I found many kilos of bad stuff headed for the streets. Then I worked as a rescue dog on the beach, saving people who were drowning.”

“Wow, and he’s only ten dollars?” the man said.

“Yeah. He’s a liar. He ain’t done any of that,” the owner said.

Heather smiled and the host roared with laughter because he’s very polite. But I do like my talking dog jokes.

At any rate, so it’s been a cozy week of mostly going nowhere with a nice wood fire burning. One of my belated Christmas gifts was a cord or so of wood to burn this year instead of Duraflame logs. The man who delivered it asked how many cords of wood we burned every year–I didn’t know as I’ve not burned wood much, but judging how we’ve gone through this cord, it’s probably between three and four starting a fire about five at night and burning it into the evening and starting a little earlier on weekends or snow days.

I wish I could say I have been getting a lot of reading done, but I don’t tend to like to sit down during the day or afternoon with a book–I really am only comfortable doing it after dinner and the evening chores. Because this is good weather to sit and watch the snow with a book on your lap.

Spotted amongst things Wirecutter has posted on Facebook:

You know who is bothered by knowing the name of a cow? A soft city person. Which is not to say that I’m a Hank Williams, Jr., certified country boy, but I do read Ozarks Farm and Neighbor magazine, and I know where beef comes from. But most ranchers have too many cattle to name individually anyway.

When I was a bagger, ahem utility clerk (which pays better than a bagger, but only because minimum wage had gone up), the Shop Rite where I worked tagged itself as the Best Meat in Town, and every year, the owner would buy the best blue ribbon award-winning cattle from the state fair (the Wisconsin State Fair is held in Milwaukee, just across town), and they would butcher the meat in-store and sell it.

So, yeah, every year around September, I knew the names of the steaks and hamburger coming down the conveyor belt. And I am pretty sure I had my portion of Outlaw, the winner one year. And that’s when I was a city boy, before I thought I might become a hobby farmist. Before I almost convinced my beautiful wife that we could raise a couple cattle, since normal people down here do that. Before someone she worked with told her that she (my beautiful wife) would never be able to kill an animal she had looked in the eyes (come on, we send it “to go live on a farm in the country” for that). It’s not like we have to bang Little Nell (the cattle would have literary names, of course, like the cats) with a hammer and process the meat ourselves.

Which is why, I guess, if I am ever to raise cattle at Nogglestead, we will have to only assign them number, decownizing them, and put hoods over their heads. Further decownizing them, I suppose.