Simian Farmer

Two black flies

There's a dead fly on the concrete floor in our laundry room.

I think it's been there for almost a month and I just can't bring myself to bend down, pick it up, turn around and flush it down the toilet.

GOILERS!!!

Did you see Saturday's hockey game?!

Holy crap!

Apparently, no team has come back to win a Stanley Cup after being down 3 games to 1 since the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs.

This Monday night; Raleigh, North Carolina; I think it's past time...

Symbolism

Material possessions have come to mean a little less to me over the past number of years.  I still have far too much 'stuff' and would like to winnow further.  So much of it amounts to little more than clutter. 

There's certainly something to be said for BuyNothingChristmas.

The fleeting excitement of getting and then having is quickly replaced by the knowledge that material substance, by and large, does little but take up space.  I find this to be true both corporeally as well as more ephemerally.  The things by which I'm visibly surrounded tend to occupy my mind as well as usurping bits of air that might be of more use to me.  Most of the stuff is superfluous, meaning I'd rather have those thoughts freed up as well.

The best medicine

Amy and I have quickly found out that raising two boys is proportionally more than twice the work of raising one.  It's some sort of exponential relationship.

It's all well worth it though.

My wife has been largely sleep deprived for the past three months, catering to the whims of the OTHER man in the bedroom with us.  At all hours even, only now approaching some semblance of predictability.

I rush home from work every day to throw together something that vaguely passes for supper (or tag in to the meal that my Amy's already started) and somehow, over the course of an evening, we lose all trace of our living room carpet.  We know it's under there somewhere.

The volumes of laundry and dishes to be done can be daunting, and we've again grown accustomed to the fact of our house being redolent of baby bile with dirty dog undertones.  Maybe we can bottle it and get Ralph Lauren to market it as Eau de Squalour.

The rewards, though largely intangible and completely incapable of doing anything about our mortgage, are so very worth all of it.

This is one of the best.

I've taken quite a few more video clips of the boys than just those I've put up here, so this montage of toddler hysterics is culled from all of them.

(By the way, if you click that little grey box on the bottom right with the arrows in it, the video will embiggen to fill your entire frikkin' screen.  That's a LOT of Dex all at once, so be careful.)

Quick!! Everybody look busy!

Well, crap.

I just found out, last night, that my wife's been reading this website for the past couple weeks.  Ever since her sister and niece came to visit us a little while ago.  (Hi BANDA!)

Which speaks to the level of communication currently extant in our house.  Or something.  But anyway...

...WE HAVE NO TIME TO LOSE, PEOPLE!

Here's what we have to do:

Paul, you'd best keep Shadow away from our dogs and tell Matt not to play his guitar where Amy can hear it.  She practised for a while and might get jealous.  Terri, stop talking about bra shopping!  You'll plant ideas that will take me weeks to get out of there, I tell you, weeks!  And Dixie; one more word out of you about soliciting men's opinions on bra sizes or your own unique approach to curing stuffy noses that only your husband can help you with, my wife will start to wonder what the heck's going on around here!

Lynn, that beating heart in a box thing was just plain weird.  You combine that with Gordon telling everybody about these Monkey Chow Diaries and there will definitely be some raised eyebrows!  I just know I've mentioned the thing with the raised eyebrows before.  Keep up!

Linda keeps going off about her iPod, which itself isn't a bad thing, but her penchant for mind-blowing sex and full moons will have the cops here, like, quick!  And speaking of the cops, Ben, would you quit it with the mommy abandonment issues?  Suck it up; you're one!  Our infant gets wind of that he'll be curled up in his bassinet until we kick him out for college.  Why can't you be quiet and uncommunicative, like your dad?

And the rest of you bloody Americans, sheesh!  Mark, keep your son under control or he'll go about kicking Declan's football all over the place and make him cry.  (And you with your camera, she'll think you're a stalker.)  We can't have that.  Marian, you're... you're... oh my god I can't even say it out loud.  **you're encouraging kids to smoke weed**  There I said it.  Now if I can steal a phrase from Charlie's dad from, So I Married An Axe Murderer, "Mae!  Shut it!"

Jenn, now is NOT the best time to bring up the fact that you've almost got the nuptial papers drafted to betroth your daughters to our sons.  I've been waiting to break the news to Amy and goll-darn it if the right time just hasn't been sorta slippery, you know?  Especially when your own mother goes off about having just killed the tooth fairy, fer Chrissake!  (Never mind the heavy petting in the parking lot she brags about.  Wouldn't THAT just get us all worked up over here?)

Jaq, do something about the hair, would ya?  That, combined with the beard and the overalls, induces a guy to do a double take (complete with a Keanu-esque, "Whoa!"), thinking that the Second Coming is upon us.  Elizabeth, you keep your southern fried charm and brags about your hundred bloody year old house to yourself.  You with your hanging the sheets out to dry and having four kids and stuff.  We have overgrown grass and two foot dandelions.  The weeds are taller than our dog!

All right then.  Now...

Everybody just sit there, sip your freakin' lemonade (or mint julip) and smile politely. 

Maybe this'll all blow over.

More filial photography

Keeping with the photo theme today, below is a really 'professional' shot of our kids.  Amy had the Canadian Baby Photographers in a few weeks ago to take Tavish's 2-month photos the same as what we'd had done for Dex.  As you can see, Declan steadfastly refused to relinquish the giraffe that morning.

In the intervening weeks between this photo and today, I'm amazed at the change in Tavish.  Mind you, a month to him is 30% of a lifetime.  Weird.

Both times with Canadian Baby Photographers Amy's been sure to have them in when I'm at work so I don't get any input into how much she's going to spend on big-ass pictures.  Once we get the order back, we'll get to keep all the proofs, so I'll probably scan the best of those and put them up here later.  (Brand new scanner at home, thus Dad must play.)

This is the one proof she was allowed to keep until the order comes in, meaning the others were even better.  I like to refer to it as 'bait'.

Morning stroll

So I'm still in the habit of walking the dog or dogs most every morning.  We normally wend our way in a somewhat circuitous fashion to the local 7-11 so I can get a cup of coffee and wake up to realize that I'm up and out for a walk before six in the morning.

This is where we normally  go:

who IS Simon Fraser, really?

Taking the lead from Paul, I felt I needed to explore who I really was.

So I went here.

The results will shock you.

I've highlighted my favourite result, but I can't say I like how it ends...

Being surpassed

I fondly recall the years I spent learning to play racquetball with my dad; we spent Saturday afternoons down at the rec centre chasing a bouncy blue ball around a large court.  He let me win every now and then to fan the spark of interest while I improved, but by the time I started to earn a few real wins, they were coming farther between because I was making him work.

We eventually switched to playing squash - a faster, better game in my opinion - and he started to beat me there, too.  It wasn't long before I outstripped him and I spent a couple years paying for lessons and took part in upwards of half a dozen tournaments a year around the province.  I got kinda good.  It's been more than two years now since I last played.  I miss it.

Lessons learned from Dad were by and large indirectly acquired through our interaction.  Annual fishing trips up north taught my brother and me the appropriate context in which to curse, for example.  The more emotional, direct, intentional lessons were taken from our mother.  Having split parents, and looking back now, that was a balance of sorts.

Tough but fair play was what I took away from the court with my dad.  I remember trying so hard to beat him one day that I ended up drenched in sweat and slumped against the wall of the court, huffing into a paper bag he had to run fetch because I couldn't stop hyperventilating.  I like to think he wouldn't let me win that one because I was pushing him to his limit then and he could see the torch being passed outside of his volition.  Last grasp and all that.

I'm already looking forward to being surpassed by my own sons in whatever endeavours we share.  A sense of anticipation I wouldn't have even comprehended a year ago.  I am suffused by a premature swelling of pride at the thought that I will be contributing to the excellence of their development into fine young men.  Which, combined with the concomitant apprehension of so much responsibility, makes for an interesting roller coaster ride.

A walking and (sort of) talking toddler induces me to speculate further into the future each time I'm given pause.  I mean, my heart lurched a little this past week when Declan burst out in hysterical laughter every time he successfully "keeked" a ball in the backyard.  How am I going to feel when I find out first hand that he can run faster than me?

It's a strange sensation, but those two small people are the only ones I can think of that I WANT to be faster, smarter and better than I am.  There's a father's ego at work right there.

For the record:

I have never nor will I ever order a coffee (or any other beverage) from that ubiquitous green monolith quoting anything other than "small, medium or large" to refer to the various cup sizes.

The snooty-yet-polite baristas can spout off as many order confirmations as they'd like: "So that's a GRAND-EH Columbian coffee with two sugars and a VEN-TEE Caramel Frappaccino with whipped cream topping?"

I will still and always reply with, "Yes, large coffee, two sugars, medium coffee slurpee."

Further, I will only go there when my wife becomes insistent on the aforementioned slurpee or I am dying from some sort of rare caffeine addiction and it's the only game in town.  Tim Hortons produces a superior and half-the-price iced coffee concoction.

Finally, the only redeeming quality, that I see, is that the name of the institution conjures pleasant memories of Battlestar Galactica.

For the record.