Fleef

Fleef verb \'fleef\

1. To stroke or tickle with a corner of a plush security item, such as a pillow or blankie.

Usage
"Pillowy is fleefing you, Daddy." "Blankie fleef Momma" [sic]

Etymology
Written records of oral history reflect the term was coined by Soren in 2007. Similar secondary sources indicate newly-verbal Sigrid expanded usage to include non-pillow plush security items (specifically, "Blankie") in late 2010.

Related Words
Fleeftown The area beneath a plush security item. Example: A Matchbox car under a blankie is in Fleeftown.

Exceeding Expectations

I finally figured something out. I actually figured it out a few weeks ago, but pretend I just figured it out today, because that makes this post seems much more timely.

So, and this is directed at moms in particular, you know how when a dad does something relating to the care of his own child and manages to pull it off without somehow putting the baby in the dishwasher or blinding himself with talcum powder, and this competence is witnessed by a woman, he is treated as some sort of wondrous miracle man, superior to all others in talent and capacity for caring? And then you think, Hey, I take TWO KIDS to the grocery store BY MYSELF every week and no one gives me a damn medal? And then you feel all misunderstood and taken for granted and gender inequity and male-dominated hegemony and yes I did go to Brown?

I think -- and correct me if I'm wrong, guys -- men might know how that feels. Just a little bit.

The answer: Pilot lights. And wiper blades.

There were several repairmen in and out of the house today responding to such fatal-sounding events such as a gas leak and a failure of our water heater and boiler to vent exhaust anywhere but back into the basement. Maybe they just all had a flair for the dramatic, but there was a gas smell and it did happen that the gas chimney was full of decroded flue tiles instead of not being full of anything, so their stories seem plausible. Anyway, when the chimney guy came, he did his thing and then asked whether I was going to call the gas company back to turn the appliances back on. Me: "No." He looks dubious. Me: "All they did was shut the gas valves and turn off the pilots. I know how to light the pilots."

And there it was. A look, a surprised noise. He was impressed. I was a true handywoman, with skills far surpassing any other female. Because I knew how to turn the little knob and push the button on the water heater according to the instructions which are written right there on the actual water heater. And if there had been another guy there, I bet it would have ticked him off. Maybe he would think, Dude, I can light a pilot with an actual MATCH while building a playset from scrap wood and jacking up the first floor of my house. * What I didn't tell the chimney cleaner was that I not only light pilots, I also replace faulty thermopile generators, with a soldering iron and everything. And I know THAT'S badass.

I got the same accolades a few months ago when I got some new wiper blades at Pep Boys and installed them myself in the parking lot. A random passerby told me how nice it was to see a woman installing her own wiper blades. But... they SNAP ON.

So there's the symmetry I'd been missing. Men are heroes for changing a diaper instead of doing something weird with duct tape, and women are heroes for igniting pilot lights instead of paying a plumber $60 to do it. But maybe that's because most of us are nervous about doing that stuff because an entire other gender will tell us we're doing it wrong. Well, some things are almost impossible to screw up. So! Men, get out there and change those nappies! Women, learn to push that switch on the water heater! COMPETENCE HO! You can do it. And someday, just maybe, no one will be impressed.

On the other hand, that doesn't sound like any fun.



*All things that my husband has done. But not simultaneously.

Theseus' Playset

One of the great paradoxes of ancient philosophy of is that of Theseus' ship. So beloved was it by the Athenians that they preserved it, replacing planks as they decayed to keep it in excellent condition. However, the philosophers point out, at some point, no planks that sailed with Theseus remain. Is it still Theseus' ship? If someone were to find one of the discarded, decayed boards that actually sailed with Theseus and build a replica around it, would it not then have a greater claim to being Theseus' ship? Or are there now two ships of Theseus?

While neither Soren and Sigrid--nor their cousins--have yet founded great civilizations, one of my Summer construction projects has been the restoration and updating of a family playset: a wooden play structure rivaling the fun of the $1200 playsets advertised in venerable publications such as Skymall (with much sturdier build). Designed and built by my grandfather for my cousins, the set was passed on to us a couple years ago, when my older cousin began college and my younger cousin obtained his learner's permit. It has been sitting in the corner of our yard for a while, waiting for Sigrid to get enough judgement to not hurt herself, or me to get around to trying to put it together.

When I sorted the pieces to assess the project, I found the elevated platform and railings were still in stunning shape; a good powerwash and restaining would restore them well. However, the parts of the playset that sat on the ground were decayed; even cedar eventually rots out, apparently in less than two decades if it's stored on the ground in the shade. In addition, I wanted to add some additional playset appointments.

Here's the final product:

I replaced the vertical corner supports and ground-level braces, and added a swing and steering wheel.

Soren helped.


I purchased a slide, which is challenging because slides are expensive to ship, and most of the slides available locally are only sold in kits. The local unfinished furniture place assured me they didn't sell individual slides, unless there were "extras" from the kits. We then had a surreal conversation about a particular orphaned slide on their floor, which was clearly "extra": they felt it was important I understand they didn't sell slides, while I tried to get them to suggest a price. I walked out with a good deal.

Surprisingly, it fits in a Jetta.

One of the orignal ladders was badly decayed, and since Sigrid won't be able to climb ladders for some time anyhow, I decided to use the old vertical corner supports as a frame for a climbing wall. There are kid-sized grips for Soren.


And some steps for Sigrid to climb.

It even has the hallmark of a custom playset: it is stained the same color as the shingles on the upper level of our house!

Sound like something your child would enjoy? Fear not! I still have a few scraps and partially decayed planks from the original. I'm sure we can negotiate an appropriate price for one of these artifacts. Then you, too, can have Theseus' playset!

Soren's Memoirs, ibid.

Hello. I'm Soren.


This morning, as I do every morning, I woke up, ran into Mommy and Daddy's room, and asked Mommy whether she had remembered to keep the TV plugged in and tuned to PBS Kids. She said yes. Then I asked whether she had put my appetizer on the kitchen table. She said yes. So I went downstairs, got my appetizer (Cheerios), turned on the TV, and wedged myself behind the couch cushions to watch cartoons. Then I remembered the rest of my morning routine, and went back upstairs to tell Mommy that when she came downstairs, she should pretend not to see me, and that she shouldn't look in the couch because there are mosquitoes. So she came down, looked around and couldn't find me, and then said mosquitoes didn't scare her and sat on the couch and smushed me (but only a little). And that's my morning routine.

I like fall because there are hay rides.



When we go places in the car, sometimes I like to rest, but I don't want to miss anything exciting. So I tell Mommy or Daddy to let me know if they see any Mustangs, Cadillacs, BMWs, Mercedes, Mini Coopers, Lincolns, or any other classic cars. Unless the cars are brown, in which case I don't want to look at them. Then I add more and more cars to the notification list until it would have been shorter to just tell Mommy or Daddy which cars I didn't want to know about.

I also like fall because there are corn mazes.



For Halloween, I have insisted that I want to dress as a Spooooooky convertible Corvette (said in a spooky voice). Mommy had better get cracking on that.

I am very helpful. I put the silverware away when Mommy unloads the dishwasher, and I put my own shoes on occasionally, and I love mopping (too bad Mommy only mops three times a year). I also like to help Daddy work on various home and yard improvement projects. I excel with the socket wrench.



That's it for now. I'm off to run around and around and around and around for a while. Let me know if you see any Mustangs, Cadillacs, BMWs, Mercedes, Mini Coopers, Lincolns, or any other classic cars.

Sigrid's Memoirs, Ghostwritten by Mommy

Hi. My name is Sigrid.



Right now, I'm sitting in my crib, singing and occasionally applauding myself. I may be singing Old MacDonald. It's hard to tell.

We went to the Topsfield Fair yesterday, and since I didn't get to go on any rides, I got an insanely expensive inflatable Sponge Bob. I love him very much and hugged him for about an hour in the car on the way home. Mom hopes he will be my favorite toy for about 20 years so that the amortized cost of Sponge Bob will seem reasonable.

I went out to the vegetable garden the other day, picked a Serrano pepper, and took a bite out of it. I didn't cry, but I made a very amusing face. Then I went out the next day and did it again.

I get very enthusiastic about weird things. I had a request in the early afternoon one day last week: "Take. Baf. Take. Baf." Mommy asked disbelievingly, "You want to take a bath?" to which I responded "OOHHHHH! KAAAAYYYYYY!"

I'm in that phase of learning to take where everything comes out as a series of one-word statements. "Bunny. Ride. Car." "Bear. Swing. Whee!" "Sorry. Mess. Letters. Mommy." That last one was after my very first time-out, which happened after I dumped magnetic letters all over the floor and wouldn't help clean them up. I was told that if I didn't pick them up, I would get a time-out. I've seen Soren get lots of time-outs, so it seems like a very grown-up thing to do, and I have the proper technique memorized; I headed right for the time-out chair, sat nicely for 90 seconds, and gave the aforementioned apology. Then I did help pick up letters. It's a good thing I have a big brother to show me how to behave.

I take reading very seriously.



Soren is very nice to me sometimes...



...but sometimes I think he wants to ship me off to Abu Dhabi.



He can't afford the postage, though, so I'm here to stay. And that's the end of my cutesy blog post.

Everything in the Whole World

That's what I feel like I have to put into each post if I'm going to go so long between posts. Which makes me want to go even longer between posts, because I don't really have the patience to write about everything in the whole world. Well, and sometimes it's the opposite problem, I guess, because I often feel like I don't do anything interesting and have nothing to write about. So I really can't win.

So what have we been up to? Vacations! Chris and I got to go to Paris for a week while Grammy and Grampy (Chris's parents) stayed at our house with the kids. The grandparents held up remarkably well, and fled the house much more slowly and subtly when I got back than I might have done in their position. They report that the kids were very well-behaved and they all had a great time together. Meanwhile, Chris and I were also well-behaved and had a great time together, so it was a win-win-win situation! It was my first time in Paris, visited all the major attractions (the Louvre, Versailles, Arc d'Triomphe, Notre Dame, Musee d'Orsay, Eiffel Tower), and a couple that seemed like they'd be minor that turned out to actually be major (the Orangerie Museum and St. Denis cathedral). The Orangerie seemed like a blip on the Paris museum radar before we showed up -- I'd never heard of it, so I assumed no one else had either, but there turned out to be a huge line when we got there waiting for the museum to reopen because it had apparently filled up. The main awesomenesses within were two oval rooms encircled (enovaled?) by giant Monet water lily paintings. The scale and the colors were enthralling.




The other major minor attraction, St-Denis cathedral, was my favorite. Besides being the oldest dated Gothic cathedral in France (construction began in 1136), it is the burial site of all but three of the kings who ruled France between the 10th century and the revolution. I really only appreciate history if it's really old, and this counts. Some of the stained glass is original, which is crazy if you think about windows surviving for 900 years, and all of it is gorgeous. Since the cathedral is a longish Metro ride out of the city, the tourist count was low, and we were able to experience the space in peace. That made a huge difference, I think. Notre Dame might have been really interesting, but I wouldn't know, because there were 500000 people there and I wasn't interested in sticking around for long. So I highly recommend visiting St. Denis if you happen to be in the neighborhood.




And now the children are insisting that I pay attention to them. Au revoir.

Classic

Scene: The classic car show at Goddard Park yesterday morning.

Soren: Mommy, what does 'classic' mean?

Mommy: Old. And nice. Kind of like 'antique'.

[pause]

Soren: Mommy, I think you're classic.

Soren's Rules for Cars

Soren has four Rules for Cars, or so he says; I've only heard two. But here they are:

1. The smaller, the faster.

2. Fast is a blast; no wonder it passed.

Good rules, I'd say.

We were walking on Main Street the other day, and Soren pointed to a parked car and cried, "Is that a Bentley?!?!"

A man sitting on the adjacent restaurant patio said, "How does he know that? How old is that kid?" He and his wife were very impressed (it was their car). I think Bentley owners might like being openly recognized by people who have no preconceptions about what a Bentley owner might be like.

Hot and Bothered

Summer. Bah humbug. Too hot for typing long sentences. At least there are farmers' markets. And air conditioning. And a quart+ of blackberries ripening in the yard. And lightness at 8 PM. And kids playing in the sprinkler. And watermelon. And Zyrtec.

I got my hair cut really super short yesterday, so now it's completely off my neck, and that helps with the heat. Plus people claim it looks cute. Also I have new glasses. I like them. And my toenails are painted silver.

Many things have happened in June. Soren is four. There was celebrating. He wants four more parties, he says. He also claims that he is now almost five. I made a carrot cake, and a chocolate one. I did this even though it required turning on the oven. I must really love that boy.

Oh, and sangria. Add that to the list of pros.

Add air conditioning again. It deserves to be listed twice.

Soren also graduated from preschool, except not really, because next year he's going to... preschool. But a different one. They sang cute songs at graduation and Soren used his diploma like a telescope. There was a slideshow of the kids in class and on various field trips. They're so cute. I got all teary. Motherhood. Seriously.

We got a giant bubble maker and now giant patches of the lawn are dead. Worth it.

Sigrid likes to get naked and run around the yard. I guess I can't post a picture of that because this is the internet. But it's cute. She has a narrow little butt and a giant belly and she barely bends her knees when she runs. She squirts the hose in her own face and gets all mad and then laughs. Silly.

It's all good.

Bye-Bye Baby

Hello toddler.

Sorry the video is so dark. On the plus side, it makes it a little harder to see the dirt all over the kids' faces.

Quirks of the Moment

Sigrid:

• Insists on carrying a dandelion in each hand when out walking.
  
• Yells "YEAH!!!!" when I come into her bedroom in the morning.
  
• Says "Melmo," even though she's never seen Elmo on TV and only knows him from the picture on her diapers. Elmo is made of special baby crack.
  
• Sings "Yah-Yo" when we get to the e-i-e-i-o part of Old MacDonald.
  
• Adores dogs, and buries her face in their fur whenever the opportunity arises.
  
• Picks up her blankie and runs for the gate at the bottom of the stairs when we say it's bedtime. She loves bedtime. Yes, I know I'm really lucky.
  
• Has a particular fondness for crossing footbridges. Over and over and over.
  
• Still wears size 4 shoes. How did I make such a tiny person?
  

Soren:

• Insists on carrying five dandelions in each hand when out walking.
  
• Has finally learned to pedal his tricycle.
  
• Writes me messages on his magnet board, such as "NOT U GD WA TO TOK" ("Not a good way to talk") when I scolded him for unwinding the toilet paper roll.
  
• Can identify pretty much every make of automobile in the country, which you already know if you've ever spent any time with him in the past year.
  
• Claims stegosaurus had spikes to protect it from creditors.
  
• Likes to read "The Monster at the End of This Book" with me because he knows it's my favorite.
  
• Would like a red Lincoln pickup truck.
  
• Is about to turn 4. How is that possible?
  

Fancy Things

The other day, I was dressing Soren in one of his rugby shirts, and he decided he wanted all the buttons to be done up, including the top one. I explained that the top one is generally left unbuttoned.

Soren: Why is it a button instead of nothing?

Me: To be fancy, I guess.

Soren [exasperated]: Well, then why don't they just put a GOLDEN CAR on there? Or a TROPHY?

Giving Away my Secrets

I got this recipe from somewhere that I can't find now, and I'm glad I wrote it down, because it rules. And now I'm going to put it on the interwebs so others may share in my high cholesterol. Sorry, I can't give the true author credit, so just pretend it was me.

Cinnamon rolls (makes 6 - 8 enormous rolls)

Dough:
1 pkg (2 1/4 tsp) instant/active dry yeast
1/2c warm water
1/3 c + 1/2 tsp granulated sugar, divided
1/2 c warmed milk
1/3 c butter, melted
1 tsp salt
1 egg, slightly beaten
3.5 - 4 c flour

Filling:
1/2 c melted butter, divided in half
3/4 c + 2 tbsp granulated sugar, divided
1 1/2 tbsp cinnamon
3/4 c chopped walnuts (optional)
3/4 c raisins (optional)

Glaze:
1/3 c melted butter
2 c powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2-4 tbsp hot water


In a small bowl, mix warm water, yeast, and 1/2 tsp sugar. In a large bowl, mix milk, 1/3 c sugar, butter, salt and egg. Stir well and add yeast mixture. Add half the flour and beat until smooth. Stir in enough of remaining flour to make dough slightly stiff (dough will be sticky).

Knead dough 5-10 minutes on floured board (or in stand mixer). Place in well-buttered glass or plastic bowl, cover and let rise in warm place until doubled (1 – 1 1/2 hours). When doubled, punch down dough and let rest 5 minutes. Roll out on floured surface into a 10 x 15 inch rectangle.

Filling: spread dough with 1/4 c melted butter. Mix 3/4 cup sugar with cinnamon; sprinkle over dough. Sprinkle with walnuts and raisins, if using.

Roll up dough (along the long edge, to make a 15” cylinder) and pinch edge together to seal. Cut into 6-8 slices. Coat bottom of 9” x 13” pan with remaining melted butter, then sprinkle with remaining 2 tbsp sugar. Place slices close together and let rise until doubled, 45 minutes.

[I usually do all the preceding work, up until the beginning of the second rise, the night before and place the covered pan in the fridge, then let the pan sit on the counter while the oven heats up and bake them right away. They don’t rise in the fridge, but will still puff up in the oven]

Bake in a 350 degree oven 25-30 minutes or until browned.

For the glaze: Mix butter, sugar and vanilla; stir in hot water 1 tbsp at a time until it reaches spreading consistency. Spread over slightly cooled rolls.

Breaking the Law

My Colorforms flowers (left), posted in direct violation of Soren's "No Flowers Allowed" sign (right):



Easter photos to follow when I have sorted through all 6000000 of them.

Several Boring Things and One Interesting Thing

Well, our little 16-month-old decided to step up her shock-and-awe campaign this morning by climbing out of her crib. There was some amount of goading from her big brother, who was entertaining her in her room before Chris and I got up, but I don't think he provided any mechanical help. So now, even though J. K. Rowling has lobbied against the inhumanity of cage beds for several years now, we are shopping for a crib tent. Sadly, there is only one maker of crib tents, and their product is widely panned as flimsy (although its ratings do average out to four stars on Amazon), but there aren't any other good options that we can find. There are those who say, "If you need a crib tent, you need a toddler bed!" But I laugh at those people, and invite them to come over and deal with teaching a 16-month-old to stay in a bed.

Other things have happened since I last posted. It rained a lot. Each house in our neighborhood is a lakeside resort now. I dropped my iPod in the loo and got a new one from Apple for half price, because they are nice. Chris and I hung a really attractive wire by the thermostat so we can jump the boiler whenever it gets cold, because the thermostat doesn't seem to work any more. There's something really rugged about jumping the boiler, let me tell you.

Oh, here's a trippy story. Someone sent me an email a few weeks back with the subject header "inquiry". Although, as one friend put it, emails with this title tend to be from exiled Nigerian princes, I chose to read it. Turns out it was from someone in Santa Barbara who wanted to know if I was a certain Kirsten Munson who graduated from San Marcos High School in 1994, because if I was, she had found some of my stuff in her attic. (I am, by the way.) Through further email exchanges, I learned that she'd found some of my paintings from AP Studio Art, and got my graduation year off the back of one that I'd apparently entered in a contest. OK, so here's the weird part. She found these paintings in the attic of a house on Valerio St, where my family moved after I graduated. In high school, I'd lived in a house on Crescent Drive, so that was the address on the back of the contest entry, and the person contacting me had also previously lived in the same house! So we'd shared two addresses in Santa Barbara. Cosmic!

She and her fiancé apparently want to keep a couple of the paintings, which is fine by me. Today, I tend to find my creative work from high school a bit... cringe-worthy, but if they think it's deep and meaningful, my high school self is grateful. That's pretty much what I was going for at the time.

The Soundtrack to my Résumé

I always have a song in my head, so the music I listen to is very important to me, because it determines what I will be listening to when the music is turned off. Sometimes it is good, like Life on Mars? or Don't Look Back in Anger or Magnet and Steel. Sometimes it is bad, like Radar Love, or the little pre-commercial NFL fanfare, or the Sid the Science Kid theme song.

Right now, I have Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind in my head, and I'm not happy about it. It came on while I was driving back from the Children's Museum. WBRU, I expect better from you. Anyway, I freaking hate that song, not on its aesthetic merits, but because I was forced to listen to it eight times a day during the summer of 1997.

Ah, 1997. Ryan Seacrest was just a smarmy DJ on L.A.'s Star 98.7. It was the summer after I transferred out of Brown, the summer before I started classes at Art Center College of Design. The summer I had to make some money. The summer I signed on with a temp agency. I landed a six-week assignment with an insurance company, which was great, because it was a nice long stint of guaranteed income. When it became clear that it was basically going to be six weeks of stuffing envelopes, I wasn't thrilled, but I was sure I could find a way to survive the drudgery. When the workplace turned out to be an office full of catty women whose main pastime was gossiping about whichever coworker had just left the room, I vowed to tune them out and carry on. But there was a conspiracy afoot. A sinister plot devised to make me crazy. A scheme that could only have been perpetrated by the likes of Ryan Seacrest and Third Eye Blind. And the person in charge of choosing the radio station at work.

You know how a lot of soft-rock stations advertise their no-repeat workday? Yeah, Star 98.7 didn't have one of those. They were interested in playing the Top 40 Adult Contemporary Hits of the Summer of 1997, and that's all. The thing about Top 40 hits is that there are forty of them, pretty much exactly. And if you hear them over and over, every day, for eight hours, five days a week, for six weeks, the math comes out to... let's see. I have the equation here somewhere. Oh yeah. It's:

[(2x/3)*240t] = whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

I still get twitchy when I hear Sunny Came Home. Oh god. I'm getting all PTSD right now, even thinking about it.

And then the six weeks was over, and I started school and listened to whatever the hell I wanted while working my ass off to get my degree so I could eventually work at a place that played cool music. I'm still kind of waiting to see how that works out. At my first real job, I could often hear Radiohead coming from one guy's office, so that was cool. And then I think they started piping in classical to see if it would make everyone swear less. My next job had no music, maybe because if you don't play music on the office, you can classify everyone as independent contractors and not give them any benefits. Then I had a job doing decorative furniture painting, and that really had its ups and downs. Usually, we could listen to whatever we wanted to, which included the soundtrack to Hair, all the awesome stuff on my iPod, and a CD of college fight songs. Huh. But these were vetoed during the holiday season by the back office manager -- I'll call her Pat, since that's her name -- in favor of a radio station devoted to playing all Christmas songs all the time starting the first week of November and ending after you go clinically insane. It really gave Star 98.7 a run for its money, repetition-wise. Also, Pat really enhanced the experience for all of us by humming along to every song, very loudly and badly. I pointed the humming out to a coworker who somehow hadn't theretofore noticed it, and she never liked me much after that, but I was glad to have some company in my misery.

The job after that had OK music. Turns out Muzak actually plays songs you've heard of now, with words, in their original recorded form. There was 80's music occasionally, but too much Coldplay in the Adult Contemporary playlist. And John Mayer McCheese. Oh, and You're Beautiful by James Blunt. Man UP, Jim. I'm sorry if you like any of these things. Reallllllllly sorry.

And now, my current job. Chauffeur To and From the Children's Museum. I was somehow transfixed by Semi-Charmed Life, and listened to the whole thing, but then turned the radio off and listened to my usual soundtrack these days, which is two people in the back seat saying Mommmmmmeeeeeeeeeeee over and over in weird voices for no apparent reason. So the repetition thing hasn't really been resolved, but at least now I can join in and start saying Mommmmmmeeeeeeeeeeeeeee as well (much to the delight of my deejays, or office managers, or whatever their titles are) and mix things up a bit by making everyone laugh.

Car Show!

(written by Chris)

Soren has been fascinated by cars for longer than he has been able to articulate that fascination. He had a lengthy phase of pointing out that a car or truck was passing by, then asking what each car he saw was, and then learning the logos of all the car companies and naming all the cars he saw (and he can identify the make of virtually all late model cars by sight). Today, I was able to provide him an all-access pass to more cars than he could imagine by taking him to the New England 2010 Auto Show, at the RI convention center. Kids' Day meant he was free with my admission, and no one could complain I was there following the orders of a three-year old.

As we approached the ticket booth, Soren spotted the banner with the roughly 20 participating automakers on it. "Hey, there's a lot of logos here," he shouts, and begins naming them, "Honda. Toyota. GMC! Lincoln...." I merely shrug to the ticket taker.

In the course of a little under three hours (we had to dash over to the Westin to score some apple juice at the two hour mark), we evaluated (i.e., sat in) a wide spectrum of vehicles, ranging in price from roughly $18,000 to roughly $75,000:

3 GMCs
6 Chevrolets
2 Buicks
8 Toyotas
4 Fords
4 Lincolns
4 accessible Toyotas
3 Mazdas
6 Subarus
3 Audis
4 Acuras

I briefly ogled a couple Lamborghinis and a couple Rolls Royces, but Soren had no interest because he could not sit in them. "Come onnnn, Daddy...."

Visiting a car show with Soren is different from visiting as car buyer in several key ways:

Price does not matter. Soren doesn't really yet understand money or status or quality distinctions. Therefore, he was absolutely as enthusiastic about the most basic Chevy Cobalt and Ford Focus as he was about the much more expensive cars we sat in. Importantly, he is indifferent to size (when you're 39 inches tall, being an expensive sports car is the biggest threat to adequate leg room and view), so the cars vary less to him than they would to someone who is, for example, not three.

The back seat does matter; the front seat does not. In fact, I was only permitted to sit in the front seat of three cars, and of those, two did not have back seats (one was a Corvette, so...). Otherwise, our experience of each car emphasized the back seat: we would approach a vehicle that was deemed worth our time--primarily by being next to the vehicle out of which we just climbed; I opened the passenger side door for Soren, who climbed in (and climbed is often the best descriptor); I would be instructed to close his door and come around the other side; I would enter through the driver's side rear door, and close it; I would be instructed to lock it; after a brief pause, we'd note something about the upholstery; we would decide to move on.

It's always his turn. When looking at popular cars at car shows, I've often had to wait to get into the driver's seat. People aren't generally looking at the back seats, but when they are, they're standing and peering in in a way that allows room for an eager three-year old to slip in front and climb in. Soren was entirely polite about it, complete with "Excuse me," but he'd slip right up to the front to scramble into the back seats.

Basic car features are interesting. During the car show, Soren learned about the different designs of door locks, levers (including the all electronic system on the Corvette) and regular seatbelts. Once he learned about a feature, it had to be examined on subsequent vehicles. We had to try the seatbelts in most of the latter half of cars we tried, but fortunately he grew to understand they all work in the same way (and are uncomfortable).

Salespeople go the other way. These car shows are, after all, sales tools. A couple of times, as I rounded the back of a car to get in the driver's side, I was intercepted by salespeople who wanted to tell me about the car I was circling. (Despite my bicentimillenial Jetta, I'm not in the market.) When Soren pops around the corner, or shouts that I need to get in the car, I just don't get bothered anymore.

Child locks suck. At more than one point, my tour of back seats left me in the embarrassing position of needing either to climb out the far side (to Soren's protests) or to beg fellow patrons to let me out because some previous attendee had triggered the child lock on the door I entered.

Overall, I will say that I'm impressed with the ground that American car companies have made on foreign automakers over the last few years: touch and feel quality was definitely comparable within price point in the cars I saw today. Of course, that's just the perspective of a back seat driver.

RIP 110 Film

Remember that first camera? The slab of a thing that took 110 film and flash cubes, or maybe one of those weird disc cameras, or the Kodak Polaroid-clone which you only had for ten months before Kodak got sued and had to take it off the market? It was so cool to get to take photos of anything you wanted, and you probably didn't even notice the aggrieved looks on your parents' faces every time they had to shell out for another roll of film or another set of crappy prints.

Well, now Soren has his very first camera. A slab of a thing with an LED flash and 50-cent software. It's fabulous.

Digital photography is a wonderful thing, my friends. Not only does Soren get to take a billion pictures of anything he wants, the only thing I have to shell out for is another set of AAA batteries every once in a while. He even has his very own Flickr account, so he can share his weird pictures with the three other people in the world who would like to see them. I am proud to be one of those three people.

Need for Speed

I just wanted to state for the record that I love sledding, and I am so glad that Soren finally likes sledding. It snowed all day today, and we went out to the hill down the street and spent about an hour going up and down and dodging all the kids who choose for some reason to climb back up the middle of the hill where everyone else is trying to sled instead of going off to the side. It was sweeeet!

Also sweet was the sledding Chris and I got to enjoy at the Proctors' house in New Hampshire. They have a perfectly good sledding hill right in the backyard, with a nice steep part at the beginning and a long slope that can lead you right to the back door on your last run if you happen to be as talented as I am. Sure, it feels a little disrespectful to stand in front of the old cemetery at the top of the hill and yell "FIRE IN THE HOOOOOLE" as you charge onto your sled, but no actual hauntings have been reported yet. There's even a bonus feature where you get to shoot between a couple trees at the fastest point, but without the actual risk that you will run into a tree trunk and get a bruise on your leg that somehow seems to exceed the size of your leg. Which may have happened at some point on a different, perhaps ill-advised, trail on the property which was roughly hewn from a former logging road in 2004. I've tried a few times to share a photo of the bruise in question, but iPhoto crashes every time I try to export the picture. I guess iPhoto has better judgement about these things than I do.

A bunch of the New Hampshire crowd, including Chris and me, coincidentally got LED headlamps for Christmas, and we discovered that there can be no higher purpose for headlamps than sledding in the dark. It'll be a few years until the kids are ready for that kind of thing, but I'm really looking forward to it!