Category Archives: family

Weekend Report

Posted on October 18, 2010 | 3 Comments

We had a nice little weekend.

Saturday, after surprising Michael and his sister with a quick trip to the doctor for a flu vaccine shot, we went to a local pumpkin patch. It was for a good cause, so we didn’t mind the huge crowd or the jacked up pumpkin prices. That and we had a chance to see the little western town these people had built on their property. It was inspiring, to say the least; if I were in the position to purchase a plot of land right now, I’d probably do it. Just for the potential of being able to build a western town on it. Or maybe a castle.

Lugging pumpkins back to the car was not fun; it’s hilly terrain, and of course the car was parked on the crest of a hill about 200 yards up. I got quite a workout, carrying two. And fortunately, Michael did not have a meltdown on this trip. He told his mother several times how sorry he was that he broke her glasses last year.

Didn’t get nearly as much done on my Halloween decorations as I would have liked, so I don’t have any progress to show yet. Hopefully later this week. Next weekend for sure. Tombstones need to be painted, graveyard needs to be constructed, upstairs ghost needs to be  hung, Lurch the doorman needs to be set up, doorway decor needs to be hung, new graveyard ghoul effect needs to be finished up… lots to do.

Having earned enough stars to pick a treat-ish activity (that is, he behaved well enough in school since we implemented his new plan that he was able to earn 21 good behavior stars), we took him bowling. Our local bowling alley is pretty cool; has enough of the retro styling leftover from its early life in the sixties to make me happy, and is modern enough to have all electronic scoring and “cosmic bowling” events from time to time (lights off, black lights on, glowing pins and psychadelic lighting).

Until now, I had not believed it possible to roll a gutter ball with the gutter bumpers activated. Michael proved that theory wrong by launching the ball up and over the bumper rail, letting it slowly roll across the top of the bumper down the end of the lane. Until now I’d never seen a bowling ball stop rolling forwards and then start rolling backwards after having been thrown down the lane. Overall, though, he did pretty well; came out with a score of 65.

Michael wanted to carve his pumpkin immediately after we got back from the pumpkin patch, but I held him off until Sunday. I told him he’d have to supply the design and clean the pumpkin out himself. Knowing his intense distaste for all things slimy and sticky, I figured that would deter him from wanting to carve this weekend. I was wrong. Not only did he stick his hand inside the pumpkin and pull out seeds, he actually seemed to be enjoying himself while doing it. Unprecedented! But understandable. I told him it was good to get his hands sticky with pumpkins. I explained that the feel of the insides, the slipperiness of the seeds, and the smell of freshly carved pumpkin is part of the richness of Autumn and should be savored. I think he caught on. He tried to convince me to carve mine up, but I said no. He talked me in to drawing a design for it, and I agreed to that.

There’s a lot to do between now and the 31st.

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Posted in family, fun, holiday, life, moments

Random Stuff

Posted on September 29, 2010 | 6 Comments

The last few weeks have been, as they say in the old curse, “interesting.”

As I’d mentioned some time ago, our dishwasher broke. It’s still broken. Sears said they put an “emergency rush order” in for our part, which means it only takes two weeks for it to get here instead of seventy. When challenged with the concept that in this day of FedEx and overnight shipping I should expect a part to be available much sooner than that, they told me (in so many words) they don’t care. I now am certain of where we won’t be shopping for our next major appliance.

Michael’s been having some difficulties adjusting to his new school. I’ve been getting calls from his principal on pretty much a daily basis for one thing or another, including fighting with another student or random acts of misbehavior. In the morning when I drop him off, he cries, citing various reasons as to why his “feelings are hurt” when I leave. Today’s reason: “I don’t like it when other mommies and daddies are in your way.” It hasn’t helped that there’s a cold bug going around and we’ve all fallen prey to it at one point or another.

Yesterday I had to see the dentist to have a filling re-done. He’s a competent dentist, but having dental work done is never a picnic. Things went okay during the drilling phase; as okay as it could ever be hoped for. It was when the rubber dam and clamp were installed that my sinuses decided to deliver unto my throat a bolus of phlegm. My uvula responded by swelling to the size of a Buick, effectively blocking my airway.

Immobilized and prosthetized I could neither spit nor swallow. My only other options were to silently drown or use my epiglottis to continually juggle the wad of goo until the ordeal was over. The hygenist must have noticed my eyes rolling back up into my head because she mercifully prodded the slurp tube down behind the dam to clear things out.

The weather has been unseasonably hot. Like, making the tomatoes regret having dropped their leaves and spurring the spiders into an unprecedented frenzy of web construction (their favorite venue is always the front walkway, at my face level). To misquote Mark Twain, “The warmest summer I spent in Portland was just after autumn began.” It makes it difficult to really concentrate on Halloween preparations, particularly when venturing into the attic to retrieve six boxes of decorations renders one weak, dehydrated and drenched in perspiration. But work progresses, and next week I should have a decent update to present: seven new tombstones and a new ghost effect for the front yard, plus a sneak peek at next year’s plans.

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Posted in family, life, ponderings, stress

Close Enough

Posted on September 15, 2010 | 7 Comments

Over dinner, Sister S recounts an exchange between herself and a friend:

“So he says, ‘We’re totally twins.’ And I said ‘But we look nothing alike!’ and he goes ‘Okay, then we’re infernal twins’.”

Wife and I exchanged a knowing smile, before bursting out laughing. “You mean fraternal twins!” we said.

Those infernal teenagers.

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Posted in daughters, family, moments

Blessing of a Broken Dishwasher

Posted on September 7, 2010 | 8 Comments

One morning not too long ago, after having loaded the dishwasher with the first of several loads of dirty dishes, I pressed the start button and nothing happened.

“What the heck?” I said, and pressed it again.

Nothing.

I made sure the door was shut. Still it wouldn’t start.

I checked to be sure nothing was blocking the door, made sure the rotors were free to move, checked the interlock switch, checked the child lock – everything was fine. It just didn’t want to start.

This was unacceptable. Not only is this dishwasher a scant six months old, but it is ENTIRELY NECESSARY in a home where dirty dishes stack to the ceiling before noon.

In a blind panic, I logged onto the Sears Blue Crew web site and started a chat session with a tech. My tech was unquestionably armed with a 1972 Sunbeam toaster manual and boasted a Kenmore product knowledge exceeded only by the guy who aerates my lawn as she asked questions like “is the door closed?” and “are the lights in the house on?” and “is it filling with water but not draining?” and “is it plugged in?” before finally declaring with authority that I’ve got the child lock engaged. The fact that I’d already informed her at the very beginning of our conversation that it was definitely not engaged was apparently lost. I was then asked to press the reset button on the GFI cord on the dishwasher, because the power is out. Through clenched teeth I calmly explained that the lights are on, therefore the power must be on as well. And I re-iterated the fact that the dishwasher was BUILT IN to the CABINET and would require DE-INSTALLATION to reach the power connection.

Upon receiving this helpful bit of information, she asked if I’d like to make an appointment for a service call. Please hurry, I said.

The next day the helpful service tech came out, and after some insightful grunts and murmurs, declared the circuit board to be dead. “I’ve never had to replace one of these before. You’re the first one,” he said. Lucky us.

He then informed us that the part is on order and that we’d be stuck doing dishes by hand for the next 11 days at least.

As I bid goodbye to the service tech and turned back to the now-crippled kitchen, in my mind appeared a vision of several large piles of saucepans, plates, saucers and cups, stacked in teetering Dr. Seuss-style arches. We would be inundated in short order.

But since in our house the watchword is “Persevere,” I rolled up my sleeves and started cleaning out the sink.

Michael asked what I was doing, so I told him I was going to do the dishes by hand. Naturally, he wanted to help.

Seeing an opportunity to provide Michael A) something to do besides chasing the cat and stepping on his sister’s hair, B) an important life skill and possibly even C) a key father-son bonding experience, I told him to go grab a chair and get some gloves on.

We started right in, scouring the sink and rinsing the dishes. Once we had our space ready, he washed and I rinsed/dried/put away. We did pretty well, he and I, plowing a sizable swath through the filthy stacks before he lost interest and decided he was done. I continued on. He asked why, and I told him very matter-of-factly that it needed to be done, even though it was a lot of work.

This cycle continued for several days: the dishes stack up, Michael expresses interest in helping, he does for a short time and then loses interest. One time he even went the distance, working with his mom to the very last dish. His expression of disappointment that they’d completed the load was priceless:

“Oh, great! I want to scrub more dishes! Who will make more dishes? Who, mama??!?”

He had contributed to the family’s workload throughput, and he knew his help was appreciated.

And something else occurred: my wife and I noticed that even after a week of doing the dishes entirely by hand, several times per day, our kitchen has never been cleaner. The sinks are clean and empty, the dishes are kept under control and the counters are clear.

I pondered this observation and considered dusting off one of my pet concepts, namely that our reliance on technology to save us labor is misguided; that perhaps it is the labor saving devices that keep us enslaved.

I happened to catch something on a blog site that supported my theory, or at least lent itself to the idea.

But just yesterday I was brought back to reality as the toll of eight days without a dishwasher finally began to register. With a sink load of dishes and no counter space for cooking, Michael’s mom reached her frustration boil over point:

“Gaaah! I’m tired of doing dishes! I’m not pioneer woman! This isn’t relaxing!”

There goes my plan of shutting off the power to the house this next weekend.

So there you go. We still have a few days before the part shows up and is installed. Until then, don’t expect a lot of writing out of me; I have a stack of dishes to work through.

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Posted in family, life, michael, parenting

But We Love Her

Posted on August 19, 2010 | 10 Comments

My mom is visiting.








We couldn’t wait for her to arrive.








In fact, we arranged to construct a Mother-In-Law’s quarters on the grounds just for her.








I even sprang for some spider spray. G’nite, mom!












(In all seriousness… the tent was my mom’s idea. She’s wacky like that. You never know what she’s going to bring with her.)

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Posted in family, fun

Please Help Find Kyron Horman

Posted on July 15, 2010 | 4 Comments

It’s been well over a month, and Kyron is still missing. Have you all seen the story? It hits us particularly hard, as it is unfolding only a few miles from where we live. His father works where I work. It involves us all.

We had hopes that Kyron might be found and returned safely by now, but no.

And since the story changed from a simple one of “I dropped him off at school and he never came home,” into a far darker tale involving lies, cover-ups and criminal activity, many of us in the area have considered the possibility that Kyron may have been taken to another state.

For the complete story, check out the local news coverage.

He might be anywhere, living with someone who’s keeping him safely out of the public’s eye, someone who isn’t his mom or dad, someone who’s obviously got a stake in a very bad situation. My hope in posting this is that maybe by chance someone reading this will recognize this face and call.

I know if it were one of my children missing, I wouldn’t be able to sleep, eat or function in any sense of normalcy. I can only imagine what phenomenal pain Kyron’s family is in, and how scared and confused Kyron must be.

These people need answers. Kyron needs to come home.

Please pray for him, and for them.

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Posted in Blog, family

Kon Tiki

Posted on June 8, 2010 | 5 Comments

In 1947, Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl set sail across the pacific in a hand-made raft to prove his hypothesis that the Polynesian islands could have been reached and thus settled by South Americans in pre-Columbian times, using only the kinds of stuff they had available at the time: wood, bamboo, and a whole lot of perseverance.

He made it.

This summer, Michael’s Daddy is attempting to prove that he can learn how to cook true Polynesian dishes using ingredients he can find in and around Portland, Oregon. Without making his family ill or desirous of a merciful end in the process.

Confession time (and by stating this publicly, I become committed to it): I have had this dream of opening a Polynesian-style restaurant for a number of years now, and I need to have a good base of Polynesian recipes to start from.

And by Polynesian recipes, I mean truly South Pacific Islands: Tahiti, Hawaii, Tonga, Samoa, the Cook islands, etc.

I don’t mean Chinese food. Don’t get me wrong: I love Chinese food, but it’s already well represented. And I’m also not talking about Caribbean dishes either; that’s in the Atlantic.

So what is Polynesian food? Good question. There’s not a lot of info on it out there, because it gets muddied by timelines and external influences, such as the Chinese food thing; the Pacific Rim is a big area and after a certain point in world history, things became available to the islands that weren’t available before. Such as Spam. I know Spam is a big thing in Hawaii now, but it didn’t use to be. And in every “Hawaiian” or “Tiki” restaurant I’ve ever been in, the menu has consisted mostly of Chinese food. Again, that’s fine, but it’s not what I’m looking for.

What would the Pacific Islanders have made, traditionally, before they were influenced by outsiders?

What did they have to work with? What were the native plants and animals they could use? And how did they prepare their dishes?

These are the questions I’m going to try to answer this summer, as each week I try out a new recipe, working with ingredients that would have been available to the islanders, and using techniques that are as close as possible to their methods.

Last night was my first real attempt: pork Lau Lau wrapped in Ti leaves, served with a coconut cream sauce and fruit salad.

I was able to find Ti leaves at a local Asian market. I got the coconuts there as well, in hopes they’d be better than the dry, nearly useless ones that are at the local grocery stores.

Preparing coconut cream isn’t hard, but it can get messy. I used a hatchet to knock off the pointy end (the one without the eyes) and pour out the water inside (there are uses for coconut water, but I’m not ready to explore that yet). Cracking open the shell and scraping out the coconut is a bit of a labor, as is peeling the skin off of the meat. I used a food processor to shred the coconut (short on time; didn’t have all day to pound on it with a mortar and pestle) and then put it in the center of a clean cloth over a bowl and poured warm milk on it, then wrapped the cloth up and squeezed out the cream. Takes some muscle. I sauteed some green onions, ginger and basil in a little canola oil, seasoned with salt, stirred in a small amount of corn starch and then added the coconut cream and let that simmer for a while.

The pork I’d prepared earlier, cutting the chops into little 1 inch cubes and marinating in a little lime juice, liquid smoke, salt and water. After searing the chunks on both sides, I wrapped them in the Ti leaves and set that in the oven at 275 degrees for five hours. The idea is that the meat cooks low and slow, with steam as the primary heat conductor to produce a moist, tender, delicious result.

The result was, in fact, neither moist nor tender. Though I’d wrapped the pork up nicely and covered the baking dish tightly with foil, the whole conglomeration ran out of steam (literally) somewhere between 3:00 and 4:00 PM. What we ended up gnawing on for dinner were brittle, charred pork rocks. Covered in coconut cream. And it was delicious. sort of. My family is so very kind to me, smiling and giving me praise while loudly crunching on meaty pumice.

They really enjoyed the pineapple and kiwi fruit salad though.

I haven’t given up on this recipe. I need to do this on a weekend, when I can be home to monitor it throughout the cooking process. And it should probably cook in a dutch oven with a good supply of moisture. Anyway, I’m going to keep at it until I get it right.

Next weekend I’m going to tackle fish. Stay tuned.

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Posted in dad, family, food, tiki tuesday

Parlé en français

Posted on April 14, 2010 | 5 Comments

Last night Michael’s mommy and I were relaxing on the couch after a rough day (hers at work, mine at home tending to a marginally ill five-year-old).

Michael was playing Wii Fit, alternating between downhill slaloms and long distance runs.

As my wife and I sipped the last of our drinks and sat there holding our glasses in hands, we both realized that neither of us wanted to get up to put the glasses on the table.

“Ah, geez. I’m all comfy now,” I said.

Then, holding out my glass, I called out to no one: “Garçon! Garçon! Take my glass and bring me a Pina Colada. Chop chop!”

Michael stopped what he was doing, grabbed my glass and carefully took it over to the table. Then he took his mom’s glass to the table, and went back to his game.

“When did he learn what “garçon” means?” I asked my wife, who was laughing as hard as I was.

He may still leave his shoes and coat lying in the middle of the entryway, but he can make us laugh every day.

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Posted in family, michael, moments

TGIM

Posted on April 5, 2010 | 9 Comments

What a weekend.

Friday I came home early, having contracted whatever plague Michael had brought home. The disease we’d shared was characterized by an unrelentingly stuffy nose. He suffered through his bout by continual, vigorous sniffing. This of course served no useful purpose other than to annoy his older sister; it did not provide any relief for his symptoms. Since Oregon doesn’t allow the OTC sale of Psuedoephederine HCL, there was little to do but just ride it out.

And there wasn’t much rest to be had on Friday anyway as there were many errands to be accomplished, for which I volunteered to be chauffeur. Fortunately I got something akin to rest for the half hour that sister S had her physical therapy appointment. Michael and I sat in the car in the parking lot. I attempted to allow myself to dip down into a lower state of consciousness briefly while Michael peppered me with questions from the back seat regarding the movie he was watching (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs).

The real fun began at midnight.

Michael woke up because he heard the downstairs phone loudly declare its rapidly declining battery life. His manner of dealing with this crisis is to report it to his parents immediately. And that meant crawling into bed with us. I tried my best to remain inert, but my alleged snoring was found to be disturbing to Michael’s mommy, and amusing to Michael. I was asked to roll over. Instead I got up and went downstairs, first and foremost to grind that annoying phone into a fine powder put the phone back on the charger, and then to curl up on the couch where I wouldn’t disturb anyone. My absence proved more disturbing than my snoring, so I was soon joined by my wife and son. We watched “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” yet again.

At 2:30 I put Michael back to bed, and his mom and I tried to recapture our sleep.

At 7:30, Michael comes bombing into our room, chipper and fresh as a daisy, ready to greet the day.

I opted against decaf coffee that morning.

We got a few clean-up and preparation projects accomplished, and took Michael to “The Chicken Nugget Store” (aka McDonald’s) as per our standing agreement: if he has a good week at school, he gets a treat on the weekend. This week he picked a trip to McDonald’s for chicken nuggets and playtime on the indoor play structure.

Naturally he spent his hour playing on the videogames there instead of crawling, sliding and climbing on the play structure.

Fortunately he did nap. It was a requirement that he do so, or his mom and I would shoo the Easter Bunny off the next morning. My wife and I attempted to catch naps ourselves, though that was difficult with one absent teenager choosing that time to provide sketchy text information regarding when her impromptu visit with her friend would be over, and when and where she’d need to be picked up.

Sunday started rainy again. I had vowed that after Church, I’d finish working on the hot tub. The week before I’d refilled it and started it up, only to find that rather than starting up and running, it would merely emit an ominous buzzing sound. After shutting off the power, I pulled open the spa’s electrical control box to discover that the GFCI was not wired properly. I’d need to repair that. To compound this repair job, I thought it would be smart to disassemble the jet diverter unit as well, since over the years the jet control knob had been getting increasingly difficult to turn.

I learned a valuable lesson right then: do not attempt to undo plumbing in a system that is currently under a great deal of water pressure.

So this weekend, since the hot tub had completely drained itself, I would fix the diverter and the faulty GFCI. Fortunately the diverter was easy to fix: a little smear of vaseline on the o-ring and it was perfectly happy. The GFCI was a different matter. The one in the hot tub was not wired right, meaning our beloved hot tub had been a potential death trap for as long as we’ve had our house. Code states that the GFCI be in the breaker at the main box, so I bought one online for what I knew to be a great price.

Sunday afternoon I shut down the power, and attempted to remove the electrical panel. It was then that I discovered that the shelves I’d put up in the garage included a brace that was covering three of the screws securing the panel.

Brilliant.

I had to cut holes in the brace to get the screws undone.

With that complete, I peeled back the panel cover (which had been left open). I was greeted with a black spider the size of Rhode Island, a critter that had been happily living under the electrical panel cover, and who was only millimeters from my fingertips at one point.

I am not a lover of spiders. I must have given out an involuntary scream (yes, I confess – they really bother me that badly) because my wife called out “Tom! Are you okay? What happened?”

I met her at the garage door, still shuddering.

“S- s- sp- spiiiiiider!”

Michael of course had to see, so I led him outside to view. Once he got within eight feet he ran inside and cowered under a blanket on the couch. I dragged out my favorite spider-slaying device, the trusty Miele vacuum.

Once the spider was devoured, I was able to move on to replacing the hot tub circuit breaker.

After pulling out the old one, I discovered that my low-cost, sight-unseen internet purchase was the wrong type.

So here I learned another lesson: be sure you know the manufacturer of your electrical panel before buying circuit breakers.

After all that, I could not finish my project. This weekend warrior had been defeated.

I hate when that happens. Makes me glad for Monday.

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Posted in family, life, night, stress

What Band?

Posted on February 10, 2010 | 6 Comments

As I’m making dinner, the kids are all playing Beatles Rock Band.

They’re really good at it; even Michael joins in, playing the drums sometimes and other times singing. He’s actually got a pretty accurate voice, and considering the fact that he can’t actually read the lyrics, he gets most of the words right.

And as they played, it occurred to me that the Beatles songs are around 40 years old.

Who’d have thunk that kids would be enjoying songs that were popular more than a generation ago?

To follow the logical thought along, if we’d had the Wii back in 1980, my brothers and I probably would have been playing “Glenn Miller Big Band”. And we’d be saving up our money for “Clarinet Hero III”

Amazing what technology can do. That, and the Beatles are just way cool, and always will be.

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Posted in family, fun, kids