Brooke and Angus

A few weeks ago, Raelin introduced us to Brooke and Angus. Although they have the same names as a couple kids in her preschool class, these are not friends of the human variety. At least, of the visible, more than a foot tall human variety. We're not sure quite what Brooke and Angus are, though they fit in the palm of one's hand, and Raelin carries them around and puts them places. She remembers sometimes several days later where she last put them, and they're still there.

We all went for a hike a few days ago, and I had decided that this hike was all about Raelin time; if she and I only got 50 feet, that's fine. Anyhow, we got quite a bit farther than that thanks to the backpack. However, once Raelin asked to get down, forward progress ground to a halt in lieu of toddler wonder. The hike we were on was through a decidious forest. It's fall. Raelin took it upon herself to pick up every red leaf on the trail and give them to me to hold, though since she's a toddler, I could only hold them in one hand. Anyhow, my hand was getting *very* full of leaves, and Raelin was showing no signs of stopping.

Kelly had gone about 50 feet further up the trail and found a couple of little rodent burrows amoung the roots of a big oak. She called to Raelin to see if she wanted to see the "mouse houses." Raelin immediatly forgot about the leaves and off to see the burrows we went.

Initially this seemed like a good idea, though after many questions about why the mice weren't coming out, etc, it started seeming like we might end up there for a few days. Then Kelly came up with the idea to have Brooke and Angus go down into the holes to see if they could find the mice. Raelin thought that was great, and so putting her hand in front of first one hole and then the other, trusty Brooke and Angus made their descent.

Now, not only did we have to wait for the mice to emerge, which would never happen with 4 adults and a toddler gawking at the doors of their burrows, we had to wait for Brooke and Angus to re-emerge, and let me tell you, those 2 just don't listen worth shit.

We ended up continuing on the walk for a little ways, though didn't get much further before we had to turn around due to time. We ran into the first hitch on the way back when Raelin wouldn't get back into the backpack, which is fine except that we needed to get home. So we started walking, which quickly became another exercise in finding all the red leaves =) At this point, I asked Raelin if she wanted to "jump" back to the car, which she did, so with Juli holding 1 hand and me the other, we made great time as Raelin would "jump" and we would swing her forward several feet. Soon we were jumping past the mouse house, and me, having abandoned my earlier toddler-centric stance in favor of a lets-not-be-late-getting-home stance, signaled to Juli to keep on going past Kelly, who was standing there waiting and gave me a look like "what are you doing?" as we went past.

Before long, though long enough that we were quite a bit down the trail, Raelin realized that we had indeed passed the mouse house, and when I told her that we had gone too far to go back, the look on her face almost broke my heart. It certainly humbled my earlier arrogance of thinking that Raelin wouldn't remember or that it wouldn't be a big deal (time number 10,352 for that). Kelly gave me a sympathetic, but still what-were-you-thinking look, and we continued on in much more subdued spirits. Needless to say I had already made up my mind to bring Raelin back to the mouse house in the next few days to make sure B & A came home with us.

For the next couple of days, sure enough there was no Brooke and Angus, and Raelin would respond only half-heartedly when asked about them. So yesterday, after her nap, she and I packed up and returned to the mouse house to get Brooke and Angus. We had a great walk in and she stayed in the backpack the whole time. However, upon arriving at the mouse house, it became apparant that while B&A were still down in the mouse house, they were not planning on coming up in the next few minutes. So I called to them, and asked them to come up, all of which Raelin thought was a total hoot. I asked her if they were coming out "no, they're having tea with the mice...do you want some tea, daddy?" So this went on for a bit, she made me tea in her mitten out of oak leaves, we watched chipmunk scamper around, filled up her mitten with bits of leaves and acorns, and generally just sat and quietly played on the trail. After some time, I was getting concerned about the time and needing to get back to work, so put her in the pack. As we walked by the mouse house, I said "OK, Raelin, we're going home. Are Brooke and Angus coming home with us or are they staying here with the mice? If they're coming home with us, they need to come out now." Raelin affirmed that they were indeed coming home with us, so I gave one last call, then said "oops, I just felt them climb up my leg; are they back there with you?" To which she happily replied "they're right here" as she patted next to her. Ahhhhh. Happy kid again and time to go home...

there's a cloud in my living room

The other morning Raelin and I were up while Kelly caught some more sleep. The day before Kelly had made Raelin a knit hat for her Halloween costume; she's going to be a dog. When asked if she wanted ears on the hat, Raelin answered "like Jasmine's ears." So Kelly knit a couple big 'ol ears and stuffed them with fleece so they'd stand up just like Jasmine's. Anyhow, there was a bit of fleece left over that had made its way to the floor. Raelin asked me "what's that" and I returned with "what do you think it is?" The answer "it's a little piece of cloud...from the sky." Gush...

Spooky Dark

The other morning, Raelin was up extra, extra early. Keldog made the heroic first rise, though 6:00 was ready to go back to bed and so rousted me. Not having slept much the night before, I made my way to the couch with a blanket and proceeded to intermittantly doze while Raelin busied herself with all the little things she does. At one point, quite a while after confirming with me that I was "resting", she wanted something from her room, which was still dark due to the early hour.

She made it most of the way down the hall way before coming back to the lit living room where I was prone on the couch:

r: please get my beadsies (several strings of cheap plastic beads)

me: where are they?

r: in my room

me: do you know where they are in your room?

r: by the bed

me: so can you go get them by yourself?

r: no

me: why not?

r: the rocking horse might look at me

me: you can turn on the light, you know

r: raelin can't reach it

me: you can if you stand on your stool

At this point Raelin silently ponders the idea; I can almost see the gears turning in her head. I don't blame her for being spooked of the rocking horse as it does have large shiny green eyes that are pretty much at eye-level for her. Though she heads off without another word back down the hall and into her room. I hear noises as she climbs into/onto a toy basket below the switch, then a rectangle of light on the hall floor shining through the open door. A few seconds later, Raelin emerges with a huge smile and her prized beads, which she proceeds to bring to me on the couch, then she climbs up and gets cozy under the blanket while she fusses and plays with the strings of beads...

The current bane of my existence

First off, I'm an Apple fan. I work on a G5 tower, I've got a PowerBook for when I'm on the road. I've got an iPod, iSight, I even bought a fucking iLife from Apple.

However, when it comes to browsers, Apple fucking sux. Hard. Massively. Now I'm going to throw out a series of unsupported claims. This is called venting, and it comes after years of struggling with Safari's pathetic support of the W3C standards that makes coding HTML UI that will work in it (the same code runs *beautifully* in Mozilla and IE, I might add, even Opera for the most part), especially when it comes to DHTML, a frigging nightmare. Just when the dust from the MS and NS version 4- browser wars had really settled out, and finally agreed to have their browsers play better together in the realm of JavaScript and standards-compliance (and for the most part have followed through), and DHTML hackers everywhere gave a collective sigh of relief, Apple crashed the party with the ever-limp-dicked Safari.

I hate it so, so much. Why, why, why did ol' Steve need a new pet project? There already existed an open-source browser, Mr. Jobs, and it's called Mozilla, and even though your company can't comandeer the project, Mozilla will always kick all kinds of ass over your pathetic head-up-its-own-ass Safari piece of shit.

So, why this rant? I'm finishing up the build on a site that uses JavaScript to do lots of things, like image rollovers (ooooh), and the crown jewel, run a slide show that has its parameters built by PHP, then always preloads just the next image while it's showing the current image so that there's no lag (except for the first image cuz it has to load 2 before it can advance). Anyhow, Safari has consistently made this thing a nightmare (I know, it's DHTML and *supposed* to be a nightmare, but still...). And this isn't the first time. Other times I've been content to swear in the privacy of my own office as I strive to tweak HTML to soothe Safari's finicky inner HTML rendering bitch. This time though, it was time to go public and say, quite loud, clear, and openly "fuck off, Safari, you should have stayed an obscure KDE project for geeks to build together, you weren't ready for the mainstream, and certainly not to be force-fed to a largely technically-unsavvy user base. I mean, Apple doesn't even ship their OS with any other browsers now...sounds a little bit like our pals over at MS now, doesn't it?"

Anyhow, there's my rant. Thanks if you read the whole thing, especially if you lost interest/comprehension somewhere in the middle. I'm curious to know if you got through; leave a comment =)

A Food Review You Can Sink Your Whip Into

OK, my brother forwarded this little nugget on to me; not for the feight of heart or easily offended. Brought to you by your friend and mine The Onion.

Geography Check

When we were out in CA I had to go out to CompUSA to get a couple items. At checkout time the young woman (like that? "young woman", LOL!!!) running the register asked for my zip. Needless to say, it starts with a 0, and I could watch the wheels spinning in her brain...

her: "What was that again?"

me: (zip code)

her: (punching it in) "where's *that*?" (with the subtle arrogance that living in CA too long brings)

me: "Maine"

her: "Maine...Maine...jeez out here in California you kind of forget that Maine even exists"

me: "Yup, and that's just the way we like it."

"Are you the brain specialist?"

"What?"..."Are you the *brain* specialist?"..."yes"..."my brain hurts"...

10 points and a gold star if you got the Monty Python's Flying Circus reference, if not, go sit in the corner and watch reruns of 70's British sketch comedy; it's quite good in an off sort of way.

And now, for something completely different...

I didn't start out this post so punchy, must be channeling John Cleese or something. Anyhow, what I *was* going to blog about was much more somber, so as promised...

And now, for something completely different: a man blogging about Maine.

Fall is here. Today was perhaps the final day of boardshorts and flip flops. This afternoon I took the dog and Raelin down to the lake, mostly to throw the stick for the dog. In addition to throwing said stick, I waded extensively while Raelin pulled herself around by her hands "swimming." It was a very, very sweet end to the warm season. Then again, most of my time with Raelin these days I'm struck at the absolute stunning wonder of it all, of this little person that I love so dearly. Moments like her falling asleep with her head on my chest, the way she cuddles up to me when I comfort her at night, sitting in my wooden adirondack chair on the deck together eating chips and cookies (the cookie that she made sure she had 2 of so she could give me 1).

On our trip out west I had some bummer times at the weddings. Frustrating both in the experience, though at Bartlebee's more so of what I could not attend because Kelly was the Maid of Honor and I primary Raelin watcher. It's not every day that your best friends get married, and to miss it *sucks*. Let's just say it was yet another example of the things that are surrendered when one becomes a parent. Though the bitterness of letting go is so incredibly sweetened by the countless priceless moments.

Kelly and I were talking the other day about how drastic seasons make the year seem long. It's easy to get caught in the time-warp of mental acrobatics, but when I feel in my body how long it's been since there was cold, it feels a long time ago. And to think the next time it will be truly warm feels even farther into the future. I have to admit that I'm a little nervous for winter this year. I've gotten soft in the easy days of summer, and don't want to let go of those mornings that it's already 70 at 7:00 am. For better or worse, there isn't much choice in the matter. Though as Kelly and I drove out to our friends' house for breakfast, the natural beauty kicked in. The mirror-glass lakes reflecting low golden light on the white birch trunks, the feeling of things slowing down, and I flashed back to a morning last winter driving home from a snowboarding session and being floored by the snow-covered meadows and woods beyond.

I'll certainly miss the herons, osprey, and songbirds, though look forward to the fall colors shining in their glory, and the driving snow and walks out on the lake.