Diggers

One of me and Raelin's little treat outings these days is to swing by the Dairy Queen and pick up a couple dipped cones. Today we continued on to the harbor boardwalk. When we got to the other end, there was an excavator and dump truck moving some dirt and broken pavement around. Not long after an eartmover and second dump truck showed up. Thing is, for much of this time Raelin had parked herself in the mini pea gravel that more or less makes up the bulk of the landscaping at the harbor master's office (which was subsequently closed =).

So we're sitting there in the gravel and she says "Daddy, use your hands to move gravel like a digger." So we made heavy equipment noises and scooped gravel into a little pile...

A few days ago Kelly reported to me that Raelin told her "yeah, tools are pretty much my favorite." Raelin's been helping me out quite a bit any time there's something requiring the use of a cordless drill, and she even helped me nail up some shingles. She thinks the jigsaw and handsaw are okay, since they're both pretty quiet, though the circular and miter saw are both too scary. As my mom pointed out, this is probably a good thing as it would be *really* bad if she decided that they would be fun to play with.

mesmerizing the nectar

OK, been listening a lot to a couple of recent albums I've picked up. The most recent is Bassnectar's mesmerizing the ultra, which continues to blow me away as i hear more and more in it. I would be hard pressed to say what genre of music it falls under, other than somewhere in the broad universe of electronic. It's a *very* polished and highly-produced mingling of drum and bass, downtempo, ambient, and throw in some very tasty vocals and a heavy dose of hip-hop bass drive, spin it together into a complex minimalist auditory paradox that draws my deep listening in and feeds the beat-hungry body drive at the same time. I typically don't get very emotional when listening to electronic music, but this albumn hits me deep...keep it up Lorin!!! You can check it out at www.bassnectar.net.

On another genre-bending front is the latest release from Sigur Ros, a band out of Iceland. Definitely more on the atmospheric/downtempo/chill end of the spectrum, though still with incredible emotiional depth and plenty of synergistic complexity to build on itself. I've also got their second release, Agaetis Byrjun, which also totally kicks ass. So great to see a band with such inspired talent that their creations not only define an entirely new musical space, but do so in a moving, tasteful, and stunningly beautiful journey.

And for the straight-up charging, there's my recent discovery of Nuskool Breaks pioneers Adam Freeland and David Tipper. Purely synthetic, highly-engineered and produced beat-driving, adrenaline-pumping tracks that often have my kicking back my chair to get a few moments of groove out in the middle of a work day.

Basically, if you think that electronic music is all about 4/4 quarter notes thumping at 120 beats per second, you're missing out on some serious artistry...

Latest

Some quick updates from the again-rainy northeast =)

Raelin started swim lessons with me at the YMCA (or as she was calling it, the "CMY Way"). She practically jumped into the pool, though once we started doing little swimming exercises she clamped her legs and arms onto me and wanted nothing to do with it. Her focus was the toys they keep at the pool. Soon enough the instructor broke them out and R started thawing a bit to the idea of being in the pool. That stage was quickly supassed as she decided she would "swim" to the various toys, at which point the fun really began. We all circled up and sang a couple songs that have little motions to them, which she picked right up and grinned the whole way through. Her favorite is getting tossed up in the air and then coming back down into my hands. She also likes sitting on the side of the pool and falling/being pulled back into the pool. Next week she gets to start wearing a little floatation belt; she'll be swimming on her own in no time =)

On a random note, she started running around the kitchen island this morning, and as she raced down the hallway she shouted "I'm a squirrel!!!"

The chickens have a new mobile pen, or "tractor" as they're called. I actually just converted the outdoor run part of their coop with some left-over hardware cloth and the wheels from the original tractor coop. The whole thing is so original-Maine it's not even funny (well, it is pretty funny, really). There was never a drawn plan, I hardly measured any where on it and certainly didn't check to make sure any angles were square. It's built almost exclusively of scavenged materials, and basically, I just kept adding bits of wood until the whole thing seemed solid enough. Like I said, pretty home-grown.

Been getting a lot of oohs and aahhs about the new deck; have also had a few semi-serious job offers from neighbors and friends. Kelly flatly denies me getting invloved in any more projects now, though if some one will pay my programmer rate to do carpentry, I'm open to that =)

In other news, we're rapidly speeding toward the birth of kid #2. Still don't have a name picked out, and even when we do mum's the word until after the birth and naming is complete.

People keep asking me if I'm ready; not sure it's possible to honestly answer "yes" to that question as there's so much unknown. What I do know is that it's 99% sure that we're in for a long spell of sleep deprevation unlike any we've yet known, plus a deep paradign shift of what it means to be overwhelmed. Sounds like fun, eh?

Anyhow, it's late and R will be up again early...

Where Down Comes From

We had some good friends in town for Easter; they've got a little guy about a year younger than Raelin. Since our lovely spring warmth from last week has chilled back down to more typical temmps, Raelin wore her down jacket to Easter Brunch. Mostly cuz she loves it and it's easier to get 1 big coat on that a couple sweaters and fleece.

Anyhow, after brunch we were all back here and one of our friends (rhetorically) asks Raelin what she's wearing, to which she replies "my down jacket." "Do you like your down jacket?" "yeah." "Do you know where down comes from?" "yeah....I fink it comes from the counter, and the island, and the chairs, and the table, and the stove..." I was baffled until Kelly lit on the fact that those are all the places we tell Raelin she needs to get down from; so why not be all the places that "down" comes from?

Need a Little Patience, Yeah...

So that old Guns N Roses song has been playing in my head the last couple of days. Not because I like GNR, or liked them at their height back when I was in junior high school (I liked them even less then). No, it's playing over and over because I have so little patience these days. Particularly for the cat and the dog. More so for Raelin, though I quickly seek to find ways out of the endless lines of repetetive questioning and, as of the last 2 nights, what has become a struggle of all new proportions to get her to sleep at night.

Add to this the fact that in just a few short weeks, we'll have another baby; a newborn. Parenting a newborn isn't exactly conducive to the things that build patience in one's life (like sleep, for instance). Parenting an almost-3 year old and a newborn at the same time I can only imagine will require finding new depths of the stuff. Add to the mix a dog that has a hard time not whining, and a cat that meows for food only to turn his nose up and go to the neighbor's to eat (where, I might add, they're feeding the *exact* food we have here), and also starts meowing to be let out anytime between 3:30 and 4:30 in the morning.

Seriously, my biggest advice to anyone that's thinking of having kids and getting a pet, don't. If you have little kids and you're thinking of getting a pet, don't. It's just nuts; and if Jasmine became "just a dog" after Raelin was born, I'm not sure how much more of a dog she'll have to become for the next couple of years.

I think my greatest saving grace is that while I may be out of patience, the closest I come to violence is battling the will of a toddler, which is to say, not very close at all. Even when I feel more or less ineffective as a parent, and that I don't know what else to do, I know that violence, whether emotional, psychological, and certainly physical, are simply not options. Perhaps it is this conviction that drives the feeling deeper; that the path through this challenging time is unclear and so truly unknown.

The other thing that gets me is how it must feel to Raelin like her world is slowly unravelling in some ways. There's the impending arrival of a new sibling that she knows is going to severely change the way things go in our home and family. Shit I'm anxious and have 31 years of life and 2+ years of parenting to draw on in preparation; I can't begin to imagine what it must be like for her.

So, for you other parents out there, drop a line to let me know I'm not crazy. For you non-parents out there, you can do the same =)

Run, run, run, run

OK, so it's been 3 weeks since my last post? WTF? How did that happen? Anyway, here's a possibly not-so-brief recap of the time...

Let's see, if you've been reading pottyparty you'll know that our neighbor brought his large boom truck over and lifted the front steps that have (dis)graced the front of the house for the last 30 years away to a fate they're much more suited to: as a functional part of a commercial concrete yard.

Thing is, when you take the steps away, there's suddenly a 4.5 foot drop from our front door. Not good. So I've been building a new deck. It's the first fully solo construction project I've done, and it's been *very* awesome. Of course, as such it hasn't been free of those "oh shit..." moments, such as getting all the framing up and realizing that wow, the seemingly slight off-level of the carrying framing actually translates into a full 2 inches of vertical difference from one of the deck to another. Shims to the rescue; it's now within 1/2 an inch. Then a quick double check of the building codes *after* the frame's complete to see that I exceeded the allowable cantilever by 15", so out comes the circular saw again and cut back 15", which actually gave the perfect opportunity to place the above-mentioned shims. There's been some other mishaps, though none have been substantial; the last is that the stairs are a bit out of square with the deck, though I'll fix that before I put up the last sections of railing. Regardless, I've been spending a lot of time both during the work week and weekend rushing to get the thing done as there's more to do yet befoer this baby arrives.

The funny thing about it though is how the whole thing has become somewhat of a neighborhood spectacle. When our neighbor was over pulling the steps out, his wife came over too and 2 of their 3 adult kids. His daughter told me "now Tom (not his real name =) will ask you how you got dad over here with that thing because he's been trying to get him over to his house for years" sure enough, I got the question =) Our neighbors on the other side have been coming over to ooh and ahh over the project as well and comment how they wished their deck was as solid, which is pretty cool to hear. Other folks stop while walking their dogs or have made a point to come over while I'm out working to see it and swap stories about the previous owners. As total icing the first evening that the decking was down was the best sunset I've seen in months, and the deck looks west so I watched the colors change as I put my tools away and felt the stoke of the whole experience.

On the work front, it's overly abundant again and well into triage. Should be a good month once all the invoices go out, though not all that much fun to be in the trenches and know that there's tons to do that I just can't get to in a day. Also, the combination of a fatherhood and not being in my mid-twenties anymore means that late nights just aren't an option these days. Used to be I'd just crank hard for a few days and then take a breather. Seems like those times are gone, at least while there's little ones running around. Kelly got a new hanging fabric cubby-thing in her closet the other day, which Raelin likes to swing and bang against the wall. Which is really loud at 6:45 after not sleeping much the night before...*sigh*

Speaking of Raelin, so the other day I didn't shower in the morning since I was working on the deck, and hence didn't shave. By the evening my 2 days of beard were quite stubbly. As Raelin and I were laying down to attempt to put her to sleep (until a few days ago putting her to sleep was a dream, while certainly not the absolute struggle it was a year ago, it's challenging again), she reached up to my chin and asked "what's on your face? are those forns (thorns)?" I replied with an explanation about beards and shaving (which she's seen lots of as she used to "help" me shave). At the end of it all she responded with "no, they're forns. You've got forns on your chin, and forns on your cheek, and forns on your froat."

On the chicken front, we've lost our loner hen to a quick and mysterious death. Folks on the boards at backyardchickens.com seem to think a shell-less or broken egg that rotted inside of her. I have no idea, though I'm glad she went quickly and that I was with her in the last moments. We even got 5 eggs yesterday. From 4 chickens. Go figure on that one. Though one has figured out how to fly out of the chicken wire addition I put on their coop the other morning, so perhaps on her forays and since she hasn't figured out how to get back *in*, she had one saved up. Tomorrow they're all getting wings clipped.

And on the misc activities front the programming class I'm teaching at a local high school continues to roll along, and the local economic development organization I'm on the board for has also been chugging along. I even met the Governor of Maine, John Baldacci, at our first major public event a couple weeks ago. While I'm not wild about most politicians, I'm pretty impressed overall with the job he's done, so it was particularly cool.

Anyhow, that's the newsy scoop for now; hope to get back on the blogging wagon a bit; we'll see how that goes with the work load and imminent baby arrival...