Oregon Coast - Part 5 : Ecola Park

Our last day there we went to Ecola State park, which while also sounding vaguely like a non-lethal intestinal bug was apparently the place we went last time to take our family photo. It's high up over the beach and quite pretty. Wheeling gulls and ocean-wind swept vistas and the like.

There's a rather involved drive where you follow a twisted road. I'm sure it was laid down before any sort of laws were passed about turning radius, minimum shoulder width, and all things that make the average North American road not make you want to grip your steering wheel white-knuckled. At all times, anyways.

I was constantly reminded of professional drivers: truck drivers, delivery drivers, and any and all who have to operate multi-ton vehicles in anything more tricky than the Bonneville Salt Flats --who have a sixth sense where their vehicle is, bringing their tire within an eighth of an inch to the curb or building or small child running for her red ball -- apparently without worrying and sweating and accidentally hitting the horn twice and the high beams once in the process.

This was the sort of road made when men like THAT made roads.

You can imagine them, hacking away at the Pacific Northwest forests, making what they perceive to be a perfectly reasonable path and that would not tax at all the abilities of the average office worker whose trickiest spatial reasoning he has to make is how ergonomic, exactly, IS he sitting.  Optimistic, perhaps a little too generous with those who don't have an easy swagger, and skin made from calluses and rugged individualism.

The pictures were taken, with more squint than was desired, as these things tend to go. The camera balanced inexpertly on a camera bag, inches from the sort of fine sand you should ABSOLUTELY keep from your camera at all costs.

It turned out. It's funny how pictures like that tend to turn out, even when they turn out poorly (well, back in the days of no-preview film), it's poorly in a nostalgic way. The way your cousin is blinking and how dad's hair is something medusa would feel a little self conscious about, these become features and not defects. Mental watermarks on a day that only seem to get better in hindsight.

After that bit we went back tot he cottage for one last day just hanging out and, for whatever reason, not going to the beach. The kids can get in a rhythm where they actually enjoy playing with each other, and it's kind of the magic you want to keep going, not interrupting to go do this or that activity. It also perfectly suits my loosely realized vision of Hands Off And Lazy Parenting. Also known as 80's Parenting.

The cottage is tiny, even smaller than our townhouse, but because it has a somewhat odd layout and there are bunkbeds this makes for a WONDERLAND of fun, apparently.Sure it's a small boring bedroom, but it was a small boring bedroom with a bunkbed with a window that looks out into the family room, how CRAZY is that? Very, apparently.

So we let them have their fun, running around slightly different layout with odd choices for rooms made by budget rather than aesthetic. I'm sure it'll help them develop that spatial reasoning that will only atrophy in time; a skill they'll wish they had when, 20 years from now, they are driving white knuckled through some federal parks' idea of a reasonable road for drivers in 1932.

Oregon Coast - Part 4 : Rides

On the fourth day we went to the tourist city, Seaside. Where all the distractions that appear cheap and absurd in your adult's eyes will hopefully be magical to the kids. The tourist boardwalk . Replete with what I assume to be reconditioned rides from carnivals that have long since folded, merry-go-round, saltwater taffy shops, t-shirts shops that show their political bent a little too readily, an arcade, of all things.

Oh, and the standard small train ride that raptures every boy and some girls below a certain age. An age that, I think  Owl Jr has sadly passed. Actually, we steered him well clear of it because we only have so much energy to wait in so many lineups. It was all the way across the street, for god's sake, I used up all my overachieving in high-school.

There were bumper cars though. A ride I always preferred in my youth, favouring a ride in which I had some say in the matter notwithstanding the 22 year old 11th grader who seemed expert in all things mildly violent (a detail that was infuriating to kid-me, and not tragically sad to adult-me). Owl Jr was of the same opinion.

Owlet was fine with me driving, and screaming and hollering as we slammed into and were slammed by various other cars. Owl Jr actually drove, with startling malevolence, accuracy, and bloodlust. Where do children learn how to drive? What is this instinct to bash and crash coming from? It was the first, and probably not the last time one of my children drove me somewhere. The abuse of prescription painkillers in the elderly is no longer a mystery to me.

In the other bumper cars were the other dads and the alternately timid and wild teens.  One quickly finds who is perfectly acceptable targets (most), and who aren't (the kid who's just there trying to obey the rules of the road, for some reason).

Then the tilt-a-whirl. This was what Owlet seemed to enjoy the most. This thing went fast, fast as in "Am I in a reboot of The Right Stuff and/or hurtling towards dangerous re-entry and humming "Battle Hymn of the Republic"" fast. Fast as in I start to wonder at what speeds does the brain develop instantly fatal aneurysms. Fast as in the very vivid thought about how Mrs. Owl would make a striking widow. Fast as in my entire faith (never that much) in the FDA or whatever regulatory body that regulates the speed and safety of worn-down carnival rides housed in long-forgotten tourists traps in a desperately eager beach-town crumbled dust.

Of course I had to maintain what little cool I possessed. It's a well known fact that dads must, generally, Maintain Their Cool. Regardless of me clawing over my children to make sure they didn't get flung into the ether. Small whimpers of terror must be overridden by what I think are robust, devil-may-care laughter. Like from a war-bassoon, or, something equally manly and not at all made up.

They put this bar.. thing, which I think is supposed to simulate some sort of control? But I couldn't ascertain -- in the blinding minutes on what I'll generously call a ride and not "A Machine That Makes You Seriously Consider Life Insurance" -- how exactly it worked. Illusion of control, is what I'm guessing, like traffic signs or gun safeties or elections.

Later we made a trip to the toystore. 'Mass-produced junk mostly made for nostalgia and largely forgotten 15 seconds after purchase store' being too wordy, if accurate. Many items in the store were obviously put there to hook the nostalgia in the parents. Silly Putty, Slinkies, Simon Says. You can just feel the embittered pleas as Gen-X parents try and get their kids play with an archaic toy (only really fun in the 80's because of the inexplicable cartoon tie-ins). And the trains, and puzzles, and the sorts of toys you would've swore were banned in the 70's because of eyes being poked out or lead based paint or a bit of both but some factory in the hinterlands of China never got the memo and is still pumping out GoBot knock-offs with military grade spring-loaded missile-launchers.

Owlet took a sizable portion of a geologic epoch to decide, having been given a budget, and what seems like one quintillion combination and possibilities. Owl Jr lasered in on Lego Star Wars. Not the last time I've been grateful for otherwise heinous media empire cross-overs.

We finished it off with ice-cream, because, you have to finish off a tour of the tourist trap town with some ice cream (ardently-assured to be Real with just sugar/milk/cream and NO ADDITIVES like you have in the city what with your Sushi and hybrid cars).

It's a day I hope my kids will remember with nostalgic fondness and not a wry cynicism. Wonder, exhilaration, joy. And if they have even a smudge of that in their memory, then it was well worth it; Fond memories that will stay with them through whatever they decide to become, anytime anyone mentions the beach or Seaside.

At least until the FDA shuts it down.

Oregon Coast - Part 3 : Less Windy

Pacific Northwest Beaches aren't usually the type where all the men are in euro-speedos and all the women in two-pieces that fit with varying degrees of accuracy. It's more like a warmer version of what I think everyone thinks of New England. With better sand and more neutral accents.

We went to another beach at Ecola Park. Which was supposedly 'less windy'.  'Less windy' than the opening scenes to 1996 disaster movie "Twister", the last time Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton were remotely relevant, is not 'not windy'. Also, by meterogical fate, the wind WAS blowing directly onto the beach. Nobody was digging out their loved ones from suddenly appearing sand dunes, but nobody was peaceably perusing a newspaper, either.

Everyone mills about in Gore-Tex or capris and strolls up and down taking a sudden interest in tidal wild-life and various sub-species of gulls.

There are also surfers. Pacific North West Coast surfers, to be exact, in their Subarus and faux-hippie attire and rigourously distressed boards. I often wonder if these surfers get defensive when confronted with a Hawaiian surfer  or anywhere in which the size of waves can be measured in 'number of galleons that it can capsize'.

There are those who obviously insist on experiencing the beach as they imagine it, if we were 10 degrees lower in latitude. Shorts and frolicking in the sort of water they use to prep for cryogenics, I assume.

Invariably these off-seasonals are kids. My kids.

They spend some time making the sort of lumpy no-form sand castles that can only be made with perfectly dry sand, and then decide they want to play in the waves. Sensible parent that I am, I steer them to a calmer area, where the waves won't immediately claim them in a deceptive undertow. Owl Jr. becomes grumpy, because, of course he wants the life-threatening ones, populated entirely with wet-suit wearing Pac NW surfers.

And here, amongst water that makes my toes candidates for hypothermia-relatd amputation from an enthusiastic 1800's naval surgeon, they are most happy. Running to and from the waves. Surfers doing their surfer thing. Me, squinting, the wind and the sun being a bit much for my introvert ways. Mrs. Owl is far back where the dry sand is, being one of those regular people who seem to enjoy sunshine and just, 'relaxing'.

(It's impossible to 'relax' while being assaulted by a bracing wind and a sun that insists it's the middle of summer, is my general take on things. On a couch with the gentle impulse engines of the NCC-1701-D, maybe. )

But boy, do the kids scream alot. It takes a practiced ear and a tense-nonchalance to determine if this is 'screaming because we're having so much fun' or 'screaming because a severed head has just washed ashore'. Context and probability help me out, usually. And this is their game, running to the waves. running away from the waves. Owlet, being a girl who could get dirty taking a bath, would switch up the running and screaming and make extremely muddy lumps of sand and build a sad moat around them, and become pseudo-distraught when the waves washed over it. The things that kids find fun.


And the wind, not noticeably less, didn't seem to bother them at all.

Oregon Coast - Part 2 : Arrival

We got a place at Cannon Beach, not Seaside, where we stayed previously. It was by lack of planning, but we ended up liking Cannon Beach more. There is a spurious commercialism, a worn-out carnie atmosphere with Seaside. It has a generally charming crassness but it can start to show through over time, only to be expected of a town that manufactures delight one season every year.

The tired local kids who must wither at the sight of more and more tourists invading their town. Rebelling against everything that kids rebel against every year, but set up against the blare of souvenir shops and saltwater taffy makes it particularly dismal.

The young people, with their loud music and cat calls and impossible displays of athleticism on the beaches, unsustainable choice of cars,  and general aura of invincibility that grates anyone who isn't them. I'm not sure at what point people are emulating what they see on spring-break themed movies and TV, and at what point it's the other way around. It's a McDonald's of sameness, though, from Fort Lauderdale to Venice Beach to here, it's all pretty much the same, the finally pent up and sudden release of all those hormones upon the unsuspecting public, and multiplied by the expectations to do so.

Cannon beach, on the other hand,  is the home to the semi-famous Haystack Rock. It's quieter and settled but you suspect there is no way any town can support that many art galleries. The vast majority of the businesses must be subsidized by the owners, who I imagine to be far too well-off older women who have left their high-powered jobs to get back to roots which involves 'getting back to roots' with other just-near-retirement women and opening an art galleries.

There are restaurants, the sort that usually don't bother showing prices on their menus, or have everything neatly lumped into whole dollar amounts. Complete with horribly over-informed foodies and the forced casual free-ness of men stifling under t-shirts when they clearly would be more comfortable with at least a collar, ideally with cufflinks and season appropriate blazer.

To be clear, both are lovely places, for the right crowd, my family isn't exaactly the right crowd for either.

The house we rented was just right. Overpainted, far too many American flags, a sense of whimsy with regards to what, exactly, is a level floor. Old furniture that didn't so much as not belong together as they were all from exactly 35 years ago, but from as opposite styles as could be imagined. Somewhere there is a Salvation Army whose furniture section has been reduced to a single ottoman.


We decided, after arriving, to just take a look at the beach.

Just stroll, maybe.

Don't bother putting Owlet and Owl Jr. in swimming clothes, it's too cold and too windy and it's just a quick look. We told the kids we'd just look. Owlet asked if maybe she could put her toe in the water. Fine, fine, what could go wrong. Just the toe. 30 seconds later and our attention elsewhere, both the kids are drenched, covered with the wet sand, laughing, and we are glad to be within walking distance of a shower and dry clothes. Owlet has, and we know this, an amazing ability to take whatever small allowances for a given activity, and, particularly if there is dirt involved, increase it until she looks like she's advertising for a new Ultra Cleen Tide brand. The before picture.

Oregon Coast - Part 1 : The Drive

I'm not sure if going a second time makes a trip to a certain area a 'tradition' yet or not. But going to the Oregon coast, seems, in my  memory, something that my parents did with us more than once, so it's close enough to tradition for me to call it one.

Second generation immigrants can't be picky about such things.

In any case we went to the Oregon Coast again, this time to Cannon Beach, isntead of Seaside. Not because one is more tasteful and less bustly than the other and we prefer our beach visits contemplative if not outright Thoreauesque but because we planned late and that's where Mrs. Owl was able to find a beach house. A house near the beach. We are not of the tax bracket where beach house is both literal and figurative.

I get lulled into a a sense of ease when Mrs. Owl tells me it's a 6 hour drive. Doesn't seem so horrible. But it's 6 hours as the crow drives. If the crow didn't have kids and bathroom breaks and the border and eating and nausea and lack of GPS. And, you know, if crows were allowed to drive cars and retrofitted their cars to handle beaks and feathers and if they had the cognitive ability-- you get the idea. The TRIP is actually about 8 and a bit. 

8 hours seems to cross the line for me from 'that seems reasonable' to 'how much are airline tickets, really?'. It's also the length of time I remember my dad driving when we went on road trips. An interminable span that starts in the dewy moment of naivete and stretches to INFINITY.  It's an ADULT amount to drive, and I'd always wonder how the hell my dad did it. Something gets stronger or some mayfly need for novelty dies out when you get older, I assume, that makes the drive doable. I'm still surprised when I do it.

And being this adult-like person, I tend to have a very low tolerance for whining, usually from Owlet, who has a prediliction to car-sickness. It's absurd, my impatience, stemmed both from my current day form of Being Who Can Withstand Boredom and Guy Who Had To Do Drives Like This As A Kid Without A Tablet Showing Movies. Mrs. Owl has to intervene, and apply some patience and listening. It's a small armageddon when both of us have run out of patience. Events that always lead to massive guilt and apologies.

Oohhh roadtrips.

Whidbey Island Part 1

We live in a townhouse complex. Those communal affairs that are not quite apartments and not quite duplexes but most people there have some sort of familial unit that requires more space and the general population is not crammed with young professionals who's idea of Keeping It Down mean keeping the 500 watt amps inside their unit and for whom Going To Sleep At A Reasonable Hour is something not far from incomprehensible.

It means communities where quiet, somewhat fuddy, somewhat duddy hobbies are embraced as appropriate and even Alright now that everyone is of a certain age never mind that its the sort of thing I did even when I was youthful and supposedly full of vim and vigour (perhaps the first clue I've been  more on the bookworm side is I would use the term 'vim' without thinking it might be as modern day appropriate as blunderbuss, Black Lung, or consumption (dying of, not mass)).

And its through these activities that an alarmingly large number of families have bonded together.

The men, by playing european board games about, amongst other things, power distribution in a large German city, battling monsters for control of Tokyo, and winning the favour of the marriagable princess in 16th century Normandy (we cast a wide net).

The women, by having a wine drinking club that occasionally discusses books. It might not be applicable to all book clubs, or all women book clubs, but it certainly pertains to this one, that the books they choose make some of the drearier Russian novelists look like auditioning members of Menudo. Dire subjects, plot lines more dire by far that involve this relationship falling in dissolution, that childhood trauma being revealed, and everyone in the end being shipped to a leper penal colony.

This may explain the wine, actually.

On top of that you have kids who more or less get along. The older ones tolerating the younger ones, as the case often is, the younger in a state of endless hero worship. Or at least unquestioning attachment. All the kids invariably jockeying for position to play with the kid that's older. Sometimes, it's magic, where they all find some imaginary game where they can all, more or less, participate in. Or at the very least, the younger ones are not aware they are being excluded. That's some parenting nirvana right there. Kids at free-play learning how to socialize and the like, parental duties involve doing absolutely nothing except listening for wailing or complete, unbroken silence.

 

It's great that everyone gets along, pretty shocking, actually. So in an effort tempt fate we decided, all 17 of us, to pack off to Whidby Island and hang out at a beach house together. My brain immediately thought of a G-rated Big Chill, minus Kevin Costner in a coffin, obviously.

We all made it there in various cars and vans, down through the border which I'm always worried will involve a grumpy border guard and various breaches of the Geneva Convention. But they never do because a young family driving a 11 year old hatchback gets a pass, generally.

After the hubub of travel with the nauseau and the cliched questions about 'there' and the state of 'yet'ness and always lurking, the not entirely irrational fear that a gunfight will break out as soon as we see speed limits posted in seemingly sedate MPH, its was relief to make it to the farmhouse.  An place where we can all live in even closer quarters and do the things we generally do anyway but a few hundred miles away and with a beach close by. Our communal living arrangement made more communal.

Zoo

We went to the Seattle zoo. I hadn't been to a zoo for pretty close on 30 years and expected it to be much as it was in the third grade. Soviet-era cement bunkers locking down the whimpering remains of once proud animals. Each going through their own hellish version of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest minus the good friend who's handy with a smothering pillow; plus various attempts to get them to mate with other animals, who, while the same species, are complete strangers.

I don't know if I looked forward to this overmuch. Although there is some magic in seeing an elephant in the flesh; even with the hollowed out stare of someone long past wishing for death, I'm not sure there is enough magic to keep me excited for the 3 hour drive. Mind you, these are all memories added onto my memories as a child. Who knows what I thought back then, now through the tinted glasses of a purportedly sane, responsible, socially conscious adult.

The Seattle Zoo, however, is not the cement zoological gulag I remember of my youth. It's all made exceedingly natural, so where there was once concrete bunkers there's now rolling hills and hidden pools and, quite frankly, far more land than there is animal. It's like a Where's Waldo featuring charismatic megafauna. You get to experience the joy of birding (uncertain identification, natural surroundings, sporadic somewhat embarrassing excitement) and the joy of public events (overpriced concession, the click of numerous SLRs all firing at the same moment, cleverly hidden washrooms) rolled into one!

The various staff and plaques announce the animals are quite happy. Their objectivity isn't to be relied upon, I'd imagine. However, regular feedings without the alarming ritual of predators thinning your herd or poachers trying to provide material for a 3000 year old recipe for Viagra has to be somewhat better? The kids seemed to enjoy it. The animals didn't seem scarringly depressed? I'm not sure.

There didn't seem to be a whole lot of rhyme and reason to which animals they liked. Terrified of giraffes, not at all put out by panthers. A panther that could kill them and then carry their lifeless corpse in its mouth while it cleared a 6 foot fence not that, as a father, I'm hyper aware of every single danger that may or may not happen to my children no matter how slight the chance. Not so scared of tiny green Amazonian frogs which could kill our entire family with a sneeze. Scared of an unidentified sharply coloured jungle snake that... ok, well, that made sense.

There were some exotic things that I was sure were just urban legends perpetuated by a recurring misprint in a reference edition of the Encylopedia Britannica (Tapirs, I mean, really), and then not so exotic things (wolves (which they put on the same field as elks? was this just to keep both of them on their toes? Do elks live more healthy lives when harried by endless anxiety? Are they the Woody Allens of the temperate herbivores?)).

There was even a bear. A great massive hulking bear. Bears, actually. And they were gigantic like what you imagine they'd be if you were three and just saw Omaha's Wild Kingdom, on an IMAX. Volkswagen sized. So massive that the idea of them opening up a mini-van at Yellowstone because someone left a bucket of KFC in there takes no imagination whatsoever.

The zoo designers had a bit of a ball with the bear enclosure. First you see it from a great way off and think, 'Huh, big bear'. Then there's another viewing part, this time under a rock, and it's a bit closer, and you can see the mini-van crushing teeth turning a whole salmon into a pink slurry. And then finally there's a viewing area that's right up against the water where the bear is eating. Close enough that my mind started doing faulty arithmetic and laughably misinformed load bearing calculations with regard to mini-van destroying omnivores and whatever plexiglass grade they use to build the enclosure.

It's a strange thing to trust your life to the whims of an engineer who may or may not have thought of everything when creating a barrier between your family and thousands of pounds of muscle that would eat you as an afterthought on the way to getting a snack.

Are there zoo engineers? Is it terribly rigourous? Do they, at the last second, move the bears to the flamingo sanctuary and the pythons to the duckling alcove because of some marketing head's idea?

I have no idea. There is some charm, it might be said, for concrete gulags.




 

Owlet is Metal

 For the most part, Owlet is as you would expect any seven year girl to be. Deeply involved in cartoons and their subsequent merchandise. Anthropomorphized animals of various magical qualities; fairies, both the Disney sanctioned and the not so sanctioned; princesses of every sort. She has endless small sets of tiny plastic figurines which don other, much smaller plastic clothes or accessories or some kind of domestic contrivance. She sets them up and plays with them, chatting about what's happening and why and how some discord or other comes about.

It's enough to make any Mattel executive ( pre-teen girls division, TV-tie-in portfolio) get all misty and sentimental.

It's also strange how she expects me to somehow be into this, and to know the various backstories of characters, their names, their likes, their failings. If I was at all interested in memorizing names and arcane stats about things which have, at best, imaginary importance I'd get into spectator sports. (Not that Owl Jr. is any better, no I do not know the episode of Rescue Bots where Bumblebee makes a brief, and apparently memorable, appearance).

In any case, we went to a street fair in June. One of those torrid affairs which is far too well funded by the local merchants to have that charm that only hand tossed patchouli and questionable crafts can bring. Lots of engaging of brands going on down that 4 or 5 block stretch. They did let some, I'd assume, smaller and more independent retailers sell their wares. Balloon animals and mini-donuts and other things that seem so very much worth their over-inflated price at the time.

We told her she can get one necklace.She chose a stall which honestly looked like it just knocked over a Hello Kitty bead factory. Lots of bright colours. I wasn't sure how she'd ever pick one, there being so much choice. Was she going to pick the pink and yellow sunshine thing.. happy.. type bauble, or the aqua-marine doo-dad which had either a mermaid or a trout with a penchant for wigs. There was always the rainbow option. So many rainbows.

Instead, she chose a skull, and crossbones. On a black necklace.

There are layers there already, I see. I was delighted, but try to stay neutral as to whatever choice she makes. But delighted I was. I mean, it was kind of a cute skull and crossbones, but it was still the universal symbol for death or for piracy. That was pretty metal.

She confirmed this underlying current of PURE METAL a few weeks later. She was going through the detailed history of a My Little Pony, Princess Luna, blah blah 'saves the world' something or other 'moon' something something, and then, "but she turned bad, and was called Nightmare Moon, so I like to call her Nightmare Moon. It sounds cooler".

That'll leave the Mattel executives scratching their head, I"m sure.

PNE : 2010

This is a draft, one of many drafts on different topics I've found in my draft archives. This particular one is from 2010... Yowsa.

The PNE is the Pacific National Exhibition, which is a very Canadian and overly complicated way of saying 'State Fair'.

Owlet is four, if my math is right, which it rarely is. Owl Jr. is two, possibly/probably. There are  rides of various speeds and sizes and death-defyingness, sweet and salty and questionable treats that all have ceased being technical 'food' during the long slow cost-cutting and profit maximization that is industrial food production and regulatory slackening which began in the 80's and has gone as unabated sales of Atlas Shrugged to undergraduate commerce majors.

Owlet is a smaller fireball, and I'm not sure how she'll take rides. They trundle and whizz and bang and some go at speeds which used to fill me with excitement but now just have me worrying about the frequency of federally mandated safety checks for semi-permanent carnival attractions.

We go through the gates and there's the big behemoth, I think it's called The Coaster, which, well, I don't know how the creative team at the PNE believes slapping some capitals on a noun makes for an iconic coaster name; but it's big and wooden and is old enough to be grandfathered through various safety protocols and the people exiting the ride look mostly like they are happy to have not required inadequate CPR from grossly underpaid transients and students, so it's probably a good coaster.

All you can really hear is the thunder and rattle of the cars as they whip through various turns and falls. And Owlet is sceaming.

In delight.

It's equal parts screaming and laughing and laughing screaming.

She has this frozen smile on her face with her mouth half way open and it's kind of heart breaking to take her to the tamer rides that appropriate for her age and size. But the various treats formerly known as foodstuffs are so chocked with sugar and chemicals that make reading it make me feel like I'm reading a Breaking Bad script that any sort of disappointment is quickly quelled into a stupor or euphoric, hopefully temporary, chemical dependence.

Owl Jr. is 2, so he's more incoherently manic about trains. There is this train ride, of course, that I'm pretty sure he'd trade us for in a heartbeat if that was legal and he had the proper documentation. His screams come, of course, when we try to remove him at the end of the ride. Two years on and he's pretty much the same way but he can grudgingly take a spin on a ride that has somehow managed to go under the radar of Disney's copyright lawyers. Yes, I'm sure there are other perfectly well known flying elephants, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment.

Bunk Bed

In August, I constructed a bunk bed. Assembled. From the standard Scandinavian outlet of fine particle-board based furniture.

Owl Jr had just come graduated from the crib. We made the sage decision to have Owlet and Owl Jr sleep in the same room, in a bunk bed, and leave the other room as a play room. (In actuality, now they have one tiny room for playing and sleeping, and one room with an infrequently used tent).

It took me 3 hours. Or 4, depending on how truthful I want to be, and how prepared I am for humiliation.

These things look so simple in the show room. Until you get it delievered in three flat boxes, each one absolutely packed with long 2x4's which look exactly alike. The wood pieces differ only slightly, by the position of the holes, by the number, by some currently indiscernible difference which you better discover before you get 80% of the way through and find that the 2x4 with the three holes on one side and two holes on the other is NOT interchangeable with the 2x4 with the two holes on one side and three holes on the other.

There is a hopelessness that is perhaps the closest I will come to understanding the Bataan Death March when opening the boxes. Thirty or so of these 2x4s, neatly arranged, a wordless instruction manual, with litigiously minded safety steps (Please ensure you are not constructing said bed in front of a lava pit, firing squad, fault line), oh, and an Allen wrench.

The instructions are trying to do the 'less is more' thing, where it uses friendly drawings and gross approximations to what you have in front of you to assemble something that will keep one of your children five feet in the air and the other hopefully uncrushed beneath. Due to the enormity of said retail furniture outlet, they cannot have written instructions, anywhere, I suppose that would cut into their costs and they might not be able to provide 24/7 free childcare for their workers or a comprehensive dental plan. Not that I begrudge said workers, if it wasn't for progress in labour we'd still be sending  five year olds down chimneys to clean them and contract exotic, lethal lung ailments.

But it does leave me turning said instructions this way and that, thinking that if only they had a single line saying, perhaps "Ensure you are using the smallest wood piece which doesn't really look that much smaller but it is, and you can tell by this small divot on both sides and is represented in the drawing by a whimsical X. Because if you don't the entire contraption will fall apart and possibly burst into flames". Just one line. A little hint. There's a reason we have moved from pictographs to a written language, as a species. 

I blustered through. It's made, it's stood up and has not fallen, crushing Owl Jr. on the bottom, yet. I take this as success.

I really cannot wait until they grow out of it and I can burn it in a large pagan pyre on some beach somewhere. Using the instructions as kindling.

Seaside Part 4 : Activities I

We were there only for a few days, hoping to avoid the dreaded affliction of boredom that runs rampant among kids 1 to 65. So the next day we had to pack in all the quaint and Kodak-moment worthy activities that any beach-side town has in abundance. The activities that look really fun and laugh-a-minute until you're on the bumper boat and the water smells like bilge from a recently decommissioned Ukranian cargo ship and your particular boat is persistently wreathed in engine smoke that smells faintly of burnt hot-dogs.

It wasn't as bad as all that, thankfully. There is a sheen though, isn't there, to all those whacky activities, like our first one: Bike Cars! A side-by-side tandem bike with seats in the front for the kids and pedalled seats in the back for the galley-slav--I mean parents. And to steer they give you an actual steering wheel! Oh the whimsy! There is a sheen, anyways, when you first see them, a novelty, a minor spastic scurrying of imagination, 'Wow! That's kinda NEAT!' you might think as you adjust your collection of Norman Rockwell buttons deftly arranged on your cardigan. But when you get there, it's the same sullen teenagers; the same iron-clad waiver agreements that makes one look about casually for Bike Car! sanctioned burial plots; the same state of the item you're going to rent: made of pig-iron and a type of pleather that's been outlawed thirty years ago due it's immediate carcinnogenic effects and indestructibility.

The kids had fun, more than I thought they would. I guess being at the front of a self-powered car without absolutely nothing in front of you has it's charms. A bit better than being in the back seat while strapped into a whatever government ministry approved child safety device that can withstand everything short of a direct RPG hit. View can't be that good.

We took a tour of Seaside, it was as quiant as you'd imagine. However, these car-bikes were supposed to follow proper right of way rules, like a, well, a car. But they'd have teenagers driving it, or moxie-filled tweens. So there were quite a few scenes that made me simultaneously cringe and bite down on the urge to shake my aged fist at a passing car-bike and yell 'Where'd ya learn how to drive?! And turn down the rock n roll!'.

Next up was -- and you'll forgive me for relating a phrase my 2-year-old says that I find cute  but that anyone else will find groan-inducing-- the bumpy cars. Zooming along in 1950's technology with safety straps from about the same era. Crammed with kids and adults and different cliques that quite clearly want to do each other massive harm, and, touchingly, are rather sorry if they hit you in the process. I drive the kids around, in turns. You can feel the butterflies just humming in their tiny bodies. A car!? Just the two of us?! That bumps?! I remember that. That's when driving was fun. Now driving is an exercise in maximal safety while calculating MPGs and best routes and avoid traffic and watching blind spots. I think everyone would have alot more fun in life if our cars had all of 3 horsepower and came equipped with massive rubber bumpers.

That is, of course, until the sheen wears off.

Seaside Part 3 : Beach

It was finally time to make our way back to Owlet and Mrs. Owl.

It's a tricky thing toddlers, the Terrible Twos. That explosions of impotent rage are just under the surface most of the time, but it's something that I've come to empathize with. Imagine if you, after months and months of not really having an opinion about anything, suddenly, are YOU. You with all your preferences and ideas and wants. Now imagine that you need to communicate with an unreasonably large human who has complete and utter control over everything you do. Now imagine you can't quite speak English. Or can, perfectly, clearly, succinctly, but either the Ginormous Human has defective ears or you must, at all times, speak with your mouth filled with marbles.

I can see where the rage comes from. These episodes usually arise when the activity changes, especially if I'm taking Owl Jr. from an activity he likes, aimlessly following tire tracks, to one he might not like, joining up with the family.

As emotional and mercurial as kids are, I've found that what they want is to be reasoned with. They need to understand the logic, the why, the what, and they can be receptive to it. Or they can give you their reasoned rebuttal with screams of 'NO' that has the decibel level and chaotic clarity of a 80's hair band at the height of their powers.

So the reasoning begins, the simple, calm, quiet reasons. The trick is to not show fear, to not show the merest chink in your armour through which they can burst through and weather you down to the nub of a human you are after, say, a five hour drive running on nothing but diet red bull and a bag of corn nuts. It's a bit like you are the negotiator and what you're trying to get is a calm transition, and what they threaten, whether they know it or not, is an episode to rob from you the last precious bits of energy your frail, pathetic parenty body contains. The energy you were going to use to read a book when they were asleep, or something more luxurious, like brush your teeth, or breathe unassisted.

It's a relief that's quite hard to explain when Owl Jr. relents and gives me a pause, looks at me, thinks, then says, 'Otay'. It's quite possibly one of my mostest favoritist words at the moment. That and profligate. The other possible result the classic toddler meltdown. Nothing to do there but bunch up the shoulders, weather the storm, and try not to make eye contact with the appalled theatre-goers who just wanted to see "The Hangover 2" in peace (I kid, I'd never bring my kids to see that, explaining all the jokes, the references, the double entendres, the monkey? Come on).

In any case, it's a semi-meltdown. It's a crime against human rights and all that is just in the world that I should pull him away from following slight indentations in the sand just so he can go play with his sister in the sand. If she can't see the magic of actual rail road tracks in the beach that'll inevitably lead to Thomas, well, that's her loss, isn't it? Isn't it?!

We make it back to basecamp, with more, rather than less, tears cried. Instead of calmly making a castle or homestead or pyramid or whatever while Mrs. Owl relaxes, Owlet has taken on the job of MONSTER CRUSHER of things Mrs. Owl must make in the sand with increasing urgency. I never remember getting my parents to do that. More power to Owlet, I suppose.

And then, finally, it's time to brave the cool waters of the Oregon coast with the waves and the sand and the more waves.

We stand about where I think it'll be safe, outside the undertow zone, not high enough to sweep my children away from me as I hold onto their hands. In any activity that has even the slightest danger I don't think I'm alone in the dad-o-sphere in that I picture the worst case scenario, which, I should tell you, involves a tsunami, a pod of radioactive psychopathic killer whales and a nuclear submarine with a faulty firing safety protocol. So I don't so much hold their hands as clutch them tightly should I have to haul them both bodily out and run to the nearest abandoned Cold War era bombshelter with optional supply of killer whale repllent.

I look down at them, holding on for dear life as the waves sweep them up, they are hooting, howling, having a good time, and besides the odd smile coming to my face I realize that, at this moment, to them, I'm the strongest person ever. It's a little humbling, and a little disconcerting as I have the bones of a osteoporis addled hummingbird and the athleticism of someone who was personally offended by the TV character Urkel. But to be linked to all those kids who's parents haul them back onto their skiis, or lift them out of the pool, or do any number of hefting and lifting that's required of a parent of young kids.

We have a great time and of course Owl Jr. has to go back to the beach earlier than Owlet, as he's going to get chilled to the bone faster. Not that he'll admit it. The answer is always 'no' to the question of 'Are you cold?'. I have to watch for visible signs of mild hypothermia, and of course, haul him out of the water. That is my responsibility, after all, being the unreasonably large human, and Owl Jr. isn't communicating properly, mouth full of marbles notwithstanding.

Seaside Part 2 : Settling In

The rental house was a few blocks from the ocean, so not a beach house perse, but a close-enough-to-the-beach house. Which was fine by me. If you get one right on the beach (so I tell myself), you'd have to start driving cars with leases that could be confused with a mortgage,  have opinions about European soccer leagues, test cricket, various exchanges, and how often, or if you ever, press your chinos (you'd have to have chinos as well, come to think of it).

You'd be Upper Class, or Comfortable, as the Upper Class like to think of themselves. And I can't, I won't, have that. And not just because I can't afford it, not in the slightest. It's a principles thing.

The house itself was not the seedy, somewhat charming dive I expected it to be. It was rather done up and not altogether horrible. Which it had every right to be. As far as I'm concerned, these neglected, often empty houses have every expectation to be utterly run down and just this side of condemned.

After looking around the house we walked to the beach and enjoyed the sand and waves. The sand was soft and very, well, sandy. Not the mud and silt and sand affair you get in Vancouver, which, while biologically interesting and I'm sure greatly enhancing the first hunter gatherers diet in the region, makes for a pretty messy walk. But this Oregon sand that was powdery and soft and was sure to keep the kids entertained for hours while their weary parents sat back and got into some summer reading.

We have a sandbox at home, and they keep themselves remarkably content playing in the sand; but not in anyway that you might imagine. They don't make ordered castles or little pyramids or whatever. It's somewhat more chaotic, mostly they just sift it ,over and over like prospectors without the tattered overalls and mercury poisoning.

This is how we thought they'd take to the beach sand. However, Owl Jr., in seeing the beach, decided to go wandering, with me in tow, because at two and a bit, a kid just kinda wanders and isn't terribly worried about being lost. At least mine isn't. He's off and in his own personal quiet reverie about life and if his parents don't have the sharp-minded alertedness to keep a tab of him every 3 seconds, well, that's not exactly his problem. He doesn't make much noise, generally. Someday he'll make a great ninja or congressional archival librarian.

There was a lifeguard on duty, somewhere, anyways, the tracks of his truck or hilariously wide-stanced ATV traced across the beach. Owl Jr, in his infinite understanding how everything in the worlds relates to trains, decided these were train-tracks, and therefore must be followed. He had a grand old time following these tracks endlessly and I had a slightly less exciting time following him as he repeated "Thomas, thomas choo choo?".

It was relaxing, nevertheless, even if my job description for the day had been changed from 'stationary, reading concierge' to 'strolling butler'. The waves beckoned, those would offer some adventure, I'm sure. For another post.

Seaside Part 1

I find I'm trying to reconstruct my childhood in my vacations. Not purposely, but out of habit.

To that end i took the family to the Oregon coast, to experience the beach as I experienced it: chilly, windy, and with far too much Gore-Tex™. It's summer vacation as experienced by a son of immigrants. How were they to know a proper vacation was at a multi-billion dollar ride park festooned with anthopomorphic domestic animals, professionally-created childhood-focussed-grouped animated imagination avatars and other copyright protected IP? They wouldn't.

There is also the small problem of my parents being under the intermittent delusion that they enjoy the outdoors. (Memories of camping, such as it was, is dominated by twenty year old canvas tents that I now know smelled overwhelmingly of mildew with brief notes of a hardy, devastating killer mold; short-lived fires that were constructed with the quixotic idea that a roaring blaze could be had from warming rather large, damp logs with a handful of forest detritus; and by the recurring, never realized aspirations of going fly fishing at 4 AM.)

So, without knowing that 'going to the beach for our children to get partially blinded from short lived fires' was not a 'thing' to do, that's what we did as kids.

And so that's what I did with my family. Minus the fire bit.

The hardest part of the vacation was the drive, of course. With children, it seems, it's always the bit where they have to stay very still while confined with nylon straps and being told to 'look out the window'. Yes, we did have a device for playing the Dora's and Thomas the Tank Engine, but we wanted to wait until we really needed it, the Death Blossom of road-trip childcare if you will. Because if you play that card too early, and they get sick of it, well, then you're exhausted and they're tired and bored and you have absolutely no psychological backstop to stop you from offing yourself with an imaginative use of the automatic windows, a trick shoulder belt, and the judicious use of the e-brake.

If a kid is really young they don't actually care, and are happy to sleep and snack and look at the blurry things out the window while being flabberghasted and amazed by the most mundane things. Like trains, boats, an El Camino that has made the disastrous conversion to 'camper'. That's Owl Jr.

If a kid is really old, they, I'd assume, find a way to amuse themselves. With the bluetooth and the blackberries and the text-mess--why no I do not have a smart phone myself, why do you ask?

If a kid is in the Magic Zone of Maximal Annoyance (Owlet), then you're both in for a treat. They are like elves, these little guys, their attention has the ferocity and lifespan of a mongoose cross-bred with a mayfly. We brought colouring books and toys and games and oh look congratulations, you've just amused her for 27 minutes. 7.5 hours to go there, bucko.

And, thinking about it, trying to keep my blood pressure down as she complains that 'it's so tiring' even though I'm the one who had been driving for three hours, I can see where she's coming from. She has no reference for how much longer it'll be, or how to keep track of the progress, of having any indication that we won't, in fact, end up spending the rest of our days in that car driving steadily south on the I-5. I came to this realization as I tried to calculate when we'd get to the rental house given our current speed with rest stops.

But we all mustered through. We did this trick of leaving really early so the kids would sleep in the car for a few hours. And much to everyone's surprise, it mostly worked.

This karmic fluke would be paid back in full, later.

Herculean Achievements And Other Small Miracles Part II

I'm not sure where the obsession with trains comes from, but it seems to be universal for kids of a certain age. Thus we have Thomas The Train Engine and Chugginton and those wooden train tracks sold by everyone from Ikea to Toys R Us. Then there are the other incarnations, train rides in shopping centres on small electric carts kitted out to look like 19th-century steam engines, outdoor gasoline-powered mini-trains manned by former engineers and those who have taken their hobby far too seriously.

You don't notice it until you have a little boy or girl who goes absolutely ballistic at the first sign of anything that goes on a track. It's the Blue Car Syndrome with multi-ton uni-directional transport vehicles. Owlet is fairly far past it, but Owl Jr. is deep in the throes of this near pathological mental disability. On the merest hint of one, he drops whatever he was doing (invariably, playing with a small train) and shouts out "CHOO CHOO!", then looks around to see if, perhaps, one has snuck up behind him, or behind me. (A meerkat like response that is much like Owlet, actually, when her favourite shows goes on, as she bellows (yes, bellows) "MOMMA!! TOOPY AND BINOO IS ONN!!!").

So for the second day of questionable childcare by their father, the kids are taken to an outdoor train somewhere deeper in the wilds of the suburbs, bordering on the exoburbs. Somehow, like all jobs that one does day in and day out, it must become somewhat commonplace, watching the jittering uncontainable excitement of little ones as they come face to face with their obsession; the tired, vaguely triumphant face on the caregivers as they set their kids down in the tiny cars for a full five minutes of peace.

It then comes to my attention, as the train is pulling from the station, that the ride is being set up for a night-time Halloween mode. All innocuous children's outdoor activities take on a demonic alter-ego during Halloween. Amusement parks, train rides, petting zoos, you name it, if it's outside, there's going to be a Halloween version that would make small children and lesser men, like myself, suddenly become aware of how tenuous bladder control really is.

This isn't 'billowing sheets and funny jack-o-lanterns', this is 'something scary enough to chip through teenager's jaded skepticism', the same teens who watch horror movies that make the Dresden Fire Bombing look like a mild city-wide heat-wave.

I'm told that nothing is really set up,that it'll be fine for the six or so kids on the train, all under the age of 5. Which, to some extent, it is. But there were a few tunnels a little bit too well prepared for the night's event. Hideous monsters, bloodthirsty monsters glare out, although the lights were dimmed (which made it somewhat worse, actually). It's then that the powers of suggestion, all the powers I could muster, came into play.

Owlet : "The tunnel, it's SCARY!?"
Me : "Nonono, it's not *shudder* scary. Nono. It's fine"

Repeat that conversation about thirty times over five minutes.

Much later, I'm sure Mrs. Owl will be regaled by Owlet's disturbingly accurate memory, "Dadda! Remember when we went on that SCAAARY train!?". After which she will reduce me to ashes with a withering glare.

Owl Jr., of course, simply loved it.

PAX 08 : Power Overwhelming.

There really is a dizzying array of crap, vying for attention like a gaggle of refugee children reaching out imploringly to a UN peacekeepker because, they, you know, need their insulin or something. All sorts of hyper niche games and gaming.

There's table top gaming, which is kinda like board games on steroids layered on top of a complexity of rules that have width, depth, and actual Newtonian mass. A vast complexity of rules. I think orc and tanks play key roles. In the more popular table-top games, an orc-tank hybrid is almost the entirety of the game mechanic. From what I can understand, it's fun.

And then there are the console games, many of which really hardcore gamers turn their noses up at, games like Madden 09 or That One Shooter In the Sci Fi Or World War Two setting that's really eXtremE! You can lump in here the movie tie-ins, the Ideas Ripped Off Of Smaller Developers by a Megalithic Behemoth. Also known as Frat Boy Fair. It's the “2 Fast, 2 Furious” to a hardcore gamer's “Glengarry Glen Ross”.

There are casual games that are so quirky that a pink octopus who sells cupcakes to send their children, represented by some sort of semi-sentient mushroom, on a field trip to the center of the OceanVerse to explore their colour dimensions is seen as derivative and a 'safe bet'.

And, last but not least, there are the HARD CORE GAMES. Shooters, RPGs, RTSes. Games with tech trees and advanced HUD overlays and intra-dimensinal load-out screens. Games that push the meta-narrative and make frantic stabs at Foucault. Games that have screens that make you think “Dear god, that looks like WORK, except... harder.”

There are some games that I do have an interest in, but the vast, vast majority of it are just pretty colours and neato graphics that I will never see outside of the convention. A man only has so much time during the day, only so much of the family budget that they can divert towards next-gen cutting edge consoles.

But the highlight of PAX wasn't the expo, it wasn't the multi-million dollar corporations selling the Next Big Thing in Electromagorical Edutainment. It was the fellow nerds. Nerds and geeks and social cast aways who totally 'got it' when you would say in the most sardonic voice, "Moo moo, moo moo mooo moo moo moo... MOOO!". Fellow gamers who wore ironic shirts that were weighed down by the amount of inside jokes they contained. 

It was nice to be part of the nerd herd. If only once a year.

Absolute Write Blogchain #10

We interrupt your usual lackadaisical one post a week with a blog chain! There are many desriptions of a blog chain, but it's basically a blatant attempt to bring new readers to your blog by writing about meandering topic. I'll be riffing off of Midnight Muse's post about salmon, I think. And smoking.

Oh, and produce!

I think it has to be a mark of adulthood to be excited about produce.

When I was a kid, and we'd go for some vacation to yet another boring landmark (with not a single arcade in sight) about some misguided explorer who had died along the way to a destination (where I'm sure he was expecting opium and cheap women, but who the plaques invariably cast as a starry eyed dreamer, bent on discovering the world for road-side diners and the more boring parts of textbooks). We'd inevitably find some long lost fruit stand. Abandoned except for a weather worn sign and a disaffected youth who oozed small-town teen resentment.

My dad would stop our full sized van (you remember the ones, they had the gas economy of a small tank and was made only slightly less uncool by dreams that it could be, with a paint job, some mags, and maybe a wicked red spoiler, look just like the van from the A-Team. They weren't 'crossovers', they gave no impression that they could do the Drakar rally or that they could handle the power if you dropped a hemi in it and tried to take down the local punks in an old school drag race. They were family-mobiles.) and get out excitedly. He and my mom would get bags and bags of cherries and apples and peaches and other things that were quite obviously not candy-bars.

They weren't even fruit roll-ups.

The rest of the trip would be them going through the produce, munching away, and always, always, trying to offer us fruit. As if it was some sort of treat! It must have been the trail fever, making them think they could pull a fast one like. What was next? Offering us asparagus instead of fries? A hot bath instead of a dip at the beach (also known as a near death experience with the coastal undertows)?

Vacation was clearly when the regimens of Healthy Eating were supposed to be loosened if not cast aside all together. Things should be deep fried, processed, re-processsed, post-processed, sugared, candied, and in other ways made to be only slightly less dangerous than injecting lard directly into the heart. Everyone knows that, especially children. It's something that must be written into our DNA : When vacation comes, you can eat anything and everything. Particularly those things that usually take a fair amount of wheedling to get otherwise. (It's my opinion that road-side attractions could save a lot of money on packaging and advertising if they just sold candied lard. It might be a bit of a tough sell at first, but I think the honesty would be refreshing.)

So it was quite alarming when my wife and I went for a road-trip to Alberta. Which, to anyone not from Canada, means absolutely zilch, what's important to note is that we had to go through many small towns filled with angst-affected youth manning all manner of fruits stands. And I'll be pickled if we didn't stop at some of them, hurry out of air-conditioned oasis and excitedly collect all manner of fruits. I think it was somewhere near my sixth cherry when I realized that unless I found a deep fryer to throw this fruit in post-haste, I'd lose all connection to my childhood.

Unfortunately I was interrupted when I had to dodge a full-sized van that, with a paint job and a wicked spoiler, would be a dead ringer for the A-Team van.


The next blogger in this chain will be TBFKA Taosbound, who will have the unenviable task of making sense of this and writing something that, unlike this post, will have to resemble English.

blog@cathsmith.com

My Midnight Muse

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(The Blog Formerly Known as) Taosbound

Virtual Wordsmith

The Death Wizard Chronicles

Food History

Kappa No He

A piece in the puzzle

Sound Off Blog

Virginia Lee: I Ain't Dead Yet!


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Gore-Tex™ Does Not Do Heat

One of the things about living in BC (a province of Canada, one of ten, on the far west coast. We're like the Oregon of Canada, except more hippyish, without the high-brow Intel connections and a Nordstrom's on every block) is that the veracity of your Canadian-ness is always in question. It usually revolves around the lack of severe cold weather that plagues BC. If you haven't faced certain death from -40 C weather simply because you've missed your bus, you just ain't Canadian.

So when a particularly nippy winter hits us, we always get the transplanted Ontario-an/Newfoundlander/etc roll their eyes, purse their lips, slap their short-wearing leg and say "You think this is cold? This ain't cold..", then proceed with a none too entertaining foray into the finer points of hypothermia and the futile effort to combat it with a Tim Horton's double double.

There is something within the (let's face it) male psyche that yearns to undergo the greatest hardship, the most extreme conditions. For bragging rights on who is the most 'rugged', 'manly', and heretofore undisputed Man of the Woods. As a BCer, you must sigh, take another sip of your half-decaf-none-fat-soy-double-expresso-capu-double-froth-machiatto frappe, slowly finish your marijuana roach, and say "You don't say?"

The curse of a being in BC is that the body is simply not exposed to any extremes in temperature. Extremes in annual precipitation, yes. Extremes in combating Seasonal Affect Disorder while biting back tears of anguish about living the middle of a temperate rain-forest where it actually rains, certainly. But the body of a BCer simply has no defense or preparation for any weather that cannot be countered by a good Gore-Tex™ shell.

Which is why when it gets hot in BC, specifically the Lower Mainland, it gets Really Hot. Where Really Hot is a function of absolute temperature multiplied by the Coefficient of Weather Wimpiness. In short, it's been approximately 50 degrees Celsius (in perceived heat) here in the Lower Mainland. Entire cars are melting on the street. Black top on slightly inclined streets are flowing down like so much rock infested, tarred molasses. The very air we breath hints of brimstone and there have been reports that this air moved at a breeze can set small pets afire. Clouds literally explode in the air, like some sort of napalm experiment gone awry. Every building has faded under the sun making all of Vancouver look like a massive, poorly designed Disney Theme Park ghost town. Horned demons have been seen to be lazing about on park benches, attired in what can only be described as "sauna wear". People worry not so much about hyperthermia than they do about igniting instantly in a fury of spontaneous combustion. At least, this is the perception of many Vancouverites, particularly me.

But you know, it's just heat. In a month or two, it'll be back to monsoon season. At least we won't have to have our Canadian-ness assaulted by Arctic Winter Loving Easterners. For now, at least, there is no national pride in suffering through a heat wave.

Summer Vacation

That's where I've been all week, if any of you are at all interested in my personal life. Insofar as it contributes to some strugglingly funny anecdote or observation about life on this great spinning rock of molten iron with its wafer thin layer of biosphere.

It was a nice a road trip. Down to a sleepy town on the coast in the States. A touristy town known for (predictably) its salt water taffy. Or it's plethora of video arcades, that have sadly declined over the years, and therefore have all the cutting age technology of 1998. I mean, my phone can play more advanced games. My rotary phone.

Be that as it may, it was quite pretty. The ocean, miles of beach populated only by the locals, it seems, as we missed the Summer Crush of 2007 (school's still in session?). Our time at the town was marked by having greasy burgers with enough net calories to feed most of South America or the hungrier parts of Africa, and by walking down the boulevard. We also bought some cheap touristy type stuff to cram into some closet and promptly forget until our untimely move into an old folk's home whose name sentimentally references meadows.

But the views. Wow, the views were pretty great. Ocean, sand, rocks, and sometimes, if we drove a little bit out of the way, really big rocks. You know you are an adult when you get excited about driving slowly down a forgotten highway and hopefully find some governmentally sanctioned Lookout Point. Some place to take a few photos of some geological formation that has been photographed some 12 sextillion times. I almost have an urge to post some of those photos here. But that would be folly. Just go to flickr and search for "towns by the sea", or "rocks", or maybe "pretty large rocks by a nice sandy beach". You'll get the idea.

It was an idyllic vacation, filled with the easy drone of lazy summer days spent doing nothing in particular. To give me some respite from my dangerously un-stressful job and our collective non-busy non-rushed life.

And then we went to Seattle. And that was all a blur. I remember things smelling of fish. There might have been a few shops along the way, perhaps a space needle viewing. And now we're home. I promise I'll think of something more original to write about next post.

The Dog Days Of Summer

So it's summer, and Mrs. Owl, the Owlet and I are staying at the parentals for a spell. We're so far from civilization that running water is a perk, and running water without lethal microbes is a luxury. Where you can be lulled to sleep by either the gentle chirping of crickets or the last strums of a banjo as the home made hooch takes hold. We're in the furthest suburb from the city; so naturally it has debilitating air quality, long parking lots that closely resemble roads (and are, when it's not rush hour) and subdivisions as far as the eye can see. Where strip malls and large car dealers scar the land; a 'compact' car is any truck under 350 horsepower; mesh hats with "Big Foot" emblazoned on the front have been worn since 1985, and always, non-ironically. And where yes, the hallmark of mullet culture, the mid-70's camaro, is found in the wild, and often.

    Ah, hometowns. Can't live in them, can't reasonably deny you were ever there. But I do appreciate some aspects of life here. There are no buskers, panhandlers, or hipsters. There are no SUVs driven by people who don't actually go off-road (if you have an offroad vehicle, your extra suspension and genuines off-road tires lets everyone know that you like to play in the mud). No suburban yokels ripping up the streets for their 'night on the town'. Since, well, this is the home of the suburban yokels.

    There is nothing particularly trendy or cool about this town. Nothing 'hip' or 'hot'. Certainly nothing 'sustainable' or 'eco-friendly'. It's a mess of neighbourhoods connected by institutions that keep the whole town running: supermarkets, malls, and multi-chain restaurant franchises. And in each neighbourhood are thousands of houses where a family can actually afford a living unit that has *gasp* a backyard; and with that, the inevitable pet.

    For my parents, that pet is an American Staffordshire Terrier. A dog somewhat related to the pit bull, except nicer, and with larger jaws.

    Now, I have nothing against dogs (quite the opposite), even the 'evil attack' dogs. As long as they are well enough away from me and mine.

    There are a few things that make me want to keep distance. Many of the people who are attracted to said dogs want them for a symbol of machismo. "Look at me, I have a pet that can rip the throat from a lioness running at full speed!" "Look! I'm just like those rappers and their 'dawgs' showing off their 'bling' and 'sick rides'." Not all owners are like that of course. Indeed, the true lovers of those breeds are vehemently against negligent owners. But even given that, I just feel awkward around dogs that instill in one not the cuddle instinct, but the Flight or Flight response. Or more accurately, the Flight or Flight Faster response.

    Don't get me wrong, my parent's dog is nice enough, friendly, a touch energetic, but a good dog by all accounts. But there is something about it's raw power. Like it could win a towing race against a 18 wheeler and win by a large margin. And then there are the jaws. Always smiling, always chilling out, but damn, are they ever big. I'm talking 'eat a small child and have room for a cantaloupe' big.

    This creates a bit of conflict for me. Because I know a dog is only as good as its owner. A dogs behaviour, for the most part, is not really its fault. Neither is its breed. But there is nothing that can quell that primitive primate brain. That screams "run away! For god's sake man, RUN THE HELL AWAY" when I see the dog run towards me, maybe for a game of fetch, maybe for the last game of 'Tear Out The Jugular' I'll ever play. There is no quelling the urge to cower and sniffle like a child. Which, I suppose, makes it fortunate that we're in the town of my childhood.