Questionable Bios

Bios, as in the tiny biographies that magazines give contributors or blogs give their bloggers when you click 'About ...'

• When not completing his collection of WWII hand grenade pins, Steve can be found volunteering his time with 'Explode This!', an interactive, hands on pyrotechnics demonstration for kids 1-4.
• Fran takes her obsession with size-exclusion chromatography to pretty daring extremes, but not so much as to interfere with her career, a receptionist at Duluth's 16th highest grossing Century 21 office.
• Travis enjoys his school marching band, being co-sub-captain of the Junior co-ed cheer squad, and taking all comers in his travelling full-contact "Octagon of Terror" (touring most of Norther Florida's retirement communities),
• Marilyn's other hobby is sharpening steak knives, often not her own, and usually without anyone knowing.
• Stamford says his most prized isolated pure virus is a variant of E. Bola he has secured with  patent-pending isolation  methodologies. He also breeds ficuses.
• Besides being North America's foremost amateur expert in corn-husk and maize-silk based rope knotting, Kathleen is also Kansas's main importer of betel-nut and betel-nut accessories.
• "Trendsetters!" 1987 annual issue named Jain the "One To Watch In Stand Alone Vending Machine Supply and Service", he hasn't looked back since.
• Roger is the senior editor and owner of "Sticklers for Stickers", North America's premier magazine for sticker misprint enthusiasts since 1998.
• Fazz also teaches jazzerskating at her local home studio. Still accepting students for the 2011 term.
• You can buy Dr. Bioplanack's self-published book, "Taxonomy Ain't Just For Animals!' at Amazon.
• Janet also is an avid horse jumper, horse groomer, horsefeed custom mixologist, horse tack adjuster, and horse shoer. She loves to keep her work varied and cites Leonardo as a kindred spirit.

Christmas Family Letter 2010

Another year has passed and that means another torrid and spicy family drama wrapped in the infamous Owl Family Christmas Letter. Maybe not torrid, and perhaps not entirely spicy, but certainly without the more earthy odours familiar to any parent who's kid has switched to solid food.

Owl Jr. is now almost two. TWO! His soberness and infinite sadness continue unabated. I do so hope he doesn't reserve that look just for me (however well-founded it may be). He's starting to speak. Not in any way or form that might be recognizable as such, and not in any way that might be measured in relation to others of his age, unless others of his age call everything 'Ma-Ma', 'Da-Da', or “CHOO CHOO”; especially “Choo Choo”. He's very much into locomotives and rail centered conveyances. I suspect it's because we're not allowed to expose them to more interesting and edifying things, like ninjas, robots, ninja robots, and perhaps vikings. He's a happy camper, more or less, going from Eeyore to Tigger in about the space it takes you to go for his armpits. He looks somewhat like I did when I was his age: morose, serious, and entirely Japanese.

He's not a picky eater. He'll eat anything that has fallen from the tree or bush (veggies or fruits), or, paradoxically, lunchmeats (that unholy alliance of stomach lining, advanced food preservation chemistry, and cow lips). He's an enigma, a mystery.

He's very mobile now, going up and down stairs like handrails are a luxury (in our case, non-existent) and gravity not quite the enemy. But generally he's to be found under some table or chair, quiet, playing with one of his many trains, or pretending whatever he has in hand is a train (books, teddy-bears, day-old macaroni).

There's not much more to say about him, except that he's developed this nearly Woody The Woodpecker type laugh, except quieter, and perhaps slightly less maniacal.

Owlet is a whole four years and change now. Her favourite punctuation is the question mark, her favourite things in life being TV or bargaining. Usually the bargaining to get more TV, so perhaps we should just say her favourite thing is TV but then we might appear even more remiss as parents. She has a bright future as a SWAT negotiator or TV critic, perhaps some sort of amalgam of the two.

She's still firey, perhaps more so. She has an expressiveness that easily matches Owl Jr.' lack thereof, and several pretty hilarious misconceptions about pretty much anything. As a pre-schooler, that's her right. As her parents, it's our right to listen to her and not correct her. Mind you, it might be because some of these misconceptions were planted in there by us (chocolate makes you shrink) and are useful to keeping her healthy; if it happens to be entertaining as well, so be it.

When not asking questions and being just generally very firey, she'll attempt to start talking about something. She's incredibly adept at starting to talk about something. “Dadda, when I was a.. when I was... Dadda, when I was a... when... I.. a little gi... Dadda, dadda, I have to tell you something, when I was a little girl”. It's funny, written down like this. But at the end of a long day, it's like Chinese water torture if the water was replaced with mercury and the torture was forever.

She's discovered the joys of drawing sea monsters, robots, and aliens, curious how she got to drawing those. I certainly had nothing to do with it.

Knock-knock jokes are a huge favourite for her. And for us, because rarely does she actually understand how the first bit and the second bit come together and you end up with a masterpiece of absurdist humour, “Knock knock,.Who's there? Banana. Banana who? Aren't you glad I didn't say orange?” I choose to believe she's doing this on purpose. She does, however, know how to do the 'interrupting cow' knock knock joke to perfection, and well, her parents are cheap laughs.

She's noticing Molly a lot more now, trying to give her commands, making note that she's the “cutest dog in the whole wide world”. Molly continues to base her affection in direct proportion to how much meat Owlet has on her plate at the moment.

This is her last year of pre-school. Next term (2011 September) she starts 5 days a week kindergarten. I assume they need more time to get into the trickery fingerpainting, the lesser used crayons, and perhaps some neon Play-Doh™, I'm not sure.

Owl Jr. and Owlet continue to get along famously. When not ignoring each other or making each other laugh they are making each other scream (sometimes out of fun (I'm not sure how screaming has been associated with fun, for them, but there it is), mostly out of frustration). They do seem to care about each other a whole lot. Most disagreements arise because Owl Jr. can't see why he has to wait to play with something just because Owlet happens to be holding it. Owlet is invariably the put-upon party, since she's learned such things as 'sharing' and 'mine', while Owl Jr., noble savage that he is, is blissfully unfettered by such ideas.

They like making forts together, and sometimes just taking turns screaming and laughing at each other which is something that goes quickly from adorable to 'how can I cover my ears inconspicuously'.

Molly is still going to work. She's far too friendly to new people who come into our office but that keeps me from having to do small talk, which is a relief to all parties, let me tell you.

I'm still where I was last year. My rut is extraordinarily homey, thanks for asking.

At some point during the summer I took a weekend and went to NYC to see some friends. It was hot, it was fun, and I wasn't mugged above seven times. I'm told it's because I kept to all the touristy areas. The Chrysler Center, Central Park, and other land marks are just as you imagined them, as long as you add about thirty times more tourists and ensure it's hotter than a malfunctioning bathhouse in the third circle of Hell.

Mrs. Owl is still working part time at a long term care facility. The old people are still old, I'm told, the pleasantly confused are still both, as well. During the summer she took a weekend to go to Vegas with her friends. She's since asked me what a 'lien' is, and I don't know, and I assume it's not related to the Vegas trip. Or choose to believe.

And that's all the news that's fit to cram into a Christmas letter, in all its torrid, spicy glory.

Best wishes for you and yours, and may the new year find you as this year has hopefully found you: healthy and wealthy and wise.

Owl Family (Mrs. Owllle, Niteowl, Owlet, Owl Jr. & Molly) Christmas 2010

Magnadoodle

Owlet has this doodle pad, it works with magnets somehow. You use a magnetic pen and you draw stuff, and when you're done, you erase it with another magnet. Owlet enjoys making sea-monsters and aliens and robots and all sorts of things that I'm sure I had NO hand in putting in her head.

We've taken to doing these things collaboratively, each adding a bit more. I used to draw a bit in elementary, jet-packed leopards with flamethrowers, aardvarks with rocket launchers, the usual stuff. Ok, maybe not usual, maybe the product of a war-and-apparently-zoo-obsessed 10 year old, but, no letters to home, so it's all above board.

In any case, I enjoy these collaborative efforts: sea monsters look something like the Loch Ness, with added various eye-stalks, claws, flippers, jaws, and tentacles; robots are generally squares with other square like things added on, invariable jet wings, or something of the sort; aliens are more humanoid, lots of antennae, and, well, overlap alot with sea monsters.

So we'll add and add and tweak and at some point Owlet feels like the monster/alien/robot might be a bit cold and gives them a sweater, more or less blacking out a large part of the body. We know what's under there, and I guess that's what matters.

Anyhow, after veritably minutes of work, she'll just kinda shrug and pull the eraser across the board. I always catch myself being surprised. We toiled over that creation. Poured together our limited and infantile imagination into every tentacle and misplaced jet engine! I never cease to be even more impressed by how zen Owlet is about the whole enterprise. Complete detachment. Or maybe I"m just looking too far into these things.

She'll be drawing over-armed aardvarks in no time.

Oz

Went to a friend/coworkers place for a Christmas work dinner type thing. Good company, food, and the many, many kids didn't leave lasting scars on each other, so, a success in my book. There was a Secret Santa with all the excitement and bubbling enthusiasm that free loot tends to engender and the kids were relatively happy about what they got, or well-bred enough not to make obvious their bitter disappointment.

What was interesting was realizing how far I've come, well, how far anyone comes when they hit adulthood. Doubly so when you have kids and you see how excited they are about the whole thing and its stark contrast to your own mild enthusiasm.

For me it's become a thing to endure. Hopefully something I can make memorable for my brood. Christmas magic and all that. Christmas songs, eggnog, turkey, Christmas cookies and what have you. But I'm far beyond being in the moment, the suspended magic of it. Because, well, I have a bloody mortgage don't I? And responsibilities, and don't see how cool a train set is, and usually think of it in relation to how it fits the family budget.

So. It's sobering. Looking at them have their fun. It's great, it makes me smile, I enjoy seeing them enjoy themselves, but I'm never going to get that place they are now.

Course, I can eat as much Christmas chocolate as I want and drink gallons upon gallons of egg-nog without having to give the what for to anyone except perhaps my cardiologist or coroner, which was the Great Freedom I yearned for when i was a child. I could also walk into a Toys R Us and literally buy anything I wanted for myself, now that I don't find any of it remotely interesting. Odd, life.

The dinner was on an island, and we took a water taxi out there. A boat. It's about a 25 minute ride, going out there was choppy as heck, but fun in its own way. Coming back it was pretty smooth, except somewhere near the end where I was starting to calculate how long I could tread water in near freezing water while keeping my kids afloat. Not long.

One was asleep, one didn't even notice we were more pitching at 45 degree angles than merely hitting chop. I'm a worrisome sort, so maybe the other parents didn't think much of it, but if they did, and I imagine they did, it seems like another thing about adulthood. Being the wizard behind the curtain, aware of how all things works (gifts, Santa, possibility of drowning and hypothermia enroute to home), knowing about the bitter realities, worrying about the horrifying consequences, but making no note of it, shouldering it, keeping on.

Mind you, the roast beef was quite good.

It's Not That Impressive

It doesn't matter what sort of restaurant you go to: the chic one with glass everywhere and the vague impression that the interior designer might have had a short but meaningful fling with slight, well-manicured Japanese man; those BBQ places that aren't really so much BBQ as they are the end product of some highly efficient de-graded beef and chemical food delivery process that would put Mussolini's railway to shame; a small cafe at some long abandoned highway town where the main ingredient in all the food, even the fruit bowl (especially the fruit bowl) is pork fat; one of those chipper new 'hip' restaurants that's just a front for one of those older restaurant chains that you could have sworn had given up the ghost to marching progress and the vagaries of the every changing and fickle North American palate; Dennys.

It really doesn't matter.

There's always a cadre of servers who have, through choice or fate, made that job their life. For good. And for some reason it's the majority opinion of them that taking the order by memory is the bestest, most impressive way to get a big fat tip.

It's not.

It's the best fastest way to get me all anxiety laden, and ineveitably, smirky and self-righteous when you bring me the Moons Over My Hammy rather than the small Coke and apple pie I ordered. This might just be a confirmation bias, it may be that all these servers who shirk from a pen and paper like economists from basic ecological theory, are, in fact, better. But my anxiety of you messing up my order is, objectively, ruining my experience.

And I feel bad for them of course. Them and their mortification for having messed up my simple order of  the 'the bacon burger,that's it, just the bacon burger, fries', as if this thing doesn't happen every goddamn day. And how could it not? It's precisely because my orders are so boring, and of course, I naturally exude boring myself, that my order would be as memorable as a Democrat's stump speech.

And I'm sorry for that.

But please. For the love of my very severe craving for a BLT and not, say, a Cobb salad, please write down my damn order.

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.

Herculean Achievements And Other Small Miracles Part I

So, I knew it was coming. The Payback. After carousing in NYC with my fellow nerds for a few days, it was only fair that Mrs. Owl get a chance away from the kids, in Vegas. Yes, Vegas. It's lucky for me that both of us have the gambling habits of a Siberian ermine in hibernation, that is, none at all. Or it's lucky that she's hid her gambling addiction and the second mortgage we are now carrying. Either way, you know, I'm a happy camper.

She went down with some of her fellow mommy friends and they had a grand old time in heat that made NYC seem like a spacious Frigidaire. Killing heat. The kind of heat that's too hot for sand. But hey, who am I to judge if her idea of a good time is to gawp at the living proof, the soaring edifices proclaiming that often-repeated but rarely heeded motto "The House Always Wins"?

By all accounts she had a good time and whatnot and I haven't noticed any undue garnishing of my wages, so it was a success.

But enough about her. This is about me! Me taking care of a 1.5 year old and a 4 year old and a small, furry dog given to frequent, enviable naps.

On Saturday I take them to a free live kids performance of a cartoon. Yeah. I know. They dress up two poor schlubs in gigantic costumes of two popular cartoon characters. The schlubs thenv gesture as the pre-recorded audio shouts out their lines.

That's not where the suffering happens though. No, the suffering happens when you arrive an hour early for a 'free fun playtime' to see only a teeming mass of stoic parents and already squirming kids waiting as patiently as they can for an animated character to come to life on a stage that bears a striking resemblance to the loading pallets you usually see out back. Toddlers and babies waiting are like live rounds in a camp fire. It's a peace with the understanding that Things Aren't Going To Be Altogether Fun In A Little while. Unless the idea of unpredictable munitions excites you.

So we wait. I have Owlet on one knee, Owl Jr. on the other, and Molly in a doggie bag by my side, with a smaller bag on whatever side of me I have left to carry diapers, wet wipes, snacks and water. Closest parent-child combo? About 2 inches. On every side. It was brick wall and a bit of gothic architecture away from being the Cask of Amontillado.

Free kids shows are really something that parents should avoid if at all possible. The 10 dollars or whatever you woulda paid is well worth the peace of mind. What peace of mind you ask? Well, waiting an HOUR with small children, for one. Trying ones best to be polite yet not giving a single goddamn millimeter to any blasted parent and their snivelling toddler if they think they can hem in on your territory, for another.

Ahem.

You see? It doesn't bring the best out in parents. Well, it brings the best out in parents, in that all parents want to give their children the bestest, mostest, everythingest they want. At least til a certain age. I call this the Years When Civility Goes By The Wayside, or the Mad Maxx Years. For some parents, it's a very long time. Up until, say, 30. For others, it's until they're kids are in elementary. I have no doubt this dark and uncouth time will take the better part of my adult life.

It's unnerving and humiliating to find yourself in a tooth and nail fight, albeit surreptiously, albeit covertly with the grand airs of civility. All that high-minded idealistic youth is gone when you're defending your 2 square feet of rubber mat hoping against hope that one kid doesn't meltdown, the other kid doesn't evacuate his bowels, and your dog doesn't start whining because What THE HELL Are All These Kids Doign So Close To ME?!

We survive, there are minor meltdowns, small compromises, but Owlet gets to see the characters gesture about and I try not to imagine what impressive resumes those poor folks in the suits had to build to get there (3 years modern dance, 5 years ballet, 2 years tap, BA teaching, Primary School, CPR 1 and 2).

When we pile back into the car, my shirt is nearly soaked in sweat. The cold sweat of stress, the real sweat of carrying a 1.5 year old and a small dog and pack, the bonus sweat of being a desk jockey who's idea of exercise is moving the mouse enough so the screen saver doesn't engage.

Oh yes, the Payback has just begun.