Nooccar

Mama went out

Friday night as I tried to pry my eyes open to read final drafts, Donna finished a 27 page paper for her graduate course. A weight had been lifted, and she decided she and Kacie were headed out Saturday night, which meant Daddy got to stay home with Claire. I originally thought that she and I would do something, go somewhere. Mini golfing? Dinner? But then I didn't really care. She was fine with her markers, and I had a dog fur covered floor. I couldn't watch any Olympics since Donna wasn't there, so I worked on the computer a little. Then I noticed Mimi was online and if I could occupy Claire, I could clean and vacuum the living room. We rang her up on Skype (this is the first generation of who uses SKYPE as a verb!!!). Mimi, even on Skype, is a good babysitter. The three of us talked, played, and hung out on Skype for two hours I did get the room cleaned while talking, and Claire enjoyed seeing Mimi since everyone is in the east.

It was time for bed, and a little later than I am sure Mama wanted us awake (well, I mean Claire awake. Mama, I am sure, would've loved me to stay up to clean the bedroom and do all the dishes, too). As I said goodnight to Mimi, Claire grabbed the nail polish bag and begged me to do her nails. I told her to wait until tomorrow for Mama, but then I thought "what the hell!?". I told Claire to pick a color as my mother didn't know what to make of what I was about to do. I've not painted anyone's nails since I did my own years ago, before going to mother-in-law's house (yeah, she didn't like it! Did I mention I used black?). Anyway, so Claire picks "poppy", and I proceed to do her nails. I then did her toes, while Mimi tried to teach Claire what "manicure" and "pedicure" meant. I also learned that Claire got her thick cuticles from my great matriarchal grandmother. So we got the nails done, dried them, only freaked our once when Claire flipped her hands upside down on my dark carpet, said goodnight to Mimi and headed to bed.

A minute after we were in bed, Claire announced that her mother was home. I didn't hear anything and told her to stay in bed, but suddenly the bedroom door opened. She was home and surprised Claire was up. She was relatively tickled pink....errrr poppy.... that Claire's nails were done. The two of them headed out to the livingroom while I rolled into lala land.

S-T-O-P

The other day Donna and I were trying to put Claire to sleep, but she kept rolling, kicking, wanting out. As parents have done for eons, we began to spell over Claire's head because we needed to communicate without her knowing. I spelled one thing, Donna responded by spelling another. This went back and forth as we tried to hold our child in bed and get her to relax. Claire was getting madder and madder that we were "talking" over her head.

Finally, she screamed S! T! O! P! Spelled that right out. Little show off.

Happy Anniversary

Fourteen years ago this summer Donna and I began dating, and after about 6 years of mostly on again with a little off again, we married on August 6, 2000. It was the day of the largest rain storm in over a century in Pittsburgh, and it was a fantastic day for us. So many highs. That was 8 years ago, and what I realized about the number was that it does in fact represent infinity. Foreverness. Couples have theirs ups and their downs, and some times are rockier than others, but if it's meant to be then YOU both will make it be. Claire's day care woman said her anniversary with her husband is next week. She said they've been married for FORTY years. FORTY! His comment was yes, some good, some bad. Yes, they are. This is life, and it happens. I like to think that the infinity symbol derived from the same early rudimentary symbols as the number 8 represent how long I plan to continue to make things work, because it's worth it. All the downs have ups for us. They do, and when we married, we said I DO, and we still do.

Claire drawing

My mother was an artist when she was younger. For years I had a sculpture she made in high school, I remember paintings she use to do, and in the '70s she use to airbrush Harley gas tanks (yes, for motorcycles. yes, my mother). Her artistry rubbed off on me, albeit my medium of choice is oils. I love the way I can mix the colors on the canvas and create whatever's in mind. I am unsurprised that Claire's got the same flair. Don't get me wrong her Mama's got some, too, but Claire's beginning young. Yeah, I know, all kids play with crayons and such, but there's something a bit different with how Claire does her art. Something more familiar like watching yourself from outside your body far far ago.

Last week we were in my classroom, and Claire drew across my entire board as high as she could reach. She then turned to me and asked how to spell her friend Eli's name. I told her, and she proceeded to write "Claire" and then "Eli". I even love the little stick man in between the two. This amazes me. She's three, folks. I don't remember doing quite this well in '77.

Tech Week: Vizio 42" 1080P

Today hell froze over. It's been coming for sometime, but it officially froze today. Yep... BRR!!! Got up this morning and headed over to Cracker's Breakfast Cafe with Claire & Donna. It was good as always, and if you live in Arizona, you gotta try Cracker's. But that was only chilly. It got downright frozen when the three of us headed to Costco afterwards. The other evening Donna and Claire were home alone and the television picture went black. I remind her daily that it wasn't my fault since I wasn't home, so she couldn't say I did it on purpose. I checked out a couple of websites and called Toshiba, but everyone pretty much said we were SOL.

The next day Claire & I trudged off to CostCo because we already knew we were buying there, and we took inventory. The Vizio 42" 1080P jumped out at me, and I was pretty comfortable with that; the price was also exactly what I expected. My next problem was figuring out how it would fit in my entertainment center. We got this beast when we got married, spent an arm and a leg, and Donna isn't giving it up. So I deferred to Terrie, the most handy person I have around. See, the problem was that our entertainment center is 37" wide, and all of these new televisions are all too large. I wasn't about to buy a smaller television, and I knew I was getting 1080P no matter what. Terrie said, "well, why don't you just cut windows in each side?" This idea was brilliant!

Sunday morning we headed off to CostCo, and I showed Donna the television. She suggested the 37", but it was only a 720P so we grabbed the Vizio Claire and I picked out, got some cables, a power surge and groceries. I came home, moved the old CRT beast out of the cabinet, cleaned stuff off the shelves that could break, and then we called Terrie. She had just gotten home from the cabin and promised she'd be over in a few hours. I ran around and did other work, while we waited.

When she arrived, she dumped her tools in the living room and we got to work. We measured out window holes for the sides of the television, and then got out the drill. We used a jigsaw to cut the holes out, and then a sander to take care of the jagged edges. Afterward, we cracked open the box and fit the television into the center. I clicked it on and it was good. Later we got the sound hooked up, and I popped in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. WOW! What a beauty! Gotta call Cox about an HD box tomorrow now.

Payson: Tonto Natural Bridge

My inlaws ended up in Arizona in the hottest part of the year, but for some reason it was unseasonably muggy while they were here. Although the monsoons arrived as soon as they left in the beginning of July, I needed to get the heck out of the valley. I emailed our friends who have a cabin up in Payson, AZ and asked them to rescue us from this abysmal hell of the Sonoran Desert. A day later I got a call that they'd be at the cabin for a week and we were more than welcome to drive up for a couple of days. Donna was amenable to this, so last Saturday we threw our stuff in the car, dropped the extra key with the neighbor to watch the dog, and drove north. Payson is really only a 90 minute drive from our house, and they've worked on bettering the Beeline Highway which is a direct shot from here to there. On the road, I texted a friend who loves to ride her hog up and down this highway on weekends and asked what we should see while there. She suggested I dragged the fam to the Tonto Natural Bridge; I've never heard of it, so I mentioned it to Donna and filed it away.

We decided to just drive up over night. Claire for two days beforehand wouldn't stop talking about seeing her friend Eli. Eli's going to be 5 this August, and so he's about 1 1/2 years older than her. They're good friends, and at home, his parents are like our SW family. The weather is the pines was a mild low 70s and the beers were ice cold. Loved it. Good company and drinks. We sat around, snacking, and talking. Those two played and played. Eli's little sister Riely just stood in her saucer toy and frowned (her favorite thing to do at 13 months old).

That night we had a huge storm. We sat inside playing games and watching it rain. Claire and Eli were relegated to the second floor where there's a television with kid's movies. They eventually fell asleep and were put to bed, and we played Sequence and Facts in Five until the wee hours.

I had asked Terri if the Bridge was cool, and she said it was nearby and worth seeing, so we headed up there the next morning after saying our goodbyes and shooting a cool video of Claire & Eli hugging goodbye.

Tonto Natural Bridge is an ancient geological creation that essentially eroded through several layers of various rocks until there's a natural bridge that's just under 200 feet tall. Terri said which trails to take and what would be easier to do with Claire. When we got there, we were confused. We hit one trail and saw some cool waterfall, but we wanted the Big Kahuna. We took another trail down and it looked a little steep. Donna had her purse shoved in a bag with some snacks and water. I wasn't carrying much because I still had sutures in my chest. Claire's new Merrel hiking boots got a work out as we made our way down the side of what amounted to a cliff. We came around a bend, and down the creek bed was the bridge. We made our way as carefully as possible down to the bridge and under it. Up ahead we saw what looked like ants, but were people down where we were headed. I felt like a pack mule going down the Canyon.


We made our way over rocks, slippery with wear. We slipped into Pine Creek water and had a helluva good time. We made it down to the bottom, and a beautiful waterfall fell down under the bridge. We had a short snack, shot some more video and pics, and walked back up the easy way. The way I bet Terri had suggested we walk down.







After our adventure, we headed back down to Payson and tried to beat the storm down to the valley. We lost that battle and drove precariously down the Beeline in the torrential downpours with everyone else who had the same ideas as us. About 30 miles north of Fountain Hills all traffic stopped. Someone had rolled a pickup into the ditch. The truck blew up, and when we finally made it the two miles to where the truck lay (after 90 minutes of waiting!) the rubber of the tires had completely melted off.

Even though the driver had a terrible weekend, we enjoyed our time with our friends and our adventure hiking with 14 stitches, a three year old, and two cameras.

Eli & Claire

Donna, Claire and I went to Angelika & Terri's cabin in Payson this weekend. Eli, their 4 1/2 year old, who adores my daughter was so excited to have a sleep over. We enjoyed our visit immensely, and I will write at length later, but I wanted to share the video I shot of them saying good bye when we left today.

Claire's first movie

Last week my father-in-law and I braved the impossible. No we didn't scale Kilimanjaro or swim with Makos off the Great Barrier Reef. We decided to take Claire to the movies, and we even decided to leave the women at home. I know. I know. This is a scary concept for two men and a three year old girl. But you know what? I lived to write about it.

She has had a strange affinity for Horton Hears a Who ever since she had Horton pancakes for her birthday in April, so we figured she'd sit through this one without any problem. Boy was I wrong.

Fortunately the film was playing at the dollar theatre (why do we all still call it that when it's like $3 dollars now?) so if we missed part of the movie, we'd live. The opening credits proved that the theatre obviously needed to charge us even more to replace the sound system and screens. They were terrible, but hey, preschoolers don't care! Claire loudly announced that she had to go potty early on, and she demanded that Papa take her. So they trudged up the aisle around all the other parents and kids. I continued to watch the giant jungle elephant (what's an elephant doing in the jungle?) as he found a microcosm society and a fleck of who knows what. It was mildly amusing, and Big Sky made it so it couldn't be too bad.

Claire came back. She sat a nanosecond, tried to stand up to walk around, wanted to shove past us (we were deliberately on either side of her), and eventually announced that she was hungry! Yes, ladies and gents, the exclamation point is hers, not mine. I offered to run out and find her a pretzel, but I would've rather watched the film. My father-in-law jumped up, grabbed,  and took her instead.

They eventually came back with a huge pretzel that felt a little crunchy to me as I held it for her. She kept grabbing at it, and part of it ended up on the floor as the kangaroo employed a giant silly vodka swilling vulture to kill the elephant, eat the speck (dirt?), and the vomit it up. (Don't ask).

As the climax rolled up towards the end of the movie (no the vulture does not succeed), Claire announced that she was going home. She immediately stood up with full disregard for all of us who just had to find out if all the whos in Whoville would ever have faith in their goofy, too-much-to-live-up-too, virile (for some reason the dude had like 99 daughters, and I can barely handle one!) mayor. (They do! Hey it's Dr Seuss for ya!) My father-in-law who I knew would be happier at home watching the golf channel than this film, took Claire's hand (looking relieved for an excuse to get out of there), and pulled her into the lobby. I watched the end of the film, and made my way out to the lobby where my kid was playing DDR and Guitar Hero.

Go Figure.

Mr. Mole ain't no one's friend

I suppose all of us are mortal. When I was 12 I began getting sick, to the point where I could not eat without vomiting. No, it's not the most exciting thing to discuss, but that's me. My doctor swore I had Leukemia (because my iron was so damn low), and they wanted to admit me to the hospital immediately. I obviously didn't have Leukemia because that was 22 years ago, and I'm still here. I also didn't have health insurance (Dad's self employed and mom was a stay-at-homer).

Needless to say I went home that day, and my mother went straight to college to get a degree. My sister was 6 at the time, so it wasn't like there were little ones at home anymore. They diagnosed me with Crohn's Disease later that fall and thus began my life with illness. Medical technology and age has been good to me over the years, but I truly am defined by illness.

I never really even understood the mortality of my parents until my father had a heart attack. I cried and cried and cried. I was already living in Arizona at the time and my perspective on time is a pendulum. I always either, A) believe I have all the time in the world to be with him, or B) want to drive back "home" now and stay put.

In the last week both my father and I have had chunks of skin and flesh cut from our bodies. Dad had some sort of carcinogen cut from his forehead, and I joke with my mother than he probably looks like Harry Potter now. I've had moles since I've been in AZ (and no it has nothing to do with the sun, since I don't get that much), and I was finally referred to a dermatologist. Today she cut the largest mole from the area that I can only refer to as my "boob". Yes, I am not skinny. Yes, I've got man boobs. Deal with it. Dad does too. So this lady's there cutting away at a large mole (think pencil eraser diameter and go a little larger) from my boob while we're making small talk. Don't quite remember the discussion. But it reminded me of James Morrow's book Towing Jehovah when God fell into the ocean, dead. They towed his body to the Arctic so he didn't decompose, but along the way the people got hungry, so they cut large chunks from his chest (talk about communion!). This is how I felt (no I don't have a God complex.... atleast I doubt it) today in the doctor's office.

I just wish I had a camera with me!

Claire writes her name!

ClaireName1, originally uploaded by nooccar.

Earlier today we were getting an x-ray of Claire's hips, and while we waited Claire wanted to color a picture. Part way through coloring I explained that perhaps she would want to give Mama the picture for her new desk at work. Claire excitedly agreed and proceeded to color the picture carefully withing the lines.

As she was finishing the picture, I went to take it so we could put it away for Mama. She quickly told me that she wasn't done. She needed to put her name on it! I agreed and was going to help her write her name like all parents do for the little ones, but she demanded that I not help her. Wouldn't you know? She proceeded to write her entire name across the bottom BY HERSELF! I had tears in my eyes by the time she wrote her "E", and then she demanded she be allowed to write her name again across the top. She did it quickly and was smiling ear to ear.

I just dropped to my knee, tears in my eyes, hugging my 3 year old daughter who suddenly can writer her whole first name, clear as day, all by herself.