Bugs, Hugs, Lugs, Fossils, and Jugs

Bugs

Another eventful, yet non-eventful week has passed.  It never seems like many things have happened, yet I take over 100 pictures each day, I mean, week.  After the Soap Box Derby, where I did reasonably well, we did some serious swimming and hanging out on the back porch.  Soon, a VERY large katydid joined us for 2-3 hours.  He was SOOOOO cool, climbing on us and posing for pics.  I'm  getting to where I like bugs.  I believe it is a Green Leaf Katydid.

Another fun bug I found today while doing laundry was this red-headed centipede.  Luckily, the pesticide that I spray for scorpions had almost killed it, but not before I suffered a mild stroke, peed my pants, and cried a little.  We've decided to start storing the heinous insects that we capture in jars so we can freak out our guests and cringe inside our own skins on a regular basis.  This one was 8-9 inches long and ugly as sin.  I hope its soul burns in hell, if it has one, as it took one of my remaining 9 lives away today.

Lugs

Summer is here and has been here or a few months.  Though the calendar only has us 4 days into summer, Central Texas is soooo ambitious that it's been blazing hot for months.  This is one of the many blessings we have here, besides enormous bugs, a variety of venomous serpents, high property taxes, and drought.  Oh My!!!

I'm trying to plan a kayak fishing and camping trip for this weekend.  Being a stay at home dad is glorious, and I'm happy for the opportunity to not have to punch a clock, but there is something to be said for water cooler talk, guy talk, dirt, fish, a little blood, campfire, and tomfoolery.  I got the Jeep ready for what might go down next weekend and I think she's ready.  She needs a name.  

Hugs, Fossils, Etc

My kid is cute.  There's just not much getting around it, nor is there anything else to say.  He just is.  He got my extra charming personality and Cristina's calm demeanor.  And he got a whole lotta cute.  And sweet.  And soft.  And sweet.  And a little bit of pink.  He needs to stay this sweet and predictable forever.  Though, he needs to walk and learn the business end of a shovel and a rake to lessen my burden.  Until then, all he has to do is be as sweet as he is and we won't sell him to the Chinese.

Friday, we headed to town for a big day at the Memorial Museum on UT's campus.  We looked at some dinosaur fossils with his big pal Fritz and his parents, Freddy and Kerston.

Afterward, we strolled down to La Condesa and ate with Jerry, Susan, and Kevin(and their friends who shall go name-forgotten).  Susan doesn't like Christopher, or babies in general, but I think that she will catch on.  :)   

 

Saturday, I went to San Antonio with the Boober(official nickname) to see my longtime friend, Shawn, and his family.  He has a beautiful daughter that turned 7 recently and we got to visit with his wife and younger daughter.  Here's the Boober with Shawn's sister, Erin.  Since Daddy got some new Wayfarers this week, the Boob got some new shades to match.  He seems to like wearing them, and he looks amazingly cool.

Jugs

Those who know me well know that I have a contempt for pools.  Particularly, pools that I have to own and maintain.  There is no such thing as a pool that is low maintenance or no maintenance, and like all else, planned obsolescence is a big part of pool ownership.  Things break, and when the do, they break in threes.  Or fours.  Or alls.  

However, the beautiful thing about a pool(besides skinny dipping after mowing and having another 3rd world problem to complain about) is seeing your beautiful family enjoy your hard work.  We had some friends come over today and enjoy my hard work and when they left, Cristina and Boober enjoyed my hard work.  I did, also.  Three or four times.    Hard work.  It was 106 today and it felt like approximately "bowels of hell and blowdryers."  Another shout out for Central Texas.  We thought about living in a blazing inferno on the bottom of a volcano, but thought it might be hotter here.  We were right(as always).  

When we moved to Louisiana about 1,000 years ago, people would say, among other things, "it's not the heat, it's the humidity."  I hated them for that.  This is why:  It is the heat.  It's just plain hot.  You are wrong.  It's so hot here that it makes me want to move to a cold place where I can complain about the cold winters.  Humidity is awful and it is your penance for sinning and having good football teams, but the heat is what it is.  It's hot. Dang hot.  99 is hot.  92 is hot.  106 is hot.  Humidity is just adding insult to injury.  And when people from TX complain about the humidity, I quickly refer them to the humidity in Louisiana, where they quickly quip about the heat/humidity conundrum, and subsequently, my head explodes into a flame of crawfish and chiptotle pepper confetti and I just want to shoot stuff like Yosemite Sam.  

But I digress.

Look how cute my kid and wife are!

 Yes.  This makes my sun rise and set each day!

 Boober is 150 shades lighter than I am, and as such, is much softer.

Stuff

It finally struck me today that I am a 32 year old man who is the father to a person.  A cute, pink-like person who needs me to tell him the stuff that he needs to know.  An impressionable person who needs me to let him know how things work.  That bugs are there and they are big.  Real big.  That the world is fairly nasty and how to navigate it with grace and style.  That you really need to wear black belts with black shoes, as well as brown, and so on.  That one nice suit is better than not.  That he'll regret the things that he never did far more than the things that he actually did.  To not tell him about politics, but rather ideas.  To tell him not how to do things, but, rather, how things ought to be.  To teach him that Philips heads are vastly superior to flats and that a owning a good set of sockets and ratchets are as important as the teachings of Plato and Shakespeare.  That knowing about the Allman Brothers will likely impact his life more than Mozart.  And how to do basic maintenance of a car.  By the time he can drive, under current law, it will be 2028.  By then cars will likely be run off of unicorn farts and tears of a lost generation, but hopefully, his old, tan, wrinkly dad will still have this old Jeep to teach him the ways of the old generation.  And maybe he can help me change out spark plug 4, which requires the removal of the AC compressor on that old Jeep.

Anyway, today I learned how to tie two new knots between my kayak and Jeep.  I also committed to learning to play banjo, but this soon shall pass, for I am busy with life and its responsibilities.  Maybe he will learn, as well as learning a second language, and I will languish and envy in my ineptitude and ignorance.  Even then, a parent can wallow in the pride that they, as their elders did, created something better and greater than themselves.  Until then, I will continue to change diapers, wipe puddles of drool, and dress him in overalls and Star Wars shirts that remind me of a simpler time when all I needed was someone to do these things for me!

Keep Moving

There has been a simple message that keeps popping up in my day-to-day routine, "Keep Moving".  Traffic signs, polite customer service messages at retailers, etc, and one day it recently hit home for me.  Kids constantly keep moving and learning.  Almost every day.  They do it, and that is their nature.  The human nature.  We adults tend to stop and dig a deep rut and blame time.  But it seems that you don't find time to do the things you really need to do, you make the time.  You have to make the time to keep moving, like the crazy critter currently in my gutter as I type who is striving to reach it to my roof to make me keep moving.  To kill more scary stuff.

It's true, you have to keep moving.  To keep moving in life, love, work, etc, etc, etc, and to keep growing.  I don't sit down, ever, unless I'm typing, and even then, I'm often standing.  But it's true.  Move.  Do stuff.  Cancel your cable, make time to do the stuff that makes life worth living.  This saying taunts me, and I've been thinking about tattooing this on my forearm so that every time I waste the time it took to do something worthwhile, I am visually reminded to keep moving.  Keep Moving.  I was hoping to find a correlation to this with my favorite movie, A River Runs Through it, but alas, there may be none.  

Off to the races!

Back to the Suture won last night! I was nervous because last year I wrecked my first race. We smoked the Marble Falls Police Department.

Today, the team I was up against had mechanical issues with their car so I won by default! Woot woot! That advanced me to the quarterfinals, where I lost. We were eating sushi when Penny called me and told me
I was up next! After a brisk sprint, I got defeated by the Ace Hardware team. They have fast cars!!!

Christopher is being a good sport considering the heat. He's learning how to fit in with us and our go go go lifestyle. Good for him, good for us!

Here's the video from the race.

More races tonight, maybe I can win the loser bracket!

Another Fun Weekend Ahead!!!!

Are you telling me that you built a time machine?  Out of a Delorean?  Out of a rusty go cart you bought cheap from a really drunk old Mexican man in Hutto?

Fact.  All of that is true.  This weekend is the 3rd Annual Marble Falls Soapbox Derby.  My car is ready to go.  Big thanks to my dad for helping me work on it and to my mom for watching The Boy while we were working on it.  And as always, thanks to my lovely wife for bankrolling all of the miscellaneous parts and paints and pieces that it takes to build something of this magnitude.  And for letting me waste a lot of time on this.  And for painting my license plate.

Video walkaround of the car

All the way, From Bourbon Street to Esplanade, they sashay by, they sashay by...

Tara and Nick Rodrigue, the newest newlyweds we know are coming to meet The Boy and support my amateur racing career.  We generally have a pretty good time when we all get together.  They are from Chalmette, LA,  which is a census-designated place in the parish seat of St Bernard Parish, which is affectionately and simply known as...."Tha Parish, brah".  It's next to New Orleans, to da east.

Oh Yeah, the Boy!!!!

This kid is great.  Not only is he made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails, but he's made of sugar and spice and everything nice.  And lots and lots of farts, I mean, like a champ.  You can hear it from behind closed doors.  It's likely something that he inherited from his mom, while his mild-mannered demeanor and general laid-backtitude came from me.  

After a milk, we've been trying to get him to teetee on his little potty seat.  Some people can train their kids from day 1 to pee on command like a seeing eye dog.  While we aren't doing this full time, it's good practice to get him used to peeing and pooing in something other than a diaper.  I don't see how people have time to constantly try to get their baby to do this, especially considering he can't walk or do anything very cool yet.  Maybe they just don't do much else.  Cristina and I, on the other hand, are busier than a couple of one-legged men in a butt-kicking contest.  Writing this blog was the first time I've sat down today since I got up at 4:30AM.  

We joke that Ginger tries to offer him advice, but since she is fairly ignorant, her advice is usually off.  She whispers things such as "Don't eat the cold snow."  "Look one way before darting across the road with reckless disregard."  "Always jump into the lake without testing depth."  "Two birds in the bush are better than one in the mouth."  "What goes up doesn't always come down....for instance frisbees that got lost in trees 2 years ago.  Always go look for them."  Stuff like that.

"This knuckle sandwich comes with an extra serving of 'get away from my milk', Dad ".

Mom and Christopher like to play, rest, and relax on her days off and watch me run around in circles cleaning, maintaining, fixing, painting, scraping paint off , building, etc, etc, etc.  I think I already posted this pic, but it's so cute.  Cristina has him dressed up like an elderly Canadian tourist at any beach in Central America.  

They help each other nap.

Staying home with him is great and all, but you can't get much done when you have one of these people strapped to your front.  I feel the same way.

But, it's worth it to look down and see this.

For you parents out there, you know what it's like to get excited about every little thing that these kids do.  He's making lots of noises now(besides belches and farts) and is blowing raspberries.  I call it motorboating.  It's crazy(and cliche) how fast they grow up.  Just three months ago, he was a lump of cells that didn't do anything.  Now, he doesn't do much, but he likes to stand and will lift himself up if you pull his hands up slightly.  He also will follow you around(tracking?) the room as you move.  He also smiles quite a bit, and is enjoying a great deal of tomfoolery.  A dab of peekaboo, some Superman flying, walking(with my help) like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters, a fair amount of motorboating on the belly, riding Ginger, etc.

Gotta go get mentally prepared for the race.  That, and pack my first aid kit.

Not a lot has happened since I last posted.  Well, sort of.  We had our pool area resurfaced and painted.  It was cracking and generally looked like junk.  It looks 10X better.  As always, we had an issue while getting this done.  There was a small leak in a seam where the hot tub waterfalls into the pool and the surface was wet, therefore the crew couldn't retexture that spot.  My parents helped me add this marine epoxy called PC-11.  You can add it underwater or on wet or dry surfaces.  It's amazing stuff and it worked!  Anything on a pool costs at least $1,000 to repair and this was fixed for about $6.  Not bad.  Here's the result:

This weekend is the 3rd Annual Marble Falls Adult Soap Box Derby.   Last year, my entry named Haulin' Bass, won the Art Award.  The car was pretty poor, but I spent very little time on the engineering portion and way too much on the art portion.

Haulin' Bass

Well, Haulin' Bass was cool but it was a bad car.  I was the first race and I lost control and wrecked.  It was a good way to kick off the races, but it was a bust for my race car.  This year, I decided to start with a go cart frame so I wouldn't have to mess with designing steering spindles, axles, etc, etc.  I also have a proper seat instead of a piece of plywood.....  I bought an old go cart for CHEAP and disassembled it.  I gave the motor away and stripped, primed, and repainted the frame.  Also, I took off the old live axle and made a fixed axle out of some huge 5/8 bolts and nylon lock nuts.  It works...so far. :)

I had a rolling chassis with a homemade brake as of last week.  My parents came to town and gave me some baby relief while Mom was at work so I could get the car finished.  We made a lot of progress by the time they left, but I still have a ways to go as far as decorating it.  

Saturday, for my birthday, Cristina and I went to a Cottage Renovation Seminar put on by Brad Kittel, owner and head guru at Tiny Texas Houses and Pure Salvage Living Center.   We are thinking of buying some rent homes in Burnet and Marble Falls to try to diversify our investments and give me a job.  I don't want to call it "flipping houses", because that's become such a TV term, but there are a lot of post-war homes in Burnet County that could use some love and there is a market for them.  I think a lot of our generation, as well as the older ones, are unsatisfied with cookie-cutter homes made out of wood from Chile that is soaked in pesticides, insulation that is soaked with flame retardants, vinyl windows that outgas, and fixtures made in China...parts that are all part of planned obsolescence.  Basically, throwaway homes.  My plan is to restore a home(or many), rent it out until the market is right or until I can't stand dealing with it, and sell it to someone who appreciates it.  Maybe also make some money by owner-financing the sale and getting a guaranteed return, as opposed to gambling in a stock market that rises and falls like the temperature.  

Here's Brad.  Cristina thinks that this is what I will look like in 20 years.  He builds and restores "old" homes using old hardwoods from salvage projects.  We really liked what he had to say about construction, politics, human nature, bureaucracies, and life.  He's a neat guy who not only marches to the beat of a different drum, but he probably made the drum himself out of an old board and a goatskin he found on the side of the road.  He really got us thinking about our next house and what we want to do with it.  We have some pretty big and radical ideas!!!

We were gone for about 13 hours Saturday, which is the longest I have EVER been away from Chris.  Cristina has gone as long without seeing him, but only due to work.  I missed him so much, but it was easier knowing that he was with his grandparents, Ace and Skeeter.  They had a big ol' time playing together, as evidenced by these videos.  

Thanks to cousins Kamri and Kayla for the cute shortalls and polo!!

I'm making Cristina use the pool more, not only because she had to have it, but because I have had to do sooooo much work on it.  I'm sure pools are fun on the user end, but there is some poor schmuck that is stuck dealing with the realities of it all.  That poor schmuck is me.  Actually, that poor schmuck was me for a summer in high school, for two years in college, and for the 2.25 years we've lived here.  If it were up to me, the pool would be drained, filled with dirt, and we'd have a nice vegetable garden.  There is a free lake down the street that we can swim in when it is hot!

The pool feels amazing and the days are HOT.  These are the 3 months that I actually look at the pool and smile rather than grit my teeth and come back inside and search the internet for dynamite to raze it.  :)

Mom got the boy a life vest and a cute little sun proof bodysuit that protects his pink skin without having to slather him with sunscreen, thus making him glow white and purple!!!!  

He also has his floating baby pontoon boat, which is starting to fit him better.  He rides low in it, so we made a booster seat for him with a pool noodle.  It's a prototype, we are making adjustments as needed.

That's all we have today, I'll post more pics of Ace, Skeeter, and Christopher tonight!

It's been an All-American weekend.

Saturday, Cristina went to see Les Miserables with her girlfriends. Christopher hung out with Parker, Chad, and myself in the meantime. Parker and Chris watched Elmo together and discussed the bond market. Yogurt melts were enjoyed by some, while others dined on breast milk.

Sunday, we went on a wild adventure down to the beach at Point Venture with Fritz, Freddy, and Kerston. The Jeep got to flex its muscle a bit, as we needed it to set up camp out on the sand. The Jeep has proven its worth tenfold already. The Powerpoint presentation proving this is forthcoming. It was fun to go cruising, he loves getting his hair tousled in the wind. We ate some Cajun food upon departure and called it a night.

Today we went to a baseball game at the Dell Diamond. Christopher got to hang with Fritz again, and we got to see civilization again. It was also $1 hotdog night and daddy got his fill
of the vile things. Not sure who won, but the company was good.

Chris has been smiling and rolling over this week, he surprises us every day. Soon he will get his own apartment and a Honda sedan so we can get back to normal. He's a pretty cool customer, no matter where we go, what we do, or how we get there, he's fine with it. He's really into his hands and all of the mischief that comes with those hands.

He and Ginger have started bonding, which is a treat to witness. She is green with envy due to his neediness and our willingness to respond. Mrs. Weenie is still on the fence with the child, but after all
of this time, we don't expect her to get on board with anything new. Give it a year and they will be a wolf pack.   If not, we will work on their respective issues regarding subordination and correct them as they arise.

That's all,
Jeff

"I'm going to drive a manual transmission next week!  After I stop sucking my thumb."

"Hey mom, can I have a sandwich?  Extra mayo, double jalapenos, and don't talk when you get in here, because daddy and I are watching the McLaughlin Group."

"Well, the Hollows Pool was nice.  Who knew there would be so many people with milk out there?"

"I think I'm going to get a better look at this hippo.  Perhaps if I hug and suck on his face I'll be able to more closely ascertain what his agenda might be."

"Daddy, why is this grass so much greener than yours????"

"Mommy is a good mommy."

"As I get older, I wear grownup clothing.  Daddy got me a jock strap, but I just use 2 inches of athletic tape to secure myself, if needed."