Baseball and the mysteries of children

Backyard baseball
Backyard baseball

I’m still at the “introduce your children to every possible hobby” phase of parenting – at least with my firstborn. There are so many wonderful and rewarding hobbies to be had, and so many of them are picked up as young children. Thane, my sweet little four year old, is already getting a little long in the tooth to ever be an ice skater or Olympic gymnast.

Anyway, you all remember me talking about sending Grey to basketball during the winter. Both boys have been doing aikido since their fourth birthday – sadly not past this summer. But I’ve also signed Grey up for: dance classes (the recital led the the worst picture ever and an intense desire never to go to a dance recital again, on my part), cooking classes, science classes, swim classes, basketball, soccer, guitar lessons and one single piano lesson.

Quite possibly the worst picture ever
Quite possibly the worst picture ever

No way no how is he doing anything that involves rink times on MY watch. So in an attempt to try yet one more sporty thingy, I signed him up this spring for a three day baseball skills camp. His teacher at school said that team sports might help him feel more like a participant instead of an onlooker at recess (I hated to let her know that reading at recess is a dominant trait and one that was passed down to Grey on both genetic lines – but I took her point). So in a fit of ambition, when a thick packet of summer camp sporty type things came home sometime mid spring I found one that was happening while my mother-in-law was here and blithely signed him up.

And forgot about it for a few months.

Now, for those of you who have not met him, Grey is a pretty sensitive guy. He dislikes physical pain and discomfort (as opposed to my youngest child who would probably keep on playing through broken bones if he was having fun). He really hates having people make fun of him. And periodically he has been known to display a bit of a persecution complex. These traits were particularly pronounced towards the end of school, so I was feeling particularly uneasy about this “Baseball skills camp” I had signed him up for.

I pulled back out the Xeroxed form, so terse. Here I was, handing my was-a-first-grader-yesterday over to this camp, and for requirements it said: “Bring a baseball glove, shoes or cleats and a refillable water bottle.” That’s it. What about lunch? I read the text at top “Blah blah blah Varsity baseball coach blah blah learn skills in small group settings with focused coaching blah blah six to twelve years old”.

Holy valhalla. What had I signed my kid up for? I imaged his last few complaints in the ears of the High School Varsity Baseball coach. And he’d be about the littlest kid there! He wouldn’t even get a day to chillax between school and baseball! And he’d never played baseball before! I took him to Target to pick out his glove.

“Mom, this glove is too tight! Mom, this one pinches! None of these (23 options of) gloves is going to fit my hands. My hands are a size 3.* These are all the wrong size! Mom, I don’t think I should do baseball tomorrow.”

Ah. Hm. There we had it. I almost agreed with him. Instead, I rang the help button and got the much-aggrieved-Target-guy (who had already not-sold me a stool that was displayed but not for sale) to size Grey up for a baseball glove. But I wondered… was it the stupidest idea ever to send my kid to a three day, five hour, all guy, all skills baseball camp in the sweltering heat when most of the kids there would truly be working on their swing or their fastball? Oh, did I mention not a single one of his friends was going?

I sent him anyway, counting on having my mother-in-law a mile away. I can’t say I didn’t spend the entire day waiting for the “Come pick your son up” call. But soon it was a quarter to two. It so happened I could pick him up that day, so not able to wait any longer I drove to the high school and after some mystery managed to locate my son. There he was, playing catch with one of the “assistant coaches” (read: members of the varsity baseball team).

“How did it go?”

“Great! I had a great time. I want to do this again next year! Hey, mom, I promised coach I’d clean up. Let me finish getting the gear.”

And that’s how it went, for three days. The second day, he was just coming in from the field as I drove up. One of the other kids sort of pushed him as he was going into the dugout, in that ambiguous way that boys have. Oh no, I thought. Is Grey stomping off the field? No, his team was just batting. He sat on the bench next to the other kids, easy in their company, until it was his turn. He was the last batter. He stepped up to the plate. Swing and miss. Swing and miss. Foul ball. (And this is the kind of baseball where three strikes actually means you’re out and you better go sit down.) Then he hit a grounder to first base and ran it out hard. He grabbed his gear and came out grinning.

The moment of the ground out
The moment of the ground out

“I hit a single and a triple, mom!”

Well, I’ll be. He loved it. He wants to go back next year. He did three days of hard work, hard listening, hard skills. Things he didn’t know with people he doesn’t know. And there was ZERO whining. (This from a kid who will say he’s too tiiiiiiired to go alllll the way to the bathroom to brush his teeth and can’t he skip it for juuuust one night?)

I will say that this taught me a lot. Obviously, I had underestimated Grey badly when I stood in Target and wondered if I should even attempt this. It makes me wonder if his sensitivity might be because things are not challenging enough for him – if when presented with something that’s truly hard he revels and steps up. Maybe it’s the things that are repetitive and predictable that he finds difficult. Or maybe I should just stop stereotyping bald, muscular varsity baseball coaches as not in tune with the emotional needs of their pint-sized charges.

Whatever it was, I am so very glad that we tried this experiment. I don’t know if baseball will be Grey’s “thing” (I wouldn’t mind!). T-ball is unfortunately a really awful scheduling match for working parents, but if that is what he comes to love, I’ll make it happen. But I’m so grateful for three days that helped me see how strong and capable my rising-second-grader really is.

Fire Spotter

I read an article about the inevitable demise and diminution Fire Lookouts, and watched one of my dreams go from unlikely to never-going-to-happen. I have a few daydreams like this one – that required my life to take a different path in order to ever happen. See also: being a Starbucks barista*.

High Rock Lookout from the access road

But the fire lookout was one of my favorite daydream jobs. I imagined getting out of school and being shiftless for a while and landing a job for a summer as a firespotter. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for old codgers, and some of my favorite old codger stories were from firespotters from the mid century. They’d talk about backpacking in all their supplies to their remote, mountain-top eeries. There’s quiet up there, and nothing you don’t bring in yourself on your own back over miles of so-so trail. The views are, by definition, amazing. Fire lookouts have the best views possible, the better to spot tell tale tracks of white or gray where none should belong. A lookout would develop an intimate and loving knowledge of that masterful view… which valleys held mist until midmorning, the way the clouds curled over the peaks and ran like a waterfall down the other side. The lookout would know topography of their charge in full-moonlit nights, and would experience true darkness when the faint lights of their own tower were off and the clouds cut off starlight.

A firespotter’s job would be to look out the window, intermixed with the great and healthy labors of keeping one’s self fed. I imagined a life of good exercise, quietness, mastery, importance. And of course, the novel, the journal, the poetry. With so much space and so much quietness, surely my pace would slow. Surely I would coax out those words, slow-crafted, home-brewed, that would make of me an author. Surely with the racing clouds as my muse and the high mountains as my foundation I could find the words to paint my beloved Northwest, my new Albion, as richly as those before me painted the fields of England, the moors of Scotland. The fir, Oregon grape and madrona would take their right place in my mythology next to the oak and the ash and the bonny ivy tree. I even had the spot picked out – I would man High Rock.

The last time I was at High Rock – 1998. That needs to change.

Sunny weekends would bring hiking visitors – a chance to catch up with people. I imagined evenings, with the long slow gloaming of high places keeping my mountain lit to the last, with the mercury notes of my silvered trumpet sliding down the hill and traveling for miles across my beloved countryside.

Of course, the summer would end, or the year would end, and I would return to the fast world of busy humanity renewed, written and sure of myself. Then I would build a life (much like the one I have now), only with that summer of solitude behind me.

Of course, that didn’t happen. I got a job before I graduated. I married two short months after I was handed my diploma. I have never been shiftless and footloose. And now they are closing the mountains to human eyes, counting on the more reliable satellites and planes and motorists with cell phones instead of the lonely mountain spotter. I haven’t been able to even so much as backpack in a National Park for years; the closest I ever got to that kind of solitude.

Would I trade my husband, my children, my career, my home and my life to be a fire spotter? Um, no. I’m quite sure my vision was lacking in a few key details. (I mean, I’m an extrovert. How many days before I went completely crazy?! Two?) The mid thirties are an age though where you start acknowledging some lives you will never lead, and that idyllic summer is one of them.

What about you? What adventures did you always wait for just the right moment in life to invite you to partake in? What daydreams have passed irretrievably from you? Would you have wanted to be a mountain fire-spotter?

*I’ve wanted to be a Starbucks barista since I was 16. I applied a few summers, but they weren’t hiring summer help. I haven’t totally given up on this, since perhaps after I’m done paying for college I can do any job I want regardless of pay and maybe Starbucks will still be around and I’ll still want to work for them, and I’ll do it by gum.

Out with the old, in with the new!

It’s never looked so clean!

So while my mother-in-law is visiting, my husband and I are doing our standard “we-have-help” move and doing some home improvement. And by “we” I mean “him”. Namely, we’re going to turn our front porch (aka junk-dropping-zone) into a livable, usable three-season space with a high-bar and stools. Previously, the porch was no good for, you know, sitting on, since any time you sat on it you couldn’t see outside the windows. Not useful. Not porchlike. So instead, sleds, snow-shoes, bubble-stuff and bags of clothes to donate bred there in unholy admixtures. It was never a good introduction to the house.

I’m thrilled with the change my husband is so laboriously working on!

However, in the cleaning up phase of porch-life, I’m sending some things to consignment/Craigslist, and I thought I’d give you first dibs. Please let me know if you would like any of these.

A hand-crafted, vintage maple bench, circa WWII (no maker’s mark). It is 59″ high, 54″ wide and 22.5″ deep. This was purchased at a Warwick RI antique store in 1996. $300 (You will need to help me with travel logistics!) It looks like this was a converted head-board.

2 side tables, solid wood. ($30)

4 hand-painted Arabic-design wood folding chairs from Al Khobar in Saudi Arabia, bought roughly 1980. Completely unique. ($100)

Feel free to share if you think the links would be of interest to any of your friends!

Aikido

The boys lined up to learn

Adam has volunteered to get tossed around the mat for as long as I’ve known him. Back in college, he used to be part of an aikido group. I remember watching them on the basement floor of Smith/Burdick – the upwelling lights revealing crazy people in white tunics throwing each other dangerously on the floor.

He took a brief hiatus after graduation, but about five years ago he found a new dojo not unreasonably far from us. Since that day, he has gone to aikido between one and four times a week (it depends on the week).

The art is fantastic for Adam. He’s in really, really great shape. (If I could do the things he can do, I’d be showing off. Constantly. He can do pushups from a handstand.) It’s also excellent mental rest for him – it allows him to meditate and be physical and not intellectual for a while. I think it calms and relaxes him, and helps him reduce stress.

Monday, sensei gave him the big news that he had passed his first kyu test. He’d worked his way from nothing, to fifth kyu and on up – each taking a year or more. For the last three or so belt tests, he’s been warned that maybe he wouldn’t get to test for the next one (since he only averages two sessions a week), but each time he’s studied books and videos, mumbled to himself while making striking motions in the hall, and proven himself on the mat.

Tiny Grey starts aikido

Over the last few years, he’s gradually become the senior student in the dojo, and assumed greater and greater responsibilities for teaching. There is a children’s session at the dojo too, and as our sons turned four they also donned white little gis and learned how to roll, and do the forms and techniques. Grey is now a green stripe. Thane still has to earn his first belt. But it has become a family thing, and an assumption about our time and energies. Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, there is aikido unless there is a pressing reason that there cannot be aikido.

Until now. Sensei has a little one on the way, and a job. The martial arts are a rather consuming passion that don’t mix well with, oh, a full time job and children. And so, with sadness, the dojo (a labor of great love) is closing.
It’s funny, but even though I never took a single ukemi, even I feel at loss. What now? How will Adam be happy if he never gets to test for his black belt, or months go by with not a single person throwing him over their head? Is there an activity I should do with the kids instead, to make sure they’re developing the appreciation of exercise, grace, coordination and workout? What does life look like when Monday, Wednesday and Saturday are back on the table? Can we find another dojo for Adam, and if not… what takes its place in our lives?

For many years, this has been a wonderful thing in our lives. I’m grateful to sensei for the hard work, love and dedication he’s poured into it. A tiny part of me is excited about a summer “off”. But I also hope that what comes next is as wonderful and fulfilling as this has been for my family.

I was trying to look up when Adam started doing aikido, and I found this post from June 2008 that seems to be the starting point! I had completely and utterly forgotten!

So, to put it clearly, my husband was laid off today.*

This wasn’t entirely unexpected and it won’t be devastating. I’m pretty confident with his skill set, he’ll find a new job quickly. But it also makes for a less-than-fun Thursday. Anyway, he has a $300 wellness benefit from his current employer which, if he does not spend it in the next 2 weeks, he will lose. He had been talking about doing aikido for a while now. He did it in college and loved it, but in our grownup life we didn’t have time for both gaming and aikido, and gaming has won. With the dissolution of his standing Wednesday night game, he’s thinking about doing aikido instead on Wednesdays and (while working) maybe sneaking it in another night of the week. While unemployed, he could participate daily if he chose. And the $300 wellness benefit will pay for nearly 6 months of it.

I think that’s such a smart and productive way to deal with the layoff. I know that working out will make him feel much better and much sharper. I know that aikido in particular really helps keep him inside his skin. And since he’s got that benefit, it’s even fiscally responsible.

*He had a new job before he even had his last day at the old job, if memory serves.

Sons and Fathers

I don’t write a ton about my husband, Adam. There are many reasons for this: he says fewer cute things than my kids, he rarely brings home cool artwork from work, etc. But the primary reasons I rarely write about him is because he is fully capable of writing about himself, and rarely chooses to do so. But I’ll break my self-imposed embargo today to talk about him, because it’s Father’s Day, and it’s a time where we sit down to say the things we think so often and say so rarely.

Four generations of Flynn men: three fathers and one baby

My husband has had some great fathering role models. His father was also a good father. He talks to me often about the walks they took on warm Saudi nights with his dad and his dog – talking about everything and nothing. I miss Mike a lot – today especially. He was always convinced that we were the most amazing, the best. I often think of how proud of me Mike would be, which says a lot about how supportive he was of me while he was here. Mike died four years ago, but he remains with us in memory and thought.

My dad

I’m fortunate that my Dad is still around and doing cool stuff. I talked to him this morning, and his newest book is doing well. He did a book signing this weekend! But my Dad was always there – at every sporting event, schlepping me from location to location, teaching me how to drive or reminiscing about the layout of the streets in Seattle in 1969. He reaches out every time there’s wild weather in my area to make sure I know. He usually knows my forecast better than I do!

All this is to say, there are a lot of great dads in our lives. But the one I see the most of, whose work I can most appreciate, is my husband.

The day my husband became a father

Adam is a great father to our two sons – whose very looks are stamped unmistakably on his boys. There are so many things they do together: he’s their teacher in aikido, their “tickle and snuggle time” favorite, their morning-breakfast-short-cook, and their gamemaster. He is with them every day, and in every way, in sickness and in health. I love watching him wrestle with the boys. (80% of my family pictures involve the three of them locked in some manner of combat).

A hike on another day. I didn’t bring the camera yesterday.

Yesterday we went for a lovely family hike in the Breakheart Reservation, where Adam and the boys talked about snakes, beetles, optimum swinging mechanics and other related phenomenon. Today, we decided to spend Father’s Day being a family by going to the Museum of Fine Arts to check out the Samurai exhibit. (And the mummies. Because Dude! Mummies!) Once again, I got to watch my husband with my sons – explaining canopic jars, pointing out historical references, sharing the enthusiasm of the kids. It was – it always is – a pleasure and a joy.

Thank you, Adam, for the joyful and loving time you spend with our sons every day. I can only hope that they grow into men and kind, as loving, and as fun as you.

Explaining Roman coins

Pictures of today’s journey to the past can be found here! We had a great time at the MFA!

A Fine and Pleasant Misery, part 2

“The rollicking old fireside songs originated in the efforts of other campers to drown out the language of the cook and prevent it from reaching the ears of little children. Meat roasted over a campfire was either raw or extra well done, but the cook usually came out medium rare.”

Patrick McManus – A Fine and Pleasant Misery

On Monday, the weather finally relented. My brother had arrived the previous night, along with darkness. I had visions of sneaking off to go hike Mt. Chocorua, which has been mocking me incessantly since we turned back half a mile from the summit for some lame reasons like, “Running out of water”, “Thunderstorms approaching” and “Knee desperately needs surgery for major tendon tears”. But there was a mass mutiny by the menfolk at the though of it, so I compromised.

In the shadow of the granite mountains

We decided to do the Boulder Loop Trail, which was marked at 3 miles, and moderate. I have to remember that the person who rated the trails in my guidebook is a sadist, who definitely never hiked the trails with a four year old. The hike became even more exciting when the folks at the front of the trail, too absorbed in discussions, failed to keep with the trail and we accidentally headed on a path designed to take us straight up the granite cliff faces.

I fell – with my camera and my youngest child – and the pictures stop at this point. Oh, I took another two hundred and fifty… the camera works fine. But somehow those two hundred and fifty are not ON the memory card. I know they got written because the ID has incremented, and I’d used digital filters on some. I had given them up for lost, but when I was whining about it last night one of my friends who works with digital recovery volunteered to see if they were really gone, so hope remains. The camera mysteriously began working again as we left White Lake.

Anyway, it wasn’t a LONG fall, but it was enough to point out to us that perhaps we were not on the right path. We did eventually rediscover our route and the path, but the rest of it took on the aspect of a bit of a forced march for the littlest one. Coupled with his complete lack of fear of heights … (I wish I could show you want that meant, suffice it to say we were very high and the fall was very long) … it was not a restful hike. But it was fun! And we did it! And Grey hardly complained at all!

That night, we finally could sit around the campfire. We sang songs, quoted poems, and read some McManus aloud to great hilarity. Grey stayed awake, from the tent, for much of the McManus. I’m hopeful from the chortling within the tent that the great man’s wisdom might transfer to yet another generation. There were stars to be seen on the walk to and from the Sanitation Center.

The traditional first and last stop of the camping trip

Tuesday, as we broke camp, was some of the finest weather I’ve seen in many a day. It was sixty-five, clement and bright. Perfect. I tried to console myself, as we folded the barely-soggy tarps, that this made the breaking up that much easier to do. But in truth, it had finally gotten good, and so it was time to go.

Today, a weekend later, we have a heatwave going on, with temperatures above 90 for three days in a row. And I find myself wondering, WHERE WAS THIS WHEN I WAS NEXT TO A LAKE!??! But looking back on my adventures, I’m forced to conclude… it was indeed a Fine and Pleasant Misery.

I can’t wait to go again!

Again, you can see what pictures remain of the trip here.

A fine and pleasant misery

“Modern technology has taken most of the misery out of the outdoors. Camping now is aluminum-covered, propane-heated, foam-padded, air-conditioned, bug-proofed, flip-topped, disposable and transistorized. Hardship on a modern camping trip is blowing a fuse on your electric underwear, or having the battery peter out on your Porta-Shaver. A major catastrophe is spending your last coin on a recorded Nature Talk and then discovering that Camp Comfort and Sanitation Center (featuring forest green tile floors and hot showers) has pay toilets.

“There are many people around nowadays who seem to appreciate the fact that a family can go on an outing without being out. But I am not one of them. Personally, I miss the old-fashioned misery of old-fashioned camping.”

Patrick McManus – A Fine and Pleasant Misery

Below the deluge

Gazing over the scene on Saturday morning, I gazed around contentedly. “Patrick,” I thought, “Patrick would be proud of me now.” Mr. McManus was quite an influence on my young mind. He and I had briefly lived in the same part of the country: his high school football team had played against the town my brother had been born in. But I had been an itinerant through Idaho’s panhandle, and he. Well, he belonged there. But it was from Patrick that I learned that it was the nature of a rope to be 6 inches too short. Patrick taught me that any time my husband asks for some expensive hobby gear, the right answer is always, “At least he doesn’t like bass fishing”. I have learned from this old sage from the time I was about Grey’s age and found a stack of his books in my grandfather’s cabin in the woods of Washington State.

But the last few years, I felt like I’d been letting old Pat down. I mean, White Lake State Park is a nice campground. Far too nice. I mean, the Sanitation center has flush toilets and coin operated showers! Running water! A nice little store. You can get pizza delivered, for heaven’s sake. And we sleep on an air mattress. I can feel his disappointment from here.

This camping trip, though, I was making up for it. I stood under a patchwork of tarps, held together by a labrynthine network of ropes that were all 6 feet too long (my husband likes to do things with his own flair). The rain made an incessant, staccato beat – drowning out the call of the loons. The wind was picking up, driving the sheets of water further under the tarp. And it was about fifty degrees, but the forecast called for it to get cold soon. All in all, it was a fine and pleasant misery, and I was content. I puttered around, humming, “It is Well With My Soul”, deeply satisfied.

When I made reservations last year, I accidentally made the Memorial Day reservation an extra day. Gazing at dreariness of November, I figured that was just the thing. I imagined lolling by the lake, regaling each other in front of the fire and perhaps even practicing my guitar and being discovered as an astonishing new talent. I kept the five days, and took Tuesday as a vacation day. As Memorial day crept closer and closer, I started getting nervous. It looked a little soggy and cool. But, I reasoned, it had rained every camping trip of the first year we went camping, when Thane was nine months old. I bought better-rated sleeping bags and cast my faith on the Lord.

This wasn’t accurate. It got colder than that, and rained more.

And lo, it wasn’t as bad as it had looked a few days prior. No, it was much worse. Saturday was horrific by camping standards. It was about 50 degrees and bucketing. One began to worry about flooding. We didn’t have a tarp over the fire, so breakfast that morning was courtesy of Dunkin’ Donuts. “Hey boys!” I called. “Let’s go swimming!!!” “Moooooooom! Stop lying!” “Nope. Go get your swim suits.”

Well, what Patrick McManus doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

It cost a bundle, but it was worth it to be warm.

We went to Kahuna Laguna up in North Conway. It was actually very fun. I discovered that thanks to his swimming lessons during afterschool, Grey was now a good enough swimmer to be released on his own recognizance in a controlled environment with lifeguards, so we did just that. This left one grownup able to pursue their own agenda. The fourteen year old boys running the fastest water slide started giving me a funny look after my fourth run… but what good is it being a grownup if you can’t run the big, fast waterslide?

After three or so hours of swimming, Thane started crying because his foot hurt. Now, if you know Thane you know that broken bones would most likely be shrugged off in the right circumstance, so this was suspicious. He was presented with chicken fingers, which he verbally disdained. Then he bolted three of them, slurped down 10 ounces of lemonade, and collapsed on me solidly asleep. I held his incredibly tall, strong, long, active boyness for over an hour, losing sensation in various body parts. And I thought as I held my golden-haired son, quiet on my lap, that this was very likely the last time one of my sons would ever sleep in my arms. Long-lashes against ruddy cheek, I did not begrudge the failing circulation in my legs for the gift of that last time – known and recognized.

That night, Adam and I played BattleLine on the picnic table – cold and far from the fire that spit against the falling rain. The peace of our evening was only periodically disturbed by having to yell at the kids to GO TO SLEEP ALREADY twenty or so times.

Having fun together – regardless of location – since 2007.

Finally, the weather turned the next day. Yes, it started getting windy and dropped to about 45 degrees. Leveraging un-Patrick-approved powers of technology (indeed, one of my friends started making fun of my Facebook updates of misery), I arranged to meet our next door neighbors from home at the Meredith Children’s Museum. Now, this museum might not seem like a great museum to someone without children. But here’s the thing… there were NO SIGNS telling you what not to do. Instead, everything was fair game for kids to play with. And oh they did! The Rube Goldberg Room, the Castle Room, the Bubbles and Puzzles room. It was GREAT. It was full of things that actually appealed to kids, instead of things that appeal to grownups misunderstandings of kids. I’m definitely adding it to our list of things to do when it rains.

Even the bigger kids really got into parts of it.

We went out to lunch afterwards. Grey and his best friend wandered off by themselves. We found them playing cards together, and just left them to it. Who knew they played cards? Thank you, afterschool, for teaching them useful things!

I’m not even sure what the game was!

That night, returning to our campsite, we luxuriated in the tarp over the fire, which helped to more efficiently direct smoke into our car. The rain had also discovered a new trip and was coming in sideways. One thing I love about camping is how you get to bed so early! 9 pm!

To be continued…

If you want to see pictures, I’ve uploaded some here: A portion of the pictures

Lemonade

The young entreprenuer
The young entreprenuer

The news is always depressing, but it seems like it’s been even worse lately. On CNN yesterday, there were five stories above the fold about children who had been hurt, bodies found… horrible things. It makes me want to turn my eyes away from humanity.

Yesterday, a viral video of David Foster Wallace talking about the implacability of adult life crossed into my digital awareness. It is a good video, and it has some good insights about our choices, and the patterns of thought we fall into. But you can hear in it the overarching despair of someone struggling to see the good – even the made-up good – in humanity. It is hard to listen to this without remembering that David Foster Wallace died at his own hand, struggling to the end with a depression as implacable as a ninja assassin. He fought that suicide so long and so hard, and you can hear the fight in his words.

I watched that yesterday. Then I sat back and said to myself, “This is not my reality.” None of this incredibly depressing stuff is. Now, the bad parts of reality have gotten awfully close. The marathon bombings scattered pain to my right and to my left. There’s a guy who used to go to my son’s grade school who is fighting to keep one of his two legs. I’ve shared the story of my friend who ran towards the bombs. (In a surreal moment, she texted the other day asking if I wanted to go to the movies since she got some free tickets for being a first responder. Sadly, I couldn’t.)

But 98% of my life – perhaps more – is full of neat people who are nice, kind and friendly. That part of my reality crystallized for me the other day. Grey had a tough day at school, and I was working from home, so when I got a call saying that he had a tummy ache… well, I picked him up to let him have a quiet afternoon. The quiet bit lasted an hour or two, but then around 4:30 on a beautiful spring day, he decided he wanted to make a lemonade stand. He had done this last year, with varying degrees of success, but came back to the idea. He set up the table, made the signs, priced his offering (reasonably, as opposed to last year).

And they came. The mom in the van who said, “We have set up lemonade stands too, but we live on a cul-de-sac so they don’t usually go very well.” The older woman with lots of makeup and a nice car who talked to him with the yearning of a grandma who doesn’t see her grandkids often, and overpaid. The dad with his two boys in the car, on their way to go fishing. The neighbors, who see our sons as extensions of their own children. The young, tattooed couple walking by who were enthusiastically accosted, and who walked uphill two blocks to make a little kid’s day.

The kid netted $15 and grossed $10
The kid netted $15 and grossed $10

This random suburban sampling of humanity was kind and friendly. Almost all gave what was in their pocket, even if it was rather more than the price of a cup. Moreover, they gave encouragement, a smile and their support. No one stops at a lemonade stand because they are thirsty and pining for a cup of lemonade (although in point of fact, the best lemonade I’ve ever had was at a lemonade stand in Seattle). But lemonade stands do well because people are kind, and interested in each other, and generous. That is just as much “reality” – likely more so – than anything CNN is covering today.

It is one of my more pleasant chores to go through the pictures on my camera to upload them. I usually notify that vast cadre of people (all four of them!) that may be interested in such things here. To that effect, hey guys! I got the April pictures up! And it’s only May!

Not their target demographic

There comes a point in your thirties where you start answering survey questions, and you realize that you are (more or less) telling marketers to ignore your feedback. When you have to pick the “34 – 45” option instead of the “25 – 33” option… your preferences and ideas have just become a whole lot less interesting.

One of the great moments in one of the great video games of all time

I was having dinner with a friend who helps create computer games the other day. This is a guy who actually has some decision making ability about which video games get made. I was telling him what computer games I loved, and what I desperately wished his company would make. And over the lobster mac and cheese at Lucky’s he looked at me and said, “Yeah, those were great games. But you’re just not our target demographic. To be successful, a game has to be a hit with 15 – 25 year old males. We can’t afford to make games they don’t like.” So not only am I not a video game designer’s target demographic, I never was one. If they made a game (I’m thinking of YOU “Black and White”) that I loved… well it was practically by accident. Later versions of games I loved almost always emphasized my less favorite parts of the game and entirely scrapped the cheerful world building I loved.

That got me thinking about how often I am not the target demographic. The truth is that in most media, I’m not the target demographic. I don’t like violence. Right there, I’ve made myself not the target demographic for 80% of movies. I don’t like meanness. That rules out all the remainder but a handful of Pixar films. Although there are definitely movies I could like, I’m not the target demographic. The movies I would enjoy are rarely being made. And if they are, I’ve already tuned out and don’t watch them.

They don’t want to impress me

Or when you’re standing on the street, and a guy drives by who is *so selling his image*. He’s in a low-riding car with a custom exhaust and a sound system that can deafen you at 20 feet. He’s got tinted windows (rolled down) and is slouching in a seat, not wearing a seatbelt and looking at the world with a jaded eye. My thirty-four year old Protestant-white self clucks and tongue and thinks, “Who are you impressing? You’re not impressing me!” Then I remember: I’m not his target demographic.

I used to work in the same building as Cambridge College

I’m not the target demographic for most bus ads (I already have a degree, thanks.) I’m not the target demographic of our local Red Sox radio station, which seems to find it impossible to avoid misogyny with even ONE of its talk show hosts. I’m not the target demographic for the salons that dot my town offering increasingly esoteric forms of hair removal and supplementation. I’m not who they’re talking to, or who they’re trying to reach.

It can almost be depressing sometimes. So few things – or people – are really designed to please and entice me. How can you be important if no one is even trying to sell you something?

When I get it that mood (usually after a trip to Gamestop trying to find something I want to play – where I am also NOT THE TARGET DEMOGRAPHIC) I remind myself of the delightful flip side.

They’re not MY target demographic, either.

These handsome guys are MY target demographic!

That guy in the car? He doesn’t impress me, but I don’t feel the need to impress him either. No platform shoes or tight dresses for me, thanks! That judgmental person I run into who has something bad to say about everyone? They’re not my target demographic. Those beauty magazines that tell me that I need an expensive and time consuming regime in order to be acceptable? I’m not their target demographic either. My husband loves me the way I am. I look better than I “have” to in order to be promotable at work. My church family will not look down on me if I wear last season’s styles. My neighbors will invite me over after bedtime to hang out even if I have a mis-allocation of hair, according to the latest trends.

So although it can be sad that so little is made to suit me, I am more than compensated by my liberation from having to impress those elements of society that are most oppressive!

Who is your target demographic? And which group do you wish would pander just a little more to what you want?

Put a lid on it

Before

When we bought our house, six years ago, the home inspector told us that the roof wasn’t in danger of imminent demise, but it would need replacing in the next three to five years. This was, by far, the best house we’d seen and I was already in love with it, so I made a note that we’d probably need to get a home equity loan (we were putting a goodly amount down) in order to fix it. This was October of 2007.

Then, the whole, “home equity loan” concept took a serious hit. Uh oh. And New England got hit by a bunch of roof-tearing-up extreme weather, with Sandy and Nemo and Irene. I breathed a tremendous sigh of relief as our roof made it through the winter with no internal rainstorms. We also had two separate spots in the roof with colonies of bats. Great for mosquitoes, but not so great for the attic.

In February, we started making calls and comparing quotes. Our house has a difficult roof – many levels, four stories up, lots of different planes.

I was very glad they were tied on.
I was very glad they were tied on.

We finally settled on Nuza Roofing. They did a lot of work. They removed all the shingles, replaced any rotting wood (including the entire porch roof), put ice & water shield on the entire roof, reshingled, replaced all the fascia (the out-facing boards), put on all new gutters in a different format, repointed the chimney, and put like 28 soffet vents in the roof. Whoof. It took almost two weeks. Every single nail they put in place was hand hammered. They did an amazing job.

New gutters

So now I don’t have to worry about my roof for like, another forty years! Yay! Of course, they did discover that we need to replace rotting trim on most of our windows (a project we actually undertook once already, to little effect). So it’s not like I don’t have to worry, I just don’t have to worry about the roof.\

So to summarize: new roof. Very expensive, but well done. I have roofer recommendations if anyone wants them!