Swords and Strollers
Josh Greer's funny blog about raising kids
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Daylight Savings Mess
It's like this: people look at something like Daylight Savings Time, and they think, "My gosh, it's so inconvenient to run around the house and change all those clocks!" They don't know the half of it.
First, no one even owns a VCR anymore, so there's no need to figure out how to set the time on one of those things. (Hint: It's not possible--when they were manufactured in Japan they were all programmed to perpetually blink 12:00. Payback, you know.)
Second, the time change is a completely different experience when young children are involved. Early in my married life, when I had disposable income and tools scattered about my house, Spring Forward meant losing an hour of sleep on Sunday morning. Or it meant waking up at the normal time and then realizing it was really practically lunch time and I was a lazy slob.
These days, it means that my children's biological clocks, which adjust to change about as well as the rudder of the Titanic did, are thrown off for at least a week afterward. It all starts off great on Sunday morning, when they don't come bounding into the bedroom (without knocking) until almost 8:00. But everything goes downhill from there. To make this easier to understand, I've documented it in timeline form below:
10:30 am Day 1 of daylight savings:
What do you mean you're not hungry? We eat snack every day at this time.
Oh, wait, we don't.
1:00 pm Day 1 of daylight savings:
Why aren't you in your bed? It's rest time, just like very other day.
Oh, wait, it's not.
7:30 pm Day 1 of daylight savings:
Why are you jumping rope in the basement? It's your bed time.
Never mind, it's really not.
7:02 am Day 2 of daylight savings:
Seriously? Doesn't your body think it's 6:00 am? How are you awake already?
The days that follow are a mass of confusion: late bed times, early waking times, altered meal times. Eventually an equilibrium is reached wherein the kids go to bed later and wake up earlier, all in the name of keeping the lights off a few minutes longer in the evening.
I'm sure everything will made right in the fall though.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
And the Oscar Goes To...
With the Academy Awards coming up, I thought I'd have my own
award ceremony for my family. "Well that's rather pompous and
self-serving," you might say. And you'd be right, but no more pompous and
self-serving than an industry that gives itself awards several times a year
just so it can get together and wear ridiculously expensive clothes and make
incoherent speeches.
In typical Hollywood style,
I'll be starting with the awards no one has heard of.
Visual Effects
The winner for best visual effects is "Planet
Cookies" by Brennen, Caleb, and Emily. Think they don't look like planets?
You try making Venus out of sugar cookie dough and blue food coloring. Want to
point out that Saturn's rings aren't big enough? Tell it to Uranus. And that
last one? Yep, that's Pluto—once a planet, always a planet in my book.
Short Film—Live Action
Something has survived…again. Yes, 2013 marks the 20th
anniversary of Jurassic Park, and Universal Studios has decided to further
sully the great reputation of this film by producing Jurassic Park 4—also known
as "Another desperate attempt to recapture the awesomeness of the first
movie." This short film "I
Like Dinosaurs" is expected to have more plot development than anything
Universal comes up with.
Music
Imagine you’re a tourist in a coastal Michigan town, and you approach this pirate
ship parked on the sidewalk. It's filled with children, and they are singing
pirate songs. Call the police? Search for the parents? No, give it the Oscar
for best music.
Makeup and Hairstyling
It takes special skill and a tremendous amount of patience
to fix a two-year-old's hair. My wife got my daughter to stand still for
upwards of ten minutes to create this hairstyle, which I'm sure has a name.
Centuries ago, someone who could keep a toddler quiet and still this long would
have been burned as a witch. This year, I'm giving the Oscar for makeup and
hairstyling to my wife, Debbie.
Costume Design
Weta Workshop has nothing on this family. It's one thing to
put a bunch of beards and wrinkles on grown men, but it's quite another to turn
three children into a transformer, a spider, and a princess, with enough time
left over to scour the neighborhood for candy.
Actor
The Oscar for best actor is traditionally given to someone
who performed in a movie that no one really liked, while movies that are
actually good, like Blues Brothers and The 300, get completely passed over. Not
this year. The Oscar for best actor goes to Brennen and Caleb, who reprised the
roles of Tom and Huck in one of the greatest scenes in all literature. Except
they used chalk instead of whitewash.
Actress
And finally, the Oscar for best actress goes to Emily. She's
never had a wardrobe malfunction, and there's no silicone or botox in sight,
but her performance in Girl with the Kitty Tattoo is Oscar-worthy.
That's all for this year's Academy Awards. Yes, I left out
such popular categories as best cinematography and best documentary. Such is
the benefit of having one's own award ceremony.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
State of my Family
I sat down the other night to watch the State of the Union
address. Okay, I lied. I sat down to check the weather on the Internet and the
address happened to be playing in the background. I'd checked the ten-day
forecast and all four of my email accounts before I realized the State of the
Union address was still going. I'm pretty sure I could plow through that Gettysburg speech in like
three minutes, so I'm not sure why politicians today think they have to speak
for so long.
Anyway, it was a quasi-patriotic experience having the
president speak over my shoulder while I deleted messages in my spam folder
promising…well, promising things that were about as likely to be delivered as
anything the president was saying.
But the moment gave me an idea. As the (sort-of) president
of my family, I should give a State-of-my-Family address.
I'll have my children
and wife sit on the couch, preferably wearing their most uncomfortable
clothing. Then I'll have two people sit behind me to provide contrast. One will
be someone who hates my guts. I'm thinking my high school driver's ed teacher,
who told me on my last day that I would get in many accidents. He can grimace
sourly at everything I say.
The other person behind me will be an absolute toad, who can
nod approvingly at every word that comes out of my mouth like it was his idea
to begin with. I have no idea who can play this role, as I've yet to meet a
human being who agrees with everything I say. I do have a bobble-head doll that
could work though.
I'll have to find a way to get only half the room standing and
clapping at a time, while the other half folds its arms and shakes its heads
with pursed lips. I could start by promising to ban princesses. This should get
the male members of my family cheering, while winning dour looks from my
daughter. I don't want to overreach though, so I'll focus only on extended capacity
princesses. Snow White will still be fine.
I'll want to end the speech on a high note, possibly by
invoking God, as so many politicians do. (Although given God's thoughts on
lying, he's probably busy checking his Twitter feed like everyone else in the
audience, rather than waiting around for the obligatory "God bless the
United States of America" line.)
So I'll finish my address by passing out candy. Ought to win
me another four years given the electorate I'm facing...
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
A Female Deer
My daughter has fallen in love. I thought I'd have more time
to prepare for this day. More time to string barbwire around the house and set
out Beware of the Dragon signs. But this romance might be worth encouraging. The
object of her affection is a fellow named Georg. Nope, I didn't spell that
wrong. But, you might know him as Captain von Trapp.
We watched Sound of Music for the first time a few weeks
ago, and it's taken hold of my children. My boys burst out into "Do-re-mi"
with no provocation, and I was asked just the other day if we could ever hike
to Switzerland.
But my daughter is the most enthralled.
My little girl has transformed into Frauline Maria. Some
days she pretends she's a nun and asks me to be the Wevwund Mother. Other times
she serenades her brothers, her parents, or her dolls with "My Favorite
Things."
And then there's the dancing. Multiple times a day she tugs
on my pant leg, steps back and curtsies, then asks me to bow, so we can dance.
The dance is more like a spinny carnival ride than any Austrian folk dance,
with me having to switch directions multiple times so I don't get dizzy.
She is Maria, and she's in love with a story—with songs that
I never tire of, and with the idea that a few notes can make her feel better
when she's feeling sad.
And like the real Maria, she doesn't even mind that I can't
sing Edelweiss.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Girls in Space?
I've never been a strong advocate for my favorite causes. I've
never written my member of Congress, I don't complain at stores and
restaurants, and I've never held a sign and marched anywhere. Mine is more of a
live-and-let-live mentality—seeking my own happiness while letting others seek
theirs. (An exception would be if Coca-Cola reintroduced New Coke. I'd likely
end up in prison over that.)
But today that may have changed. I was reading a book titled
Mousetronaut, about a tiny mouse that traveled on a space shuttle. (It's a true
story, and the mouse had its own uniform and special training…budget deficit
anyone?) Partway through the story, my daughter pointed to one of the human
astronauts and asked, "Is that a girl?"
"Yep," I replied.
Then she turned around in my lap and asked wide-eyed,
"Can girls be astronauts?"
Wow. I've never done anything to suggest my daughter cannot
be anything at all she wants to be, yet somehow this three-year-old had
determined that going to space was only for boys.
I still won't be writing any letters—I'm too busy helping my
kids build a LEGO castle for that—but I guess more needs to be done to show
children that they can do and be anything their imaginations desire.
So, yes, my little girl needs to see that astronauts,
mayors, and dump truck drivers can be girls as well as boys. Just like my sons
need to see that teachers and veterinarians are not all girls.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
How to Screw up a Kid for Life
I’ve named three babies in my life. You may question whether
that makes me a doddering amateur or a seasoned professional. I suppose if I
said I’d hammered three nails in my life you’d likely not be inclined to ask my
help on your next construction project. But if I said I’d defused three bombs
in my life, you’d think I was MacGyver (Or James Bond if you’re too young to
know who MacGyver was.) Given the relative scarcity of baby naming
opportunities a person has in his life, I consider myself highly proficient at
baby naming.
I named my first child, Brennen after bickering through a
list of names with my wife. My second son, Caleb, was taken from the same list,
being the only other name that we both agreed on for a boy. My daughter, Emily,
is named after the greatest poet in the history of the universe: Emily Dickinson.
Those are three pretty straightforward names. Chances are,
if I asked you to spell all of them, you’d go two-for-three without breaking a
sweat, and you might even luck into spelling Brennen’s name with an “e” instead
of an “a.”
So if a noted weirdo like me can name three children without
incident, setting them up for a life of normalcy (at least on the as far as
their names go), why are so many people having trouble naming their babies
lately without resorting to odd creations and perplexing spellings? Celebrities, for example, apparently can’t
even be bothered to think about their children’s names. They just shout out the
first concrete noun in sight and go with it: Apple! Blanket! Coco!
Done.
Possibly just as bad (at least for their future teachers)
are those kids whose parents decide to test the limits of phonetics with their
creative spellings. Ashleigh, anyone?
I fear we are raising a whole generation of kids who think
spelling is like some sort of X-games event: make it up as you go, and as long
as it looks pretty, you’ll get some points.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Sick Day
Have you ever seen one of those movies where explorers find
a journal written by some poor schmuck who was chronicling his civilization’s
downfall right up until invading hordes swept the pen from his ink-speckled
hand and offed him with a broadsword?
I bring it up because this blog might someday be a museum
piece for this very reason. My family is in the throes of some unidentified
sickness, and I’m slouched at the keyboard, with pieces of toilet paper
scattered around the desk (because the Kleenex are long gone, and no one has
had the energy to get dressed in days, let alone make a trip to the store). Cough
drops are my constant companions, except when I’m actually coughing, which the
aforesaid cough drops are powerless to prevent. I’m typing simply because my
fingers landed on the keyboard when they dropped in exhaustion.
The coughing and sore throats came first, which led to the
run on cough drops, then on honey, and finally on the leftover Halloween candy
that would have never been eaten otherwise. Then came the fevers. At one point
the mean temperature among the inhabitants of my home was 102. We probably
should have all gone to the hospital, but who would have driven?
Nobody’s really eaten anything in a few days (except the
Halloween candy). Nobody’s felt like cooking anything either though, so it’s
hard to tell if our collective fast is out of necessity or lack of options.
They are coming…I can
hear the coughing in the distance. They are stumbling over empty Kleenex boxes
and discarded cough drop wrappers, but nothing stops their relentless march. We
have bleached the door handles and propped up our pillows. We do not hope to
see the sunlight again…
See what happens when I get sick? I eat gross Halloween
candy and have delusions that I’m Tolkien. Maybe somebody should drive me to the hospital.
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