Boots on the Ground

The first thing we did was buy the girls some good hiking shoes. Oddly enough, they were from Kohls, which is not known for their Sierra Club-friendly clothing, but they’re good shoes and give the girls the support they need.

Daddy gave up his hiking shoes not long after his mission, when he swore that for the rest of his life he would never again climb anything higher than a ladder to fix his roof. Of course I’ve broken that particular oath many, many times over since becoming a Dad. Never have replaced the boots, though. Always hike with tennis shoes nowadays. I think this last trip has nearly convinced me to switch over to a good pair of boots the next time around.

We went on vacation last week. It was an extremely hike-intensive vacation to northern Arizona, but Jelly will no longer allow me to call them “hikes.” What they are, according to Jelly, are “explorations.” “Hike” sounds too much like “work,” apparently. That’s my girl!

My problem with hiki… er, exploring these days is that gravity is apparently stronger today than it was back in 1978 through 1980, when I was at the peak of physical conditioning. Back then I grunted my way up (and down) hills with names like “Widowmaker I” and “Widowmaker II” (in case Widowmaker I failed to make any of us unmarried missionaries into martyrs for the cause). Several times a week. So I know for a fact that gravity has gotten stronger because when I went on “easy” explorations with my two daughters this past week, and I did this every day for seven days, I was gasping and wheezing like a fish that climbed out of the pond only to realize that it hadn’t quite evolved lungs yet.

The explorations are built into the Junior Ranger programs of our various National Parks and Monuments. There are quite a few of them in Arizona, including the Grand Canyon, Walnut Canyon, and a host of others. We love these Junior Ranger programs because it gives the girls a chance to learn about nature and science and Mommy doesn’t have to do any lesson plans for those days.

We’ve been wanting to visit the Grand Canyon as a family for several years now. We’ve been trying to coordinate this trip with our goddaughter’s family in Vancouver for quite awhile now, but circumstances just keep conspiring against it. So we decided to do it while public school is in session and the various parks would be relatively uncrowded.

The Grand Canyon is a wonderful spectacle. I’ve visited a couple of times before, but never really appreciated just how incredible the vistas can be. It may be that this time was unique in that I had to chase my two explorerettes out to all the various view points that can only be accessed by a (usually) short hike, and I’m pretty sure I’d never really done that in my previous visits. Also, because of our handicapped placard, we had access to a route generally only serviced by shuttle bus out to the western end of the South Rim. These view points afforded us the most spectacular sights of the Canyon, and some were close enough to the road that Mrs. Woody got her fair share of the wonder.

Even if you’re not hiki… sorry, exploring the entire South Rim, the park requires at least a day and a half to do it any justice at all. We also had the pleasure of playing hide-and-seek with the weather while we were there. Rain storms threatened for much of the day, but generally only came out to play in the later afternoon hours. Thus we timed our outside time for the morning and early afternoons, and traveled to our next stops in the rain.

On Sunday we met with the Grand Canyon Branch of the church for Sacrament Meeting. They would have loved for us to do all three hours as we instantly increased their attendance by roughly 25%, but we needed to work in a Ranger talk for the girls’ Junior Ranger requirements. The Branch President did, however, tell us that elk like to come out after dark and graze on a field over by a local training center. We didn’t see the elk, but did see some mule deer after dark that night on our way back from the west end.

The next day we covered the east end of the Rim on our way out of the park. Our eventual destination for lunch was the Cameron Trading Post in (oddly enough) the reservation town of Cameron. They are notable for their Navajo Tacos, which Mrs. Woody loves. They were wonderful, and fed us for two meals.

Other parks or monuments we visited were Wupatki and Sunset Crater National Monuments, Petrified Forest National Monument (including the Painted Desert), Walnut Canyon National Monument, and Montezuma Castle National Monument (including Montezuma Well). Most of these other parks include some wonderful ruins of ancient peoples (generically referred to as “Sinagua” which means “without water”) who eventually merged with tribes like the Hopi or Zuni. Sunset Crater is unique because it is a volcanic crater which you cannot see inasmuch as they have forbidden any hiki… [slap! Stop that!] exploring on the volcano itself. You can, however, explore the vast lava flow fields below it, which was fascinating whenever I had the chance to breathe.

I took lots of photos, of course, because Mrs. Woody could only accompany us on well-paved trails. However, most of my photos show only the back sides of the girls who were always about twenty to fifty yards ahead of me and would have gotten further away had I not mustered enough breath to bellow at them to for heaven’s sake WAIT UP. This made them pause long enough for me to close to within ten yards or so before they scooted off again.

We also visited (DEPUTY DAN ALERT) Meteor Crater. This is the first documented site of a meteor impact crater in the world, and also provided training grounds for the Apollo astronauts as they studied geology in preparation for their moon walks. Very cool stuff! They even have an Apollo test capsule that was probably used for landing impact tests on dry ground as opposed to water landings.

We finished our journey by visiting a Pioneer Living History Museum just north of Phoenix, and of course paid a visit to the Mesa Temple. I’d never really seen it before, and was struck by how different and beautiful it is, compared with other temples built prior to 1972. Turns out, although we didn’t know it when we were there, that the Mesa Temple was dedicated by Heber J. Grant on that date (October 23) back in 1927. Pretty cool!

By the way, my baby sister attended ASU before getting married, and Mrs. Woody also got her post-graduate degree there. When we drove by the campus, Mrs. Woody was struck by how much had changed since she attended. She was particularly aggrieved by the fact that her favorite shaved-ice shack had been torn down. The entire area looked as though it had been in the grips of redevelopers, so that everything was now “themed.” Rather disappointing, to my mind.

Other sites of note included Winslow, Arizona. For those of you who grew up in the 70′s and are no longer under the influence of whatever recreational pharmaceutical was in vogue back then, this is the site of the famous Eagles song “Take it Easy,” and includes the phrase “I was standin’ on the corner in Winslow, Arizona.” It also refers to a “girl… in a flat-bed Ford.” I am here to tell you that the girl in the Ford is a fake… a painting on a wall in a little park called the “Standin in a corner” park. The whole song is a sham! The hotel (La Posada) where we stayed, on the other hand, is one of the last of the original Harvey hotels and is quite the historical treasure. They’re still restoring huge parts of it, but what they’ve done with it so far is pretty neat.

We also spent a night in Snowflake so we could see the Snowflake Temple the next day, on our way out to the Petrified Forest. I will not bore you with details of what Mrs. Woody will call a classic example of men who refuse to ask for directions. But she got photographic proof, so the story may come out at some point in the future.

Anyway, we’re home now, and contemplating our trip up to Vancouver next week so Mrs. Woody and her friend can spend a few days at a scrapbook conference at a camp north of there. We’ll probably be soaked to the skin when we return.

Better water-proof my boots.

Preoccupied With Hair

I enjoy writing these birthday essays for one primary reason: they help me gain a perspective on what sorts of things preoccupy me as I get older. At one point, for example, I worried about becoming one of the older college students at Southern Utah University, oh, about twenty years ago. Actually, it wasn’t so much that I worried as it was a kind of perverse humor in being considered the “grandpa” of the class at that time. Fortunately, both the campus and I were spared this situation as I chickened out when my career stabilized before I had a chance to sign the dotted line.

As I’ve gotten older the preoccupations have shifted inward somewhat. I’ve focused on various creaks and groans that I feel (and occasionally hear) when the house is quiet. I’ve also talked about being of an age where I most remember my own Dad; that age where kids are nearly grown, your own body has turned decidedly hostile, and your teeth retired years before you were ready to do the same.

This year it’s hair. Mine, specifically.

I’ve noticed lately that it isn’t quite as obedient as it used to be. I’m beginning to understand why some men my age keep it cut shorter than your average marine. It’s just easier to deal with that way.

I’ve never been terribly good at keeping my hair trimmed appropriately. Up until high school, Dad would take me to the barber just before school started and have him give me the dreaded “buzz cut.” They called it a “crew cut” to make it sound stylish, but the fact was that for a skinny undersized boy with over-sized self-esteem issues, it was like having a visit with Torquemada and his band of Merry Men. I always came away from those haircuts looking like someone had stuck a fuzzy billiard ball on top of a pipe cleaner. This was the look I sported in every official school photo until about my sophomore year. After these traumatic experiences, Dad would have to growl at me to get me to accompany him to the barber any time sooner than six months afterward. I still don’t get to the barber anywhere near as often as I should.

My high school years were largely marked by the fact that it took me longer than most boys my age to discover the delights of regular showers. Hence my hair always looked as if I’d been using Dad’s Brylcreem, when in fact it was simply plastered under a layer of self-manufactured oil and, occasionally, dirt. Photos taken of me from this period confirm that I spent most of my adolescence looking like the quintessential nerd boy, all the while wondering why on earth I was having absolutely no luck in attracting members of the opposite sex.

Fortunately, sometime before I graduated I began to discover that, with regular showers and a good bottle of shampoo, I was able to not only converse with actual girls, but, in my senior year of high school take on the challenge of an actual girlfriend!

Then, of course, there was my mission. My mission, wonderful experience that it was, was clearly a step backwards in the area of personal hygiene. I lived for two years in the mountains of Guatemala, where the next shower was never more than a week (or perhaps two) away. For the first six months or so of my time there I would hike in from our adobe hut on the outskirts of human contact, shower, pick up my stone-beaten laundry, buy a few groceries, play some broomstick hockey in the Momos House, then prepare to hike back out to my area for another week of questionable cleanliness.

Oh, there was the river, of course. It flowed about 500 yards below us, accessible by a trail with a 72-degree incline, and enough privacy that we didn’t have to worry about K’iche women surprising us with laundry detail. However, one step in that water was enough to convince me that this particular river flowed directly from some sort of ancient American glacier and that the only reason it didn’t ice over was that it was flowing too fast.

The alternative, out there in the Guatemalan highlands, was the tuj or sauna bath. A tuj was a large adobe igloo with two holes. One for gaining entrance, and the other for placing super-heated rocks that you splashed water onto to get the full steam effect of a sauna. Tuj baths were great, but you still never got one more frequently than once or twice a month.

Once I returned to civilization, my grooming returned to a state of near-normal, including daily (unless it’s just not possible) showers. Also, except for a brief period where I fooled myself into parting it down the middle, I have not sported any other hair style than the one I have now. I have less hair with which to maintain that style, true; but there’s been no call or reason to deviate from it.

The thing is, lately my hair has seemed less… willing to be parted where I’ve been parting it for over thirty years now. Ultimately we get there, but it takes longer. Doesn’t even matter whether my hair is freshly cut or a tad longer. Also, when I shampoo my hair nowadays it feels somewhat coarser. I know it’s getting grayer; been on that track for awhile now. I just can’t seem to come to grips with the fact that my hair, like my skin, is less pliable than it once was.

Thank goodness I’ve reached the age where I’m less concerned about mid-life crises, and more concerned with having any sort of pension left after Obama gets through with us. Maybe, before my money runs out, I should do something bold; something daring. Something that would call attention to myself without worrying the neighbors that I was joining a separatist movement.

Maybe I’ll build myself a tuj in the backyard.

A Tale of Two Pies

You will never see my face on “Next Food Network Star.” My culinary point of view would be something like “Kurmudgeon’s Kitchen” and would feature things like 20 Things You Can Do with Kraft Mac ‘n’ Cheese. Mine is the kind of cooking for which Alton Brown would try to do some sort of resuscitation with, say, a Cuisinart, and eventually give up in disgust. My cooking would more likely be featured in “(I Need an) Iron Stomach, Chef.”

That said, I’m learning. I do this because I need to be helpful in the kitchen, and have frequently been completely responsible for what appears on my family’s plates during any given meal. Also, the Woodyettes have both reached the age where they need to be learning these skills, and Daddy is often asked to provide the adult backup for their efforts.

Add to this the fact that we have been studying the original thirteen colonies in our homeschool history curriculum this past year, and you will not be surprised to learn that our Headmistress and All Around Nice Person, Mrs. Woody, has found all sorts of colloquial recipes for our family to try. Which brings us to two particular pies.

The first was something that Doodle had heard about and wanted desperately to try. I have to confess that I had long ago relegated Sweet Potato Pie to the status of Broadway legend due to its appearance in Oklahoma! Ado Annie makes a Sweet Potato Pie for the big barn-raising, and the fellow who’d sampled it the previous year related how he’d gotten a huge bellyache from same. That placed the pie permanently on my No Thanks List. But when your youngest daughter is eager to try it, and wishes to actually be the one to make it, one must go along.

I was pleasantly surprised by our Sweet Potato Pie. It has a flavor reminiscent of pumpkin pie (your genial host’s all-time favorite), but much more starchy in texture. Still not moved up to a place among my favorites, but I’ll eat it if we make it again. It was much more fun to watch Doodle help with the preparations. She tends to get quite excited about the mixing and the mashing, and occasionally her exuberance gets the better of her. But for such things were paper towels created.

The next pie on our list was Shoofly Pie. This is the Pennsylvania Amish original, which means there are as many variations of recipe as there are families who make it. So we picked a likely one (read: easy enough for Daddy to comprehend and make) and enlisted the Woodyettes’ help. The fact is, they both love to help, but they haven’t quite mastered the delicate give and take that must prevail when you pack three fannies into a two-fanny kitchen. (“Daaaaad, her spoon is on my side of the bowl!” “It was not! I was just trying to put more around the edges!” “Dad?” “Daddy??” “Where ARE you, Dad?!”)

With such a gooey bottom for a filling, I was frankly surprised that it baked up so well. Nice and fluffy, and the molasses did not overpower the overall flavor. The girls did a pretty nice job, especially with the crumble that constitutes its upper crust.

So Woody is adding baking to his list of domestic skills. The way I see it, if I can’t make it look like something Alton Brown would make, I can always claim to be channeling Duff Goldman instead.

They’re Not Babies Anymore

My girls keep growing. It amazes me no end because I’m not one to encourage growth in other living things. It’s not that I actively discourage it, mind you, but as a gardener I’d be given a dishonorable discharge for killing things while they’re still underground. Yet my girls grow, no matter what I do.

Case in point: Jelly went to the temple today to do her first-ever baptisms for the dead. It was one of those wistful “my baby’s not a baby anymore!” moments; the kind where there really isn’t anything I can say to my snuffling wife that doesn’t sound incredibly trite. “Yep! She’ll be leaving us any day now!” No, that wouldn’t be politic under the circumstances.

It was even wistful for her dad. Since turning twelve last year she’s been steadily growing into this elegant young lady who still looks a lot like the little girl who continually prances around the house dreaming about fairies, but who also now spends copious amounts of time draped over the easy chair in her bedroom consuming books of all kinds, including her scriptures. We’re already staring down the barrel of another (her second!) girl’s camp this June. She doesn’t talk as much smack about teenagers anymore because of the realization that she herself will officially be one in just a few weeks. If you see a flag waving from someone’s house on Flag Day this year, think of Woody and his new live-in teenager.

Sigh.

Doodle, meanwhile, has been in double digits since last December. The challenge here is the cognitive dissonance created by a mind that still wants to be a little girl, and an increasingly traitorous body that desperately wants her to grow up. Now. The result is that classic blend of occasional klutziness laced with newly hormonal pathos that makes parents think fondly of boarding schools in Switzerland where we apparently have no extradition treaty.

We tell Doodle that she’s not a little girl anymore. This statement is belied by the presence in her bedroom of more baby dolls than the number of pages contained in Obamacare, two strollers, and enough stuffed animals that, if we sold them at one dollar a pop, would probably take care of the national debt of Ecuador.

Still, the age of accountability has arrived. My mother will find it absolutely knee-slappingly funny that I – her oldest child – have begun using the “P” word when talking about my daughters. “P” for “potential,” that is. The one word I swore in my youth I would never use on my own kids. But it’s true. They both are loaded with it, and I’ll be darned if I let them reach my age without ever having explored their own limits. In fact, Dad has actually had to sit his daughters down and (oh, the humanity!) lecture them about… about… THINGS. IMPORTANT THINGS. THINGS that Dads frequently wish they would never have to discuss because their loving and dutiful wives would already have discussed them, but which never seemed to stick so Dad had to sit them down and DISCUSS THEM AGAIN. Oh, it’s a vicious cycle.

No, they’re not babies anymore. And Dad’s not getting any younger, either.

Fish + Barrel + Gun = New Calling

Like any willing member of the Church, I have held any number of callings over the years. I’ve been everything from an elders quorum president to a nursery leader. (Seriously; in the same ward. I joked at the time that nursery leader is what they call failed elders quorum presidents to serve. Now I’m not so sure it was a joke.)

I’ve come to find that certain callings are celestial, while others are simply eternal. I think you know what I’m talking about.

Question: how many wards have you lived in where it seems some people get called into an organization over and over again? Think about it. Scout leaders are generally marked for life. They’re the ones with one whole wall of their garage dedicated to camping gear. Likewise that one sister in the ward who can’t seem to escape the black hole of the Primary. She just gets called, over and over, rotating between presidency and teaching positions. They retire her when the Sunbeams are about as tall as she is. She’s the only lady in the ward who can’t recite the Relief Society motto. Instead of “Charity Never Faileth,” for her it’s “Primary is Forever.”

The bishop’s counselor and I had a fun chat last night. He talked about the challenges connected with calling people to serve in different positions. He admitted that, while the Spirit definitely takes a hand in pointing the bishopric in the right direction, there certainly do seem to be those callings that are considered “pigeon-hole” callings for certain people.

Music callings are my particular pigeon-hole. It runs in the family. My sainted mother sat at the organ Sunday after Sunday pretty much the entire time I was growing up. Even when she was serving in other callings they were loathe to give up her keyboarding prowess. Over time that calling grew into other duties as well. She and Dad became musical fixtures in the Simi Stake where I grew up. They were at the center of nearly every musical activity sponsored by the stake over the years, including not a few musical stage productions.

Dad, for his part, was the eternal ward choir director. Also the Sacrament chorister. This is where Dad got his training for becoming a High Priest later; he would sit on the stand every Sunday, and began wearing dark glasses so as not to be so obvious when he nodded off during the meeting.

With Mom and Dad being so musically gifted, it naturally followed that some of their offspring would be drafted into the service. My first music calling in my ward was as a chorister in the Sunday School, back in the day when it had its own meeting time and included the sacrament. Dad was Ward Music Chairman at the time, and he concocted the idea of using Sunday School as a training ground for young choristers and pianists to learn how to perfect the craft for future callings in Sacrament Meeting.

By age 17 I was conducting my first Stake Youth Choir. This was a by-product of the old “services and activities” committees that were designed to find something for kids to do instead of sneaking pot into the bathroom at school. (This was the 70′s and I know whereof I speak. Not that I ever participated, of course!)

Between my mission and my first marriage, I served as music chairman both at the ward and the stake level. Shortly after I married my first wife, we moved to another stake where members of the church go who wish to hide from Salt Lake. Since I wasn’t there to hide it didn’t take long (about two Sundays, generally) for our new ward to notice that we could sing. That leads to being drafted into the choir, which ultimately leads to being called as the choir director when the previous choir director begins their stay at Happy Acres Resort and Rest Home.

Of course I love music callings. It’s in the blood, so to speak, and I can’t not be who I am. But what, you might ask, are my celestial callings? Teaching callings. My very first calling as a newly married man (before they caught on to my mad choir skillz) was Course 12 in Sunday School. They suggested I bring my machete to class in case they got a bit unruly. Truthfully, though, I loved that class. I’ve loved every class I’ve ever taught, and I’ve had my share of challenging classes.

Naturally I try to teach in my music callings as well. The problem there is, I don’t bring much to the calling besides some innate talent to wave my arm in time, and a better-than-decent ear. Theory-wise I am horribly unschooled. I can talk smack when it comes to hemiolas and melismas, but please, please don’t ask me what key we’re in. Couldn’t tell you. Maybe this time around I’ll go back and brush up on some of that basic stuff.

So teaching callings come and go. They just released me from the Stake Sunday School presidency where we had served just short of three years. It was a wonderful, if anonymous, calling. But timing is everything in life, and it just so happens that both our ward and our stake music chairs are leaving in short order to serve missions with their hubbies. It was even money as to who would talk to me first, and the ward won.

Fun facts:

1. I have served as Priesthood Chorister in every ward I’ve lived in since I was 16. I have yet to be set apart for it. Ever.

2. There’s actually been only one ward in my adult life where I did not serve as choir director. That was the first ward (Santa Susanna 5th) where I lived as a newly married man. We simply weren’t in the ward long enough for them to retire the old director and toss me in there. At least, that’s my theory.

3. Although I’ve only served as Stake Music Chair in two out of the four stakes where I’ve lived, I have conducted stake choirs in all four of them by assignment.

4. As many people have said over the years, “They’ll keep calling me to this until I get it right!” Maybe this time I’ll actually get it right.

New Glasses!

For someone who has worn them since the 5th grade, the occasion of receiving new glasses is something of a vernal equinox. It denotes a passage from old to new, as if my eyes were awakening from a long winter into the fresh green of spring.

Or perhaps it’s simply the fact that I utterly, thoroughly, and completely despise my current pair and can’t wait to donate them to whichever relief agency will send them to a Talibani khalif.

We’ve just switched optometrists. We went to arrange eye appointments (75% of us require eye care in this family) the other day and found to our initial dismay that our coverage had changed. I automatically select the same health plan every year during enrollment because Mrs. Woody is thrilled with her current physician and has no desire to rock that particular boat. So I simply ignore the enrollment forms (tantamount to selecting Same-Ol’, Same-Ol’ Health Plan) every year. What I didn’t notice this last time was that our vision coverage had changed. And our now-former optometrist doesn’t accept the new coverage.

All was not lost, however. Last year when we participated in our Stake’s production of “Savior of the World” we became acquainted with a very nice gentleman from another ward who happens to be an optometrist. The fact that I actually remembered this man nearly a year afterward gives me hope that I haven’t yet lost too many gray cells.

Through all my previous visits to eye docs in my adult life, the common thread has been that my eyes were expected to deteriorate over the years, and thus far they have performed to expectation. This last prescription was perhaps the worst yet and was my second iteration of “progressive” lenses. (Progressive lenses are lenses that take from other lenses in order to redistribute the wealth. Conservative lenses simply tell your eyes to work harder.)

I may have mentioned that I loathe this pair of cheaters. It wasn’t the prescription, really. It was the “reflective coating” that they coaxed me into trying. The main selling point was, as I recall, the ability of the lenses to not turn your eyes into high-beam headlights when having your picture taken. As Mrs. Woody is a devout Scrapbooker (if they had a clergy, she would be an archbishop), she much prefers to see my eyes in photos. So I got the coating. And instantly regretted it.

For the past two-plus years, I have had a dickens of a time cleaning these glasses. Nothing works. I was given one or two of those small spray bottles of lens cleaning solution. Useless. The typical lens cleaning cloth has been likewise a waste of good flannel. Even my old standby of Windex and a paper towel made nary a dent in the grime that seems to accumulate within minutes of the last cleaning.

Add to this perfidy the fact that this frame, which I chose primarily because it was evocative of Harry Potter (don’t ask) is allergic to its own hardware. Apparently it was the recipient of donor screws and failed to take anti-rejection medication, because I have to tighten these things about every second or third day. I’ve already lost two screws, and the replacement that I’m living with now is a full 1/32″ too long. Looks like an aerial for a shortwave radio receiver over my left eye. To me, anyway.

Now, I have to tell you that our good Doctor told me that, after having deteriorated every two years for the past 20 or more, my eyes had not really changed except for a tiny bit in the up-close range since my last prescription. I didn’t really need new glasses, but of course it was my call.

Oh, no, I assured him. I needed new ones. The sooner, the better.

So they’re on their way. Hopefully will be here before we board a train in a couple of weeks for a trip up north to visit our dear friends in southern Washington.

It would be nice to actually see them this year.

Who’s Afraid of the Big Five-One?

I’m a little late for my annual birthday essay this year. It’s only partly because I wasn’t sure how to handle this one. 51 is a number that doesn’t immediately lend itself to clever prose, although my sister pointed out to me that “51 backwards is only 15.” So, okay, that’s cool.

The important thing about having reached this particular age is that it means absolutely nothing to me on a personal level. I have by now reached well beyond the mid-point of my anticipated life span, yet this fact does not bother me. That’s probably because I’m still a number (10, give or take) of years away from giving retirement any serious thought. In ten years my girls will be in or on the cusp of their college years, and that’s about the time I will begin considering living on a fixed income.

So 51 is not a milestone. It’s not a nice, round number like 50, which always sounds more impressive than it really is. Neither is it 60, which is when I won’t mind those senior discounts so much. Physically I have parts of me (my brain, for example) that refuse to accept that I am no longer 25. The rest of my body (literally) feels every one of those 51 years now. Especially, and I know precisely how cliché this sounds, when the weather changes. Mrs. Woody and I both have internal barometers that tell us better than any analog or digital weather station when the barometric pressure is changing. We can’t tell whether it’s going up or down, but we can tell you it’s moving.

Mentally, though, I don’t feel the chronological advances. I have what is probably an unfortunate tendency to gauge myself against my Dad when it comes to aging. Dad for me always epitomized the “grown up” male figure. He was nearly always larger than life from my perspective. And I’ve never seemed to measure up.

I will say, however, that when I catch my reflection at certain angles these days, I see parts of Dad staring back at me. My hands, for example. Even now, looking at them while they type, they’re not Dad-like hands. Yet, in the mirror I can see those big, beefy hands that were one of Dad’s defining physical characteristics. In fact, my arms, when I see them in profile, remind me forcefully of Dad, especially when he was conducting.

So how else to define what this birthday meant to me? The best way, really, would be to describe how we chose as a family to celebrate it this year:

We went to San Diego.

A couple of years ago, my birthday celebration was a day at Disneyland. That was fun, but it was only the one day. This year we did a long weekend that included Friday and Monday. We visited Sea World, took a tour of San Diego Harbor, visited the Fleet Science Center, hit the San Diego Zoo, and did probably our first and last visit to Legoland on the way home.

I haven’t been that tuckered out in months. But it was fun every single day, and we got to see lots of neat stuff.

Which, for me, is precisely why I’m not worried about 51. When Dad was 51 I was never sure that he was actually enjoying the places we visited as a family. This was probably because of Dad’s propensity for grousing whenever normal humans were otherwise having fun. Take Disneyland, for example. Dad apparently loved Disneyland. Yet, aside from “Pirates of the Carribean,” I don’t recall Dad ever having ridden anything that involved less-than-dignified entertainment value. I, on the other hand, went on at least three different rides with my daughters yesterday at Legoland, including one that takes the rider and puts him or her in various, decidedly undignified poses, including upside-down, so that my blood was not restored to normal circulation (“sluggish”) for at least seven hours. And what’s more, I enjoyed them.

51? I can handle it.

National Book Month

We always get a kick out of National Book Month. Not so much because it’s highlighted on our calendar — I didn’t even know it was National Book Month until Mrs. Woody told me it was this morning — but rather for its entertainment value.

Mrs. Woody pointed me to an article in LDSLiving Magazine called A Great Escape. The article was a staff piece that chats up the benefits of reading in a family dynamic, and provides a few pointers they took from the National Book Foundation for “getting the whole family involved in National Book Month.”

First one on the list: “Family trips to the local library. Encourage each family member to check out at least one book.”

Or simply stop by my house, and you can borrow several of our library books.

One book each? We are a family of voracious readers. Daddy can’t always take time to read because he’s always under hideous deadlines at work, but reads whenever he can. The girls, however, are rarely without a book (or three) under way. Mrs. Woody taught them both to read early on, and both girls were well above level by the time they were of kindergarten age. It’s only gotten better with time.

In fact, nine year old Doodle just finished the entire Harry Potter series this year for the first time. She’s read the first few novels several times before, but was always a little scared of the later books. This year she finally got motivated and read all the way through them.

Our trips to the library require a special backpack on wheels. A typical trip to the library for this family begins with rounding up all the books we’ve finished. This is made easier by having the girls put them underneath the end table that we use as our “Library Table.” We stuff them all into the backpack, which is usually filled to capacity, and return them at the desk.

We have to return them at the desk partly because we’re pretty sure the library has misplaced one or two of our returns over time, and we don’t want to have to pay for them. But mostly it’s because our library cards are nearly always at or near capacity, and we need to have books checked in before we can check any more out. It’s a vicious cycle.

So, I’m sorry, but encouraging my children to check out just one book would be tantamount to child abuse in this home. We feel cruel when we limit them to five apiece. My arthritic limbs appreciate their restraint, though.

I blame my mother for part of this, by the way. Here’s another woman who cannot walk into a library without checking out at least ten or more volumes. It’s pathological.

The second tip involves “family reading night.” Really? Just the one? We must be overdoing it, because I defy you to visit this family on a night (or day) when we’re not reading. Of course, they amplify this by suggesting that you hold a family discussion, giving everyone a chance to talk about the book they’re reading.

This is fine as far as it goes, but for every pithy tome the girls read, there’s plenty of what I consider to be “fluff” reading as well. These are the series books that you find in the juvenile section that take, maybe, half an hour to read and are filled with characters that, if they were to become films, would make me want to hurl popcorn at the screen. Still, this family discusses plenty of what gets read. It has even led to Jelly taking her first tentative steps into the world of Role Playing Games because her imagination has found such fertile ground in her reading over the years.

This tip was cute: “Family game nights about literature.” Um… like we’d have time for that. Everyone has their nose buried in a book.

The final tip from this article, though, I heartily agree with: “Reading with your kids. Not only does this help your child realize the importance of reading, it is a great opportunity to spend one-on-one time together.”

It should go without saying that Mrs. Woody and I have done this from the start with our girls. From the time they were old enough to hold up their tiny heads, we were reading to them. We got to where Mrs. Woody and I both had memorized several of their favorite stories over time. The girls, too, were memorizing as it turned out. Whenever Woody was tired and wanted to cut story time short, he’d try to abridge the story. The girls would immediately know that Daddy had skipped, and make me go back and do it right.

In a way, it’s sad that we have to work so hard to encourage people to read books. It speaks to the shorter attention spans that people seem to be developing because of half hour sitcoms, sound-bite news, and anything you can find on the internet. Probably one of the reasons why I’m not a more popular blogger is that it takes me so much longer to say what most bloggers can say in a few sentences. I’ve always been too long-winded for the generic internet.

Still, there’s hope. Demonizing an author like J. K. Rowling simply because she chose to write about a world where magic exists with terms like “witchcraft” and “sorcery” should always be balanced against the undeniable fact that she motivated an entire generation of new readers. It does not mean that millions of kids will grow up to become pagans. It does mean that millions of kids may grow up with a greater ability to read and comprehend even greater messages contained in numberless volumes of truly classic literature that a thin, wiry, bespectacled wizard may have unlocked for them.

So celebrate National Book Month. Or, if you’re anything like our family, National Book Life. It makes a difference.

Now Where Did I See That…?

It can be hard to keep track of things I’ve run across at one time or another on the internet. This is particularly true of funny things; that is, things that I find funny even if no one else does. For example, I’ve been saying for years that I have MAS, but bad. “MAS,” for the uninitiated, stands for “Male Answer Syndrome.” I’d say I inherited it from my Dad, but Dad was generally right. The true MAS sufferer has something more akin to Blatherer’s Disease, where unfiltered text drains down from the brain directly to the mouth. But can I find the page where I first encountered what I consider to be the definitive essay describing this malady? I cannot. Some old joke page, probably, long since dissolved into the ether.

Fortunately, good material never dies on the internet. It generally gets recycled, rebranded, and claimed by thousands of authors who want their fifteen minutes, even if they have to steal it. Here is a version close enough to the one I remember from years ago that it might be the original. Note the designation “A Humor Us Original!” on that page. Heaven only knows.

Ever wondered where the end of all this surfing will take you? Have you ever pondered what awaits the person who has visited the estimated billions of web pages on the internet? (Note: I’m old enough to remember when they were counting pages in the tens of millions. In internet time that makes me the 2,000 Year Old Man.)

I came across the End of the Internet several years ago in the early days of my career as a web designer and programmer. I even included links to it in some of my web pages at work. This, so far as I can tell, is the original and I was delighted to see it’s still there. There are others who have tried to expand on this idea, of course. But I love the simplicity of the page. A few simple HTML inline style codes, and there it is. The end.

Musical humor is not hard to come by. Some of it, unfortunately, must remain my private little joke as language becomes problematic in more modern routines. So, as much as I’d love to link to the guy who lambastes Pachelbel’s “Canon in D,” I won’t. But nothing prevents you from searching YouTube and seeing what you come up with (look for Rob Paravonian). Just be warned that the guy gets pretty worked up about it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

On the other hand, sophisticated humor need not escape us. I was surfing YouTube late one night while waiting for one of my database processes to run (I spend a lot of my evenings this way) and came across this gem from Richard Joo. I first became aware of this fabulous pianist when he was fronting Billy Joel’s attempt at classical piano writing, “Fantasies and Delusions.” But this clip from a routine he’s performed around the world just floors me every time I see it.

I cannot count how many times I have personally performed the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s “Messiah.” For five years running (six this Thanksgiving weekend) I have performed in a community sing-along of select choruses, and we always do this one last. The problem is that after opening as the tenor soloist, and basically being the bedrock of the tenor section, I’m exhausted by the end of the performance. It’s worse now that we do two performances back-to-back to accommodate what has become a very dedicated — and very large — crowd. But I hope I’ve never sounded as tired as this organist must have felt in this classic recording. It sets performers’ teeth on edge whenever they hear it. A must listen every holiday for that very reason.

And, of course, the Nuns of Turtle Creek are a must-see event every year. No idea if they were the first, but they are by far the best.

An a cappella group called “Straight No Chaser” from Indiana University went viral with their comic interpretation of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Unfortunately, the original has disappeared because the guys have done a “reunion” album, and that’s the only version you can find on YouTube right now. It’s still got good stuff, but I miss the original. This one sounds somehow more canned.

That’s it for tonight. Perhaps more when I remember what I’m missing and try to put it somewhere safe for next time.

TV Interruptus

I’ve mentioned elsewhere that the only must-see TV in our house currently is the NCIS franchise. Mrs. Woody and I are hooked. We’re big Bellisario fans anyway; we both liked Magnum, P.I. back in the day, and when we got married we became fans of JAG. We began to lose interest in JAG around the last couple of seasons because it became just another prime-time soap opera (albeit with military uniforms). But NCIS is a big hit here at Hacienda Woody, which means our Tuesday nights are veg-o-matic nights for Mom and Dad.

Our girls have gotten used to this idea. They know that on Tuesday nights, careful planning is required so that they know to interrupt our viewing right during the more critical plot development times in the show. They do this constantly. And, generally speaking, it’s always been for some silly reason, such as, “Mooooom, Jelly won’t play Animal Crossing with me!” Or, “Mommy, my fairy is named Willow SomethingOrOther, and she has these really pretty wings, and she makes corn whiskey in a still that she made from pieces of Daddy’s shaving set!” (I may have imagined that last bit. Part of this interruption process is that they always finish and leave just about the time I’m able to completely turn my attention away from the show to whatever they were saying. I miss stuff that way.)

Tonight was really no different. Sensing that they were between commercial breaks, they both crept in at various times throughout the shows. (We’re keeping an eye on the Los Angeles version since it immediately follows the original. Like it so far.)

Our Doodle Woodyette is nearly ten years old, and she poked her head into the living room with a huge smile on her face. By the time I snapped my ears over to what she was saying, I realized that she was about two lines into the 13th Article of Faith, recited from memory. Her grin got larger as she got closer to the end, and she finished with a small flourish. Big hoorahs from Mom and Dad both, and Dad didn’t even mind missing a few precious seconds of the plot (which was pretty much predictable by that point, anyway).

Some interruptions can be rather annoying (“Moooooom!…”), but some are downright important. This one was. As soon as she left the room (her grin having grown to roughly the size of the federal deficit by this time), I marvelled to myself how surpassingly cool that experience was. How many kids will risk life and limb to interrupt their father’s favorite TV show by reciting an Article of Faith? I would never have dared something like that with my Dad. Not until a commercial break, at any rate. But my girls are fearless in that regard. I can snarl all I want, but they know there’s no teeth behind it. Besides, Mrs. Woody loves it when a small person barges into the room for a quick hug before rushing off to the next universe waiting to be conquered.

She’s apparently on their side.