Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Disney '08

Once again, we have proven to be the well-oiled Disney machine. Crowds schmowds. During our annual trek to Disney, we bobbed and weaved our way through four parks in three days, a finely tuned Disney experience on the roll. And, as usual, I brought back some new Disney knowledge to share with you:
– Parker is finally tall enough to ride some of the bigger rides. We went on the Test Track, which has you go through a car testing facility. At the end, you go on an outdoor track at about 65 mph in an open-air car. Allie loved the ride and even went back for seconds. Parker decided that being tall enough to ride certain things was not necessarily a good thing.
– Disney is very accommodating to those in wheelchairs and motorized scooters, which is admirable to say the least. For example, buses allow those riders to get on first, along with their party. That said, if you are with someone in a scooter and your party of 15 gets to go on ahead of all of the people waiting to get on, I would recommend you quietly board and stare forward. Doing a death-metal horn sign and saying, “YEEEEEAAAAAHHHH!!!” only makes the crowd angry. And you can imagine how this particular crowd member felt 12 hours after the initial incident, when we were leaving a park later in the day when the EXACT SAME FAMILY boarded our bus ahead of us. And out came the horns. Grrr.
– Even at Disney, the circle of life comes complete. We saw this when we were at Animal Kingdom, and we stopped at the meerkat exhibit. And it seemed the meerkat exhibit had also become the vulture exhibit. And the vultures were having a snack. Godspeed, little Timon.
– Speaking of natural interaction, I think it takes a brave bunny to sneak up and chomp on a sleeping gorilla’s lunch.
– I finally have let go one of my biggest issues: swinging the chains. In most every queue line you go in, there are chains separating the line. And children have an uncontrollable need to swing them. While in previous years I have considered duct taping my children’s arms to their sides, this year I opted for the “swing away” approach. Now you may be saying that children should stand there and behave and not touch things. And you clearly have not been in line for a flying Dumbo ride with 150 children. Let ‘em swing the chain.
– If and when you do go to Disney, please don’t be one of those people who walks around talking about how much Disney charges for this or for that. It’s no secret. Disney doesn’t hide the prices. Sure, the food is expensive. But they also don’t care if you bring in your own food and drinks. And if you choose to spend $25 on a giant Goofy hat that you will never wear again, that’s pretty much of your own doing.
– While watching the Country Bear Jamboree, I looked around the crowd and wondered, “What in the world must the 11-year-old from Brazil who speaks no English be thinking right now?” Probably that Americans are very strange.
– Speaking of Brazil, by my estimate, all of Brazil was at Disney during our visit. Yes, the entire country. And a large contingent wore bright yellow matching sweat suits.
– Nokia should change their slogan to “Nokia: Our cell phones can survive a three-story fall from the Primeval Whirl roller coaster.”
– I found the equivalent of the first time my daughter met Cinderella few years ago: When my 4-year-old son met Mr. Incredible. I think his jaw may still be open.
– The diners at the Rainforest Cafe confuse me. When we found out that it was a two hour wait, we opted not to dine there. We were then told there was immediate seating available on the covered back deck, overlooking a lake. Only about half of the deck was full. So the choice was to sit immediately on a 65-degree Florida evening overlooking a lake or wait two hours to eat at a cramped, loud, chaotic indoor table. Yeah, makes tremendous sense that the deck wasn’t full.
– The front of the monorail is the only way to travel. And apparently telling the kids not to lean on the turns or the monorail will fall is “mean.”
All in all, another great trip for our family, and we plan to make it back again next year. It’s our annual pilgrimage, one that we hope to keep taking as long as the kids still feel the magic. And want to swing the chains.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Crape murder

So there seem to be two schools of thought on crape myrtles:

1. Hack their limbs back each winter, letting them spring forth anew in the spring

2. Let them grow and be crape myrtles and avoid what has been dubbed "crape murder."

I opted for both schools with two crape myrtles in my yard. In the front yard, I had one that was a gnarled, mangled mess of an eyesore. A few years ago, I hacked it back to about 4 feet high. The tree came back the next spring, and it also did not complain once when I was cutting it, so I assume it was fine.

The tree in my backyard was given a license to grow on its own. And, this weekend, I revoked the license and went beyond crape murder and into systematic crape execution.

I really had no choice in the matter. There were two factors that led me to have to remove the tree: (1) It had grown so large that, when it rained, the limbs drooped down onto the house and in the pool and (2) I got a chain saw for Christmas.

The tree had gotten out of control, and even the possibility of trimming the branches wouldn't have mattered.

Apparently, it had been trimmed over the years so that the trunk was now about a foot thick, and the branching didn't start until about 8 feet in the air.

Had I trimmed down the offending branches, I would have had a big ugly stump the size of Yao Ming in the middle of my backyard. It was all or nothing, and nothing was no longer an option.

So I got the process in motion. Step 1: Wait until my wife would be gone for a couple of hours. She had expressed some concern over removing the tree. That said, she never came down solidly on the side of leaving it up, so it's not like she'd make me put the tree back up.

So Parker and I headed out and got to chopping. (What lumberjack DOESN'T utilize a 4-year-old sidekick?)

Parker had two main jobs: (1) help me haul the branches off after they were cut and (2) not get crushed. Parker picked a spot on the other side of the yard where he would sit and give me the thumbs up when it was time to trim.

The chain saw I have has an 8-foot extension pole, so I was able to lop off some of the tallest branches first. I would gauge which way the branches would fall, line up my angle and proceed to cut.

I can honestly say that I hit the mark 100 percent of the time, assuming the "mark" I was shooting for was completely guessing wrong on where the branches would fall.

Fortunately, they all fell in places that didn't cause damage. No broken windows, crushed fences or pinned dogs. (The dogs were inside, as I didn't want them anywhere near falling trees. When I was a kid, I saw our family beagle get crushed by a tree that was cut down. Great childhood memory there.)

After about an hour, I had removed a substantial amount of the limbs.

In fact, there was only one long, lone branch left. What had started the day as an out-of-control hydra of a tree had turned into the Charlie Brown Christmas crape myrtle.

While there was only one branch remaining, it was a rather large branch. And it was leaning toward the house, specifically in the direction of the big picture window in our kitchen. While I was not sure of what my wife's reaction would be on removing the tree, I can guarantee what the reaction would be if I sent a branch crashing through the window into the kitchen. Despite where I thought the branch might fall, reflecting on my previous guesses, I decided to enlist some help.

In no time, Parker was nestled in the crook of the tree, holding the branch tightly to guide it toward the ground when I cut it.

Now, I will await for your apology for thinking for one second that I would have done that. For shame.

No, I did not turn my son into a lumberjacking koala. I asked a neighbor for help. He came over with a rope and the kind of can-do attitude that makes America great: "I'll pull the rope while you cut. And even if it falls on me, it won't hurt that bad."

When the saw was almost through the branch, it started to crack, and my neighbor guided it harmlessly to the ground. Mission accomplished. Tree done.

I hated having to take down a tree, but the thing was just out of control.

I love a nice shady yard, but I don't like it at the expense of being able to walk outside my kitchen door because you get smacked with sagging branches.

Crape myrtles have this strange Phoenix-like quality of rebirth, so I am sure it will try and sprout up again this spring.

And if you're curious as to my wife's opinion on the removed tree, let's just put it this way. If and when the tree DOES come back, I'll probably let her weigh in on the decision first.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Back to basics

So by my estimate, I spent less time in high school than I did shopping for a new cell phone.
And I had that new cell phone for a grand total of two months before I lost it. Good job, Mike.
It started a while back when my wife realized that we had had our cell phones for a couple of years. Apparently, if you keep the same phone for that long, the company will give you a new one, free of charge. There was nothing wrong with my phone, mind you. But they did offer gobs of free ones. And two years in technology terms is like... well, it’s two years. But a lot can happen.
My phone was a basic one. I made calls. I received calls. I felt very high-tech because I had learned to text message, although I am still having a hard time using text message shorthand, as I feel a little dirty typing “U up 4 lnch?” I try to opt for curt instead of improper, and simply go with “Lunch?”
But I decided I would go ahead and get a new phone, because the new ones had all kinds of features. I could e-mail. I could take pictures. I could surf the web. I could make cole slaw. I could levitate. I could paint a house in under four minutes. Oh, the places your cell phone will take you!
My wife and I spent far too much time looking at the different features, researching them on the Internet, asking people about their phones. At one point, someone at work remarked, “Why don’t you just get a phone already?” That is absurd. This is not something you just grab on a whim, such as a car or a house or a kidney. This is a cell phone, for crying out loud! I will be stuck with this thing for TWO years! (Yes, I COULD buy one before then, but why in the world would I do that?)
Eventually, we settled on one kind of phone for both of us. It was a snazzy, sleek little number that roughly 22 billion people on the planet have. And, no, this was not a sweet, romantic matching pair type deal. Rather, it was that both of us independently chose the same phone, and neither of us had plans to back down. A compromise of different colors was reached.
So once the phones arrived, I shelved my old phone and headed into the exciting world of my new phone. There were indeed bells. And whistles. And countless other things that I had no idea what they were for. And I couldn’t figure out how to use any of the features that it did have. I even decided to buy a ring tone — something 11-year-olds do a dozen times a day – and couldn’t figure out how to do it. I went to the store and had them walk me through it. I felt bad for them. It was like they had just thawed me from my glacier and were introducing me to this modern world.
After a while, I just resigned myself to using the basic phone parts, and occasionally fumbling around and trying to take a grainy picture, although more often than not I took a picture of my hand. Also, I somehow turned the ringer off on a regular basis, and I am not sure how I did that, but I think it involved one of the 40 buttons on the side of it.
I will admit there was a certain longing for my old phone. Sure, it was as low-tech as you get with cell phones, but it did everything I needed. I could operate it without looking at where the buttons or keys were. I was in tune with the ring tone. It was synergy.
But I tried to get used to my new phone, thinking eventually it would turn into my new cell companion. But it just wasn’t clicking. It didn’t feel right, like my old one. Then the other day, I was at the grocery store with my daughter. I called home. “How about quesadillas tonight?” I said. “Pardon?” said the woman next to me. “I’m on my phone. I thought that was evident, what with the hand held up to my ear,” I responded.
And that is the last call I made. I got home later that night and could not find my phone, which is odd, because I am rather consistent with placing keys, wallet, etc. in the same place. I checked the three most likely places that any right thinking person would:
1. My car
2. The couch where I woke my son up from a nap by starting a wrestling match
3. A pile of leaves out back (I even used a metal detector for that search)
Despite those routine searches, it never turned up. The next day, I took my old phone out of dry-dock and had them activate it at the store. The moment I used the phone, I felt a comfort that had been missing since I switched over. Simple was back, and simple was good.
I am sure that my new phone will turn up somewhere, either in a leaf pile or a couch cushion or in a pile of onions at the store. And when it does, I will have a big dilemma. Do I turn it back on? Or do I stick with my old phone? And most importantly, do I make the quesadillas?

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Flour child

I knew when I heard the way my wife called his name – “PARKER WHITFIELD!!!!” – that we were at a crossroads.
And down one of those roads was a bad day – the potential start of one of those avalanche days of bad things, piling up and on, with stubbed toes and being cut off in traffic and losing your keys and all the other things that seem to follow when your day starts like that.
Fortunately, we did not go down that road. Instead, I looked at my wife. She looked at me. “He’s covered in flour,” I said. “And so is the kitchen.”
At that point, we headed down the better road, the one that didn’t end in a tequila bender in Mexico.
You see, my wife was making cookies and decided to have Parker help. There were three big flaws in her plan:
1. She was making cookies at eight in the morning. No one is ready to make cookies at 8 a.m. except professional bakers. All of us other non-baker humans should not even try baking cookies until well after a pot or seven of coffee. It’s just not wise.
2. She enlisted the help of a 4-year-old. She would have been better served to enlist the support of a seizuring macaw.
3. She lost the “Who Can Pretend to Be Asleep the Longest?” game, and therefore did have me to run interference for her. See, the kids are now old enough that they can somewhat fend for themselves in the morning, so we don’t have to spring out of bed the minute they are up. It’s nice to know you can lie in bed and know that, in the other room, your children are quietly painting each other and pulling all the stuffing out of a couch cushion. So my wife and I play this exciting game. First one to admit to being up loses. Winner gets to sleep in. My wife is normally very good at this game. She claims to be good because she is actually sleeping. I find that hard to believe.
So where was I? Right, Parker helping with cookies. So my wife had all of the ingredients out on the counter, and Parker was handing her things as she needed them. Apparently, he decided she needed the flour, and he went for the big plastic canister that holds roughly 65,000 cups of flour. I have no idea why we have that much flour. Apparently we are expecting the entire state of Kentucky to come over for made-from-scratch biscuits or something.
But anyway, Parker’s attempt, well, failed, and he ended up dumping the canister on his head, covering him in white powder, sending flour to all corners of the kitchen, and creating a nice little mushroom cloud of flour dust that I hope will settle in the next few weeks.
By the time I got to the kitchen (the “WHITFIELD” echo was just starting to fade), Parker was really not sure what to think. I am fairly certain that one thing that was prominent in his mind was, “This was probably not the wisest course of action.”
He looked at me and then his mother. And when he saw that we were, well, on the floor laughing, he too felt a little more at ease, although he was somewhat tempered in his celebration, as every time he would move a big puff of flour would cloud up in his face, so he would start spitting and sneezing and coughing.
Eventually, I got most of the flour off his body, mainly by taking off his pajamas, so he looked like a little naked kabuki actor halfway through makeup. Truth be told, I do not recall how I got the rest of the flour got off of his head. It probably involved the dog.
But the important point was that my wife and I could have let this be a very bad start to the day. And to both of our credit, we didn’t. We laughed at the funny things in life, and reserved the serious, stern side for important infractions, such as standing in front of the TV during a football game or eating the last peanut butter bar, which Daddy SPECIFICALLY got for his lunch and hid them on the top shelf INSIDE the crock pot, under a dish towel for the exact purpose of hiding them so that he could have them for himself. You know, meaningful stuff.
It’s not to say that we, like everyone on the planet, don’t sometimes have the wrong reaction now and again. But it’s good to have a successful flour-dumped-on-your-kid’s-head dry run to remind you to keep things in perspective. More often than not, it’s just not that big of a deal. That said, I sure hope Kentucky doesn’t show up.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Showing my resolve

So long, 2007. Let’s get it started, 2008. Much like my federally required Thanksgiving column, I offer up my heaping helping of New Year’s resolutions:
I resolve to get the most use out of my brand spanking new deep freezer. I have that sucker loaded with meat and pizzas and such, and I feel pretty confident that I could weather a nuclear winter with my food supply. The only catch: I have to actually remember to use it, rather than remembering about all of the meat in there in about two years after a prolonged power outage.
I resolve not to make my wife make that face. She makes that face often, and it usually comes after I have nitpicked about something, such as, say, the kids leaving a television on in a room they are no longer in. She often says, “It’s not that big of a deal.” I then reply with, “You’re right. It’s not that big of a deal to turn off the television.” That’s usually when the face occurs. I will suffer in silence this year, and just turn the TV off myself and get over it.
I resolve to be more patient with my kids. I sometimes expect too much of them, such as expecting them not to act as though they were raised by wolves. On occasion, their lupine-backgrounds will shine through. They’re only humanish.
I resolve to go through 2008 injury free. This is perhaps my biggest challenge, as I received a chain saw and an ax for Christmas.
I resolve to win at Cardboard Sword Fight, even though the last one was really not fair, since I had a cheap cardboard tube from a dollar roll of wrapping paper, and Parker had one of those super thick tubes from that fancy foil paper.
I resolve to no longer put Nicky, my daughter’s new American Doll, in perilous situations. Apparently, my daughter does not find it funny when I suggest Nicky would like to be an Arctic Explorer and go visit the freezer.
I resolve to figure out eBay. I know it’s not that hard, but I am going to sit down and open an account and finally unload stuff that has been taking up closet space for years. I think my chances of listening to a CD by Icelandic alternative rockers The Sugarcubes (Bjork, before the weird swan outfit!) are pretty slim by now.
I resolve to teach Murphy the Excitable Dachshund that Maggie the Attack Basset does not find him attractive, and he should probably chill out on the romantic gestures.
I resolve to not let my wife look inside my car after I clean out hers and make snide comments, as she often seems to note that I tend to leave large volumes of stuff in my car, and I don’t usually have the added distraction of trying to corral two children who are somersaulting out of the vehicle.
I resolve to figure out all of the cool stuff my TiVo can do. Currently, it can record “Boston Legal” and “Go Diego Go.” I am pretty sure it does more than that.
I resolve to not eat fast food for lunch a single time.
I resolve to not set goals I cannot possibly achieve, so I resolve to not eat fast food as much.
I resolve to keep things in perspective.
I resolve to remind my wife that my perspective is that football is the single most important issue facing our nation.
I resolve to shape my political opinions on the current field of presidential candidates based solely on the method of taping a picture of each candidate’s face on a squirrel and having the squirrels race. Winner gets my vote. Seems to make as much sense as the current method.
Happy New Year, everybody!