Spring break has arrived for many schools, and families everywhere are embarking on the traditional spring break vacation. If you are fortunate, your family firmly believes that this time should be spent doing things of family togetherness, preferably while gathered on a warm, sandy beach. If you are not fortunate, well, you are probably familiar with the other type of spring break trip: the Educational Vacation.
The Educational Vacation is looked upon by many parents as a way to expose their children to learning opportunities they might not necessarily have in school. The Educational Vacation is looked upon by many children with dread, largely because "learning opportunities" sounds very similar, in child speak, to BORING, and also because on Educational Vacations Dad insists on being out of the hotel and doing Educational Things by 5:37 a.m. each morning.
The nation's capital offers a great many opportunities to learn not only about the government but also about the vagaries of its subway system, 62 percent of which is down for maintenance at any given time during tourist season. Because of the intellectual nature of many area attractions -- museums, memorials, Congress -- it is best to bring children along when they are mature enough to appreciate what they are seeing. Most children reach this maturity at about age 27 (possibly slightly higher for males).
Certain Relatives came to Washington this week with their children, who are somewhere under the recommended age of 27 but nevertheless quite mature. Based on their experiences, and those of other families with children, I have compiled a brief but possibly helpful guide about what to see and do in DC with your family.
1. Any restaurant with pizza and/or giant brownie sundaes. Food is a highly cultural thing, and your children are likely to want as much of this culture as you will allow. A Young Person in the visiting Relatives' family declared that the ginormous brownie sundaes at a particular Washington establishment were by far his favorite activity on this trip.
2. Fun vehicles to ride around in. Many cities have adapted various vehicles for tourist purposes, such as the Duck Boat. The Duck Boat came about after a large, boat-looking duck suddenly emerged from the harbor one day in Boston with instructions from other, non-boat-looking ducks to "never come back." Passengers on Duck Boats are given duck whistles, which your children will want to use, and which they will try to sneak into the White House tour. Trolleys are also a hit with Young Persons. They particularly enjoy sitting on the top of a double-decker trolley when it is 103 degrees outside. Warning: Many Young Persons, once aboard a Duck Boat or trolley, will not see the necessity of disembarking. Using them as actual transport to another spot is a foreign idea, and one that it is best not to insist upon.
3. Anyplace with souvenirs, including but not limited to CVS drug stores and streets. Your children will likely be eager to take something back to remind them of their visit to the nation's capital, such as a lone cherry blossom they found on the sidewalk, trodden upon by countless dirty shoes and pretty much indistinguishable, to the naked eye, from a dead bug.
4. Museums with hands-on activities. Learning is most fun and meaningful for children when they can interact directly with materials on display, such as pulling an emergency exit alarm at the National History Museum.
5. Hotel with pool. [Note: This is mandatory when visiting any large city with Young Persons.] Hands down, this is the most popular attraction on family vacations. Moms and dads may feel dismayed at this, having generally spent large amounts of money for the family to see more unique things. But don't despair. Next year, just book a hotel in your local city, leave your children there for a week to enjoy the pool, and go visit DC without them. You and your spouse will be able to do all the things you couldn't when the kids were with you, like have an entire ginormous brownie sundae to yourselves.
Due to some complicated issue that I do not fully understand, a Male Relative is undergoing a procedure to have "tooth matter" implanted in his mouth. The tooth matter, as I understand it, will fill in a large depression and allow the tissue to grow around it to prevent infection. The Male Relative was describing this over the phone in some detail, and it is possible that my mind started to wander a bit, but I clearly heard him say the word "cadaver."
"Wait, what?" I said.
"I said they're putting in a cadaver tooth," he said.
I pondered this. "I think if it were me, I would rather not know that."
"Well," he said, "they said I had a choice of a cadaver tooth or an animal tooth. I figured I should stick with my own species."
I agreed that this was probably a wise choice, although secretly the Hero and I were somewhat disappointed that the Male Relative did not go for the animal tooth. We wondered what might happen if one were implanted in his mouth.
"Feeling a little strange?" we could ask him if he had an animal tooth. "Have an urge to beat your chest and make ee-ee-ee sounds?"
The Male Relative's Wife may have mentioned that he disappears into the woods for days at a time. "Sometimes I'll find him gnawing on a bone," she might have said, worriedly. "The cats hiss at him constantly."
But the cadaver tooth is not without interesting possibilities. Once it is implanted, will the Male Relative take on any of the former tooth owner's characteristics and knowledge? Will he, an avid exerciser and meticulous dresser, refuse to wear anything more fitted than baggy sweatpants and sit on the couch for hours watching reruns of Green Acres? Will he suddenly become fascinated with Renaissance festivals and start frequenting them in full period costume? Will he acquire a sudden, deep knowledge of prehistoric insects? Write horror stories about people implanted with cadaver parts?
Most likely there will be no such effects. After all, people receive transplants of various body organs all the time. Nevertheless, we'll be watching him closely. The Male Relative has something of a history of medical near-mishaps, so if we notice him sneaking out of the house late at night when we go to visit, we'll know he got the wrong tooth.
Let's just say at the outset that the Hero and I need to get out more. Until that time, we will continue to be enthralled with such mundane things as our new refrigerator, which recently came to live with us. I will not say that we have been enthralled to the point that we have turned down social invitations since we have had it, but this could be due to the fact that we have not received any social invitations since we have had it.
The new refrigerator beguiles us with its sleekness, its spaciousness, and above all its doors that can be be flung wide open to reveal everything inside at once. This compares with our previous refrigerator, whose doors opened just enough to allow a glimpse of a single slice of cheese on the second shelf before shutting abruptly. This required deftness of fingers to achieve the returning or retrieving of wanted items.
With the new fridge, we can stand in front of it with the doors wide open for however long we want.* We can open every bin, slide out every drawer, all at the same time, admiring the produce as if we are at a farmer's market.
[*Or for 3 minutes, which is when the door alarm sounds, or for 2.7 seconds, which is when we hear a paternal voice in our head saying, "CLOSE THAT REFRIGERATOR DOOR! YOU'RE WASTING ELECTRICITY!"]
We make up reasons to open the fridge and the freezer, just so we can enjoy the new-found ease of doing so, and to enjoy our organization.
"Uh, what are you getting in there?" one of us will say when we hear the refrigerator door open.
"Um, ice cream."
"Well, you won't find it in the fridge."
There are downsides to the new fridge, of course. My concern for preserving the pristine, shiny exterior leads to constant vigilance about smudges. A cloth is kept nearby to immediately wipe out any mark. "Be careful," I say to the Hero. "Here, put these gloves on before you open the door."
Our old refrigerator boasted numerous family pictures, cartoons, and other items that had been there so long we didn't even recognize some of the pictures ("Isn't that one of your relatives?" "I don't think so. Must be one of yours."). These have all gone into a drawer somewhere. The new fridge cannot be sullied.
The Hero's only regret is that our model did not come equipped with a touchscreen computer, which would have stored all our recipes, itemized what we are out of, allowed us to make grocery lists, inquired whether we have eaten our seven servings of fruits and vegetables for the day, reminded us for goodness' sake not to keep the door open so long, etc.
On second thought, maybe it's good to be lacking some features.
At work we recently returned to some old-fashioned ways of doing business, such as communicating with our colleagues face to face or over the phone, rather than through email. This was prompted by the recognition that effective communication between coworkers promotes understanding, respect, and collaboration. Above all, it was prompted by the eternal passing of the company email system.
The email system was thereafter conducted to a "cloud," a gentle home for broken and defeated computer programs located somewhere in Pittsburgh.
This event, perhaps, should not have been unforeseen. Even before email's demise, transmission of messages was sporadic. Many of us instituted a backup internal communication system, which works like this:
1. An employee sends an email message to a coworker and waits approximately 10 minutes for a reply. When no reply is forthcoming, the employee walks to the coworker's office or cubicle,
2. The employee informs the coworker that the employee has sent the coworker an email, and inquires whether the coworker has received it.
3. The coworker says he will check and will get back to the employee. The employee returns to her desk.
4. The coworker checks his email. If he has received the employee's message, he replies to that effect and addresses the topic of the email.
5. Steps 1-4 are repeated, this time initiated by the coworker.
6. After several rounds of this process, during which no actual email messages are received by either party, the employee and the coworker shake hands and agree to do business this way again. After the new system is up, however, the two will likely never meet in person again, unless by accident at the company potluck lunch.
Another method of communication during this difficult time, favored by the IT team, was the handing out of physical memos. These memos were delivered to each employee in person, in real time, defined as "written and printed yesterday, delivered today." The memos contained important information about the evolving email situation, such as, in succession, "Please remember to archive old emails," "Please refrain from archiving any old emails," and "If any further emails are archived, you will be immediately thrown into a dungeon filled with Commodore 64s."
For ease of reference, each memo was printed on a different color of paper. An employee could therefore simply be asked, "Did you get the indigo memo?" and the employee could immediately answer yes or no, unless the employee is one of the 97% of the population who have no idea what the difference between indigo and violet is, and then he or she would totally be guessing. If fanned out in a certain order, the colored memos almost produced the ROY G. BIV spectrum, except that hot pink was substituted for red, creating HPOY G. BIV.
The hot pink memo, the last to be handed out, announced the arrival of a new email system. Inevitably, this news prompted a return to the old ways of communication, in which we avoided, as much as possible, getting out of the chair or lifting the phone to talk to someone. Some of us are now experimenting with converting our HPOY G. BIV memos to paper airplanes to carry written messages to coworkers in the vicinity. Progress lives.
In the appliance department of a Sears near our house...
Salesman to Saleswoman: Hey, Annie, there was a couple looking for you while you were on your break.
Annie (turning pale): Ohhhhh...it was THEM, wasn't it. What did you tell them?
Salesman: That you'd just stepped out for a few minutes...why?
Annie: Why didn't you tell them I stepped out until July! (looking around frantically) I have to hide.
Salesman (becoming concerned): What's going on?
Annie: They just won't go away! I sold them a range and a refrigerator a few weeks ago, and now they want a DIFFERENT refrigerator.
Salesman: So? Lots of customers change their mind.
Annie (shaking her head): Not like THESE customers. They take HOURS to look at everything. They ask questions. They measure this, measure that. They ask MORE questions. "Can we put a Crock-Pot in a convection oven?" "You put a Crock-Pot in YOUR oven? Really? So what time do you put it in?" It never ends. I can't take it, I tell you. Last time they were here I couldn't sleep for days afterward.
Salesman (starting to get nervous): Uh, they'll probably be back pretty soon.
Annie: I have to hide before they come back! (She dives into a freestanding Amana extra-capacity freezer.)
(All the remaining salespersons, who have been listening to Annie's story, hide also -- behind the dishwashers, in the tool department, behind the GE Profile Series II side-by-side refrigerator, etc.)
Us (returning to the appliance department): That's odd. There were plenty of salespeople here before. Where'd they all go?...Well, as long as we're here, we might as well look at washers and dryers.
(A small noise, like a strangled animal, sounds from nearby.)
Us (looking in the direction of the sound): Uh, was that the freezer?
Saturdays start out having the same number of hours as other days, theoretically at least. But at some point on a typical Saturday morning, time suddenly speeds up, and in only a matter of minutes it is dinner time. At least this is how we, at our house, explain our inability to accomplish everything we have planned to do on a Saturday.
In an attempt to address the Saturday Time Compression and ensure that we have time for all the truly important things, the Hero recently drew a time line for various activities we wanted to do. On the time line he drew a large box from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m.
"That's coffee time," he announced.
Next he drew a line was drawn at 5:00. "This is dinner."
"Wait," I protested. "If coffee's from 4 to 5 and we eat at 5, when do I cook?"
He placed a tiny dot on the time line around 4:55. "There," he said.
"What about going to the gym?" I said. We have been doing this around 4 on Saturdays. Or 5. Sometimes 6.
He decided to leave that off for the time being. Other things were more important to allocate time to. He directed his attention to the start of the time line. A line at 7 a.m. indicated getting up. He then drew another large box in the space from 7 to 8. "This is the first coffee time," he said.
By the time we had placed meals (10:00, 1:00, 7:00), snacks (9, 11:30, 12:45, 3:50, 9:30, 11:52), relaxing, further relaxing, chatting with neighbors, lounging in the yard, and other similar pursuits on the time line ("10:00 to 5:00: Ignore large weeds in yard"), we had about 14 minutes left for cleaning, laundry, outdoor work, grocery shopping and other errands, and working out.
"Maybe we don't have to do all those things every Saturday anyway," the Hero said. "Maybe we can alternate weeks of grocery shopping and working out."
"Too bad we can't grocery shop WHILE we work out," I said. "If the Y would just put in computers on the treadmills and bikes, we could put in our grocery order while we exercise, and it would be ready for us when we get there."
We agreed that if WE had to focus on two tasks at once -- computer work while drinking coffee, for example -- everyone should, even the machines at the Y. Of course many people already do multiple things as they exercise. They listen to music as they work out, they watch TV, they read Tolstoy, they try to keep from separating their back from the rest of their body, etc.
We do these things too. And in doing so we have finally discovered where the time lost during the Saturday Time Compression goes: It is held in a time bank somewhere, probably in China, and then released all at once as you are straining to make it through those last few minutes on the treadmill at the gym. You were SURE you had only 12 minutes to go, but no, now the timer says 6 hours, 27 minutes, 19 seconds. When this happens, there's only one thing to be done.
Coffee, anyone?
We trust that everyone has enjoyed celebrating Pi(e) Day, 3/14, in a manner that best expresses their particular interests, whether in seeing how far they can get in reciting the digits of pi, or in seeing how far they can get with a fork, a spoon, a large apple pie, and several scoops of ice cream.
It has come to my attention that while 3/14 is technically National Pi Day, there is an actual National Pie Day, on January 23. This makes it 1/23, which was probably a deliberate choice on the part of the pie people, having to do with the "1, 2, 3, go" often associated with pie contests. Or maybe all the other dates were taken.
Regardless, we see no reason why pie cannot feature prominently on both days. Pie is, after all, an object that could be described as round, and therefore the pi of pie can be quite easily computed. Not by me, of course, but quite easily by someone else.
The Hero, who happens to be a math person who also appreciates pie, has suggested that we eat only round foods on Pi(e) Day, such as pizza, quiche, cookies, donuts, etc. We did not do that this year, but I believe it is an excellent suggestion for next year, so long as it is understood that "round" foods does not include "healthy" round foods. That would be decidedly un-pie-like.
For those of you who did not get enough pie trivia in the previous post, we offer some additional true or false questions here.
1. America's favorite pie is apple, followed by pumpkin.
2. In the middle ages, when a young man wanted to ask for a young woman's hand in marriage, he would bring a pie to the young woman's father. If the proposal was acceptable, the father would turn the pointy end of a slice of pie toward the young man.
3. If the proposal was NOT acceptable, the father would turn the pointy end of a knife toward the young man.
4. Pie was banned in England by Oliver Cromwell, who deemed it "a pagan form of pleasure."
5. Stargazy pie is the most disgusting pie ever created.
Answers (possibly made up)
1. True. Running a close third, according to one source, is "anything chocolate."
2. False. But it's kind of a cool idea.
3. Probably not. But it's more believable than #2 for the times.
4. True. (The real reason his reign was kinda short.)
5. False. Incredibly, there is also Surprise Pie, supposedly favored by wealthy Englishpersons of yore, in which live creatures would pop out when the crust was cut. If this is what prompted Cromwell's ban on pie, it was obviously in the best interests of national security.
I leave this discussion of Pi(e) Day with a thought-provoking question. If the best part of the pie is the crust (and it is, according to a scientific survey of myself), why do we put all that other stuff in there anyway? Why not just have layers of buttery, flaky crust? And put the whipped cream or ice cream right on top of it?
Now THERE'S the type of story problem we all should have had in math class.
In some circles (no pun intended) today, 3/14, is Pi Day, which celebrates the symbol for the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. You might think that this day was established by math people, those who can rattle off pi to gazillions of decimal places (and know how much a gazillion is). In fact, Pi Day was started so that those of us who are NOT mathematically inclined can be transported, in thought, back to high school math class and relive our terror of higher math. (Quick! What's a periodic function?*)
*Something your brain engages in, especially as you get older.
But for those who are terrorized rather than thrilled by math, or who steadfastly refuse to engage in any math-related functions on moral grounds, pi is easily transformed into pi(e). 3/14, then, becomes: Pi(e) Day.
For such individuals, Pi(e) Day can be spent doing complex calculations, such as "If I completely forgo all other food for this 24-hour period, how much pie could I consume?" "If I pile several slices of pie on top of each other, does it count as just one slice?" "Who do I know who has given up pie for Lent, so that I can have their share, too?" etc.
In honor of Pi(e) Day, we have prepared some trivia questions. Okay, mainly they were prepared by someone else and we just appropriated them. We thought about including some pi trivia as well, but the level of questions we personally could ask would all involve answers like "round," "not round," "sort of round," "roundish," "under certain circumstances, yes, a Root Beer float could be considered round," etc. So we'll just stick with questions about the pie we can eat.
True or False
1. In the 19th century fruit pies were often eaten for breakfast, because they were "considered part of a hearty meal before a hard day's work."
2. I wish I had lived in the 19th century.
3. The crust of early pies was referred to as a coffyn.
4. People did not eat the coffyn part of the pie.
5. Once people started calling the coffyn crust, they began to eat it along with the filling of the pie.
6. Early pies contained meat, usually fowl, and the legs were left hanging off the sides to be used as handles.
7. More people prefer their pie plain, with no ice cream or whipped cream.
8. Pie consumed on Pi(e) Day has a negative amount of fat or calories, such that you actually lose weight when you eat it.
Answers
1. True.
2. Duh.
3. True.
4. Duh. Would you eat something called a coffyn?
5. True. Well, we just made that up.
6. Sadly, but apparently, true. This meal was evidently the forerunner of soft shell crabs, which are popular here in Maryland among those who are not disgusted by body parts hanging off their sandwich buns. It also was apparently the forerunner of the stargazy pie, which is too disgusting to describe here.
7. False. Most forgo the pie entirely and consume the whipped cream right out of the can.
8. We wish.
So, on this Pi(e) Day, load up your coffyn with some fowl legs and whipped cream, and dig in!
At the end of our last dance lesson last week, we were informed that someone from the studio would talk to us about possibly continuing our lessons. We suspected that "talking to us" would involve persuasive arguments about the stupidity of NOT continuing.
"They'll probably take us into that little room," the Hero said.
Earlier we had seen a couple in that little room, which was notable because unlike the other little rooms in the studio, it had furniture to sit on. It looked to be a very comfortable room, in fact, with leather chairs and a lovely wooden table and desk. We had watched as the couple came out of the room, hugging.
"They look like they've been to couples therapy," I said at the time.
So when Brandon, our instructor, told us that someone would be talking with us about our "options," we were not surprised to be ushered into the little room.
Now, the Hero comes from a long line of skilled negotiators, buyers, and sellers. There is no danger, for example, of any of his immediate relatives being forced into buying a time share. Were they to attend one of those high-pressure "We won't pressure you to buy anything" sessions, the salespersons would inevitably find themselves agreeing to purchase something from the relatives rather than the other way around.
I, in contrast, come from a long line of wimps who can't bear to disappoint other people. This sometimes results in our ending up with items that, without having been pressured into buying them, we would never even have considered. For example, my family returned from a trip to Greece many years ago with a large, expensive urn depicting numerous gods and goddesses, all aiming sharply pointed implements at each other threateningly. Everyone from the workers at the shop where it was made to the shop owner to the taxi driver who took us to the shop -- ignoring our strong protestations that we did not want to go -- insisted we buy the urn. My parents still have it, because, as my mother says, "I would feel bad getting rid of it."
Only in the matter of Girl Scout cookies does the Hero show a greater propensity to cave to sales pressure than I do.
I figured that with the Hero's heritage of not being easily strong-armed into purchasing things, we would be pretty safe from any attempts on the part of the dance studio person to talk us into additional, costly lessons. I thought it best to say as little as possible, and never "Yes." Because if it had been up to me, things might have gone very differently at our meeting in the little room:
Studio person: "So, we have a fantastic deal for you guys -- the 10-10 package, 10 private lessons and 10 group lessons, for only $5,473."
Me, nodding enthusiastically: "Sounds great! Where do we sign up?"
Hero: "Are you crazy??"
Studio person: "Okay, so maybe you're not quite ready for that kind of commitment. No problem! We also have the 6-6 package for just $3,286."
Me: "Oh, that sounds very reasonable."
Hero: "You ARE crazy."
Studio person: Ahh, I can tell that YOU are a couple who likes to make your own rules. So, for you, we have the put-together-your-own-package. You can come to as many or as few lessons as you like, and for each lesson you pay just the same amount as you pay every month toward your mortgage...."
Me: "Hmm, are you -- well, are you sure you're charging enough for that package? I really think you could get people to pay even -- hey, honey, why are you pushing me out the door?...Wha-- hey! Let me back in there! I just want to help him have a good day. You be nice to him, honey!"
Fortunately, when the studio person started drawing little arcs and incomprehensible marks on paper to illustrate how participants progressed from the routine newcomers' lessons to more demanding yet expressive ones, presumably in an effort to impress us and get us to say "YES! We want to be on the other end of that arc!" I cleverly pretended to really, really need a Kleenex that was somewhere in my purse.
In the end, of course, we said that we would sleep on the decision to continue, which the studio person correctly interpreted as "No, we are definitely not going to take further lessons, unless we get another Groupon in which you pay us to take them." He and the Hero even struck a deal whereby the studio would not call us to ask whether we had changed our minds.
And the other end of the deal? I'm not sure, but I think it had something to do with Girl Scout cookies...
I am sure that those of you who read this blog regularly will be relieved to know that, as our dance lessons are coming to an end this week, so too will the posts about our dance experiences. But not quite yet.
Taking these dance lessons has been not unlike being in a pet show, or a 4-H show, although let me hasten to say that we have no personal experience being entrants in these shows. But as we are practicing our steps at the studio, our instructor, Brandon, peers intently at our feet, our hand position, and our body lines to the point that we begin to worry. Are we good enough? Is he going to criticize us for something? Does he notice how awesome our hair looks today? etc.
But then Brandon's cheerful face brightens, and he gives us his standard critique: "Awesome!"
We have the feeling that this would still be his reaction were we to begin tripping over each other, bumping into things, bumping into him, etc.
In light of our experience we feel somewhat qualified to offer advice to other beginning dancers. The best thing to do, short of actual talent, is to find other couples who dance even less well than you do, and hang around them. This will, with very little effort on your part, instantly make you feel quite accomplished.
Unfortunately we may be that couple for the others in our group. But we can proudly say that we have only trod upon each other's feet, which is generally discouraged, one time, and we believe no one witnessed this incident.
In the group lessons we are encouraged to dance with different partners from song to song. The Hero and I try to avoid this at all costs, for example, pretending to be deaf when these instructions are given. Somehow, the instructor and other dancers have figured out that we are NOT deaf. We therefore occasionally find ourselves obliged to dance with a stranger.
It can be a little awkward to be in such close proximity to a stranger. Therefore it is a good idea to have something to say to the person, such as "How are you enjoying the lessons?" "Why did you decide to take lessons?" "Do you always step on people's feet like that?"
Some people handle the awkwardness by ignoring altogether the fact that the other person is merely a few inches away from them. One of the male dance instructors has perfected this technique, carrying on extensive conversations about what type of dances you enjoy the most, whether you are having trouble with any steps, and what you like to do in your free time, all while looking off into the distance across your right shoulder.
You should probably not attempt to alter this behavior, for instance by moving your head around to try to force the person to make eye contact. This would violate the Polite Dance Partner Behavior Code, which allows for occasional trodding on feet but NOT attempted coercion to make eye contact.
Some couples have NO conversation whatsoever as they are dancing. As awkward as strained conversation can be between strangers -- the Hero reported that he and his dance partner spent an entire waltz discussing Groupons -- silence can be even more awkward. You feel as if you have entered an alternative time universe, similar to what happens when men wait for women to come out of a public restroom, or a fitting room.
To help us get the most out of our lessons, the Hero and I try to practice our steps at home. This presents a challenge, as our rooms are very tiny, and after two or three steps we find ourselves apologizing to the dishwasher and other immovable objects with which we have made contact. Someday, if we improve in this regard we may write a book on How to Dance in Four Square Feet of Space or Less. We'll be sure to get a back-of-the-book endorsement from Brandon, which no doubt will be: "Awesome!"
Today we feature the latest installment of Things Overheard at Ladies' Night Out, which the Princess attends whenever she needs some good blog material. Just kidding! Of course she goes mostly so she doesn't have to cook for one night.
Spouses and children feature prominently in many of the conversations on these evenings. Also dogs. Since the Princess has only one out of three of those, she does a lot of listening.
This time we contemplated the tendency of husbands to, while holding down very responsible, high-level important jobs like designing future space stations, exhibit a marked inability to find anything located in their own house without first consulting their wife: "Honey, where do we keep the mustard? How about the milk? Well, where do we keep Timmy's diapers? Uh, where do we keep Timmy? I mean, he's ours, right?"
I related what the Hero had once given as an explanation for such baffling behavior, soon after we were married: "When a guy gets married, all his brains just fly out of his head."
The ladies considered this, and then said that while they personally would have put it not quite so bluntly, this was essentially the case.
Much dismay was expressed at the tendency of fathers to play roughly with their children and to allow them to do things the mothers would never consider, such as letting them drive the family car while still, technically, a toddler. Of course I am just kidding. But one father, apparently ignoring the mother's advice that perhaps he should not allow their two-year-old to play with a Sharpie permanent marker in the father's office, did just that, and soon had a nicely autographed scribble on his wall.
Further ignoring her advice to research the best way to erase Sharpie marker from one's wall, the father put primer over the marks, which promptly bled through the layer of primer. And the next layer. And the next layer. Seven layers of primer later, Sharpies are strictly a controlled substance in the father's office.
Another father relishes the fact that the church ladies bring food to people who are sick, just had a baby, painted seven layers of primer on their walls, etc. When his fourth child was born, he wanted to know who had signed up to bring them dinner for the next couple of weeks.
"How about so-and-so?" he asked. "She makes great food. Is she signed up? Oh, this is great."
"Honey," his wife reminded him, "the baby...we're excited about the new BABY, remember?"
There was a lively discussion concerning dogs, specifically one named Ollie who is the center of sibling arguments daily. "Every time they walk Ollie, he gets away from them," the mother reported.
"How big is the dog?" someone asked.
"Uh, nine pounds."
Clearly, Ollie is having fun strutting what little stuff he has.
Ollie also has a charming habit, whenever the boys tell him it's time to go outside, of promptly performing an act right there in the house that immediately renders an outside visit quite unnecessary.
Let's hope Ollie doesn't get hold of any Sharpies.
"Bad news," the Hero said. "We're not lifting enough elephants at the gym."
He was looking at the latest report from our local Y, where we have been faithfully working out once a week for, oh, at LEAST the last two weeks.
The report tells us, among other important things, how much weight we have lifted in terms of elephants. Usually this is in the neighborhood of .04, .1 elephants -- equivalent to maybe a tooth. However, WE have apparently been slacking in the weight-lifting department, logging only .02 elephant.
As dismaying as this news was, I was more concerned about the fact that, according to the report, we have earned 0.0 ice cream sundaes. Of course it takes a great deal of effort to earn a fraction of a sundae, but SURELY I have at least earned a cherry by now. Maybe just the cherry stem. But SOMETHING.
The report is also useful for keeping track of how long you have used the cardio machines, such as the stationary bike and the treadmill. ("The treadmill was in operation for 30 minutes and 24 seconds. However, no motion was detected on it. User is suspected of stepping off and letting it run while she napped on the floor mat next to it.")
It would be helpful if there were some sort of image to help us visualize how far we'd run or biked, like the elephants for how much weight you lift. It would be exhilarating to know, for example, that "You ran from the White House in Washington, DC, to George's Mount Vernon estate," although if this showed up on MY report, it would NOT be exhilarating because it would indicate that I had been grossly confused with someone else. My report would be more like "You ran from The Bakery Shoppe at 143 22nd St. to Nora's Ice Cream Store at 145 22nd St. (and we suspect that you walked part of the way)."
The report also notes your Lifetime Fitness Points. My Lifetime Fitness Points are somewhere in the neighborhood of 113. I have no idea what this means, but to reach the First Level of Fitness probably requires around 14,897 points. I have been secretly inquiring into whether one can buy extra fitness points, but have thus far been unable to obtain any information on this. Perhaps some sort of barter system could be worked out, where I could get someone else's points in exchange for, well, I don't know what. This is probably why the barter system is not too popular at the Y.
If neither of these strategies is successful, I might have to resort to turning on a bunch of treadmills at the same time, when the gym is not too crowded. I will log in with my code number on all of them and hope that the system will not notice there is nobody on them. It will cut into my napping-on-the-mat time, but sometimes you gotta make sacrifices.
I suppose I COULD just exercise more...wait, is that an elephant I hear laughing?
In our second group dance lesson, the Hero and I fared better than during the first group lesson. This was measured by the fewer number of times various instructors swooped in to separate us and show us what we were doing wrong. Alternatively, the fact that they interrupted us less could be taken as a measure of their belief that we were beyond help, but we choose to remain positive.
After our lesson, the Hero began to wax poetic about the waltz, which we had practiced to part of "Edelweiss." "I think of the 1, 2, 3 count as a rise," he said. "I try to rise with it and then gradually fall. It's very elegant. At least," he said, deflating somewhat from his rise, "in my MIND I'm elegant. Probably to anyone else I look like a piston: UP, down, UP, down..."
During the lesson, instructor Brandon talked about up and down movement too, in the context of bouncing during the single swing dance. "Don't bounce UP," he cautioned, as this would make our legs hurt after a while and we would definitely look like pistons. He advised us instead to bounce down, sort of crouching a bit. This would allow us to express our interpretation of the music in a non-piston-like manner.
It is also, I found, a good way to make your lower back hurt. But -- and this is an important point -- at least I did not look like a piston while hurting myself.
So doing piston moves is not really our specialty. What we personally are best at is The Stomp. This is our own version of the fast swing dances, which for most dancers consist of a marching step side to side and a "rock step" back to front. Most dancers enjoy these because the music is fun and, more important, they know how to DO the dances. Whereas to us, the swing dances are such a bewildering blur of movement that we must boil them down to one type of step: the stomp.
As long as we can hear the beat -- which is not usually a problem in songs like these -- we can do a firm, confident, and above all loud STOMP on each beat. We are not too particular about whether we are stomping from side to side or back to front at the same time, although Emily, another instructor, seems to place great importance on this. We don't hold it against her.
The Stomp is an adult variation on the Toddler Stomp, which is a dance well known to teachers of very young children. The Toddler Stomp is performed by a simple rocking back and forth from one foot to the other and is usually performed leadenly, with the toddler's feet showing extreme reluctance to be separated from the floor.
Of course our Stomp is a much more sophisticated version. Occasionally, just to show off our flexibility and growing skill, we'll swing our arms around at the same time as we are stomping, although not necessarily in a coordinated manner. And sometimes we might even rotate and move about the floor as we are dancing, though I admit this is most likely to occur accidentally.
Our next lesson will include just Brandon and us. Alone, without all the other dancers to distract him from our technique, we may not be able to fool him. But he is very positive, and I have no doubt that after we are through with our lessons, he'll be able to tell the other instructors, truthfully, that we are two of the very best stompers he's ever seen.
