So I decided to do a little spring cleaning here in the office the last couple days. Ran into trouble when I couldn't fuel the flamethrower (ran out of napalm, unfortunately). Had an old buddy/roommate from college mention that he cleans out his car with a leaf blower.
Now, that would beat the heck out of my Plan B... and I couldn't figure out how to get a backhoe through the door anyway.
If I could just pull one of those trucks with the leaf-blowers mounted on the back right up next to the office, then reach in through the window with a hose... Hmmm...
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Kate & Jay's Birthday 4-11-09
Copyright 2009 by Ed Kmetz
Yo:
Kate & Jay are now into their second decade as of 07:50 and 07:52 this morning. Double digits for the dynamic duo.
Happy birthday wishes to them. I have to tell you about their party. First, a little back story.
So we (mostly Karen) decided that their party would consist of 10 (ten) kids. Each of them gets to invite 4 friends. They'll arrive for dinner Friday night for "make your own pizza," stay overnight, we hammer some breakfast into them, they play games outside Saturday , then parent pickup is around 3.
That's the plan. So far, so good.
Karen has numerous outdoor games planned, plus guess the gummy bears, draw strange pictures of people (as only 10 year olds can do), watch a movie in the (almost completed) theater downstairs. The kiddies will jump on the trampoline, have races, play with Halley, ride razor scooters down the driveway, play volleyball, and on and on.
That was the plan.
Of course the weather forecast does not cooperate, and all week they're calling for floods, tornadoes, locusts. Ark-building is recommended. So we have to plan on a plan B.
Keep in mind, too, that there are differences, stark and many, between 10 year old girls and 10 year old boys. These differences cannot and must not be ignored.
Let's start with last night....
After dinner we tell 'em all get your PJ's on, then we'll put on a movie in the theater for you. Now, I have a Vudu movie server with 12,000 titles available, so selection is not expected to be a problem. I put on the filter for "family" movies in high def, and the list is narrowed to 292. So I figure it's time to have some fun. I hand Jay the Vudu remote and say "here, all of you decide on a movie."
Try getting ten 10-year-olds to agree on anything, but especially the single most watchable movie of nearly 300. I basically poured gas on the floor and tossed a match into it. It was awesome. I couldn't resist.
I headed upstairs.
The discussion continued downstairs for maybe 8 - 10 minutes. Call it discussion if you like, but know that the negotiating tactics of 10 year old boys are based strictly on volume, and not at all on logic, compromise, or tact.
Girl: "I LOVE that movie"
Boy: "That's a STUPID movie, I wanted to barf."
And so it went.
Finally, I decided that rather than having them declaring all out war, or reaching a bitter, movieless stalemate... and having started the conflict I figured I'd better mediate the conflict. Found something (one of the "most watched" features) that about 7 of 10 agreed on, and only 2 or 3 thought was stupid.
An hour and a half or so, and a couple gallons of popcorn later, they head back upstairs. Movie pronounced satisfactory by all as it turns out.
Time for bed.
We corral the 5 boys into the living room, the 5 girls up in Kate's room. There's the constant underhum of girl giggling and chatter until who knows what time. The boys talk and scream, then a couple drop off line, then pretty quickly all of them are circuit breakers tripped. Like puppies, when the boys go down, they go down hard and they're out like they're under anesthesia. The girls giggle and chat quietly until who knows what time (word this morning was that they stayed up until 01:30, but who really knows...). The girl sound level is low enough that it doesn't matter much if they're awake and quiet or asleep and quiet. Quiet is quiet enough.
Now it's this morning. 07:30. The first girls awake, they decide to play the game hangman. No doubt it's words like "turquoise" and "gentle" and "breezes."
The first boys wake up about the same time and within seconds, all boys are awake.
The girls chatter quietly amongst each other, and giggle. Another game of hangman... "pastel" or "zephyr" this time. All girls gently awake and wish each other a good and delightful morning.
The boys start by drilling holes in each other's heads. They swing at each other with machetes. Contact is frequent.
A butterfly lands on Katie's bed upstairs, and the girls watch, breathless, at the gentle flapping of its wings.
The boys chainsaw through the sofa. They jackhammer the floor.
The girls cure the common cold, then ask to be excused.
The boys start the Chicago Fire.
We finally get them all dressed and rounded up and at the breakfast table for chow. Pancakes fly, syrup is dispensed, bacon is nuked, orange juice poured. Kid bellies fill. Before we know it, they're all outside. 5 girls head for the trampoline. The rain has somehow held off.
5 boys grab a new birthday "flying ring," a gizmo like a Frisbee but without a middle. It can fly 25,000 feet when propelled by appropriate boy power.
It can, however, only fly 50 ft. horizontally and 20 ft. vertically when tossed up straight into a tree, which happened maybe 2 minutes into play.
I couldn't find the camera, but it would've been an award-winning shot for sure. One fluorescent yellow flying ring hooked around the end of a skinny tree branch, 20 ft. up. 5 boys staring up at the ring, mouths open, like turkeys in the rain. They head for the garage to find tools. Out come rakes, hoes, a broom. After some minutes they conclude that even a 5 ft. long broom handle held by a 4 ft. boy is no match for a 20 ft. tree. One boy decides to lift another boy into "piggy back" position. They both fall down. They try the tools again, with no success. They then decide to build a human pyramid, so Victor gets on the ground on all fours. Jay climbs up on Victor's back. They enlist Trevor, the smallest kid, to climb on Jay's back. Trevor gets as far as Victor's back and the whole works collapses in a heap of random boy parts. Minutes pass. Plans are argued, debated, considered, rejected. Tools are tried again. Clark climbs the tree, reaches fruitlessly, and beats a retreat. Hunter climbs the tree and as he's a bit taller, he can actually reach the offending branch. Shake shake. Shake shake shake. SHAKE SH
The ring falls from the tree!
The boys storm the house in glorious celebration, like ancient hunters returning with a wildebeest tied around a sagging carry pole. They did it! It was all about the TEAMWORK! There was NEVER any doubt! They had it ALL the way!
By that time, 09:30, it was time to head for the climbing gym... the "Plan B" mentioned above. http://www.northsummitclimbing.com/
10 kids, plus Donna, wanted to climb the walls. We get 'em all saddled up.
2 hrs. of climbing ensued. Super-nice and careful people there at the climbing gym. Almost all the kids had a ball, except for one who claimed fear of heights after he made it up about 3/4 of the way, and another who had suffered a *severe* ankle injury earlier in the day. (He required much ice, and rest. Fortunately, no Medevac. Somehow he managed to recover in time for baseball practice this afternoon.)
If I were judging, and this was a competition, the girls would've won it going away. The girls left scorch marks as they scampered up the walls. I'm thinking a couple of them could've done it upside down. Most of the boys held their own, though. The look of pride on all their faces as they'd come down off a difficult technical climb all the way to the top was way worth the trip.
Brought them all back to the house. Lunched 'em and ice cream caked 'em.
Back out into the yard for an (uneventful!) session of ring toss and trampoline.
Parents came. Kids packed up and left. A couple of our good friends hung around and helped us polish off some chow that was jamming our fridge.
The rain held off.
Tired, but quite satisfied. A good day. A great birthday for K & J.
Happy Easter!
ESK
Copyright 2009 Ed Kmetz. All Rights Reserved. ALL broadcast, publication, retransmission to e-mail lists, WWW or any other copying or storage, in any medium, online or not, is
STRICTLY PROHIBITED without PRIOR written permission from the author. MANUAL FORWARDING by e-mail to friends is allowed IF 1) the text is forwarded IN ITS ENTIRETY, from the Copyright line on top through the end of this paragraph and 2) NO FEE is charged.
Yo:
Kate & Jay are now into their second decade as of 07:50 and 07:52 this morning. Double digits for the dynamic duo.
Happy birthday wishes to them. I have to tell you about their party. First, a little back story.
So we (mostly Karen) decided that their party would consist of 10 (ten) kids. Each of them gets to invite 4 friends. They'll arrive for dinner Friday night for "make your own pizza," stay overnight, we hammer some breakfast into them, they play games outside Saturday , then parent pickup is around 3.
That's the plan. So far, so good.
Karen has numerous outdoor games planned, plus guess the gummy bears, draw strange pictures of people (as only 10 year olds can do), watch a movie in the (almost completed) theater downstairs. The kiddies will jump on the trampoline, have races, play with Halley, ride razor scooters down the driveway, play volleyball, and on and on.
That was the plan.
Of course the weather forecast does not cooperate, and all week they're calling for floods, tornadoes, locusts. Ark-building is recommended. So we have to plan on a plan B.
Keep in mind, too, that there are differences, stark and many, between 10 year old girls and 10 year old boys. These differences cannot and must not be ignored.
Let's start with last night....
After dinner we tell 'em all get your PJ's on, then we'll put on a movie in the theater for you. Now, I have a Vudu movie server with 12,000 titles available, so selection is not expected to be a problem. I put on the filter for "family" movies in high def, and the list is narrowed to 292. So I figure it's time to have some fun. I hand Jay the Vudu remote and say "here, all of you decide on a movie."
Try getting ten 10-year-olds to agree on anything, but especially the single most watchable movie of nearly 300. I basically poured gas on the floor and tossed a match into it. It was awesome. I couldn't resist.
I headed upstairs.
The discussion continued downstairs for maybe 8 - 10 minutes. Call it discussion if you like, but know that the negotiating tactics of 10 year old boys are based strictly on volume, and not at all on logic, compromise, or tact.
Girl: "I LOVE that movie"
Boy: "That's a STUPID movie, I wanted to barf."
And so it went.
Finally, I decided that rather than having them declaring all out war, or reaching a bitter, movieless stalemate... and having started the conflict I figured I'd better mediate the conflict. Found something (one of the "most watched" features) that about 7 of 10 agreed on, and only 2 or 3 thought was stupid.
An hour and a half or so, and a couple gallons of popcorn later, they head back upstairs. Movie pronounced satisfactory by all as it turns out.
Time for bed.
We corral the 5 boys into the living room, the 5 girls up in Kate's room. There's the constant underhum of girl giggling and chatter until who knows what time. The boys talk and scream, then a couple drop off line, then pretty quickly all of them are circuit breakers tripped. Like puppies, when the boys go down, they go down hard and they're out like they're under anesthesia. The girls giggle and chat quietly until who knows what time (word this morning was that they stayed up until 01:30, but who really knows...). The girl sound level is low enough that it doesn't matter much if they're awake and quiet or asleep and quiet. Quiet is quiet enough.
Now it's this morning. 07:30. The first girls awake, they decide to play the game hangman. No doubt it's words like "turquoise" and "gentle" and "breezes."
The first boys wake up about the same time and within seconds, all boys are awake.
The girls chatter quietly amongst each other, and giggle. Another game of hangman... "pastel" or "zephyr" this time. All girls gently awake and wish each other a good and delightful morning.
The boys start by drilling holes in each other's heads. They swing at each other with machetes. Contact is frequent.
A butterfly lands on Katie's bed upstairs, and the girls watch, breathless, at the gentle flapping of its wings.
The boys chainsaw through the sofa. They jackhammer the floor.
The girls cure the common cold, then ask to be excused.
The boys start the Chicago Fire.
We finally get them all dressed and rounded up and at the breakfast table for chow. Pancakes fly, syrup is dispensed, bacon is nuked, orange juice poured. Kid bellies fill. Before we know it, they're all outside. 5 girls head for the trampoline. The rain has somehow held off.
5 boys grab a new birthday "flying ring," a gizmo like a Frisbee but without a middle. It can fly 25,000 feet when propelled by appropriate boy power.
It can, however, only fly 50 ft. horizontally and 20 ft. vertically when tossed up straight into a tree, which happened maybe 2 minutes into play.
I couldn't find the camera, but it would've been an award-winning shot for sure. One fluorescent yellow flying ring hooked around the end of a skinny tree branch, 20 ft. up. 5 boys staring up at the ring, mouths open, like turkeys in the rain. They head for the garage to find tools. Out come rakes, hoes, a broom. After some minutes they conclude that even a 5 ft. long broom handle held by a 4 ft. boy is no match for a 20 ft. tree. One boy decides to lift another boy into "piggy back" position. They both fall down. They try the tools again, with no success. They then decide to build a human pyramid, so Victor gets on the ground on all fours. Jay climbs up on Victor's back. They enlist Trevor, the smallest kid, to climb on Jay's back. Trevor gets as far as Victor's back and the whole works collapses in a heap of random boy parts. Minutes pass. Plans are argued, debated, considered, rejected. Tools are tried again. Clark climbs the tree, reaches fruitlessly, and beats a retreat. Hunter climbs the tree and as he's a bit taller, he can actually reach the offending branch. Shake shake. Shake shake shake. SHAKE SH
The ring falls from the tree!
The boys storm the house in glorious celebration, like ancient hunters returning with a wildebeest tied around a sagging carry pole. They did it! It was all about the TEAMWORK! There was NEVER any doubt! They had it ALL the way!
By that time, 09:30, it was time to head for the climbing gym... the "Plan B" mentioned above. http://www.northsummitclimbing.com/
10 kids, plus Donna, wanted to climb the walls. We get 'em all saddled up.
2 hrs. of climbing ensued. Super-nice and careful people there at the climbing gym. Almost all the kids had a ball, except for one who claimed fear of heights after he made it up about 3/4 of the way, and another who had suffered a *severe* ankle injury earlier in the day. (He required much ice, and rest. Fortunately, no Medevac. Somehow he managed to recover in time for baseball practice this afternoon.)
If I were judging, and this was a competition, the girls would've won it going away. The girls left scorch marks as they scampered up the walls. I'm thinking a couple of them could've done it upside down. Most of the boys held their own, though. The look of pride on all their faces as they'd come down off a difficult technical climb all the way to the top was way worth the trip.
Brought them all back to the house. Lunched 'em and ice cream caked 'em.
Back out into the yard for an (uneventful!) session of ring toss and trampoline.
Parents came. Kids packed up and left. A couple of our good friends hung around and helped us polish off some chow that was jamming our fridge.
The rain held off.
Tired, but quite satisfied. A good day. A great birthday for K & J.
Happy Easter!
ESK
Copyright 2009 Ed Kmetz. All Rights Reserved. ALL broadcast, publication, retransmission to e-mail lists, WWW or any other copying or storage, in any medium, online or not, is
STRICTLY PROHIBITED without PRIOR written permission from the author. MANUAL FORWARDING by e-mail to friends is allowed IF 1) the text is forwarded IN ITS ENTIRETY, from the Copyright line on top through the end of this paragraph and 2) NO FEE is charged.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
About Me
- Ed Kmetz
- Copyright 1999-2012 Ed Kmetz. All Rights Reserved. ALL broadcast, publication, retransmission to e-mail lists, WWW or any other copying or storage, in any medium, online or not, is STRICTLY PROHIBITED without PRIOR written permission from the author. MANUAL FORWARDING by e-mail to friends is allowed IF 1) the text is forwarded IN ITS ENTIRETY, from the Copyright line on top through the end of this paragraph and 2) NO FEE is charged.