Some Thanksgiving Day Photos

Amateur Day, Take Three

There are a few days each year when people who are much better suited for their typical day-to-day routines venture out in to a part of the world where they just have absolutely no business being. Amateur Day #1 could technically be considered the last, chronologically speaking, but its name and popularity land it atop the list. I'm talking of course about New Year's Eve, which is when all the people who catch a buzz from a Bartle's & Jaymes wine cooler think they've magically grown a tolerance for large quantities of alcohol, and subsequently flood the town and wreak havoc. You'll find me comfortably in bed no later than 9 p.m. on New Year's Eve, it's just not worth the hassle.

Amateur Day #2 is Selection Sunday, the day the first-round match-ups are announced for the NCAA Basketball Tournament. This is when all the accountants and cell phone salesmen out there all of a sudden know everything there is to know about college hoops, and they subject you to 5 days worth of trash talk over a ten dollar office pool they'll almost certainly lose. Dude, my three year-old could regurgitate what she heard on SportsCenter last night better than you just did . . just spare us.

And today is Amateur Day #3, the one we affectionately dub Black (or Green, depending on your need for political-correctness) Friday. The root of the problem on Black Friday is that people are coerced into doing things at a time of day when they're typically doing something else. This creates huge and uncomfortable clashes, and it generally brings out the worst in everyone, all in the name of $50 off the price of a TV. While I wasn't stupid enough to go to a mall this lovely day, my daily trip to the gym takes me right past a new shopping center that houses a SuperTarget and a Best Buy, among other places. How do I know it would be mass-chaos inside the stores at 8:30 this morning, you ask? I'm going by the fact that on the 1.5 mile stretch of road before the entrance to the mall I was cut off by at least 4 cars and witnessed 3 others making blatantly illegal maneuvers to get where they were going. That's what I mean by Amateur Day . . the people who drive like that are usually out shopping at 7 or 8 o'clock at night, when everybody acts crazy and the sane people are at home avoiding them. But when they subject those of us who commute leisurely to their antics at times when we're not expecting it, that's when all hell breaks loose. Next year I'll most likely skip the trip to the gym on Black Friday, knowing what I know now. It's just one of those days, like New Year's Eve, where I'd just as soon hear the stories afterward and not have experienced any of them. Happy shopping to those of you who value that PlayStation III more than your sanity.

Merry Christmas Daddy

This morning started as many others do, Mandi was off to work early and I sat down to read the Sunday paper at the kitchen table. It's one of the few times each week I truly get to myself, outside of the gym. Lily woke at her usual 6 a.m., and as I always do I gave her a few minutes to knock the sleep out of her eyes before I retrieved her from the crib. I like listening to her on the monitor when she wakes up, as she's still at the age where she verbalizes what will soon become her internal dialog. Listening to her morning rant is a guilty pleasure I'm really going to miss when she finally moves into Avery's room.

Because we spent a good part of the day yesterday putting out the Christmas decorations, it was no surprise that Lily had Santa on her mind this morning. While she loves the outdoor lights and decorations, the ones on the living room table that she can interact with are definitely her favorite. The norm for our house from now through Christmas Day will be an ill-coordinated chorus of Jingle Bells, Let It Snow, and Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree and others performed by three snowmen, two penguins, and a dog. So I turned on the webcam and captured a little 10-second snippet of her enjoying the new "toys". There's no sound to accompany it, but as the last snowman stopped singing, she turned to me and gleefully yelled "Merry Christmas Daddy!" Enjoy!

Dear Nasa,

Yet another gem of a post just dropped in my lap by Avery today after school. Apparently a few months ago they were given an assignment to write a letter to NASA telling about a new planet they'd discovered. Today they brought home the mounted, finished product, and it's fantastic! This is how it reads:

Dear nasa,
I discovered a new planet new planet! it is called nebeula. their air is stinky. most of it looks like the beach. it looked fun. there where kids too. the space ships looked realy fun. it was butiful. the people were real nise. the people did tricks in the sky like sky diving. it look like an over loaded fair.

Your friend Avery

It just doesn't get a whole lot better than that. Write this down . . Avery has friends at NASA, so if you ever need a moonrock for a gift or want to vacation on Mars, give her a call on her iPhone and let her know, she'll hook you up.

Dumb Things Other Parents Do, Part I

Most of the crap I see people do is not worthy of the time it takes to write it down. Sometimes though, they're just so wrong on so many levels I can't help myself. I decided to start a series of stories on the topic. This is, after all, supposed to be a "guide". Consider the tales retold here the "do not" picture in your handbook of parenthood.

Last night as the girls and I were leaving the mall I spotted a large white Ford Expedition parked 2 spots past The DaddyBus. Initially it only stood out because it was parked in a spot marked "Compact Cars Only". Before you start calling me names, understand that if the story ended there it would not have been something I ever spoke or wrote about. I don't equate these spots with those reserved for disabled people, mothers with infants, etc. It makes you a little bit of a jerk to park your Expedition there, but if you park it in the mothers spot and you don't have an infant in the car you're a piece of scum. Clear? Ok, so as I loaded the 25-pound box of modeling clay we bought for Avery's class project into the trunk (you can look forward to that story, I'm sure it will be a good one) the big Expedition thundered to life and started to inch backwards out of the spot. I say inch because every 3 or 4 seconds the 3-ton behemoth would lurch to a stop, its driver clearly struggling to maneuver out of the cramped parking spot. And then it hit me.

There was a 15-year-old girl driving this thing!

I stood and watched for what seemed like ten minutes as the girl's mom sat in the passenger seat on her cell phone, completely oblivious to the peril her daughter was subjecting everyone within a quarter mile to. The vehicle continued its lurching retreat out of the parking spot until it nearly ran over a curb behind it. The girl put the truck into drive and started to heave the steering wheel to the right, the power steering pump wailing and squealing, straining to turn the beast. As she inched toward the end of the row of parking spots, I watched her clumsily reach with her right hand over to turn on the turn signal. At this point she was at least 8 feet into the middle of the intersection, waiting most impatiently for the pedestrians and crossing traffic to clear her intended path. That path eventually led her halfway into the loading dock of the Bass Pro Shop before she got the truck into the proper lane and straightened out. It was amazing that no innocent passersby or trees were killed in the making of this story.

What was this mom thinking? How good can her insurance possibly be? And how can she sleep at night knowing that she's allowing another teenager to get behind the wheel with no sense of responsibility or right vs. wrong? A) Why did she allow the kid to park in that spot in the first place (or had mom driven to the mall and pulled that sweet move). B) How could she not be scared for the truck given the teen's obvious lack of experience? C) What could she possibly be talking about on the phone that was more important?

I know my oldest kid is only 7, and for me to say that I'll be more on top of things when she's a teenager than this mom was is purely speculative. But at least I've seen the do not picture now, and it'll haunt me until long after my kids have learned to drive.

L . . I . . L . . Y!

I've been working with Lil on spelling her name for quite a while now. A few weeks ago she recited her ABC's completely unassisted, so I thought the name was the next logical step. I soon realized two major flaws in my plan, however. First, the letter "L" is one of two that she still can't pronounce correctly ("R" is the other). And while I suspect this is normal, it hurts her because it's 50% of her name. The second flaw is that when asked to identify the letters, one of her most common mistakes is confusing "I" and "Y". Geez, so much for giving her an easy-to-spell 4-letter name, eh? Well we kept practicing and practicing, at the end foregoing the mid-word split ("L I" . . "L Y") because I thought it might be confusing her, and we went for the whole thing. Well this morning she's got it, consistently knocking it out of the park, and she's sooo proud of herself! She likes to point to the big painted letters on her wall when she does it, grinning from ear to ear and clapping wildly for herself when she gets it right. "I spell (pronounced speoww) my name!", she yells. Now that she's got that mastered, our next conquest will be counting to ten in Spanish. Right now she can do "uno, dos, tres" unprompted, but we still have to walk her through 4-10. Nueve, for 9, still needs a little bit of individual attention, though. Her current pronunciation resembles the chorus to her new favorite song . . "A bay bay".

Dragons Fade

I can officially say that the Green Dragons ran out of gas last night in the Championship game. The offense was lethargic and the defense was sloppy. The result was a 2-0 defeat at the hands of a Sharks team that, admittedly, was a lot better than us. I guess the fatigue from a 4th game in 6 days finally caught up with the team, but I don't blame them a bit for that. They play their final regular season game this morning at 10, which will be their 5th in a week, and it promises to be a complete disaster. The head coach has promised to mix up the line-ups, allowing the kids to try some new positions since the game is essentially meaningless. I'm looking forward to seeing what an all-girls offense can do, as well as what some inexperienced goal-keeping will lead to. The season wraps up next Saturday with a pizza party and another set of trophies, and I have to say that coaching this team has been one of the most rewarding experiences I've had in a long time. The one-on-one time with Avery has been great, and the chance to teach and lead the kids is something I'm grateful for.