afongen

In all my excitement about the return of the Perl Advent Calendar, and the LugRadio Advent Calendar (!), I completely forgot to check to see whether there would be a new 24 Ways this year. There is, chock full of all your web design goodness this advent season. Entries from the likes of Drew McLellan, Andy Budd, Rachel Andrew, Christian Heilmann… go check it out. (via)

Me: Good answer!

K: Yeah, I’d totally make a good dad. I can build stuff and make up bullshit on the fly.

Me: We don’t call it bullshit.

K: Oh yeah. Wisdom.

Today at dinner:

Me: Ooh, your glass is empty, would you like more water?
Owen: When a bird dies, we all suffer, too.

It’s like I’m living with a Zen master.
We recently checked out a book about endangered animals, and it’s affected him deeply. We returned it days ago, and he’s still mulling over the text (which he’s apparently memorized) and asking thoughtful questions.

“All the religious freaks moved here. You know how all the criminals were sent to Australia? You go to churches in Europe and they’re empty because all the goddamn religious freaks moved here.”

I rescued this from a draft blog post two years ago and leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which one of us said that.

When you’re at that point in your son’s bedtime routine where you sit quietly and listen to a CD with him for a while, and he’s finally relaxed enough that you don’t feel too guilty about listening to a little something on your iPod instead of Winnie-the-Pooh lullabies for what has got to be the hundredth time — because it’s not like you’re ignoring him or failing to treasure these precious moments together, you’re giving him a chance to sleep on his own — do not, do not listen to an outtakes episode of the Drunk and Retired podcast. You will find that you cannot help but laugh out loud, disturbing your son’s blissfully restful state.

Not that I would ever do that.

I just got word that a coworker and her four children were hit by a car yesterday as they were walking near their home. We don’t know their status other than what’s in that article, as the family has more important things on their mind than contacting the office with updates.

I’ve worked closely with Stacy for years (her husband recently joined us here as well), and these are some of the most adorable kids you’ve ever met. They are in our thoughts and a whole lot of prayers.

Rachel Coleman and her daughter Leah of Signing Time fame performed at the Minnesota Children’s Museum last week, so naturally we had to bring Owen and Alec. We all had fun.

You may recall that we’ve been using sign language with our kids from an early age. Neither Kiara nor I is fluent in ASL, but we could learn enough to help Owen express himself before his verbal abilities took off wildly. He still loves to sign, and I know that he’ll have a lot of fun signing with his little brother.

I’ve got a lot of email the last couple days (a surprising amount of it in response to my Jabber post the other day … gotta enable comments) but haven’t been able to respond because I’ve been dealing with a family health issue. Nothing that massive amounts of antibiotics and painkillers won’t help, hopefully, but please know that I haven’t been ignoring you. I’ve just had other things going on.

After just a year of benign neglect, the grass in our front yard has given up and died. If it happens that easily, it tells me that we’re dealing with a non-native grass. I’m not one to obsess over my lawn, so I’m not about to fertilize the hell out of it every year for the sake of a grass that doesn’t even belong here. No, now we’re on a mission to turn our front yard into a native prairie.

Perhaps that’s a bit extravagant. (Are prairies extravagant?) It’s a small lot; I don’t know that it will count as a prairie. But they will be prairie plants.

Over the next several years, we’re replacing our front lawn — such as it is — with grasses and flowers that are native to this area, that thrive in medium-dry soil and lots of sun, that will require less maintenance and be better for the environment. We started by going out to Landscape Alternatives, a nursery that specializes in just this sort of project. They’re great people who really know their stuff. I heartily recommend them.

We’re starting this year by tackling the 4-5 foot hill going down to the sidewalk. We’ll lay down six or more layers of newspaper covered with wood chips, to kill the grass and weeds that are there now. Then we’ll put in the plants, one every square foot, water it a bit, and carefully weed over the next year or so. After that, the plants should come back happily on their own, and suppress most weed growth on their own.

Over the next few years, we’ll move back toward the house bit by bit. We’ll have a stone path, a bench, even a hammock and a koi pond! Maybe not the pond. Neither of us is a gardener, so even this year’s small step is an ambitious project. But I’m very much looking forward to it.

I spent the weekend with Friends in the woods at Northern Yearly Meeting. Kiara’s the Quaker in the family; I just tag along for the good parties. Since my beliefs and values are very much in line with the Quakers, I’d attend Twin Cities Friends Meeting with Kiara were my time in meeting not overwhelmed by a voice in my head screaming “THIS IS WRONG THIS IS WRONG GET OUT GET OUT NOW!” I take that as a message that I shouldn’t be there. :-) But I do go to NYM with her and the kids.

I value this weekend as a rare opportunity to enjoy long stretches of contemplative silence — among those who do not question the value of silence.

This year NYM was again at the Wisconsin Lions Camp, in a quiet, wooded area northeast of Stevens Point. Attendees have the option of sharing a cabin, which we did last year, or tenting in the woods, our choice this year. We arrived after dark, stumbling through the woods to find somewhere to pitch our tent, vainly trying to hush Owen so as not to wake others around us. Pretty comical in retrospect. We set up the tent a ways back in the woods from the camp, only to discover in the morning that we’d walked right past the main tent area. Still, we liked being in the woods: it was quieter, and I liked seeing the night sky through swaying pine trees. The boys slept well in the tent, not even waking up during the violent thunderstorm that swept through and sent many of the other tenters scurrying inside.

I don’t say this to brag. Were we not camped away from the others, we would have been alerted to golf-ball-sized hail as well, and sought shelter on the graciously volunteered cabin floors.

Owen spent his mornings in child care, playing with other kids his age. It tuckered him out so he would sleep soundly if we could get him too nap. On Sunday, he wouldn’t nap so I took him for a walk around the lake. He made it halfway around before asking me to carry him, and fell asleep in my arms 5 minutes later. Let’s just say I got my workout this weekend, although not one that my chiropractor would approve.

Kiara wasn’t able to attend much of the business meetings (Meetings for Worship with Attention to Business; the Quaker decision-making process is fascinating) because she had Alec in the infant/toddler care, but we’re working on a way to change that next year. And she did discover that she likes sacred harp and shape note singing (not sure if there’s a difference).

And me? When I wasn’t establishing that no, we hadn’t lost the keys, they were locked in the car, I was either in the woods on a walk around the lake, or playing with Owen. It was a good weekend.