Baby Take a Ride in My Coop

You know how I got that new camera lens and now I think I'm a photojournalist?  And I said I was finishing up a big project and would be posting a million pictures of it?  Well, here it is.  Part I anyway. 

Yep...I am now one of those insufferable urban chicken farmers.

Here's a quick rundown of how it happened.  Our good friends who live a couple blocks away from us, and whose little girl is one of the twins' best friends, started talking about getting chickens.  

Or maybe my wife and I started it.  In any case, we drank a lot of wine on a lot of different occasions and got more and more excited about the idea of pooling our resources and running a little poultry operation.  They had a big yard and knew a guy at the farmers' market who could be our chicken guru, and I knew how to build stuff.  And we all liked eggs.  Clearly, it was meant to be.

Toward the end of one of these dinner party/playdates, we researched chicken coop designs on the iPad, and within 15 minutes had ordered a set of plans off of eBay.  (I wrote more about urban chickeneering in my neighborhood paper, here.)

And for the next three weekends, and some weekdays when I didn't have any paying work to do, my buddy and I picked away at what the old coot who designed this thing calls the "Coop deVille."

The plans aren't bad, but they're not exactly standard architectural blueprints.  It took a while to figure out how the hodgepodge of sketches, photos, and text fit together.  Luckily, the designer, James, was pretty easy to reach by phone to clarify parts that I just couldn't puzzle out.

It's not the most complicated thing I've ever built--not by a long shot.  But I wouldn't recommend it for novice handypersons, either.  Even if you've got skills, there's another thing you need a lot of: tools.  Obviously, you need all your basic hand tools--hammer, tape measure, chalkbox, level, etc.  But I swear I used a good 60% of my power tools, and I've got a garage full of them.  I even needed to buy yet another specialty pneumatic fastener, bringing the number of nail guns I now own to six. 

The material list for the project was pretty basic.  Almost the whole structure was made of 2x4s and plywood.  Then of course there was quite a bit of hardware.  But the reason the lumber list was so simple was because, instead of making me buy twenty 2x2s and ten 1x2s and thirty 1x4s, etc., etc., ol' James had me ripping all the pieces for the framing, the doors, the trim, everything, out of 2x4s.  I felt like Laura's Pa on Little House on the Prairie, milling logs to build wagon wheels.  This system made shopping for lumber easy, and saved quite a bit of money, but I had to set up my table saw every single time I worked on it.  I was blasting sawdust out of my nose with the neti pot every night.  

These are some of the power tools I used: table saw, circular saw (Skilsaw), jigsaw, miter saw, air compressor, framing nailer, trim nailer, pneumatic stapler, cordless drill, impact driver, router, random orbit sander...I'm sure I'm forgetting some.  You could probably make do without having all of those tools, but you definitely need a table saw. 

 

This is what we started with.

The jobsite

One pretty cool thing about the design of the deVille is that it's modular.  You build all the panels of the coop and the run that's attached to it separately, then screw them together.  This way, you could theoretically unscrew the panels from each other and move the whole shebang to another part of your yard.

Building the front wall

One panel framed!

Time passes...using a router to cut the plywood out for the windows on the front door. Note the stack of completed panels in the background.

Once all the panels were built, we started screwing them together

Happy Fathers Day! Enjoy Some Links!

I didn't get around to writing anything for Fathers Day this year.  I was busy, and I kind of didn't really feel like it anyway.  Anyway, I think I said all I want to about Fathers Day in these two posts that have been on the blog over the years.

This one is about my dad, who is a super cool dude and a great dad.  I lucked out.  And here's one of my favorite pictures of my dad, getting ready to jump out of a plane:

This one is probably the best thing ever written on my blog.  It's a remembrance, written by my dad, of my grandpa, known to his four kids as "Paw," and to almost everyone else as "Tex," even though, as far as anyone  knows, he had never set foot in Texas.  Grandpa was a cowboy, a railroad man, and a bareknuckle boxer who worked on ranges and ranches from Arkansas to Canada, with his family in tow.  You should really read this one.  Here's a picture of Grandpa at age 60 or so:

A'ight then.  I'm gonna go eat my Eggs Benedict now, then go watch a movie in a real movie theater.  Happy Fathers Day!

The Worst Camera Gear Review Ever

This might be the worst camera equipment review you ever read.  I mean, like, the technically worst ever.  I'm actually very pleased with the piece of equipment I'm reviewing, so it won't be a bad review in that sense.  It's just that I don't know a damn thing about cameras; so if you want to read about f-stops and crap, you might be disappointed.  

BUT WAIT.  DON'T LEAVE.  THERE ARE CUTE PICTURES OF KIDS AND DOGS HERE.

You know how, when you don't feel like doing something you know you should be doing, sometimes all it takes is a new gadget to get you excited about doing that thing again?  For me, a new pair of gym shorts is enough of to push me to make the right decision if I'm vacillating about whether to work out or not.  A new Sawzall (which I just got after finally killing the one I'd had for 10 years!) can get me psyched to start working on a remodeling project.  And this new lens I got for my Canon Rebel DSLR has inspired me to take about 400 pictures of my kids in the last three days.

I was already in the habit of taking quite a few pictures of my kids, but I've been taking virtually all of them with my iPhone.  We bought the DSLR when my wife was pregnant with the twins, over four years ago.  We have probably taken 10,000 pictures of our kids since they were born, but only a thousand of them with the DSLR.  

I was excited to start taking "real" pictures when we got the good camera, but the novelty wore off pretty quickly.  The first problem was that I couldn't be bothered to read the instructions thoroughly.  I'm sure the Rebel does all kinds of cool stuff that I don't know about, but as far as I could tell, the quality of the pictures wasn't much better than the quality of the ones we took with our point-and-shoot.  And even the point-and-shoot was too much of a hassle to carry around once we got phones that took pretty good pictures.  So the Rebel sat forlorn in the credenza with some other obsolete electronics and Christmas decorations, while we documented our kids' early lives with cell phone pics.

But then the nice people at Staples sent me this lens, and suddenly, I saw how a real camera can make a difference.  The lens is a Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III Telephoto Zoom.  Chances are, you have a much better idea than I do what that elaborate name signifies.  All I know about it is what I read on the Staples website:  it's good for shooting sports, portraits, and wildlife.  They might as well have said it's perfect for shooting kids.

Here's how I know that this lens is awesome.  I still haven't bothered to read the instructions for our DSLR.  I just set the dial so it points to the little running dude because I figured out that the pictures don't come out all blurry when I do that.  Then I set the lens on auto focus, point it at my subject, and shoot about a dozen pictures.  If any of the pictures don't come out looking great, I blame it on the subject.  

It might make real photographers mad that a moron with halfway decent equipment can take good pictures, and I wouldn't blame them.  I'm sure they can assuage their resentment by pointing out some technical flaw in photos taken by chumps like me: stuff like "composition" or "lighting" or "focus."  But I'm just stoked to suddenly have hundreds of pictures of my kids that might be worthy of framing, and my friends and family who are real photographers should also be relieved that I won't be bugging them to send me pictures of my own kids.

Tired

Dog nap

Sidewalk Nap

Tree nap

So consider yourself warned, gentle reader: I'm probably gonna start putting a lot more pictures up here.  Especially next week, after what should be an awesome field trip and the unveiling of a super cool project I've been working on.  Who knows, I may even read the instructions for my camera!



Full disclosure, Staples provided me with this Canon telephoto zoom lens to review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own. To see their full line of camera and camcorder accessories, visit Staples.com

You can follow Staples on Twitter @Staples, or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/staples

What I Meant By That Thing I Wrote on Slate about Objectification

Prologue

Yesterday was my birthday.  

If you must know, I'm now 46 years old.  I'm in my late mid-forties.  That's okay, I guess.  Anyway, there's not much I can do about it.  

I had a great day.  Really, really great.  The kids were in school and my wife took the day off.  We went to brunch and then pretty much goofed around the rest of the day.  It was truly wonderful to hang out with my wife and no kids during daylight hours, with no projects or chores to do, for pretty much the first time since the kids were born.  We also received the great news that my wife passed the brutal Medical Board exams (!), which she has to take every ten years, so there was a lot to be thankful for. 

But I was a little distracted by the damn internet, because a lot of people were talking about me over there.  

My first piece on Slate was published in the morning, and by the time I found out about it, there were over a thousand comments on it, most of them aggressively negative.  I mean, it was awesome that I got something published on Slate, which I've been enjoying since I first learned about the internet, and that people were reading it.  But, it wasn't so awesome that everyone seemed to hate what I had written.  

So what I'm doing here pains me a bit.  I don't love the idea that I need to explain something that I already wrote.  I've written about a number of controversial issues, but I've hardly ever been attacked by the self-styled critics known on the internet as "trolls."  I like to think that that's because I try to be thoughtful, avoid generalizations, qualify any bold claims, and preemptively address concerns or counter-arguments readers might have.  This also makes me long-winded; but issues aren't simple and I try not to oversimplify them.  So I feel like I have screwed up when the tone of something I have written doesn't get across to the reader.

That's what happened with my piece on Slate, which some editor or another named "Heel."

What I Was Trying to Say

 

Among the flaming comments on Slate, a ridiculous response to my piece on Jezebel, a virtually incomprehensible satire on NYmag.com and some bashing on twitter, there were a few thoughtful comments and genuine questions by people who were puzzled about what I was up to.  

Most of the people I know, including my mom and my wife, got it.  They thought it was funny, honest, and thought-provoking.  Some of the commenters on Slate got it.  Most didn't.  Others weren't so sure.  A couple writers emailed me and asked if it was satire.  One of them was interested in the evolution of the article--whether something had been compromised in the revising and editing process that made its tone unclear and evoked such outrage and disdain from Slate commenters.  I think that answering his question is the best way I can explain it.

I started writing this story months and months ago.  It was inspired by a bit that Louis CK does where he talks about being a "prisoner of perverted sexual thoughts."  I could relate to it, and I wanted to see if other middle-aged dudes could as well.  I found a clip of the bit on YouTube and posted it to my super-secret Dad Bloggers page on Facebook.  The conversation it inspired went on for nearly 300 comments and was hilarious and raunchy.  Virtually all of the guys copped to being susceptible to sudden sexual fantasies about attractive women on a regular basis.  Most of the guys didn't see it as a problem.  In fact, they embraced it as a healthy expression of straight male sexuality.

I'm mostly in the same camp as far as thinking an erotic fantasy life is normal.  Why not, right?  Everybody does it.  It's not hurting anyone if you don't act on your impulses.  

But part of me has always found it troubling, or paradoxical anyway, that the feminist (a word many of my new critics claim I don't understand) values that I believe in are in conflict with my flights of sexual imagination.  I mean, there have been times when I have been having serious conversations or just casual interactions with women, and suddenly part of my brain is locked in (fleetingly, most of the time) on what they might look like naked, or...you know...typical sex daydreams.  I'm thinking about them in a way completely unattached to who they are as people or what their desires are.  I call this objectification, although many of my new critics also say I'm misusing that term.  

If I were to say, "By the way, your rack looks awesome and I would love to knock boots with you right here in the line at Costco," that would be decidedly sexist (a word which, according to many of my new critics, I am using completely wrong), right?  But to think those things is okay, as long as I keep them to myself?  This is what I would call cognitive dissonance, and it seems like something worth talking about.    

This situation is a pretty small concern of mine, in the grand scheme, but it's something I've thought about, and it--the fantasizing part, if not the concern about fantasizing--is something that seems almost universal among men (although many of my new critics say that I'm an asshole for thinking that men are more preoccupied with sex than women).  Naturally I thought, "Hey--I should write about this."  I write about gender stuff.  This is a gender thing.  Perfect.

So I pitched it to my editor at the Atlantic, and we went back and forth on it for a while.  The last draft I gave her went something like this:

• I'm a sensitive feminist guy (tone was meant to be a little self-mocking, but ultimately sincere)
• I saw this funny Louis CK bit and related to it
• I confirmed with my buddies that most guys have sexual thoughts about random women, and most of them think that's not a problem
• Part of me feels like these thoughts aren't completely harmless though, so I wanted to research what literature was out there that offered a reprieve from what Louis CK called a "prison" and a "nightmare."  And here's the gimmick: I make like I'm on a quest to tamp down my own erotic imagination.  A funny premise under which to explore the existing research.  (Also, it wouldn't kill me to try not to think about sex so much.  Maybe I could get more stuff done.)
• Here's what the sex research and evolutionary psychology says about how men's and women's sexual fantasies differ and why.  It's interesting, fairly predictable, and none of this research talks about trying to control sexual ideation as long as it's not harmful to the person experiencing it or the people around him.
• The only place I found people talking about reducing or controlling sexual thoughts that fall into the "normal" range were religious websites, which promoted the practice of self-shaming, which I'm not really into.
• Here's what a couple experts on male sexuality told me: Don't worry about it.  Be a grownup.  Don't ogle women, but feel free to daydream about them.
• Conclusion: mumble mumble I don't know I guess I can just try to grow up blah blah mumble maybe evolution will catch up to our sex drives and make them less urgent and more selective than they were when we had to try and impregnate every fertile-looking female in the valley.

The conclusion was not very strong.  The editor didn't love the whole piece, and, honestly, I think she was kind of creeped out by it.  I moved on.

Months later, I happened to be in contact with an editor from Slate (a long story in itself), and mentioned my "pervert" article.  She looked at it and saw some potential there.

She had an idea: get rid of the boring science parts because everyone already knows how men are, and make it more about my quest to control my sexual thoughts.  Make it funny and light-hearted.  Oh!  Oh!  Oh!  I could look into recommendations about how to stop objectifying women, and then spend a day trying to implement them, and write about the experience! 

Yes!  Of course!  Bring the funny more.  It'll be kind of a fool's errand:  a snipe hunt for the "cure" to my sexual preoccupation, which is mostly a silly simplification of a complicated issue, but during which I actually make legitimate points!

We went back and forth on it for over a month, at the rate of maybe a couple exchanges per week, and then finally got to the point where it was ready to go.  It had shrunk from about 4000 words at its most sprawling to whatever it is now:  1400 or so, I guess.  We ditched a long intro in which I more thoroughly established my feminist bona fides.  We chopped the part where all the dad bloggers embraced their own sexual daydreams.  We scrapped all the sex research about men's fantasy life.  We stripped down the quotes from the sex experts and the articles by other men who had examined their own sexual thoughts and ogling.

My editor told me it was "totally delightful and hilarious"  She is a highly respected writer and editor.  Who was I to doubt her?

Then it went live.

Commenters on Slate are crazy.  That's just the way it is.  Any article that's slightly controversial brings out all kinds of rage, often of the right-wing and "Men's Rights" variety; but really, all agendas are represented.

So I didn't take it personally when commenters called me a creepy perv, an emasculated eunich, a closet homosexual, a cuckold, a sexist, a religious zealot, a Puritan, and so forth.  That happens all day every day on Slate.

What did bug me though, was that so many people took the piece so seriously.  My tone didn't come across.  It's tempting to say, oh, the idiot commenters were just too dense to get it; but that's not really fair.  Something didn't work.

I'll take some of the blame for not fully committing to the humor piece, although I thought phrases like "cloaking them in imaginary burqas" and the idea that I would use the image of my Intro to Women's Studies professor as my "higher power" would be a pretty good indicator that I was not taking myself, or my "quest" completely seriously.  It wasn't satire, exactly, although it had some satirical elements.  It was meant to come across as self-deprecating, hyperbolic, and quixotic.  But I also wanted to have a conversation about this vexing, complicated, contradictory thing that happens in the monkey-minds of men who would never consider hollering or wolf-whistling at an attractive stranger.  It didn't seem impossible to do and still have jokes. 

I'll put some of the blame on my editor, for telling me I was funny.

I'll put some of the blame on context.  As one of the more reasonable commenters on Slate pointed out, it was hard to tell if I was trying to be funny when she first read it, because the article appeared in the "Double X" section, which is generally devoted to "women's issues" and almost always comes from a strong feminist slant. So it seemed feasible to that reader, at first anyway, that I was being 100% sincere about trying to purge dirty thoughts from my mind and that I was relentlessly beating myself up about having sexual urges.  I assure you, as much as I am sometimes a little conflicted, I am not beating myself up.

I'll put some of the blame on internet pundits whose default setting is snarky outrage.

I'll put some of the blame on the topic for not being simpler and less uncomfortable to talk about.

And next time, I'll make sure to be less subtle.

*Update: I usually don't do comment moderation because I want to encourage everyone to engage if they feel like it; but I had to this time because of some disturbing comments.  I'll try to stay on top of the moderation as possible.  Sorry about inconvenience.

********

In other news, I have an article up on the NY Times Motherlode blog.  I also wrote that one a long time ago.  The editor warned me that it might be controversial and people might leave mean comments.  So far, everyone has been perfectly lovely about it.       

 

How I Beat Cancer

Last Friday, I took the kids to the Natural History Museum for a return visit to the big exhibit about dinosaurs, a topic that has dominated their conversation for the past few months.

They're at once fascinated and terrified by the huge displays at the museum.  They'll play make-believe with the little T-Rexes and Stegosauruses in the play area for hours, and they'll memorize the facts that I read them from the plaques on the more docile looking dinosaurs; but they won't get within 20 feet of the huge animatronic dinos that grunt, paw at the ground, and grind flesh with their robotic jaws.

The girls raced up and down the stairs and ran laps around the galleries on the upper floors, and later, picked at an overpriced lunch in the museum's café.

It was a lovely outing, except for the fact that I was pretty sure I would be dying shortly afterwards.

On the way to the museum, I had noticed, while making faces at the kids in the rearview mirror, a dark spot on my left earlobe.  It looked kind of like an inkblot.   

Perhaps it's an inkblot, I told myself, with false lightheartedness that only brought attention to my sudden sense of dread.

I looked at it more closely once I had parked, and, since it was slightly raised, determined that it was not an inkblot, but certainly a fast-acting, death-dealing tumor that was at that moment spreading its pernicious tendrils deep into my brain.

I never used to think like that.  Even when I technically had skin cancer (basal cell carcinoma--pretty much the least deadly cancer ever) a number of years ago, I was like, eh, whatever, it's cool, I'll just be better about using sunscreen.

But that was before I had kids.

It was also before I passed a certain age threshold where bad things started happening to my peers.

I know people my age with serious or even terminal illnesses.  The extent of this knowledge is exacerbated by the miracle of the internet, through which I am constantly apprised of the comings and goings of people I haven't seen in twenty years, as well as people I have never even met in real life.  Hell, I know people my age who are dead!

But mostly it was the kids who gave me the dreads.  How would they react when they learned that Daddy was no longer there to take care of them?  What would Mom tell them about where I had gone?  How would they remember me?  Would they remember me?   Would they feel an endless ache for the person who was always with them as they transitioned from wiggling scream-sacks to sentient beings--for the man who contained half of the secrets that could help them understand themselves?  Or would I just become a vague memory, a collection of stories that became less accurate in the telling, and more expedient to their personal narratives?  Would their new daddy be rich and have thick, luxuriant hair?  These questions distracted me from the more immediate mystery of why the fossil of the land-based Ankylosaurus was found in an ancient sea bed with a shark tooth in its side.

I texted this ear-selfie, along with the question "what kind of cancer is this?" to a highly respected doctor in my area, with whom I happen to be sleeping:

Never look too closely at your ear.  It's weird.

    
My wife, who usually responds to any request from family for free medical advice with, "You've got about four months...six months, tops," texted me back: "The brown spot?  I'd need to look at it more closely."

The lack of gallows humor only deepened my anxiety.  Had she not been concerned, she would have surely mocked me for worrying about a little blemish on my ear.  Her answer was very...professional.  As if I were a real patient with a real condition.

I tried to remember the pamphlets that I had received from the dermatologist when I got surgery for what I had jokingly referred to as "face cancer" seven years ago.  What does melanoma look like?  Was that the bumpy, colorless one?  Or the one that looks like a mole?  Or an inkblot?  I could never keep that shit straight.  It was like Poison Oak or Black Widows: it didn't matter how many times I saw the illustrations, the warning signs of the stuff that would fuck me up didn't stick.  One thing I knew, though, was that my occupational history (lifeguard, carpenter, ski instructor), and disdain for sunscreen until age thirty, put me at high risk.

"He's extinct, right?" Maddy asked.

"What?"  I said.

"The Triceratops.  He's extinct, right?"

"Oh.  Yeah.  All the dinosaurs are extinct.  Or, you know, they've kind of...turned into something else.  They don't really live anymore, but we can see still see traces of them in animals that are alive now..."

"I have to pee!" Livvy interrupted.

We raced to the bathroom and, after all the business was done, I rubbed and scratched at my earlobe in the mirror.

"What are you doing, Daddy?"  Maddy said.

"Oh...just...I have this spot on my ear."

"Wash it off, Daddy!" Livvy said.

"Well, I don't think it's gonna come off from washing, sweetie.  It's not that kind of spot."

"You should put water on it and use a washcloth!" she insisted.

"Okay.  Well, I don't think it will work, but sure.  Okay."

I soaked a paper towel and started scrubbing the damned spot.

And damned if it didn't start rubbing off!  My earlobe turned red as I scrubbed, but the spot disappeared.

"Hah," I said.  "You're right, Livvy.  It did come off."

"What was it, Daddy?"  Livvy asked.

"It was just some caulk with dirt stuck to it," I said.  I realized that, as thoroughly as I had scoured myself after working on a window replacement job the day before, I hadn't gotten every last schmear of polyurethane caulk off of my skin.  I must have brushed my face against the flange of the window I had just installed as I tried to squeeze between the wall and the lemon tree.

"What's caulk?" Maddy asked.

"It's the gooey stuff that Daddy uses sometimes to fill in cracks and holes when he's fixing stuff.  Kind of like glue."  But they had already stopped paying attention.

"You are exti-inct!  You are exti-inct!" they chanted as they ran back toward the dinosaurs.

 



 

My Kids and I made a Crafty Mothers Day Gift from "Dad's Book of Awesome Projects"

I've had this book in my hot little hands for a couple weeks now, just waiting for an opportunity to do one of the projects in it.  Mothers Day was the perfect excuse.

Mike Adamick, author of the blog Cry It Out, contributor to NPR, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Jezebel, etc., etc., and super crafty dude, has a book out called Dad's Book of Awesome Projects.  You should buy it.  I would have, except that he sent me a copy for review because he's that cool.  I would gush about Mike for a couple more paragraphs, but I know it would make him uncomfortable (and I would have to mention that he does stuff like sews jockey silks for his horse-obsessed daughter, which makes me look like a total slacker dad), so I'll get back to the main focus of this blog: me.  Um...and my kids.

So, yeah.  Mothers Day.  I've got a spotty background with it.  I killed it once about nine years ago when I sent my mom a booklet I made of the Billy Collins poem, The Lanyard, along with a lanyard that I had fashioned from a craft kit while sweating and cursing on like the hottest May 5th on record in San Diego.  I've been disappointing her ever since.

I might be setting my wife up for future disappointment in our kids as well, because the project that the twins and I did for Mothers Day is pretty freaking awesome, if I do say so myself.

You know those silhouette pictures you made in kindergarten?  When some grown up shined a slide projector on your face and traced your shadow onto construction paper?  This project, which I found in Mike's book, is a variation on that.  I'll walk you through it.

(Aside: The kids and I were looking through the book, trying to decide what to make for Mom.  I asked what they thought she would like for Mothers Day.  Livvy thought Mom might be into the "circus stilts."

"Hmm..." I said, "I think those are more for kids."

"So we could make them for Kids Day!" Livvy suggested.

Moments later, Maddy became very excited about the birdhouse project in the book.

"That's not really for moms, though," I said.  "It's mostly for birds."

"So we could make it for Birds Day!" she replied.)


Before we got going, we had to buy some supplies.  So we ran down to the most fabulous Ace Hardware store ever, in the gayest part of San Diego.  We needed spray paint mostly, and a couple other things.  The kids, of course, wanted pink paint and sparkly paint, which were both in abundant supply.

We headed home and got to work.  First, I needed to cut a couple pieces of plywood to use as our canvases.  I could have cut them with a circular saw, but it was actually easier and more accurate to roll the ol' table saw out into the alley.

 

I had some birch veneer plywood left over from--believe it or not--the wooden trike project I did for their first Christmas.  I cut it into basically the biggest rectangles I could wring out of the oddly shaped scraps I had (about 9"x11"), and sanded them, with some help from my crew.

  

Then we got busy painting them Pepto-Bismol pink.

Maddy was really into shaking the paint can

While we were out in the alley, I snapped some pictures of the kids (who were being complete punks by that time) against the neighbor's garage door.  Those would become the basis of the stencils I would make.  (Tip from Mike: kids with longer hair look better with ponytails.  I'm glad I knew that.)

  

While we were working on the project, I kept stressing to the kids how important it was that we NOT tell Mom what we were up to.  I quizzed them often to make sure they understood.  "Are you going to tell Mama what we were doing?"  I would ask.  "No...it's a surprise!" they would respond.  "For Mothers Day!"

So what happens as soon as Mom walks in the door?  Livvy says, "Guess what, Mama?  We're making you a secret project for Mothers Day!"

When the kids were in school the next day, I went to the craft store to get the last thing I needed: stencil paper.  Although they seemed to stock every craft item anyone had ever imagined, they were out of the bigger sheets of stencil paper, and only had it in the size of notebook paper, which wouldn't be quite big enough.  I would have to improvise.

Following the directions in the book, I printed out the profile pictures, and then placed the transparent stencil paper over them and cut out the outline of the girls' faces with a razor knife.  I ended up taping two pieces of stencil paper together so that I could fit the kids' entire faces on the stencil.

Even as I was cutting out the stencil, I had this feeling that I was screwing up.  I kind of knew that the stencil was going to be too big for my boards, but I just kept going.  I couldn't be bothered to re-size and re-print the photo, or even go out to the garage and re-measure the boards.  Because I'm an idiot.

I figured I would just wing it.  And they ended up looking kind of like ass.

Not really the greatest composition

I wasn't sure if they were truly horrible or not, so I texted Mike the picture and asked if I should start over with either bigger boards or a smaller stencil.  He was very polite, but the message was clear: of course you should, dumbass.

The stencil was the hard part, so I chose to just cut some more boards.  I used a scrap of medium-density fiberboard (MDF) this time, because it's much smoother, and the grain in the birch veneer had made the paint look uneven and rough.  So, really, my fucking up the size of the pictures was a blessing in disguise.  The MDF came out purty.

I went ahead and sprayed the sparkly paint over the pink after it had dried a bit.  Naturally, the nozzle stuck in the "spray" position, and I had to wrestle it and poke around in the valve with a nail to get it to slow down.

Just like every time I've done crafts for Mothers Day, I cursed loudly and probably frightened the neighbors.  Soon I had the sparkliest forearm hair this side of Hillcrest Ace Hardware.  It had mostly stopped spraying when I got the cap on it, but about five minutes later I had to hit the deck when I heard the huge POP of the cap blasting off.  I threw the can in the neighbor's dumpster.

Sparlky

Finally, I was ready to actually create the silhouettes.  I should have let the paint dry longer--like for a day or so--but I needed to get it done before my wife got home, because she had the next day off and I wouldn't be able to sneak out and finish it without arousing suspicion.

This part went okay, but I wish I had devised a way to keep the stencils more firmly in place on the boards.  The spray from the paint can blew the stencils up a little bit, so the white paint got underneath and made the outline of the silhouette less sharp in places.  They still look pretty good, but not perfect.

 

So I'm almost through it.  All I have to do now is to get the kids to sign the backs of "their" masterpieces without them freaking out about the fact that I completed the project without their input.

Oh yeah, and then we have to figure out where to hang 11"x13" sparkly pink homemade artwork.  I'm thinking they'll look good in Mom's clinic. 

The Poison Cookies

This is the last thing I said to my girls tonight before they finally fell asleep:

"YOU DON'T NEED TO WORRY ABOUT MONSTERS IN YOUR ROOM!  THE ONLY MONSTER YOU NEED TO WORRY ABOUT IS ME!  DON'T YOU DARE MAKE ME COME IN THERE AGAIN!"

  

That was right after they started screaming when I slammed the door to their bedroom, at the tail end of the five hours of continual torture they inflicted upon me.

You know how you're not supposed to go to bed angry at your spouse?  I guess you're probably not supposed to go to bed angry at your kids either.

Well, I haven't gone to bed yet, so there's still some hope, I guess.

I don't think it was me this time.  I really don't.

Well, it wasn't my preexisting emotional state, anyway.  I had had a pretty good day.  I got stuff done around the house, including about a million loads of laundry, which seemed to have made my wife happy.  I had gotten the house straightened out and the kids fed lunch just in time for our twice-monthly visit from the cleaning ladies.  I tended the garden, fed the animals, and made it to the gym with the kids in tow.  I even managed, with the kids pestering me and the cleaning ladies vacuuming under my feet, to work with an editor on some changes to a forthcoming article I'm pretty stoked about.

But at around 4:30 pm, I fucked up.  Bad.

The kids were playing nicely with each other, running upstairs and downstairs and out the back door onto the deck.  We had talked about going scootering or doing some other wholesome outdoor activity, but I was a little spent, and it seemed like they were getting plenty of exercise.  I figured, you know--snack time, maybe some reading, and then Mom would be home with leftovers she had scored from a drug rep lunch at work.  Then slide right through the bedtime rituals and bam, done.

I thought about the fresh strawberries in the fridge for a snack, but we had been eating them by the pint for the last few weeks.  I glanced at the apples, oranges, and avocados on the counter but was uninspired.  And then I remembered the chocolate-covered graham crackers that Mom had bought on an impulse as a special treat for the kids.  I had been strictly warned against eating any myself, but of course I had ignored the exhortation.

They were strong medicine, these cookies.  They weren't really chocolate-covered graham crackers as much as they were rich milk chocolate bars with a crunchy, graham cracker center.  It was like the Swiss take on a Kit-Kat.  It took all the restraint I could muster to not plow through the whole bag during my midnight raid.

What the hell, I thought.  The kids have been pretty good today, I can't give them the cookies after dinner because the chocolate will jack them up for bedtime, and, most importantly, they might share them with me.

The kids didn't dilly-dally when I announced that they would be having the special cookies for snack time.  And they didn't share with their old man either.

Remember, maybe it was in college, that one girl?  She was really nice and kind of funny and cute?  But after the fourth shot of vodka, to which she was clearly unaccustomed, she became erratic, and then irritable, and then weepy, and then angry, and then weepy again, and then FURIOUS, and everyone was like, whose friend is she again?  Can somebody call her roommate?

That's what both of my children turned into after eating these cookies.  As I tried to fold laundry, they stamped around in the water they had poured into a large puddle on the deck, and then tracked it inside, onto the freshly-mopped floor.  Then they stomped around in the freshly-scoured bathtub with their filthy, wet feet.

I used to worry that losing my temper and yelling at the kids would emotionally scar them; but now I just worry that it's completely ineffectual.

I yelled at them from upstairs, and then ran downstairs to continue yelling at them from close range when the initial yelling didn't have any effect.  When my back was turned, they filled the bathroom sink with soapy water and slung it around the bathroom, and laughed in my face as I yelled and hid the handsoap from them.

As I cleaned up the mess in the bathroom, they tore the living room couch apart and used the cushions as a slide, a trampoline, and a "pile of rocks."

Mom came home, dropped off the food she had brought from work, and then headed out to her crossfit class.

At dinner, one kid wouldn't keep her hand out of her milk glass.  The other refused to eat with the fork I had given her because she didn't like the color, and instead shoveled rice into her face (and down her dress, onto the floor, etc.) with her hands.  All I could think to do was withhold the food until they calmed down.  Forks were thrown.  Threats were hurled, and ignored.

Somehow, we got through dinner without a visit from CPS.  Mom returned and helped with bedtime preparation, but then took off to pick up provisions at Target.

Bedtime can be tricky under the best circumstances, but, now that the poison cookies had turned the twins into volatile middle-school students with the self-expression skills of toddlers, I didn't know what to expect.

I should have expected the worst, because that's what I got.  Maddy has started doing this thing where, every time the cleaning ladies come, she won't sleep under the covers of her bed because she doesn't want to mess up the smooth bedspread and hospital corners that Lupe and Company have created.  It's a problem.  And tonight, Livvy started playing the same game.  Add to that their demands that Daddy take turns lying in bed with them, and you've got a recipe for an unstable trained chimp turning on his masters.

"Sleep with me, Daddy!"

"No, Daddy!  Sleep with ME!"

"Not on top of the covers, Daddy!  YOU MESSED UP MY BED!  BLAAAAAAHHHH!  SMOOTH IT OUT DADDY!  SMOOTH IT OUT!

"IT'S MY TURN, DADDY!  SLEEP WITH ME, DADDY!  No, Daddy!  Get under the covers.  AAAAAAAGGGGGGHHH!  YOU MESSED UP MY BED!  SMOOTH IT OUT!  SMOOTH IT OUT!"

"I have to go to the bathroom."

"I need water."

"I can't find my ballerina doll's shoeswaaaAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!"

This continued for twenty minutes, until finally:

"THAT'S IT!  I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE!  I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING ELSE ABOUT YOUR BLANKETS AND DOLLS AND LOVIES AND CRAP!  GO TO SLEEP!  GOOD NIGHT!"

 

[Exits bedroom, slams door.]

Then came the wailing about being scared of monsters, the rejoinder from Dad, more wailing, sobbing, snuffling, and at last, slumber.

I'm not actually mad at my kids.  I went into their room and kissed their cheeks as they slept, just as peacefully as a couple passed-out drunks in a boxcar.  I'm disappointed in my poor judgement this afternoon, and my terrible attempts at damage control.  But I've forgiven myself, and I have high hopes for tomorrow.  Especially since the kids will be in school all day.