Eye on the Ball

"Keep your eye on the ball" I said.
"I was!" he said.














I apologize for my lack of posting. This blog came out of an excess of time and mental energy. Lately I've had a lack of both time and mental energy. End of the year. New cars. Lots of stuff. Things are bound to slow down eventually and when they do, I'll have things to write about.

Citrus

For Mother's Day my wife asked me for one simple thing. She just wanted a couple of citrus trees. Orange, lemon, whatever, just plant some trees next to the apple trees. She mentioned it all through the spring, and I always waved her off. I think she thought I forgot, but I didn't. The plan was to get them as an actual Mother's Day gift, and not just sometime in the month before hand and call them a gift and then have nothing for her on actual Mother's day. I'm a romantic like that. So after the 5K last weekend we loaded up the truck and bought one orange tree and one lemon tree. They're planted safely in the yard and seem to be doing well. The orange tree even has tiny oranges growing on it. I'm not sure they'll turn into edible fruit, but we're hopeful. Both of us keep saying that the very first thing we should have done when we moved into this house was to plant fruit trees. If we did that we'd have an orchard to pick fruit from instead of tiny trees to just watch grow. Take my  advice, plant some fruit trees this spring. It's never too early and in 20 year's you'll be happy you did it.

Race Day

A lot of stuff happened last week and into the weekend. Some of it I'll try and cover this week, some of it I'll leave.
Saturday morning saw the whole group of us up early to go race. Not a car race this time, but a running race, two of them actually. My middle two kids participated in the kids mile. My son was hoping to top his third place finish of last year, but the field was stacked and it wasn't meant to be. He raced well, and finished well, and set a good time. For my younger daughter, it was her first real race. A mile. Quite a long way. She did great. A little walking but she pushed on through her difficulty and finished solidly mid pack. She was tired, but she was happy to have done so well.
My older daughter stepped up the the 5K this year, and my wife tagged along with her to help keep pace and make sure that she didn't get lost. They both ran well and finished several minutes quicker than they were expecting. My daughter now has a personal record. A number that is out there for her to beat. It's a good thing. My wife commented that it was the most enjoyable 5k that she's ever run, which means a lot coming from someone who has run as fast as she has.
On the way home we stopped and bought doughnuts. It's not something we do very often, but it somehow seemed like the right thing to do after the race. The kids are all planning their next events. My son says he's ready for the 5k. I think he wants to beat his sister. My daughter wants to actually train because she was running 5k last spring without stopping for practice. She knows that with a little more practice she can eliminate those walking breaks and take a couple of minutes off her time. Competition runs strong in my kids and it makes my wife proud. Doing good is one thing. Wanting to do better, and working for it, is something else completely.

Healthy Baby.......Raccoons

We have a compost bin out back. Well, not so much a bin as an old bathtub with a piece of plywood over it. We're classy. Anyway, something has been getting into it for a while. It's not a huge deal really. We put old food out there and something eats it. I don't really care if it's a raccoon or a possum or maggots or bacteria. As long as you don't cause trouble outside of the compost bin, we can all live in peace.
Two weeks ago I had to go out to my truck right at dusk to get something out of it and a quick glance over to the bin revealed a large raccoon holding a piece of watermelon rind. Last week somebody tipped over the garbage can and nibbled on some cupcake wrappers. Things were clearly getting out of hand and I had resolutely decided to trap and relocate our increasingly annoying friend.
Today I got home from the store and the dog was going a bit bonkers in the garage. I went to check it out thinking that she had the raccoon cornered and there was a fight brewing. She was just looking up at the high shelves in the rafters. I put the groceries away and went back to the garage to get her so she could come inside and calm down. That's when I heard it. Noises. Little squeaking chortles. Baby raccoons. At least two of them. Huge problem.
Any of you who have been reading along know what happened last year with the baby heron that fell out of it's nest. If you've been reading back farther you have heard about the raccoons and the crow and all of the other stuff that I helped raise as a kid. If I trapped the mother raccoon and was somehow left with the babies, I'd have to raise them. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't.
Clearly I cannot trap the mother raccoon now. She has to stay alive and healthy and hanging around for long enough to get the babies big enough so that I can trap them all. I need her to be a successful parent. If she fails as a parent it will be bad for my marriage. I can't let that happen.
On the shelf below the one that holds a stack of squeaking chortling tires, I have put a bowl of food. I'll fill that bowl pretty much every day for the next month. I will do everything I can to keep that mother raccoon healthy and around to care for her babies. If all goes well, I'll trap them all in a month or so and send them to live someplace more appropriate than my garage. Until then, healthy mom, healthy baby.....racoons.

Soccer Sock Trick

It's soccer season again and I thought I'd pass along a trick that we've learned over the years. Soccer socks are really really long so that you can put them on, put your shin guards on, and flop the socks over the shin guards. They're pretty cool. The hitch is that they don't really make them in small sizes. If you're four or five and have tiny feet, it's very hard to put on the socks and then cram your feet into your shoes without having some sort of wrinkle or bump or other sock irregularity that causes discomfort and whining. We've discovered that you can simply cut the foot portion of the sock off and use regular socks in your shoes while still using the top portion of the sock to cover your shin guard. Happy feet makes for happy small soccer players. As an added bonus, they make excellent arm and leg warmers and work well for all sorts of dress up.

One on One

My daughter and I had fun at the motorcycle races last weekend. The track was great and the racing was great. I missed my wife and the other three kids, but by taking only my daughter, the whole event was much more relaxing. I didn't have to yell at anyone to stop hitting, yelling, wrestling, or not being nice. I didn't have to try and watch four people at once to make sure that they weren't wandering off. I could just sit and watch the races and keep my daughter in the corner of my vision and it was good. When it was time to eat, I asked her what she wanted, she decided, and that's what we had. Nobody complained that they wanted something else. Bed time happened when she got so tired that she was falling asleep watching the TV in the hotel room. It was nice.
Probably the most fun we had all weekend centered around the fact that our hotel room was a "suite". I put that in quotes because, though technically a suite with a microwave and a fridge, the hotel was a bit of a dive and in my mind suite is usually associated with something nice. It wasn't very nice. It did have that microwave though and we put it to use.
The races for the weekend are on Sunday, and Saturday is reserved for practice sessions and qualifying. We went to the track both days, but left a bit early on Saturday to avoid some of the hot day and to not get too tired out before Sunday. This found us cruising back to town at 2:30. Too early for dinner and not wanting to go out again, we decided to hit up the grocery store for some microwave food. I bought two microwave burritos and my daughter picked out some Hot Pockets. We chose popcorn for desert. I taught her how to rip the Hot Pocket box in half and use it as a plate (college style) so there were no dishes and no clean up. We found a few TV shows and eventually Raiders of the Lost Ark and we ate popcorn and talked and had a great time. It was a really nice weekend.

COTA

I'm not much for watching sports. When my wife turns on college football I usually remember that I have something to do in the garage or some pressing yard work. It's just not something that I usually enjoy. With one huge exception, I'd rather go do something than watch other people do something. That one exception is MotoGP.
For those of you who live under a rock, or in North America, MotoGP is the top level of motorcycle road racing. It's like Formula 1, but with 240 horse power motorcycles piloted by men with otherworldly abilities. It is, bar none, the best racing in the world. If it weren't for the fact that I really hate breaking bones I certainly would have followed these gentlemen onto a track at a much lower level. Maybe that's why I love it. Motorcycle racing is the one thing in my life that has eluded me, and it continues to hold my fascination. 
A decade ago the only way you could watch MotoGP live was to visit Europe or Malaysia. Then China built a track. In 2008 a deal was struck and the circus that is MotoGP came to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It took every bit of willpower and not a few dirty looks from my wife to not go watch the races up at Indy. Last year though something changed. A couple of rich guys who wanted to become richer convinced the state of Texas that we needed a new road course. Not just another track, this was to be a world class venue that would hold Formula 1 races. A little chatting back and forth and it was decided that the track should be built to accommodate MotoGP as well. Circuit Of The Americas, or COTA, was built.
On Sunday will be the first running of MotoGP at COTA. My wife bought me tickets. Two tickets. I would have loved to take her, but someone has to watch the kids. I decided to take my oldest daughter instead. Hanging out with her is pretty easy. She has quick humor, good taste in music, and isn't too flaky. It's a little like bringing along a small adult that can't drive and is easily confused reading maps. We're going to have a good time. Maybe next year I'll go again and bring another one of the kids. Maybe I'll bring the whole family, I don't know, I need to see what it's like. 
I'm glad my life still enables me to have adventures and that my wife supports them. I'm also glad that I get to share them with my kids. Anything fun is always more fun when you get to poke someone with your elbow and point and yell "did you see that!"

Painting

Just an old picture of painting on a rainy day. Only two kids. No school yet. Nothing to do and looking for ways to kill time. Those were the days...... of course there were diapers too. Don't necessarily miss the diapers.

Stung

Yesterday was a nice day and I had a bit of time to kill while my youngest was in preschool, so I went for a run. As usual I ran barefoot and, as usual, I had a very pleasant time. After the run I did a cool down walk and some stretching, and then cut across the lawn of the preschool to get back to my car. That's when I stepped on a bee. It was unpleasant. I've been stung quite a lot in my life and I hate it every time. It's something that you never quite get used to. 
Later on I was telling my wife about it and she held little sympathy. I run barefoot, what do I expect? It was just a matter of time! I pointed out to her that in all my many years barefoot upon this planet, this is the first time I've ever been stung in the foot. I argued that stepping on a bee was a pretty low occurrence thing. To back up my claim I put forward the fact that I've been stung in the lips three times in my life, and only once in the foot. Perhaps we should worry less about wearing shoes and more about wearing full face helmets?
Sometimes I think we spend a lot of parental energy worrying about the wrong things. We talk about how to stay safe around strangers, but it's far more likely that a child will be harmed by a person they know than a stranger. We worry about school shootings when most children who are shot are shot accidentally in their own homes. We tell them that drinking, using drugs, and having premarital sex are bad, but we don't admit that it's the consequences that are bad, while the actions themselves can be quite a good time.
I'm not sure what my final conclusion about all of this is. My foot is incredibly itchy and that makes it hard to concentrate and type. I think we spend a lot more energy on things what we're worried about than the things that our kids should be worried about. We feel like we know the people we know, and that we have control over the guns around us, but what other people might do and what guns they might pick up are scary. We worry about what would happen in our lives if we let vices in, especially when we see them destroy the lives of those around us. Maybe the next time I'm warning my kids about walking barefoot though the grass I'll start to worry more about their lips than their feet, and I'll realize that even the simplest parts of parenting aren't as simple as they seem.

Acceptance

On my way to drop the kids at school the other day I passed a group of kids waiting for the bus, rather, I passed two groups of kids waiting for the same bus. They had clearly segregated themselves into the "us" and the "them" and each group stood on their own side of the road. It got me to thinking.
When my kids started preschool at age three there were no groups. Everyone was a kid and everyone played with each other. Sure, the rowdy kids played with each other more and the quiet kids played with each other more, but for the most part, this was the class and just being in the class was enough to be friends. Nobody was looking to find their place in the world because there was nothing to find. I'm a preschooler, you're a preschooler, we're all preschoolers! Let's play!
Sometime between then and junior high, the whole idea that we all fit in everywhere falls apart and they start to tear the larger group into smaller groups. They split by sex and by personality and by ability and in my kid's school, language. They fragment into small groups and they stand together with their faces turned inward to their group and their backs to those that don't belong. I saw it at the bus stop and I see it when I'm at any school function. Already I'm seeing a lot more back and a lot less face myself when my older kids are around their friends.
I know that this is all normal. They're deep in the process of becoming themselves. From now on it's the interaction with their peers, and the acceptance of those peers that will largely determine who my kids become. If they're a boat at sea, I know I'm not the rudder that steers them, or the wind that pushes them along, I'm merely the ship builder that hopes he's built a straight keel for them to move forward on. I want to help my kids, I truly do, but with each passing day I can see that who they become and what successes they have in life increasingly depend on them. I can't make their friends for them. I can't do their work. No only can I not fight their battles, but most of the time I can't even see them if they don't want me to.
Before we had kids a lot of people told us that the hardest parenting was when they were little. They needed you to feed them and change them and take care of pretty much every aspect of their existence. Their neediness was exhausting, physically and emotionally draining, and it was hard. They get bigger and they get more independent and things do get easier. That much is true. I'm starting to think that maybe there are two hard times though. The first part when they need you for everything, and the second, which is starting to happen now, when they might not need you for anything at all. Acceptance of that will be hard.

Teamwork

With as much bickering and fighting as there is around the house on a typical day, it sometimes surprises me to look back at pictures and see the kids going about jobs with excellent teamwork. I like to look at the pictures and remember an idyllic time when they were getting along and solving problems with conversation and compromise instead of screams and insults. Then I remember that the reason that I took the pictures in the first place was because it was so cute and unexpected for them to be cooperating like that. This wasn't normal behavior, it was odd enough and special enough that I needed to take a picture of it so that I could remember a single moment of cooperation. Someday I'll forget the fighting and these pictures are what I'll have left. I'll like that.

Diabolical

The Easter bunny is a diabolical fiend. Don't get me wrong, the guy's awesome, but he is not a kind and gentle bunny when it comes to hiding eggs. It is fun though.

Mugs

We have a box in our garage that is completely stationary for 364 days a year. It sits and collects dust and is never moved or opened. The day before Easter each year, I pull it down from the shelf, reach inside, and grab as many coffee mugs as my hands can carry. I call them coffee mugs because that's what they originally were made to be. If you judge an object by it's use, then they aren't coffee mugs any more, they're dye mugs. 364 days of hibernation for one vinegar fueled bright and cheery dye session. If mugs could be happy, these would be happy.
Click through the jump to see the rest of the pictures.

Two Wheelin'

The last of the kids had his maiden two wheeled voyage this morning. He was very excited and wanted to make sure that I shared it with everyone. He was a bit wobbly and his turns leave something to be desired, but he's well on his way to multi mile biking adventures. The longest journey starts with a wobbly trip down the driveway as they say.

Brother?

When we went to the rodeo we stopped at the petting zoo. My son found a long lost brother. At least that's what we think happened.They bonded.

Fragile

My wife went up into the attic to get out the Easter stuff. In retrospect, she may have employed gravity a bit too aggressively. Although, she did accomplish the task she set out to accomplish. Full points for that.

The Eraser King

I picked my son up from school the other day and asked him how things were going. "Good", he said. I asked him to expand on that general thought. He went into a long explanation about how he was selling things in class for tokens and told me about the things he had been selling. Selling? It seems that his teacher has let a secondary market for school supplies develop in her class. Kids in her class earn tokens by being good or getting work in on time. They can use those tokens to buy pencils or erasers or some small toys or a day without shoes. Really, a day without shoes is a thing you can buy. Anyway, my son decided that since he had some extra pencils and some small toys that he had bought earlier that he could make a tidy profit by selling them. He asked his teacher if this was ok, he even wrote up a contract outlining his honest business practices, and she approved. Due to some supply issues in the teachers supply box he was doing pretty well. Well enough, in fact, that other kids took notice and decided to copy him. One girl in particular noticed that since the teacher was out of erasers, my son was able to sell them for 10 tokens each. She had a handful of erasers herself, and decided to undercut him at two tokens. Now, if it was me, I would have taken this as a sign that my price was too high and lowered it to be competitive. Not him. He walked over to her desk with a handful of tokens and bought every last eraser she had. He then walked back to his desk and declared that the price for erasers in the class was back up to 10 tokens. My elementary age son managed to corner the secondary market on erasers and pull in a tidy profit. I'm not entirely sure this is the kind of thing you can teach. I'm both extremely proud and slightly fearful. He is truly the Eraser King.

We Won!

Well, we took the kids to Rodeo Houston again. They're all big now so we did the petting zoo and the farm stuff and then we went to the midway. I know that everyone in the family (except me) likes to play games. They spend money like it's free and have fun. I do not have fun. One of the first games we walked past was the ring toss where you're trying to get little plastic rings to land on one of about 500 glass Coke bottles. It's basically impossible. You can stand there for an hour and watch people throw thousands of rings and never make one. The kids wanted to play so I said "fine, let's get it over with". My wife said "no, if we win then we have to carry the giant prize all day". We'll never win. Nobody wins. Fine we'll wait. I'm already grumpy.
On the way out, we stop to burn through the last of our dwindling life savings. Baskets of rings are purchased. Rings are tossed. I'm rolling my eyes at the silliness of it all. Of course you know where this ends up. Of the several million rings tossed that day that sailed helplessly to the ground, somehow my younger daughter managed to throw one perfectly. She's happy. My wife is happy. The carnies are happy. Everyone is happy. Even I'm a little happy. But only a little.

Spring Biking

So it's spring break. Rather, spring break is almost done. You'd think that as a stay at home dad I'd have more time to post by not having to drive the kids back and forth to school. While theoretically right, it's not really right in practice. I find that I'm simultaneously trying to get projects done while at the same time my presence is needed every 3 to 5 minutes to solve some dispute between the children. Couple that with the lack of structure that my days now have, and it seems like every evening I find myself getting ready for bed and realizing that I haven't posted. Come next week and a return to normalcy and my posting schedule should get better. 

One thing we have been doing this week is enjoying the weather. I've been working on the cars and the yard and the kids have been playing outside and riding bikes. My youngest finally convinced himself that he could handle riding with training wheels. He went from unsteady to tearing around the driveway like his butt was on fire in about 20 minutes. It won't be long and I'll have the last of them riding a two wheeler. Bikes are fun.

Adventure!

I've been a little delinquent in my posting, but I have a good reason. Adventure! My oldest son and I flew to Pennsylvania to pick up a car. It was a three day trip that included 4 hours in flight delays, 1400 miles of driving, having to diagnose and fix the car in a parking lot, and some really incredible roads. I didn't have to take my son. I could have done it myself and saved money on a plane ticket. I wanted to though. I like spending time with my kids, whether all together or one on one. Anything fun becomes more fun when you're sharing the world with someone you love.

Checker Head

Today was wacky hair day at preschool. In the usual fashion of our family, we took things one level farther than intended. The idea behind crazy hair day is to style your hair in a crazy fashion, so of course my son decided that he needed to cut his in a crazy fashion. I, of course, agreed.
The plan was to make his head into a hair/not hair checker board. It turns out that this is quite hard to do. In hindsight, it would be pretty hard to draw a checker board accurately on a basketball. Trying to cut one into the hair of a five year old is more like trying to draw a checker board on a basketball while someone is dribbling it. I did not do a great job.
His haircut was well received though. Lots of compliments, lots of smiles, lots of shock by the preschool moms that someone would actually do that to their child. It was fun. Tonight we broke out the clippers again and turned it into a normal haircut. We had fun. He looks good. It was a success.

Man In Charge

Last week my older son received his award for reading. In his school they use the Accelerated Reader program to encourage kids to read, test them, and reward them. In his school you get awards for 10, 25, 50, 75, 100, 150, and 200 points. If you make it that far and wish to push on, you can get to 250 points for the big prize, Principal for the Day.
It's a pretty big deal. You get announced on the televised morning announcements and then you get to hang out with the principal for almost the whole day. You go from class to class and monitor the teachers and their students and get to hang out and play computer games while the principal does real work. You get to be the center of attention for the whole day, and there's nothing that makes my son happier than that. He worked hard to have his day, and I'm proud of him.

Clearly Now......

The first of my children has a pair of glasses. At his five year old checkup the pediatrician figured that he might need to be checked by an optometrist. The optometrist agreed that the boy can't quite see as well as the rest of us and had a pair of glasses made up for him. This really shouldn't surprise any of us. All of my siblings have glasses. My brother in law has glasses. All of the grandparents involved have glasses. In fact, my wife and I are the only ones in our immediate family not to need glasses. It figures that eventually the world would turn blurry for at least one of the kids.
He's had his glasses for about two hours now and hasn't managed to break or lose them yet. Minor miracle there. We'll see how long that lasts. We are going to head out to Super Cheap Discount Eyewear and buy him a pair of beater glasses with the prescription that we picked up from the optometrist. We figure that they should be good for the days when he can't find his glasses or he breaks them or when we go on hikes in cliff country. I'll let everyone know how this whole glasses thing works out. Having never had them myself, it's a new adventure.

WHAT!

I'm not sure if I've posted this picture before, but every time I come across it when I'm scrolling through pictures I think I should. My son received a tool kit for Christmas one year and he loved the drill. His little sister loved it too, but instead of pretend building, she loved to poke the drill in her ear and let it run. Don't worry, it was way to big to go in and cause any harm. I laughed every single time I saw her off in a corner, concentrating hard, drilling away at her head. Kids are fun.

Not My First Rodeo

We have a phrase in Texas, "It's not my first rodeo".  It's meant to explain that you've been here before, done this before, and you know how the game works. My assumption is that is originated in actual Rodeo competition as a way to let others know that you didn't need instruction about how to hang on to a bull or what not. Having never ridden a bull, that's pure conjecture.
Today at my son's preschool was rodeo lunch. They do this every spring during the time when the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is going on. They have hot dogs for lunch and then play rodeo games like lasso the rocking horse and stick horse races. It's fun. Today, as the parents gathered and wondered what to do, a number of faces turned toward me and asked where they should do. They knew that this was not my first rodeo. I pointed here, here, and here and put people in their places and things worked our great. One thing I've learned through the years is that it's not so important who is in charge, just that somebody is. Things go much smoother if there is one face to look to when a question comes up, even if that face is making up the answers.

The day went great. Everyone had fun. Only one stick horse racing injury that I'm aware of. The kids went home tired and the parents took a lot of pictures. It was a little bittersweet for me though. This isn't my first rodeo, but it was my last.

Boxes

Little kids like boxes
They like to climb inside
Pretend that they are on a boat
And take them for a ride

Half Pipe

Last week I took my wife to the dentist. I didn't need to, she's perfectly capable of finding the dentist on her own, but by doing that I was able to hang out with her for an extra hour or so on the drive to and from. It was nice. While she was getting her teeth cleaned my youngest and I went grocery shopping and explored a small public skate park near the dentist. I scoped out the ramps, read the rules, and wondered if the kids would like to come back.

Asking a nine year old boy if he wants to go to a skate park is like asking if a fish pees in the water. The answer is so obvious that you feel silly asking the question. So we went. My older daughter had some work to do so the three youngsters piled into the car along with a couple of boards and helmets and pads. We had a good time. Nobody is quite ready to drop in on the halfpipe but they had a lot of fun going back and forth and sliding down on their feet. Ramps that any one of them would jump off without blinking are quite intimidating when you're riding on wheels. It's going to take a few trips to really get the hang of things. We had fun and nobody got hurt. We'll certainly be back for more.

Slow Day

I'm calm! Who says I'm not calm!

I was pretty excited about today. The only thing on the calendar was my wife's dentist appointment. Looks like some time off for daddy. Just had to drop the little kids off at the elementary and then drop my oldest off at school across the street. I headed back to the elementary because I had to prepare a couple of deposits for the PTO and then take them to the bank. Not the close bank, but the far away bank because they're the one with the automatic change counter and it's more time efficient to do it that way than to count it all by hand. I was lucky enough to make it home in time to load my wife and youngest up and head off the the dentist. I didn't really have to do this, but if I didn't then I wouldn't really see my wife at all today. While she was at the dentist my son and I went grocery shopping and checked out a neighborhood skate park. Then we picked my wife up and had an actual legitimate treat, a lunch out. That was my morning. In a few minutes I've got to head out to pick up the little ones from school and then we'll go to the library for our weekly book retrieval. We'll make it home in time to head back out and pick up my oldest and her friend from after school science club practice. That should leave us all sitting down to dinner after which I'll be awaiting a phone call from the friend's older brother who I have to pick up whenever his track practice ends.
I'm glad I get an easy day like this every now and again because the busy ones wear me right out.

Special Boy

I feel the need to make this picture public. He's a special boy.

Crew

Recently hired a work crew to help me spread some gravel. With their help it took only slightly longer to finish the job than it would have taken if I had worked alone. It was a lot more fun though.

Baby My Baby

Baby my baby
Could you maybe
Not poop on me today

Your clothes look fine
And so do mine
Could they stay that way?

Baby my baby
Could you maybe
Not poop on me today

Each day this week
You diaper has leaked
In a most disgusting way

Baby my baby
Could you maybe
Not poop on me today

You wrinkle your face
Poop all over the place
Both stinky again today

None Too Small

At this house, there is no holiday so small that it doesn't deserve celebration. Take Valentine's Day for instance. Though this holiday has been around in some form since the days of Chaucer, it has in recent years evolved into a minor holiday in which those in love give each other stuff. It's not even important enough for a postal holiday. Derided by many, we grab onto Valentine's Day in an attempt to add joy to the dreary early days of spring. Heart table cloth, heart napkins, heart plates, and pink heart shaped pancakes to start the day. We're always ready for a celebration.

Bath Goggles

I had an interesting chat with my sister the other day. It seems that there's a bit of a lice issue rolling through my niece's preschool. Not a huge deal, humans have had lice since before we were humans. It's really probably a rare thing that we don't have lice. I've had lice, you've had lice, we've all had lice, not a problem. You just wash everything you own in water with a temperature as close to lava as you can get, and you wash yourself and your loved ones with anti-louse shampoo. Sounds easy, but here's where the story gets interesting.
You see, not everyone likes getting their hair washed. Some dislike it more than others. Some dislike it so much that they throw a huge fit and fall all over themselves as if washing hair is a violation of their rights as a human being. With normal kids shampoo it's not a huge problem, but with louse shampoo, it can be. It turns out that louse shampoo isn't tear free. It stings a little. Ok, it stings a lot. That stinging might actually turn out to be a chemical burn on your child's eye. She might freak out enough with all of the thrashing and wailing to make herself throw up. Now you've got lice, a head partly rinsed of shampoo, an eye that's literally burning, and vomit. These stories are better to hear than to live through.
After I stopped laughing and my sister told me that she had to do another round of shampoo in a week, I recommended that she run out and buy a pair of children's swim goggles. We've used them with a couple of our kids who hated getting their hair washed with normal shampoo. Works great. It would have been better advice before all of this happened, but, better late than never I always say.

$17,881

If you've been reading along, you know that a couple of weekends ago my son stepped on a nail and ended up spending three days in the hospital on IV antibiotics. The bill came today. We have insurance so the part that we have to pay is comparably small. The overall number, $17,881, is quite large.
I try very hard not to be political when I write this blog, but I'm going to make a bit of an exception about this one issue. I think we should have some sort of health insurance for every person in this country. Whether or not it's the system that is due to come into effect in the next few years doesn't really matter to me, I just think that something needs to be in place. Right now we cover the elderly because their care costs more than they can possibly pay. We also cover the poor for the same reason. According to a quick search, somewhere around 105 million Americans are covered under those programs. 48 million people are uninsured, about 8 million of them children.
What happens when you're five and step on a nail? If you have insurance, you go to the doctor when your foot gets puffy. They decide how bad it's likely to be, and you get treatment. Life goes on. What if you're one of the 8 million kids that don't have insurance? Well, hopefully it's not bad and the body will heal itself. If it's like my son though, you can either take him in and be lucky with only $18,000 in hospital bills, or you can wait. If you wait it turns into a larger infection and that infection gets into the bone. Now you're looking at a month or six weeks in the hospital and surgery and perhaps a lifelong limp. Suddenly $18K sounds cheap. You waited one day because you knew you couldn't pay. You still can't pay, but now you can't pay over $100,000 instead of $18,000. How is this better for anyone?
People in this country should be able to seek medical treatment without the fear of financial ruin. They should certainly be able to seek it for their children. We already, as a population, pay for the sum total of all of the medical services that happen every year in this country. If you can pay, you pay. If you can't pay, and you're old enough or poor enough, maybe the government pays. If you can't pay, and you don't pay, those bills don't just go away. The medicine has been used, the tests run, the care given. Those unrecouped costs are passed along to those that can pay. Let me repeat something. We already pay for all of the medicine that is practiced in the United States as a population. I simply think we should re-arrange things so that we don't have to financially destroy part of the population to do so.

Choir

My oldest son tried out for, and was accepted to, his elementary honor choir. It was all a bit surprising as he wasn't much of a singer. Our assumption is that he wanted to participate in any activity that let him stay after school and hang out with other kids. Choir, team handball, slug taxonomy, if he could stay and hang out it all sounds good to him.

In the end it really did sound good. Given a few weeks of practice, an optimistic young choir teacher can take 100 singers of moderate ability and blend them all together to produce something that's enjoyable to listen to. The whole was truly more than the sum of it's parts. I hope you enjoy it.

Open Apology

Nurturing, caring, and up to code.

This is an open apology to my in-laws. When was writing yesterdays post about the saga with the refrigerators, I looked through old pictures to see if we had any of the really bad fridge. While I didn't find any, I did find pictures of our house immediately before, and right after we had our first baby. Holy cow I'm sorry. I'm not sure how you ever walked into, and then out of our house and didn't openly question whether we were out of our minds deciding to have kids. The place was, and still is to be honest, an active construction zone. Bare concrete floor. Plastic sheeting hanging from the ceiling to keep the dust out of the 'clean' part of the room while I worked on the other part. Tools and stuff piled everywhere.
You came and visited. You must have slept somewhere. You kicked the cement block in front of the fridge to keep the door closed. For several weeks we had to walk outside to go from the kitchen to the living room. Our bedroom was as orange as the setting sun. Somehow you just smiled and said good luck and hid what must have been rising panic at the thought of us raising your grandchildren. Maybe, somehow, you knew it would turn out ok. I don't know how you did it, but I'm truly sorry and forever grateful that you were nothing but positive as we bumbled our way through learning how to be parents and adults all in one go.

Fridge

I'll cut right to the chase, my wife sort of demanded a new refrigerator this morning. I say sort of, because although it came out as a demand, I managed to head it off for a while. I'll explain.
We have a fairly long and colorful history with appliances dedicated to keeping food cool. Our first refrigerator came with the house. It was not good at it's job. It was old and tired and on a good day, it would keep the food in the bottom cool, and the food in the top slightly below freezing. This was all dependent on not opening the doors too many times, it couldn't handle too many cool cycles. It was also dependent on the doors actually closing, something which it did with reluctance. At some point in the history of the fridge something had happened to make the doors swell a bit. Whether this was due to water in the insulation, or corrosion, or some other factor, we never really knew. The result of the fault was that the doors became increasingly hard to shut over time. At first they wouldn't stick unless you pressed them closed. They then progressed into a fairly elaborate ritual of slamming to get them to stay. Eventually even this failed and I was forced into ever more elaborate systems of improvising.
The first system, one that worked quite well I might add, was a piece of wood that was wedged between the handles and the doors. Imagine the board that keeps the castle gates closed against attack and you're on the right track. This wasn't just any piece of wood though, it was engineered to fit perfectly in the handles and wedge the doors shut. I was quite proud of it until it stopped working. For some reason, the handles stretched out, the door swelled even more, I don't really know, we had to move to heavier artillery, and by heavier, I really mean heavier, a cement block. Yes, part of opening our fridge for a time involved moving a cement block out of the way, getting what you needed, and moving the block back. This really did prove to be quite effective, however, it wasn't enough.
We had a baby. The baby had to eat. The boobs went to work and left the milk at home, and proper refrigeration became a serious priority. The fridge would keep leftovers for a week, but it wasn't the 40 or so degrees that was recommended for storage. On top of that, the freezer was supposed to be as close to zero as you can get it for longer term storage. Our freezer was closer to the suggested refrigerator temperature than it was to zero. Aside from the cement block issue, the fridge had to go.
We bought a new fridge. A glorious white beauty that produced ample cold and would close every time. Life was good. Sort of. It did produce cold. It did close. That was good. The problem came when it decided that it was time to activate it's self defrost mode. It stopped it's cooling, heated up the coils, melted the frost on them, and deposited all of the melt water right into the freezer. For some reason the tube that leads from the defrost tray in the freezer down to the catch tray on the bottom freezes. Not every time, but often enough that I (or my wife when I'm gone) has to chip out the skating rink on the bottom of the freezer and use hot water and a turkey baster to create a free passage for additional water. I could have probably called some sort of refrigerator repair man, but someday I'll tell you the story of our chest freezer and my still smoldering hatred for repair men. As long as it makes cold, I decided that I'll chip out the ice.
So that's what I've been doing. Every two to 6 weeks, the freezer will freeze over and I'll get out my implements and I'll fix it. For ten years I've been doing this and it really doesn't bother me. The garage has a hole in the roof the size of a Volkswagen and the dog poops on the floor at night. I have bigger problems than a little ice once a month. This morning when my wife mentioned that the freezer was frozen again, she also mentioned that, dammit, she works a good job and makes enough money that if she wants a fridge that doesn't require constant maintenance then by god she should get one! I like being married, so I agreed. In principle anyway.
In reality, it's just not a good time to get a new fridge. Next fall all of the kids will be in school and I'm going to address that hole in the garage roof. In fact, I'm going to address the whole garage. Top to bottom, a garage makeover. We've been talking about this a lot. I'm even planing to build an office for my wife out there. Someplace nice and quiet with a lock on the door where she can go and do work if she needs to. An oasis of calm. A sanctuary if you will. It would be fantastic to have a refrigerator out in the garage for extra food storage with our growing kids. If we're going to have a fridge in the house and one in the garage, then we should buy a new one for the house and put the old one that needs to be defrosted manually in the garage. The hitch with this whole thing is that if we buy a new fridge now then we don't have any place to put the old fridge until the garage is ready. Right now the garage is filled with car parts and race tires. Really important stuff.
So, as I explained to my wife this morning, I love the idea of buying a new fridge. I really do. I just think we should wait until I have a place in the garage for the old one. Somewhat surprisingly, she agreed with my logic. If I can keep her from smothering me in my sleep, we're totally getting a new fridge. Later.

My Boy

I look at you my last born child
You are my youngest son
I just can't help but ask myself
If I've done all I should have done

Did we sit and read enough
Learning letters side by side
Or was I to busy running around
Taking kids for ride after ride

Did I hold you close to share our thoughts
Things quiet as a mouse
Or were those times swallowed up
By the chaos in the house

I know that your life is different
When you are the youngest one
There's more people to help you out
Dad's not the only one

I'm always trying to do everything
It's so hard to know what to do
I just hope the choices made
Were right for me and you

Rollin'

It's how we roll. Or at least how we used to.

Forgettable

See, his brain never forgets.

Yesterday I did something that I've never done before. I forgot about an orthodontist appointment. It was on the calendar. I had talked to the receptionist at the orthodontist's office the day before to confirm it. I had even sent my son's teacher an email telling her that I'd be coming to get him. It still blew right by me. Of all the doctor, dentist, and orthodontist appointments we've had over the last 11 years, I never missed one until yesterday. I feel terrible.
In the grand scheme of things it's not a huge deal. I rescheduled the appointment and my son won't end up in braces any longer because of my lapse. Life will go on. I just don't want to become that guy. The guy who makes appointments and doesn't show up. The guy who shows up late. The guy you can't count on. I'm like your old spinster aunt who never had any fun because she thought close dancing was a slippery slope to drunkenness and debauchery.

Nailed it! #3

MRIs are pretty interesting devices. Our body contains a lot of hydrogen atoms which all have their own tiny magnetic field. These fields are pretty random in the body and cancel each other out, which is why you're not just a big walking magnet. However, if you zap your body with a really really strong magnetic field for just a fraction of a second, that's the M in MRI, the magnet, you can get some of them to line up in the same direction. When you release the field, they wobble back to the position they were in before, that's the R in MRI, resonance. You can actually measure this wobbling if you have the right machine (which is what a MRI is) and you can map it all out and make really really detailed pictures of the insides of a body, which is the I, imaging.

Movie night. They really missed him.

MRI is a pretty amazing technology, but it has three downsides. The first is that you have to slide into a tube, which freaks some people out. The second is the noise generated by switching the magnetic field on and off at a high frequency. It's loud. Ear plug's needed loud. The third is that you have to stay very very still while you're being measured so the images aren't blurry. These last two are a bit of an issue when you're a five year old who doesn't like loud noises or holding still. I'm pretty sure that an image of his whole body would have been really blurry except for the one foot that was strapped to the table. That was the important foot, and they were happy with the images, so they finally let us go back to the room and start the medicine.
The medicine was IV antibiotics every 6 or 8 hours, depending on which of the two was next. This means that they started together. Then in 6 hours there was another dose. Then 2 hours after that, at 8 hours, another. Then at 12 hours the second dose of the first and then at 16 the second dose of the second and then at 18 the third dose of the first and then at 24 both of them together again. Couple that with measuring vitals every four hours, and then try to find a gap in that schedule for sleep.
Three nights of that, and not a whole lot of sleep. After the first night I gave up trying to sleep in the recliner and just climbed into bed with my son. He's a hard boy to sleep next to because he flops like a fish, but it turns out I'd rather sleep next to a live salmon than in a recliner. Eventually three days passed, and honestly I could tell stories about every one of them, but in the name of brevity I'll skip to the last one.
We were woken at 5:30 on the last morning by a large stern woman. She needed blood and she was in no mood to discuss anything about it. Ninety seconds out of a dead sleep and she had two vials of blood in her bag. She swept out of the room leaving behind her a cloud of perfume scented confusion and a small weeping boy. It was.....traumatic. After that we waited. Another MRI was needed to show that the infection that had started in the joint of the big toe had gone away before release was possible. It was scheduled for 8:00 am, so of course it didn't happen until about 2:00. My wife relieved me from my position at the hospital and brought the boy home at the end of the day. By that time he had become so acclimated to life in a medical facility that he fell asleep during the second MRI, loud noises and all.
Now we're a few days into a week of oral antibiotics and still living under the threat that the infection will return and send us back to the hospital. We had a bit of a scare yesterday when his foot got very very sore and started to get red. I actually brought him back to the hospital, but by the time we had waited for an hour things started to feel better. All we can figure is that he had aggravated the toe running around at preschool. We were able to able to walk out of the hospital before ever seeing a doctor or even officially checking in thanks to the absurdly long wait times in the ER. 
This whole thing has been quite an adventure, one that I'm hoping we don't have to repeat any time soon. I have learned a few things though. Nails are dirty, but shoes are dirtier. If you step on a nail, do it barefoot, you'll be a lot better off. If you're sent to see a specific doctor, try really hard to see that doctor and not get caught in the web of admissions and bureaucracy that exists in the hospital. If you have to go to the emergency room for anything, bring a snack and something to do. If it's not serious enough that you need an ambulance to get there, you're going to wait. And wait. And wait. You can spare the extra two minutes it will take to make your wait bearable.
I hope some of you enjoyed the telling of this story. Even though it took me three days to type, it's still the short version. Catch me in real life sometime and pull up a chair and I'll tell you the rest.

Nailed it! #2

Yesterday the story that began with stepping on a nail left off with a short drive over to the hospital. When I say short, I mean really short, it's less than a mile away. We could have walked if the whole reason for our visit in the first place wasn't foot pain. It was, we drove, and we made it.
This hospital, like many, is confusing. I suspect that they do this on purpose, but I'm still not exactly sure what that purpose it. Perhaps it's to keep people from escaping? I don't really know, but unsurprisingly I couldn't figure out where to go. When I left the pediatrician's office I was sent with a note basically giving me a prescription to head right to the children's ward to meet with the doctor that already knew we were coming. Not being able to figure out where to go, I asked a nice person who sent me to admissions. Ok, I can dig it, my son needs to be admitted, so off I head to admissions.
I showed my handy dandy get into the hospital free card to admissions and was met with a scowl. The owner of the scowl made a few calls and then sent me to a cheerier person to show my insurance and ID and such. This person received a call that instructed her to send us to emergency. For some reason that's how they wanted to admit us. I put my non ambulatory son on my back and headed to emergency, the one part of the hospital I could find. At emergency I showed my paper to yet another person and explained that I was sent over to go the the children's ward but couldn't find it and I had been sent from admissions to them. They assured me that I was in the right place and that they were the real ones that knew whether there were beds available. Ok, sure. We wait. More paperwork. Triage by a nurse to confirm that he did indeed have a puffy foot with a hole in the bottom. More waiting. A doctor to confirm what the nurse confirmed. More waiting. A nice trip to radiology for a series of x-rays. More waiting. Finally sent back to the back of the emergency area to......wait. After about the third very nice nurse asked us why we were there some phone calls were made and things started to happen. As it turns out, a doctor had been waiting for slightly over four hours in the children's ward for us and she was worried and annoyed. Things started to happen.
A big slightly scary bald guy came and got us next. We had seen him walking around the emergency area and I was starting to wonder if he hadn't been hired as a bouncer. He was wearing scrubs, but he looked far more likely to be the type of guy to put you in an ambulance than take you out of one. He was the nurse assigned to put an IV in my son's arm. If you have a five year old, take a look at their arm. It's skinny. Really skinny. Now imagine that you have to find the tiny little vein in that arm and get an IV in there and do it in such a way that they don't freak out so much that they jerk their arm and undo everything you're trying to do. I did not envy the job of this man, but he was awesome. He talked to my son and calmed him down and drew a little snake head on the elastic tourniquet. I hugged him (my son, not the nurse) and held his arm and witnessed the best IV stab I've ever seen. In, out, taped up and two vials of blood drawn before I could even explain what had happened, which is pretty good because there's no real way to explain to a five year old what's going on in a way they understand. A big scary guy wants to stab you, but only a little bit, and take out some of your blood, but only a little but, and then leave a plastic tube taped to your arm.
It was done, the IV was in and we were almost instantly in a wheel chair and off the the children's ward to get settled down for our next three days of sitting. Except before we could sit, we had to head back out for an MRI.  This is where I'll leave the story for today, a small boy with a big foot on a moving table being slid into a room sized magnetic doughnut.

Nailed it!

On Wednesday I was in the middle of the perfectly choreographed dance of getting the dinner in the oven, getting the kids in the car, picking up my daughter from her after school project, driving home, pulling dinner out of the oven, and serving it, Ta Da!, and my youngest son started screaming outside. I was pretty sure that his brother had done something to him and the noise was headed toward the door so I waited. When he walked inside blood was dripping out of his shoe. That's probably not good, especially since we had to be in the car in four minutes to keep on schedule.

More Legos, stat!

I pulled off his shoe and he told the story. He was following his brother around the back yard (ha! I knew he was at the bottom of this!) and he stepped on a board. The board had a nail poking out of it and the nail ended up through his shoe and into his foot, hence the screaming. Luckily the boy clots like it's his job and by the time I had things washed off the bleeding had stopped. A quick dab of antibiotic ointment and a bandaid and we were in the car only one minute late. If the story ended here it would be a nice little story about wound care and excellent time management skills. You might notice however that there are a LOT more words on the page. We're just getting started.
Like all wounds, good parenting says that this little nail stick should be watched for a few days. My kids have cut there feet a bunch of times, and we bandage and watch and things get better and life goes on. He woke up the next morning saying that his foot still hurt, but things really still looked fine. He insisted that he couldn't walk and we chatted about him going to school anyway. In the end we decided to let him stay home and heal. At about 9:30 my wife called and asked about his foot. She's one of those concerned moms. I had been watching it and reluctantly admitted that it was starting to swell and even more reluctantly agreed that I should call the pediatrician and see if they could get him in to have a look at it. I was torn between knowing that having a doctor look at it was the right thing to do, and my general belief that most things heal if you give them a few days.
At the pediatricians office we were met by our usual super happy doctor asking why we were here. I explained and she looked at his foot. Shortest appointment.....ever. She was out of the room and on the phone with the hospital and the next thing you know we're back in the car and on our way to a more serious medical environment.
It seems that puncture wounds, like those caused by stepping on a nail, are serious business. The nail can shove a bunch of stuff into the hole, but bleeding stops before the body can really flush it back out. The only thing worse than stepping on a nail is stepping on a nail with your shoes on because on the way through the shoe the nail picks up all of the nasty things living in your shoe and shoves them up in the wound. That cute little boy created the perfect storm of circumstances for a multi day medical emergency, and that's what he got.
As this story took three days to play out, it's going to take me three days to tell the story. For now I'll give you the bullet point version so nobody has to worry, and I'll fill in the details later.
-The boy steps on a nail.
-Wound gets all red and puffy.
-Pediatrician stops being cheery, becomes serious and sends us to the hospital.
-Three days on IV antibiotics.
-An x-ray and a couple of MRI's.
-Hospital chairs suck to sleep in.
-Home safe and sound.

Clan

Feast for the whole clan.

I was just sitting around thinking, and it occurred to me that over vacation my kids were able to see four great grandparents, three grandparents, two uncles, three aunts, five cousins and an almost uncountable number of great aunts and great uncles and distant cousins by birth and by marriage. That's pretty cool.

Missing Dinner

When my wife is away from home
Working late or at a meeting
I don't quite put the effort in
to what the kids and I are eating

It's still good food, and tasty too
I pay attention to nutrition
But without my wife to serve it to
It's not the same sort of mission

No four course meal, no pretty food
No fancy candle light
Just hot and brown and tasty
Is all they get tonight

I've made her meals for 13 years
Still here so I say bless her
After all these years and all those meals
I still want to impress her

Racecar

 A photographer by the name of Luke Guillory was at the last rallycross event and took some pictures. I love this one. I'm surprised my daughter can see out of the car.

Problem Solving

Prison.

My wife isn't the complaining type, not even a little bit. When people tell her that she's lucky to have the best husband in the world she tends to agree. She sings the praises of my cooking and my childcare and sometimes my cleaning. Not too much on the cleaning. If she were a glass half empty type of gal she could easily turn those compliments about me around and find things about me to shoot down. I looked at the cup on the floor this morning and contemplated this.
Like all houses we have bugs. Spiders are the creepiest, but at various times of year we have other visitors as well. Right now we have a series of seemingly identical black beetles that will make their way across the living room, from one side to the other, and disappear. I don't know what they're doing or where they're going but they seem to be harmless. My inclination would be to just let them be, but everyone else in the house seems to think that they should be put outside as part of our humane bug removal policy. It's a simple process really. Just place a cup over the bug, place a piece of paper under the cup, and carry the bug outside where it belongs. Generally this job falls to me but sometimes I'm busy and I don't make it all the way through the process. Yesterday my son saw a beetle and demanded that it be trapped. He's five now and I told him I thought it was high time he start trapping his own bugs, but he said it was a daddy job. I was getting everyone ready for school at the time and figured that if I took a second to trap him under a cup then I could just pitch him outside later. The heart of the problem was a bug crawling across the floor. Now there was not a bug crawling across the floor. A large part of me felt that the problem was solved.
Last night my wife came home and eyed the upside down cup in the middle of the floor and shrewdly asked about it. I hastily explained that there was a beetle under it and I'd get it later. Of course I did not get it later. In fact later, after the kids went to bed, we were watching TV and another beetle had the bright idea to crawl across the floor. I got up, and moved the cup, and now I had two beetles trapped. My wife suggested that I put them outside but it was cold and I didn't have a piece of paper at hand and I felt that since I had once again solved the problem immediately at hand I would be fine until the morning. This has turned out to be true. In fact, I haven't quite gotten around to putting them outside even yet. You see, the cup in the middle of the floor hasn't become a problem. When it's time to pick up the living room I imagine it will be, and then I'll solve it.
I do believe that I married well.

Bloody Foot

You come walking up to me
Your foot a bloody red
I ask in horror "What did you do?"
"I don't know" you said

Were you cut by a shell or a rock
Or bit by a bear or a whale?
"I stepped on something sharp" you said
"While running down the trail"

Come here my boy, I'll patch you up
And send you off for fun
But next time be more careful
And watch out where you run

You stop fussing very quick
And ask me on a whim
"Does my giant bleeding foot
Mean that I can't swim?"

Pit Crew

High quality pit crew.

What a fantastic weekend. For the first time ever I was able to bring one of my kids on a racing trip with me, and it was a pretty special one. A few months ago while rallycrossing with the local group I met a really nice guy who usually rallycrosses in Louisiana. He was over playing with us as a way to spread good will and to invite us to come drive with him and the loony rallycrossers from the New Orleans area. An event finally came up that I could attend and I got the OK to bring my oldest daughter.
Most of my racing trips are just day trips. The drives to and from are a couple of hours at most and I'm usually home by bed time. New Orleans is 7 hours away though, and adding 14 hours of drive time to a full day of playing in the dirt was a little beyond what I thought I could do. I talked to my wife and we decided that it would be a super special daddy-daughter weekend if we were to drive to New Orleans and stay overnight in a hotel and then race the next day. We would get a lot of time together to talk without having to fight for attention with three other siblings. That's what we did, and it was great.

Happy girl and a fun weekend.

The only downside to the weekend was the four days of rain leading up to the event. The ground the course was on was muddy and slippery and pretty much un-raceable. The best you could hope for was to make it through the course without getting stuck, which not everyone did. Cars got stuck and cars broke and none of the driving was particularly fun. It was a race weekend, and the racing wasn't great, but the weekend still was. We changed tires together and my daughter was able to ride along with me when it was time for me to make my runs and we had a ton of time to just hang out. We were able to talk cars for the first time ever, which was a pretty cool thing to do. In one weekend she's gone from identifying cars only by color to being able to tell a Mustang from a Camaro and being able to tell you why it's important to tighten lug nuts in a star pattern. Not bad for a ten year old girl who loves sparkly things.
Like I said, it was a great weekend. I'm already checking the race schedule to figure out when we can do it again, and trying to figure out how I'm going to be able to give everyone a turn going on race weekends with daddy when they're all big enough. I can't wait until they can drive.

A Fence for the Fence

Not a whole lot of time to write today. I'm installing a fence for the fence. You see, our dog has now taken to climbing over the fence in the yard. I tried installing electric fence around the part of the fence she was going over but she just moved to a different part. Maintaining that much electric fence is a serious chore so I broke down and bought one of the invisible fence thingies. For the time being is seems to be working. I'm not certain that she quite has a grasp on the concept that she's not supposed to go near the fence but she seems pretty afraid of the gate, so that's a start.
I've included a picture of her sledding with my wife to show that she's not a completely horrible dog. There are times when it seems like a good idea to not give her away. There are days that she's walking a thin line though.