The DePaul's take a holiday

One of my favorite things about the new year is the tangible phenomenon of vacation days.

I'm blessed by the mercy of my employer and the fruits of my sometimes hard labor to have fifteen days a year to do with what I wish. Last year I used number 15 in early November, so for six weeks I stumbled through the no-more-time-off-the-rest-of-the-year-except-for-company-mandated-holidays fog. I got the two Thanksgiving days and the two Christmas days, but that took the edge off feeling like I got away with something by being off work when everybody else was too.

And then that December miracle occurred, when at 11:59:59 I went from zero to fifteen in one second, a quantum leap attributable to the labor laws and the aroma of capitalism that we in this great country so deeply inhale.

So I have now before me a clean slate, and I don't know what to do.

We haven't a proper holiday in years, me and the missus. Oh, we've been places. Near and far. Round the world. But not for lezhure (pardon my French). This year we vow to change that; we've just not decided how.

Lovett wants to go to Ireland, of all places. He likes the countryside and castle pictures in the bookstore guidebooks, which shocks me because we have to threaten him with a tazer just to go outside to the curb with the garbage can in tow. (Just kidding about the tazer. It's not plugged in. Please don't tell Lovett.) And he wants to hike the Irish countryside. There is hope.

Dora, my hiker and lower-life-form researcher, has more metropolitan aspirations. When she sees photos of the "Eyepull" Tower, she wants to jet to Paris and stand under it in the spot where Zelda and I phoned her and Lovett when she was too little to understand during our whirlwind, 10-hour tour of the City of Lights. She learned that the "Statue of Livery" is in New York City, so she wanted to go there "really bad" until she watched the inauguration on TV and learned that Lovett walked the hallowed halls of our nation's capitol before she was born, so guess where she wants to go now?

Zelda pines for the beach with book and journal, even though she knows how the sand chafes me and the sun entices my inner freckle, though I love the wind and the salt air and the food. But everybody in Birmingham goes to the beach, and the DePaul's strive to avoid what everybody else does (in our understated way, of course).

I'm claustrophobic, so a cruise sounds like punishment; our Baptist brethren would shun us were we to exhibit mouse-eared souvenirs, so Disney is out. Since the Concorde has retired, we'll probably stay on this side of the pond (sorry, Lovett).

So, dear readers, what say ye? Suggestions for my frugal, adventuresome, xenophilic, bookish clan?

Patience, children

A cold front roared through Birmingham this past weekend with the strongest wind gusts the DePaul's have seen since hurricane Ivan stomped ashore last September.

The worst winds were on Saturday night, which is noteworthy only because about that time my muse blew into, as they used to say in wrestling (or rasslin, depending on your preference), "parts unknown." Every night since then I've put a bowl of milk out on the patio for her, hoping when she finds her way back home she'll know I missed her.

She's disappeared before. Usually she wanders off right after I've committed to a project where I need to muster all the creativity I can squeeze out of whatever corpuscles creativity rides around in. Just when I'm about to panic and renege on my promised output, she whispers in my ear, and I write, and all is well. I've learned to be patient with her, and I ask you, dear reader, to do the same.

Goodnight, Johnny

Favorite joke told by Carson (paraphrased):
Good news from Sarajevo. The new model Yugo comes equipped with a rear-window defroster so your hand won't get cold while you're pushing it down the street.

Favorite joke told about Carson (paraphrased also; it's been 13 years for crying out loud):
The Tonight Show writers contribute a dollar a day to a pool won by the first writer that Johnny greets on his way into the studio. The pool is up to $25,000.

Things I wish I'd written

OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan on the inaugural address

Times Online - Simon Jenkins on Don Quixote

"Larry" Adams, "Moe" Jefferson, and "Curly" Washington?!?

Dora ambled over to my chair in the corner the other night to see what I was reading.

"I'm reading David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of John Adams," I replied.

(Actually, I told her I'm reading a book about a man named John who used to be president.)

"Is that him?" she asked, pointing to the cover.

"Yes, that's him. He was a really neat man."

"He looks like that guy in [hip, pricey, chain hamburger joint]," she said, pointing to Adams' hair.

"Huh?" I pondered, until I remembered the cardboard cutout standing in the entrance to [hip, pricey, chain hamburger joint].

Dora saw John Adams and thought Larry from the Three Stooges.

Boy, I have a lot of work to do.

Wartime Inauguration

Enough about FDR's cold chicken salad and unfrosted pound cake.

The frugalities of Roosevelt IV (the inauguration of 1945) as compared to Bush II (tomorrow's inauguration, "the most expensive in history" as NPR always points out) are supposed to show us what a wartime inauguration should look like.

But it's apples and oranges.

In 1945, FDR was a shell of the man he had been twelve years before, at Roosevelt I. His declining health was obvious to everyone around him (within four months he would be dead). The strain of being commander-in-chief for the preceding three years of uncertainty took an enormous toll on him, mentally and physically. The death toll of American troops, staffed primarily by an involuntary draft, numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Domestic life was altered across the board as basic necessities were rationed and entire industries were retooled for war production instead of consumer production. The focus of the entire nation was on the war effort; our sovereignty was at stake.

Not so, 2005. This war is not the focus of the nation. To suggest that the mood of the nation is subdued because of the war is inaccurate. Our everyday lives are not touched by it. We follow our volunteer forces closely if a large body count occurs, but the topic of war is easily pushed aside by college football's BCS controversy, or Janet's wardrobe malfunction, or Martha's incarceration, or Brad and Jen's split, or Trump's fiancée's $100K wedding gown. We eat out, attend sporting events, rack up credit card debt, and gossip about celebrities we know better than our own neighbors while sacrificing nothing for the war effort.

The $40M they'll spend on the inauguration is good economic stimulus. The union guys who built the platforms and the D.C. cops who'll earn overtime pay and the guys who set up (and, ugh, take down) the portable toilets can use the money. The private donors and lobbyist who'll foot the bill need to feel part of the process. It'll help their self-esteem.

So let them party. Let them eat five-tiered, frosted cake. Let them dance. And then let them get back to work and finish the job.

No wonder Ralph Kramden was a grouch

Is there any lonelier job than driving a bus in Birmingham?

I saw a Greyhound bus on 280 today heading into town. There was one passenger on board. One. She was a middle-aged African-American woman wearing a red hat. She sat three rows behind the driver on his side of the bus, staring straight ahead as he did.

I wonder where she came from. How does it feel to be the only passenger on a bus leaving town? Are you thinking Those fools can stay there if they want but I'm getting out while the gettin's good or are you thinking How come nobody else is leaving?

I wonder where she was going. How does it feel to be the only passenger on a bus arriving in town? Are you excited to be ahead of the crowd, with the opportunities to yourself at your first-come, first-served feet? Or are you questioning your judgment, wondering if you missed the Welcome to Nowheresville sign at the city limits?

How does it feel to be the driver of a one-passenger bus? Gotta be some weird economic indicator karma going on there. This chick's fare won't buy the diesel fuel for this trip, much less pay my salary. What kinda two-bit outfit have I hooked up with? It just ain't cool tooling in a big ole bus like this with only one passenger.

He probably doesn't know it, being an out-of-town Greyhound driver, but it could be worse. He could be driving a MAX bus down 280. They never have any passengers.

"The Jungle," 2005 edition

Upton Sinclair would be proud of the advances we've made.

Evicting the squirrel

I hung a new suet feeder in a tree in my backyard earlier this week, and I have yet to see a bird feeding from it. Of course, the fact that I get up only thirty minutes before time for work and I don't get home until dark cuts into my bird-watching this time of year. So I grabbed a quick glance out the window at the feeders on my way to shave this morning. I was appalled.

Hanging upside down from the pole that holds my feeder of sunflower seeds was a long-tailed grey squirrel.

Squirrels are the bane of us bird-feeders. They are greedy, destructive, and messy, but most of all they scare away the birds which defeats the purpose of feeding birds in the first place. Mr. DePaul, my father and bird-feeding mentor, goes to exhaustive lengths to discourage squirrels around his feeders (I hesitate to describe some of his methods on a family-oriented blog). I didn't inherit his disdain for the furry mammals, but when I saw mine this morning, I was a little miffed.

I marched toward the feeder in my house shoes, making eye contact with Mr. Squirrel all the way across the yard. He left only after I was within arm's reach of the pole. Get out and stay out! was my unspoken message that chased him into the woods. I returned to my shaving basin, the sovereignty over my tiny garden kingdom intact.

But I'm sure the squirrel returned, most likely before I left the driveway. And he probably invited all his friends to the buffet just for spite. My presence was merely a temporary deterrence.

The squirrel incident parallels one of my writing struggles. I have an interesting character in mind who is dealing with some past issues of commission and omission in a series of dreams which I'm trying to write in the third person p.o.v. The character wouldn't be a reliable witness if I wrote them in first person because as a retired pastor he would certainly filter them, especially dream number 1.

Which is precisely my problem. I sit down to write the first dream and look out the window to see my internal censor hanging upside down from the feeder pole, digging through my sunflower seeds. He says things like You can't write that. That's vulgar! and Wait until _____ reads this! You'll be finished as a _____. I chase him away like I did the real squirrel this morning, and he shakes his long furry tail all the way into the woods as if to say I'll be back! And he is, as soon as I pick up the story again.

He steals my ideas, destroys my voice, makes a mess of my psyche, and scares away all the little birds I'm trying to attract to my feeders. I can't get rid of him.

If I treated my "squirrel" like Mr. DePaul does his, my children would be orphans.

What a difference a week makes

Tonight I was sitting in my chair in a quiet corner, watching the wind blow the pansies in the window boxes, a little jazz on the radio, a bowl of popcorn in my lap. Lovett was checking his e-mail, staring intently at the monitor, the click of the keyboard barely audible over Duke Ellington. Dora wandered into the room to tell me about her very first big-girl choir practice. Then she said, "Can I go to sleep on your shoulder?" So I set aside my popcorn bowl, lay my head back as she crawled into my lap, and in three minutes she was sound asleep.

What a difference a week makes.

Last Wednesday, Zelda and I had an important dinner meeting to attend. A minute and a half before we were to walk out the door, I noticed some peanut butter on Dora's shirt. I took her to her room to change it, but nothing I picked out would do. Nothing. A wardrobe malfunction with a four-year-old. I finally picked a shirt for her and made her put it on. She followed me out of her room, protesting, and then she about-faced and came stomping back with a Raggedy Ann doll under each arm, both of which were as tall as she is. "I'm taking these with me," she declared, the air thick with self-appeasement.

"No, you're not," I replied. "They are too big. Find something smaller." To which I headed to the garage to open the car for Lovett, who was uncharacteristically anxious to go somewhere since he had a friend waiting to meet him. I opened the garage door, cranked the DePaul chariot, and waited. No Zelda. No Dora. Not even a Raggedy Ann.

Faced with the prospect of entering late a room full of people, I went back in the house looking for my wayward women. I didn't have to search very hard; I just followed the trail of wails. Dora ran past me into the garage and collapsed on the floor in an hysterical heap. I went to pick her up and she did something she had never done before. She screamed at me. Actually, "scream" is such an impotent word. It was one of those Darth Vader "I am your father" guttural groans that stabbed me right through the heart. I expected her head to start spinning round and round at any moment. I realized quickly that I had a struggle on my hands.

I picked her up and gave her the I'm-bigger-than-you speech as I put her in her car seat and tried to buckle the seatbelt. Mission accomplished without getting kicked anywhere important, I took my frustrations out on the car door, giving it a slam that rattled my teeth. I got behind the wheel, slammed the chariot into reverse, and began backing out of the driveway. And then I caught an earful from Lovett.

Lovett is a wonderful big brother. He has been wrapped around Dora's little finger since day one. He is eight years older than her and when she was a baby and we were trying to get her to go to sleep on her own, he would yell out from his bed, "Am I the only one that hears her crying?" and "Is nobody going to feed her? Are y'all just going to let her die?" He came to her rescue again tonight, wondering aloud if I was proud of myself and why I hadn't let her bring her dolls so we could have avoided this major scene.

So I transformed into a mode that surely was the catalyst for dueling back when black powder pistols were all the rage. I let him have it. I told him how wrong giving in to her would have been, for that night and for the future. I told him how hard I worked to provide a safe and secure home, insulated from the outside world as much as possible, and that I wouldn't stand for her disrespect. Nor his.

And then he got hysterical. About how he didn't feel safe and secure and how upset he was and that I didn't care. I coasted to a stop at the traffic signal at a major crossroads on the way to our destination with a carload of insane, irrational, emotional, and hysterical people, three minutes away from our meeting.

And it hit me. I was at a crossroads not just on the highway, but in my relationship with my kids and within my inner being. I was three minutes away from sending Dora off to childcare in a state of emotional upheaval, wreaking unknown havoc on herself and her caregivers. I was three minutes away from sending Lovett off to find his friend and fend for himself for an hour and a half when not thirty seconds before he had declared his insecurity. I was three minutes away from dragging Zelda and myself into a room full of people, having painted on the happy family masks and pretending that our lives were conflict-free.

When the light changed, I asked the chariot occupants where they wanted to go for supper. Lovett got more upset when he realized he wasn't going to meet his friend as planned, so I offered to go pick his friend up and take him with us. We popped into the local chain deli with the good salad bar, and within five minutes I had my family back. Dora was sharing her fruit cup with me, Lovett and his friend were talking about the latest releases from Hollywood (that neither one will probably get to see).

When we got home, we had long talks with the kids individually. Dora understood the importance of obedience, and Lovett talked through why the incident upset him so. And we healed.

And tonight, the click of the keyboard and Dora's drowsy hiccups on my shoulder bear testament that the healing has held up pretty well so far.

What a difference a week makes.

Keeping the bird feeders full

If I don't keep my bird feeders filled with fresh seed, the birds go elsewhere to eat. And so it is with the blog as well. Not that I'm blogging for attention or that I recognize that I have any regular readers, but my visitor count doesn't increase if I don't post. Last week I didn't post anything and had very few visitors.

I did keep my bird feeders filled, so don't worry about our feathered friends. I had finches (gold and purple), chickadees, titmice, and Carolina wrens galore.

Speaking of bird feeders, I was working with one yesterday afternoon when Dora waddled across the yard, armed with a couple of dolls and her twirler (what she calls her baton), flip-flops on her feet, and a ziplock bag of Lifesavers clutched in her hand. She was supposed to be laying down with Zelda for a nap; Zelda fell asleep first, and when Dora heard me outside she bolted with her treasures toward freedom.

After finishing up my work, I sat with her in the grass at the back of our yard overlooking the wooded hollow behind our house. The trees were filled with birds waiting for me to leave the vicinity of the feeders; the tiny creek gurgled in the bottom, sunlight reflecting off its rock-lined bed. "Can we go in the woods?" Dora asked.

"Sure," I replied. "Go and get your tennis shoes." (I didn't really say "tennis shoes." What we call them is more like "tinnyshoes," but I didn't think you would understand that term. You would probably understand the term "sneakers," but we sure as heck don't call them that.)

She returned with an armload of shoes and socks and two walking sticks dragging behind her. I shod her and we tumbled down the hill toward the bottom.

Dora is such a paradox. She dresses with earrings, lipstick, plastic high heels, and frou-frou skirts to go outside and hunt bugs. She never passes a mud puddle that she doesn't stamp her feet in (or bury her arms up to the wrists). She is my nature girl, the antithesis of big brother Lovett, my techno-savvy pop-culture walking-Wikipedia, who, had I to guess, was probably running through some intergalactic thingamabob looking for some whozeewhatzis to slice with a light saber.

We romped in the bottom until the sun went below the edge of the hollow above us. It cooled off quickly, but she didn't want to climb home. We balanced on hurricane-downed tree trunks, overturned rocks looking for crawdads, watched the geese and airplanes fly overhead, got our shoes and hands muddy. We fell down, grabbed briars with our pants legs, thumbed our noses at gravity.

A good Sunday afternoon.

Splinter Removal

I performed one of the more dreaded duties of fatherhood today: splinter removal.

Dora came home from a friend's house yesterday and said she had a splinter but she wouldn't let me look at it. This evening I caught her favoring her middle finger, and I coaxed her out of a peek.

It was red and swollen, and it had to come out.

It was horizontal across the second joint palmside, parallel with the end of her finger. The wound had closed over; there was no accessible exit point. This was going to be bad. An excavation. Code-3 emergency. Certified personnel only.

To say I was merely worried is to understate the lack confidence I had in my excavation skills. I had a flashback to when Lovett was just a little older that Dora is now. He had a splinter deep in the sole of his foot that he wouldn't let go of. Or, more accurately, wouldn't let anyone touch. It, too, had to come out, though, so into the floor we went, Zelda holding him topside and me latched onto his ankle. Oh, the screaming. Shrill, hysterical, pterodactyl-level screaming. Whether I was actually touching him or the splinter or not. Once, a stray sigh of desperation wafted from my nostrils and brushed across the wound, starting the scream cycle over again from the first octave. I thought I would never get the splinter out of his foot and get his voice back down into a comfortable decibel level again. I was dreading a repeat situation with my little princess.

But it didn't happen. Oh, she cried. Ok, she wailed, a little. But she was not hysterical. I comforted her with my tone of voice and usual calmness, as I had done with Lovett, but she responded much differently than he had. I know it hurt her, but she was a trooper. I have seldom been as relieved as I was when I made a desperation grab at the splinter and came out with it. A little soap here, a bandaid there, and something to drink, and my little smiley girl is back to normal.

God help me when her hurts get bigger.

Rocket's red glare

There were fireworks o'plenty in our neck of the woods this evening. We grabbed some blankets and dragged the lawn chairs out into the backyard to watch the show.

We love fireworks. We love to watch other people's fireworks. We leave the pyrotechnics to the professionals (though we won't turn down an amateur, either). I almost blew my hand off once during an episode of "When Firecrackers Go Bad" so there is the safety angle, and it seems that lighting fireworks is too close to setting dollar bills on fire for my fiscal comfort. Dora doesn't like the loud ones, and she will tell you so. Lovett and I like the boomers that knock our breath out. It doesn't get much better than sitting in the Hoover Metropolitan Stadium (aka "The Hoover Met") after a Birmingham Barons game and getting pounded by an artillery barrage.

Nothing like that tonight, though. Still, lawn chairs, cool air, free fireworks. Plus, we missed Reeg on TV.

It's been a good year so far.

Happy 2005.