06/28/2009

The Weekend

Man, this weekend will have claw marks on it before I go to bed. I am holding on for dear life. It just wasn't long enough. I think a lot of that is because we lost electricity on Saturday at about 5:00 PM. A transformer behind our house gave up the ghost. They were still working on it when I fell asleep at 11:00 pm or so. In the middle of the night, they fixed it and by morning I was cold from having been uncovered and soaked with sweat...

It was probably in the mid nineties outside on Saturday afternoon... Saturday started off pretty normally. I watched little E while Ann took the other three boys to see UP at the cheap movie hour (10:15 a.m.). E and I read a few books and then I found some TV for him while I worked on my dissertation, skimming through all the stuff that King James wrote during his lifetime. I swear, it seemed like half of his decrees were about how there are too many buildings in London.

Then after lunch I ran to the library to pick up some books, ran to get a new headlight for the family minivan, and did a propane exchange. Good thing we were planning on grilling out for supper on Saturday anyway - the power went out before I started, so I had to figure out how to cook corn, tater tots, and about 4 pounds of chicken all on the grill at the same time. It actually worked out, believe it or not. The chicken was excellent and after it cooled, Ann covered it with foil and then laid those frozen blue things all over the top that you use in coolers. Then she put it all in the freezer. Didn't want to let that much valuable chicken go to waste, especially when it all came out so well done and so juicy.

Then after supper I mowed the yard and I and all the boys took turns getting our showers for Sunday. I read to them by flashlight and then fell asleep listening to an audio book on a battery powered cd player. Ann has been reading these mysteries and she stayed up who knows how long reading one of those. This morning then we got ready for church and kept the nursery. We're not having Sunday school during the summer, and so we split right after the last child was picked up by his parents and we ran home and ate chili. After that, I took a 30 minute nap and then we went fishing at Tilles park because Nathan was dying to try out the fishing pole that he got for his birthday. We probably should have spent the extra time to drive out to the Busch wildlife refuge because we didn't even get a bite - it was windy and sunny and though not very hot, it wasn't really cool either. But we saw a gorgeous bird perched right above where we were fishing - a "Black Crowned Night Heron" - and I got close enough to take a lot of really detailed photographs of it. I'll have to post those soon. Whenever we go out of doors, we almost never have a bad time - there's always something interesting to see.

At the park today we fished with corn. Apparently that's how you're supposed to fish for catfish, which eat vegetables, and Tilles park is supposed to be stocked with catfish during the summer months by the parks and recreation department. I am not very good at fishing with corks and hooks anyway, and I had a lot of trouble judging the depth to use for the hooks with the corn. I have a picture of a lot of catfish gathered at the bottom of the lake laughing at my corn way up at the surface. Who knows. Another problem with a lot of the lakes in St. Louis is that there are Canada Geese everywhere, leaving their scat and making the ground unpleasant...

Then this afternoon, the boys split up to watch movies and/or play XBox. After supper and bedtime rituals, I finished up reading the book Hatchet. It was a really good book, though not as good as the book My Side of the Mountain. We'll have to figure out what to read next in a hurry. Usually, I read a section of the bible (we're nearing the end of John right now) and then a chapter from some kind of good fiction book. I'll try to get something from the library for the boys tomorrow, but if I don't get a chance, I'm sure there is something short I can read for one night. N likes these books in the "Great Brain" series about a little kid who swindles everyone in town by using his brain. Those are usually pretty entertaining.

I really don't want the week to start. Last week was so busy and this weekend was cut short by power outages. I'm tired, and my body is sore and I just feel "life sore," as I heard Rob from "Rob and Big" say one time.

06/26/2009

Barlows Do 'Why Go?' by Pearl Jam

06/23/2009

Comments On

By the way, for those of you who read this blog via RSS, you might not have noticed that I turned comments back on. Anyway, just thought I'd put this message in the main body of a post so you guys would know. Interacting with readers has always been a great thing. Hope you guys are doing well; would love to hear from you.

06/21/2009

Pool Rules

Well, we joined the local pool this summer and Ann and the boys have been going every day. The boys have tans and their hair is now back to a beautiful blonde color. Their tan lines are funny to see - who knew the Barlow boys could tan? - and they all have their mother's freckles.

I finally was able to go to the pool with them on Saturday and was shocked to discover that chicken fighting is not allowed at that pool. These were the staples of my childhood pool going experience:

1. Chicken fighting - you know, four people, in two pairs, fighting on each other's shoulders to push the other pair down.

2. Marco Polo - no explanation required

3. Trying to make a splash big enough off of the diving board to wet the lifeguard in his or her chair.

I suppose Marco Polo is allowed, but that's about it. Too bad.

The pool is fun, though. I jumped off of the diving board and realized that it has been about 20 years since I've done that. It was actually a little frightening at first. For most of my teenage years I was way too self-conscious to even take off my shirt, so 20 years is about right. I probably missed out on a lot of fun, but it's not like fears are rational. Now, there are so many people at the pool who look worse than I do, so I don't mind. Plus, before I was just destroying my own fun, but I hate to ruin things for the boys just because their dad won't get in the pool. So this summer I've been exposing my pitiful physique to the world.

Well, gotta run. We're now reading "Hatchet" at bedtime and can't wait to find out what happens next.

I need to blog about our little turtles that we have now - they are little half-dollar sized red-eared sliders. They are doing wonderfully, and eating the turtle food so I know they'll make it.

06/13/2009

The Beach Beer

See, up 'til this point in my life, I thought the best tasting beer in the world was the beer right after mowing the yard. That was before I had the beer on the beach in the hot sun after playing in the surf all morning. That beat the taste of the mowing the lawn beer by at least 40%.

The Fashion Show

I love this new Bravo replacement for Project Runway but this week's episode had Angel going home because, essentially, she didn't know what a "B-Girl" should wear. All of the contestants were assigned to create a garment based on a particular high school clique. Someone was assigned "prep", someone "skaters", etc. The winner was assigned "mean girls." But for Angel, who grew up in the Midwest, she had no idea what a b-girl would wear. The judges treated this like an affront - as if she were delegitimizing hip hop because of her ignorance. Yet, there was no library she could have consulted to find out what b-girls wear on the show. I'm amazed that they would treat it this way. I wouldn't have known what to do either. Imagine if they'd thrown "country girl" into the mix. I'm as ignorant of country music culture as I am of hip-hop, but I think I could imagine what a country girl would wear. Angel was at a huge disadvantage. Anyway, pretty stark realization of differences in perception between the New York judges (and Kelly Rowland) and myself.

06/11/2009

Our Trip

I put a few photos below from our summer trip down South (really, from the alligator farm), but Ann had a good photo-heavy story about the first part of the trip on her blog. After we left the beach, we went to my parent's house in Mississippi and I got a lot of good photos of all the amazing trees and plants my dad grows. I'll hopefully post some of that stuff this weekend. Been catching up from a week long trip - rough!

06/06/2009

Things That Bite

05/31/2009

My Fence Work

Here's the fence I put up yesterday:



Notice that our backyard is higher than the neighbor's yard, so to tie into their fence and not leave a gap where our dog could escape, I had to make that little foot wide extension. Anyway, not perfect, but I think it will do the trick.

A Productive Saturday

I had a pretty productive Saturday. I mowed the yard, front and back. I replaced the front brake pads and rotors on the minivan, changed the oil, and cleaned up the battery. I also went to WalMart and got some essentials. Then, I noticed the ground was soggy from all the rain and thought it would be a good time to tackle digging the holes for the fenceposts I had hoped to install in order to fence in this yard and keep the dog from escaping. Well, I ended up finishing the fencing, too. I am pretty tuckered from all that, and there are the blisters and oil-stained fingers, but hey, that was a lot of things on my to do list.

I've never replaced brake rotors before. The first time I replaced brake pads on a car, I just looked at the rotors and thought, 'meh' and left them as they were. But this time I let the brake pads go too long and the back side of one of the rotors had a really bad gash in it. These rotors have been turned once before, so I just went ahead and bought new ones. I think I'll save the old ones in case I want to make a windmill someday - on a lot of the alternative energy sites, people use rotors as a platform for bolting on their fins for windmills.

I can't imagine what a brake job would cost. The parts alone were about 100 bucks. The good thing about taking your car to a shop is that they're eager to find other things wrong with it and they look at everything to see if there's more that needs replacing. That's also bad too, because you often get socked with crazy repair bills, but it is nice to catch things before they get bad. The weird thing is that the driver side rotor was worse than the passenger side. I'll have to research and see if there is some reason why that might be.

When I fixed the battery, I was basically just cleaning the terminals - there was some blue stuff around the positive terminal, even though I use those little chemical treated felt thingies. So I went by the book and cleaned the battery off with water + baking soda. Worked like a charm - the basic soda mixes with the acidic accretion and you end up with a clean battery terminal and a neutral run off. That's the theory anyway. But I had a blister on my left hand from mowing the yard earlier and some of the blue stuff got on the blister. Yikes. That was some sharp pain. The next cup of soda water went on the hand of yours truly.

It was a pretty day today, though it started out with unforecasted rain. St. Louis weather is a bear to predict, I'd imagine. This afternoon, when I ran to the hardware store to get some Quickcrete for the fence posts, I heard Prairie Home Companion and they were in St. Louis! I don't know if it was a taped performance or live, but it was neat to hear St. Louis get its props. I hardly ever go downtown, but I hear that good things are happening down there. Man, if you went to that performance, you got a good deal. It is pretty expensive to see Chuck Berry perform at Blueberry Hill, and PHC had him + all their other normal entertainment. And it was at the Fox Theatre downtown, which is a beautiful theater. I saw Wilco there one time (and Blue Clues Live many years ago). As an aside, they totally had "broadway Steve" and not the real Steve at that show; so lame.

Alright, gotta run. Have a good Sunday, dear readers.

05/24/2009

My Side of the Mountain

Been reading this great book to the boys at night called My Side of the Mountain (Puffin Modern Classics). It is about a boy from New York City who runs away from home to live on land that his grandfather farmed in the Catskills. He brings an axe and some flint and steel with him and that's about it. Before he left, he learned all he could from books about living on the land and makes a go of it. The great thing about the book is that it is a first person narrative and the kid tells you exactly what he is eating, how he prepares it, etc. If you like cooking, you'd probably like this book too because he goes into pretty good detail about the fresh greens he's able to harvest. In the early part of the book, he finds a nest of duck hawks and takes one of the little ones and raises it as a falconer would. This hawk ends up being an important source of food for him as he releases the hawk and then runs through the brush of a field scaring rabbits out. The hawk dives and soon he has rabbit to eat and rabbit skins for clothing. When his clothes start to wear out, he has to make clothing from deer skins and rabbit. I would recommend this book for girls and boys; I can't imagine any child not enjoying hearing it. There is a sequel to the book as well, and from my brief peek at it the other day, I think it is pretty much in line with the first book. Besides the detail about survival, the book explores what it is to live alone and to live with others. There is a pretty rich psychological angle to the book that reminds me a little bit of Harry Potter. More than once I thought about the relationship between Sam (the main character) and his hawk "Frightful" in the same way I thought about Harry and Hedwig. There is something magical about a hawk that has had training to help humans, whether it carries messages or not. I also think it is interesting that, even when the book was written, America had ceased to really be a place where one had the kind of freedom to live outside of the norm - Sam has to be constantly on guard against drawing the interest of the town. He might be forced to go to school, or back to New York City, or even have his way of life questioned by wildlife officials wary of fire or damage to wildlife. Anyway, sometimes there are books I read to the kids and I can barely force myself to read more than the minimum. This is the kind of book where 45 minutes of reading can pass and I hardly notice.

05/20/2009

My boys

Been thinking a lot about my sons lately. I've noticed that a lot of disabled adults walk kind of funny - with their heads cocked or shuffling around. I have resolved to try and be sure that #1, our autistic son, walks erect and learns to be lighter on his feet. I don't know how I'll do it, but I know at least one way *not* to do it. I tried taking him on a walk with the dog yesterday, but he ended up really scaring me, and a passing motorist, when it looked like he was going to run into the road and flag the person down. Man, my heart was beating. Next time this will be a solely human walk so I can focus on him better.

#2 is really gifted, musically. His first instrument, the drums, is coming along amazingly. I have been showing him songs I liked in my youth that had good drum parts and he has been learning them so quickly. It all started with some good videos I found on YouTube of Led Zeppelin playing "The Ocean" and he ate that one up. Then, just yesterday, I showed him "Why Go" by Pearl Jam and by this afternoon he was doing a good job of playing the drum part, including the intricate high hat close before each down beat. Amazing. I need to record some more YouTube videos so you can see how much more adept he is even than the last video we made. I also began showing him how to play guitar and he has taken to it so quickly - learning chords very rapidly. He has a kind of focus that I never had as a kid - I was much too ADD for the kind of steady progress that marks all of his attempts to learn things.

#3 is my artist and he has been really into several things lately - superheroes, jokes, and skateboarding. He came at skateboarding via an old Tony Hawk video game that the boys haven't even played in years. And then he wanted to try the real thing. I was an avid skateboarder in my youth, so this was a welcome development. Hopefully he can learn to control the board and dive in fully; it's a great individual sport (with social aspects). As for the jokes, they don't make adults laugh, but it is nice to see him find a way to make friendships with other kids in the class. He loves to laugh. And superheroes has been an interest for a long time, and it goes along with some of the art interest that he has. There is a tremendous drawing of Superman on our fridge right now that he made. Really good details.

#4 is a really imaginative kid. A lot of weeks he wraps a present on Monday and waits until Friday to open it. It is usually a box with some of his old toys inside, and the invented holiday is always something different. Maybe it is because his birthday is so close to Christmas, all the intensely present-heavy holidays of the year are confined to a two week period. I dunno. He also loves his mother a great deal. He told her, first, that he wanted to marry her when he grows up. When Ann explained that this was impossible, that she was already married to Daddy, he then told her that he was going to marry a girl who looks just like her someday.

Four completely different personalities, four completely different challenges, talents, and interests. What a responsibility!

05/17/2009

Emergingish Churches

I was listening to someone talk about why they liked going to The Journey the other day, and I heard three basic things - the allowance of visual art into worship, "the music," and the pastor's being so frank and honest. I think a lot of the good emerging kind of pastors are very frank and today I was trying to think through why it is that people like these kinds of churches. I wonder if the frankness plays a kind of boundary-crossing role that produces a feeling of intimacy. I remember reading Dawn Eden talk about her days of one-night-stands with men and talking about how much she enjoyed that unabashed, forced intimacy that happened. Frank people do kind of take the clothes off of their rhetoric and their subject matter; it is a naked discourse. Then, it seems to go like this, but I could be wrong - the frank pastor creates the intimate connection which is kind of titillating, and then he gets a mulligan on the issues of decorum and this can lead to decorum and restraint and order being viewed as the enemies of authenticity. The children are in children's church so the pastor can talk about pretty much anything in adult company. Church is PG13. Once this naked mood is established, encounter group type of dynamics come into play and this can lead to overdisclosure - people being "real" with each other. Worship is very emotional, with a kind of wall of sound that one can get lost in; songs move from one to the other without much break or with talking that is, itself, accompanied by background music. These churches often have very active, even weekly small group meetings, where people stay connected and continue throughout the week to disclose to each other their brokenness. What I'm suggesting, I guess, is that there is a real reason why these types of arrangements are attractive to many. It is nearly the opposite of the isolating decorum that characterizes so many lives, but of course the opposite of an unhealthy approach is not guaranteed to be any healthier. Anyway, the foregoing is just some unformed (probably uninformed) thinking out loud, for what it's worth. But put the children back into the sanctuary, bring up the lights, tuck in the pastor's shirt, put a robe of authority on him, and nakedness becomes creepy, and "authenticity" starts to look a bit like looking for spiritual power in the admission of our brokenness rather than in a meal of reconciliation over the broken body of Christ.

05/16/2009

Scenes from My Cell Phone Camera

It's been on my to-do list for a while to get all the photos off my cell phone. There were some interesting and amusing things from the past year:



Matteo Ricci's Chart Explaining Christian Theology



What could possibly be "beyond scrubs" besides nudity?



This device really clears up a lot.



#2 Made a great Harry Potter this Halloween



There just aren't words to describe how ugly this couch is.



Weird engraving from a 18th century English book.



Saw this deer two weeks ago at Powder Valley nature preserve. It was one of about 5 we saw that day.

04/22/2009

What I look Like Today

I seldom post photos, but I'm stuck here waiting to speak to someone, so I snapped this photo: