Child Labor

The game is played like this:  2 kids, 2 shovels, 1 cow pasture.  Each player may stand no more than 10' from the other.  When a player finds a fresh pile of cow manure, player must strike the pile with the back of the shovel and splatter opponent.  After 1 hour, player covered in lesser amount of poop wins.  Or this:  2 players, 2 bb-guns.  Ok, you probably know what happens next, right, One-Eyed Mike?  This is a small sampling of the games I played growing up.  Not once did I sit for a game of Monopoly, but Rat-Batting?  A little too much.  Some "games" were thinly disguised ways of my parents getting free ranch-work.  Castrating calves is fun if you save the fuzzy little scrotums for Evel Knievel action figure helmets!  I bought it then, and now Dylan is all in on the concept, too.

I haven't sold her on the fuzzy helmet idea, yet; she still is a little freaked by the bawling and clatter of working cattle.  Grady's the same, and I can't blame either.  Cattle work is a messy, loud day.  Grady, when he joins us in the corrals, simply yells at the cows (or me), then sobs.  Dylan turns her head, draws dinosaurs on the back of vaccine boxes, finds a happy place -- then falls asleep.  Sometimes, though, I'm able to get some work out of her.  Remember the game "Pick up Sticks"?  I don't either, but I told Dylan it was a game all kids played and it was easy to learn.  I just put her in the feedlot and told her, "Go pick up sticks."  We piled branches while her pink school-shoes and white tights got covered in "dirt" (remember, it's a feedlot).  We had a blast.  Dirty work that culminates in a giant bon-fire, what could be better?

Sometimes, especially if there's a very special episode of Team Umizoomi on, it's hard to get either kid out of the house to help me.  I have to result to bribery, which I'm not above.  With Dylan it's simple: clothes and candy.  So, I stuff my vest pockets with Tootsie Pops, Regina packs a snack bag, and Dylan gets to wear a tiara and a tutu for her workwear.  Nothing says "cowgirl" like a pair of Wranglers, a Carhartt jacket, and a pink tutu spattered in manure.

Grady's starting to work with me a lot more, but at his age, there's little I need to bribe him with more than, "You want to hang out with Dad?  Come with me!"  I'm sure I'll be packing a snack bag full of candy soon enough.

Until Dylan is big enough to swing a shovel or pack a bb-gun, we'll keep her in cowgirl-princess workwear and hopped up on candy.  And I'll be getting the one thing that has kept agriculture alive in the U.S. for the last one-hundred years:  free child-labor.

Nariz Naviblah

This year for Christmas break, we went to Mazatlan.  We made our grand entrance into the country with a plop.  No, it wasn't the sound of our plane bouncing its wheels on the tarmac; it was the sound of the contents of Grady's full diaper spilling onto the floor as we were trying to get through customs.  When Dylan was younger, the sounds of her crying would guarantee us a quick escort through customs without any hassles.  Apparently, the smell of Grady's poo has the same effect.  We breezed through, no problemo.

The morning we left home, it was 8 degrees.  The week before, we'd had nothing but bone-chilling fog that wouldn't burn off until late afternoon.  We needed a good thawing and spent our first day or two regaining the feeling in our extremities.  Dylan and Grady gathered seashell ornaments for the little Christmas tree we brought.  After our tree was decorated, we figured we should make an attempt at blending in with the locals by brushing up on our Spanish.  "Un tequila y limon, por favor," Regina repeated, over and over.  I'm not sure what it means, but it seemed to make her happy, so I'd add, "Yeah, sounds bueno," and Dylan would throw out her version of Merry Christmas by telling everyone we saw, "Nariz Naviblah."

We rented a car and spent afternoons exploring downtown Mazatlan.  I thought we'd head north, out of town, for the Advanced Elusive Driving Techniques, Cartel Experience class that the resort offered, for that "real Mexican experience you'll never forget!", but Regina navigated us to the historical downtown instead.  Dylan grabbed her purse full of pesos and searched for her perfect toy (at one point she tried to buy a stuffed kangaroo.  Nothing says "Mexican vacation" like a kangaroo.), while Grady and I found a shop that made homemade salted caramel and coconut ice cream.  I was pretty sure, at that point, that we'd never leave.

Christmas day was perfect.  Santa came to our room and left presents, then Mexican Santa came by the pool that afternoon to dole out more gifts.  Given Grady's Santaphobia, we let him skip sitting on this one's lap.  Dylan was given a make-up kit, which she promptly applied liberally to her face.  The yellow lip/neck gloss looked okay, but the purple unibrow was a little much.

Grady and I took a little afternoon snooze, then went back to the pool to find Regina and Dylan.  They weren't in their usual places (Regina soaking up sun, Dylan leading a game of tag in the shallow pool), so we headed for the beach.  We were distracted by shouts and screams and I assumed that an iguana had wandered into someone's pool bag.  Instead, I found a big white dude wielding a club and beating the snot out of a pinata while a line of small kids, Dylan included, cheered him on.  Regina told us that the little kids had gone through three rotations and couldn't crack it, so they called in some Jim Thome ringer to take a few swings.  "I wish that was me," I jealously whispered.  He spilled the pinata's contents with a few expert swings and the kids dove in.

There's nothing wrong with an uneventful vacation.  Last trip, I got food poisoning from ceviche and pulled over by a cop -- two things I'll never forget.  So, this trip, when nothing happened, we were relieved.  We ate great seafood, we expertly lounged by the pool, we built terrible sandcastles -- all the things that should happen on vacation -- and it was perfect.  Regina's tanner, I'm fatter (mmmm, flan), Grady's addicted to seafood, and Dylan keeps asking where her new make-up kit is.

A Very Callahan Christmas

Aside from fugly sweater contests and eggnog shooters, the Callahan Grange Christmas Party is one of our favorite traditions.  The Boliver crew puts together a terrific evening that's heavy on Christmas cheer: great food, tons of desserts, and a visit from Santa.  The Santa visit is my favorite part, not because he lets me sit on his lap (Which he doesn't, anymore.), but because of the commotion he creates.  The older kids start buzzing around like smacked tuning forks as soon as someone mentions that he's on his way.  The mid-younger kids are the most fun, because they are the most confused.  Santa is still just a big freaky stranger to them, but he's also the dude who doles out gifts.  And the littlest kids really have no idea what's in store for them.  One minute they're chilling with a sippy cup, the next minute someone plops them on a stranger's lap and tells them to smile for the picture.  I'd be pissed, too, if that happened to me.

Because this is a Callahan event, we can always expect something unusual to happen.  One year Santa seemed to be a sixteen year old boy.  Jolly, yes, but chubby and hairy, no.  Another year I think Santa had braids.  But this year's Santa nailed it, right down to the genuine home-grown white beard and Mrs. Claus entourage.  Dylan was in awe.  Fortunately, she's quit asking Santa for random items (2009: a turtle), but now has a "go-to" toy whenever anyone puts her on the spot (2010, 2011: a dolly).

The fear of Santa torch was passed smoothly from Dylan to Grady and the boy did not disappoint.  He didn't necessarily cry when we plopped him on St. Nick's lap, but rather howled and looked like a man fighting for his life.  He squirmed, twisted, and fought like a cornered wolverine.  Santa maintained composure and said, "Ho, ho!  He's wiggly!" while he looked at me with eyes that begged, "Please help."

But, like I mentioned, it wouldn't be a Callahan Christmas without a twist, and we were treated to an extra-special one.  This year, we ate upstairs in a building that probably was around when Jesus was born.  Eating upstairs is a lot like getting stuck at the kids' table for Thanksgiving.  There were a handful of adults who were "supervising," and a whirlwind of kids, all running around at full speed.  I kept thinking, "Some kid's getting stitches tonight."  I would have been right, I'm sure, but just when the energy peaked, the power went out.  The room instantly turned dark as the inside of a cow (that's dark).  Kid's screamed, parents scrambled, and soon everyone was rounded up and hurried downstairs.

Luckily, what Callahan lacks in population, it makes up for it in ingenuity.  Candles, flashlights, and maybe even a flare, were lighted and the Grange transformed from a dark cave to a cozy Christmas.  We stayed and the soft lights and power outage made everyone a little giddy.  It felt like a real Christmas party; we didn't break into any spontaneous caroling or pause awkwardly under the mistletoe, but the kids got to visit with Santa and Regina and I got all the benefits of a great Christmas party without the nasty eggnog shooter hangover.  Win-win.  Merry Christmas.

Let the Games Begin!

I came in from feeding cows last weekend and, as casually as a UC Davis campus cop pepper-spraying a crowd, Regina informed me: "It's begun."

I knew exactly what she meant.  It really could only mean one thing:  Potty Training.  The thing about starting is that there's no turning back.  It's a big commitment.  Your brain pushes out all thoughts except for pee and poo and you turn into a parenting parrot, chirping, "Want to go pee-pee?"  "Polly want a poo-poo?"  It's not that we are in love with changing diapers, but to be honest, we're used to them.  I don't gag anymore and sometimes changing a diaper can be cathartic.  Plus, it's a hell of a lot cleaner than teaching a boy to crap on a toilet.

So now Grady's trucking around in his sister's old pink pull-ups and wondering why we incessantly ask if he has to go poopy.  We started off with a grand-slam.  Day 1, 1st Toilet Sitting -- Grady pooped!  I acted excited and even gave him a few M&M's ("A Candy For A Dandy"), but I'd been burned too many times by Dylan when she was potty-training to really celebrate.  Sure enough, Day 1, 2nd Toilet Sitting -- Grady peed on the floor before I could get him seated, splashed around his piss puddle with his hands, sat on the toilet and did nothing, then, when I took him off, peed more on his clothes.  Sigh.

Potty-Training is Exhausting! 

Regina and I are learning that potty-training in cold weather is no picnic.  First, there's no peeing outside, which is what all country kids do.  Dylan had a pee (and sometimes poo) tree designated for said purpose.  You can spot it, it's the one with the vibrant green leaves and dead grass around its base.  We could send Grady out in the rain and tell him to use the pee-tree, but the gale-force winds would probably topple him.  Inside, when Grady stands tall, his weinus is still 6" lower than the rim of the toilet, so everything has to be done seated.  And when little boys are seated, their little junk doesn't "dangle" down.  When I sit in front of the little man and encourage him to push like we're in lamaze class, I feel like I'm staring down the barrel of a loaded gun.  If that thing goes off, I'll take a direct pee shot to the chest.

I made the mistake today of catching Grady mid-poo, taking off his pull-up, and putting him on the toilet.  No, no, no.  Bad idea.  His legs, butt, the toilet seat, and a 3' radius around the toilet were smeared in his doody.  All I could yell was, "Help!" as Regina ran in with a pack of wipes and a hazmat suit.

There's no turning back and we look forward to the day of skid-marked chonies rather than poop-filled diapers.  With a little patience, and a whole lot of 409, we'll make it through this alive.

Mia Hamm-Bone

Dylan's just completed her first ever organized sport: pee-wee soccer.  Unlike t-ball, which is slow and painful to watch, pee-wee soccer is a fast-paced, nail-biting, painful sport to watch.  At one point during the season, I thought wagering on the games would spice up the action.  Apparently, it's frowned on as we "don't keep score" and doesn't promote "good sportsmanship."  I had to be a little stealth about it, but I managed to offer Dylan five candy bars of her choosing if she scored a goal.  Sure, some would call that "bad parenting," but you should have seen her hustle.  One of the other dads heard my motivational strategy and doubled the offer for his son if he would, for once, "Just kick the damn ball."  Both kids burned off a lot of energy trying, and both dads never had to pay up, so win-win.

This season, the league had seven teams.  It seems like a lot, but consider there are only five players to a team.  Pee-wee soccer often looks like a rugby scrum, with every single player, goalies included, roiling around a ball that no one seems to be looking for.  Limit the number of players and you limit the size of the scrum -- it's good logic.  The fun thing about our league is that if you have an extra kid, say, one that's too young to play yet, no one cares if the younger sibling throws on a jersey and plays for a while. We tried to keep a short leash on Grady, but he often wandered out onto the pitch, much like a streaker or lost cat, and disrupted the games a few times.

We started the season with just one practice.  It began with no one listening to the coach's instructions and ended with everyone using the sideline cones as hats.  Christina, the coach, has the patience of a saint.  After that practice, she asked if we should try another before our first game.  "Would it matter?" I asked.  It wouldn't, so we didn't.  What the Pacific Power Blue Jets lacked in talent and skill, they made up for it in lack of concentration and goofiness.  We knew we were in for it when, upon arriving to our first game, I spied the other team running passing drills and stressing "teamwork." It was like playing against a German olympic squad.  "Klaus, why are you not running?  Stop crying!  Teamwork!"  "Nine, Dietra, stay in your zone."  Needless to say, they kicked our butts.  The Blue Jets spent the entire game picking the ball out of the back of our goal.  That team soon became known around the league as The Team That No One Liked.

The Blue Jets only could get better from there, and they did.  Dylan, as a forward, is a good player.  She's aggressive, likes to run, and got to where she could dribble and run (for a while).  The next game she even scored a goal (this was pre-candy bribe).  But, when Dylan played anywhere but forward, her attention to the game fell apart.  As a defender, she's indifferent and as a goalie, she's distracted.  "What's going on over on that other field?" seems to be her only thought.  I couldn't even offer a candy bar bribe that she'd buy into as a goalie, that's how little she liked the position.

The Blue Jets improved significantly as the season progressed.  If our games were two, instead of four, quarters long, we'd of had a winning record.  But, while other teams replenished electrolytes and talked game strategy at the breaks, our team took the cones and chased each other around the field, pretending they were unicorns.  They were so exhausted by the third quarter that no one wanted to run anymore.



The last game ended with cupcakes, candy, and trophies.  Dylan was awarded "Most Enthusiastic," which is coach-speak for The Kid Who Won't Stop Running.  Dylan still sleeps with her trophy and talks about the goal she made, so the experience was a good one.  The Blue Jets could care less what the final scores were or how they played.  They had fun, they spazzed out, and now they're ready to hone their skills in the off-season so they can collect on those candy-bar bribes.

The Routine

The calves are weaned, the hay is (nearly) in the barn, and our back porch smells like baby chicks (sounds cute, smells awful) ... it must be fall.  It also means that the kids are back on The Routine.  No more of this sleeping in until 6:30 -- no sir-ee.  We are on the clock these days.

And by on the clock, I mean this:  I try to to sleep in as long as possible, Regina wakes up at some horrible hour to run, and, usually when I just hit REM sleep, Grady starts yelling for milk.  And The Routine begins.  Grady gets his milk-fix, a banana, and a clean diaper (usually not in that order), then he's off on his own to go roll cigarettes or whittle.  It doesn't matter, my attention is now on the girl.  Dylan is pretty good at getting up, but pretty bad at getting going.  She tells us she's going pee, then will spend ten minutes making faces in the mirror.  All the while we just think she's constipated until Regina goes and checks on her.  Then I have get to pick out her outfit for the day.  I usually choose a skirt, then grab fourteen shirts that I think have the possibility of matching and show them to Regina while she's showering.  Next, I do her hair.

My brothers used to have illustrated diagrams of the four hair styles they could pull off.  Their girls would point at one (pig tails, pony tail, side pony, or top pony) and they'd oblige.  I don't have a cool cheat-sheet, so every morning is a new adventure in hair styling.  I try to get away with the easiest, the pony tail, but end up getting conned into something elaborate (for me) like a braid.  Dylan keeps asking for a side pony, but I feel like I have to draw the line somewhere.  I know, the 80s are cool again, but there are just a few styles that should have stayed there.

Dylan, now, is an old hand at pre-school.  Her dad, however, isn't.  She'll remind me for a week that show and tell is on Friday.  Usually by Tuesday we'll put something she can share in her backpack.  Then, come Friday, I have a trip to the bakery on my brain and the backpack gets left in the car.  Dylan's been carrying around a shed lizard skin for three weeks now, just waiting for her time to shine.

She's also learning jokes, and so we've been perfecting her stand-up routine.  Right now she has a solid fifteen minutes, but it falls flat after that.  Well, right now she has a lot of "conceptual comedy."  This means she understands the cadence of the set up, but doesn't think the joke clear through to the punchline.  I get lots of: "Knock-knock." "Who's there?" "Giraffe." "Giraffe who?"  Long pause, then laughter, "Giraffe carrying a monkey!"  It isn't Richard Pryor, but I laugh anyway.

I'm learning things at pre-school, too.  No, I'm pretty good with my colors (just not matching them), but I learn things that most parents never need to know.  For example, last week the teacher told me that we had a dead calf in one of our pastures and it was starting to stink.  Sure enough, I went down and checked and she was right.  Pre-school: it's good for everyone.

Grady is back at the Greatest Place on Earth (daycare) and is loving the constant attention and hot toddler babes.  The kids come home either energized or completely wiped out.  If they want to party, Regina turns them loose with the chicks.  Grady's gentle, but so was Lenny in Of Mice and Men.  Regina now calls him King Kong because he wants to hold those cute little chick soooooo badly, but his grip goes from 0-10 without much in between.  And while Grady tries to squeeze them, Dylan tries to keep them all bunched together, like Mick, Greg's Border Collie.  If they're too exhausted, Grady gets a knife and a hunk of wood and Dylan works out a few Knock-Knock punchlines.  By then, we're all exhausted and we go to bed, ready to try it all again in the morning.

3 Lake Challenge

A few years ago, Regina and I decided that we'd go to a different lake in either the Trinity, Russian, or Marble Mountain Wilderness areas each summer.  By the middle of August we hadn't done so much as a drive over Shasta Lake, and we knew we had to act quickly or we'd be hiking through snow drifts.

We have a few limitations: Despite my large ears and great ass, I'm not a mule and won't carry all the gear required to spend the night, so the lake has to be a day hike.  I'm fat, so long hikes are out.  We could ride horses in, but of the fourteen or so horses mooching off the Bench H gravy-train, I'm not sure we have three or four that could make it up a mountain trail.  So we hike.

Lake 1:

After yet another failed attempt at getting to Paradise Lake, we quickly decided on Campbell Lake.  I don't know if hiking makes Dylan nervous or excited, but something about it makes her chatty.  Weird-chatty.  She talked the ENTIRE hike.  She talked to Regina and me, she talked to herself, she talked to her dolly (of course she brought a dolly), she talked to the few people we passed.  It was over eight miles to the lake and back of this:  "You want to hear a song? Here are your choices: alphabet, monkey in a tree, or butterfly."
"How about the monkey one," I'd say.
"I don't know that one.  Here's the alphabet song.  Sings...  You know how to say alphabet in Spanish?  It's Butterfly."
"I don't think that's right," I'd say between deep breaths.
"You know how to say butterfly in Spanish?  It's Cabootyloo.  Want to hear another song ..."
And on, and on.  Regina finally snapped.  "QUIET! You hear that?  It's just the wind in the trees!  Isn't that nice?  And peaceful?  Listen, just listen.  Please!"
"Want to hear a song about trees?"

Lake 2:
This one doesn't really count because we go to Lake Siskiyou every year, but the following weekend we loaded up the nieces and nephew, and the kids, and went to Mt. Shasta.  There's no hiking required to get there, and there are giant bouncy toys in the water that some old fat guy tried to bounce around on and instead looked like a bad audition tape for "Wipeout."  And, man, it really wore me him out.

Lake 3:

Paradise Lake has been our golden ring -- only because every time we decide to go there, there's road construction blocking the road in.  So we slipped past the loaders and backhoes and made it to the trailhead.  It's half the distance to get to as Campbell, but twice as steep.  So much so that Dylan was quiet the first mile in.  Then her little legs warmed up and the rambling started.  I packed Grady and he spent most of the hike removing my hat or dropping his in the trail behind us.  As if the hike up weren't tough enough, hat-retrieving leg-bends with an iron weight on my back about did me in.  Paradise Lake was aptly named -- at least I felt like I was in paradise when I took Grady out of his pack and scarfed down two burritos.


So there you have it, two new lakes, one summer.  I'm not sure if that makes us exempt from hiking in 2012, but you can bet that we'll be gunning for a new lake anyway.  Regina will study her maps and find something only lost PCT hikers have ever seen.  I'll be in the round pen, trying to get a horse or two ready enough to ride.