Buzkashi and Your Anus

One thing about raising little critters on the ranch is the general perception that country kids are tough.  And, really, a lot of them are.  A friend of Dylan's recently was kicked by a horse.  When I told Dylan about it she was A) very concerned, then, B) shrugged it off and said, "Oh, he's tough, he'll be okay."  I like that.  I like the idea that others will perceive my kids as tough without them actually having to do anything particularly macho.  No alligator rasslin' or unfiltered cigarettes, no backyard bare knuckle bouts or that dead-goat polo game they play in Mongolia necessary.

The Wild Bunch

And really, our kids are pretty gritty.  I've seen them shake off hits and falls that would have put me in the cry-corner.  This winter Dylan slammed her finger in the car door as we were going into the Masonic Hall for breakfast.  She cried a little, then wrapped her bloody finger in a napkin and dug into her pancakes and bacon.  And last fall, when Grady and I went in for flu shots, I really expected the worst.  Instead, when the nurse jabbed him with a needle, he scowled at her like she'd just told him Christmas was cancelled.


Despite all this, both kids can also be pretty dramatic.  I used to think Dylan was tougher than an old boot, and then she started school.  She started coming home every day with a new bandaid covering some phantom injury.  We told her that bandaids over scratches were useless and she was wasting the school secretary's time.  When the bandaids stopped, Dylan started opting for ice-packs to cool off those gruesome wounds.  We tried to dissuade her with "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"-esq tales, but she didn't listen.  We finally had to put a hard stop to all of it when Mrs. Jenna, the secretary, told me that Dylan came in during one recess and requested an ice-pack for her heart.

At dinner, if Grady isn't very hungry, I'll often try my feeble attempt at reverse psychology and tell him, "Okay, if you aren't going to eat, then you can go to bed."  Ha, I think, now he'll eat.  Instead, his bottom lip curls down and quivers.  He climbs out of his chair and Charlie Brown-walks to his bedroom.  I watch as the door slowly shuts behind him.  My plan, of course, has completely backfired, and I spend the rest of dinner coaxing him out of his room with sweets like I'm befriending a stray dog.

Mucho Macho

It's easy to forget how sensitive the kids can be.  When Dylan came home from school this week and proudly announced that she was doing her first real school report on, wait for it, Uranus, my eyes lit up like a pinball machine.  Jokes!  Regina, fortunately, can read my very simple mind and shot me a "Don't you dare," look.  But Uranus!  It's right up there with Lake Titicaca, Titmouse, and pianist jokes.  I stopped, took a breath, and bit my tongue.  I knew that I'd take the jokes too far and would, undoubtedly, squelch her excitement for science and probably hurt her feelings.  Instead, like a proper father, I checked my jokes at the door, took a deep breath, and said, "Awesome.  Tell me all about Uranus."

Mi Car-o es Blanco

When the temperatures here dipped to -8 and our days were spent thinking of creative ways to thaw pipes, my brain took an early vacation to Baja.  I had a mental Cabo Advent Calendar, and each day I opened up a little flap to reveal either a Pacifico or a shrimp taco.  So when I sat in my chonies on our patio in Cabo, with Regina on one side and a michelada on the other, I felt, for the first time in a long time, completely thawed.  I thought I may never leave.

We took our annual trip to Mexico this Christmas and the kids, of course, had a blast.  We spent a week in Cabo and three days in Todo Santos, and most of our time was spent on pristine beaches, or at the pool, which overlooked the pristine beach, or eating shrimp tacos, near some lousy pristine beach.  Give Dylan and Grady a set of arm floaties and a beach bucket and they practically babysit themselves.  At least that's what I told all the glaring parents.  Grady was perfectly content building, then demolishing, sand castles all day long.  We'd slather on a layer of sunblock and turn them loose.  Dylan has a Rainman-esq affinity for numbers, and between playing in the waves and building sand-cities, I'm pretty sure she got an accurate count on the grains of sand on each and every stretch of beach we visited.

If Dylan wasn't counting things, like pom-pom trees (her name for palm trees), or buzzards, or Mexicans, then she was asking about numbers.  A typical conversation went like this: "Dylan, look!  I just saw a whale with a kitten on its back."  "What's the number 7-0-0-1?"  If her numbers infatuation keeps up, I'm teaching her to count cards.  Our non-sequiter conversations won't be half as frustrating if we're stacking chips in Vegas.

Our only misadventures came at my expense.  One day we decided to drive to downtown Cabo and walk around.  After searching for parking, I found a great spot in front of a coffee shop.  Sure, the curb was painted red, but the entire block was lined with parked cars.   I concluded that a red curb means, "Come on over, whitey, park here."  When we returned from our stroll, we stopped in for a coffee.  Just as we were served we watched two traffic cops pull up on their motorcycles.  Since I'm 1-0 in getting out of traffic tickets in Mexico, Regina sent me out to investigate.  I stood near them in an awkward silence as they eyeballed my rental.  They'd look up at me and glare, then resume writing.  Finally, I thought I'd better throw down some espanol.  "Uh, mi car-o," I said confidently, "es un problemo?"  "Ticket," they replied.  Crap.  Luckily, Regina sensed my dilemma and figured I was probably going to say something accidentally offensive (like "car-o") and came to the rescue.  No ticket, and I'm 2-0 on blundering my way out of traffic fines in Mexico!

The second flub came in Todo Santos at a seafood restaurant.  I thought I'd go rogue and not order shrimp tacos.  I went, for no reason, with camerones aguachili.  It translates to "translucent-grey raw shrimp, with little or no seasoning save lime."  Regina laughed when it came to our table, mostly because of the pile of raw shrimp on my plate.  I'd also ordered shrimp ceviche, so doubling up raised a few flags in my brain.  Unfortunately, the cook was standing near our table, and I'm a people-pleaser, so I ate it all.  You ever get sick from too much Jose Cuervo, then try a shot of it the next day?  That clench in your gut?  That's how I felt the entire meal.

The weather, when we returned, was above 0, and the kids had a few days to acclimate before school started up again.  My only hint of Mexico, a red belly, is slowly turning back to raw-fish white.  Regina, somehow, will stay beautifully tanned until April, just in time to start catching sunshine here.  After bringing home a little bit of Baja in their bellies (Dylan announced, loudly, in an In-N-Out in Redding that she had diarrhea), the kids are back to their old routines.  And we've already started planning our next Baja adventure.

Eastside Vice

Every time I go to the dentist, he tells me to stop eating so much candy, then either informs me that A) I need another gold crown, or, B) I have a few spots he's going to, "keep an eye on."  Dylan, too, seems to have inherited my knack for collecting cavities and she's becoming well accustomed to hearing the same thing from him. Aside from poor dental hygiene, our kids have a couple of bad habits that, for now, are borderline, but, in the immortal words of Dr. Willis, we'll definitely be keeping an eye on them so they don't blow up into full fledged vices.

Grady's habit is seemingly innocent.  He still sucks his left pointer finger.  It's not too big of a deal, but as a four-year old, he should be outgrowing it.  It's a habit that he clings to, and whenever he's bored (in the car), or tired, he immediately sticks his finger in his mouth.  Apparently, he gnaws on his finger because he's developed a callous that looks like it came off a Pacific Crest Trail hiker's foot.  We'd be okay with his habit if he didn't double it up with a hand-down-the-pants combo.  The degree of difficulty is high to manage both things at once, but he's become a master.  If it were merely the Al Bundy-style, or "The Judd," as Regina calls it, and he stuck his right hand down the front of his pants, we'd chalk it up to weird genetics and let it go.  Instead, his free hand shoots down the back of his pants and we're constantly worried he's going to get some crazy butt-sweat rash on his little hand.  Ok, maybe "we're" not worried, that one may just be on me.

If A&E decides to spin off from their unsettling show Hoarders with a dark side of children-hoarders series, their first stop will be in Dylan's room.  The girl collects everything.  On last count, she had five jewelry boxes, none contained jewelry, and all were overflowing with ... I'd say junk, but she gets mad when I call it that.  Ditto for beneath her bed, and behind her bed, and her backpack, and her pockets.  If it's a vessel, or just an area that will store stuff, she'll fill it.

Last week, Regina was washing one of Dylan's jackets.  It felt unnaturally heavy and so she checked the pockets.  This is certain to be on Episode I, because this is what we found: a paper clip, 3 pieces of scrap paper, 3 rocks, a small stuffed animal, a stick, one used fake fingernail, a water bottle cap, a marble, an "I Love You," note from her friend, Hello Kitty hair tie, hair clips, a dime, a piece of a sugar pine cone, stickers, a pack of glitter, plastic jewels, a ring, and a bolt.  Yes.  All of that in two child-sized pockets.  She's going to need a full TSA pat-down before school each morning.

As far as bad habits go, we're pretty lucky.  They aren't arsonists, or feces flingers, or booger eaters, or plagiarists.  We, of course, are keeping an eye on them to make sure they don't turn into full-blown vices.  And now, if you'll excuse me, I think there's some leftover Halloween candy with my name on it.

Orange United

October is impossible.  It's a month cramstuffed with so many events that the good leaders of this nation have decided to celebrate its ending by letting everyone eat candy.  Here, they say,  nice job keeping your shit together.  Have a Payday.

Soccer was a twice a week commitment for Dylan that she seemed to be 52% committed to.  This year was a step up from the pup-tent sized goals and tiny field melee that is pee-wee soccer.  Now the goals are, you know, soccer goal sized and the field is proportionately bigger.  Dylan's enthusiasm for the game hasn't grown proportionately, but we're working on that.  Dylan played on the Etna team.  Or, to be more specific, The Etna Team.  Right, there was only one.  And guess who they played?  Yep.  The Ft. Jones Team.  1 league.  2 teams.  10 games.  October, yea!  I dubbed the Etna team Orange United.  They wore orange, and played (comparatively) like an English Premier League team.  The purple team, or the Ft. Jones 3 and Under All-Stars were good, but my God, they were small.  I think they recruited from the wrong playground.

If getting benched for fun-wrestling players from the other team and skipping to the ball means Dylan  enjoyed soccer, then I guess we'll pack up the mini-van and all become soccer moms, because it's in our future.  On the field, when she wasn't wrestling, she sometimes managed to focus long enough to be a pretty good player.  But stick her at goalie in an oversized red shirt and she'd become leader of the elephant walk and have all her defenders on their hands and feet doing the Jungle Book waltz.  Sometimes, when she was keeper, I'd look over and notice a completely empty net and see Dylan on the sideline getting a new beanie or gloves -- you know, because they matched better.  In fact, the only goal the FJ3UAS scored all season happened while Dylan was playing goalie.

Grady was a perfect little hooligan and tried to terrorize every match he attended.  If it weren't so cold he would have streaked.  Regina and I learned early that we needed to divide and conquer.  That meant either one of stayed home or, if we both went to the game, one of us kept an eye on our little Sidetracked Suzy while the other got playground time with the Hungry Monster.

Aside from organized sport, deer season monopolized quite a bit of our (my) time.  "Got to go get food for the family," I'd tell Regina whenever the kids were especially bratty.  This year Dylan wanted to join me.  I was excited about this time together so I planned a few easy hunts that we could do.  Our first morning out we hiked up on the hill and I decided to test Dylan's observation and keeping quiet skills.  We sat on a rock that overlooked a brush patch and, sure enough, several deer started moving around.  Dylan looked through my binoculars (backwards) and pointed out does and fawns.  The observation skills are good, but keeping quiet?  No.  She chatted the entire time.  Why those deer stayed in the same county as us, I don't understand.  We moved on to another spot and, again, saw more deer.  I kept feeding her candy bars to keep her mouth chewing and not talking, but the sugar might have backfired on me a little.  We were just about ready to pack it up and go home when a few more deer appeared.  I turned the binoculars around and saw that a couple of them were bucks.  Here we go, I thought.  Dylan's hunting gloves are little purple things with a yarn person on each finger.  When I looked at her, ready to plan our hunt, she was was flapping her hands like a hummingbird's wings.  The bucks looks warily on.  And when I tried to sneak over to a rock for a better view, I heard a loud crunching behind me.  Dylan decided to hop along behind me.  For obvious reasons, the bucks changed course and we didn't see them again.

While Dylan is my little hunter, Grady is my little logger.  When I got my chainsaw back from getting repaired, I decided to test it out by knocking down a few dead oaks in our horse pen.  Grady followed along and I was sure the loud saw would scare him.  Nope.  As soon as the first tree crashed down, he raised his arms like I'd scored a touchdown and yelled, "Yeah!"  So I kept on cutting until I fell a tree over the fence and thought I'd better slow down a little bit.  He just needs a little pair of Prison Blues jeans and and a hickory and he'll fit right in.

Next time I cut wood, I'll let Dylan help too.  The kids can be as loud as they want and it won't be their crazy hand gestures or voices that scares anything away.   No one will ask them to wear an oversized shirt and stand in front of a net while all of their friends play on the other side of the field.  Maybe I've finally found the perfect October sport for the whole family.

Put Your Corn Dogs in the Air Like You Just Don't Care

The first thing Dylan did when she set foot on the fairgrounds for opening day of the fair was inhale deeply and tell us that she detected upper notes of saddle leather and cinnamon with subtle undertones of acorn and boysenberry.  Actually, she just smiled and said, "It smells like the fair."  Corndogs were frying, livestock were crapping, beer was spilling, cotton candy was spinning and it all combined to smell like only a fair can.

Our first attempt at the carnival rides was a mixed bag.  Grady's just a few inches too short for the AA rides, and Dylan's too short for the big league stuff, so they're stuck in carnival purgatory.  But, they still love the carousel horses and the bumper cars and the small roller coasters.  Ho hum, I thought.  I need action!  I need thrills!  This year I talked Dylan into the most feared ride of all ... The Berry-Go-Round.  Basically, you sit in a giant strawberry and spin around.  The berry-coccoons hold one oversized adult and a handful of skeptical small people who are too polite to ask why a fuzzy old guy is on the ride with them.  There is a wheel directly in the center that the biggest, baddest kid (me) gets to spin.  And oh how I spun that strawberry.  The kids were laughing and I was spinning and spinning until, well, until I got sick.  "Faster," they yelled as I started scouting out spots where I could barf out the undersized door and not hit any families.  Decorum states that fair board members wearing their official fair IDs shall not hurl on paying fair-goers.  "Let's just rest a while," I told Dylan after that mess.

It didn't help that we decided to relax on the Merry Go Round.  Easy peasy, I thought.  I'll just stand here between Dylan and Grady and let my stomach settle.  But the diabolical little girl on the carousel horse directly in front of us had other plans.  As soon as the pipe-organ music fired up and we started going around, her finger started a frantic booger dig-and-scoop from nose to mouth.  It was a wreck I couldn't not watch, and wanted desperately to unsee forever.  The nausea came back with a vengeance and I almost became the first sober adult in history to throw up on the carousel horses.  I settled my stomach with a corn dog and decided relaxing on the Ferris Wheel would help.  Dylan and I went up and as we gazed at the iconic Yreka skyline, Dylan asked, "Daddy, in the 90s did they have Ferris Wheels?"  I laughed so hard that my nausea completely went away.  To celebrate, I ate another corn dog.

Must. Hold. On.

Grady has turned into a roller coaster maniac.  There are two at the fair that he's tall enough to ride.  The Go Gator goes around in a small circle and is made for small children.  Grady throws his hands in the air like he just don't care and leaves them up the entire ride.  I forget what the second roller coaster is called, but it should be named Small Claims Court for the whiplash is causes.  The kids love it, and why they are big enough to ride it bewilders me.  Regina or I have to ride it with them, and keep our arms behind their little heads so they don't break off and roll out into the midway.  Regina needs a masseuse when it's over, I need another corn dog, and the kids just want to ride it again.

Dylan's fair-goal is to spend money.  She brings her coins and bills and is lured into buying anything shiny.  My mantra seems to be, You already have that at home, or, That will break before we get home.  Instead, I convince her to play the Win a Goldfish carnival game.  I figured the fish she won last year was a fluke and it wouldn't happen again.  Last year she came home with three.  This year she won five.  I'm still not sure how.  As is wont to happen to fair-fish, five became four, became three ... you get the picture.  We're down to one, but he seems like he might make it.  I figure the fish, like a fair steer or hog, are good lessons for life.  Take care of them, treat them well, and if you're lucky, they'll live.  And if you're really lucky, you can sell them at an auction.  Dylan's only comment when one of the fish was found floating in the bowl was, "I wish it was just sleeping with its eyes open."

Happy Fair Monkeys

Next year, I'm staying off any ride that spins.  Dylan's already planning on winning some compadres for our survivor fish and wants to do Pee-Wee Showmanship with one of our chickens.  Grady's working on growing those last few inches so he can hit the medium-sized kid rides.  And we'll be there, like a yoga class winding down, inhaling deeply through our noses to catch every smell, and exhaling deeply through our mouths to settle our stomachs.

Rodeo Road

Following the last May Rodeo, after watching her classmates finish 1st and 2nd in the Mutton Busting, Dylan came home and announced that she wanted to be a professional sheep rider.  I chalked up her swagger to the cotton candy lunch she'd had, but when I checked in with her a few days later, she was still up for the challenge.  This is the girl who'd been overly confident a few years before about her ability to ride a sheep -- until I sat her on a sheep's back, then she flew out of the chute faster than helicopters leaving Hanoi.  She spent the next two years telling everyone she didn't want to ride a sheep, she only wanted to ride a bus.  Needless to say, her newfound enthusiasm for rough-stock events was surprising.

Wrangler butts

In lieu of going out and finding an actual sheep on which to practice, we utilized what we had.  So, Mutton Busting practice consisted of balancing on wheellines as I rolled them.  We did this twice, then Dylan went to Tennessee.  In my mind, she spent her two weeks away working on her core-strength and agility, like Rocky Balboa training in Russia.  In reality, she ate cheese biscuits and played with her cousins.



To be honest, I'm not a fan of Mutton Busting.  I've stood in too many chutes and have been handed sobbing toddlers, as their parents told me to, "Just stick him on, he'll be fine."  These kids, they suck at riding sheep.  One, because they are so spent from fear that when the gate opens, they immediately let go, and two, they're so upset that their parents are morons, that they suffer an existential  crisis and ponder the meaning of Mutton Busting, then let go and get trampled by sharp sheep hooves.  I even have a little pep-talk I give them: "It's a little bit scary, and a lot of fun, but you don't have to ride if you don't want to."  Granted, it's no TED talk, but it seems to work most of the time.

Before

Dylan needed no coaxing, no pep-talk.  She rolled into the arena in her glittery pink cowgirl hat, her new rodeo shirt, and her pink boots.  The hot tip from a former champion was to ride backwards, so she did.  My hot tip for her was to hang on tight, so she didn't.  Even with Grady cheering her on, and trying to climb on the sheep's back with her, her ride only lasted a couple of seconds.  The highlight was her summersault of a dismount.  She hit the dirt, popped up with arena muck all over her face and new shirt, collected her silver dollar, and said, "I want to do that again," and then, "How about that snowcone now."

After

The rest of the rodeo was really just a junk-food free for all.  Both kids gorged on snowcones until their faces and shirts looked like they'd spent the afternoon tie-dying at a Phish concert.  Grady got into someone's Doritos, so we stood on diaper watch until we learned that the "new" Doritos are gluten-free.  Crisis averted.

You know what they say, "It ain't over until the wild cow gets milked," so, as the rodeo wrapped up with the Wild Cow Milking, Dylan grabbed her pink hat, and Grady clung to a disintegrating paper snowcone cup as Regina and I herded them toward the truck.  There we were, back on the rodeo-road, making a living busting muttons.

Justin Morgan Needs a Motorcycle

Before we had kids, I used to fantasize about the bedtime stories I'd read to my gifted progeny.  I asked myself questions like: Is 3 too early to introduce them to Cormac McCarthy?  Does is matter if my kids mispronounce Fydor Dostoyevsky?  I imagined snuggling up on the couch in our jammies as my doe-eyed youngest handed me Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and said, "My mother is a fish." We'd all laugh and then I'd read to a rapt audience.

Me and Fat Cat will just chill, you keep reading

Obviously, this is why no one likes, or hires, English majors.  The reality of bedtime reading has been far less literary.  During the school year, Dylan has take home readers and we learn a lot about the daily struggles of Pat, Meg, and their damn dog, Bit.  When we ask Grady to choose his bedtime story, he usually grabs Pajama Party.  We sang "Pajama, jamma, jamma," so many times, and in so many ways, that we finally hid the book.

This year, Mom was cleaning out a bookshelf and I ended up with a pile of my old books.  I got so nostalgic about the stories that I immediately integrated a two part bedtime reading policy: I pick the books, and, You can't pick the books.  We started with The Mouse and the Motorcycle.  My brother Greg's name was written in his careful left-handed penmanship on the inside cover and I thought, This book is old.  Would it hold up?  Yep, the kids loved it.  Even after I'd catch Dylan drifting away and looking at the cats, when I'd quiz her about the chapter, she'd caught every detail. (Reason #2 no one like English majors: we quiz.)

We flew through that book and eagerly jumped into a childhood favorite of mine, Justin Morgan Had a Horse.  This book, frankly, is kind of a stinker.  I have to update the language to keep the kids interested, so lines like, "Hark to the man!" become, "What's up, Homie!" or "'Tis an insult to match our blooded horses against him," modernize to, "Who wants candy!"

We'll just make our own books.

Grady usually calls it quits early in each chapter and starts climbing around the couch.  Dylan tries, but ends up singing songs quietly to herself somewhere by the second page.  Once, I tried to quit the book.  No one was paying attention to the story and I thought we'd pick it back up later, much later.  Dylan threw a fit though -- I think she thought I was upset we were quitting the story -- so I trudged on.  Now, when I quiz her, I'm not even looking for a correct answer.  I'm not even sure I could give one.  I just want her to realize that we've been reading the same story for three months.  It's like a kid's version of Infinite Jest, everyone brags about reading it, but I have a hard time believing anyone really likes it.

Lately, we've definitely been on a summer reading schedule.  No, not summer-reading, like Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, rather, let's eat ice cream instead of reading a bedtime story kind of reading.  I'll definitely amend my bedtime reading rules and give the kids a vote on the next book.  Until then, I'll put Blood Meridian in Grady's bookshelf, right in front of Pajama Party, and keep my fingers crossed that's the one he chooses next.