Touch 'em All

How quickly things can change. Last week you heard David cooing about the “yellow tractors” working outside our house.
Well, it turns out that you can have too much of a good thing. The tractors multiplied and so did David’s need for them. His quiet enthusiasm has turned into a not so quiet obsession. He now chants “Tractor! Yellow Tractor!” as we approach our neighborhood in the car. If denied the chance to see them up close he treats it as a personal affront and hurls himself into the kind of desperately angry frenzy that only a two year-old can conjure up. I take personal responsibility for this turn of events. You see, on Saturday, as a treat for David, I took him for a walk down the street so that he could actually touch one of the tractors. We touched the tires, the side, and (best of all) the scoop. But there were other tractors, too. And it turns out that we needed to touch them as well: ALL of them. As soon as we got to within a few yards of one of them, David would hold out his hand and say, “Touch. Touch.” OK, how bad can this be? By the time I finally got him back to the house (a half-an-hour later) he was in a lather. All tractors must be touched! To stop touching them is, it turns out, an insult to both the tractors and David. And so it has been ever since.

I should have seen this coming. David has exhibited a slight obsessive-compulsive streak from day one. It started with an unnerving love for Elmo, but only "The Best of Elmo" (NOT "Elmo Saves Christmas") and a special love for "Elmo's Song". Here's David and Trin performing together on that classic, followed by Dave answering an important question:


And while we've managed to curtail the Elmo jones (by eliminating Elmo from the VCR), he will now spend up to 30 minutes (a long time for a toddler) playing quietly with his Hot Wheels. This seemed like such a leap forward for him until we realized that he is meticulously lining them up on the window sill. Should one of them slip out of place, he screams and the whole thing starts over. We think it’s just that the boy wants to control everything in his immediate surroundings – including us and Trinity – but we’ll keep an eye out for other signs: for instance, if he starts to align the fringe on the area rugs so that they are all perfectly spaced and straight, or if he starts to adjust his batting gloves like Nomar Garciaparra between every pitch.

And speaking of baseball, it’s been quite a week. Of course, Barry Bonds continues to creep closer to Hank Aaron’s home run record. Sammy Sosa hit his 600th round tripper, and Frank Thomas belted his 500th. Ken Griffey, Jr. is approaching 600 and should get it by August. Ryan Howard became the fastest person to 100 homers in major league history. And Craig Biggio got his 3000th hit yesterday. Oh, and Roger Clemens has turned out to be old (finally!). In honor of these monuments to the steroids era (Biggio and Griffey being the notable exceptions in this case, I hope), I decided to join a softball team that was about to lose two players and needed replacements quickly. Now, it’s been several years since I donned my cleats, but if there’s one area of my life in which I am supremely confident, it’s my abilities on the diamond. My confidence is probably unwarranted on many levels (keep it down, Thompson!) but I’ve come to know that I’m better than most out there. So I went to the first practice and quickly flashed some good leather and then took some good cuts at the plate, spreading the ball around the field like it was my job. I don’t have power, but I’ll hit for average. But, it turns out, I am old, too. I’m still feeling the lingering effects….FROM PRACTICE! I feel like I need to be dropped into a gigantic container of ice, from my shoulders to my ankles). What a wreck! Trying to step lively across the street while walking Peanut, I look like Kirk Gibson rounding the bases in the 1988 World Series. Luckily, our first game after the practice was rained out; now I have some time to recover.

And Nancy is now trying to recover some sense of intellectual purpose. In an academic household, the boys of summer have to coexist with summer classes, and Nancy is teaching a five week drawing class at ISU (next week is her last). She told me yesterday that she has one or two really solid students, a few in the middle, and a handful of boneheads. Now, you might think that a committed teacher shouldn’t speak that way about her students. After all, we’re there to not only teach them, but to touch their lives as well. Nancy was feeling upset -- she's usually much more generous with all of her students. But let me give you two examples of what she has had to deal with this summer. The first involves a CD of Django Reinhardt that Nancy put on for her students listening pleasure while they worked. One of her students complained that she didn’t know who this guy was (this is before Nancy actually started playing the CD). Of course not everybody knows who he is, and here’s a chance to hear something new. Another student explained that he was perhaps the greatest jazz guitarist ever and was a gypsy. The other student then balked at the thought that gypsies were real – she thought they were like circus performers. Plus, what’s the big deal anyway?; she had just seen an episode of House that featured a family of gypsies and “they just looked like normal white people.” Huh? Needless to say, Django Reinhardt’s music did not touch her life in any way.

Next, apparently, Nancy slips a subtle “L” into the word “BOTH,” so that it sounds a little bit like “BOLTH” (I never noticed it before now). One of her students has picked up on this and actively mocks her every time she says the word – it’s like he’s tuning in just for the opportunity. When Nancy told him that she didn’t really appreciate it, his response was, “But you say it funny!” We’ve decided that the next time he does it (probably today) she should just quietly walk to the door, open it and say “BoLth you and your attitude may now leave the class.” Frankly, I think she should tell him that he puts the “dick” in diction, but that’s not Nancy’s style; she’s far more orderly and polite that I am.

Finally, today is the last visit with David and Trinity’s biological parents. Thank God! For about a month now, we’ve been holding visits in a park rather than the DCS office because David began refusing to go into the visitation room with “the bios” as we call them (I know that sounds like a cold way to describe them, but I’m trying to avoid their names here as well as any sense of them as actual parents to the kids). But the park has turned out to be a place for them to mostly sit around and watch us take care of the kids, though they will occasionally take them on the swings -- this is supopsed to be their time with the kids. Last week, David bolted away from them and toward an open gate that leads out to the street. They made no move whatsoever to stop him and it was left to Nancy to run after him, catching him only after he’d gotten outside the gate. As for Trinity, they seem more concerned that she doesn’t pick up dog poop than whether she’s healthy, happy, etc. And as for dogs, it turns out that they inherited a dog last week and after only three days have decided to get rid of it because (wait for it...) it never lets them be…it whines all the time and follows them around all over the house. Wow. Their skills as caregivers are astounding...touching, really.

Noises On

I’m getting what’s coming to me. Karma is grinning. The teenager next door just got a drum set. All those hours spent practicing in my bedroom, my dorm room, my small apartment with thin walls, or in some suburban basement or other are being revisited upon me. It sounds a little something like this:



The kicker here is not that he’s playing the drums, but that he’s been known to play them as late as 11:00 PM. Or, he USED to. Poor thing: he actually thought that they wouldn’t make that much noise if he wished it hard enough. So there I was last Friday night in all my 40-year old, foster-father-of-two-sleeping-toddlers glory knocking on the garage door, ready to haul out my stern look of disapproval for this rude and naughty teenager. But before I could narrow my eyes and furrow my substantial brow, the culprit appeared before me, his own eyes wide with the sudden realization that he had DISTURBED THE NEIGHBORS. He was so apologetic and so quick to stop what he was doing without complaint that I simply ASKED him if he could stop for the night. I came away from the meeting feeling pretty rotten. Maybe it was the sudden recognition of the timid, well-meaning ghost of my own past that made me want to go back and tell him that he should keep playing: play LOUDER, in fact – and let me give you a few pointers while you’re at it. Of course, I didn’t; that would have been foolish and embarrassing. I am happy to report that he’s still playing, though only during the day and early evening, thank goodness.


The other noises we hear in the neighborhood these days are the sounds of tractors and dump trucks. The city of Terre Haute is replacing all the main sewer lines in our subdivision and widening our streets. It’s presented us with an increasingly messy combination of mud and gravel pretty much everywhere. It’s also helping us improve our brain power by confronting us each day with a new labyrinth to navigate in order to get to our driveway. But the sudden appearance of dozens of tractors and trucks has simply thrilled David. Each morning, just after waking up and having his juice, he positions himself at the front door and enthuses about the “yellow tractors.” Listen in:



But the best noises of all this week arrived in the mail in the form of a two-CD collection of recordings from my very good friends Doug Hubley and Gretchen Schaefer. I was fortunate enough to play in two bands with Doug and Gretchen during the early 90s: The Cowlix and The Boarders. I’d just come down from trying desperately to be a rock star, and playing with D&G taught me a ton about how to play a song properly – how to think about what each instrument was doing and what the overall atmosphere of the song was supposed to be. Doug is in the process of mining his musical past (which covers 40 years now…exactly how old I am) and this first collection focused on the key songwriters in his musical development. Listening to the collection of basement recordings by the various incarnations of Doug’s bands (of which The Cowlix and The Boarders were but two) made me miss that part of my life greatly. I initially posted a cover of an old classic from my days with the Boarders here, but became uneasy about the possible copyright implications. So, I have removed it in order to follow the advice I give to all my students: avoid even the appearance of impropriety. If you want to hear the Boarders or the Cowlix, you will have to build a time machine and travel back to Portland, Maine sometime between 1992 and 1996 and keep your eyes peeled for one of these posters. Then, go to the location advertised, sit down, order a beer or a scotch, and enjoy the show. Or you could park yourself outside D&G's house just up past "Morrill's Corner," and listen for the sounds coming from the basement. Just don't tell us to keep it down.

Songs About Food

There are three members of this household who will eat just about anything, and three who might be defined as "finicky." This picture of Peanut is how we know that others are picky eaters and leave things behind. It's also how we know that we are becoming increasingly less rigorous in our housework. We should be appalled. Instead, it seems convenient, not just a little funny, and frankly I'm happy not to have to deal with the leftovers.

But back to eating habits. David, Nancy, and Peanut will eat just about anything. David loves to sit down with a bowl of frozen peas or fresh tomatoes and munch away; and Peanut...well, she's a dog. Trinity, Fast Eddie, and I, on the other hand, are more discriminating. For instance, I don't like a lot of "earthy" tasting greens such as Spinach, Fiddleheads, etc. Eddie, for his part, doesn't like to eat the birds that he kills (though Peanut is a big fan) nor will he stoop to eat anything under the Whiskas brand. And Trinity has a taste for fried foods, processed meats, and not much else. She LOVES Tater Tots and hot dogs, we're afraid to say (as it implicates us in the occasional promotion of less than totally healthy options). The way she wrinkles her nose at a freshly inserted piece of broccoli, holds her tongue out until it drops from her mouth, and then swipes it off her tray with her right hand (always the right hand because that ensures that it lands in the far corner of the kitchen) is something to behold. She also gets obsessed with other peoples' food once spotted, and she doesn't want anything to do with what's in front of her beyond that point, even though it's exactly the same.

David, for his part, likes to be on the move during dinner. He takes a bite or two, gets down from his seat at the table, goes to the living room, plays with some Hot Wheels or grabs the dog's tail, and then comes back for another round. Whatever works. He also has a fondness for cheese that goes beyond what I expect might be normal. Here's a little song he sang the other day. Nancy thought he might be trying to sing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" (the bedtime hit du jour) but I think it's a song about cheese. In fact, I think it's called "I Love Cheese" (listen for the refrain just after the halfway point:



David's affection for various cheeses can be verified by my father who, just the other day, overheard David request one, then two, then FIVE pieces of cheese (let's not fool around with the tedium of going through three and four -- let's get right to the real goal here). Behold the power of cheese, indeed.

And behold the power of Starbucks. We know it's politically, environmentally, and culturally dubious to frequent Starbucks, but Terre Haute just got a new one (only our second) RIGHT DOWN THE STREET FROM US. This new java oasis has led us to the understanding that there is only one stupid question you can ask Nancy: Do you want more coffee? Asking that question just takes up the time that you might otherwise have been buying her one. This has also increased my once carefully regulated caffeine intake twofold at least and turned me into "Too Much Coffee Man" on occasion. Too Much Coffee Man is jittery, prone to fits of infectious enthusiasm for whatever trivial distraction is right in front of him, unable to finish a sentence (let alone a complete thought) before moving onto the next subject, and eventually experiences a drop in his blood sugar level that renders him completely incapable of tolerating even the friendliest, most casual phone conversation. Too Much Coffee Man is a joy.

And with that, I want to leave you with a music video (remember those?) from The Mountain Goats. If you are not a fan of The Mountain Goats, I hope you will be soon. Maybe this is the song that David was singing about cheese. Or maybe it's the song Nancy will sing if Starbucks ever closes down.

Base Instincts

This blog is a way for me to keep family and friends posted on the various happenings (both monumental and mundane) in our little corner of the world here in Terre Haute. Mostly, it's a way for me to find the lighter -- or at least less stressful -- side of our daily ritual of raising two foster kids, David (26 months) and Trinity (14 months), keeping a dog (Peanut) and a cat (Fast Eddie) from killing each other and us, and trying to be productive scholars as well as good parents, friends, and spouses. Some days it feels impossible. But rather than complaining quietly though bitterly into my coffee I've decided to air it out here.

For example, I might relate something like this, which I call, "Trinity's Skindition." Trinity was born with bad eczema. If we don't keep her covered in some sort of greasy substance we spend the night trying to coax her -- itching wildly -- back to sleep. Hell, we do that sometimes even when she's been slathered properly. Anyhow, trying to grease her up has proven to be something of a challenge since she learned to crawl, then walk, then run. I want you to imagine trying to get a nice, even coat of wax on a moving vehicle (one that thinks it's HILARIOUS). And, of course, once you get her greased, you have to pick her up (no easy task there) and get her into her pajamas while she (still giggling) does some strange 1-year old version of the "Maniac" dance from "Flashdance" -- it's sort of like watching someone ride a very recalcitrant bicycle while lying on their back. I've been kicked in the tender parts more times than I care to mention (which is why I've chosen to include the video below). Once in pajamas it's time for gobs of hair gel because the eczema affects the scalp as well. The hair gel (Johnson's Baby Oil Gel with Aloe) permanently stains any bit of clothing with which it comes into contact, so you have to make sure to change clothes before the whole process has begun or you are doomed to being sorely disappointed come laundry time. And I do this every night. Sometimes it involves simple petroleum-based products; other times it requires hydrocortizone creams; sometimes it even requires antibiotics. And it never ends. I'm trying to find the bright side of it all. Perhaps it's getting the chance to work on my footwork and speed skills like a prize fighter training by chasing a chicken. Or maybe it's that I've lost nearly 20 pounds since this whole affair began? Or maybe it's just the giggling and the impish "isn't this fun!?" looks from the most inaccessible corner of the room. Any better suggestions?

Additionally, I'll use this space as a way to share fun, interesting, provocative, maddening, etc bits of cultural flotsam and jetsam with you. So. let's begin with something fun: Usually I can't stand to watch men get hit in the groin by anything. It's easy, base humor. Plus, it hurts like hell (see above). But this Rolling Rock commercial takes that mundane and sloppy form of comedy and turns it in to a riotous celebration. Forget the ending with the two bozos in the stands and the phallic bottle and baseballs. The real "climax" appears at "Stripey, NO!" Enjoy.



Next, because our kids are still wards of the state for the moment, we are not allowed to post pictures of them on the Internet. So for the time being, I will provide audio clips of them. You should be able to access them from the MP3 player at the bottom of the page. We'll see if I can make it work.

And with that I'll let Trin have the final word this week...