The Drum Major

It is difficult to fully embrace the thought that my son, James, is a Drum Major. This is due to the fact that I possess a full set of memories which go back to the time when he was a mischievous little boy with a sly smile who was always up to something.

We only caught him at it a few times, but we know he was always up to something.

Now he marches in a white uniform with a beard and highway patrolman sunglasses and looks oh so grown-up and polished and responsible and confident. And he directs a large group of his peers as they march and strut and gambol around the football field, wielding their instruments in a performance that brings the crowd to their feet.

How is this possible? When did he suddenly become this Drum Major person?

He does have a presence when he marches onto the field, a sense of Being There that commands attention, that focuses their eyes on the motion of his arms as they swing up and down, to and fro, keeping the beat, keeping the time, keeping them all in step, in sync, in rhythm.

The sight of it brings a thrill to my heart. It is nothing that I would ever dared dream for myself in my long-lost days of high school, though I craved the pleasure of the crowd and the sound of applause in my own way. And it is an odd feeling to look out on the field and see someone you know, someone whose life has been witnessed by you in such detail from tiny infant to nearly-adult, seemingly cast in a role that is so remote from your own experience.  Realizing yet again that they are a completely different human being at the beginning of their own journey, and who knows where they will go?

So I sit back and watch the show.

Serenity II

I saw her on craigslist on a Friday morning and my heart started beating faster, so fast I could feel it against my chest. It was Serenity, or as near to Serenity as I had seen in a long time.  But I knew this could not be true; my Serenity was still in the garage, patiently awaiting her heart transplant, covered in dust and regret.  And this, her twin, was obviously hale and hearty - or, at least, mobile.

Cheryl and I had talked about it, this need to get something running quickly. The boys had their cars, Cheryl had her van, and I had only my sad little Serenity. Without something to drive myself, it would be necessary to catch a ride with someone else. Not outside the realm of possibilities, but terribly inconvenient and out of everyone's way. So she needed to be fixed. Or sold.

It had been my intention to take my car into the shop and see how much it was going to cost to get her running; I suspected a great deal more than I could afford. The engine was ready to drop in, but would still need a complete check-out before attempting to ignite the cylinders.  The brakes had been cannibalized for the red car.  The exhaust system was piled in a corner of the garage awaiting the acquisition of a welder. Little things here and there add up to a lot of money at $100/hr.

But this car, this twin, was already running. And available.  It was possible to go right over to the seller and lay down money and drive away. Instantly.  It was just a matter of money.

I sat and thought about it for several minutes before my emotions completely overwhelmed my intellect, and I called Cheryl on the phone and told her what I had found. She agreed that it was a reasonable solution (and a reasonable price). So I called the seller. It was still for sale. I told him I would come to see it. He said there were other interested parties. I told him I would come to see it right away. Then I called Cheryl again, and she got the financial wheels rolling (so to speak) so that we could pay for it that very afternoon (she's a miracle-worker, if you didn't already know that). And she arranged to leave early from her office to come pick me up so that we could go up and see the car.

We went. The car had the usual rust spots, but it was very clean overall. We took it for a test drive - all the way to the credit union, where we obtained the money necessary to make the sale. We drove it back. We went into the seller's little office. (It turns out he was a dealer, although the craigslist item was in the owner-only section. I didn't make a fuss about that.) We handed him our money. He handed us the paperwork to sign. Several signatures later, we had our third Subaru.

While we were in the office, two other families stopped by to ask about the Subaru. Apparently the seller had been telling the truth. They were all greatly disappointed to find out that the car had already been sold. I still feel kind of guilty about that, especially for the families with young kids who have never experienced the joy of owning a Subaru. But ... first come, first served.

The best part was being able to drive a stick shift again. All the other cars are automatic; this one is a 5-speed.  Oh, the feel of a clutch on my feet again! And my hand gripping a shifter! The utter sense of control! Pure bliss.

I had to pop the hood again when we got home, just to look at the engine compartment (my favorite place). It isn't the EJ25 like in Serenity.  This one is Serenity's smaller cousin, the EJ22.  More durable, better mileage, or so I've been told. Not as much power, but who needs all that power when all I'm doing is driving a few miles to work? It's not like I'm doing any off-road racing.

Yet.

Pearfectly Delicious!

One of the wonderful characteristics of my wife - and there are many of them! - is that she is willing to do some things the old-fashioned way.  She comes of good pioneer stock, you know.  Not afraid to do a bit of hard work to accomplish her goals, even when it might be easier to take shortcuts.

Home canning is one of those things that's good to know how to do, and one of those life skills that are important to pass down from generation to generation. It isn't really necessary for us suburban folks who can quickly drive over to the store when the pantry gets low or we just get a hankerin' for some fruit on the table at dinnertime; but like all the rest of those skills that could one day mean the difference between living and dying, it's always good to know the basics.

Cheryl has always wanted to have or own fruit trees on the property so she could run the process from beginning to end; but the soil around here -- and the infestation of Asian beetles and every other kind of bizarre bug that tries to eat the bark and leaves off the trees -- precludes that. So we do the next best thing. We have friends at church who have trees in their yards (or orchards) and they let us know when we can come over and pick 'em.

So last week when a friend from church let us know that the pears from her trees were ready for picking, Cheryl and the kids went out and picked four boxes full of the yummy fruit.  And then spent several days peeling and cutting them and plopping them into jars and popping lids on them and heating them on the stove and watching them seal up and then cooling them down so they could be taken down to the basement where they will be stored for the next couple of years until they are called upon to come back and grace our table.

Besides canning pears, she also made pear butter, which is a particular favorite of mine for my morning peanut-butter toast.

We were in a bit of a race doing all the peeling and cutting and plopping, though.  The pears were nearly ripe when they were picked (some were ripe, actually) and the relative heat of the household air only accelerated the ripening process, so we had to move quickly.  Some of them, unfortunately, ripened a bit too quickly and were unusable.  But most of them did.

Most of the pears didn't look like the picture-perfect fruit one might find in the produce section of the grocery store. They were smaller than what is typically found in the commercial varieties, and weirdly shaped. Some had odd little dimples scattered all over them. Some even looked like faces!

Being a geeky engineer, I had to look on the Internet to try and figure out what caused those weird dimples.  Some sources said it was due to insects biting into the fruit and sucking out the juice, leaving these little hard areas that didn't re-fill; others said it was some kind of fruit virus.  Either way, they were like little pits and had to be cut out.  Some had so many dimples that there was hardly any fruit left by the time all the pits were removed!

There were worms in some of them, too. I hadn't realized before how the worms get into 'em, but apparently the blossom at the end of the pear is kind of like a natural tunnel into the interior; so sometimes we'd cut into a pear and find the middle all eaten away and a happy little worm sitting in there with a big, fat grin on his face, like he'd just won the lottery. Poor worm! He did win the lottery, but not quite the one he was thinking of.  More like the Shirley Jackson lottery. I don't mind a little extra protein now and then, but ... ick!

It took us more days than we had imagined to get all the pears done.  Four good-sized boxes full of pears, each requiring extra care and handling to cut around the pits and dimples and worms and weird shapes resulted in long hours at the table, our fingers stained brown by whatever chemical it is that turns the insides of the fruit brown when exposed to the air too long.  (We used Vitamin C in the soaking juice to keep the canned pears nice and pear-colored, but our hands had no such protection.)

Now the pears are resting quietly in the basement (except for the ones we decided to keep handy for immediate use!) and our fingers are recovering nicely from the staining and cramping ('cause it ain't easy to grip a paring knife for a long time) and the floor is recovering from being coated with a thin layer of pear-juice (which tends to make it sticky) and the compost is beginning the slow process of reducing all the peelings and pits into fertile soil again.

So ... pears are done.  Whaddya wanna can next?

First Day of School - Fall 2013

It's traditional on the first day of school to get a picture of the kids on their way out the door, but this year, I goofed up.  They were too fast or I was too slow or it was just one of those things that get lost in the shuffle of the busy-ness of life; either way, they got out the door before I was quite ready and the opportunity was nearly missed.

You can tell it wasn't posed or anything.  It's more like me standing on the porch yelling at them to "hold still!" while trying to get the camera turned on and focused.  And they're giving me that look that says, "Really? Do we have to do this?  We're not in elementary school anymore, Dad.  We're practically grown up!"

And they are.  Nearly grown up.  Just a few more years and they'll be heading out the door for good, off on their own life adventure, carrying with them all the knowledge and wisdom and practical facts we've been able to stuff into their heads.  Hoping it's enough to get them through.  Enough to keep them on the straight and narrow regardless of what the world has to throw at them.

It's odd having having them all nearly grown up now.  High school and college aged. Driving themselves around. Looking but not necessarily acting mature.  Tugging on the those apron strings, eager to get out into the world and be their own persons.

I grabbed a couple pictures of the girls as they were heading out to catch the bus. The first one looked very dark because the flash was on; the early morning sky wasn't really that dark, but the flash made it that way.  The second one had the right background light, but their faces were out of focus because I turned off the flash.  Maybe if you glance from one to the other really quick, back and forth, you'll get the idea of what it really looked like.

James was still fixing his lunch when I had to leave for work, so this is a picture of him making his famous peanut-butter-and-Nutella sandwhich.  It does taste pretty good.  Probably gives him a good protein boost for the day, too.

I didn't even think about getting a picture of Adam before he drove off to college.  Probably because his first class doesn't start til after ten which means he doesn't get up til nine, and I'm off to work by seven.  And I wasn't going to wake him up just to get a picture of him lying in bed trying to get a few more precious moments of sleep before his alarm went off.  Or wait around til he got up and breakfasted and showered and packed his stuff and headed out to his car to begin his day.  He's in college.  He's a sophomore. He should be able to handle himself by now.  And we tend to think of him as already gone anyway, since last year he was living on campus and not home until Sunday afternoon.  Even though he's living at home and commuting, but we've still got that he's-at-school-full-time mentality.

Cheryl has her first day of school today, too.  And she seems to be eager to get back into the swing of things, working with those very nice people in the music department at school.  It's a joy to be able to share some of those moments with her, getting together with the music directors and band leaders and other stafff members who work so hard to create a first-class musical program for the kids.  As it is a joy to have children who are very musically-inclined, who benefit directly from our involvement.

Hard to believe it's all started again. School.  Marching Band.  Jazz Band.  Musicals. Where did my summer go?  It's gone.  Vanished.  Disappeared like a vapor while I was at work.  That's so frustrating!  But nothing to do about it now.  Just gotta keep moving on.

Labor Day Weekend in Iowa

Cheryl and the kids drove out to Iowa for Labor Day weekend for the purpose of witnessing, in full color, the cheerleading prowess of their wonderful cousin, Isabelle.

They were not disappointed.

They seemed to enjoy the cheerleading.  I'm not so sure about the game itself. How much can you say about a high school football game at a school you don't attend?

The most you can hope for is mild entertainment.  Guys running around a field dressed in padded costumes, whacking into each other and tossing a little leather ball around.  It's supposed to be representative of some cosmic struggle, a stand-in for battle or war or something.

Mostly, it's a way for guys to burn off some testosterone.

And girls to burn off -- whatever it is girls need to burn off.

My kids weren't raised to appreciate football.  Or baseball.  Or basketball. Or any other sporting event.  They're more the Art & Literature types. Hey, that's not a bad thing; it saves us lots of money in the long run, money we might've spent on expensive stadium tickets and outrageous concessions. (We'd rather spend it on Museums and Musicals and Theater and Symphony tickets.)

But because it is their cousin, they had a good time.  Didn't see their cousin as much as they would've liked -- they got there on a Thursday night (game night), and Isabelle had school the next day, so they didn't get to spend a lot of time with her until Saturday; and of course she works, too, so even that time was limited.  But they did get some time with her.

And they spent nearly an entire day's worth of time in the car, there and back again.  With lots of time to listen to Books-On-CD.

Boy, was I relieved when they got back home!

Being alone is so ... boring.