My 6-year-old has been introduced to Trogdor, the Burninator. (She drew this, not I.)
Category: Uncategorized
Toy Week: Worry Wednesday: Sugar Cube
This is my 4-year-old daughter’s toy penguin, Sugar Cube.
I had a whole related post written for today, but for the first time since I’ve started blogging, I don’t know what happened to the words. They’re gone. I’ll try to re-create them later, but my day job calls.
In the meantime, enjoy this penguin.
Toy Week: How Do You Figure?
My wife’s family does a gift exchange for Christmas, for which each person draws another person’s name and handles the gift for him or her. It’s a way to save money and avoid clutter—and the little kids are excepted. Anybody can buy for them.
Before Thanksgiving, my mother-in-law circulates a list for everyone to write down gift ideas for themselves. I filled in mine two weekends back, and then was talking to my wife about it.
“I put some Pacific Rim action figures on my list,” I said.
“Oh.”
“Does that disappoint you?”
“No … just … where would they go? You already have a bunch of toys in the garage.”
She’s right, but those are my Lord of the Rings sets, several of which I haven’t yet been able to bring myself to open. The Nazgûl looks so awesome in its box. Plus, those toys had been at my office for a long time, and they came home during a move, and I haven’t got around to finding them a permanent home yet. After several years …
I actually split my time between two offices, and I have a lot of toys on my respective desks: A complete set of Homestar Runner figurines, a set of Umbrella Academy figures, and a Davy Jones action figure from Pirates of the Caribbean sit one one. The other boasts Batman, Iron Man, and a few My Little Ponies.
I grew up on action figures. More than one closet at my parents’ house is still filled with Star Trek: The Next Generation toys and collectibles, including an entire set of Playmates figures still in the packaging and a second entire set for display purposes. Sooner or later I’ll figure out a way to display them all.
No, I don’t really need them, but I do enjoy them. I don’t make them walk around on my keyboard or anything, but I do fondly admire them from time to time, and I like to explain what they are to guests who give me puzzled looks.
They’re sort of like geek badges, I guess, especially the obscure ones: I know what these characters are from. Do you?
After my conversation with my wife, I looked back at the all-family wish list. For herself, she’d listed certificates for restaurants or movies for date nights with me, her husband.
That really put things in perspective.
Still, I hope I get to unwrap at least a kaiju this Christmas.
Toy Week: Brick House
We were riding down the elevator at Barnes and Noble with an employee of the bookstore yesterday, and my girls spied a stack of animal-themed Lego boxes on a dolly she was leaning on.
“What are those?” my 6-year-old asked.
“These?” the worker said. “These are Chima. It’s a boy thing.”
Maybe she was trying to have some moment of solidarity with my daughters, like “Boys and their weird hobbies, am I right?”
But I bristled.
“Oh,” I replied. “My girls are into Ninjago right now.”
I hoped that retort would be enough to indicate to her that girls can like Lego stuff, too, but I don’t think she noticed. She probably didn’t even know what Ninjago was—because to her, it’s for boys.
Plus, from a strictly sales standpoint, I don’t know why someone would turn off an interested party to a potential sale, no matter their gender.
Despite being a boy myself, I didn’t know what Ninjago was until last year, and even then it was a hazy concept my daughter brought home from kindergarten. She recently discovered an animated series on Netflix, and I’ve watched some of it, so I’ve recently learned quite a bit about the Lego characters who fight by spinning themselves into living elemental tornadoes.
I grew up with Lego sets, but they were the basic kind, with no plans or directions. Then came the Pirate and Castle systems, but even with the themed kits, there was a lot of possibility, and mixing everything together yielded amazing combinations, like Robin Hood-style tree forts with billowing sails and mounted cannons.
In college, I met my brother (as an only child, I decided to pick a sibling when the right one came along) when a guy I sang with in choir invited me back to his dorm room to play Lego. We were eventually best men in each others’ respective weddings.
So Lego sets are awesome.
The best thing about them, though, is that no matter which ones you get, they’re all about creation and working with what you have to do what you want. Feel like following the directions down to the last brick? Go for it! Want to scrap the blueprints and piece together something out of your own imagination? Anything goes!
It’s a great life lesson.
Having a floor-focused 1-year-old running around means Lego pieces are hazards in our house for the moment, but I’m still planning to get some Ninjago stuff for the girls for Christmas. Don’t tell them.
I’ll have to supervise, or course, to make sure no little plastic pieces get lost and/or eaten, but I don’t mind. I get really excited about these kinds of things.
But these presents will totally be for my girls. What would I want with spinning Lego ninjas?
Health Week: Worry Wednesday
So, I’m going to New Orleans for my birthday.
Which is awesome. And stomach-churningly freaky.
If there’s one thing I worry about—more than germs, more than personal financial collapse—it’s air travel. I am terrified of flying.
When I’m on a plane, I’m sure I’m going to die. I’m not worried I will. I am positive I will.
When I flew to New York for a wedding some years back, I stayed up for 36 hours before the red-eye flight to ensure I’d be sleepy. Then I took double the recommended dose of sleeping pills the proper amount of time before departure. And I washed them down with alcohol.
None of this is medically recommended, by the way. In fact, I don’t recommend any of it in any way, since I spent the next eight airborne hours death-gripping my armrests like I was being Tasered and staring with pupils the size of Susan B. Anthony dollars at the little airline icon slowly creeping across a map of the United States. My panicked body apparently immediately synthesized every gram of narcotic and ounce of booze directly into glutamate, which is the chemical your brain starts pumping when you’re threatened and need to decide whether to choose to fight or flight. Fight or flight? On a plane? Ha!
I’m not proud of my phobia, which makes me a miserable travel companion before, during, and after any air travel.
So why am I planning to willingly step into a pressurized cabin that has no business being several feet above the ground, let alone 30,000?
About a month ago, I decided to enter a haiku contest to promote Cottonelle toilet paper and wipes on Twitter. Why not, right? I got to make a joke about butts, and I won a $200 gift card to Amazon when my entry was selected to be one of seven winners.
The winning text, by the way:
“Cottonelle sheets, wipes—
Like yin and yang for your butt:
Two forces, one whole.”
Suddenly, new people were following me, probably eager to see if I had anything else funny or insightful to say—about butts or any other topic. And I realized my Twitter account was linked to a web page to which I last contributed content in March 2011.
Since there seemed to be a hot iron in front of me, I decided to strike by launching a blog based on a concept I’d developed at around the same time I stopped posting elsewhere. Standing in the Shallows went live on Oct. 6, 2013.
Then …
Last night, my phone rang, and at the other end was a voice telling me I’d been randomly selected out of the seven haiku winners to get plane fare, a hotel stay, and conference registration for the Dad 2.0 Summit in New Orleans, set for Jan. 30 through Feb. 1, which coincides with my birthday. And here I am with a blog and everything!
I don’t know much about New Orleans beyond the fact that bodies can’t be buried there due to it being below sea level, and of course the levee situation, and Mardi Gras, and beignets, and that Simpsons episode where they make a musical out of A Streetcar Named Desire and refer to the city as the Sodom and Gomorrah on the Mississipp’. I don’t really like jambalaya or gumbo or muffalettas, but I do like visiting new places, even if getting there isn’t so much half the fun as it is all of the bladder-emptying terror.
But thanks, Cottonelle and Dad 2.0! I’m looking forward to learning a lot in Louisiana—assuming I don’t plummet to my doom.
(I’m still playing the long game too, life-wise, just in case, so don’t forget to weigh in on my Movember moustache style in yesterday’s post, and visit my Mo Space if you feel like leaving me a comment, making a donation, or just seeing what’s what.)
Fright Week: Bonus Monster
For those of you celebrating a late (9:50 by my clock—ha! How my life has changed!) Halloween, here’s a Creature from the Black Lagoon in a Speedo from my 2002 Monster collection. I tried to give him a swimmer’s build.
Note that most of my drawings depict figures sticking out of water, and yet this aquatic character is as dry as toast. Maybe that’s why he’s unhappy looking.
Words from my Wife
Recently in a dad-blogging forum—because I frequent such places now—somebody posted a link to this babble.com article, “Why I Don’t Put My Husband Before Our Children,” which is about, well, exactly what the title says.
Someone else contrasted that essay with this one from the New York Times, “Truly, Madly, Guiltily,” which presents the opposite perspective.
In case you’re too engrossed in my own writing (or lazy) to follow the links, here’s a summary: In the first piece, a mom discusses the challenges of dealing with three children and the tolls that takes on a marriage—and why she’s OK with that, for now. In the second piece—written years ago, actually—a mother explores the idea that her children are orbiting moons, while her husband is the sun. (She also explores that topic though a lens of sexual attraction, so hey!)
Intrigued by the two views, but leaning very heavily toward the second (given the two choices; there’s no angle here on children vs. no children or single vs. married), I was interested in hearing what my wife thought. So I sent her the links.
She responded pretty quickly, sending me what I now give to you as the first guest post in the Shallows (almost guest post, because I’ve still written a fair bit).
On the first essay: “That mom is going to wake up one day to the realization that the ‘hard’ part of parenting doesn’t end after the children are toddlers. One day she will realize she has no idea who the man is in the bed next to her. Children are needy and exhausting little humans. They will always demand all of you. You make choices about your priorities and how you manage those demands. I think her attitude leads to the kind of marriage that ‘stays together for the kids’ and ends as soon as the kids are out of the house because she and her husband made the choice to not make each other their priority.”
Wow! Maybe I should turn this blog over to her more often.
She continued: “The second one I tend to agree more with (obviously). As I have said before—I married you because I chose you. Our children are needy, exhausting blessings—but you (and being united with you in our parenting) always comes first. You can’t be united if you don’t make each other a priority (or don’t even spend time together). That time does not necessarily have to be romantic weekends away like she says (though that sounds wonderful); it does have to be a regular commitment to communication and connection. Children learn from what is modeled for them—I would hope that we model a love that is committed, playful, supportive, and passionate. I also think sex is a reflection of the intimacy and emotional connection that is in a marriage. I’m glad she talked about enjoying her sex life (though I personally would have been more bold in challenging the play group moms and their negative attitudes)! I actually have had the same thoughts she has about how I would react if our children died versus if you died.”
I’ve been thinking of starting a place in the Shallows for the bigger-issue serious stuff, called the Deep End, and this post would certainly land there.
What do you think?
(P.S. This is an old drawing of Sarah, from back when she had rectangle-framed glasses. Also, as you can see, the straight lines of her eyewear influenced the hole out of which she’s sticking.)
Shallow Work
I’m planning to make Sundays a bit of a rest day here in the Shallows, though I must admit I’m interpreting “rest” in an odd way.
Instead of drafting a new post for today, I started a Standing in the Shallows Facebook page, figured out how to allow for pinning my posts/art to Pinterest, changed my commenting policy to allow for anonymous posts from people who don’t want to provide a name or e-mail address, and created a new page—”The Piers,” get it?—for links to other blogs I read.
I also did a bunch of dishes, helped babysit two other families’ worth of kids, researched other dad blogs, and considered entering a writing contest for a chance to win a contract for a Dark Crystal prequel novel. I think I may try for it.
Today’s doodle, by the way, comes from my children playing with one set—the first set—of our babysitting charges. Through the course of a game, each kid laid claim to a superpower (wings, ice breath, and the like), though my second daughter couldn’t decide on just one. She periodically reinvented herself until she settled on all of them.
I wonder what turning into everything would look like. Marvel, get on this please. I’m sure it could fit in one of your X-Men titles. You’ve got, like, 50 of them.
Check back tomorrow for a new weekly theme, more doodles (yes, there’s a unique one for each post), and other Shallow stuff.
Until then (and speaking of Dark Crystal), what movie terrified you as a kid?
Standing in the Shallows 