Cheating on my Wife

Every year I try to make an anniversary gift for my wife out of the material that is designated for that year of marriage. For instance, the first year is paper, the fifth year is wood, and eight is bronze (see the entry about last year's gift). In 2010 we celebrated our ninth anniversary. The material was ceramics.

You'd think this one would be easy. I took a full course in pottery at university, and Gwendolyn and I get out the play-dough often. However, getting one's hands on clay, a wheel, and a kiln really entails finding a potter who offers classes. So last summer I planned that we would attend a two-day class together in the autumn, and I'd throw something on the wheel based on what Sara would like.

My idea was perfect in theory. However, as with so many others of my great ideas in life, money was a limiting factor. The cost for two of us to do a two-day workshop together runs in the several hundreds of dollars. Last year, this stash of cash was not there.

So it came to pass that on our ninth anniversary, I cheated.

I found out that Sara wanted a straining fruit bowl and that she had eyed one up made by her pottery-throwing colleague at the Made In Chenango co-op. I made a secret run up to Norwich one day, and bought this little beauty:

I hope that someday we can do that pottery workshop together. Until then, the work of a pro will have to do.

~ emrys

A-Go-Go-Go

"A-Go-Go-Go" has become G's chant that comes out when she gets excited that we're going somewhere. It is usually accompanied with a little shuffle of her feet and a very excited look on her face.

Emrys has a meeting tonight and we had just done our good-bye kisses and he headed out to the car. Just as he closed the car door I realized that he didn't the snacks he had prepared for the meeting. I picked up the phone to grab him before he got too far. His phone was off. I threw on shoes and headed down the driveway, breaking into a run as he started to drive out of the carport. He finally looked in the rear view, or heard me yelling, and stopped. I told him he had left the food on the counter and he gratefully backed the car up and headed back for the house.

As I came back into the house I was met with a grinning, prancing Gwendolyn chanting A-GO-GO-GO MAMA!

Southwest in Snow

Drive across the Southwest United States, and eventually you'll come to vast expanses of smooth desert, out of which thrust giant pillars of stone. Only the most daring of climbers will make it to their flat tops. Everyone else is left to wonder from below at the straight-sided megaliths that appear as if God had carved them out of an Earth-sized block of wood.

Here in the rolling, forested hills of the Northeast, we can't see those wonders of geology up close--that is, until sleet falls on eight inches of soft snow atop a railing. Then in negative silhouette, the Southwest comes to us.

Have I mentioned that Yahweh did a great job with physics?

~emrys

Table Games

Games are one of the simpler and more important joys in life. They provide a medium in which stories may be shared at leisure, points may be debated (even when it's not over the rules), and three family members may gang up on the one who married into the family. Games keep the business parts of a person (reason, hands, eyes, etc) occupied so that the identity may come out--to play.

Whenever Sara's parents come over, we usually devote time to playing games. Our favorite strategy table game is Settlers of Catan, a German game that has won awards on the international scene. It has enough complexity to keep us coming back for more, but can be played in a couple of hours (unlike, say, Monopoly, which is really a game about growing old gracefully).

Hand and Foot (or, when you're losing, "Fist and Boot"), is a variation on Canasta, played with four decks of cards for four people. Opponents are split in teams, and deciding who will play with whom establishes the first basis for friendly harrassment and goading. The game requires little skill except the abilities to needle and look really perturbed when your team has lost a hand. (Note the optional equipment featured below: wooden card boards that little hands can use for card games.)

Ah, the hours of fun that can be had with a six-foot round table, four decks of cards, and coffee! What a wonderful way to rest from the rigors of life.

~emrys

Serendipity

I always struggle when someone in the family asks me, "What do you want for Christmas?" or "What do you want for your birthday?" The few moments in life at which I really think, "Gosh, I'd really like to have one of those," pass by and are forgotten swiftly. I don't have a mental list of things that I want, and I don't really spend much time coming up with things to want (except maybe more time, which ironically usually means owning less stuff). When someone asks, I generally stammer, pause, and then make something up that will suit the occasion.

I was chatting with my mom in December when she said, "You and Sara need to tell me what you want for Christmas." Pause. Stammer. "Well, I--OK, I'll get back to you." The conversation went on, in which I told her that three days earlier our washing machine finally bit the dust. (It came with the house, and I suspect it entered the house upon construction, making it at least nineteen years old. The instruction manual is printed with brown ink on beige paper, and the picture of a telephone in it has a rotary dial.)

"How about if I make my Christmas and birthday gifts to you guys a new washer?"

I was as relieved about not having to come up with gift ideas as I was thrilled that she offered to solve our laundry woes. "Sure! Sara's got the one she wants already picked out. We were going to get it this weekend."

So a story that began with a load of laundry sitting in its own filthy water, undrained, gained a felicitous ending. For the sake of history, here's the old goat that finally gave up the ghost (with exploring toddler blurring by):

And here's the new, sleek, high efficiency washer, on whose buttons you could play a piece from Tchaikovsky if you studied hard enough:

There is no central agitator, so we can fit the whole duvee in there (makes Sara very happy). And it has an extra rinse cycle, so diapers are a whole lot easier (makes everyone very happy).

Thanks, Mom. You rock!

~emrys

Spur of the Moment

~emrys

Christmas Invention

The Wheat side of our family has begun to pull names out of a hat for Christmas. Instead of getting gifts for everyone, each Christmas we only need to get a gift for the name drawn. (We don't actually have a hat--there are websites that mediate this kind of thing now. Thank God! Where would be get just the right hat?) This year, I "drew" my brother-in-law Josh.

I don't see Josh much, so I have to go on family rumors about his current interests. The rumors are spare, since Josh doesn't let much slip about what he's up to. I had just two hard facts to go on last Christmas: Josh enjoys cooking (and works in the restaurant field), and like all the Wheat males, he's a Red Sox fan.

I decided to get Josh a Red Sox-themed fondue set. It's the perfect combo for a man of fine cuisine who hates the Yankees, right? Search as I might across the infinite field of the cyber-market, I could not find a Red Sox fondue set. Strange. Hasn't anyone thought of this before? Aren't the addicts of Boston baseball fame also interested in dipping pumpernickel in a white wine and gruyere sauce with their friends? Doesn't every Sox fan have a fondue pot on the simmer for his World Series party?

Left wanting (and disappointed) by Amazon and eBay, I decided to make it myself.

First step: cut dowel for the handles, then affix them to bare fondue forks:

It turns out that handle-less shafts of fondue forks are also in short supply. To pinch-hit, Sara found seafood doohickeys (no lie, the technical term is "doohickey"), normally used for getting crab meat out of the exoskeleton. Well, these eight would have a higher calling.

Then I designed and printed up handle-wraps with various combinations of Red Sox insignia on them. I needed eight distinct patterns, so that each guest would be able to tell which fork is hers:

A little mod podge will keep the designs on the fork handles:

But even dry mod podge doesn't hold up to water. So I applied one of my favorite newfound products, polycrylic, to the handles. I'm not sure that it'll hold up to a dishwasher, but warm water and dish soap I'm sure won't bother them.

I was on a roll, but I decided against making the fondue pot myself. First, I was pressed for time. Second, my electrical engineering and forging skills are a little rusty. So I had Sara pick me up a fondue pot, and put the custom-designed forks in (with a little sign that says, "Hand wash only").

No word yet on whether Josh has put it to use. We'll see him in May, I hope, so I can ask him then.

~emrys

New York Minute

In July of last year I attended a seminar in Manhattan. I stayed with a high school friend in Jersey City and commuted onto The Island for four days. The trek into The City included a brisk thirty-minute walk to the train station, a twenty-minute trip on the train, a ten minute trip on the subway, and another five-minute walk to the seminar offices. The return trip, done after 10:00pm, included a ten-minute subway ride, a twenty-minute bus ride, and a five minute walk to my friend's house.

The same commute done by car would have been, well, a nightmare.

Every time I visit one of the larger cities in the world I find my appreciation for public transit refreshed. What blessings they are to let someone else do the driving, enjoy predictable schedules, and be able to read or type during transit. Every time I experience these blessings, I lament the lack of public transit in so many places in the U.S. Especially the lack of passenger trains.

It's one of my enduring dreams to one day see a rail line (high-speed, or monorail, or maglev, whatever) put in along the median strip of I-95, the artery that runs from Miami to Boston. How cool would it be to ride one train all the way down the eastern seabord? I have written letters to congressmen and -women (last year our district's rep sat on the Transportation committee) about this idea. And I think about how easy construction would be along all the other interstates with massive, unused median strips. I-40, I-80, I-25 . . . so many places for faster, cheaper travel.

I think that the United States still operates from the belief that the individual or family car is the best way to get around. And the longer we invest in automobile-based infrastructure, the longer that prophecy will fulfill itself. After all, trains will continue to be an expensive investment as along as few people are investing in them. Maybe as gas prices rise, however, we'll begin to rethink our foundational beliefs about transport. Maybe instead of assuming that it's best to be able to drive fifty or one hundred miles at the drop of a hat, we'll begin to live within a twenty-mile radius most weeks, but enjoy fast, convenient, and relatively cheap rail service which allows us to go four hundred or a thousand miles more frequently.

For the past three years we (Sara and I) have been trying to fit a trip to the Midwest into our budget. Our choices are flying or driving. With a toddler, both options are expensive and, in different ways, troublesome. One train to Chicago (along I-90) and another to OKC, on which we could recline or walk around with Gwendolyn, would be a no-brainer for me.

Maybe my dream will come true after we have fuel prices as high as Switzerland's.

~emrys

Floral Migration

The south edge of our property has a sharp embankment bordering the road on which we live. It's not a pleasant stretch to mow or tend, so we plan to plant successive stages of day lilies to cover this zone. These flowers will dominate their section and produce attractive orange blossoms in midsummer.

To establish this band of hardy flora, however, the bushes that reside there now must migrate. Last summer I moved one of the few plants that Sara wants to keep--the peonies--from the bank to another bed she's cultivating. Here's the peony bush, in its original position (under the Queen Anne's Lace, marked by the blue shovel):

Two holes for the two halves of the uprooted peony, in the other flower bed:

The vacant lot left by the emigrant:

And the peonies (one become two!) in their new habitat.

We'll see this summer if they really took to their new home.

~emrys

Cast of Character

Way back in September we told you the story of how Gwendolyn broke her leg. Living with a toddler in a cast presented extra challenges and adventures. I took several photos of these interesting times which have set ignored on the camera for too long. Here they are at last.

Gwendolyn's cast required coverage with a plastic bag for bathing, and neither full immersion nor being in the shower were options. So for six weeks Gwendolyn sat on a towel in the downstairs bathroom, cast wrapped in plastic, for her "baths." We sponged her down to get her clean, and Sara had the brilliant idea of inaugurating a set of foam bath letters which, when wet, would stick on the outside of the shower door.

Gwendolyn had no less fun in those bathtimes than in the old way.


You can see the plastic on her right knee, and two buckets: one with foam letters and one with soapy water and sponges.

The trick, we discovered, was not letting the bath go too long. If she got cold, she'd wet the towel with something other than bath water.

My girl is a tough chick, but one part of the whole healing process did her in. The vibrating cast saw used to take off fiberglass casts scared her. It doesn't touch the skin at all, but the jet-scream of the machine made her want to get away as fast as possible. She cried louder than she does when she gets shots.

As I remember my cast-wearing youth, the doc took off the cast and said, "Go easy on it for a week." Otherwise, we were good to go. No more! Now orthopedic patients--even the eighteen-month-olds--get protective boots for two weeks after the cast is removed. Here's Gwendolyn showing off the remains of her cast:

You can be sure no emotional trauma remains when the patient pretends to use her cast as a cell phone:

Two weeks later, Gwendolyn walked normally without the boot, and the two hunks of fiberglass, signed by family and friends, were just another pair of toys to throw around the kitchen.

And Gwendolyn will not remember a bit of it.

~ emrys