D's Notebook

Month: August 2013 (Page 2 of 2)

Off They Go

August 14, 2013 /

(Administrative note: I’m in the midst of another big, blog redesign project. It will likely take months to complete and I’ll explain more as the re-launch gets closer. Part of that is no longer posting pics of the girls here. I figure most of you who are close to me are either A) friends on Facebook or B) know how to reach our family picture page. So that’s where you need to go to see the obligatory First Day of School pics.)

M. and C. are off to school. C. was bright-eyed and ready to go as soon as I woke her. M. was grumpier and not nearly as excited about the whole thing. It’s a short day, dismissal is at 1:00 today, so it’s a nice way to ease into the new school year.

L. and I walked the big sisters into the school this morning. M. ducked into her class on her own. I don’t think she wanted me anywhere near her desk. We took C. into her room and helped her get started putting her stickers on all her supplies. I tried to keep her focused but her eyes were darting around, seeing where friends from last year were sitting, who was walking in the door, and how Mrs. W’s room is set-up. The room was crowded with kids and parents, so L. was a little clingy.

Once I was confident C. was getting her work done, we ducked out and headed to the lunchroom for the first day coffee and donuts. Again, it was really crowded and L. was sticking very close to me and not saying much. We grabbed her a donut and some juice, and I guided her to a table near some parents I know that I wanted to say hello to. When she sat, she kind of stared at her lap, not making a move for her donut. I bent down and asked if she was ok and she burst into tears. When I asked what was wrong she blubbered, “I’m just tired…” Which probably was partially the case. But I think the crowds weirded her out a little. And, I’m afraid, she was either bummed she’s not starting school yet or sad that her sisters were leaving her. Which made me sad.

I picked her up, she hid her face in my shirt, and we hustled out to the van. She was very quiet all the way home, although she did eat her donut, and still seemed sad when we got home. But she seems to have rebounded. Hopefully this was just a one-morning thing and it’s not going to repeat until she starts school in three weeks.

But the big sisters are off.

The supply thing was odd. For the second-straight year we pre-ordered all the recommended supplies from St. P’s last spring. It’s nice to have them waiting there for you on the first day of school and be sure that everything is what the teachers want them to begin the year with. But I kept feeling like I was missing something last night when we got their backpacks ready. I threw in lunchboxes this morning and that was it.

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R’s – Recalling Better Days

August 13, 2013 /

Man, what a ride. I have a feeling, when we look back on this season, we’ll look at last weekend, when the Royals hosted Boston, as the high point. Big crowds, including the first August sell-out since 2003. Exciting games, including the great, six-run sixth inning Friday night. And a feeling that the Royals mattered again. MLB.TV was acting up much of the time, so I listened more than watched. What struck me were the roars from the crowd. Those were roars that I grew up on. In the 90s, those roars were fewer and fewer. Aside from Opening Days and the first two-thirds of 2003, they largely disappeared over the past decade. But for one weekend they were back.

The numbers still don’t look good for the Royals. Despite all their winning they’ve barely gained ground in either the division or Wild Card races. It’s going to take the miracle of sweeping five games in four days in Detroit next weekend to bring the division title back into the realm of the possible. Winning less than three games could be disastrous for the Wild Card race. They survived Salvador Perez’s injury. Now Miguel Tejada and Lorenzo Cain are both on the DL, Mike Moustakas might be injured. But they keep finding a way to crank out wins.

We can worry about all that next weekend, though. For now, I prefer to bask in the afterglow of last weekend while enjoying another solid game against Miami Monday night.

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Last Days

August 13, 2013 /

The shift has begun. We put the girls to bed just after 8:00 last night. They had swum quite a bit during the day, so two of them were tired. M.’s light was still on at 9:00, so I think she was reading. But C. had her radio cranked up and was singing away, as happy as could be. It’s funny how kids think a closed door means no one outside the room can hear what you’re doing.

I set my alarm for 6:45 to begin acclimating myself to the 6:30 alarms of the school year. I gave myself 45 minutes to drink coffee, catch up on Twitter and RSS feeds before I rousted the girls from their beds at 7:30. There wasn’t too much complaining, so I’ll call this part of the adjustment a success. We’ll see how grumpy everyone is Wednesday morning.

Our final weekend of the real summer was eventful. L. went off a diving board by herself, without floaties or someone catching her, for the first time. Four years, ten months, seven days. And she was a pro from day one.

She had gone a few times earlier this summer at the end of her swim lessons. But that was always with no one else near the board and her teacher in the water to catch her and then swim her to the side.

Last year, when we went to the pool only as guests, that system was good for parents as well. You could tread water under the board while your toddler in floaties jumped to you, and then drag them over to the ladder.

Apparently there was an injury or something because they told us early on this summer that wasn’t cool anymore. So other than those dives after practice in June, L. had no board attempts. She’ll jump off the dock at our LVS, but that’s with a lifejacket on.

Anyway, she had never really asked about it. Saturday we were spending a perfect afternoon at the pool. S. was with us so L. was showing off how she has been able to swim without floaties in the 3.5 foot section of the pool. I took her down to the deep (five foot) end and asked her if she could swim to the side, about 20 feet away. She didn’t even say yes, she just took off and made it with no problem. I noticed the lifeguards seemed to have loosened up the parents under the board rule, as a friend was helping his three-year-old get to the side after she jumped off the board.

“Do you want to try the diving board?” I asked L..

“Yeah!”

She got in line, when it was her turn I swam out near the board but not under it, and gave her the ok sign. She barreled down the board and jumped right in. She popped up, wiped the hair from her eyes, took a couple breaths, and swam towards me.

“Go to the ladder, swim hard!” I said as I kept just out of her arm’s reach.

She followed directions perfectly and made it to the ladder with no trouble.

She climbed out and went right back to the line.

Two jumps later she did a perfect cannonball, as if she had been doing them all summer. She must have gone off the board 20 times, and by the end I didn’t even leave the side of the pool. She wasn’t always the swiftest kid to the side, but she always made it. A couple times she made it without taking a breath.

I had hoped my big accomplishment for the summer would be teaching C. to ride a bike with no training wheels. She’s close, though she’s lost interest and I haven’t practiced with her much. Turns out L. going off a diving board will be the big physical accomplishment of the summer of 2013. Which is pretty cool, since last summer that was M.’s and C.’s big accomplishments. She might be younger, but L. is keeping pace with the big sisters.

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Slogging To The End

August 8, 2013 /

I think we’re ready, all of us, for school to begin.

Trips to the pool have been the cornerstone of my daily plans for the summer. Give the kids time to veg in the morning, get outside a bit before it heats up, maybe run an errand or two after lunch, then spend the afternoon at the pool.

But we’re going on week three of strange weather. When it’s warm and muggy during the day, it’s often been cool at night, making the pool water chilly. Other days it’s either rained, or threatened to rain, keeping us home. I think we’ve been twice in the last two weeks.

I’ve also run out of other, interesting things to do with the girls. There are only so many parks you can visit, or trips to the mall that you can make. Adding to the fun, the neighbors are on a late-summer vacation, so there’s no easy distraction right outside the door. It’s been a long week-to-ten days.

The girls have had some playdates, so they’ve either been running around to friends houses, of having pals over here. But that only ties up part of the day. I’ve been a poor parent this week and let them spend way too much time in front of the TV.

“Hey, girls. Want to go to Target/the library/the grocery store?”
“No.”
“Ok. Watch another show.”

We’re all bored with each other and ready for a change. M. and C. are still young enough where they’re excited about returning to school. We got their class assignments on Monday and C. got a postcard from her teacher this morning. Sunday night we’ll ratchet bedtime back a little and Monday morning I’ll rouse them earlier so they’re ready to do it for real Tuesday night/Wednesday morning.

When they head back to St. P’s that still leaves L. and I three weeks before she starts pre-K. Drop-off and pick-up at St. P’s will give our days structure, though. And I’m going to enjoy those last 13 days when it’s just her and me as much as I can. This is going to be a different school year for me, with four hours a day to myself. But next fall, when all three girls are at St. P’s together, my life will really change.

It’s been a great summer, and we still have some fun things to do before it’s officially over. But as far as summer break is concerned, I think the B’s are ready for the end.

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Say It Right Or Don’t Say It!

August 7, 2013 /

I’ve enjoyed the recent references amongst my Kansas City friends on Facebook to one of my favorite restaurants, Il Centro. Adding to the fun is the, now, obligatory comments about how everyone was sure to pronounce the name correctly.

For the non-KCers out there, as an Italophile, I was quick to correct my friends who called the spot “eel sen-tro” rather than the correct “eel chen-tro”. What was the point of that year of Italian if not to help people with such mistakes? It became a running gag for friends, once I convinced them I was right1, to continue to say it improperly around me just to get me fired up about it.

Anyway, there’s a local car dealer that is now selling Fiats. They run a commercial on the radio station we listen to when at our LVS that we hear probably 15 times a weekend. The man speaking on the commercial doesn’t sound like some old boy Hoosier with a drawl from the hills of southern Indiana. He sounds like a normal dude from the suburbs. But he pisses me off as soon as the commercial starts.

“Bon JAIR-no!”

What? “Bon JAIR-no”? How do you get that from buongiorno”? Of all the ways you could mispronounce that word, turning the “-gior-” into “-jair” makes no sense at all; there’s no “A” in it! I would have thought a man running a Fiat dealership would have had some assistance in any Italian words/phrases he wanted to drop in his ads. I guess not.

Ten years ago I might have written him a nasty email, correcting him and demanding that he recut the commercial with the proper pronunciation. But I’ve mellowed in my middle age, and instead I’ll just write a blog post that 15 people see and continue to stew each time I hear it. Which I’ll bet amuses some of you quite a bit.

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  1. I think it finally took the restaurant running ads on local TV for me to win the argument, my education be damned. ↩

So Very Eighties

August 1, 2013 /

Last weekend I was sitting around, enjoying an 80-Acre Hoppy Wheat when Madness’ classic 1983 tune “Our House” came on the radio. Being the reflective cat I am1, I savored my beer and considered that I very well could have been listening to the same song exactly 30 years before that moment. I also thought if you had to sum up the 80s, that would be a pretty solid song to do so. I jotted down some other songs that were “very 80s-ish” and tucked the list away in my virtual notebook.

So here is my list of the Most 80s Songs Of The 80s. What the hell does that mean? Well, these are not necessarily the best, or most played, or most memorable songs of that glorious decade. But rather these are the songs that sum up the decade the best. When you hear them, you are immediately transported back to some vague point in your youth when MTV was determining what pop music was for our generation.

A few disclaimers.

First, this is my list, thus reflects what I think of when I think of “80s Music”. Which is music that has a heavy New Wave influence, crashed the top half of American Top 40, got heavy MTV airplay, and was generally released between 1981 and 1985. Someone five years older or younger, or even someone my age who had different tastes back in the day would likely put a very different list together. This isn’t meant to be definitive.

Second, I did not put a ton of thought into it. I thought about the biggest songs and bands of the decade, did some quick filtering on that initial group, scanned a couple online lists, and mashed this together. I imagine if I spent more time considering it, it would be a little different. But I’m about to reconsider my 25 favorite songs of all time list and will put much more effort into that than I did to this.

So with far too much explanation for a silly music list, here goes.

The ↁ’s Notebook Ten Most 80s Songs Of The 80s.

(Year charted, peak position on US Top 40)

“Our House” – Madness. 1983, #7. I bet you can hear this song at least once a day in every radio market in America. Punchy horns, bouncy bass, a wonderful string backing track, and perfect sing-along chorus. A little ska, very British, and all pop.

“Don’t You Want Me” – Human League. 1982, #1.

“Tainted Love” – Soft Cell. 1982, #8.

“I Ran” – A Flock Of Seagulls. 1982, #9.

A healthy chunk of British New Wave bands were synth pop artists, and these three songs were the best of the bunch. “Don’t You Want Me” is an undeniable, timeless classic. “Tainted Love” is one of the greatest covers of all time and sounded like it came from 20 years in the future with its dark, erotic sound. And “I Ran” is the stereotypical 80s song, produced on synthesizers by bizarrely-coiffed performers with minimal music talent.

“Hungry Like The Wolf” – Duran Duran. 1983, #3. Bridging the gaps between disco, pop, and rock, “Wolf” seemed like it was everywhere for about nine months and signaled the arrival of one of the biggest bands of the decade.

“We Got The Beat” – The Go Gos. 1982, #2. Arguably the best girl group ever produced the prototypical American New Wave song, equal parts rock and pop.

“867-5309/Jenny” – Tommy Tutone. 1982, #1. In a decade loaded with one-hit wonders, there was no bigger one-hit wonder than this creepy theme song for stalkers everywhere.

“Pour Some Sugar On Me” – Def Leppard. 1987, #2. All hair metal, pop metal, and radio friendly hard rock led to this massive 1987 tune. And then it all came crashing down in an avalanche of acid washed denim and <a href=’http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drakkar_Noir’>Drakkar Noir</a>.

“Borderline” – Madonna. 1984, #10. Not necessarily her best song, but certainly her most 80s song. It’s sweet and simple and a reminder of how great pop music was in 1984.

“Let’s Go Crazy” – Prince. 1984, #1. Listen, I love Prince. But I debated a long time whether to include him here or not, as his songs are of their own age, regardless of release date. But “Purple Rain” was one of the two or three biggest albums of the decade, and no one represented the diverse pop sound of the decade better than he did.

“Billy Jean” – Michael Jackson. 1983, #1. This song is the 80s. A singular star. An amazing song made unforgettable by an endlessly played video. And from the biggest album of the decade, and one of the most essential albums of all time.

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  1. I love when I get to call myself a reflective cat. ↩
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