High Plains Panhandler

Christmas 2003

Christmas comes early around here. By that I mean, early in the morning. Really early. Too early.

The rule this year was if the kids woke up before seven, they could open whatever was in their stockings, but they couldn't touch anything under the tree. At seven, they could wake us up and we'd go gangbusters on everything else.

That sounded good when we made that plan last night. Too bad we're talking about three eager kids and a bunch of tempting boxes all wrapped up in pretty colors. Plans don't last under than kind of pressure.

Colleen: "My Christmas, it was pretty fun. The breakfast was good and the presents were neat. Our rule was we could go out early and wait until seven o'clock to wake up our parents. I got books and a movie called Freaky Friday and a Barbie car and a science lab thingie and a Polly Pocket thing and I got lots more too. It's so exciting. I just love Christmas and not because of the presents, but because of everything. The end."

Megan: "I had a merry Christmas because when I woke up and looked at my stocking there was a ballerina doll and candy and a book. When Daddy was up I got to open presents. I got Dig It Up, Polly Pockets, and a Science Computer. We had a wonderful breakfast of orange strada with cranberries and walnuts!"

Alex: "I got a crocodile and a candy cane. Me like my candy."

Christmas Eve 2003

We're waiting for Santa, snuggled up, hypnotized by the glow of A Year Without A Santa Claus.

Dick and Jane

Now that Megan has finished her Dick and Jane treasury, reading a chapter to us every night for the past two weeks, she declared that it was time for her Dick and Jane party. While Suzanne and I dashed out to see The Return of the King, Megan and Cassie, our babysitter, made confetti, sign, and party favors.

After dinner, Megan ran off to prepare for the party. She told us that we had to dress up, so no sweat pants or tennis shoes, and be ready for the party at 7:30 sharp. She greeted us at her door, right on time, with her hair sprinkled with water and combed in her special Megan-party style.

We had a few cups of pretend tea, watched a puppet show about Christmas, played Pin the Crown on Jack, and then made a great mess by throwing Megan's homemade confetti in the air over and over again. It was a wonderful Dick and Jane celebration.

Later, Megan sat alone in her room, clutching her book to her tummy and crying. When I asked her what was wrong she told me that she didn't want to take Dick and Jane back to the library the next morning. "I love Dick and Jane!" she wailed.

So we compromised and wrote Santa an emergency e-mail asking for her very own, non-library, Dick and Jane book. I hope he comes through with it.

Flout about

We headed over to the Texas Roadhouse for dinner where you can eat peanuts and throw the shells on the floor, which is always a winner with the kids. Since we were watching our friend's two girls (she had ripped her Achilles tendon), we had a long wait for a table fitting seven to open up.

Our waitress handed out crayons and an official Texas Roadhouse coloring page for each kids. The page had plenty of kid-friendly coloring activities: word find, connect the dots, that kind of thing. Colleen diligently worked at all the puzzles. She had just started the missing letter puzzle when our food came. I passed her a big bowl of mac and cheese and glanced down at her puzzle. The first missing letter word looked like this: "F _ O U _ " and Colleen had filled in the blanks to spell FLOUT.

Boy did I get excited. I pointed at the word to Suzanne. "Flout!" I exclaimed. I couldn't believe it. Flout, which means to insult or show disrespect to someone, had long ago been replaced in current venacular with "dis," shorthand for disrespect. Yet here was the Texas Roadhouse, enhancing kids' vocabulary, saving decent and meaty words from rusty disuse, careless neglect, and eventual extinction. What a great place!

So I said to Colleen, "Hey, that's a terrific word."

She said to me, "What? Flour?"

Then I looked closer and saw that what I thought was a "t" was really an "r." She had written "flour" and not "flout."

In anguish and self-pity, I stuffed another dinner roll in my mouth and pouted.

Alex turns three

Today is Alex's third birthday, but we split up the festivus between last Friday and today for one very important reason: firetrucks.

On Friday Suzanne finagled the guys at the firestation down the street to give Alex and his birthday party friends a tour of the place. We met over there at four o'clock (we had been expecting snow that day, and we were afraid that ice and snow emergencies would have forced us to cancel the tour. Fortunately, the weatherman, Doppler Dave, got it completely wrong, and the weather gave cooperated nicely). The firefighters were very friendly. One of them dressed up in his 780 pound oxygen, fire-proof suit to show us what he really had to wear when he went into scary burning buildings. With his mask on he sounded a lot like Darth Vader, so I kept saying "Luke, I am your father, eh." but everyone was smart enough to ignore me.

Here's something interesting we learned from our tour of the firestation: every three days firefighters work a 24 hour shift, and they all travel together in the firetruck to get groceries. They have to pay for their own cokes and cable TV. The city doesn't pick that up for them. I told them that when I run for mayor, my platform will be Cokes and Cable for the firefighters. They promised me the firefighter vote. With that, the retirement home bloc, and the Chess Club cartel, I'm almost there!

They were a great bunch of guys to entertain a small bunch of guys and girls for 45 minutes. They didn't have a pole in the firestation, but they did have a long line of dorm room-style beds. You could tell from that room that these guys really loved and believed in what they were doing. I don't know how they could sleep in that room otherwise.

So we had a little party afterward. We played Pin the Spot on the Dalmatian game, and did a little art at the table (although one mother wouldn't let her son paint; she said it was too much fuss. That bewildered me. All kids are too much fuss. Why worry about it? Fuss away! By the by, I believe if you pronounce fuss Fooss you've really just said "farts" in Lebanese. This comes courtesy of my sister-in-law Karen. Maybe that's what this one mother meant. Her kid was too much Fooss, which of course, is true for all little boys). We finished with cupcakes and present opening, and then sent all the little party guests back home, full of Cheetos and sugar, ready for dinner.

Phase II of operation 3rd Birthday happened tonight, the official birthday day. Alex got to choose a restaurant for dinner, so he picked Chick-Fil-A, and we all bundled up and braved the icy wind for some chicken nuggets. As usual, all Alex wanted to do was take off his shoes and socks and climb up the slide in the play area. Afterward, he opened our family presents and then, with a great and mighty crash, he collapsed in his bed, hugging his Super Expando Whirly Circle and asking about his next birthday party that he expects to happen tomorrow.

That's two birthdays down and one to go. Megan's is next month and in-between is Christmas. Timing is everything.

Click for a bigger picture.

The Restauranteur

I once heard that Amarillo has more restaurants per person than any other place in Texas, which, if true, sounds impressive, cultured, and vaguely fat until you realize that 98 percent of those restaurants operate under the guise of McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut, and Chester's Deep Fried Cheese Bars. We have chain restaurants everywhere, and when a new one opens up its a Big Deal. Once the lead item on the local evening news was that a new employer was coming to town with jobs a-plenty. This got people all hot and bothered because new companies hiring people was Good For Amarillo!

What was this new company with all the jobs that would save the Amarillo economy and make the mayor giddy? Shoney's. If you google "Shoney's" it shows this as the description: "US chain."

Shoney's has since closed down. I think it's a photo store now.

When we hear of a new, local restaurant opening in the face of all this homogeneity, Suzanne and I try to get there and try it out. That's what we did today for lunch when we went to a new Italian restaurant just down the road from our house (Thursday's are good days for lunches since the girls are in school and Alex is in Mother's Day Out).

We started with bruschetta, followed by meatball sub for me and a bowl of pasta soup for Suzanne. We waited and waited quite a long time for the bruschetta. Finally the waiter came by and apologized for the delay. This is what he said (this is true):

"Sorry it's taking so long for the bruised chetta, but the cook doesn't know how to make it, so he's looking in the book right now."

Then he laughed like this: huh huh huh huh huh.

Surfer boys are rare in Amarillo. I guess you just have to know where to look.

We finally got our bruschetta, which tasted bland. The soup and sandwich came out right after. Suzanne said her soup tasted like Campbell's tomato; my meatballs, although promoted on the menu as famous and homemade, tasted infamous and generic.

We heard our waiter try to describe the soup the Suzanne had ordered to another table next to us: "I don't know how to pronounce it, huh huh huh huh, but it has some beans in it, huh huh, and I think maybe it has some noodles too, huh huh. I haven't seen it before, so I don't know if it's any good."

Yet he strangely just delivered a bowl of it to us (he must have had his eyes closed to not have seen it). It's a good guess that it might have noodles in it. We were in an Italian restaurant, after all.

There are times when a deep and well-placed sigh isn't enough. Lunch was one of those times. Double Daves, where are you when we need you?

Will do magic for food

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law were very kind and asked me to do a magic show for my nephew, Andrew. Andrew's seventh birthday party was Saturday, so they all flew me down to Houston that morning, a few hours before the chaos began.

I had heard that there might be close to 8000 kids at the party, so I had to mentally prepare myself for the show, which meant that I stayed up very late the night before and then had terrible dreams of kids spitting carmel on me while I ran the carousel at the Hanna Barbara Land Amusement Park (this is a true story -- it happened when I was in high school, and I wasn't feeling well that day, so I threw up on the kid who spit on me. Then I quit. Good times), but Mark, my brother-in-law, in a tricky and insidious lad. He brought Double Dave's pepperoni roles for lunch, right when I was getting all my stuff set up. That blew my concentration, because all I wanted to do was eat the pepperoni roles. I hadn't had a Double Dave's pizza role since graduate school when I lined my backpack with aluminum foil, filled it up, and then lived off pepperoni roles for three weeks. The sign said "All You Can Eat," it just didn't say when.

Word of caution: don't eat pepperoni roles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner three weeks straight. For the love of all that's mighty, don't do it.

The party was quite fun, but boys are made out of different stuff than girls. The five girls at the party sat nice and quite on the sofa, hands clasped together, smiles all around, heads straight up as if they were balancing phone books on them. The boys on the other hand, all 25 of them, ran around the house, frantically trying to build dangerous weapons from household chemicals, appliances, and cutlery. They jumped, rolled, wrestled, yanked, pulled, burped, pinched, slugged, and once or twice, bared fangs and hissed at the sun.

We got them settled down for the show (I threatened them with a magical incantation that would change them into monkeys, which I later found out some of the kids took very seriously. One hid under a table. I feel bad about that. Well, no I don't). My tricks went off well, although when I tossed out a half peanut butter and jelly sandwich for inspection it started a food fight, which I hadn't planned on. I do feel bad about that one.

I tried to show everyone how to do a card trick. I picked a simple self-working trick, but I don't think it came over very well. Everyone split up into pairs and tried the trick on each other, but soon cards started flying, kids started poking, and the noise level jumped to about 4500 decibels. I felt my inner ear start to melt.

My sister-in-law, Karen, saved me with five magical words: "Who's ready for birthday cake?" Instantly, the kids ran to the kitchen. That was a better vanish than anything I could have pulled off.

The next morning, after everything had settled down, after all the sugar had made its way out of the bloodstream, after the headiness of opening and looking at presents had dissipated, I talked a little to Andrew while we practiced tricks with his new stripper deck (that's a type of magical card deck and is not a description of what's on the cards). I asked him about one of the little girls he invited who, I think, he secretly likes. When I brought her up, he gave me a really good aw shucks shy boy look. So I teased him just a little and said, "She said she really liked the party."

Andrew: "No she didn't. Did she?"
Me: "Sure, and she said 'Boy, that Andrew sure is a cutie pie.'"
Andrew: "No she didn't say that!"
Me: "And she said 'Andrew's hair is nice and combed too!'"
Andrews: "No! She didn't say that!"

Then we sat there silently for a few seconds while he shuffled the cards. Then he said:

"What else did she not say about me?"

Then I ruffled his hair and told him he'd be a great magician some day, just as long as he doesn't make pepperoni roles disappear.

Orna Mental

One of the reasons that I was in a rush to put up the Christmas lights on the roof of our house is because of our Supper Club Ornament Exchange party that we were hosting Friday night. (The Supper Club consists of seven couples. Every month we switch from one house to another and eat differently cooked -- sometimes not so cooked -- suppers. A couple of dinners ago we played the new update to Trivial Pursuit where we discovered that Clay, one of our supper club members who is a suit-wearing, tie-constrained attorney, was at one time a long-haired heavy metal 80s rocker. I wonder when he's in front of a judge he's tempted to yell out, "Lick it up, your honor! I'm lord of the metal masters!")

So I braved the 40 mile an hour wind gusts to get the last of the lights on the root, put up the Grinch and Charlie Brown cut-outs that we made years ago, and stepped back to admire all the burnt out lights that were the result of my handiwork.

This is how the ornament exchange worked. Everyone took a number from a hat. Number one picked a wrapped up ornament first. Number two went second and could either pick an ornament or steal the ornament that the first person had picked (if you steal, the person you steal from is able to pick another ornament or steal from someone too). It went on from there until the last person, number 14, picked the final package or stole any of the other 13 ornaments. I had argued that number one should then be able to steal from anyone, but Head Banger Clay thought that if you got number one, you were stuck and could steal nothing.

I ended up with an Volkswagen Bug ornament driven by Santa and Rudolph. I tried to hide it in my arms so no one would steal it. When someone came by to take a look, I gave them the hairy eyeball and scared them away.

When I was looking for an ornament to give at the party, I had looked all over e-bay for something sufficiently cheesy, but I ended up getting a glass ornament handmade by a glass-blower here in town. Everyone ooohed and aaahed over it, but no one tried to steal it. That's usually a good indication of ornament lameness. Maybe I'll hire a couple of thugs and steal it back. They might make off with more than the ornament, though, but that's what thugs do. It's hard to find good help these days.

Student of the Week

Megan is student of the week this week, which means that she gets to bring all sorts of fun things to her kindergarten class, her classmates praise her on bended knee (no different than a normal night around our house), and I get to explain to her class what my job is.

Now telling people what I do at work is a tough one. I used to say I didn't have enough security clearances to describe my job, but since Pantex the nuclear facility is just north of here, it sounded as if I were some scary atomic weapons guy who isn't supposed to blab. I really don't want to be a scary atomic weapons guy since I understand from the SciFi channel that they usually end up growing to 45 feet tall and eat power lines like spaghetti.

So as I sat there in front of a semi-circle of polite kindergartners, each eager to hear my story, I began with this:

"I'd like to tell you that I'm a superhero with x-ray vision or maybe even a super spy with an antenna watch and a robot pal sidekick, but what I really do is (dramatic pause) a little bit of magic."

It's always deadly when you have to decorate your job with a sprinkle of suspense and a flourish of magic, but hey, I'm not even sure what I do most of the time, so I'll use whatever I've got.

Megan's class was extraordinarily well-behaved. They asked great questions (although they would ask the same question four or five times in a row), and they laughed pretty hard when I showed them that their teacher was really Velma on the Scooby Doo 2004 Wall Calendar (I had done a quickie composite of her head on the calendar cover), and they loved watching me beam a picture from my cell phone to my laptop, courtesy of Bluetooth. I thought they'd really dig the name Bluetooth, but they were all too busy laughing at the picture of themselves to care.

I think I left them all confused and bewildered, but that's how I am at the office most of the time anyway, so in a way I think I described my job perfectly. Now I can relax. The pressure's off for a couple of years until Alex starts kindergarten. By then maybe I'll have my personal transporter device working. Now that would be a nifty demonstration.

O Tannenbaum

We headed over to Boy Scout Troop 80's big Christmas tree lot once again for our annual pilgrimage. Like last year, we were greeted by Benjamin, tree-seller professional. I hadn't even stepped out of the car before he dashed up and said, "Welcome to our Christmas tree lot. I'll be your account manager for the evening."

He herded us quickly to the 30 foot pines telling us that they'd make a wonderful addition to our family dwelling (his words, not mine). He was a little bummed when we told him the trees were way too tall and that we were looking for something in the eight to ten foot range, but he regained his seller's composure when he took us to the fir trees. He grabbed a big one, shook it so that he could see its breadth of full branches, and then told us he could have this packed into our car right now, for no extra charge. Suzanne told him she didn't like it because it looked artificial, to which he responded, "Isn't that the point?"

We ended up with a nice pine that was too tall for our ceiling (I had to trim the top a bit), but Benjamin wouldn't let us go with merely buying a tree. He kept trying to push the Tree Longevity Powder, the Tree Bag, the Tree Be Well, and some other weird quasi-ornaments that frightened me. He also took me to the side and, out of the corner of his mouth, said that he took tips. One of the scout leaders heard him, though, and said, all gruff and business-like, "No tips, Benjamin." Benjamin shrugged and gave me a look that said, "Hey, you gotta try."

Like last year, once we paid, Benjamin disappeared into the tilted green forest of Troop 80. Some other boy scouts, older ones, helped me lug the tree to the car. Colleen, Megan, and Alex stomped around in the mud, and I checked my pockets, just to make sure my wallet was still in one piece, protected from the Benjamin selling tornado.