High Plains Panhandler

Valentines!

The kids made their own valentines for us this year. Here's a sampling:

From Colleen (11):

You fill my heart with laughter
You fill my heart with love
But most of all you
Fill my heart by
Just being
You!

From Megan (9). Megan wrote a short story and sprinkled words from candy hearts throughout it. I'll italicize those and keep all her spelling and style:

"Take care" I called out to Mrs. Miller as I steped out on her front porch. "You to" she yelled back "oh and Happy Valentine's Day!" I ran over to Razzle's house. "Hey what's up?" she asked. "Your late." "I know." I replied. "My mom made me take this tuna casarole to Mrs. Miller." "Cool" Razzle mutered. "Whats wrong?" I blurted. "Somebody spry panted are car red, pink, and wihte. It says love ya." she moned. "And now dads going to kill me!" "Groovy" said a voice. Razzle wheeled around. There stood Liby, Razzles 18 year old sisster petting pinnces, the 200 pound cat. "And I'll be there to see it all." she sneered. She dissepered into the house. "Whait." I said to Razzle as she began to slump back inside. "Maby I can help wash the car befor your dad gets home from work." "O.K." brightened Razzle. "Come back and 12:00. I'll serve lunch." "See ya" I yelled. At 12:00, I ran up Razzle's porch steps. Razzle answered the door, white faced.

"Dad's home erly" she wishpered. "Great." I grinned. "cause I've got a plan." Razzle led me inside. "Hello" I said. "I've figured out who spray pantied your car." I said. "Who?" Mr. Lea said gruffly. "Liby." I replied. "Who me?" blurted liby. "After a shocking silence, Mr. Lea said "Liby?" "O.K. I did it." She confessed. "I wanted to get Razzle." She glared at Razzle. "In trouble." She hung her head gultly. "Liby you can cancel that trip to the mall." Mr. Lea ordered. "And Razzle, sory I blamed you." When I was leaving, I gave Razzle a valintine with a cupid on it. "Razzle do you like it?" I asked, "It's dreamy." she answered. Just then Liby peaked out from behind the door. "Razzle, you are in such trouble. Totally." As I jumed down from the steps, Razzle hugged me and said, "you rock."

From Alex (6):

My mommy and daddy are GOOD BECAUSE THA MAK MY BRETIS. XOXOXO
(Translation: My mommy and daddy are good because they make my breakfast.)

7,177,818

It's official. After close to seven long years of paperwork, e-mails, and Fed-Ex packages, my first patent issued today.

Now I can finally buy my Mad Scientist uniform, goggles, and hunchback assistant.

What will I do tonight? The same thing I do every night: try to take over the world!

Ski ski revolution

We're not too far from the Rockies, but we've only been to the mountains for skiing a couple of times (pre-kids), which is really too bad. Too bad for Suzanne because she likes to ski, and too bad for me because I like hot chocolate.

Last weekend we decided to take Angel Fire, New Mexico up on all its discount offers, dump the kids into ski school, and have a swell time cruising the slopes. For the most part, this plan worked out tremendously well. We met up with some friends, registered the kids for a full day of lessons, strapped into the foot sarcophagi that are ski boots, and clipped into our rented skis.

Then we did the actual skiing. Here's where Suzanne and I differ in our approach. Suzanne glides down the mountain, gently moving from side to side, stopping elegantly, moving swiftly, looking gorgeous. My approach is somewhere different: I go in a perfectly straight line, gradually speeding up until I get nervous, and then I fall. Then I repeat. Superficially, one might argue this is a terrible way to ski, but I would argue that's a poor way of looking at it. It's not a terrible way of skiing. It's a great way of falling.

After our first run of the day, I opted to stop skiing (under the pretense of wanting to watch the kids in ski school but secretly realizing that my miserably flat feet are not intelligently designed for skiing but rather for ottomans, fires, and cocoa).

I waddled over to the kids' ski school to watch the progress, and after a few minutes I wished I hadn't. The Angel Fire Ski School was terrible, like one of those horribly wretched Dickens' Orphanages where every eats soupy gruel and gets beaten with tree branches. I watched Alex ski down the small bunny slope, moving at a pretty good clip, but as he reached the end where the other kids were lined up for their next turn, he went right through the line and stopped ten feet beyond by grabbing an inflatable barrier. Since he was downhill, he couldn't make it back up to the line, so he simply stopped there and collapsed in the snow. So there he was, along with five other kids who had had the same problem, stuck in the snow and getting no help. They just lay there, flat on their backs, unable to move.

The ski instructors were too busy yelling at the other kids to notice. One kid just stopped halfway down the bunny slope and screamed, "HELP ME! HELP ME! HELP ME!" A few others kept crossing their skis and ramming into the wall around the slope area. The ski instructors responded to all this chaos with all the professionalism of Groundskeeper Willie. Yes there was cursing and screaming and shouting, and after a little more of that I couldn't stand it anymore. So I trudged over to Alex (who had seen me by now and had his hand outstretched to me), and I took him away to get some cocoa. (The ski instructor finally showed up when we were leaving and asked if I could convince Alex to stay; Alex looked up at me, tears in his eyes, and then just hugged my leg - all I could say to the instructor was: "You can't be serious.")

So here's a piece of intertubes wisdom: do not take your children to the Angel Fire Ski School. Try the ski school in Taos instead.

Beyond all that, though (including Megan twisting her ankle and ending up in the infirmary) we had a great time, especially snow tubing the next morning. If I had known then what I know now, I would have avoid skiing and gone directly for the SkiBikes, which looked great and damaging and all sorts of scary. Next time that's what I'm taking down from the top of the mountain, no matter how many snow boarders or ski instructors stand in my way.

Eye of the Alex

January started off pretty frantically, so I neglected to mention anything about it here. There was plenty of drama, though, so let's start with Alex, a train table, and gravity.

A couple of weeks ago, Suzanne and I were making dinner when we heard a loud thump from the family room followed by an inhuman wail. Since this is a commonplace occurrence in our house, I rolled my eyes and offered this advice: "Someone apologize to someone else."

"Alex fell off the sofa and hit his head on the train table," said Colleen. The train table is a small play table with a hollow center where we store Alex's train tracks and engines. "It looks pretty bad."

That's when Alex came into the kitchen, a giant gash over his left eye gushing blood down his face. The girls were frantic. Alex was panicky. And Suzanne and I had our hands full of turkey and salad. We shoved the food out of the way and lay Alex across the counter for a closer inspection. The gash, which appeared to be three inches long by an inch wide (fortunately, the heat of things caused my measuring faculties to short-circuit; the gash wasn't nearly this big) kept generating a tremendous flow of blood. We stopped most of it with a healthy supply of now permanently red-stained towels, but it still looked pretty bad. So bad that I told Alex I'd lie down on the floor with him while Mommy called the doctor (I did this, alas, because of my own queasiness and sad lack of machoness - but I swear to you that I could see his skull through the gash, and at one point I knew that was frontal lobe peeking out at me).

Since Alex's regular doctor was off duty, we threw all the kids in the car, left dinner to fend for itself on the counter, and sped off for the hospital.

The people at the hospital were very nice and relatively speedy (it took an hour and a half to get some help, which sounds long but in an emergency room, it really isn't). Alex's eye had become so swollen by this time, though, the doctor opted against stitches (total doctor appearance time, by the way: two minutes, six seconds) and the nurse the doctor left to do the dirty work used small butterfly bandages to fix Alex's head.

It was tough on Alex that first week. Everyone at school wanted to know what had happened, since by now his eye had swollen to Quasimodo size, and all Alex wanted was to duck his head and hold his hand over his eye. But it gradually got better, and now he sports a thin red, not-quite-healed boo-boo over his eye, and from his recent scamping around the house, I can tell he, once again, fears no train table or fireplace corners.