Okay, so now I’m bathed. And there’s goop in my hair to make it stand up the way I like. Of course, I’m not bothering to brush it or anything… I should look nice and dorky on the cam for Blogathon.
Yes, I said cam.
Scary, wot? What can I say, I have a weakness for opportunities to show off my goofy-looking mug.
I get a kick out of my kids.
Alex is so serious, just like his dad, when he’s not being silly, just like his dad. I think he’s doing a better job of things than I was at his age, though he can be stubborn about the darnedest things as well. Gee, I have no idea where he gets that. Recently he’s been working on mastering Sonic Adventure 2 and unlocking characters in Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast, churning through The Elenium by David Eddings, and sussing out the secrets of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I’m hoping to start him on Raymond Feist’s Riftwar books once he’s done with the last of the Elenium trilogy. He just started The Hidden City this evening so there’s a few days yet. Alexander is a perceptive and surprisingly empathic young man who, if we can train him up right, will probably find himself more popular with the girls than he’ll know what to do about. Hey, it has to beat how I stumbled through that aspect of life for so many years.
Erica is such a normal little girl in so many ways, and yet surprisingly deep and mature in several others. Mind you, she’s far and away the more devious of the two. Nothing escapes her notice, and she learns very well just by watching. Case in point: Alex was playing one of the 3D platform-style games a while back, and Erica just sat and watched. She didn’t ask to play until at least a week had gone by. Then, when she did decide to play, she was off and finding things in the game that Alex didn’t even know about! Her current responsibility is that of General Bunny Wrangler (to her mom’s Bunny Wrangler In Charge, of course) and she takes great delight in handling the bunnies and making sure they have clean water and fresh food. She’s our little nature-lover and adventurer, no doubt about it. Not to mention her role as Social Butterfly, which is what makes her parents wonder what set of genes she picked that up from. Erica is a complete natural at social networking, though she has some hard lessons yet to learn about trust and about fairness.
Yeah, I have great kids. No doubt in my mind.
Sometimes it’s as if nothing has changed.
Sometimes it’s a strain to see eye to eye.
Sometimes we just can’t communicate.
Sometimes the fact that there’s a divorce going on jumps up and bites us on the ass.
I’m not trying to “put you in your place.” I’m trying to gracefully move apart, trying to admit defeat and move on with my life. I cannot survive this if I cling desperately to what was. I feel like crap as it is.
I love you. But I’m not going to pretend that we’re not going on with our own, separate lives. If it looks or sounds like I’m pushing you away… I’m not pushing, but I am trying to keep you at arm’s length so I can keep my perspective. Doing otherwise would lead us down a path that can only ultimately bring even more pain. Yes, more than what we’re already feeling.
Perhaps this doesn’t help. Perhaps this doesn’t answer the question. I can’t do any more than I already am, though.
(BlueCalx moment: Hey, you should go visit greyduck.net right now. Yeah.)
Attention, attention: We have changed from root beer to orange juice as the beverage of choice.
I love orange juice. Actually I love most citrus juices, but orange juice is the best. Minute Maid makes a darned tasty juice, while Tropicana’s tastes a bit too “raw” for me.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to heat up a corn dog, pour another glass of OJ and watch more Lain.
Burning yet another vacation day I wouldn’t have been using for anything better anyway, I decided to join in on Wendi’s cunning plan to get the hell out of town for most of a day. We ended up bringing along her usual babysitting charge, Nzhone, but that wasn’t a bad thing.
We packed up, hit the gas station, hit the store, then took off down the Sunset Highway for Cannon Beach. Just before we arrived we decided to stop off for another visit to the World’s Largest Sitka Spruce, or whatever.
Okay, I like trees. But seriously, who travelled the globe, hiked through every forest, just to discover the largest available tree in a particular species? Wow. And I thought I was geeky.
Anyway, we arrived at the beach, trekked out to the sand and surf and proceeded to enjoy the heck out of it all. The kids dug in the sand, we all got our feet wet, we snacked on occasion. At one point Wendi found a… small creature.
No, I don’t know exactly what it was. I’m open to enlightenment, folks.
After our lunch break (no, we didn’t eat that small creature) Haystack Rock became our destination. The kids had a blast climbing around in the tidepools. Alex even scrambled out on his own initiative to look at the sign on the rock. Good heavens, he really is a real boy. (At his age, I’d never have done anything like that. Astonishing.) The girls, of course, busied themselves with the age-old task of getting just as wet and muddy as humanly possible, and enlisting other small children as accomplices. I just took lots of pictures and made a fool of myself for posterity, among other useless acts of nonsense.
Eventually we were all tuckered out, so we piled into the van and headed for home. Other than a traffic jam on the inbound Sunset that forced us to take a scenic route home, we encountered no problems. Except for the small matter of sunburn, that is. You see, while Wendi was making sure that everyone else was appropriately slathered with sunscreen, she forgot about preserving her own skin. (I had assumed she’d already done that, so I didn’t ask. Bad on me.) She’s going to be very, very uncomfortable over the next couple of (working) days. Ouch.
And so here we are, back at home after a grand day at the beach. Oh, you wanted more pictures? Check just below.
Coast Trip – July 2003
