I wasn't kissing. I was sucking.

Costco sells a snack I love called "Peanut Butter Filled Pretzel Nuggets". I love these things but I know they can't be good for me. They're far too tasty to be healthy. I try to limit how many I eat at any one time but it's difficult. As any Costco shopper knows, there is only one size at the store: large. I estimate the peanut butter pretzel jar holds roughly 500 nuggets. It's so easy to just reach in and grab a handful. Or two.

In an effort to limit my snacking, I've taken to trying to savor each individual nugget. I reason that the longer it takes me to finish one of these guys, the fewer I'll be able to eat overall. It's a reasonable strategy and I've had some success with it. Each nugget consists of a salty hard pretzel exterior with a soft peanut butter like substance inside. Sometimes, I like to pop one in my mouth and suck on it until the salt is gone and the shell softens up such that I can crush it with my tongue against the roof of my mouth. This takes awhile and if you rush the process, you'll rip up your palate so it's pretty effective at limiting the rate of consumption.

A few days ago, I was rushing out of the house to pick up my oldest son from school. As I grabbed my coat, I passed by the pretzel nugget jar and instinctively grabbed a handful. I was just a couple of blocks from the house when I popped the first one into my mouth. Now, as I was driving, I happened to notice something out of the corner of my eye - movement in someone's yard. I turned to look and, sure enough, a man was out mowing his yard. Unfortunately, at the same moment I made eye contact with him, I absenting sucked on the pretzel nugget in an attempt to crush it. To anyone who didn't know about the nugget (basically everyone but me) I'm pretty sure it looked like I caught this fellow's eye and blew him a kiss. He gave me a sheepish wave, keeping his hands on the mower handle.

It all happened so quickly. I was down the street before I fully realized how my nugget sucking may have looked. Feeling slightly embarrassed, I considered what my next course of action should be. I came up with four possibilities:

1. Stop at his house, explain the whole pretzel sucking thing and assure him that I was not blowing him a kiss. This could get weird if it turns out he couldn't see me clearly or he didn't think I was puckering at him in the first place.
2. Begin randomly blowing kisses whenever I am out and about in the neighborhood. Become known as the guy with the awkward muscle tic that looks like I'm blowing kisses.
3. Avoid that particular street for the foreseeable future.
4. Act like nothing happened. If I happen to run into the guy and he mentions the whole "air kiss" episode, explain the pretzel nuggets and the sucking. Maybe offer to share some with him so he can appreciate the process.

For now, I'm rolling with number 4 with a little bit of number 3 thrown in there for good measure.

Raking

On a cool, brisk, sunny fall day there are few things more pleasant than raking leaves. I can honestly say that for the first five or ten minutes, I enjoy raking. After that, the thrill fades a bit. Our yard isn't very large and it doesn't take long to rake it but, even so, my enthusiasm for raking disappears long before the leaves do. This past Saturday, my wife and I and my youngest son raked. We started with the back yard, which is the largest of the two. We have no deciduous trees in our back yard but the neighbor's maple provides plenty of leaves for both them and us.

Even though the back yard is larger, I find raking it less annoying than the front. The back yard has two attributes that are helpful when raking: gardens and a fence. Gardens are handy when raking because, in my mind, the worst thing about raking is trying to figure out what to do with the leaves. I've convinced myself that it's beneficial to cover the plants in the garden. I don't know nor do I care to know if this is actually true. I just know that things go pretty fast when you can just rake everything to the edge of the grass and into the garden. Now, it is true that come spring I'll have to contend with these leaves again. But, that's an issue for then, not now. For now, I will rake as many leaves onto our gardens as seems reasonable. And then I'll add a few more.

A chain-link fence marks the perimeter of our yard and provides an effective barrier against yard to yard leaf travel. There's nothing worse than raking your yard clean only to have the wind deposit new ones from down the street.

Our front yard only has a couple of small gardens and no fence. Early in October, I set the lawn mower to a very low setting and gave the grass a buzz cut. I do this every year in a feeble attempt to provide a few less places for leaves to latch onto. Maybe, just maybe, most of them will blow on by and find more comfortable accommodations in my neighbor's yard. Lately, I've noticed my closest neighbors also cutting their grass shorter. We've convinced ourselves that it is helping, if only a little, mostly during the early part of the season. When the trees really start shedding their leaves there isn't much you can do but wait and rake.

As we moved from the back yard to the front, I took a moment to appreciate the array of colors strewn around the yard. It was quite beautiful - a mix of red, yellow, green, brown, and gold. It was a beautiful day and I felt a renewed enthusiasm. As I began raking, I noticed that the leaves were different in this yard - more variety. In particular, there were small golden leaves that refused to go with the others. With each sweep of the rake, these little guys would jump over the tines and propel themselves in the opposite direction. Like a stubborn three-year-old, they would not be coerced into playing with the others. As my frustration grew, I took a moment to study one of these leaves. I scanned the neighborhood, trying to ascertain this fellow's origins. Finally, my eyes rested on the culprit, across the street and two houses down. About half of this leaf's siblings were still precariously dangling from the tree. I glared at the tree and then briefly at the house behind it.

By noon, we had raked both yards. Our lawn stood in stark contrast to my neighbors on each side, where leaves abounded. It was windy and by two, our front yard was once again covered. On Sunday, my neighbors cleaned their yards. I just didn't have it in me to re-rake and since the leaves weren't too thick I fired up the lawn mower and mulched them this time. There are still a couple of trees in our neighborhood that have not dropped their leaves and I know my lawn will not stay leaf-free but I don't really care. In my mind, I made a good faith attempt - if the leaves aren't going to cooperate I can't be blamed.

View from the pew

A couple of Sundays ago I was sitting in church. The gospel included the story of the ten lepers who cried out Jesus for healing. Jesus told them to go and show themselves to the priests. Along the way, there bodies were healed. One, a Samaritan, returned to Jesus and gave thanks, the others continued on their way.

The pastor is just starting his sermon. He's decided to focus on gratitude and showing thanks. I hang with him until he throws in something about just praying to God, receiving healing, and giving thanks. I know from experience that we don't always get the instant result the lepers realized. When preachers start down that path, I tend to stop listening.

Instead, I decide to use the time to contemplate other aspects of the story. I wonder if those ten lepers were the entire colony or if there were others who didn't cry out to Jesus and if they were therefore left with their sores. I wonder if the ten who cried out really believed Jesus could heal them or if they were just desperately hoping he could. Given how ostracized and miserable these people were, wouldn't they cry out to anyone who might possibly be able to help them, no matter how remote the chance?

My mind drifts to the nine who did not return to give thanks. They hadn't really done anything wrong. In fact, they did exactly what Jesus instructed. Perhaps, they were afraid to break ranks and return to Jesus to give thanks. Their sores had mysteriously disappeared. They could just as easily reappear. I wonder if they tried to stop the Samaritan when he turned back toward Jesus, afraid that his action would doom them all. Until they saw the priests and were declared clean, they were still outcasts. I can understand their desire to get there as quickly as possible. Maybe the Samaritan, being a Samaritan, cared less about the priests, I don't know. I wonder about the times we follow orders and fear keeps us from breaking ranks and doing what we know we should. I think about war criminals and the soldiers whose only defense is that they were just following orders.

My mind focuses back on the pulpit as the pastor wraps up his message. Be grateful. I can do that.

Color Blind

This past week, B has been helping out at our church's vacation bible school. The program runs for the week and attracts a mix of kids from the neighborhood and church members. As I understand it, B has no assigned job - instead, he fills in wherever he is needed. Asking him about the experience or what he's been doing is like talking to a well-coached witness in a trial. His answers are terse and very specific to the question asked - extra information is rarely given. Normally, N would be attending VBS but this year the dates coincided with drama camp and drama camp won. N is a little more forth-coming about his day, thus I know which friends are with him and what they're working on.

We were talking about the day at dinner one evening, both boys had seemed to have pretty good days. The conversation was drying up when B offered a rare piece of unsolicited information: on the first day, some girl had asked him where N was. Glad to have something to talk about, A and I pushed him for more information. What was her name? Was she in his class? What did she look like? This may be the reason B is reluctant to give us very much information. Like an opposing attorney who's just gotten a witness to divulge a secret, I peppered him with questions. In the end, all he could say was that he thought she was in his class and that she was tall. My wife and I rattled off the names of various tall girls in N's class and mused about who it might be. B went back to his dinner, probably regretting having opened his mouth.

A couple of days later, I was on Facebook and noticed that our church had posted numerous photos of VBS. I paged through them, hoping to glimpse B and maybe figure out what he was doing with his time. Apparently, he must have spent a good deal of it avoiding the camera as he only appeared in a couple of shots. Along the way, however, I happened upon a photo of a smiling tall girl from N's class. I showed it to B and asked if this was the girl who had asked about N. He nodded that it was and told me her name, which he'd learned the day following our dinner conversation. I guess the information was there if we had thought to ask him again.

The girl was not one of the names we had guessed, although when I saw her, it made perfect sense that she would be there. In our mostly white neighborhood, knowing that she was not would certainly have helped us in our search. On the other hand I'm kind of glad that, in B's mind, the thing that made her stand out was her height, not her race.

Ew!

My wife's mother fell recently and required a visit to the hospital and some time in the transitional care wing of a nearby nursing home. The boys and I were killing time one afternoon in her room at the nursing home while she was away at dinner. My oldest son, B, had his iPod Touch with him and was soon lost in his own virtual world. My younger son, N, didn't bring a distraction so I gave him the TV remote and suggested he find some entertainment. He checked the channel list and was disappointed to find that Disney was not among the options. I noted that, while he may feel this was a huge injustice, most of the residents probably weren't big "Dog with a Blog" watchers. 

After flipping around the channels a couple of times, N finally settled on a show called Taboo. The show apparently featured segments on people doing things that were generally considered taboo. We caught the beginning of a piece on Yogi Zen, a guy who claims that the secret to agelessness is drinking your urine. N was spellbound. 

We watched as Yogi explained that he washed his hair with urine. We watched him rub his urine all over his upper body. Finally, we watched him lift a crystal goblet of pee and take a long drink. Occasionally, N would look over at me with wide eyes to see if I was watching and if I found this as bizarre as he did. Mostly, N stared at the screen with his mouth slightly open and his nose scrunched up. 

Evidently, Yogi has some students or followers who come to him for instruction on meditation and such. Most of them hadn't progressed to urine-sipping yet, but one fellow did finally try a bit (with a squeeze of lemon) and proclaimed it delicious. N wiggled in his chair and laughed to himself. 

Yogi explained that he had changed his diet to get the best flavor for his urine. Asparagus, I thought. Some how asparagus is going to be involved. You either avoid it completely or eat nothing else. Yogi didn't go into specifics. 

Yogi has a girlfriend. When she showed up, Yogi offered her a sip from his cup of urine. She complied. N still watched in amazement. Yogi explained that sharing your urine was an ultimate act of love. N squirmed a little. Then Yogi and his girlfriend kissed. At that point, N let out a "Ew!" and changed the channel. 

And that's how the mind of an eleven year old boy works: Drinking urine is gross but interesting. Kissing is just gross.

Fish Tale

My wife just returned from an extended weekend in Florida. While she was away, I was responsible for feeding the kids, the cats, and the fish. I also had to make sure the boys got where they needed to be. She left Thursday morning and got back Monday afternoon. During that time, one or both boys needed to be at: a piano lesson; a saxophone lesson; a tae-kwon-do lesson; a tae-kwon-do test; a saxophone recital; a graduation party; church; and, of course, school.

With so much going on, I was a little worried I might forget or miss something. The fish was a particular concern, since he doesn't squawk if you don't feed him. The cats and the boys are pretty good at letting me know they are hungry. The fish just swims around in his own little world, hardly seeming to acknowledge us at all. Because, of this concern, I made it my mission to remember the fish. I worked his feeding into my routine, determined to not forget him.

By Sunday morning, I was feeling pretty good about how well we'd managed without Mom around. By midday, most of the scheduled activities were behind us, having been successfully attended. I was feeling confident enough that I'd actually okay-ed N's request to have a friend over for a few hours. "Sure, send another kid my way, I've got it handled."

Then, as I was preparing a delicious grilled cheese sandwich/tomato soup lunch, I happened to glance at the fish. Instead of drifting about the tank in his usual pattern, he was fairly motionless at the bottom of the tank. "Strange," I thought, "I've never seen him do that before." I'd also never seen him float upside down, which I noticed he was also now doing. My first thought, upon seeing this was, "Stupid fish, you'd better be sleeping." But, I knew that fish didn't sleep upside down. The fish was dead.

Immediately, I ran through the previous night's activities. I remembered feeding him - right before I fed the cats. Nothing seemed unusual - he seemed energetic and excited to be fed, just like most nights. In truth, I kind of liked feeding the fish. It seemed like the only time when he was even remotely aware of our existence. I was pretty certain that I had followed proper protocol regarding the care of the fish. Still, I felt a cloud of suspicion forming around me. The fish was dead and somehow it was my fault. Stupid fish.

The fish came into our lives when B brought him home from school. In fifth grade, the kids study goldfishes in class and, if you're lucky and you're parents agree, you get to bring one home after the session is done. I wasn't sure how the boys would take the death. The fish isn't like our other pets - he's more like a living decoration that provides a little color and movement to one corner of the room. I waited until the boys were seated at the counter for lunch. "The fish is dead." I said as I handed B his sandwich, "It's not my fault."

B looked over at the tank and nodded. "Well, four years is a pretty long time for a goldfish" he said, before dunking his sandwich in his soup.

"Humph!", N scowled at the fish tank. N has been bitter for a couple of weeks now because some poor planning has meant his fifth grade class won't have time to do the fish lesson. "If my teacher could have stayed on schedule, I'd have a replacement fish for that tank", he grumbled.

I left the fish in the tank and we continued with the last of our scheduled events. Later that night, I happened to glance over at the tank and I saw an orange shape moving around the tank. Maybe fish do sometimes sleep upside down, I thought. Sadly, upon closer inspection, I found that I'd left the aerator on and the fish had bloated enough to become buoyant  The little guy was caught in the current from the aerator, careening from one end of the tank to the other in a little ellipse.

As I watched the fish corpse moving about the tank, it occurred to me that if I hadn't told the boys he was dead, they probably wouldn't have noticed. This dead fish was acting a lot like our live fish did - and I no longer had to worry about feeding it. I let him have a couple more laps then I unplugged the aerator and stopped the show.

On Monday, I announced that we needed to have a fish funeral. "You mean the toilet?" N asked with a certain glee that made me uncomfortable.

"No," I replied. "We'll bury him in the backyard. Not flush him down the toilet."

I cut up a cereal box and fashioned it into a small casket. The boys and I went in the back yard, dug a hole and solemnly laid him to rest, giving him more attention in death than we had for a long time in life.

That was a rabbit

I'm kind of excited. As I drove to work today, I saw something that inspired me to write the following little poem. I think it would make a great children's book if I could just find a good illustrator.


That Was A Rabbit

Lump ahead looks kind of funny.
Hard to tell it was a bunny.
That was a rabbit.

Fluffy tail and sticky stains,
That is all that still remains.
That was a rabbit.

Bunny on the busy street.
Didn't have such lucky feet.
That was a rabbit.

Responsibility and blame

My boys have become experts at blaming others for their problems. If they're having trouble getting ready in the morning, it's because someone kept them awake too late the night before. If the homework didn't get done, it's because there were too many distractions around the house. Or my favorite, used recently when a quiz came back with a poor score: "It's the school's fault for not teaching me better study habits when I was younger".

It's easy to find someone else to blame for our troubles. What my boys don't always see is that, even if they're right and someone else is truly at fault, it doesn't absolve them from responsibility. Just because your brother kept you up past midnight, it doesn't mean you don't have to get yourself ready for school in the morning. That's still on you. Going forward, we'll try to make sure the late nights don't happen again, but for this morning, you still need to get moving. And maybe the school did do a lousy job of teaching you study habits. I personally doubt it, but if you think so then you've already identified that you have lousy study habits. What are you going to do about it? Learn some new ones. Fix it.

I sense the blame/responsibility argument will continue in our household for some time but it's not one I'm willing to give up any ground on. There will always be outside forces messing up the perfect plans we have for our lives. If we let these disruptions be an excuse for not accomplishing our duties and goals, we will never really do anything. I want my boys to do things.

Not My People

As I write this post, I am sitting in a lounge outside the music department at a small university. I bring B here once a week for saxophone lessons. There's a decent jazz ensemble that rehearses nearby - it sets a nice mood for the place. I have a half an hour to kill while B sharpens his reed skills.

Few things make me feel older than hanging around a college campus. It's a feeling different than visiting an elementary or high school. I'm fine going to those places. Usually, when I'm there it's for some function that includes other parents. Plenty of peers close enough to my age group to make me feel right at home.

But college is different. I think somewhere deep in my psyche there's still a piece of me that identifies with this group. "These are my people," it whispers. "We belong here." At first glance, I can almost believe it. As I watch a group skitter to night class, laden with monster backpacks I can recall doing the same thing. But that was a long time ago. Today, I couldn't skitter if I tried and the thought of sitting through a night class gives me hives. Last week I listened in as a group tried to come up with the name of one of those old musicians. You know, he sang folk songs and played guitar and harmonica. He was originally from Minnesota, somewhere up north, maybe. They never did come up with a name.

So, here I sit, feeling old. But, I'm okay with it. These are not my people. They are my people's children.