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Tuesday, July 24, 2007 I’m back… Again! Look at those dates. My how time flies. I know I’ve been remiss, but I have had a good reason. I have finished my coursework in the teaching program at Sierra Nevada College, and I am now able to redirect some of my energies here. As a matter of fact, this website is going to help me finish an extended learning contract for one of my classes. This summer has been pretty brutal: I’ve been working incredibly hard on two night classes, waiting tables, teaching kids how to build an launch rockets at Kid’s University, and trying to spend a little time with my family. I haven’t had much luck in the latter arena, but that is about to change. As Ruby would say, “Daddy, you’re going to be a teacher!” Yes Ruby, I am. I finally have a paid internship at an area high school, and I will start teaching sophomores in late August. Until then, I will wait tables a couple of nights a week and catch up on the texts that I will be teaching: Macbeth, Twelve Angry Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Of Mice and Men. The rest of my time will be spent with my family. I have only been spending two evenings a week with them this summer, and I hope to never repeat that awful schedule. From now on, my time will be divided between work and family, not work, different work, school, and family. I know that I did it so that I could eventually have a schedule that coincides with Ruby’s, but never again. Working so hard in school, I missed a lot of time with Ruby, but not as much as the readers of this page did! I promise to write about some of the most important changes in her life soon, but for now, here's a cute kid to tide you over. |
Saturday, August 19, 2006 I still haven’t seen the diploma, but I’ve seen my official transcript, and it’s… um… official. I haven’t written here or done much of anything other than dealing with school and hanging out with Ruby in a while. I got it into my head that writing about my frustrations would jinx my application process for grad school. I usually think of myself as a reasonable and rational human being, but I just had to let the dust settle before I did anything other than was absolutely necessary for admission into the MAT program. This consisted of writing an introductory essay, finally getting the aforementioned transcripts and rustling up letters of recommendation from a busy friend in town and a professor who was summering in Ireland. Several forms and a hefty tuition payment later, and I am a grad student. |
Thursday June 22, 2006 Ahhhh, Summer vacation. I love it. Warm weather, time with Ruby, and my guitar are balanced with a little work, some grad school red tape, and a little bit of long overdue yard/house work. Even with the latter three, it all adds up to a dramatic reduction in stress when compared with last semester. I thought that with all this new found free time, I’d be much better at updating these pages, but the more time I get to spend with Ruby, the harder it is to pick any one thing about which to write. My mind reels when I try to sift through all the different developmental processes that are simultaneously beginning, progressing, and changing. I could write reams about our adventures in toilet training, but I understand that people who haven’t spent the last two years changing diapers are less excited about the potty milestone than I am. They also will find less humor than I do in the fact that once or twice a day, Ruby leaves the bathroom, smirking and shaking her head saying, “That was just a little stinker.” So, I’ll move on to other topics. Her linguistic prowess continues to rapidly increase. She understands spatial concepts and is exited by prepositional phrases. She likes to climb the hill in the back yard so that she can scream random coordinates to me from on high. "I way up here! What I'm doing way up there? Daddy, What you doing way down there?" She is also learning to use possessives, and constantly lets me know whether a given object is hers, mine or Mama’s. If Ruby had her way, there would be three of everything, so that we all could have our very own. She continues to sing lots of songs, including Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt 1, and most of the songs from the Muppet Movie. If anyone has a copy of that soundtrack, let me know. It’s out of print, and an expensive collector’s item on ebay. I get really mad these days when I want something that isn’t available on iTunes. I guess I’ll have to figure out The Rainbow Connection and a few Electric Mayhem songs on my guitar. We spend a lot of time outside. There’s a cool animal rescue park north of town, and Ruby loved the cheetahs, owls, and the mountain lion. There are a couple of babies at Ruby’s daycare, and our good friends have an eleven month old son. I can barely remember what it was like to interact with Ruby at that age. It’s only been two years, but when I look back at pictures of her as a baby or read some of the archives of this site, I can’t reconcile the relatively short amount of time documented by the photographic and written record. It seems like a lifetime ago. Dammit, It was a lifetime ago: Ruby’s lifetime. I laughed and then almost cried the other day when she furrowed her brow and shook her head at me after I referred to her as Baby Ruby. “I not a baby daddy, I a little kid.” I look at her face, and I can't find a response. She's right. Another summer is flying by, and like the Baby Ruby before her, the Ruby that I now know is fading into a memory. At the same time, she is evolving and expanding into and through so many new facets and phases that I can’t keep up; I want to meet them all and spend a lifetime with each one, but I’ll just have to content myself with the fleeting wonder of what she chooses to share with me. Every once in a while, she’ll walk over and pat me on the knee and say, “I love you Daddy.” She didn’t do that a year ago. Somehow, I know that as she grows and sheds her skins, moving into new nodes of life, I will always find wonder and love in the evolution of her. “I love you too Ruby” |
Wednesday, June 6 2006 I hate to jinx myself because they haven’t officially posted it yet, but I think I am a college graduate. It should have been an easy final semester: I only had three classes, and they were all fairly interesting. However, the cumulative stress and exhaustion of the last few years converged into a steady stream of white noise and debilitating mental chaos that made the simplest scholastic tasks seem impossible. I have always been a bit of a procrastinator, but this semester was different: I expended all of my energy vacillating between homework avoidance and then whipping myself into a last minute frenzy to complete my neglected papers, reading, and exams. The gradual build up of pressure as I approached the finish-line felt like one of those nightmares where you’re being chased by some ridiculously slow moving horror and are unable to run or scream. Deadlines encroached, and I was left to panic like a fly caught in an invisible web. I had been working on this stupid degree for so long that maybe I was afraid to move on to the next step. Somehow, I made it. I’m done. Even taking into account the fact that I didn’t start working on my degree until 99, and I did some other stuff between now and then (like have a kid), that’s a long time to be the old guy undergrad. I am reminded of a scene from one of the great works of American cinema, Tommy Boy: Tommy: “You know Richard, a lot of people go to school for seven years.” Richard: “Yeah, they’re called doctors.” Now, I’m just waiting for someone, I’m not sure whom, to “post” my degree. What does posting mean? Will they mail it by post or will they put it on a bulletin board somewhere with a thumbtack? I have been tangled in graduation red tape for over a year now, and no one has ever had a straight answer about anything. No person at the University knows the whole story. It’s like a nuclear weapons factory: each person only sees the part with which they are tinkering, so as to keep the entire process mysterious. I called my advisor, and he told me that everything looks good to him, but I should call the registrar. The lady there told me that it all seemed copasetic to her, as long as everything is taken care of with the Dean’s office. The secretaries in the Dean’s office and I have a history of bureaucratic frustration, but they also told me that I have nothing to worry about, as long as I’ve got everything else taken care of. What does that mean? I want someone to say, “You’re done, I promise. Here’s the degree. Take it.” I’ll believe it when I see it. This fall, I’ll start work on my Master’s degree. For now, winter is gone, the grass is green, and I’m going to the park with a small person. |
Easter Sunday, April 16, 2006 Ruby can carry a tune. As a matter of fact, Ruby can carry several tunes. It is difficult to come up with an accurate count of the songs in Ruby’s repertoire. Many of her favorites have such similar melodies that they can hardly be considered separate. Case in point: “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “The ABC Song.” It was nice of history’s songwriters to recycle that melody in order to make life easier for the younger songbird set. Ruby can simultaneously ponder the mysteries of space and build the foundations for her study of lexicography. Ruby’s alphabet is a little different from yours and mine. My favorite parts are the opening: “ABCB EFD”, and then later when she sings, “Ay Chi Jay Kay, Elmo Pee.” Brilliant. I find myself singing along with her. I know it might be confusing for her later on, but I can’t bring myself to force The Man’s alphabet on my little girl. Who am I to stand in the way of musical and linguistic evolution? Where would the musical cannon be without Coltrane’s rendition of “My Favorite Things” or Aretha’s “Respect”? Where would the English language be without the relatively recent evolution of the Latin character set from the Greek letters and the earlier Phoenician alphabet? Ruby brings new melody, meaning and order to the alphabet, and if that means that we should start spelling things a little differently, then so be it. It must be time for a change. Music continually reinvents itself and the world around it with each interpretation of an old song. Even when the melodies and lyrics of Ruby’s songs are distinctly different from one another, she likes to combine them in classic medley style. Click HERE or on the picture below of Ruby and her Manager to watch a compressed quicktime movie of one of my favorite Ruby recording sessions. “This Little Piggy Went to Market” and “Itsy Bitsy Spider” are perfect for one another. I should note that the subtitles are mine and have not been approved by the artist herself.
So there you have it: Empirical evidence that Ruby is a true progeny and that her genius is not merely the product of a loving father’s perception blinded by pride. But we all knew that, right? |
Monday, March 6, 2006 Recently, my friend Dan called me and asked me if I could cover bass for his band, Rockmachine. I replied that I had never attempted to play bass, and reminded him of the fact that I couldn’t actually play guitar, so the question of whether or not those skills are interchangeable was moot. He said that was perfect. Rockmachine has been a “joke-band” project of his for several years in which he gets his musician friends to play instruments that they don’t really know how to play. The key difference between the previous Rockmachine members and me is that they are actually musicians, while I am someone who enjoys playing the first few power chords of Iron Man on my cheesy red guitar. If others are in the room whilst I rock out, my virtuosity is usually met with disdainful winces. What the heck though, right? It’d just be goofing around with Dan and his friend Jen. I’d never hung out with her before and she seemed really cool. They had been recording stuff for his other band recently, and I assumed that he just wanted to record some Rockmachine songs as well. I’d go have fun at a couple of practice sessions and then smile knowingly and say “I told you so,” when they realized that I had no actual musical ability and kicked me out in favor of someone else. I’m an adult. I can deal with a little rejection; besides, the whole being in a band thing seems to be mostly about hanging out and drinking beer, and I’m pretty accomplished with a 12 oz bottle, if not with a 12 string. I grabbed the dusty no name bass that years ago, someone had given to Ani, and I headed to Zac’s house, the home of The Wax Models (and Rockmachine’s) basement practice space. Hip kids with British accents were hangin’ out upstairs (Zac’s such a rockstar), but Dan and I descended to set up and wait for Jen. Jen is a great bass and guitar player, but um… she was going to play drums. Go figure. I was a little nervous, but that slowly transformed into sheer panic and genuine anger as Dan slowly revealed to me that this practice was actually not just to goof around and possibly record on his computer someday, but, instead, was for a live show that was coming up in a week. A very crowded show... Rockmachine would open for a couple other bands from L. A. Zac was promoting it pretty hard. Zac is a Myspace monster. Oh yeah, Dan had forgot to mention until half way through the practice that we also had to wear fuzzy bunny suits onstage… in front of lots of people. I wasn’t supposed to worry about it however, because we might be able to get together and practice once more before the show. I was panicked, and I couldn’t concentrate. I was acutely aware of the fact that I was spending the entire practice worrying about standing in a bunny suit on stage in front of a drunken crowd when I should have been concentrating on learning the songs. They weren’t what anyone (even me) would call complicated, but it still would be a good idea to figure them out if I was going to play them. Our set was to consist of six songs with a total of six chords between them. Three songs were Dan originals about three different red-haired girls (or maybe the same one, it's kind of hard to tell) and their respective dancing ability. These strange fun pop songs, inspired by the Casiotone-esque rock beat of the Yamaha Rockmachine, were to be followed by the bubblegum pop trifecta of Chewy Chewy, Sugar Sugar, and Yummy Yummy Yummy-I’ve Got Love in My Tummy. Um... yeah. I know. Dan loves those songs. What can you say to that? Long story a little less long: We did practice one more time. I did sort of figure out the songs. Dan called me before the show and asked if I had crapped my pants or puked yet. Apparently that’s a common effect of the pre-show jitters, and as a matter of fact, my stomach was noticeably disturbed. We set up and did sound checks as the bar filled to capacity. The people there didn’t seem like the kind of geeky pop lovin’ indie-kid crowd I had expected, but instead consisted of 40 year old Sun Valley tweakers smoking crank in the corner and frat guys with bro-hawks crowding the stage. We nervously shuffled out to the the parking lot and donned fuzzy brightly colored bunny suits and watched Dan drink corn syrup based fake blood. He looked kind of sick when he told us that the taste was “um… not good…” We stormed in and started to play. It started kind of rough, we missed some cues and had to stop and adjust the tempo on the first song. “Chewy Chewy Chewy Chewy…” We moved into the second song and Dan kept drinking and drooling the fake blood. Apparently he was spitting it directly into his guitar’s pickups, because they kept shorting out. I lost the melody (which is ridiculous because there were only three chords per song with three root notes for me to follow) and the crowd stared at us with confused disbelief. We tried several times to get it back together, but Dan’s guitar wasn’t playing at all. After that… well, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. Dan is a rock star. A ROCKMACHINE star. The band that followed us was a straight-forward edgy neopunk band that appeased the disappointed and confused tweakers and fratboys who didn’t know how to process the fuzzy bunnies that bled into their instruments and botched “Sugar Sugar”. Then came Dragonfire. Ahhh Dragonfire. I don’t know how to describe them, except to say that there was lots of silly string and Kiss and Journey songs for all. There’s a lot more to say about them, but I’ll save that for another time. I’m pretty sure that Dan won’t ask me to play again, so I’ll say now that I had a great time, and even though I milked the “I can’t believe you made me do this” udder for all it was worth, and I was terrified at first and disappointed later that we didn’t rock the whole set, I had a great time. I loved getting to know Jen. It was fun hanging out in the practice basement, and I got to tell the doorman that I was with the band. Someone told me I looked exactly like Nipples the Bear from Diesel Sweeties. No one asked me if I wanted to yiff. (Google "yiff" at your own risk.) Most importantly, I’ve got a bloody-bunny-suit-Rockstar-story in the bank for future use. If Ruby doesn't believe me, I've got pictures to prove it. If you have the time and the bunny suits, I highly recommend it. |
Saturday, February 11, 2006 Ruby and I recently went to the new Sportsman’s Warehouse Megastore in search of a windproof jacket. I usually try to move quickly when shopping with Ruby so that neither of us gets bored or cranky. I was unprepared for her wide-eyed excitement as we strolled past the many stuffed deer, elk, bears, turkeys, lions, and even a scrawny coyote that had been shot and stuffed for the pleasure of the store’s patrons. My daughter was rigid with joy and wonder, pointing at the once-beautiful creatures, which were now mockingly placed on shelves above backpacks, or nailed to the wall near the ATV accessories and shotgun shells. “What’s that?” “Hi deer!” “Big Fish!” “Oh Daddy, Wussat?” I answered her questions and tried not to be saddened by the juxtaposition of joyful young life and senseless repetitive death. Rudolf was a big part of Ruby’s Christmas this year, and her fascination with deer has outlived her thankfully diminishing demands for me to sing that silly X-mas song. As we meandered through the fly-fishing equipment and camping stoves, she was most interested in the gazelles, deer, and elk. She pointed at the store’s behemoth centerpiece of death and said over and over, “Big deer, Big DEER, BIG DEER!” I only said it once, “That’s a big elk Ruby. They are even bigger than deer.” She started a new mantra, “Big Elk Big Elk Big Elk Big Elk.” After I made my purchase and we left the store, Ruby looked from side to side: bronze statues of a deer and an elk flank the store’s entrance. Ruby, from that one earlier encounter, now knew that the larger one was “BIG ELK.” We walked over and she told me where his nose was. I asked if she wanted to touch it, and of course she said, “OK!” For weeks afterwards, she would tell everyone who would listen the story of the big elk and how she touched his nose. She still gets directly in my face and makes sure that I am looking into her eyes before she says “Big Elk? Touched his nose. Touched his nose.” Ani and I returned a couple of times because it made Ruby so happy. I remember being very small and walking through the galleries of stuffed animals at the Nevada state museum, but I must have been older than Ruby, because I understood that they were dead and that someone had shot and killed them. I still was compelled to look at all of them as closely as possible, hoping that they would flinch or suddenly sprint into the painted dioramas they inhabited. I just knew the huge beetle on the fake plant near the immobilized bald eagle wasn’t cured with formaldehyde and had snuck into the exhibit. We took Ruby to the Wilbur D. May museum in the park near our house. May was a very rich rancher who fancied himself a great-white adventurer type. Apparently, May felt that in order to appreciate the world, one should travel, hunt, kill, and “immerse” oneself in exotic culture by hiring indigenous people to serve one’s every whim. He procured much material proof of his worldly travels to show the folks back home how great, white, and adventurous he was. It’s hard to walk through the ranch house museum about his life without cringing. Don’t get me wrong; I am not completely bitter towards Wilbur D. May. My favorite park in town and the trailhead behind my house are on his old Ranch: both of which were among his gifts to the city. Besides, the museum that documents his escapades and houses his coveted trophies and spoils, as creepy and awful as it is, makes for a surreal afternoon. It is impossible to be unmoved by the reproduction of May’s living room; everything in it is dead. Bones, horns, pelts, heads and feet cover every possible bare space. Ruby looked down at the bearskin rug and said, “You OK Bear? You OK?” Ani had to shake her head and walk away. “Not really Ruby. Not Really.” I don’t know what she thought, but it didn’t dampen the afternoon’s fun. Last Saturday anyways, the Wilbur D. May Museum was Ruby’s favorite place in the world. Ever since, every time we drive south from our house, she asks about the tiger. “Tigah? See Tigah?” Maybe next week. |
