Paco, you're the best dog in the whole damn world

Maybe best creature overall. I'll write more about you, bud, as well as your human counterparts and the whole candy swirl of life's goodness. And its shit. But I'm just days away from finishing this thesis and cannot write anything else but this crazy paper. In the meantime, see what Paco spends his time doing while I'm out of town.

Yah, I'm on the road, but jeez pup, just for a day.

The Boys and the Like

I cannot compel you enough to know how amazing it is to have these boys right now (and here's hoping for forever.) Quin has entered a stage of constant, delusional smack talking, and Otto is emerging from his little brother shell as the most excitable commentator I've ever known. You've most likely heard Dick Vitale during March Madness, well imagine if he were small and cute and trying to tell you about the fox he saw outside our window. He's got this thing where he has trouble getting off the first word.

Dream big burger boy.Here's an example:

"May...maybe...maybe...maybe...

...maybe..." and this gets increasingly louder as if each attempt is turning over a new and more exciting revelation. When the rest of the words are finally assembled, he rolls: "MAYBE...MAYBE...it's a mommy fox AND SHE WANTS TO EAT A MOUSE!" Sometimes that last louder bit is accompanied by stabbing his fist into the air. As if getting that together is the gold medal achievement of the day, and being just 3 and the younger brother to a communication juggernaut, it is a huge deal getting something out into the open.

Of lawyers and liability: Two very different animals.Quin, you see, is full of disarming little missives about how much bigger and smarter he is than Otto. It may be MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE a well-planned counter offensive to Otto gaining in size. So after Otto's fox epiphany, Quin will reply to conversation that had not existed in the room. "I'm five, and go to five-year-old school, but Otto's just three. He'll be five one day, but by then I'll be seven." Otto is left hanging, his fist stuck in the air; his rising star snagged on Quin's reality check.

This is not to say that Quin is mean or mean spirited; it's just how he rolls right now. He's a package of older brother responsibility of which he takes very seriously, along with a ridiculous amount of childlike fantasy. We've never seen him tie his shoes in anything other than a mound of knots, but he insists that he teaches the other kids at school how to do it. There's a lot of pressure knowing everything, I guess. And if he is teaching them how to tie their shoes, other parents must be doubting the school system. Of course I've been delusional all my life, so at least his self misperceptions are mostly benevolent.

One of my delusions flaking away like old wood paneling is that "I'm good with people." Enough people have told me that that I actually started to believe it. I've had my moments with intercommunication, but I got it in my head that I'm infallible. This despite daily tourettes-like attacks on myself for interactions gone wrong. "Sweet Christ, Jared, why did you have to keep talking?" I'll berate myself with self-inflicted interrogation over small talk gone awry. And it happens most often after I try and communicate with Quin's kindergarten teacher. Another delusion I've harbored, or that has harbored me, is that I'm good with teachers. I like teachers and Iove what they do, and that sentiment has traditionally spilled over into good relations with any of the kid's instructors. Now, however, I have no idea how to work myself out of a tailspin with Mrs. K, as I'll call her.

She's experienced and runs a tight ship with the 19 kindergartners that tromp their way into her daily life. I respect and admire that, but I thought that I'd get some kind of free pass as the parent of a new student--like maybe MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE there'd be some kind of recognized achievement of a father delivering his child straight into the classroom. No, no there's not. My extra effort to get Quin to school was met with a scolding. I got scolded in front of the kindergartners. "You don't need to come into the classroom," she said, pointing where I could find my way out. I understand. I was still in a preschool frame of mind where you get your kid as close to the intended target as possible so they don't get lost chasing a butterfly, but not in "big kid school," as Quin calls it.

Smack talk will wear a guy out.

The upside to getting rebuked in front of your son's class is that you feel like you have an opportunity to redeem yourself. The downside is that I've been trying to redeem myself. Each effort has been met with disappointment. And it's a thing I have, where if someone gets the upper hand, I have a hard time getting the words. The latest effort to impress Mrs. K went off much like Otto trying to articulate his dinner announcements, and was inspired by delusions similar to Quin's. I'd found the Christmas gift we'd wrapped for Mrs. K and thought getting it to her better late than never would help bridge our communication gap. Instead of taking risks with improvised communication, Quin and I wrote a note. And instead of taking it directly to her, I figured I'd drop it off at the office where she could be surprised by it later.

I have said that there is a tiny version of me in my head. He's in a glass bubble, and I can barely hear what he says. Often he's screaming at the top of his lungs and beating on the glass, doing whatever he can to stop me. Like when I told that joke on the radio about "Color Fest" in Mancos, Colorado not actually having any people of color. And this would be the case when I dropped off her gift in the office. The receptionist kindly pointed out that, "There's Mrs. K with her class right now!" The implication was that I could just hand the gift to her myself. And the little guy in the bubble was screaming something.

I burst out of the office and into the line of Mrs. K's children. In doing do I disrupted decades of teaching experience; the successes and failures, the late nights lying awake and the early mornings making it work. I'd walked right into the teeth of Mrs. K's delicate routine--one in which interruption does not seem to be an option. The children, who had been lined up single file in a crisp response to her rigid rules, broke ranks and gathered around me. Quin greeted me but with concern. "Sweet god, what are you doing?" begged his tiny face.

Mrs. K did her best to smile. You know the smile you see when patience has been lost and stabbing someone is illegal.

"What can I do for you," she asked above the growing din of children's voices. The bubble guy mumbled, "Don't apologize. Don't explain. Just give her the gift and get out."

"I'm sorry," I said. "Didn't mean to interrupt your class but---"

'Daaaaaad," Quin said in the agonized twisting of the word.

And I spiraled. I do. Especially in the dark light of the in-lieu-of-stabbing smile. The kids voices grew, some wanting to give me high fives, a thing I'd started that has grown to be a bane around any group of small children, especially at Otto's school where one kid missed my hand and hit another kid in the face.

"We got this gift..."

"OK, OK, fine," Mrs. K said with a stern delicateness. "Hand it to me and thank you."

Bubble guy was trying to end his life with a shard of glass.

"Anyway, we got it and never got around to giving it to you--" And the thing is I get to a point where I can clearly hear myself failing, but the words aren't stopping, like something is broken. And then, turning inward watching myself, the external part goes unfiltered. So I chattered, and Mrs. K demanded I give the gift to Quin so he could give it to me. And that's bad. She had to bring in a five year old to help me out of the situation. I could hear myself finishing up something about how excited we were about the gift (Santa earrings) when I came back to awareness and the class was in line and marching its way down the hall. Quin waved and smiled.

"Good," I thought, "I still have him on my side." And I think next time I'm just going to give her a high five.

Despite his father, Quin has truly found himself at big kid school.

While we wait: something I wrote during a seminar at a conference

Here I am at a conference in the Orange County Hyatt. Several partitions have been folded away to make room for our presence. Each quadrant, on its own, gets four light fixtures. We have 16! I'm looking up at one. They look like giant jellyfish--a giant jellyfish that has had its tentacles used to make rock candy. And they are brown. I'd like to think it was a local couple who landed on this design, and after hitting the craft show circuit, got enough attention to have their product picked up by the Hyatt. I've imagined them in their modest home near the beach. It's not on the beach because they sold the place they inherited from her mother because: A) they were tired of the kind of people moving in and B) they were broke.

But there they are savoring tea and Quinoa, and having just done yoga, feel relaxed to the point of being tired. Then everything changes via the cheap Chinese circuitry of their Cricket cell phone. They never use it, so when it chimed the factory chime, both were equally surprised and suspicious. The man jumped to get it. He felt a little satisfaction at the opportunity to protect his wife. Just a few nights prior he'd been drinking with a friend and saying he wished he had a dragon to slay because getting this business off the ground was a whole lot harder way to impress her.

A dragon, however, would have killed him as he had trouble answering the phone. The small, slick, hinged device nearly snapped shut and hung up on the guy from the Hyatt. Turns out the slick guy named Chad envied their lifestyle and wanted to promote their work, and would have called back anyway. So they danced around the room and didn't at all mind that they'd broken a vase. They hugged and pulled away to look at each other. From this moment--after the apologies for things said during leaner times--began the new era. The hiring of down-and-out friends. The niece who made the website and the story in the regional newspaper. Soon the brown, rock candy squids dangled from hotels everywhere, even the big Hyatt in Portland. Things were not always easy, especially firing some of their down-and-out friends, but they hired Chad to consult them to success.

That's what I'd like to think. I'd like to think these light fixtures weren't secreted from a dingy faraway factory. I'd like to think that. But I already did. Because Chad finally got them to come to their senses and ship manufacturing overseas. So now I sit under this alien invasion, brown shards of plastic crowding the light out of oval openings. They're frozen in attack mode. They left so many light years ago with a mission they've now forgotten. They're just stuck there, detached and feeling quite dumb. And somewhere there's a lady picking up the pieces of a broken vase.

Sinking: The Painfully Frustrating Story of our Boys and Swim Lessons. Part 2

I appreciate everybody reading and tweeting and facebooking the swimming lessons story. To thank you I'll give you even more to read. Well, it's a long-in-coming update, and probably why my blog has ten readers: I'll start something and then never finish. "Hey, today I was visited by Jesus!" and then I never get back to share the results. (BTW, he was totally cool. Stoked on legal weed.)

Quin and Otto are now in their fourth week of swim lessons. Sarah and I have moved on from merely celebrating their participation to cheering them on as they use the kickboards. We don't cheer, actually. At least not out loud. We save it for the night time when we lie in bed, Paco providing his celibacy wedge between us, and chatter with cautious excitement. But during lessons, we sit in the shadows and watch from a distance. If you were to see us you'd judge. "Look at those parents, tapping on their phones and ignoring their children. It's why we're all obese [gay] [pregnant] [fill in your pet issue here.]" That's OK, judge away. I used to judge the very same people as Sarah and I appear to be. But it's who we have to be. If we emote even the slightest, the boys revolt. Little bastards. Beautiful bastards. So Sarah and I sit like Jackie Onassis and her nondescript boyfriend with vague smiles at the passing parade.

We call it our vacation. In the humid warmth of the pool area, the kids' splashes lap at the fading memory of our 2006 trip to Tahiti.

Proof that this is actually happening (we need it for ourselves, too.)Proof that we have some work to do with pictures.
This is huge though! For one, we've reached that all-important phase in parenthood where we don't give a damn. I'd like to offer the case in point where Quin had a major meltdown in a grocery store in Granby. I'll start by saying that the whole ordeal ended in threats of a violent death. Before that though, there was Otto who wanted to ride in one of those grocery carts with the car on the front. We hate those, and want to kill the inventor. OK, I'm getting to the threat of death sooner than I wanted, but as we strolled to the sounds of our screaming children, my gentle wife and I joked about how we'd brutally torture and kill the person who'd  thought another goddamned chunk of noisy plastic would somehow benefit our lives.

But back to the action. Otto said he wanted to ride in a car. Quin said he did not. We were on vacation so I said, "What the heck kids!" Otto silently loaded himself into the petri dish of thousand snotty children (decked out to look like a police car) and we were off. Well, all of us except Quin, who was crying because he wanted to ride in it too. This piece of crap, however, was a one-seater. We offered him an opportunity to take turns, and all kinds of other pansy parent concessions, until we found ourselves in a busy store with a screaming, inconsolable child. Unlike most parents, I enjoy this. Because in my new I-don't-give-a-shitness I like demonstrating to the child that he can cry all he wants, even in a public forum, and I will simply ignore him. Now there are those who might scowl at me and wonder why I'd have a crying kid in a store. To those I would say, "buy condoms." That's right. Don't be mad; be grateful. Rubbers are right over by the pharmacy and when you're done you can even beat the prophylactic against the wall to make sure they're all good and dead.

However, to the others who smile and nod, I say right on sister. You know--we all know--that we have reached a higher plane, where not even the squeals of God's precious cherubs can perturb us. And it is on this plane where Sarah and I sit, tapping on the tools of our dignity's demise, and occasionally chatting the way I imagine the Romneys would at a grandson's fencing tournament.

From those seats though we have had to contain shrieks of glee as the boys get on their kickboards and tadpole around the pool. They are learning the basics of swimming, and all we have to do is not screw it up. We're excited about the prospects, but only quietly and to ourselves.

Sinking: The Painfully Frustrating Story of our Boys and Swim Lessons

Some of you may remember the trouble I had in getting the boys to participate in swim lessons. It was my first paralyzing parental challenge. They love water, they just don't want to learn anything from it, and I had no idea what to do to get my children to join their frolicking classmates at Englewood's "Pirates Cove" water park. It killed me. Here the boys were delivered every day to an aquatic Disneyland, not some waterlogged old rec center with chipped paint and elderly bodies bobbing around the pool, but a brand new, state-of-the-art facility with water cannons and water slides and wading pools and a "lazy river." It's manicured to make even aquaphobes love water, and my boys sat on the edge, not even the least bit moved by my childhood stories of riding a bus two hours to get to the nearest pool.

It was not an easy chore, refraining from mild beatings. There were doting mothers sitting in a horseshoe encouraging their suburban spawn, and I sat on my own island, trying to be adorable about my boys not leaving my side. And after a while you don't know how to take their suggestions with a smile. "Yes, yes...just let them be and they'll figure it out..." I'd reply to the reception line of advice-bearing ladies. Whatever I tried; enthusiasm, wit, fear, even jumping in with their class and playing with the zeal of Southern Baptists in a river, they did not budge.

Here's a week of summer lessons with Otto:

Day1: Swim lessons! My kid is the one on the left.Day 3. Still to the left. Far left.Day 4: Yep, that's a toe!

At least he's good with the ladies.

Day 5: Still no participation but there appears to be joy.
There are two parts to my drive to get them to swim. First, they need to know how to. As a child I nearly drowned in a river (three times), and once sat helpless as I watched my brother gasp and flail in a beaver pond before being pulled out by this crazy redneck who just happened to know how to swim. A crazy redneck could swim, but my boys would not be able to. It bothered me. Which is the second reason. I think it's a male thing, but after being denied for three straight weeks at Pirates Cove, I was deteremined to make swim lessons happen.

I conjured a plan to get them in private lessons. There seemed to be some reticence about having other kids in the class. It makes no sense, as they've both gone to school their entire lives.They've been steeped in the competitive, take-no-prisoners world of preschool since they were three months old, so I didn't get the whole "Oh god, there's other children!!" routine. Maybe that's it. Maybe they were like, "Hey, great! Dad takes us too a pool and it's another friggin preschool."

I was at the rec center and swimming through the bodies of the bobbing elderly, when I got an idea. It's not brilliant, and actually is kind of sick, so keep your expectations low, but I decided I'd do private lessons for the boys, but with a really cute lifeguard. Quin already has a thing for the ladies. He might be that kid who gets in trouble early on. You know, touching a boob in the sixth grade or something, and I'm not sure I'm helping to curb that with my choice of swim coaches. Anyway, I found one, and when I asked her to teach my boys to swim, it felt like I was just a couple clicks of bad intention from requesting a lap dance. There was something wrong there.

She agreed. And Wednesday we had our first appointment. I've never been so nervous. All day at work I wondered what was wrong with me. It was the kind of anxiety I get when I have a comedy show at night. I have to try and function through mundane work activity with the distraction of a big event gnawing on my brain. I actually consulted some of the more experienced parents at work, and they comforted me (I think) with their own stories of swim lessons gone wrong.

Quin flips us off with his foot.
I hope that my boys, heck all children in the world, realize how much thought goes into something as ordinary as getting a kid in the water. I rehearsed my facial expressions in the bathroom mirror. I wanted to look cool, not anxious, like swim lessons were not at all a big deal. These kids can sense whenever you really want them to do anything. "Hey, look, it's a jolly, magical man who will give you toys if you sit on his lap!" If they know you're dying for them to do it, they'll forgo Christmas.

I also prepared in my head how I was going to act at the pool. I wasn't going to say or do anything out of the ordinary. No extra enthusiasm or dire warnings; I was just going to be totally cool. I didn't care if they cried in the water either. The cute girl would have to take care of it. I was springing for private lessons, so I figure that's part of the deal. Oh, and I could never pull the "I'm springing for private lessons!" card. It would be lost on children.

With everything planned down to exactly how and where I was going to sit (they won't let the parents leave the building, but you can sit out of sight, and kind of near a TV with ESPN,) I got home from work with barrels of bravado. I would win.

Also, I would not be going. As the boys chose their mother over me.

That didn't deter me, as some of my work parents encouraged me (I think) by saying they too were overzealous. So after the boys left I followed them to the rec center. I found a place near the TV and watched as Sarah very coolly delivered them to the overdeveloped teen. The boys refused to get into the water.

I watched for another few minutes. Sarah spied me and shook her head. I couldn't bear it. I hit the elliptical and nearly pulled those arm things off. What in the hell was I going to do? Even death failed to deter the boys, or at least Quin, as demonstrated in this conversation:

Me: You need to learn how to swim.
Quin: I don't.
Me: You do, or you'll drown.
Quin: I don't care.
Me: If you drown you die.
Quin: Can I play games on your phone?

Nothing was getting to these hard-headed mini-mes. Nothing@!

I did fifteen minutes, which is just over a mile in elliptical distance, and then rushed back to the pool. It had been hard to stay on the machine, as all I wanted to do was see if the boys were in the water. Although, I was pretty sure that Sarah had packed it up.  I often frame it as a lack of determination, but mostly she's not one to humor obstinence. I was working on some encouraging quotes in my head. I could take the boys next time. I had another plan. I'd take all their toys and swear they'd never see anything fun and/or comforting again until they joined in the lessons. "You can drown in sadness or swim in the pool," I'd shout during a lecture about choices. I even thought about a backup plan to my backup plan. These guys can have fun with a dead leaf. I was screwed. I had no plan. Until I turned the corner and scanned the water. Sarah was still there, but the boys were gone. Christ, she'd sold them. I looked at her and she smiled at me. And for good money!

And then I followed her gaze. Some twenty feet into the water there were the boys. THEY WERE IN THE GODDAMNED POOL! I have felt elation before, well heck, I won the Jackson County spelling bee in 1986, but this was like winning ten cars on The Price is Right. It was the best damned thing I'd ever seen. I tried to keep it cool walking across the natatorium to Sarah. Looking away from the boys and the teenage sprite, I used ventriloquist lips to whisper, "are they really in the water?" And Sarah, cool as ever, looked away as if not to be talking to me and said, "I've been trying not to cry."

Yes.  I turned around and tried to watch like I wasn't seeing the the most validating moment since Quin got over colic. He waved from the water and Otto shouted for me to watch him in the pool. I almost dove in.

Later we'd nearly frighten the local high school swimmer with adoration and accolades. She has no idea, and from behind her piercings and on the other side of her extra large soda, she followed my wild gesticulating exhortations about her performance.

"I really didn't do much," she said.

She has no idea. Which is good. We're paying enough already. And Quin has made his intentions clear: I want to go back to the pool and see Alexis again. I checked with his little brother, and he agreed.

About something in 1998, or about now

Let me tell you about a dark place all lit up. It's in here where I can go out and feel safe again. Open up the pores and not be afraid of what's going to get in. My grandpa used to say they're nothing but rocks and sticks these houses we preen and practically kill ourselves to maintain. He's right. He was talking about removing your heart from the lumber and the stone and selling when the time was right. But he was making sure we were intact around all these material things that can gobble you up. And I miss him, and all my elders, even the living, because there was a time when I could need them this much and it wouldn't matter.

So I call Sarah from work and there's silence on her end of the line. I make some noise to kill the tranquility, or what once was before frustration cannonballed into it. It doesn't have to be hard but sometimes you get snagged on things, or at least your arterial flesh does. Delicate skin on both ends try to share what they know so well. Those bits of the day that cling and bring you down. I don't see Titanics but lovely dancers somewhere around 1998. I'd driven from Portland where I was failing in radio to surprise Sarah in Durango. We were falling in loneliness, and not fond of what was going on, this love thing that had been so deft in its maneuvers. "We can do anything, survive anything," we unwittingly thought as I ventured further west. That's where I found that in the cities payphones don't call back and that hanging out in front of a 7-11 to hear about a job was as futile as being so far away.

I got back into town and I was so excited I did this little break dance move and in my white guy enthusiasm caught my eyeglasses with my dancing hand and whipped them to the hatchback of my Tracer. Using most of my partly blind vision to find them I was nearly t-boned at a stop sign. An angry guy in a Toyota truck honked and beat on his steering wheel. Asshole drivers, especially the ones that sit in the intersection and laugh. Because on the other side of that street was this pretty lady. She had glasses too, and I forgot just how they illuminated her eyes and pulled you into her skin. That skin she cares so much for, lotions and creams and dreams of Baltimore humidity, all necessary business for a girl, I guess, but all pulled away with a surprise at the top of the stairs.

In that crappy old, second-floor apartment she had no idea I was about to stumble in, and I had no idea she'd care as much as she did. She looked at me as if she might know me, and I paused to hope she did.

I remember her lunging out of love; not the kind of a momma's or a dear old friend, but that of a lover who'd snagged something along the way. And just at about the 300 block of east 5th avenue she found it, and I was so happy that I had too. And we happy danced sometime in 1998.

On that quiet phone I could hear the what-the-fuckness of mindless minutia...might as well drink if you're going to kill brain cells. We all know it, the fiddles in the orchestra. Something's not right, something's not making the right noise. And you share laughing disappointment over some appetizers before drifting into meal. Kind of hoping the night never has to end. Getting in the car and getting the kids to bed means it will. It will spin around and the gears will grind you into another day. You can't feel futility. Where there once was happy dancing, there always will. Because it ain't just off a dusty street in a mountain town, or suburban house in Englewood. Rocks and sticks you know.

But let me tell you about a dark place all lit up.

Somehow it's only day 2

I'd like to take much of the blame for Sarah's absence seeming much, much longer. I get giddy, and as soon as she was on the plane, the boys and I hit the town. We went to a sports bar to watch the Bronco game, then we went to a park, and then Ikea. We even got pulled over for having a headlight out. Of all the things Remember, police officers help people. Your father just needs help.we did, and money I spent, the police officer asking daddy questions is still the biggest story. But that was just Sunday night. I woke up the next day thinking we'd already knocked out a big chunk of the week. No, it just felt that way, and now it's only Tuesday and the boys are so tired that there's been some emotional issues.

The first full day was another big, sprawling achievement. I dropped them off at both of their schools, went to work, then to my school, then picked them up before taking them back to my work, all of which included the heightened bickering of two senile old men in the back of the car.

Otto: So I'm going to have a party at Chuck E. Cheese and there will be 100 games and pizza...

Quin: Yah, I'm going to have a robot party and--

Otto: STOP IT I WAS TALKING YOU CAN'T TALK I WAS TALKING

Dad guy: Boys....

Otto: BEFORE YOU WERE TALKING SO I'M TALKING AND YOU'RE NOT MY BEST FRIEND

Dad guy: Otto...you've been talking so it's Quin's turn.

Quin: IT'S MY TURN OTTO DAD SAID SO I'M GOING TO HAVE A ROBOT PARTY AND BUILD C3PO AND R2D2 AND HAVE ROBOTS AT MY

Otto: KELLEN IS MY BEST FRIEND, MERRICK IS MY BEST FRIEND

Quin: ROBOT PARTY AND YOU'RE NOT INVITED OTTO

Otto: AT CHUCKIE CHEESE!

Quin: A MILLION HAS SIX ZEROES!

Otto: I'M TALKING!

Can I add here that I'm someone who since the 80s has been concerned about global warming. It's really haunted me and I think we need to do something. I'm disclaiming that now because my lifestyle doesn't reflect it. We live in Englewood, Sarah works in Lakewood, I work in Denver and our kids go to school in Littleton. My Subaru Forester boxes its way around town with the efficiency of a coal train, and this specific one has a leak in the exhaust, which is why I have to leave the doors open when I warm it up. And this morning I was half tempted to pull it into the garage put us all down.

Today featured the most tantrums I've ever experienced in one day. Many of them the children. Here they are, titled by the first really dumb and unhelpful observation I made during each one.

1. "Otto, I don't think screaming will bring us any more grapes."
2. "Then you should tie your shoes yourself."
3. "All I did was offer to help you with your bow tie."
4. "It would have been a good idea to tell me that before we left the house."
5. "I think you're hungry."

To look good even when the world doesn't understand you.The bow tie (or "tie bow" as Quin calls it) has been a major issue. Quin needs help, but doesn't want help, until it's clear it's mostly mental help. So with the shrieking, pantless madman crawling around the house and shouting mean things about his father, I did my best to comfort Otto, who'd tried to hug is ailing brother and was punched instead. And it just kept spiraling. Otto needed a sack lunch, so Quin wanted one too...as we pulled up to his school. Which, as I've stated before, IS IN A DIFFERENT FRICKEN CITY, SON! So I managed to carry the boys into Quin's school, and just outside of his classroom (which was already in session...and today's kindergarten isn't like my kindergarten where you napped and ate graham crackers...it's the real deal where the teacher will even scold the father of one of her students for not following protocol) we sat and practiced meditational breathing: "Smell the flower, blow out the candle." Or at least I did while Otto stared into space and Quin waited for me to open the door.

Tonight, after work and lots of traffic and a bout of nausea, I barely made it home. I picked up Quin and he charmed me into a grinning oblivion as he shared how his teacher didn't say anything about the bow tie, but "she looked at me and smiled which means I'm good looking." I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned to him that I had a relationship with a teacher and it has kind of messed me up to this day.

Otto's school is always a tiny bit more fun (no teacher has ever scolded me there) as I have a tradition of giving all the kids high fives. I did that and then he showed me his paper airplane, something like a wad of newspaper, and how it could fly. Wonderful. And then it was early to bed after we cleaned out most of the leftovers in the fridge.

Watching the iPad from the bathtub has been wonderful for all of us.This morning I dropped off the boys, and as I left Otto's school, I thought about all I had to do, and how I didn't have time to complete any of it. It began to weigh on me pretty heavy. But as I walked to the car I was taken by the blinking "School Zone" light. It's rhythmic and uniform and predictable and it reminds us to slow down. When I got closer I saw it wasn't actually one light, but about fifty little lights all working together. And then I remembered, oh, that's how that's done.

Quin has been very proud of his bow tie, but Otto's reactions have varied.

But this is the kind of thing we've been sending to mom.

Everything is good! Have fun in California!