The Fry Side

Last weekend finally saw the arrival of M’s birthday present. It has been a long time coming, and huge thanks go out to everyone who pitched in toward the gift, as well as those who wanted to, but my donation system failed (I didn’t feel like letting gift money between friends get shaved off by PayPal.)

So click on to see what greatness has arrived.

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Ludwig van Beethoven – “Piano Sonata No 8, 2nd Movement”

I’m fixing dinner for myself and cleaning the kitchen. The lad bounds up the stairs in pajamas and his robe and rushes right into the kitchen.

“Okay Dad, I’m ready!”

“Um, for what?”

There’s a brief pause.

“Nothing!”

“What?”

A great big grin slides across is face and he hops away.

I hear Mommy’s laughter coming from the living room. Finally I crack and start laughing too. He’s so proud that he’s laughing as he hops into the living room to tell Mommy the prank he pulled. Twice. Without taking a breath.

You think I was proud of the bike thing the other day? Hah, I scoff at thee.

The moments that he shows beyond any doubt that he’s my son prove the very air in my lungs is worth something.

I took the training wheels off Austin’s bike today.

In a child’s life, before a driver’s license or a kiss, this is the biggest moment there is. He was cruising around with the training wheels raised from yesterday. After some time barely touching them to the ground, he finally asked for them to be removed. I removed them, and off he went.

Riding circle after circle, a whole new world of adventure opened up to him. Suddenly, he could travel fast and without restriction. It was the official turning point of being a big kid.

I wish that moment was just the two of us. Him spinning circles in the street and I proudly watching and smiling. As it was, I was also chasing a little sister around, who desperately wanted to ride her tricycle into the street. I blocked the trike, but she still wound up walking in the swampy gutter a bit.

It was a special little moment, though. I still have recollections of losing my training wheels and blazing around our street in Oakdale, California. Of course, those memories are quite fuzzy, though my Gram (the Queen Mother for those in the know) was apparently there for the event that weekend.

Austin was surely beside himself. He would come back into the driveway and tout how amazingly well he was doing after having his training wheels raised only the day before. Then he’d be off again, wheeling quietly around our street and down a block as Em and I took a walk.

The lad’s still plenty wobbly, as one would assume my son would be. But man oh man does he want it now.  I guess I’ll have to get either my running shoes or my bike up and ready for when he wants an adventure.

I think for posterity’s sake, it’s worth mentioning that about half an hour into losing his training wheels, Austin ran into a parked car.

No damage except to his pride.

The end.

The Beatles – “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”

Happy halfway mark for the year. Your assignment: listen to the entire album. If you have the LP, you better be listening on vinyl.

Farewells are never easy, least of all when they are permanent. We gave Puma to a new owner today. She has a farm and space for him to get the exercise he needs, and he won’t be trapped in our house with Tyrone anymore. No more fights, every hour, on the hour. There was no way any of us could be happy with a pair of cats who fought so much they made one another sick.

All that is really tough to keep in mind when trying to console a six year old boy. The toddler can say goodbye, not understand that its permanent, and forget it all in a month. But it’s hard for a little boy to forget the great big cuddly cat that would snuggle at his feet all winter long.

He won’t forget him, as well he shouldn’t. I still remember (very vaguely, and I’m sure incorrectly) the big black dog that was my first word, and all the other pets that passed through my life. It is a part of life.

What is really hard is not to eulogize Puma. He’s not dead; far from it. And it’s odd, because it’s usually the farm story that gets told to hide the truth of death from children. In this case, though, Puma is off to a friend of the family’s place in the country to live out of their barn. I really do hope they’re pleasantly surprised at how nice Puma is.

I’ve done my best to hold a stiff upper lip for the sake of the family. It’s the father’s place, I would say, to be the solid, sorted person in times of stress. A father keeps rowing the boat, long after anyone has passed out from exhaustion. That’s not to say we have a heart of stone. Of course things hit our souls, and hit us hard. It is simply part of the job to get people safely where they need to be before finally resting and breaking down a bit.

I wish we did not have to find him a new family. I love that cat a lot. But there was no way we could get through another decade of Puma and Tyrone going after each other, me cleaning the carpet at least weekly (and usually as soon as I get home from work with kids in tow), or me fending off the door from two animals every time I try to leave the house. We will all miss him, but we all, even Puma, will be much better off.

Truly farewell, my silly fat cat.

I have a dubious relationship with Time. I do my best to stop and catch it before it gets to far, but still it manages to evade my snares. It probably is because it’s aided by my two children at either side of me, distracting me with feints of illness and injury and simple hunger.

Silly kids.

That is why I’m eating an egg roll at 10 at night.

And a cupcake.

And drinking a beer.

(Found via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.)

This was a really great debate between the two camps of whether or not to add nuclear power to our arsenal of energy sources sans fossil fuels. The big piece wrong is that they are talking about two different sets of numbers. The pro side is talking about overall current energy needs, whereas the anti side was speaking about replacing transportation energy costs. Once you see that, it undercuts the anti side quite a bit.

Still, it is great to hear those points out. It does seem that with our knowledge, wind can and ought to be a strong power source, and solar ought to be on all suburban and rural rooftops. Hell, you can farm underneath wind turbines, so you might as well plug your tractor in and remove even more of the black energy required to generate our food.

Both points, though, miss a big step: transportation of energy. We lose tons of electricity over our power lines. Superconductors aren’t viable for mass production. Battery power keeps getting better so long as we keep wanting Internet access in our pockets. But how do you think all the electricity is going to get from 10,000 wind turbines to a town?

The first speaker was right that we can hold onto our nuclear waste materials while fourth-generation generators (waste burners, essentially) are developed further. And who wouldn’t love the idea of burning our kill-Earth-ten-times stockpile down to a simple kill-Earth-twice stockpile? That right there should be the front retort of any anti-nuclear energy argument.

So the future is nuclear for base load, wind for topping off that base and for sale (windy in one place, calm in another), and solar for the extra daytime use? Sounds reasonable for me. Now if we can either quit burning fossils for creating and moving our foods (oh yeah, and packaging them), we may do better. Plastics aren’t going anywhere, but I wouldn’t mind going back to a world of mostly wood, metal, stone, and glass.

It would help us all out if we made our food more short-range, for certain. And if I could take a train to anywhere in the region. But if we can at least kick the black energy for using our computers and lights and toasters, we’re at least going to be in a better place.

I promised you all a treat. Here you go!

Denis Leary – “Asshole”