Tuesday, February 19, 2013 at 11:23AM We had another long, snowy weekend here at our little New England farm.
Sometimes, those are the perfect days for holing up and working on something fun together, just as the original inhabitants of our house might have.
I spent Sunday in with my daughter in her bedroom, teaching her to play Taylor Swift songs on the Ukulele.
Good times.
Saturday, February 2, 2013 at 4:45PM
There's either a challenge or a plot hatching between brother & sister here.
Either way, I approve.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013 at 7:09AM Critter: Sam, this is my personal space bubble. Stay out of it!
....pause....
Boy: pop!
Critter: SAAAAAMMMMM!!!!
Tuesday, January 15, 2013 at 8:56PM
It's been a long few days at work. We've finally launched a new version of our website, representing thousands of man hours of effort, creating a whole new site full of scientific content, protocols and products to help molecular biologists find the reagents necessary to snip DNA up into little bitty pieces, study it, put it back together again, and sequence it into long, complicated genome structures that tell us more about who we are. Plus: hey! a cool shopping cart!
We're also in the middle of selecting a brand new ERP platform, which - if you're anywhere close to a manufacturing or other large organization - is a Big Hairy Project. We're working with a set of research labs to create a new automated workflow to take data from several instruments and turn it into analyzable data on amplified DNA purity & concentration. And we're taking our commercial software and interfacing it with a new kind of freezer that acts like a combination mini-bar & coke machine, except instead of Dr. Pepper, you can get yourself your favorite flavor of polymerase on demand.
It's all pretty wild stuff, and an exciting time for me and the team trying to connect and coordinate all these pieces together, and make it look easy like a good IT group can do.
I've been getting into the office pretty early, and getting home well after the sun goes away, but you know, this is the kind of thing that gets you excited about your contribution, and makes you feel pretty special.
When I got home this evening, my ten year old daughter (still lovingly referred to as 'Critter' around here), asked me if I could help her finish her chore.
I should back up.
When the Critter irritates us or looks a trifle bored, we reach into our standard parenting bag of tricks to keep her productively occupied. Sometimes she moves cinderblocks around (we had a few left out from the autumn pig roast). Sometimes, she gets to clean out the nesting boxes in the chicken coop. If all other inspiration fails, she is sent to pick up the dog's poop from the yard, which both cleans up the lawn, and gives us some pretty good deer deterrent to spread around the garden.
Our dog is pretty big. She poops a lot.
So this evening after dinner, the Critter asked me if I could help her with her chore. She explained that she had filled up the bucket with so much St. Bernard poop that she was no longer able to lift it by herself. And it's probably going to snow tomorrow.
So, after a longer than normal day (weeks) launching a new website that will process literally millions of dollars of transactions, enabling the breath-taking discovery of the fundamental building blocks of life, and mounting a touchscreen onto your average stand-alone Kenmore appliance in order to transform it into a freezer-sized iTunes eCommerce app, I get to stumble around my yard in the dark with a flashlight looking for a rubber bucket full of frozen dog shit, so I can find a place to dump in the woods.
Big picture, it's all probably good for my pride. But it sure as hell is hard to soar with the eagles when there's a trug full of frozen St. Bernard crap waiting in the dark with your name on it.
Need to keep yourself grounded? I have a ten year old you can borrow...
Thursday, January 3, 2013 at 10:01AM Just before the new year, we took the kids up into New Hampshire to celebrate a little snowfall with some downhill skiing.
Skiing in New England isn't like skiing in Tahoe or many other destinations. The mountains are smaller, and the snow (so say the experts) is different. I don't know. I'm from Georgia. Most of our snow comes in cones. I grew up skiing occasionally, and I can sort of remember how to get from the top of the hill to the bottom in more or less one piece, but that's about it.
She and I stuck my Bride and the Boy into their respective classes, and went up our first chair lift of the morning. I asked her if we could take one of the "green" slopes to start out with - this was at Crotched Mountain, which has nice long, windy slopes with plenty of room to practice your skills.
The Critter gave me a thumbs up and headed down the slope. I zig zagged and tacked back and forth across the hill, giving my body a chance to calm down after being strapped to two long, rigid sticks with the unreasonable purpose of making my downhill descent faster and less deliberate. I would zoom, swish. Zoom, swish to a somewhat controlled stop. And check back up the hill to watch the Critter steadily descend. She has remarkable control. She points her skiis downhill, and goes at a nice, even clip, apparently exactly as fast as she wants. No more, no less.
The Critter has several friends that are on the local racing teams. They figure out tricks to go faster. They seek speed, and get frustrated when they don't win, and show up the next week to do it again. I asked her if she wanted to race or join one of the teams. She said, "No thanks." And we got back in the chair lift and headed up the hill again.
A few more runs and I was feeling comfortable enough to let her choose the next slope. She chose a blue slope, where some of the teams were practicing slaloms. It had a steep drop off, coming from a black diamond above it, where the racers would weave in and out around poles. The Critter just smiled, and headed off at her steady pace. About halfway down, I lost control, and tumbled to a wretched stop. I sat in the snow and contemplated how the hell I was going to get off the hill.
An older guy stopped me and asked me if I needed any help.
"No. Just remind me that I don't have to try and keep up with my 10 year old next time."
He laughed, and said he had been right where I was and helped me me up. I swallowed my pride, took my skiis off, and walked the rest of the way down the steep part of the slope, until it went around the bend and leveled out to something more rational.
I found the Critter there waiting on me.
She had stopped, and watched the racers zoom by, and was patiently watching the slope for me to finally make it around. We laughed a bit together at the foolishness of old men who think they can keep up, and I strapped my skiis on again. I told her to give my battered, snowy corpse a gentle shove down the hill if I didn't manage to make it all the way off of this slope. And which pocket I had put the car keys into. Zoom, swish, zoom, swish, stop, I went down the rest of the hill. Steady, easy, confident skiing she went along side me.
We skied for another couple of hours and headed home, where I soothed my oldness with a hot bath, a cold beer, a half bottle of motrin, and something on my kindle. Simultaneously.
The Critter has never been in a rush. She strolls through the day, enjoying whatever she's doing at her pace. It shouldn't have surprised me that she took skiing with the same confidently content insouciance that she does everything else. She ran cross-country this past autumn for the first time, and was consistently the last to finish at every meet. But she was having a good time. She enjoyed her classmates. She liked the activity and running through the woods. She felt good about what she was doing. And I gave her a high five when she crossed the finish line. She's in competition with nobody but herself. And she seemingly came into this world already & instinctually aware of that fundamental truth.
This is the same kid who, when she was five and meeting a friend at the movies, chose to wear her Pirates of the Carribean costume. With the hat. Not because it was a movie about princesses, or because her friend was going to wear her costume. Just because she enjoyed it. These are the lessons you hope and pray your kids - maybe especially your daughter - picks up. Enjoy who you are. Be comfortable with your skin. Laugh when you fall down, and wait for those that need a little extra time. Especially when it's your daddy.
This week, she got in trouble. Normal, 10 year old kind of trouble that cost her tv, computer and other electronics priveleges for a week or so. (I learned this trick from the Army: "Drop and start doing pushups until I get tired!" The irrationality of the punishment is the only way to restore a little fun into being a parent in those moments.)
This morning, I made her lunch and slipped a note into her lunchbox: I'll love you to the stars and back, little girl. Even when you get in trouble.
I cannot teach this stuff. Hell, if anything, she's teaching me. I just get to sit back and watch this remarkable kid turn into a remarkable person. And wish it wasn't happening so damned fast.
