Blue Sloth

Summer Sandcastle Contest: Day III

Sorry for the delay. Up 'till one this morning working on the angel before I couldn't think straight. Came inside and realized I hadn't eaten all day. Foraged for shrimp and potato salad. Collapsed. Couldn't sleep. Woke up at 4:14, tossed and turned. Gave up at 6:00. Back at work by 8:00. Isabel who had breakfast at 6:00 was carried outside by her big sister just as I was starting my first welds. "Daddy, daddy?" Woeful expression on my barefoot daughter's face. Her big sister has carried her outside. "Daddy? Isabel hasn't had breakfast yet." I shut down my torch, flip up my goggles, turn off my iPod, remove my noise cancellation headphones, set down my torch, filler rod, and steel. "What?" Kelly repeats, "Isabel hasn't had breakfast yet." She looks concerned. Let's not forget Kelly has just fixed her own breakfast with no problem not ten minutes prior, after oversleeping and missing her early-morning swim practice. "Yes she has. She had oatmeal and made Play Doh animals two hours ago." Kelly looks at me blankly. "Oh." I frown at my daughter. "Did you have breakfast today?" She looks at me innocently: "Yes." I smile back as I slide my goggles back down. "Good, Kelly she's fine. She had breakfast. Everyone brush your teeth, wash your hands, put on your shoes and come outside. It's beautiful out, we're going to have a great day." Of course I was wiped by 10:00 and started burning myself by 11:00. Since the burns are turning into scars that I will have for the rest of my life, rather than wounds that heal (think branding yourself with steel heated with a 2000 degree torch) I decided it was time to knock off for the afternoon. I have to drink water constantly with the heat. And add in my pot of coffee and I felt like I couldn't stop peeing. Sweat just pours off me. So hot outside. Came in, took my first shower since Monday and felt like a new man as I put on a real shirt (with collar! clean!) and took everyone for the fine dining experience of Bojangles. Ridiculously over-battered fried chicken never tasted so good. I won't even tell you what size family pack it takes to feed three beasties, one sloth and a mola these days. Alex has been begging for Boom Blox for Kelly's new Wii (birthday present) and we scanned the reviews before looking for a used copy after lunch (universally loved by critics). Got it home and it's safe to say it's one of the best games I've ever played. It's as close to virtual reality holodeck as you're going to get in the next five years. You can grab, push, yank and throw blocks. You can heave baseballs and bowling balls at blocks. You can create your own levels and designs. It is intensely fun for a family with school-aged children. It is even more fun if you can get the kids to give you a chance to play. Just amazing. Some of the multiplayers levels are like the world's greatest Jenga games (without having to rebuild the blocks afterward) where you try to remove blocks without toppling. Others are like the greatest games of "knock down the tower" with cows and penguins and pandas dancing and cheering you on (the soundtrack is addictive too - maybe I just need to get out more). Anyway, we played that until I looked at the kids around 8:00 and said innocently enough, "Are you guys going to want dinner or have you had enough to eat today?" Off to store. Back, Kelly cooked the burgers, I think I had everyone in bed by 9:45. Hey it's Summer. Wife creature came home about ten minutes after everyone had fallen asleep. Perfect timing. I cooked my steak, sat down to eat and realized I hadn't posted. Here I am. Steak is cold. I have movie to watch. I might make it through the previews before I fall asleep.

Sloth Recipe

Ingredients:

One medium-large sloth
Two bottles Aberdeen Cabernet
Three pounds of shrimp, fresh off morning shrimp boat
One pound lump crab meat
Half pound of butter
Dozen ears of corn from roadside market
One stretch of sandy white beach, three miles from inlet to inlet
One ocean, tide rising
One ocean breeze, 15 knots
One clear blue sky, no thunderstorms in sight
Four steel shovels, three buckets, two beach chairs, four towels, and two dozen assorted beach toys
One mini cooler full of soft drinks
Second mini cooler full of sloth drinks
Third mini cooler full of shrimp salad sandwiches, chocolate chip cookies, and chips

Add:

Three exuberant beasties
Three boogie boards
One sloth willing to dig endless holes in sand
Good waves for surfing
One bottle of continuous spray suntan lotion

Directions:

Coat beasties with suntan lotion
Carry all ingredients save for shrimp and crab meat to beach
Dig hole for umbrella and arrange chairs, toys and beach towels for beasties
Dig holes for all beasties and four giant mounds of sand for sand castles
Alternate between surfing with boogie boards and building castles for six hours
Feed beasties and sloth as time allows
Mix with sunshine
Complete castles as high tide breaches the moats and begins to tear down ramparts
Watch the carnage (consumption of sloth drinks optional, but recommended)
Begin to marinate sloth in red wine
Move beasties to pool and throw five hundred underwater torpedoes for them to recover
Feed sloth shrimp dip and crackers
Continue marinating sloth
Bathe beasties, put them in pajamas and start boiling shrimp and corn
Prepare drawn butter for crab meat
Mix salad and slice sourdough bread
Prepare horseradish sauce for shrimp
Pour wine, seat beasties and season sloth to taste

Enjoy!

Anniversary

Ten years ago today Amy and I got married in a little church in Elbow Cay in the Bahamas. It only seems like yesterday.

Wind

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.

~ The Wind in the Willows

“Since I grew tired of the chase
And search, I learned to find;
And since the wind blows in my face,
I sail with every wind.”

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

“To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.”

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

“In the love of narrow souls I make many short voyages but in vain - I find no sea room - but in great souls I sail before the wind without a watch, and never reach the shore.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

Childhood Revisited

Isabel is out of school! One down, two to go and then Summer begins in earnest. I collected Isabel from her little class party and watched as she received the "Best Artist" award, following in the footsteps of both Kelly and Alex who both received the same distinction from the same preschool. She was so excited to tell me, "School all done!" and then remind me that, "Tonight we see Indy-Jones!"

I have worked really hard outside the studio today, cutting steel and bending hundreds of new pieces, so that I'd be ready to go as soon as the big kids came home. They're back now and I need to shave, shower and get ready for the premiere.

I've been trying not to get too excited, or too detached, but now that the day has arrived I find that I am quite interested in seeing what Steven, George and Harrison have concocted after 20 years. Can they recapture the magic? I miss Harrison Ford from the Blade Runner, Mosquito Coast, Witness days. I miss him sitting in a bar in Raiders when he thinks he's lost Marion and his nemesis comes in to gloat and he stands up ready to end it right there . . . only to be saved by a gaggle of children. I miss him world weary, ready to rest for the first time in a long time, only to be wounded more by Marion's affectionate attention.

I was Kelly's age when the first film came out. Perhaps I can revisit my childhood tonight.

A Funeral

It's been a tough day. An old friend's father passed away yesterday and today was the funeral. When I was a young teenager, this was the family next door - and it was a door that was always open to me. I spent many an hour sitting at their kitchen table talking about high school, girls, sports, life. My friend's dad treated me better than most of my peers did. He was opinionated, cantankerous, drank too much, smoked, was at the other end of the political spectrum from me, but at his core he was a sweet man, and a loving father.

I would go see if my friend was home, and if she wasn't I'd be invited in anyway and offered a coke, quizzed on life, made to feel at home. I think I spent more time with her parents than I did with her during those high school years.

It was sad to see him pass. He was only 70.

A lightning storm swept through the neighborhood tonight. A bolt slammed into my street, or front yard. It made an iron side table and two aluminum bats fall over right in front of me on the porch. I was standing inside looking out the narrow window beside the door when it happened. Very freaky.

I didn't get much work done today as a result of heading to town for the funeral and arranging pick-ups and drop-offs so I could attend the service. It's green outside now, and quiet.

I am going to have a glass of wine and sit on the porch, reflect on how I can use the experiences I had in my next door neighbor's house to make Kelly's friends feel at home when the time comes, and learn how to make a gruff noise of wry acceptance when I hear something interesting, rather than pry with further questions or open up my mouth and dump a bunch of unwanted 'wisdom' into the mix.

He treated me with respect and he listened.

Sunday

Speed Racer was a disappointment to me. It would have been a nice 20 minute short film. The action scenes were too chaotic to comprehend what was happening, and while I commend the Wachowski brothers for their concept of vivid colors and surreal imagery, they suffer from the same over-indulgence that plagued George Lucas in his prequel: throwing everything and the kitchen sink into every frame. There is no sparse framing, with something to draw the eye from one point to another. No focal point. Just chaotic color and movement. There is a point where less is more. You should build an action scene the same way you build dialogue between characters.

Alas Speed Racer grows quickly tiresome. As it was, I simply thought of what I would have done to pare down each race to show how the track really worked, how I would have developed each race and each scene.

Isabel loved it however. She went on and on about it during the movie.

Kelly won her baseball game on Saturday, drove in a run and scored two. Alex won his soccer game. We got out on the lake for a glorious day of mud castle building and basking in the sun. We had a great dinner on the boat and a long night's sleep listening to rain pound the roof.

Happy Mothers Day to all you wonderful moms out there.

Monday

How many teeth does an alligator have?

I have three dental appointments for the kids lined up today and I'm thinking that three pairs of beastie teeth might equal one big gator.

Our weekend was full of soccer games, baseball games, and welding. We even snuck a little golf tournament action in there. I continued my P90X regimen and had two soccer games of my own last night.

Right foot is killing me, other than that I'm in one piece.

A couple cups of coffee cures all that ails a soul. I'll be back in the studio in between trips to the dentist, and I'm hoping the right leg will touch the left leg for the first time today.

Friday Night

I sculpted all day.

Isabel was a real sweet heart. She helped me all day long, and when she got tuckered out, she would sit down on the wooden church pew and think about little girl things, twirling her fingers around her stuffed cat's tail. And when she caught her wind, she'd ask to help, or perhaps to draw some more.

We drew on the concrete with chalk: giant cats, and what Alexander would look like as an adult Jedi. We drew on paper (more cats and some abstract swirlies). She brought me pieces of steel for various functions, both helpful and sometimes imaginative. And of course from time to time she would don her goggles and crouch down beside me with filler rod to feed into the flame. Fearless child.

I had a few moments where I had to shut the torch off and simply lie down on the concrete. I forgot how easy it is to burn yourself when you're not on top of your game.

I pushed through and worked despite my intense need to just quit.

Baseball practice was long and hard. Kelly played great. We are trying to figure out a starting infield for the second half of the season after playing everyone equally all over the place.

I have just now finished my position by position write-ups and now I can relax.

Friday

I'm back in the studio. I feel woozy, like the four o'clock mola pains are hitting five hours early. It's frustrating, annoying, debilitating - I want to claw out my own rotten insides. But I cannot sit back and wait to feel better before resuming work on the South Main Project.

So I'm diving in. There's a fine bead of sweat on my brow and all down my back - and I haven't even started welding.

*sigh*

I started the morning by working on Izzie's Rock Box, which is a joint project with me and the kids. They sketch designs and we have round table discussions of elements we want to incorporate, and then I weld what they tell me to.

I added another rock tube today - you drop a rock in the steel pipe and it rattles down through the box and pops out into a basin on the other side.

The whole thing is on legs, like some R2D2 prototype. I bought a fifty pound bag of smooth white landscaping pebbles for her to play with.

Izzie is particularly enchanted. She loves little rocks.

The movie was really good last night. I give it a seven out of ten, with hopes for greatness down the line. Not as good as Batman Begins, but better than most of the superhero origin stories. Kids really enjoyed it.

Sloth Eater

I'm not sure if the blog has been eaten, or I have been eaten, or both. Is there something in my belly that gnaws away at me? Or am I resting in some poor creature's belly giving him terrible pain and discomfort? Whatever the case, I wish this would stop. Now. Immediately. This instant. Please. I wish I could spit this thing out or be spit out by whatever has swallowed me. Or perhaps it could just finish digesting me and be done with it. Excrete me. Marinating in stomach acid is no way to spend a beautiful March afternoon.

Help Me

In the past I've asked for help from time to time from my readers. The response is always interesting, insightful, and unexpected - ranging from indignant 'How dare you ask something back from your readers!' to the amazingly sweet and profound.

We've delved into a wide range of topics: the guts of writing a cover letter for a novel, what it means to blog, the best way to potty-train a beastie, how to properly operate a washing machine, to the inner workings of my guts themselves. In the process, you my readers have helped me keep my head above water as an adult while I've subsumed myself in the process of raising three very young children.

A tip of my cap to you.

I am now deep into the process or building a monumental sculpture and restarting a part of my life that has been dormant for nearly nine years. But it's more than just starting a part of my life, because for the longest time it was who I was. I was a sculptor.

Yes I was this and I was that, and I liked to do such and such, but when it came down to it and I shook your hand - I was an artist. What do you do? I sculpt.

And I got lots of strange looks. Sculpt what? And many further questions. None of which I felt compelled to answer completely because it really didn't matter. I wasn't a banker the way a person who works at a bank puts on his nice clothes and goes off to work to make a living. I was an artist because that's what I loved to do, and that passion carried over into my character, into the rest of my life. It was part of who I was, and I was comfortable as that person - to the point that it didn't matter if anyone else understood. It was just who I was.

Now when I shake your hand, I'm a dad. More specifically, I'm Kelly and Alex and Isabel's dad and it's the greatest job in the world and the most important thing I've ever done, and the most important thing I ever will do.

What do you do? I'm a full-time dad. And I get lots of strange looks. That little pause followed by an 'Oh . . .' And many further questions. None of which I feel compelled to answer completely because it really doesn't matter. Because I have given myself completely to this 'job' and it is part of who I am. The passion I have for my children's well-being and their dynamic upbringing is every bit as much a part of who I am as being a sculptor was for me back in the day. Very few will "get it" and like before it doesn't matter if anyone else understands. It's just who I am.

It's so much who I am that I have let the other parts of me slide away, or languish; sometimes I lay awake at night and wonder if they've disappeared entirely. I know that this is not good for me as Philip, nor is it good for my children because we are moving out of the diapers and toddler-hood and preschool era at light speed into more complex and challenging learning curves.

I want to be - I have to be - a dynamic and interesting person, full of good humour, wit, and a zest for life. I must always be looking to learn and grow not only to be true to who I am as a person on this earth, but to be the kind of dynamic and hopefully-amazing father that I have strived to be for going on eight years and that I hope to be for the next 60.

So I am asking for your help. Pursuits, passions, hobbies, places, inspiration, events. What do you do that fires your spirit? Tell me a story. Tell me about the time you went to so and so for the first time and tried such and such. Recommend a book.

Seriously, I need a book. Right now, today. A novel. A gloriously-light upbeat novel.

Help me discover new paths and new avenues. Help me rekindle the little flame I have guarded and kept going for these years, help me turn it into a bonfire, help me design the Great Lighthouse and place the fire within.

In the meantime, I will be posting a quote from a children's book and its relevance to right now.

Help me, my readers.

In the process of helping me, you may be helping a hundred strangers, you might spark an idea in someone's heart that needs it desperately. Or maybe it will remind you that you need to fan the flames of your own passions.

Working

South Main Project: Update 7

I am working hard. This week I have logged at at least 8 hours a day in the studio. I am working on the figure's skeleton. Hips, knees, and ankles to be specific. Trying to get just the right contrapposto pose.

This has been the week where it's been to varying degrees:

• a challenge
• impossible
• frustrating
• so close
• aighhhhhhhhhhh

This is part of the process: thrashing through a period where you seem to do nothing but work on one small detail that you know you have to get right but that seems so elusive that you begin to question your own basic sanity.

It hasn't helped that I trashed my foot in soccer on Monday. I don't know what I did exactly, but I went to plant on my left foot early in the game and it hurt, and I continued to play the rest of the game - like an idiot - and now I can't put any weight on that ankle. I hobble around on the ball of my foot - which ironically enough puts my leg into just the kind of contrapposto angle that I'm trying to achieve with my sculpture.

I stand there looking at my steel with my right leg locked, right hip thrust out, left leg ben slightly, balanced on the ball of my foot, hips and torso twisted slightly . . .

Christmas Eve

A glimpse around my world:

There are three Lego sets under construction on the Lego table in the Great Room.

Kelly is working on Creator 4894 Mythical Creatures. It was difficult to convince her to start another design since she had built five really cool little creatures this summer from this set. However after the initial sadness of breaking apart the finished designs, she is really into this big dragon that is taking shape.

Alex is building 7665 Republic Cruiser and Creator 4953 Fast Flyers simultaneously.

Thankfully each set is dominated by a different color brick: green, red, and white respectively. But it makes for a challenging search every few minutes and is frequently Dada who calls out, 'Can you help me find this piece please?' Their eyes are sharper it would seem.

We started the Cruiser on a Saturday afternoon in November and it has been slowly growing over the weeks. It's like watching a real ship being assembled in a ship yard.

I am enjoying having the kids home.

Finding myself weakened by pain, my current day/night routine goes something like this: at night I struggle to fall asleep, tossing and turning as I replay each conversation I had with the kids during the day. I recount both sides of each situation, how I handled each confrontation, each lesson. I worry over being too hard on them, over spending too much time on things not directly related to their upbringing, over missed opportunities, and so forth and so on. My mind will not shut off. I worry myself into a fitful sleep where I then have dreams that border on nightmares that wake me up precisely at 4:00 a.m. every morning. I then lay awake until my wife's alarm goes off and little feet start thumping around the house. At this point I roll over and fall asleep for about an hour. It is the only good sleep I get each night.

During the day I enjoy them fully and completely.

Knowing that I have been torturing myself at night, I have forced myself to relax and just enjoy the flow of these special days where everyone is home. We ride bikes. We straighten a bit. We build things. We go for exploratory hikes. We laugh a lot. It's just perfect, and not the least of which is seeing Amy smile and laugh and relax and lounge around the house.

I made sure to have everything done and not just done but done with a capital D. The house is clean, organized, in shape. All closets ship-shape, current clothes fitting, rooms in order, decorations easily accessible. Nothing for a wife creature to do but sit back and enjoy her children. And cook if she so desires, which she enjoys doing with the kids very much. But not required. I don't bake much with the kids so it's nice to smell cookies when she's home.

Isabel is delighted to have everyone around. She works on moon sand, then playdough, then dollies, and on and on. Her current companion is a stuffed camel. Camel goes everywhere with us. To the store, to school, to bed. It's one lucky camel.

This morning the kids went off with Amy to get some errands done and I rolled over and went back asleep. I slept until 11:00 and I feel like a million bucks right now. Wow. I feel like it's the first real sleep I've had in ages.

Tonight we go to Amy's parents house for dinner and then home to put out cookies and milk for Santa. I will put on my Santa Sloth hat and do a bit of elf work while the fire crackles and Christmas jazz plays through the house.

I will kiss my children after they have fallen asleep and count my remarkable blessings. I could not ask for anything more in life.

Decisions

I'd like to take coat rack creature outside to photograph now that the sun has returned. However . . . he has quickly turned into a very valuable tool in the sloth household. He is covered in coats. His shoe baskets are full of shoes. Scarves are draped over his shoulders, mittens rest on his fingers. He is being used exactly as I envisioned.

So do I take all the coats and wintry paraphernalia off the steel sentinel so that I may haul him outside and document his existence? Then haul him back inside and carefully rehang all the clothes back upon his silvery torso? Or do I wait for the school bus to come home and enlist help, risking clouds and the sun dipping behind the pine trees?

Or do I just take another bite of tasty donut and enjoy Isabel perched on my lap as I sit at my desk? Decisions, decisions . . .

Note to dads with kids: if you want to ensure having at least one donut left after the kids have breakfast, you must buy the Entenmann's Variety Pack. The kids go straight for the chocolate dipped and glazed and sugar-coated donuts and leave the plain cake alone like it's radioactive waste. Then you can stroll out, pour yourself a cup of coffee and munch on a donut without fear of finding an empty box (and a kitchen full of kids with big eyes and pursed lips).

Christmas This Year

I gave Kelly and Alex a choice about Christmas this year. I asked them if they would like to do a scaled-back version where Santa would bring them one big thing and then they could ask for something special from mommy or daddy, like extra time doing an activity one-on-one.

They leapt at the idea immediately (I was thinking I might have to explain it a little first) and have embraced it since. Kelly knows exactly what she is going to ask for, and Alex is 'thinking about it.'

Isabel is too young to understand, so she'll be getting more little presents so she has things to unwrap on Christmas morning.

The kids will be giving each other one store-bought gift apiece, and then 'coupons' good for such things as 'one free room cleaning' or 'one hour playing exactly what you'd like to play.' This took a little more explaining to Alex, because when I said for example he might give Kelly an hour of straightening her room he looked at me with a concerned expression and said, 'I don't think that's what I want for Christmas.'

Kelly has asked Santa for a 'child-sized workbench' and a 'set of kid-sized tools that really work.' I explained to her that they don't make child-sized versions of tools, but that Santa felt she was ready for her own toolbox full of real tools. This pleased her greatly.

I then explained that a child-sized workbench would be too expensive in addition, and would be breaking the rule of 'one big gift from Santa.' She said that was fine before I could add, 'But I would like to build one with you and have it ready by Christmas morning.'

This set a huge grin on her face, and she set to drawing plans immediately.

I had been building Alex a surprise already, and have something in mind for Izzie, so this fits into our Christmas plans neatly without spending extra money - and still working to make it special.

So long story short, I began building Kelly's workbench yesterday afternoon, and I am pleased to find that I'm in such a groove of cutting, grinding, welding, and building that I think it will be complete sometime this evening.

I glanced at the tables available online - didn't like a single one of them. So I designed Kelly's in my head as I walked out the door to begin cutting steel yesterday and I haven't written down a single number or drawn a single sketch.