Spent the productive part of the weekend fixing up the rental in Tacoma preparing for the new tenants.  Now I do like the finite quality of home repair - fix it and it stays fixed - as opposed to the constant updating required with software.  Unfortunately I always find my feature list far exceeds my allowable time and resource budget.  Taking a lesson from project management experience, I try to prioritize and delegate appropriately but I always find myself feeling like there are so many more things to do then actually get done. 

The strategy I can live with is to get he 'must fix' tasks done and take care of a couple in such a way that they won't need much maintenence next time around.  This time I accomplished this with tree trimming (away from the studio, back fence and powerlines).

Good news is that we had some help from some divine friends who were far more skilled and knowledgable than I or my wife and we were able to get a few things fixed (shower grout, mud room tile, paint on all the walls) better than ever before.  My wife and I took on the "Labor Ready" unskilled tasks and left them to do what they do best.  The end result was an improved house but a sore and aching body for me.  

I realized it's easy to work 12 hours straight when all that moves is my fingers and neck - although I am sure I woudn't feel the same effect if I trimmed trees consistently.  A friend dropped by while we were down there who builds docks for a living and studies Kendo for fun.  He was big as a tree and doesn't feel the affects anymore of wrestling large timbers while standing chest deep in water.  Maybe I could figure out a way to work in a wave tank.

At any rate, I'm glad the Tacoma update is finished.  I still need to drop by and de-moss part of the roof and re-seed part of the lawn but these are easy tasks.

This past weekend my wife was away attending a seminar so I was captain of the ship (and two boys) for longest stretch of single stewardship I have yet experienced since the baby was born.  The hardest part was logistics as the schedule worked like this:

• Drop wife off downtown
• Clean out space in storage garage for old sofa and chair
• Make sure baby has a nap
• Wash little league uniform
• Roll up living room rug to return to Pottery Barn
• Coordinate with helpers to move old sofa and chair to storage garage
• Schedule pickup of new sofa and chair from seller
• Move new sofa and chair down three flights of stairs and into house
• Pick out Cds and pack up player for wife to use at seminar
• Take baby downtown for noon feeding
• Check in with wife on how seminar is going
• Get back home to feed 10-year old
• Note that he got himself ready on his own! Nice work!
• Take 10-year old to his ballgame
• Meet godparents there and coordinate ride home for 10-year old
• Leave for afternoon feeding and to pick up wife
• Drop off wife and baby
• Go get 10-year old from godparents house

All of that was only Saturday!  Sunday substitute chores for the 10-year old and building and trying out a pitching target for sofa moving.  Both boys were exceptionally well-behaved and patient with me as I scrambled through the list of 'to do' items and my wife was wonderfully appreciative to have a chance to interact solely with adults for an extended period of time.

Just returned from three days chaperoning 5th grade outdoor ed.  Slept well, had a great time and realized yet another great reason to have kids.  I remember in my late teens and early twenties having conversations with friends about not wanting to be a kid or teenager again unless I could retain all the knowledge I had gained since then.  How cool would it be to know exactly what to say to that teacher/parent/bully/jilting girlfriend or what choices the older and wiser you would make differently than the dumb kid you were.

I realized this weekend that this is exactly what watching your kids grow up allows you to do.  Now don't jump to the conclusion that I am one of those parents who relentlessly drive their children to vicariously right slights and failures of youth.  What I am finding is that watching your kids face challenges or learn new things tickles your memory about things long forgotten (or repressed) and allows you an adult perspective on the dramas of childhood.

The outdoor ed program was held at the same Y facility I first attended for sleep-away camp.  I had a miserable time there.  (subsequent visits and other sleep-away camps were much better experiences)  I was cold. I was lonely.  I was bored.  I lost my coat.  I made no friends.  As the loner I was picked on. I probably deserved some of it because I didn't think to change my clothes the whole week I was there.

Watching the kids interact this weekend I saw kids flash on variations of each of these experiences and I had the opportunity to take better care of them than the adults around me did (or failed to do) so many years ago.  I don't claim to have imparted wisdom of the ages to the next generation but I did make sure the kid who lost his sleeping bag in the parking lot didn't freeze the first night, I kept a cabin war from getting out of hand, and walked a fine balance between totalitarian table manner enforcement and health risks.

The opportunity to resolve a situation differently than I experienced it is pretty swell.  I'm looking forward to several more years of similar opportunities - middle school and high school are just around the corner.

Most mornings I check in with my 10 year old by asking if he had any dreams the night before.  This is usually good for at least a 15 minute saga of swordfights and chases, near death experiences and the like.  I realized recently that his dream-stories are frequently related in terms of video games.  Different scenes are referred to as levels, he frequently is in search of something and acquires different powers or objects as he progresses through the dream.  I found this jarring but I guess it should have been expected since the current forms of mass media shape our perceptions of the world.  I suppose I related my dreams to my parents with cartoon language.

Also he told me that he had a dream in which he was a butterfly.  While I may have modifications to the way I move through a dream world, I don't think I have *ever* been something other than myself in a dream.  Makes me wish I had the imagination of a ten year old or maybe just my 10 year old's imagination.

It's been awhile.  Between marriage, kids, moving, career shifts and weeding through all the flotsam and jetsam that accumulates in the corners of my house, I haven't seen you for too long.  Changing times call for changing tactics and, since I am involved with social computing software, I'm going to try this out.

Drop by when you are curious about what I'm up to.  Browse the categories, peruse the archives, lurk in the photo album, leave me comments, try out the site links.  Better yet - give me your space URL and I'll do all that and more to find out what you're up to.

I miss you and am looking forward to catching up.

Finally am back in the land of the healthy.  Baby Bodhi brought home some type of ick last week that ended up nesting in my joints. By Wednesday I found I could not move - literally.  My infected muscles were set in a state of constant contraction so pronounced it woke me up at night - despite my retreat to the relative quiet of the basement.  I walked around the house like an old man for three days and winced at everyday tasks like holding the baby, climbing the stairs or standing.

I have not been this sick in at least 5 years.

Ok.  To be fair, several folks at work complained of similar symptoms the week before I was out - I shouldn't blame it on the baby.

When I was younger I looked with pity upon those adults with small children who lived in what I considered squalor - drool-covered toys everywhere, dirty dishes in the sink, cracker crumbs in the seat of the car and a trail of discarded clothes throughout the house.  I was a babysitter for several families in my neighborhood from the age of 12-16 and thus was exposed to many variations on the clutter that creeps into a house soon after the arrival of children.  Previously immaculate households would fall to rack and ruin with the addition of a baby or as the toddler grew into new levels of mobility.

Imagine my surprise at finding myself succumbing to this malady - first with my then 7 year old and watching it accelerate with the addition of the baby.  It started with my car - sticky juice and cracker crumbs in the backseat and random sports shoes began accumulating in the trunk.  I just didn't have the same time or $$ to detail my wheels as I used to.  Soon after the baby was born it spread to the house - much to the dismay of my extremely vigilant and organized wife.  I step on stray toys, run a used diaper collection sweep daily and try to herd our stray garments towards the laundry room but like sand dunes the chaos silently shifts across the house and settles again at it's entropic lowest point.

While the sisyphusian task of keeping the house clean was at first frustrating and demoralizing, I am now finding it kind of liberating.  It seems to be human nature to fit the task to the time allotted and thus constraining my available time to clean and organize has forced me to re-evaluate the list of "must-do" tasks, the quality bar for a clean house (play with baby or steam clean carpet - which is the best use of my time?) and pare down un-necessary possessions.  Of course this shift isn't comfortable - the greater the change, the more effort required - but in the long run, I welcome the situation and embrace my resulting changes in perspective - even if it means I am kicking baby toys across the floor for a few more years.

Borrowed mom-in-law's accord today due to excessively high winds making motorcycle commuting uncomfortable if not dangerous.  In-laws are on a cruise through the Panama canal and fortunately we have extra keys. 

Trolling through the CD changer came across Beatles CD - Let it be? - with Maxwell's Silver Hammer and Octopus' Garden.  Was pleased to find I still remember all the words from my Junior high school Beatles obsession.  Back then I spent hours making and swapping tapes with Feliks and working through lyrics in the Beatles Songbook in our piano bench.  Even the notes passed back and forth with the girl who was my first real 'girlfriend' were liberally sprinkled with Beatles quotations. 

Listening to these songs again I was pleased to find most held up well in terms of musicality, instrumentation and lyrical content.  Guess it's like good jazz music - when the composer and performer is really good at what they do, the music continues to be compelling - even years after initial release.

I have been watching my extensive CD collection gather dust and titles and artists slowly transform into quaint anachronisms.  I'm amazed at how quickly something that consumed so many years (and so many dollars) is relegated to nusiance status when life becomes full of other priorities.  Don't get me wrong.  I still love and listen to many of the discs in the collection.  It's just that spouse, kids, houses, bills, work and before you know it, there isn't space to spend all weekend re-alphabetizing or filing the 1200+ discs in the collection.  The weirdest part about it all is that *I don't really miss it*.  In the heat of the moment, building the library seemed to be a pretty important thing to spend time on.  In retrospect I view my former self with fond amusement - the same way I watch my kids struggling with their life and death drama every day while knowing with a father's omniscence that everything will turn out ok for them in the end.  I guess it's human nature to fill our days with whatever seems most important at the time.  Fortunately we always trade up to items of more importance from year to year.  I'd feel bad if it were the other way around.