Big

This guy! I love him so much. What an all around great guy. Funny, charming, caring, sharp as a tack and ridiculously good-looking. Here's a sweet shot of him at Luigi's (old school Luigi's). We were waiting for pizza. Little by little, we are running the Sacramento pizza circuit. I forgot how much I liked old school Luigi's. Nice pies, even if we had to wade through a primordial stew of Hepatitis B, roundworm and used condoms to get there.



Last night was open house night at Ira's school. Each open house usually features some special
artwork from the students. This time it was a self portrait with the classic Montessori theme: Peace Begins With Me. I love how he drew his hair here, he's got the Eddie Munster widow's peak just perfect. The portrait also shows him holding a hammer (that's what he told me). I have since found out that he told the teacher it was a toothbrush. What a rascal! I love him anyway. Just remember, peace begins with Ira or else!

I wanted to write this down quickly before it became lost to time. It is so fascinating to me that Ira has no concept of aging and consequently becoming an adult. Not so much lately, but every once in a while he gets very anxious about growing up. His five year old brain is convinced that he's destined to grow up as fast as Tom Hank's character in Big. He's never seen the movie, but it's exactly what he fears will happen. He asks a lot about what we will do when he wakes up one day and finds he is a grown up. Where will he get his clothes?! We've been around and around in circles about this. I have tried many different ways of explaining that growing up into an adult takes a long time. First you're a kid, then you're a bigger kid, then you're a teenager and eventually you're an adult. I didn't realize until recently that he has no frame of reference for a teenager transitioning into an adult. He simply hasn't been alive long enough to have known anyone going through this. He knows plenty of adults, but they've always been adults to him. He isn't capable of thinking of them as being children or teenagers once. This all kind of blows my mind when I think about it. Anyway, I finally had to come up with a stock answer for when he's worried about suddenly waking up and finding grown up clothes that fit. I said he could borrow some of dad's clothes until we could go clothes shopping. It worked.

Running from scissors

I've made a terrible mistake: I tried to trim my kid's hair and I effed it up. This is not really the first time this has happened either. In fact, I should know better. I am not even sure why after the last time I effed it up, that I decieded to try it again. Clearly, hair trimming is not my best domestic trick (I cook a fantastic soup!).

It all starts out so innocently. Oh, look at my flaquito's hair. It's falling in his eyes! Just a quick trim won't hurt. I make the trim and satisfied with the instant results and complete absence of catastrophy, I press on. I continue the trim...every time! I never quit while I'm ahead with the trim. I should probably never start. Some people are great at this. I admire you people and that is why you are paid handsomely. I am not one of these good-with-scissors-types and I have no interest in changing that. I have many other useful party tricks. Have I mentioned the soup?

I must resist picking up those scissors again. P.S. We got it fixed by a skilled tradesman.

The many moods

Mood boards have taken the blog world by storm. I just got access to some nice design software and I'm trying to learn how to use it, so I made this mood board for a little cycling season style inspiration.

I'm outfitting my bike with yellow accents this spring because:

A) Ain't nothing wrong with looking good.
B) Easy to identify if stolen.
C) I need a new rear tire anyway because the one I put on last season was a tire-shaped piece of garbage.

I'm pretty sure I saw a guy bring a stolen bike into a shop last week. He came in on this very expensive, Felt junior road bike, which he looked ridiculous trying to walk with because it was so tiny and he was so adult-sized. He asked the bike shop guys for a pump to fill the tires, but couldn't figure out the bike's presta valves. All the while, he kept asking the shop guys if it was a nice bike. I had a pretty bad feeling about it since it seemed like such a shady situation. It bummed me out to think of some kid getting their sweet bike stolen from their garage, or worse, bike-jacked. I hope this never happens to my bike, which I love, so I'm going to make my already unique bike just a little more custom. This effort won't guarantee it theft-proof, but it will make it easy to spot in case it is stolen.

Try to guess

We took Ira fishing again. He had a blast and caught two fish, with a lot of help of course. Sadly one of the fish we caught swallowed the whole hook and bait and when the hook was removed, it killed the poor fish. Oh! So many complicated feelings. I caused the suffering of a life! I maybe made a hawk a nice sushi lunch? Who knows. It's some circle of life stuff right there. The universe has probably already righted itself and I really shouldn't keep thinking about it, but I do.

Speaking of my precious little tax deduction, he's doing just great. He's got so much to say about everything all the time. Who said men don't talk? Ira's favorite conversation filler is the "try to guess" game. He'll challenge you to guess what he sees or is thinking. It could be anything! I never win, even when I know I'm right. And he's turning out with a quick little wit, too. Leon was leaving me and Ira for the evening and after announcing, "All right, I'm taking off..." without missing a beat, Ira responds, "What are you taking off in? A rocket?" Dad is bested! Certainly if I included this account in a letter to the school we're trying to get him into right now, they'd admit him immediately. This is life with a verbally over-active five year old. The kid shows promise. P.S. He finally has a loose tooth.

There's not much new with me besides a lot of boring fitness stuff (nutrition, BMI charts, shredding, bikes, testing impact activity for shin splint irritation). But let me tell you what happened today: I cracked the other side of my neck (the side that doesn't crack). Holy wow. I want to sing an ode from the rooftops, I want to sing it on the meadows in the shadows of the Austrian alps. I feel like I just won first prize at the 2012 Neck Tension Relief Pageant. This is the wierd part: I must have jimmied loose a craving somehow because suddenly, and quite immediately post neck crack, I had an intense craving for cherry cheesecake. I called Rick's Dessert Diner and they do not have it. My life will just not be right without a slice of cherry cheesecake and I don't know where to start looking for it! There, this is my punishment for my part in the taking of an innocent fish life.