Without mittens

We walked around both lakes, but it took us twice as long as usual. That's because we had to stop to smell tree trunks and park benches, throw sticks into the melting ice, eat handfuls of goldfish crackers and candy, scour the woods for the perfect walking stick, pause to think of the words to silly childhood songs with surprisingly bleak lyrics, and chase every squirrel that we saw.

When Signing Woman picked me up for the weekend walk we'd planned, she brought her border collie and her granddaughter, as well as our friend Makes Bread. Kids and dogs turn a simple walk into an afternoon outing, and the unseasonably warm weather meant that we could linger along the trail. It wasn't until we were back in the parking lot that I began to feel a winter chill. Signing Woman's husband called her cell phone to say that he'd put the tea kettle on, and we stopped back at her house for cookies and steaming cups of tea, while he fussed over us and his oldest grandchild.

 

All of the macro, none of the creep jacking

I often complain that my youngest son, With-a-Why, spends too much time playing computer games. Boy in Black always defends With-a-Why’s gaming habit, explaining it’s really not much different than what he experiences when he plays chess with a friend — he’s doing analytical thinking, he’s being strategic, he socializes with other players, he discusses the games with his brothers and friends, which is bonding. I get all that, and it’s true that my academically gifted son isn’t challenged by anything at school, but still, I worry.

“He’s really good at Starcraft II,” Boy in Black will say to me. “He’s made it to Masters. You should be proud.”

Despite Boy in Black’s reasoning, it drives me crazy to watch With-a-Why stare so intently at a computer screen. So I was pleased when I saw that he was using the behavior modification calendar his sister had given him. It’s in the living room right next to his laptop computer and I’ve watched him put stars on it every day. I figure the behavior modification chart will push him to spend time away from the computer. He gives himself a star for each hour of an activity he does.

“I read for three hours today,” he announced yesterday. That meant three green stars for him. I know he’s been giving himself a gold star for every hour of playing the piano, and a silver star for working out at the gym.

Last night my husband and I were leaving to go out to dinner just as Boy in Black arrived home for the weekend. “I need to work on my purple stars,” Boy in Black said to With-a-Why, grinning, as he unpacked his laptop computer. While everyone else in the country is moving to thinner, lighter laptops, Boy in Black has gone in the opposite direction. His laptop looks like the controls of a spaceship.

“I know,” said With-a-Why. “I’m falling behind. I haven’t had time.” He opened his laptop, pulling the little table it’s balanced on closer to the couch. I looked at him suspiciously.

“I got more than eight hours of sleep last night,” Boy in Black said to me. “I got a red star for going to bed before midnight.”

“For you, that’s a good goal,” I said. He rarely gets enough sleep. “What about the purple stars? What are they for?”

“Starcraft,” With-a-Why said, without looking up. He was already starting intently at the screen.

“Playing computer games?” I asked incredulously. “You’re giving yourselves stars for playing computer games? That’s one of your goals?”

“Of course,” said Boy in Black. “We’re building skills.” He grinned at me as he slid into place next to his little brother on the couch. “I’ve been slacking this week because of my research.”

“I’ll work on my Protoss while you work on your Zerg,” With-a-Why said to his brother, “I still need to get those forge fast expands down.”

“Just don’t rage quit when the roaches show up at your door,” Boy in Black replied.

“GG, N00BS,” I said as I left. It’s pretty much the only phrase of computer game speak that I know.

Filling February with stars

Last semester, I kept hearing Boy in Black tease his sister about how many gold stars she was getting each day. At first, I thought he was joking.

But it turned out he wasn’t. Beautiful Smart Wonderful Daughter had set specific goals for the semester and a system of rewarding herself by putting stars on the calendar each day when she did something specific towards each goal. The stick-on stars came in five colours, so she had five different categories. Working out, for example, got a gold star while trying a new recipe got a red one.

Since my daughter is already incredibly organized and self-disciplined, it’s hard to know how much the stars on the calendar made a difference, but by the end of the semester, she had achieved her goals. She’d worked out five times each week, for example, and successfully defended her thesis proposal.

By the time this semester began, we’d all gone from teasing her about the stars to wanting behavior modification charts of our own. So she printed out calendars for all of us, put them in folders, and bought us packets of star stickers. We were instructed to choose five goals to match the colors of the stars.

I decided to wait until February 1 to begin my chart. February is always a difficult month for me, so I figure that maybe the stars will help motivate me to take good care of myself. The categories I've chosen give me credit for things like playing the piano, taking a walk in the woods, and meditating. I admit that it was a little disconcerting to pull out the calendar and realize that we had an extra day in February this year (like the month wasn’t long enough already!), but I hope that filling the days with stars as I achieve my goals will make February easier.

In the airport

I knew I had a long layover on my flight home, and I figured that I’d do some work or maybe write a blog post in the airport. I was returning from a Southern City where flowers were blooming — yes, flowers in January — and it was warm enough to eat lunch outside two days in a row. But I didn’t have my laptop with me, and in my dramamine-induced haze, the idea of trying to type whole sentences with one finger on the iPad keyboard seemed like too much work.

The weekend had included a Mountain Goats concert which was so much fun that I had briefly entertained the fantasy of quitting my job, deserting my family, and spending the next year just following the Mountain Goats from town to town. To compensate for my responsible decision to actually return home, I did no work in the airport. Instead, I put on my iPod and listened to the Mountain Goats for three hours.

When I looked up to see if the flight board had any new information, I saw the elderly woman across from me a sympathetic look and whisper something to her husband in a worried tone. That’s when I realized that maybe I’d been singing along to the music. It’s possible that her sympathy had something to do with my inability to carry a tune, but more likely, it was because the lyrics to the Mountain Goats songs tend to be pretty dark. I guess I too would be worried if I sat next to someone in the airport who was smiling and muttering under her breath, “I hope you die. I hope we both die.”

I briefly considered trying to explain to the woman how much cathartic it is to be at a Mountain Goats concert, listening to a whole crowd of people singing ridiculously dark lyrics to the incredibly happy, energetic John Darnielle while he jumps around, laughing in delight at the way we all know his lyrics. But the dramamine had sedated any part of my brain that had ever been capable of such articulation, so I just slumped back down in my seat, clicked over to the next song, and tried to listen without singing along. With the Mountain Goats, that’s surprisingly hard to do.

Neighbors

We've had very little snow so far this season. I've heard a few people say that they like a winter when they don't have to shovel the driveway, but mostly, everyone's complaining. Snow is warmer than rain because you can just brush it off. And besides, snow is way prettier.

Music in my ears

I’d noticed that my kids listen to music when they run at the gym, and I kept asking them about it, so Boy in Black found an iPod on ebay and bought it for me. “You can fill it with Joni Mitchell and the Mountain Goats,” my daughter said. I am fairly predictable in my musical tastes.

It has taken me a while to get used to the iPod. Whenever a new song begins, I keep expecting the people around me to comment, or start dancing, or sing along. But instead, they just continue along their way, totally ignoring the music, and that’s when I realize that they can’t hear what’s blaring into my ears.

The result is that I feel like I’m watching a movie. I can see people — a man sitting on the floor to catch his breath, two women talking over by the mats, a teenager lifting some dumbbells, a man and a child walking up the stairs — but I’m totally removed from the scene, with just music rushing through my head.

I find myself doing the voice-over narration in my head, making up stories for the characters. I can usually find someone whose body language and facial expressions match whatever song is playing.

That woman in purple is running fast to escape the memories of her childhood, the demons that keep her awake at night. That man in the red shorts slows down as he remembers the boy he used to be, the teenager who jumped from the high cliffs of the gravel pit with his friends, unafraid to take risks. He wonders how he turned into a middle-aged man scared to speak up to his coworkers. The girl in the spandex is smiling because she’s got plans for tonight.

Music fills my time at the gym with an endless stream of stories.

No skating

We've had such a warm winter so far that the creeks aren't even frozen. 

In the locker room

I could pay for my gym membership just by selling the stuff that people leave behind in the locker room. So far this month, I’ve found a flowered beach towel, a wooden hair brush, a green nalgene bottle, a silver bracelet, a crumpled pair of white socks, a plastic hair thing, a purple t-shirt from a national park, and a bathing suit sized for someone with no appetite.

The most valuable thing I’ve found yet was a smartphone left in a bathroom stall. I didn’t want to just toss it in the Lost & Found box, so I clicked on facebook, found a name and photo, and then went out into the locker room to find her. She was an older woman, of course. Like me, she grew up in the days when telephones were attached to walls and there was no chance of ever leaving them in a public bathroom.

My kids never even use the locker rooms — they wear their workout clothes to the gym (yes, shorts, paired with a winter coat) and just go straight to the workout rooms. “It’s no wonder you always find stuff in the locker room,” my daughter said when I reported the day’s findings. “There are always mothers with little kids. I’m guessing when you come to the gym with a bunch of little kids, you feel lucky if you just manage to leave with the same number of kids you came with.”

It’s true that I sometimes run into herds of little kids in the locker room, but I’m never in a big hurry to actually work out. I’ll play with a toddler while her mother’s getting dressed or hold an infant while her mother uses the bathroom. The warm locker room is a friendly place, filled with half-dressed women who are cramming stuff into gym bags, wrapping towels around little kids, or drying their hair in front of the big mirrors. Despite every stereotype I've ever heard, the locker room smells good — like floral shampoo, warm cotton, perfumed deodorant — and the chaos makes me feel right at home.

Playing in the snow

 When I picked up Little Biker Boy on Sunday, I said, “It’s a beautiful day. We should do something outside.” It’s what I always said to my own kids when they were little.

About six inches of snow had covered the trees and meadows. I drove down a street that deadends at a little creek and parked the car. Little Biker Boy ran over to the creek bank. “Watch out!” he yelled. “I might fall in!”

He stopped before he reached the edge of the creek and looked back at me. “Did I scare you?” he asked hopefully. “Didya think I was gonna fall in?”

I walked along the creek and took photos while he made snowballs and threw them into the water. With the foliage gone on the trees, we were in full sunshine most of the time, and our bodies made shadows on the snow. We explored the creek, a nearby bridge, and the woods.

When we came to the hill formed by the bridge embankment, Little Biker Boy ran to the top and began rolling down, his arms and legs flailing as he tumbled. When I was little, we lived next to a highway embankment, and I remember how much fun we used to have sledding or tumbling down. I didn’t join in — because sadly, as an adult, I get motion sick doing stuff like that — but I stood and watched Little Biker Boy run up, tumble down, run up, tumble down, run up, tumble down, until finally he was shivering and it was time to go buy hot slices of pizza to warm ourselves up.

White out

As most of my readers probably already know, major internet sites like Wikipedia have gone dark today, a blackout to protest SOPA and PIPA, two bills that would severely limit access to online information. Even my favorite webcomic has joined in.

I decided to protest with a whiteout instead of a blackout because in this part of the world, it’s a more appropriate metaphor. It’s snow and ice that can stop the flow of information, shut down businesses, and freeze progress.