RBOC, Reflective Late Summer Edition

I'm putting all my intellectual effort these days into course planning and harvesting articles from my dissertation, so all I have in me are random bullets:

• Lucas and I were pulling dandelions from the lawn yesterday, and a bee or wasp stung me right in the middle of the palm of my right hand. Thank goodness the critter didn't get Lucas. If I recall correctly, this is only my fourth bee sting, but hoo boy is it by far the worst. My hand has been swelling over the past 24 hours, and I can't make a fist, plus--oversharing alert!--the hand just started breaking out in hives. I almost went to an urgent care clinic, but in light of our new high insurance deductible,* I'm going the Benadryl route instead.** The pharmacist said not to take Benadryl until the evening because it'll knock me out, so I'm waiting until Lucas goes to sleep, but meanwhile I can't use my right hand for anything but typing, and even that is a stretch. It's made me VERY grumpy, but it also means I haven't had to grade papers. :)

• Someone who matters tremendously to me just let me know she's pregnant after trying for what seems to me to be a reasonable amount of time, but which I'm sure to her felt like for-ev-er. I'm very excited for her and her husband. As soon as she's told a few more people and is into her second trimester, I'll blog about it more openly.

• Lucas's development is proceeding in leaps and bounds. His drawings are becoming more and more complex--check out Fang's blog if you're interested, as he's been posting several pieces of Luke's art--and his language, too. Today he wrote his last name flawlessly, without any prompting. We're also getting a bit more insight into how his mind works. For example, on Friday, Fang told Lucas they would watch an episode of a Batman cartoon at 5 p.m., and he showed Lucas a clock with hands on it. Fang reminded him when the small hand was on the 5, they would watch the show. Lucas pointed out there was a dial on the back of the clock, and they could turn it right away to make it point to 5 so that they could watch Batman immediately. Ha!

• We had to administer a series of questions and exercises to Lucas for his preschool teachers. One of them required us to ask Lucas to "Draw a boy or a girl." Fang did this exercise with him while they sat across the desk from one another, and Lucas proceeded to draw a person, only he drew it upside down, so that it was right-side-up for Fang.

• These latest developments, coupled with others, worry me--I fear we might have a gifted child on our hands. Oy. I'm not sure I'm ready for that, particularly in a state not known for funding quality public education.

• This weekend I took Lucas to the local birds of prey center. The folks there don't rehabilitate birds, as do many raptor centers; rather, they breed, raise, and release endangered birds. They have a very intimate bird show--the hawk's feathers actually brushed repeatedly against my legs, and the crow took a dollar bill from Lucas (the bird can't have quarters because they're shiny and he hoards them)--and some raptors that can't be returned to the wild for various reasons, including a couple of California condors and some really neat eagles. Despite all the bigger birds, Lucas was really taken with the crow.

• Jacob has finally noticed the five or six squirrels that frequent our backyard, but still has a pretty sedate reaction to them. He's recovering nicely from his neuter surgery, which he had last Thursday. He's tipping the scales at more than 85 pounds now.

• Tomorrow afternoon Fang will take Lucas to observe a martial arts class to see if it's something Lucas might want to try. Meanwhile, I'm plotting to take the boy to Friends meetings and First Day school. Would having ninja-level martial arts skills disqualify 18-year-old Lucas from conscientious objector status with the Selective Service?

• This conversation just transpired between Lucas and Fang:

Lucas: Daddy, will you do something with me? We can do something you like.

Fang: Sure. What do you want to do? (thinking he'll get out the guitars and play some music)

Lucas: (very sweetly) Well, you like to watch superheroes on the TV, right?

The boy knows how to work his dad, that's for sure.

• Fang is trying hard to be more social, which he admits has always been a challenge for him, even though he's very good with people. He was waitlisted for a guitar class offered through the city's community education program, and he found out today they opened up an additional section of the class. He starts next Wednesday, and he's enthusiastic about meeting some like-minded people. He went to a Smashing Pumpkins concert with one of my colleagues last week, and they seemed to hit it off; they seem to have plenty in common to gripe about, if nothing else. (Waves to colleague, who sometimes reads this blog.)
  

• Overall, I'd say what has most characterized our first two months in Idaho is resilience, and really, we're not a resilient people. (The phrase "highly sensitive" is a more apt descriptor.) I'm really happy about that, as these are the times that try a family's souls--a big move, a new job, pay cuts, new social circle, no support network to speak of, a new preschool, a Cliffordesque lab who thinks he's still the size of a shoebox. My colleagues and new friends here have been a huge help in easing our transition, and for that I am exceptionally grateful.

*Thank you, State of Idaho, for lengthening the new-employee health insurance waiting period from 30 days to 90. Much appreciated!

**I've never taken Benadryl, but I'm going to take my first pill in a few minutes. Fang is a little too excited about this prospect--he knows I can react strongly to new meds, and he's crossing his fingers for a good show. Will it include further crankiness, slurred speech, or giggles unbecoming a bee-sting victim? I'll keep you posted. (As if.)

Lucas's latest

Lucas has been drawing a lot of people lately--our dining room table is drowning in sketches--and tonight he drew this one for me:


Pink dude came first, drawn upside down intentionally.

Then blue dude came along. According to Lucas, blue dude thinks he's happy, but he's really sad. Hence the tears coming from his eyes.

I don't know what the story is with green dude. Maybe he's feeling some schadenfreude for blue dude?

(Fang also received a drawing from Lucas; his features an "invisible guy" drawn in yellow. Fang acknowledges my new acquisition is superior. That's why I'm looking so smug in the photo.)

I will now take a moment to remind Fang that Lucas has never drawn a portrait of me, but Fang has merited several, including this recent one, which is a damn good likeness:


Of course, there's also the famous "neckchin" drawing, and this next portrait, done at age 2 years and 4 months, is definitely among his greatest hits, and an amazing likeness of Fang:

I'm worried this means the boy is going to suck at left-brain thinking. (Who am I kidding? I know it means exactly that--he's cursed by genetics.) Time to save up for math tutors!

By request: Puppy photos

Jacob is now just shy of five months old. I'm not really sure how this

became this

in just two months. And by the vet's estimate, at his current ~50 pounds, he's just over halfway to his adult weight.

I know I've been remiss by not posting a ton of cute puppy photos, but Jacob is difficult to photograph because he's so damn wiggly and is a whore for the camera. Most of my photos of him look something like this:


He does tend to hold a little more still for Fang, particularly when Fang is doing his back exercises:

Really, he's adorable, alternately exuberant and kind of zen. I'll try to get some decent video of the cuteness to share with you all soon.

Here we go again. . .

I'm visiting my family in Long Beach, and Fang knew there was a giant hole in my heart because of Obi's absence. So he got me an insanely adorable band-aid:



And yes, I know it's mildly insane. But. . . is he not delectable? You're looking at 10 cute weeks of Golden Retriever/Lab mix. He came with the name "Jacob," and since we're LOST fans, we may just keep it.

It's driving me crazy that I won't be able to meet him until Sunday evening.

At 4 years old, he's already a fanboy

I blame Fang.

Lucas the Photographer

On Christmas morning, Lucas decided he wanted to use my digital SLR to take some photos. I have yet to look at his pictures, but here's one of my four-year-old photographer in action.



That's me he's trying to photograph. Also on the couch with me is my "little" (almost 6' tall) sister, who I recently learned is not just a dean, but rather supervises the dean, at the vocational college where she works. (She's 31. Gah.) Between Lucas and me is my grandmother, who doesn't look even close to 86 years old, and my youngest aunt.

Still a 3 year-old. . .

Fang sent me this photo from his day with Lucas. Look at the size of that boy!



I just measured, and he's 43.5 inches tall. Freakishly tall.

Growing up too damn fast

I've been horribly remiss in my mamablogging. For friends and family, here are some recent photos of Lucas, who is still 3, believe it or not:

Mowing the lawn

Guess what he'd love to have for his birthday? (Versus what he's actually getting: one more 12¢ goldfish to go with the big ol' fish tank and 4 fish we already bought him for as an early birthday gift.)


Checking out the polar bear at the San Diego Zoo. This is one of the few exhibits where he actually spent some time really looking at the animal, though I suspect it had less to do with the polar bear and more with that awesome little ledge he was standing on.

And now for something completely different

In this video, Fang caught a pretty typical two minutes in the life of Lucas. The boy is just a joy to live with these days.

While the cat's away. . .

This is what happens when I leave my boys home alone:

Lucas directs

Mr. Trillwing has been learning to play guitar, and he frequently records his progress on video. This time, Lucas decided to direct.

Teaching with hoaxes

I'm working on the next Electronic Envelope for the teaching center where I work, and I'm including a brief article on the Edward Owens hoax perpetuated by Mills Kelly's class at George Mason University. I'm including the short piece here not so much for the text--which you may or may not find useful--but for the little pirate lemming I Photoshopped together. I'm just so amused with myself. . .

(photo credits: lemming • pirate hat)

Late this fall, Jane Browning created a blog about her senior research project on Edward Owens, purportedly the last American pirate. The site includes information about Owens, images of his last will and testament as well as a partial transcription of it, video interviews with history professors, a video of Jane exploring the area immediately around Owens's house, and a link to a Wikipedia entry that Browning created that passed review by the online encyclopedia's volunteer editors.

In December it was revealed that Jane Browning does not exist, and that the site was a hoax perpetuated by the students in a history seminar at George Mason University. The purpose of the hoax, according to an explanation on the project site, "was to spend time thinking about how easily information takes on a life of its own online, ethics in the historical profession, and the role of digital media in popular culture." The course syllabus (PDF) explains Professor Mills Kelly's learning goals for the course:

I do have some specific learning goals for this course. I hope that you’ll improve your research and analytical skills and that you’ll become a much better consumer of historical information. I hope you’ll become more skeptical without becoming too skeptical for your own good. I hope you’ll learn some new skills in the digital realm that can translate to other courses you take or to your eventual career. And, I hope you’ll be at least a little sneakier than you were before you started the course.

Do not miss Mills Kelly's post on the topic, and especially the comments section, in which some smart folks who were taken in by the hoax weigh in on the project.

This strategy--teaching about hoaxes, or better yet by perpetuating a hoax--has implications far beyond historiography and historical research. My colleague Mikaela Huntzinger immediately pointed out its potential in crafting a course in ecology, for example. I agree. I recall one of the harder exam questions from my undergraduate years, from the final of an interdisciplinary special topics course on animal locomotion, was something like, "You're standing in line at the supermarket and you see a tabloid that claims scientists have discovered an amazing creature" with certain characteristics--limb and spine length, range of motion, and so on. The professor wanted us to argue whether or not such a creature could exist based on what we had learned in class. In other words, we were to synthesize what we had learned in class to determine whether or not the tabloid article was a hoax.

It all reminds me of a larger, more complex, and much more fun version of the game Balderdash, in which players try to convince one another that their made-up definition of a real but arcane word is the actual one. Imagine a class on Romantic poets in which the professor asks students to determine which samples of blank verse actually are by Wordsworth--and in which the students get extra points if they submit, and other students fall for, their own faux Wordsworthian blank verse. (Hint: incorporate the word "gleam." Throws me every time.)

Have you taught with hoaxes? Have you fallen for any? (Sokal hoax or lemming suicides, anyone?) And how do you teach your students not to be so gullible?

Lucas's favorite accessory

He wears the cape all the time--even to bed.

Happy holidays from our family to yours

Learning to converse

The scene: It's getting late for Lucas, a bit past his bedtime tonight. He's been using safety scissors to cut ever-tinier fish from pieces of paper. He is wearing a polo shirt, brown corduroy pants, and a long red cape, and he's been prattling on about cutting and paper and fish. Then, suddenly:

Lucas: I'm tiny.

Me: You're not tiny. You're 3 years old and (gets out the tape measure) 42 inches tall.

Lucas: I'm all over my place.

Update: Lucas and Obi

I've been crazy overwhelmed, and I have a dozen blog posts percolating in my head. Tonight I need to catch up on some grading, write a talk I'm giving as a guest lecturer in a class I used to teach, read several articles for my museum studies grad seminar tomorrow, and plan for the museum studies class. And yes, it's 7 p.m. now.

But I have a couple things I need to blog before I forget them. The first is a Lucas update, so helpfully provided this week by Fang. Thanks, Honey!

Also, there was this exchange this morning:

Lucas: I squeezed Daddy.

Me: You squeezed Daddy or you hugged him?

Lucas: I squeezed Daddy.

Me: What's the difference between squeezing and hugging?

Lucas: (already wearing his red cape) That's a job for Supe'man!

The second thing I've been meaning to blog about is the new dog. Obi, he is not so easy to deal with. He's got this crazy puppy chewing thing going on that you really must see to believe. He is getting better about jumping up on people (he does it only about 35% of the amount he used to jump), and we just dropped a wad on some private lessons with a trainer as well as 10 group lessons, so he's learning to sit and lie down. Walking on a leash is a whole 'nother problem, and Obi has some serious territorial issues to work through.

But I had a revelation about him. See, when we told the trainer that he's about 14 months old--that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) told us he was 10 months old when we adopted him--she said the local SPCA tells everyone that any dog under 3 years old is 10 months old. I guess it's a popular age. That's when it dawned on me that Obi is also probably not the mix of breeds that the SPCA claimed him to be. Of course, since Obi was a stray, the SPCA folks couldn't know exactly what breeds he is, so they went with the popular Australian Shepherd x German Shepherd cross. And he does look a little German Shepherdy in that he's black and lanky. But the older he gets, the more he looks like--gulp--a Border Collie.

And since he likes to get soaked, I'm thinking he's a Border Collie x Labrador Retriever cross. A Google images search pretty much confirms this. There are a lot of BC x Lab crosses that look like Obi.

Which means, unfortunately, that we may have a very, very smart dog on our hands. Mr. Trillwing thinks he's dumb as a post, but I suspect Obi is like that kid you knew in high school who seemed a total slacker but then up and earned a perfect score on the SAT. Which means: after several more months of hard work, I suspect we'll have a wonderful dog. But right now. . . not so much.

Retail therapy

Spent way more on shoes during my lunch break today than I should have. But aren't they pretty?

BlogHer?

Are any of my readers going to BlogHer in San Francisco this week? If so, I'd be delighted to meet you. Please let me know in the comments, or at trillwing -at- gmail -dot- com.

Thanks!



P.S. Here is some grainy footage of the new dog--a black dog in a dim room--so that you can see how, er, energetic he is:



He is also a chewer. We're calling him Obadiah, Obi for short. Once we get past the dumb chewing puppy stage, he will be an excellent dog.

Puppy!

I've been tweeting* about this but haven't mentioned it here. Mr. Trillwing and I have decided--though our hearts are still heavy with grief for Woody--that it's time to welcome a new dog into the house.

Enter "Ricky." (Name change coming soon--please leave your nominations in the comments.)


I awoke from a nap on Saturday to find Mr. Trillwing sneaking in the front door. Since he was carrying some DVDs, I asked if he'd been to the video store.

"Yeah, but that's just my cover story," he said. He admitted he had gone to check out the dogs at the weekly SPCA adoption hours at the local Petco. And there he had met Ricky.

I quickly pulled up Ricky's profile online, and found this description:

Ricky is about a year old, maybe a bit younger, he acts like a goofy puppy, his coat is really silky soft, and he might have some more growing to do. He is about 50 lbs now. He was a stray found by a good samaritan, so he isn't sure what to do on leash (he doesn't pull at ALL, but he bumps me a lot, and zig zags a lot), and is a bit fearful of people, dogs, cars, etc on our walks. He is also, terrified of cats. That said, the dog is a LOVER. He is goofy and funny, loves to fetch, wants to hang out wherever I am in the house, prefers to chew his toys ON my feet, legs or lap, and picks up commands VERY quickly. I think he'd be a dream to train, and with some confidence boosting, is going to be a first-rate dog.No matter what he is, he's adorable. He has some of the biggest ears I've ever seen on a dog, and when we go on a walk, they touch he holds them so high, and swivels them around like a rabbit would, or a satellite. Hilarious. Overall, he is an absolute sweetheart of a dog.

That was enough for me to throw myself in the car and rush over to Petco, only to find that Ricky's foster parent had taken him home for the day. I put in an application for the dog and waited impatiently. . .and then we were invited to an adoption interview at the farmer's market tonight.

It was there I met Ricky. He immediately jumped into Mr. T's lap:


It caught Mr. T off guard, and he actually let a genuine smile creep onto his face. I knew at that moment that we must. take. this dog. home. with us. Plus, the dog was really good with Lucas.


Seriously, I don't know if I've ever met a sweeter dog.



We passed the adoption interview, signed the papers and the check for the adoption fee, and we'll be bringing "Ricky" home on Tuesday.

Is he not adorable?



*I just realized I have 700 updates on Twitter. If my blogging has slowed down here, blame my fellow tweetybirds.

Two photos of our smoky sequestration

Here's Lucas at one of his favorite pastimes: arts and crafts. We keep our kitchen table overflowing with paper, glue sticks, small glueable objects, watercolor paint, markers, crayons, stickers, scissors, and even a hole punch. (When we eat at a table*, we eat in the dining room.)




We've been spending more time than usual inside. Why? The damn fires. Here's a photo I took about an hour or an hour and a half before sunset this evening.



Nice, eh? Those colors are pretty damn accurate, and yes, the sun really did seem to be that far away.

On the upside, it hasn't been as warm lately as it usually is this time of year. Hmmmm. . . I wonder why! :P


*Our big comfy couch has this nifty fold-down flap (I call it "the bachelor flap") in the middle that makes a nice little table and has drink holders. It's verrrrry easy to get into the habit of eating there.