#46: Family Game Night

Friday night is traditionally nacho nite. This Friday we also decided to make it a family game night. Pete is just coming into the right age for that, and Henry is always down for whatever.

The game we can all handle right now is Shoots & Ladders, or in the version we have, Slips and Ladders.

Henry was in the running for a while but hit a big slip and bounced back to the start. But he was stoic about it. Pete and the parents wound up in a three-way tie one move away from the finish line. This was the moment for Pete to learn a Big Lesson. He spun a 3 but wanted a 1, so he moved the arrow to the 1. We told him he couldn't cheat, he threw a fit, and waaah, waaaaah, it was off to Time Out for a Conversation.

He came back like a trooper though, actually apologized and even acted like he knew what he had done wrong. And then he won honestly. Good times.

#45: Hooky

Played hooky from work the other day. I had a good reason - my wife was feeling really sick and there were 1,983 things that had to be done by a parent that day. If not her, who?

Me, that's who! And it was great. One of the main things to do was take my son Henry to Shriners for an occupational therapy appointment. He goes weekly, but I haven't been able to get to one in ages. It was one of my New Year's Resolutions to attend more, so this was perfect.

What he's been working on lately is mastering driving a power wheelchair using his mind. We, and by "we" I mean his expert therapists, started out with pedals on either side of his head for forward, left, and right. Over months of trial and error we've determined that he works best with the pedals situated at shoulder level. So he leans straight back to go forward, or leans to the left or right to turn. He's able to scoot down hallways and stop when he wants to stop, or make his way into the gym room to play ball and turn some cookies, as shown below. This is not bad for a kid who can't walk and has serious cortical vision impairment!

Yes, this was quite a bit better than work.

#44: Hold That Tiger

Cat-holding: this will be the new "mindfulness" fad. Get in ahead, folks.

The cats and I have this thing, where they prefer to sit on and cuddle with my wife and see me more as just a food dispenser. Lemmy especially.

So we were joking around about it this evening and my wife bets me I can't hold Lemmy in my hands for two minutes. (He'll routinely take a long holding from her, even riding in her sweater.)

Pull out the stop watch and give it a try: I pick up Lemmy, pet him, talk to him, and he squirms out after 29 seconds. What the hell?

Try again, says my wife. Hold more still. Don't do anything but hold him. Slow down. Breathe. Be calm.

Fine, so I'm a fidgety, bouncy person. I get ragged on at work (and home, and on the bus) for always drumming on things with my fingers, I'm shaky, I have trouble holding still. But let's see about this.

I try again.  I don't talk so much beyond a murmur. I don't pet so much. I just stand, slow my breathing, gently rock a bit, still my mind. 30 seconds .......... 60 .......... 1:30 ..... 1:45...1;50...1:55, 56, 57,58,59 BOOM! Did it! I set Lemmy down gently.  He meows contentedly.

That was interesting. But now I'm all sneezy.

#43: Egg Hunt

As mentioned, I am volunteering this winter and spring to go out and jump in some local swamps to count frog and salamander eggs for Science.

This Saturday was my first outing, in a pond at Howell Territorial Park on Sauvie Island.

It's been years since I spent time around pure wildlife buffs - I'd have to reach back to my teens, attending OMSI summer camps, as the last time I was surrounded by nothing but others geeking out this bad on creepy crawly things. The amount of intel swapped was astounding, on everything from "what is that bug," to fishing and hunting tips, to learning about a group of people who go out at the same time each year to hand-carry hundreds of frogs across Highway 30, when they come out of Forest Park and make for Sauvie Island to mate. Which ties right in to what we were doing here.

The mission: to count egg masses for the red-legged frog and the northwestern salamander. The purpose: see how their populations are doing and how they are responding to changes in management. The how: by putting on waders and jumping in.

Here's a look at how it went.

#42: Paid Off Student Loans

This is new! This is big!

Now, it's my wife's student loans, which were small, not mine, which are enormous. So this is like, say, stomping on a marmot while your head is still in the jaws of a grizzly bear.

But still: cram it, marmot! You done, son. Feels good.

#41: Sponsored

So I may have tiptoed obliquely around this before but here's something about me:

I'm Like A Chocoholic, But For Booze

Did you ever know a "chocoholic"? One of those folks who just can't get enough chocolate? I bet there's at least one in your home or workplace.

...

To be honest, I'm a bit of a chocoholic myself. Except for one small detail. You see, instead of being addicted to chocolate, I'm addicted to booze. 

And this is something I (and my family) have been struggling with for years, in fits and starts, with periods of great success and titanic failure.

(It may come as no surprise if I tell you this blog was conceived as part of my plan for recovery.)

Anyway, a couple years ago I started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, which have been wonderful, but I have been holding back from throwing myself fully into "the program," that is, into working them 12 steps I'm sure you've heard about.

I'm shy and I'm a procrastinator, and I have a lot of fear around pushing into, specifically, Step 4 - making a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself - which is really where the steps get serious. I've also, for the same reasons, held back from getting a sponsor.

I believe that my setbacks, my relapses, have a lot to do with my failure so far to take these plunges.

Well, I am happy to say that finally, on Thursday, I approached and asked somebody to be my sponsor. As far as new things go, this was a biggie for me.

I can't help but liken it to asking somebody out on a date, which I am also not good at.  (I never brought myself to go to a dance in high school, and my wife and I got together more or less without any formal dating, in the sense of taking her out to dinner or what have you.)

So it seems only appropriate that we are getting coffee on Sunday. Or as I told my wife when I got home from Thursday's meeting: "I have a date for Valentine's Day! His name is Ted!"

#40: Terror Treadmill

So I told you before about Motorhead Treadmill. Well, today I tried getting up at 5:15 to get some exercise in. I am also still on the scary story kick. So I was reading this one called "TheOddkids" which more or less has caves, bugs, and running away from things that live in caves and are made of bugs as its main selling points.

(Image stolen from the Internet, sorry.)

This was nice because did I mention the treadmill's out in our cold, dark, cluttered and bug-filled garage? Yeah, so this was a good way to kick off the day. Not scary, really, but creepy-crawly. Just a touch of adrenaline to complement the exercise endorphins.

Honestly I don't get how people can just do exercise in a well-lit gym with other people and the Oprah network on a big screen. How do you even get up for that?

#39: 7 Days of On-the-Fly Nature Photography, Day 7

Tree and building.

Monday, so back to work, back to the city. It was a beautiful day, though.

#38: 7 Days of On-the-Fly Nature Photography, Day 6

Manzanita Beach, completely empty.

#37: 7 Days of On-the-Fly Nature Photography, Day 5

The weekend hits: we get to leave town.  

This is brother-in-law fishing on Nehalem Bay. We were mainly out crabbing. Only caught one. Too much fresh water in the bay from a big rain the day before, we reckon.

#36: 7 Days of On-the-Fly Nature Photography, Day 4

Trees. Just some trees, in the morning sun.

#35: 7 Days of On-the-Fly Nature Photography, Day 3

I think I can see some nature from my desk. Here, in the zoom lens. See it, behind the - there!

#34: 7 Days of On-the-Fly Nature Photography, Day 2

The Crows Are Back in Town, Downtown Portland

#33: 7 Days of On-the-Fly Nature Photography, Day 1

Long story short: about a week ago a friend on Facebook challenged me to do what he was doing: post a photo of mine of a nice nature scene once per day for a week. I figured, hey, nice chance to plumb the archives and share some old favorites.

But my brothers chimed in and insisted we were doing it all wrong: that you can only post a picture you took on the same day you're posting it. After all, how else could it be a challenge?

Well, I'm game. I just wrapped up seven days of doing it my way (and the way it was passed down to me), but today I'm launching seven days of doing it the hard way. Hard because I live in the middle of the city, work downtown, and commute in the dark this time of year. As it happens, friends in New York and Philly who I passed the challenge on to are already doing it the hard way.

So here's how I'm kicking things off:

Wetlands, Southwest Portland

#32: Affirmations

Affirmations: basically, positive mantras you tell yourself. Say them, write them down, look at them, whatever.

I've been hearing about them as a good thing to do for years but I'm a cynical stick-in-the-mud so it never really took. But of course here I am, committing myself to new things.

So on Monday it seemed like affirmations were the thing. First, I found myself reading about them in this half-joking, actually serious book my brother got me for Christmas, when I was really in need of a buck-up:

Then, later that day they came up as a topic in a meeting I attended. So it was some synchronicity. I tried some. They seem nice. I intend to keep it up. And no, dear reader, I'm not going to share mine with you.

Well, OK, maybe just one: