Work in progress

One of the reasons I wanted to build myself a new crafting area is to make it easier for me to undertake sewing projects.  Right now if I want to sew, I do it on the dining room table, and it better be something I can complete in a few hours.  I'd like to leave my sewing machine set up on my new desk and have everything already at hand when I have time to work.

Denizens of Ravelry frequently ask whether there are similar sites for their other hobbies -- needlepoint, cross-stitch, rug-hooking, tatting, etc.  The answer is no, at least with the features that make Ravelry so powerful and unique.  But at least one group has attempted to apply a self-consciously Ravelry-esque model to sewing, and the result is mysewingcircle.com.

Ravelers will find the site familiar, from the "notebook" where they can link their projects to patterns and fabrics, to the lower-case sans-serif typeface used throughout.

Right now it's small, but growing.  Evidence that things are going right is easy to come by.  I entered my projects yesterday, and for one of them, the pattern (an internet freebie) wasn't yet in the database.  As I would on Ravelry, I created the pattern entry myself, entering all the information, then linking it to my project.

When I went back to the site today and took a look at my notebook, I saw that the pattern now had an official picture in the database.  Somebody scanning the newly entered patterns had gone to the site where it appears and found a picture they could attach to the database record for the pattern.

What that says to me is that the site is already populated by people who care about making it useful.  They tend the garden, water and weed what's planted by the whole user population, keep everything tidy, and jump in to contribute where they see a need.

That's what's made Ravelry so successful -- a combination of site design that makes user contributions easy and rewarding, and a community that quickly evolved folkways of service.  Seeing those same attributes at mysewingcircle.com gives me confidence that the site has what it takes to become the elusive "Ravelry for sewing" that so many are looking for.  And just as Ravelry has made me a better, more prolific, and more adventurous knitter -- by leaps and bounds -- I'm hoping mysewingcircle.com will improve my skills and inspire my efforts.

Cube by cube

Today's post about my awesome crafting area in progress is at Toxophily.



 Pictures galore!  Just ignore the wallpaper and carpet.  Yeah, I know we should have replaced them before I put a bunch of new furniture in the room.  Someday.

The biggest stage

Last night was the premiere of Breaking Bad's fourth season.  It's been more than a year since season three ended; an entire cycle of Emmys have come and gone, meaning that the show and its personnel are not nominated for anything this year.

For some programs, such a long break would spell danger for devoted fans.  A show might come back and find its viewership has evaporated, people having long since moved on to the next big thing, or forgotten the thread of its convoluted plot.

But the lengthy hiatus has only caused Breaking Bad's popularity to grow.  The season four premiere last night was the show's most watched episode ever, beating the previous season's first episode by thirty percent.  It appears that the show's fans spent much of the last year, and certainly all of the past month, badgering everyone they knew to start watching.

And the heightened interest and bigger audience translates into a shockingly huge comment section for my first recap of the season.  Twenty minutes after the show ended, there were 100 comments; everytime I refreshed thereafter, the number seemed to grow by leaps and bounds.  Right now, about 20 hours later, there are over 800 comments.  That's getting up into territory I associate with Noel's immensely popular writing on Lost.  It's a scale with which I am entirely unfamiliar; my writeups of How I Met Your Mother and Modern Family, two network comedies with much larger viewerships than BB (though certainly a less avid or cultish fan base) might draw a couple of hundred comments, while my "classic" writeups of NewsRadio struggle to reach half that.

I certainly can't attribute the activity to my writing; fans of the show gather to discuss it, not what I said about it.  Nevertheless, at that level of interest, there are more people reading what I'm writing, even casually and cursorily, than anywhere else my work appears on the site.  It's a daunting prospect -- to know how to do what I do best while at the same time giving such a sprawling group what they might want.

Creative space

Back when Archer used to bring us his "If I Drove A Tractor Trailer" book to read several times a day, Noel used to get especially wistful about the description of the little sleeping space behind the truck's cab, complete with its own TV.  I understand the impulse to have a nook for yourself.

That's why I've been planning all summer to turn a rather large corner of our bedroom into a craft storage and work space.  Three weeks ago I moved the computer to Archer's room and got rid of the big desk that used to occupy that corner.  On Monday the furniture was delivered; on Wednesday I built the storage unit;  last night I built the table.  Cady Gray and I spent Saturday morning packing the unit with yarn; I worked on needles and tools today.



Just as storage, this is going to be an improvement; easier to get to, more spacious, better organized. I was surprised to find that the yarn that had overflowed four big Rubbermaid tubs and several storage crates -- the yarn that runs to several pages in Ravelry's stash in list view -- all fit in the 25-cube Expedit.

I'll have a full and photo-rich chronicle of the tranformation in the next week or two. But right now I'm thinking about that desire for a little cozy space to live and work. People who make things are rather obsessive about their studios, craft rooms, and organizational schemes, as a look around the internet will tell you. Such spaces are partly about facilitation, but partly about inspiration -- an arrangement and decor that we imagine will unlock our ability to create.

My surreptitious aim in reworking this area is to facilitate and inspire my nascent sewing skills.  Right now I have to set up and take down my sewing machine on the dining room table if I want to use it, which is quite a production.  The desk and table I put in my new craft area is intended to give the machine a home and to provide a space for associated tasks, like cutting and pressing.  So will I sew more now that I've set up everything the way I think will be perfect?

Classic

Archer's never been a movie fan.  Long narratives that require an understanding about why people are acting as they are and what they are feeling -- not exactly his thing.  But we took him to see Cars 2 earlier this summer in the hopes that there would be enough racing to keep him from getting board while the rest of us enjoyed the story.  And based on his enjoyment of the trailer for Disney's new Winnie the Pooh traditional-animation feature (which had a meta-textual element using the book pages and words), as well as the movie's short running time (69 minutes), we decided to go see it as a family, too, and hope that Archer could find something to engage him.

Did he ever.  The animated book illustrations and playful interaction with the text tickled him pink.  And during the rapid-fire verbal farce about whether Piglet could tie knots (Piglet: "I cannot"; Owl: "So you can knot"), he was in hysterics, confiding to me afterwards, "I was laughing so hard I almost threw up."

Of course Cady Gray loved it all, as did her parents; the movie has a handmade feel that combines the gentleness of the books, the classic imaginative touches of the original Disney Pooh featurettes, and a dash of contemporary zip.  But every time some comic misunderstanding or bit of narration-related fourth-wall-breaking happened, I glanced at Archer and saw a huge grin on his face.  With the right sense of humor and self-awareness about its formal qualities -- whether cinematic or literary -- a story can hook him, and keep him enthralled.

Challenging

One week of Summer Laureate University For Youth -- SLUFY -- is done.  It's our second year with both kids in the day camp, which is produced by the Center for Gifted Education at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Last year we really struggled to get the kids down to Little Rock and back every day.  The camp runs for five hours in the afternoon, not enough time to be worth the thirty minutes each way of commute, so whoever drops them off winds up hanging around coffee shops and libraries until it's time to pick them up. This year we have a carpool partner, so we only have to make half the trips per week, but it's still brutal.

But we decided after last year's experience that it was well worth it for our kids.  The classes are wonderfully interdisciplinary and advanced.  Take the first week of Cady Gray's class on ice cream as an example.  The students conducted taste tests; created their own flavors (each using a base flavor, a fruit, a nut, and a candy ingredient); wrote a letter to Ben & Jerry's about why their flavors should be adopted and produced; designed packaging; and shot a commercial using Flip cameras.  Any kid would love to do those activities, but collectively they create a self-directed, creative, and educational picture of the food business's many facets.

We're lucky that both our kids have been able to qualify for this camp two years running.  Archer's classes are Game Show Probability (and how perfect is that -- today they explored the Monty Hall Problem) and Burning Issues (about fire).  In addition to the ice cream class, Cady Gray has come home with facts about medieval times from her Knightly Days class (we've heard about the plague or "the plaque" as CG termed it, the unfairness of the feudal system, and the code of chivalry, and a lot about the cardbox box and tube castles they've made).

I could wish that all their education were like this, but I'm thankful that at least some of it is.  One more week of SLUFY -- I hope they enjoy every minute.

Authorship

You know that Kindle single I was writing about yesterday?  It became available today in the Amazon Kindle store.

I was in Little Rock waiting to pick up the kids from SLUFY when I saw the announcement from the A.V. Club's Twitter feed.  When I went to the single's Amazon purchase page, I was delighted to see that both Noel and I are credited as authors (Noel filled in for me at least once in each of the three seasons, and he did an interview with Breaking Bad's creator Vince Gilligan that's included in the e-book), along with editor Josh Modell and cover illustration Danny Hellman.

It occurred to me that I should make sure the single is linked to my Amazon author page, so I went to Amazon Author Central and clicked the link to add items to my bibliography.  Amazon's search engine then presents to you everything with your name on it, and you can click buttons underneath to claim the item as your book.  In a few minutes, hours, or days, after some algorithm confirms it, the items appear on your author page.

I flipped through the pages, skipping over the children's books by Donna Bowman Bratton, and not only found the Breaking Bad e-book, but also -- surprise and joy -- the upcoming volume of essays Cosmology, Theology, and the Energy of God that I co-edited with Clayton Crockett, which is due out from Fordham University Press in November.  The book has appeared in Fordham's catalog, but this is the first I've seen it available online for pre-order.

So whether you're in the mood for some great televised drama or some energetic theology, I've got you covered at Amazon!  Either or both make great gifts for a loved one -- or why not treat yourself?

Back to the lab

A few years ago, I took on the job of writing about a brand new drama on basic cable.  It was the second original series produced by a channel better known for showing the same second-rate movies over and over.  Most of the people involved with the show were relatively unknown quantities, or were best known for material quite different from the show's premise.

The show was Breaking Bad, one of the best shows of our era or any era.  And thanks to my lucky break, I've been writing about it for the last three seasons.

The fourth season premiere is this Sunday, and I'll be writing about it again.  Connected with that premiere, the good folks at the A.V. Club have put together their very first Kindle single.  It's a collection of my posts, episode by episode, combined with interviews and other related content that's appeared over the run of the series in our publication.

I wrote a new introduction for the collection, and it should be available in the next day or two.  What a cool reward for one of the most fortunate gigs a TV blogger could ever get.

Just can't wait

Because the kids are in Little Rock at a summer camp this week, and don't get home with their designated parent (or carpool driver) each day until about 90 minutes after I get off work, I find myself at home with a bit of alone time around dinner.  I really shouldn't be left by myself when there are boxes of furniture awaiting assembly.  It gives me ideas.

I was going to wait to assemble the big Expedit shelf unit, desk, and worktable that will constitute my new crafting area until the weekend.  But while I was waiting for Noel to bring the kids home from the city, I started looking at websites and videos showing the assembly.  I started to get antsy.  And when the rest of my family walked in the door, I was stacking up empty boxes in the hallway and inventorying all the pieces.

Commentary on the web suggested that the large 25-cubicle square could be assembled in as little as 30-40 minutes.  With some trepidation, because I wasn't sure I understood how the pieces went together and because I tend to be a blind follower of instructions, I took the advice of Ikeafans.com and put both sides on first, then stood it up and put all the shelf and vertical pieces in from that position.  It was an absolute breeze.  I couldn't believe how fast it all went together.  Within an hour of turning the first screw, I was turning the last one.  It was so effortless that I went ahead and put the attached desk together, too.

I also got a trestle table, but it's just a bit too wide for the space that's left between the desk and the wall, unless we move our bed a bit so there will be more room on that side.  I may not be able to resist setting it up even so, though; I'm so close to the crafting space I had envisioned that I think I could deal with having to squeeze through on my way to bed temporarily.  I'll post pictures soon.

Now I get the joy of moving all my yarn and equipment into my new space -- maybe the part I've been looking forward to most, since it involves getting reacquainted with my stash.  Can I hold off long enough to let Cady Gray help, as she has pleaded?  My self-control just isn't the best when it comes to new spaces, new organization, new inspiration.

You gotta love sports

On Sunday, we hurried home from church to catch as much of the women's World Cup match between USA and Brazil as we could.  The kids love watching sports events, and will often excitedly comment on the stats being shown on the screen and the rules being followed by the players.  It gives them a chance to understand the structure of an activity that's highly structured, building up a diagram in their minds of how the sport works, cog by cog.

When we're watching baseball, Archer will frequently stop whatever he's doing and trot out to the living room to check on the score and the situation.  He often delivers a sportscasterly bit of commentary on what he sees, something like "This is just an epic duel between two players."  And if we yell or get excited, he'll come running to see what happened.

So when Abby Wambach headed the ball into the goal in the last minute of injury time on top of extra time to tie the game, and Noel and I exploded in joy, both Archer and Cady Gray dashed into the room from their designated play-in-your-rooms time.  And of course we let them stay to see the penalty kicks.  They perched on the loveseat together explaining to each other how it worked and counting the goals each team scored.  When Hope Solo made the only save of the PK's, they crowed.  And when the last USA kick found the left corner of the goal, they leaped off the coach and screamed along with their parents.

Sports can bring families together -- that much is a commonplace of nostalgic commercials and greeting cards.  What surprises me are the characteristics of sports that attract them.  The numbers and scorekeeping, sure, for Archer; but also the boundedness, the comprehensibility, the transparent structure of them as rule-governed activities.  In the act of understanding sports, the kids find handles to understand how all kinds of things work -- or should, in a perfect world.

Hammock time

Coming off of a frenzied academic year, my idea of leisure is usually not to do anything at all.  To vegetate in front of the TV, sleep late, and have my food brought to me on convenient trays.  It's then that I dream about hammocks and Adirondack chairs and beverages served with little umbrellas and just ... existing.

But faced with the actual practice of such leisure, I am usually a failure.  Dating back to my teenagerhood, I've never understood how people actually manage to do nothing.  I mean really nothing -- like "laying out" on the beach, as we used to call it.  Hours spent just laying there in the sun, not sleeping, not reading, not ... doing anything?  I tried sometimes, but I always found myself trying to sneak a book in there.  Even listening to music wasn't enough for me to feel like the leisure was at a satisfying level of minimal activity.

So it's not surprising that I've taken up knitting, since it's the perfect compromise between doing something and doing nothing.  Now my relaxing no-goal days have at least that much accomplishment.  I often find myself at my most rejuvenated when I've done more -- organized something, cleaned something out, built something, crossed something off my to-do list.  The transition between leisure and work is made much easier when you get a little of the preparatory material for work out of the way during your supposed downtime, like watching a piece of media you have to write about, or coming up with a framework for something you have to produce, or even just dividing your work time into segments so the decision about what to work on when is already made before you start.

Tomorrow morning we're getting a delivery of IKEA furniture to form the basis of my new crafting space.  I highly doubt I'll get any of it assembled before next weekend, given the relatively tight evening TV and writing schedule we keep combined with the kids' summer camp commutes making for a later start than we're used to.  Part of me resents having to devote half a day of my unstructured leisure to assembly; but part of me relishes spending concentrated, extended time on something I'm so looking forward to.  If it works out, I imagine I could end the weekend far more satisfied with myself and the way I whiled away my time than usual.

Beat the heat

Well, there's no way to beat heat this pervasive.  But Magic Springs and Crystal Falls distracted us for a day!



Water slides require held breath. This is Cady Gray's version.




Nice to start off the day with this much enthusiasm!




Time to leave the water and head for some rides. I apologize for the preponderance of daughter pictures and relative paucity of son pictures. I am a bad mother.




You see my source of my problem. What a little ham.




Archer and his dad get ready to enjoy a coaster ride while Cady Gray and I wait our turn.




Hey, there's Archer again! Or at least his hat, in the old-timey car in front of us.




But enough about him. Here's Cady Gray driving our car, cool as a cucumber.




And waiting to ride on the airplanes.




Archer waited, too. The camera loves the back of this kid's head, doesn't it?




Both of them fed the giant mutant albino catfish in the lake.




And both of them ate an monstrous funnel cake with strawberries and ice cream. (But not all of it. We do have some parenting standards.)




And here's the photo taken by the kindly park employee that will be included in the nostalgic time capsule of this summer.  Farewell, Magic Springs!

Thrill seekers

On our last trip to Magic Springs a year two years ago, we introduced the kids to their first roller coaster -- the Diamond Mine Run, a kid-sized version of a classic runaway mine train ride.  They adored it. Cady Gray especially took to my advice about riding in the last car to get maximum whip-crack action, and we had multiple rides to close out our trip.

This year we headed for the Diamond Mine Run as soon as we were done with the family section of the park.  Cady Gray was keen to ride on her own, without an adult, so I rode in the last car while she and Archer took up the first car as a duo.  Then we rode again with Mom and Dad, and the kids' huge smiles gave us a crazy idea -- were they ready for their first full-sized coaster?

The fact that Big Bad John, the regular-scale runaway mine train ride, was rated only "Mild Thrill" gave us confidence that we weren't over our heads.  I rode next to Cady Gray twice, and she screamed in pure glee from start to finish.  "OH YEAH!!" she yelled with a full-throated rasp I have never before heard from her.  So far, from that last trip to this, her reaction to roller coasters was unbridled laughter throughout.

When Dad mentioned that Mom wanted to ride the Arkansas Twister, a classic wooden out-and-back coaster (pictured above) that's without a doubt the most bone-rattling ride in the state, both kids were adamant that they wanted to join me. Dad was out, since his go at it some years back convinced him this is not a ride for folks with a family history of heart disease. Given Cady Gray's unqualified enjoyment of the mine trains, I took her first; Archer was willing to ride in a car by himself, but I wanted him to wait until I could go with him rather than risk him freaking out without someone beside him to talk him through it.

As we crested the turn at the end of the "out" portion of the ride, I turned to look at my seatmate.  She had a shocked look on her face, and the rattling was causing her cheeks to shake like someone in a centrifuge.  I was momentarily concerned that the funnel cake she had eaten recently was on its way back up.  To my shout of "are you okay?" she managed a gasping "okay" before we were on our way down and back.   Fast and fun is all well and good, it seems, but this was an order of magnitude more than she was prepared for.  When we stopped short of the station, she was finally able to release her clenched grip on the lap bar.  Her smile wasn't so much pleasure but relief.  "I stayed on all the way to the end," she announced, and I couldn't help pointing out that she had had little choice.  As we exited, she admitted that it was scary and decided to advise Archer not to go.

But Archer was not to be deterred.  He urged me to head back into the queue as quickly as possible so we didn't miss the next ride.  I told him how long it would last and how many steep drops there were.  And then we were off.  To my utter surprise, he was much less fazed by the height, the speed, and the boneshaking vibration as I thought he would be.  When I checked with him at the halfway point, he was able to answer readily that he was okay, and as we went over the small hills at the end, he was even cracking a smile.  As we got off, he was visibly proud of conquering the ride, and grilled me about what speeds he thought we had reached.

I've always loved roller coasters; Noel has never been a fan.  Looks like the kids have inherited my mild thrillseeking tendencies.  I'm excited about having someone to ride with for all our amusement park trips to come.

Reading the entrails

If Julius Caesar had had a 48 hours like I have, he would have sent his army home and taken up needlepoint for the season. Alas, we live in more enlightened time, and are nit allowed to use omens as an excuse for cancelling plans.

We've had a quick overnight trip to Hot Springs (America's First Resort) planned since summer began. No big deal. Drive an hour or so down the freeway, go to a water park, ride some rides, stay in a nice hotel, eat, drink, and drive home the next day with the kids' backpacks full of memories.

The trouble started the afternoon before our departure. Our Civic Hybrid wouldn't turn over, and needed a tow to the dealership. It's the car we were planning to drive on our getaway, but no biggie -- the other is in good shape and ready to go.

Then the night before the trip, I heard a funny noise and checked out the central air unit. Uh-oh, there's damness around it, water pooling on some of the flat surfaces, dripping behind the filters (where we tend to get seepage under our floors and carpets), and condensation forming on one of the bathroom registers. Nothing can foil a planned trip like a leak, so we called the service guy, who told us the top of the unit needed better insulation to avoid such sweating. He made a date to come back and do it Saturday morning, and suggested turning the A/C off while we were gone. Nothing to do but try to keep cleaning up the moisture if we wanted to be cool in the meantime.

For some people, a busted car and a spontaneous source of water inside the house might convince them that the trip wasn't in the cards. We were making final preparations to leave the next morning, though, when the universe sent us its final message. I was using our hose reel to coil up the hose not 30 minutes before departure when I felt a sharp sting on my arm -- then on my ring finger, in my side, and under my chin. I caught only the briefest glimpse of a bee or yellowjacket as I shrieked and ran for the house. First time I've been stung since I was a kid, and it hurt like the dickens, especially on my finger. I'm not allergic, thankfully, but as I nursed the four bites, I couldn't help wondering where the heck that came from. I had oo idea there were bees or whatever in that reel or around it; I make several trips a day to the outdoor faucet not 6 inches from there while watering the lawn.

You could take at least the car and the A/C as blessings in disguise. By breaking down before we left, we saved having a bigger disaster with the car out of town, or with a leak when we weren't home. But it was hard to see the insect attack's silver lining. It felt more like a final warning, or maybe a spiteful kick in the teeth. One thing's for sure -- it made me glad to be putting that apparently cursed house in my rearview mirror, if only for a day.

The administration gene

One of the reasons I like administration is that consistency and integrity matter to me.  There is nothing more infuriating than an arbitrary decision; nothing more rage-inducing than ad hoc leadership.  We should know why we are going this way rather than that, on something more than purely practical or least-resistance grounds.  There should be a principle that guides and unifies various decisions.

Identifying and following that principle isn't easy, to be sure, but neither is treating each choice as a wholly separate, unique, unrepeatable event for which no precedent or context comes into consideration.

I'll bet I'm not alone.  When I get together with other academics, or with the denizens of any reasonably-sized institution, the majority of complaints center on senselessness.  When decisions don't cohere with each other, when leaders whack moles, when squeaky wheels get grease and everyone else goes begging, morale plummets.  People deserve better, and they know it.  A little explanation and a lot of follow-through goes a long way.  When communication channels shut down, every action -- even the most defensible -- looks unprincipled, because it comes with no strings connecting it to other actions, making a pattern that illustrates a principle.

And there's one more key.  Missions, values, principles, strategies are wonderful, essential things to have.  They tell you what's the most important things for you to do and the essential components to doing them.  But without structures that can persist beyond the commitment of individuals, no matter how central or dedicated, they are empty.  We can't just farm this off as Person A's job; everybody in the organization needs to be able to follow the logic and understand -- if not make -- the decision.  Without a transpersonal structure, that's coincidental at best and a sham at worst.  Structures make some people nervous; they take resources to maintain, they add layers of oversight complexity and can form hierarchies, they can become ossified and recalcitrant and creaky.  But none of those potential flaws is a reason to dispense with them.  Indeed, without a structure that identifies such elements in the effort that are in conflict with principles -- without a structure of assessment and reflection -- any labeling of structures as problematic is just an aesthetic judgment or opinion, asserted without any common language of process and perception underlying it.

Countdown to crossroads

It's a luxury to have a job where you get to define yourself.  In academia, every class is a chance to remake your image for a new group of students.  Every research project is a moment of freedom and possibility -- more so as you develop a reputation and gain respect with your colleagues.  And opportunities are always coming along to direct this, administer that, edit the other thing.  You get to choose what kind of career you want to build.

I feel like I'm at one of those moments of choice -- not in a pressure-filled way, but in a freeing way.  Having started a new field of research last year, I've now gotten validation from my colleagues in the form of papers accepted to a national and international conference.  Now I can decide where I want to take it, how fast, and for how long.

This fall there's another book coming out with my name on it -- a co-edited volume arising from the conference my colleague and I organized a couple of years ago.  My boss thinks that puts me well on the way to a promotion to full professor -- an opportunity I'll have in another couple of years.  And if that promotion comes my way, I'll be at the top of my profession.  If I choose to look for opportunities, I can.  The kinds of chances coming my way will be bigger and involve more changes.  But there is an advantage to this stage in life -- the freedom to imagine something different from a position of strength.  After years of apprenticeship and stress about career viability, it's nice to be in a place where most of the choices in front of you are good.

Vacation season

It's hard to believe that summer is half gone.  But by any measure, that's the case.  I wrapped up my semester's work in mid-May, and will go back for fall in late August.  The kids finished school in early June and will return in mid-August.  I'm transitioning from working on my fall seminar syllabus (June's task) to constructing two major research presentations for national and international conferences this fall (July's task).  Once August starts, all bets will be off; we're taking off the first week for a family reunion, and when we get back the kids will be only one week from the start of school (I have an additional week and a half before my first classes, although semester tasks will start ramping up immediately upon our return).

And given that both of our kids have summer camps for the next three weeks, family time will be thin on the ground until that August trip.  This long weekend was full of togetherness, and we've got another one on the docket coming up in just a couple of days.  Continuing a family tradition, we're headed a couple of hours south to our nearest theme park and waterslide extravaganza for an afternoon of fun and a hotel stay (complete with pool and pull-out couch sleeping).  We'll hang around Hot Spring the next morning for some more swimming and maybe some minigolf before heading home ... to start another weekend.

The way I see it, the only thing better than a family vacation is one that comes with a relaxing weekend at home at the end of it.

Rock star dreams

We had dinner at a friends' house tonight and enjoyed some adult socializing while our three sets of kids played (and occasionally fought over) Lego Rock Band on the host family's Wii.  Once we sorted out who got to play what instrument and when, I was fascinated to see how hard they worked at their drumming tasks.

Last year Noel made an offhand comment that he'd like to have Rock Band, and I made a stab at researching the purchase for Christmas.  It was daunting -- nothing seemed to come bundled, there were too many options, and in the end we thought about all the other games we'd bought for us and not for the kids and never play, and decided not to do it.

Now I think we might be interested in getting it for the kids.  Archer's one weak area musically is keeping a steady beat, and I saw how much the game feedback mattered in that respect; whenever he stopped getting points, he slowed down and worked harder at staying in rhythm.  Cady Gray became so delighted with the effects of hitting the booming tom on "We Are The Champions" that she became more and more demonstrative, lifting the stick over her head and engaging in a bit of proto-headbanging.

I still don't know how to assemble all the parts, and I'm sure the cost will give me pause.  But now it's not just a matter of something that might be amusing.  I see how hard my kids work, how dedicated they are to mastering these games.  Anything that inspires that kind of effort gets my attention.  No matter what skill they're trying to acquire -- even if its something as utterly useless as mashing buttons int he right sequence -- what they're really practicing  is perseverance, willingness to fail, and using feedback to improve.  If those lessons come with a better sense of rhythm and familiarity with some classic rock, that's just icing on the cake.

Madeleine

We had lunch at Panera Bread today.  Since it's Saturday -- an S day -- I got to contemplate choosing a dessert from their bakery section.

Usually in this situation I would find the chocolatey-est thing on the shelf.  I have only a few sweet opportunities a week; I try not to waste them on anything non-chocolate.

But last time I took the kids to Panera Bread, Cady Gray picked out a thick, flower-shaped sugar cookie with bright yellow and pink sprinkles.  It looked so cheery that I decided to try it today, much to Noel's surprise.  I tucked it in my purse and brought it home; an hour or so later, I unwrapped it, broke off a piece, and popped it in my mouth.

Perhaps you've had this particular cookie.  A quick Google search finds people in search of the recipe.  All I can say is that it was something far greater than what I was expecting.  Thick, buttery, not just sugary but also with the underlying rustic richness of shortbread, accented with the sharp, sweet hit of the sprinkles coated on the top.

I involuntarily exclaimed at its goodness, earning a longsuffering look from Noel (whose low-carb diet would recoil in horror from such a confection).  It was an instant trip back in time, both to the thick homemade sugar cookies we helped bake for holidays, and to the shortbread biscuits that my Scottish grandmother always gave us when we visited her, dispensed from a tartan-covered package.

 It's been a long time since I was brought up so short by a morsel of food.  I felt like I had taken a bite of summer itself.  A reminder of the power of taste, and a call to expand my dessert horizons every so often.

Needing each other

It's the end of Superkids, a camp for K-2 students sponsored by my university's early childhood education program.  Our children have attended every year they've been eligible; Archer went for three years and Cady Gray has one more year to go.

So for five  years running we've heard the same songs at the graduation ceremony, with the same hand gestures and CD accompaniment.  Before the program began, Archer, sitting with me in the audience, told me how mixed up the track numbers and CD changes were before the leaders put all the songs on the same recordable CD.  His attendance coincided with the height of his obsession with digital displays and time.

Cady Gray is very receptive to the curriculum's message of empowerment through learning, high self-esteem, and the importance of friendship.  On our way home from dinner tonight, she essayed the proposition that friendship isn't a want, but a need.  I agreed, talking about all the things we can't accomplish by ourselves, and praising her and Archer for being good friends and giving each other someone to depend on and someone to trust.

I've had a number of good friends -- best friends, the kind that are needs and not wants -- in my life.  But I don't think of myself as a person who's good at friendship.  Social media has made it easier; I can be aware of people's needs, try to help when I can, and offer compliments and advice without relying on frequent physical meetings.  Because as a homebody, I treasure my family time and my solitude, and anyone who knows me would agree that I'm not proactively sociable.

Because easy friendship is not one of my talents, therefore, I treasure all the more the friends who stick with me in the most friendly of situations.  They invite my kids over, water the plants, pick up the mail, host the barbecues, stop by for the small talk.  The ones that are farther away remember the birthdays, check in regularly, play "remember when," and generally let me know that when needed, they will be there.

If July 4 is about anything, it is about solidarity.  Independence from a colonial power didn't mean individual freedom as much as it meant greater dependence on each other -- a need for trust, for solid relationships, for institutions, for respect.  I'm a huge fan of my individual freedom, but find myself nurturing a growing appreciation, year after year, for those who make themselves available as friends.  Thank you, one and all.