Leesburg Essay 11

The Triplets

As of this writing, Paula has finally been sent home. The medical staff at the rehab facility weaned her gradually off the morphine she needed following surgery for reflux in November, but she still requires a feeding tube. Felicie reports a series of “tests” the medical staff has put her and Greg through to make sure that they were responsible enough to take her home. One test was to give Paula a bath. When Felicie pointed out that she’s been giving Eva and Mary baths for months, the staff’s reply was that they couldn’t be sure that she was doing it right.

Eva and Mary, while waiting for their sister to arrive home, kept busy displaying definite personality differences. Eva is generally more awake and fussy and Mary is more calm and sleepy. Mary is also a couple of pounds heavier than Eva; I wouldn’t be surprised if this was partly a result of the fact that Eva is up and fussing! Big brother James, who is currently stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and is nearing the end of his Special Forces training, got engaged to long-time girlfriend Ashleigh in Paris over Christmas. They are planning a wedding on Maryland’s Eastern shore over Memorial Day weekend.

Alex

Alex has started yet another chemo regimen this month. George visited her a few weeks ago and reports that she’s fairly tired and generally weak from her treatments and her lack of activity, but is otherwise her usual self. Among the usual things she’s dealing with: Ian broke his collarbone in February fooling around with Shane.

Media Update

I recently finished Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh, a non-fiction book about a “rogue sociologist” who embarks on a standard sociological survey of the attitudes of poor urban residents of Chicago (e.g., “How does it feel to be poor and black?”). Instead of carrying out his survey, he ends up being sort of adopted by the members of a drug gang at the Robert Taylor Homes and spends years simply observing their lives. I found it hilarious how he just walked into the projects and hung out with these guys without any clear idea what he was getting himself into. He has some fascinating insights, including a hint of the utter corruption in Chicago politics at the most basic levels. In addition, reading this book has helped me with the more problematic vocabulary sprinkled throughout the HBO series The Wire. 

Aunt Marcia lent me the first two books in Vince Flynn’s “Mitch Rapp” series. Rapp is an ueber-Jack Bauer (the TV show 24’s lead guy) roaming around the world eliminating terrorist threats to the U.S. These are great stories, especially when you only have time to read a few pages and can’t afford to have to keep going back and rereading to follow a complicated plot. In addition, I don’t know if I’ve ever read a book in which Leesburg features so prominently. There’s only one major complaint I have: Vince Flynn has either a really bad editor or publisher because the books are littered with annoying little errors in spelling and whatnot, which is sort of inexcusable in the days of Spell Check.

Last fall I began a recent book by Jane Smiley: The All True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton. I am normally a big fan of Jane Smiley, but I found this book lacked an emotional center, at least for the first 100 pages, after which I got so bored that it became more of a chore than a pleasure to read. It would have helped if the author had spent more time discussing the lead character’s marriage to a man she hardly knew. The marriage provides the catalyst for her to leave one life and start another, but the focus is on the activities of abolitionists in Kansas. I think Mitch Rapp provides more of an emotional punch.

George and I took a deep breath and cancelled our subscription to the Washington Post. Although the paper occasionally carries noteworthy stories (I think back to the long series detailing the problems at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center), the quality of the journalism is awful. Quite often the reader must get to paragraph 20 on the second page of the story before encountering some of the basic facts (who, what, when, where, and why?). I think the idea is to “grab” the reader, but when basic information is lacking upfront I get frustrated; hardly grabbed. Maybe the journalists don’t actually understand the story they’re writing. Maybe they have terrible editors. Whatever the reason for the problems in basic journalism, we were also annoyed by the outrageously biased coverage of the election. Even though we’re not rabid partisans it’s hard to take the paper seriously anymore. I glance at the Washington Post and The New York Times headlines online and all I really miss from the print version is the weather page. I’ve found that I’m actually better informed about international topics from perusing the website RealClearWorld. We also still get The Economist and have begun a subscription to a magazine called The Week, of which I am quite fond.

Through Netflix we caught a few episodes from the first season of the American series The Office, with Steve Carrell. Like the Dilbert cartoon, it highlights the fundamental absurdity of the office environment. We saw the British version and thought it was hilarious. Happily, the American version is as well and I’m just thankful that I don’t have an office job anymore (no endless staff meetings, no struggling to stay awake after lunch). It’s sort of like Tolstoy: happy offices all resemble each other; unhappy offices are all unhappy in their own, tragic ways.

We slogged our way through the much ballyhooed film There Will be Blood starring Daniel Day Lewis. All I can say about this film is that much of it might take place in California, but the overall impression it leaves is of Texas, where the movie begins—vast and filled with incomprehensible things.

In contrast, the film version of the wonderful book Atonement by Ian McEwan is really well done and I didn’t get that sinking feeling that my experience of the book was ruined by a poor film adaptation.

When George’s alarm goes off at 5:30 a.m., it is set to WMZQ, the local country music station. As neither one of us likes country music, this is a strategy meant to get him out of bed and across the room to turn off the alarm and put an end to the music. Even so, during the colder months (when he doesn’t want to get out from under the warm covers) we get about five to ten minutes of music before he manages this and we’ve found the lyrics really amusing. I’ve always been opposed to country music because of the twang, although some of the singers really do have great voices (like Faith Hill). Some of the lyrics are classic, though, especially when they get into the absurdly mundane. An example off the top of my head: “I walked across the kitchen, made some coffee, the cat was on the counter eating cereal, you were already gone.” Or an actual song by Toby Keith: “She’s a rebel child, and a preacher’s daughter, she was baptized in dirty water, her mama cried the first time, they caught her with me, they knew they couldn’t stop her.” One that really speaks to me is by Kid Rock, really a crossover hit, borrowing from the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic “Sweet Home Alabama” and from “Werewolves of London.” The best line: “It was 1987, my thoughts were short my hair was long.”

Now that football season is over, my favorite source of football news, ESPN’s Football Today podcast, has moved on to discussion of the musical chairs of various coaches and players. The multitude of coaches in the NFL is beyond silly—even in the TV series Friday Night Lights the coach of the Dillon High School Panthers has about five assistant coaches. I won’t be surprised if the Giants announce that they’ve hired one coach for the right side of Eli Manning’s body and one for the left.

Update on Nora

Now that Nora has really gotten into the swing of things with the other kids in the neighborhood and at school, she has discovered that parental restrictions are quite annoying and projects this into her play. She has explained to me many times, for example, that Baba (her blanket) can do whatever it wants. If it wants to go out in the 30-degree weather in shorts and a t-shirt, that’s all right with Nora! Happy day for Baba! This is probably because Baba is pretending that it lives in Hawaii, not Virginia.

She also has become extremely attached to her stuffed dogs, which is exactly how I was as a child. She even talks about having a dog club, which is what my friend Ginanne and I had. I think that the only members were Ginanne, me, my dog Tish and her dog Rufus. Ginanne’s little sister Becky was probably not allowed to join. Ginanne’s mom composed our club song:

Doggy Clubs of America, DCOA
Doggy Clubs of America, DCOA
We love you best of all the rest
Doggy Clubs of America, DCOA

Update on Alexander

Just before Christmas break, Alexander’s teacher asked his students to write an essay describing something that the students thought they deserved to do in class when they returned in January. A sort of Christmas present from their teacher. Alexander’s submission was the following:

I think that I deserve to have math time test for the whole first week of January. I think I deserve that because I like doing math time tests and that I like math. I also think so because math time tests are very fun. Math time tests are fun because they help me learn my facts and learn math. I also want to because I’m on multiplication and it’s hard to pass so if I do more math tests then I’ll be able to pass because I’ll learn my facts. I like math because I get to learn addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

It’s hard to argue with this logic, although he clearly doesn’t take after me. His teacher wrote: “Your wish has been granted.” In contrast to his desire for more math, Alexander seriously considered how to get his teacher to let him give up word study homework for Lent.

The second graders at St. John the Apostle are approaching their First Communion in May, which means they had their First Penance in preparation. Apparently, First Penance is a logistically difficult occasion for the priest, a question of not scaring the kids or making them incredibly nervous, so the priest's body language is important. Along these lines, Father Mosimann, the head pastor at St. John’s, related a story in which he used to avoid direct eye contact with the kids during confession—much as he often avoids direct eye contact with adults during confession, because doing so makes them feel more comfortable confessing their sins. Kids, however, apparently don’t have the same inhibitions, and some thought he hadn’t listened to a word of their confession. He also occasionally closed his eyes (again, to avoid eye contact), which some kids interpreted as him falling asleep. A friend of mine who teaches religious education at St. John’s said she had one kid in her class that wouldn’t speak at all. I guess Alexander spoke, but we have no clue what he said.

Update on Kate

One thing that my yoga-teacher training program stresses is integrating yoga into daily life. There are a number of principles that yoga philosophy stresses for its devotees and one of them is leading a clean life. This includes the obvious things like taking showers, but also includes the kinds of food you eat, and how you manage your household. For the past year I’ve been chucking all my harsh cleaning chemicals (hmmm: my hands did not have the terrible itching and cracking problems that I had last year—maybe these two things are related?). I don’t use antibacterial soap, I use “green” laundry detergent, and as you all probably know I’m a devotee of organic foods. It took me a while to hunt down a dishwashing powder without phosphates in it that actually works: I’m happy to report that I’ve had the same results with Biokleen that I always got with Cascade. I’m only sorry that we won’t be able to retrofit our home with solar panels or windmills any time soon. And I would have drawn the line at those “green” disposable diapers that you're supposed to be able to flush. Ha! I’d like to see that.

Baxter enjoys my home yoga-practice sessions. Sometimes he gets a little bit too excited about them and jumps up on me or generally tries to take over the yoga mat. Once he jumped up on my back when I was (coincidentally) in “downward facing dog” pose and his dew claw got caught in my sweatpants. He couldn’t get down. I had to slowly lower myself to the ground and extract him.

I attended a workshop at a studio in Falls Church for Yoga Nidra, which is yogic sleep. This practice requires you to lie completely still for an hour-plus in the resting pose savasana (usually placed at the end of class) while the instructor leads you through deep relaxation. At one point the instructor was going through a series of images he wanted us to picture in our minds, such as a Greek temple, a grave—things of this nature. For some reason I had the hardest time imagining a pyramid. All I could get to was a corner of stone blocks surrounded by sand. I’m still trying. Alexander’s school project depicting the Nile and a Sphinx or two in clay helped, but only a little.

Update on George

George had a big “Larry David moment” (you may recall I previously mentioned his frightening resemblance to the lead character in Curb Your Enthusiasm) when volunteering for the day at Leesburg Elementary. The assistant principal was interviewing him during the morning announcements, which are broadcast via video to all the classrooms. After answering a question about where he worked, he proceeded to tell the entire school that his organization’s purpose is to steal secrets from other countries. The assistant principal hastily interjected that at the school they work hard to teach the children that stealing is wrong. They probably won’t be asking him back anytime soon, even though the rest of his day was apparently incident-free.

Travel

In late January we took a trip to Great Wolf Lodge, which is an indoor water park/family oriented hotel in Williamsburg (there are other locations as well). The water park features a huge climbing structure complete with slides, sprinklers, pails, and water guns; a wave pool; a “river”; giant water slides; a surf simulator; and more. This was a great hit with the kids. Entirely consistent with their personalities, after a certain point Alexander stopped going down the slides and instead began to use all the gadgets to dump on water on other (unsuspecting) guests, while Nora, once she got over her fear of the water slides, didn’t want to get off them.

In addition to the water extravaganza, the hotel featured an interactive game called “MagiQuest.” This was ingenious, because it locked parents into buying interactive magic wands (and perhaps paying to get them decorated) which the kids then used to follow “quests” throughout the halls and gain various powers. Alexander was as happy with this whole setup as with the water park itself. The only problem is that kids were playing this game, running throughout the halls, until close to midnight—thump, thump, thump like a herd of rampaging water buffaloes. Don’t go there to catch up on your sleep. People we know who had been there complained about the food, but it's food meant to appeal to a broad swath, lots of kids included, so nothing threatening. They even had Goldfish crackers, that ubiquitous childhood snack food, at the dinner buffet.

Over Christmas we got a chance to go sledding in Aunt Marcia’s backyard in New Hampshire. This was a huge hit and everyone had lots of fun. True to form, Alexander after a certain point stopped sledding and started building a snow wall at the bottom of the hill into which the other sledders could crash, while Nora, after getting over her initial fear, didn’t want to stop sledding. The best part was that most of the adults were involved. Even my Dad, knee replacement and all, took a turn down the hill. At one point the adults were at the top of the hill calling down to the kids who had all the sleds. Hey you kids get up here with the sleds!! It’s our turn!!

As we typically try to do, we also spent a bit of time in New York City. We met a couple of George’s high school friends one night and ended up after dinner at a dessert place in the Village called Max Brenner. There was on that particular night, horrifyingly, an hour-and-a-half wait for a table and we didn’t get seated until some time just before 10:00. This place is a marketing extravaganza, but I was actually quite disappointed with my dessert. It was a cup of thick hot chocolate, but it was lacking salt or something because it tasted completely flat. The major thing I noticed this time about New York is that pretty much every fourth person, male or female, was wearing a black parka made by The North Face. This appeared to be the uniform, this winter’s fashion shorthand. I’m sure that if any in our party had been wearing one, we could have shaved at least a half an hour off our wait time at Max Brenner.

It’s not really travel, I guess, but George and I “traveled” to Alexandria, Virginia one night in December to check out Restaurant Eve, which seems to be the newest “destination” restaurant in D.C. The place appeals to me in part because they have elaborate local food supplier networks and have some sort of special worm composting thing going in their backyard. They have nice napkin holders. Oh, and the food is excellent too.

George took a business trip out to Denver recently and went skiing—for the first time—with a colleague of his. It turns out that he loves skiing. This means I’ll have to go too! I love cold and snow! Yippee! It all balances out, though, as he feels pretty much the same way about going to the beach.

Politics and Current Affairs

We survived the Inauguration. I had originally thought that it might be nice to take Alexander down to the Mall and see the goings-on, but the organizers sent out not-too-subtle messages that kids were not welcome (e.g., “Don’t bring kids.”). Never mind the kids, it seems that the organizers were not interested in anyone from Virginia (traditionally a Red state, but this time gone Blue) attending the event, as they closed all bridges connecting Virginia to the District. Did they mine the harbors as well?

It seems that this historic event has had little immediate positive effect on our finances, as the stock market has dropped even lower since Obama took office. I’m wondering what’s going to happen to our taxes when it comes time to pay off the stimulus. Speaking of taxes, what kind of incompetent tax attorneys do the Administration officials and nominees have? Maybe they should stop paying all those expensive accountants and try Turbo Tax Deluxe (one state return included!). What was Tom Daschle thinking when he waited a month or so after “catching the error” to inform the Obama team? These people are all a bunch of hypocrites.

We, in contrast, did pay our taxes this year, and we also managed to take advantage of the brief really-low-rate window to refinance our mortgage. We now have a 15-year at 4.5 percent, which I really can’t imagine we’ll beat at any time. Then we started hearing that Obama was going to put forward a financial plan for distressed homeowners, and I thought, “Oh great, so we refinance and then the government is going to come in and help everyone.” Luckily, the likely categories are not going to encompass us and, really, for that I am grateful. It’s wonderful to be getting some “free” cash from the feds but who really wants to be in a position to need it?

And as for Rob Blagojevich—it occurs to me that he’s not even quite as smart as the drug dealers in the HBO series The Wire because they stopped talking on their phones when they realized that they might be in trouble. He just kept gabbing away. A sign of a truly serious personality disorder.

Bonus Gratuitous Comparison

Why the environment movement is a religion. To see why, it’s instructive to compare it directly with Christianity.

 

Christianity/Environmental Movement

Deity: Holy Trinity/Mother Earth
Demon: Satan/Exxon Mobil
Sacrament: Communion/Recycling
Place of worship: Church/Farmers market
Progeny: The future/Wasteful self-indulgence
Sins: Murder, lust/Disposable plastic water bottles, driving
Prayer: Hail Mary, Our Father/Om shanti shanti
Sacred Text: Bible/Silent Spring, The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Fringe Violence: Crusades/Torching Mercedes and BMWs; spiking trees
View of Humans: Originally sinful/Originally sinful (and dirty)