Winter Notes.


The mail lady, for all of her faults, was the bearer of good packages today, as my winter “Northerly” edition Field Notes arrived.  Paired here with a Paper Mate Inkjoy 700 RT (really a nice pen), it’s a match made in heaven.

What doesn’t seem to be getting enough attention is the great video the folks at Coudal put out for this edition.  Charlotte and I have watched it multiple times, and the part at the end wherein you find out what the man is making makes her  say, “Ohh,” every time.  Their other videos (especially the Fire Spotter one) are also very well-done.  But this latest was perfect.

Now I find myself really really wanting to make a snowglobe out of a small dill mustard jar.  And, I don’t know if I mentioned that we’re house-hunting in earnest or not.  But it has me fantasizing about a mancave and workbench and an old can full of carpenter pencils and old babyfood jars full of smaller things.

Thanksgiving for all.

One of my oldest friends became a father last night, and there is even more to be thankful for this year.

I was just handed a cup of hot coffee by my lovely wife and am watching Charlotte totter around in her Elmo boots going, “Daddy daddy daddy.”

The sun is out after being absent for a while (again).

We finally, on our 10th Thanksgiving as vegetarians, tried Tofurky last night.  It was awesome.

Now, a day with family and a good football game at night — with leftover Tofurky.

I might have the most to be thankful for.

Thank you, worst mail carrier ever.

Thank you for tossing my packages up the stairs.  Thank you for cramming my mail into the box and regularly ruining/ripping it.  Thank you for piling everyone’s large mail in one heap on the days you don’t feel like stuffing it into the boxes.  Thank you for showing up, talking loudly on your cell phone and waking my daughter up; the volume you achieve in this fortress of a building is very impressive.

If she were the only mail carrier or postal employee I knew, I would never ever ever use the US Postal Service.  (And I love the USPS.)

Yes, I’ve filed complaints about her.  I might just yell at her next, if I can catch her.  For a fatass who’s too lazy to do anything correctly, shit, she moves fast!

Wind took away the leaves.

Since we’re still sick, Charlotte and I had a pajama day.  The wind was whipping up while we were inside making a pot of chilli and having tea (decaf for Charlotte).  When I put her down for her nap, I noticed that the few trees I can see out of my windows (in this most sylvan part of Baltimore City) were stripped today from the wind.

I feel like I’ve missed this fall.

But, in my defence, we had such a wet spring, summer and early fall that a lot of trees never really changed color.  Truly, it’s the most visually disappointing autumn I can remember.

The chilli was very good, though.  Helped to open up our stuffed-up noses a little bit.

Ah, tea!

We are, all three, sick.  Which sucks.  But now Charlotte really likes green tea with honey.  And by that I mean that a not-quite seventeen month old toddler tells me that she wants tea and then will drink a whole cup of it (cooled down first, of course).

She also asked for the potty tonight, peed in it and then said, “All done.”  I am tempted to lose my shit with excitement that potty time is coming very early, but I’d like to see a repeat performance or something.

Or maybe it’s just the Benadryl and dehydration talking.

I am having trouble remembering when Charlotte could not walk and or talk at all. Because, shyte, these days, well these days, she learns so many new words in a day that I can’t keep up with her.

Writing feels good.

Last year, I attempted the whole NaNoWriMo thing and fell short.  Which is to say that I ran out of steam and quit.  I mean, I did have a job and a seven-month old.  So I didn’t feel badly about it.  Mrs. P suggested we enter the writing contest (fiction) at our local alternative weekly paper this month.  Good motivation to write.

I hadn’t thought about fiction since last year, and I read a short story I thought of working on for this endeavor.  It was written in pencil in a book.  Turns out that it’s way too dirty.  Also, well, I only got through about 5,000 words of it before I realized I could never cut it down to the contest’s 2,500 word limit.  That one might have to get submitted to Playboy or something.  Damn.

So I popped out 1,000 words of a new short story tonight in a half hour on a cup of tea with milk and honey.  (My throat hurts.)  Parts of it made me laugh out loud.  I mean, I sometimes laugh hard at things that aren’t funny.  But maybe this is funny.  I don’t know.  I have to finish it tomorrow or early on Friday and find out.

But it feels damned good to be writing again.  And then I found a pen I’d been looking for.

And now for something positive.

I am off today to the National Zoo with Charlotte, for her first trip to a zoo.  We have one in Baltimore, and it’s not even far away.  But I keep forgetting about it because it’s easy to take one so close to where I live for granted.  You know how it is.

I haven’t been to the National Zoo since second grade (that would be, ahem, 25 years ago), and I am as stoked to see the giant pandas now as I was then.  Only tomorrow I get to show them to my daughter and also spoil her a little with fries, ice-cream and a stuffed toy or two to boot.

In the course of my internet meanderings, I came a cross a cool site called LunchDoodle (one word?) that you should totally go and check out.  It makes me wish I doodled more.  I especially like this one, after my eleven days (and counting) without coffee.

And my Field Notes calendar came yesterday.  Excellent.

Leaf blowers in Roland Park.

Let’s bracket the fact that we are making moves to move (sounds like a po-mo film) out of Roland Park.

But I doubt that people here do their own yardwork.  I really do.  I’m “around” a lot during weekdays; that’s when I see lawncrews working.  I never see home-owners doing hard labor like mowing, cutting and cleaning up snow or leaves.  On the contrary, few of these rich bastards ever clear the walks they are required to (by city law) of snow and/or leaves.

I mean, shit, I fell the other day, carrying Charlotte.  I slipped on leaves, twisted the hell out of my ankle and went down — very slowly.  When you’re as practiced as I am at being a klutz, you learn how to fall well.  I twisted around, landed on my knees, slid on more leaves, arched my back to keep my balance and let the friction of my jeans and the leaf-bedded sidewalk stop me, whereupon I placed Charlotte into a soft pile of leaves and turned to make sure that Mrs. P was not also falling.  Of course, this all took two seconds.  And, of course, it could have been prevented, is said owner of said $1 million-plus house had their fucking leaves raked up like some of their neighbors have.  I meant to walk by, get their address and report them to the home-owners association and, well, ahem, send them a piece of my mind and maybe even a verbal middle finger.

But: leaf blowers.  I think I have established that the people in Roland Park who bother to do anything about what falls on their sidewalks don’t do it themselves.  Maybe one guy does, but I’ve never seen him, not living here for over five years now.

So why the fuck do we have to listen to leaf blowers on the weekend?

I mean, the real question is: Why the fuck do we have to listen to these at all?  The managers of my building had two guys out in the beginning of the fall with leaf blowers.  It took two of them, spewing exhaust and noise,to do what I could have done with a decent rake in the same time.  And, brother, I suck at raking.

But weekends?  Come on.  It’s not like Rich Jerry Van Guy is only home on weekends to do his yardwork.  He doesn’t do it!  He pays someone else, which is well and good.  So pay them to do it during the fucking week!

I was complaining to my Dad about this.  I share his mix of mellowness and near-constant bitching (we are a veritable mystery to science) as a personality.  So I was surprised when he said that maybe these folks couldn’t get anyone to come and do their yards/walks during the week.

To that I say: then pony up more fucking money for the people who do your yardwork.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the rich-but-cheap Roland Parkers with which I am familiar probably don’t pay said folks enough money anyway.  I mean, I would tell you what happened during a food drive in the 90s here and how some lady in a mansion (no shit) told us not be so greedy.  You don’t wanna know.  You’d lose your faith in this fucking city and, especially, in this rich-assed neighborhood.

Of course, leaf blowers are dirty and loud and stupid to begin with.  That’s another issue.

But, dear fellow Roland Park residents: mow your get your lawn cut and leaves gathered on weekdays.  If you enjoy hearing all that noise so much when you’re home on weekends, then do it yourself.

Child abuse books on Amazon.

Okay.  I’m not posting links and all that.  I know some folks personally who feel very strongly about this.  But you’ve probably heard about a petition over the last few months (?) attempting to get Amazon to pull some books which promote what a lot of people feel is child abuse and which some argue legally constitutes child abuse.

I should say that, as a reasonable human being with a heart, I don’t support child abuse at all.  And the beating the shit out of your kid to teach them method, in my opinion, is child abuse.  I know people, even in my generation, who believe in spanking, if not mild hitting.  I do not.

Maybe it’s because Charlotte is some kind of exceptionally brilliant baby.  But I would rather do anything than raise my hand to her, especially since we’ve taught her limits by a year and a half old that keep her alive and safe and which we taught her without having to smack her, etc.  I’m willing to flirt with the idea that maybe we’re just that lucky, that maybe she’s just that smart, that well-behaved.  And maybe this is easy for me to say, but I still wouldn’t spank her or, worse, actually beat her in a rage.

That said, I think that pulling any books off of Amazon because of their content is a slippery slope that we’d be fools to risk going down.  Today, it’s books on parenting that promote hitting kids.  Tomorrow it’s no more Anarchism books.  In five years, we’ll all only be able to read government/NGO-approved ebooks on our fucking Kindles.

Are parents who would never otherwise abuse their kids going to read these books and then suddenly become abusers?  It would seem to me that some people might use the books as permission to smack their kids around — or worse.  “Dr. Soandso says we can hit Billy.”  Anyone who would think that probably already educates their kids with his or her fists, or is about to anyway.

If these books really promote child abuse (and I’ve never read any of them, like most of the people signing that petition; I’m sure), I don’t think reasonable people would spend their money on them anyway.  The people that would abuse their kids because a book that they sought out on purpose (knowing it would validate abuse) told them to are probably not on the road to beneficial parenthood anyway.  I assume.

And: wake up.  Amazon is not the only place to buy books.  It’s not like abuse manuals could not (and would not) be sold elsewhere or ever just shared on the internet.

Facebook as sorta like real life in another way.

I find myself accepting “friend” requests from people I don’t even like because I’ve become as afraid to reject and/or unfriend people on Facebook as I am in real life. This extends to family members I can’t stand, people in high school I used to want to suffocate with my backpack and even partners/spouses/friends of friends.

On one hand, this could be good because maybe it means that I don’t hide behind an internet identity.  Only it doesn’t.  Case in point: this blog.

It might be a shame to think about Facebook so much.  But, if nothing else, it’s a fun way that we and some of our friends share pictures of our families, etc.  I don’t feel badly about that.

I am, however, cleaning Facebook house a little this weekend.  I’m tired of people I don’t ever see stalking pictures of my daughter and never posting anything at all on Facebook, like they only go on Facebook to stalk people.  That’s weird.

Also fun: people who post nasty things about you or yours, like everyone doesn’t see it and think said people are asses.

Charlotte will find hundreds by then.

If not more.  This is a great article not just about the act of keeping a paper notebook, but also of that notebook which has been kept.  I’m running through one Field Notes notebook every 7-14 days.  Not to mention my stash of other notebooks, even from the brand of former liars.

Charlotte has some Field Notes I got her for Christmas, I mean, that Santa (wink wink) got her for Christmas.

Mine are filling with the myriad new words she says everyday now.  Sometimes I am surprised at how easily they come.

Saw a penny.

Left the penny.  Didn’t stop to see what side was showing.  I felt like I had enough good luck.

And I feel like there’s a bad poem or story in there somewhere.

I had a lovely day of three walks: One with my daughter to a local shop for juice, hot cocoa and a pumpkin spice cookie; another with my daughter to meet my wife after work; another for chai tea, iced tea and a long and cold walk with my very good friend.

There are worse ways to spend the beginning of November.

The 8 phases of a Bic pen.

Okay, this is funny.  It’s a real accomplishment for me to get a pen looking like that, given the mountain of pens in our apartment.  (So wasteful, I know.)  But with a Bic (especially the ink-drooling new BOLD version), I might make it one day.

The best reason to drop Moleskines.


(Larger photo.)

There’s a lot of hoopla on the net today about Moleskine because the company is holding a contest that a lot of people find offensive and that a lot of other people find empowering.  I don’t want to join that fray.  I’m not a designer and, frankly, I don’t understand much at all about the profession.  I have my own issues with Moleskine as a company and as a book.

Read about it here.  Read Moleskine’s condescending and badly-worded response here.

But I will repeat what I’ve said before, especially in light of all of the Moleskine proselytising I’ve done on this blog.

The best reason to ditch Moleskines is that they are not the only game on the block anymore, combined with the fact that they suck. 

What I mean is that the quality has gone to shit.  The company makes promises it doesn’t keep and makes too many damned products to keep their staple product both cheap and “good.”  (Look what happened to the price of standard Timbuk2 bags when they started making all that other stuff, and those babies aren’t made in the USA anymore unless you get a custom model.)  Also, there are many other notebooks out there with the same features (or a better set of features) than Moleskines.  You can get recycled small m moleskin “copies” made in the USA for the same price from Ecosystem, for instance, and their paper is much, much better.

That said, having issues with a company is a damned fine reason to stop buying their shit.  That was, in part, why I stopped using Moleskines after years and years of use and mucho money spent.  Not to mention time spend fondling the damned things.

Me?  Now?  I used a lot of different books, but my current favorite is Field Notes.  I don’t pet them.  I use the shit out of them.  The company never implied that they were made where they are not, and, they tell you exactly what’s in the book.  Also, well, shit, they are more durable and have better paper.  But, hey, that’s not the only reason we choose our notebooks, right?

Spiders, both wolf and busy.

I should supply photos as proof, but last night, I killed a wolf spider that was just hanging out on my dining room floor.  It was a few inches from The Very Busy Spider.  On the floor.  Yes, books on the floor.  Charlotte and I are those kinds of readers.  The books are everywhere.  Sue me.

I sent a cell phone picture and description to my very good and very manly friend, who is very afraid of spiders.  He responded with: “Fuck that.”

No photos?  I’m tired of staring at this dead creepy-crawly, after spending too much time on the internet confirming my identification.  Two years ago, a full-grown wolf spider crawled across my face in my lonely tent on a camping trip.  It felt like a baby’s hand and resulted in a bit of yelling.  The one I found last night was big, but not full-grown.  A dropped jar candle did the trick.  Using a shoe, I’ve found, makes it harder to identify the spider if, like me, you’re trying to get over an…uneasiness about spiders by looking at them closely and often.

Some of the pictures on the internet of other, scarier spiders made the profuse hair on my arms stand up.  No, thanks.