Band Geeks - With Photos

Happy Weekend!

Jack and I are having a great one so far. After a nice thunderstorm rolled through this morning, we had more comfortable temperatures today than we've had all week and felt motivated to get a few things done around the house.

Last evening we met up in Murfreesboro with some of Jack's old high school marching band friends to fellowship over pizza & beers at the Mellow Mushroom and attend a Drum Corps International event at MTSU.

Things have changed a lot since we were in high school marching band and attended DCI events for motivation.

These days the corpsmen and women don't march onto the field. The color guard people come out first and assemble their flags and rifles and swords and pimp canes and sparkly things along the sideline, the horns and drums come out and take positions, and when the field commander blows his whistle, they start.

The modern "color guard" has come a long way from girls in knee-length swirl skirts and feathered bolero hats with white western boots and flags in "team colors". I detected a serious Cirque de Soleil circus-acrobatic influence in both the costumes and the choreography, and in one of the performance we saw, the musicians had just as much complicated, dance-like footwork to be completed as anyone in the flag corps. And there are boys now.

Heavily-costumed, bedazzled flag-boys wearing make-up.

My friend Jonathan from high school was a man ahead of his time... He wanted to be a flag-twirler more than anything else in the world, and I never will forget our band director screaming at him in front of everyone when he dared pick up a piece of color guard equipment, "Guys will NEVER be in the color guard!!!"

Hmmph. I guess there's a reason Mr. Rhody is a band director and not a fortune teller.

Check out this guy - someone who plays a horn AND slings a rifle.

Oh, and remember how I mentioned the groups just walking out onto the field when it was time to start? They ended their routines in much the same fashion. No impressive exit or cadence from the field. Bam, they end. The color guard leaves the field with their armloads of props and the horns and drums play an "instant encore" gathered around the field commander. After that, they just stroll away.

Impressive as the content of the shows were, there was only so much heat and crowd we could endure. The thing started at 7:30 wasn't even scheduled to end until 11:15. We were home by 10:30, sweaty and glad to hit a comfortable, air-conditioned room.

An Evening with Lucia

Lucia has learned about how flattery and changing the subject work in negotiations --

"Pammy, I love your new haircut."

"I'm glad, Lucia, but it's still time for us to go back to the house."

"Your shirt is pretty."

"Your shirt is pretty too, Lu. Is it new?"

"Pammy, I haven't done the green slide yet."

"OK. You can do the green slide FIVE times, then we have to go home."

That's pretty much how I spent several hours Monday night, babysitting Lu while Sis & Chris went to the latest Harry Potter movie. Neither Lucia nor I think of it as "babysitting". We're just two buddies spending time together, having a big time, reading books, managing conflicts and learning to love one another more and more with each minute we share.

She's becoming such a grown-up little girl, and she's hitting a couple of milestones this week.

Monday night I put her into the crib for her last night in the baby bed Dad built for her. Yesterday Sis and Dad assembled her brand new bed, and last night she slept in it for the first time. I don't know that she really loved it so much, but she will get used to it. Sis bought her some neat linens and things to go with it - a comforter and sheets with watercolor birdhouses in shades of orchid, lavender, turquoise and green; and a great reading wedge that's big with a dark lavender microfiber cover and her name monogrammed in orchid "fun letters" on the front.

I haven't seen the whole thing put together - that will happen next week - but I know it's going to look great. In a world where little kids grow up surrounded by "Dora the Explorer", "SpongeBob", and any number of other cartoon characters, I'm proud of Sis for selecting colors and a larger theme that will promote both peaceful sleep and Lucia's growing sense of abstract thought and imagination.

I'm proud of Sis for a lot of things. She and Chris are doing a bang-up job parenting Lucia, which brings us to the second milestone - potty-training.

Today was Day One. I checked in with Sis twice. Lucia woke up dry from her nap in the new bed and celebrated a couple of successes, but she isn't satisfied with one little cookie as a reward for sitting still long enough to hit the pot with a few drops of pee pee. Jack has suggested money. When Sis and I were learning about the potty, we learned the importance of reading material.

I hope things go smoothly over the next few days and only hope that Lu catches on to this potty thing as quickly as she's caught on to everything else she's been confronted with...

Like her skuut. She's amazing on it - she's fast and fearless, but she does listen to Sis when she tells her to slow down or stop with the exception of one curb she jumped like a BMX'er. I have a feeling the next time Jack shows up with a bicycle for Lucia, it might be a classic "Spider Bike", which is apparently the most bad-ass thing a kid could've possibly had in 1969.

He had the Western Flyer version.

Enjoy the photos of Lucia and the butterfly in Sis' beautiful perennial garden. They're delightful, even if I do say so myself...

This & That...

Another weekend has come and gone, bringing us one weekend closer to the summer being over. I still remember the anxiety and excitement of a new school year looming ahead as those last hurrahs of summer came and went on the calendar. I don't know how the schedule rolls now, but back in my day, band camp and 4-H Round-up both happened in late July sometime after taking the year's lambs to Junior Livestock Exposition. Those were good times...

Now the good times are a little different than they once were, but they are every bit as rewarding. If not more.

Thursday night I babysat Lu for a couple of hours while Sis and Chris went out to dinner and picked up a few groceries.

Please pardon the lack of pictures, but spending time with Lucia the other evening was too interactive for me to spend much time behind the camera. We had a blast.

I'd picked up an Asian Salad to go on my way over, and once Lucia and I started eating dinner, she quickly began quizzing me about what I was eating. She was particularly interested in the edamame (pronounced ed a'mommy), otherwise known as soy beans, and after I shared a few with her, she quickly declared them to be the best beans she'd ever eaten and proceeded to eat the majority of the ones that came in my salad. 

"Pammy, can I have another one?"

I didn't mind. Soy beans are one of the healthiest things a body can eat, and they're now available in the freezer section of most grocery stores. They're excellent in salads and great ingredients for the newest hottest thing in children's "lunch-ery" - bento boxes. (borrowed photos)

If you're not familiar with bento, it's a Japanese method of packing a box lunch with rice or noodles, meat or fish, and assorted fruits/vegetables/pickles. Think of it as homemade "Lunchables" without the preservatives and crap.

Because of the Asian influence, there's a lot of "Hello Kitty" imagery in the world of bento for children, but what kid wouldn't be excited about something like this for lunch?

Sorry to get sidetracked there, but sometimes it happens.

Lucia was in a great mood during our visit, and I'm amazed at how advanced her language skills are. Well, her mother is a speech-language pathologist, so I'm not that amazed, but for a two and a half year old, she's nailed a lot of conversational skills lacking in many of today's five year olds. And older.

We ended our evening with an awesome dance party in her room. She shares my appreciation for The Go-Gos and does an awesome sing-a-long dance to "We've Got the Beat".

Potty training looms in the week ahead for her... Good luck, Lu. Good luck, sis. This is going to be a milestone.

The fish of the week was, once again, Red Snapper. Delicious.

Jack and I met up with Mom and Dad today for lunch at the good Chinese buffet in McTown. It was great! As with most buffets, it's best to go when it's busy - everything was fresh and delicious. And it was great to spend some time chewing the fat with Mom and Dad.

On one last note, Sis shared a little "Lucia tidbit" that she overheard on the baby monitor as her facebook status yesterday that I absolutely must pass along, because it's just too precious -- 

Lucia is talking instead of napping. It sounds like she is making up a story. I just heard, "I can't reach the castle. It's 7:00. Oh no! This is terrible!!!"

Have a great week, everybody!

Tuesday Night Hodgepodge

Today was supposed to be the hottest day of the year. I haven't heard yet whether we made it to the record book or not, but I certainly think we got close before thunderstorms moved through, bringing temporary respite from the stifling steaminess of mid-July. Key word: temporary.

When the sun came back out and I ventured to the yard with my camera, the air was so humid and the temperature so hot that my camera, which had been in the nice cool house, condensed like a glass of tea. And no, that isn't a good thing, but by the time I realized what was going on, it was too late to come back inside - best to wait-out a fogged-up lens filter sometimes.

We have mushrooms popping all over the place with some wonderful edibles in the mix, though a handful barely "picking sized" chanterelles is hardly anything to plan a meal around... Hopefully we can find some more in the next day or two - we've seen some in the woods down the hill from the house of substantial size in previous years and would like to find some more of those.

The squirrels love mushrooms, too. This dude is chowing-down on a big bolete stem...

Sunday afternoon Jack and I took a delightful backroads photo safari, following Smith Fork Creek from Dowelltown and taking the long way to Alexandria, winding our way through Brush Creek, Sykes, Hickman and Lancaster to the Caney Fork River below Center Hill Dam.

Somewhere in rural Smith County we spotted a swimming hole with kids and a swinging rope and had to stop for some photos. The kids were friendly and happy to take some swings on the rope for the benefit of our cameras.

Upstream from the swimming hole some guys were fishing. This guy said he planned to clean his catch and fry it up for his dinner.

As we watched the action in the swimming hole, the trio of teenage kids having a meeting in the swimming hole seemed to move their business into the area where the three younger kids were swinging.

The little boys had problems having room to safely land in the water, so "Tiffany" took matters into her own hands. Loudly enough for everyone to hear, she proclaimed, "I'll get 'em outta the way," before taking aim and launching herself squarely at the obnoxious trio.

If I had this kid's address, I'd be sending her a copy of "Fried Green Tomatoes" so she'd understand why I yelled, "TUWANDA!" at the top of my lungs as she took flight.

She was stealthy. And effective. It was great.

The younger boy reminded us of the character, Dill, from "To Kill a Mockingbird".

The older boy, who was maybe eleven and had a sprinkling of "guy lights" in his hair, has dreams of being in the "Abercrombie & Fitch" catalog.

I really think he would've loaded up and come home with us, had we given him the opportunity.

He literally begged us to stay and take more pictures, but after he announced that we made him "feel like a porn star", we made a hasty exit.

A few miles past the swimming hole, we followed the road along the railroad tracks into Hickman.

Unspoiled places like this are simply beautiful in their absence of convenience markets and Dollar General Stores.

Running across one of the Appalachian Quilt Trail barns was a pleasant surprise.

Center Hill Dam is a feat of engineering. It makes me wish I'd developed an appreciation for math earlier in life --

The fishing is grand in the Caney Fork River below the dam. Jack and I talked to a guy who'd caught a 30" Brown Trout.

The Great Blue Heron.

I'm proud of the photos I took of this guy --

He was beautiful sailing through the fog.

Some folks associate swans with the grace of ballet, but in the photos Jack got of this beautiful creature, perhaps the heron was overlooked when "Swan Lake" was composed...

On our way home from between the dam and Silver Point, we passed the market at Old Buffalo Valley Road. I think this is where we used to turn on the way to visit Ma-Ma and Pa-Pa Harris in Granville, but I could be wrong...