QuestionAbel Parenting

I finished the last of my schoolwork for the term a few days ago, which means I can now focus my energies on the Play for the next month.  “The Hound of the Baskervilles” is at the Town and Gown on September 17-20, 24-27.  The poster has been finished for some time and was a lot of fun to make.  I will post it later on.  There are many worries I have about this production.  A lighting director still hasn’t been found, there’s no clue how many people will actually try out for the show.  Not too worrisome, I suppose.  Perhaps I will have to learn lighting very quickly or something like that.

Zachary has started day care.  He began last week on Monday and he goes Monday through Wednesday.  This way, I can get work done for the various projects I have.  I miss him when he is away, but he is such a lot of work lately.  Crawling has been achieved.  One walks him to the living room and sets him down and he will burst into wailing if you should step a few feet away from him.  Forget a quick trip to the bathroom.  And he will crawl after you.  Which is somewhat frustrating.  Babyproofing the house hasn’t occured at a large scale yet, and we are at a bit of a loss as to how to limit his access to the variety of wires on the floor.  He loves to chew.

There have been a few dreams the past week of camp and I wake up missing the experience terribly.  With the advent of the play, I feel my doldrums and boredom will clear up a bit.  Zachary at day care gives me time to focus on things important as well.  But there is a definite lack of “must be done” feelings here at home.  That’s an okay thing, I suppose.  However, there were pictures on Facebook the other day of campers that I have had and it pulled my heartstrings terribly.  These are a few kids who are stepping up through the LIT program, and kids who are still CITs and they are at camp and it is hard to not be there and talk with them and see them grow into leaders at camp.  That’s what I ended up enjoying most at camp: watching campers become counselors.  I am fond of thinking of all the current counselors I had as campers in some capacity – I was only a “counselor” for two years.  But there’s still a healthy amount.

So, I miss those kids.  They give me hope in the future.  Hope that Zachary will have a great camp to go to someday.  Oh, I miss camp.  But I also feel compelled to move on and do other things I’ve dreamed of doing.  So that is what I try to do.

io9 has a review which sums up a lot of my feelings for HP6 quite well.  It seemed more of a “Here’s what happened while you were waiting for the seventh (and eighth) movies” feel about it.  Things seemed rushed.

I didn’t really feel the need for the Dumbledore funeral, as the ending dragged a bit on its own.  I suppose it could have been done in place of the glowing wands or something.  But one commenter (gasp! a commenter!) raised a good point that had been nagging me:  Draco got the Death Eaters into Hogwarts so Bellatrix could break some windows?  Lame.  I suppose the director wants to hold out on battles until movie eight?  Cheated.

Snape’s struggle was far too underscored, and that was my main problem.  “I am the Half-Blood Prince,” he says at the end of the movie.  Who?  Who’s that?  Oh, the guy with the potion book, right.

I’m not the greatest fan of including every speck of prose from a book, but I felt this one chopped out weird bits and left out other bits.  Three hour movies are not my thing, really, but the snogging focus was a little heavy considering the weight of the other things happening in the wizard world.  It felt a bit like that in the book as well – which I suppose captures the age of the characters well.  At that age, it is the end of the world if a loved one doesn’t love you back.  But, still, there’s good action to be seen.  And the snogging doesn’t come off as romantic or sweet – it comes off as kids playing around.  I know they aren’t the youngest of folks, really, but still.

Ah well.  It was alright.  Sam and I disagree on the movies anyway, but I think she felt this one lackluster as well.  Her favorites are the first two and mine is number 3 – her least favorite.  Change is hard

Ah, Percy Jackson.  That adventurous fellow.  His adventures are (currently) done.  Rick Riordan has called it the end of the first Camp Half-Blood series, so there will no doubt be more.  Will they have Percy as the main character?  I actually hope not.  I like the idea of exploring some new campers and that kind of thing.  Percy has had his arc completed.  I liked it.

“The Last Olympian” was much better than “Battle for the Labyrinth.”  Labyrinth seemed very trite, very “I’ve read this book before” compared to the past books.  ”Olympian” had a lot of action and fun to it.  Predictable in several ways, but also hard to guess the exact outcome.  I spent much of the book expecting Annabeth to turn evil at the end, but I did guess Silena’s secret fairly early on.  Of course, I am not the target demographic and I have become somewhat skilled at guessing how books will turn out.  Harry Potter?  Called it.  The City of Ember?  Swish.  Books my age?  Don’t read ‘em very often.

Because despite the predictability of some plot points and character actions, I have nice surprises thrown my way by the younger books.  The creative process flows faster in them, amazing things that adults might think silly happen and end up seeming very cool.

Percy Jackson is an amazing series overall from the perspective of an educator.  There’s lots of parallels to Greek myths and stories and it’s an entertaining way for kids to learn about ancient Greek mythology.  Which is neat to me because I’m a bit of a myth-nerd.

The conflict is pretty action packed in Olympian.  I didn’t find the “choice” Percy had to make all that difficult from an outside perspective, but it was fun to read.  I especially enjoyed the inclusion of Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth who played an important, if underscored, role in the proceedings.

It was a good conclusion to a good series.  I liked it.

Well, Zachary has this awful diaper rash.  Somewhat disgusting.  We are doing our best to solve the problem – and we are for certain moving to cloth diapers.  We want to get the all-in-one, and it would be a treat if they were the adjustable (one size) variety.  The past few days have found me scouring reviews and personal parenting blogs for advice.

Ah, “Parenting.”  Have I mentioned my ire for this publication?  A rudimentary scan of this periodical brings up its delight-less incorrect moniker.  The magazine should be named “Mothering.”  Upon further investigation, one might change this to “Mothering without Dad’s help because he’s a worthless layabout and probably doesn’t care about the children, also, you are a female Jesus.”  I suppose the masthead would be too unweildly.  Still, it’s a nightmare.

Case in point:  The Forums.  I am no stranger to the world of Online BBS Battle.  Youthful and brash,I was even guilty of upscaling arguments into “that’s what the Nazis did” territory.  My time in the trenches has made me wary of re-entering that world, so I mainly lurk.  Signing up for every forum I want to comment on takes too much time anyway – I’ve got this baby to take care of.

The Forums have a “Dad to Dad” forum, seemingly intended for Dad’s to talk to Dad’s.  What the staff of “Parenting” don’t seem to understand is that the magazine should probably pull Dad’s into this world.  It certainly doesn’t.  The DtD forum is mostly moms wondering why the Dads don’t seem to be around.  Maybe they are busy fixing grease traps and shaving themselves, whatever these men do.  It all adds up to a big “fail” for the magazine.

Irritating behavior from a magazine aside, it irks me that the “stay at home dad” is still looked on as weird by certain folk.  There’s no way to really know who they are, but they are out there.  Watching.  Judging.  Ignoring their children.

Ah well.

The excitement at Casa de Abello is over our new recycling bin. It is, in actuality, a laundry hamper. But the bags are removable and there are three of them. We no longer will be throwing everything into one bin for later sorting. The nicety also follows that we can take one load at a time for right now. Which is pretty great when you have to drive your own recycling around town.

In addition, we have tomatoes on our front plants. Something I am quite excited about. We lost one fruit already to bugs, but there has been a spraying. Are we proud? No. But we will have tomatoes.

It continues very hot, which I am not too thrilled on. But that’s how it rolls here in OK.

Life has picked up. Zachary and I are back in OK after our sweet, sweet, excursion to MI. Camp was a lot of fun and reminded me of life at its best. OK is hot. So that’s that.

Life! Sam has tended the garden well – she is the superior gardener of the family – and we shall soon reap benefits. I missed the beans and peas by being at camp, which is sad, but I shall be about to have zuchini and squash, corn, tomatoes, peppers, and peanuts! Ah, my peanut plant is growing well. I planted three, but one is doing well as can be. I don’t know when to dig the peanuts up, though. So the Internet calls later.

Sam is looking for jobs. She has applied in the UP (awesome!) and Maine (could be awesome) and our dreams of a quick move home to MI are fading. Which could be a good thing. I rather fancy the idea of life in Maine, dependent on where we end up. It seems a smaller state width wise, so I wonder what a journey to the ocean is like when you live on the southwest area. I don’t know Maine. All I think of are dudes in waterproof overalls thrusting lobster into sacks and “The Shipping News.”

All this talk of gardening and living on a farm (our goal) has be excited to do a few extreme DIY projects. I have a little dream of making my Quest pizza (Rose Levy Berenbaum Rules!) with as much homemade material as possible. The pizza in question involves beer in the crust, so you can see how far such a thing could be extrapolated. A dream indeed, of sauce made from homegrown tomatoes, crust from homemade beer, mozzarella constructed from a cow I milk myself, perhaps even flour and barley grown at home. It shan’t be easy, but it certainly sounds amazing to me.

I am almost done with my school term. All that remains is a paper and a test I must complete. And that will be that until Augustish.

My main focus in the coming weeks is “The Hound of the Baskervilles” at the Town and Gown. So much must be done! Directing a play is a new endeavor for me, so I am excited to learn.

And on the fiction front, I am hard at work on “Attack of the Space Pirates.” Perhaps I will build a buffer so I can update the blog with it. Published on the Internet? Perhaps so.

Also: For those who need to know (you know who you are, illustrious clientele) my job title is no longer “Adventurer-for-Hire.” Those mercenary-styled cavaliers have grown too large in number with their shoot first, ask questions never attitudes. For your Grail Quest needs, I suggest you go with someone possessing more panache. Me. Man of Action. I plan. I watch. I act. Don’t be fooled by cut-rate adventurers who use any excuse to start a knife fight! Get a Man of Action and get the job done right!