Metamorphosism

Run

The blistery stripe on Gamma's forehead, the doctor said, and the blistery spot on her cheek looked like something she called "Kontaktdermatitis". She prescribed antihistamines. Gamma had come into contact with a blade of grass whilst playing in the woods near the river. It's also important to know she inherited her hayfever from her father, who is me.

For various reasons I decided to go for a run Sunday morning. I ran from our house to the river, about half an hour, 45 minutes. The chest pains weren't so bad so instead of running home I turned left and ran upstream, intending to return home in a big circle, big giant circle, instead of boringly retracing my steps. Running up the river got boring too, though, plus it was a lot farther than I expected, so for a change I took a left on the next trail I found heading into the forest and quickly got thoroughly lost.

This is no problem in that particular forest, because, I figured, it's not like the region is unsettled. Go far enough in any direction and you eventually come to something manmade, like a road or a town, or you come to the river and that takes you back to civilization.

I followed a road that turned into a path that turned into a trail that turned into a bunch of bushes. Then I scared what I figure was a deer because it ran off into the woods a lot faster than I hope the wild boar that live in the woods can run. Then I came to some water. Then I found a couple deer trails and followed them for a while, because deer are always going someplace, you know deer. Always a destination in mind. Except these particular deer seemed to take a perverse delight in constructing dead-end deertrails leading to bodies of water, which turned out to abound in those woods, or solid walls of summer-green vegetation.

I was jogging along all the time, crashing through brush and grass and leafy shit. My tight, clingy running pants were all green in the front, green with these velcro-type vines that were sticking to me and slowing me down. Wild hops grow in the area, and it quickly became obvious that the first clotheslines must have been based on ideas some caveman got running through woods like that and all of a sudden boing, you know?

My clingy pants, besides interlocking perfectly with the velcro-type vines, only went halfway down my shins, leaving an exposed area that was beginning to blister. As was the rest of my body, the front half, because these functional running clothes I was wearing wicked the perspiration from my skin professionally, but provided little protection from whatever I was allergic to in the bushes there.

In the deepest part of the forest, the forest's rectum if the forest were a giant whale, tangled up in vines, ducking under a dead tree, I told myself, Pay attention. Pay good and close attention right now. It's not every day you find yourself stuck inside a metaphor like this.

I got untangled and kept running along a path that turned into no path, and that eventually intersected with my road, and I followed that and two hours after I had left found myself back home, uneventfully except for not getting eaten by a big furry German shepherd a lady was walking without a leash, etc etc.

Thanks to Gamma I had the antihistamines and the antihistamine skin cream and that helped a lot, but my crankiness knows no bounds today. Plus, boy are my legs sore.

The reflective property of slapstick

In the conference room, delegates listen to speakers through plastic devices that fit over one ear. Or they listen to the translators through them. Interpreters I mean. Plastic ear cups are connected to your chair by a curly plastic cord that stretches out to about 6 feet when you forget about the cup and get up and walk off before twanging back across one or more surprised fellow conference participants (just the cup not you, normally). This is very funny to watch from a distance, and yesterday I discovered it to be equally funny, in a slightly embarassing but what the hell life's too short to worry about stuff like that way when it happens to you. By "you" I mean "me". Although the possibly Malaysian delegate didn't find it especially funny to have the thing snap back at her, and the probably Chinese delegate gave me a downright dirty look. Lighten up, dude. It's only a plastic ear thing. Happens at least once per conference, sometimes more.

Dialogue

Little girl: Hallo.
Parrot: ...
Little girl: Hallo.
Parrot: Hallo.
Little girl: Arschloch.
Parrot: ...
Little girl: Arschloch.
Parrot: ...

First Communion

They sit at a long table where the altar usually stands and the priest speaks and they all sing. It is a sunny day. They each go up to the microphone and say something one by one, except for the fat kid who shakes his head when the teacher talks to him, and still refuses to speak when she drags him up front. A big painting of Mary in front of my face. All the men wear suits, like Alpha said. All the kids wear white robes and the girls have wreaths of baby's breath. One boy stares at the paintings on the ceiling, mouth wide open. So I'm not the only one.
They get bread. It tastes like bread, Gamma says afterwards. They drink wine. Alpha tells me they get real wine. They're eight years old.
Then frankfurters in the room next to the church. And coffee. At home we eat schnitzels a caterer brought and cake and ice cream. The cake has a white and pink marzipan frosting Gamma and I peel off because neither of us likes marzipan. Underneath is chocolate frosting.
We lounge around. Some of us take naps. Alpha leaves on a business trip. Clouds start to roll in, there might be thundershowers later. The air has that feel to it.
We return to the church in the afternoon. More ceremony and singing. We give back the robe and pay some money, for laundering the robes maybe. Gamma desires a walk so we walk and not where I usually walk, she leads the way.
We hear a siren. That's an ambulance says Gamma, whose world is drawing into sharper and sharper focus.
We see lots of people she knows. Kids from school. We walk around the village. Past farms and flower gardens and vegetable gardens. Lots of lupins blooming, while mine haven't even grown spikes yet. Same with peonies, mine are barely buds and look at those lush blossoms.
Gamma tells me you feel just like a princess on your first communion day. She shows me the old building where the showers and locker rooms for the old soccer field used to be. Shows me the broken windows, tells me about sneaking in there with a girlfriend once, exploring. People are cleaning up a wreck out on the highway, far off. Blue lights still flashing. A truck from the fire department carries off a silver van. More are still in the ditch.
A couple is out walking their big white dog. They are the parents of the open-mouthed boy in church. They tell us they took him for a walk after everything was over and he started crying and said he just wanted to go home and watch TV, he was overwhelmed.
Gamma and I hold hands and walk along the field. We bump into a little friend of hers out in the field with her little brother, taking turns looking at the wreck with their dad's binoculars. We talk to them and Gamma looks through the binoculars but doesn't see anything special, just a red car.
Further away, we look back. Here in the fields the sky is huge, broad and high. The clouds are black in places and brightly lit in others by the setting sun. The fields just beginning to turn green, bordered in the distance by green hills with mountains beyond that. A few houses, the edge of the village, with a row of tall poplars between them and the fields. At the base of the poplars, two little kids in summer clothes looking at a big wreck with binoculars.
Next to a field of wheat we stop and watch swallows diving after bugs. We watch a bug hurry through the air over the field until we lose sight of it. The green wheat looks especially soft, the green hairy bits standing up from the grains of wheat make it look almost misty. A tractor drives past on the track and we get out of its way.
Take a good look, I tell Gamma. Remember all these gardens and vacant lots and fields and farm houses. They'll all be gone when you're my age.
Why? she asks me. I try to explain. It makes her sad and I wish I hadn't gotten started. I don't want to make my kid sad, I just want her to remember the lupins and peonies and kids out on bikes and standing in the dusk and swallows.

Mold

Nothing like finding yourself naked and twisted at the bottom of a teeny plexiglass shower stall (sort of an inverted Ardha Matsyendrdsana), looking sort of up at the ceiling and sort of over at the grout an inch in front of your face, with a twisted knee, wondering how you are going to get out, and a little girl asking if you are okay, to make you question whether the reduced mildew problem is worth the effort of squeegeeing the inside of the stall after every shower.

Bilocation

My youngest daughter, her name is Gamma, can bilocate. She did it last night after dinner. We had cleared the dining table and were sitting there talking and getting ready to do what we do after dinner, practice cello, play a game, brush our teeth and go to bed, whatever, depending on the person. My father-in-law often takes a walk around the village at that time. My mother-in-law lies on the sofa with her leg-bending machine and her crutches and suffers from her knee-replacement surgery that prevents her from doing anything beyond dispensing criticism and instructions on matters great and small.

She, my MIL, got up from the table with great effort and limped, sigh-propelled, back to her sofa. We all talked about whatever we were talking about when suddenly Gamma pointed and shouted in a voice simultaneously awed and narky:

OMA CAN WALK WITHOUT CRUTCHES!!!!

For that instant, Gamma was two other places: in a large tent crowded with the halt and the lame and an evangelical faith healer (I SAY THROW YOURAH CRUTCHES DOWN AND WALK! THANK YOU JESUS!) and in a police station, on the good side of a two-way mirror, pointing out a suspect in the line-up (THAT'S HER! THE ONE WITH THE "CRUTCHES"!).

Okay, so trilocation, seeing as how she was also still at the dining table. And her grandmother metamorphosed temporarily into a crab, a crab caught in the headlights, a crab hypnotized by the snake, and both quickly scurried back to the table to fetch her forgotten crutches and yet not quickly seeing as how she was unable to walk without them and moving quickly would undermine her status as one unable to walk without crutches.

We floated, suspended in a timeless bubble of impromptu delight. Then the clock resumed ticking and Gamma went and brushed her teeth.

Joke

Sometimes you find yourself inside a joke. A blonde does something silly right in front of you. Maybe you're even the blonde. You're sitting in a pub, and a duck walks in, or a horse. You're golfing, and Bill Gates, God and Tiger Woods play through.

But then space/time rights itself and, you know. Was that really a duck? You say.

I'm stuck in a joke at the moment. One of my favorites. You know the one about the traveling salesman and the farmer's nasty, pulchritudinous daughters? That's not the joke I mean. You know the one about the rabbi... the guy, who goes to the rabbi because his house is just too small for his wife and his kid and his cats and the turtle tortoise? And the rabbi says, but I thought your kid was in France? And the guy says, yeah, that's the other kid. And the rabbi says, well, let someone stay over and he does, he lets his daughter's friends stay over on the weekends and he throws birthday parties with a dozen eight-year-old kids but that doesn't help so he goes back and the rabbi says, so let your father-in-law move in while your mother-in-law is in the hospital and he does but that doesn't help so he goes back and the rabbi says, now that your MIL is out of the hospital, let her move in as well, she can occupy the sofa and dispense good advice and you can install one of those raised toilet-seat things in the downstairs bathroom and the rest of youse can use the upstairs bath and toilet because the raised toilet-seat thing is so scary-looking.
And the guy shrugs and tries that. Doesn't help. Then the plumbing breaks and the downstairs bathroom floods and they have to turn off all the water in the whole house and go to work unshaven and unbathed until the plumber comes and fixes it. And his FIL can't find the tortoise out in front of the house one evening when it's time to put it back to bed so he goes out and helps him look for half an hour until his wife asks them what they're doing, running their hands through the mulch and cursing, and they say looking for the tortoise and she says, Why? I put it to bed half an hour ago. And she laughs, and laughs.
And the guy, thinking how good it's going to feel when the inlaws move back out, goes back to the rabbi and knocks on the door and Rod Serling answers and he asks for the rabbi and Rod Serling says, What rabbi? Perhaps you have the wrong door. And the guy goes back out into the street and it's infinitely long and all the doors look exactly the same.

That joke.

Fahrenheit 451

For Novala (because she gave such nice answers herself, and is so delightful. Also, I reserve the right to change my answers).

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
The female sex android in a pulp paperback my father found on the bus once when I was a kid.
Margarita.

The last book you bought is:
Kafka on the Shore, Murakami

The last book you read:
Kafka on the Shore

What are you currently reading?
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace
The Passion, Jeanette Winterson

Five books you would take to a desert island.
A Moleskine
The Master and Margarita
Underworld, DeLillo
Finnegan's Wake (I could finally read it, or use it to start fires).
One more book.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
My daughter Beta, because I'd be really interested to hear.
Two commenters to this post, chosen at random, because I can't decide. Cookie, because Novala can vouch for him.

Has anyone else not done this yet? And Anne, who was actually the first person who occurred to me, which made me think she must have already done this a long time ago, and whose bookshelves I have seen with these eyes, and which contain books like you wouldn't believe. So take it away, Anne.

A walk in the woods

We go to the river and walk into the woods until we don't know where we are anymore, and then we keep going until we find ourselves again. That's more interesting than retracing our steps and starting over.

It doesn't always work. Driving in Brno last weekend, we kept going and found ourselves in a network of streets, the names of which all began with "Z" and were generally easy on the vowels, lined with apartment buildings with fewer windowpanes than windows and construction sites where no construction was going on, and not just because it was a Saturday.

So I guess the trick is picking where to get lost. Here, in the woods by the river, in the worst case, we could just follow the river to a town or a road.

We wander like this and talk to each other. We've been together nearly 25 years, and we just recently started doing this, getting lost and talking.

Research establishes link between drinking, existential crises

Alpha thinks I'm configuring her new e-mail account, but that went faster than I thought so I'm blogging. Today is a holiday here, see, and she would put me to work doing something else if she knew I had finished the other task.

We went to see Anne and her guys on the weekend. We enjoyed it thoroughly, and not only because my wife's parents have moved in with us while they wait for my MIL's cyborg knee installation to take. Once this knee heals, she'll get the other one replaced, after which she might be able to run at speeds up to 60 mpH.

But until then, she'll spend a few weeks on the sofa telling us how to do things. So we take walks, and make telephone calls trying to find a plumber to fix the leaky pipe, and go to the Czech Republic to visit nice people, and the stuff you do in situations like that.

Nine weeks of blogging gold in sight.

We went to see Anne, who just for the record had the most incredible blue eyes I've seen since 1976 (seen then in a woman's head at the airport in Washington D.C.) and plus she is a spookily good palm reader.

The Czech Republic is as beautiful as Austria, and this time of year, with the lush spring growth, both are quite smashing. The Czechs seem to have more whorehouses, at least they have bigger signs than in Austria, but they appear to be clustered near the borders.

Czech fields are bigger. Maybe their farms are in general larger than Austrian ones. So this makes the landscape look a little different.

Brno is hillier than Vienna, and easy to get lost in because the street signs are not only in Czech, they're also somehow hidden. So as we looked for Anne's address, me driving and Alpha reading the directions to me, there was a lot of conversation like, "Turn right, no left, at the street starting with a Z. Does this street start with a Z?"

Also they have different currency so I was reduced to infantile tourism, where you don't know anything and just go where people take you and pay what they tell you to pay. Alpha, on the other hand, learned Czech after about 30 minutes.

What can I say about the trip? We took a walk through the town, along streets and trails in the woods, making fun of participants in an orienteering competition running around with their maps and compasses. Around this time we discovered we were lost in the woods. Then we found a pub and everything was okay again. Not only okay: I discovered an idea I'm going to steal from the pub and become a very, very rich man with. But more on that at a later date.

I can't give a good account of the trip here, because I'm still so hungover, a strange gin hangover where you don't feel so bad physically, you just question the meaning of existence. At the same time, it was one of those visits where the kids get along, and your wife likes your friend and her husband, and you like her husband and you're relieved everything turns out so well. You rifle through the books on their bookshelves and they all look interesting as do the CDs on the rack. The furniture is tasteful in a comfortable, agreeable way and they cook well and their son draws cool maps and takes knightly good care of Gamma.
The Murphy bed was cool. I slept well, although I suppose I would have slept well inside an industrial clothes dryer that night. The food was good. The neighborhood was charming. If only existence had a meaning.

Comment filter

I think I figured out why harmless comments are sometimes denied. Included on my blacklist are words such as c4sino, g4mes, b3tting and d3bt and similar words that are potentially harmless but common in spam. I hate to remove them from the list because they keep out a lot of the riff-raff. So try L33t if your comment gets denied. Unless you're a sp4mmer.

Battleground Lake

There was a bottomless lake not far from where I grew up. It was where my parents' generation went to have fun, and mine too, until they opened up the gravel pits closer to my house. Nowadays, there are other things to do. There are malls and stuff.

There was a high slide at the lake. A high tower with a slide leading straight down into the lake. I never went down it. I was a fraidy cat. Now that slide no longer stands, felled by liability laws, I guess. Instead, they may have a fancy fiberglass one spiralling around. But I don't know this, I haven't been there in years.

I went swimming there one summer when I was in college. I packed my pocket watch in a baggy so it wouldn't get wet. I needed to know the time so I wouldn't be late for my swing shift job at the cannery. The watch got wet anyway, and stopped, so I left way early just in case.

My brother let me try out his scuba stuff there one summer. Visibility was zero, the water was very muddy at the edge. I put on the diving mask and the tank and started breathing and stepped into deeper water and gradually sank and that, in combination with the lake being bottomless, freaked me out so I got back out of the water.

A diving platform was anchored 50 yards or so out into the lake. Kids swam out there and sunned themselves and jumped off. Laughter, water drops, sparkle, sun, skin. I've always been a good swimmer so I could swim out there easily, but I never did because I didn't know the other kids. There was grass on the shore and I had a big towel.

About thirty big deer were standing around in a field right next to the freeway the other day. Several husky bucks with velvety antlers. A bunch of does. The evening light was clear and bright and the woods behind them and the grass in the field were this bright, fresh green. I slowed down to look at them. I wanted to strip naked and frolic with them, but that would have been a mistake on several levels.

I am standing on this diving platform. I am wearing heavy, steel-toed logging boots and a heavy coat and clothes. I got here by climbing down a ladder but now it's missing its rungs and I can't climb back up and were I to swim I would sink because of the boots and clothes. This is this dream I had a while back that won't leave me. The dominant feeling is one of being fuxxored.

The lake is bottomless. Also, in the dream, it's the ocean. And the boots are heavy, heavy as deep-sea diver boots. This is where the dream ends. But if I continue it this is what I do: take off the boots. Fold my clothes in a neat pile. Dive in naked. I'm a good swimmer, I just forgot for a second.

Okay

"Gamma told me last night that she tests whether you're listening or not."

"That's nice."

"She says she can say anything she wants and you agree to it."

"Uh-huh."

"She says the weirdest things she can think of, and you say okay."

"Mmm hmm."

"If you're listening, she says, you catch on right away."

"Okay."

"Otherwise, she can get you to agree to about five weird things before it dawns on you."

"Cool. Hang on. Wait, what?"

Toe-licking

Mornings, I let in the cats and stand at the counter and open their astronaut-like foil envelopes of food and squeeze them into their dishes, twisting my bare feet around in a miserable dance as they lick my toes as if they posit a causal relationship between them licking my toes and me giving them food.

I give them their food and drink my coffee and wonder if God (if you believe) or life or whatever (if you don't or if you're not sure) is like that too, with our prayers and demands. We pray and he's/it's like dude, stop licking my fucking toes, I was going to feed you anyway. Go torment a mouse or something.

Nightmare

Every few years I have a grand nightmare that permeates me like a poison and takes days to get out of my system and I never really forget. I had one last weekend. I mentioned it. I'm still hungover from that, and it sounds so harmless to tell about. Once I dreamed about a boulder in the middle of a river, a thin layer of water flowing over its smooth, flat top. That still haunts me. This dream was about being stuck somewhere. There was more to it than that but that was the basic thing. Same thing with the boulder - I had murdered someone and hidden their body under it. Backstory is important. Once I dreamed I was fighting a guy. That was maybe more conventionally interesting. Other people sat around, watched television and didn't notice that I was sawing at his jugular with a piece of broken window glass, or that blood was spraying out in a thin jet. Took forever to kill him, and he never really died.

With that on the inside of my head yesterday, I went to the luthier and bought a cello. I hated to do it, because I was enjoying the quest so much; learning so much about cellos etc. Ideally, I would have wanted to travel to a cello maker and buy one directly from him or her. See where they stack the wood they use to build it, see half-finished instruments scattered abo ut. Smell the wood shavings. But a time comes in the affairs of men when you have to shit or get off the pot, and that time was yesterday. The cello was at the upper end of my price range, well beyond it actually, my wife had granted permission, I had the money, sort of, in pocket and the likelihood of finding anything either better-sounding or prettier for that price was slim. Somewhere, someone I don't know has a wonderful instrument gathering dust in their attic, but pff. So, nightmare in hand I went and bought it.

I always get shy and awed when I'm there. Imagine a jellyfish in a black suit, gasping for air, running a tentacle around its collar nervously. To make matters worse, two parents walked in looking for a "school cello" for their kid.

Things went well, though. I told the luthier my price, which was lower than the price he was asking. You're saying you want to buy the cello for that price, he said. I'm saying I want to buy it, period, I said, but my wife and I discussed it, and my limit is this amount. For reasons unknown to me, he accepted that and I left with my cello. He even loaned me a case until I buy one: if any of you know where I can get a fantastic deal on a hard case, let me know.

Now, to find a bow.

I'll have to post a picture of the cello, though. The maple back and sides are quite attractive, tiger-striped, which resonated with me as perhaps my most interesting nightmare ever involved a tiger; interesting because Gamma was not only in the dream, she remembered it too, after waking. It impressed me so much I am using it in a novel.

In other news, Alpha gave me a folding tripodic chair so Gamma and I don't have to fight over the one we had when we go into the woods to draw, it was a wonderful present. And I think I'm getting a cake when I get home, because Gamma and I had this conversation this morning:

Girl: Maybe you'll have a cake for your birthday.
Man: Maybe, but I doubt it, but that's okay.
Girl: Everyone needs a cake on their birthday.
Man: No problem, I'll survive. I don't think I'm getting a cake.
Girl: Don't you want a cake?
Man: I like cake. But that's okay, honey.
Girl: Don't feel bad, dad. Maybe you'll get cake!
Man: No, I don't think so.
Girl: Dad, no, maybe you're getting cake!
Man: That's nice of you to say that, but...
Girl: Dad, you're getting cake!
Man: Heh.

Music

We went... a friend... hang on. There was this concert. My wife mentioned it to a friend of ours, who discovers the coolest music etc. She said the dulcimer player was good, she had seen him perform once where she also saw the Vienna Vegetable Ensemble. The concert was in a small town out in the country. We drove out. The countryside was beautiful, like a moonscape if the moon were covered with rolling hills and plowed fields, and had a big full moon hanging over it. The place wasn't so big, small stage, eight or ten tables. Despite that, and what you would expect to be the attraction of an electric dulcimer/accordeon duo, with vocals, sort of ethereal, the place was nearly empty. That is, when we got there we were the entire audience. Then more people came, and more, and more, until there were at least ten people in the audience, not counting the guy moving levers up and down on the mixer.

It was really good. I had no idea dulcimer and accordeon could sound so modern and like that.

After the concert we went outside and talked to the singer for a while. She was surprised to meet someone in a small town in the Austrian countryside who spoke fluent Japanese. By "we" I mean "my wife." I stood in the background and smiled and nodded and wished I'd worn a warmer coat.

The singer was a Japanese woman, FYI.

That was a few weeks ago. Last Saturday we were at another concert. This one was in another small town, but the audience was quite large and knowledgeable. Interestingly for us, by "us" I mean my wife and me, the musicians were too good. They were classical musicians - their regular job is playing with the V1enna Ph1lh4rmonic. This was... the music at this concert was Schrammelmusik, which it would be oversimplifying to describe as the urban folk music played while drinking wine in Vienna, but I can't do any better. And we agreed, although they were really, very good, that the music could have used a little more dirt, wasn't imperfect enough. Lacked the seeds of its own destruction.

Frog

Gamma was sitting in the woods drawing. Alpha was looking at a pond. I watched them both. Then I got restless and walked over towards my wife. A little brown frog jumped out from under some plants at my feet. I crouched down and tried to catch it, to show it to Gamma, but it got away. I put my hat over it, but it wriggled out from under and hopped away between my legs. By the time I turned around it was gone.

Then we saw two blue bugs. They were large and Gamma was afraid to walk past them until we explained that they were fucking and preoccupied. Gamma drew a picture of the pond.

I tried to draw a picture of a hunter's blind, one of these rickety tower constructions they have here, but it looked wrong until I stopped looking at the paper as I drew. Then it still looked wrong, but more interesting.

I was in a dark, desperate mood all day because of some nightmare I had. Something about a tower.
Nightmares are my favorite dreams, usually, but still.

For breakfast, Gamma and I made waffles with whipped cream and strawberries and raspberries, because it was Mother's Day.

Guest post

The key to happiness is your sense of function and utility, if you're an iron lung. You are respirating another being, unlike an oxygen chamber, which is nothing more than a glorified bed for people like Michael Jackson. Happiness for an oxygen chamber hangs from a thin string tied to a twig of self-deception about as big around as your little finger.

We iron lungs, on the other hand, replicate the pulsation shared by all life forms, from the contractions of birth, pulse, peristalsis to the ultimate contraction and release that expels a being from this life.

Miners retired at 32, staring at pictures of God pinned to the ceiling, wishing their kids would stop singing those plaintive songs about them in the next room in their nasal voices; resigned polio victims; little children taken tragically ill, imagining walks down long corridors holding hands with healthy alternate selves, we've breathed them all.

In and out.

Gamma turned 8

I hate clowns so a clown was out, as was that person who dances around in the sort of bird costume. McDonald's was out, the organic farm where the kids can play in the dirt and pet the animals was too far away plus it was closed on the weekend I think. The Museum of Natural History wanted, what, way over two hundred Euro for seven kids or something like that. We did a pirate party last year, I think. At any rate, we'd done one already, with treasure map, treasure hunt, all that stuff.

Which left the art museum.

This is how I found myself sitting in front of The Two Fridas with my wife, a friend of ours kind enough to come along and help out, the tour guide and twelve 8-year old children: nine girls, Bill Gates, Hannibal Lector and Don Rickles. The sort of smart kids who are fine as long as you keep them occupied, which turns out to be impossible.

The guide was really good. She had been planning to show the kids a different picture, but they all sat down in front of this one so she explained it instead, off the top of her head, talking about Frida and the painting at a level the kids and I could understand. She told us how expensive it was, how it had traveled here with a courier who never let it out of his sight, as the boys swang pillows over their heads, sword-fight style, etc.

Alpha is a genius. We took the train to the museum, which fascinated the kids, some of whom had never been on one before. I had expected the kids to be rowdier. I even wore my steel-toed boots just in case, just to put a little fear in them. This is how scared the boys were: on the way to the restroom with them after the tour, Don Rickles asked me what my name is. I told him. "That's a girl's name," he said.

Anyhow. The guide told us afterwards she had been surprised the kids were as well-behaved and attentive as they were. A previous group hadn't been interested at all.

After the tour, they got to paint and we fed them and went back to the train. On the way we let them play in the creek, so they could fall in and catch colds. Hannibal Lector found a broken schnaps bottle and threw it back into the high grass. I went in looking for it so no one would step on it with his or her bare feet, and stepped in dog shit with my boots. It reminded me of that scene in Jurassic Park where the big game hunter is taking aim at one dinosaur and the other one eats him. So I went wading in the creek for a while too until the sole of my boot was fairly clean again.

Amazingly, no one was injured the whole time. No paintings were damaged. No one cried. Bill Gates was thirsty, because we had none of the beverages he allowed himself to drink (i.e. tap water). Everyone else seemed to have a good time. We were still talking to each other after we arrived back at our train station and handed the kids back to their parents, who seemed equally surprised they all still had ten fingers and toes each.

We went into town, where I got Gamma an ice-cream cone. She climbed halfway up a tree and ate it while listening to a big band that was playing outside.

That was Saturday. Sunday some relatives came over. We fed them until they went home again. Gamma had a great time both days. She said it was her best birthday ever.

How to shop for a flat-screen monitor

Shopping for hardware is a complicated undertaking, so it's essential to decide beforehand exactly what you want and how much you are willing to spend.

In my case, I answered these two questions with "a flat screen monitor" and "hopefully not too much."

With that taken care of, I went to the mall. I went into three stores. In each one, the same thing happened: the sales people saw a grey-haired guy standing in front of computer stuff, breathing through his mouth, and avoided him until he left again.

Then I went back to work.

The following day, I went to a different mall with a colleague from work, a fellow who knows more about hardware than I do. When we got he said, "computers are over there. I'll be in the DVD section."

I stood in front of the flat-screen monitor display and oxygenated my blood through my mouth. I observed the products on sale and educated myself through close attention to physical details and the descriptions on the little price tag things next to the monitors. While the 17" ones were the cheapest, I realized, the 19" monitors were bigger and cooler-looking. So I decided I wanted one of those. They ranged in price from something-something-99 to you've-really-got-to-be-kidding-99.

I asked the saleskid which one he would recommend. Cunning as I am, I think I phrased it like this: "I want a monitor. Which one should I buy?" He shrugged. I looked for my work colleague, but he was engrossed in the fine print on the back of a DVD. The FBI warning or something.

The cheapest monitors were suspicious-looking and oddly named, while the expensive ones were cooler looking, had unnecessary features (Height-adjustable!!) and I also had never heard of the brands, although they sounded cooler than the cheap ones. Which left the ones in the middle.

This, I realized too late, is done intentionally. There is, I think, a science to marketing. Cheap ones over there, with the cheap prices you use in the ads to lure customers, expensive ones over there, which you never plan to really sell, they're just to make the ones in the middle, the ones you really intend to sell, look reasonable. They do this with everything - cars, shoes, humans.

So I bought a medium-priced monitor. Expensive-medium. Black, to match our keyboard at home. Looks really cool. Built-in speakers! Nothing is too good for you, Alpha!

Now about that cello...