“...and he learned their lingo in a way I never could.”

The other night  I found myself arguing with my six-year-old about lie versus lay. I’m not going to apologize for that, especially since she brought it up. Well, actually, I corrected her first, but she fought back. (I’m proud of that misguided child for sticking to her poorly aimed guns.) She said she was “laying down for a nap” at school, and I said she was lying down. She said laying, I said lying, she said laying, I said lying--well, you se how it went. Two six-year-olds in an argument. To end it, I pulled the “I’m an English teacher. It’s ‘lie down.’” And then I explained in my Dad-at-Bedtime voice that one lies down to go to sleep, but one lays a blankie down after cuddling with it.

I know, though, that I am in a minority when I tell my dog to “lie down.” I know I’m in a minority who understand that “one lies down on the bed for a nap, but one lays the folded laundry on the bed.” (And later, when one wants to lie down, one picks up the clean laundry and lays it on the floor, and then the dogs come in and lie on the clean laundry that has been laid upon the floor.)

In the shower this morning I started thinking (you know you do your best thinking there, too, Dear Reader). How could my daughter avoid getting mixed up, when the vast majority of adults in her life say “lay down” when they mean “lie down”? When countless people tell their dogs to “lay down”? When teachers tell their students to “lay down” for nap? Whether through lack of confidence, lack of interest, or because that’s how everyone else says it, it’s no surprise that people say “lay” when they mean “lie.”

That’s where the real learning takes place. The osmosis of learning to speak. Usage determines the rules of the English language. If enough people learn to say something a certain way, that certain way becomes the rule. 

My problem is that I have this really inconsistently applied instinct that the old ways are the best ways, not counting dishwashers and laundry and staying warm and some other things. But in lie vs. lay, the old ways are the best ways. Silly, I know.

Do you want to know why your dogs don’t obey me? Because you’ve trained them to “lay down,” but when I want them down I say, “Lie down,” and so of course they get confused. Don’t ask me to dog-sit, because I’ll flip those tables on you in a hurry!

Nine years ago, a woman spoke at a seminar in my learn-to-get-paid-for-teaching program. I don’t recall her name, or her area of expertise, but I remember one thing she said: “Within fifty years, the rule for lie/lay will be obsolete. It will be grammatically acceptable to say, ‘I’m going to lay down for a nap.’” Her point was simply that, in English, usage of the language determines the rules of the language, something I’ve long accepted. But...the old ways are the best ways. This crossed a line and I took a stand. “Not if I have anything to say about it!” I called from one of the upper rows in the seminar hall. “I’ll teach lie/lay until the day I retire.” Never mind that I’d be 82 on that day if I taught for fifty years and probably would just be making up my own language at that point, in between wiping coffee spills off my clip-on and telling kids about embarrassing moments of my own junior high experience. (Oh, wait--I do those things now.)

“Well, if that’s your battle, good for you,” the expert lady replied, not as condescendingly as you might think, but kinda so. “I’m only saying that...” blah blah blah, something like that train has already left the station, etc. The blood pounding in my ears prevented me from hearing what she said, and I tuned out for the rest of the day. I recall brooding over my tuna sandwich at lunch that day. I would own lie vs. lay. I would produce generations of graduates expert in the use of lie vs. lay. They’d become bankers, actors, doctors, song writers, advertisers, pastors, and public servants; they’d infiltrate their chosen fields and start a revolution...

And yet...and yet...usage does determine the rules. That day, something deep inside me recognized that she’s probably right. And here I am, nine years later, with a daughter who lays down instead of lies down for naps.

All I can do is love her unconditionally for who she is. For whom she is? Who is she? Dangit! Whom’s in charge of this stuff?

I should have known the battle was lost when Hanes came out with their “lay-flat collar” on t-shirts. The tagline: “Lays flat. Won’t bacon.”

Needless to say, I’m a Fruit-of-the-Loom man now.

“It’s all up now. That comes of meddling with the Craft without warrant!”

This used to be a much longer blog entry--nearly 1,000 words of boredom. [Now it’s only 750 words of tedium. Waka-waka!] I was in some kind of a mood when I wrote it. The gist of it is the following summary: The dishwasher sprang a leak and I caulked it up, only nearly breaking the rest of the dishwasher in the process. 

My thesis: I think I am pretty handy around the house, but due to some variables in my handiness equation I run a high risk of causing more damage than I cure.

That’s right, a handiness equation. More on that after the tale.

Last spring, we discovered water coming from under the dishwasher every cycle. Not so much that an old bath towel shoved under the washer couldn’t soak it all up, so for a month or two we made do. But come summer I decided to fix it properly. I traced the leak underneath the dishwasher and reasoned that it was either a leaky hose or a leaky gasket. I’m not sure I know quite what a gasket is, but I think it’s like a rubber washer that forms a seal between two hard surfaces, and that sounded like a potential leak source. I had seen the Sears repairman fix our washer previously by taking out the motor assembly from within the tub (turns out olive pits don’t get chewed up by the impeller--they just clog up the works until nothing turns). That was as good a place to start as any. I’ve always been good at taking things apart, so this went swimmingly. I was soon awash in dishwasher parts. 

After I disassembled the entire motor housing, I discovered that I hadn’t needed to do any of that work in the first place. The leak was simply coming from a hole in the tub itself, caused by some melted plastic that was stuck on the tub floor after a plastic bottle lid was melted by the heating element once several years ago. The melted plastic, though I had scraped up what I could, continued to heat up during every wash cycle, eventually melting in its turn the dishwasher tub, until finally the hole found daylight under the washer. I hadn’t needed to take ANYTHING apart to find this leak--it was right in plain sight, easily accessible, simply explained, and effortlessly repaired. 

So, time to reassemble the motor housing. Funny thing: assembly is always harder than disassembly. I managed to strip a plastic threading that held the water sprayer in place, and only after 45 minutes of fuming and forcing and fudging and other f-words, I got it back so that it A) stayed on and B) turned freely. I’m not sure it’ll ever come off again. After that, just for good measure, I poked a hole with a screwdriver in one of the filter screens. I don’t think I’ve ever actually experienced an emotion that could be described as apoplectic until that moment.

Two hours after beginning the process of fixing the dishwasher, I simply daubed some heat-resistant silicone caulk into the hole and plugged it up. The dishwasher hasn’t leaked since. For good measure, I repaired the damaged filter screen with the same caulk.

The end result is that I fixed the leak in the dishwasher. But in the process I damaged two other parts of the dishwasher, making another problem that much more likely, although so far, so good. So now, the Equation: 

(self-perceived handiness + troubleshooting effort) x action taken

                                                                                                     = actual handiness

                                   damage done during action

The higher the number, the handier one actually is. I have left Time Spent on Project out of the equation, because that in itself contains too many variables: being handy doesn’t mean you’ll have the right supplies or won’t be interrupted by 2-year-olds. Plus, I’m not sure how to put that into the equation. I think what I’m seeking here is an “Actual Handiness Ratio,” but maybe someone with stronger conceptual math skills can help out. I realize that this is not nearly a complete equation, but it sure seems logical to me that the handier one thinks one is, the bigger the action one will take to fix things, and the stronger the likelihood that one will screw something up in the process.

Does that apply to raising children, too? I hope not.

“I saw a crooked man crawling along the white dust of the roadside...”

“Look, a meth deal!” I really said this. In the car with my wife and children. In Williamsburg, Virginia. It just came out. Perhaps you know that words just tend to pour out of my mouth without my brain filtering them. (Have you ever read “The Word Birds of  Davey McFifer”? A solid read, according to my memory as a seven-year-old. Great pictures of birds crawling out of a boy’s mouth.) It’s probably not something I would have said if my brain got into the act, but fortunately my children are pretty oblivious to the seedy underbelly of the world, so to them I might as well have said, “Look, a mess reel!” Plus they don’t really listen to me, so I could talk Klingon all day long and be no worse off.

It all started when we checked into our campsite across the James River from Williamsburg. Looked like a really nice state park, and the campsite was impeccable, but...it was raining, and the tent was still wet from the night before, and none of us wanted to sleep in the tent in the rain, and I had no compunction this time about wimping out, so we took the ferry across the river and drove into Williamsburg to find us a nice hotel. 

But first, CVS for diapers! Not far from William & Mary and Colonial Williamsburg was a CVS, according to TomTom. So we buzzed over,  and I was in and out in no time. We saw a Super 8 across the road, and while I wouldn’t put it in the category of “nice hotel,” it was likely in our price range and would be a good benchmark for how pricey a hotel would be here. As we waited to pull out into the road, I noticed a person standing on the grass looking down the road. For a bus, I guessed, but something didn’t seem right about the way the person was looking around. Also, I couldn’t tell if this was a man or a woman. Then we turned into the street and I got into the left turn lane and stopped at the red light...at which point I noticed a man standing on the opposite corner from the first person. A car pulled up to the red light next to him and the window came down. The man walked to the car, leaned over, stuck his hand in, and pulled it out, returning to the corner as he glanced up and down the road. 

And that’s when it all came together. Like Shawn Spencer, I had an instant flashback to all the evidence my brain had filed away: meth dealers! Working in tandem on their corners! “Look, a meth deal!” I said as we turned, actually pointing at the man on the corner, and I thought to myself, if not for  Breaking Bad, I’d never have noticed that! But it gets better.

We pulled into the Super 8 parking lot, and in a span of point-five seconds, both Stefie and I noticed a woman in jaguar print short-shorts and high heels walking to a car and a man with no shoes sitting on the outdoor staircase with his head leaning on the railing. We both said something to the effect of, “I don’t think we’ll stay here tonight,” and I pulled right out of the other exit without slowing down. Again, it was like a set piece from Breaking Bad, minus the stunning desert landscape. Fortunately, my inner Clark Griswold stayed asleep and did not suggest that this would be a fine place to stay.

We found the Fife and Drum, an awesome inn down the street from a great coffeehouse and a greater ice cream and hot dog joint, and I called. The nicest man, the owner, answered the phone and told me in about the most polite way possible that our family was a bit young for his establishment--they didn’t accept guests under ten, since it was such a small inn, and the sound would carry...he did have two unattached suites in the yard that would fit our family in a few years...he had four kids, too, and he understood.... I wanted to be all grumpy about it, but he was just too nice. He pointed us to the Williamsburg Woodlands Hotel, a family-oriented place next to the Colonial Williamsburg visitor center. It was the right choice for us. In addition to being designed very smartly for families, it was actually a nice room. Not spectacular, but nice.

Williamsburg was a great place, and we could have easily spent more than two nights there, but now we get back to the whole thing about bring an 18-month-old along to places like this, and it can be summed up like this: either Stef or I walked around with a manic Freddy while the remaining four toured the buildings. I did get to see (Freddy let me stand and watch) some workers putting up a new building. They were working on the rafters. It really hasn’t changed much in 250 years--we just have much bigger tools to cut faster and lift higher. Makes me think I should be able to build a silly little shed or carport....

Which is a nice segue to next time.

“The perspiration poured down my face and splashed on the blotter as I leaned forward.”

You may recall that, on the way down to Florida, a hard rain forced us to stop at a hotel in North Carolina instead of pushing on to a late evening arrival at Little Pee Dee State Park in South Carolina. I was bound and determined not to let that happen on the way north. So we drove and drove from central Florida up and up, through Georgia, and into South Carolina, and time was ticking away, and the clouds were growing heavier, much like Freddy’s diaper in the kiddie pool.... 

Stef took over driving after dinner. Two hours to go until our campground at Santee State Park. Cloudbursts here and there dumped water on the highway. I really didn’t want to set up in the dark and rain, let alone spend a hot, rainy night in a stuffy and probably leaky tent, but all I did was beat around the bush, muttering my worries and implying that it “might be a better move” to check into a hotel.

Looking back, I can face up to the fact that I, a lifelong camper, a Boy Scout, an AT thru-hiker, a backpacker who has slept in the desert mountains of New Mexico and the rain-and-sheep-poop-covered glens of Scotland, was wimping out from a little rain. But I wasn’t going to be the one who chickened out this time. Mind you, if Stef had said we needed a hotel, I’d have been all for it. I was guilty of some majorly passive-aggressive behavior--”It sure looks like rain...might be a long night...that hotel is only $59 a night...”--but when, as we exited the Interstate for the campground, Stef asked if I wanted to stay in a hotel, I manned up and said no, we better just camp. Manned up? No, that’s not right. A man would have been smiling at the prospect of the night ahead. A man would have been singing songs about the rain. A man would have stopped to buy firewood, lighter fluid, and a six of Schaefer. Me, I just grumbled, passively, and let Stef drive us to the campground.

Around 8:00, we rolled into the campground and found our spot. The ground was damp, the air was humid, and the sky was a darkling plain (thank you, Matthew Arnold), but so far no rain here yet. I had let my baditude take over, however, and I went about setting up camp with a silent mental scowl. Dropcloth down. Set up the tent. Dive into the car top carrier with one broken hinge to retrieve sleeping bags and pads. Discover my sleeping pad is still in Florida. Mental scowl deepens. Here we have the perfect example of an expression my parents often used to describe my moods--”cutting off my nose to spite my face.” It goes something like this: I decided to camp, knowing it was dark and rain was impending, so I’ll show me how stupid I am by adopting a foul attitude about it. Ha! Who’s happy now? Not me! Who made the poor decision? Me! The rain began, a drizzle, mostly.

Meanwhile, Stef had the kids organized, setting up the inside of the tent as I tossed things willy-nilly inside. She took the kids to the bathrooms to wash and brush, Freddy in her arms the whole time. We set up the port-a-crib, hoping he might be over the manic behavior from his first night in a tent but suspecting that he wasn’t. He wasn’t. Stef moved his mattress to the tent floor. We settled in for a long night. I had no mat, but at least it was sweltering in the tent so that I could sleep on top of my sleeping bag.

A man would have behaved differently. A man would have anticipated the storm a-coming and set up the Amazing Blue Tarp to protect his family. A man would have stood guard outside the tent, felt the rain wash through his beard, and shouted at Thor and Odin making their noise up on the Trembling Path to keep it down...perhaps I’m drifting a bit. My point is that I didn’t set up the Amazing Blue Tarp because I was hot and tired and didn’t want to get rained on and I left my mat in Florida and my pillow was terrible and I missed my teddy. Whoops. Still drifting.

Short showers rolled through, but the tent didn’t leak that night. I did have to close all the windows all the way, something I’ve never had to do in any other tent, ever. I said the tent didn’t leak that night, defining night as the period from dusk to pre-dawn, that eerie blue time between starlight and sunrise. Around 4:00, the real rain started, and the water began to drip down from the tent ceiling. One of the more serious design flaws of this tent is its ability to hold giant pools of water on its roof, and then magic takes over and the pools of water begin to seep through the very fabric of the tent itself, as if the fabric were not totally waterproof! Unbelievable, I know, that a tent that is sold without a rainfly could possibly leak! If it weren’t totally waterproof, wouldn’t the company include a rainfly? (The company, by the way, begins with a Cole and ends with a man.) So it must have been magic. Dark magic.

A whole bunch of water also pooled in one corner of the tent, soaking our clothes from the day before, but that might have been because before our trip I set up the tent on asphalt and then dragged it over stones onto grass, making little holes in the floor, some of which I did not see to patch. Probably not dark magic. Just idiocy. Let’s not dwell on that.

One bright side: we were all so miserable through the night that we were up and packing by six AM, in the car by 7:15, so we made great time to Williamsburg. Ate breakfast at Perkins on our way out of Santee. The worst breakfast I’ve ever had--why, oh why, did I order the buffet? We should have gone to Waffle House. A good breakfast would have undone the whole night’s discomfort. Really, though, it faded away very quickly--we were all so glad to be leaving that night behind. And partly due to that lousy night, we ended up staying in the very nice Williamsburg Woodlands Hotel, which made it easy to tour the village. So we had that going for us.

Next time, I’ll answer the question on everyone’s mind: what do Williamsburg and Breaking Bad have in common?

"We might threaten a Station-master, and make him send a wire on tick..."

This entry could be about tolls, entrance fees, exorbitant concession prices, and all the costs of a family vacation, even one done on the (relatively) cheap. But it won't.

Let’s forget the traffic ALL THE WAY through New Jersey. Let’s forget the camp set-up at dusk in Maryland. Let’s also forget the traffic the next day ALL THE WAY from D.C. to the North Carolina border. Let’s forget the torrential rains in NC that drove us to a hotel instead of our planned campsite. Let’s forget the blistering hot and soakingly humid weather that makes summer in Florida. Let’s forget the money-sucking vacuum that is Legoland. Why forget those things, when bad events make the best stories? Your imaginations can fill in the details of all the above. And much more good has happened.

Instead, remember the night Freddy spent in the tent with us in Maryland. After a disastrous beginning in his port-a-crib, or pack-n-play, or port-a-pack-n-play, we decided he might fall asleep better on the ground with the rest of us. At first, yes, he snuggled and cooed and was generally an awesome, chubby 18-month-old. But then he decided that he wasn’t sleepy, so he began roaming around the tent. We have a roomy tent, but still, every third step was someone’s stomach, or hair, or nose. The kids thought this was hilarious and cracked up, but anytime the kids crack up, Freddy starts laughing, too, and so a stomped-on ear led to laughter, which led to another stomping, and on it went. Freddy sacked out, eventually, but was up several times in the night. I distinctly remember getting kicked in the nose and then kneed on the temple as Fred tripped over me. Poor Stefanie, however, got the worst of it: she gave up her mat so Freddy could sleep on it while she slept on the cold, hard ground. In the morning, Freddy’s feet were in my face, his body was on Stef’s mat, and his head was on Rosie.

I did have one Clark Griswold moment that morning: as we climbed in the car for Day Two of driving, I sensed the kids’ apprehension that the day might be as long as the first day, when we were bumper-to-New Jersey. “Don’t worry, kids,” I said, jinxing myself with all the confidence of the true idiot. “Today can’t be as bad as yesterday. That was the worst traffic I’ve ever seen. Can’t get any worse.” And then we hit Washington and weekend traffic to Virginia Beach.

Yes, we did not reach our South Carolina campsite in Little Pee Dee State Park (a great name on many levels) because of traffic and rain, so we had to fork out dough for a hotel room, but it was a needed respite. I can’t say it was much more comfortable than a campout, but it was nice not to have to set up the tent in the rain and dark, so I guess it simply relieved my trepidations. It wasn’t even much easier to unpack or pack, since all the campsite stuff was on top. Oh well. At least we got to smell that “non-smoking” room smell of bleach, Fresh Hotel Scent, and old cigarette smoke. We could have used the wi-fi, to, if we hadn’t fallen asleep so fast. We did snag some good pizza from Pino’s Pizza across the road (listed on Tomtom as Pink’s Pizza, which would be the worst name ever for a pizza parlor).

Day Three of driving was lined up to be our longest, but was actually the easiest simply because of the lack of traffic anywhere between North Carolina and central Florida. We did, of course, stop at South of the Border. Bathrooms, pictures with the weird animal statuary, and some bad ice cream (when our kids don’t finish ice cream, you know it’s bad). I know our kids were pretty wasted by the traveling, because we parked right outside the toy store and not one of them asked to go inside.

We spent three nice nights in an air-conditioned cabin at a KOA (sorry, Mom and Dad). We were promised free wi-fi, but apparently lightning struck their tower last week, so it would be down for a few days...maybe someone would be out tomorrow...mumble mumble. My cynical side says it was a great bait-and-switch: free wi-fi! Oh, sorry, our wi-fi is down.

Legoland. The kids had fun. Really, it’s a very nice amusement park (although the carousel ride is shamefully short). Pricey, yes, and Storyland’s mist tents beat the pants off Legoland’s mister-things that don't even send moisture down to human level. Miniland is awesome to look at, but not in the sun in 90º heat with 90% humidity. But the kids had fun. The staff was very courteous. We spent two days there, and day two was much more fun than the first--the kids made a plan of all they wanted to do, which meant very little standing around wondering which way to go. The gardens there were really cool--the 80-year-old banyan tree was amazing.

So now we’re at Stef’s grandmother’s house south of Melbourne, on the “treasure coast.” Spent the morning at a beach in Vero, the afternoon at the community pool, and Freddy and I had a good nap in between. 

So much of our trip must be planned around Freddy. We have to stop driving so Freddy can move, we have to start driving so Freddy can nap, we can’t go there because Freddy won’t behave, we can go there but one of us has to hold Freddy.... I’m so proud of my big kids for not only putting up with this reality, but also for going out of their way to entertain him and love him and care for him. Watching them interact with him and with each other makes it easy for me to love them. And that’s where I’ll stop.

"Therefore, we are going away to be Kings." (Redux.)

Probably not kings. Or queens. (Sorry, Wife, I've hemmed myself in by choosing post titles from a story with only one woman.) We only rule a handful of wooded acres in the big city, with just four servants in our household. And we can't even really call them servants, since we usually do what they want. That isn't really difficult, since they usually want ice cream or donuts, and we love both. Recently none of them has asked to play Pretty Pretty Princess, so it has been especially nice. We have hidden that game deep in the highest cupboard. I'm hopeful that it will just disintegrate. (Separate but related: I am a Candyland master. I smoked my daughters over three games this week. If you want to speed up a game of Candyland, take out all the single colors save one set. Then you're playing with doubles and specials, and the action is HOT!)

But we are going away. This is, I think, our longest car trip as a family---speaking in distance and time. Now that we are six, plane travel is just out of the realm of possibility. And, for some reason, driving 24 hours over three days sounds more relaxing than a trip to the airport.

It's a combo trip: camping, tourism, and family visits. I don't know what Mrs. Manwhowouldbe thinks, but I see this as a warm-up for a future summer-long trip out west. We'll see.

My goals for this trip are simple:
1. Stay awake while driving. Hello, Caffeine. Come here often?
2. Have as positive an attitude as possible. I don't like myself when I'm a crank, so why should I expect anyone else to?
3. Stay off my oldest son's case. He needs to be who he is, not who I want him to be.
4. Run, read, and write regularly.

Okay, now I need to go fight with the minivan about how everything is going to fit.