Handwriting

Go here and download lots of handwriting fonts for free, some terrible (like that one: Pea Summer Sweetness), some pretty cool.

(Thanks to Zoe for the link.)

That gleam in your eyes

Everyone thinks their family's kids are the cutest and funniest, whether their own birthed children or nieces and nephews. But seriously, I believe I can say without prejudice that my niece KG has a terrific habit that she's sure to lose soon enough, so thank goodness for video and the internet to preserve it.

In preparation, you'll want to refresh yourself with this little bit of Sleeping Beauty:



In June, visiting Neck, JG, and the kids, I took Baby Bubba outside on the patio to rock him to sleep because it was 72 degrees with a breeze and that, combined with the sounds of Fountain Valley traffic, really seemed to calm him. KG joined us with her swaddled baby and sang a little lullaby. (I'm sorry to say that I appear, quite unshowered after lots of time in airplanes and the bed, and with a silent laughing maniac smile.)



Sleeping Beauty herself would fit right in to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir circa-1982 with that deluxe vibrato, but she stays pretty well within her range. We can't quite figure KG's interpretative three-octave jump, but then who am I to deny her artistic license?

West Virginia, mountain mama

Back in March we drove to Detroit (can I get a Go Heels?) and wound around the West Virginia mountains, through two tunnels and Charleston, along the rivers for awhile. It was cold, and snowed off and on, which frankly made the whole scene that much more alluring. Like most states with a reputation, I imagine there are a great many tax dollars at work to make that stretch, anyway, attractive and non-hillbilly, to play against the type with which the whole state is saddled. I'm a sucker for a good bridge, and cities and towns along rivers. I like to imagine earlier times when coal was king, when the towns bloomed on the water in the shadow of industry.

Montgomery

Richwood

South Charleston

On a whim, I went there this weekend to revisit that curiosity. I stayed in the Marriott in downtown Charleston, which was strangely cheaper than Holiday Inn Express, even. I'm a real dork when it comes to how much I love hotels. I still remember the first hotel I ever stayed in: the Handlery in Union Square in San Francisco. I was 13 and I had an acid-washed purse and pink jeans that I wore proudly, heaven help me. It's an old hotel, and was being remodeled. The whole family was there, which means a lot of little kids, but the only reason we stayed there was that our friends the Leisters were there for business and we were together. I'm sure it was nothing short of a nightmare to haul 5 kids and their junk through a lobby under construction, to pay for parking in the deck, and endure the eccentricities (Donnie's worst nightmares) of a small, old, downtown hotel in 1989. But I didn't care, because I felt so urban and cool, sitting in the wide windowsill listening to the jazz coming from the club across the street until late at night, and the ever-present honking. I loved it. Had it been just our family, we would have stayed in some 2-star Best Western in Alameda for sure, as we always did. We have stayed in some seriously terrible motels on family trips, which is understandable; we required two rooms minimum and we were definitely on a budget. I'm clearly trying to make up for feeling deprived of hotels.

Cynical in tone and apostrophe abuse

There's an element of this hobby that is quite self-indulgent, I think. I really like the freedom of being alone and choosing the schedule based on light and where the road takes me. My goal is to approach these places with an appropriate balance of voyeurism and appreciation for the "other," but even that is potentially problematic, because I never want to be judgmental or superior (unless there's bad grammar; then all bets are off). And there's a risk that by looking at people and businesses and towns from this perspective -- the search for aesthetic -- I can oversimplify their lives and experience. Ideally, the search for beautiful and interesting things -- and translating them into the correct aperture, shutter speed, and composition -- is inspired by a purely artistic instinct and an attempt to present something in a new way, not that I feel entirely up to the pressure of creating pure art. I haven't yet worked out to what extent I feel okay about my invasion of their space with the proper balance of all these goals. I sense that if I did this in California, for example, I would feel more or less evened out, but beyond that I start to question my permission to be there.

I do think there is a safe zone, though, and that is nature. Really talented photographers with serious equipment and an intense obsession with light can make nature photography, and by extension the subject, new and appealing to even serious bums. I had a lovely drive to the southwestern edge of the Monongahela National Forest, which is just levels of the green transcendent beauty that is the entire state. I started a hike to the Cranberry River but since there wasn't a soul around and my survival skills are nil, I decided the 10 miles to the river might not be the smartest choice. Nonetheless, the 45 minutes I spent in the forest were very good in the way that 69 degrees, fresh air, and copious ferns always are.

More photos (+coal) on Flickr.

Dog

So I find myself in primary physical custody of this pit bull, Indy, for going on six months now:

He is primarily a PIA but sometimes I really like him, which is confusing. I am lately a disciple of Cesar Milan and often in the course of his shows on NatGeo he says, "A family without a dog is incomplete." To which I say: No Way, but then I don't come from dog-loving people. My mom likes them; I think there might have been a dog named Rusty in her past life but don't quote me on that, and she isn't scared and will generally pet most dogs. She says, "Hey, fella," something I daresay she picked up from Grandpa T. I hear his voice in my head when she says it, and that is a happy moment of childhood dog relations, mixed in with all the holy terror and screaming. My dad is, I think, tolerant-ish. He could take them or leave them; his family never had one, as far as I know. I don't know if dog ownership is common in Germany like it is in America, but they emigrated not long after World War II, and they had bigger fish to fry once they arrived.

We had other pets: hamsters (gag), which escaped a lot and ran around the drop ceiling in the basement, help us all, and one my dad accidentally kicked down the stairs to his or her death. We also had a couple of bunnies (gross), and some cats, two of whom, Panther and Sophie, we inherited. Panther came with the Fresno house, and he was more like a barn cat who ruined window screens to be let in to the garage to sleep and poop (why we had a litter box when he spent his days roaming around, I'll never know. I fully ascribe to the controversial cat-owning theory that the world is your litter box), and I know my dad, anyway, generally ignored him until he got old and started peeing in the air intake of his car. It will show you how much I really cared about Panther when I say I can't even remember if he was put down or died of old age.

But don't judge! I've kind of reformed from my ambivalent upbringing. I like animals more or less, more if they don't smell too terrible and are Waco:

less if they are golden retrievers with really disgusting ear problems. I'm terribly fond of our barn cats, particularly old fatty Rooster.

(What I really like is posting pictures of Boozie.)

I've drained a few cat abscesses in my day, and that's grosser than cleaning up three barfs worth of sickness in the back seat from the dog. And the joy they bring you is supposed to make up for all that, I suppose, but I'm still working on that particular emotion. What I have is light fondness, and a weird and surprising loyalty that manifested itself when someone whom I judged wanted Indy for his pitbullness responded to my "Free to a Good Home" flier at the BP and had their child call me at 10 pm. I said no way, or rather I made Robbie do it.

But he's so hyper, this is the main problem. He's never bit any humans around here, and heaven only knows what the first couple years of his life were like before he found his way to the Ranch, but among his jumping, spastic behaviors is this super annoying need to have his mouth on you, licking, nipping (in an attitude of love, the dog groomer swears) but I prefer to not be anywhere near the business end of that strong jaw, and I mostly don't want someone else to get freaked out by it. When I first checked out Cesar's tips for training, I fancied myself a good student of his method, because it's primarily based on the idea that a dog is a dog, not a person, and to treat him like one goes against his nature and instinct and leads to confusion and bad behavior. I'm saying, you would never see me kissing any dogs on the lips, right, so I decide I have the correct amount of detachment to run with this idea of becoming his pack leader and making him submissive to me.

Which is all well and good, but it is hard. Cesar takes this pit bull named Daddy to a bunch of his house calls on the show, and I get inspired/devastated by watching his incredibly calm, obedient nature. Indy has made some serious improvements, especially on walks, where he has stopped pulling and stays at my side, and he will sit and wait for me to give him permission to eat his food. Last night when I fed him it was late and dark and I didn't have time to do a calming walk or blue squeaky bone chasing activity, so I just ditched it all and fed him, and he was an absolute basket case, the opposite of everything I had been trying to teach him. So tonight I took him for a long walk, thought I had tired him out enough to get him to walk calmly beside me without the leash, and instead he took off like a lunatic. I cannot for the life of me teach him to come when called, so he ran around the pasture with the horse mamas and babies a couple times and got nearly to Nick Adams's property line before he listened to his better angels, I guess, and noticed that I was calling him in my happiest, most excited voice for five minutes straight to get himself back to me stat.

I love the small victories, but I feel like I carry around a big SmarteCarte full of dog-fearing, dog-hating baggage that never quite gets me over the hump to the patience and love he really deserves. So, despite my fondness and tenuous attachment, I still want him to find a home with someone who will.

In the meantime, I am pit bull pack leader, and don't you forget it.