Where Would I Even Begin?

Spring break this week, so I got bonus time with the girls, got them through Wednesday dinner. Took the week off work so I'd be available for whatever time I could get. I'm trying to get the tax-return ball rolling but I'm just licked, between trying to get remedial housekeeping taken care of and completing my longest solo flight as a newly minted single parent.

Or have I been minted? The divorce isn't final, so I guess I'm still in the die, newer than mint.

The fatigue is probably enhanced by Madame Blueberry. For the childless, that's a VeggieTales, one of their better ones. However, Mo's OCD tendencies kicked in on it, so it was played to the exclusion of all else. ALL else. She doesn't even watch it most of the time, but gets pissed off if the TV goes silent, or to the Wrong Program. At first this fixation was funny. It's checked out from the library, and I'm wanted for questioning there about the DVDs in my ducts they want back, so the ex-Frau asked me if I wanted her to burn a copy of it, but that was this evening when she was picking up the honyocks, and the first image that came to my mind didn't involve a DVD-R, it involved actual fire.

Saturday we went to Osawatomie. I wanted to check out my prospective digs. That's a Northest Kansas joke, there's a lot more to Osawatomie than a state boobie-hatch: there's also the John Brown Museum (it was closed), a cool park around it (which was open), and plenty of small houses crammed together like Kansas didn't have plenty of land.

I don't know if you can see from the photos, but I sometimes wonder where Kansas gets this reputation for flatness. I heard once that to find an area flat enough for the on-location shots in 'Wizard of Oz' they had to go to the Oklahoma Panhandle, which is...not in Kansas! Most of the state is rolling prairie, and then you have the Flint Hills and the 'Baby Ozarks.' It ain't mountains, but try chasing my kids through John Brown Park.

And no, there's no trick photography or Photoshop stunt here: Mo really does get that much air when she swings. The camera is at head level for me, about six feet off the ground and I am actually looking slightlyup. It's unsettling when she decides she doesn't need to hold the chains.


So then on Sunday I decided it was time to hit a museum that was open. I even went online and checked for hours and admission prices. We'd done the Nelson pretty recently, and while I don't think you can overdo a gallery like that, it's nice to mix it up a bit. So we did the Kemper, a much smaller museum but it's all modern stuff.

Emily was excited about the Warhol (Dennis Hopper, a screen on a shot from 'Midnight Cowboy,' I believe), a Pollack (the Nelson has one, but this was a different splat), and some of Pollack's disciples. A couple of cook Georgia O'Keefes, too. I'd show you pics, but no flash photography allowed. Fortunately they had no such ban outside by the spiders.

What was actually scary wasn't the spiders, it was the weather. The sirens had gone off Sunday morning though it wasn't even overcast where we live. Isolated supercells are the biggest source of tornadoes, and as their name suggests they are isolated. I've lived in Tornado Alley for 36 years and never seen a tornado; the closest call I had was in grade school, when I heard one from the saftey of the storm shelter. And that wasn't even close enough to damage structures around the school. Still, a bullet is pretty isolated, it doesn't make Russian Roulette safe.

There were 110 tornadoes spotted that day last I heard, nine fatalities. Sirens were going when we came out of the Kemper Museum and according to the radio there were confirmed twisers about ten miles from where we were. Tennis-ball size hail, too. Out further, where the worst of the tornado action hit, they had some softball size. When you think about the mechanics of hail, sucking that ice back upstairs, softball size is practically impossible. An updraft like that might take me up.

But I don't want to be a Disneyland Dad, so Monday was house cleaning. Okay, not 100% of Monday, but we hit it pretty hard. We also hit the Crayolas pretty hard. I was caught out on this last week, when Mo had homework that required crayons and I realized I didn't own any. At all. The sidewalk chalk and markers I had were used up, and crayons weren't even something I'd thought about. For one, Mo's had a history of eating them. Not a little bit, but enough where her developmental pediatrician questions whether she's covered by what the company means when they say 'non-toxic.' Plus she writes on walls with them when she can. That's really less of a concern since I have not a single wall that doesn't need a fresh coate of paint already, but I hadn't even been thinking of coloring supplies.

But coloring is a good outlet for her, and she'll do it about forever. So I bought the Old 96er (movie reference), the set of Crayolas that shames my childhood grail of 64. I remember having 64-envy when I was stuck with the 24 in school. Eventually my parents caved and got the 64, which seemed an amazing luxury. 96 isn't even the max these days.

The 96 was about four-and-a-half bucks. For three more I could get the 120. Well, according to my math, that's almost double the price for only 24 more colors. Unless those colors includes 'Human Blood Red' with real human blood for pigment, that's a bit outrageous. I think I know what they're doing, though. A friend of mine opened a burger stand years ago, and he specialized in overfeeding you. His regular burger and fries was more than I cold handle. My brother would split the fries with me and it was stilla gut-buster. But he had a double on the menu, a huge sandwich. When he added a triple, I asked him who could eat such a thing. He said he only sold two a week, but that he sold a lot more doubles with the triple on the menu, because the double had gone from being the maximum to being the medium.

I'm sure Crayola sells a ton more 96-color sets with a 120 to make it look reasonable.

So then I was going to take the girls to the Natural History Museum in Lawrence on Tuesday. I went with Em's class on a field trip and it was a big nostalgia trip for me, because I saw those same stuffed walruses when I was her age. It was open, and it was a 'suggested donation' thing, and it's not that far from home. But Em didn't want to do it, she preferred the Adequate Mall. No sweat, it's less gas to get there.



The thing with video games like the motorcycles is you don't have to pay. The previews alone exceed the attention span...



Oh, and we hit Target, too. For clothes and to browse patio furniture, it seems.

There's more, but I'm about to fall asleep at the keyboard here.