GRIZZLY PEAR
So our girl stoically walked into school yesterday morning.
But I had a hard time seeing her go.
You’d think all that practice with preschool would prepare me for this. But I had puffy eyes all day.
Letting go isn’t easy, even if it’s just for six hours and twenty one minutes.
But she enjoyed her first day. On to day two!
My wife and I went on a run checking out the movies of Mamoru Hosada. We haven’t had a chance to see his most recent film Mirai, but we did get to see The Girl who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars, and Wolf Children.
Each of these three films are fun enjoyable watches;
Each of them are very well done, but they aren’t completely crafted.
Almost there, but not totally.
I haven’t seen a great library of japanese animation outside of Studio Ghibli, but using their catalog as a yardstick, I would place them just a touch below middlin’.
So definitely worth a watch, but don’t expect a classic, even if there are some excellent moments.
Which reminds me, I need to rewatch Princess Mononoke, it’s been a long time since I saw that film.
The kids really do enjoy being pulled around the backyard.
The route is a looping crooked figure 8, with a portion of it on the lawn.
The air is still quite warm, even after the sun has set down beyond the block wall.
I doubt they will remember any of it when they grow up.
But I hope I do.
The girl is reading now, and we recently read Chris Raschka’s Charlie Parker Played Bebop together. The book is a brilliant play on word, image, sound, and absurdity.
Never leave your cat alone.
If you read it silently, it doesn’t seem like much, but read it with a preschooler and ham it up and the silly logic of the book opens up after several readings. I’m not a jazz expert, but it captures the feel and energy of bebop.
On a semi related note, the girl just read to me Cindy Ward and Tomie dePaola’s Cookie’s Week. Don’t leave that cat alone either.
My wife and daughter when to listen to a jazz saxophonist at a free library concert but it was so popular they couldn’t get in.
After they got back home, I pulled up some jazz on youtube so it wouldn’t be a complete loss and came across Unsquare Dance by Dave Brubeck.
I’ve heard the song before, maybe even danced in a performance to it. Or maybe it it was someone else’s performance in the same show. I can’t remember, but still it was good to be reintroduced to it.
It wasn’t the Sunday afternoon we planned, but it worked out well enough. And damn those are some killer tambourines in this performance.
We watched the fireworks at Fox Hill Park last year and this year for July 4th. It’s a bit far from the action but you have a panorama of the city.
There were a bit more folks this year around, presumably because it more people know about it, so there was a nice energy in the park.
Adding to the festivities, the local Las Vegas Tribe decided to have their drum circle on a knoll by the parking lot.
Next to us was a family that tried to have a birthday party at the park, but the day was so hot, apparently nobody came.
I feel for the parents and the kid, but they did seem to appreciate the cosmic compensation of being invaded by a bunch of hippie hand drummers.
Friends are hard to come by in this world, but friendly accidents abound around us.
We were shopping in Ikea and after a coupon, we ended up owing only 28 cents.
I pulled out a dollar and handled it in cash.
In return, I was given a few nickels, pennies, and a fifty cent piece.
Pretty cool, the girl got really excited!
If it isn’t a gimmick, well then it should be one.
About eight months ago, a woman broke into our house while we stayed with our in-laws.
She got to live out of the cold for about a week before I found her sleeping on some sofa cushions in the living room.
Aside from breaking into the back door, she did no damage to the place, and was quite good at making sure the neighbors on both sides had no idea she was there.
However, she did take the risk to hook up our little casio keyboard and presumably played it a little.
I can’t say I’m fond of the incident, but it’s odd what your memory will latch onto months after an event. I hope she will get a handle on whatever demons are keeping her on the streets.
We all should have a little music in our lives.
While our girl still prefers to go to Disneyland, I’ve noticed that she and her brother seem to get quite a bit of joy playing around the house or in our small excursions around town.
If my eyes aren’t lying to me, rolling around the backyard in a plastic wagon garnered as many laughs and giggles as hanging around the magic kingdom.
Going to a neighborhood park is not an all encompassing “total experience” like going to an amusement park, but in the moment, I don’t think it’s that much of a dropoff for the kids.
Not that I plan on shortchanging the kiddos on resort experiences that we can afford, but I don’t think the marginal ROI is nearly as much as the marketing hype would like us to believe.
After half a decade of buying cheap books at the friends of the library store, we now have enough volumes to fill up six slots of the Ikea Kallax shelves. So the girl and I sorted out our own private library this weekend.
The first division we made was fiction and non-fiction, which were then sorted the rest out by author’s last name. Apart from confusing the illustrators and authors, and a child’s tendency to get distracted it went really smoothly. Some highlights from the exercise included:
In all, it was a fun exercise. It was quite interesting to go through all the books we’ve collected over the past few years, and even better to plumb the depths of a five year old mind.