Granddaddy Daycare, trois

Left: Needing a moment I strapped her in and gave her her favorite chew toy. It wasn't that long ago she would fall asleep in her swing. ----------
Below: Enjoying her latest toy, a bouncy seat with four stations. She already had strong legs

but this will put her over the top. The first baby body builder?

In what should be my last blog about taking care of my granddaughter, you will learn of my new respect, baby milestones, and how quickly they learn. No, I will be doing daycare two or more days a week until the middle of June but I should stop writing about it. There are other things going on.

Although it is changing, being able to plop a baby down without fear that, in this case, she won't be there when you come back should be liberating. It's not. She is still a lot of work, not hard work, just constant WORK. It's a good thing she is so cute and actually does play with her toys remarkably well. She plays better I found out, if I'm paying an excessive amount of attention to her, specifically, all of my attention.

That it is so much work has given me new respect for my wife. My longest session of granddaddy daycare has been a full day for a substitute teacher. My wife took care of three babies in succession literally every day I worked, at least 50 weeks a year, for five years with each day being nine hours plus commute. (She took care of our children for far longer than that but the five years only covers when one of them was a baby.) Then there were the days that I was sick and she had another baby to take care of. All I know is that I could never do it that often, for those hours, that long. And then there are the people who do daycare for a living.

I definitely am not one of those. You couldn't pay me enough. But then, seeing my granddaughter smile and hearing her giggle at something I've done... She really likes to hear me talking like Donald Duck. Unfortunately, I really can't but she even likes my practicing.

While my repertoire of songs is much larger than it was just a few short weeks ago, it still isn't all that large. Mostly she doesn't mind me singing but she has started developing some taste. If I happen to be singing one she isn't in the mood for, she growls. When I change to one she likes better at the moment, she smiles. Sometimes it's that impish smile that only children can get when they know that their manipulations are successful. This has led me to reassess a path I was on. I was trying to teach her to say granddad, even to suggesting the diminutive she could use, "Gaga." While I still say, "Come to Granddad, Gaga," every time I pick her up, I've started a crash course to teach her to say, "Mommy." The reasons should be obvious.

My son said she turned over a couple weeks ago but I had never seen her do so. No longer. She did so today from her back to her front, twice. Since she still isn't crawling, being on her stomach isn't her favorite position and she doesn't yet seem to know how to turn back over. As a result, it wasn't long after she turned over that she started complaining. It turned out that she really didn't want my help turning her back over but after I picked her up, all was okay once more.

One other thing that Granddaddy Daycare forces me to do is go to bed earlier. I've found that when I'm tired, she isn't. Either women have instincts at this early of an age that they carry through all of their lives or she is a Republican. It's now after eight and I should be getting ready for bed.

It's April in California and Not Supposed to Rain

This morning found me in Pasadena where it was threatening to rain. Since I was riding my motorcycle and absolutely had to be back in Pacifica before 8:00 AM Monday, I decided to cut my visiting a half an hour shorter than planned and hit the road on my two wheels.

I made it almost all of the way to I-5 before it started to rain, which led to the composition of this twoem:

It spit a bit on 210 just before I-5.
Traffic slowed. Thought to split but chose to stay alive.
Wet rain gear, dry me.

For you non-motorcycle riders, California allows motorcycles to lane split so we don't have to stop with the cars and trucks and over heat.

After fairly steady drizzle over Grapevine, the sun finally got to full heat. Eventually I was able to stop for gas and do something about it, namely take off some of the unneeded gear I was wearing. Fifty miles after making those adjustments, I had the unfortunate inspiration to compose another twoem:

When I stopped for gas in the sun,
Thought need for rain gear surely done.
Wrong, wet, and grouchy!

Yes, it started to rain and continued to rain until it was time to get more gas, another 80 miles, and I put back on my rain pants. Unfortunately, it continued to rain. One stretch was particularly heavy, which led to a rather disappointing discovery: my rain pants aren't waterproof. It appears that in times of heavy rain, my motorcycle saddle and I form a catch basin that works exceedingly well at forming a pond right between my legs. With waterproof pants on, the pond would have simply drained away the next time I stopped. But no, my gear was much too efficient to wait for that. It passed the water through to my jeans so my jeans could wick it away, after becoming suitably warmed by my now wet and freezing body.

Thank goodness for a heated jacket and gloves. With all of the lower extremity water I was still cold but at least my chest and hands were kept above freezing.

The rain did have some benefits. It definitely took care of the dust. It also took care of some rather nasty smells I noticed on the ride down to Pasadena. I didn't know that a cattle feed lot could smell like hog s**t.

I did notice an interesting license plate on a rather large Class A RV, a bus-like RV: "Y RUFET"

Even though I did a far better than normal job lashing my backpack onto the back seat of my motorcycle, the constant wind managed to shift it to one side enough that two people made an effort to let me know it had shifted. Nothing fell off and while damp, nothing is ruined. I'm even using the laptop I carried through all that rain now. Of course I had the foresight to put a plastic bag over it in addition to its padded case.

Still, I'm looking forward to my next, hopefully dryer, ride.

Nostalgia Stop

After what felt like at least 300 miles of non-stop rain, I was glad to stop at a place that Marilyn and I frequented, sometimes with children, the Best Western Tree House Motor Inn in the City of Mount Shasta. There was still snow on the ground around the hotel, not to mention the mountain.

The children all remember this hotel as the hotel of the "Green Death." We took an extended car trip to the Olympic Peninsula in the summer of 1993. On the way back Marilyn caught a rather severe cold. By the time we drove down from Lake Oswego, where we stopped in to visit her Uncle and I learned a lesson that was going to stand me in good stead for the rest of my marriage, everyone had it but me.

Anyway, we stopped and immediately after I got everyone into the room, I hoofed it over to a drug store in the strip mall across the parking lot. I barely made it before they closed but they had Vick's NyQuil. I don't think that the children would have taken it if she hadn't but they did and I got a good enough night's sleep not to be the fifth victim.

One of our earlier trips was memorable because we ate at Marilyn's Diner on her birthday. I would like to say the food was memorable but the last time I looked the Diner was closed up for good, which tells me that other people thought the same way about the food.

Then there was the time we were there in the snow, without chains. We went as far up on the mountain as we could, which fortunately was at a wide place in the road. I was able to turn around and go down slowly facing the right way. I would have hated to have had to back down.

We also went to the City of Mt. Shasta on one of our Thanksgivings on the road. On that trip we rented a house. On our way to and from the house Marilyn spotted a dirt mound and a sign that said organic soil. We called the number and once we described our van and family, were told to take as much as we wanted or could. Marilyn dumped everything we had in those 32 gallon trash bags out and we made off with a lot of dirt. She grew tomatoes in it for years.

As with all but one of our trips to the hotel, I did not come prepared to use the pool. I stayed in my room, except for a walk out under the stars to a close diner for a light dinner.

Although I really enjoyed the room with its interior and exterior doors, Marilyn would never have stayed in it. She preferred second floor rooms. Some of this may have been for security but all she ever discussed was not liking the tread of feet over her head all night.

As far as that lesson: Fifteen years earlier her Uncle was asked by his wife to put in a new foyer floor. He said that he always does what his wife asks but he gets to decide something about it and that is when. This advice saved me quite a bit of work over the years.

I'd Rather Be ...

I'd rather be traveling. Most of my life dreams involved traveling in some form or another. Some of them Marilyn and I discussed, even though they never got much beyond the dream stage.

Before kids, we discussed loading up an RV with computing equipment and traveling around to some of the smaller U.S. towns providing freelance computer and programming services in person. Then we discussed traveling around after an empty nest on a big cruising motorcycle with a trailer.

Now with the Internet so pandemic and free wifi almost everywhere, I am once again thinking of traveling as a way of life. Indeed, if it is to be a way of life, it requires some income. Now Google has a mechanism, AdSense, to pass around a very small portion of its money machine. Theoretically allowing Google to place targeted ads on a blog, which is also one of the reasons they host blogspot, and having a sufficient number of readers such that some of those ads are clicked on will create some form of payment to the blog author. I plan on setting up AdSense just to get the mechanism down, and then getting creative on my blogging.

I'm having a lot of fun thinking of creative ways to combine traveling and blogging, some of which may involve my own website, which would have an additional benefit of involving an old love of mine, programming.

My idea: blog about various motorcycle tours, some exclusively from my own interest and research and others that are the result of either suggestions or surveys, hence the separate website, although suggestions could also come through comments on the blogs.

A one person brainstorm, really a tempest in a teapot, has generated the following:

A "Living Memory Tour," where I travel to all the places I remember living and document my memories of living there and how they've changed, with at least current pictures. Now, I recognize that this has limited commercial appeal, read that likely low reader interest, but it interests me and is both an excuse to ride my motorcycle and to write. I suppose I could include some additional places I've thought about living, or where Marilyn and I actually looked at houses, but that doesn't sound too commercial either.

Another tour might be the "Places I've Always Wanted to See Tour" or any combination of "Whizzing Around:" North America, the U.S., any State or Region, or even some foreign countries. The standing joke was that Marilyn always wanted to stop and go to the bathroom, preferably in some car campground, which she could mentally add, or not, to her "places she wanted to camp" list. She never wrote them down so I could never have a camping tour of these places but one "whizzing" tour could have a campground focus and another could have some other focus.

Perhaps the Whizzing theme or some other label could apply to some of the possible survey driven tours. I've eaten at several restaurants that posted certificates about their being the "best" in some category. Generally these are the result of a survey filled out by just a few readers of a really local paper. One tour could be based a compilation of those surveys or on blog reader input, perhaps through this website I still don't have. I still need to develop a cute rating to compare the various "bests."

"Biggest Oldest Tree Tour:" A tour of the Bristle Cone Pine, a couple old growth Redwood forests I want to visit, and old and large trees around the country of various species. Some of these are landmarks of historical or literary significance. While a tour of the Major League baseball parks has been done, my thought is to do a "Major Minor [league] Baseball Tour.

Even better, I can visit my children and siblings during the winter and not even need a separate place to live. (Ha, ha.)

What to do when it's raining?

First let me tell you what my daughter and I did today before it rained, we went for a hike. Now, the ground was still soaked from the last rain, last night's rain, but even though it was cloudy, it wasn't specifically raining. While we were gone her husband hid some chocolate eggs in their house for her to find. He hid them in her house because the ground was too wet outside even without the threat of rain, which looks to be even more so threatening now.

Two days ago, we went to tour Washington's State Capitol building. The docent leading the tour was not only full of knowledge, which he shared continuously, but also had some humor. He made sure that he pointed out the floral motif of the Representatives' carpet, Trillium, Washington's State Flower, a ground flower suitable for the lower house.

After the tour we went directly over to the bronze bust of George Washington, where some nice soul took our picture. We also made sure we rubbed his nose for good fortune. It was the only polished portion of the bust. With the amount of buffing it was receiving, you'd think there would be a lot more fortunes out there.

Later my daughter's husband and I went out to "dine" at Basilico Italiano Ristorante. My daughter would have joined us but she was already at work, there. The food was very good, if pricy, and in sufficient quantities that we had to pack some of the entree home in order to have room for dessert. At least we were able to feed three for the price of, well there, two.

Yesterday we got up early to hit Olympia's Farmers Market. Early didn't help us because none of the booths could start selling until the bell was rung, at 10:00 AM. Thankfully, the "restaurants," separated from the "market's" covered pavilion could sell before the market bell. They unfortunately were mostly windows in the side of buildings with limited covered dining areas, which we didn't take advantage of anyway as the cold metal picnic tables were too cold. I didn't even get hot food because I figured it wouldn't stay warm through my eating of it. Of course, it rained while we were there and even if I could have held it, my umbrella was back at their house in my truck.

Since it was another day of rain, we decided to take a road trip. A few miles outside of Olympia, while there were clouds, there was also some sun and perfectly dry roads. With no alternative hiking plans, we continued our road trip. Since the Farmers Market could be considered our first stop, our second one was several miles away in Everett, Washington. At the Aurora Astro Products, your northern light in the astronomy business, we learned quite a bit about telescopes: Dobsonian, Cassegrain reflecting telescopes, and Refracting. I believe the Cassegrain will be their choice because it is less expensive than the Refracting telescopes and is useful for more things than astronomy, which makes sense given the amount of cloud cover I've seen in the three days I've been here.

From Everett, we drove directly to Pike Place Market in Seattle. Of course, there was no parking so we drove away a couple of blocks and found "event" parking in a garage and walked back. By then it was well into the afternoon and we were hungry, even with all the healthy snacks we purchased at the Farmers' Market and ate on the way up. We stopped in at the first place that looked interesting, the Pan Africa Restaurant & Bar. I enjoyed a Veggie Groundnut, my son-in-law had the Chicken Yassa, and my daughter chose the Curry Corn. We just had to try an Injera on the side. All the food I tasted was truly excellent. What's better, it didn't feel like a chain and the food was unique, at least to my experience.

Then after watching a couple street performers, one who sang to a guitar he played and then played the Star Spangled Banner on a saw; and the second a quite accomplished prestidigitator, we went looking for the cribbage board booth that Marilyn and I liked in our 2004 visit. We never did find it but did get to see a fish thrown, one of the iconic images of Pike Place.

There is something about standing and walking on concrete that tires me out faster than walking on the more sponge surface of woodsy paths or grass. After just a little walking around Pike Place, we were more than ready to head home and veg out the rest of the day, which I'm proud to say ... we did.

Olympia, Here I Came

The plan was to ride my motorcycle up to visit my youngest daughter and her husband, but I chickened out. It took more than the threat of snow, although that was a particularly potent threat in and of itself, it was really the cold temperature that could come along with snow. Since my son has now given me heated gloves and a heated jacket liner, I could have made the ride with most of my body relatively warm. No, the threat of snow, and the cold that snow generally comes with, was really a threat of ice.

As it turned out, the roads were generally dry and what flurries did happen were brief and of no consequence. But, I still was glad that I was in the heatable cab of a Ford Ranger XLT, even with its 1/3 the mpg of my motorcycle. My daughter was also glad because it let me bring substantially more stuff than just myself. There was a lot of snow, visible on the tops of the Coastal Range all the way up California's I-5, after I-505 joined it. (Well, I don't really know how far from the coast the range that I was looking at was but it was to the west of I-5.)

Even though I was not on my motorcycle and took every advantage of that that I could, I also had some of the benefits that my previous motorcycle riding had given me. Since the trucks ventilation didn't have an option for recirculate, I had all the benefits of the outside air, including the odors. Since I traveled the entire distance with my lights on, people felt justified in cutting me off because I was obviously in a highly maneuverable vehicle with tremendous motivation to avoid colliding.

About half way up, I took advantage of a half-way stop. (It would have been truly half way had it not taken the better part of two hours to get from Salem past Portland.)

Here I'm going to take a break from my normal attempts to express myself humorously. Some of that attempt is an effort to recast my life to be a little lighter than it has been for the last three plus years. Some of it is to avoid depressing any readers, and myself further, with any sadness or tale of woe. In this case though, and continuing in my now tradition of not naming names, my youngest daughter's father-in-law passed away after a nine-month battle with an aggressive lung cancer, this after her mother's demise, two years ago, to gynecological cancer after a two-and-a-half year battle.

Now, her mother-in-law and I are in a very similar place and we had much to talk about and share tears over. Anyone who has lost a spouse of decades carries around a hole where that spouse used to be. It is both our fervent hope that, while we do not ever expect that hole to go away, we will learn to focus on other areas of our lives to help us learn to better live with the hole. While we don't want to be intrusive, our children, indeed all of our families, are important foci. If it can be any consolation at all, I do find that while I can accidentally trip over the hole from the most innocuous of triggers, I am doing so less often and the memories that I treasure, while still tinged with bittersweet, are becoming more treasures than triggers.

In addition to our open conversational help for each other this way, our talk ranged through many other subjects. It was truly great to have an adult conversation where I didn't avoid subjects entirely or self-censor.

I woke up early, which is to say my now normal time. As the darkness was replaced with light, there was a misting of snow, which led to a twoem: I chickened out and didn't ride. I'm watching it snow from inside. Glad I have a truck.

Then during and after breakfast we continued our conversation, now talking more about our children, from whom we fielded several phone calls from the ones I'm visiting now. One of them was a request for several more items to be added to my long distance hauling service. While we spent some time rounding them up, they did not delay my departure beyond its planned time. Our conversation delayed it long enough that I saw this tom turkey from her window.

Of course, the delay and the accident that I never saw slowed my travel enough to Portland to allow me to catch Portland's rush hour. (The "rush hour" label must have been invented by some spin doctor trying to attract people to some city by falsely labeling stop and creep as rush. Further, this person had no concept of time.)

The rest of the trip was uneventful and allowed me to catch up on a number of phone calls, including a call to wish my sister a happy birthday. Yes, she was born on April 1st. Some years I call her and say April Fool. Other years I don't call her. I don't know what she is fooled by more. (I'm not sure that being able to use a phone when traveling is really a plus. I really like the peace and noise from riding a motorcycle.)