Troop 22 Court of Honor

Kids -- Watch This Space

Okay, kiddos. The three of us in the center of Typhoon Johnson can use this space  to communicate. Let's do that.

This is our family newspaper. The calendar is at the top. Dad will keep it up-to-date. You can refer to it for planning. You will be expected to tell me what to put on the calendar for your life. Okay?

I'll be posting things that I think will interest you. Don't hesitate to post things you find shareable too.

Love,

Dad

Spring Break Review

Spring Break was terrific for R and M. They spent nine days at the family compound*, and I got to join them over both weekends.

Rest and relaxation was the theme of the week. There were trips to the community pool in Lincoln City for swimming and Rock Wall climbing. There was a lot of sleeping. And naps. Really! And book reading. And typing practice. And games. And playing with the dogs in the yard.

There was all sorts of quality time with Grandma and Grandpa.

There was even a little time for Dear Old Dad!

It was a party. D paid a visit at the end. So did Lola.

===

* Otherwise known as Grandma & Grandpa’s place on the Oregon Coast

The Start of Spring Break

…at the beach. Kids are staying the whole week with Grandma and Grandpa. I’m spending the weekends. Made it a long weekend, stayed over on Monday. It’s just the typical Spring Break in Oregon thing… dashes outside to play between rain squalls.

The pace of life at the beach place slows down immensely. It’s another world. We sleep a bit more, but still get up relatively early. Saturday, for example, I was awake just before dawn, watching the light come up through the window of my bedroom while still snuggled down under a quilt that my Mom had made by hand.

We do physical stuff at the beach, whether it’s work or play. We washed and detailed FOUR vehicles over the weekend, and we built a play fort in the side yard. The kids ran with the dogs outside whenever the rain let up.

And when it rained, we moved inside to feed our brains. The television showed Discovery channel and History channel; R spent time researching the history of the Trail of Tears forced march. M studied videos on how to do magic tricks with strings and cards. We also laid out a plan for ultra-lightweight survival packs that fit inside a coat pocket or a fanny pack, and learned more about tsunamis by studying footage of the recent Japanese events. Then we spent some time discussing how a similar tsunami might affect our house at the beach.

As I write this, I’m back home, ready for my work week. I try to hold on to the beauty of the beach pace. It’s hard, but it’s worth it. It’s not the speed, but the ability to pay full attention to something or someone important. Whether it’s the loving dog, or the child, or my parents, or a friend I hold dear. It’s about getting my thoughts squared up in “the present” and then keeping them there. Yes, there’s a future to plan for, and there’s a past to learn from. But the real impact is what I do RIGHT NOW. And a faster present does not always make for a better future.

Swedish Crème Cookies

It started like this, a question from M, over breakfast at the “Doghouse”**

“Dad, where can we get Swedish Crème Cookies?”

The conversation went from there. Seemed that a character in a book she’d just read gets pelted with Swedish Crème Cookies (SCCs) that a friend throws from up in a tree. M wants to know what they look like and where we might get some.

“Dunno” is the answer to both questions. We look it up. The recipe is quite straightforward, and they look yummy. So we all decide to make some. A quick trip to the store to get a couple cookie sheets, vegetable food coloring, almond extract and extra butter, and we’re in business making Swedish Crème Cookies. Everyone in the house lends a hand. M is having a blast. It’s her project, and everyone else helps, but defers to her ultimate decisions. She decides on blue and raspberry colored frosting for the centers. Because it’s her first time with the food coloring, M gets a bit carried away with the quantities, leaving the frosting a very intensely blue and vivid red-purple. Oh well, that’s how we learn. And, it’s vegetable coloring anyway, so that’s fine. The cookie dough was really stiff, so I had to do the rolling pin part. D guided the baking process throughout. Lola, the Beagle, cleaned the floor.

Total output: about 14 SCCs.

So, how were they? They turned out great! The frosting was a bit soft, so D refrigerated them. We had them for Saturday evening dessert. The first impulse as you held a blue SCC in your hand was to lick off the frosting that poked out around the edges. As soon as you did that, however, you were tattooed! It was like the exploding ink packets they put in the money they give to bank robbers – marked irrefutably by the SCC. You can see the evidence In this photo:  blue tongues abound!

The blue tongue thing became a bit of a focal point, to be honest. Suddenly the kids were working the blue frosting for maximum tongue/tooth impact. Notice, however, that they did a remarkable job keeping the frosting color to the INSIDES of their mouths, which is saying something because the USDA could have used this frosting to stamp their approvals on the sides of beef or something.

Leave it to R to take it all to the next logical conclusion. One SCC, pulled apart to make “Tommy”-esque eyes to go with the blue tongue. The SCC did NOT suffer from the vivisection – it was consumed immediately after the photo was taken.

 

Needless to say, toothbrushing was incredibly thorough on Saturday night: any residual food particles practically iridesced blue color. Dads could to tooth inspection from across the room this time around!

Four SCCs survived the Saturday evening onslaught, to be used in Monday morning lunches.

 

 

** without much real explanation as to their reasoning, the kids now refer to Dad’s house as “The Doghouse”. It just seemed to happen organically. It fits.

School Calendar

 

PPS expects the 2011-12 school calendar to be available by the end of April.

Staff have drafted a calendar that must be approved by unions and the Portland School Board.

 

Important tentative dates are:

• First day of school: Sept. 6, 2011
• Thanksgiving:  Nov. 24-25, 2011
• December break: Dec. 19, 2011-Jan. 3, 2012
• Spring break: March 16-23, 2012
• Last day of school: June 13 or 14, 2012

Bonus Time

It’s important to celebrate the little things. I get reminded of that nearly every day at this point in my life. Things like:

• How good it feels to clean out your ears with a warm Q-tip
• The magic of Potato/Leek Soup
• Coming home to the greeting of a dog
• Clothes that fit

This is a ‘living simply’ time for me, and one that increasingly is becoming a life choice more than a necessity. It’s a fitting line of thinking for me in this Ayyami-Ha season. A new beginning. Keep only what you need and only that which works. Jettison the rest and revel in the freedom and bliss that comes from simplicity. Let that freedom create the ability to respond to magical moments in life.

One of those magical moments happened this weekend, in fact. M had a date with her Mother to see the OBT professional dancers perform on Saturday. That left R with nothing to do on a Saturday night. I was informed that he could spend the evening with me if he wished; he wished; and so did I.

Now, full disclosure: I had planned to spend some evening time with my friend, D. This was, after all, my “weekend off”, so I’d planned some clothes shopping*, a trip to IKEA**, and a Saturday evening meal with D.

With the opportunity to spend time with R popping up short-notice, it was easy to adjust. D thought roller skating would be a lot of fun, so we merged everything. R tagged along on our meal / D tagged along on the impromptu boys night out, and I got to spend great social time with two delightfully witty and intelligent human beings. To watch R’s emerging mastery of sarcasm go toe-to-toe with D’s mastery of irony as a comedy device, was really cool. While I certainly could have joined in, it was much more fun to keep quiet, let them spar, and enjoy their fun. It was really, really cool for me to watch the two of them get acquainted. My son will do well in the world as he grows up. I can rest easy in that.

It was an Ayyami-Ha night. Celebrations all around, in ways that match the style of the individual members of the family.  Simple. Joyous. Freeing.

It was Bonus Time. And such a bonus it was. A “Bounty of Bonus” one might say…

Throughout this week, the kids and I will consult on a plan for our weekend together coming up. I wonder what else we can incorporate for Bonus Time?

===

* I’m slowly gathering up some ‘skinny’ clothes to fit my svelter self. Right now, I’m wearing size 30 waists where I used to wear 33 waists. Needless to say, the old pants are pretty saggy when they’re 3-4 inches too big in the waist.

** My first trip to IKEA for me. Overwhelming without a guide.

Home or Away?

Spring Training baseball starts in a few days. I love going to spring training games. I thought, last year, that I finally had a mechanism in place for the family that would allow for some spring ball every year. But that fell apart, didn’t it? I’m not complaining; I’m just registering my personal disappointment… and my understanding that, as the Rolling Stones put it, “you can’t always get what you want.”

We’re at the beach this weekend, the kids and I. It’s a three day weekend for the kids; I took a vacation day on Monday, and we’ve been here since M finished ballet rehearsal. The question I’ve been pondering is this: am I at Home? Or am I Away?

Where exactly is Home? What constitutes Home?  My folks have owned this property for 30 years. Chances are good that the property will stay in the family beyond them. This has been the place to visit my folks for longer than all other addresses combined. I may not have gone to school in this community as a child, but there’s MUCH more sense of home for me here than anywhere else.

Hillsboro is my home town for school and the like. But I only lived there for twelve years and have been away for more than twice as long. So much has changed in that town that I only recognize vague pieces of the place nowadays.

So where is Home?

On the one hand: according to the Post Office and the law, Home is where I get my mail. That’s a reasonable distinction. In that case, my Home is in the city. But that seems like a rather tenuous thread to Home.

On the other hand: I tell colleagues, friends and neighbors in my community that we’re “going away” to the beach. Except, I’m really going home, aren’t I? I’m more “away” when I’m in the city, living in my city house, going to my city job. Given the choice to retire today, would I stay in the city or go to the beach full-time? Odds are I’d go to the beach. So… where exactly is Home?

My folks live here. But that’s not exactly why it qualifies as Home. Parents move to new places. The post-parenting home is not always a place the children will call home for themselves. Retirement communities, snowbird lifestyles, and the like, are more like Away than Home. I have some friends who, for a variety of circumstances, are living with their parents for the time-being. They don’t necessarily feel like they’re Home. There’s more to Home than where the Parents are.

In baseball, each team gets to play half of their games in their home venue. The other half – the road games – are spread out amongst about two dozen various stadiums. No player knows a field better than their home field. They can play their best there, if for no other reason than their familiarity with the place. Is that the city? Not necessarily. Is it the beach? Very likely. I’ve much more time spent at the beach. I’ve more connection to the place. My children, myself, and my parents include this place as a part of our personal identity. In fact, this place has drawn four generations of my family into it’s loving embrace. From my grandmother Iola, right down to my two kids.

Yesterday, the kids and I climbed up the hillside at the Cape. It’s a big sand dune, this particular Cape. M was telling me that it was the first time she’d gone all the way to the summit. She’d been on the dune face many times before, but not over the summit because she needed a grownup with her. I qualified, so over the top we went. As we climbed the dune, I shared with M that I’d been climbing that dune since I was her age – ten years old. Then, I shared that she, at the age when I started coming here, could say “I’ve been climbing this dune for my WHOLE LIFE!” I think that qualifies as Home.

So, today, when we drive back to town, we’ll be going away. It was nice to have a weekend home stand with the entire category 3 Typhoon Johnson. This little community may not be much, but like the Rolling Stones said with their next thought: “if you try some time, you’ll find, you get what you need!”

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R goes Electric

R has been struggling to keep up with his homework. Not because he's buried in it, but because he's been having trouble focusing on it. Working from two different households, learning a new rhythm, and spending a number of days sleeping on the couch instead of in his room didn't help.

Nevertheless, some things now seem to have him on an upward slope:

1. We've upped his ADD meds slightly. It's not unexpected that he's got a bit of a tolerance for the meds. He takes a VERY small dose compared to some of the other kids in his similar position.
2. He's back in his room, with his things.
3. He's looking forward to time at the Beach Compound with all of us: the Three Johnsketeers, the Grandparents, and Teddy & Tilly.
4. Last night, he was invited to spar on electrics with the rest of the 'guys' after class.

Because R had his homework caught up, we could stay late and spar. He was all sorts of excited when Zach told him to put on a lame' jacket. He's fenced electric before, but this was full on sparring with the big guys. What ended up happening is that R and I sparred each other on a second strip, in parallel with the competitive types. It was good. R's working on a fourth parry / disengage/ riposte move that's accurate and whip-fast in execution. When he throws his lightning-fast super-long lunge behind the riposte, he's very dangerous -- pushes right through anyone else's parry and getting the point on the continuation. Soon to be overwhelming, that move! So we worked on that. It would seem that he was pleased to be there, pleased to have been promoted. 

I drove home a young man who was focused, thinking well, and all together in his organization. It was nice. For us both.

Readying Valentines at the PCC library on Date Night.

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R sparring

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The Famlitution

At least, that's what M calls it.

We're writing a Family Constitution. Establishing our own set of beliefs, inalienable rights, expectations, and operating protocols. We started over the weekend, and captured a much more complete first pass than I expected. Given that both kids have some some study of The US Constitution in school already, and have contributed to the creation of a classroom constitution, the process of writing out a "Famlitution" was quite familiar to them. Upon suggesting a Constitution, I was met with an immediate, kind-hearted debate over which child got to write the preamble. This debate quickly "devolved" into the two of them riffing off each other, framing the preamble on the spot. Yeah. It was like that...I had to write fast and memorize the rest, lest we miss something.

So now we have a preamble, and ten "articles." Among the articles are:  "Personal Safety, Privacy and Dignity", "Communicating and Listening", "Openness and Honesty", "Integrity", "Family Decision-Making", "Grievances", "Who Makes Up the Family?" Among others. We discuss broad-stroke thinking on what we expect, and what might be done for discipline. We discuss how we make decisions and who gets to vote, and when. We discuss what to do when someone brings a challenging belief or idea to the family. When do we accept an Idea? When do we reject an Idea? How do we reject an Idea without rejecting the Person bringing it? The children themselves brought up the idea of family citizenship and how we allow someone to become a family member. I thought that was amazingly broad-minded of them.

It was an interesting process, and I got the sense that it did two things:

1. created an immediate sense of increased belonging, safety and influence in their surroundings, and
2. rekindled a sense of intimacy and caring between the siblings.

The rules would be made clear, and they both could hold the other accountable to those rules. Why? because they were written down. They didn't need to bicker through each momentary issue because they'd have a written document to use. They could each check the issue against the Famlitution for a self-ruling before even bringing up the topic.

A good thing, this Family Constitution.

Off to dance rehearsal

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Typhoon Johnson Now a Cat 3

In my mid-October post, "Let's All Go To The Lobby", I wrote about taking a break, about having lost relevance. Some things had come up; I needed to pay careful attention to them. For the most part, that work has been accomplished. Now, it's the start of February, and I'll be returning to the blog. The intermission is over. I've a new mission for this space.

            Henceforth, the Typhoon Johnson blog will be an online journal exploring my relationship
            with my children, R and M.

This new direction is the right thing to do, for many reasons -  which I will not expose here (they're matters of the private heart). And, I realize, it'll be a place where the children can interact, post, comment and get involved as well. That, you see, will become a part of the Typhoon Johnson blog's new mission. Maybe, just maybe, we can capture some of the magic that is our interaction with each other.

There is an elephant in the room here, and I will address it this way:  the blog will not be spending time on C's personal life. She has asked in a number of ways for more privacy; I will be granting that. It is now not my place to expose the details of her life either intentionally or accidentally.

That, my friends, is why Typhoon Johnson is now a Category 3... smaller, more compact, quieter/calmer in some ways. But still full of vibrancy and energy.

Now watch us go!!