Laundry baskets

We have a number of laundry baskets in our house - I think it's about four. Most of them are up in our bedroom, on the floor, full of clothes. But, increasingly, it is getting harder and harder to determine if the clothes are clean or dirty.

This happens because Alison, our 15 month old, likes to pull clothes out of the baskets onto the floor. She loves emptying her dresser drawers, her brother's dresser drawers, and taking the pots and pans out of the cabinets in the kitchen.

We keep a laundry basket in our bedroom for dirty clothes. And sometimes, there are two laundry baskets full of clean clothes, waiting to be put away. The laundry problem wouldn't exist if we were better at doing this. But this takes time, even if it's a few extra minutes, and often, just bringing clean laundry upstairs is an accomplishment. Putting the clothes away is just another thing that we don't feel like doing.

We've certainly rewashed clothes that have been clean that we have thought we dirty, and we've also probably worn dirty clothes. The other day, I was trying to figure out if a shirt was clean, so I smelled it. Deodorant smell is an obvious give-away, but sometimes it isn't that easy.

The shirt I was holding didn't smell, nor did the others around it, so I wore it. It may have been dirty, who knows.

I wonder if anyone else lives like this, or are we truly slobs? Perhaps I don't want to know the answer.

Dinosaurs!

One of the charming things about having very young children is the hilarious remark that will often pop out of their mouth.

Take today, for instance.

We were at a Christmas-type store, looking to purchase a Department 56 piece for our Christmas village. (I almost wrote "holiday" village - shame on me!)

We were looking to purchase a new building to add to our collection, which has been a tradition each year. We'll usually purchase an accessory, little figurine people, or a building. This year, in honor of our son, Ethan, who loves fire stations and anything involving emergencies or sirens, we were looking specifically for a fire station.

As we surveyed the display of tiny villages and buildings, suddenly Ethan says, "Look! Dinosaurs!"

Confused, I turned to see what he was pointing to. (Surely, there are no dinosaurs in the Dickens village...)

A camel. Ethan was looking at a camel in a nativity scene.

A classic. He thought the camel was a dinosaur.

This ranks up there with the comment he made the first time we brought him to the beach.

"Look!" he said. "Chickens!"

And of course what he saw were seagulls.

I wonder what a seagull would taste like in my sandwich.

James Taylor at Tanglewood

There is nothing quite like seeing JT perform at Tanglewood, in Lenox, Mass, framed by towering spruce trees, the Berkshire Mountains and Stockbridge Bowl, the local lake.

And next summer, in August, he will put on four shows - two mainstream concerts, an "Evening" with his band, in which he plans to talk about his songs and play them, kind of like VH1 Storytellers, I presume, and then a final performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which I think I'll skip. But two of the four are definitely warranted, especially the "evening" with the band, which will be in Ozawa Hall, not the main shed.

Another bit of good news: Garrison Keillor leads the Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood again, in late June 2009.

Unfortunately, the July 4 performer is Diana Krall, whom we've seen there before and is a bit too low-key for an Independence Day party. And Wilco, who we saw play Tanglewood last year, is not on the schedule. Would love to see Cake perform at Tanglewood, but I'm afraid they wouldn't draw the kind of crowd Tanglewood normally targets.

Here's the Tanglewood link:

http://www.bso.org/bso/mods/perf_detail.jsp;jsessionid=KGRRFFKMAYZPQCTFQMGCFEQ?pid=prod2880038

Crappy places to live (and send your kids to school)

People talk about the widening of the so-called "achievement gap" in the academic performance of city kids vs. suburban kids, which, unfortunately, boils down to, in large measure, minority kids vs. white kids.

This is a problem, but consider this. The top 2 news stories in yesterday evening's local news were:

1. A boy who was arrested for bringing a loaded gun to Weaver High School in Hartford

2. A man who flashed an elementary school classroom in New Britain


Now, these two stories are taken from one day's news, and I am making somewhat of a generalization. However, how is the achievement gap ever going to close when you have incidents like this happening in city schools? I know I couldn't focus on learning if a classmate had a gun, or some dude opened up his trenchcoat my classroom.

The thing is, if you compare graduation rates, test scores, grade point averages, crime, DCF referrals and a whole bunch of other criteria, it is sad to say, but you'd be a fool to send your kids to these low-performing, crime-ridden communities. The problem is, people can't afford to move anywhere else. What can they do, other than hope for a magnet school slot in a better town? What can they do, other than be good parents, and instill in them good values? I guess you cross your fingers and do a lot of hoping.

Losing things

Things we've lost (that I can remember) since having kids:
(I'm not necessarily blaming them, it's just that our brains can only tend to higher priority matters, like if our son has a knife or our daughter is about to lick an ant trap...)

1. Two cellphones

2. Three cordless phones (somewhere there is a giant stash of telecommunications equipment...)

3. My watch

4. Various books (including a specific one about lighthouses)

5. A set of car keys

6. Many, many pens (both kids like using them)

7. Hair (in my case)

8. Sleep (mostly in my wife's case)

9. The ability to stay up past 10 p.m.

10. The ability to sleep past 6 a.m.

Gun Control

I'm wondering about something: The second amendment guarantees us the right to keep and bear arms, including semiautomatic weapons, a vast majority of which end up in the hands of those who shouldn't have them, but marijuana is illegal?

The reason I bring this up is because yesterday an 8-year-old from Connecticut accidentally shot himself, with his father standing right beside him at a gun fair in Massachusetts.
(See story: http://www.courant.com/community/news/ec/hc-ap-gunaccident-1027,0,7933566.story)

I fail to understand how "productive" ways of guns ownership (hunting, self defense?) can outweigh the problems associated with guns.

Just tonight on NBC Nightly News, it was reported that, in this horrible economy, gun sales were up 10 percent in the last few months. Brian Williams didn't have a very good explanation for why this is true during the broadcast, saying that perhaps people are taking money out of their banks and keeping it at home, so they need a gun to protect them. Is a knife or baseball bat not good enough? Are people that paranoid about getting robbed?

And then we have video of Sarah Palin taking target practice, showing off her ability to shoot a handgun and people are getting excited about this?

If it were up to me, police, armored truck drivers and DEP employees would carry guns. I just don't see why common people need them, or should have them.

John McCain and Mr. Roper

As we watch CNN's weekend political coverage, it just occurred to my wife and me that the weird smile that McCain makes after telling a joke is just like Mr. Roper, of Three's Company (see Best Sitcoms post), looking into the camera with his sinister smile after busting on his wife's mother, or poking fun of Mrs. Roper.

I hope the photos convey this effectively.