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Home of Michael Perry – Author, Humorist, Singer/Songwriter, Amateur Pig Farmer

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Posts Tagged ‘parenting’

Miscellaneous Today

Friend in iffy band situation says: “It’s like dating a flaky hot girl – you just enjoy the time you have.”

Says the five-year-old after watching Dad struggle along: “Jogging is just fake running.”

Not The Time To Laugh

It is important to hold the line when disciplining the child, but equally important that one not seem to take the child’s anger or despair lightly. Which is to say when the child has a high-decibel flailing flop-fest after failing to meet the clearly-stated standards for having a special cookie after lunch, you absolutely must not crack a smile even if the child is hollering, “But I want an EAR-E-O! I want an EAR-E-O!”

She is fast asleep now.

Garage Band Baby

Got the GarageBand app for my iPad. Mainly for a very simple one-track voice thing I’m doing. But my four-year-old is all over it. In a glimpse of the future, she has – quite of her own volition – selected “Heavy Metal” as her favorite guitar sound.

Time to sound-proof the playroom.

50/50

I like that if I stop in for coffee here on any given day odds are 50/50 that I will see at least 50% of this band. Guy in the tie reads Bukowski, draws a fine Americano, and (just to beef up his cred) knows what a “onesie” is.

Infestation of Cute

Infestation of CuteHad a companion in the office this morning. She’s taking a nap now, but left some of her friends behind. I am told that among this herd are Aurora Dawn, MoonPlanet, DaisyPink and some other names I didn’t catch but go good with purple braided tails and over-sized blue eyes. I look over at that chair, and it’s like I popped mushrooms.

Missing from photo: StarBottom the purple bear, she’s helping with the nap.

 

A Little Taste of the Book

My next book (no title yet, earliest it will be out is August 2012) is much more focused on a man named Tom than it is on me or my family. But anyone who read Truck knows I have a soft spot for pickup trucks and girls, so here’s an excerpt from the current draft in which I am accompanied by my then 3-year-old, who is resolutely sucking her thumb as we hammer down the backroads:

Jane and I are on our way to visit Tom Hartwig. He’s going to cut and bend some steel for me. Normally the truck would be rolling on blacktop, but crews are resurfacing and reshaping the curves along this stretch of county road, so they have chomped and removed the asphalt. Gravel rattles in the wheel wells, and a whorl of dust spins from beneath the back bumper to drift in our wake. It’s good to drive a dirt road, especially in a pickup truck. You get a whole different feel coming up through the wheel. There’s a little give, a little float to the curves. You feel like maybe life is more liveable when everything doesn’t have to be all double-yellow perfect. Given time and good spirits in the company of a child I believe you should converse with that child, but right now Jane’s thumb is well-planted and furthermore I can cultivate in her worse habits than the love of watching farm fields slide past an open truck window to the tune of yesteryear’s country music legends, so I punch the radio button and dial up Moose Country 106.7. I do my best to raise my children right, but some lessons are best imparted by ladies, specifically among them Patsy, Tammy, Loretta, and even – especially – Dolly.

New Kathleen Edwards Music

Like pretty much everyone else I discovered Kathleen Edwards around 2003 when she released Failer, which is one of those albums that never quite made it into the box out there in the pole barn because every few months I’d have a need to hear it again.

Later, after I became a father to two daughters, I found myself listening to Kathleen Edwards from a new perspective, and I’m happy to say that both of my girls regularly request her music when they visit me up here in the typing lair. My wife is also a fan.

So the whole family is real happy that Kathleen Edwards has some new music forthcoming. We’ve been given a sneak-peek/listen here. I like when tough meets beautiful, and “Change the Sheets” is exactly that. And for the story of “Wapusk,” go here.

Also, I am not talking out of school if I tell you we think it’s neat that much of the recording of both of these songs was done just one short rooster-crow from our little farm.

Nice 4th and Baler Photos

Good 4th last night. Sat on our ridge with a fire and 70% homegrown food (have never successfully grown marshmallows), just enough breeze and woodsmoke to keep the mosquitoes and gnats in fly-by mode, and for miles in all directions, amateur fireworks (some of which get bigger every year).

Have never been a fireworks guy. Don’t care to play with them, and figure you might as well light five dollar bills and throw them to the wind. But yesterday I harrumphed and approved the expenditure of $16.50 toward a simple grab-bag batch. We parsed them out over the evening between homemade campfire pies and watching the bigger bursts in the distance. Saved a bunch of colorful ones for the very end. And after watching the 11-year-old dance across the yard writing with a sparkler in the dark, after hearing the four-year-old’s peals of laughter at the colorful ones that spun in the driveway…well, sometimes a guy has to unbend a little, huh? We spread that $16.50 out over two hours and while I stood holding my wife’s hand in the dark as the last colors fizzled, we did the math on any number of other manufactured entertainments and figured we took the cash for a decent ride.

Earlier in the day my wife and daughters went to the river with friends while I stayed home to write, move some chickens, and help my neighbor (same guy who did this) bale a batch of hay. (Later that night when we were going to make campfire pies and realized we didn’t have any bread, I ran back over there and he lent us half a loaf – there’s yer rural barter system in full effect).

Office Helper

She’s back in the house now, along with the purple bear she calls Star-Bottom.*

The table was made in the 1940s by my grandfather for my father.

I think his take on Mickey was abstract enough that the trademark attorneys at Disney will direct their efforts elsewhere.

*Yes. I know. The real Star-Bottom is probably shaking it somewhere even now.