Visiting Granddaughter

Hey, we're in Kansas City spending time with our 7 month old granddaughter and her parents. This is a real treat for us and it's a lot of work. Babies are a lot worse than bosses for making ambiguous demands designed to multitask you to death. The redeeming thing is that they are a lot cuter than bosses.

Our princess seems to be a baby of great robustness and strength. She's in the ninety-something percentile of size in all dimensions such as length, weight, and head size but a little slow in the hair growth department. Despite the pink outfits, our daughter is always receiving dubious compliments from strangers such as, "Great baby. He's going to be a bruiser isn't he."

Ayla is her name. This is a girl's name in both Finnish and Hebrew, so it recognizes respectively her paternal grandfather and grandmother. It is also notably the name of the protagonist in Clan of the Cave Bear, that bright, courageous, and decisive little Cro-Magnon orphan girl who had the misfortune to be found and raised by thick-witted Neanderthals. Our daughter read the book when she was a child and emphatically announced, "If I have a daughter I'm going to name her Ayla." I have suggested to her that she probably identified with Ayla, particularly the part about being raised by thick-witted Neanderthals. Disclaimer: She does not always find my lame attempts to analyze her psyche particularly accurate or amusing.

Back to Ayla. She is in the exploratory stage now. That means she instantly grabs anything in reach and stuffs it in her mouth, with both hands, to assess by gnawing. For instance, she can grab a paper table napkin, stuff the whole thing in her mouth and gum it to shreds in the moments it takes a stiff-backed grandparent to bend over and pick up the spoon she just tossed on the floor. Her two parents, four grandparents, and four surviving great grandparents have provided her with a wealth of colorful, jangly, child-safe baby toys to satisfy her intellectual curiosity but, as her father notes, she definitely prefers the choking-hazard non-toys in her surroundings.

Ayla is impatient to crawl so she can more quickly reach fragile and dangerous articles. She can do push ups and she can stand up on her feet with her face mashed into the floor but she hasn't gotten all four limbs operating in sync yet. Her current traveling method involves the snowmobile technique wherein she uses her face like a sled runner (lubricated by a stream of saliva like a snail track) while her powerful legs serve as the traction propulsion device. Then she takes a couple of rollovers before assuming the snowmobile again. This can get her from the highly engineered baby teething toys to the skull and crossbones hazards as quick as a flash.

We take lots of outings with Ayla. She likes stroller rides, I guess because of the jiggling motion and changing scenery. She even tolerates latte stops if there are enough straws and table napkins to eat. Here are some pictures of some of our weekend outings. One notable stop was at an adult exercise station in one of the parks. This was particularly pleasing to Grandma who seems to be the genetic source of the boundless curiosity and energy passed to her descendants. Click any image for a larger view.

Willy C Becomes Rowdy Beaver

While driving from Liberal, Kansas (actual town name) to Kansas City on Monday my wife and I got hungry about 50 miles before Witchita. This was a natural consequence of the fact that it was two hours past lunch time. I wanted to stop at some reliable convenient place like one of the many golden arches and KFCs. This never works when traveling with my wife. She feels that every meal may be our last or at least our last in that part of the world and thus must be special. It must be delicious, low caloried, and memorably representative of the character and history of the region. This causes her to research all our AAA books and interview numerous passers by in quest of the ultimate dining experience. It drives me nuts.

As we were approaching Wichita, she read all the quick histories and restaurant reviews of Wichita from our AAA and other reference guides. She came up with the "must eat at" restaurant, Willy C's. We dutifully programmed the address of Willy's into our trusty new Garmin GPS. Ms. Garmin got us off at a certain exit then immediately directed "Turn left…" on some street then, "Arriving at destination on right." when we were in the left lane with lots of traffic on the right and no sight of anything called Willy. Almost immediately it was into, "Recalculating: Turn right on Elm St. Recalculating, Turn Left on Oak Street. Oh Golly, Go back". Then my wife starts in with, "No it's got to be on West street; go under the freeway." I respond, "I can't go under the freeway; I'm in the left turn lane." Then all hell breaks loose (this happens all the time) with wife, Ms. Garmin, and me all squawking at each other hysterically and wife insisting that I'm losing my temper and becoming an unsafe drivers so I should stop there in the middle of the freeway ramp and let her drive.

So, to make a long story more tolerable we somehow moved wife into the driver's seat and caught a few honks and middle fingers as we headed off with her in pursuit of Willy's. This time she resolved to stop right where Ms. Garmin said, even though it definitely did not say Willy C. (a rare moment of agreement with Ms. Garmin). It turns out that this was not Willy C's but the Rowdy Beaver. We went in and learned that Willy's had gone bust and the Rowdy Beaver had just opened two weeks ago in its place.

In the end it was good. The Rowdy Beaver was my kind of place. They had much paraphernalia for sale including, prominently, manikins with tiny very narrow-fronted thong bikinis that said Rowdy Beaver on the front. They had many micro brew beers and ales to choose from with good names like "Flying Dog Doggy Style pale ale". They had big burgers with thick beef patties and they weren't all soggy with that crappy mayonnaise and pickle relish that runs downs your forearms when you try to eat burgers at most of the fast food chains. There were lots of flies but we were able to swat them with carefully aimed blows of our menus. I really liked the place. I think my wife did too; she figured it was soooo authentic Witchita.

Crazy Woman Takes Charge

Why do I only think up a good response after the incident has passed?

Last week I was driving to the north rim entrance to the Grand Canyon when I saw some people standing in the road flailing their arms up and down. It was in a meadow area so I could clearly see the road beyond them. Other than a couple of parked cars and some more people on the shoulder there was nothing on the road, so this was a bit puzzling. As I approached more closely one woman began running toward me in the center of the road flapping her arms more wildly and looking quite angry. I had to stop because she was completely blocking the road. She ran up to my door still flapping her arms wildly and demanded, "Don't you know what this signal means?!" I tried to get my window open to hear her better but in my nervousness I accidentally had my finger on the wrong button so I kept opening and closing the rear window. Finally I opened my door so I could better communicate with her.

The lady continued raging, raving, and flapping her arms while blurting, "This means SLOW DOWN. There's been an accident up ahead!" Since I could see the roadway was completely clear ahead and I was completely stopped I reasoned that I had slowed down sufficiently soon and thoroughly to satisfy any reasonable person. I just gave her my best Jack Nicholson glower and only slightly snidely asked, "Well what do you want me to do about it?" This really set her off and she yelled, "I want you to SLOW DOWN!" Then she rushed at my door with both hands and tried to slam it. I don't like people getting physical with my car so I held it open until she stopped pushing, then closed it gently and proceeded very slowly on. When I got into the middle of the area she was guarding I saw a crunched up motorcycle off the road in the meadow and I could tell that the people on the shoulder were tending to a man lying on the shoulder, presumably the unfortunate rider.

The rider was wearing one of those pirate-like bandanas that bikers who disapprove of helmets use to protect their hard craniums during an accident. OK, maybe that remark is unfair. Perhaps he was wearing a helmet when the accident happened and Ms. Take Charge had wrenched it off his head oblivious to the dangers of neck injuries. So, anyway I proceeded on, hoping this unfortunate fellow would survive and feeling very annoyed at the bossy rude woman.

What was this woman? My school teacher wife said she was probably a school teacher because they instinctively and aggressively try to take control of any situation that looks like an emergency even if they don’t know what the hell they're doing. I just kept mulling over the answers I should have given her when she demanded, "Don't you know what this signal means?!" Perhaps I should have said, "I'm just back from Venezuela and there it means 'I'm from FARC and I want to kidnap you and hold you hostage for six years'". Or perhaps, "This is a national park so obviously I thought you were a wildly excited German tourist trying to share with the world that you had spotted a cute chipmunk eating a pine nut." Or maybe just, "I thought you were listening to a Rufus Thomas CD and just got an uncontrollable urge to leap out of your car and start doing the Funky Chicken dance in the middle of the road.

Anyway I guess I said the right thing. As it was, it irritated her enough to make her charge my car like a bison bull in rut. By the way, this isn't the first time this has happened to me. The previous time it was an almost identical situation except it was a lady police officer who went berserk. I know there are those who will say I'm from an era when men thought a woman saying "stop" really meant "go further" but this isn't true. In both cases I had female witnesses who attested to the fact that I had slowed sufficiently soon and thoroughly and that the berserk woman was truly delusional.