Monday, January 16, 2012

Like a Panda: When Photos are All I Have to Give

oh internet… sometimes it gets so hard to be close with you.  I want so badly to be the kind of content-producer you can trust, the kind you know will have something thoughtful and revelatory for you whenever you want it, so long as that’s not much more often than once a week.... and then I find so many things that stand between us.  Sometimes they’re interesting things, and I become distracted… sometimes they’re difficult things, and I’m either buried in my attention to them, or fleeing from all realities - even your crackling cybernetic embrace.  Sometimes I’m just booked solid with simple things, or even nice ones, like visits to friends or trips to the beach or the gardens or the inlaws, or maybe even that watchucallit parenting gig I still seem to have going on, and I don’t get around to much of anything, including this.  Sometimes I sleep, and sometimes I don’t, but there’s always something to keep me busy.

Does it sound like an excuse?  I suppose it is one.  A lame one, but that’s sort of my M.O. these days, so let’s get used to it.

And it’s just getting worse, too: I’m in default mode here.  If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, and Shaanxi is the last refuge of the Quinling Panda (as I am reliably informed that it is), then cute photos of one’s kids is the last refuge of the blogger.  I’m going to try and round it out with some artsy, if not fartsy, stuff too, but here’s the skinny: I’m actually writing a poem.  I realize that this will somewhat detract from the surprise when I actually post the damn thing, but maybe that much excitement would be too much for you and would fry your delicate synapses or whatever the hell it is you have.  Nodes?  Do you have nodes?  Maybe my suddenly posting a butt-long poem would have fried them.  Do nodes fry?  Can I get fried nodes?  Maybe with an imperial roll?  Am I asking too much?  Are you still listening?  Is this thing on? 

Okay, so I’m like six pages into writing a poem that will challenge even the most ardent of you to wade through it to the end.  But I will not be able to stop till I’m done, and it’s been tough to clear the time I need to do decent work on it, what with the workplace angst and the homelife intensity and the crowded bus rides where I keep on having to give up my seat to elderly ladies with shopping bags full of caltrops and limberger.  I should be able to wrap it up soon, I’m down to the climactic bit and then just a bit of denouement for giggles and I’ll post it, I promise, so you can ignore something with real literary merit.  But in the meantime, I don’t like leaving things here so.... postless. 

So I’m going back to photos, and as it happens, over the past few months there have been some decent photo ops as far as I’m concerned.  But consider the source of this information: a tired, over-extended dad.  You know what’s coming.  Photos of kids.  I’m not proud of myself, but I’m proud of them, and goddamn it you’re going to get their smiling punims jammed down your craw today.  Because my poem isn’t ready.  O the humanity.  Or whatever. 

I’m drawing, mostly, from three photoriffic recent events: a trip to Cornerstone Gardens, a trip to visit inlaws about half an hour outside of Seattle, and a party held this past weekend for my son J’s fourth birthday.  And while I was manipulating those photos with the cuteness intensification tool and the charminator filter that get so much use with my home edition of PhotoShop for Parents, I did stumble across a couple of other random shots that also didn’t suck out loud so I’m throwing them in as well on the theory of why the hell not.  But in the spirit of “blogging without frontiers,” which I believe I just made up (Google proves me wrong, there were fully six results for that search term, so I’m going to go with “blogging without front ears” and that one is MINE, suckers), I’m not going to post these according to where they were taken, but rather, according to which of my children (J, Z, both, neither) are featured.  After that it’ll be a crap shoot, and I sternly recommend you bring your own crap because mine is spoken for.  To wit:

J:

First, you get to see him as I do: rapidly diminishing to an identity at the horizon - in this case, on a path near the Cascade Mountains:

Okay, sometimes he’s somewhat more… visible.  For example, his birthday party was at a gymnastics studio, and here he is learning to yank chains:

And finally (for the J-only shots), here he is with his accountant, going over his annual report:

Let’s move on to Z:

On vacation in WA, learning to hit the sweet spot:

At J’s birthday, having just bounced into a pit full of cubic blueness:

And, further at the birthday party, letting us know that a tramampoline is in our future and not just our current crappy little one either:

You can see, a pre-pre-diabetic like myself has a lot to worry about from each of these supermuffins.  But then, they gang up on me and get even cuter together:

Yes, it’s exhausting.  Thank goodness I sometimes can fix my gaze on some quiet place where their blazing megawatt smiles and wrenching huggability are not immediately apparent.  So, by means of a palate cleanser for the internet (and hell yeah it needs one, the internet never even flosses), I offer you: 

A photo I’ve wanted to take for a long time - I call it, “Straws,” but you are free to call it “Straws” as well if you’re having an uncreative day:

Here’s a few from Washington State, where we visited both an air-and-space museum ...

...  and a railroad rolling stock museum.

Let it no longer be said that I have a uniformly 1-track mind, and lets move on - turning our attention, frayed and abused though it may be, to further visions of Cornerstone Gardens, which we totally love.  They’ve updated since our last visit - got rid of the blue-ball tree and the surreal minigolf course, but some of the new stuff is great, much of the old stuff remains awesome, and their housewares shop remains one of the coolest places I’ve ever taken photos:

(This last one deserves a word of explanation: these are, purportedly, Kewpie Doll molds.  I have a long and valued relationship with Kewpie, and you’re going to have to ask me about it if you want more information than that - but this is by far the second-creepiest Kewpie vision I’ve ever seen.  Number One goes way too far and you can be grateful it’s too late and I’m too sleepy to dig up a link.  These grotesque slag-spattered shells are weird enough, I’d say.)

Finally, a quick phone-photo from Baker Beach, the nearest beach to my front door, at sunset a week ago.  It’s a nice beach, and a nice way to sign off.  I’ll have a goddamn poem or something for you soon.  Or, if not, something else.  Keep’em crossed and we’ll see what shows up here, eh?