Decisions Made, Directions Given

OUR BLOGGING EFFORTS ARE MOVING to joymeta.blogspot.com. (links on the right)

So we were there planning to go to Nigeria and really wishing there were more blogs from Nigeria that would help new couples like us get a feel for the place and what it's like to raise a family. Joy announced that she wanted to set up a public blog (unlike this half-public, half-hidden blog) where she would talk about Nigerian life.

I was pretty excited. I'm always very happy when I can get Joy to post over here, in part because then this becomes much more of a family blog and less a Derrill production; in part because she talks about things I don't think to that I want to remember and save; in part because none of our female friends are willing to comment on my posts, but you will say something to Joy, so if I want to hear from you, I've got to get Joy to say something; in part as validation of the time I spend on this family journal; in part because I enjoy every time I get my 19th century wife to use a technological device; and a few more parts for good measure.

What I didn't realize was that she only wanted to post at the new blog. I figured we'd talk about "Africa stuff" in the other blog and Hyrum stuff in this blog. Silly man, trying to keep your life separated into boxes like that! The point is to tell people what it's like having kids in Nigeria. How do you separate them?

Hm, good point, dear. I know, I'll double-post anything of particular family interest and ... no. You're right. It's easier to just pretend we have two blogs and leave it at that.

So until further notice, this blog is going on hiatus. We may return to it when we come back to the States. We'll see. Until then, update your RSS feeders and bookmarks to Tender Mercies Realized.

The proof is in the publisher

The final proof of my textbook is off to the publisher.Huzzah!

He has my eyes

One of the things I like about Hyrum is that he has my eyes. Don't get me wrong, I would like it if he had Joy's eyes too. But since I have an easier time acknowledging my son's good looks than I do in thinking there is anything worthy of approval in my own looks, seeing my eyes reflecting from his handsome face gives me a little hope for me too.

Unfortunately, with the eyes comes the pink. I wouldn't say I regularly had pink eye as a child, but it was a frequent enough visitor that I know it when I see it. Hy is having his first bout with it, thankfully nowhere near as severe as what I had a few weeks ago. Little water, little discharge, little staying home from church, little glad there's no school tomorrow for him to miss, very little sleep as he pops into the bedroom several times a night to ask Mommy for help... good times. He's started asking for me to wash his eyes. We got a system going briefly that he liked, and when I did it differently the next time he said, "Daddy, you're not doing it right." I explained a bit further what it is we need to do, got him on board, and now we're working together much happier. I so have to keep trying to convince him to not stick his fingers in my eyes, though.

He also has a mild fever (100.6).

Meanwhile, I think I'm slowly passing another kidney stone, so it's time to be on Vicodin while moving boxes, mowing lawns, and trying to proof-read my textbook for the last time before publishing. For once, I was just as happy to spend church today lying down on the couch with him.

I've never been able to keep him laying down for as long as we just managed. We took turns watching half an hour of Prince of Egypt and Backyardigans. Each time we returned to PoE, he asked to start over and "see the horses going down." After the intro, teenage Moses and Ramses race each other in two-horse chariots. They nearly get themselves killed several times as people get out of the way, they jump gaps, and scaffolding crashes down around them. They pause the horses briefly at a barricade which suddenly collapses and they ride their horses down a tidal wave of sand in a scene highly reminiscent of going down a tall roller coaster. Pretty fun, but not the point, so I said no.

As we went along, I explained some of the parts of Moses' story from the Bible to be a bit more accurate than the film. He asked some pretty tough questions about why God sent curses and he correctly remembered and linked up the Passover with the Sacrament (score!). I was pretty pleased.

He told me several times that the movie was scary, but we made it through. It wasn't too scary, I guess. He and I had tried watching it last year, but it was too scary then. (I should note, he chose it from among the options I gave him.)

Afterwards, I asked him what was the scariest part. Imagine my surprise when he answered -- not the darkness, not the plagues, not the deaths, not the scary music -- "The horses. They go down WHOOSH. They go fast. Why did they go so fast, Daddy? Why did the horses go faster?"

I then asked him what his favorite part was. "The horses."

You liked the horses?
"Yes. They go fast."

I think I'm going to have a very interesting conversation with my Lovely and Gracious when she gets home....

----------------------

Hy-guy also apparently needs glasses. The school's best guess is that he has about 20/100 vision. We took him to an eye doctor for children in the area who demonstrated that he can read the top line of the eye chart, but nothing lower. We'll have to wait until the pink eye gets cleared up, though, to give him further testing to see just what kind of glasses. Happily, children who need glasses are a medical condition, while adults who need glasses need a separate vision insurance, so our insurance will cover his glasses if not mine.

Exciting News: Going to Nigeria ... again!

While Derrill was in Nigeria this week, he confirmed to the president of the American University of Nigeria that he would be coming to work there for the next three years. We have a job to look forward to!

"In Nigeria," says Joy obviously. "So we're moving there."

I was impressed while I was there with the friendliness of the people, how eager my colleagues were to have me there, and the real opportunity to do some good in the world.

We have been quite coy about all this online up til now. We didn't want to jinx anything by sharing too many opinions publicly online before a deal had been made. Up until the decision was reached (D hadn't finalized it fully in his own mind until Sunday night and told the president on Monday) we had been in contact will several other possible universities, each interesting in their own way.

Even though we have been silent online, "we have been thinking and praying about this decision for a long time." It's a pretty big step for us, and not one I think we had predicted going into this job market. But we now feel it's the right step for us now and are looking forward to it.

Baby Lavinia appears to be very excited to share about Nigeria. She's jumping all over inside Mommy.

"I have been feeling like we might end up going to Nigeria since before Derrill went to Nebraska in March. I had told Derrill that Nebraska or Nigeria sounded like the most likely for doing the kind of teaching he is interested in doing right now. Then Nebraska fell through pretty quickly."

Each additional school that contacted me for an interview really disturbed Joy, who wanted the uncertainty ended. "Ya! I kept feeling like we were going to go to Nigeria, and then I would be really stressed about Nigeria for a few days, and then I would feel peace about Nigeria, and then I would feel stress about it again. That's what I did for the last two months."

People have asked us if we're excited. My typical response was that, yes, that was one reaction we had. Fear was another. There were many others. Several of our concerns had to do with the fact that we will be the only members of the Church in Yola. Even if Nigeria is prone to civil disobedience and conflict, the conflict is in other states of the country: Adamawa state where we would be is very peaceful traditionally and calm.

Now that I have been there, however, I can just say "yes." I'm excited. The overwhelming answer from the Spirit as we've prayed about the decision has been peace, and not just general warm fuzzies, but specific reassurances about specific concerns. After all, anywhere you go there will be challenges. If God wants you to learn something, like patience, He can accomplish that in NYC just as well as Nigeria.

"Oh, I don't want to live in NYC! Sorry, but Nigeria doesn't sound too bad compared to NYC. Apologies to anyone who lives there. I am not a city person. Nothing personal. I wouldn't want to live in Lagos either..."

"Especially since Derrill made the decision, we have had continual peace instead of just moments of peace. Satan seems to be a little concerned about us going. I was in a lot of turmoil the few days before we made the final decision, to which I attribute Satan trying to sway me against the decision."

"Some of the reactions we've gotten from people as we talked about this have only reached the fear part. And some people have been very excited for us and talk about what an adventure it will be. We feel the weight of all of it and know that Heavenly Father will help us to overcome any challenges in getting or being there -- known or unknown -- as we know we'd have challenges anywhere we are in the world. With God, nothing is impossible."

Yola is way on the far east on the river that runs into Cameroon. Lagos is in the far southwest. Nigeria is 2.5 times as large as California. There is an LDS temple in the south east near Port Harcourt.

This is a picture of the inner court of the faculty building where I will be working. I'll be on the second floor.

The family I was staying with kept asking me how I was in my decision process after each trek to see something on my list -- housing, shopping, the town, the school, etc. Every time they asked, I had been feeling just a touch overwhelmed. I answered I was still in information gathering mode and needed some time to process. Once I wrote my thoughts down to share them with Joy -- assuming the internet connection would work -- I felt a lot better.

It's not necessarily going to be easy. That's not the point. Knowing a lot more about some of the specific challenges involved, I'm confident we can deal with them and find a lot of happiness there in Yola.

Celebration!

I have a working camera again!

It takes big pictures. Below the fold are the fist images my camera saw on its way in from the mailbox (eager, much, Derrill?) and my miserable boy suitably numbed by Backyardigans (More on that in another post)

Favorite Books

The last couple months Hy has been rediscovering books. Mostly it's Dr. Seuss, and mostly it's Bartholomew Cubbins. The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins is a smash hit that he wanted us to read again and AGAIN. We asked him to please choose another book in between the 500 hats. It's been a lot of fun, mostly.

Yesterday I helped him discover a new favorite book. The Lesson by Carol Lynn Pearson. "He seemed to understand a lot of it too," Joy says. "He's talked to me about it several times today -- having problems and ... I didn't understand what he wanted to do about them, but he understood." In the fable, a boy named Robert goes to school and discovers math problems. The math problems are hard, but he is happy whenever he solves them. I suspect that the numbers in the beginning of the book are a large part of its draw. Then one day his teacher announces they will do story problems.

The first story problem is: If you have 3 cars and 1 truck and Joey comes and takes 2 cars and the truck, how many times should you hit Joey?

"And he identifies with that." He puzzles it out with Robert, and is pleased when Robert discovers the answer is no times. As the book goes on, Robert's problems become more and more difficult. Hyrum's interest in the book varies depending on my reactions to it. Whenever I start choking up or tearing because of one the problems, he gets very interested in the book. When I manage to go several pages without difficulty, he starts talking about something else.

... he heard his teacher say, "Robert, if your family moved to a small house in a big city and you had to leave behind two aquariums and one dog and your best friend..."
"Oh no!" interrupted Robert. "I don't want that problem. Give me a different problem!"
"But I can't," said the teacher. "This is your problem and you must solve it."...

At the end of each lesson, it reads, "and he moved up a grade." By the end of the book, I am feeling ever so much less like that is an accomplishment and more and more dread at the inexorable climb.

It's a wonderful, moving book that Joy introduced to our home. Hyrum asked for it again tonight, in addition to talking to Joy about it several times. We can highly recommend it.

So this is Hyrum's latest literary addiction.

Staying Awake in Cobenhavn

I'm in Copenhagen for a work conference starting tomorrow. I'll be presenting some work tomorrow and need to be well rested ... but I didn't sleep on the plane and need to stay awake now so I'll be able to sleep tonight. So I'm going to keep myself awake by putting you to sleep with a little gratuitous blogging.

Copenhagen is cloudy today but ever so much warmer than Ithaca. I visited here once, long long ago at the beginning of my postdoc with Per. That was the beginning of my involvement with the textbook on global food policy that will be published this Oct-Dec. Now we're at the beginning of another project on the political economy of government food policy, working with researchers from over 17 different countries.

This time I don't have a camera. I'm hoping to remedy that situation before Hy goes to Disneyworld in two weeks. If you would like to see my pics from the last time I was here (funny, it seems it was cloudy then too. Psh, Europe!) try here and here is where I hid the pictures of Thorvaldsen's statues of Jesus and His disciples.

I somehow managed to lose the directions to my hotel. I asked around, got directions to the wrong one that got me directions to the right one. It was a comfort to me during my wandering around to suddenly realize I had been in the area before! Despite the construction going on downtown, I recognized a lot of the buildings (oh, yes, I remember taking a picture of that building to show everyone Americanization ... and that's where the statue of Hans Christian Andersen is, though I can't see him just now behind the construction wall....)

When I was in Germany, the exchange rate was about 1.6 DM to $1. Over here it's 5kroner to $1 and it takes some real mental effort to tell myself, "No, it does not cost 24DM=$18 to ride the bus, only 24K=$4.80. ... No, you did not just spend 100DM=$60 for food, only 100K=$20...." and on and on.

Getting around in Denmark is quite easy because just about anyone I bump into speaks English quite well and they are rarely shocked when someone walks up to them and starts speaking in English. A lot of the signs are in English too.

My advisor, boss, co-author, mentor, and friend Per warned me that the hotel rooms at the CabInn really are cabins and quite small. I'm impressed someone of his height can sleep on the bed, myself. The room is just a smidgen larger than my old dorm room, but is smaller than the double rooms. There is a second bunk that can be folded up against the wall and that's how two people could share the room. While there's always hotel-culture shock for me, I remind myself that this is closer to par for the course in Europe.

My room's bathroom is something else. Imagine you are standing in a small bathtub. To your immediate right is the showerhead. To your immediate left is the toilet. In front of you is the sink. Take one step and you've either run into something or you're out of the room. There's a curtain you can use to wrap around yourself and close off the toilet from the shower. I decided to move the toilet paper out of the room to make sure it didn't get soaked. In its defense, the shower was wonderful - excellent water pressure.

I wandered down the road after a nap to a local grocery store for lunch and dinner fixings. It being Sunday (and my naturally frugal nature) I dislike the thought of wandering into various the cafes and spending 80-100 ... (not dollars, kroner) for a bit to eat. At least with a grocer I won't have to bother anyone for dinner. So now I have my usual German feed: full kernel bread (which my still-growing kidney stones don't like so much, but they'll just have to tough it out for a day. They didn't seem to mind on my mission.), with cucumber, "Bondehus" cheese, and frikadella open faced sandwich, plus bananas, carrots, and juice. Bondehus apparently translates as cottage or farm, but it's not cottage cheese like we know it: it's hard and low fat.

For the record, the Danes and other Germans never take kindly to my reminiscing about my time in the former East Germany. Germans are none to popular anyway, much less east Germans. Last time here when I fondly recalled how many things reminded me of my time there, a west German made it clear that it was a distressing comparison. Of course, since all I knew at the time was east Germany, that's all I could compare it to. By now I've visited a fairly large swath of west-central Europe (Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Finland) and can differentiate a bit better between common Europa, typical German (typisch Deutsch), and distinctly Ossie (east German).

Who will we be?

For a moment walking out the door, I reveled in my geekdom and wondered who Hyrum will want to role play in the future and what roles he will ask of us.... Will I be Sam, Aragorn, or Gandalf to his Frodo? Han, Obi-wan, or 3P0 to his Luke? Which of the Justice League or the X-Men or Starfleet officers will we be? ... or should I be working on my rim shot instead?

Please recommend a good MP3 player

I have some of the worst luck with MP3 players so far. I got a Fuze last year and it stopped working within two weeks. I returned it and got a Fuze+. It stopped working after 3 days. A couple weeks ago I got a Coby. It skips tracks 30 seconds into the song. Now it's going back and I'm going back to the drawing board.

So can anyone recommend an MP3 player that actually works?? I don't want an Apple product. I only need something to hold a lot of music while I exercise. I would like the ability to organize my music, but that doesn't seem to be an option anywhere.

Who is this boy now?

Hyrum has added quite a cast of characters to his list of acting credits. He takes on several roles every day now, announcing rapid fire who everyone is and insisting that we call him by his new name every time we speak to him. Also new this week, he announces "I am Hyrum for a minute" when it's time to change his diaper, and then he reverts to his alternate persona when he stands up again.

We were very interested during our parent-teacher conference to learn that, though he'll talk about these people and pretending to be them, he only ever goes by Hyrum in the classroom. If he decides to playact with you, it's apparently an honor.

Some of the newer roles I didn't mention in the last post:

Hyrum -- Daddy -- Mommy -- (source)
Pablo -- Tyrone* -- Uniqua -- (Backyardigans)
Tyler -- Aubrey -- Jacey -- (kids in his class who hugged him for his birthday)
Margaret -- [her dad] -- [her mom] -- (friend at church)
Sister McCallister -- just Daddy -- Sister McCallister's Mom* -- (nursery leader)
Kermit the Frog -- TBA -- TBA -- (Muppets)
Joseph Smith Sr. -- Joseph Jr. -- Oliver Cowdery -- (church history)
Rolf -- Capt. von Trapp -- Lisl -- (Sound of Music)
Flick -- Dot -- Princess Ada -- (A Bug's Life)
Buzzz -- Tom Nook -- "the cat in the dark" -- (Animal Crossing)
Buzz Lightyear -- Rex -- Woody -- (Toy Story)

He's also doing more announcing who he will be on a certain day or under particular conditions:

"If Mommy wakes me up, I will be Kermit the Frog."
What if I wake you up?
"I'm Buzzz and you're Tom Nook."

His birthday card was signed by all of us!

*Incidentally, I had to fight to get the Tryone role. He was casting me as Uniqua and Mommy as Tyrone. It took part of my cunning and all of my persistence to convince him to switch us. I get enough female roles as is. I was a touch concerned when he wanted me to be Mary Poppins until we were watching it together. We saw "Feed the Birds" and then "Let's go Fly a Kite." During the latter song, Mary looks out the window as the children go skipping off, her face full of love and longing. It was at that moment that he happily pointed and called out "That's you, Daddy!" ... Okay, I'll be your Mary Poppins.

*Also incidentally, he's never met Sister McCallister's Mom, but he assumes she must have one. Further incidentally, he has a really hard time saying Flick's name properly, so if you overheard him, no, he's not cursing at us.

Splashing around a bit

In one of my favorite comic strip punchlines, grandpa says defensively "I don't wallow in self-pity... I just stick my feet in and splash around a bit."

A friend commented on FB that he wants to fly. I agree. I want to fly. I want to finish flying home and be there when my son wakes up and it's his birthday. I don't much want to be alternating between sitting on the radiator or the floor of the La Guardia ticketing terminal waiting for the next flight after the rain canceled so many flights tonight. I want to be home like I promised I would be.

Instead, I'll get the pleasure of reenacting my triumphal return from Denver in January when Hyrum came to pick me up from the airport and I got to watch his face erupt into uncontrollable joy to see his friend Luigi home. It will have to do.

Happy birthday, son. I'll be home soon.

Random comments on accents

My theater training never included Italian accents. My son, however, likes asking me to "talk like Luigi." So I've spent a lot of time lately working on an accent I've never studied. At first my attempts sounded like most pretty pitiful versions of an Italian accent with which you're probably familiar - stick an -a at the enda of randoma words anda see what happens.

While shoveling the snow today, I realized I had learned something about the accent from trying it. The -a doesn't go after random words, but serves to separate two words that would otherwise be joined by consonants. In my example above, the -a between "end of" doesn't help the words flow, but "anda see" does, as would an -a between "what happens." Now because I'm making this up, I don't really know if it's "correct" but it feels sensible. It could also be a matter of rise and flow, or only going after certain consonants because those letters don't end words in Italian, or some other possibility.

One of the ways Hyrum is mildly entertaining is that he thinks all English dialects are "Mary Poppins." He really doesn't care if I sound like Bert or Monty Python or Hermione or Ringo, they're all Mary.

And on the subject, I'll just mention that I have a terrible time doing a German accent. This is funny since I speak German and taught English to Germans, so I've heard a lot of it. The first problem is that the harsh-sounding stereotypical German accent doesn't sound like the attempt of anyone I knew in Germany to speak English. The second problem is that to do it right, I have to think in German and then translate it back into English and it gets mighty complicated to keep up. The best I can do these days is imitate Pres. Uchtdorf, but he speaks with a much clearer English than most Germans would so his voice doesn't scream "Kraut" the way someone on Hogan's Heroes would. Thankfully, Hyrum doesn't want to play act anyone German yet, so I don't have to worry about it.

A Theory of Growing Old

I'm starting to get old. *pause for laughter*

A couple months ago I slammed the car trunk on my finger. It hurt, it bled, it freaked out a few shoppers at the nearby store where they searched for gauze, it still shows up as a little bit of black on the tip of my finger. I drove us home through the snow for an hour with a large finger held awkwardly for all of New York to see and mistake for its neighboring finger being waved at them. Ouch.

One day last week I watched as Joy closed the trunk to the car. I thought it looked like her hand was a little too close to the trunk ... yes, the hand she was using to close the trunk, that one was a little close to the trunk. I panicked. I very nearly ran out to her to grab her hand away, or at least yell out a cautionary "Don't close the car trunk on your hand!"

It's like I forgot my wife was an intelligent person. It's like I forgot that, if she does have a fault, lack of a self-preservation instinct is not it.

And I suddenly understood why "old" people were always unnecessarily warning me not to be the biggest idiot who ever walked the earth. They got hurt. They knew a guy who got hurt. Suddenly they're looking out for everybody else out of instinct because it could happen to anybody, anytime, anywhere. When you get to "our" age, after all, things don't heal like they used to.

I would like to imagine that by noticing this unfortunate trend early on, I can apply enough mental Rogaine to stave off, or at least hide, this tendency. I know enough people, however, to believe that while my struggle may be worthwhile, it will likely turn out to be futile as well. Hyrum, Lavinia ... I'm sorry. I know you're (will be) smarter than this,

But don't put your hand in the blender and turn it on.
Please don't run into light sockets with liquid scissors.
Stop trying to stick your elbow in your ear. Stop trying to lick your elbow too.
And whatever you do, DON'T push that big red button, okay?
And get off my lawn.

All Too Easy

I've been having a series of vivid, unsettling dreams this week. Last night's was particularly good and all too easy to understand and decipher.

I dreamed I was on LOST. I managed to escape the island, only to realize that with four other castaways and the pilot from the show on board, we were in trouble. We crashed. I woke up and saw the gray-haired face of Jen. She told me that I was back on the island and it had been ten years since I had tried to escape. I screamed and just rocked in a fetal position, sobbing in the dream.

Now to understand the dream, you need only know one thing: Jen came to Ithaca with me nine years ago.

And we're both ... still ... here.

Aaaaaaaaah! Get me outta here!


(Jen is not gray haired. She looked a bit like Katherine Janeway in the dream, which is also appropriately symbolic.)

(Pictured right: my office.)

Pop n Boo's Revenge

When you grow up, I hope you have children Just ... Like ... You!

I have an undeserved reputation for being a "planner" at my parents' house. It all stems from the fact that I get hungry for dinner before Mom and Dad do. Left to their own devices, dinner happens around 7 or 8pm. I got accustomed to dinner at 5 or so at college. I quickly learned that the best way to get dinner happening when I wanted it was to go to Mom about 3pm and say, "So, Mom, what's the plan for dinner?" She would send me to Dad. (That gave me permission to invade his office, you see.) "So, Dad, what's the plan for dinner?" I maaaay have also sometimes asked them what the plan was more generally, trying to find out what they thought was happening that night and if there was any hope of gaming. Could be.

My parents, now Pop and Boo, came away from me asking that every day, all summer and every visit, thinking that I like to plan. Can't imagine why ;)  . Joy is ever so much more of a planner than I am, though. The odd thing is that she likes to plan, but "isn't good at it" and I don't like to plan but I'm good at it -- I think mostly so I can get it done quickly. When we got together with my brother and his wife last year for our anniversaries [right] I discovered that they wanted a Real Plan, complete with time schedules of when we'd arrive at each attraction, compared to my Vague Notion of a Plan that said we'd get there when we get there and do the most important things first. Joy says, "I like Steve and Emie's idea of planning. I'm just not very successful at it. They made the trip much more enjoyable." So I think I'm a flexible guy.

WELL. Enter Hyrum and Joy.

Joy says to me, that she needs my help scheduling her time with Hyrum when he gets back from school. "He does well with structure." So we sat down two weeks ago Sunday night for and I helped her write a Real Schedule, with actual time lines and activities and Structure. She loves it. She lives it. It works. "I'm even becoming a little bit flexible with it."

"At snack time Thursday ... Snack time has become a time to talk about what is going to happen in the rest of our day or things about school.

Hyrum asked Joy if they could play with something. Joy told him, no, not yet. After snack time was Jesus time (when they would read his scriptures and watch a video) and after Jesus time was Hyrum Choose.

"So they he said: 'After choice time?'
"I said, 'After Hyrum Choose is Free Time, and you can play with xxxx then.'
"He said, 'After Free Time?'
"'Is dinner.'
"'After dinner?'
"Family fun time.
"'After family fun time?'
....

And they went on like that through SUNDAY! Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and through Church, he asked "After ....?" and Mommy told him. It was quite the little conversation. She commented at the time something to the effect of - Boy, no sooner do I get a schedule put together but he detects it and wants to know it!

Today we're in church. He asked to eat his lunch. I said no, not yet. It's time for the sacrament. You can eat lunch after the sacrament.
He said, 'After lunch?'
I anticipated: After lunch you go to nursery, and after nursery we drop off the Furies, and you go home and have snack time and a nap, then we have home teachers coming over and ....
He was happy.

"Oh, but you misinterepet. Because there's time between lunch and nursery when we're still in Sacrament meeting and..."
Yes, dear, I am still not the planner you are. I do not account for each minute.
"Yes, but he is expecting to go to nursery RIGHT after lunch, and it's been a problem."

So we have a literal son who cares about scheduling and a flexible Dad who helps schedule everyone else but wants to not have to go into detail and ....

The Curse Works!

Someone Else's Favorite Music

We're in process of backing up this computer so we can wipe its memory *grumble grumble, Vista grumble Dell grumble 5th time grumble grumble*. And part of that means making sure I have CD copies of all the music I've bought online and finally burning some CDs I've been meaning to for a long time but never getting around to it ... like a CD of Weird Al favorites so I don't have to rip 7 CDs for a couple dozen songs.

So, let it be known that these are the songs going on Derrill's Favorite Weird Al Yankovic CD. Any recommendations on great songs I missed?

Weird Al was a very important part of surviving high school. He was a gateway drug to tolerating all sorts of modern music I otherwise couldn't stand -- except when it was being mocked. There is a lot of music I doubt I would enjoy today without that early exposure. He inspired my own parody writings, not least of which my last talent show entry. (I'm still looking for a video of that.) There was comfort in knowing that even though I was widely known among the jock community as "Crazy Derrill" I was in fun company. Like "Weird" Al, I am not on a first-adjective basis with anyone. He also served as a welcoming Shibboleth once I got to college: anyone who would publicly acknowledge him was probably fun and mostly harmless.

Top 5
Midnight Star
Buy Me a Condo
Ode to a Superhero
Ebay
Spam

Next 5
Your Horoscope for Today
Lasagna
Hardware Store
Theme from Rocky XIII
The Saga Begins

The rest in some semblance of an order

Hyrum moving on part 4: The Compromise

The next two morning weren't any better. In fact, they got a bit worse. Tuesday he got worried about school while we were in the car. Wednesday he started crying before we got out the door.

This was not going well. He was still happy enough at school and cried when Mommy tried to bring him home again, but we could see the pattern developing.

So Wednesday morning as he began to have a fit, I stood apart and prayed to know what we could do for him. For a moment I saw my son more clearly. He wants to be happy. He needs to be happy. He needs everyone to be happy. I need to give him an excuse to be happy. Make him a deal. He wants you to help him be happy.

I stepped back into his view and asked Hyrum an important question. "Would you like Mario to come with you to school?"

He stopped crying. I had his full attention. Mommy had been quite firm that toys were not going with him to school. I wasn't sure at that moment how much I'd need to bargain with both of them or if I could pull something off with her approval, but I felt like I was on the right track.

Coming Home From Denver

Sunday after my job market conference in Denver I took a very delayed flight to Detroit, raced to the next plane to Ithaca which I miraculously caught, and was soon waiting at the airport at midnight for Joy and Hy to come pick me up. It was a good conference. I was looking forward to being home.

Joy had reported that Hy was having a difficult time during the days I was gone - crabby, less patient, just a bit wild, "tantrumy all over the place." She figured he was missing me. She woke him up, got him in the car, saque and all, and drove to the airport.

When Hyrum saw me, it was a lot of fun to watch his face. His bleary eyes searched the area and lighted on me. They widened in shock and his mouth started twitching as it broke out into a brilliant, wide-mouthed smile. The happiness and excitement radiant beamed from his eager face. Oh what a happy boy!

I opened the car door to give him a hug. "Hi, Luigi!" he said.  [This is what I was talking about in my other post.]

Ah, my boy. It's good to be home.

Hyrum Moving On part 2: The Adventure Ahead

Tomorrow is a big day for our little guy.
"Therefore it's a big day for us," says Joy. [As always, Joy is in quote marks since Derrill does the typing.]

Tomorrow we all start school. Caroline Elementary preschool.
"And we are a little nervous."

Small Moments of Christmas Happiness

Over the last couple years, my musical tastes expanded significantly, and there's a part of me that hasn't worried per se about my parents' reaction but has significantly doubted how well they fit into the family

Then for Christmas Pop not only bought me some of the new music I'd recently discovered, but liked it enough that he got it for Grandma Boo as well.

It felt a little like indirectly giving a Christmas present. :)