Lucy's Corner: Special Day

It was three years ago yesterday that I finished a job interview in Elsewhere, walked back to the hotel, and got the message that K. had gone into labor. Never mind that we had carefully scheduled interviews two weeks around K's due date. Never mind that my flight wasn't going to leave for another six hours--Lucy was ready to take the world by a storm.What a storm it has been. It's been only recently that we've stopped calling Lucy "Little Trouble," and I think we stopped only because she somehow got big, and so did the trouble. God made Lucy especially winsome and winning to keep the rest of us from wanting to throttle her quite so often. She's a cheerful explosion, and as the wood and plaster settles to the ground you start to make out the dimples, beaming at you through the dust. I love her dearly and want her to stay small forever.I was at work for most of Lucy's waking hours, but K. reports that the Birthday Girl has been especially happy and bright today. We didn't hire any clowns, but I think she enjoyed herself. What do you think?

The Blue Peter

It's been three weeks since I started my new job, long enough that if I wait any longer to write about it I'll have to start putting "new" in quotes. It would be overreaching to say that my new line of work is everything I could ever hope for in a life's work, but as legal careers go the position feels like quite the coup. The hours are somewhat longer than what I was working for the government, but I have near complete control over my schedule which is amazing bordering on miraculous. I see the kids at both breakfast and dinner, and don't have to worry about opposing counsel ruining my weekends or vacations. The head of our practice group--the partner assigning most of my work--is pretty near ideal as far as bosses go: extremely knowledgeable, always available to discuss questions, but otherwise respectfully hands-off. The work itself should be the subject of another post, but for now it's enough to say that I've found it easy to imagine myself following this path for years to come.

In explanation of the title, the Blue Peter was and is a nautical signal flag--a white square against a blue background--flown from the mast of a ship to indicate that the ship was about to proceed to sea. Sailors in port would keep an eye out for the Blue Peter to let them know that it was time to repair aboard ship, to make haste lest they get left behind, and so it seems natural that the flag has come to represent a spirit of optimism and adventure. In the novels of Patrick O'Brian, naturalist Stephen Maturin is quite taken with the idea of the Blue Peter, the flag bringing to his mind feelings of freshness, new horizons, new life. Happy in my new job, I've been looking to buy a Blue Peter to frame and hang over my desk, a visual reminder of my bright new prospects.

My good fortune must be palpable to others: Today I wore my best suit to work so that a photographer could take my headshot for the firm website. There, under the soft glow of professional lighting, a makeup lady brushed my eyebrows, powdered my nose, and straightened my tie. I'm guessing I looked pretty good, because that evening, while I was waiting for the bus, a middle-aged woman approached me and this is what she said: "Hi, I'm Doris. I'm not a prostitute or anything like that--I just like white men. Are you married?" Oh yeah, the future looks bright.

Good Neighbors

We hadn't been in our new home for an hour before the neighbors started showing up. I was lying inert in a pile of moving boxes when our next door neighbor knocked on the door with a housewarming gift in her hand. Then the retired nurse across the street introduced herself with all our neighbors' names and numbers written down on an index card. Then the couple directly across from us came over with all their small kids and pretty soon we were over in their yard, playing with their toys and climbing their tree. A few days later the nurse's husband--the one who raises South African turtles--dropped off a box of heirloom tomatoes and acorn squash. I only hope we can be as neighborly to all of them as they have already been to us.

On the day of the move I saw a gigantic black and yellow spider stretched across the back of the deck, her abdomen bloated like a snake's head. The next day I saw her in a nearby bush, smaller and clearly protective of the egg sac she had just laid:
I don't know how she got around with all those eggs, since the sac ended up being about as large as a medium-sized marble.
We thought the spectacle, being so close to the house, would freak the kids out, but a recent reading of Charlotte's Web gave the spider and her magnum opus an aura of familiarity. K. still wants me to move the sac further afield before we're knee deep in creepy babies, but I feel full of neighborly magnaminity--half the fun of owning your own yard is letting other kids play in it, right?

On the other hand, we discovered that the bushes lining our driveway are being slowly eaten alive by bagworms, and this is where my live-and-let-live philosophy gets thrown out the window. We first became acquainted with bagworms two years ago when we came to Elsewhere for a summer internship. On one of our exploratory Sunday walks we noticed two blighted bushes--no leaves, but covered with pulsing, prickly pods like the one below:
Apparently, the bagworm slowly works its way around the bush, weaving bits of leaves and bark into its silk bag so that it has some protection during the slow process of turning itself into something slightly less repulsive. Some of our bushes have had an entire side stripped bare, but even partial damage is readily discernible.
I don't know if I would feel more sympathetic to the bagworms if they looked more appealing, but we couldn't kill those things fast enough. They were surprisingly difficult to pluck off, sometimes taking the whole twig with them, but even they weren't as tenacious as Lucy once we put her and the other kids on the job. Pretty soon our driveway was the site of a bagworm massacre.

I felt a twinge of remorse for our treatment of the bagworms--some of them are probably still alive and lying in a maimed, half-formed state until a heavy rain washes them away. Under the laws of nature they can probably claim precedence since they were prospering long before we showed up. Still, we have an expensive piece of paper that says the land is ours and they were making our bushes look ugly and that is apparently enough of an intrusion to justify their complete extermination. I'm not saying it was wrong, but I wonder whether it should seem normal.

Later that day we were walking in the backyard and saw a big, bright, fuzzy caterpillar slowly feeding itself a length of pine needle. I'm not saying that looks are everything, but we let him live.

Hawaii

Hawaii proved to be too rich a subject for our camera battery--after a flurry of picture-taking the day and a half before my sister Christie's wedding, the battery went on strike and would only take a handful of shots before needing to be recharged all over again. We had to borrow my parent's camera for half the trip, which is why this post has no actual pictures of Christie the bride or Joe, her very excellent groom. (Note to the family--now would be a good time to do that photo-sharing we talked so much about.)

When you go to a well-known tourist destination like Hawaii, I'm not convinced that your photos need a lot of captions--certainly the sun, waves, and smiles can all speak for themselves, and common knowledge can fill in most of the blanks ("The kids rode a boogie board at the beach; they liked it a lot.")


Sage and Lucy met their charming little cousin Ellie for the first time on this trip--a spirited game of tag was not too far behind.

You'll notice that I'm wearing regular khaki shorts in the picture below. All beach trips with our kids follow the same pattern:
1) Yay! We're finally at the beach. Let's go to the hotel and unpack our things.
2) OK, we'll go to the beach first, but we're just going to look at the waves.
3) OK, you can walk along the beach, but don't get your shoes wet.
4) Your shoes are wet. I'll hold them while you stick your feet in the water, but roll up your pants so they don't get wet.
5) Your pants are wet. Yes, you can wade around in the water as long as I don't have to come get you.
6) Now my pants are wet.
A couple days after this picture I stepped on a sea urchin while snorkeling with K., souring somewhat my love of reef exploration. The spines pierced straight through my aqua socks--but you should see the other guy :)


Know Your Relatives: Can you spot Grandpa, Lucy the Flower Girl, Ian the Ring Bearer, and Uncle Bryce in this picture?
Sadly, this shot of everyone's backs is the only actual wedding picture our camera afforded us before lapsing into another coma.

And this is from a cool excursion we took with my Dad to 'Iao Valley State Park.
Tropical Storm Flossie brought a lot of wind and fog that day, which actually enhanced the valley's natural awesomeness.

See for yourself:

And here's some of the usual suspects (including Grandma and Grandpa, and cool uncles Bryce and Bob) overlooking a surf spot on Maui before catching our flight to Waikiki Beach. Pictured or unpictured, it was so good to see my whole family after a long time away, and you couldn't ask for a better occasion to bring us all together.

Daytrips from Elsewhere

Not much text this time--since we got our digital camera K. and I have probably taken over 1000 pictures. I've just discovered that Flickr is holding some of my better shots for ransom until I upgrade to a paying account, but here are some that managed to escape capture:























Hopefully the next post will have some pics of white sand and blue water...