Yesterday, when I got home from work, Megan and Hazel were hanging out front in the shaded (as opposed to the shady) part of the yard. I pedaled up, making a damn dashing entrance even with my dorky bike helmet perched atop my head like an oversized conch shell. After a few minutes of debriefing on our days, Megan ran inside to finish up some stuff, leaving Hazel and I outside to occupy ourselves with Hazel’s two favorite outdoor activities: digging up mulch from our various flower beds and picking up rocks from our gravel driveway. The common thread between the two actions is that Hazel stalwartly clutches her toy shovel regardless of her need to shovel anything in particular. It’s her security blanket when playing in the yard.

So as dinnertime approached, I sat on our side steps watching Hazel choosing just the right stone to lift up from its gravelly brethren. With spade in hand, Hazel found her geologic target and stooped down to grab it. Then, and I swear you could easily track the thought processes going on in her developing mind, she looked from the rock to her shovel slowly and, with tiny tongue protruding askance in determined concentration, took the rock and tried to place it in her shovel. Unfortunately, the trowel was upside-down and rather than a welcoming scoop, her rock tottered on a standoffish convex plain. Smartly realizing that this would not do, she saved the stone from its plummet and returned it to her wee fist.

Still driven by the desire to put the rock in the shovel, Hazel then negated her earlier clever analysis of the situation by keeping the spade’s orientation constant and simply taking the rock and pressing it firmly against the concave side underneath. And as you would expect, gravity did its thing and the rock fell to earth, micro-pantomiming its take on how the dinosaurs went extinct. After assessing what had happened, Hazel merely bent back down and grabbed a different rock to see if that one would stay within the shovel’s scoop.

Clearly Hazel’s grasp of Newtonian physics is akin to my own understanding of how a car works. Beyond the fact that I realize that cars need fuel and an occasional change of oil, the whole happenstance of why my turning of a key brings a large machine to transporting life may as well be magic. And I bet that Hazel will understand gravity long before I’m able to rebuild a carburetor or whatever. But I would have been sad if Hazel had given up after just one failed attempt at sticking a stone to an upturned shovel’s blade. If she did, she would be accepting a reality that is indomitable and as dry as a slice of plain white toast in Death Valley. As we get older, much of the magic of life gets lost amongst paying bills and washing the dishes. Somewhere along the line, we start to accept that those rumblings in the sky are scientifically explainable and not a bunch of angels in a bowling tournament. I’m hoping that Hazel’s world remains saturated with the purest imagination she can muster for a very long time.

Take it away, Ben Vereen (starting around the three minute mark)!

As I have detailed in the past here and here, I think I am the center of universal attention — hence the blog and all. Despite my debilitating self-absorption, I actually managed to ride my new bike to work last week without breaking out in a nervous sweat (or any sweat at all; the two-mile ride is on a fairly level grade) or collapsing in a fit of anxiety hives. Even when I shifted badly and dropped my chain, I was able to fix this mechanical mishap without feeling that each car driving by held the entirety of my adolescent romantic failures, all of them pointing and giggling at my predicament.

However, this past Saturday, I had that feeling again. Hazel woke up nice and early around 6 a.m. ready for the day, a fact that invariably begets two groggy parents rolling out of bed to attend her needs. Once Hazel was changed, dressed, and fed, I headed out to do some yard work. First on my list was digging up the remnants of an overgrown forsythia bush. Last year, I noticed that it was sending shoots and branches up under the siding on the east side of our house. I read online that you can hack off forsythia limbs and transplant them in the fall, each branch taking root and growing into a fully-fledged forsythia bush. I was skeptical, but hopes for the best since, as the adage goes, “If it’s on the internet, it must be true.” And this spring, just like a starfish’s arm that grows a whole fish(?), those ungainly bare stalks I jabbed in the ground actually blossomed and have new, promising growth.

So like I said, this weekend I put spade to dirt. Even though the remaining bush was nothing more than a few inches of knotty trunk, foot-long shoots were sprouting still, so I knew I had to move this beast. Everything was going well until, just before the imminent uproot, my shovel (which I was using as a makeshift pry bar) gave out, its fiberglass handle issuing forth a disappointing crack. I looked around, but I guess nobody heard it. No newshound popped out from behind the maple tree remarking, “What a scoop!” No paparazzi shouted my name as their flashbulbs painted my now flaccid digging instrument in stark relief. Once more, life reminded me that I’m not the center of it all, despite what I might have Sharpied on the waistband of all my underpants.

One of the best skills a person can have is the ability to put a positive spin on a potentially bad situation. I’m not talking about someone who blindly ignores the icky parts of life in favor of Precious Moments figurines and posters of kittens staunchly “hanging in there.” This optimistic outlook needs to be authentic and honest, boldly acknowledging that things aren’t perfect without actually focusing on that glum fact. Take for example this anecdote from my college graduation. Commencement was held outside on the Marist College green despite warnings of heavy rains to come. And come they did; dumping rains began soon after the first diploma was handed out. Many of my classmates left in a huff as soon as they walked across the stage, but a good handful of us stayed on to cheer our fellow graduates. By the end, the mass of students who had stuck it out congregated to the front of the seating area, celebrating as the steady rain soaked us through our gowns, our eyes barely protected by our waterlogged mortarboards. Once the last name was called, Marist Brother Paul Ambrose took the microphone to deliver the closing benediction. He cleared his throat as said, “May your young lives have as many blessings as rain drops that have fallen on your heads today.”

So that’s what I mean by effective positive spin. Let’s now use this method to assess our dry(ish) basement. We had originally planned to finish off a good portion of it, making a play room, a dark room, and two office spaces for Megan and myself. Moving forward, I feel that we’d be foolish to blithely disregard our basement penchant for getting wet. Even with a sump pump installed, we’re still talking about a potentially damp environment from time to time. I don’t want to put our computers and their peripherals down there. So now what?

Well, we’re considering an addition. Right now, two of our three bedrooms are being used as advertised with the third servicing as an office/craft room. But if we’re going to expand our family (a serious possibility in the next year or so) then we are going to need to revert that third bedroom to a nursery. With no extra space for computer stuff, an addition may be just the thing. So the estimate gathering has begun, but I have to say how very nerve-racking this is. If anyone out there has a better idea, I’m all ears.

At the very least, we can always depend on Hazel to take care of clean up.

Megan and I had lots of misgivings before sending Hazel to daycare. Would we become strangers, ranking behind all those fun teachers? Would she learn all sorts of nasty behavior? Would she be permanently snot-ridden and coughing? The pessimistic litany went on and on, our cyclical conversations on the matter amounting to nothing more than philosophical tires spinning in the mud. In the end, we had to admit that Hazel needs to see other kids and have other adult authority figures without us around. Independent relationships are important, and we certainly don’t want to raise a high marking but socially inept home schooler. We won’t be able to clamber onto the school bus with her on the first day of kindergarten, so we may as well give her a social head start and give her over to daycare two days a week. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?

Well the worst didn’t transpire, but one of our top concerns reared its mucousy head: by the end of week one at “school”, Hazel managed to contract Daycare Ick. Unlike the parasitic Ich that ruined many a fish tank in my life, Daycare Ick involves a lot more sticky shirtsleeves (both the infected child’s and any nearby adult in consoling distance). Daycare Ick symptoms can vary from a perennial runny nose to a nagging cough to what Hazel wound up with: Conjunctivitis. I can easily imagine all those other kids in her room, older kids by as much as a whole year, holding her down and taking turns rubbing their grubby fingers in her then brown and now pink eyes. Between that and her dripping nose and teething aches, Hazel is only ranking at most a 7.5 on the Funshine Bear Cheer-o-meter.

But just as a South Pacific island youth must kill a Great White Shark using nothing but half a coconut, I suppose that Daycare Ick is a necessary if not annoying right of passage. What would my youth have been without the classroom colds, the locker room awkwardness, or the sundry wedgies? Fortunately, none of my wedgies were atomic and my freshman year gym teacher let us shower with bathing suits on. But don’t ask about sophomore year, I really can’t afford to miss any work from the post-recount catatonia.

Some seasons get along very well. I imagine that summer and autumn are very congenial, the former being a life-of-the-party type while the latter its stalwart companion and designated driver. After several months of long, raucous days and temperate nights, summer is all too happy to be tucked into bed by easy-going autumn, a glass of water on the nightstand and an empty wastepaper basket at the ready should summer’s spins become too much. All in all, they’re good roommates and will probably keep in touch after graduation.

Winter and spring, on the other hand, do not see eye to eye. Winter, favoring the cold, likes to sleep with the window wide open and a fan on all night. Spring, a fan of sleeping in the buff, can’t stand this and besides, that cold draft blows right on its potted rubber tree which is quite debilitating. Winter counters that the plant exacerbates its hay fever, which spring maintains is just psychosomatic anyway. Pretty soon, you have one replacing the other’s toothpaste tube with hemorrhoid cream. In retaliation, the scorned decides to sneak laxatives into the other’s hot chocolate and things just escalate from there. It’s as if these two seasons are sharing a cab with Hammurabi in the driver’s seat (“Where you want go? Two-fifty mile!). I won’t even get into what you can put into someone’s shampoo bottle given enough privacy.

Currently, Winter’s grasp is tenuous at best and it’s starting to panic. Spring has already started moving its stuff back into the room. This week, temps are soaring into the 40s (this is not a sarcastic comment – after the winter we’ve had, coats seem silly in this kind of weather) and the melt is assuredly on. In what could be construed as an act of final desperation, winter spat out a snowstorm last night to show that it’s the boss ‘round here. By this morning, I found a world coated in pseudo-ice. Rather than thick, hard ice that traps anything and everything, this stuff popped off my car easily, melting from the underside out. It was kind of like winter has taken the world, soaked it in egg batter, dipped it in breadcrumbs, and deep-fried the hell out of it. It was almost cute.

Of course, that didn’t mean the roads were a non-issue. I still managed to slide off the road at that tricky s-curve near the Rockland Golf Club. Thankfully, I was able to extricate myself without the need of a masculinity-sniping tow truck. Yes, with spring in the neighborhood, we’ll be planting tulip bulbs and wearing light jackets in no time.

Last night, Hazel decided it would be a hoot to cry uncontrollably from 1 a.m. until about 3:30 or so. The most likely culprit is teething, which I see as more of a red herring for parents to rely upon during ambiguous caterwauling spells than a consistent tear bringer. She also might have been really bummed by the latest casualties of “American Idol”, but since she has never seen the show, this is another catalyst to strike from the tally.

The most certain answer that I see is that today is February 29^th. Not only does it mark the end of a pretty cool month—February has the common decency to last only four weeks, thereby stepping aside quickly in my everlasting desire for November, the month of turkey and birthdays—but it also means that March is nigh upon us. All in all, March is a scary month. Not only does it come in like a proverbial snarling lion, but it also holds within it 31 days the dread Ides of March. I’ve been trying to get through the complete Shakespeare catalog with Hazel, but she has an unfortunately short attention span for long blocks of dense text with no illustrations of cuddly bunnies or chirping baby chicks. The result of her budding ADHD or just being a baby: You Make the Call! Even March’s name is frightening: MARCH! It may as well be called Schnell! for all the imagery of forced trudging through muddy desolation it brings to mind. The softest correlation of March’s moniker would be Sousa; this name change might impart a sunnier disposition. But after looking at his photo (ol’ John Philip bears an amazing resemblance to a Stratego game piece), I think any way you slice it, March is destined to strike fear in the hearts of any feeling souls on this planet or any other that recognize the Gregorian calendar system. Surely, this must be the cause of Hazel’s twilight terrors: a tearful goodbye to February coupled with a horrified acceptance that yes, March’s tyrannical rule starts tomorrow.

Just think of how sad Hazel will be once she figures out that she won’t see another 2/29 until she’s nearly five years old. It just doesn’t seem fair.