Free Range

“Hello. This is an important message from waste management that’s our made a county. Into the labor day holiday. On september third. Collection. Of your cartilage. Recycling. And angela trending. They’ll be delayed by 1 day. For example. If your regularly scheduled. Pick up. Is. Wednesday. We will be picking up your collection. On thursday of the same we. We will Are normal collection schedule the following week. Thank you for your patience. And we have college i said 8 and 10 being yet. Hello. This is an important message from waste management at our meeting county. Into the labor day holiday. On september third. Collection. Of your cartilage. Recycling. Angela trending. Will be delayed by 1 day. For example. If your regularly scheduled. Pick up. Is. Wednesday. We will be picking up your collection. On thursday of the same we. We will Are normal collection schedule the following week. Thank you for your patience. And we have college i said 8 and 10 being yet.”

I am getting a gaming console. (Yes, middle aged me.) And it’s being delivered tonight, if the UPS tracking system is any indication. (”out for delivery” = impetus for heart to start racing with excitement)

For Callum, Wii Sports (Baseball, Golf, Tennis, etc.) will be a variation on the “hittheball” game we play incessantly. I hear great things about the intuitiveness of the Wi remote, but putting it into a two-year-old’s hands will be an interesting test. Is it intutive because we’re accustomed to everything that’s come before, or have the game designers really tapped into something very basic about the way the human brain and body interact with the outside world?

Then there’s the side of me that’s almost kicking myself for putting this into the hands of a two-year-old in the first place. Don’t I know anything about the American Obesity Epidemic (TM)? Don’t I know anything about limiting “screen time”? But, then, I imagine his eyes going wide the first time he figures out the connection between his movement and what happens on the screen, and I can’t wait to put it into his hands. Yes, we’ll still be going to the park to play “hittheball”. This kid has got to move. When he’s not sleeping, that is.

P.S. Wish me luck on installing the darned thing. Until the kid sees it in action, he’ll never understand what is so important that it takes all of mommy’s attention. I’ll be shrugging him off my back while desperately trying to explain why he should be patient with me. *Sigh*

P.P.S. I must have been kidding myself. Callum refuses to even hold the Wii remote. He runs to the other room when I try to foist it on him. He prefers the much more intuitive interface of his yellow plastic bat. Now if only I can strap the Wii remote to the bat. Would duct tape work perhaps? Hmm…

Television for toddlers gets a bad rap. It stifles the development of imagination, some argue. It hinders language development, say others. But I’m here to say Dora the Explorer, in particular, has taught my son some valuable life lessons. To wit:

1. If someone is stuck in a tree, the best way to handle it is to dig in your backpack for a net. Wait to do this until the person/animal is about to fall, then catch them deftly in the net’s super-strong strings.
   
2. The trick to getting anything to open — door, gate, treasure chest, etc. — is saying the Spanish word “abre.”
   
3. When you’re trying to avoid Swiper the Fox (an everyday occurrence, of course), if Dora has enough time to tell you what steps to take (”say, ‘Swiper, no swiping!’), you’ll definitely have time to follow her directions while the fox tiptoes towards you, bit by bit. And, yes, repeated verbal requests to the bad guys always work — no need to call police, or anything.
   
4. If you don’t have time to take evasive measures, no worries. Swiper never throws the objects he swipes very far away.
   
5. A map can help you find things even if you don’t know where they are.
   
6. more to come….

In preparation for a camping trip this weekend, I rummaged through the garage this afternoon and dragged out a stuff sack full of gear that I’ve had since around 1994. (Yes, I’m getting old.) I remember buying most of the stuff for a trip to Belize I took with two guy friends. Their plan, which I bailed out of nearly immediately, was to start off in the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve and follow a river to a certain city. (It’s all a little vague, now…) There were no trails to follow, particularly. These guys — who had very little hiking or camping experience — planned to blaze them. I ended up staying most of the time in an amazing little campground. (God bless the Internet. It’s amazing how I can walk down memory lane now, online, and find out that the Turkish caretaker/owner we hung out with has apparently left the country.)

Anyway, I originally packed with the intention of spending quite a bit of time in the jungle — before I realized how ill-advised my friends’ plans were — so I prepared pretty seriously. This afternoon, item after item materialized from within the stuff sack — a first aid kit, a cook set, waterproof matches, a compass, a whistle, concentrated biodegradable soap, a camp towel, water purification tablets. It was all the stuff I needed to survive, by myself, back then. Just going through it, I felt this swelling of pride. I was a pretty damned good camper, I thought to myself. I had it going on. (I even made a Flickr set of some pics from the journey.)

This camping trip, however, is very different. And I found myself looking at my backpacker gear kind of wistfully, reminded of a time when all I had to worry about was myself. And I could ride the waves of circumstance: finding the campground, hanging out with some mountain biking guys, going cave exploring with a local guide, and returning to find out that my friends (those intrepid trail blazers) were hanging out by the pool in the gringo-friendly one-and-only hotel. (They’d given up on hiking after one day wielding machetes.)

On this camping trip, I’m taking my two-year-old son. It will be his first time camping. His first time sleeping in the outdoors. His first time tucking his toes into a sleeping bag. His first time. And I’ll be taking care of him, and vicariously enjoying those first-time, wide-eyed experiences. I don’t think we’ll need a compass this time, but I’m bringing along plenty of diapers and wipes.

—
My rummage through the stuff sack also turned up some really great camping checklists, that I think Justin will appreciate, and maybe others will, too. To give credit where credit is due, I should mention that these are from Oshman’s (now part of Sports Authority) and the Whole Earth Provision Company:

• Oshman’s Camping Checklist, Pg 1
  
• Oshman’s Camping Checklist, Pg 2
  
• Whole Earth Provision Company Checklist, Page 1
  
• Whole Earth Provision Company Checklist, Page 2