Valuable Life Lessons: Consequences

So I'm putting Firstborn to bed last night, and in the process I flip over this plastic bucket that's sitting on his bed.

This particular bucket has a history. We picked it up at Target last weekend, so that we'd have something in the car in case the evening's illness decided to visit us again. (Which, actually, it did, so... yay us?) Anyway, after cleaning it out, I'd put it Firstborn's room Sunday night, just in case he needed it again.

So last night - Monday night - as I'm putting him to bed, I flip over the bucket and find that there are toys hiding underneath. I remarked on this - "Hey, there are toys under this bucket," or something equally insightful - as I put the bucket back on the floor.

"I was using the bucket to hide the toys," Firstborn informed me. "That way they could surprise people."

"Well, they surprised me," I told him. I scooped up the toys and dropped them in the bucket. Then, because I like to check on things like this, I asked: "Are they okay down here in the bucket? Or should I take them out in case you need the bucket to throw up?"

Firstborn thought about this, but only for a moment. "We should take them out," he said decisively, "just in case."

And I nodded, and I did. But I am very proud of that 'just in case.' That's a boy who's looking ahead to consider what might happen, and what we can do about it. That's an understanding of cause and effect - of actions and consequences. And that's something that I very much want him to learn and understand.

And he's getting it.

I'd like to say something like, "These are the moments that make parenting worthwhile," but that's not right. Parenting is either worthwhile, or it isn't - and there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer for that, but it's something that has to be weighed in the balance overall, not something that can be justified by a particular moment here or there. But it was still a damned fine moment.

It's all in the wrist

The secret to making plans that never go awry is this: set up your plans so that if it looks like something is starting to go wrong, you can change them. It's not so much a matter of planning as it is one of attitude.

Weirdly, this ties directly in with some of my earlier thoughts on impermanence and balance. Sometimes, event have a kind of flow to them, and pushing against the flow just won't work... but getting out of the way, and coming at it from the side? That works just fine.

Our Weekend With Bats

This past weekend, my wife and I took the boys down to Austin for the weekend to see the bats and visit my wife's friend and her new boyfriend[1]. This was a really good trip and a really bad trip, all rolled into one.

The drive from Dallas to Austin takes about three, maybe three and a half hours. For us, with one thing and another, it was more like a five hour drive. Fortunately, we weren't trying to hold to a strict schedule - and Beautiful Wife's Friend was very understanding. When we arrived, we met them at a beer-burgers-and-playground sort of place near their apartment, which gave the boys a chance to get out and exercise. Then we went swimming at their pool, which was cold but welcome. I stretched out on the side of the pool to dry off, or at least I tried to - Firstborn kept rolling me into the water.

Then we dried off and went down to the Congress Avenue Bridge. After a certain amount of walking at a quick march - harder than you might think with a five-year-old and a stroller full of toddler - we found a nice spot under the bridge and waited for it to get dark.

And waited.

And waited.

And listened to the bats squeaking and rustling under the bridge.

And waited.

And watched it get darker.

And waited.

And saw one bat.

And waited.

And waited.

And then we saw a whole bunch more bats come out and start flying around, until there was this steady stream of bats pouring out from under the bridge, and it was really really cool. I don't think Secondborn really cared - he was more interested in the rocks on the ground - but Firstborn watched the bats flying out with great interest and enthusiasm.

Then we went to another, different beer-and-burgers-and-playground place, and had dinner. Firstborn played Aliens vs. Zombies vs. Humans (or some variation) with the other kids on the playground, while the rest of us ate and drank and were merry. It was more than a little bit past the boys' bedtime when we left, and on the way out Firstborn informed me that his stomach hurt.

We drove back to our hotel, and got the boys out of the car. Firstborn had apparently been waiting, conscientiously, for that precise moment when he could be copiously sick without dirtying either my wife's car or our hotel room. (He explained this after he was, y'know, done.) Once we were sure he was finished, we took everybody up the room and dropped most of them in a hot bath. Secondborn was already passed out, so he missed out on that experience.

Bedtime preparations followed. I'd done all the packing for the trip, so I had a nice moment where Beautiful Wife said, "Oh, I forgot to pack a toothbrush..." and I said, "No you didn't," and handed her toothbrush to her. (Because I'm cool like that.) Then we all went to sleep...

...For a little while, anyway. Until Secondborn woke up and repeated Firstborn's earlier performance, only without the presence of mind to choose his targets. So it was not exactly the night of deep, restful sleep that we'd been hoping for.

On Sunday morning we got together with the Beautiful Wife's friend (and the friend's boyfriend) again, and had breakfast. We'd stopped by Target on the way over there (mainly because we were afraid that, with the kind of night we'd just had, I might not have packed enough spare shirts), so we were late again. Firstborn was playing with a new Transformer and cheerfully showed it off to our hosts. I say we had breakfast, but we really spent a fair amount of time just hanging out, too, which was fun.

And then we drove home. Which, again, took longer than it really should have, but wasn't all that unpleasant - the big problem was that Secondborn wasn't any too happy about being trapped in a car seat. He was firmly of the opinion that he should be out of the seat, moving around, creating chaos, and putting himself in danger. He settled down after we put Elmo on the portable DVD player - and, not coincidentally, after we got some food into him.

And then we got home, and unloaded the car, and started the laundry, and made sure both gas tanks were full for the beginning of the week. Because, again, I'm good like that. Indomitable, that's the word for it. Could be my middle name, if I didn't have one already, and if my parents were completely off their gourds when I was born.

...But I digress.

So that was our weekend. To recap:
1. Road trip was long but went fine.
2. We were late to everything except the bats.
3. Bats are cool.
4. Everyone was sick.
5. My wife has cool friends.

Got it? Good. And good night.

[1] The friend's new boyfriend. Not my wife's new boyfriend. I'm quite sure my wife doesn't have a new boyfriend.

Quoting my iFriends: Secular Humanism

So, emilyperson posted this in the comments over at Confessions of a Former Conservative. It struck me as one of those thoughts that ought to be shared, so I'm reproducing it here:

I’m reasonably sure you can be a Christian secular humanist. The word “secular,” contrary to popular belief, doesn’t mean “anti-theistic.” It just means it lacks mention of religion. All a Christian would have to do in order to qualify as a secular humanist is not tie hir theology up with hir humanism.

(Of course, it’s more complicated than that. Religion informs worldview, and worldview influences philosophy tremendously. But a Christian can still say “because it’s right” without adding “because God said so.”)

That'll preach.

Reflections on Difficult Questions

Can I just tell you how much I love my boyfriend? The guy who knows about my bloodline, who knows that my people are actually kin with the Worms of the Earth - and who has at least some idea of what that means - and who hasn't so much as remarked on it? It's not that he doesn't realize, or hasn't thought about it. I asked him. It's just that he doesn't care.

I'm keeping this one.

Anyway, onto the other stuff. I just told him about this, and he said I should write about it, so here I am. This is Claire, by the way, in case you missed that somehow.

So, let's see... what do you need to know? Well, I've been working for an optometrist under the auspices of my boyfriend's Elders. It's a decent job, with regular hours - that's nice. But since he's been learning to become a Watcher, I usually get home before he does. And today when I came home, I found that we had a visitor. Want to guess who it was?

When my boyfriend wrote about her, he called her Anne. She's the last survivor of the group that brought the death-blight - the Corpsewalker - to our world. She was the one who got suspicious, the one my boyfriend sent to Father Peter to get help.

That was odd, by the way. I'd never suspected Father Peter of anything. The idea that he might have suspected me was a little unnerving, except... well, he never did anything, you know? But Anne went to him for help, and he tried to help her. He didn't laugh at her, or send her off to counseling. So he knows something.

Anyway, there was Anne, sitting in front of our apartment. This, I was not expecting. But, okay, I can't just ignore her. So I said, "Hi. Anne, was it? From Our Church?"

She nodded. "I wanted to ask you some questions," she said. She didn't say it loudly, and she didn't look scared or aggressive or anything like that. She just looked sort of determined.

"I probably can't answer you," I told her, "but come inside anyway."

I unlocked the door and we went inside. And she looked around, like she'd expected something less normal. She wasn't as tall as I am, and she had a round face and a kind of round, muscular build. Tomboyish, I guess you'd call it. I locked the door behind us and said, "What did you want to know?"

She looked at me, and cocked her head slightly to one side. "Was Father Peter right?" she asked. "Were you the ones who... helped us?"

There was a moment there, when I could have told her that I didn't know she was talking about. But when I thought about it, it was already too late for that. Instead, I said: "I can't answer that... and you could get into an awful lot of trouble by asking it." I was thinking about the Whisperers. As far as I knew, they were still off-duty, but if they weren't... or if the Watchers happened to be watching us...

"What kind of trouble?" she asked.

I hesitated.

She started to say something else, then stopped. Finally she said, "Look, I don't know what happened. I don't know how it happened. But something horrible was going on, and I was right in the middle of it, and nobody - not even Father Peter - will tell me anything about it. They keep saying it's too dangerous... like not knowing is any better."

And I thought, Oh. Unwilling sympathy, I think that's what I want to call it. I said, "All right." In my head, I was running over the oaths I'd sworn to my boyfriend's cult. How much could I tell her without killing us both?

"Father Peter said you two might be able to help," she continued. "He said he wasn't sure it was a good idea, but he was going to tell you about... things." She hesitated, then asked: "Are you friends of his?"

I held up a hand to stop her. "Come on," I said, and led her into the kitchen. I got out a couple of glasses and poured us each some wine. I took a sip; she gulped down about half of hers. I poured some more before I spoke.

"Okay, so. Yes, we're friends with Father Peter... but not when it comes to this. Okay? You asked about what could happen. Well... death could happen. Madness could happen. Maybe something worse. And he was risking that by talking to my boyfriend about... that. You understand?"

She nodded.

"Your friends... they stumbled onto something secret. You were right about how dangerous it was. But it's over." I hesitated, not sure how to say what I wanted to say next. What I wanted was to tell her to run away and never look back, to get out into the normal world and stay there. "You have a choice," I told her instead. "You can walk away now, and just accept that you're never going to understand exactly what happened. Or you can try to learn more, but to do that you're going to have to choose a side."

She stiffened. "I don't know enough to choose a side."

"Yeah," I said, and sighed. "And the only way to learn more about them is to swear allegiance to one of them. That's why everyone keeps telling you that questions are dangerous. The wrong question to the wrong person could get you both killed. Or worse, like I said."

"So the only way I can learn enough to make an informed choice, is if I've already made a choice? That's..." She let the thought trail off.

"That," I finished for her, "is about the size of it."

Tidings of Autumn

Maybe it's just this time of year. Weather's changing, nights are getting longer, holidays loom like an impending landslide, and - at least at my house - everybody's sick. Or almost sick. Or trying very hard not to get sick. It's easy to feel a little down, or maybe more than a little. I've been feeling it, too: tired, stiff, hazy, uninspired. I have the attention span of a gnat on crack. And what I really want is to spend a couple of hours sitting in a hot bath with a good book, but if we got that sort of chance the Beautiful Wife needs it even more than I do.

And anyway I'm stuck at work, because we're training on the new website that we're setting up. Hopefully. Someday...

On the plus side, I'm listening to No More Kings sing "Zombie Me," which never fails to amuse me. And I can go home in an hour or so. And I do love my boys, even when they're certifiable biohazards. And hey, now I have something to post on the Blog o' Doom. So hey, here you go.

The Cell Phone Bible: Feedback and Q&A

Okay, so The Cell Phone Bible is finally done. This seems like a good time for anyone who's curious to ask question, or make comments, or offer their own alternate versions. Want to know why I approached the story a particular way? Ask. Want to ask why I didn't do it some other way? Feel free. Want to write your own take on the concept? Run with it.