I don't know the words...

My oldest son has a vast vocabulary. He's only 6, but he speaks well and knows even more than he can say (and trust me, he can say A LOT!).

Once in a while, however, he will be without the right words. Usually this is when he's in some extreme emotional state, most typically anger or sadness. He'll be crying or growling or throwing things in a tantrum, but when prodded, he can only apologize with, "Daddy, I don't have the words. I don't know enough words to tell you how I feel."

Now, we may say this when the words are slow-coming, or when we'd rather not articulate things...sometimes even grown ups have a hard time putting something into words, granted.

But when he says this, he means it. We've talked about it many times. "How come there are not good words for how you feel?" he will ask me, or "What is a word for when you want to [typically graphic violence] someone?"

I find it interesting that he has so many words and ideas, yet this is the limit of his language. For being such an expressive young man, he still struggles with verbalizing his emotion. Sometimes I wonder if kids have emotions that are off our charts, beyond our words. Maybe we all tend to pull down our person to fit societal norms, including our emotions? Maybe there truly are no words to articulate what he's experiencing, and for me to name it something mundane would be to rob it of its originality.

I know, some may read this and say, spank him and get it over with, he's throwing a fit. I may go there, but I likely take these many side roads along the way.

No ZIPPERS?

Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act = Utter Insanity



In this litigious world, I sometimes wonder just how safe we're going to have to get. I just learned from family that Goodwill and other thrift stores cannot sell clothing with zippers any more. Some law went into effect on Feb 1 that leaves vendors of zippered clothing liable for injury that might result from the deadly devices.



The CPSIA covers primarily lead paint issues, other related safety hazards. There are a great number of items to be pulled from the shelves unless they can be proven safe. Second hand stores cannot afford testing, processing, and propping themselves up legally like a mega-giant-big box retailer may. From everything I've read, it might just lead to the ruination of a great deal of small businesses resellers. Even if the CPS has let resellers off the hook, as I read allusions to, the word is not getting around locally.



Thrift stores in the Wichita area are taking wholesale safeguards. To prevent fines and litigation, they are ditching materials that even might be hazardous. (And this we have on good authority from a local thrift shop manager.) Thus pallets of perfectly good clothing is to be destroyed. Not given away. Not shipped to developing nations where people would enjoy the zippered clothes and have the good sense not to zip one's organ in the grinder. (And if they did, they would not sue someone for their own stupidity.)



Will there someday be a time when we are all wearing clothes fastened by velcro? Is there, perhaps, some inherent danger even in velcro?



Where does natural selection come in here, people? If someone is stupid enough to injure themselves with a zipper, do they not deserve it? Why should they be able to sue the manufacturer or vendor for a zipper catastrophe? How bad could it be, anyway? Have people died from zipper malfunction?



I know, I know, most of the hubbub is around lead that might be used in bangles, buttons and zippers...it's crazy that this even extends to children's books printed before 1985 which might have lead in their composition. Even libraries are affected!! I find this to be at the top of my 2009 list of STUPIDITY. I am a parent, and I'm all for the safety of my children. My kids aren't dumb enough to chew on zippers, buttons and books so very much they're getting lead poisoning. I'm sure I've even eaten my share of lead paint as a child, and ut dowuknd't uuufict mie yaaanni!



We should all just wear government-issue "safe" clothing and read only government-issued safe books.



Zippers were always too erotic anyway.

It took a long time to legislate them out!

What hurts a 3 year old...

(parental blathering, again)

I am protective of my kids, as most parents likely are...and when a bully gets to them or a television show scares them or...well, I'm there for them. Now sometimes my temper gets the best of me, and then I am the source of pain for my kids--that sends me into a tailspin of regret and gnashing of teeth.

The only time I get more angry is when some corporation (McDonalds, Wal-Mart, etc.) hurts my kids. They manipulate my kids all the time through ads, commercials, target marketing at knee-height, and so on. That, at least, I have learned to tolerate.

The other day, however, a large corporation that tours with Bob The Builder really chapped my hide. They were promoting Bob's big Wichita appearance, and that very day my wife liquidated my life insurance and bought us all tickets on row 2! Now, Carson, my 3 year old, loves Bob the Builder beyond measure. I think sometimes he patterns too much of his life around Bob, like those times when I find tools in bed with us...or times when he "fixes" things that do not need toddlers hammering on them. Bob, to Carson, is the icon of all things good and right with the world, and the chance to see Him Live--well, even Carson was speechless.

Alas, the corporate villains cancelled the show only a week later (thus, a week before the show) and my wife broke the news to Carson over supper. I have not seen him sob and weep like that EVER. (I don't think the other boys have ever been so distraught, either, for that matter.) It was terribly painful for us all.

So, what hurts a 3 year old? Broken promises. Cancelled appearances. Retracted offers. You should read my wife's blog to see just what the boys offered as their (violent) reactions and what they suggested for the show's promoters! This blog is too tame to list such things.

Dirt

I have found that I know next-to-nothing about dirt.

Every farmer/gardener worth his green thumb should know all about dirt. Even every-day folk who just have a flower pot on the porch ought to know a little something. Here I am, however, on a warm day in February and ready to get gardening--and I must admit I know nada.

Now, this is especially embarrassing as I did grow up on a farm. We had a large spread, however, over 3000 irrigated acres, and we tilled and fertilized Big Picture. I am not on that scale, and I do not want to use chemicals (herbicides and pesticides and fertilizers) unless I have to.

Thank goodness for the Internet.

I need to find an "ask stupid gardening questions" website. I have so many to pose...

For instance, yesterday my 3 year old and I discovered some very nice dirt, to my way of thinking. It was under leaves and decomposed branches and rot, altogether an area about the size of an average yard, I'd guess. The soil was black and what I'd call loamy (?). It resembled the stuff you buy in a bag, potting soil. I'm pretty sure it's The Good Stuff. Now I just have to figure out what to do with it.

We raked up a mighty pile of debris covering the Black Dirt. It seems like it would be good to help make my raised beds not so compacted. I'm thinking about doing a lasagna effect and alternating layers of the leafy decomposed stuff, the black dirt, some real bagged stuff, some top soil (I'm thinking to have a truckload delivered for multiple purposes) and maybe some of the grass clippings from the last 2 years...but I have no idea what order or how thick or if I'm making a bad mix...

...but I CAN read, and I WILL find out.

To me, this phase, the dirt, is the most essential. I really want to get it right.

I know real gardeners work on things year-around, but at least I've burned off an area in January and am now getting my dirt together in February...building raised beds in March (and likely starting to plant something maybe).

I cannot wait to get home and get raking/shoveling again today!

Virtual Victrola

...my internal iPod...

It annoys my spouse, I'm sure, and perhaps anyone else who's close enough to me to notice. I suppose I just Jones out once in a while, expressionless, maybe smiling. Sometimes I'm sure I hum...

Here's the thing. I always have music going in my head.

It's not like a voice in my head (though there are vocalists, so I guess...). It's not like I'm making things up, though I can take a tune, even a very complicated one, and twist and turn it around to recombobulate it, change the syncopation or the dynamics or the words or the instruments or...you get the idea.

At times I can get just a snippet of a tune I know, then I'm good for hours. Unlike my brother, the Rainman, I cannot tell you about artists, albums, eras--he can accurately recount all that for you. I cannot always recall lyrics with any shade of assurance. I can, most of the time, pull enough of a tune out that it keeps me occupied for a long while.

This is complicated by Jingles, which have more power over me than any other form of advertising, obviously. I can hear a Jingle once, and then be stuck with it all day. I can "accidentally" hear some song over a store's speakers, even elevator music, then find myself replaying it over and over, like it or not. I have to consciously rethink the tunes, change the mental playlist consciously, to over-ride the tune of the moment.

My music is also complicated by radio/channel changing friends/family. It hearkens back to Max Headroom's BlipVert issue. If someone is scanning through channels and I get just a clip of this, then that, then the other--eeesh. I may end up with a mash-up of it all going in my head. I can sometimes pick which one gets pulled to the front, or I can sometimes shut them all out with something more "popular" or well-known in my head, but other times I am simply overwhelmed.

Fortunately, that does not happen often. If I can attune myself to something else when the channel flipping is happening, then I'm okay.

I actually enjoy this bizarre "gift" of mine, most of the time. It allows me to wile away the hours and never be without a song in my heart. I worry, however, about getting older and losing more control of my head. I worry that songs may crowd out essentials (unless, perhaps, there is nothing more essential than a song in one's heart?). I agonize that I may get stuck on a Jingle, indefinitely. I wonder, more and more, if it's obvious to others that I'm listening to some soundtrack at the same time they are talking to me, that I'm having to consciously attend to them or let them be drown out my my music.

I worry, perhaps most of all, that I'm alone in this whole musical madness.