Although I insist that I’m implacable every time Archie jumps out from behind the door, there are several situations that make me nervous. Long days of separating from a young toddler is one of them. Talking to my personal heroines is another. Mixing my professional life with my crazy parenting life is a third. Combine all of these and I say some bonehead things. Take the final day of the Institute for example.

One of the JBMTI directors started talking to me while I was reuniting with Matilda. I was so thrilled to speak with her that my brain left my body and I became one of those parents– the ones who say things like, “well I don’t know about tantrums, because we don’t have any because I breastfeed,” “my child won’t have any trouble ever because I cosleep,” or, “my child won’t play with superheros because we’re a nonviolent family.”

I’m not saying I’ve never been one of those parents– when Carter was a baby I distinctly recall thinking those 2-year-olds were monstrous creatures and wishing their parents would do something about their atrocious behavior. I haven’t been that parent for a long time though- until last summer.

Maureen commented that her grandchild’s favorite word was “no,” and wondered if it was also Matilda’s favorite word. My response?

“Why no, I don’t know why it would ever be her favorite word. I mean, she hardly ever hears it.”

I have one good friend who has pledged to kick me if I say anything that dumb again, but sadly, she was in another continent while I had this conversation. All I can do is offer up this 90 second montage.

On crunce uplonta lime,
The mubs where flowfing so dabime.
The hunklehorns where crunkling,
crute the chithe, the gumps the flyme.

Oh, Flump, oh gzump, the frupulos dariogi,
The knulll carrot garby’s Ghadagee gahzee!
The trapolite crumb, hath gone
and the capapa did dodlada jee!

And he played his trump, he won the jump,
he googled, so filled up with Zee!
He gabbet, he gump, oh he sat ‘pon a stump,
and chabbled away all his dee!

Oh, do keep your eyes open, my lubulous pal,
on came the great pariogi!
Oh, chip chip chap! Chad chacholy chal!
Oh, he killed, he slayed its tee!
Oh, now time no one worries! We frumble in our zee.
We have nothing to fear from the dadasasear
Frupulos pariogi!

One word summed up my day on March 31, 2009

Unlike her older brothers, Matilda was pink, giving the homebirthing experience two thumbs up. Carter was home but hiding in another room (a choice that makes him tear up two years later), and Archie was blissfully romping around a friend’s kitchen after a sleepover. By the end of the morning, though, everyone had been properly introduced. Matilda’s support system was at full power.

Where’s the Ma~ in BlogSchmog?

This blog began 11 years ago in anticipation of our first child. Carter benefited from new technologies, like digital cameras, and greater free time to watch his digital footprint grow quickly. Archie, our second son, had fewer photos and posts. Our most recent period of blogging slack came at a bad time for Matilda. She is well documented on our twitter feeds, but there are only a handful of Matilda-related posts here on BlogSchmog:

• Caption Contest—Enter your captions for our first Matilda Megan post!
• Boys, girls, science and marketing—There’s no surprise that we’re not raising girls who think dangerous science could be fun- we’re too busy telling them cleaning is fun.
• Born to Boogie—While I’m quite certain Matilda has her own special dancing talent, it turns out, most babies do. From the Ice Age to present day, dancing and music have helped us not only have fun and connect, but also survive.

That trend may change soon. Matilda came back from a trip north to visit her aunt with much more conversational English. She counts from 2 to 9, and will generally make a go at anything she hears pronounced once. Matilda also slips in an extraneous “h” when telling people where to sit, which sends Nanna into giggles.

My first Matilda-focused blog post will highlight her two-week-old comprehension of joke telling:

Ma~: Knock-knock
Us: Who’s there
Ma~: Daddy
Us: Daddy who?
(pause)
Ma~: Knock-knock

or

Us: Knock-knock
Ma~: Who there?
Us: Daddy
Ma~: Oh (claps) Yay!

Happy birthday to my latest two-year-old.

Welcome to the world, Ma~

When my three kids and wife headed north for a quick visit with her sister in Chicago, I spent the bulk of my time attacking some of our cluttered rooms in our house. These are both well-used and forgotten places that make our house seem smaller than it is. I knew my short window of time wasn’t going to be enough to go through every box of flotsam that a dozen years has brought to our shores, so I focused on finding the floor in every room.

In the process, there were some drawers and rarely seen places under immobile furniture that yielded a few magical scraps. This is the mined gold that makes the cleaning process worthwhile.

My family frequently makes trips to the local museums in Chicago when traveling there. At some point in the last two years, they found a photobooth at the Chicago Children’s Museum and entertained each other with crazy faces:

My Family in a photobooth

Archie loved to use his newfound writing skills to brighten someone else’s day. In this case, his sweet note to his mom had a secondary effect of brightening my lonely day a few years later:

Archie leaves a note for Mom

Back when Carter was an only child, Amy would spend time with him talking about me and planning surprises. One of my favorites was a Father’s Day gift box filled with arts and crafts and little notes. I’m reasonably certain that this laminated message came from that box. It wasn’t completely sealed, so the writing is a bit smeared:

One of Carter's favorite things

This one was bittersweet. Carter’s dictated sentiment—”My favorite thing is to play downstairs with Daddy.”—reminded me of how few of those homemade craft kits in that box we actually completed.

The four MLB players keeping me young

• OF Matt Stairs—currently a pinch hitter for the Washington Nationals
• IF Omar Vizquel—a backup shortstop for the Chicago White Sox
• RP Tim Wakefield—a knuckleballer and bullpen pitcher for the Boston Red Sox
• SP Jamie Moyer—most recently a Phillies pitcher who had Tommy John surgery and hopes to come back with the Seattle Mariners in 2012

As long as Jamie Moyer hasn’t given up, I’ll feel like baseball is a game played by peers. His surgery last year—cutting short a pretty nice season for an old man—didn’t deter him, and unlike Hoffman, Moyer won’t retire. There’s also some hope that another Satchel Paige will come along.

Thanks to segregation, which confined most of the pitcher’s stellar career to statistical obscurity in the Negro Leagues, Paige didn’t make his major league debut until age 42, with the Cleveland Indians in 1948. Even with the late start, Paige played 17 more years before retiring as the oldest player of all time (59 years 2 months 18 days), in 1965.

The youngest professional baseball player ever was Frank Chapman, who played for Philadelphia of the American Association in July 1887, at the age of fourteen (14 years 7 months 28 days). Many historians don’t count that, though, and instead look at Joe Nuxhall‘s 1944 debut with the Cincinnati Reds (15 years 10 months 11 days) as the low-water mark for age of a major leaguer. In my lifetime, it was Ken Griffey, Jr. who started making me feel old when he opened with the Seattle Mariners for the 1989 season.

It is currently a race to see whether someone younger than my son Carter (currently 11 years 1 month 27 days) will be in the league before there is no one older than I am (currently 42 years 10 months 11 days). I’m not sure which I’m rooting for: for baseball to span two generations at the same time, or to close out my era of baseball before my son starts his.

Which would you want?

60+ is an iPhone app to improve conscious living

The Earth Hour movement is leveraging the iPhone to get at least some of those billion to carry conscious living beyond 9:30p tonight, when the hour of sacrificing electricity for 60 minutes is over. The “60+” app treats sustainable actions like FourSquare treats locations, allowing you to check-in when you accomplish one of their 25 suggested environment-saving behaviors:

• Choose sustainable seafood
• Decline a shark-fin soup at dinner
• Set the air-con at 24 C or higher
• Sun-dry your clothes instead of using an electric dryer
• Use natural lighting wherever possible
• Use a fan instead of air-conditioning
• Go vegetarian for a day
• Remove electrical appliances from the socket when not in use
• Turn off your lights for 1 minute
• Turn your lights off for Earth Hour
• Take part in the Earth Hour 2011 Candle Walk
• Take a picture of yourself in the dark and upload it as your Facebook profile
• Recycle 1 can
• Donate your old clothes to charity
• Bring your own chopsticks
• Recycle Paper
• Buy locally produced fruits and veggies
• Ride a bike to work
• Organise a carpool or taxi-sharing system
• Wash your dishes by hand
• Fix leaky taps
• Install low-flow showerheads
• Collect rainwater to water your plants
• Take shorter showers
• Use the half-flush on your toilet

In addition, there are dozens of tips given for how you can further change behavior to save resources.

The application is quite beautiful to look at, with a recycled cardboard theme and nifty icons. It integrates with Facebook, although I was surprised none of my friends there had this app. The app keeps a running total of actions performed since February 3, which as I type is only at 12,823. Even so, I find the information contained in this app useful both as a reminder and as a teaching aid.

Our Earth Hour will be tested: My eldest is having a friend over to watch a movie. I don’t know what the timing is, but it may be a hard sell to unplug under those circumstances. I’m hoping Carter finds some ways for us to survive those sixty minutes and help me appease my conscience for a little while. I will be using 60+ beyond today’s symbolic campaign.

On our anniversary, we would walk past the strip club to Crazy Johnnies, where they don’t ask you what you want but how you want the steak cooked. We would also frequent the primate area at the Zoo and watch the orangutans play. Without kids or dogs at the time, the animals (particularly those orangutans) were our adopted family. Returning to New Orleans as vegetarians rules out Crazy Johnnies, but we make a point of looking up our charges at the zoo.

Unfortunately, due to a number of factors, we’ve missed the orangutans on the past few visits. It took two tries this trip, but we did manage to find a few to watch. The actual children we have created since we moved away made it impossible to spend too much time with the primates, but it felt good to get that chance to reconnect with that part of our past.

With our family grown to five, there is a new context for exploring the city. The boys and I bonded over the heat, marveling how Amy can love it so much, let alone run in it. We enjoyed our daily walks across the street to City Park to count ducks and slide down the playground equipment. The family took a couple passes through NOMA’s sculpture garden, the second time with the boys as tour guides. Carter fell in love with the music and the art of New Orleans, and all the kids made good use of Monkey Hill. We rode the streetcars and walked another 40 minutes to get to Louisiana Pizza Kitchen for some oven-baked pizza and a chance to browse the French Market. All the while, Matilda waved to everyone.

I forgot batteries for my real camera, which left me at the mercy of my 3G iPhone. The orangutan pix didn’t really turn out, but there are a few others that sum up my brief stay down here in the Big Easy.

Re-visiting New Orleans

A big thanks to Laura and Jeff Dedelow for putting up with our brood this week, as well as our friend Jamie and her family for successfully introducing our kids to Chinese food.

Deb Roy wanted to understand children learned language. What makes this collection of captured sounds and images revolutionary, however, is the techniques his team has developed to track, visualize and analyze the everyday connections we humans make by living in the world.

By the time his baby-makes-three moment finally arrived, Roy had wired up his house with cameras intending to catch (most) every moment of his son’s life. The nine rooms of his house were tricked out with a birdseye lens looking down on the activity below. Unlike a lab setting, where observations of interactions are artificial and prompted, Roy’s recorders could find thousands of key unsolicited, natural moments of childhood development. After scrubbing the artifacts to make provisions for privacy, he handed the files over to his Cognitive Machines research group at MIT. Together, they turned the detailed home movies into a massive data set of language development.

The little Roy had picked up a vocabulary of 503 words by his second birthday. The TED audience was treated to an audio montage of the evolution of the boy’s understanding of water, moving from “gaga” to a an articulated “water.” In that clip, you can hear the cognitive spurts and experimentation until the happy ending when he owns the correct word.

In his talk, Roy describes the stages of meaning-making the researches progressed through to find some interesting insights about the relationship between context and learning. The first step was to create “space-time worms” using motion analysis to track movement in a room as a function of time. This allowed the researchers to focus on activity in the data the revolved around Roy’s son. The result was about 7 million words of transcripts.

The team then studied the relationship of words and their use in the context of the world. By mapping the individual players in space, Roy found “social hotspots”—where a more activity was spent together—and “solo hotspots” showing the boy interacting alone with his surroundings. These trails were mapped in the house as a function of time, creating wordscapes—hotspots rise like mountains on the map. For “water,” the peaks are in the kitchen. For “bye,” they are near the door.

After examining the caregiver speech in the key moments when a new word was acquired, researchers found that caregiver speech would change. The language the child heard from caregivers was simplified in those critical moments, allowing the learning to take place before gradually building it back up to complex language.

Beyond the boon to language researchers, Roy’s work has two other big impacts.

This same method of working with massive datasets can be applied to how we interact with the mass media—specifically, television—through social media. Applying the language-mapping techniques to media led to the founding of Blue Fin Labs, Roy’s agency that measures engagement with mass media. In near real-time, they can track how tweets and other individual digital footprints are tied to specific shared events on television. They mine about 3 million comments a month on relevant topics, linking them to an event and thus allowing a wordscape to be generated.

The second impact is one of personal history and reflection. Digital artifacts can capture moments in early childhood that the brain can’t possibly remember from a perspective no one has experienced, a kind of God’s eye view of history. To underscore what it means to be able to share your own developmental milestones with your children, Roy rolls back the 3D rendering of the video camera footage when his son took his first few steps. In response, I can only echo the word shared by father and son in that moment: Wow.

One of those humans happened to have a video camera on Thursday. Moving to the edge of his seat in the sky (actually the seat of a fellow passenger), he captured a few minutes of the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery:

This was a unique perspective of Discovery‘s final shuttle mission. There are a number of videos available from the ground view as well as the one we watched showing the camera attached to the shuttle. All of these people sharing the experience of a major technological achievement by documenting it with other major technological achievements.

When I was my eldest son’s age, the first spaceworthy shuttle—Columbia—had just been delivered to the Kennedy Space Center to prep for its first flight (That wouldn’t occur for another two years). Elsewhere in space: Bryan Allen pedaled the Gossamer Albatross across the English Channel, Voyager I completed a flyby of Jupiter, Pioneer 11 passed Saturn, and Skylab came back to earth. It was also the year of Three Mile Island, the Ixtoc I, NORAD’s false alarm, and a crash of a DC-10 at O’Hare. Science is hard.

We only have two more chances to see this again. My boys watched the last Discovery launch with me on my laptop, after being reminded on Twitter that the lift-off was imminent. We waited less than ten minutes before NASA flight command reported the shuttle was officially in space. It takes more time to watch an episode of Phineas and Ferb than it does to leave the planet.

Incredible.

Many of these status updates had to do with interesting moments in Twitter, related to research in the service, but I also find my personal Twitter museum has collected a number of profound, hilarious, and striking status updates from others around the world. Here are fifty of my favorite Favorites …

this superbowl needs more vuvuzelas.—@djbender

Apparently there’s a sequel to Super Bowl 44 today – do I have to know anything about the other Super Bowls to prepare for today?—@trobinson79

After a brief flirtation, I’ve turned away from Quora. It’s too structured to be social and too closed for open talk. Also, it’s boring.—@shelisrael

I mean really, Mubarak should have done that speech while sitting in a swiveling chair and caressing a white cat. #Jan25 #Egypt—@KarlreMarks

The Spider-Man musical doesn’t need to close – it needs to be the next season of Survivor.—@moonandserpent

Assembly Hall just went from being the loudest place in America (after Hulls 3) to one of the most quiet (as Watford shoots free throws)—@IUSportcom

Now that the astrological birth signs have been recalculated, thousands of awful lower-back tattoos just become even more regrettable.—@justinkeller

My 5th grader has a paper due. It needs to be double spaced. She very carefully typed 2 spaces between each word.—@MacksMind

Glad they’re making Great Gatsby in 3-D. My favorite part of the book was when Gatsby threw knives at the reader’s face.—@BorowitzReport

I guess “A Christmas Carol” will forever be known as the episode where the shark jumped Doctor Who.—@lmcalpin

Google Wave Lesson: If a product is named as a Firefly reference, expect it to go the way of any Joss Whedon show.—@jeffcatania

If my quick glance at my twitter stream is correct, Brett Favre & Wikileaks are building a mosque in NYC.—@bmk

someone should submit The Economy to kickstarter.com—@jingman

Do all these muscles make me look fat?—@OldSpice

I’m glad I never have worry about forgetting whether or not Jesus saves. Thanks, bumper stickers and billboards.—@cmbeck_

The Emergency Alert System on the cable is preventing me from watching the local stations which will show me where the storm actually is.—@bubbas_brain

Discussing with my lawyer a new idea: adding “Agree to Disagree” option to my EULA dialog box, and let the user use the soft anyways.—@migueldeicaza

The cure for boredom is curiosity. The cure for curiosity is worksheets.—@alfiekohn

DON’T MAKE ME CRITIQUE YOUR COMPLICITY IN MALE PRIVILEGE. YOU WOULDN’T LIKE ME WHEN I’M CRITIQUING YOUR COMPLICITY IN MALE PRIVILEGE.—@feministhulk

If plastic bags live for thousands of years in a landfill, they’re like little time capsules. Why don’t we encode cool info on them?—@jingman

I saw a guy playing Solitaire on the iPhone. That is wrong in so many ways.—@SoundSystemSDC

Hotel internet is to internet as rice cakes are to oreos.—@clifflampe

Calling Butler “America’s Team” at this point is like commenting on a blog post with “First?!!!”—@tacojohn

My biggest fear of traveling back in time is that I’ll waste it explaining what it is that I do for a living.—@cmbeck_

incessant drumming. Me: Stop or I’ll have you committed. @cmakice: what’s that mean? Me: locked up in a room. @cmakice: Oh. With drums?—@amakice

One of the most painful things about being an academic is that no mater what you research, there’s always someone telling you how dumb it is—@whazlewo

wouldn’t it be great if we all pitched in to help people even when there wasn’t a disaster?—@aschweig

#Twible Ex 20: G’s Top 10. No gods, idols, blasphemy. Keep Sabbath holy & love Mom. Don’t kill, cheat, steal, lie, or look @ Xmas catalogs.—@janariess

Jim Zorn suspended practice, called investigators. Forensic experts determined white substance unknown to players was goal line.—@chucktodd

the Nobel Prize for Obama is really a Most Improved Player award for the USA.—@muchosalsa

Johnathan Frakes is directing. Yesterday, he called me Number One. My heart made a noise that sounded like awesome.—@NathanFillion

Why is the “default” image on most sites a male silhouette? I find it offensive when women are represented as a shadow of a man.—@zephoria

how many hipsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb? eh, it’s this really obscure number. you’ve probably never heard of it.—@treyp

When I take my pants off in public I’m being lewd. When I willingly do it in airport security i’m a patriot.—@cmbeck_

I always wondered how I could make “obituary” rhyme with “millionaire” and now I know. Thanks country radio!—@ryanvarick

My 6 year old son got a new watch. It’s 3:10 everybody.—@theaudioprof

@trotzke and I are now Bonsai buddies. Something he doesn’t know: I’m going to grow the hugest bonsai ever!!!—@BigDaveSmith

if nice guys finish last, then who would win a nice guy contest?—@StephenAtHome

wisdom of a 4 yr old: “the most important thing when deciding where to eat is if it has a gumball machine”—@mtwolf

Looking up the synonyms for unique.—@trotzke

@oprah ur caps r on, btw—@THE_REAL_SHAQ

Hey Twitter, you’ve been Punk’d. @aplusk is really a 14 year old kid who lives in Encino.—@SoundSystemSDC

@amakice I suggest the online moniker of Ma~—@benfulton

Hoosier Music Mt. Rushmore: Axl, Michael Jackson, Mellencamp, Wes Montgomery. Suck it, Hoagie Carmichael.—@SnailTrax

OH: Me: what are you doing? Archie: taking the onions out so I dont taste them. Me: they’re onion rings.—@amakice

OH: Nanna: “Is that his name? French Fry?” Archie: “Yes.” Nanna: “For Certain?” Archie: “No. French Fry.”—@amakice

Time to reset the Illinois governor sign once again to “This office has been criminal-free for 0 days”.—@dickc

I’m standing in the foot prints of giants.—@whazlewo

Charlton Heston is dead? Who is goign to take the gun out of his cold dead hands?—@zebtron

If you’re reading this now, I can only assume it’s because your family is boring the crap out of you.—@StephenAtHome

There are posts about laughing, shared experiences and finding true love interspersed with others regarding our parenting partnership. I did actually finish one of those, in the form of a video tribute a few years back:

We laugh a lot. He knows what delights me. The other day he stuck his head in the living room to do this knock-knock joke:

Knock Knock

Who’s there?

To.

To who?

To whom.

I’m still chortling a bit, but I’m laughing just as much at the fact that Kevin interrupted his work day to come tell me a joke he probably thinks is lame, because he knew I’d find it hilarious.

It’s more than the hilarity and the children that holds us though. Somehow over the years we’ve found ways to lift each other beyond our own expectations.

20 years ago we started dating. Being with Kevin felt different than anyone else I knew. I felt like someone could really see the me that lurked underneath all the crazy and chaos that comprised my life– he was an oasis of possibility.

18 years ago we were still sorting out our dreams of adulthood. I had an image of my ideal job, but couldn’t imagine making it a reality until I read our wedding newsletter, written by Kevin. In it he announced that in the next few years I would be attending graduate school to become a therapist, something I considered little more than an out-of-reach pipe dream.

17 years ago, Kevin, who by the way, hates heat, humidity and conservative politics, packed his bags, skipped out on a lease and moved to Louisiana– more specifically, Fat City– with me.

You might assume that we chose to move South because I had been accepted at Tulane School of Social Work, and while that would be reasonable, it would also be inaccurate. I had visited Tulane, decided it was my destiny, and with Kevin’s support and encouragement followed my instinct. I had no official acceptance letter, we had no jobs and the only person we knew was my dad’s Marine buddy, who didn’t really run in our circles.

Kevin worked nights at Kinkos, I worked days at TGIFridays, we met around midnight to play scrabble and watch MST3K. Eventually I talked my way into Tulane and Kevin found a more palatable job at Xavier University. We developed new talents, forged new connections and spent some time growing up together.

Our time in New Orleans represents the time my own sense of competence and curiosity blossomed- in many ways I see that part of my life as a rebirth– the time I really got to know myself. I wouldn’t have made that leap without Kevin at my side.

That’s the thing about Kevin– the thing I want to reciprocate– he doesn’t just see the best in me, he assumes motion toward my best, propping me up, holding my hand and urging me on. He reminds me who I am, who I want to be. More importantly, he’s willing to take the risks inherent in making those leaps together.

“Getting Along with our Robot Overlords: How to Approach Design of Human-Robot Interaction”

“The Stuff in My Utility Belt”

Ignites are great opportunities for members of a community to gather and share their passions. The format—20 slides, automatically advancing every 15 seconds for a total of 5 minutes—is short enough to lower the barrier to participation (it isn’t a lecture) and structured enough to level the playing field (everyone has the same constraint to work with). Usually, the night ends with the audience buoyed by the energy the event brings and thinking about something new.

Ignite Indianapolis

An hour north, Indy had its first Ignite event with a dozen speakers on stage at the Fringe Theatre. I had some logistical issues getting from Bloomington to the site after class at IU, running into a lot of construction as I tried to find the place.

Smaller Indiana, the community project that organized the event, arranged to have the Ignite Indianapolis talks video taped and just released them online. Because I was so stressed about my own talk, the first flight of talks was a blur. I’ve enjoyed going back and watching what I missed.

There were a few talks at Indy’s Fringe Theatre that stood out:

• Bob Mattax (Developer, Developer Town) on “Why Houses?“
• Brian Shafer (Co-owner, Walnut Valley Bison) on “Bison: Back from the Brink“
• Daniel Poynter on “Six Degrees of Awesome“

I was particularly grateful to Daniel Poynter, who started out the flight I was in. His talk was engaging and interesting enough to break me out of my personal funk and let me relax. (Daniel also made a reprise at the Bloomington event the following week, where the video clips he had didn’t play properly.) The clear favorite of the night, though, was Bob Mattax’s talk on why his company built houses instead of cubicles.

Ignite Bloomington 2

The quality of this local follow-up to the first event a year ago was outstanding. I learned about arduino, online brownie points, Robert’s rules of order, and law school. In a nice complement to Carter’s presentation was Joseph Baird’s talk on resourcefulness.

For Carter, Ignite marked his debut as a public speaker. We we first brought up the possibility of his participation, I assumed the best I could hope for was pre-recorded content—we were going to rig up a Mission:Impossible tape recorder to smoke at the end of the five minutes. He insisted on speaking live, though, and rehearsed in the days leading up to the event. It amazes me even now that a 10-year-old can get up and be as poised as he was. He’s ready for another.

Although there is no official video yet (it’s coming), I do have a couple bootlegs. Carter’s talk was a hit, but I also captured the poetry of Jenna McWilliams and Christian Briggs, two colleagues in a social media research group called SociaLens. J-McDub and Briggzay gave a beat critique of media and culture that’s worth a listen.

Thanks to organizers of both events for the chance to participate. I look forward to the follow-up ignites later this summer.

Babies aren’t the only ones who love to boogie. Check out this woodcock looking for worms. He reminds me quite a bit of the toddler boogie:

It looks like they’ll soon get an opportunity to a larger work. Bloomington is expecting 5-9 more inches of snow tomorrow.

Prior to one of Carter’s preschool year parties I tried it- I sent out invites with a cute, “your presence is our present” message and promptly got a phone call from the mom of one of his best buddies at school.

Friend’s mom: Amy? Your invitation says no gifts.

Me: Yes.

Friend’s Mom: Are you serious?

Me: Um, well, yes. Well, blah blah plastic and the environment, blah blah budget and plenty-

Friend’s Mom: Hm. My son has already been talking about shopping for Carter and he’s very excited about it, so I’m sure you won’t begrudge him a chance to give a good gift, will you? I mean isn’t that part of the fun of birthdays?

I started paying attention to what Carter was learning and doing on gift-giving occasions. Even at a young age, he was a generous and thoughtful giver. When he scours catalogs, he isn’t only looking at things he enjoys- he lists which items would be perfect for which friends and why. We’ve never wandered Target aimlessly searching for a ticket into the party, we’ve headed out with a mission, Carter listing the qualities that would make the gift “perfect.”

Since that year, Carter has received homemade gifts, stories, pictures, action heroes and books for his birthdays- he enjoys all of them, but I think what he enjoys most is thinking about those people thinking about him. Giving a gift says, “hey- I thought of you when you weren’t here- you stay in my heart.”

As to the plastic accumulation, there are several alternatives. Coupons for special events, tickets to the movies, parts to a toy he already has like Legos or K-nex are all things that don’t contribute to further clutter in our home. Sharing a book you have already read and treasured or finding the perfect used toy is a way to reduce the impact on the environment. One of Archie’s favorite gifts is a robot made of cardboard boxes, aluminum cans and duct tape. It truly is the thought, and communicating it, that counts.

This week we took some grandparents to visit the Museum, and I took advantage of the extra adults to pay a visit to the gift shop. The boys were happily learning science:

boys learning science at the Children's Museum

Matilda and I wandered into the science section ignoring the massive pink Barbie display dwarfing the cool legos.

I left the store and cornered my father-in-law.

“I need your camera so I can document the sexism in the gift store.” He handed it over. This is the same guy who actually made his buddies quit joking about wifely duties at our “couples shower” 17 years ago. My outrage is rarely news to him.

I took the camera back downstairs and used that time to try and pinpoint my upset. I’m not opposed to dangerous boys- I’ve got two of my own. I’m all for bubble baths, and I think making my own perfume sounds lovely. It wasn’t about what was on that wall, it’s what was missing. There was nothing on that wall that encouraged girls to take risks. The science available to girls was science designed to make them more attractive mates. Boys? Here- light stuff on fire, make sparks. Girls? You get to bathe. I felt like the first little girl in the pony ad.

Learn science, smell pretty.

A clerk approached me, looking concerned.

“Can I help you find something?”

“How do you choose which science kits to offer?” He led me over to the science kit wall, eager to introduce me to their cool products, and then saw my point and cringed a bit. “I’ve been a parent of boys for almost ten years,” I explained, “and I’m happy to see stuff that celebrates boyhood. But now I’m a parent of a girl, and when I walk into your science section I just feel sad for her and worried that there won’t be fun, dangerous stuff for her to try.”

He told me I’d managed to arrive just after the Christmas rush and I admit, I stooped to a bit of sarcasm when I asked if that meant all the dangerous girl science kits, perhaps including the daring kit of nail polish, had sold out. In the end, he apologized and told me that when marketing toward 9-16 year old girls, dangerous doesn’t cut it- bubble bath does. He thanked me, assured me he’d pass on my concerns, and asked me to continue the dialogue as my daughter grows.

We’ve already bought our annual membership, and I’m certain we’ll return to the museum this year. It felt a little silly to be arguing about science kits for teenagers when the center of the debate was strapped to my shoulder teething on a toy, but if 9-16 year old girls prefer perfume to science, then we need to get started at an earlier age.

Take a look at this ad aimed at people buying for little girls:

You didn’t misunderstand- the little girl really sings, “I love when my laundry gets clean, clean, clean.” I spent way too much time trying to find an equivalent ad for boys- the closest might be Hasbro’s 2007 “built for boyhood” campaign, which certainly made it sound more fun to be a boy getting muddy than a girl doing his freaking laundry, but there’s nothing I could find that sends the message, “here boys, do basic self-care. It’s loads of fun.” There’s no surprise that we’re not raising girls who think dangerous science could be fun- we’re too busy telling them cleaning is fun.

This is a big year for me. Having survived the past decade as a first-, second- and third-time parent, the Tens will bring me teenagers with cars, dates and college tuition. I’ll feel more prepared to take that on if I can wrap up my own education.

I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions, but here’s a few goals I have for 2010:

1. Graduate.
   I’m so over this academic thing. Being in the Ph.D. program has made me reflect on the type of work I like doing, and that is the research, development, and design of stuff. I need to dissertate with abandon this year to make it happen, but I don’t want this particular goal to ever show up on my radar again.
2. Write a book.
   The Twitter API experience with O’Reilly scratched a lot of itches for me, giving me the confidence to do it again and do it better. When the dust finally settles on my dissertation proposal this month, the focus of my plan will be having a new book at the end. If I am to squeeze any more learning out of the Informatics program, it will be directed at gathering the skills and research rigor to tackle any topic and turn it into a 180-page tome in 9 months. Hell, with a little help, maybe I’ll do two.
3. Drop 20 Pounds.
   This is a fairly arbitrary number. Despite what Wii Fit keeps telling me, I’m not in dire shape physically. Whatever I lack in endurance, strong knees, and a love of the outdoors, I make up for in confidence. I survived age 35 a while back, so now I feel like Fame. As the kids grow older, though, I see opportunities for biking, softball, soccer, and a host of things I used to enjoy. Shedding some weight is the tangible payoff for the more important goal of re-establishing physical activity in my daily routine.
4. Launch a startup.
   As if I didn’t have enough on the plate … Actually, this may be the easy one since it’s underway right now. I have been privileged to latch onto an interesting design challenge spearheaded by a Bloomingtonian at the Business School and funded by a French Turk. I never followed my gut with ideas I had in the 1990s, and I have generally lacked time and other resources in the Oughts, but I’m sticking with this particular project. We’re currently in Phase 3 leading to a Beta launch in February, but if all goes well there’s at least two more major iterations left before next Christmas.
5. Tame the homestead
   Due to a number of factors, our home has suffered our occupancy for over a decade. I may be reaching on how much can be done under financial duress, but I’m hoping for a summer of green grass and reduced clutter. To help my dissertation quest along, I’ll start by reclaiming the space that used to be my downstairs office. Anything else will be gravy.
6. Play.
   I want to transition back to a life with more games, from the board variety that Archie is starting to love to the computer kind I’ve shunned to keep from being distracted. I miss running fantasy sports leagues and participating in game nights. There’s a lot to do in 2010 to succeed with my first two goals, so I’ll consider it a victory if I merely spend the next 12 months transitioning to a life that includes Madden NFL.

Wish me luck!

My first post partum run was slow and painful.

I kept going though, a little at a time, and recently I completed a 15 mile training run.

Completing a 15 mile training run left me feeling on top of the world.

I started off my 40th birthday wanting to be a runner, longing for the rush or creativity and confidence that seems takes over somewhere during the third or fourth mile of a longer run, but the reality was I was a walker who ran a little bit. Over the course of a summer I became the runner I wanted to be. This change occurred not through martyred, suffering workouts but expressions of vitality and joy. There were certainly days I did not want to run, but after ten minutes I was either pleased I had chosen to plug away. Only one time did I pass the ten minute mark and decide to go home and shower instead of finish the run.

Now it’s New Year’s, and I’m looking around my home. Prior to the holiday, I decided I wanted to focus on inviting joy into my life- choosing the joyous path rather than the martyred, cranky mama path that frequently beckons me. I am surrounded by obstacles to the joy though- a small cluttered home filled with chaos. Today is officially my first “run” back to having an uncluttered life. It is just a beginning. 15 miles seems impossible, but I plan on jumping in for as much as I can handle until I can handle more.

I love this post. But I hope it’s okay if I present ‘the dissenting opinion’ and dig deeper into some presuppositions with which I’m not sure I agree.

I’m happy to delve deeper into this discussion, particularly if we’re going to do so without dangling prepositions! While your tweet started me down this road, what ultimately sent me over the edge was a post at huffpo suggesting that Hillary Clinton’s feelings might be hurt that there was no PCILF website. While I’ve since recalibrated my expectations, I originally believed Huffpo would be in line with my feminist values.

I just don’t see VPILF carry all the connotations you suggest. It’s an objectification to be sure and the discursive power of a label is powerful, I agree. But why can’t a VPILF have a powerful mind? Why can’t she be ambitious and strong? Or intuitive and emotional? Or have a business in finance, or solar energy, or construction? Nothing of course. At least, not to me. The notion that the VPILF comment carries the “and I wouldn’t vote for or listen to or respect such a VPILF” seems more an assumption you (at that particular time) were projecting on this whathisface.

VPILF is different from “Wow, she’s hot,” because of the word “fuck”. When I hear “fuck” I don’t think of a romantic evening, or even a meaningless roll in the hay, I think of being screwed. That’s why when you hear, “I’m fucked,” you don’t think, “wow, she must have had a great time last night.”

A vice president is powerful. Fucking the vice president is an easy way to diffuse that power. Certainly you might vote for a powerful, attractive woman, but the fact that you can call her fuckable reduces her power to that of a barbie doll.

And, as the whathisface, I, with great respect, politely resent that. As a proud third wave feminist, I believe a person is a complex personality with a plurality of facets that cannot be reduced to a single label. So whether a candidate is a VPILF or VPINLF has no bearing on whether she gets my vote.

VPILF at best skews the focus to her sexual attributes rather than her credentials (or lack thereof). A simple test for sexism is to ask yourself if you could change the genders in the situation and have it make any sense. While it might be simpler to argue that no sexy men have been vice president, the truth is, male presidential candidates are not judged as much as women on whether or not they are sexually attractive. There’s no PILF website despite the fainting at Obama rallies.

The princess thing strikes a different chord. I have a niece and nephew and I view much of my feminist reading through the lens of helping raise Lily. The aunts love to get her princess toys and gear. I’m the uncle that buys her soccer balls and throws her equally hard around the room when we play games like Kung Fu Panda or Star Wars (I am always the villain who gets defeated).

Several of the commenters mentioned parental influence in princess indoctrination and that’s a piece of it, but the underlying problem is a societal system that forces women into one of several unappetizing stereotypes- princess being one of them. Kudos to you for offering your niece opportunities to punch out of those molds.

But if someone were to mistake Jack for a girl – that’d be okay. That’s a mistake. But Princess? . . . I can feel (internally) my emotional reaction for the mistake-as-princess is different than the mistake-as-girl. I think it is because of the marginalizing connotations embedded in our cultural consciousness of damsels in a dress in distress. Your version of a princess is far cooler, and if someone mistook him for *that* princess, I can feel my internal reaction changing entirely.

Thanks! I am pretty damn cool. I hadn’t thought of the distinction between mistaking him for a girl, and mistaking him for a princess- and you’re right. I suddenly felt empowered picturing Matilda at Disney asking, “what makes you mistake me for a princess?” Changing that internal vision of girls, princesses and vice presidential candidates is central to a more egalitarian society and discussions like this one help move us forward.

From my perspective at least, it seems to me that it’s not the boy-as-girl mistake that causes distress at all — it’s the boy-as-’weaker sex’ that distresses me. [And that is of course my projection on 'princess' as mediated by your post.] The only difference in those two is that one has ‘weaker’ in it. We must seek out and destroy those ‘weaker sex’ connotations, I agree wholeheartedly (and I wonder if it relates to the make-up video you link to). To do that, we will probably have to tear down some ’stronger sex’ connotations as well.

Calling a boy a girl is calling him weaker. I disagree with it, but that’s the connotation our society has given it. There are people who are horrified at the notion of Carter being mistaken for a girl and it goes deeper than homophobia. It’s because deep down, they think being a boy is somehow better. It’s just anecdotal, but I’ve never heard anyone complain about being pregnant with a boy, and I’ve reassured more than one tearful friend that her husband will still love her child, even if it’s a girl.

You’re right- we have work to do on both fronts- tearing down negative stereotypes of both genders. Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a great book about problems men face as a result of our patriarchal society.

But we will also have to raise children (even those not our own) with a skeptic eye for underlying assumptions. And we must challenge those underlying assumptions, even when they’re their – or our – own.

Well said, Sean. Thanks for the conversation. Feel free to drop by for some holiday cheer, candy, cookies or kung-fu panda.

*Isn’t it really cute that he substituted “woman” for “girl” in an effort not to infantilize the stars of this video?

“What if I’m pregnant with a girl? And what if she has different political ideas than we do and she runs for office? We’re bringing a girl into a world where if people disagree with her they aren’t going to talk about issues, they are going to objectify her and take away any power she might have with the almighty ‘that’s where I want to stick my penis’ card, and laugh.” Extra distress resulted from the fact that the people perpetuating VPILF were people I would normally consider my liberal allies, and any upset from me was dismissed as me being humorless. (A huge mistake, let me tell you. I am hilarious).

Several months later I found myself teary after every day spent at the magical world of Disney. Every day we listened to the wait staff ask Carter what “the princess” wanted to drink, then act embarrassed to discover the princess is a boy- because boys can’t ever be something as horrible as a girl- then step outside to see the princesses, complete with makeup and hairspray.

“If this is a girl, we can’t go to Disney,” I lamented. “I let the boys be boys. I’ve welcomed squirt guns and swords into my pacifist home, side by side with dora, dolls and play kitchens- but I draw the line at makeup for toddlers.”

I was filled with new admiration for my friends who raise girls. Boys have their challenges, certainly. I never imagined I’d have to say things like, “no, honey, you need to keep your penis in your pants,” or “that squirt gun won’t last longer than a few hours if you use it as a hammer,” and those are just the tip of the boy-iceberg.

Here’s the thing though: squirt guns and swords are fun. They involve running, screaming and action. Traditional boy play is actually what I think of as natural child play- it’s what kids do when left to their own devices. Makeup and hairspray aren’t fun (to me at least)- they are what we do to look presentable, to attract mates, to hide the sleep circles.

Princess for a day should involve the capacity to chop off pretend enemies’ heads, ride pretend horses and play with dragons, not hold still for a long time while people paint you. Disney’s version of a dream day for little girls sounds like teaching little boys to work in middle management for the day. Here boys, suck it up, wear a tie and pretend to be in charge. Fun times. Why on earth would we think little kids should “play” that way?

Stay tuned for part two: in which I justify my crappy housekeeping as a political statement. You won’t want to miss it.

I did it!!!!

“Great. Another chasm,” I thought. But, as it turned out, it wasn’t that at all. It was. . . a flying carpet? Yes. A flying carpet came up out of the ravine straight at us. It was moving so fast that I didn’t have time to dodge. It ran straight into my ankles and tripped me right onto it. It did the same thing to Plittereeg, knocking him onto it behind me.

“I have no idea how to steer this thing!” I said, my cheeks flapping from the g-force. (Editors note- I was wearing a space suit, so take notice that it was the g-force, not the wind.) We shot back down into the ravine through endless tunnels of ice and rock until we came to a palace that looked like the Taj Mahal. We stepped off the carpet and inside the palace cautiously. Plittereeg created foot pads so that we wouldn’t be heard and I rode piggy-back so the footsteps of my space boots wouldn’t be heard. (Editor’s note: it’s about time I told you that Plittereeg wasn’t actually wearing a space suit but due to his wildly adaptive evolution he was able to survive in space without needing breathing gear.)

Plittereeg ran as fast as he could without emitting so much as a single pat on the icy floor. He slid to a stop and pressed himself against the wall in a spread eagle position next to the door. Unfortunately, since I was still on his back, this made for a very uncomfortable stop for me. Plittereeg jumped around the corner and into the door. The first room was a long hall, at the end of which were two spiral staircases leading up to one very wide staircase vanishing up into the darkness of the highest turret. The walls of the hall were lined with marble columns and the floor was a very long carpet with pictures of dragons devouring humans and large animals like hippos and rhinos.

Plittereeg leaped towards the marble columns on the right side of the long hall ducking behind column after column and making sure the coast was clear. As I watched the scene go by from Plittereeg’s back, I realized that Plittereeg was actually humming the James Bond theme song while he ducked for cover behind tremendous columns. He flew, not literally flying, by that I mean leaping, from the last marble column to the edge of the spiral staircase on the right.

Plittereeg hopped up the stairs, with each step humming a new note. We made it to the top of the stairs and Plittereeg tip toed from the top of the stairs to the wall, then shimmied across the edge to the next staircase. He hopped from stair to stair up higher and higher into the tallest turret, at the top of which he completely forgot about trying to be sneaky and started humming the theme song louder and louder.

“Well, well,” came a voice from behind us. Plittereeg lurched and hopped and I was thrown from his back. As I struggled to see whoever had been talking, I realized Plittereeg was also sprawled on the floor. Looking up, I saw sitting on the throne was somebody who looked like a sultan. He also looked like a human.

“Welcome. I may look like a Sultan, but I am certainly not the famed Sultan of Space. That, my friend is the palace you are in now. This entire palace is actually a space ship. It’s been hidden down here for centuries after being forced to make a crash landing due to -a-hem- heavy interferences from-” he paused, “dislikable patrons.” With that, he pulled a lever and the Sultan of Space shot up in the air and crashed through the roof of the cavern the palace was hidden in.

Plittereeg and I ran as fast as we could down the stairs and along the hall. We leaped out of the door about a hundred feet above the ground and went careening downwards at an incredible pace until we suddenly slowed. I looked up to see if there might be some reason for this. Plittereeg’s hands had melded together and formed a giant parachute. We settled down safely on the ground and ran even faster than we could, surprisingly, back to the Great Flying Pickle Jar. To our relief, Dave had woken up. He had a bandaged wing, one bandaged tentacle and a bandage wrapped around his head, but aside from that he seemed to be okay.

I ran to the control room and said for Alabaster to gun it and get us out of here as fast as he could. With that, we took off into space and, as it turns out, that’s where we’d be for a long, long time.

Plittereeg, Alabaster and I agreed that this was definitely a last resort. As we walked out of the ship Weasel continued to hop up and down supplying ideas.

“Or we could lower a television down, or we could lower a lamp down, or a maybe a laundry basket. . . ” Weasel continued on with ridiculous ideas as we walked towards the crater. The Plittereeg did something that, even with his vast array of tricks, seemed to be unaccomplishable. He shut his eyes, concentrated, and his right index finger shot off of his hand like a rocket, became pointed in midair, and hit the wall of the crevice on the other side, leaving a gooey strand of flesh behind. Plittereeg demonstrated how strong this was by swinging down into the pit. He continued to jump down farther and farther until we could no longer see him.

He came up holding Dave having formed a platform with the bulb on his left second finger (because he only has two fingers and one thumb). He hoisted Dave up through the walls and tunnels of the great pit. He set Dave down on the ground and kneeled down to feel his heartbeat.

“It’s beating,” he said, “but only very slowly. We don’t have much time.” The next few hours went by like a blur. Checking Dave’s vital signs, darting out of the room to grab a breathing mask of a bottle of pills, standing amidst the blur of figures running past and worrying about Dave filled all the time. The moment the blur stopped going past was when Plittereeg asked me if I would come with him to the ashes left behind by the giant larval insect and take samples of it for Alabaster to turn into medicine.

Plittereeg used yet another of his amazing tricks to contain the ashes- the bulbs on all the fingers on his right hand swelled and then mushed together to form a kind of large orb. His hand rounded out until it looked like part of his wrist. A line appeared around the diameter of the orb. Plittereeg flipped the lid open and began to collect the ashes.

After we were finished collecting the ashes we went back down the crevice and attempted to salvage the moon buggy. This was hard work, but at least the pickles were easy to collect. Plittereeg formed a container on his back and became our self-assigned container for collection.

After climbing back out of the chasm, we went back to the space ship. Me and Plittereeg ran as fast as we could back to the space ship. We dumped the salvaged parts into a bin and hurried back outside to continue our mission, but trouble was afoot. (dun, dun DDDUUUUUNNN!!!!!!!)

Weasel wasn’t too thrilled about this idea, but he was glad that the jar would at least eventually be opened, even if he didn’t get to eat the pickles inside it. Once Alabaster had opened the jar in one twist- (”after I loosened it,” insisted Weasel,) they poured the pickles into the fuel tank and we headed out.

Alabaster stayed behind and took atmospheric readings, which I figured was okay because he was hard to phase and wouldn’t be too surprised at Plittereeg’s amazing abilities. We trundled along the dusty surface of the planet all clad in space suits. I was surprised at the incredible array of different size and shape space suits that Dave had, because seeing how the Great Flying Pickle Jar had once been a Ductopi colony, there should only be ductopi space suits. I was awed as without a second thought he pulled a small, four-armed space suit for Weasel out of the glove compartment of the buggy- but then again if all of the ductopi colonies were like the Deathbird then they probably tailor-made all sorts of space suits for their various mutants.

As we headed out, we didn’t see much at first. There were three moons orbiting the planet and there was about as much gravity on this planet as there had been on the great blue expanse of desert that had been Plittereeg’s home. But it wasn’t wrong before we ran into some problems.

The first problem was the precarious rocks and mountains and hills everywhere. We had been lucky enough to land next to a valley- a shallow valley and some flat ground- but we were still surrounded by hills, mountains and large boulders. Nervously, I glanced back and forth, setting my gaze on Dave and the rocks. I realized that it would have been better if Alabaster had come along, because Dave had displayed how terrible he was at driving. Dave later explained that when he was a military exus leader he didn’t have to do the steering, he just had to be in charge, so he had limited experience in navigation.

Dave’s first driving mistake came when he started talking about how he couldn’t possibly measure how lonely his childhood was, and swerved into the side of a rocky wall. Dave immediately pulled the buggy back into the middle of the valley but the boulder still came tumbling at us. This is when Plittereeg displayed the first of his tricks. He concentrated very hard and the bulb on the top of his antenna grew at such a tremendous speed that it nearly burst before leaving his head. He swung his head around madly and the bulb detached itself at maddening speed whistling through the air with one side burning up with friction. It hit the boulder so hard that both the boulder and the bulb disintegrated on impact.

The next problem came not from Dave’s driving mistake, but just from the fact that we had neglected to wait for the results of Alabaster’s atmospheric testing. We had stopped to take some rock samples when Weasel started juggling rocks. He was incredibly good at it, given that he has four arms. He started tossing them higher and higher until one of them stayed in the air. Weasel watched it in awe. It started to shake thirty feet above the ground, then it was pulled back like a sling shot up into the atmosphere and shot down like the atmosphere was spitting out a watermelon seed. Plittereeg moved so fast I could barely see him- he was a blur- he did a variation on the hammer arm trick. Rather than forming his arm into a hammer, he left it as a hand, the other part that he changed was that the elbow stayed bent the entire time, so he used it as a boomerang. He tossed his arm up into the air and it grabbed the rock mid-flight. Plittereeg flinched with the pain of the rock hitting his hand with such tremendous speed, but I imagine that the hit severed his telepathic connection with the arm, thereby letting him work without having to concentrate on the stinging pain.

The arm flew back to him like a boomerang, just like he had planned and he held it up in the air in a dramatic pose, trying to look like, well, like who I don’t really know, and in any case, he was doing a dramatic pose. He let Weasel keep that arm but he did so in a confused manner. I don’t blame him. I had no idea why Weasel would have wanted a disembodied arm.

Dave took some rocks, hid them in teh glove compartment and trundled on. The third problem came, not because of atmospheric pressure or because of Dave’s bad driving, but because of the first signs of life we had seen on this planet- a giant larval insect. (I have to call it that instead of a grub for scientific reasons).

The giant larval insect came slithering and lurching out of a cave and attempted to absorb the buggy into its gelatinous body. Plittereeg’s fingers grew longer and the bulbs shrank and his fingertips sharpened. He coiled up his fingers, sticking his thumb up into the spring shape and flicked them out, shooting razor-sharp needles at the beast. This was the first time I’d gotten to see the actual effect of Plittereeg’s finger trick on a living creature. The embedded needles started to shake in the flesh of the larval insect and shot out snaky tendrils that also embedded themselves then flopped end over end across the creature, like a slinky down stairs, leaving horrible chemical burn marks where ever it flopped. The snaky tendrils invaded the body, burning it all over until the entire larval insect shriveled up, burned with very small low-heat flame for about a minute, then crumbled into ash. Plittereeg stood proudly in the backseat of the buggy.

Dave, worried about any more mishaps, drove us back to the pickle jar, but before we could make it to the pickle jar, a boulder fell on the ground in front of us causing a cave in. Dave attempted to turn around, but instead of doing that, he gunned it and zoomed into the hole. Plittereeg and me alone managed to jump off of the buggy. Weasel also tried but failed miserably, falling short by about a foot.

“I’m okay!” We heard Weasel’s voice through our radios. We could only keep in contact with Weasel because he had caught onto a ledge. The others’ radio receivers were most likely broken. With that, we headed back to the space ship to inform Alabaster.

The more cool stuff consisted of a large static shock, a super magnet, a skeleton key and lock picking set, and a limited stretch which allowed my arm to stretch out to three feet. The less cool stuff consisted of an airbag (I mean who needs an airbag in a hand?). That’s it. The kind of neat stuff consisted of an automatic rock, paper, scissors microchip that could sense what the other player was going to do, (I didn’t use it much because I consider it cheating) also a candy dispenser, used for firing tiny lead pellets but I assumed it could also be used for candy. Unfortunately I never got to test out my assumption because there are no M & Ms in outer space.

Plittereeg and I spent hours hunting down these various functions. Our deal was that I would let Plittereeg help me discover the functions and Plittereeg would teach me some new tricks I had never learned. When we finished discovering the various functions of the arm, Plittereeg did something I would never have expected of him. He shut his eyes, concentrated really hard, and the bulb on the end of his antenae lit up and started glowing with a tiny pulsating throb. The more he concentrated, the brighter the glow got. Eventually it got about as bright as an average light bulb. After a while it got so bright I couldn’t look at it directly, then the brightness went back down to a steady, glowing pulsating throb and the bulb began to swell until it was about the size of an exercise ball.

Then Plittereeg began to nod and shake his head at the same time. The glowing exercise-ball-sized-bulb began to swing in circles until it detached itself, flew across the room and hit the wall, exploding with a band and sending green flecks everywhere. I conveyed my amazement as best as I could without clapping and hurting my left hand a lot. Plittereeg did another trick. He concentrated very hard and spread out his fingers. His long dexterous digits became even longer. The bulbs on the tips of his fingers and thumbs shrank until his fingertips and thumb tips became wickedly sharp. His fingers coiled up into a spring shape and his long thumbs curled slightly and slid inside the cage of fingers. Then he flicked open his fingers and thumbs and tiny green razor-sharp needles shot from the tips of his fingers and embedded themselves in the wall.

The bulbs on the tips of his fingers grew back and his fingers shrank back to normal size. Very vaguely, Plittereeg attempted to explain.

“Most of my species’ tricks of self-defense and attack are possible because evolution has made most of our body parts detachable.” He displayed this concept by detaching one of his arms and dropping it on the floor. He shut his eyes and began to concentrate again. The fingers on his detached arm fell off and the stub of his wrist flattened out into a hammer-like shape, which he picked up with his remaining arm by the stub that used to connect to the shoulder. The elbow in his hammer-arm bent and he threw it with his remaining arm with all his strength. The elbow of the hammer-arm remained bent until it was about half-way from Plittereeg to the opposite wall. Then it straightened out and spun wildly out of control so fast it blurred in a way I had never seen before, looking more like a flying ball than a flying hammer. It hit the wall with such force that it almost dented it, and would have dented it if it had been made of any normal metal.

Plittereeg was lucky it hadn’t dented it or Dave would have made him rebuild the wall from scratch. Plittereeg’s missing arm grew back slowly, but completed its growth cycle in a matter of minutes. Plittereeg was about to display even more tricks when Alabaster called him to get to work on the terra-buggy we were building to help explore the planet we had landed on.

I watched as Plittereeg bounced over to the entrance to the maze in his usual energetic fashion and imagined what his next trick might be. With that, Dave called me to work on figuring out a power source for our buggy and figure out what we would use as protection. I grinned at the thought of how many possibilities there could be for self-defense.