We were beyond excited this year to head to the fair now that our little Justine is much less “squirming lump” and much more “mobile ball of unbridled energy,” old enough to appreciate some of the sights and sounds this fantastic event has in store.  We arrived early, soon after the gates open, and threw ourselves into experiencing the various shows and booths.  In quick succession we watched a troupe of acrobatic dogs, a family of bears capable of riding bicycles (although not bicycling backwards nor blowing bubbles) and a group of wakeboarders “shredding” some two by fours with the help of a modified lawn mower engine and a tow rope.

After a quick stop at the New York State Potato Growers Association booth for a nutritious breakfast (a loaded potato), we headed to the livestock buildings to show our daughter what all the animals look like close up.  While she found the 1234324 varieties of rabbits fascinating, she was less enthralled with the cattle, perhaps because of the nonchalance with which they relieved themselves, sporting a “so?  I pooped?” look of indifference on their faces. Frankly, I was surprised Justine didn’t identify with them.  She probably wondered what size diaper they should’ve been wearing.

We grabbed a quick lunch around noon, with Kim and Justine snacking on a chicken pita, while I decided on a slightly less healthy “fried sampler,” consisting of two fried oreos, two fried chocolate chip cookies, and a fried peanut butter and jelly (as a main course).  The particular booth I patronized actually offered a “you bring it, we’ll fry it” service, which I skeptically assumed was an empty promise until the guy in front of me was handed his fried hamburger.  Only at the fair.

After lunch, it became clear that our well-behaved toddler was quickly devolving into an over-tired “fussy monster,” and so we weighed our options.  We decided to try and find a quiet spot, nurse her (that would be my wife’s task) and then hopefully get her to fall asleep in the stroller.  That is how we found ourselves under some bleachers in the horse coliseum, pushing a stroller in figure eights in a vain attempt to bring about naptime while teams of horses pulled old fashioned stagecoaches around a dirt track nearby.  Judging by the knowing glances and snickers of passers by, our attempts at causing spontaneous napping was failing badly.  Intent on enjoying more of the fair, we fell back to plan B.  Ignoring her, and just walking about, in hopes she’d just pass out.

This failed too.

Finally we decided to leave the fair, and then ride the shuttle back to the parking lot in hopes she’d fall asleep on the bus.  After a few roundtrips and a chastising from the bus driver (“you can’t just ride the bus all day…”), we fell back to our final plan.  We went back to the car, laid our now inconsolable child into her car seat, turned up her baby tunes, and waited.

Two minutes.  That’s all it took and she was out cold.  She slept for the next hour and a half as we returned to the fair, visiting the dairy building for twenty five cent chocolate milk and frozen cheesecake on a stick, trying to find bathrooms that were not overflowing with fairgoers, and strolling through the two buildings full of vendors hawking everything from steam powered mops to ShamWows to Jesus.  (My favorite was The Right to Life booth, which was giving out plastic fetuses).  When she finally woke up, we visited the pigs and the petting zoo (with a real live giraffe!), let her learn the harsh truth about carnival games (which she didn’t – she wanted to take the rubber ducks rather than the prize), grabbed a quick dinner and headed out, some nine hours after we had arrived.

All in all, another magical day at the Great New York State Fair.  If you ever have the chance to attend, I heartily recommend it – and try the deep fried Milky Way.  It will change you.  Forever.

- MWF -

Happy Fatherhood Friday to all, and to all a good day!

As the calendar turns to September, Central New York suddenly turns into ground zero for apple-picking enthusiasts.  Seemingly overnight, a lengthy stretch of Route 20 near LaFayette turns into Apple Alley, awash in orchards with signs emblazoned with “U-Pick-Em” and “Apple Fritters” and “If You Can Read This – You’re In Range.”  Folks come from far and wide to partake in the picking process, and at dirt cheap prices, who can blame them?

I must admit that, having grown up outside of Philadelphia, I had no idea there were varieties of apples outside of the dark red Red Delicious that my mother always bought, let alone the dozens that are actually grown around here.  Nor had I ever experienced the joy of plucking a HoneyCrisp or a Gala apple straight from the tree, wiping off the excess DDT (so as to avoid harmful mutation) and taking a delicious bite, before chucking it over the trees in hopes of knocking a hapless picker off of their ladder perch.  I heartily recommend the trip if you have an orchard nearby.

We decided Labor Day morning to head out to Beak and Skiff, the number one place around here to go picking, and headed down that way right around the time they opened.  The crowds were thin, something that changes drastically as September wears on.  Instead of waiting 20 minutes in the line for the tractor as usual, instead we sat on the tractor and waited for other people to show.  We were soon out at the trees, which had been barely touched this early in the season, and proceeded to fill up our bag with the JonaMacs they were picking that day.

Faithful readers (Mom) will recall of course our apple adventure last year with my parents – Justine was but a few months old and while she gave a decent effort wasn’t particulary adept at grabbing the fruit off the trees.  This year, with her now ambulatory and rambunctious, we were able to get her to adorably grab the apples off the trees and throw them in the bag with a reasonably high success rate.  But what she really loved, as evidenced by the sizable wet apple stains down her dress, was consuming the apples.  We’d get her started with a bite, and then she just nibbled away.

I suppose I never really thought about how to eat an apple, but I assumed I always realized there was a core and not to eat it.  Justine, apparently not understanding this, actually ate the apple from the ends, and right through the core.  Frankly I’m still amazed that she did this, as in my experience, you’ll break your teeth on the core and grow apple trees out of your stomach by consuming the seeds.  (Man, that was a crazy summer.)  Regardless though, she loved it, as evidenced by the nuclear meltdown she had when we tried to spirit the half eaten JonaMac away from her sticky hands.

All in all it was a pleasant, and quick affair, and we left just as the main crowds began to arrive.  With a long naptime still ahead of us, we’d still find some time to relax this Labor Day.

And eat some apples to boot.

Ok – it’s not THAT exciting. But still interesting nonetheless.

Way back in the beginning of June, which my sun-addled brain can now hardly recall with any clarity, my wife embarked upon a bi-weekly nap time ritual – mowing the lawn.  Before the traditionalists raise their hackles about her handling this particular chore and not me, I should point out that she ENJOYS it, or at least tolerates it where in fact I despise it.  My fate instead is to scrub the stink out of the bathrooms every now and then – a fair trade if you ask me.  But I digress.

So with my daughter precariously asleep in her crib, my wife outfitted herself with her mowin’ shoes, strapped one of our monitor handsets to her waistband and fired up our trusty mower to halve our blades of grass.  She successfully trimmed our front lawn, which in the summer is generally more dirt and and sticks than grass (thanks to two gargantuan pine trees), and proceeded to the back.  She did a couple of passes on the back, and then stole a quick glance at our trusty light-up monitor to see if Justine was stirring.  The monitor was suspiciously absent.

Not a big deal, she thought, I must’ve dropped it.  She retraced her steps, scanning for the white monitor amidst the freshly hewn grass.  She searched the front yard.  She searched the house.  She tackled the mailman and searched his satchel to no avail.  The monitor had simply vanished.  Thoroughly confused, and perhaps drunk (I’m just guessing), she shrugged and completed the task at hand, in a constant state of cringe at what she assumed was to be an imminent shredded monitor.  It never came.

That afternoon, my wife hosted a gaggle of mothers and their children for a play date.  She delivered her tale of woe to the sympathetic women and their savagely uninterested toddlers, and they all began scouring the yard for the missing monitor.  Despite discovering a number of other missing items – a few ball-pit balls, a wooden puzzle piece and an original draft of the Constitution buried in our side yard, no one turned up the monitor.

I returned home from work, and listened incredulously as she laid out what had happened and everyone’s seeming incompetence at finding a relatively large handset monitor that lit up like a Christmas tree.  With my usual sneer I set about the simple task of turning up the shy electronics.  Much to my amazement, it was nowhere to be found, despite even my own expert searching.

After a heavy rain the next day, we were forced to abandon our search, confident that the monitor had either been rendered inoperable by the water or pilfered by roving bands of unsupervised teens hell-bent on causing minor inconveniences for newly minted parents.  After a brief moment of silence in which we all held hands and remembered “the good times” with the monitor, we turned our attention towards a burgeoning summer of parties, vacations, and many a night of drunken Parcheesi.

And then, just a few weeks ago, months after it had disappeared, we discovered the fate of our little white friend.  As I was unceremoniously uprooting plants trying to wrangle our hose into the yard to fill Justine’s water table, I uncovered our electronic marvel under one of the hostas in our garden.  I picked it up, admiring the relatively good shape it was in, and then scared the bejesus out of our cat as I scampered inside to show my newfound quarry to my shocked wife.

Thus the cycle of loss and recovery was complete – the question that haunted my dreams had finally found an answer, and that small hole missing our lives was once again filled in.  Or something.  But the most amazing part?

IT STILL WORKS.

Nice work, Fisher Price.

- MWF -

Happy Fatherhood Friday to all, and to all a good day!

‘This is all Jamie’s fault.”

Let me back up a little bit.  My friend and co-worker (the aforementioned Jamie) recently moved back into the area after living in Florida for several years.  He and his wife purchased a 70’s era split-level that needed a sizable amount of work to bring it up to 21st century standards (running water and the like).  Jamie immediately set to task on switching over the classic shag to some newfangled laminate flooring, a job that I “assisted” (held the tape measure) with one Saturday. That was the beginning of all of this.

The ease at which our friend was able to drop in the floor planted a dangerous seed in our minds – the idea that we too could “laminate” our basement, turning an otherwise inhospitable wildlife refuge for our cats into the faux-hardwood, safari-themed romper room of our dreams.  With minimal work and expense!  My wife especially has turned Ty Pennington on the matter, collecting paint swatches from Home Depot, drawing up elaborate blueprints and trying to keep Paulie from dissolving into tears (again).

These fancy plans, of course, require a significant reduction in what some folks term “clutter,” but is more aptly termed “housecrap.”  After an initial purging of obvious garbage, removal of several layers of shredded cardboard from the scratching posts, and a Tetris-esque repacking of the closet (increasing our storage capacity by 7%), we were still left with a basement full of junk and an inevitable conclusion.  Time to sell!

We came up with a two-pronged assault strategy to reduce our clutter and bring in some cash at the same time – selling the big stuff via Craigslist and the rest via a classic garage sale. We immediately set about listing items online, and scored a few early hits unloading some old video games, a small futon, and several tons of baby-generated fertilizer.  Meanwhile, we began preparations for the garage sale, going room by room, collecting old trinkets and unused gadgetry, amassing them in the garage and then doing our best to assign appropriate prices to our useless junk.  By Thursday night, everything was pretty much set.

With much fanfare, we de-garaged our wares Friday morning and I set off for work while Kim set about the twin tasks of managing sale AND our endlessly toddling 14 month old.  And from what I understand, it was a glorious sale-filled day, where we raked in dozens of Washington’s as our “housecrap” slowly and miraculously disappeared.  By the time I arrived home, my wife was dancing amidst the few remaining Christmas decorations, flush with the success of the day, and the prospects that a full Saturday sale would bring.

Alas, it was not to be, and that is how I found myself on that blanket in the grass, slowly suffocating in the humid August air, watching with disgust as the lookie-loos drove slowly past in their air-conditioned conveyances, in search of something that we apparently didn’t have.  We made a few sales early in the day, but for the most part it was a bust, and we were left to pack up boxes of crap (for eventual donation or possibly bonfire conflagaration) in the brutal heat of the afternoon, our grandiose plans of “trash to treasure” derailed in a late summer heat wave.

And all thanks to Jamie.

Jerk.