Madeline cracked the code on our song list recently. Most songs we sing on a regular basis come from the same basic tune. ABC, Twinkle Twinkle, and Bah Bah Black Sheep are essentially the same song. So Madeline has been busy working out transitions between them like A,B,C,D ha’ you any wool and Twinkle Twinkle little star now I know my A, B, Cs. The most interesting was when she decided to come-up with her own song. I tried to switch the song to the itsy bitsy spider but Madeline sung out “How about acorn?” and then proceeded to sing, to the tune of twinkle, etc. “Acorn, Acorn, how you are? Acorn Acorn how you are?” It isn’t much for a first lyrical effort but it was fun to hear her make up her own song. She has gotten a stronger will. Last week she asked me for a cookie so I said “How about a carrot?” She replied “How about a cookie daddy?”

Posted by Dan Housman at 09:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

During the past week we happened to rent both “Blood Diamond” and “Fast Food Nation”. It was hard not to notice that these two movies were a little different from the movies with people dressed in leotards pretending to be bat-men or comedies involving Will Farrell as an incompetent (insert weird profession here). I liked both movies but they both had within them some deep political agendas to educate people about issues we would normally be blissfully unaware of spoon-fed as drama with brand name actors and musical stars. In the case of Blood Diamond the basic message within the action packed drama was that the DeBeers family controls the diamond industry as a cartel and that nice rock that westerners are paying $5-$20K for as a down payment on a wife is the source in a land far away of children being recruited to becoming soldiers and countless victims of machine gun fire in senseless wars. The Fast Food Nation thesis was something similar but in this case more about how we are so divorced from the source of our beef that we don’t appreciate what happens on the killing room floor, who is suffering in substandard conditions to bring the food to us (illegal immigrants), and that our food probably has a lot of cow dung mixed in with it because nobody cares to police it that hard. In this case the meat packing giants replaced the DeBeers family.

So I make a couple of observations from the spoon feeding of this information to me. The first is that I, like most folks of my generation, no longer actively seek out this sort of information. I go to my regular source of information/entertainment, Hollywood Video, and consume whatever they give me. In order to communicate social issues to me you need to package them in a format that I can digest, usually something with a love affair between Jennifer Connelly and Leonardo DiCaprio with lots of explosions and body count. I can also sit through seeing that guy from the Seventy’s Show, Greg Kinnear, and Bruce Willis.

But the other more obvious fact is that there is something that hasn’t quite been worked out in the modern world in terms of balancing the supply chain with old-fashioned ethics. It seems that given the world of corporations and the need for profit established in a capitalist society, connected with the public’s need not to know dirty details about the sources of their consumer products, it is more than likely that the suffering by some will be created inadvertently by the consumer machine. This was unlikely to have been as much of a problem in a world where travel and transportation was more restricted. That is a highly ironic fact given that many people thought that the birth of international travel was a great peace keeping event. So I’m hoping that the next generation is getting fed proper visibility into the repercussions of their lifestyle so that actions of consumers, myself included, can be somehow directed to lead to ethical supply systems. It may be impossible to do but the alternative… that’s what we have now and it isn’t working ideally in some cases.

Posted by Dan Housman at 08:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few weekends ago we went to a wedding reception for Sarah’s cousin. The reception was in Rhode Island and was a nice party with dancing and a live band. Madeline was getting a bit restless hanging out in her high chair during the meal so I took her for a walk outside the hotel. On driving into the hotel we had noticed the odd feature that it was surrounded on all sides by highway and had a parking lot full of RV homes. So I figured the right adventure to go on would be to figure out the story behind the RV homes. On the way to the RV homes we passed an old rusted excavator. Madeline is a big fan of the excavator because it is featured in the Roger Priddy Baby Things that Go book. We’ve had many conversations about the parts of an excavator mainly the back bucket, front shovel, cab, and the wheels. As we approached the excavator we saw some hotel workers wandering close to the woods. At first I thought they were out on a smoking break but when we got closer we could see that they were offering some cold cuts like a ritual offering in front of a lamp post that had fallen near the excavator. I asked them what they were doing and they said that they were hoping to catch the kittens living inside of the lamppost to take them to an animal shelter. Since Madeline was in her stroller I drove her up as close as possible to the lamp and we both looked inside to see if we could get a look at the baby cats. From the inside I could see the eyes of a black and white one that was interested in coming out into the open and it looked like a couple of others were cowering, more timidly, behind him. We watched for a while but given that I didn’t want Madeline to wander into the patch of poison ivy behind the kittens I kept her in her stroller. As she once again got restless I continued around the corner with her.

On the other side of hotel I figured out the reason behind the RV homes. The hotel was playing host to a Springer Spaniel conference. RVs full of spaniels getting their ears blow-dried in wrappings filled rows of parking spaces. We checked out a couple of puppy pens filled the young representatives of the breed but were disturbed by the loud sounds and smells of the many generators supplying needed power for the blow drying activities.

Upon completing our circle we returned to the hotel to reach the rotunda room where the reception was still in full swing. We told Nick the story of the kittens and the dog show and he warned us not to tell Christina since she would be likely to take the kittens home. But he told Christina for us and before we left for home after the reception we had taken two more trips to see the kittens. As we left Sarah hunted the parking lot for a barrette that Madeline had lost while Nick and Christina rounded-up three of the kittens into a box to take home to Massachusetts.

After caring for the three kittens for a few weeks they were working on plans to distribute them to loving homes. Since we knew the tuxedo kitten from our encounter at the lamppost we knew that he was the least shy of the bunch. Christina and Nick dropped him off for a few nights to see how life would be with him and Annabelle. I figured that Annabelle would be happy to have a little friend to play with to keep her occupied but Annabelle’s reaction was not so positive. She mainly hissed and growled at us and him and got into a state of feral animal-ness that was quite frightening. My thought was that if left alone with the kitten she would shred him and send back the pieces in the morning. So we tried for two days to try to manage a peace process where the kitten was to sleep in Madeline’s room with the door closed and avoid encounters with Annabelle. Unfortunately this was impossible. Madeline can open doors and likes going between rooms. Eli, the little kitten, was too curious to stay in her room if the door was open a crack. The results were some nasty scratches on Madeline who would try to pat Annabelle or pick-up Eli while Annabelle was in her feisty evil mood.

We returned Eli after a could of days of war and I figured we weren’t going to be able to make these cats live together but Sarah decided she could handle the war of the cats and he was back 48 hours after leaving to get his shots. Since his return Annabelle has stopped growling and hissing and may be on the road to accepting him as a new play mate. Madeline is not learning fast enough how not to handle him. We are having a great time playing with the new kitten though.

Posted by Dan Housman at 07:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sarah, Madeline, and I had been looking to purchase a house througout the spring. We went to many open houses with an open mind regarding the pros and cons of continuing to live in the city versus going out to the country. So we looked in both Brookline and Newton. Well it wasn't that adventurous but we saw our share of interesting properties and learned a bit about the inside of many people's homes. We saw one home where the entire back yard had become a concrete swimming pool with a thin walking area behind it. They were handing out sheets to let us know that the pool could be filled in for $15000. Another place reminded me of Graceland because it looked preserved from the 50's in all of the decor and electronics. Some places were too expensive although very impressive including a house that we loved but felt like we would be paying for it for the rest of our lives in mortgage payments. We took a tour of the conversion of the Water Works in Cleveland Circle hoping to see the part that they were going to show the big two bedroom units they were hoping to sell for $4-5 million but only saw some crappy stuff. While looking one day we had brought Stephanie along and she recommended signing-up for RedFin as a broker since her brother Eugene had done so. I signed-up with RedFin. I tried to track which homes were going up or down in price. I watched locations come on or off the market. I called some place that had come down $750,000 dollars that came with a pool and a mini-house only to find that they were pulling the property from the market because of a lack of interest. We almost made an offer on a house that my whole family had toured thinking it might be the right one and watched as it kept coming down in price but then while we were travelling to Orlando we foundd that it had disappeared. We toured one house on Lake Avenue that everyone had seen before while strolling by the lake to gawk at the beautiful porch and flowers only to be disappointed after seeing the interior of it and then getting into a fight with the realtor who hated the concept of a discount broker.

Then one day while touring an open house found on Redfin Madeline found a cool toy that beeped and played music that she could play with for a few hours in a family room. While to we decided that the price was within the expected range of the market, the house was within a reasonable distance of Newton Centre, and that we could afford it and live there. So we worked with our online broker, negotiated a little bit, and to a Tudor house. We completed the purchase and sale agreement last Monday after discussing who would pay for the removal of some asbestos in the attic so that we could install central air conditioning as our way of combatting the effects of global warming. On August 15th we should close pending the success of securing our mortgage and putting down a payment. Then some renovations and we are in our new home.

It actually was a lot of work and energy surfing the net looking at every blip that might be the right place. Now with the All Star Break and no Red Sox to view on Game Day and no houses to scan on real estate sites I am trying to figure out what to be searching for next on the Internet? I'm sure I'll figure it out.

Posted by Dan Housman at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)