The Measure of a Week

By most counts, it’s been a pretty good week. It was the third week without my wife home and I managed to keep the kids fed, get them educated, and send them out in public with mostly clean clothes on. Don’t ask about regular bathing…for any of us. Do dirty kids nullify clean bed sheets? And through it all everybody has remained relatively sane…sanity is, after all, completely relative. It has helped a lot that I have friends who have taken my kids for a few hours or loaned me theirs. With their help, this is what I managed to do this week:

A Book

I’ve managed to finish the introduction to a book I am editing on South Carolina archaeology. I don’t have a good title for it yet, so any suggestions are welcome. Now this book has been a long time in the works and has been held up by some colleagues who have had a difficult time turning in a paper. I may miss deadlines, but this book has been my nightmare for four years now. Not living up to deadlines in a contract with the press is bad enough, but I had members of a fund raising board breathing down my neck too. They have promised extra money to pay for a set of color photos to go into the book—something the press wouldn’t do because it would be too expensive and they would never be able to sell the book for enough to recover the costs. Understandably, they want to get this thing out because they want to use it as a fund raising tool.

Mercifully, some authors dropped out and others came through…and now the content is all there and my introduction is done. I think it is finally ready to hand in to the press for review. It might go in before Thanksgiving or I might take the holiday to fidget with the manuscript one more time. Either way, turning it in will get a big, heavy, smelly, tiresome, old monkey off my back.

Now on to those other papers, proposals, and reports…

Manta Rays and the Moon

On top of that exciting development, I managed to help my kids prepare presentations for their schooling this week. My daughter had to do a short presentation on manta rays, which means I had to learn a lot about manta rays this week. Did you know that the word manta comes from the Spanish word for blanket or cloak? I guess manta rays kind of look like blankets moving through the water and some traps used to catch them looked like blankets, too. Did you know baby manta rays are called pups and they are born alive? The eggs hatch inside mom. How about this, each manta ray has its own unique color pattern on their ventral sides—you can tell them apart if you spend enough time with them. And since they don’t have stingers on their trails, like sting rays, they won’t do a Steve Irwin number on you.

Meanwhile, my first-grader son had to make a model of the moon. We spent two nights making huge messes constructing the paper mache moon—flour and water slurry all over the table, the floor, shoes, clothes, and, of yeah, and the moon, too. I’ve done the balloon method of making something like this and it’s never worked out for me, so we started with a wad of newspaper. I now see why people go for the balloon. While under construction the moon would not dry---I assume because the gob of paper under the layer of paper mache absorbed lots of water. I tried putting the moon on a heater vent, but it got so hot in the house my daughter and I had to put our bathing suits on. Then I tried sticking it in front of a fan, but it never dried. I finally had to put the moon in the oven to get it to dry. Wrap your head around that one…I had the moon in my oven. The other reason to use the balloon method? Our finished product weighs as much as the real moon and can now be used as a bowling ball or doorstop.

On day three of the moon construction project, we painted. I showed my son how the moon looked smooth from a distance, but was really covered with craters when you got up close. We recreated the craters by dipping marker lids, a pill bottle, and the rim of a small glass in paint and making circles on the moon’s surface. I was pretty proud of our moon until I saw the models the other kids made when I dropped my son off at school. Those first-graders have some pretty talented parents.

Back on the Bike

With all that good intellectual stuff, I still had time to get some exercise. It was 80 degrees for most of the week and I actually had two days where I got an hour or two without my kids. I did what any other rational person would do. I rode my bike. (OK, I did some writing, too…oh and some laundry.) In fact, since last Thursday, I’ve actually ridden a total of 33 miles. Now last year at this time I would have done all of that in one, shorter ride. It took me three rides and 2 hours and 20 minutes over the course of a week to do it.  Still, considering where I’ve been for the last couple of months I’d say that is respectable. I’m even happier with the fact that the ride I took yesterday covered a little over 15 miles—longer than any ride I’ve done since June. I made up the route as I went along and it turned out to be a bad one through industrial areas, busy streets, and even on dirt roads. Still it was good to spend some time letting the stink blow off. Besides being good for my mental health, making it 15 miles tells me I am starting to build my stamina and strength back up.

That is a good start to getting ready for some long, spring rides. Too bad my training build up is going to be interrupted by the brutal South Carolina winter. If I’m going to keep going, I’ll have to get some long pants and gloves…and just plan to ride through it.

Next week is Thanksgiving and I’m taking the family circus on the road to my parents’ house. That means I don’t have to worry about feeding or educating my kids, and that will be a nice break. On the other hand I will have to drive 5 hours, and chop potatoes and celery. It also means I’ll have to maintain the illusion that I am a responsible parent by devoting more time and energy to keeping my kids clean and well behaved. On second thought, it might be easier to stay home and hit Ryan’s Thanksgiving food bar. It’s not good, but there’s a lot of it and I won’t have to help cook it. And I’ll bet the turnover in food is so high on Thanksgiving that the danger is pretty low that we will get food poisoning or find someone’s e coli contribution to the holiday festivities.