Tales from the Shark Tank

The attempt to think of an effective bribe to motivate our son is fairly constant, but sometimes I’m still surprised by what works. He came up with the system of “tally marks” himself, whereby he can increase (or reduce) his allowance by his behavior. Doing something the first time he’s asked is good for a positive mark, as is doing his homework without reminder, and remembering to do things like take his dishes to the sink or pick up his Legos. Whining is good for a negative, as is gratuitous rudeness. It’s working beautifully, not least because he’s learning to be mindful of his own behavior, tone of voice, responsibilities and so forth.

But I still need, sometimes, to come up with something a little more extraordinary. I have some seriously overdue housecleaning in hand, and I want his help. (It doesn’t hurt that a large part of the chaos is of his creation, either.) So I made him an offer. If he would help me, not only would he earn a plus-mark, but we would make immediate use of the cleaned-up kitchen for me to teach him how to make a butter cake from scratch – reading a recipe, gathering and measuring ingredients, how to use the mixer and what butter and sugar creamed together looks like – the whole thing, start to finish, with an additional plus-mark if he stays with me through the whole process instead of saying “too hard, you finish it.” I was expecting him to want to think about it. Instead his whole face lit up and he bounced in enthusiasm. So that’s what we’ll be doing. The cleaning process got a start today. I expect we’ll be ready to bake by tomorrow. And then, of course, he’ll get to decorate his magnum opus.

Out shopping this afternoon, I saw a family that, to my eye, said everything there was to say about generational self-image. Mom and Dad, who looked to be about my age or a little older, both wore faded jeans and eclectic t-shirts. Mom’s hair, chestnut brown streaked with snow white, was in a single thick braid to her waist; dad had a neat iron-grey ponytail.

The kid looked to be somewhere around 17. He had carpenter jeans a size too big, a hoodie…and a short, neat classic men’s hair-cut that would have looked perfectly normal on any professional. He also had the classic “My parents are an embarrassment” slouch.

I kept a straight face until I was outside, but it wasn’t easy.

It’s unmistakeably spring here.  I went for a walk this afternoon to enjoy the sunshine and relative warmth.  When it’s been consistently either below freezing or incredibly windy or both, a still 45^o day is a thing of wonder.

It seems the birds think so too.  They’re everywhere, singing and courting and claiming the best nesting territory.  Killdeer, redwing blackbirds, robins, woodpeckers, finches, sbcbs (small brown chirpy birds) and flying jewels, hawks with great wingspans and tiny creatures so light they don’t bend the grass-stems when they alight.  I got to see a pair of male redwing blackbirds chasing each other all over the sky, one flying away at top speed, then evidently thinking better of it and turning on his tailfeathers to chase his erstwhile pursuer with equal determination.  Through the whole performance the female sat on the wire, chirping and flirting her tail, encouraging them to their best display.  The guys were still chasing each other when a third boy flew over and introduced himself, whereupon she flew away with the one who wasn’t busy chasing his rival.  The robins enacted the same little play, save that instead of chasing each other the fellows flew at each other, bumping in mid-air, fluttering down for a brief landing and then doing it again.  And sure enough, once the Robin Wrestling Team fluttered five feet away from the watching lady, another glossy young man flew down from the barn roof to escort her off to a nearby sapling.  If the current barn-cat (a feral calico, near as I can tell) isn’t with kittens yet, she certainly will be shortly, and the nanny-goat the neighbors around the corner have looks like she might be carrying twin kids, she’s so round.

So it’s definitely spring.  I’ll be potting up some herbs to go out on the back steps in a couple of weeks here, and hopefully walking more as the weather gets warmer.  I’ve even got new walking shoes.

I was pulling laundry out of the dryer and folding it a little bit ago, in preparation for tossing in the next load of soggy stuff.  That hardly requires much attention, so I was just letting my hands work on autopilot while my mind wandered, not even bothering to look as I reached for the next thing.  So you may imagine my surprise (and amusement) when I reached in and found my hand full of very soft, very warm fur.  To compound matters, the occupant of the fur in question turned to bump my hand with a very solid little skull and immediately started to purr like a diesel engine, an effect magnified by the echo chamber created by the dryer.  I looked in, to find a wide-eyed calico face with big innocent green eyes looking back at me.

I’m well accustomed, by now, to finding my girls asleep in a laundry basket, but Cloud evidently decided there was no good purpose to waiting for it to be put in the basket when there was this perfectly good cave going to waste.  Either that, or she felt her fur to be in need of an air fluff.  I’ve been writing this while I waited for her to jump out of the dryer.  Now that she’s wandered by, it’s probably safe to toss the wet laundry in, so that our boychick can wear what he wants to school tomorrow.