Christmas 2019

We broke down and bought the kids a Nintendo switch.

While touched by the kids' desire to want to buy gifts from r one another, we consciously decided to scale back this Christmas (despite the Nintendo purchase), and encouraged them to write cards to one another. They included coupons redeemable for chores.

After opening presents, we headed to the pool for a quick dip and to allow Clementine to try out the mermaid tail Santa brought her.

Christmas dinner.

Grief and Loss

It is not easy to remember Christmas isn't a happy time of year for everyone. 

For every family gathering under a twinkling Christmas tree, opening presents amidst a sea of wrapping paper, sipping egg nog or mulled wine, bellies full of Christmas ham and candied yams, there is someone sitting at a hotel bar watching football or cricket, perhaps far from home. 

A co-worker in the security section told me yesterday he was working on Thursday. He said he didn't mind. Working on Thursday, Christmas Day, at least meant he got Saturday off and two days off in a row when paired with Sunday. He's here in Colombo by himself, his college-aged kids back at university in the States. He said he didn't mind and had found the silver lining in his situation, but it's hard not to imagine him wanting to be somewhere else, anywhere else, than alone in Sri Lanka on Christmas, despite the warm weather, palm trees, pools, and beaches.

I think most people have mixed feelings about Christmas. I know Elise does. I do, too. Sometimes, I feel deficient because I don't loooove Christmas, that Christmas isn't my favorite holiday. I like it well enough, and I do love spending Christmas with Elise and enjoy how much magic it brings the kids. 

Christmas has always served as a poignant reminder of a childhood being shuttled back and forth between divorced parents. Every other year I would spend Christmas morning with my mom then at 12:00 my dad would come pick us up to spend a second Christmas in the afternoon with him, an afternoon which usually began with a long Christmas dinner with distant relatives and innumerable cousins I didn't know or see but once a year. If that. Every other year, the opposite would be true, we'd spend Christmas morning with my dad, until 12:00 when he would take us to my mom's house. 

Perhaps, I should have grown out of this resentment by now, but this was pretty much the norm until I had a family of my own, spending part of the day with my mom and part of the day with my dad. 

Before Elise and I met, I spent several Christmases by myself. Likely, intentionally. Exhausted by the effort of trying to navigate this balancing act. Perhaps, I was in Boulder where my work schedule and lack of disposable income made it difficult to fly back to Florida. I would go on long bike rides or a hike in the morning, then maybe to a movie at night. It was lonely as hell, but bittersweet because it was a path consciously chosen, self-imposed exile. 

It's hard to be "big" on Christmas coming from South Florida. No Christmas in Florida is like the silver screen, Hollywood vision with snowmen, caroling, mugs of hot chocolate, and going window-shopping in the town square. South Florida has its own unique conventions for Christmas. Not the least of which is a boat parade. 

My mom was never "big" on Christmas either. She had her own way of doing things, a way to put her unique stamp on the holiday season which included not having a Christmas tree. She would pick a pine branch from the yard and dress it up as the saddest looking, Charlie Brown Christmas Christmas tree you'd ever seen. Sometimes, she wouldn't even do that. Instead, she would just get a poinsettia and call it the Christmas tree. We didn't have Christmas decorations and we never put Christmas lights on the house. She never got a Christmas ham or turkey, but entertained with a variety of small game birds, quails, dove, and Cornish game hens. We'd have Publix fried chicken on Christmas Eve. 

There have been a couple of Christmases since she died, but she is always missed. For a lot of others, this will be the first Christmas without a loved one. 

I recently stumbled upon an interview with Stephen Colbert, the late-night TV host, conducted back in August by Anderson Cooper, the CNN anchorman. I don't know how I missed it.

The lengthy exchange (as detailed in an article in Vanity Fair by Kevin Fitzpatrick) began with Anderson Cooper recalling the death of his mother earlier this year. Cooper then pivoted to 1974, the year Stephen Colbert’s father and two brothers died in a plane crash when he was only 10. 

As Colbert explained how his upbringing subsequently pushed him toward escapist fantasy literature and comedy, Cooper questioned how the late-night host learned to accept tragedy as a way of life. “You told an interviewer that you have learned to—in your words—‘love the thing that I most wish had not happened. You went on to say, ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ Do you really believe that?”

“Yes,” Colbert replied, later clarifying the quote originated with Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien. “It’s a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering. There’s no escaping that. I don’t want it to have happened. I want it to not have happened, but if you are grateful for your life—which I think is a positive thing to do, not everybody is, and I am not always but it's the most positive thing to do—then you have to be grateful for all of it. You can’t pick and choose what you're grateful for.”

Colbert added that the common bonds of suffering can often bring people closer. “You get the awareness of other people’s loss, which allows you to connect with that other person, which allows you to love more deeply and to understand what it’s like to be a human being if it’s true that all humans suffer."

I believe this is an important reminder that life is a gift to he appreciated. All of it. The bad along with the good. Yes, loved ones will die, accidents will happen, friends and family will get sick. This is all -- as tragic as it is -- life. 

Bob Ross, the TV painter with the frizzy hair and soothing voice, perhaps said it best in an episode of his show The Joy of Painting from fter his wife, Jane, died from cancer. 

In the episode, he's painting a scene with a lake resting between two majestic mountains. He loads his brush up with a dark mixture of paint and starts to dab it all across the bottom of the mountains.

"Don't worry," he tells viewers, "I'm only adding this dark for contrast. Gotta have dark. Gotta have opposites, dark and light, light and dark, continually in painting. If you have light on light, you have nothing. If you have dark on dark, you basically have nothing," he practically whispers, his brush tapping rhythmically on the canvas. "It's like in life. Gotta have a little sadness once in a while so you know when the good times come."

Belief

Last night, Friday night movie night, we watched The Rise of the Guardians, a tale of belief, notably the competing desires of both the Bogeyman, aka Pitch Black, and Jack Frost to be believed in by little kids. 

It's the time of year when, as parents, we answer a lot of questions about belief and existence. Peter constantly asks, "Are you Santa?" Or downright states, "Santa isn't real." Sam is at the age where he's afraid to not believe, as though not believing means he won't get any Christmas presents, or more largely, that not believing signals a transition, growth, from the innocence of youth to something else, something he may not be fully ready to face. He may have already crossed the Rubicon of belief. If he has, he's been awfully quiet on the subject. 

For Clementine's sake we quiet Peter's doubts. If he doesn't believe in magic, don't spoil it for those who still do. Without really answering his question, staying intentionally vague, neither affirming nor denying the existence of Santa, the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny. 

Somewhere along the way, Elise and I stopped forcing religion on the kids. When the kids were younger and when we lived in Florida, we occasionally attended church on Sunday mornings. For a short while, we said prayers before bed, when Elise or I were tucking the kids in, kneeling at the foot of their beds, clasping our hands together, bending our arms at the elbow, and bringing our clasped hands to our foreheads, short letters to God dictated to our bed linen, thanking Him for certain things, requesting of Him others. We still say the blessing before most meals, but have directed some of those prayers to Poseidon, Zeus, Vishnu, Buddha, Mohammad, or any deity du jour.

Attending church in Colombo is a practical unreality. Last Easter Sunday, suicide bombers blew up churches and the lobbies of hotels catering to wealthy Westerners. Needless to say, we don't plan to go anywhere near a church or a Western brand name hotel this Christmas. Jews and Muslims in the United States may harbor similar fears. 

All the kids attended church preschool. It was just the right amount of religion at the time. 

I don't know if either Elise or I are prepared to say we don't believe in God or a god. I do think we are prepared to say we no longer believe in religion, at least institutionalized religion as it is practiced in most places around the world, an artificial construct to gather money, collect power, and exert control over others. In that sense, I don't know what to believe.

In a less religious household it is more challenging to keep the spirit of Christmas from being all about getting toys and commercialism. Last night at dinner, I had to remind the kids Jesus was a real person who imparted upon the world real kindness and forgiveness. Christmas is about Jesus' sacrifices, and we should remember to treat others as we would like to be treated, to be kind to one another, and to forgive. While we're enjoying the Christmas ham, drinking plummed wine, and opening presents. 

It's hard to say, but if I wasn't more religious when my mom was alive, I definitely feigned religion better for her benefit. Towards the end, I don't think I was fooling her. She was always perceptive and likely sensed she was losing me, but having her in my life at least forced me to go through the motions.

Watching the movie last night did make me think about belief. What do I believe in? 

Belief is a form of trust. I believe in Elise. I trust her. I believe in myself and encourage my kids to believe in themselves, too. Things many pray for we can make happen ourselves if we believe in our own capability. 

I don't think too deeply on the subject. On the subject of spiritualism or the afterlife, I prefer to be surprised. I have faith things will turn out all right and don't worry about much, but not because a higher power is watching over us or guiding our hand, because we've worked hard to be capable individuals with family and a few close friends to lean on; that's what I believe in.

Democracy

This not a political post.

But it is a post about politics. What's the difference? In an era of increasingly polemic idealogical differences between the two primary political parties, I've become more and more interested in the structure of democracy in the United States, if not the policies themselves. How did we get here? And where do we go now?

I recently read what I thought were two very interesting articles. The first talks about structural flaws in American democracy, most notably in the Senate and Electoral College. As the article explains, these structural deficiencies were intentionally baked into the Constitution by the Founding Father's. Today, and possibly going forward, these deficiencies may lead the United States from functioning as a true democracy. 

The second talks about why the beliefs of the two primary political parties have diverged so dramatically, so quickly, and so acrimoniously, and how that division will continue to become exaggerated going forward. 

Neither article really speaks to policy, or the "why" of government, but more to the "how" and what it portends for American democracy in the future. 

I respect the right of anyone to have widely different political beliefs than I do, even if I completely don't understand why they think the way they do. I know I have a very different world view than many Americans who probably don't think too much about what goes on outside of America's borders, if they think much about what goes on outside their county or even town. I respect the right of those to have a different political beliefs than I, understanding I would receive the same consideration. But that may not be the case now or in the near future as America becomes less a true democracy. 

It's hard not to extrapolate this argument out to it's furthest logical conclusion. If the structural flaws in the American political system are not corrected through legislation -- noting they are only flaws or deficiencies because the Founding Father's could have never imagined the internet, the strength of social media, or the fact what is true or fact can be controvertible -- the country is no longer a democracy, in the sense individual Americans do not have equal representation nor the same political rights. The disproportionate political rights will, inevitably lead to disproportionate human and individual rights as the majority party impresses their priorities and beliefs on the minority party. This is already happening in countries like Israel to the Arab minority and India to the Muslim minority. 

The fault line in America is along idealogical lines. For now. Though there are cracks along racial and  religious lines, America is strong. I am hopeful that unlike Pangaea, our nation will not drift apart, that our tectonic plate of shared culture will hold together. 

Hiriketiya

For Thanksgiving, we decided to drive south to the beach to go surfing.  We left Thanksgiving day morning, quietly forgoing the traditional turkey trot, hopping on the Southern Highway instead.

After leaving the freeway in Matara, we wound our way along a two-lane highway, occasionally coming car door to sea several times before veering off the main road onto a cobblestone path leading down to the sea.

Hiriketiya is a hidden cove surrounded by cliffs, tall coconut palms, and the press of the green, green jungle.  The forest descends all the way to the sea.  We stayed at a modern and hip hostel called the Salt House.  Complete with fish tacos, yoga, and cold beer. 

The hipster infiltration of Sri Lanka was evident, though not overwhelming or unwelcome.  Brick-oven pizzas and beer on the beach were pleasant niceties after the longish drive.  We had Thanksgiving dinner by the ocean, waves crashing on the rocks at our feet, the kids exploring tide pools in the fading light of dusk, surfers splitting the sea behind them, lingering in the swells well past sundown.  Our table sat on a wooden deck overlooking the water; the kids ate spaghetti and meatballs.  Elise and I shared french fries and Lion lagers.  That night as we walked home, fireflies lit our path, illuminating the darkest parts of the jungle; I didn't even know there were fireflies in Sri Lanka. 

The next day, we spent the entire Black Friday on the beach.  We borrowed a long board from the hotel, and Peter and Sam took turns surfing.  The break was bigger and further out in Weligama, well over their heads, so I swam next to them as they paddled into the surf.  There can be no pursuit as tiring as accompanying your son or daughter learning to surf.  I pulled them past the break, then pushed them into the wave.  I couldn't see them over the break, but knew they caught when they just disappeared beyond the wave towards shore.  I would then swim back to shore to pull them back out again; I slept well that night.

We have always said Sam is like a puppy dog, tireless.  If you threw Sam a frisbee, he would do the human equivalent of catch it in his mouth and return it to you endlessly, until your arm got tired, until your arm fell off.  Elise even calls him by the nickname "puppy".  Sam is to surfing as a dog is to a tennis ball.  He was relentless in the waves, holding his own with surfers twice his age, staying in the sea until his cheeks and nose were pink and blistered (we bought him zinc oxide when we got home). 

As Sam enters middle school and the fury of adolescence, he occasionally has what Elise likes to call "snow globe moments", times when his brain is like a snow globe that has been shaken, waiting to settle.  He doesn't know why he is angsty or upset.  Likely, there is no rational reason for his reactions during these moments, except for a torrent of neurons firing in his pubescent brain, lightning crashing. But there can be no better balm or elixir to combat this storm than the churning sea.  There is likely no greater gift Elise or I could bestow upon him then the opportunity to sit in the ocean and watch the water come in and go out underneath him, a steady rhythm when there is nothing else steady in his quickly-accelerating existence. 

And there were monkeys.  The view from our patio:

Clementine's Christmas Pageant

Clementine as the narrator in the primary school Christmas pageant!

Clementine's Science Experiment

Udawalawe

We took advantage of the three-day weekend to drive into the interior of Sri Lanka. Our destination: the national park in Udawalawe, a long four and a half hour drive from Colombo.

We stopped at our favorite rest stop halfway to Galle where we had breakfast. The kids Subway subs, and Elise and I shared a plate of string hoppers slathered in daal curry and coconut sambol with a fried egg on top. It was pretty phenomenal as far as roadside breakfasts go. We washed the spring hoppers down with a sweet, foamy Nescafe and were on our way. 

Our lifestyle has forced us to make several sacrifices. Not the least of which is a good cup of coffee is not always available when one wants one. You take what you can get and gradually you get used to it. The only coffee available at my office in Amman was Folgers instant coffee. This news may dismay many who are accustomed to make a daily stop at Starbucks for a $7 latte on the way to work. Like I said, you make the best of what's available, and before you know it you can't get going in the morning until you've had the cup of Folgers that pours more like something that should be flowing down volcanic landscapes, swallowing villages with thatched roofs whole, than something to drink. A proclivity for Nescafe is much the same. 

A flimsy paper cup of Nescafe squeezed between my knees, we were ready to continue on our way.

The first two hours mirrored our trips to the beaches south on the hour. This time, we drove past the exit to Weligama, all the way to the end of the divided highway in Matara. The next couple of hours would be spent on a narrow road, mostly two lanes, but not always, dodging women walking on the side of the road under brightly-colored parasols, shirtless old men on barely moving bicycles, sputtering tuk-tuks, careening buses that blast by us leading sudden force wave of wind and sound, and most disturbingly, dogs sleeping in the middle of the road. Miraculously, the dogs were never hit, nor did they even move as though they were even slightly concerned they may be hit. Not surprisingly, given how kind and gentle Sri Lankans are, it likely never occurred to either a Sri Lankan or the dogs they may be run over.

We arrived at Kottawatta Village just in time for lunch. We had to split up between two cabins.  Clementine and I in what she quickly dubbed 'Cool Cat Cabin'.  Elise and the boys in the other cabin.  When they failed to come up with a name of their own, Clementine named their cabin 'Cabin Sloth Bear' for the prospect of seeing the elusive bears on the safari the next morning.  

We actually did order the "Coatin Crapping Coconut Prawns". They were pretty good.

After lunch, we explored the camp before going for a long swim to wash away the drive.

We weren't exactly sure if the fish was being massaged or doing the massaging.

That night, after a dinner of traditional rice and curry, we watched the giant fruit bats take to the skies and fly from their diurnal resting places, on the hunt. They hung in the air, as though barely defying gravity, as though only held among the clouds by sheer will or by definition. These are bats, therefore they fly. They must or else every reference book in the world would need to be rewritten. It seemed to be the only thing keeping them in the air, because their flight was like a galloping horse. Every time they beat their leathery wings they would fly a little more, then fall barely perceptively, then fly again.

We had to rise early the next morning for the safari at 5:30. We met our jeep in the parking lot of the camp and we climbed up, soon pulling out of the camp onto the main road and driving through town to the park. 

We drove along the berm of the reservoir which afforded a 360 degree of the mist covered jungle around us.

Everyone agreed driving into the park was every bit reminiscent of driving into Jurassic Park. Right up to the giant wood log gates guarding the entrance. 

The kids were enraptured. I'd be lying if I said Elise and I weren't, as well. It wasn't just seeing the elephants up close (close enough to nearly touch them!) or bumping over the washed-out orange dirt jungle track or the sheer sense of adventure and discovery, not knowing which watering hole was home to a sleeping crocodile or which tree branch held up a giant stork, eagle hawk, or peacock on its extended sinewy bony bark finger, but also just the sounds. 

On the way back from Udawalawe, we listened to an interview with an acoustic ecologist from Seattle who had spent much of his life cataloging the sounds of the Olympic peninsula. He was careful to emphasize quiet wasn't the absence of sound as much as darkness was the absence of light, and one only perceived light by what it fell upon. and the sounds of the jungle were much like that. Layers of chirping, screeching, twittering, screaming, calling, singing of birds, frogs, and crickets. It was Tarzan if Tarzan could be an adjective. 

As amazing as the elephants were, equally impressive were the smaller creatures. Everything was familiar but also so foreign. There were dragonflies, but the dragonflies were bright red as though from Mars. There were flies but with emerald bodies that shone like gem stones. There were curious squirrels with striped bodies and tales that instead of being short and bushy were long and whip-like. We saw kingfishers and bright, impossibly verdant bee eaters. We saw species of birds that flew over head with short wings beating desperately and long tail feathers and birds that, like a burst of blinding sunshine caught your eye before starting away in a motes or receding golden brilliance. We saw egrets flying through the air like sticks or poles with slowly beating wings.  Peacocks sat stop leafless, skeletal trees, their long, long fanned tail feathers draped behind them like a train on a dress or a wig, and the birds left you wondering if what you knew about them was, in fact, correct. Weren't peacocks supposed to be flightless? And, if so, how the heck did it get that high up? 

We stopped for a moment and walked to the edge of the reservoir where we saw a herd of water buffalo bathing themselves in the shallows and water birds and storks with hot pink plumes wading along the banks in search of lunch.

Before it was all said and done, we would also see crocodiles and golden jackals, too.

After the safari, we headed back to the camp for a late breakfast, some downtime, and swimming.

That afternoon, we would head to the Elephant Transit Hospital, the place where the baby elephants were cared for, stopping for ice cream along the way.

The day ended with a thunderstorm as we ate an early dinner, thunder rumbling above as we sat in the near-dark.

"We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true; but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than tree-wavings--many of them not so much." From A Wind-storm in the Forests  by John Muir.

"In a big country dreams stay with you
Like a lover's voice fires the mountainside
Stay alive"  From In a Big Country by Big Country 

Mini Marine Ball 2019

So, when we moved from Jordan to Sri Lanka we were sure to bring with us one of our favorite events and what is sure to be the biggest event on the kids' social docket this year...the Mini Marine Ball!

This year, the kids' got to bring a guest with them called a "Plus One".  Sam invited his friend, Victor, and Peter invited his new BFF, Ryan. 

It is moving into monsoon season here in Sri Lanka, so -- as if on cue-- the skies opened up just as we were about to leave the house, and Elise and I drove five tweeners to the ball in a literal monsoon.  

As Elise was shuttling the kids from the car up the sidewalk under the umbrella, Clementine fell into a drainage hole in the sidewalk.  Her entire inner thigh had a giant strawberry on it.  After I made it inside, my first task was to search out the first aid kit, so as partygoers were straggling in, laser lights pew-pewing everywhere and the bass thumping, Elise and I were in the corner with Clementine, looking for bacitracin and gauze bandages to patch Clem up with.  She would eventually recover.  After spending the first half of the party as a wallflower in the crook of her dad's elbow, the rhythm would soon be too hard to resist. 

The party was different than the one we attended in Jordan in all the best ways.  Elise told me the kids' school doesn't really have a formal dance, so for the ninth-graders in attendance, this was going to be the closest thing to a school dance they were going to get to experience.  The ninth graders' "Plus Ones" were legitimate dates in prom dresses and corsages.  

The actual ceremony was appropriately solemn and respectful.  In the Marine tradition, the oldest attendee, 14 years' old, served a piece of the Marines' birthday cake to the youngest attendee, a year and a half old, so so, as a symbol of the older generation passing their wisdom down to the younger one.  

Sam and Peter were party animals from the very get-go. 

Everyone -- even Clementine -- ended up having a fantastic night.  They can't wait until next year! 

Left to Their Own Devices

The inevitable finally happened over the weekend. The kids' got their own devices.

I don't even fully recall the exact decision tree that got us to this point. As a kid, I remember having my own yellow Sony Walkman Sport. I used to love music. I mean, I still do, but listening to music used to be a hobby, a pasttime. I used to listen to cassette tapes starting when we lived in Houston, fifth grade, younger than Sam is now. I even remember my first cassette. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Followed by Culture Club, Adam Ant. When we moved back to Florida, I distinctly remember lying on an inflatable mattress in the living room in our old house on Snug Harbor, one holiday when my grandparents came to visit from Texas and I was forced to give my room up to them, listening to The Clash and Queen. Later, when I would reach high school, the more eclectic and nuanced the music the better. Green on Red, Neutral Milk Hotel, Violent Femmes, and of course R.E.M., Depeche Mode, the Violent Femmes, the Cure. 

But Sam had no way of having the same relationship with music. In Jordan, one of my coworkers was cleaning out his closet and came upon an old iPod. He put it up for sale on our work's Facebook page, and I bought it in a second for Sam. He loaded it with his mom's downloaded music from iTunes and that worked for a while, but it was a temporary fix, a patch, a band-aid. 

One of the great things about music is that sense of discovery. Like Vasco de Gama or Columbus, finding new music was revealing a new landscape, uncovering a new continent or passage around the world. I remember looking through my dad's old records and before even placing the needle on the vinyl, wondering what the music would sound like. I had no idea. An entire universes of new sounds awaited me. Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, the Grateful Dead, the Who. I had heard of these bands and knew they were significant in their own right, but I didn't know why and I couldn't imagine what they would sound like until I pulled the record from the sleeve and put it on the turntable.

Though we move frequently and a large collection of anything is antithetical to spanning long distances, it's one of the reasons I carry my old LPs with us from country to country. To instill that same sense of wonder in my own kids. We are currently, however, without a record player. Peter plugged our 110v turntable into a 220v outlet. The trials and tribulations of living overseas. I will forever wonder why there have to be different voltages in different parts of the world. I'll have to buy a new one soon. And speakers. Big ones. With sub-woofers. 

One of the main reasons I bought the kids Kindle Fires was to give them something to listen to music on, so they had that same sense of exploration and freedom I had. It wouldn't have been practical or even feasible, really, to get them cassette players. That's what I really wanted to do, but cassette players are collectors' items now and I don't think anyone is making cassette tapes anymore. Even a portable CD player was out of the question. 

But in order to play music on the Kindle Fire they have to find the songs first which entails surfing the web, or if not the web exactly, the music player app. Staring at a screen. Exactly what I wanted to avoid.

Also, I am the father of three voracious readers. I, too, read a lot at their age. Mostly, sci-fi and fantasy. Sam, especially as is a huge fan of fantasy. Again, I remember going to the Waldenbooks in the Twin City Mall (long before there were Barnes & Nobles) and buying a fantasy paperback to read. 

My brothers and I, all of us, were huge comic book fans, we would beg my mom to take us to the comic book store off of Dixie Highway and 45th Street in Riviera Beach, a horrible part of town, even now, every week. The store would "pull" new releases for us and keep them in a paper bag for us to collect on the weekend. I don't remember the day new releases came out, but it was weekly, so though your favorite titles were monthly, they rotated the new releases so one of your favorites came out every week. I was a huge fan of the Chris Claremont and John Romita, Jr.'s run on The Uncanny X-Men and Marv Wolfman and George Perez's time on The New Teen Titans. I still am. 

But the kids don't seem quite as I to comics as I was and I guess that is okay, especially since we don't live near a comic book store in Colombo. When we lived in Falls Church, we would ride our bikes -- me pulling Pete and Clem in the trailer behind my mountain bike -- to the comic book store, but even then, they were more interested in Pokemon cards than comic books. 

All this to say we needed a way to keep them reading without a Waldenbooks nearby.

Though they spent most of the day Sunday on the Kindles, they didn't look at them all during the week, so I'm hoping my fears are overstated. 

I guess we'll find out.

Halloween 2019

Halloween came early this year!  My work hosted an event on Saturday night.  Since Halloween isn't really a thing in Sri Lanka, there is unlikely to be any trick-or-treating on actual Halloween later this week.

Elise says she can commit to a handmade costume once every other Halloween.  I believe this is fair, since we had very few homemade costumes growing up.  Most of our costumes were the plastic mask with a rubber band that always caught in my hair and apron that smelled like toxic off-gassing we bought at the K-Mart on Northlake Blvd.

This year, Peter and Clementine knew what they wanted to be early on.  Godzilla and a mermaid, respectively.  But Sam remained uninspired up until the day of the actual party.

Elise signed us up to host a table at the party.  Unlike traditional trick-or-treating, kids would go from table to table collecting candy, instead of door to door.  Never one to do anything half-assed, our table ended up being a hit, as it was one of the only tables to include a game.  The whole affair ended up being a little bit like a carnival midway, and we were the table that got stuck handing out pencils and bookmarks, kind of like the one house on Halloween night that is handing out toothbrushes.

Since the theme Elise came up with was eyeballs for the table (she bought a bunch of ping pong balls and spent most of the preceding week coloring them with Sharpies to look like actual eyeballs).  On Saturday, right before the party, the kids finally got inspired, throwing out one awesome idea after another on how to decorate the table, including floating the eyeballs in vats of jell-o and filling plastic test tubes with colored water.  The table started to take on a mad scientist vibe, only we didn't have a mad scientist.  Yet.  Step in Sam as the mad scientist! 

Peter's Godzilla costume came a few weeks before Halloween.  Needless to say, he spent quite a bit of time inside the costume prior to Halloween, even though we asked him not to for fear the costume would tear.  

Elise and I both feared the costume would be too hot to wear.  Our theory proved correct, and Peter shed his plastic cocoon a few minutes after we arrived at the party, sweat pouring off him.  When it was time to go trick-or-treating to the tables, we discovered the zipper to the costume was broken (the costume came with a built-in fan that blew the suit up to truly monstrous proportions, but if the zipper didn't zip up, there was no way to keep the air in the suit).