Where are we?

If you've been following along, you know we've got a map thing going on at our house. A massive National Geographic donation from my in-laws meant awesome wallpaper for our four-year-old's room. And there was that post that got shared around the internet from that time I carved an orange peel into a map of the world.

Well. We bought oranges again, so you can guess what kind of project we tried. Lately we've been working with Addison to understand the difference between cities, states, and countries, because she'll say, "I want to go visit Grammy and Gramps in California." But even though we live in different cities, we all live in California.

So this time, a map of the United States. Addison can now pick out California, Utah (where we used to live), and Alabama, where her Papa and Nena live. And Hawaii, which is her favorite state.

We talked about what makes a state, and the order they were added. And here they are, in a never-ending animation. Like watching a washing machine go around, if you watch long enough, you'll eventually reach enlightenment.

Valentine's Day, a tribute to U2

Because today is the day I imagine all sorts of people going around expressing their undying affection for Bono and the rest of his U2 companions. U2, you're the best.

Tickles, Lemonade

My favorite blog posts of 2014

Things slowed down on the blog in 2014, coinciding with settling into a small town in the mountains north of L.A. And I'm pretty okay with it being slow. Since we've been here, we've tended fires, skipped rocks, taken hikes, dug holes, and generally taken our time to enjoy things around us.

So even though it's been a slow year in some ways, some big things happened. To start, we bought our first house. HOLY CRAP, we're home-owners. It's almost like that moment your child is born and you start looking around, going, "now what?"

On the blogging front, there was that moment that my post about oranges hit the front page of Reddit, and it seemed for about twenty-four hours as though the entire internet was scolding me for 1. my strained metaphors, and 2. using a Mercator Projection as a model for an orange-peel map. Duly noted, internet. Duly noted.

And it's a little surreal, but also way, way cool to announce that I'll be a speaker at the 2015 Dad 2.0 Summit! When the founder called to extend the invite, it's possible I told him I might pee my pants. Clearly, it's gonna go really well.

Anyway, here's my round-up of my favorite posts of the year (click here for 2012 and here for 2013) with brief commentary from me and my four-year-old:

My favorite blog posts of 2014 

What to do with your old National Geographic collection

Me: Now that we own our home, I can't help looking all around and thinking of all the cool projects I can do to really make it ours. This was a fun start.

My four-year-old: "Those maps are pretty. They tell me about the world. My favorite one is the Hawaii one."

The Jabberwocky 

Me: We've made something of a tradition to do a poem every Halloween (the year before was Poe's "The Raven"). I love doing these with my daughter, 'cause she really gets into them. She's pretty much the cutest Jabberwocky slayer ever.

My four-year-old: "The claws that snatch, the jaws that bite! Beware the Jubjub bird!"

So long as we are dirty, we are pure

Me: In which we discover my daughter's new favorite outdoor activity: getting buried up to her chin in the dirt so that pirates can find her and dig up this four-year-old pirate treasure.

My four-year-old: "I'm kicking that dirt. I feel pretty good about that. I like to be buried in the dirt, because it helps me to hide from pirate dad."

In your image, orange, the world was made

Me: I really enjoyed this one. I think it came out pretty well, despite inadvertently using the much-reviled Mercator Projection. And thanks, Reddit, for the constructive criticism.

My four-year-old: "That looks like a world made of orange peels. Hey! I see the United States!"

A father for the fatherless

Me: This was my wife's first guest post on my blog, and it shows why I married this amazing woman. 

My four-year-old: "That looks like you and me walking together in a corn field. Just walking, and just holding hands, talking about princesses."

Pablo Neruda was not as brave as my daughter

Me: My very first post about a product, and in true Neal fashion, my metaphors abound. And of course I invoke Pablo Neruda. 

My daughter: "Am I eating something? Maybe it is a deer. Which makes the deer sad. Sorry, deer."

A New Year

Brave little bears

A short story, part fiction, with some bits of truth

“Get that out of your mouth!”

She looked up from the deer’s carcass, blood smeared from nose to chin, a chunk of meat clenched in her teeth. Her breath steamed into the cold winter air.

“Why?” she asked, pulling the stringy, dripping thing from her mouth. She stretched it between her two hands, straining to pull the single piece of flesh apart. "It's real chewy."

“It’s not cooked,” he said, setting his rifle in the notch of a tree.

“Bears don’t cook deers when they eat them.”

“Well, you’re not a bear.”

“I am! Rawr!”

He plucked the dripping gobbet from her hand and whipped it away into the forest, and she jumped about him growling and swiping with rigidly hooked fingers. Finally, she kicked him in the shin.

“I AM a bear.”

“Fine. But someday you’re going to be a grown woman and grown women do not eat raw meat with their bare hands.”

“Grown women have bear hands?” She eagerly made claws again.

“Not exactly,” he said, and then sighed at her crestfallen expression. He squatted on his heels and beckoned her. “Come here, little bear.”

He wiped her face with several handfuls of snow, an effort that deteriorated into a small-scale battle and left him sprawled on his back in a snow drift. She glared at him defiantly, wiping her cheeks furiously with the backs of her sleeves. He glared back as he struggled to rise, but couldn’t maintain his ire as he overbalanced and fell sideways back into the drift. He heard giggling as he struggled to extricate himself.

“Alright, get over here and help your old man!” 

In the resulting tug-of-war, the tiny giggler offered marginal assistance, but he maneuvered so she would believe she was doing most of the work. By the time he was on his feet, they were both breathing hard. He said something about her muscles, and she beamed up at him, eyes bright, cheeks rosy, and drops of blood spattering her coat. 

"How did it taste?" he asked.

"Not my favorite. I think I would like Rhinoceros better."

"I'm sure. Do me a favor, would you? The next time there's a dead animal on the ground, don't put any of it in your mouth."

* * *

His steps plunged into the snow, over and over again. For a while the girl had shouted directions to him from the sled, but now she was silent, and the only sounds were his rhythmic steps and the constant crunch of the sled over the snow. At a clearing in the trees he paused and let the sled come to a stop. He shrugged the rope from his shoulder and stretched, staring out over the valley below.

“What’s out there?” the girl asked. She didn't move from her spot, nestled in a bundle of blankets, the deer’s body stretched out beside her.

“Civilization,” he said.

"What's that?"

"Well, it's lots of people all crowded on top of each other, trying to figure out ways to live together."

“What kind of people?”

“All the kinds.”

At the foot of their mountain, settlements were sparse, but in the distance he could just make out the lights of the city winking on, one by one.

“The lights are pretty,” she said.

“Yep,” he said. “It’s good to watch sunsets.”

“Not the sunset.” She stabbed a finger out from beneath her blankets. “Those little lights. Where the people are.”

He grunted, and circled the sled, checking to make sure all the straps were secure, that the carcass was still wrapped sufficiently and not trailing blood in the snow. He pulled the blankets a little more securely around the girl. Wiped her nose with a blanket edge.

“Why don’t you like people?” she said.

“I like you. You’re a person,” he said. “Some of the time, anyway.”

“And mom’s a person,” she said. 

“See? I like people,” he said.

"But you don't like going out there. Where people are on top of each other."

"Well, I don't mind meeting a person like a bear or a moose in the woods. It’s nice to see them from a distance. Maybe you get close enough to wave. But you put a lot on the line when you get too close.”

She thought about that. He bent to retrieve the rope and looped it over his shoulder.

"I would get close to a bear. Because I'm brave," she said.

"Yes, you are," he said. "But then it's my job to protect you, and make sure you don't get too close. To keep you safe." 

He paused.

"The truth is, sometimes it's me I'm keeping safe. Your dad is a man who likes to stay on his mountain."
“I like your mountain. But I want to go down there,” she said. “I think I might like it, too.”

“I went down there once, when I was younger," he said. "It’s where I met your mother.”

“But then you came back up here.”

“Yes.” 

"Well, I would go down there, and nobody would scare me. Because I would be a grown woman. Maybe even bigger than you!"

She climbed off the sled, shedding the blankets. She stamped her feet and clapped her mittened hands together, a four-year-old’s version of calisthenics .

“I can walk the rest of the way,” she said. “I’m am getting big, you know.”

“I know.” She tramped in huge steps around the sled and towards the cabin, which was just visible through the trees, the glow from its windows a tiny beacon of comfort and warmth.

He glanced again out over the valley. And then smiled, as he heard in the distance a small voice shout “Rawr! I’m a bear!”

What to do with your old National Geographic collection

Recently my in-laws asked if we'd like their old National Geographic magazines. It turns out they've been saving them since Columbus reached the Americas.

Our house is small, and we're pretty dang bad at finding appropriate storage places for things. We've still got 90% of our book collection in boxes, although I plan on that changing once escrow goes through on our house (my dreams are filled with full-wall built-in bookshelves). We almost passed on the collection, but then we were like, "but they're National Geographics!" So we took them. And then they sat around for a long while as we tried to figure out what to do with them.

Makeshift beds were made. Towers were built. Dangerous gymnastic stunts were performed with enthusiasm and daring. At which point we had to recognize the unwise use of stacks of National Geographic magazines as building blocks and play equipment.

I remember, decades ago, sitting at my parent's kitchen table, poring over the latest National Geographic magazine. I'd examine every page and imagine worlds far beyond the scope of my everyday life. There's magic in these things. Mystery. Adventure. Only yesterday, the plumber who came to fix our water heater saw our stack of National Geographics and waxed on about his own love affair with the magazine.

Perhaps most exciting of all was riffling through the pages to find the secret artifact nestled amidst articles on rain-forest spiders or new discoveries about Marco Polo's journeys. The neatly folded map is the cereal-box prize for the kid who has a little bit of Indiana Jones in her heart.

There's no doubt my four-year-old is an adventurer, so much so that she puts this home-body dad to shame. I'm working on living up to her craving for adventure. Baby steps, you know? In the meantime, this homage to her childhood and my own is what we came up with for my daughter's room:

I know that not every map is created or even accepted by the people who reside within the (sometimes arbitrary) "boundaries" that a map describes. And a thoughtful play like Brian Friel's
"Translations" complicates even the practice of naming and labeling on maps, charts and historical and cultural analyses. Yet even accepting those qualifications, I identify with Gilbert H. Grosvenor's (the first full-time editor of National Geographic magazine) thoughts on the volume of meaning, of imagination, and of creativity to be appreciated in these works of art as efforts to understand the world we live in.

"A map is the greatest of all epic poems. Its lines and colors show the realization of great dreams."

- Gilbert H. Grosvenor, Editor of National Geographic from 1899 -1954