Does this look infected to you?

Yesterday Elise woke up with Croup. We are very familiar with this wheezing, barking monster but this is the first time it has hit Elise. She cleared up quite well after a spell on the front porch. That sounds pretty southern, doesn't it? Setting on the front porch for a spell with the little one, her on my lap wheezing away next to the azalea bush.

So I kept her home from school and she spent the day with me, happy as a clam, no sign of croup. We had a great time together, going for coffee, grocery shopping, hanging out in the front yard, saying hi to the mailman. She told anyone who would listen that she was "a little bit sick". A little bit loco is more like it. Maybe the pollen had something to do with it. The croup, not the loco-ness. Pollen counts above 130 are said to be "very high". The count hit 5700 here last week! That has to be a mistake. Today was 300 and something.

Eventually, the end of the day came and it was time to get her sister from school. We arrived and she was taking her usual time getting out of the car. I tried to hurry her along, which I seem to be doing a lot. Impatience is surely my fatal flaw. She made her way hastily to the doorway and I wasn't really watching but somehow, she managed to lose her balance and careen head first out the car and straight toward the pavement. I couldn't catch her. All I could do was stick my leg out to try to brake her fall. She bounced off my shin and tumbled to the ground. Bloody murder was screamed. Her face had smacked solidly into my leg. I did a quick check and she still had all her teeth. And none seemed too loose, although they all seemed a little loose which struck me as odd, but I had other more pressing matters. Anyway, she recovered quickly as she does. She is a tough little girl. She does have a lot of accidents these days. One of her favourite things to do is to walk or run while looking behind her. This often ends badly.

We went inside and told the story to Ms. Miosha at Georgie's class. That's when I noticed I was bleeding. My little monkey's teeth had scraped a gouge in my shin. I didn't think much of it and we carried on with our day.

The next morning the cut looked ugly. It is a little swollen and kind of oozy. The dreaded monkey bite! The girls were both very excited by this and the fact that this meant I needed a band-aid. Georgie made me promise that she could put it on but emphasized that she had no interest in removing it later.

I remember another time when I was worried about getting bitten by a monkey. Gudrun and I and our friend Nigel were standing looking at some baboons that were blocking our path. We were trying to go for a nice little hike in the Drakensburg mountains only to have our day ruined by some ill-tempered apes. Are baboons apes? Well, wherever they fit on the monkey- ape continuum, they grudgingly yielded the trail to us but hung out in the bushes nearby and grunted and growled at us with increasing intensity until we made a hasty retreat (ran away like little girls). We felt rather silly for being scared of them so tried again with similar results. They sounded even more aggressive and annoyed with us this time so we returned to the hotel. We rationalized that we had done the right thing but inside we felt like cowards. I think we told the guy at the hotel that the hike was "great". Tough sefricans like him would not understand. Nigel was concerned that a bite from one of these guys would be a bad thing as they had "dirty mouths, just like people". I was more concerned about them ripping me limb from limb. Those SOBs were big.

Anyway, I am off to put some polysporin on my monkey bite. I fear it has become gangrenous. Get the hack saw. I probably have a night of delirious dreams ahead of me.

April 23, 2010

Yesterday when I was picking up the girls, Georgie told me that cars are not good for the earth. "Bikes are good for the earth", she said. Well I don't have a bike so today I decided I would leave the car at home and walk to pick them up. It is about a 45 minute walk through our tree-lined neighbourhood, Emory Campus and Lullwater Park. I took the stroller and a backpack. It was humid enough to make an 85-degree day seem even hotter. I enjoyed all the beautiful flowers and trees along the way. The lower part of Emory Road is what Gudrun likes to call "the tree tunnel". This is the nicest time of year here, as long as you're not allergic to pollen. The azaleas are particularly nice.

I made my way through Emory pushing the empty double stroller. I stand out on campus amidst the coeds, all giddy about the end of term. A father among children. They all seem to be about 15 years old. Just when did aviator sunglasses come back? And why were they ever in? That's at least three iterations of that silly style in my lifetime.

By the time I got to Clifton Road I was a sweaty monster and was happy to reach the shade of Lullwater Park. Amazing that just a few weeks ago this place was barren. Not a leaf to be found and now it is a jungle. A snake-ridden jungle.

I got to the pool at the Eagle but changed my mind about going for a swim. Apparently, this was "Luau Night" and the place was packed with the aforementioned 15-year olds. I felt very old and out of place. There was one other old fart there but he was wearing a speedo. Poor guy, probably just moved here from some backward country where speedos are acceptable and just doesn't know how lost he is. And it was one of those high-riding speedos, too. I left him and his thinly-veiled genitalia with the partying freshmen and headed up the road to the Clifton School.

After a protracted pick-up (Georgie performed her slow-motion snack eating ritual) we were on our way. Georgie has a new teacher who is african-american and has a skin condition like vitilago or something so that her face is mostly white with what looks like dark freckles. Georgie said one of the kids asked her about why she had so many dots on her face. She told them they were "kisses from God". Funny that Georgie didn't ask us who God is. Maybe we've had that discussion already. I think we did, about all the different possible gods and belief systems, etc. From what I recall, she was bored beyond belief.

Anyway, we headed back through the park and ran into Alison's Dad, Chris. Alison is in Georgie's class. Chris is also coach of Georgie's soccer team, The Warthogs. He teaches biology at Emory University gets to walk from his office through the lovely park to the Clifton school. That's his daily commute. We had a nice chat there among the trees and flowers. He told me that the copperhead snakes hide out in the ivy bushes. Except the one that was after me, I guess. He was nowhere near any ivy. Apparently, the last University president, whose house is in the park, had a problem with copperheads biting his dogs. They kept going in the ivy. Kind of like a Darwin award for dogs.

We walked out of the park and to Gudrun's office on campus. We waited outside and sat on the grass. Elise and Georgie went up to some students who were studying and chatted to them about pre-school and Tinkerbell. Georgie reported to me about all the little red bugs she was finding. When Gudrun was done we went to 'Rise and Dine' for dinner. Gudrun ardently loves that place and would happily eat all her meals there. Growing up, she frequently ate pancakes for dinner so I think this formative pattern steers her to these type of establishments. She also loves Waffle House, a southern institution. I think Kid Rock got in a fight in the one here.

We walked home at dusk, still hot enough to make me break a sweat for the third time that day. Nice the mosquitoes are not here yet.

Atlanta headlines and news, 2009-10

They have brown bread here made to taste like white bread. They advertise it right on the package. Brown bread with that great white bread taste! Ok, that's not a headline but it is fantastic and therefore newsworthy. Why put up with the disgusting taste of brown bread? One of the many reasons I love it here. Other reasons include drive- thru everthing and the fact you can put anything out by the curb and someone will take it away.

The Atlanta city jail is closing. The downtown jail. Closing because they can't pay for it not because they don't have enough people to lock up. They got lots of folks that need to be behind bars but I guess they will just have to go somewhere else. Anyway, Fulton County is apparently very excited by this news. So excited that they want to buy the jail. They have even more felons to put away, I guess. This is funny to me because another county just outside the perimeter don't even have enough money to keep paying for their police force. They just laid them all off and are hoping for the best. I'm sure that will work out just fine. Good thing the MARTA only goes to Buckhead.

Oh, and the MARTA, Atlanta's public transit is bankrupt.

A funeral home in one of the suburbs has been fined for keeping some bodies unrefrigerated for more than two months. The owner of the funeral home felt the punishment was too harsh. I mean, if he could stand the smell, where's the problem? It's your classic victimless crime. I remember a similar story from South Africa. A funeral home where they kept taking the bodies, promising to bury them or cremate them and instead they just stuck them in their back yard. Eventually, someone complained about the smell and the owners got charged or fined or something. And just like here, they seemed to not quite understand what they had done wrong. The bodies were piled very neatly.

Not far from here, still in north east Atlanta, body parts starting showing up. An arm in this park, a foot in an alley and so on. Eventually, they had a whole person and a murder investigation was under way. As far as I know they never got the guy, assuming it was a guy.

They have been fighting over water for some time here. Water from Lake Lanier, a big man-made reservoir north of the city. It seems the Army Core of Engineers dammed up the Chattahoochee River back in the 50s and made the lake. Now it is a major supply of greater Atlanta's water. The problem is that folks downstream in Alabama and Florida don't like us using all the water. The once mighty Chattahoochee ain't so mighty anymore and farmers and others who enjoy water are unhappy. They showed some farmers from Alabama on the news. They seemed ticked off, though I couldn't really understand what they were saying. Word articulation is much better when you have a full set of teeth. That's not fair or even true. What's the best thing to come out of Alabama? The I-20. Also unfair but possibly true. Anyway, It seems there was never an agreement to use Lake Lanier for drinking water so there's a fight brewing. Governor Sonny Perdue wants to take it all the way to Washington but he forgets that folks in DC don't really care about the south.

Tennis

Before Gudrun broke her toe in an unfortunate household accident we had regular battles on the clay courts at Emory. These hotly contested matches had much drama and more than their fair share of questionable sportsmanship. Gudrun's penchant for calling all the close ones 'out' would irritate me no end. I also had the disadvantage of having to use a borrowed racket which was warped and strung far too loosely which caused me to spray shots wildly. Gudrun said that it is a poor athelete who blames his equipment. That's just like her to mangle a quote. But her forehand is formidable and she covers the court like Steffi Graf in her prime. Her backhand is outrageous. It is either a rocket into the corner or flies out of control into the the barbeque area (sorry, I mean the "grillin' area"). One of the strongest parts of Gudrun's game is her attire. She favours a very sassy tennis outfit which is distracting and puts me further off my game. But then again, winning isn't everything.

After two months in Atlanta-July 2009

We have been here two months and the dust has settled. Sort of.

Today has been typical so far. We all slept in. None of us seem to be able to get our sorry asses out of bed. It is pretty nice not to be woken up early by the kids. Georgie has been the biggest sleepy head, adopting a teenager-like sleep pattern. She's awake until 11pm, often complaining that's she 'tired of waiting until morning'. Elise isn't much better. She sings and yells and then cries, wants the door opened, wants a book, wants most of all to see mommy and eventually falls asleep in some strange position as if she was shot with a tranquilizer gun and fell right where she stood. As if sleep overcame her all of a sudden. Maybe it did.

The morning is full of negotiations and arguments about cereal, bowls, outfits, order of teethbrushing and sunscreening. Elise goes berserk when sunscreen is applied to her face or when her teeth are brushed then walks around the house moaning and wailing her sad lot in life.

Both girls are mostly settled in daycare. Elise is in Sweet Gum while Georgie is in the Oak room at Clifton school. Elise is the youngest and seems to fit in well. Georgie's room has mostly nice little children save for one psycho who likes to punch kids in the face then burst into tears. I told Georgie to punch him back if he did it to her but I know she won't. She is a peaceful child. (Luckily that kid soon left the school, possibly for some electroshock treatments). The teachers are wonderful. Miss Miosha and Miss Sonia, both originally from California. Occasionally, the fabulous Miss Rebecca comes to read a story to the kids or hang out. She's been there for almost 20 years and has a sort of free run of the place. She has a big booming voice. She has very short hair and one of the kids asked, " Are you a woman?" And she said, "AM I A WOMAN?!! CAN YOU NOT SEE THE BEAUTY?!

Carpenter bees and hornets

Spring advances. So many nice blossoms and flowers and everything is green. And the pollen is unbelievable. There is a fine yellow dusting of it on everything. Including the lining of my lungs. Allergics are in misery.

And here come the bugs. I almost forgot about them. The ants, the flies, the mosquitos, the beetles, the cockroaches. Our first arrivals are the carpenter bees. Think of a bumblebee then triple its size and there you have it. Georgie calls them 'wood bees'. They are digging holes in our mail box post. They leave little piles of sawdust beneath their tunnels. Their legs dangle straight down as they cruise slowly about. They often hover right in front of you, and look at you with those rediculous legs hanging down. This doesn't bother me now that I know they can't sting. I learned that fact from Georgie. She is a great source of information actually. For example, she knows all about ants. She freaked out on our walk from school yesterday. "OH NO! A FIRE ANT!" I asked how she even knew what one was and she replied, "Because it's RED!" and ran down the path. She told me they are called fire ants because when they bite you "IT FEELS LIKE FIRE!" I calmed her down about the ant but then a big hornet buzzed around her and renewed her panic. These hornets are rusty orange in colour. One was on our car's side view mirror and Gudrun was trying to get a good photo of it. Until it almost flew in the car. One got in the car later in the day. Gudrun got out of the car in a hurry and I whacked it repeatedly with a map of Georgia and Alabama until he was dead. I used the Alabama side of course. Gudrun has since instituted a 'windows up' policy. The AC is on all the time since winter has given way directly to summer.

Swimming at the Eagle

Swimming with Georgie. She is in an inner tube, kicking herself around with a lovely contented smile on her face. It is the day after her 5th birthday party. A bright, sunny day but not so hot today. In the reflection of Georgie's sunglasses I see my father. His hair is slicked back and wet. He's in dark sunglasses and has a stubbly beard. He's smiling and if you could see his eyes, there would be a twinkle. I remember him swimming with me in the summer. I was older than Georgie, I think. I could swim on my own. We would be in a lake or the ocean offshore and he would silently disappear under the water, like a seal, and be gone for an impossibly long time. Then he would surface just as silently twenty yards away. He loved swimming and he especially loved swimming underwater. Another of his specialties was the running dive, something he passed on to all his sons. We are three running-dive experts. He used to talk about how smoking had made it harder to hold his breath, though you would never know it from his numerous submarine voyages. And besides, officially, he didn't smoke.

On Georgie's first day at the Clifton School, I walked with her and her classmates down the road to the Eagle. Georgie was nervous about her new class and was happy I was staying with her.

Ray fell while running down the sidewalk and scraped his knee. The teachers had brought a wagon o' snacks and water. It was one of the first really hot days of summer.

We sat on the field that day in July, boiling in the heat. The field overlooks the pool and one of Georgie's new friends pointed out that one of the swimmers was going underwater while wearing sunglasses. Conner, I think, said, "My dad does that, too". I told him that my father did the same thing. Georgie who had not said a word piped up with, "His dad died, he died". Conner found this an alarming idea, that a dad could be dead so I attempted a little damage control. This lead to questions about how he died. More of the children were listening now. I wished I hadn't said anything. Thankfully, Miss Sonia took the conversation in another direction. I was off to a good start with these kids.

Now summer is almost here again, and that day seems like a long time ago. Georgie loves her class and her friends. Almost all of them were at her birthday party. Ray and his family are gone now, moved to Seattle. Georgie said she cried at nap time on Ray's last day. In one of her reports from the school, there is a photograph of that day at the Eagle with Georgie and her friends from the Oak room.

I often think of my dad when I am with the girls. Being father to two little ones brings back good memories of my childhood, none better than swimming with Dad.

Spring here, the grass is... still yellow

April 2010

Crazy grass here. It goes dormant. These are special varieties of grasses here in the south designed (genetically engineered?) to withstand the heat of summer. The tradeoff is that they are ugly and yellow all winter and well into the spring. And it is well into spring. Actually, feels like summer to a Canadian. This is good enough, no need to get any hotter. And despite a good couple of weeks of this sunshine and warm temperatures, the grass is still yellow. Not our grass of couse. That's because our lawn is all weeds. Lovely, lush, green weeds. It is the only way to go. It is all about the colour. Not that we have anything to do with it. Our landlord has hired some 'lawn care specialists', and I use the term loosely, who come whenever the spirit moves them to hack down our weed lawn and attack the jungle out back. Mostly what they do is use leafblowers to fire all the trimmings and crap into the neighbours hedge.

We are an embarrassment on our street, actually- our street of lovely homes (not rentals like ours) and well maintained manicured lawns. I think they use an overseeding of other grasses because many of them are actually green now, or at least greenish, and crucially they are all grass. Not a weed to be found.

Other signs of spring have yet to come. The hummingbirds are not here, nor are the fireflies. But the crickets have begun to sing at night. Not the thundering roar of summer but they make their presence known. Also making an appearance are the gigantic carpenter bees.

And the possum road-kill is back. I had to negotiatiate a hard left followed by a hard right ('the dead possum two-step') to avoid two of them down on Old Briarcliff Road, my route to pick up the girls. One was right in the middle of the road, lying on his side. I hate that. Just looked like he was having a nap. I dread seeing his progressively mangled body.

It reminds me of last summers 'Mr Possum' on (new) Briarcliff Road. This one is a really busy street compared to the wind through the forest that is Old Briarcliff. Anyway, this little guy met his end on Briarcliff in the 'valley of the jungle', an area just before the supermarket. There is a river below a bridge and an expanse of forest that looks very wild and exotic. There are vines and dense vegetation. He must have lived in there and decided to cross the road fo some reason. At first, before I knew about possums or opposums as they are actually known, I liked to think he was a mongoose. 'Mr Mongoose', I imagined, had lived in that jungle carrying out the noble quest of killing snakes. But after a visit to to the natural history museum and a funny story from my little girl, I realized Mr. Mongoose was in fact, a possum. Georgie had excitedly told me that her music teacher, Mr Randy, had had a possum appear in his kitchen one night. He had crawled in through a hole in the floor under his refridgerator. We also had one in our backyard and he attacked the dog from downstairs. Anyway the original Mr. Possum ended up dead on the side of the road out of harms way. Well, he was out of the way of further desecration by cars. That's what I hate about roadkill. Sure there is the whole petrifiying flesh thing, and the tragic waste of precious life so that someone can go to the store to get ice cream. But the real killer is the indignity of the continued abuse of the body. The smushing, the crushing, the slicing, the dicing. Enough already. There was, of course, no clean up crew and I passed him every day as he shrank and stank, and oozed, and then eventually dried up in the stifling heat. Over time he became a flat little patch of fur, and then almost like a stain. Then the monsoon of September came and he was gone.

But now the season has begun again and the poor little possums are in for it. For this is a town of cars and bad drivers and of forests and little critters who just can't seem to stay off the road.