Adventures in Testosterone

Ian catching some air in Sellwood

Valentine's Day came and went like never before. I came home from the office to see my wife +Megan Asay walk out the door, luggage in tow, to the bus stop, which would take her to the train station, which would take her to Seattle to spend some time with her girly friends.This left the four boys home to fend for ourselves, which is actually simpler than it might seem, as I'm not of those incompetent, bumbling dads portrayed on television (my favorite: Hal, from Malcom in the Middle, although I feel a lot of sympathy for him).

My flamboyant feet

After taking the older two to school by bicycle on Friday morning, Ian and I met a former co-worker at Grand Central Bakery in Sellwood. I expected to find a quiet hangout, but it was overflowing with people and noise. I guess everyone else in the neighborhood was taking a vacation day, too. We hung out there for a while before breaking free and walking the neighborhood and soaking up the winter sun. I'm rarely able to explore Sellwood on a week-day, and today's find was the homesteading store, which had chicks and goats and ducks penned up in the back for perusal and available for purchase (Ian especially enjoyed that). I thought about buying one of the goats, but we just don't have a large enough lawn to justify having it around, although it would continue a generational-family-tradition of buying something big or crazy or expensive while Mom's gone.

Mount Saint Helens, from Sellwood Park

After getting a taste for what the warm sun feels like, I couldn't just take Ian home, so I was happy to accommodate his request to visit Sellwood Park. Ian loved swinging, although his servant soon tired of having to push the boy-who-refused-to-pump-his-legs. We walked around the park, sticking to the open areas to take advantage of the tanning opportunity. We even took the trail down to Oaks Bottom, although Ian whined about not wanting to walk once we reached the end of the descent, but I think I actually avoided carrying him back up the trail. Back at the top of the hill, we discovered a pile of bark chips and played king of the mountain, which led us to discover that on a clear day you can see Mt. St. Helens from the park--who knew? We soon returned to the bike and trailer, and Ian fell asleep within a minute of him not needing to use his legs anymore. I left him in the trailer once we returned home, but I was surprised that he called out to me as I was walking away. He wanted to watch TV, so I let him while I took a nap in my favorite chair on the sun-soaked front porch. Then it was off to rescue the boys from Llewellyn.

Edward, Aaron, and Nichole

I fail to remember what else we did that afternoon--a game of hockey in the driveway with Aaron and his friend Francesco maybe?--but that evening we drove to PDX to pick up Meg's oldest sister, Nichole, who was making her first trip to Oregon since moving to Virginia 18 months ago. She treated us to dessert at Mike's Drive-in: most of us choose ice cream, but Aaron went with onion rings (Edward almost got a burger, but he swung to the sweet-side eventually). Some random dude picked her up at our house a few hours later, and that was the extent of her stay.

Our conquest: Council Crest

Saturday was my birthday. Meg had arranged a man-date for me--a bike ride with my friend Andy--which included babysitter arrangements (fake-Aunt-Angie). As glorious as the weather was the day before, today was terrible, typical Oregon winter: mildly cold and rainy. We didn't get hit too hard (probably because we ride so fast), but it was miserable compared to Friday. We rode to the top of Portland's highest point--Council Crest--something I've done several times on foot--a place I've longed to ride. We took a slow meandering pace to the base of the mountain, then took an even slower ride up its slope. There was a fair number of people at the summit, despite the cold and rain and virtually no view of the city and its bridges and the Cascades looming in the east. We rode down a different way that brought us out in downtown, and we rode over the Hawthorne bridge to the foodcart pod on 12th and Hawthorne for cheap Mexican fare (not as good as New Year's tacos, but decent enough). And then it was a short ride home, but in the nick of time, as the clouds began releasing the rain in sheets.

Rare moment of semi-unity

For some reason I was cranky after the ride, and the only thing I wanted was to take a warm nap in my bed. I tried resting while the older boys played Minecraft on my laptop, but I blew a gasket at their conversations and kicked them off the game and out of the room, which worked because they didn't bother me after that. After dinner we loaded into the van and drove to OMSI (I've never driven there since we've lived in Portland--I felt so dirty). We had tickets to see an IMAX film, and the older boys expressed mutual interest in watching Adrenaline Rush (boy, had I known that we could have watched it free online, maybe we would have picked something different). I think each of us had a wildly different experience: Aaron liked the film, and of course promised never to do anything like the film portrayed; Edward expressed extreme frustration and having had to watch that scary show (and he claimed he never agreed to this selection); Ian fell asleep; and I thought the whole premise was dumb and flawed (i.e., trying to prove DaVinci's parachute concept), but it was fun to see people do stupid things like base-jumping  The only way to calm Edward down, who was ready to go postal on anyone who looked at him wrong, was to watch a documentary at home about penguins and Antarctica (really, the gesture made his so happy).

Sunday was nice because I didn't have to spend half my day in administrative meetings at church. And, frankly, taking three young boys to church isn't that hard, especially when the Primary has them for two of the three hours. We came home and played Settlers of Zarahemla and watched Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. I'm always surprised at the patience my children have with older films, even though they realize the special effects and acting are quite cheesy and so different than today's standard.

The Portland Japanese Garden opened their gates to the public for a day of free admission on Monday, so I took the boys and met Aunt Nichole for our first ever visit to one of Portland's treasures. You'd think I would have taken advantage of something so authentically Japanese long ago, but I guess this shows just how cheap I am (it's like 10 bucks a head to get in). Well, we weren't the only ones taking advantage of the free day. In fact, there were so many people it almost wasn't worth going. The boys were actually interested in walking around the 5.5 acre park (I lost track of Aaron and Edward from time-to-time), although I had to carry Ian on my shoulders most of the time to prevent him from making a scene. I recently acquired a nice piece of software that helps me process HDR images, so I purposefully took shots that take advantage of this fun technology. It's the latest cool thing that I like, and I'm not going to apologize if you don't care for it. I'm not sure if my promise of cooking the boys "Japanese chicken" helped sway them to wanting to have a Japanese-themed day, but all three helped to devour about a pound of chicken that night for dinner.

Ian exposed

The boys weren't too happy about returning to school after the extended weekend (Ian and Edward camped out in the basement (unfinished) in sleeping bags--I mean who would want to leave that behind in the middle of winter?), but they got up fine and rode their bikes to school without issue. I cleaned the house in the few hours before Meg came home, and afterwards Ian and I spent some time sunning our white bodies on the front porch (pretty sure Ian was dressed in my favorite combination of sweat pants and no shirt). Once Meg returned home, we didn't have time to re-connect or share stories, as I had to saddle my horse and ride into the office for a half day of work.