Springtime Color

Photos from the yard, March through April 2010.  Our first Spring in this house.

As Freud Observed

Yesterday evening I was lying stomach-down on the floor in the den reading about Erikson’s 8 Stages of human development.  As two year-old Seventy-Six ran, jumped on my back, put his arms around my neck and swung around so that his face was next mine as he fell over onto the book screaming gibberish noises in my ear and laughing, I was reading the following aloud to him:

“As children seem so much more in control of themselves and reach peaks of willfulness, societies, through parents, decide it is time to teach them the right ways to behave.  As Freud observed, parents do not permit their children to enjoy their anality in any way they please; instead, they train them to behave in the socially proper way.” (Crain, 2005, p. 283)

Caution-Lady, in the room at the time, and I cracked up at Freud’s observation.  It was a funny family moment with our own little appropriately staged wild-boy in the starring role.

Tormented – to no Good Purpose

That’s a pollen map of the continental United States grabbed last week from the homepage at www.pollen.com.  I should be grateful I was born into a world where drugs make my body less sensitive to allergens.  To the good, and I am stretching things  here, my allergic reactions indicate that I have a hyperactive immune system that seems to be in excellent spirits as it repels particulate matter.  Nevertheless, like the Kryptonite-Effect I experience whenever I accompany my wife in to a Hobby Lobby store, my allergic reactions are debilitating and render me not entirely unlike ordinary human beings.

Library Talkers

It was noisy in the public library last night

Needing a quiet place to read and take some notes, I spent a couple of hours last night at the local public library.  Volunteer tax preparers were noisy in a back room, but not quite disturbingly so;  however, one of them talked in normal conversational tones on a cellular telephone whilst walking about the library.  An older woman seated nearby my table answered a loud cellular telephone ringing in her purse and talked loudly about how she was in the library waiting for little Billy-Bob’s ball-game to end.  Some people have no more sense than owl-droppings or courtesy than the average marmoset.

Keelstrip Project Pionier 450-S

Friday was the day I got around to starting the keelstrip project.  In order to keep from having to buy a new skin for my new boat, I bought a keelstrip kit from Longhaul Folding Kayaks.  Spoke on the phone with the company’s owner, Mark Eckhart, who not only manufactures folding kayaks, but has a keen interest in superannuated folders long out of production.  For a very reasonable price, he sent me a 17’ keelstrip, neoprene cement, a brush, 50 grit sandpaper, rags (for the application of toluene), protective gloves, and printed instructions.

Abrasion of the fabric along the keel is such that I will have to debride some of the loose strings.  I also marked the guidelines wrong and will have to re-center and tape the strip, then re-mark the hull.  Additionally, because the floor of my garage is not particle-free, I’m going to to have to find another place to clean off the strip’s application surface.  Which means that aside from the hull-sanding, I’ll have to start over.  Means I’m going to get another toluene headache, although I’m sure working in the open air helped lessen the toxic effects of the fumes on my neurobiological substrate.

Some pictures: