To Marty's Playland and the Trimper Family

Dear Folks Who Buy the Prizes For the Antique Cranes:

Please take a long, close look at this photo. See the baby in the background? That's me. I'm going to be... a lot older in December. I'm in Marty's in this photo because my parents thought it was fun to show those antique cranes. After all, they had played them as kids, as had their own parents. It was important to have their kids come to Marty's, to see and play those cranes.

Take a closer look. See how the bottom is filled with sand, and the prizes are stuck in it? Pretty cool, huh? And when I got a little older, the bottom was filled with tiny little seashells. There was little more exciting to me than when the claw scooped up a prize- or even better, a tiny seashell.



Now take a look at this one. this is my own son, overjoyed because the claw picked up a spring thing. It didn't pick something up every time, but it was totally awesome when it did, and it did more times than not. We ended up with a lovely bag of little plastic cars, rings, poppers, aliens, erasers, baseball cards, witchfingers... small prizes that not only kept us coming back to the cranes, but to Marty's Playland. Not only were we in the habit of spending long happy afternoons in front of the cranes, but also the skeeball, the coin-pushers, the roll-ball poker machines...

That picture is, unfortunately, two years old. Last year, you started putting in prizes that the claw had no chance of picking up. This year, you added to the insult by raising the price to 25 cents.

I don't mind the price change. I'm sure they started off as a penny, when my grandparents were loving them. They have been 10 cents as long as I can remember (we always called them the "10-cent cranes"). Keeping up antique machines is likely to be expensive, and the prices of the prizes- well, you could tell they were going up. Those springs are now retailed from Oriental Traditng Company for 2 cents. A little popper thing, the prize my other child liked most, now retails from Oriental Trading Company for a whole .04 cents (yes, I am aware other places sell them cheaper).

I do mind the prize change.

See, part of the charm of the cranes was going out with a bag full of those little toys. If you managed to snag a pen- the sign of a true crane master- you got a bigger prize. When I was younger, the prizes where indeed bigger- in size. Not in price. Blow-mold plastic was cheaper then. Getting a little acryllic animal (imitating those fine little glass ones) was a treasure to keep. Oh, yes, I still have them- from when I was seven.

How important are those cranes to your business? I don't know. But I can tell you that with the change, when we had a chance over our week stay to go to an arcade again, we didn't go to Marty's. We went a block down from our apartment, and had a ball, and got a lot more tickets that got us a lot more prizes. Any other year, we would have gone to Marty's. Every other year, we HAVE gone to Marty's.

And next year? We are considering if there are places other than Ocean City to take our vacation.

All for 2 cents. Seem strange? That's what happens when traditions are snapped.

Earthquake!

Joey and Andy have been having a Pinball Day. As in, they have been bouncing about like pinballs. Eep.

We pulled up to a gas station, and waited for the pump to fill the tank. Suddenly, the car starts bouncing about as if... well, as if little boys decided to bounce energetically in the back.

"What was that?" I turned sharply about, my own nerves already well-frayed. However, both boys and Evan were firmly strapped in their seats.

I hopped out and took a look, and there was a sheepish-looking man with his hand on my car. Why is he rocking me car? I thought. That's just weird. The car in front of us moved, so I moved up, and pumped the gas, and headed out to the post office. Joey was really upset, especially since he was already off-kilter, and started talking constantly and loudly about things like being shaken and other indications that he was pretty scared.

That's when I got a text from JoeyAndyDad. You OK?

OK? We're fine, why?

Earthquake. 5.8, centered in Mineral.

Wowzers kazowzers. That's only about 30 miles southwest of us. We headed back to Mom's house to check on it, but nothing was even out of place.

My house? Evan says some of the pictures upstairs are slightly askew. And that's it.

All around us? People talking about stuff on the floor, chimneys falling, awnings coming down.

But folks, we're fine. A litle shaken, not stirred. Next adventure: Irene. Due on Saturday. I'll keep you posted.

Beach. It rocks.

I know, I suck.

Why haven't I been posting much?

I have Andy home now. No camp this week.
We just a new book out, and I have been running about trying to sell it and get copies into the hands of reviewers and such.
Pot Luck Magazine is finally ready to be laid out, and I now have it done, except I need to get the main file and the cover to integrate, and it won't.
I had to grade finals and report grades. Then I had to start formatting and tweaking my fall classes. And I have to have it done now, because we'll be at the beach next week.
We'll be at the beach next week, so I have get everything settled and ready to go, all hands on deck. Fortunately, we have extra hands this year, but it still takes a lot of prep to take the boys on a long trip.
We got some payments on our genealogy contract that had to be processed.
My brain is fried.

I am planning on consuming a good amount of beer next week. Or at least dreaming of consuming beer next week. The apartment doesn't have high-speed internet access, so there may be a few posts, but I'm not guaranteeing anything. I'll be on vacation, after all.

New Design: Choose Kindness

Our latest design! Woo-hoo! I am also adding some of the new products to my older sections.

Joey See, Joey Do

I now have a mortal enemy. And his name is Annoying Orange.

I refuse to link to any of the videos of this nasty, inappropriate critter. Take my word for it. The video character is very aptly named. Unfortunately, he is also very striking and memorable, and thus very striking and memorable to imitate, despite his behavior being, well, annoying. And insulting. And offensive. And ugly.

Some of Joey's friends are very into Annoying Orange. They, and many of their parents, think it is funny. They also apparently think it is OK material for their 7-to-10- year-olds to be watching. I am hoping for the best by assuming they use it to discuss why the orange is annoying and so why you want to avoid his behavior. But alas, the majority of children we know who watch this trash are echolalic and imitative. Children such as... Joey.

So the other day, while they were eating snacks in the cafeteria, Joey thought it would be funny to throw his lunchbag at his teacher's face, in a "remake of Annoying Orange." He and his buddy D thought it terribly funny, especially when she gasped- a sound Joey has been finding hilarious this week. Needless to say, the teacher was not pleased. And Joey realized quickly that he had done something that had made her not pleased. The spiral spun to disaster from there.

The good news is that people who needed a good look at what our life has been like for the past year got a spectacularly dramatic view of it, and can now better work on helping improve it.

The other good news is Annoying Orange is now officially banned from my house. In fact, we may be watching a lot of Little Bear, Franklin, and Peep for a while. I may try to sneak in a Mr. Rogers. You know, some positive behavior models. I don't get to choose who he imitates, but I can do my best to present him with all the good models I can lay hands on.

And personally, I like Quack the Duck much better. He at least says "please".

Up up and away!

There is absolutely, positively no doubt that I have two happy boys this summer. And I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to be able to type that sentence, and spread it to everyone who reads here, knowing how many of you can truly appreciate what that sentence really and truly means. Even knowing those of you who can only get a faint echo of what it means, you can get the vibe. May it help the tides of your own lives.

How awesome is it to sit in a restaurant, one that Joey picked out- voluntarily picked out, all by himself- and have to speak to him about talking too much? Right after school? Or have to scold him a little for playing too rough with his uncle Evan. Do you understand what it means that he is playing with another human being? At all? I have to be ready for Friday, because we are going to be baking up a storm... because when I asked Joey what he wants to do, he says, "Let's bake cake and cookies!" He wants to do something- he can vocalize it- he really gets excited about it!

Yes, we still have meltdowns. Yes, I had to pull him upstairs a couple of time in the last week or so to discuss the "I want to kill myself" assertions and how to deal with frustration. He still has no patience whatsoever. Ups means there will be downs. BUt I'll take the massive ups we're having. Yes, and twice on Sundays, with every down I've had.

Andy is loving himself some camp, too. He's decided he likes art better than scootering, though I think there are two main reasons for that outside of his love of art: his little ladyfriend, and being teased because his scooter isn't one of the shiny new kind. He decided he likes his scooter, but no so much the other boys who go scootering at camp. Art is more fun because the company is more fun. I know this, because we've had several talks about it. I was worried he wouldn't want his scooter after being teased about it, but he loves his scooter. He won it at the auction and painted it himself, after all. That's my boy.

So here's to summer. May yours be as gloriously wonderful as mine!

The Big Picture

I often think Joey's life is kind of like this- waiting for us to see the big picture.

At the Aquarium

We had our Big Summer Trip today: the Aquarium in Baltimore! This is always a big adventure, because it is a long drive, then a trip through dark, crowded places, then an exhausting drive home. In the past, Joey has had trouble dealing with the dark, with the crowds, with the fish, and with the whole overwhelming experience. But this year, we have the return of Happy Joey- so we decided to give it a try.

Joey was so excited to be going to the aquarium, he was up at 2 am, singing to me in bed. At 5 am, he was dressed and informing us (who were still in bed) that it was time to go to the aquarium. Yes, he was a little excited.

We left about 6, because we wanted to be there when it opened to mitigate the crowds. Also, we were technically going with Team Stimey, though I got to see Stimey for all of... ten minutes? And I think we had an opportunity to say about three sentences to each other. The Aquarium is an all-hand-on-deck proposition, and all hands were busy.

Both boys were very, very happy once we arrived. They were excited to see fish, they were excited to sharks, they were excited to see turtles. Happy happy boys. That is the way it should be. We took the usual route through the sharks, up through the different waterways to the rainforest and coral reef. We were hoping to make it through the Australia exhibit this time, but no dice, we wore out. At least Joey as very happy through the whole thing, and really took time to look at the fish, not just glance at the cases and cope with the dark and crowd.

We tried at first to stick together, but JoeyAndyDad and I split up at last so Joey could take some breaks and Andy could go ahead and look at stuff and not wait around. Team Stimey came in behind us and we all met up at the top of the Coral Reef. Andy liked to get Joey's attention by grabbing his head or neck, and physically pointing Joey's face where to look. It was effective.

It was wonderful to see Joey actually looking at the fish, not just glancing at them. He would actually watch each case for a while, talking about the fish and animals he saw, noting that fish need to live in water (and couldn't come to his pond...) He was especially entranced by the octopus (no photography allowed of the octopus, but he was AWESOME) and the divers feeding the fish in the coral reef. He also liked to point out turtles everywhere. He was so interested, I am going to fish out some of the book I have bought him about fish and reefs and see if he will look at them.

Andy liked the rainforest and the exhibits about the Amazon basin. There were alligators, rays, and lots of frogs. Even he wore out at last, though he wouldn't admit it- he wanted to go see the jellyfish and hang out more with Team Stimey (Andy loves him some Sam!)

Andy was especially fond of the rainforest itself. HE saw it three times- once with Dad, once showing Joey to get him caught up, and one more time with Team Stimey, to get them caught up. He's fond of these open aviary type exhibits, seeing the birds fly and everything with no cage separating him from them. He also got to see a sloth and several nice tortoises. Joey was more interested in the parrots.

Andy even got to feed some of the birds- one of the staff gave him some mealworms to put out, and the birds came right up to get them. He was as happy to be able to actually touch mealworms as he was to have the birds come eat them. He saw the Wild Kratts feeding mealworms to aardvarks and was really interested in them, so getting to hold real ones was awesome.

The boys liked the frog exhibits, too. For some reason, Andy was calling the yellow tree frogs "ninja frogs", but apparently this added to the charm. Andy also wanted to show Team Stimey the frogs, but mostly ended up fascinated by Sam by the time we got back to them.

Though I didn't get to see them as much as I would have liked, Team Stimey was awesome as ever. We had lunch at the (very expensive) cafe before attempting the coral reef. It was a nice place, because you could see the whole harbor, and watch the dragon-shaped paddle boats skimming about. Apparently there was also a "ghost boat" in the water, but I didn't see it.

Finally, it was time to hit the reef. It was feeding time, so there was a diver there talking about caring for the reef and the fish. As I was leading Joey around to see him, a wail went up- alarm! alert! Danger, Mom Robinson!

The problem was that Joey had dropped his totem green sparkly pencil into the water, and couldn't reach it. This was a calamity on several levels- Joey's totems keep him calm, so we really needed the pencil; and we were afraid the fish might try to eat it (or at least the eraser) and get hurt. Andy dashed over to the diver for help; and he kindly thanked us for letting them know so they could get it out of the water, and he sent one of the divers ho was feeding fish to retrieve it for us.

We got to see the diver swim over and rescue the pencil, very exciting. She handed it to Joey, who was ecstatic and thanked her enthusiastically. He then was very excited to see her feeding fish a few minutes later as we descended into the reef.

And while the boys were bouncing about, excited about the diver and the fish and the pencil and everything, Andy lost a flipflop. Yep, it fell right between the grate and the glass of the tank, and landed just about the lighted shark silhouettes- and out of reach. I got a staff member, who kindly went to get someone with a pole. He came back to stand with me while I waited, and apologize for the wait (I must have looked as tired and exasperated as I felt), and tried to make me feel better.

"Oh, don't worry, M'am; a few minutes ago, someone's kid dropped a pencil in the tank and they had to send a diver over..."

I had to tell him that was us. I think he got his laugh for the day.

In the end, the flipflop was retrieved, we went to see the dolphins, and all was well with the world. We were worn out, so we hit the gift shop and headed home. But hey, never a dull moment.

Boys in the Summertime

Boys in the aviary at the Richmond Zoo.


Boys and tigers at the Richmond Zoo.


Feeding the giraffes.


Joey discovers the budgies.


Andy thinks budgies rock, too.


Discovering our inner Storm Trooper.


Joey loves riding animals.


Andy decides horses are OK.


A dream for Joey: meeting Obi-Wan Kenobi.


Andy's dream come true: meeting Captain Rex!


Joey still loves barrel rides.


Andy on the slides.


Sparklers!


The boys really liked holding them, and no one got burned!


Andy discovers a snakeskin on our nature walk.


Joey even liked the nature walk. This was unusual; he's usually not a fan of walking around at Grandma's and just looking at stuff. He especially liked toadstools.


Andy finally dives off the board at the pool.


Checking out tractors at the Caroline County Fair.


The boys liked the tractors, and being allowed to climb on them.


Playing in the corn: a sensory paradise.


Joey and Andy decided riding together was awesome.


They even hopped in the same bumper car, because it's far more fun with two!

Life is good. Happy summer!