Jetsetting

I've never been to Europe, but I'd love to visit. It looks beautiful, and old, and so compact compared to Texas. I've never been to Peru, but the idea of Macchu Picchu has intoxicated me since I was a teenager and had a poster in the living room of my first apartment (is it "mine" if my parents paid for it?).

I've been to Disney World multiple times, and flying is definitely the way to go. Actually, the first time we flew (which was the third time we visited), it almost felt "wrong" because the journey getting there the first two times was so much a part of the experience. But spending more days in the park and fewer on the road, after that first time flying, I was hooked.

I spent all week in Hawaii in a state of rapture: the flowers! The ocean! The food! The people! It was a week like none other before or since.

And cruising has taken me to places I didn't even know I wanted to go, but will never ever forget. The village of Chacchoben is one of those little corners of beauty that I didn't realize existed. The island of Roatan is another.

Covid scrapped our plan to fly to California, which we promised Mal would be the last time we'd get on a plane for a while. He's pretty anxious about air travel. I was bummed about not getting to visit Disneyland for the first time, and sad that I wouldn't get to see the Pacific Ocean any time soon... but since then, we've taken some pretty cool "consolation" trips.

Last October, we drove around Hill Country and saw some very cool sites, ate some really good food, and had laid-back family time. It was great.

In November, we went to Port Aransas, which is no CA or HI, but has its own charms. My parents and my sister's family spent Thanksgiving there.

In July, we visited Dallas for a few days (a drive we have well worn over the past decade), and in August, we went to Houston extremely briefly.

In the end, I think James and I have basically agreed that air travel is just a thing of the past for us. In addition to Mal's fears, and even more importantly, we will stop flying for the same reason we got solar panels: The cost to earth is too great.

Sadly, I looked up comparative carbon emissions and saw that cruising is significantly more polluting than flying, per passenger mile. Sigh.

But once I get over the disappointment of thinking I'll never experience a Belgian Christmas, I remember other things: There are wonders everywhere. Staying close to home not only saves wear-and-tear on the planet, it also saves money. Additionally, places like Hueco Tanks park in West Texas only allows about 70 visitors per day, due to the effect of an influx of people has on the surroundings. I'm starting to realize that when we go to "exotic" places like Roatan, and the island has to change to keep up with the expectations of well-heeled tourists, it's the same effect. And it's ironic because now Roatan depends almost entirely on tourism. Here's a very well-done article on all of that.

So, we drive. And probably not too far. At least until we get an electric car and can figure out the charging situation.

What I'd like to see go away is the classist, "Oh, you simply MUST travel. It broadens the mind in ways you just can't find doing anything else." I call BS because I know a lot of people who have traveled extensively and are as small-minded and pompous as anyone else might be. I remember one night, chatting with an older couple at dinner on a -- gasp -- cruise after the magical day at Chacchoben from Costa Maya. While I reeled over the intense beauty and wonder I'd experienced, the woman said to me, "You can understand why they all want to come to America" as she shuddered a little. It was like we'd been on different planets.

Traveling doesn't mean you're worldly. It only means you have the time and means to travel. And good for you. I love traveling! But it's not morally superior to being a person who never leaves their hometown. Can we strike that down, please?

Basically, we want to be better stewards of our planet. That might involve a lot of us deciding to leave most of it well enough alone, and stick to our neighboring destinations. We're ready for that. It's probably beyond time.

20 Years After 9/11

It's been 20 years since 9/11 changed the world as we know it. In a lot of ways, I feel like this post is probably about as interesting as my mom telling me about where she was when JFK got shot. Or maybe where she was when she found out. That was so interesting to me that I can't remember what she told me. Though I obviously remember that it was important to her. To me, 9/11 wasn't as emotionally impactful as the Challenger blowing up. That's mostly a confession about the shallowness of my priorities as a human being. I'm not proud of this. I recognize that it's a serious flaw in my character, I'm trying to overcome it. A handful of people (including a teacher!) died trying to get into space when I was in junior high. Thousands of people died when terrorists stole planes and changed history by flying them into skyscrapers that symbolized capitalism. I was working in Boulder, CO at the time. I'm almost positive that I lived up the mountain in Nederland. And that I'd taken the bus into work that morning, which is why I hadn't heard any of the news. Someone had brought in an old-school (even for the time) portable TV. It was a clunky CRT thing, with rabbit ears for its antenna. The footage of the planes flying into the buildings was playing over and over. I don't think either had collapsed yet. I'd spent the past few years getting disenchanted with the American government. I'd dropped out of college to join the military for Desert Storm. Back then, everyone I knew was afraid that the goverment would have to bring back the draft (most of our teachers remembered it going away when they were young, and they warned that it was just a matter of time before some serious military conflict brought it back). So volunteering for the Navy seemed like a wiser choice (and chance to be lazier) than being forced to join the Army or Marines. Plus, I liked the Navy recruiters better (ah, the stupidity of youth). After I got out, I came to the conclusion that Desert Storm was a huge mistake. This was a shock to me. I grew up believing that I could trust the U.S. government to mostly do the right thing. Despite growing up in a family that identified as mostly Native American. Both my grandfathers fought in WW2, because it was the right thing to do. My dad volunteered to fight in 'Nam, as soon as he was old enough. I grew up hearing about how disappointed he was that he wasn't allowed to join that fight due to hearing problems. I trusted that the government wouldn't have taken us to war in Vietnam if it wasn't the right thing to do. Just like we wouldn't have gone to war against Kuwait if it hadn't been right. After all, Americans are the good guys! We saved the world from Fascism in WW2. Right? Well, no, but that's a story for a different day. I hated the point of my existence while I was on the submarine. Our entire purpose in life was to threaten to be suicide bombers on an inconceivable scale. We were the world's biggest terrorists. We might have had an arsenal of ICBMs that we could launch and wipe out every major city in China. Or Russia. Or anywhere else in the world that had cities to melt down to radioactive glass. It's also possible that we didn't. I never had a "need to know," so I was never sure whether our missiles were the real thing or not. Whether they were or not, we all lived with the grim reality that Russia (at the very least) would be able to respond quickly enough to vaporize a cubic mile of ocean around us. We played a lot of war games when we'd pretend to sneak up to launch depth (with a squadron of enemy ships hunting all around us), launch our missiles, and then sink slowly back away so we could sneak back up a few hours later and launch a few more. But we all knew that we wouldn't survive after that first launch. I don't know about anyone else on the sub, but I know that I didn't want to. I couldn't have lived with the fact that I'd just helped wipe out a dozen or so cities. After I got out, I managed to get enough space to actually examine the truth. And I came to the conclusion that my fundamental assumptions were wrong. America had not been the "good guy" there. We weren't the "good guy" in Vietnam. We hadn't been the "good guy" in Korea. Or, really, in any of the other military actions since WW2. It's quite possible that we weren't even the good guys in WW2. Maybe the real reason we got involved at all was because the Soviets were about to conquer the world, and FDR wanted to present the American Way of Life as a better alternative. At best, we showed up to help straighten up the mess we made by getting involved in WW1. And there just is not any excuse for our involvement in that one. It turns out that the US government has almost never been the "good guy." So: I was really not a big fan of the US government when 9/11 happened. To be honest, I wasn't a huge fan of NYC either. There's a lot of other emotional baggage there, and this post is already long enough. When I saw those planes fly into that tower, my reaction was "Well, there goes what's left of our freedom." At the time, people pretended that the terrorists attacked us because the hated our freedom (that wasn't it: they attacked us because we refuse to stop meddling in the Middle East, because we're addicted to their oil). And they got belligerently patriotic and flew big American flags all over the place and insisted that we couldn't let the terrorists win. Then they threw out a huge chunk of the freedoms that the terrorists supposedly attacked us to eliminate. When I was a kid, you could just wander through an airport. Hang out at a terminal and watch planes arrive and leave. I'm glad they decided you can't just smoke everywhere and got rid of the ash trays, but I'm sad that we've gone so over-the-top about pointless security measures. I'd love to be able to walk Laura to her gate and kiss her "good-bye" the next time she boards a plane without me. When I was in school, teachers would call roll and make a list of the missing students. Then they'd hang that list outside their door. Now, there are biometric scanners to track who is in each classroom. And kids are fine with this! It's like they've been brainwashed to believe that it's fine for Big Brother to track their every movement. And then there's the surveillance state. When I was growing up, parents would scare their kids by telling us how the government in the Soviet Union monitored every facet of their citizens' lives. They didn't have the technology to manage the kind of surveillance that we regularly expect from our government. And that doesn't hold a candle to what we voluntarily share about our lives for the convenience of the little personal spies we carry around in our pockets. At least Apple and Google can't murder us with impunity just because they don't like our opinions. And, so far, the federal government hasn't taken that step (though things started getting close with the way Trump handled some of the Black Lives Matter protests). On the other hand, Congress did decide to allow the President to do pretty much anything he wanted to try to get revenge against the people who were behind the attacks. And we've committed a lot of atrocities since then. 9/11 was an unspeakable tragedy. Our response in the Middle East was much, much worse. Americans should be better than we are.

Childhood terrors

Over the past few months, Mal has developed a bunch of phobias. I'm not qualified to make that diagnosis. And he's probably too young for anyone to make them. But he has a bunch of irrational fears that directly impact his quality of life. I'm pretty sure that's the definition. Maybe especially since he can't express his fears. I want to be really clear about this: he's much better than I about expressing his feelings. But he hits a blank wall here. Something was happening the other day, and it freaked him out. I tried to be the patient parent. My natural tendency is to just tell him that there isn't anything to worry about, and I know that doesn't help. So I asked him "What's the worst thing that you can imagine happening?" He couldn't come up with anything beyond "That sound scares me." I think we agreed that it was a creepy sound, but (in my mind) it wasn't anything that should keep you from living your life. He's watching youtube videos that fill his brain full of things that might go wrong. Diabetes. Strokes. Having your oxygen stolen by sleeping under a tree. I've been spending a lot of quality time lately with a rubber mallet and lumps of clay that I dug out of our back yard. He spent a little time with it, pretending that it was Thor's hammer, and that he couldn't lift it. And then he swung it around and smacked himself in the back, and he totally freaked out about the possibility that he'd given himself a spinal injury. I try to assure him that he pretty much cannot do that. And I feel a little hypocritical, because he also insists on making death-defying leaps that seem like they really could snap his neck, and I really want him to stop those (he mostly has). The other day, a thunderstorm blew through. I have vivid childhood memories of sitting on our front porch and watching that sort of thing with my mom. I tried to convince Mal to come outside with me. Mom tells me that they terrified her and that she was just putting on a brave front so I wouldn't be scared. I love them. Maybe mostly because I'm sure we won't get tornadoes here in my lifetime. But Mal doesn't want anything to do with them. And, really, how much of his terror of everything is due to COVID? There's this thing you can't see that can kill you. Just sort of randomly. Or maybe the people you love. Who knows? Is that more random than the idea that you could get killed by electrocution from wires that should be hidden by holes in the walls? Or maybe by the insulation that might leak down from the ceiling if that drywall gets breached? We put him (and ourselves) into a mask anytime we go into public. Is that teaching him that anyone can just drop dead at anytime? He told me recently that he basically sends out "I love you" as a sonar beacon to make sure everyone he loves around him hasn't just dropped dead. I want to tell him that's a really silly fear. People usually don't just die like that. But my cousin Benny Jr did exactly that. At about my age. Maybe his fears aren't as silly as I'd like to think.

All Puppy, All the Time

My, how we've all grown over the past three weeks.

Luke has shot up physically. He was 8.8 pounds when they weighed him at the vet on August 6, then 9.2 pounds at our vet's on August 11. When I took him in for boosters on August 27, he was 11.8 pounds! And he's so much taller! He already outgrew the awesome crate I bought him, so we traded with someone in the neighborhood for a much bigger, much cheaper crate. Oh well. C'est la vie. 

James took Luke to his first puppy training class last weekend. I'm taking him tomorrow. He has that for six weeks, and we're also planning to get him out to a pool to see if he likes swimming. He seems to have more energy every day, so we're always looking for ways to get him thinking or moving. And the "moving" part can be a challenge when it's so hot out. 

Ironically, this is one of the cooler summers Austin has had in some time. But that's relative, and it's sweltering. Much more humid than typical.

Mal has figured out how to play with Luke in a way that won't get him all chewed up like James and I are (puppy bites are super painful and I scab over for so long, it would be tempting to wear long sleeves if we weren't living in the sweltering days of hell right now). We have two of Luke's toys each tied to opposite ends of a rope. I'd put one on the end just to kind of make it seem "alive." It was a way to play tug that didn't risk Luke's accidentally biting me. Once we put another toy on the other end, though, it became magical. Mal will run around inside during the day and outside at dusk, and get Luke absolutely bonkers over chasing and taking the toy.

We've also learned that he definitely likes to explore the neighborhood. I hadn't planned to try leash-walking until he was about 4 months old, because he's just such an energetic little ball of loopiness that I didn't think it would work. We're not doing loose-leash walks that give me much exercise, but it's nice to be out and about.

Luke sleeps great in the crate at night, but does not like it during the day. We've had a couple of successful  sessions, both when he was just already exhausted and I put him in when he was basically asleep. When we put him in fully awake, even if he's been exercised and fed and tired out and there are treats and toys in there, he does not like it. Work in progress.

He can use the rabbit waterer!

(It's Saturday morning now)

This time last year, when we weren't going anywhere, Mal got out of the habit of wearing clothes. Once the pandemic seemed to be lifting, he was to the point where he wanted to dress in the morning, even if we weren't going anywhere. Now, thanks to the Delta variant, which has rendered indoor spaces unavailable to him since he's unvaccinated (because of his age), plus the puppy, we're mostly home again. And once again, Malcolm is running around in his skivvies. It's hard to find pictures of him that don't involve partial nudity. But he is spending a lot of time outdoors, playing with the dog and hanging out with James and I while we work in the yard. So here's a cutie I took of him last night, and that's why he's not wearing a shirt. Now, why he wears his undies backwards and pulls them up like he's an 80-year-old man? I have no idea.

Time to go get ready for the day. Have a great weekend, everyone!