The scene: warm kitchen in cozy house somewhere in Central Europe. Mother and Father are sitting at table drinking tea. Daughter, who had been dozing in bed because she was feeling sick, enters kitchen.

Daughter: I just vomited a gigantic amount.
Father: In your bed or in the toilet?
Daughter: In the toilet.
Mother and father: [wide grins, give thumbs-up sign with both hands].
The End

Go and nominate your favorite sites at The Bloggies. All we Euro Snobs are, this year. I have no special recommendations though: that’s what it’s all about – your favorites. I would, however, like to point out that Bulletproofpunk is funny, new in 2001, well-designed, has great non-blog content, and is European.

“Out on the ice, there are no big people and little people, just people who can skate and people who can’t.” That was today’s paternal sermon to Gamma, who went skating for the first time this afternoon. I don’t think she believed me, but she was polite about it.

You know what? Her skating lesson wasn’t horrible. We’d feared it would be. We’d feared a crying, cold little kid, sick of falling to the ice every other step. But she enjoyed it and hardly ever fell because she had a mother and a big sister (who can skate fairly well) watching out for her. And, later on, after I got used to being on the ice again, a father watching out for her too.

But most of the time, I was watching out for myself. I learned to skate when Beta started skating, about 8 years ago, so we could do that as a family. Then when Gamma was born none of us had the energy to skate. So this was my first time back on the ice in about 5 years.

There are big people and little people on the ice – but they are big people who can skate, and those who can’t; same for the little ones.

Any skill divides people into new groups – those who have mastered it to various degrees and those who haven’t. I was reminded why I always enjoyed skating at this particular rink – the wonder of seeing people who looked boring or dorky waiting for the train or ringing up your purchases at a shop gliding across the ice backwards, dancing on the ice, skating arm-in-arm with their sweetheart.

The enjoyable thing about skating, for me, is the joy of doing something poorly but doing it anyway. As a child I received so much praise for the things I could do well – get good grades at school – that I became crippled by the Fear of Fucking Up, afraid to try anything I wasn’t so good at.

I finally got over that when I learned to skate. The Fear of Fucking Up is the enemy of the Joy of Doing Something Poorly. Just enjoying an activity for the playful childish pleasure of it, free of any need to achieve.

Alpha recently received a bonsai tree from a friend. It has been in our entry way, dying a little more each day, leaves gathering around its twisted base.

Tonight I cooked Mexican food. Another friend was over. Beta got a stomach ache and read a book. Gamma acted autistic. After we got the kids upstairs, we sat on the sofas and talked. Moritz the red water loving cat climbed inside my sweatshirt for a while.

The friend told us a story involving, on the very far edge of the story, bonsai trees. We mention ours isn’t doing too well. She suggested we move it to somewhere where it gets natural light.

Duh, we say, good idea. Also, this is how you water bonsai trees we found out: completely submerge the pot, until no more bubbles come out. Then let the excess water drain out, and put it back wherever you had it. Do this twice a week.

Learn something every day.

Have you observed an affinity for water on the part of red cats? The first red cat I met was Pete the One-Eyed River Cat, who lived with a rafting guide on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula. He had one eye and would sit on the guide’s shoulder as he took tourists down rapids in rubber rafts.

Our newest cat, Moritz, is also red. Yesterday, for the dozenth time, he was on the kitchen counter sniffing the chunk of parmesan cheese, which bothered me, so to teach him not to do that, I placed him in the sink and turned on the tap. He seemed to enjoy it. He ran through the house afterwards, making everything wet. And later, when Gamma was taking a bath, he jumped in with her.

Like it was for Pat, Moira’s So Blue It’s Black was one of the first blogs I read when I discovered this pasttime about a year ago, and I even had the great good fortune to meet her in person in Seattle last summer. Moira has announced that she will be concentrating her blogging energy on her new site, A Constant Reader. Go Moira.

Cat vomit all over door: check.
Make Alpha mad: check.
Car frozen solid: check.
Plague of locusts: too cold, try again in summer.

In the shower today, I remembered, as a perky undergrad, doing a translation for an economics professor of the German Effluent-Charge-System Law. That sure was fun.

One interesting fact I got out of that was the practice, at least 20 years ago, in Germany of totally fucking polluting one river and keeping others relatively clean, instead of sorta polluting all of them.

We take a similar approach at our house with disgusting chores. Like, I get to apply the ointment to festering cat’s sores. Cat vomit on the door this morning: no one even said anything, I just put down my coffee and got out the paper towels. The frozen rat out in the back yard two days ago: me. Etc. etc.

Alpha and I do split human vomit, however.